[00:00:00] I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

[00:00:14]

[00:00:39] Trisha: Hi there everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in our thinking. Cultural intelligence cq, for those of you who haven't heard of it before, is made up of four capabilities. There's the motivational CQ drive, the cognitive CQ knowledge, the Metacognitive CQ strategy and Behavioral CQ action. Here on the shift, we focus on the metacognitive aspect, thinking about our thinking, and today's guest brings rich experience in helping others do just that.

[00:01:29] My guest today is Jerry Jones. He's a learning strategist across cultural expert and one of the most thoughtful and creative people I've encountered in the space of leadership development and learning design. Jerry is the founder of the Culture Blend, and he's worked across continents helping organizations build cultures of trust and meaningful change.

[00:01:51] I first met Jerry when he was delivering a very meaningful presentation at a Families in Global Transition conference in Bangkok. And actually I just realized that conversation was with our last week's guest, Cath Brew. It was one of those moments where everybody in the audience went silent and you could feel the emotion and the response in the room.

[00:02:16] So that was a moment. But I've since worked with him in his role as a global director of design and development. And he has always been one of those people who creates learning experiences that really help people lead, communicate, and collaborate more effectively and more inclusively. And working with him and with clients has always been a delight.

[00:02:41] Clients have always loved his designs. He is a thinker, an ideas person, and I think that might be one of the reasons why I love him, and he is able to bring strong relationships of understanding and support with clients. some of you listening may also have heard his podcast with Chris O'Shaughnessy.

[00:02:58] Called Diesel and Clooney, which is really speaking to third cultured kids and some of the aspects of relevance to international education. So a broad background. Jerry, welcome.

[00:03:12] Jerry: Wow. And you're hired. Like I, I'm looking for somebody just to introduce me anywhere I go. That's it. That was good. Like, I've never been invited to, to discuss metacognition before. I don't even think. So thanks for that.

[00:03:26] Trisha: but that's what we've done repeatedly when we've been talking about design, isn't it? I mean, we often think about how do we create those learning experiences? Yeah. What, how do we get to what's going on in people's heads, you know?

[00:03:39] Jerry: Right. And I, that's what I, that's what I've always loved about working with you is I'll talk about that for a while, and you'll be like, that's metacognition. I'm like, I didn't even know that. Like, that's, yes. Let's use the right words. But yeah, you take it to a different level.

[00:03:52] Trisha: Yeah. And I should have probably said somewhere in there that we both have China in common, except I was probably there. Was it not 10 years? Was it 10 years before you were there? Yeah, so I was there

[00:04:05] Jerry: When? When did you go, what? Like,

[00:04:07] Trisha: 93.

[00:04:09] Jerry: Okay. I went 2006 was the first, our first year

[00:04:12] Trisha: Yeah. So that was when I left. 10 years before you then, so you saw a different China.

[00:04:18] Jerry: We may not have it in common because you probably went to a different China than I

[00:04:22] Trisha: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Different place and different time. And it's China changed so much over that time. Yeah.

[00:04:29] Jerry: absolutely. Yeah.

[00:04:30] Trisha: Yeah we have both bonded listeners on our challenges over learning Mandarin. And our I felt like I got to a stage where I could be understood, but, you know, there it's it was challenging.

[00:04:42] So,

[00:04:43] Jerry: Yeah,

[00:04:43] so I finally developed my answer. When people ask me if I speak Chinese, you can take this and use it too. My, my answer is always do you And if they say, no, not at all, I'm like, then yeah, I do. 'cause actually I could speak and you'd be, you wouldn't understand a word of it, so you'd think I'm speaking really good Chinese.

[00:05:03] But if you do speak Chinese, I know nothing. Like, my Chinese is so bad if you actually speak it.

[00:05:10] Trisha: I was once told that I had a very standard accent, which is such a compliment. So you know, by a Chinese person.

[00:05:17] Jerry: That's a fabulous compliment.

[00:05:19] Like very few people do that.

[00:05:21] Trisha: I floated after they said, oh, your accent is very standard. Yes. Anyway, back to our standard opening questions. Jerry, what is a culture other than the one you grew up in that you have learned to love and appreciate?

