Reframing challenge through the lens of gratitude with Kristi Nelson

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid size agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want down the road, sellable. With 25 plus years of experiences both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build A Better Agency. I am super glad you’re here. This is going to be absolutely awesome episode. I know they’re all awesome, but this one’s going to be bonus awesome, I think. I’m super excited to introduce you to my guest and to really hear what she has to say because I think it’s going to be important in a different way for us as agency owners and leaders. I’m excited to bring her to you and to allow all of us to just sit and learn from her.

Drew McLellan:

Before I do that, I do want to remind you that we’ve got our AE Bootcamps coming up. So we have an advance day bootcamp for people who are four years or more of experience in agency life. That’s going to be August 17th and 18th in Chicago. Then our regular AE bootcamp and that’s for people with less than four years of experience is going to be September 14th and 15th also in Chicago. So you can read all the details about what we’re going to cover on the website. So just head over to agencymanagementinstitute.com and under the “how we help” navigation tab, you’ll see workshops and you could read about both of the AE bootcamps there.

Drew McLellan:

I will tell you that we get rave reviews on those workshops from both the AEs and their bosses. So I am confident that we can help your AEs get even better and level up if you would like to send them our way. I promise we’ll take good care of them. All right, so let me tell you a little bit about our guest. So Kristi Nelson is a fascinating woman. She wrote a book called, “Wake Up Grateful.” As I think about everything we’ve gone through over the last year and I think about the uncertainty, the fear, the challenges, the difficulty in figuring out our next steps when it was very unclear where our next steps should be, I knew that Kristi was somebody who can help us get realigned.

Drew McLellan:

We are enough our of the pandemic that we can see blue skies ahead and many of you saw blue skies to the tail end of 2020. But even that, even when you had a good year and even if you’re having a good year now, I think sometimes the habit of worry and the habit of struggling for certainty and control, because let’s face it, we as agency owners and leaders, we like to control. I think that that can be actually exhausting.

Drew McLellan:

So Kristi’s premise is that we can literally wake up grateful every day and we can take nothing for granted and we can really celebrate things like uncertainty. I just thought she was the perfect guest for this season for all of us. I promise you, I’m as excited to learn from her as you are. So let’s get right to it and let’s dig into the conversation. Kristi, welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you’re here.

Kristi Nelson:

Not as glad as I am. I’m really grateful to be invited. Thank you, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. I think at the end of the day, the listeners are going to be the ones that are super grateful. We met through a mutual friend and I read your book, which I thought was brilliant. I have to admit I’m a bit of a gratitude grateful kind of guy. I think that should be a core thing that how we live our life and how we, the lens that we look through things. So I know that you and I are going to have a great conversation.

Drew McLellan:

I want to start with just tell everybody a little bit about why you wrote the book, what inspired you to write the book, and why do you think this message is important for business people.

Kristi Nelson:

I wrote the book as a cancer survivor who was not meant to be here really on so many levels to survive stage four cancer is pretty radically outlier-ish these days. And I was incredibly grateful to survive and also loss, that gratitude over and over again as I got back into the fast pace life with all of the future looking momentum and goals and ambition, and I would lose perspective over and over again honestly, swearing that I never would, right? So you get the second chance at life, you think that’s going to make you the happiest most grateful person in the world, and yet we also come to the pressures of every day and consumerism, and how things should be and all those things. So the pressures and the stresses.

Kristi Nelson:

So I wanted to figure out how to get perspective back again. That perspective of emerging from a huge wake up call like illness, a radical illness and many people have wake up calls in their lives. COVID has been a huge wake up call for people.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Kristi Nelson:

And how do we emerge from that as conscious as we can be and maintain perspective so that we don’t lose it and go back to this is the way things are supposed to be, this is the way things used to be, but actually be really thoughtful and intentional about having move forward.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think we’ve all experienced that. I think we experience it when our family or our friends experience a loss, I think people get super reflective and grateful and focus on blessings after they lose someone that they love. I think we saw it after 9/11. I think we are seeing it in COVID, but I think you’re right, in all of those cases, we very quickly, despite the profoundness of those circumstances. I mean, when you think about the pandemic and how profoundly it has impacted all of us personally professionally, you would think that would change us forever and yet maybe it doesn’t.

Drew McLellan:

So I can totally understand how even with something as severe as your illness that you’re so grateful to get back in the groove that sometimes the groove takes away what you learned from being out of the groove.

