Blaine Bartlett

INTRO:// Is it possible for leaders to operate from a space of compassion while doing business? Or if there is any connection between leadership and compassion? What does it mean, when you talk about your absolute nature? Can leadership be beautiful? Welcome ladies, and gentleman, welcome to the podcast The xMonks Drive. I am your host Gaurav Arora and our today’s guest is Blaine Bartlett. Blaine is a keynote speaker, an author, co-host Bloomberg tv, and a TEDx speaker. Lets explore some deep questions and look at the practical aspects of those philosophies with Blaine. Outro: One thing which I am taking away from this episode is “True leadership, executed effectively co-creating coordinated movement can be beautiful and elegant”. What are you taking away from this episode and how are you looking forward to implement that learning. Would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment and rate this podcast, and I look forward to meeting you again next week with another interesting conversation. Till then, take care and stay tuned. Gaurav Thank you so much, Blaine. Such an honor having you here on the show The xMonks Drive. How have you been today? Blaine I've been very good. Thank you Gaurav. It's been very, it's been a very good year so far. Yeah. Yeah. We're only four months into it. But I like how it's beginning. Gaurav Tell me more about that? Blaine Well, we've got a number of projects that we're working with. All of them are moving in the direction that I'd like them to be moving. So that's a good thing. Yeah, some writing projects on social media outreach. We've got a new program that we're launching, we've got a new, hopefully, TV series that Apple TV is looking at picking up. So there's, just a number of different things that we're working with. And I continue to do some work with Jimmy Mysteries group, the Delta Leaders Group. And so this whole notion of compassionate capitalism, which your listeners and viewers can see over my shoulder here, that's we're looking at ways to really have that become more and more part of the mainstream conversation in business, how do you run a compassionately capitalistic company so that we minimize the harm of business and maximize the good? Gaurav Absolutely. So thank you so much. As you mentioned, I was just going through your book called Compassionate Capitalism. And in fact, I think universe has been extremely kind because, in the last one and a half years, I've had the honor of working with Mr. Das Sisodia, where he uses the concept of conscious capitalism. And of course, our paths have crossed and I had the great honour of interacting with you on several occasions. Blaine, thank you for your time and all your kindness. And while going through this book compassionate capitalism, it gave me a different perspective of looking at leadership. Would love to hear from you? How would you define a leader? And what is the responsibility of leadership In today's world? Blaine That's a great question. Actually, too good questions. Yeah, I've spent probably close to 40 years, working with leaders around the world. I've personally have trained and coached close to 300,000 business leaders. Gaurav Wow, 300,000 Blaine In this 300,000. And in that process, I've wrestled with how do we define, number one, what a leader is, and number two, the act of leadership because they are separate? And I've come to kind of a position where, you know, first of all, I needed to simplify things so that it was accessible to as many people as possible. So when I started looking at what is the leader, you know, what does the leader actually do? At the end of the day, when you strip away everything around personality around style around, you know, what people generally think of when they think of a leader, you know, whether it's a Mohandas Gandhi, or whether it's Steve Jobs, Mother Teresa, I mean, they're all different people. But at the, you know, when they're done, what they've done is they've created movement. They've created movement, they created change, by definition, they created change, movement always causes change. So a leader is anybody that causes movement in a system that they're a part of. Now, what I like about that definition, is that because it's impossible for you, for me, for anybody to come into a system, whether it's a family, whether it's a business, whether I'm a consumer, whether I'm the boss, I will, the system has to shift, it has to move, to allow for my presence to accommodate my presence. So just by showing up, I cause movement. Now, what's interesting about that is when you think about it in that way, everybody actually is a leader, because everybody is always causing movement. So the question that gets moved to very quickly is that movement effective? That's where the value is that question is where the value is. Yeah, effective leaders cause the kind of movement that they need to have in the system in order to get the result that they say they want. Most people are highly ineffective because they don't pay attention to the quality of the movement that they're creating, they're all we're always creating movement. So that leads us to how do we define leadership? Yeah, leadership is the activity that leaders engage in. So leadership in the way I define it is the process of co-creating, coordinated movement. It's pretty simple co-creation, coordinated movement. Now, what's interesting about that particular definition, both of them are directed