[00:05:36] Jerry: Yeah, so, okay. I thought about this question like through the years and. The easiest answer for me of course is China. Like, it was my experience. I spent about 15 years in China. And so you, like, you don't do that without learning to, did you say love and appreciate like, absolutely. But here's my other answer.

[00:05:55] Like, this is my side answer and I'm gonna say North Korea because I didn't spend 15 years, but I gotta spend three days in North Korea and it was. Like the amount of deconstruction and unpacking and breaking down of things, because all I have is what I've seen. That's all any of us has of any culture, until we've experienced it. And so I had never experienced it, but I had plenty of ideas about what it was and to see. People like it just, it changed everything for me. Like to see people who had the same challenges in many ways as I do there, there was and the same, who love the same things that I do.

[00:06:40] Of course we see the world very differently and we understand politics and policies and probably daily life so very differently. But just to be able to connect and see one made me realize how presumptive and assumptive is that a word?

[00:06:59] Trisha: We'll make it one.

[00:07:00] Jerry: Yeah, it is now. I was being and I think that's helped me in a lot of different, like to create a new filter.

[00:07:06] I've got plenty of filters when I encounter a culture, but that was like a new filter of, hey, you, like, there's a lot you don't understand here. And you're probably making a lot of calls that that dehumanize these people and you're gonna find out real quick that they're human, right?

[00:07:21] Trisha: And so in those three days, a lot of shifts.

[00:07:23] Jerry: Sure. Yeah.

[00:07:25] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:07:26] and maybe another way to think about a shift is when you become aware of a filter. Anyway, that moves us to our next question. Can you tell us about a moment when you experienced a specific shift, a moment where your perspective expanded in a way that stayed with you?

[00:07:42] Jerry: Yeah. So this one. This one is less cross-cultural in the sense of national culture. It was with my son and it, my son is adopted. He's black. His birth mother was white, his birth father was black. And it, when he was about 10 years old is when the George Floyd murder happened.

[00:08:02] And so, and we were still in China, so, but we were watching the world, or not the world, but the country go through that from the other side of the world and experience that. And it was just one of those moments where I felt really inadequate as a white father of a black child. Right. And we were a little bit shielded from it, actually.

[00:08:21] A lot shielded from it, a lot protected from it because we were on the other side of the world. But this felt so significant and so important that we have to have this conversation. And and so I sat, he's 10 years old, you know, we're in, I remember we're in the back of a taxi and I was like, look, this is what's going on in the world and this has happened, and I just wanted you to know that.

[00:08:40] And he, he just does this thing where he just kind of. Squints his eyes and goes really deep and he unpacked it a little bit. He had a few things to say and and it was like it was really deep. And we went back and forth and he kept asking me questions and I was like, I can answer that.

[00:08:55] I can answer that. But I was struggling, really struggling to know the right answer. And he said he said something about video games. Just went to video games and I'm like, okay, this is how he does. He's 10 years old, right? Like that's, he's thinking about video games. Okay. Conversation over, we can come back to this at any time.

[00:09:10] But we had the conversation and then as he's talking about video games and school and he says, dad, I just, I sometimes I feel like nobody likes me. And, I was like, internally, what's going on in my head? I'm like, yeah, okay. I got this. I know how to handle this. And I said, yeah I do too. I know how that feels.

[00:09:26] And he said, yeah, dad, but you're not black.

[00:09:30] And it was just this huge moment for me of like, he, there's so many things about. Culture about politics, about the history of the United States and everything that was going on about crime and police and all the different pieces about what was unfolding right in front of us that I knew more than he did.

[00:09:53] And, that I could explain to him and help him understand, but I would never be able to see it from the perspective that he's able to see it from just because he's black, right? Even though he is being raised in a white family in China, he's got a perspective that I don't have. And for me it was a bigger moment of shut up and just listen.

[00:10:13] Like everyone was screaming at in the moment. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had an idea. And it was really time for people like me who can't understand it can't grasp it, and will never be able to, no matter how much you explain it to me. It was really a moment for me to shut up and listen and learn what I can as much as I can, but not to feel like I need to teach anything.

