Rachel: Welcome to Lonely At the Top, a podcast for high level leaders carrying the invisible weight of the world. Because you know the higher you rise, the fewer people you can safely talk to. Here we welcome founders, executives, and decision makers who feel the isolation and pressure that comes with power. Lonely at the top is your sanctuary in the storm, I'm your host, Soul Medic and former psychotherapist, Rachel Alexandria. Today we have Jeff McAuliffe. He's a coach and
Jeff: consultant with
Rachel: 35 years of experience in leadership development, process improvement, and organization [00:01:00] effectiveness As an internal and external coach and consultant, he's worked across the board in corporate,
Jeff: healthcare, public,
Rachel: nonprofit
Jeff: organizations,
Rachel: Jeff was also a graduate faculty member at Saybrook University, which used to be called Leadership Institute of Seattle, for 14 years. His current project is a biweekly newsletter called 52 Weeks of Earth Day to inspire those who are concerned about
Jeff: climate change.
Rachel: To move from being a bystander to becoming a change agent. I'm
Jeff: I'm so excited to have this conversation. Jeff. Good morning, Rachel. It's great to be here.
Rachel: It's good to be here with you.
Jeff: So
Rachel: back when I was in therapy grad school. Jeff was one of my faculty members. The
Jeff: the year.
Rachel: was at the Leadership Institute of Seattle, 'cause it was still called that one, I was there. , We had something called Integrative Group. Igroup
Jeff: Yep. Yep.
Rachel: and Jeff [00:02:00] was my faculty lead for this process group where it was kind of like my dream and many other people's nightmare. have to sit in a room for like two hours and talk about nothing except the here, the now and the personal. can't tell
Jeff: Stories,
Rachel: the past. You can't go into a big long narrative. You can't talk about other people. It's really a practice in owning and tracking and communicating about your personal experience.
So
Jeff: Jeff and I to do that for
Rachel: many
Jeff: many concerted hours. That's right, yes. Yeah. It's really a discipline of presence, right? Of just being able to ground in the here and now and not rely on all the other stories and narratives that prop us up every day.
Rachel: Yeah. One of my other faculty
Jeff: Faculty.
Rachel: so strict about it that she said we couldn't hold a water bottle in our hands or be chewing gum.
Jeff: [00:03:00] That's, that's really strict. That's ridiculous.
Rachel: It was very strict. It was very strict. I'm sure she doesn't listen to this podcast. , I really don't know. So we, we won't give her a hard time. But yeah. That was our early experience. And when I reached out to you, I don't even know if you remembered me.
I thought, oh yeah, I'll talk to Jeff and we're friends on LinkedIn. And then I was like, oh, right. A teacher sees so many more people than the
Jeff: Oh
Rachel: of the
Jeff: heck, I, I certainly remembered you, Rachel and you know, LinkedIn is my only real social media. Since I published that newsletter on it, I'm pretty active with it , and so I, I do track people, I track graduates and colleagues and appreciate, that ability to stay connected.
Rachel: Yeah, me too. It's been nice seeing you, really taking so much action for climate change.
Jeff: I,
Rachel: curious and I thought it would be interesting to reach out to you partly because I'm always looking for people with different kinds of experience
Jeff: mm-hmm.
Rachel: to talk about [00:04:00] the sort of isolation that comes from being on the top.
And I haven't really had on any higher level educators, and especially because you have that, plus you have so much experience working in corporate, so you get to see behind the scenes for those companies and leadership in companies, and you have the experience of training people to go work with them.
Jeff: Right, right.
Rachel: So. We're expecting a lot of wisdom from you,
Jeff: Okay. Okay. Well let, lemme see if I can dial it up here.
One, one of the things that, that sort of immediately strikes me is that I would say at least for the first 20 years of my career, I was pretty regularly,
Oscillating between being a consultant, which is just by definition you're trying to make something happen, but you have no control over it. That's probably the simplest definition of a consultant , and being a leader. So as a consultant, it was critical that I developed a very close [00:05:00] working kind of equal one-to-one relationship with senior leaders to , try to support these changes happening.
And , one of the things that always sort of bothered me a little bit as a consultant was that I may have had as much, if not more stake in involvement in some of these big culture changes or process changes or whatever system changes. And , the more successful I was , one of the measures of that was the more essentially invisible I was, the more that it was really owned, not by the consultant, but by the leader.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: And so , at a certain point it's like, damn, I just wanna get on the other side and be a leader in this stuff. I don't, I don't wanna always be in the background. Right. Had certainly had my chances to do that too. When
Rachel: When
Jeff: did you
Rachel: chances to be more out in the front?
Jeff: Well, I spent 10 years at a large aerospace company and, I had an opportunity after being there for about seven or eight years. To, lead a team to [00:06:00] actually be a manager of a team of consultants.
Rachel: Uhhuh.
Jeff: And then when I left Boeing and was hired by Swedish, I was hired on as the director of training and development.
So I had a staff of eight. And, sat at the table with some of the big kids, and had to put on the leader hat. And all that. And as much as I thought before being a leader that there must be this really big difference, I, I, I didn't notice it quite so much when I was in those leadership roles, right.
I didn't notice a sense of, oh, well now that I've fully got the accountability, it's still not my show. It's the show of how I really help my staff and people, make things happen. And so it was, not the big revelation of something different when I really stepped into that role as what I expected it to be.
Rachel: Interesting.
