Simon Brown (00:21.995)
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown. I'm one of the authors of the book, The Curious Advantage. And today I'm here with my co-authors, Paul Ashcroft and Garrick Jones.

Paul (00:35.231)
Hello.

GAJ (00:38.062)
Hi, there.

Simon Brown (00:39.972)
And we're delighted to be joined by Lisa Danels.

Lisa Danels (00:43.307)
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you both. Oh, but all of you actually.

Simon Brown (00:48.087)
Great to have you with us, Lisa. So welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast. So to kick us off, Lisa, you're a seasoned senior executive, you're a consultant, a coach specializing in developing mindful and purpose-driven leaders, and you're author of the newly released The Human Edge Advantage, which we have a copy of here, Mastering the Art of Being All In. So can you kick us off by telling us a little bit about your story and how you ended up where you are now, please?

Lisa Danels (01:15.743)
Yeah, so I mean, I feel very fortunate in my life because when I was in university, I had the opportunity of having an internship in the learning and development department. And I kind of found my passion there. So I was very lucky because I know a lot of people struggle to find what they really love to do. And then I realized, well, no one's going to hire me in that field without any experience. So I said, let me get into a good company, which I did. I started my career at American Express.

And then I went back from my master's at NYU because I really wanted to specialize in leadership and organizational development. And then I was really fortunate. And maybe it was just being in New York where there's a lot of amazing companies that are located there. But I got to work for some of the best fortune 50 companies that exist in the world. And with that, I had fantastic mentors that really.

that really helped me grow in this field of organizational development and leadership development and really be able to bring forth how do you help leaders grow and how do you help teams accelerate and really do things like one of the things that I've really been proud of and I've done it in partnership with my friends here on the video is really focused in on driving innovation and doing it in a way where you can learn from other people.

And when I think about my career, I think about like three big trajectories. The one is around curiosity. My dad, before the internet was invented, I was always like, dad, why is this? Why is that? And the poor man, he didn't have a chance. But I have to say, he did buy me one of my best, best presence in the world. And this is going to sound a little outdated to our younger generation folks, but he

Simon Brown (02:56.087)
Thanks for watching!

Lisa Danels (03:09.035)
the Britannica Encyclopedias. And to me, that was like the best gift you can give to a child because it meant I had all of this knowledge at my fingertips. So curiosity was one that you see throughout my career in terms of how I got to where I am. The second one was around learning. I just, till this day, I love learning, I love research. You'll see it in the book. You know, I love to, and I love to make it practical, which gets to the last piece, which is around impact.

Simon Brown (03:11.293)
Ah, yes.

Lisa Danels (03:38.579)
Right? As I want to have impact, I want to make a difference. I don't want to just be an intellectual talking head, but I want to be able to say, how do we make it practical? How do we help people transform from the inside out? And then, you know, after my corporate journey, I finished at Novartis. And then my partner and I started Human Edge around six years ago. And it's been a really beautiful journey of helping people, not only answering the what, like, why do we do what we do, but really about being very curious about why.

what's underneath it, because if people don't understand the why, then it's really hard to transform and change. So, and if we do it through the heart, the space of the heart, which I believe is a big element, then that's really how we can have the greatest impact on people.

Paul (04:25.186)
At least I want to pick up on the point about curiosity, of course, here at the Curious Advantage and congrats on the new book. Loved it. But curiosity does feature very prominently in the book. So could we unpack that a little bit? How important do you think curiosity is and why do you think we need to be curious?

Lisa Danels (04:31.871)
Thank you.

Lisa Danels (04:37.696)
Yeah.

Lisa Danels (04:46.087)
Yeah, I think it's on three different levels because the book, we really talk about the self. So if we're not focused in on the curiosity of ourselves, who are we? What do we care about? What's our values? Then we can't really fulfill our greatest potential because we need to understand ourselves first. So I would say that's one level that you see quite prominently in the book. The second one is this notion of connecting. So if I'm going to connect with other people, then I need to be curious about people. I do a lot of executive coaching.

And I'm really surprised that when you see people have low interpersonal savvy, and I say to them, be a cultural anthropologist. Start to find out about people, where they're from, what's interesting about them. And I think we need to be able to get curious when to build connection. But the second thing for me is, if we want to get curious about other people's perspectives, if we want to work with them and build on their ideas, we need to be curious about...

help me understand how did you come to that conclusion? Where are you coming from? And until we do that, we really can't have those dynamic co-creative relationships that we're looking for. And the last one for me, the third one is around situations. If we really wanna co-create new possibilities and solve some of the real challenges that are in front of us in our lives and in the world, then we need to look at problems and situations in new ways. And that's where curiosity plays a big thing because a lot of...

teams I work with, executive teams, are not very good at framing problems. And then everybody, there's no understanding about what the problem is. So teams then spin in all different directions trying to solve them. And I think we also need to, in terms of curiosity, we need to challenge the assumptions we have about the problems. Because when we don't do that, we can't break through. We can't find new solutions to these problems that are existing. So that's where I think curiosity plays a big role in the book.