[00:10:34] And so I just let him have that moment as the expert.

[00:10:38] Trisha: So hard. Yeah. I think about those, you know, really difficult moments when we see things and we see, that those moments have been then opened up and you can't close that. Then you then see lots of different, you see things from that different perspective.

[00:10:58] Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. And that's rich and beautiful. It's hard in the moment, but it's, there's so much more to understand on the other side of it if you can process it and take it back with you. And it may take time, but there's a lot on the other side.

[00:11:12] Trisha: You've coached, you know, over a thousand professionals through cultural transitions and designing learning experience that help them to face cultural shifts, significant cultural shifts. How do you prepare people for that shift? You know, how do you, I guess, try and help them to make those switches in their heads?

[00:11:34] Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of that's a big answer. There's a lot of things that I think, I've seen over the years and I've used over the years as far as preparing people, but I think a lot of it narrows down to expectation. And the reality is you can never set someone's expectations perfectly.

[00:11:53] You can tell 'em all about the place that they're going and the people there, but you can't. You can't have the conversations that they're gonna have, right? Like, you can't recreate the smells. Some of them maybe, but you can't recreate all the smells and the experiences and the stress and the like you can tell them it's going to be stressful.

[00:12:10] You can't show them how it's going to be stressful. So you can move things to to help people move their expectations closer to. You can never show them reality. And so one of the things that I've learned, is just to postpone expectations. 'cause a lot of times I think we go in and we're like, just lower your expectations.

[00:12:32] Just realize you're not gonna get anything done because you're transitioning from one space to another and just go in with zero expectations and then everything's great, but it's not. Like, it's just depressing because you've given up on these hopes and dreams and thoughts that you thought were going to happen.

[00:12:49] And I think hold onto your expectations, right? Write 'em down, get very clear about them. Know what you're expecting. And when you see something that goes completely like it breaks one of your expectations, and take that one. Off the list. And then you've got a more realistic list of expectations and the things that you expect to do when you realize you can't, possibly, it's just impossible and it was crazy for you to or it was just like it was not a good thing for you to think about it.

[00:13:17] For, to even expect it. Then you take that out and you've got a better list. But the ones that are possible, they're just gonna take more time. 'cause you've got a lot of transition. You've got a lot of learning. You you've gotta catch your insides up with your outsides, right? Like, what's going on around you.

[00:13:32] And that just, it takes a lot of time. It takes time. But you don't have to give up on, on any expectations. I think that's where we sell ourselves short.

[00:13:40] Trisha: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's part of what you were saying before about listening it's being there for them in the challenge point.

[00:13:49] Jerry: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:50] Trisha: You've said I think it was on your LinkedIn page, growth happens when people feel seen, challenged, and supported.

[00:13:57] Jerry: Did I say that?

[00:13:58] Trisha: Yeah. yeah.

[00:13:59] Jerry: That's good. I like that. That's good.

[00:14:00] Trisha: yeah. I know,

[00:14:02] I know.

[00:14:02] Yeah. I mean, like I referenced before that I've been in client meetings with you where we presented design, the learning design, and I think that's exactly what you do. That you.

[00:14:12] Jerry: do. I'm just letting you know.

[00:14:14] Trisha: It's not a problem in Australia, mate,

[00:14:17] Jerry: I know I don't, but I've almost I've gone back on it, but at one point I committed to, every time somebody says it, I'm going and let them know just for the fun of it. But there've been a few that I was like, no I can't possibly do

[00:14:28] that.

[00:14:29] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:14:30] Jerry: Sorry, I thought you were saying something really important

[00:14:32] Trisha: yeah, I was, yeah. I mean, if you're thinking about. How do you create the conditions, especially in a learning environment, especially in a corporate learning environment where you can communicate that, that people are both seen and supported and challenged, and you know, have you got any examples where you've created the conditions and you've seen sort of breakthroughs as a result?

[00:14:56] Jerry: I think the most impactful, learning moments that I've been able to be a. Part of like the most important thing is just getting out of the way for that to happen. and allowing and trusting. 'cause especially when you're designing, it's so easy to over design.