Kristi Nelson:

A hundred percent. Beautifully put. I think the ironic thing is, “Oh, I get to go back to how things used to be,” can take us really far away from how we truly want to be. I think that’s the distinction that’s so important to hold onto is how do we really want to be and to know that we have more in our power around shaping lives to reflect that then we often remember. So how do we keep perspective and those wake up calls, like I always say to people, “We notice when things go wrong all the time.” We have a gravitational call to the things that aren’t going right in our lives. Our attention just goes there like a magnet.

Kristi Nelson:

If you want to appreciate your capacities, break an arm or break a leg and have a cast on and then you get it off after six weeks and you say, “Oh my God, I am never going to take my arm for granted again,” and boom, give you back two days, maybe if you’re really evolved, but it comes back again. We take things for granted and that’s not our fault. We live in a society, which gives us every reason in the world to do that. So it teaches us, it surrounds us with all those messages of it should be different, it should be better, it should be newer, it should be faster. You should be different, focus outward.

Kristi Nelson:

So I think we are prey to those things and yet we can pull it back with perspective and that’s the thing that we got to earn ourselves over and over again is staying intentional, staying present, and working together I think so, having a community of people like this who belong to a sense of association, a sense of affiliation makes a huge difference when we can call each other forth in the best of ways. So I think that’s what you’re doing with your work and I’m honored to be part of it.

Drew McLellan:

Thank you. As I was reading the book and I was reading it through my own lens of course, and then my lens of what from this book am I going to pull out when I talk to Kristi to be valuable to the listeners, one of the things, one of the thoughts I had was one of the things that makes agency owners and leaders brilliant at their work, super successful, help clients every day is they’re a great problem solvers. So to be a great problem solver it means, and in fact, one of their greatest gifts is they’re problem spotters, right? So they can see where clients run into a brick wall or where something’s going to happen.

Drew McLellan:

So they’re constantly wired to find problems and solve them. And I thought, “Isn’t that interesting?” In fairness, I’m wired. That I own an agency, the work that I do with agency owners, with coaching and all that, I’m constantly anticipating what their problems are and trying to figure out how to help them maneuver those problems. I thought, “Gosh, does that get in the way of me spotting the good things?” I’m not out looking for all the great things that are happening, because they don’t need my help with those. But is that mindset, is that skill in essence actually blocking my ability and my listener’s ability to be as grateful as we could be?

Kristi Nelson:

What a great question.

Drew McLellan:

Thank you.

Kristi Nelson:

You’re welcome. It’s the first time I’ve been-

Drew McLellan:

I want to start with the big guns off the bat.

Kristi Nelson:

That’s the first time I’ve been asked that question and it’s really astute. So I think we’re all problem solvers in so many ways. I guess what I would say honestly Drew is that I think gratefulness and being grateful is a problem solution. It’s basically if we can apply looking through a great lens to the problems that we have in some ways and that’s not saying, “Oh, be thankful for everything that happens even the hardest stuff in the world.” But if we can see opportunities, if we can have that kind of opportunity lens that we’re looking through all the time, which is what is this problem really opening up as an opportunity rather than how do I shut this problem down in immedioso. So like, “Let’s get this problem out of the way.”

Kristi Nelson:

I think there’s actually often a lot of gifts that come forward. The most challenging things in the world often are the most generative things in the world for us in terms of teaching, in terms of wisdom. I remember somebody saying once, “Don’t try to deprive everyone you love of their difficulties and their pain, because if you look back on your own life, the most difficult things in the world are the things that taught you the most.” So how do we instead learn to be with each other and be with the difficulties in a way that seize and seizes opportunity rather than let’s just put duct tape all around this and just call it a day and wanting to put it behind us, because that’s not going to give us what we really want, which is what’s the learning in here?

Kristi Nelson:

What’s the teaching? What am I meant to extract from this? How do I get something, a gift out of this that I can carry forward for other people, for my future? It makes me think of a saying that I heard once, which is about, “A good hockey player follows the puck and a great hockey player gets in front of the puck.” He knows where the puck is going.

Drew McLellan:

That’s a Wayne Gretzky quote. Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

Right, Wayne Gretzky quote. Okay. Good, okay. So that I have one sports quote to throw in here.

Drew McLellan:

There we go.

Kristi Nelson:

It’s probably my only one.

Drew McLellan:

Well, it’s a good one, yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

I think in terms of being strategic, I think business owners actually are not just looking for the problems to solve, they’re looking for the opportunities to fulfill. So that’s a different way of thinking about it too, which is okay, sometimes we see the problem and what we need to do is get out ahead of it in order to think just beyond it, where is this going? What’s the opportunity this offers us? And that’s a much more befriending way of dealing with difficulties as opposed to thinking that they’re all just huge problems that need to put put asunder.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it’s probably seeing it in a more holistic way. And you make a valid point. I guess everybody looks for and solves problems in their life, but I think as agency owners and leaders, that’s what we get paid to do. So we’re just so hardwired to do that. I think COVID, when COVID hit last March and businesses of all variety had all of a sudden stopped, pivot, changed the way they did work. In many cases in my world, my agency’s lost 50, 60, 70, 80% of their clients in a week and then had to figure out how to get around that and how to build, rebuild as they help the clients that they still had.