GAJ (06:43.626)
Lisa, I love the start of your book where you've got a quote from Khalil Gibran. And it says, do not accept half a solution. Do not believe half truths. Do not dream half a dream. You are a whole that exists to live a life, not half a life. And I'm fascinated. I mean, it's such a brilliant and beautiful quote about being our whole selves. What was it that made you want to choose that quote as the start of your

of your book, defining what you had to say.

Lisa Danels (07:16.755)
Yeah, the reason we chose that quote, or I chose that quote, is one of the things that really gets teed up in the first chapter of the book, the introduction, is that we're not just talking about connection in terms of people connection. We're talking about that the world we live in is interconnected, and we're interconnected. And when we understand that level of connection, then new possibilities emerge. If we don't understand that we're all one and we're all connected,

then we can't access it. And that's why we chose that one because it starts to spell out that sense of connection to self first, connection to others, then we connect to the larger world.

GAJ (07:49.398)
That makes a lot of sense.

GAJ (07:59.322)
really makes me think. Your book speaks about burnout and how can we stop ourselves and our leaders from burning out and how does that link to this idea of the whole person and the connection?

Lisa Danels (08:04.127)
Oh, yes.

Lisa Danels (08:14.767)
Yeah, and I think for me, it's one is, if we're going to be, if we're not going to burn out, we need to, or we're going to thrive, I like to think about it in that way, then we need to really be connected to our own impulses. So, you know, and this is part of like, anyone who writes a book and as you guys all have done together, you know that part of it is we're in process, even though we write about this, it doesn't mean that we have it perfect. And I think that's an important thing.

So why I was writing the book, I was working weekends. And the thing for me is I was so busy writing that I wasn't in tune with myself. And by the time of the end of the year, I was really burnt out. So I think part of it is we have to get in tune with ourselves and we only can do that by waking up in the morning and being curious. How do I feel? Did I get enough rest? Am I eating the right healthy food? So this is one of the really key elements.

GAJ (09:06.072)
Mm.

Lisa Danels (09:08.351)
The other key element about not burning out is we need to be clear about our purpose and values. So if we're not connected to what we love and what we do, when we're connected, it doesn't feel like we're working. We have so much energy and then it allows us to step into flow. And when we're in that state, then we can really start to thrive. And I think the last piece around this burnout is, and we really saw it after COVID, is that

having connection and having great interactions with people, it leaves a feeling of yumminess and we feel our emotional tanks are full. And we can't underestimate that.

GAJ (09:50.52)
I was just talking to a client who was talking about curiosity and a lot of their team were worried that being curious was adding more work to an already absolutely packed agenda on their daily lives. And the conversation we had was pretty much in those lines. It was like, if you're enjoying your work, if you slow down in order to speed up.

If you just take time to be curious, you're probably making better decisions, you're feeling more fun, what you call it, yumminess. You're having a better time, and as a result, the whole thing becomes easier, and it's not an addition.

Lisa Danels (10:29.191)
No, it's not an addition. And I don't know why, and I'm sure you, this was something you explored in your writing, was around that why as children, we're so curious and we don't really wanna know what's gonna happen the next day, right? That's the excitement. And as adults, we want this safety and security. We wanna hold onto this and it kind of takes away the joy of life.

GAJ (10:51.787)
Mm.

Simon Brown (10:53.911)
Coming back to what you're saying on the burnout and also linking that to what you said on curiosity. So I think it was our very first podcast where we had Jackie Brassy from McKinsey and IE Business School. She talked about one of the powers of curiosity being to sort of manage emotional wellbeing. And when I'm hearing similar message around how actually if we're curious about ourself and aware of what's going on within ourself, within our body, within our emotions, within our anxiety, et cetera, that self-

Lisa Danels (11:10.892)
Hmm.

Simon Brown (11:23.095)
curiosity of self helps us to then sort of manage that stress burnout and overall well-being. Is that consistent with what you were seeing?

Lisa Danels (11:31.799)
Absolutely, and I think what people fail to understand, and I spell out in the book, is this notion that there's a high level of anxiety going on, and if you dig underneath it, it's really related to fear. And we're really afraid of being ourselves and stepping into the courage to be ourselves. And that takes a lot of practice. It takes a willingness to let go of the good opinions that we believe people have of us.

Simon Brown (11:43.168)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa Danels (11:57.923)
That's not an easy place to go. And in order to do that, we need to explore ourselves and examine ourselves, even if it's difficult.

Paul (12:08.662)
I think linking to that, Lisa, one of your chapters, which I love the title of this chapter, says, what is personal power and why do we give it away? Tell us, because I think that is probably linked to what you were just talking about, about how our control over burnout. Tell us a bit about personal power and why this is important.

Lisa Danels (12:15.72)
Mmm.