[00:15:11] It's so easy. I love the book. Made to stick. It's like why some ideas stick and others don't. But there's one model in there that says like, you're moving from accessibility to accuracy. A lot of times we wanna start with accuracy. And so when we're oh, we gotta say this, we gotta say this, we gotta say this and that.

[00:15:31] If we say this, we have to say this and we have to say this and yeah. Okay. That gives us a picture. But it's not completely accurate because you haven't thought about this yet. And it's like, okay, if you say all that, you said nothing because nothing sticks, right? It just bounces off.

[00:15:44] But if you can say that one thing or say nothing and give them an experience that's what sticks. And that's what. Transforms people. And so, I have to remind myself of that anytime I put something together, anytime I design I have to step away from myself and say, they don't need to know all of that.

[00:16:02] What they need to do is feel this, and then we'll talk about it. We'll come back and they'll have something to learn, which is so much better than anything you could teach them. Like, they came ready for that. You don't have to be responsible for all the learning. It's there.

[00:16:16] It's just waiting.

[00:16:18] Trisha: And it's that recognition that there are people at different points of the readiness for change.

[00:16:23] Jerry: Yeah.

[00:16:24] That's so true.

[00:16:25] Trisha: So like you say, some some people will be right down there ready to go, oh yeah, I need this piece of knowledge to help me take that step and change. And other people are not ready for that change. So it's, yeah, that's that.

[00:16:36] I have not heard of the accessibility to accuracy, but that feels like the, some people are not even at the point where they're ready to be taken on that journey and I guess they might, you know, one of the other things that you've talked about in your work is helping teams get unstuck. And so sometimes people are really.

[00:16:54] Stuck on something completely different. We come to bring them a piece of learning and they're stuck on something else. So there's no way they're gonna be open to that learning. So, yeah. Is there any times where that sticks out for you that, happened?

[00:17:08] Jerry: Yeah, like, I like, I feel like that's an ongoing there, there are lots of experiences where we've had just really unsticking people and trying to figure that out. What stands out for me though, as you talk is that a lot of times, again, this is where I have to check myself because I go in and I think I can see it. Like, I think I, I can see why you're stuck. If you'll just listen to me. I'm gonna give you the three point outline of how to get three point outlines. Don't unstick people. They don't make any difference. No matter how true or right or wise or good they are. They just don't help you get out of the mud.

[00:17:42] And so, really. A big part of it for me has been learning this, but that's again, the time to, to listen because some people are stuck because they have zoomed, this is why I get stuck. I've zoomed so far in that I'm just kind of. Like, there's an avalanche of details, and I'm not a detail person.

[00:18:01] I I don't do well with details. But the avalanche of details has me stuck. And I feel like, I remember one time my desk got messy in my office at work. And it was just like overwhelming. There was a lot going on and all the excuses, but it was just messy. And I just looked at it and I couldn't move.

[00:18:18] I was like, I don't know what to do. And my wife actually came in and she's like, okay, look at this. Watch this trash or keep, I said trash. She threw it away and one piece at a time. And she got me unstuck because I was, and that's how I work. Like details are stuck for me. Other people they thrive in details, but they're too far out.

[00:18:39] And that's where they can't get to the details because they're they're missing the high level pieces. And so you have to really, I think. Takes some time discovering who a person is and why they're stuck and what got us here and all those pieces. But then it just really give them the reins and the opportunity to unstick themselves.

[00:18:58] Right. We can help and we can support and we, that's why I love coaching because that's what coaching is, right? It's like, It's not,

[00:19:03] Trisha: It's getting people unstuck.

[00:19:05] Jerry: I'm not gonna train you out of this out of this mud, but I'll be here and let's walk together.

[00:19:11] Trisha: exactly. Let's be here and walk together. I was thinking about a learning situation and that isn't what you can do in a learning situation, but it's always good to recognize that you've probably got some people in the room who are sitting at that point in the change cycle as well.

[00:19:27] Yeah. So you lived and worked in China for a decade, as we said earlier. What did that cross-cultural immersion teach you about communication and identity?