Jeff: Even as a leader, I think one of the things I carried into that , which was very much present as a consultant is, I, I think I make a really good second.
Rachel: mm,
Jeff: Uh, in other words, I like to be the person behind the person in some ways, [00:07:00] and I was not.
Rachel: not the Picard.
Jeff: Right. And as you know, from Leadership Institute of Seattle, we bring our family of origin into our roles. And I was the fourth of four boys, and I was always looking up to my brothers and I realized, yeah, this is, this is just a naturally comfortable way for me to be in the world is to be in some way, still looking up in some way.
You know, the top is a very relative title, when you say lonely at the top, tops can be in very different places. And I guess when I was the director at Swedish, I, I was a top to some people.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: but, um. You know, it's all relative.
Rachel: Did you
Jeff: Did you find
Rachel: that
Jeff: that you experienced, because you
Rachel: you kind of
Jeff: touched on this,
Rachel: that you
Jeff: experienced
Rachel: more
Jeff: loneliness or?
Rachel: at any one position? Whether you're a consultant or an employee or person in leadership that there is isolation regardless?
Jeff: well, when [00:08:00] I met you and just came on to being a faculty member at LIOS Leadership Institute of Seattle, that was also my opportunity to hang my shingle. So prior to that, I had been an internal consultant
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: and a manager of internal consultants. But when I stepped into being, this was like a, a really large change for me in my life.
Become a faculty member. And then also to hang my single shingle. Like I didn't join a consulting firm. I just said, okay, McAiliffe consulting, let's just start it and see what happens. And I would say probably where the loneliness hit the most was a lot of those projects where I was just the single consultant and I was in there and, you know, day to day, I, there weren't colleagues to look to.
It was just sort of like, it was my gig it. And that's why I found, professional associations and close colleagues to have our own, peer review, if you will. That might be a fancier [00:09:00] version of just saying, let's go out some have some beers. And I'm really stumped by this situation.
Can you really help me with this? You know.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that
Jeff: That makes sense.
Rachel: think
Jeff: I think there's a lot
Rachel: potential loneliness in entrepreneurship or running your own business, and I, I don't
Jeff: Don't talk about it as much on this show,
Rachel: because I've been doing it for 20 years, and so I have less curiosity about it. Uh,
Jeff: right.
Rachel: know, people being at the top in organizations is not my experience for the most part.
So, yeah. So
Jeff: so
Rachel: I was like, I know I can do a show where I am continually curious because it's not been my lived experience. But yeah, when you're in entrepreneurship, the benefit is you can network with all kinds of people who have no investment or visibility into your business and they're barely gonna have anything that would impact your reputation. Compared to the CEO of
Jeff: Sure,
Rachel: [00:10:00] corporation.
Right. Who
Jeff: Absolutely.
Rachel: pretend all the time that everything are okay.
Jeff: Yeah. Right.
Rachel: What about being faculty? I mean, you'd
Jeff: Already been
Rachel: um, a director or manager to consultants when you took on the role of faculty. I remember, I'll just say a story briefly. I remember looking at one of my other faculty members after a particularly hard class because honestly, a room full of 40 therapists who all
Jeff: have their
Rachel: stuff going on in a
Jeff: program
Rachel: designed
Jeff: designed.
Rachel: your
Jeff: Your
Rachel: stuff,
Jeff: Yep. Yep.
Rachel: can be pretty challenging.
Jeff: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Rachel: So I
Jeff: I
Rachel: seeing one of my professors, one of the other, long-term faculty there, and we had a rough one. And I think she was
Jeff: she was going,
Rachel: probably personally on the side.
And me being an empath and an intuitive, which I didn't
Jeff: yeah.
Rachel: totally understand at the time. I was like, oh, teacher not okay. And I kinda came over and I was like, how, are you doing? Is, are you all [00:11:00] right? And I could
Jeff: I
Rachel: the, the veneer crack a little
Jeff: Uhhuh.
Rachel: she
Jeff: Uhhuh.
Rachel: of share with me like, uh, you know, uh, and then kind of like pulled herself together and was like, know, I'm okay.
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachel: And I, I felt for her, 'cause I understood it wasn't that she didn't wanna share that she didn't trust me. She just felt
Jeff: Like
Rachel: appropriate to
Jeff: to be supported.
Rachel: by one of her students.
Jeff: Right, thanks for calling that out. I mean, particularly in that program, very experience based. It was a very tough tightrope, I would say, when I first came into it and stayed that way, oftentimes off and on. I found myself continually over the 12, 14 years, something like that in academia, continually coming up against an edge where I had to have a trade off between my authenticity and just what's an appropriate boundary to be sharing, given the role relationship? And particularly, uh, in LIOS in those integrative [00:12:00] groups where, actually we are striving for a sense of openness and vulnerability.
And as a faculty member and as a new you caught me in my first year. Boy, did I stumble through that one. I'm just amazed you even have any positive sense of me at all.
Rachel: I don't remember
Jeff: I, I, I, I, I have some, just awful memories of some really crazy things where I was completely triggered. I was doing exactly the opposite of what we were modeling.
And, I think there was some bodies in the road, I mean, that's, that's kind of a strong metaphor, but there was definitely some collateral damage there. Right. And that first year of learning was very tough. You know, the other thing as well is, um, so I did, after a number of years at LIOS, I, I became one of the faculty leads for the Spring program.
