michael henderson

Michael Henderson Interview | Brave cultures face fears

Michael Henderson has worked with hundreds of organisations as a corporate anthropologist – exploring the cultures of workplaces. He has seen time and time again, that with the right approach to culture and with a passionate and capable leadership team, organisation’s cultures can be ignited to deliver outrageous levels of performance, and deep and meaningful levels of fulfilment.

In this conversation Michael shares why diving into our greatest fears will be the thing that liberates organisations, he also shares strategies for leading cultures when you have people work from home.

 

Michael Henderson Interview

Ali:

There’s not a single place of work that hasn’t been affected by the coronavirus. With plenty of organisations making the swift shift to work from home, reconfiguring the type of work they deliver, and redefining their strategic plans, it can have you wondering, where does workplace culture fit into all of this?

Ali:

If people or culture aren’t a part of the picture, the result is disengaged employees and disappointed customers. It doesn’t have to be this way, even amongst a global pandemic. Today’s guest, Michael Henderson, has worked with hundreds of organisations as a corporate anthropologist, exploring the cultures of workplaces. He has seen time and time again that with the right approach to culture, and with a passionate and capable leadership team, organisation’s cultures can be ignited to deliver outrageous levels of performance, and deep and meaningful levels of fulfilment.

Ali:

In this conversation, Michael shares why diving into our greatest fears will be the thing that liberates organisations. He also shares strategies for leading cultures when you have people working from home, which is very relevant for this time.

Ali:

Michael is one of those extraordinary people who I am honoured to call a friend, that will have you thinking deeper, and will leave you wanting for things to be better, simply by being who he is. Please, soak up the wisdom that drips from Michael Henderson.

Ali:

Michael, welcome. It’s such a delight to be hanging out with you.

Michael Henderson:

Thank you. Likewise.

Ali:

We are appropriately social distancing, as you are sitting in Auckland and I’m here on the Gold Coast. And this is a conversation, I was just saying to you a moment ago, a conversation I wanted to have with you for a while. My preference is usually to sit in the studio to be able to have those face-to-face conversations, but this is the second best thing, to be able to sit down via Zoom and to connect with you.

Ali:

But it’s also, I was conscious of the timing to be able to connect with you, your experience of workplaces, of cultures and to have that conversation whilst we’re in the midst COVID-19, which is the unusual time across the globe. As you’re sitting in Auckland, how is it impacting on you and your experience?

Michael Henderson:

Probably almost potentially sounds inappropriate in some respects. I’m actually really enjoying the experience, and that’s at a personal level, which we maybe get back to later. But just watching how society and people in my local community have responded to this, I’m finding absolutely fascinating. And with any major shift in context, human beings usually find that it brings out both the best and the worst in us and I’ve certainly found that to be the case, even at a national level that we’re seeing in the news in New Zealand, but then also just in local community.

Michael Henderson:

My wife and I had taken our dogs out for three walks every day, and you can see people abiding by the appropriate guidelines that we’ve all been given, and some flaunting those. Some people are deliberately being more interactive, so waving or saying hello across the roadway, whereas others are almost walking past you with their head down, eyes averted. So it’s just kind of fascinating watching how different human beings are making the choices to get through this, or respond to it.

Ali:

Yeah, I almost feel like there’s part of us collectively not really sure what we should be doing, what the guidelines are, what’s okay, what’s not okay. And I think they’re figuring all that out along the way. Part of your title is as a corporate anthropologist. Can you describe what that is, what a corporate anthropologist is?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, gladly. Thank you. Let’s start with the anthropology bit, because the corporate bit is really just the setting, in which the anthropology takes place. If you ask any anthropologist, they’ll probably give you a slightly different way of interpreting what the study’s about, or what the practise is about, or what the profession is about, but the way I describe anthropology is it’s the study of human beings as creators of culture.