Drew McLellan:

So when you’re faced with big, when you’re faced with cancer, when you’re faced with a death of a loved one, when you’re faced with COVID messing with your business so badly, how do you frame that? How do you view that from a lens of gratitude when you’re almost drowning in the loss or the fear, or the unknown? I think that’s one of the things that COVID has been so brutal for all of us is the unknown. I still think a lot of people are saying, “Things are good in 2021, but dot, dot, dot.” They don’t know what that dot, dot, dot means, but they just have this sense of pending something, right?

Kristi Nelson:

Yeah. And what do we do with pending something?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Kristi Nelson:

We go to pending doom.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Kristi Nelson:

Right? So that’s just where our gravitational, our mindset goes. So here’s what I would say. So there’s a few questions within what you are asking and I think they’re all important. What you’re asking this last part is really critical, which is are devastating circumstances land us in a greater awareness of the uncertainty of the world?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

That’s one of the things they do is they really highlight that. One of the things that intrigues me a lot is that I think we live in a state of denial of uncertainty 99% of the time [crosstalk 00:15:34] until something happens.

Drew McLellan:

We’re type A people, right? We’d like all the control, please.

Kristi Nelson:

Yes, please.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

Right. If I got it planned, it’s got to go just as I planned it, because I haven’t, forbid something comes in and surprises me and-

Drew McLellan:

I have a checklist. Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

Yeah, exactly. I have a to do list, nobody get in the way. So yeah, we can be dangerous. Those of us who are wired that way and Myers-Briggs J, just if you’re a completion person, it’s like, watch out. I think uncertainty though is a fascinating concept, because I get asked about this a lot and I have a book, a chapter in the book called, “Savoring uncertainty.” When people say like, “Okay, now wait a minute, that’s asking me to go way too far.” How can you say that, you could say that tolerating uncertainty where the modicum of comfort. So how do I savor uncertainty?

Kristi Nelson:

Part of what I love to invite people to remember is that we’re always living in uncertainty. It’s perpetual, it’s always been true. However we’ve gotten here, we have a hundred percent survival rate to date, anybody who’s listening to this, of surviving uncertainty. Life has been uncertainly every single moment we’ve been alive up until now and it’s going to be again, and we’ve been faced with it in a more acute and vivid depiction of itself let’s say in this past 15 months. It’s gotten itself really crystallized and made us not forget it. So it’s like it’s right in our face.

Kristi Nelson:

I think that how we deal with that is going to say a lot, which is can we be open to surprise? Can we be actually available to the fact that life is uncertain a lot and are we able to get in front of the puck? Are we able to see what the uncertainty might allow for, because there’s also gifts and uncertainty. The most incredible things in your life, the most amazing things in your life have definitely come out of uncertainty. Falling in love, a lot of those things, we don’t plan to the T a lot of the most incredible things in our lives. We also don’t plan the most difficult, but people just want to like, “Okay, I want to filter out everything difficult about uncertainty.”

Kristi Nelson:

But then if you plan your life just so and you got hypervigilant, you’re also going to filter out some of the most amazing things in the world too, some of the most extraordinary delight, joy, beauty, love, all those kinds of things. So I am always interested in what opens up for me if I say, “Okay, I’m going to befriend this uncertainty in a way.” And what does that expose me to? What does that create for me? Sometimes it creates incredible new alliances, new ways of thinking about things, new pathways through things, identifying new opportunities.

Kristi Nelson:

And one thing I will say for sure is that if the world was completely certain, there would be no way for you to interact with the future and shaping the future in any way. If everything was already all laid out and there was no uncertainty, your role and it would be absolutely moot. You could just say, “I’m just going to sit here and become a couch potato and do nothing,” but the truth is you have a role in shaping the future. You have a role in contributing to possibility. And all of that requires uncertainty, because that’s what you get to figure out now. We’re in this crazy place of figuring out how to move forward.