GAJ (12:15.906)
Ha ha

Lisa Danels (12:26.451)
Yes, yeah, it's really important because in our in our traditional way of operating, it's always been we believe that power is held in a fuel and that people have power over us. And then we have this resistance to that. And you see it in the world. There's this huge dynamic going on about this shift from power over to power with and power within. So when we talk about this personal power, it's really saying there's really only one power, which is the power you have in yourself.

And part of that is very much related to your belief around self authorship. Your belief that you can change your life, you can live your dreams. So there's this sense of when I'm in, when I am mastering myself, cause that's what personal power is, I'm stepping into my ability to co-create. So instead of achievement, we move to co-creation. And that's massive, that's a massive shift. And it's not easy to get there because in order to do that,

We need to master our mind because the mind is a busy, busy place. And until we master the mind and get the mind working for us, you know, it can get in our way. It can bring to self-doubt. It can tell us what's critical. There's so many things going on in the mind, right? But if we use that mind in a way where we can use it for curiosity and filling our container, then this can make a huge difference in terms of how we operate, especially also the emotional mastery.

If we want to step in our power, if somebody says something to us and we have a reactive behavior, then that's not going to help. So if we want to unlock it, we have to be willing to take off our masks, take off that coping mechanism and deal with that stuff that came from childhood patterns, which by the way we all have. All of us have these elements.

Paul (14:11.114)
These are, yeah, agreed and I love that. Would you have a tip? I know in the book, and I love this about the book, that you, you give really practical examples and, and things to do. Is there one idea or one tip that you could give listeners as to how to sort of take control of their personal power or grow that?

Lisa Danels (14:21.898)
Mm.

Lisa Danels (14:32.603)
I think the one big thing is taking some time and just saying, not what is it I need, but what is it I long for? Because that really starts to tap into what's in the heart, not what's in the head, not what does society tell us, but what do I long for? And if we start to just do free writing for five minutes on that, I think we'll start to discover what's really in our heart and what do we want to author.

Paul (14:42.442)
Hmm.

Lisa Danels (14:57.727)
What are we willing to step forward and do? That's probably the easiest thing you can do to start to step into your personal power.

GAJ (15:03.358)
I love that, asking what is it I long for? What are my desires? Things that would light my fire. I was interested in the other part of the title about your power and why do we give it away? Can you talk a little bit about why we give it away?

Lisa Danels (15:08.276)
Yeah.

Lisa Danels (15:19.813)
Yes.

Yeah, we give it away for many reasons. One is if we're in a relationship, right? And we think that if we speak up or we say something, that could have an impact. So we give it away. I mean, the reason this work started is because in a previous employer, when I was living in the States, I had a personal experience where I was in a meeting room with very senior leaders. And one of the senior leaders started really coming after me.

in the meeting and it was really, it got on the point of being bullying. And one of the things that I realized is I didn't speak up. I didn't say anything. And I remember after reflecting on the situation, I thought, I really gave up my power. And why did I give up my power? And I was afraid if I spoke up, the ramifications would be so bad. So that's those are some of the reasons we give up our power. You know, we let fear get in the way.

GAJ (16:20.242)
It comes back to fear, I was just going to say, you mentioned that.

Lisa Danels (16:22.195)
Oh, yeah, it's very fear-based. It's very, I think the other thing too, and we'll speak about this a little bit about the Keegan model, but it's also because we're very tied to what people believe our world should be. So we're taught to, oh, don't go down this profession because you're not, and you hear it all the time from children, right? Their parents say, oh, go be a doctor. Oh, don't be an artist. You won't be able to make a career.

Right? So we're very much trained about through our socialization. And this is part of it doesn't allow us to really explore and be curious about ourselves. We're just taught to kind of walk the line, toe the line.

Simon Brown (17:01.78)
and

Yeah. And how I'm hearing in that context is that giving away power is a negative thing. Is that the case? Or is it there are certain examples where, you know, actually, it's the right thing to do to be giving away power or positive thing to be giving away power. This is in a context of unwittingly giving away power, is it that we're talking?

Lisa Danels (17:25.919)
Well, I mean, Simon, you bring up a really good point, but I think it's from a different perspective. So if we're talking about leadership, we're talking about power with, and that's when we share power. So this is the big paradigm I unpack in the book, which says, before it was like, I'm the leader, you need to listen to me. And now the leader can't know everything. It's impossible. There's too much information coming at us. So now we have to have power with, and that's when you share power. But the thing is, here's the thing.

GAJ (17:47.135)
right, it's all changed.

Lisa Danels (17:55.207)
is that if we're going to share power, that the people on the other side have to be willing to step into the power. And that's why the personal power has to be there first. Because you can, and this is what I find with leaders that I coach, is that they're going, I share power, I ask my team for innovation and ideas, and I don't get anything, right? Because the people have to be able, we can't just take the leaders off and train them. We have to do it in tandem within the teams.

Simon Brown (18:15.936)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa Danels (18:24.651)
That's what's really.