towards movement, co-create movement, co-created, coordinated movement, I can get coordinated movement. If I've got a big enough stick, a big enough pot of money, I can get people, to coordinate for a short period of time. That's how most traditional leaders think. He has external motivators, either reward or fear, coordinated movement for a short period of time. The problem with that is what you have is compliance, do not have commitment. Yeah. When you add co-creation, co-creation is ownership transfer, my idea now becomes your idea. And then that's a valuable idea for both of us. So with co-creation in place, I have commitment as a possibility when I go to coordinated movement. So it becomes a much easier process, I've got to do a lot of work on the front, to have an easier process on the backside. So co-creating coordinated movement is what highly effective leaders do. Not able to fly. And that appreciates the question. Gaurav Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much, Ben. And I'm just reflecting. I'm just looking at that a movement could be a noun and a verb as well. Right? And I think in the definition, we are referring to both because a leader is somebody who can actually create a movement and can cause movement to lead to that movement. Wow. Blaine Yeah. And part of it has to do with you use the word Noun. A leader, is both a verb and a noun. Yeah, a leader is both a verb and a noun. Yeah. Buckminster Fuller years ago, wrote a very tiny little book that didn't get much notoriety at all, but it was called I Am A Verb. I am a verb. And it was a brilliant little book, and I will use it in my coaching work with executives. And one of the questions I'll ask is, if you were a verb, what is your verb? What's the verb that describes the movement that you are? And Steve Jobs I innovate therefore, I am. You know, Rene Descartes. I think, therefore, I am, Walt Disney, I imagine therefore I am. So that verb helps define the noun that I actually what I teach, therefore I am. Gaurav What a profound question. If you were to define yourself in a verb, what would that be? Wow. You know, in your book, you have very beautifully created a linkage between leadership and compassionate capitalism. So please help me understand what's the connection between leadership and compassionate capitalism? Blaine Beautiful question. Well, we'll just kind of go back to the definition of leadership, co-creating coordinated movement. Implicit in that definition is the experience of connection, not separation. My followers and I actually joined together we are in Co creating, we are co-creating. Now, when you think about this, in terms of compassion. It is impossible for me to feel and to behave, more importantly, to behave compassionately with something I don't feel connected to. So the idea of business being conducted from a position of compassion requires that the business itself the leaders in the business recognize that everything is connected. I'm connected, not just to my people. I'm not connected just to make the customers. I'm connected to anything and everything that that business touches. And then I look at how do I behave? In a manner that does no harm. Wow, there's a lot of businesses they do harm. Yeah. And then they go to market. And it's because the leaders aren't thinking that they're connected. Gaurav Mm hmm. Isn't that a profound thought that only if I can look at that how everything that I'm creating everything that I'm coordinating, is touching everything around me. And that's where I think an essence of oneness comes into the game. You know, in today's world, Blaine, the people that I interact with most of us, including myself, we are so busy taking care of our stature, we are so protective of our status quo, we are so protective of the accomplishment that we have. Now, how can we develop the essence of oneness, non-duality, co-creation, coordination? How can we bring in that essence into the world that we are living in which is so protective, which is so fearful, which is all about, I need to take care of my own self? Blaine Yeah, what you're describing is the dominant mindset in the world today, which is one of scarcity. It's a notion of scarcity. The experience of separation is a consequence of believing that there are limited opportunities that there are limited resources that there are limited, fill in the blank. So what ends up happening is that the mindset that most people occupy is exactly as you describe, I'm separate from, and so I need to compete in order to have to accumulate, what. Gaurav Hoarding, yeah, I need to hold things. Blaine To hold things to accumulate and to hold on to things, whether it's status, whether it's money, whether it's property. But most people, most businesses are organized around and this is where you need to make a profit, the bigger the better. Yeah. And that notion of accumulation is antithetical to the way that nature actually works. Nature does not nature, nature's the only truly free market economy. There are no artificial constraints in nature, and everything in nature, in some way or other serves as a center of distribution, not accumulation. So in answer to the question here, how do I begin to think differently, and as a consequence, act differently, I begin to think about myself as a center of distribution. Think of my company as a center of distribution, not as a center of accumulation. So just a practical example, most of my IP, most of my area, most