Michael Henderson:

What that basically means is studying how human beings choose to and form a culture. And that can be at a family level, so how those individuals come together and start to create rituals or symbols, or celebrations or ceremonies to determine the meaning and their connection with each other. Or it could be organisations, or it could be religions, or it could be, as we were just talking about before, societies.

Michael Henderson:

It’s very much just the study of human beings through the lens, if you like, of the word culture. And then the corporate bit is really just taking anthropology, anthropology is such a wide field that you can apply it into a whole bunch of different settings. You can apply it into technology, medicine, music, linguistics, physiology.

Michael Henderson:

I just had a accidental interest in organisational culture and how human being operate in that environment. So took the skills and the qualifications I have in anthropology and started to apply it into organisational and business world.

Ali:

Fascinating combination. I love that. I’m almost smiling at this accidental interest in it. Amazing how accidents lead us into certain areas. Why the interest in anthropology? I definitely see you as someone who’s fascinated by human behaviour, was there ever a consideration for studying something else in another field? Or was it always-

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, again, it was … Although it’s one of those situations when you look back and join the dots, it was always there. I just hadn’t been aware of it. I had no intention of becoming an anthropologist, even to be honest, having studied anthropology in university and got a degree in it, I still wasn’t convinced that I was going to then become an anthropologist.

Michael Henderson:

I had designs on professional soccer, which was never going to happen given my skill level. I had designs on being a singer-songwriter, which again, I can’t sing for my life and have no creative talent in music writing. There was a whole bunch of other things that I actually had my heart set on, and anthropology wasn’t one of them.

Michael Henderson:

The whole thing got started, I think, when I was a young tot, I must have been three or four. My hometown is a town called Shrewsbury in England, which is on the edge of a river, called the River Severn. And across the river is Wales, the nation. I adored my grandfather who used to walk from our house to the village market every Saturday morning to go and get produce to bring back for the family.

Michael Henderson:

I always wanted to walk with him, but my mother said, “Look, it’s too far and you’re too young,” and she said, “Once you’re tall enough and strong enough, then you can go with granddad.” And eventually the day came, and I was so excited, and we walked. It was quite a hike. I think it was about six or seven miles both directions.

Michael Henderson:

But got to the market and was absolutely staggered almost instantly. I thought something had gone wrong with my hearing. And my grandfather must have seen me rubbing my ears, or shaking my head or something, sort of bent down and said, “Are you okay?” And I said, “No, something’s wrong with my ears, granddad.” He said, “Well, WHat’s happening? Are you in pain?” I said, “No, but I can’t hear what those people are saying.”

Michael Henderson:

He said, “Well, what do you mean?” And I pointed at them and there was people standing nearby that were speaking in Gaelic or Welsh and I’d never heard the language. I’d only ever heard and been exposed to English, which is often the case living in our little bubble communities, and our little culture we only think that’s the only language spoken, or that’s the only culture there is.

Michael Henderson:

My grandfather did a rather wonderful thing. He said, “Oh, it’s okay. Your ears are fine. That’s Welsh.” And I didn’t understand what that was. I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, they’re Welsh people,” and I didn’t know that that meant they were from another place. It was like, to my little whatever it was, four or five year old mind, Welsh could’ve meant stupid, or ignorant, or silly ones.

Michael Henderson:

I hadn’t placed it as a cultural context. It was like they’re the silly people, they’re the people that don’t speak properly or whatever it happens to be. And he could see I was a bit confused. And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well across the river there’s another land called Wales.” And he says, “It’s a wonderful place.” And he says, “In that place grown ups believe in dragons.” And if you’ve ever seen the Welsh flag, they have a dragon on it. He knew I’d seen the flag and then I sort of joined the dots.

Michael Henderson:

So that was the moment where suddenly something about that lit a fascination in me that there’s other people out there that live more interesting lives, and have better stories, and more imagination and creativity than we do, whoever we happen to be.

