Michael Koehler: Welcome to episode 2 of On the Balcony. In today's episode, we continue to examine Ronald Heifetz’s groundbreaking book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, and look at Chapter 2, ‘To lead or to Mislead.’

Leadership Without Easy Answers is the book behind the most provocative class at Harvard University. And it has indexed generations of change agents, executives, and people who care about developing others.

So, last time, I shared with you a few of the ways this book introduced a new kind of thinking about leadership, no more great men theory, or just leadership skills or tools, but actually defining the work of leadership around the difficult, complex challenges out there. And that is what Chapter 2 is actually about. Heifetz describes that the leadership work begins by defining what the problem really is, and then exploring who the stakeholders are that actually need to be included around the table.

In his class, he would often even draw a round conference table, where he puts the stakeholders even if they've never met in real life because, in messy challenges, that's where things get heated, where conflict emerges or people disagree or even disengage, not because they resist change per se. It's because they resist the loss embedded in addressing the problem.

Today's guest knows a lot about this. I am so excited that we're joined by Mitzi Johnson. She's the former Speaker of the House in Vermont. She has practiced a lot of leadership in her many years in office as we’ll hear in a few moments, especially around her work on gun legislation. As with all of our guests, Mitzi will bring a piece of the text from Chapter 2, and together, we'll chew on it deeply for more insights and applications. If you are an avid reader, I invite you to read along with the book.

In the second half of the show, you can continue to join me on my own developmental journey. I will go back to my coach Andy and explore how I, Michael, can practice more leadership. And that will get pretty personal today. For now, let's begin with my conversation with Mitzi.

Welcome, Mitzi.

Mitzi Johnson: Hello, Michael!

Michael Koehler: It’s so wonderful to have you on the show.

Mitzi Johnson: Thanks for having me. This is fun.

Michael Koehler: Mitzi we are starting our show, as every time, with a brief summary either before we get to know you a little bit better. We'll start with a summary of the chapter to ground us. This chapter, the chapter of this episode is Chapter 2 – Leadership Without Easy Answers. I'm really curious to hear from you what core ideas stood out in that chapter?

Mitzi Johnson: I love this chapter. I love these concepts here. For me, it's really about evolution and this adaptive leadership concept of disequilibrium, and vulnerability. It's that tension between making progress on really hard things and getting pulled to what people want you to do.

Michael Koehler: I think it is the first chapter where he actually begins to parse out adaptive from technical, like defining the work. It starts actually in the introduction, but I think he makes progress on defining the work of leadership as adaptive work, not technical work, as the work that requires learning and learning where the challenges are complex and can't be fixed and solved easily by expertise, right? That would be a technical problem, a routine problem but an adaptive problem is a messy problem,

You talked about disequilibrium, which I find so often to be a little bit of an edgy concept because the word is so edgy, just equilibrium, and it's really the way I read it in this chapter as I was reading it again and understanding it. It's really the stress that happens, the heat that happens when people are overwhelmed and need to learn something and need to adapt.

Mitzi Johnson: Yes, this really unsettled feeling of chaos and the unknown.

Michael Koehler: I think he spent some of this chapter explaining the patterns around how people are restoring heat, how people are freaking out over heat, and how leadership is really managing and orchestrating, this conflict, orchestrating the heat at the right level.

Mitzi Johnson: Yes, and sort of the subtext of how to read it, right? He doesn't talk explicitly about that, but really being able to read it and understand it in order to help make decisions.

Michael Koehler: Mitzi, I'm curious to hear a little bit about sort of your own identities that inform your own work as a leadership practitioner, and as somebody who's loved this work and, and read this book and this chapter with me again. And that may inform the wisdom you bring to this, but maybe also the biases we're bringing.

Mitzi Johnson: Basically, being a recovering politician, having spent 18 years in elected office and having been out now for a little over a year, I just so strongly identify with the practice of leadership in political office and in leadership, having chaired budget committees and been the Speaker of the House in the state of Vermont, and having a very strong grounding in the practitioners' world with some dabbling in the consultants' world, in part with you.

Now having a little more even balanced, doing more of the training, while still keeping a foot in that practitioner's world. So, really thinking about how this relates to policy and all of the pressures that somebody in the elected office feels. Those really tug at me quite a lot.

I think also, some of the bias that I bring is having pretty strong compassion for people in those positions, and understanding their point of view a little more quickly and easily. I have to work to get myself into the headspace with people who are really frustrated that progress doesn't happen quickly because, on the inside, I understand why things don't happen faster. So, having to really identify with people who feel those constraints of authority.