of the things that we develop here in my organization, they're freely distributed. People can access just about everything that we've got now, do we sell some things? Absolutely. We sell some things I need to, you know, the idea of the business needs to be a viable entity. So I'm not saying don't make a profit. Yeah, everybody needs to make a profit in some way, whether I'm a schoolchild, but the profit is my learning. Yeah, I need to learn something, but then I need to be able to give it away to distribute that learning. If I just hold it close, it does nobody any good. Yeah. So that mindset of distribution, Foster's the experience of connection, it helps reinforce that experience of connection. Gaurav I just love it when you say it fosters that connection in the world. And on the first one I heard it faster, and realized, the faster I distributed, what I have the fastest, I'll be able to build more connections as well. And I'll be able to foster that connection as well with others, you know, then at the same time, the world that we live in, there's a tendency to compare myself with others as well. And always unconsciously, most of us, if not all, most of us. We are playing a one-up game. Blaine Yep.. Gaurav How do these two concepts fit in? Because there's so much FOMO, fear of missing out. And then from that space, I'm operating from a space of scarcity mentality where I need to play a one on game. But on the other hand, the concept that you're talking about that how can I be a conduit? How can I be a source to distribute everything that I have and be totally in alignment to nature, totally in alignment to the universe, how do these two concepts stay together? Blaine Gaurav, you ask great questions. You do. Thank you. The subtitle to the book, Compassionate Capitalism is A Journey To The Soul of Business. Okay? And it's the soul that I'm interested in. And I don't mean soul in a religious sense, I really mean it as a very pragmatic description of the source of livingness that comes through and animates everything in this universe. A rock has a soul. Okay, then a soul is nothing more than information looking to be expressed. That's what the soul is. The soul is information looking to be expressed. So the idea of competition suggests that my soul is limited. Yeah, I have two comparisons, a good place to begin, it's a horrible place to live. Comparison can have triggered desire, it's kind of - Oh, I'd like to have that. Okay, but I don't have to have it at the expense of taking it from you. That's what competition is about. Instead, what I'm looking at living from the soul of my business, from the soul of who I am, I start to get creative. There's a huge distinction to be made between the competitive mindset and the creative mindset. Steve Jobs, while people will think that he was an amazing competitor, he actually wasn't, he was an amazing creator. Yeah, and I mean, creator in the sense of ideation. Yeah, he would take things in and go, What can be created with this, from an experience standpoint, wants to be birthed here. And he wouldn't. He famously did not run focus groups in the organization. He didn't care what people thought there was no competition involved in that, you know, why would I care what my competitors are doing? I want to create because what I want to create is going to benefit. And part of it has to do with understanding what the purpose of business is, the purpose of business is not to make money. That's not the purpose of business. Now, you need to make money to stay in business. But the purpose of business is to enhance the probability and the possibility of thriving on this planet. If my service or product uplifts, your experience of living, you're going to want to buy my product, you're going to want to and I don't care if you're a noodle shop in the corner of a small little place here. If you're serving something that uplifts the experience of the people that come to you, you're going to have people continuing to come to you. Yeah, one of the oldest companies on this planet, it's about 780 years old, I think is a noodle shop. In Japan, they've been in the same family for over 700 years. And what they do is one thing, and they do it very well we uplift the experience of the customers who come into our shop, we uplift their experience of being alive for a short window while they're having noodles. Gaurav You know, for the time being, I'm saying, let's assume what you're saying is the universal truth. Let's assume, and my heart says, that is the universal truth. But at the same time, what I'm saying is, let's assume it's the universal truth. What do you think? Who are those people who are trying to bend reality? And why are they doing that? Because what you are seeing is a very different narrative. And the narrative which is running in the world is very, very different. Blaine Bend it in which direction? Gaurav Not so, effective direction. I don’t think which is very beneficial for the humanity because what you are saying is that the Nature says, continue to distribute what you have, so that the more you distribute, the more it's going to foster connections, right. And on the other hand, there is another narrative which is going on in the world that says hold on to the things right, hold more money and capitalism and one up psychology and I should be better than you operate from a space of competitiveness. There are so many media ads people are talking about let's make more money, let's