Michael Henderson:

I think from that very, very early age, I’ve always been intrigued in those other people and how they are being human over there. And without realising it, that kind of … I won’t bore you with the rest of the stories, but it just led to a long series of investigating, travelling, studying other people and other ways of being human on the planet.

Ali:

I think it’s fascinating. I love that story. I think most people can probably relate to a moment in their own childhood of realising that there is more beyond their own little bubble and another way of seeing the world. I imagine that, for you, has led down some really, really interesting paths, in terms of connecting with a variety of cultures.

Ali:

In terms of the work that you do, as you say, sort of placing that interest in people and how they express what we term culture in a corporate setting. Workplace culture is one of those myths I think a lot of leaders and senior leader’s kind of go, “Apparently we need one, but I don’t know where to get one. How much do they cost?”

Ali:

I’m interested in when you look at workplace culture, and this might be one of those can be how long have we got kind of questions, but in that work, what are some of the biggest myths about workplace culture that you’ve heard from leaders? And it might be things like, “It’s easy to get. How do I get a good one? How will we know when we’ve got there?” Are there false beliefs that we hold about what a workplace culture is?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, thank you. That’s a really good question, because I think even calling them myths is almost an appropriate use of the word because if you’re thinking even about what we just sort of said, grown-ups that believe in dragons in Wales, that’s their mythology. But in Wales, that mythology’s taken almost deadly seriously.

Michael Henderson:

And you can go into a workplace environment and find the same thing. You can find in organisations they believe in concepts like value, or price. And value in particular, if you go and unpack that a little bit, that’s a bit of a myth in itself. So they’re going, “We’ve set the value of our product or our service at this much.” But of course, value’s determined by the perceived benefit or experience that the purchaser has, it’s different from price.

Michael Henderson:

I think what you’re tapping into there, is speaking to the very heart of what we’re actually talking about here, is that each culture, organisational culture included, have a whole bunch of myths and belief systems that they buy into that aren’t necessarily true at all. But they make the world feel meaningful, and they can make the world feel motivating for us, and they can give us a sense of belonging with a like-minded group of people who believe what we believe.

Michael Henderson:

If you take the concept of culture inside an organisation, one of the most dominant myths I believe organisations almost suffer from a little bit, is they actually believe they understand culture. And to your point, they’ll often talk about it or inquire into it almost as a noun like, “Where do I get it that? How much does it cost?” I think you said before, just lovely.

Michael Henderson:

And the reality is that if you start to talk to business, particularly business leaders, and ask them about culture, you don’t have to talk to them for too long, you suddenly realised, and I mean this in a very, very respectful way, that they’re absolutely incredibly naive, or even ignorant. And I don’t mean ignorant as in stupid, I mean ignorant as in ignorant. They ignore it because they don’t need to pay attention to it. So I think, yeah, one of the big myths, if not the biggest myth organisations have around culture is the myth that they understand what it is in the first place.

Michael Henderson:

A really big part of the work I do is actually just helping organisations understand what that word actually means and what role it’s playing in the entity of your organisation. Where does it come from? How does it form? What does it do? What’s culture’s function and how relevant is it? Who owns it? Why does it change when you don’t want it to or why does the reverse happen when you want it to change and it won’t, it’s resistant to change?

Michael Henderson:

So I think all those elements of understanding the dynamics of it are almost like subcategories of the overarching method, they believe they’ve already got it sorted or that it’s not that important.

Ali:

It is huge, big, important questions to be diving into and challenging leaders with.

Michael Henderson:

Yeah. Really, especially if you genuinely, and I use that word very deliberately, if you genuinely care about adding value through your business, so it’s not just about shareholder return. There’s nothing wrong with shareholder return, or it’s not just about profiteering, I think if you genuinely care about the output your organisation is putting into the world and impacting on other human beings, then you cannot truly be in integrity with that if you actually don’t have a really comprehensive, bone deep understanding of what culture is.