Kristi Nelson:

I’d say befriending uncertainty rather than be grudging uncertainty. How can befriended? Because it’s the truth and I think we’re going to do better if we can figure out how to make friends with it a little bit better.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. That’s so true. For a lot of the people listening, they have a staff, a team of people, and part of their role is to lead, to inspire, to coach. How would you recommend to them that they take this idea that you just outlined so beautifully? How do they show up as a leader to teach their team how to savor uncertainty? Because our world, one client calls and all of a sudden 20% of our revenue is gone, I have to lay people off or whatever it is. We’re at the end of a food chain in a lot of ways in our business.

Drew McLellan:

Sometimes that’s great, because we’re at the end of the food chain and we can make something cool happen, but sometimes it means bad things happen to our business that we didn’t have a lot of control over. So how do I as a leader help my people understand that A, that’s just part of the gig in life but B, it’s certainly part of the gig in our industry and to get comfortable in that? Because I think sometimes when people leave us, they leave because the uncertainty is so uncomfortable for them that they seek something that feels to them more stable or certain.

Kristi Nelson:

Yeah, they’re just going to a different place rather than uncertain future.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Absolutely.

Kristi Nelson:

Again, there’s the human instinct too. It’s just I’m going to shift, the grass is greener over there, so I’m going to go climb over that fence and then you go over and you know? My first thoughts are always about embodiment that as a leader are the call to us is always to embody anything it is that we want to inspire people, anything we want to inspire people about, we have to be in embodiment of it and we have to be pretty full proof around it, because people can smell it when we’re not real, when we’re not in that space ourselves.

Kristi Nelson:

So if you want to say to people, “You need to be more comfortable with uncertainty.” How are you showing up into that in your own life? And how are you modeling that? I think people are always looking in some level to leaders to be real, to be vulnerable, to show up and what I think is the most powerful thing is to acknowledge uncertainty. I think about the guy who, I forget his name, but the business that burned down and all he was doing fleece and he was in Massachusetts somewhere, and his whole mill burned down and how he took care of people.

Kristi Nelson:

People look to leaders who can deal with difficulty and uncertainty and stay connected to their hearts, stay real. It’s not about betraying your heart and going to your head and having to have just the right thing to say. I think it’s more about how to stay true to your heart and stay connected and relational in those spaces where you feel like, “Okay, now I’ve just gotta freeze the world for a year and figure out how I can bring my best self forward and be the leader I meant to be,” when what people are really looking for is in the middle of the hot soup, how are you stewing? How are you doing?

Kristi Nelson:

I think it’s about being real and authentic,. So embodiment is one thing. The next thing I would say is to say to people, model for people in the midst of all this uncertainty is a lot of possibility and a lot of opportunity. How are we as an agency collectively going to determine what those are? What’s the possibilities that are backening us right now? What are the opportunities that are offering themselves to us that we may be missing? If you’re not willing to shape shift, you’re going to possibly have troubles because adapting to changing circumstances are so critical for any organization and any leader.

Kristi Nelson:

I think calling everybody together, Lynne Twist who wrote The Soul Of Money, which is a great book, she says collaboration yields prosperity. So one of the things I think for leaders to do is really get off the top of the ladder and come down and join everybody on the floor or on the mid rung or something and invite everybody in and to say, “As we look at this collectively, let’s hold a space for trusting that some wisdom is going to come out of this and it’s up to us to figure that out, all of us collectively.” I’m not going to be your answer and no one person here is going to have an answer here, but the wisdom of the collective is going to generate something so awesome and extraordinarily new.

Kristi Nelson:

And we’re going to open into that space of not knowing and uncertainty and allow something to reveal itself that wouldn’t have otherwise. And that’s rich, and that’s creativity. Everything creative comes out of that space.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. We saw a lot of that in COVID where agencies had to pivot and reinvent themselves and start offering things that their clients really needed that they had been offered before like virtual events and things like that. And so you’re exactly right. I think we can make that shift if we have our head in the right place. I love what you said about leading with your heart. I’m a huge advocate of that and that when your people feel you first, then I think it’s easier for them to follow you.

Kristi Nelson:

A hundred percent.

Drew McLellan:

I think for a lot of business owners, I think that’s an adjunct to position, they think they have to know it all rather than they have to feel it all and they have to show those feelings. I think a lot of us are uncomfortable being super vulnerable in front of a lot of other people, but every great leader that I know has figured out a way to lead with their heart first.

Kristi Nelson:

If you want longevity in your teams and you want sustainable relationships, it’s not about having all the answers, it’s knowing how to ask the right questions, and knowing what asking the right questions is an indication of is humility and vulnerability and also needing other people. The last thing your team wants to feel is that you don’t need them and you’re trying to figure it all out on your own. That doesn’t inspire a sense of commitment internally. So draw on the wisdom and expect surprising things to come with a sense of trust and an invitation that’s really deep and sincere. I think there’s so much to be gained out of some of these difficult times.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I agree. So you use the word “connections” a couple times. So I want to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk about the notion in your book about cherishing connections, okay? All right, we’ll be right back everybody.