make more money. Let's make more money. Right now, every time when I go to a LinkedIn or a social media platform, I experience a lot of fear there. Right? So who are those people? Why are they doing that? Blaine Those people are the vast majority of the people on this planet. That's and they are captured. They're literally hypnotized by an existing mindset by an existing narrative. That says it, we talked about this earlier, I have to get mine because there's not enough to go around. And it's that experience, the experience of separation. The experience of separation, I am separate from nature, I am separate from life, I'm separate from other people. Lend itself, it can't not lend itself to a competitive mindset, it inappropriately competitive mindset. There's nothing wrong with competition, you know, Olympic athletes. I mean, the question is, Who am I competing with? And for the sake of what am I competing, if I'm competing with another to raise myself, you know, I'm really competing with myself, because I'm looking for externally, I use an external standard as a metric by which I can uplift who I am. Okay, so the competition is actually internal for me. And I'm not taking any way away from you know, the runner in the lane next to me if I'm running a race. Where this comes from, in my experience, and just the research I've done is, it's human nature. In part, there's a piece to human nature that says it's rational for me to get as much as I can. Rational self-interest is the dominant, dynamic, in play in business, and for most people in life, rational self-interest, I need to get mine, you know, what's in it, for me, that's contrasted to something that's called enlightened self-interest, which is required for both of us to win. Enlightened self-interest is I'm gonna, I need to benefit, obviously, but I'm in relationship with you. I'm connected with you. So enlightened self-interest suggests that I need to also take care of you, in the sense that I don't do any harm to you. If I'm not doing harm to you, I'm actually setting you, I'm actually positioning you to win. So the whole notion of Win-Win, has a very pragmatic foundation to it. And it's based on enlightened self-interest, which is what Adam Smith wrote about when he wrote the book, The Wealth of Nations, back in 1776. That was the first, written down the first codified example of an economic model. And that it's also the blueprint for what started out as capitalism, capitalism doesn't really, it doesn't look like that at all. anymore. Today. The distinction between rational self-interest which is self-serving, which is selfish, and enlightened self-interest, which is altruistic, which is looking from a perspective of first do no harm. Yeah. And business transactions. Yeah. Because they are connected to you. Gaurav You know, what I'm assuming is if we continue to walk on the path of rational self-interest over enlightened interest of others as well, the default future that we are creating for ourselves is not very bright. Blaine That's not sustainable at all. Gaurav It's not sustainable at all. And I think that's where leaders like you Blaine, leaders like Das Sisodia is so the leaders like there's so many people were talking about Conscious Capitalism, purposeful organizations, people are talking about how can we actually bring in and do more value addition? How can we be your source of good to the overall humanity? Where should we begin? That could allow an individual to experience that overall growth is the only way which is sustainable, and can take care of future. Blaine The place to begin is to understand that if you think globally, you need to act locally. Now I know that's almost a what's the word I'd use here? It's been said so yeah, think globally act locally is it's also it's been said so often it becomes meaningless, but I actually do believe that this is how it works. I need to be able to act locally with myself. I see myself as a center of distribution. My intent and any interaction that I have with anybody is to leave them feeling better about themselves at the end of the conversation than they did at the beginning of the conversation. Gaurav Yeah, as you said, providing a better experience to another person in everything that I'm doing. Yeah. Blaine If I'm doing that for myself, doing that as myself, it has a ripple effect. Out into the out into the universe. One, I mean, this is philosophical, but one of the things that I actually entertain a lot and play with a lot in my mind is that there is nobody out there. But me. What I call reality is just an out-picturing of my internal consciousness. Absolutely any, anything that is actually perturbing me. I need to look back here first. Okay, what's what am I out projecting? What am I? What am I? What's the inner conversation I'm having that is manifesting itself externally? Absolutely. And if I work here, I'm a center of distribution. I want to feel good about me. So that other part of me that I'm speaking to right now, if I want to feel good about me, I made sure that you feel good about you. Because the aspect of you is nothing more than an out-picturing of a part of me. And I say me not going not the Blaine Bartlett. Yeah, but the spirit, the spirit that moves through and through me. Gaurav Yeah. For me, this is a moment to really absorb what you're talking about. Because in the morning, I was talking to somebody and we were talking about self-acceptance. But unless I can accept