Michael Henderson:

Because at best, if you don’t have that, at best you’re going to be delivering a very cosmetic, maybe even camouflaged presentation to the world of what you think they want to hear. But it’s not necessarily what you’re actually there for, or what you’re actually truly doing. So I’m increasingly starting to think that organisations lack integrity if they don’t understand what culture is.

Ali:

And you’re able to summarise what culture is, or is that one of those [inaudible 00:16:35] questions that’s …

Michael Henderson:

I’ve taken the liberty of summarising on behalf of humanity, because everything I know most I almost get it right. So thank goodness I turned up, right, otherwise, nobody would ever lose. That’s one of the paradoxes of being an anthropologist. It’s almost a standing joke. People go, “Anthropologists, so what do you study?” And you go, “Culture,” and you go, “Yeah, what is that?” The resulting response is, “We don’t really know.”

Michael Henderson:

But where I’ve got to with it, and I’m a bit of a purist around it, I always like going back to the original etymology of the word to actually understanding where words come from and what their original meaning was. So the English word culture is originally from the Latin word cultus, which means to care.

Michael Henderson:

It’s where our words horticulture, viniculture, agriculture, so those are to care for the garden, or to care for the crop, or to care for the plants. And we just started to, in the 1800s, started to use that, “Why don’t we care for each other? Isn’t that what tribes are about? Isn’t that what a village is about? Isn’t that what society is about?” Or, in this case, isn’t that what COVID’s about? Okay, let’s crank up the care.

Michael Henderson:

What I’m teaching my clients is, is to rather than use the word culture as that typical organisational perspective and here’s another method, they describe it as being the way we do things around here. My suggestion is it’s more than that. It’s far more than that. And it’s more about why we do it this way around here.

Michael Henderson:

So culture is why we care this much about health, or safety, or customer service or quality, that we choose to do the things we do this way to ensure that quality, to deliver that quality, to enhance that quality. So I think there’s a lot of benefit in just as a consideration, considering your culture, even at home, even with your family culture while we’re all in lockdown around the world is going, what are we as anuclear family or a nuclear culture truly care about?

Ali:

I just want to paraphrase what you said again. Sometimes we have this definition is that culture is what we do around here, or did that dive into, and feel free to jump in if I get this wrong, but what you’re almost posing is that why we do what we do around here is the essence and that that’s natural.

Michael Henderson:

I think, yeah, you’ve actually summarised that really nicely, is that otherwise there’s a big part of being human that’s just an animal. We have a body and we can go through those bodily type functions of eating, drinking, moving, mating, whatever it happens to be, but what makes us truly human is not that functionality. It’s not just the doing. The whole animal kingdom does doing.

Michael Henderson:

It’s why we’re doing it that separates us from a lot of the other species on the planet and being more deliberate about that. So why am I doing … Why do I wash the dishes diligently, rather than just seeing it as a task that I want to finish so I can get back to watching the soap opera on TV? So if I wash the dishes diligently, it’s because I care. Well, what do I care about? Well, I care about my family not being sick or not getting ill off bugs that have stayed on the plate, or in the bowl or on the spoon.

Michael Henderson:

So I think care brings out the humanity in us. And I think by understanding what we care about provides a invitation to back into ourselves on a daily basis about how to be more human today.

Ali:

So if I bring this into … We’re currently in a unique environment for workplaces in particular. There’s not a single industry that hasn’t been impacted by COVID-19. And if we think about workplace culture, often we do think about it being the posters on the wall, the way that we say hello to each other in the morning, and all of that has changed, particularly with teams. A lot of organisations where people are either working from home or they’re working from different locations than they have before, but there is still a job to do. How does that transition the cultures from an office environment to distributed team?

Ali:

Are there things that you’re hearing or seeing in the way that organisations are making that shift that is retaining, I guess, that essence of care? And on the flip side, are you seeing moments or signs where that care is not happening in workplaces? I get that’s a really big, broad question, but I guess my question is how do we bring culture into work from home team when we’ve never done this before?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think for your listeners that aren’t aware of the individual, there’s a wonderful … He’s almost considered the founding father in corporate anthropology. It’s a gentlemen called Edgar Schein, Emeritus Professor at River Tide, now MIT in the States.