GAJ (18:24.914)
I have to ask you, how does that, you talk about first circles and second circles when you talk about personal power and receptivity and it's something about the body. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Lisa Danels (18:39.475)
Yeah, in terms of how do you show up, are you willing, like when you walk into a room, are you are you hunching over right? Or are you accepting of being or are you and you and are you having this whole conversation in your head so you're not able to connect? Or are you fully present in the moment and being able to see what's going on and then respond to people? Right. Because this is

GAJ (19:01.622)
That's the third cycle.

Lisa Danels (19:02.963)
Yeah, that's the third circle. So these are really important concepts that we understand around how do we show up? Because if you ask people around this notion of connection and you really kind of ask yourself, are you really present with people? Are you fully present? Are you they are listening and being with them? Or are you having another conversation in your head? And this is what gets in our way in terms of how we in terms of how we show up.

Simon Brown (19:32.343)
So one of the other things you talk about is the notion of sort of being all in and the barriers to stop us from being all in. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Lisa Danels (19:44.583)
Yes, so when I talk about all in the book, there really goes to three levels. The first one is you need to connect with yourself. And in order to connect with yourself, you really need to remove those barriers. What gets in the way of me fully showing up? Because a lot of the times people don't even know what they feel. They're so disconnected, they can't even like how many workshops. And I know you.

All of you do a lot of workshops. How many times when you ask the question, just as a check-in, how are you feeling? And you get words like good, fine. They're not emotions. They are not emotion. So people have a hard time with really getting in tune with and being able to have an emotional vocabulary. So the first one is this, you know, connecting to self or this personal power. The second one is connecting to self. So if I really want to.

Simon Brown (20:12.008)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Brown (20:16.373)
Yep.

Lisa Danels (20:33.503)
have a place where people co-create together, then they need to be able to have the connection through trust and mutual respect. And a lot of the times we respect people who show up like we do, right? Rather than respecting people for what gift they bring to the table. And I think that's really important. And I have to say, I learned this lesson a really hard, in a hard way. I had one of my boss's colleagues pulled me aside one day.

and said, Lisa, you're great at strategy. You really bring new interesting ideas, but you don't always value people who bring other things. And as this person was giving me the feedback, the tears were coming down my face because I realized that I really wasn't honoring the gifts that they brought to the table. And I only looked at if it was similar to what I brought, did I value it. And it was a massive blessing. They connect with others, yeah.

Simon Brown (21:23.115)
So second one's connect with others, is it? It connects, first one's connect with yourself, second one's connect with others, yep, yep.

Lisa Danels (21:29.287)
It's the connecting with others because we have to respect what do they bring to the table that we don't and You hear a lot of leaders that go on if they don't have this I'm not interested and the reality is that it's important And there's this great story that Margaret Hefner talks about with the super chickens, right? That they looked at the chickens that were they wanted to produce the most eggs So they brought these they brought these chickens together over multiple generations and they found by the end when they only had the super chickens and the high achievers

They ended up killing themselves. And then when they look back and said, well, why is that? They said, well, the hens actually that didn't produce as many eggs kept the harmony in the flock. So these are important lessons.

Simon Brown (22:07.339)
I think there's a Ted talk on that, I don't know if anyone wants to learn more on that. I think it's Margaret Heffernan, it's a Ted talk, I think, where she talks about super chickens. Yeah.

GAJ (22:12.962)
Ha ha ha!

Lisa Danels (22:13.815)
Oh, it's fantastic. So that's the second piece around this meaningful connection and creating this real sense of belonging. This is something people really are looking for now. And unfortunately, there's this loneliness epidemic that's going on. 33% of the population around the world is feeling lonely. It varies by country, but it's a very scary thing that we're not able to connect with other people. And then the last one is the, I think, is the most fun part. And really, we're.

GAJ (22:15.598)
We should do a podcast.

Lisa Danels (22:42.739)
where Ludic plays is around this co-creation piece, which is how do you co-create possibilities? And in order to co-create possibilities, we need to be able to set the frame and be able to allow everyone to contribute. And in order to let everyone contribute, then we need to share power. That's what Simon getting back to your concept about it.

Paul (23:06.838)
At least one of the other terms you, ideas you give us in the book is about igniting your own genius, which piqued my interest, as you could imagine. Can you tell us a bit, how do you, you know, what is igniting your own genius? How do you do that? And how does it relate to being curious?

Lisa Danels (23:14.708)
Yes.

Lisa Danels (23:24.391)
Yeah, so in order to ignite your own genius, you really need to understand what unique skills you bring to the table. So I like to say, what are your superpowers and what are your gifts? And in order for you to know what they are, you need to be curious about them because those gifts don't come like we might have raw talent, but they don't become real talent. They don't become actionable until we start using them. And we have to get curious about, oh, I'm gonna step out of my comfort zone here, or I'm gonna go learn something. I mean, one of the things we see is,

The people who learn across multiple disciplines are the ones that actually can bring the most insight to a discussion because the bright side of the brain is starting to connect data that they never thought was possible. So this is where curiosity plays such an important role in how we have our own genius. And a lot of the times, if you ask people, what's your superpower, they get a little embarrassed.