Michael Koehler: And if I may throw in there, to my knowledge, you're one of the few women who held such a kind of office in this country. I'm curious about how that plays a role and how are you making sense of this framework and those pressures on their role?

Mitzi Johnson: No, that's a whole ‘nother podcast or series. But certainly, being a woman in a space where there were very few other women speakers, my counterpart in the Senate and the Governor were both men. And not only were we different genders, but we also had very different styles of leadership.

And so, it can be hard to do this kind of adaptive work without partners. I always told my folks that leadership is a team sport. And adaptive leadership really accentuates that. The way women partner just can be very, very different. And so, it lends itself very well. I just fit right into some of the adaptive methodologies, and sometimes found it hard to find partners in male counterparts.

Michael Koehler: Yeah, interesting. What would you say a sentence or two more about that? What was hard?

Mitzi Johnson: I find myself in spaces where we're talking very frequently about the pressures of women in leadership, and all of the extra hurdles that women in leadership face. I just want to name that men have pressure in leadership too. One of those pressures that I see is to live up to a more command and control style of leadership on board, like, ‘Here's my vision, now and I'm going to drag you along with me’, the kind of leadership that society expects men to portray. And that does not lend itself well to some of the more inclusive adaptive work, where some of the work and the learning are distributed among a broader community.

And so. getting my counterpart to participate in a little more of the kind of broader stakeholder engagement and compromise was to be quite gentle, a little challenging.

Michael Koehler: I think what I heard you say, and maybe I got you wrong, but it's not just that men may be, and we're generalizing here, right? Each individual deploys themselves in their own way, but when we think about the way men exercise, practice leadership or authority, there may be a little bit more of that, ‘I can fix it, I solve the problems’ approach.

But what you're actually saying is people elect and project onto men, kind of their hopes that like a go-to person that sort of fixes and solves and that may make it harder also for men to be in a more collaborative space. Did I get that correctly?

Mitzi Johnson: Yeah. And actually, Chapter 1 names that a little bit. In Chapter 1, not a spoiler alert here because people already listened to the Chapter 1 podcast but it specifically says leaders are not only influenced by followers that are under their influence as well. So, it's a reciprocal relationship there. So, there are different constraints that men have that make it harder to open them up to partner with in the way that I would want to as a White woman and as a practitioner of adaptive leadership.

Michael Koehler: Mitzi, every guest brings a quote from the chapter. I hear it for the first time and I'm really curious about what sentence or quote you brought, and want to invite you just to read it to us.

Mitzi Johnson: The one I chose is actually right up front in the chapter, closing out the first paragraph, and it says, “Knocked out of equilibrium, living systems summon a set of restorative responses.”

So, in the natural world, when nature gets a curveball, it finds some way of fixing and settling into a new normal. One of the examples that are used in the book is about those moths that used to be light-colored but then during the Industrial Revolution, there was so much pollution that the light-colored moths kept getting picked off by the birds because they stood out.

So, of course, any moths that had a darker coloring could hide a little better. And they all of a sudden had characteristics that made them more survivable to pass on more genes, right?

So, any living system summons a set of restorative responses. And that I think, speaks so heavily to that deep drive to say, “Nope, make the pain go away. We're going to fix this, we can just make this little tiny tweak, and things are back to normal.”

In the gun debate, that was, ‘This isn't really a problem in Vermont. Nope, go back to normal.’ In the budget debate it's, ‘Oh, well, that happens every year. Nope, we don't need to do anything different.’ And in the climate change debate, it's a whole lot of, “That's an anomaly. It’s the planet's temperature cycle. What can one person do?” I want to restore normal. It's that deep, deep discomfort of the unknown and the chaos and things being just out of whack.

Michael Koehler: Yeah, wow, beautiful Mitzi. I'm going to read the sentence one more time. And before we go deeper into your own experience, I want to just invite you to listen to it as I'm reading it and think about what images come up for you. Let your mind wander a little bit.

What images, what stories, what metaphors, associations, as loose as they may be come up as I'm reading that sentence, one more time. So, here it comes: “Knocked out of equilibrium, living systems, summon a set of restorative responses.”

Mitzi Johnson: I have this flood of images. The first ones that come most easily are images from my days in the State House and all of a sudden being back in very specific rooms, in specific conversations with specific people saying, ‘Don't make me do this. I can't bring this back to my people at home. I'm not going to vote on this.’