myself, and not be able to accept humanity, and that's where I said, acceptance is the first step to embrace humanity. And here, when I'm listening to you that how am I a cause to the world that I'm living in? How am I manifesting the situation that I'm into. And for the last two weeks Blaine, I've been dealing with a few things in my life, because my external world is not going the way I would have expected, both in my personal life as well as professional life. So the easiest way is to blame the world. The world is like that people don't care. You do whatever good that you would like to do to people, and then they are going to ditch you, they're going to cheat you, right? But at the same time, when I took a pause and started to look at, Hey, how am I creating this world for myself? If four people have left us in the last two weeks' time, what is it that we are doing or not doing? Blaine Hmm. That's a great question. Yeah, when people leave an organization, they're actually leaving the leadership of the organization. I mean, that would be one way to think about it. Now people leave for all kinds of different reasons. Sometimes it's better off or someplace else, sometimes their life situation changes. But yeah, the only thing that I have control over truly the only thing that I can control are my thoughts, my feelings, and my attitude, everything else is outside of my control. So when I go back to leadership, the definition co-creating coordinated movement, I look to myself first co-creating what am I? What am I? Am I actually co-creating with spirit? Am I co-creating with soul? Or am I co-creating with my ego? I get qualitatively different results depending on who I personally am. I Blaine Bartlett, in personally co-creating with and that gets manifested externally when I start to co-create with others. Yeah, outside of outside of my body. And then the coordinated movement, who am I coordinating with? You know, the leadership model that I've developed. I call act awareness, context, communication, commitment, and trust. There are five pieces to it. Awareness, context, communication, commitment, and trust, the first piece is, is awareness. And the way that I define awareness is it's a realization and a noticing of where my, where I have where my access to the spirit that moves to and through me is either blocked or open. That's what I mean by awareness. Where is the access that I have? To the soul, the spirit It brings life to what I do, either blocked or open. And when I start to notice that, I start to notice some very interesting things, I start to notice my inner conversation, they start to pay attention to conversations like, Well, I'm not good enough, or I can't trust people, I mean, those sorts of internal dialogues, they end up getting mad, because I'm coordinating with those people coordinate with we are continuously coordinating with our belief systems, we are continuously co-creating better way of sayings, co-creating with existing belief structures, Gaurav The way you are coordinating with your thoughts, the way you are coordinating with yourself. And the same way in the similar way. You are co-creating a future for yourself as well. Wow. Okay, yep. So, you know, you also spoke about soul. And here we are talking about awareness. And the question which is coming to me around, and I will definitely would love to come back to the ACCCT model that you spoke about, when you spoke about awareness, context, communication, commitment, and trust. Another word, which is coming to me, and I don't know, where would I fit in, Is ego? What's the relationship between awareness, soul and ego? Where would you place all these three? Blaine Ego is the embodied, differentiated expression of soul. Now, that's a fancy way of saying, you occupy a body that is different from my body. Now that's at the physical level, you also send a different vibration. Gaurav Yeah, solid separately, Blaine There's that separate, but this the spirit, the soul that animates you also animates me it's the same spirit conscious, consciousness is another word for this consciousness spirit soul cannot be differentiated, its expression is differentiated. That is what we call ego. And ego shows up in an embodied form. And everybody has an ego. I mean, this is kind of we live in a physically manifested world in our ego allows us to navigate that, for almost 99.9% of the people on this planet, the ego is in charge. Yeah, the ego is in which is that experience of separation again. And there's nothing wrong with an ego, it lends itself to rational self-interest. But when I start to wake up, when I start to wake up, and I start paying attention to the question, Who am I? The only thing that I can really say, I mean, I can, I'm not my body. But I can see my I can observe it. I can't do anything I can observe. I am not Gaurav Anything that I can observe, I'm not. Blaine I am not because there's an observer. Gaurav I have that. I have that. Blaine Yeah. So I am not my body. I am not my thinking because I can observe my thinking, I have feelings. I can observe my feelings. I have sensations, hot, cold war, I can observe my sensations. I'm not my sensations. So who am I? Yeah, this is Siddhartha sitting under the Bodhi tree. Yeah, padding the earth going? I am that's all I can recognize as true as I am. Now, that lends itself to what is the I am? Yeah, it doesn't have a name in Sanskrit in I mean, if you look at any of the great religions writings, whether