[00:19:38] Jerry: I think one that the communication. Is so much more than words, right? Like even if you know the words, even if you can speak the language, there's so much beyond that, that goes into communication. And that was a lesson that I learned like in the big funny ways early on and throughout my experience the times you say something and it comes out wrong and but it was also like it just, that goes as deep as you will take it, right? Like the cultural piece of that and the recognition of we're looking at this together, right? Like we're looking at the same thing right now. And my assumption is always, I. You see what I see, right? Like you see, and that's not necessarily the case, right?

[00:20:17] Like they may see something completely different. We used to do an exercise where we would just put up the color red, right? And say, what does this bring up? What does it bring up for you, Trisha? Like what? Like what? What does red mean to you? ,

[00:20:29] What's the first thing you think about ?

[00:20:30] Trisha: Weirdly ground came to mind.

[00:20:32] Jerry: Interesting.

[00:20:33] Trisha: yeah, that might be I don't know. I don't know where that came from.

[00:20:37] Jerry: that's that's interesting. You're the psychologist though, so I have no idea how to unpack that with you, but that's very interesting. Yeah. But you get, if you get people from five different places in the room, they're gonna have, red is going to mean something different. Maybe two of them agree and these two agree and but it means something different.

[00:20:52] One of my favorites we, I used to do this with a Chinese audience, like if they were all Chinese, would put up the number eight and say what's this mean to you? And of course, it's like, that's the most auspicious number and it's the best number. And then I share the experience of choosing my first phone number.

[00:21:08] And the person who was helping me choose that number the first one I chose was they were like, oh, you don't. You don't want that one. I'm like, why? Why don't I want that? Because I had too many fours. You don't want all those fours. And I'm like, okay I'll choose this one.

[00:21:22] And they're like, you can't afford that one. Because it has too many eights. I'm like, it actually costs more money. And that was, so that was that first lesson, right? So they say eight and I throw up a six. And they they're like, oh yeah that's a good number, lucky number. And they throw up a 66 and they're like, oh, yeah.

[00:21:39] Like, that's a really lucky number. I throw up a 6, 6 6, and they're like, that's extremely lucky. And then I show them the picture. I. The pictures that come up on Google image when you Google 6, 6, 6, at least from our Google. And it's these demons and monsters and and they, or it's demons.

[00:21:57] But I put up the pictures of the demons and they're like, oh, monsters. And I said, okay, you said monsters. This is what I think. When I think of monsters and it's Cookie monster, it's all the Sesame Street Monsters you know, and it's like we're just going back and forth. We're looking at the same thing. We see something completely different, and it's also a really fun conversation.

[00:22:16] But to keep that in front of you when it's really practical and it matters, is a completely different thing because you'll almost every time kinda slip back into that. You see what I see,

[00:22:26] right?

[00:22:27] Trisha: Yeah, that's right. Jerry, we've been sharing between us some of our mutual learnings from using artificial intelligence, ai. So what have been some of your aha moments around ai?

[00:22:38] Jerry: Mmmmm I had one just earlier this week. And. I was processing some new plans and some things I want to do and some like, I really wanna, I wanna push this out into the world. I want people to see it. And and I was like, okay. Tell me based on what we've talked about so far, speaking to, I use chatGBT, I know lots of options out there.

[00:22:57] That's the one I was using in the moment. I was like, tell me like what you think about this. And there's this one moment where it said what you're doing is you're. Putting something out there where people aren't like they're not just connecting with it. They're saying, damn, that's me.

[00:23:13] And it was like, that's it. Like that's, I want people to, I want people to feel it when I talk about this and say, yeah, that's me to, for them to have the aha moment. But it was just like this. I was blown away in the moment, right? Like, it was like you get me. And I think I've had so many of those that it's freaking me out.

[00:23:31] Like every, everywhere. Like there's nothing, there's, I've never seen anything. I don't know. But I've never seen anything that people are so excited about and so scared of at the same time.

[00:23:39] Right. And that's exactly how I feel. But I'm learning to take that part I'm excited about and leverage it for whatever I, can in the moment. Right.