It’s just that allergic response – ‘Nope, nope, nope, too hard.’ Some of it is actually thinking about the natural world where I live. So, as you know, you've seen it, I live on an island in Lake Champlain in Vermont, and the lake floods. We sort of have a high tide, but just once a year, when the snow melts and it all drains down into the lake, the water level rises.

And so, a lot of the area around the lake shore has - the things that can survive with really wet roots for a few weeks, do fine. If there are plants that need good drainage, they don't last long. And so, the plants that thrive are things that either can have wet feet or things that are built to kind of hold and retain soil that wants to be washed away by the melting lake and all the wave action. And it's a very windy place.

So, I'm staring out at all these tall skinny cedar trees that you'd think would snap in a heartbeat. But boy, it takes a lot for a cedar tree to come down as it's whipping all over the place in the wind. And their restorative response to this tough climate are a lot of clustered trees and deep long roots that help them stay anchored where they are. Those are some examples.

Now that I'm talking, I'm also thinking of putting my little nieces and nephew to bed when they were little and all of the like, ‘No, no, no - but I'm thirsty, but I'm tired. But just 1 more chapter. But I really have to use the bathroom. But I'm starving.’

And like, don't make me do something different. I want to keep doing what I was doing. This lovely flood of images from all these different spaces that are important to me that come back when I think about what the natural inclination is when something gets knocked out of equilibrium.

Michael Koehler: Yeah! I was struck by these two words, “knocked out” and then “summon,” like pretty intense verbs. Knock out is almost brutal, but then also summon and you talked about allergy before.. There's this kind of magnetic force like the summoning is like almost a religious connotation like you summon the spirits or… Boy, this is like intense language, living systems summon a set – those a lot of alliteration – systems summon a set of restorative responses,

Mitzi Johnson: Say that three times fast.

Michael Koehler: There's a forcefulness behind it.

Mitzi Johnson: And an involuntary aspect.

Michael Koehler: Yeah, you're drawn, you're like, hold it, it’s summoned.

Mitzi Johnson: This is not gentle and thoughtful. This is involuntary and urgent – must return to normal.

Michael Koehler: All right.

Mitzi Johnson: So, I was thinking about this in relation to the earlier quote from the earlier chapter that I mentioned, which was, ‘Leaders not only influence followers but are under their influence as well.

There is very much a symbiotic relationship there. When somebody who is appointed, is authorized to try to make a change in the system as a higher authority, I think frequently as you know of elected officers, but in any system, and they start feeling the reaction that their people, their authorizers are feeling, this allergic response, this summoning, this unbidden, like, ‘No, turn-around. Don't do that. Get me out of this ick.’

It has a huge effect on the authority as well. It takes a lot to not then feel like you must deliver what they are asking for, and in adaptive work, the challenge is that oftentimes delivering that, even though it is the popular and majority view is not the right thing long-term.

Michael Koehler: Let's see, I want to read the sentence one more time to you. This time, I'm going to invite you to think about your own experience. Think about your own work of leadership, maybe something from that gun legislation, that very intense gun legislation time comes back to mind, where you have some personal resonance experience around this quote, which is, ‘Knocked out of equilibrium, living systems summon a set of restorative responses.”

Mitzi Johnson: There's this huge flood of very intense memories coming back around that. In a lot of political debates, there are people that are all along a spectrum. And then there's a whole bunch in the middle, ‘I can go either way.’

This debate is not one of those. It elicits super strong responses. And so, the situation was that the day after the horrific Parkland shooting in Florida, a kid with almost the same storyline as in Florida, was taken into custody.

This very similar life storyline and the kid in Vermont had very specific plans. And that really shattered this Vermont false sense of security where it doesn't happen here, right? I mean, forget the fact that Vermont has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country, but in terms of gun violence and accidental things and what people think of as mass shootings. It didn't feel like it happens in Vermont, despite a very lack of gun laws here and a very high percentage of gun ownership is a strong culture of hunting.

And so, these two things happening together, the horror of Parkland, and oh my god, what a near miss in Vermont. Yeah, we were knocked out. We did not gently slip into a disequilibrium. We didn't even get the two of the one-two punch, we just got the one punch and it was a real shock to everybody and I’ll admit that when you asked me to think about this, just now, I had to collect myself for a little while because all of a sudden, I was back at when I was knocked out of disequilibrium.

When the governor's chief of staff called me and said, ‘This is a private briefing, I just had to tell you what's going on.’ There was some shock there and gratitude for all the people that ended up, the police, and the families that ticked all the right systems into place to prevent a tragedy.