it's Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, you just kind of pick your poison, so to speak. They all speak in some way about the unpronounceable the unnameable God, Spirit doesn't it doesn't it's not a name that you can actually put on your lips. Now, here's the interesting thing about name, you know, I am not the literal translation of name is nature. We give somebody a name to describe their nature. The nature of them, a tree, it has a nature, a rock, it has to nature, obsidian, you know, we when we start getting very discriminating with it. I am Blaine Bartlett well, that has a name and it has a certain nature of quality to it. That's the ego that comes into play. But you strip that away you're left with this. This I am that can take any expressive form. That's the I am that runs to and through me. Yeah, and a very, very simple. I mean, yeah, I am God. I mean, if you look at it that way, what we're talking about here is consciousness, consciousness being manifested externalized in physical form Gaurav In different ways and forms. You know, Blaine, you said something so beautiful. And I want you if you can just double click on that you said that I am nature. One of the questions that I've been dealing with is if I am nature, how can I identify? What's my absolute nature? How can I identify that? Yeah. And how would I know that's, that's who I am? Because I was really conscious when I used the word, how would I identify? It has an element of identity. So that's the reason I restricted myself. How would I know? Blaine Yeah, well, I think you start to ask questions that, you know, people will spend lifetimes answering truly, the idea of my true nature, if I look at it through the lens that I was just describing, you know, the soul, you know, having. Not being able to be divided, the soul is indivisible. The spirit consciousness is indivisible. It just shows up in different forms. And so part of how I, how do I discover my true nature, I start looking past the ego, I start looking past the form that I see in front of me to see the spirit that is beneath it. One of my favorite writers is a fella by the name of Thomas Trover. In trover, live back in the 1800s. He was a Scottish philosopher, Scottish jurist. He wrote he gave a series of lectures at Edinburgh College. And one of the lectures he gave was on the nature of beauty. And the way he described beauty was it was that would choose Yeah, it's, you recognize something as being beautiful when you see the underlying Spirit that gives it form. So you think of a sunset? Yeah, the sun a sunset is beautiful, not because of the colors necessarily, but because you see the spirit, the aliveness, you know, the universe is alive. Yeah. So you see that life coming through in that incredible display of color. A painting, music in when you think of it Ravi Shankar used to play some of the most incredible sitar. Just, I mean, I would just fall in love with it. Yeah. It wasn't mechanical. There was beauty. It was alive. Yeah, that's where you start moving into the true essence of something. When, yeah, in beauty is the name of life. Gaurav I'm not surprised that we are connecting again and again and again, Blaine. Because I feel somewhere we are vibrating, at least I would choose to believe that. We are vibrating at the same energy because just few days back, I was talking to another friend of mine. And we were talking about musicians. We were talking about artists, we were talking about people who are in some or the other kinds of martial arts. And I was wondering that through them, the universe shines through them, and God dances through them, soul starts to experience flow. And every time when that happens, there's so much in alignment with the universe, that it shows up. So beautiful. Now as you use the word beauty, I'm just wondering, how can we bring in this concept in the way business is done in today's world? And what are the possible challenges that you face because you talk about compassionate capitalism day in and day out? Blaine Yeah, I mentioned beauty for a reason. I think leadership can be beautiful. Leadership oftentimes is not beautiful because it tends to default towards command and control towards domination, that sort of thing. True leadership, executed effectively co-creating coordinated movement. It's like an extraordinarily beautiful dance that partners have said yes to. And even when they step on each other's toes. That's part of the dance. But in there's ahhh. Yeah, that comes with it. It's just kind of like, well, that's how do we work this into the. So there's almost an improvisational nature to it, that makes room for creativity to emerge. And I mean, I use Ravi Shankar sitar, he started with fundamentals. That mean every musician does everybody, every musician starts with chords, you know, they, the recording, and then they start, once they really work it, it becomes beautiful because they start putting themselves, I say themselves, not their egoic self, but they let spirit move to and use their hands or use their voice, they become presses that it becomes a tool. Gaurav They become a conduit, Blaine They become a conduit and leadership is the same way, leadership when it is beautiful. You don't necessarily assign the notoriety to the leader, it is kind of like this just happens. And the ego is out of the way. And it's just it's kind of how did that occur. It's beautiful how this unfolded. That's what we're looking for. And you