Michael Henderson:

He has a very, very simple model that’s potentially useful for the conversation we’re having. He describes culture as operating at three levels. You’ve got the surface level, exactly what you just talked about, are the artefacts and the symbols, the visual or the audible sounds or signs of language that let us know who we are, where we are, who we’re with. And that can be the obvious thing, like a logo on a building, or in your local petrol station, or local convenience store will often have a logo letting you know that it’s that particular brand of petrol stations.

Michael Henderson:

So you’re right, in the workplace we often have those kind of symbols or charts about measurement, or progress, or results ,or health and safety guidelines or instructions, which is, don’t run, walk. So one level of culture is all those visuals and the conversations that occur around that.

Michael Henderson:

And you’re right, once we become distanced from those, sometimes we lose the visual connection with those signs, but thankfully, there’s two other layers to culture that Edgar Schein reminds us about. The next layer down, which are the deeper level below the signs is what he calls values. So the values are basically why would somebody put that sign up in the first place? What would they need to … And it’s back to that word care. What would you need to care about to have that sign up?

Michael Henderson:

We’re conducting this conversation on Zoom. So at the moment, if I may, I can see there’s material items or artefacts even behind you, where you’re sitting at the moment in your office or library. For example, I can see a picture of, or maybe it’s even a miniature statue of an owl, a bird, the wise owl, so that’s an artefact and the value would be what would someone need to believe in order to have feel it’s appropriate, or humorous or wonderful to have an owl sitting in their office?

Michael Henderson:

I don’t need you to respond, but let’s just lay with this. You might be saying, “Oh, that’s actually a gift my daughter made at school and brought it home. It was an art and craft thing she did. I was blown away with the quality of the owl looking like it does and it’s a stunning looking owl. But given she was only three-weeks-old when she made it, it absolutely blew my mind, so it’s actually a symbol of pride.”

Michael Henderson:

That next layer down is why we value those things in the first place. It may not be an owl, it might be a profitability chart, or a Gantt chart or a project chart. So the values are, why is that important? And so that could reveal efficiency or productivity, or … So it starts to give us a that meaning element that’s the deep layer, even though we’re missing the symbols.

Michael Henderson:

If I just pause there before I go into the third and final layer, I think given what you’ve just inquired into is when we’re doing distant conversations like we’re doing, because we lack those visual symbols and auditories, it’s often very helpful to keep summarising. You’ve done that even in our conversation today, where you paused the conversation and just summarise it. Right? But you’re going, “Okay, Michael. So, are you saying then that being as potentially more interesting or relevant than just doing?”

Michael Henderson:

So the moment you did that earlier in our conversation, you took the values that have been discussed and highlighted them because we’re currently missing symbols or visual communication. A really good, useful tip in these types of distant conversations, or webinars or Skype calls is to summarise far more regularly with each other what do you think the other person’s just said so that we can capture, if you like, the value or the key concept that’s just been shared and make sure that we’re actually in agreement that that’s, in fact, what we’re talking about.

Ali:

That sense of just reiterating time and time again, because what it gives, and I’m sure you’ve seen it, it gives the other person the opportunity to go, “No, that’s not what I said.”

Michael Henderson:

Yes, yeah.

Ali:

As well, so for leaders or in meetings, just to capture that quicker than what we normally would sounds like a really practical tip, doesn’t it?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah. It’s something as simple as saying … Just to invite them to share back what they’ve just taken from what you’ve just said, rather than just assuming that what they’ve taken is what you meant.

Michael Henderson:

Often, say, when we’ve got things even like full body language can help enormously with that, but for often as we are, we’re kind of restricted even in this conversation to head and shoulder shots. So there’s a lot of valuable information that comes from hand gestures and facial expressions that we’ve both been using during the course of this conversation.