But the knocked out of disequilibrium for me came the next day, when I was given the affidavits of what this would-be killer said to the state's attorney, when questioned and to police when questioned, and how honest and beyond unashamed, almost proud he was of what he was planning and what he was going to do, and how awful it was and how incredibly intertwined it was with social ostracization and with being a bit of a social outcast, with not having a community, with not having a place, with not having a lot of supports around him, with living out of his car and being hungry, all of these social problems compounded in one place that just became this cauldron that was simmering anger.

That's the moment that knocked me out of equilibrium. I remember forwarding those affidavits to my leadership team saying, ‘Read these carefully. Hug the people you love and come back Monday morning.’

That was a Friday afternoon that I sent it like come back Monday morning, being ready to work our tails off. And I had an unexpected partner in the Republican governor who was a lifelong gun owner and had a lot of loyalty among a hunting community and people who fiercely protected the Second Amendment. He cracked open the door. He was clearly knocked well out of equilibrium because, in one of his press statements, sort of buried in the third paragraph, it said, ‘Maybe it's time that we should have a conversation in Vermont about who should have guns.’

It's the first time he'd ever mentioned something like that. This was a huge deal in Vermont. I mean, you couldn't even have conversations about noise ordinances around shooting ranges without the NRA being outraged.

And so, to have a Republican governor, one of their own, who'd always supported Second Amendment issues, to come forward and say, ‘You know, maybe we need to rethink.’ This was huge. And then the restorative responses.

The restorative responses involved an enormous amount of pushback doesn't begin to cover it. But a bunch of here's where some gender issues come into play, too, because my male counterpart and I were on the same page on these issues. The Vermont Chair of the Judiciary Committee was a woman in the house and a man in the Senate, they were almost on the same page. Not quite, but almost.

But the women in positions of authority got a lot more threats and protests and pushback than the men in authority. And so, there was a huge response from gun owners that always knew that their issues would prevail in Vermont, and they knew that this governor always had their back.

And so, for this conversation, like the main defense of, that doesn't happen here, to be completely debunked and to have a very strong ally of theirs and a governor say, ‘Ah, you know what? Maybe this time is different. Maybe we do need to do something.’

They were feeling way knocked out of equilibrium and they had some very strong restorative responses.

Michael Koehler: Thank you, Mitzi. I’m thinking this case highlights as beautifully that equilibrium is not the same for everyone, it is so highly contingent on the issues, right?

Some people got knocked out of equilibrium because there was another shooting. And that brought the urgency again to the lack of safety around guns and the accessibility, right?

Other folks were knocked out of equilibrium into disequilibrium because of their understanding of freedom, opportunity, and basically, independence, leaving me alone with my hunting rights and my autonomy here. And suddenly a state is regulating more, even if that means you, I don't know the details about gun legislation in the US, but it probably has to do with getting a proper license and showing proper authorization.

Mitzi Johnson: We're not even close to that.

Michael Koehler: But like the losses around that are knocking people out of equilibrium, and maneuvering those multiplicities. And I think that's the same in a way, for every adaptive challenge.

People are different factions, different groups of people with different values and perspectives are going to experience different levels of equilibrium related to the potential losses they are facing.

Mitzi Johnson: And I think that the potential word is important there. It's potential losses and perceived losses. I actually spent quite a lot of time with hunters, the avid hunters, during this period to say, ‘Okay, let me go through these policies with you that are being considered. I want to make sure that they're not touching the hunting community. I need to be able to tell my constituents and I need to be able to tell my caucus and Vermont representatives so that they can tell their constituents that if you are a legal licensed Hunter, none of this affects you and to be able to try to minimize those losses.’

I spent a lot of time just sitting down with people saying, ‘Hey, tell me when you first held a gun? Tell me who gave you your first gun? What was that experience?’

There were actually so many really beautiful, sweet stories of that being this rite of passage for a little boy with his father, or for one person, in particular, somebody who had lost his father, relatively young and it was his uncle who stepped up to provide that and provide that bond. It's an important part for some people to have an experience.

Some of your listeners are going to be like, ‘Well, what the hell, they don't have to deal with a gun.’ Some of your listeners might be like, ’Yeah. Yep. That's how it was for me.’

And so, just trying to make space for both of those storylines. And yes, your point of exactly which little plot twist, pushed somebody or knocked somebody out of disequilibrium was wildly different depending on where you stood in this debate.

Michael Koehler: Yeah. In a way, elected officials are probably, as a part of their role, in touch with these different factions and stakeholders on a daily basis. Like, that is the work, right?