They're not willing to kind of say, yes, this is my superpower. And I think we need to get a little bit more comfortable of really falling in love with ourselves and be willing to experiment and be able to step into that space in ourselves.

Paul (24:25.351)
Hmm.

Simon Brown (24:39.307)
I remember when we had Sanyin Siyang on here and she was talking about the superpower and the superpower of curiosity. So we're talking with Lisa Danels. Lisa is a senior executive at Human Edge. She's a consultant, an author, and a coach, and she specializes in developing mindful purpose-driven leaders. She has over 20 years of diverse business experience, and she empowers C-level executives and high potential leaders, leveraging a probing approach and her robust business.

She holds a master's degree from New York University and is a certified coach through IPEC focusing on strategic direction, team building and exceptional performance. Outside of work Lisa enjoys yoga, cooking, skiing, hiking with her dogs and globe-protting with loved ones. So Lisa there's four sections in the latest book so can you talk us through what those are, the sort of flow that sits in the book and I know curiosity features prominently throughout all of those.

Lisa Danels (25:36.331)
They do, they do. So the first one is really the integrating head, heart, and gut. And that's an important part because if we want to have the greatest capacity to fulfill our dreams and our professional ambitions and our personal ambitions, we need to be able to bring in these three energies, I would call them. And the first one is the head. And this is really about

The head is all about this mental construct, right? The ability to take our ideas and bring them into reality, right, and be able to feel, I call it our repository, right? Fill our mind with amazing stuff. The more we read, the more we engage, right? This allows us to create that fertile ground for creating new ideas. The second part of it is the heart, right? How do we bring in that emotion? How do we allow the heart to come in so we can deal with difficult situations when it comes to people?

And then the third one is the intuition, which is really my favorite because I believe it's the highest intelligence that we have Because it allows us to access both the head and the heart at the same time So when we can integrate all of those three things We have the greatest capacity because any problem that's put in front of us We can access all of three of those energies at the same time Which most people have difficulty doing I see a lot of leaders bifurcate between the head and the heart

Simon Brown (26:55.179)
Hmm.

Lisa Danels (26:57.627)
And then you feel like they're talking at you and they're not talking with you. So that's a good way you can see it. You can actually hear it when people are not fully integrated. So that's the first part of the book. The second part of the book is really around this cultivating personal power. And we've touched on so many of the concepts already, but what is it? Why do we give it away? How do we unlock it? And then what are the, I think this is one of my favorite chapters, what are the deeper gateways to ourself, right? How do we really...

learn to fall in love with ourselves. And that's not an easy feat, because the mind is constantly saying, oh no, you're not good enough. You'd be surprised how many people have this imposter syndrome, where they really wonder, even if they've achieved great heights, they're still wondering if they're good enough and if someone's gonna find them out as a fraud. So I think that's an important thing. The next one is the connecting to others. And this is about the foundations of human connection. What are those four elements that we need to ensure?

for selfless collaboration. And the one thing that I really was intrigued about, and we all learn as we're writing, and the biggest area was around trust. And if you notice in organizations, right, we don't always rebuild trust once it's broken. We don't know how to rebuild it. Where in our personal relationships, we're much better at it, and maybe it's because we share the same bed with somebody at times, or we share the same household, so it would start to get uncomfortable if we didn't bridge that trust. But...

In organizations, once it's broken, we have difficulty rebuilding it. And that's one of the most important things that we talk about, that trust is that foundation. And then the last part is the really fun part of the book, which is this co-creating possibilities. And in order to do that, we need to create this frame. We need to have hope and optimism. And this was another big thing for me in the learning process is, when we talk about hope, hope is actually a process.

It's not, we always think of like, oh, hope is something that, you know, we have to give people hope. But when you look at the research, it actually says that leaders, when they give a process for how to take people, how they're going to achieve and how they're going to grow and learn, that this is something that can really be, this can be put into a process. And you'll find that there's ways of doing that in the book that are quite practical. And those are the four points.

GAJ (29:13.775)
That's really inspiring, the idea of hope is something we can work on together. I mean, what's interesting about your book, which I really value, is there's a lot about what I need to do with myself and how I need to focus on myself and work through things. Great. But there's also a lot about how we do things collectively and especially creativity, which is very hard to do.

Lisa Danels (29:33.609)
Yes.

GAJ (29:39.35)
Being creative is one thing. I know I'm a creative person. I'm a musician, amongst other things, and I know it. But sharing creativity with other people has always been more difficult, right? And yet you give us some tips and some clues about how to do that. Can you talk us a little bit more about this being creative together?

Lisa Danels (29:50.401)
Yeah.