Drew McLellan:

Hey there, do you have an up-and-comer inside your agency whose become your right-hand person? How are you investing in them? Who are they surrounding themselves with and who are they learning from? You might be interested in taking a look at our key executive network. It’s built to help you groom the leaders in your agency. It’s designed to surround them with other AMI taught agency leaders and it’s facilitated by one of AMI’s top coaches, Craig Barnes. They meet twice a year and they stay connected in between meetings with calls, Zoom get togethers and email. AMI agency owner is one of the best professional development investments they’ve ever made. Head over to agencymanagementinstitute.com and look under the membership tab for key executive network. All right, let’s get back to the interview.

Drew McLellan:

All right. I am with Kristi Nelson, the author of Wake Up Grateful and we are talking about how we as business leaders can tap into that place of gratitude and gratefulness and how we can infuse that in our work and with our team. So right before the break, I had suggested that we talk about this idea of cherishing connections. Talk to us a little bit about what you meant by that phrase and what that looks like.

Kristi Nelson:

It’s like calling people for cherishing connections is a strong thing. It’s like savoring uncertainty, right? It’s like, okay, wow, that’s aspirational and it is. It’s important and yet it’s what’s going to get us everywhere is really deeply valuing the relationships and that collective intelligence and the resources that are available to us in our midst. So this is a heart-centered place. I talk in the chapter about cherishing connections about something called the grateful rule as opposed to the golden rule, which I think is super important. It is inspiring to a lot of people and also challenging to a lot of people, because the golden rule is something we learned really well when we’re kids and it’s supposed to take us out of narcissism, but it actually perpetuates it as adults.

Kristi Nelson:

So if you give the other person, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So give the other person exactly what it is that you would need. It’s actually coming from such a self-interested perspective. So if you think about it, if I give you what I need, if I treat you exactly as I want to be treated, I don’t know anything about how you want to be treated. I don’t know anything about what you need. So the grateful rule is do unto others as they would have you do unto them, not do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s silly.

Kristi Nelson:

It’s like the love languages. You have no idea what’s meaningful to this person until you actually find out. So cherishing connections is deeply about listening actually and knowing that if you can reward people in the way that’s meaningful to them, you’re going to have such much richer relationship that you can draw from and so much more allegiance, and commitment. It’s interesting, because we have all kinds of assumptions that we operate from. One of them is that money is the most important thing.

Kristi Nelson:

So oh well, I’m going to give you a raise. Meanwhile, what the person is needing is something entirely other than a raise. The person is needing something entirely other than a raise and wants a different kind of recognition, wants to be included in a different way, that the money actually doesn’t matter, wants to feel valued or called out, or acknowledged in some way that money is never going to do. So if you value money and you assume that everybody else values money and you give everybody money, you may be spending more than you need to spend and also never hitting the target of getting your care and commitment to a staff person, to an employee, somebody on our team fully expressed and experienced, because it’s not working for them.

Kristi Nelson:

It’s like if you bring your wife home roses every single day and what she really wants is to go on a trip with you, but it’s like, “Oh my God, but I’ve been bringing you roses every day.” “Well, you never ask me whether I like roses or not.” That’s so simplistic, but it’s actually when we’re working with a team, it’s not a homogeneous team. There’s such diversity within our teams. So to really understand also too, what is it that’s going to make somebody stay? It could be their title. It could be differences and responsibilities. It could be as you know, time off versus money. It could be flexibility in schedules. It could be all these kinds of creative things, but unless you inquire, you’re never going to know.

Kristi Nelson:

So cherishing connections actually is interesting because it makes you a cherished connection. If you cherish the people in your midst and cherish those relationships, you will be cherished and that’s what you have to prove and show through your behavior and through your inquiry and your curiosity.

Drew McLellan:

How do you ask those questions? If I’m your employee, how would you find out from me what it is that I need or how I want to be recognized? What does that conversation look like?

Kristi Nelson:

Oh my gosh, this is so fun because I do this with my team. So Drew, I’m so happy to have this conversation with you because what I want you to know is I’m really interested in you being fulfilled and content here in this employment. And I want you to stick around for a long time. I actually value you a lot. I value what you bring, not just what you do but who you are. So I would love to know from you what are the things that matter the most to you about this work and what’s most meaningful to you in terms of where you are really fulfilled and how you’d love to grow and how you’d love a slight shift?