And, that was really interesting in the sense that, faculty in general I've noticed there's a couple of different types of disciplines. Medicine is [00:13:00] one, academia is another one where, people just don't tolerate authority very well at all. It's like if you're, if you're, if you're in a role of authority, it's all about cajoling and influencing and things like that just because, simply saying, well, I have role authority here and so I'm making a decision or we're gonna do it.
It just, it doesn't fly. And I've noticed this working with doctors, and I've noticed there's a certain sort of associative culture in those disciplines that, in one respect it's like, no, I'm not lonely at all. I'm almost too fused with you to be able to take on any authority to get something done.
Right. It's an interesting dynamic.
Rachel: So when
Jeff: So when you're talking about that dynamic,
Rachel: I
I believe believe you're saying
when you're
Jeff: you're trying lead other
Rachel: high
Jeff: high
Rachel: who
Jeff: who, high degree of education, so
Rachel: leading fellow therapists or
Jeff: mm-hmm.
Rachel: Okay. So I'm just making sure you're not talking about your role as, faculty to student.
You're talking about your
Jeff: No, no. I'm talking about Yes. [00:14:00] With with your, with with, with, with other faculty. Right. They
Rachel: a
Jeff: make a lot of dramas about medical shows.
Rachel: or like doctors and about lawyers, and maybe that's why, right? Because not only are the stakes potentially high in what they're doing, there's gonna be a lot of interpersonal drama with their leadership. So I,
Jeff: Yes. I think, I think that's,
Rachel: this.
Jeff: That's been my experience. Yes, that's true. Yeah, but you're right about that line of, keeping an appropriate professional boundary and still trying to remain authentic. I mean, oftentimes we would get news that we were not allowed to be able to communicate to students until the school itself did some sort of official communication.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: And, any leader runs into that sort of thing. I mean, you don't have to be in a faculty in a academic setting for that. I can think of any number of times, and I've coached leaders and I've been in a leadership role where basically, [00:15:00] you're privy to certain information.
They're stumbling or moving slow or whatever about the information you're having to deal with all the anxiety out in the system about what's going on.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: You've got to keep a tight lip and act like, oh, I don't know anything. Which is bullshit, right? Excuse my French.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: I think organizations put leaders in those sorts of roles all the time.
Rachel: I mean, I know a little tiny, tiny bit about some of the big changes that obviously happened to the school that I went to and that you were faculty
like it went through name changes and accreditation changes and, you know, home university
Jeff: changes. Exactly.
Rachel: a program inside of
Jeff: Different universities. Yes. Yes.
Rachel: And I'm sure that was very anxiety producing for students as they were in the middle of it.
Jeff: Yes. I can think of any number of situations where that came up. And understandably, what's, what's the title of the degree? Right? The title of [00:16:00] the degree changed.
Rachel: Uh, yeah, I remember there
Jeff: There was a contention,
Rachel: is for anybody who cares about the backstory, I technically have a master of
Jeff: arts degree
Rachel: in quote,
Jeff: Applied Applied Behavioral Sciences. That's right. Yeah.
Rachel: It's an MA in an ABS and that's very confusing because people think it's a master of science degree and it's not because it's a soft science.
And you know,
Jeff: Oh, right, right, right.
Rachel: made to change it and I, but
Jeff: But my degree is
Rachel: as that. And my graduating university is Bastyr. But the
Jeff: Yeah. Organization.
Rachel: didn't stay with that university. I think the year after I left, they had to find a different
Jeff: Correct,
Rachel: university.
Jeff: correct. Big crisis. Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah.
Well, that,
Jeff: That
Rachel: us into
Jeff: into my next question.
Rachel: What
Jeff: What is
Rachel: maybe it's this, but maybe it's something else. What is a
Jeff: the season of leadership
Rachel: that really tested you?
Jeff: Hmm. I think [00:17:00] I got my first big testing when I was, for six months I was an interim director of a group home for developmentally challenged folks. And I had actually been a consultant to their board, and I'd worked in this kind of environment before and I, I understood the ins and outs, which is why I think they asked me to step in.
Yeah, but this was a situation where literally the executive director one day just walked away and like, oh, there's no one running the show.
Rachel: Oh, no.
Jeff: I just remember stepping into this role and , particularly the first week, of coming into this role, because the place had just fallen to pieces.
I remember coming in and half the staff weren't there. It was just like people weren't showing up, staff weren't showing up. And, these were clients who really needed a lot of structure to kind of just hold it together. I mean, these were folks who were profoundly challenged, nonverbal, highly autistic.
So staff weren't showing [00:18:00] up. The vehicle to the home was broken and that was required to get , the clients to their day programs. Deliver to their day . I remember looking in the bank account and it was empty. They had not put into the state for their billings, so literally the bank account was empty, staff weren't showing up.
This, whoever the executive director was, had really just dropped the ball and then walked away. And, I just remember these long, 12, 14 hour days literally scurrying around like a madman, trying to patch things up and make things pull together.
Coming home to my wife and I had this metaphor, this image in my mind that I shared with her. I. I feel like I'm in the middle of a wildfire and I have one bucket of water a day, and I better throw it in the right place, or I'm just gonna get consumed by this. It was just so overwhelming. As they say in hindsight, it was a test of my character for sure, and thankfully we did pull it together and things got on the right foot, and I was there for six months and was [00:19:00] able to hand over the reins to someone, who was very competent and capable, stepped in.
And anyway, it was just a,
Rachel: A
Jeff: It gave me a sense of being able to step up to something I had never had in my life before. And I really value the fact that I had that opportunity, you know, in hindsight. But damn, was it hard.