Michael Henderson:

But there’s a whole bunch of other body language, which is whether we’re leaning forward or backward, or whether the legs cross, or that we give a that we give a subtle indications that maybe somebody doesn’t quite agree with you or is a little bit uncomfortable about what you just said, or even just needs a bit more time to contemplate and understand what you’ve just said.

Michael Henderson:

So I think, yeah, I think just confirming, “I’ve heard that story. I’ve heard that anecdote, I’ve heard your explanation. Is the point you’re trying to make that we need to improve our communication? Is the point you’re trying to make is that the way our customers used to think about us may have just shifted during COVID and we need to reconnect with customers to understand how they’re seeing us now?”

Ali:

Love it. I’m going to ask the obvious, the third layer.

Michael Henderson:

Yes, thank you. The third one is deep. The third one is values are what we consider to be important. The third layer is called the belief systems, or the underlying assumptions is how Edgar Schein describes them. I typically prefer to nail it into the word belief, which is why is productivity, or safety, or efficiency important in the first place?

Michael Henderson:

If you put those three together, I’ll give you an example. If we have a, let’s say there’s a record chart on the wall in the office when we were at work that showed us the results we’ve generated this week. So that would be a symbol or an artefact. What that symbol represents at the level of values, the next tier down in Edgar Schein’s model is progress, or performance results or objectives.

Michael Henderson:

Then the deeper level, which organisations … And I think this stuff’s huge, if you can remind me in case that I come back to this, I think this is the opportunity of the whole COVID situation, is the deeper element is asking the question of the basic underlying assumption, “So why do we believe in productivity again?” Or, “What is it that’s so rewarding about profit?”

Michael Henderson:

It’s that going back to the core foundational belief that we’ve often forgotten that we believe in, so it’s what are referred was preconscious. We probably had in an earlier conversation when we set up the business going, “Now, profit’s going to be important, otherwise we’ll go out of business.” But then the moment we’re not going out of business, we forget why we’re chasing profit and we just get into the habit of chasing it, or managing it, or stimulating it or inviting it.

Michael Henderson:

I think the COVID situation enables us potentially just to actually have some time and some space to go back to that underlying assumption is, “Why are we chasing profit again? In the early days when we started up, it was out of survival. We’re surviving now. Do we need to be making as much profit as hungrily or the degree of desperation that’s almost become habit that we used to have when we started?”

Michael Henderson:

Maybe the answer is no, maybe the answer is you can now become nonprofit. Maybe the answer is maybe you could discount all your prices and do marginally profitable because you’ve actually got enough already and make your products and services more accessible, more available, or break into new markets that couldn’t afford you before.

Michael Henderson:

It just, those three levels of looking at the symbols around you, understanding what they represent to you, and then understanding why that representation is important to you enabled you to almost spring clean your own culture. Just dust it off, have another look at it and go, “Is this what we still believe? Is this we’re all about? Is this what we want to become? Is this is what we’re invested in? Is this is what we promised?

Michael Henderson:

My wife and I have done a huge clean-out over being in lockdown. I’ve literally, there’s things like that with our wardrobe, with our library, with our music collection. We’ve just gone through everything and almost done 20/80. What’s the 80% of our time that we spend with 20% of what we own and boxed up everything else to be the giveaway to charity or dump.

Michael Henderson:

I think the same thing can apply within our organisation cultures. You can actually go back to the really central components, the really deeply held in the belief level of culture components to be culture, they’re still adding value, they’re still relevant that drive you to excel to service and revisit those and just check they’re still relevant. Check that you’re still getting integrity around those.

Ali:

I love that. I think most people listening will have that commonality that they’ve cleaned out something, although sometimes [inaudible 00:31:54] month or so, let alone if not the entire house. But transferring that to cultures or the things that we believe, why are we doing what we’re doing, is another level.