Kristi Nelson:

Because if I can keep you growing and keep you contributing, that’s going to make me really happy and it’s going to be really good for this business. But I need to know from you what’s most meaningful to you and how can I show you? How can it show up to you how much I actually value your role in this company, this role, your role in this organization?

Drew McLellan:

I’m going to come work for you now.

Kristi Nelson:

Yeah, sure.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

That’s a one minute conversation, two minute conversation and then it just leaves that person it’s like, “Take all the time you need. I’m happy to talk to you tomorrow. Go home. Talk to your family.” But I think about it, but what could I do? How can we work with this? I will give you an example which is I’ve been assuming for a long time that somebody in my midst in the team has particular challenge around the configuration of the team and would want to be compensated at a different level. What she really wants is a different title. She wants a different title.

Drew McLellan:

Was it just the title or was it a different role?

Kristi Nelson:

It’s the different title. It feels like recognition to her. That feels like a recognition that really matters that I could still [crosstalk 00:33:38].

Drew McLellan:

It’s a badge, right? It’s a badge I get to wear.

Kristi Nelson:

It feels like an honoring of something in her history, her longevity, her increases in responsibility. It has nothing to do with compensation, it has to do with a different kind of recognition.

Drew McLellan:

When you have these conversations with your team, do you find that you have to give them some examples?

Kristi Nelson:

I think you have to also have limits and boundaries too, right. So, to give examples but it’s not like, “Okay, whatever it is that you want, we’re going to make your job, whatever it is you wanted to be.” It’s like, “What would be the conditions that would allow you to make your greatest contribution here?” It’s a great question.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

What would be the conditions? What am I able to think better about that would help shape those conditions for you? So what the person is feeling is one you’re really invested and understanding who they are and what moves them and motivates them as a distinct from all the other people. So one on ones are so huge and the more layers of management that you have, the easier it is to forget how important it is that those one on ones with really critical people who may not be exactly accountable to you directly, those are generative conversations when you have them versus the person who they’re necessarily direct report to, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Kristi Nelson:

So you can do so much good by having some of those conversations, and work that magic of having people feel recognized, acknowledged, not taken for granted, seen, valued inside the team and actually that they’re unique in particular needs for recognition have a place inside your organization. If they don’t feel it, they’re going to be over that fence looking at greener grass in a heartbeat.

Drew McLellan:

Just for money, right?

Kristi Nelson:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Because they think that’s the only way they’re going to be recognized.

Kristi Nelson:

That’s exactly right. And lots of ways that people can feel, recognize when resources are short and we don’t have a ton to be able to leverage in terms of financial resources and people have struggled a lot in this past year and maybe we will struggle differently. And in order to get to success, I think it is about looking at what other resources can I bring there on my teams and in my organization. Resources are really limited if you think about it only in terms of money, right? So there’s so many other things that we can bring and attention is a huge one.

Kristi Nelson:

So attention is one of the greatest resources. It’s the most undervalued, certain ways underappreciated. The resources that we have in our hands and it cost nothing. So attention I think is a huge one.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, it’s such a great lesson and a great reminder. So you have a concept called, “Liminality.” Did I say that right?

Kristi Nelson:

Yes, you did.

Drew McLellan:

Tell me what that means.

Kristi Nelson:

It’s a great word. I suggest everyone go look it up. Liminal, liminal times, liminality is the space in between a known and familiar universe and the next more fully known and familiar universe that you’re entering into. So a good example is liminal time is when you first wake up in the morning, your very first moments of waking up after sleep before you’re fully awake are liminal. You’re partly in one, your foot is still in sleep and it’s not … your one foot is going towards awakeness but you’re not fully there. Those are really creative times.

Kristi Nelson:

So one of the things that we can talk about is when you’re departing a certain culture, a cultural moment, or a moment in history, which is defined by routines and rituals and norms that we’re really familiar with and we know we’re moving towards something and in that space of uncertainty we’re not exactly sure what’s going to look at, but there will be a time when they’re more fully known. Right now, they’re not formed at all. So guess what that is? Massive opportunity.

Kristi Nelson:

When we’re in midair literally and you are when you step out of something and you’re not fully landed with both feet yet the next thing and you’re not fully departed from the past thing, that is a really tender zone. A lot can happen, and it’s to me a time to be embraced, because we don’t get many of those times in life. And it opens up all kinds of doors of possibility. I have a favorite quote by Bal Shem Tov who was a 17th century mystic and he says, “Let me fall if I must, the one I will become will catch me.”

Drew McLellan:

I like that.