Rachel: Yeah. I think that's the thing that really distinguishes leaders. Leaders don't look at an absolute shit show
Jeff: And go, oh,
Rachel: I, that's not my problem. Or Someone else needs to fix this, or. You know, help me. Leaders look at an absolute mess and go, okay, me find the bucket.
Jeff: right, that's right.
Rachel: Let me start solving this problem. And you know, granted, a lot of us, I think, have these experience in our twenties when we have more energy to throw at things like
Jeff: Right, right,
Rachel: get to that age, that situation now, and you're like, oh no, I'm just not walking in that door.
Because absolutely not,
Jeff: [00:20:00] right.
Rachel: you know? But
Jeff: You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Rachel: you're younger and you have more ability to burn the midnight oil every day,
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Rachel: I think that's what happens with leaders. We don't get into it because it's all roses and candy and dollar bills falling from the sky. We get into it because we're problem solvers.
Jeff: Right, and yeah, I imagine everyone has their own example. It is the kind of thing that, that really, um, what do they say? Tests your metal. Um, , I was thinking of, another situation when I was at Swedish and, we had a very interesting, and important time.
When I was there in the history of that organization, when it merged with what used to be Providence Hospital in Seattle. And, I was, one of the main organization development people. And my staff was supporting the merging of these two cultures.
Very, very, very different cultures. Swedish was considered the rich person's hospital on the [00:21:00] hill. Providence was considered, the people's Hospital where, whatever resources you had, didn't matter. We will take care of you. Very, very strong Catholic, tradition around that. And so what I was trying to host and we were pulling together was the first meeting of the two management teams, 300 people in a room together for a day and try to pull things together.
And it , and what my challenge was is that I, I had to stand up to the vice president of HR and the CEO about where it was happening. And, uh, I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep the night before, the night before I had, uh, I had to deliver that news.
And it was so surprising to me because I thought I was literally gonna be facing these dragons, of you've made a wrong decision. This is awful. You're fired, you know, all this. And finally they both relented and
and of course the thing went great. I mean, it was a fabulous beginning of the merging of these leadership teams. So, it was sort of a paper tiger, but it just. It, the, just getting the gumption as a fairly new director of pushing back against, these executives and the CEO.
Rachel: [00:22:00] Yeah, I think that's another thing I've noticed about, leadership. And I, I think that makes me, and probably you, you know, 'cause you do consulting and I do essentially, we'll call it executive coaching, but it's also spiritual guidance. But ,
Jeff: Sure.
Rachel: know, we
Jeff: We
Rachel: with these really powerful kinds of people
Jeff: right.
Rachel: and I think that's the thing that makes us successful is powerful
people need you to push them.
Jeff: Oh yeah.
Rachel: Like you know, nobody's gonna help them by just agreeing with them or chat gpt sycophantically being like, what a great idea. You know, like, we have to be the people that, that their will breaks against sometimes.
Jeff: Yes. Isn't that true? Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: think we're considered particularly helpful ultimately by them if we don't.
Rachel: Yeah,
Jeff: I, I think that's, I think that's how we really gain credence as being able to not just support and nurture and say, great idea and whatever, but also it's like, well, let me challenge you [00:23:00] about that idea.
Are you, are you you know, coaching language, are you willing to be challenged in this moment about that? You know,
Rachel: I don't even ask them. I just start doing it.
Jeff: you just jump in, huh?
Rachel: Oh yeah. Yeah. I was never a typical therapist when I was the therapist. You know, I always kind of wanted to do the executive organizational consulting stuff too, but I didn't wanna do an extra year of the degree
Jeff: Oh, right,
Rachel: that would've been another $20,000
Jeff: yep,
Rachel: So,
Jeff: right.
Rachel: But yeah, I always seemed to attract, even as a therapist, clients who didn't just want me to love on them and nurture them and, you know, gently nudge them. Like, I'm just like, why do you
Jeff: Why do you think?
Rachel: be different? been
Jeff: Yeah, right?
Rachel: I have a meme that I made, uh, I dunno if you've ever seen the meme where the guy is standing in a voting booth and there's two buttons and, and he's sweating. It's a cartoon.
Jeff: Uhhuh,
Rachel: Where he's agonizing over two choices
[00:24:00] and I replaced the labels of the buttons with, after hearing my therapist say something intense, I think the buttons say That's so true.
And the other one says, fuck off. And consider it successful. If I've gotten to a client to that moment at least once, probably a year, sometimes I have to send them that after they have the
Jeff: Right, right, right, right.
Rachel: they're just like, fuck off. I hate
Jeff: I hate that. You were so great about that. Get,
Rachel: me.
Jeff: That's so great. I must admit that working at Boeing, it probably took at least five to 10 years to, uh, build that muscle. Just 'cause Boeing is such a macho, brusque, in your face kind of culture.
At least it was in the nineties when I was there, and I distinctly remember this, this, oh, I will never forget this lesson. It was so great. So I'm facilitating a group of leaders in the quality assurance organization and we're creating a five year strategic plan.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: You know, these were meetings where we were, I dunno, maybe four hours a week [00:25:00] for a couple of months really pulling together a major plan and, and I'm being all facilitative and being all inclusive in my language.
And, you know, we have this wall of post-its that we're putting up that's like a timeline with different things. And I just remember this was like our second meeting, I think, and I've got this post-it, I don't even remember what it said. And I said, I read it aloud. It said, goes right here, right? And, and the three or four leaders in the room look at me deadpan.