But I think in a way, practicing leadership always means you are in touch with various stakeholders and factions, maybe they're not called that way, right? Maybe they are the different departments in your firm, or they're the different beneficiaries and the funders in your nonprofit or in your community, people with different values, but like, there's always different stories and different groups will be knocked out of equilibrium in different ways and will try to restore order in productive and unproductive ways in different ways.

The capacity, like, I think you described this to beautiful lightly, in a way, it's probably impossible to not be also knocked out yourself like you are gonna be moved by a piece of the puzzle here because you're a human being that has feelings and is compassionate, but at the same time seeing the picture and being in touch with the various stories.

Mitzi Johnson: And because you are somebody who is a stakeholder and who was engaged, if you were to sort of map out in a visual way, who's involved and what their perspectives are, and what they're feeling in terms of loss, like, you're in there as well. And so, you somehow have to anchor yourself and keep an open mind to be aware of all these forces while the tides push you all over the place at the same time.

Michael Koehler: Let's see, I was slowly coming to the end of our session. There’s is so much more that we could explore, but I want to wrap up by inviting you one last time to read your quote. I'll wrap us up with a very brief question at the end.

Mitzi Johnson: “Knocked out of equilibrium, living systems summon a set of restorative responses.”

Michael Koehler: Mitzi, reading that sentence and looking forward to your own journey, what action are you being called to take or to continue to take?

Mitzi Johnson: Yeah, this last time when I read it, I looked at the word restorative response, and thought about my introduction of being a recovering politician. It feels like that's what the last year and a half has been for me, like, leaving office was in itself, getting knocked out, I lost my election, I was knocked out, right?

So, for me, it's finding that new normal, my restorative response to being a recovering politician, and just finding a way to do it that allows me to keep contributing and moving forward and not just settling into the couch. But really keep staying engaged in participating, and I love the healing element that the word restorative has.

Michael Koehler: And we're so lucky that this is part of your restorative response that you share your stories, your wisdom, your reflections with us. Thank you so much for that, Mitzi. It's been such a joy and honor to do this with you.

Mitzi Johnson: It is wonderful to chat with you, Michael. I'm so glad you're undertaking this project. Thanks for having me.

Michael Koehler: Coming up, what happens if I changed my lens from talking about leadership to actually practicing it? I'll continue to explore that with my coach, Andy.

In the last episode, he and I explored what it would take for me to bring more of German history, to the essence of conversation around racial justice. I identified some potential triggers in me.

Most importantly, a part of me got pretty scared of doing more of that, and particularly scared about what it would do to my journey of belonging in this country. But I committed to having a conversation as two white American friends about their ancestors to learn more. Let's see how this went. That’s after the break.

Welcome back! In the second part of each episode, we'll shift gears towards application. In a moment, you will tune into a live coaching conversation with me as the client, and my colleague, Andy Cahill, as the coach.

But before that, let's catch up. If you might recall that in the first coaching session, I committed to talking to two of my American friends about the ancestors. I've been wanting to engage more deeply in conversations around social justice, and feel that my experience as a German might be helpful in an American context, especially German practice, for looking back and talking more about history, particularly when it's hard.

My experiment was to have these conversations and to notice whether my worries of being shut out or not belonging came true. And here's the data. They didn't, at least not in the conversations that I had.

The conversations were actually really meaningful. One friend shared that one of her ancestors was an intense figure in the American Nazi movement and that she felt disturbed by it, and especially how much of it to do it was to talk about it in her family.

That actually made me feel more connected. So, I guess I'm off to a good start testing assumptions and learning a little bit more about them. Let's shift now to today's coaching conversation. If you're new to coaching, here are a few things you need to know. You'll notice that and ask a lot of questions. That's one of the core skill sets of a good coach. Questions that helped me, the client, gain some new awareness of my challenge.

In today's session, Andy and I will begin to refine the objective for the larger coaching journey. That is often the work of earlier sessions and crucial for successful engagement. Off we go, here's Andy.

Andy Cahill: Michael, Hello again!

Michael Koehler: Hi, Andy!

Andy Cahill: It's good to be back here with you.

Michael Koehler: Thanks for being back.

Andy Cahill: Yeah. Sounds like you had a really rich conversation with Mitzi. And I'm looking forward to hearing that at some point. And I'm really curious to hear what would make this coaching session powerful for you today? Where should we start?