Kristi Nelson:

Me too. I love that, because it always stirs me up a little bit and it’s like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute and I got to think about it.” Those are my favorite quotes. They have to inspire discomfort a little bit. So let me fall if I must, the one I will become will catch me. I love it because we’re right there. We’re right there. We’re falling out of time. We’re falling out of norms. We’re falling out of the comfort, the familiar, everything. And the one we’re going to become is going to be there the greatest, but we don’t yet know who that is.

Kristi Nelson:

So let’s take care of the one we’re going to become. Let’s pump up the capacity of the person who we’re going to be, who can catch us on the other side of this liminal space and be there to greet us. I love that concept and it’s something available to all of us.

Drew McLellan:

Don’t you think we’re in the middle of that right now?

Kristi Nelson:

A hundred percent.

Drew McLellan:

We’re coming out of this uncertainty. We’re coming out of the sequestering. We’re coming out of wearing masks everywhere. We’re coming out of the fear and the loss, but we really don’t know what new normal is going to look like yet, right? There are parts of it that are starting to take shape. There are some things that are going back to old normal, but we know there are going to be things that are different. So we’re in the middle of this right freaking now.

Kristi Nelson:

Exactly freaking yes. To me, that can open the energy of excitement and possibility. If we embrace it, resisting it, we’re there. Resisting it generates nothing. We’re midair.

Drew McLellan:

We are midair. We’re midair whether we want to be or not, right?

Kristi Nelson:

So look up liminal and get into it. Dig it as a concept. If you’re an agency leader, invite your team to embrace it. We’re in the liminal space. We’re in this liminal time. Guess what? There’s a lot of things about the old normal we don’t want to return to. And there’s a lot of things about the new normal that we don’t know yet. Can we be part of the leading edge of helping to shape what we’re going to become that will help catch everybody? What an invitation that is. Can we be a contribution to that conversation? No, not unless we acknowledge it. Once acknowledged, all possibilities open to us and then collectively, I think we can go towards shaping a new future which has a lot to offer that we all really need and people around us need.

Drew McLellan:

As you’re talking, I’m thinking about so many of the agencies are reinventing how they work, who they serve, the kinds of people they need on the team. While that probably feels uncomfortable because we’re type A people and we like to have control, without that opportunity, we can’t get even bigger, better, stronger, smarter, happier, all of those things. It’s an interesting idea that we have to be uncomfortable to get better, however better is defined for you.

Kristi Nelson:

A hundred percent. I think-

Drew McLellan:

Okay, I just have to say I don’t really like that reality.

Kristi Nelson:

But it’s actually true.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

So the truth is we’re all a little uncomfortable right now. Guess what? It’s liberating as heck to acknowledge it. For somebody who’s a leader to say that out loud, we’re in a pretty unknown time and we have to embrace that the degree of discomfort that we have around that, be friends not be grudge, here we go, how can we open up the space to befriend this more? What’s going to emerge from that? Let’s be part of the big solutions that the world is needing right now. It may be different from what we’ve done, but guess what? It’s the adapting entities and agencies. Is the people able to really shape shift and pivot as you say who are going to be there to greet everybody when they come out of the fall?

Kristi Nelson:

Where do we want to be? We want to be there. So what do we have to embrace that’s new? What do we have to think of that’s new? What an opportunity for people to be able to start really thinking that way and asking those questions.

Drew McLellan:

Perhaps the certainty message that comes out of that is I’m not sure where we’re going to land, but I am confident that together we will land and we’ll land with both feet and wherever we land is going to be good and it’s going to be prosperous for us and we’re going to be able to really serve the people that we catch. And that’s why we do this work.

Kristi Nelson:

Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

A hundred percent. So that’s what you can embody as a leader. That’s only going to happen if you befriend uncertainty to the degree that you can and make it open all those doors of opportunity and possibility that if you believe in those, you can say that with confidence. What you just said is such a beautiful thing to be able to say. It’s so reassuring to people rather than, “Oh, don’t worry.” Everybody knows, we’ve had a lot of political leaders who have said that to us for years and years and years about a lot of things that we really should be worried about actually. People go like, “Yeah, that’s not resonating here.”

Kristi Nelson:

So people are so attuned right now to what’s an authentic message versus what’s an attempted reassurance and it doesn’t work. So send the authentic message and it means doing our work ourselves, and it means doing it with the people that were among and that’s awesome. So I was going to say something. I was going to say, one of the things that the last question you asked opened up for me was also looking at where the energy is right now in the world where there’s a huge amount of demand and what’s successful and can we learn from that? Are we willing to turn towards some of the agencies that are so overburdened right now with demand, to actually know that those things are happening, that there are ways that we are attending to issues around mental health, and wellness, and diversity, that those things are in big demand right now.