Hmm

Lisa Danels (30:02.675)
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing for me is, is that this whole notion of what is leaders role now in the world, right? Now that we're networked, we're trying to be more agile. So leaders can't know everything. So in order for leaders to really play a prominent role in this process of co-creation, they need to create a frame. They need to say, where do we play? Where don't we play? So let me give you a practical example. So at U of M and S, we were exploring

GAJ (30:23.167)
Okay.

GAJ (30:28.268)
Yeah.

Lisa Danels (30:30.331)
artificial intelligence and how to use it in learning. And in that discussion, my team was exploring it. And I was very clear. I said, look, there's a lot of AI coming into the world that says we can fire someone without talking to them. So there was AI that was dehumanizing people. And I said, I don't want any of the dehumanizing stuff. I want to use AI to actually bring out the best in people and allow them to fulfill their potential. So I created that frame so they knew.

when they were going out and doing and looking what was out in the market, they knew to what they should include and what they shouldn't include. And these are important. And this is something leaders really I've seen by working with leaders. They're not very good at creating the frame. And then they wonder why people don't contribute as much. But when you create the frame, then I know where I can contribute and I can co-create with you.

GAJ (31:06.166)
It's fascinating.

GAJ (31:22.046)
I wish I had this term creating the frame a few days ago. I was talking with a client again, where the conversation I recognize now was all about creating the frame, because it was about curiosity. And how do you, you know, they were worried that if people were just allowed to be curious, if people were just allowed to be curious, they would go outside of the remit or they'd be getting all kinds of solutions to problems that they hadn't.

Lisa Danels (31:31.552)
Yeah.

GAJ (31:48.59)
asked for in some ways and they were asking how do we tune creativity do we go and we had a really wonderful conversation about the context and the content and now I realize that term is creating the frame the role of the leader is to say we're going to be we're going to be curious but we're going to be doing it within this context within this frame.

Lisa Danels (32:02.837)
Yes.

Lisa Danels (32:08.687)
Yes, and also in that, and you'll find it on page 224, the actual, because I know step by step, because I had the interesting, Garak, is I had it, I knew the concept, and the concept was very, very high. But when I wrote the book, I thought I need to give some structure to this, because I need to be able to help leaders understand what they need to do. And

GAJ (32:14.12)
Mm.

GAJ (32:17.565)
Gotta go there.

GAJ (32:30.038)
Dude, there's a whole book about creating the frame, I think. It's so useful.

Lisa Danels (32:35.515)
Well, I can, and it's really also about what is the opportunity, right? Because in creating the frame, we need to, we need to identify what is the opportunity that we're going after. And that does, it does, it limit what it's nice is it creates the frame, but people can still be creative in the frame and they can fill in, they can fill in. And that's really one of the most important things.

GAJ (32:39.202)
Yeah.

GAJ (32:54.318)
Right, we had that conversation about Captain Sully, who was in his in his cockpit, and he was framed by all the protocols and the safety requirements of being a pilot in a cockpit. But every day he came to work, he asked himself, what can I learn here? And within that cockpit, he was then able to, he was then able to when they faced a challenge, he had hundreds of different

Lisa Danels (32:57.889)
Yeah.

Lisa Danels (33:12.586)
Mm.

GAJ (33:23.726)
creative within that frame. That's what you have to something lovely quote from John Cleese, where he says, if you want creative workers, give them enough time to play, which is.

Lisa Danels (33:34.143)
Yeah, and I think play is an important thing because, you know, bringing in what I think why it works really well as well is one is we need to challenge our assumptions about problems and we don't do that enough, right? So because if we don't challenge the assumptions, we go right back to what was been tried and tested.

So we need to challenge those assumptions. And then we need to allow, and this is a great concept because we use, in the book, I really talk about this notion of improv. How can we use the lessons from improv? And here we talk about people need to bring a brick and not a cathedral, right? So if you bring the whole solution, then what can I really add to it, right? Versus if I bring a brick and you bring a brick, and you know, when I first, my thinking has evolved on this because in the beginning I was thinking, oh, we all bring a piece of the puzzle.

GAJ (34:09.073)
That's very nice.

Lisa Danels (34:20.435)
And then I actually, when we started doing the process, I actually realized that it goes way beyond that. Because when I say something and it sparks some insight in you, Garrick or you Simon or you Paul, then what happens is something new emerges that none of us ever, ever could have imagined. And then it starts to build and it creates this energy of its own. And next thing you know, we have this, we're all excited and we have this solution that we were like, I could have never ever thought of that on my own.

Simon Brown (34:37.473)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (34:51.109)
Yeah.

Lisa Danels (34:51.303)
And that's how that's where the co-creation comes from. That's why it's so, so powerful.

Simon Brown (34:55.559)
On that co-creation, yeah, on that co-creation piece, you said something a moment ago, Lisa, that I'd like to come back to. So you said, hope is a process. And so I've never thought about hope as a process. So I would love to hear more to understand how hope is a process.

Lisa Danels (35:06.1)
is.