Michael Koehler: So, I'm on this journey throughout this season, these 12 episodes, to really explore how to deepen my own practice of leadership. I loved our conversation last time. I've got a few things to share from it. But the frame I want to set for today is I would love to set a goal with you or an intention for this larger arch, to really get your help in defining for me what success looks like, what would it look like for me to, let's say, half a year from now,, like in the Fall Winter, 6 months from now to have a broader skill set to practice leadership more around those topics that we've identified in the last session around social justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, maybe climate change, some of those systemic challenges out there that I want to practice more leadership on, like honing that goal?

Andy Cahill: Really? Does it sound like you've already spent some time sitting with that as a desire or hope or aspiration? To what extent do you have an emerging vision around what that success would look like a half year from now? And to what extent do you need some help to just kind of start fresh with that question?

Michael Koehler: Yeah, I love the work we did last time around belonging. That was really meaningful. I feel like I don't have a big picture yet. I think it would help me just to know what I'm moving towards as I’m then sort of circle through this coaching journey week by week or every two weeks to check in, like, how am I making progress towards a bigger goal?

So, no, I don't have that picture yet, and I think that would be a success for me today to look kind of to define that image that I'm moving towards.

Andy Cahill: Got it. So, it sounds like if you leave today with some sense of that image that you're moving towards, that would be really meaningful for you on your leadership journey. Question is still emerging in me, but it's something, like, there's something about having a vision that you know will be powerful. But there's also something about the absence of a vision or its opposite that produces disequilibrium or discomfort or discord, there's something about your leadership right now that you sense is something is missing or lacking? Can you just help me better understand more about what the gap is that you're trying to cross?

Michael Koehler: I think there is a gap. It’s a little vulnerable. We say that leadership is possible for everybody, wherever you sit. And yet here, am I the coach, the teacher, the facilitator, who helps others develop their leadership practices. And I'm not sure frankly speaking if I'm practicing leadership as much as I actually can, or enough.

Andy Cahill: So, it sounds like a part of this question about your evolution as a leader is something like, am I practicing leadership? And if I am, am I practicing it enough as much as I could be? Am I right?

Michael Koehler: Yeah. In the educator world, this is a kind of slightly cynical saying, ‘He who can, does; he who can't, teaches us.

Andy Cahill: God bless the cynics. So, there's some part of you that's holding that a little bit and going like, ‘Am I just someone who can’t, so I’m teaching.’ Is that right? Why did you present that kind of playful joke?

Michael Koehler: Yeah, I don't think it's that binary. I think in the past, I was a dancer and a dance coach, and I loved both. And I feel like they both belong together. I think the practice informs the teaching and the coaching and the coaching and teaching then forms to practice and there's really like a duality between practice and education. I think that's where it comes from. Like, I want to lean more into the practice myself. I think that consulting coaching education stands can be the safest space. And I think that's what I'm here to explore. Like, where's my edge? Where is my frontier?

Andy Cahill: I feel really curious. I feel a charge pulled towards playing with that question, where is my edge? Where is my frontier? Starting with your own body, with your own primary experience, and seeing if that might help you begin to own that question more fully. Would you be willing to play with that a little bit to see what it gets us?

Michael Koehler: Yes.

Andy Cahill: Okay, cool. So, for starters, it might help to imagine a situation. It could be the one we worked on in our last session. It could be something coming up that a part of you sees yourself, ‘Oh, I could just safely be in teacher mode. But actually, I could also be in a leader mode.’ Or could be something else that you're aware of, but some kind of scenario where you, one, see an opportunity to practice some leadership, and two, it feels there's some resistance or fear or worry that if you did something, it would go wrong. Let me take a moment to connect with that and let me know when you've got something.

Michael Koehler: Yeah.

Andy Cahill: Okay, good. And would it be helpful and meaningful for you to describe the situation out loud? We don't need to for this to work, but would you want to share it at all with me and the folks who are listening? Or do you want to just kind of go towards the primary experience?

Michael Koehler: It's a deepening of that challenge we worked last time bringing in the orientation towards history, difficult history, into the American, more into the broader workshop contexts and conversations.

Michael Koehler: Great. I think for our purposes, now, we don't need one takeaway that you might leave with today, or that folks listening might leave with, it's like, oh, here's a specific leadership move I could make. And that would be really cool. But my sense of your goal here is more around, where do I want to begin to lead more.

So, what I want to invite you to do in the spirit of helping you touch into that, I want to invite you to notice yourself in the situation, as much as you can in your imagination and in your mind's eye. Put yourself there. It may be already on your calendar, or it may be something that isn't on your calendar yet but you can imagine happening. But when you feel like you, Michael, are in this situation in your mind's eye, let me know.