Kristi Nelson:

Are there ways that we can turn our services towards the things that we know are in big demand and not be intimidated by those but say, “How do we incorporate?” So that we really can be part of meeting the demand and part of addressing the real needs that are up right now. There are people who are wait list, consulting companies and different kinds of marketing companies that have wait lists, am I along? And there’s something about them that we might benefit from learning from if we’re not scared of that.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think everything you just listed are things that our clients need to embrace, find their voice around, and we can help them do that. So not only is it profitable work, but it’s noble work. I think all of us, regardless of what we do for a living, but I certainly know of my own people, agency people, we honker to do noble work and for our talents to change our little slice of the world.

Kristi Nelson:

Gorgeously said and so true. Who doesn’t long for that level of impact and noble is such a great word.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Kristi Nelson:

Noble and that’s another good word to really look up in the dictionary and go deep with, noble and liminal. Those are two assignments today. But that nobility, what does that really mean? Again, don’t assume that your idea of what is noble is everybody else’s idea. So that’s another great question like, “What makes this work?” Really feel noble to you, feel meaningful to you in a way. That’s interesting to take the temperature of a group of people around what those things really are and to listen to those and let those inform the work going forward. That’s a really cool thing to do.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I love that. I knew when we started talking that I was going to be very sad when the clock told me that we had to stop talking. So this has been …

Kristi Nelson:

We can keep talking.

Drew McLellan:

We could keep talking and we will off camera, off mike, we will continue to keep talking because this has been spectacular. I told you before I hit record that I wanted this episode to be a balm that would wrap itself around my listeners and remind them of their purpose and the opportunity they have to inspire and to change the world. I think you have given us so many ideas and tools for us to tackle this uncertainty and to your point embrace it and savor it and recognize that the opportunity for us to do something magical and noble and meaningful actually sits in this uncertainty and this place of being grateful that we get to be in that space and that we get to lead others through it to this new place where we can catch ourselves and them, and our clients as they tumble through this liminal space into whatever is ahead of us.

Drew McLellan:

I am super grateful that you’re able to share with us what you did. I owe Stuart a scotch for introducing us. I just want to thank you for being here.

Kristi Nelson:

It’s really been my pleasure. I can say that when you talk about heart for leadership, it’s really easy to see how you inspire that because you embody it so beautifully and I’m honored to share this time. I hope the resources and gifts of gratefulness can really serve the folks who you’re so committed to and I am too. So let’s go there together.

Drew McLellan:

I would love that. If folks want to learn more about you, about your work, we didn’t even really talk about your work, the book, what’s the best place for them to seek you out?

Kristi Nelson:

Gratefulness.org is our website and it is an incredibly gorgeous resource. It’s inspiring, it’s uplifting, it’s motivating, it’s a sanctuary, it’s a place you can come hang out and be inspired any single minute of any day, 24/7 people come all the time. We book, Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing For Granted. That’s really what we’re talking about here is don’t take a moment, don’t take a person, don’t take an opportunity for granted. That’s a sure fire way to joy and wellbeing.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I love that. I am grateful for you. Thank you so much for being with us.

Kristi Nelson:

Thank you. Thanks, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. All right guys, this wraps up a really special episode of the podcast. I’m so glad you were here for this and I’m so glad that you heard this message. I hope each of you found a nugget or two to remind you of what you get to do every day and the chance that you get to lead other people through this, this liminal space, this uncertainty and that you can be the one that tease them up, to not only that you can catch them but that they can catch other people. I think that’s an empowering idea that we get to be the soft landing for others. I think that’s a privilege that we get to have. I hope that Kristi’s message just sunk into you and soak you up, and that you think about how you can do that, because I know with all my heart that this is well within your capacity.

Drew McLellan:

And I also know that it is in your heart to want to be that for yourself, for your team, for your clients. So I just go forth and do it, do it with courage and confidence, and I’m excited to see what you create in this liminal space, because I really believe you’re going to do some amazing remarkable things. I’m super happy that I was able to bring Kristi to you and bring these ideas to you because you know that I got your back and I believe in you, and I want this for you. So I’ll be back next week with another guest and in the mean time, you guys know that you can reach me by email, you can reach me through the website and I’m here if you need me, okay?

Drew McLellan:

Thanks for listening. I am so grateful for your time, and your attention. I know how crazy busy you are. So I just feel super privileged that we get to hang out for an hour together every week. So thank you for that and I’ll see you next week.

Speaker 4:

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build A Better Agency podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses and other ways. We serve small to mid sized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.