Lisa Danels (35:14.387)
Yeah, so it's a process because if you define what you want to go after, right, then hope is about breaking it down into smaller steps so that people can achieve it. How do they achieve those milestones? How do they get acceptance for that? And when a leader can help somebody do that, it builds hope in them that they believe they can achieve something. Because without those winning steps,

Simon Brown (35:37.527)
So it's creating a vision and the motivation towards that vision, the hope of achieving that vision, the greater goal.

Lisa Danels (35:44.079)
And it's not only saying, can you achieve it? But part of the process is also saying, what could get in your way? What do you need to overcome? Because if you can identify what might get in your way and what you can overcome beforehand, then when it does happen, you're prepared. So that's why hope is a process. Optimism is also important because they found people who were more optimistic, they're healthier, all that stuff. And that's more of a personality trait.

Simon Brown (35:50.731)
Hmm, yeah.

Simon Brown (36:00.831)
Yep.

Lisa Danels (36:11.859)
But hope is actually a process we can all learn.

Paul (36:16.314)
So Lisa, when you went through the sections of the book, you mentioned that one of your favorite chapters is around the gateways to the deeper part of yourself, which is where you start to unpack a bit of the Robert Keegan model around the stages of development. Could you tell us a little bit about that? And also in particular, where you go into the masks that people wear? Can you tell us about some of the masks that people wear and actually how maybe we can take those off? I love that.

Lisa Danels (36:28.641)
Wow.

Lisa Danels (36:36.692)
Mmm.

GAJ (36:39.19)
know, fascinating. Yeah.

Lisa Danels (36:41.819)
Yeah, absolutely. So Keegan's model is a model about the stages of development, and he talks about five stages, and I'm not going to go into all of them because all of them, the first two, happen quite early in our age, early in our development, but it's really stage three, four, and five that are really important for this work. And stage three is really about what we talked about before, which is about 58% of the population, which is they live in socialized mind.

that they're directed by their relationships and the rules of the game, and they don't step out of that. So then we ask people to be creative, right? But they're not in the right stage of development to be, to really fully step into that. Because the next stage is self-authoring. And this is about 35% of the population. And this is about that self-authoring, the self-efficacy, I can take care of my life, I can guide my life. So that's an important piece. This is where things start to shift, but it's only 35%.

So we need to help people get to that, make that shift. And then the last one is the one which is stage five, which only 1% of the population achieve. And this is really about being curious and challenging all your assumptions. And you're willing to break the beliefs that you've held. So you're willing to live with paradoxes. You're willing, like all of this stuff, and you start to, your mind starts to think at a whole new level of consciousness. And there's a sense of oneness.

Paul (38:06.062)
So are you saying that, and then the model then is suggesting that people get stuck at a particular stage of development, and then there are things that you can do to progress?

Lisa Danels (38:12.372)
Most people...

Lisa Danels (38:15.987)
Yes, there are absolute things you could progress and to progress to this level three to level four, which would change our world, would be stepping into your personal power. So that's really one of the most important things. You asked about the masks. So the masks fall into three different categories and the masks have to do with during times of stress, I move away from people. So for example, there's a mask of unease. People who don't like

Paul (38:28.502)
Got it. Yes.

Lisa Danels (38:43.807)
people who don't like to take risks. They don't wanna, they're afraid of making mistakes. Right, so that's one of the one. There's the mask of skepticism. They think people are gonna take advantage of them. So all of these, when we talk about how to overcome the masks, we have in there what's required for the shift. What is the mental and emotional shift that takes place?

So this is an important one. And then we also have one which are more the dominant ones we see in the workplaces, the dominant ones around moving against. And these have to do with the mask of originality, right? Sometimes we can be so original that we're actually not practical because the underlying fear here is about, people don't get me, they don't understand me, I'm different. So first is we need to understand the masks.

Paul (39:32.643)
So we

Lisa Danels (39:36.243)
And then once we understand the masks, then we can start understanding the underlying fears to overcome them. And that's one of the new steps.

Paul (39:43.89)
Yeah, and I think this is what I picked up is each mask is sort of driven by fear. Right. It's, it's masking a fear in some way.

Lisa Danels (39:48.231)
They all have underlying fears. Correct. And think about it this way, Paul. It's like the mask is, what do I wanna show the world on a positive side? What do I want people to see? And then what am I really hiding? What's going on inside of me that I don't really want other people to see? I don't want them to know how I feel. Because even the mask of pride, which is when you have this sense of arrogance, really what's going on is very deep insecurity.

Paul (40:18.028)
Mm, very good.

Lisa Danels (40:18.207)
So people see it as overconfident, but it's really an underconfidence. It's a lack of inner confidence.

Paul (40:25.13)
Hmm.

GAJ (40:26.91)
It's so fascinating, especially when you think about bringing the whole person into the workplace. I think this is one of the huge themes of the 21st century, it has to be, about how work is changing, how we've moved away from an industrial paradigm, and how we are now at a point where we can be generating value, but also bringing our whole selves there and with other people. It's a huge insight.

Lisa Danels (40:42.774)
Yeah.