Ali:

What came to mind as I was hearing you talk for me was, there’s also a huge amount of courage that’s required in that. There’s both can be that sense of asking the question, but what if the answer is we don’t need to make a profit and we have entire teams geared up for that? What if the answer is this is not the product that serves our clients anymore, or our customers? That can be quite unknown and scary as well.

Ali:

At the start of this year you came and spent some time with our team, which was such a gift to have you in the room. And I remember at the time that you shared with us something that really, really struck me at the time and it stayed with me, this sense that fear is the gravity of culture. That it’s the thing that can hold you back, it can be the handbrake for progress.

Ali:

I almost think whether it’s fear or uncertainty or anxiety, there’s a bit of that going around in terms of people’s experience at the moment, both personally and professionally. How do cultures, and therefore individuals, becomes skilled at sitting with fear or addressing fear, particularly in workplace cultures?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah. That’s a really good question and thank you for inviting them because I think in many cultures, fear and response to fear or the processing of fear is not something we really talk about in organisations. We put systems and processes in place to almost get round it or ignore it. It’s not a comfortable conversation in a lot of organisations.

Michael Henderson:

Yet, to be going to high performing cultures, so all of the highest performing clients I have at some stage or another have deliberately had a conversation around the table going, “What are we afraid of?” But let’s not just take it fear, let’s really amp up that conversation. “What are we terrified of? What is so overwhelmingly confronting it could stop us in our tracks and send us into possums in the headlight, freeze?”

Michael Henderson:

Because if that’s a possibility in our world, maybe it’s worthwhile investigating that and talking about that while we’re not in it, so that should it ever appear at least we’ve got some familiarity with the conversation. At least we’ve got some recall, some recalled mission of what we discussed.

Michael Henderson:

It’s almost like … Do you remember we talked about if a earthquake ever hit? Well, I think that might have it, right? Unless Bob just bumped the table. And so, I think there’s a lot of merit in not … And this is going to sound corny, but not being afraid of fear conversations.

Michael Henderson:

You’re right. I describe fear as being culture’s gravity because culture has this amazing capacity to lift all of us to levels beyond which we individually wouldn’t necessarily go. You will see this when you see acts of acts of courage in society or just throughout your life. We’ve all witnessed dozens of them where somebody steps up and does something for others, sometimes they don’t even know who others are. They just see somebody in need or in trouble and reach out to them.

Michael Henderson:

Australia does this every single time you have a disaster, which seems to be every second month, doesn’t it? Floods, or fires, or somebody drowning, or a shark attack [crosstalk 00:35:57] goes on in Australia. That courage is an ability to respond in a challenging situation with the best of you. And that best of you often is something you haven’t necessarily owned before or even seen in yourself before, but the fear invites it to step forth and it out of that becoming brave, or becoming courageous that you reveal or rediscover yourself again.

Michael Henderson:

I encourage organisations wherever possible, is to actually sit down and have a really, really frank conversation. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been advising a lot of my clients at the moment to actually have this conversation around the dinner table or over Skype if you’re in fractured family situation, is actually through worst case scenarios.

Michael Henderson:

Depending on the age of the children, almost encourage the kids to be part of it. Because as I’ve found in traditional cultures, tribal cultures will sit around the fire at night and talk about the possibility of starvation if the crop doesn’t come through, or the antelope don’t return this season. They talk about the possibility of dying.

Michael Henderson:

I find in Western cultures we’re even terrified of that word dying, and we don’t want the children to even now that it’s a possibility. I think we’re missing out on something there. I think there’s a real … And I’m not trying to manipulative with the concept here. I think there’s a real positive element that can come out of talking about worst case scenarios and what do we do if that arrives, so that we can find even from just the mere mention of it a better version of ourselves now.

Michael Henderson:

That potentially in the discovery of it is enough to keep that worst case fear at bay. Just by having the conversation about it being a possibility invites us to become somebody we weren’t a moment ago that is better placed or is more considered, or has more courage, or more creativity, or more humour, or more solutions than the fear-based version 30 seconds ago at [inaudible 00:38:13].