Michael Koehler: You want me to share some of the images that come up for me?

Andy Cahill: Yes, please.

Michael Koehler: I'm seeing myself publicly sharing leadership insights from dealing with history, in general. I see myself publicly sharing insights from leaning into my own difficult past and my family's difficult past. It's quite difficult. I mean, also aggressive, difficult, not just difficult things that happened to us, but we committed difficult things.

And I'm seeing myself in conversations, public or private, one on one or workshops or panels, really holding other people through the process of getting in touch with their own difficult history in ways that encourage learning. So, not triggering the hell out but also not avoiding the topic. There's nuance or curiosity, depth, a precision in leaning into the discomfort.

I talked a lot with Mitzi in this episode about this equilibrium and that restorative response that systems have and kind of one of the restorative functions of people avoiding the disequilibrium of a difficult past is to look into the future and avoid it. Just look, look in a different direction.

And freely, kindly, gently reorienting towards like, no, there is stuff to be named, there is stuff to be examined, to be looked at a little bit more deeply. And so, there's both commitment and precision and dedication and kindness at the same time. That's what's coming up for me.

Andy Cahill: Let's maybe just take a moment to allow that balance or that interplay of precision and compassion or kindness, I think was your word, as like a possible image we could deepen into.

So, maybe we could set that gently on the table. And then what I'd like to do now is you've essentially named three places or scenarios where you see an opportunity for leadership. One is what we might call kind of a public thought leader or public champion of the power of learning from our past. You're going to speak to leadership insights – insights about that to… who knows which audiences.

Another thought is this deeply personal, doing work at the level of yourself and your family system and your relationships around where these repressions have shown up in you and these aggressions have shown up in you.

And the third is sitting with others right at that intersection with both precision and compassion. We won't have time to work on all of these today, but I'm glad you've named them. I wonder, is there one that you feel drawn to today to unpack and lean into a bit more?

Michael Koehler: Yeah, yes. The clear reaction here. The second one.

Andy Cahill: Tell me more about the laughter. What's happening for you, as you touch on that second option?

Michael Koehler: I’m getting on a flight tomorrow. I’m flying to Germany for a week and a half. And these days, I only connect back to my home country and most heavily on these trips once or twice a year. So, I've got a real opportunity to inquire, maybe actively inquire but also passively receive some data, as I'm going home.

So, that's where the laughter was about. But it's an anxious laugh because I know that there is, and I'm not sure to what extent I want to talk about this right now, but that there are some unresolved pieces in my own history and my own family's history that have been unnamed or taboo, and I have questions around. And there will be an opportunity for me to do some of this work.

Andy Cahill: Yeah. I don't think we need to talk about it today, or maybe not even in any session. But what I would like to do is help you get some more first-person data about that possibility of exercising leadership for yourself and your family system to see what it might tell you about your bigger question of exercising leadership in this space.

So, what I want to invite you to do and again, you're totally in charge here, you get to decide what you share out loud, and what you work with inside, but what I want to invite you to do is imagine yourself in Germany in a context where you might have an opportunity to exercise leadership and your family system.

What I want you to do as you imagine that situation, maybe let's pause it and just let me know when you've got a situation in mind. Again, you don't have to describe it unless you want to.

Michael Koehler: Yeah.

Andy Cahill: Great! And then I want, as you imagine yourself exercising leadership in that situation, to notice how it feels in your body to make that move, or to take that risk. And it's likely that you'll notice some sensations somewhere in or around your body as you imagine yourself doing that.

Michael Koehler: Yes, I’m noticing some sweaty armpits right now. Yeah, I will say some cold, sweaty armpits.

Andy Cahill: Good!

Michael Koehler: The tips of my fingers are also a little bit sweaty and cold. There’s some tension around my shoulders. My shoulders are tensing up.

Andy Cahill: Great! And now it's possible you may be experiencing the sweat and the fingertips in the shoulders is one kind of experience or it's possible those may be separate responses, but I simply want to invite you with as much self-compassion as you can muster to bring your attention to one, or the collective hole of these sensations and simply notice what thought patterns or emotions start to come up now that you notice this physical experience. There's no rush here. But if you're getting anything, any thought patterns, images, or emotions as you focus on sensation when you're ready, feel free to share those.

Michael Koehler: There’s something around, I don't really have thoughts, but fear. Fear comes up and the image of my parents yelling.