GAJ (40:56.758)
I was wondering, Lisa, what might you be personally curious about right now? Professionally and personally, let's say it that way.

Lisa Danels (41:05.659)
Yeah, so the first one is I'm really curious about AI. I think first, to be honest with you, it kind of scared the hell out of me. I'll be really honest because I thought, oh, I'm kind of glad I'm getting towards the end of my 50s and I'm not gonna be in the workplace much longer. And I saw myself, and then all of a sudden, there was this like, oh, but you could do this, you could do this, you could do this. And then I got super excited.

So that's one that I've been really having a lot of fun with. I've been really playing around with Adobe Firefly and creating all these cool images and using chat GPD and all these other things. So that's one that I'm really curious about. And personally, I'm really curious about longevity.

because people keep saying like body hacks, you can live to 150, right? And I always said I wanted to live to 100. And now I'm like, God, if I lived to 150, what in the world would I do? So I really wanna understand like, what makes us age and longevity?

GAJ (41:51.502)
Mm.

GAJ (42:06.51)
Well you share certainly curiosity with at least two of us. I know that Paul and I speak about longevity all the time and we've mentioned it to Simon too. So it's something we're interested in. Wait, well I mean we're all taking supplements and the rest of it and hopefully we'll be there with you when we're all out there. That'd be fun. Fascinating. And the AI thing of course we're very, very curious about too.

Paul (42:11.936)
Hmm.

Paul (42:16.4)
I'm working on it actively.

Lisa Danels (42:18.72)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (42:35.247)
Yeah, we're working on our next book, which is around curious about AI at the moment. So we'll look out for that one in a few months time.

Lisa Danels (42:39.251)
Yes, you mentioned that.

GAJ (42:41.762)
We've got to do Curious about Longevity at some point.

Lisa Danels (42:44.439)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (42:44.883)
Yeah, that might be the one after. So, Lisa, we're coming to the end of our time. We've covered a huge amount, so if I summarise quickly where we've been. So, from your background in L&D and your time at the American Express, into then your foray into leadership and org development and helping leaders grow, we talked about the three elements around curiosity, around learning and research and impact as being the sort of three things that...

GAJ (42:46.838)
Hahaha

Simon Brown (43:11.735)
to drive you, the sort of driving forces. Then we dived into curiosity and looked at three elements of being curious about self, curious about people and then sort of co-creating situations. We talked about connections, we talked about burnout and the link that burnout has also and the power of curiosity related to that. We talked about anxiety and fear, then we dived into personal power and how we develop it and how we can give it away.

with the tip around not asking what do I need, but what do I long for. We went into sharing power, we went into being all in and some of the barriers around being all in. And then we dived into what the books made up of around the head, heart and guts, powers of each of those, cultivating personal power, connecting to others and co-creating possibilities. And then touched on creating a frame as well and hope...

as a process and then dived into Keegan's stages of adult development, touching on masks and then finishing in what you were curious about. So a lot we covered. Out of all of that, is there one message maybe for our listeners or one sort of key point that you'd like to leave in people's minds?

Lisa Danels (44:19.045)
Yes.

Lisa Danels (44:26.72)
So, uh.

Lisa Danels (44:30.391)
Yeah, I think that I think the most important thing at this time is to really cultivate and be curious and be more self aware that your internal curiosity, if you really learn to love yourself, you will always bring your genius to the world. Because until you acknowledge that genius you have in you yourself, you can't bring that and you can unlock it. Because if you bring it, then you give other people permission to bring their genius as well.

Simon Brown (44:56.979)
Love it. So be curious.

Lisa Danels (44:57.139)
And then we can play with it, we can play and we can solve some of these real challenges in front of us.

Simon Brown (45:02.667)
Perfect way to wrap up. Wonderful, thanks so much for joining us, Lisa.

GAJ (45:02.679)
Thanks.

Lisa Danels (45:07.529)
Thank you.

GAJ (45:07.662)
Thank you Lisa, thank you for your book, so brilliant.

Paul (45:08.374)
Thank you, Lisa. Yes.

Simon Brown (45:11.015)
Absolutely. So yeah, do go out and check out the human edge advantage, mastering the art of being all in. So yeah, go and check it out now. So you've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast. We're always curious to hear from you. So if there's something useful or valuable from this conversation, then please do write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel saying why this was so and what you've learned from it. We always appreciate hearing our listeners thoughts.

Lisa Danels (45:16.599)
Thank you.

Simon Brown (45:37.599)
a curious conversation. So join us today using hashtag curious advantage. Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon worldwide. Order your physical, digital or audio book. Copy now and further explore the 7C's model for being more curious. Subscribe today and keep exploring curiously. See you next time.

Lisa Danels (45:54.975)
Yes, bye.

John (45:59.921)
Very nicely done. Thanks, I'm going to stop recording now.

Simon Brown (46:00.607)
Thank you, Lisa.

Paul (46:01.758)
Well done Lisa, brilliant.