And then one of 'em says, nah, it doesn't go there. And based on our previous conversations, it patently goes there. There's no question that it goes there. And I look at him quizzically and I go, no wait. This is so and so, don't you think it goes here? And they both, again, all of 'em just deadpan. Same guy said, nah, it doesn't go there.
And then finally I looked at him and I realized, okay, I get this game. And I looked him straight in the eye and I'm just gonna say, fuck you, Joe Smith. And I slammed the PostIt against the wall. And then they all literally got up with huge grins [00:26:00] and Joe Smith, anonymous name. Comes over to me, shakes my hand, and says, great, you're in the club now.
They just wanted to know I had a backbone, right?
Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I
Jeff: I mean,
Rachel: I don't love the testing, but . I love that story. And I feel like I have that with a lot of my clients. Like there'll be moments where they're, they're very powerful people. They're very charismatic,
Jeff: Right?
Rachel: know, and, and I'm not intimidated by that because I'm pretty forceful in my own will. It's another reason why I didn't really fit in in therapy school.
'cause forcefully, willful people are not typical. Like no shade, like therapists are, are amazing. And I
Jeff: Oh yeah.
Rachel: in therapy school and I, you know, really loved my cohort. I never felt like I quite fit in because, uh, our training was kind of like, you know, reflect and listen and validate and gently encourage and,
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of those Rogers [00:27:00] skills, right?
Rachel: Yeah, when I love Carl Rogers, Rogersian, humanistic,
Jeff: Yep. That is the,
Rachel: like that unconditional, I'm gonna call it love
Jeff: sure.
Rachel: I'm working with is there. But
Jeff: But I'm also
Rachel: quote a friend of mine, Lauren Gaucher, I'm also a love bully. I'm not gonna let you keep hurting yourself and me.
Pretend like that's fine.
Jeff: right. Oh, that's good.
Rachel: Yeah,
Jeff: that phrase.
Rachel: I know. Love bully. Yeah. Lauren Gaucher, she's a, an amazing realtor in Portland. I actually, actually
Jeff: Uhhuh.
Rachel: talking to her about maybe coming on the podcast,
Jeff: Uhhuh.
Rachel: so anybody in Portland who needs a kick ass realtor.
So. When you're at the top, no one sees your balance sheet of burdens. So here on the podcast, we like to ask our guest to open up their private ledger and
Jeff: oh.
Rachel: few things with us.
I would love to hear from you. One cost you feel you've paid for being in leadership.
Jeff: Well, this is a, maybe a bit of a cliche, but I [00:28:00] would say that one cost, you know, the years that I was at Swedish. I was there about eight and a half years, and that was a time when my kids were, grade school, middle school, getting into high school.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: And, um, I was just working really hard. And, people talk about work life balance and there's no problem to be solved there. It's just trade offs. It's just, it's just that, that whole polarity thing. It's like you give to one side to the other, and it's always a dilemma to manage.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: I'm not sure I managed it really well. As I look back on that. Because I wanna say that I know I was working at least 10 hour days, five days a week, and was probably on the computer or my phone multiple times in evenings, weekends, whatever. My adult kids now are in their thirties,
and we have conversations and they don't hold anything, against me, which is really lovely. But I just looked back at that and realized, there were just [00:29:00] a lot of moments lost in there. Not only in terms of time with them, but my wife used to refer to those years, particularly when the kids are younger, preschool, kindergarten grade school.
She referred to those as the donkey years and it made sense to me, although it was really hard to swallow the donkey years were just like, our life is about work and as it's about family and it's like me time is kind of gone right now.
Rachel: Like you're
Jeff: You're a donkey hauling,
Rachel: the
Jeff: you're a don, you're a donkey hauling the gear.
Yep.
Rachel: Okay.
Jeff: You're a donkey hauling the gear. And I, I remember towards the end of this time period, and there's this professional association that I meet with every six months. It's kinda like my tribe. It's a group of about 20 of us. We get together for a couple of days with a very structured retreat that we do every six months.
And
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: part of it is an opportunity every five years to do a, a really deep reflection and review on your practice, your life, what's working, what isn't. And I remember talking to about my donkey [00:30:00] years and one of the people in this review looking at me and going, well, what animal would you like to be if you don't like being a donkey right now?
And I realized, oh, I, I think I want to be a big cat. Uh, yeah. Right, right. I believe it was David White, someone wrote a book called The Three Marriages. Have you ever heard of this book called The Three Marriages?
But it's basically about, it's really a great people who are in mid-career, particularly if you're raising families 'cause it's about the trade-offs between self, family, and work as three different marriages that you're, you're married to yourself, you're married to your family, you're married to your work, and how do you work with all those trade-offs?
And I think that there may have been some cost, maybe not, with my kids. But I also just think back then, and one thing that I made a point of doing was at least once a year during that time period, getting away for a personal retreat, like a friend's cabin in the mountains for [00:31:00] two days and just go there and build the fire in the wood stove and get out the journal book and go take walks in the snow or whatever.
And, just have some completely unstructured reflective me time. Yeah. That was, that was one of the ways I was able to work with that cost. Yeah. Kinda life saving.
Rachel: Yeah, that's, I mean, it's great if you have the ability . I work with a lot of folks who are neurodivergent and I think that is a big struggle for them to
Jeff: To do something like that.
Rachel: Uh, usually they have to do it within the container of like a silent meditation retreat or
Jeff: Oh, okay.