mentioned the word flow. You know, this is kind of how the experience of flow unfolds, is when we get our egos out of the way and we let spirit move the organization move this move the people move the process. And, you know, very few, the word I use often is elegance. And I mean, beauty and elegance, to me are very synonymous, you know, they kind of go together. And I took the word elegance from my experience in software coding. Yeah, elegant code is code that has no bugs. It does what it's supposed to do with no unintended consequences. I don't have to go back and clean up after myself. Leadership can be elegant. When leadership is elegant, it's beautiful. And far too often leaders have to go back and clean up after themselves because they were not particularly elegant. They didn't learn unity, to actually move. They didn't let spirit co-creation. Gaurav That's where the ego came in between and lead that conversation led that action led that behavior, which was not good for the larger good. Blaine Right? Yeah, I need to be in control. Gaurav Yeah. And I can see that how when I'm saying that I need to be in control. How is that coming from a space of fear? How is that coming from a space of scarcity mentality? Because in case I don't control that the universe is not going to give me again. Yep. Blaine, I'm just wondering, you know, there's so many people who are listening to us right now. How can we practically bring what we're talking about right now? In our day-to-day conversations? How can I co-create and coordinate something? Which is good for the larger good? How can I, as you mentioned, co-create and coordinate movement from a space of soul? What are those few steps that we can do on a day-to-day basis? Blaine You have been demonstrating it for the last Oh, almost 45 minutes now. And it's through the use of questions. Through the use of questions. Questions allow for connection. They allow for connection. And if leaders could learn one thing, and I say leaders not this isn't role title specific. Everybody's Gaurav Everyone is a leader. Everyone's a leader. Blaine So if we can learn as human beings to ask questions that are designed to engage, tell me more about that. Yeah, it's kind of like it helped me understand how do you see this in this way? Yeah. What you know, an interesting way to think about this, is, there's approximately what 6 billion people on this planet a little bit more than somewhere in that neighbourhood. We all live on the same planet. None of us. None of us live in the same world. Every single person lives in a different world. That's a world of my own making. So I am continuously in the process of dealing with aliens. You're from a different world. Huh, so yeah, and this is kind of a fun way to think about this, I'm dealing with an alien, I want to understand how that aliens world is put together because I'd like to co-create with it, I'd like to coordinate with it. And for me to expect you to change your world to match my world is stupid. It's not gonna work. But if I can understand your world, and you can understand my world, we can find commonalities, we can find where things overlap, we can find opportunities to co-create coordinated movement. And you don't have to change. I don't have to change whenever I'm asking somebody or saying to somebody, you need to change. By definition, what I'm saying is you're not doing it right. And as soon as people hear that, they start to get defensive. You need to change well, what's wrong? Yeah, all of this stuff starts to come as a consequence of being directive. Not curious, not an inquisitive, not curious. Questions, invite engagement. Gaurav So profound listening to you Blaine, thank you so much for the last few words that you mentioned. But every time I'm asking you to change, what I'm saying is, what you're doing is not right is not correct. But at the same time, what I don't realize is that I'm talking to an alien. And here, how can I respect an alien? How can I respect the world that the other person is coming from? And rather than offering my curiosity and respect to the other person, I start to get into a space of control, I start to get into the space of judgments without realizing that judgments is something that creates separation. Yep. Thank you so much Blaine. Then if you were to go 40 years back, when you would have started your journey in this space? What's the one piece of advice that you would like to offer to yourself? Blaine I've thought about that a lot. I honestly I think the one piece of advice that I would have given to that young man back then is to be curious more, just to be curious more. And I think that would have served me very well. I got curious later in life, I was always kind of curious. But I put curiosity on the shelf as I started doing my career because I needed to do it the right way. And I didn't want to question what the right way was that just kind of like this is what they told me to do. So I'm gonna go do that. Curiosity opens up all kinds of possibilities. Gaurav Thank you so much, Blaine. Such an honor having you on this podcast and as I've told you so many times, always a pleasure, always an honor. Always a privilege. Just being sitting in front of you and listening to because I get to hear a lot of wisdom in a very short span of time and I suddenly realize how blessed I am to have like you in my life. So thank you so much for your time. Blaine Absolutely. My pleasure anytime, anytime. You take care