[00:23:48] Trisha: As we think about organizations and the fact that they're transitioning some of them really fast, and some of them not at all, and some of them somewhere in between, towards what you and I would we've talked about how we refer to it and we think more of an AI forward, but, you know, human first future.

[00:24:09] So what do you think is important for the organizations to consider? And where might they be getting things wrong?

[00:24:16] Jerry: That's a great question. And I think like picking it apart in the moment and just getting very real and honest about change. From multiple perspectives, right? Like there change is absolutely happening, but, and we've been saying that for. For my entire life at least, right? Like change is the one thing you can count on. The thing you can be sure of is that everything's gonna change.

[00:24:43] And so we know that's not new to us. The change is really coming very quickly right now and in bigger ways. And I know you and I were talking and we're talking about 15 years ago and you asked me what do you think is gonna happen in the next five years? And that was our conversation was like the next five years.

[00:25:00] Is gonna be 10 times the amount of change that we've seen in the last 15, just because there's, there, there are now these things in place that are gonna move us forward. But I think one, like we're not out of control. Not yet. And there are some things we can change. We have full reign over one how we interact and what we do.

[00:25:18] And there's still plenty of things that we can change and there's things that we can use AI to help us change that we didn't have before. And that's really, that's the exciting part of it. But I think there are groups, there are organizations, there are people. Who are looking for a way to stay the same themselves, right?

[00:25:37] It's not about what they can change. It's about them and whether or not they change. And one of the things, you know, we've worked together and one of the things that we've said just from a work perspective is that in inevitable change requires intentional change, right? It things are going to change.

[00:25:56] You still have some control over some things. But a lot is going to change, and you have no control over you. You can't stop it. It's too big for you. And you're you're just not going to be successful if you do that. So you have to ask yourself, if that's the case, then what intentional changes do I need to make?

[00:26:13] Whether that's. For myself, for my team, for my business for the people around me. Like, what changes do I need to make intentionally? Because if you don't, then that's how Extinction happens. And Extinction used to take a really long time. But at the rate that things are moving now I think we could go extinct pretty quickly.

[00:26:35] Or at least our mindset or business model or our business itself. Could get passed up if we're not, if we're not really intentional about distinguishing between what we can change and what we can't.

[00:26:46] Trisha: Yeah, and remembering that within any organization we've got people who you know, are at those different stages from, whether it's accessibility to accuracy or you know, not even thinking about change to keenness, to be on that change wagon already there. We know that even in organizations where people I work with some government departments and here in Australia and for the majority of the people, they are not to use ai.

[00:27:15] It's, they have been told to, to avoid it until, you know, the regulatory, The safety aspects have been taken into account. But I'm sure that there are a lot of those people who would have chat GPT in their pocket. There'll be some people within that organization, perhaps not a lot. And they're itching to use it.

[00:27:34] And so there are all these people at all these different stages. And. Helping people to get wherever the organization might want to be is a challenge. And it's, I mean, it's the same in the work that we've been doing about inclusion for, you know, the last, how long we've been working together, four years maybe.

[00:27:53] Jerry: Yeah, about four years.

[00:27:54] Trisha: so, yeah. That there are people at different stages and recognizing that is probably the first and most important thing to seeing how are we gonna take this organization on this journey.

[00:28:06] Jerry: And that's, to me, that's the richness of it. Like, it, the richness of AI for me is still in humanity. It's in the humanness because right now it's a. It's a tool that service, it helps me do better work, right? Like it helps me proofread everything I do. It helps if I am stuck, if I have a, just gimme an idea about this.

[00:28:26] And it's still my idea, but it said it better and just saved me two hours of like, it's really serving me right now. I like it. It is working and it's, and it does it in such a way that I feel like it's human. Like I have conversations and I can speak to it and it speaks to me. And, of that is there, but right now AI is for humanity it feels like.

[00:28:47] Like that's, it was a created thing that serves humanity and is incredibly helpful. And each of us has that moment kind of when we see it for the first time. There's that what Did it just do that instantly and now we're like, if somebody has that, it's kind of funny.

[00:29:07] Like you didn't know that you haven't seen it, but I'm realizing like my aha moment was only a year ago, right? Like, or a year and a half ago. And that's how quickly things are moving. It used to be when somebody has an aha moment, the other people had it 10 years ago, and now it's just moving quickly.