Rachel: a held structure.
But I'm like you, I, I am more neurotypical in that way where I can hold a self structure and I testify to the same benefits of things, things like that. Like, you know, I used to go in Seattle to the, Olympus Day Spa,
Jeff: Oh, yeah. Right, right.
Rachel: often referred to as the Naked Lady Spa.
Jeff: Yeah. I just happen to know about that place through my spouse.
Rachel: yes, exactly. It's not, it is not [00:32:00] co-ed.
And I when I was just kind of feeling worn down or a little lost or overwhelmed, I would
Jeff: Hmm.
Rachel: an afternoon and just lay in the hot rooms with the salt or the sand or the clay and kind of sweat it
Jeff: It out.
Rachel: you can't take devices in those rooms,
Jeff: right.
Rachel: And, and that was kinda my mini, you know, just really allow my brain to kind of spin its stuff out.
Like spin all the tangled spools out and let all the yarn rest on the floor so I could start gathering it up and like, re spooling. I, I'm talking about this like I've ever done any kind of yarn schooling, which I haven't,
Jeff: Oh,
Rachel: but this is the
Jeff: right. It's a great metaphor. And yeah, I, I was, kind of jealous that there wasn't a naked men's place that at least I knew about.
Rachel: There's
Jeff: I
Rachel: five I
Jeff: Banya I've been to, I've been to Banya. Yes. And that's, that's a, that's a great place . I've been there after going on a mountain hike [00:33:00] to just get the muscles all smoothed out and spend a couple hours in Banya five and, oh, that's, that's heaven alright, so back to your private ledger.
Rachel: Please tell
Jeff: Tell us
Rachel: one
Jeff: what
Rachel: asset that
Jeff: helped you out.
Rachel: didn't realize you had at the time.
Jeff: Well, you know, I think kind of coming back to some of that stuff, perseverance is, something that I've sort of discovered over time is something that I can do. I can hang in there and I think I'd realized this pretty well by the time I got to Swedish.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: Um,
one vow that I made to myself. When I got hired on at Swedish, i'd never really worked in healthcare before,
Rachel: mm.
Jeff: but I, I made a vow to myself that I'm gonna stick this out for five years no matter what.
Rachel: Wow.
Jeff: Part of that commitment was that I realized that the kind of work that I was doing, I was really working to try to bring, a culture change to [00:34:00] Swedish. And I realized at that time to healthcare in general, which was we were pioneering this whole thing of taking ideas out of industry, from manufacturing.
Um, and bringing it into a healthcare environment, which I realized was very ripe for this, taking this idea of what's now called lean thinking or lean process improvement and lean healthcare is pretty common in just about any healthcare environment you look in now, or a lot of 'em. But this was like brand new and we were really pioneering this and I realized that this culture and this environment is really ripe for this kind of help.
It's gonna take at least five years to test it out and see if it's gonna work. You know, this isn't gonna be the kind of thing where you come in and you, do a little project and then you say, great success, all done, goodbye. I mean, it was really gonna take a long haul.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: And so I just, I just made that commitment to myself that, and it ended up being more [00:35:00] like eight and a half years.
But, um.
Rachel: Wow. Yeah.
Jeff: Um, and the time was right when the time came to leave. But, I don't think I could have done something like that earlier in my career. Just said, you know, I've, it doesn't matter how this shows up, what's going on? I commit to being here for five years and I'm gonna make this happen.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: My younger self would've looked at that and said, what? Are you kidding?
And it's interesting. Now, my older self, I must admit particularly people who are in middle or upper management roles or in senior consulting positions or things like that. I've just had an opportunity to just look at all kinds of different resumes and things in the various work I've done over the decades.
And when I see someone saying two years, one and a half years, two years. I did a number of years at Amazon, as a contractor and as a coach, not as an employee. And at Amazon they looked askance at you if you are in a role for any more than one and a half or two years, because Amazon is very much of a you're gonna work your way up or you're not a fit and you're gonna go [00:36:00] out.
And I look at those sorts of things and I, I really question it because I think you really can't know what sort of impact you're having if you're in that kind of role, unless you've been in it for at least three years for someone in a, an upper level role, even in a small organization, I would argue,
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: , I mean there's other good reasons unless your boss is always toxic.
But if that's your answer for job after job after job, well guess what the common denominator is. You know, it's not the toxic boss.
Rachel: I would
Jeff: I would say that that's something I have learned
Rachel: my length
Jeff: my,
Rachel: now too when I
Jeff: when I first,
Rachel: I mean, you
Jeff: I mean, you know how
Rachel: works, like a
Jeff: like a lot of
Rachel: what
Jeff: like what insurance says that
Rachel: therapy is supposed to be like,
Jeff: if you've got 12,
Rachel: weeks of coverage, you're
Jeff: right, right, right.
Rachel: six weeks of therapy and you should be good. And that's like, that's barely enough to get a relationship started. And I used to think because, you know, we [00:37:00] studied brief therapy, there are some, positive impacts you can make even with a short amount of time. For sure. But when I
Jeff: I
Rachel: stepped out of being a therapist and stepped into more what I do now, in the very beginning I was like, okay, I'm gonna offer this as more like package basis and not session by session.
Jeff: there you go.
Rachel: the, the first
Jeff: The first package I offered was, uh,
Rachel: four
Jeff: four sessions,
Rachel: and then I
Jeff: and I think I made six sessions and I thought, okay, yeah.