Andy Cahill: And what is the fear of being afraid of if an elder figure like a parent were yelling? What's it afraid would happen?

Michael Koehler: It feels pretty existential.

Andy Cahill: Yeah, there's something like that about that.

Michael Koehler: I'm connecting to the child. A child that is dependent on the parent to provide.

Andy Cahill: Beautiful. So, let's just stay here for maybe two more minutes. You said I'm connecting to the child, I want to invite you to, from your highest and best self, from a place of both precision and compassion, connect to that child right now and simply ask what the child wants you to know or what it needs for me right now, or if the child to feel safe?

Michael Koehler: It may sound a little weird. The child needs to know that I'm there. There's a trustworthy holding energy, parental energy there that is watching out for the child, and the child's curiosity for learning.

Andy Cahill: And Michael, do you feel like you're in a place at this moment where you could let the child know that you can do that? That this child can trust you not to yell at it and support it as you navigate these sensitive waters?

Michael Koehler: Yeah, I can support a child in me. But there is another energy, which is what happens if the child meets its real parents?

Andy Cahill: Yeah.

Michael Koehler: I think that child may need a little bit more to like, just know, like, I'm not gonna yell at you but how's that child in me protected?

Michael Koehler: Yeah. So, Michael, as we come down our home stretch here, I want to invite you to set an intention, which we won't have time to work today, to connect with that child around that question because you haven't actually made a commitment to exercise any leadership next week in Germany. You are totally permitted to do whatever you choose, based on where you're at now.

We've just been working with the possibility. So, just set an intention to connect with that inner energy, that childlike energy around the what if? What if we exercise leadership and we get yelled at? Let me know when that's done.

Michael Koehler: Yeah.

Andy Cahill: Great! Beautiful! We can either if you and I do another session, we can go into that if it feels right, or you can bring that to another coach, or do that work on your own. But as we step back from the scenario, I'm going to ask what connections are you making to how you imagine yourself stepping into lead more in this space that you've articulated after this work today?

Michael Koehler: Gosh! I'm getting in touch with the enormous fragility and protectiveness that is related to this work. I mean, that child, that image of that child that came up here, for me that was scared to even ask questions at home a little bit more. That felt pretty real. Yeah. I've intellectually heard the name fragility and I've read about it, but wow! There it is.

Andy Cahill: Yes.

Michael Koehler: That's my own restorative, my own kind of when the disequilibrium goes up, in terms of how safe does it feel, the restorative function is as I'm protecting, avoiding false conversations to keep that energy within me safe somehow.

Andy Cahill: I can notice a part of me that could see someone else avoiding an issue and that way and going like, ‘I don't want to get yelled at,’ and judging them for being too weak or afraid or not strong enough. But let's really get in touch with that insight that it's likely that many other people, particular people and what we call white bodies, have some version of that fragility around actually talking about this stuff.

Michael Koehler: Yeah.

Andy Cahill: So, here in our last two minutes, as you get connected to this question, what would success look like six months from now? What are you in touch with now?

Michael Koehler: This is great, Andy. The work here is not me practicing more leadership on DI as being out there talking about DI. But actually, talking about this fragility, this own experience of the inner protectiveness that shows up as I'm engaging with that question. That is the work because that's where the frontier lies.

Andy Cahill: Beautiful. There's something about you doing that in those other places that I experienced as a kind of invitation and normalization for other folks who might want to join you over in that conversation with ‘feel too afraid to.’

Michael Koehler: Yeah. Half a year from now success for me will look like I have found ways to give voice to meaning to that fragility and found ways to engage with us. What did I say? Kind in precise ways?

Andy Cahill: Yeah. Which you just did for yourself. While we're at our time boundary, I'm really excited if we get the chance to go deeper with you on this or to hear how you go deeper into that. Is there anything else you need to say today, Michael, for this session to be complete?

Michael Koehler: Andy, just as always, so much gratitude. Thanks for leading me to this point of insight here.

Andy Cahill: It was beautiful work, really beautiful and it's fun to be with you and it's a real honor to be part of this amazing project you're producing. I can't wait for people to hear this podcast. I think it's gonna be really special.

Michael Koehler: Thanks, Andy. We’re produced by Prodigy. Editing – Rally Burn, Daniel link, Tim O'Brien, Christy Perrott, and Emily Weiner. Cover art by Kenneth Amoyo and Rosi Greenberg. Our music is called Change in Blue by Hannah Gill and the Hours. Thanks for listening. We'll see you for episode 2, On the Balcony.