[00:29:26] Trisha: And there's a sense, the Proctor and Gamble research showing that, you know, one person using AI was as effective as at innovation as a team of people. So, you know, on our own we can use it to, to generate ideas, to make us think differently, to spark things. And so the possibilities for us to be better, you know, as individual designers becomes so much more.

[00:29:52] We could keep talking for hours.

[00:29:54] Jerry: Yeah.

[00:29:56] Trisha: but I'm wondering what advice you would offer to someone who wants to help others experience real shifts in their thinking.

[00:30:05] Jerry: First thing that comes to mind is you gotta think what they're thinking, right? Like, you have to see, because we're all looking at the same thing from different perspectives. Don't ever assume that you've got it figured out and that you know what they need to know what they need to hear and learn.

[00:30:18] And I've learned that the hard way. Like there have been times that I've spent hours and days putting something together and been excited about it. This is what they need to know. And it just doesn't land. But then one little conversation is like, oh, like that's what you needed. I thought I knew what you needed and I didn't.

[00:30:37] So having that conversation on the front end. And listening and learning, and really listening. Not just listening. So you can say, okay, I got your answer. But really seeing it and feeling it from their perspective.

[00:30:48] Trisha: You're taking us back to that.

[00:30:50] Jerry: What was the question? Like? How do you help

[00:30:51] Trisha: what advice would you offer, which is exactly what you've just answered, listening, and you've taken us back to that moment in the car with your son and you needing to listen. Yeah. So Jerry, how can people who want to connect with you, follow up with you?

[00:31:06] Jerry: probably the best way still is. And and again, like I'm in transition right now and things are changing Just keep it fresh so I can talk about it. but, go to the culture blend.com. it's some, I have it written for a little bit, but it's still there. And if you wanna, reach out, me, you can, you can do it through that and I'll see it.

[00:31:21] Trisha: and LinkedIn

[00:31:23] Jerry: LinkedIn, look me up.

[00:31:24] Trisha: Connect.

[00:31:25] Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:28] Trisha: And as you look at your life and the people you've worked with and the future that we are facing, what are you hoping for?

[00:31:34] Jerry: That's a, all of these are deeper questions than, um, than maybe they should be. but you know what what I'm hoping for is that this new mind blowing technology that's, coming on very quickly I hope that it, that it pushes us to a more human place, right? Like we, we've been saying for.

[00:31:54] Years, maybe centuries. I don't know that when a new invention, new technology is coming out, we just envision what the world is going to be like when that comes out. We'll be able to, like, this is gonna do 80% of my job for me. I'll be able to sit around and do nothing. Like, I'll be able to work 10 hours a week and everything will be good.

[00:32:11] We'll make so much money. We'll do, and it's never worked out like that. It's it's never, like the technology has always pushed us to work harder to, it's challenged us relationally. It's drawn more lines between us. Ultimately, even though it becomes a part of our life, even though it is very effective and even though it does 80% of our work, we find 90% more to put in there.

[00:32:33] Right. So my hope and I I feel almost ridiculous I'm not super hopeful about it. It like, it hasn't happened yet with any of the other things. I don't think it's gonna happen with ai. But I would love it if we just had deeper human connections because. AI could do something for us and give us more time, or AI could help us connect.

[00:32:53] AI could help us see things from a different perspective, you know, and it has all of that potential and I think it will be used for all of that. And then also will figure out a way to make it, really push us harder, stress us more, and that just seems to be our pattern. So that was a really bleak, Right. What do I, but it is, it's what I do hope. I, I hope we get more human

[00:33:17] out of this.

[00:33:18] Trisha: We will be more human together. Thank you Jerry, for your insights, for your thinking. I've enjoyed speaking and yeah. Thank you for the way that you do bring people together, through the learning that you design and through the way that you work with people that,

[00:33:33] Jerry: Well, thank you.

[00:33:34] Trisha: And thank you listeners for being part of this conversation. If today's episode sparks something in you, please hit follow or subscribe to keep growing with us on the shift.

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