Rachel: to be doing this forever. You can have an impact in this amount of time. And I quickly saw that it wasn't enough time. The individual sessions
already a thing where I was like, 55 minutes is not enough time.
Jeff: Yep.
Rachel: just isn't. If, if any of you
Jeff: Of you in therapy.
Rachel: right now
Jeff: like
Rachel: go
Jeff: you go to your therapist, you feel like,
Rachel: started to say the really important stuff and they're like,
Jeff: well, that's time. Yeah.
Rachel: is 55 minutes isn't enough time.
Jeff: The structure. Yeah.
Rachel: All my sessions [00:38:00] are two hours, unless my client wants less because some
Jeff: Hmm.
Rachel: come in with an agenda and they're just ready to go.
But
Jeff: Yep. Yeah.
Rachel: yeah, you know, so my sessions were already long, but my minimum now is three months.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Rachel: , You're not gonna get any kind of serious change, any type of real change. you might feel better after a session, but it won't last. In order to start changing
Jeff: Changing habits.
Rachel: you're an individual or a system, three months is the bare minimum
Jeff: Right,
Rachel: get some kind of seed planted and growing. And a lot of people work with me for, a year and a half, three years, five years, because that's how they really build their new and improved self, it
Jeff: right,
Rachel: so much time and we don't like that answer because
Jeff: right.
Rachel: have to do this work for that long. But, you know, eight years doesn't surprise me.
A culture change is huge,
Jeff: Yeah,
Rachel: on the individual level,
Jeff: sure,
Rachel: that [00:39:00] fast.
Jeff: sure. Yeah, well, that's also part of our attention deficit, quick culture too. It's just kind of driving more and more of that, you know?
Rachel: yeah. I mean, I feel like I, I guess, I don't know what it was like super long ago, obviously, but people would come into my therapy office and be like, I just want you to wave a magic wand. One of my clients was famous for saying, I just want the montage. Can we just skip to the montage?
And then, you know, have me come out on the other end with the change already in place. Right. That was, you know, 20 years ago.
Jeff: Right, right.
I hear the same thing from leaders in terms of culture change or even, even a simple process, change, like a major process within an organization. It's like you're, you're talking at least 18 to 24 months for a really,
Rachel: gonna do this in six months.
Jeff: right.
Rachel: like, no,
Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
Rachel: not ever.
Jeff: Right,
Rachel: Like you are not even gonna change that much in six months. Leader who
Jeff: right,
Rachel: idea.
Jeff: right. Yeah. Yeah, [00:40:00] yeah. Yeah.
Rachel: yeah. We vastly overestimate people's ability to change quickly. Um, alright, last thing we'd like to find out from your private ledger,
Jeff: Hmm.
Rachel: what
Jeff: is one investment
Rachel: investment you are
Jeff: you're making now
Rachel: for
Jeff: for your role?
Can, I give two?
Rachel: Of course. Yeah.
Jeff: So I, I have been a meditator, off and on really since high school, 50, 60 years. But about 10 years ago I kind of, again just made a commitment that I'm just going to start doing a daily meditation. And so I, I spend almost every day, uh, spending an hour on the cushion.
Rachel: Nice.
Jeff: And that's a, you know, that's a big commitment.
But it really is an investment. The days that I don't do it, I can definitely notice the difference in terms of, just my sense of patience or my, my emotional volatility, it just makes a big [00:41:00] difference. , And the other thing is, I started doing Tai Chi again.
I used to do Tai Chi when I was much younger. And just in the last year or so I've started, going to classes twice a week. I've yet to build a practice. I mean, ideally I would love to be also, just trying to get through the form once a day. Um, uh, that's still a work in progress.
But, but I am going to class twice a week. I mean, , I'm gonna turn 72 here in a, in a month or two, and I'm noticing that, all the packaging isn't holding up as well as I'd like.
And, and, and one, and one of the things that is starting to fall away but now being helped by Tai Chi is balance,
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: Tai Chi is just fabulous for balance. So I feel like I'm gaining some of my, my sense of balance back.
Rachel: Mm. Mm-hmm. I'm heading towards my 50th year and, uh,
Jeff: Oh, good for you.
Rachel: of perimenopause is, that everything starts being like, okay,
Jeff: Okay. We
Rachel: seemed like we were all
Jeff: all
Rachel: and ha ha ha, [00:42:00] not anymore.
Jeff: right,
Rachel: and they've just pulled like some of the central blocks out and you're like, what? So I am a big proponent. I love Tai Chi. I haven't been able to, to find a really great place to practice that feels like it fits.
Yeah. But I am a proponent of working on all the things you need to do for bodily balance. I do, weight lifting, heavy weight lifting in a variety of mobility supporting forms. So, good for
Jeff: Good for you. That's great.
Rachel: Yeah. Good for us. Yay.
Jeff: Hey, hey.
Rachel: It's a little
Jeff: A little nudge
Rachel: listening, go pick up
Jeff: Is that heavy
Rachel: Uh, and, you know, with, with good
Jeff: breath?
Rachel: you know, with your
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Good breath. And not with your back,
Rachel: well, you know,
Jeff: I mean, just not, yeah. Yeah.
Rachel: who can show you how. Yeah.
Jeff: Right.
Rachel: All right. I have got two more questions for you before we wrap up.
Jeff: Okey dokey.
Rachel: one is. do you wish more leaders felt permission to say out loud?
Jeff: The [00:43:00] first thing that comes to mind, is being able to say unabashedly I don't know.
Rachel: Hmm,
Jeff: I don't know. I don't have the answer. I think way too many leaders get sucked into this image that leadership is about having answers as opposed to pulling people together to create, collective collaborative intelligence.
Um, but I, I would also say on a deeper level, um, I wish that more leaders were able to express their emotions out loud
Rachel: hmm.
Jeff: and that, and I think that's true for most emotions. But I think the particularly taboo emotions for most leaders are what we might call, some of the negative ones, sadness, shame.
I think anger is somehow allowed. Like that's an okay one because we have so many vulnerable, it's not vulnerable. And it's certainly actively modeled.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: As you recall, we learned in LIOS one of the most [00:44:00] basic ways to differentiate yourself as a person, as a leader to take a stand is to simply communicate.
What are you thinking? What are you feeling, and what do you want in the moment? And owning it in I statements.
Rachel: mm-hmm.
Jeff: And I am continually coaching leaders on this. And I would say that the thinking part and the want part is pretty easy for them to pull out. And the feeling part is oftentimes what's just completely missing.
I've watched a whole room of leaders totally shift when the senior in the room had already said what they think and what they want. And the assumption was based on those two things that everyone had failed. And finally, when I pressed them to say, what do you feel? They said, I'm ashamed at myself. And the whole room shifted
Rachel: Mm.
Jeff: because they thought that what he was saying was directed at them as opposed that it was directed at himself.
Rachel: Yeah. I notice,
I've had a wonderful [00:45:00] journey with my partner, we've been together a couple years now. He's a very passionate person one of the emotions he most quickly goes to when reactive is anger, which, you know, no surprise, lots, lots of people.
Jeff: Sure.
Rachel: am very sensitive to anger.
Like just, I just am, I'm know, high
Jeff: high touch
Rachel: person. And what is wonderful is that he's done so much emotional literacy work and nonviolent communication work that even though he has this initial reaction, when we get a chance to talk about it and process it almost every single time, his anger is predominantly with himself.
Jeff: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Rachel: And when I understand that, shifts things for us.
Jeff: Right, right.
Rachel: it's not a thing. I don't know. I guess when I feel
Jeff: angry.
Rachel: And I'm expressing it outwardly, it's almost never that I'm mad at myself. The way that I deal with my anger at [00:46:00] myself would be internal.
Jeff: So it's
Rachel: So it's news
Jeff: news to
Rachel: but yeah,
Jeff: Yeah.
Rachel: so many assumptions about people based on. Well, honestly, usually not thinking, just assuming all the
Jeff: Right, right.
Rachel: like without even being conscious about it.
I want to move to the last question, but before we do that, you know, I never know who's listening to the show and whether or not they might want to get in touch with you for, I don't know, a job or mentorship or to get involved with one of your causes. Uh, if,
Jeff: Are you open to people?
Rachel: in connection with you from this show? And if so, how could they do that?
Jeff: That's a great question. And I am. I am open to, people reaching out to me if they wanted to do any kind of follow up. I'm also, we didn't talk about it. I'm very particularly interested in being a climate change agent. So if there's any way that I can be helpful in supporting people in accessing resources or doing that, that would be lovely.
So I think probably the best way to [00:47:00] reach out would be to message through LinkedIn. That would be maybe the easiest way to do it. I regularly check that.
Rachel: Fantastic. That'll be in the show notes. All right, last
Jeff: Last question.
Rachel: This is when we open up the time machine, so the time machine's opening, and
Jeff: And they're going,
Rachel: gonna get, I know we need sound effects. So you get to step in and go back to a time when you were younger, whatever age you choose, where would you go back and what would you say to this younger version of yourself?
Jeff: well, I would go back to somewhere mid-career, I don't know, let's just say 45.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: And I don't think I'm unique in, in that. I think a lot of people, when they're in their mid-career, that's when you wanna make your mark on the world.
That's where you wanna feel like you have an impact that you're making your own personal ding in the universe or whatever it looks like. And when I look back, at that time I was certainly full of ambition and lots of ideas of what I wanted to [00:48:00] try to do and how to make that ding, but I also just felt like I kept looking for external validation for that ding.
I kept looking for, that great sort of Las Vegas lights at the end of a long, dark highway that said, you did it, Jeff, you made your impact, and now I can relax. And so if I were to say something to my former self, I would say relax. It's okay. I was always trying to develop new skills. I always needed more skills, gotta get this, gotta get that so I can further that impact. It's actually, not about the skills you have.
Right. And what I would like to say now is it was probably your presence more than anything that gave the impact.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jeff: about what you did necessarily.
Rachel: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: was about who you were and how you showed up. Just relax.
Rachel: Mm. Good advice for all of us. I am mid-career myself, and so I'm also taking that wisdom in. I
Jeff: Alright.
Rachel: [00:49:00] with you. Thanks so
Jeff: so much for coming on the show today. Well, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate you inviting me in.
Rachel: Absolutely.
Thanks
Jeff: Thanks for listening to,
Rachel: At the Top. If today's conversation resonated, I hope you'll give yourself permission to pause even for a moment and check in with what you might be carrying silently.
Jeff: you don't have to.
Rachel: alone. I work with high performers and leaders who wanna clean up their secret messes. You can learn more at RachelAlexandria.com. If you know another leader who needs to hear this show, please send it their way, yeah, it's lonely at the top, but it doesn't have to stay that way.
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