Ali:

Powerful. Yeah, powerful conversations for leaders to step into.

Michael Henderson:

Yeah. My wife and I did it in New Zealand. We’ve been in shutdown for just under four weeks now. Day one we went, “Okay, let’s have the fear conversation. What’s the worst case scenario?” And worst case scenario is one of us dies, maybe we’ve already contracted, maybe we don’t get through this an then we go, “Great. If that happens, who do we need to take care of?” And there was a puppy conversation. There was a our three kids conversations, there was our wider family, parents conversation.

Michael Henderson:

How well placed are we to do that? And we realised in a couple of areas we weren’t and realised it was too late to do anything about that, which brought up another fear, which is, “Does that make me not the son I thought I was or not the father I thought I was?” And so we talked through those fears.

Michael Henderson:

I mean, it’s just feeling the fear, allowing it to be real, not trying to stop it, not trying to avoid it, just going, “Well, okay. I can feel how much fear I’ve got around that as a possibility,” and just literally be courageous enough just to sit with it. Because what we’ve found, and we’ve been doing this work for quite a long time, is what you find is fear will dissipate if you’re willing to acknowledge it.

Michael Henderson:

It’s when you resist it that I hovers around and haunts you in the background and catches you at your vulnerable moments at 2:00 in the morning when you wake up. But if you’re willing just to sit there and stare it in the face and go, “Yeah. I am terrified of this,” and feel that, it’s almost like part of our … And you’re probably better placed to talk about this I am, Ali, as a psychologist. Part of our brain goes, “Look, I’m bored with the fear conversation now. What else have you got?”

Michael Henderson:

Or, “Is there another ghost we can have a look at? Because this one feels a bit tame. It’s not quite as frightening as it was three minutes ago.” We spent pretty much the first 24 hours just doing an inventory of what we were terrified of, including going out of business and becoming bankrupt, which both we have potential for if the shutdown carries on for three, four, five months, we could be there.

Michael Henderson:

So we’ve had those conversations and now there’s still real possibilities, but I don’t have an emotional response to them any more. We just got bored of being afraid and so you go, “All right. What else can we do?” Well, so then we switched in creative mode, “Well, how can we respond?” Or, “What else could we do if this whole current business under and we’re still alive, then what are we turning our hand to? What skillsets or what offerings do we have that people may find valuable or useful?”

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, I think there’s a real … And maybe this is one of the unforeseen benefits of the COVID things is to ask humanity just to pause and have a look at what we’re really afraid of, rather than just being busy and striving for what we want. Maybe some of those wants were driven by underlying fears that we haven’t acknowledged in ourselves, and when we acknowledge them maybe we don’t need the wants any more. Maybe we’re quite happy with what we’ve got.

Ali:

Interesting because it’s a huge amount of honesty that needs to come into the conversations, and I’m sure that you’ve been part of them by virtue of the consultancy work that you do in organisations where leaders will say, “Yup. Friday I’ll have the fear conversation,” but really actually gloss over it and go down the path of well, just playing devil’s advocate or risk. They’re very happy to talk about risk, but not always comfortable to talk about fear. How would you encourage leaders to go beyond just talking about risk management and actually diving into what terrifies me to my core?

Michael Henderson:

I think that actually I didn’t know the answer, but I think you just provided it. I think it’s the language you use. Risk is a concept. What you find risky and what I find risky will be two different things. Management is a concept. It’s what’s the process for managing my way through this incident? And some people say, “I don’t want to manage my way through it. I want to skip through it. I want to sing and dance through it. I want to grovel through it.”

Michael Henderson:

I think it’s in the language, so I think it is encouraging leaders how do you encourage, invite and obviously, being the leaders, you’ve got to start with yourself. But finding emotive language to express. So rather than switching back into your head or your clever near cortex academic language, or theory and concepts, it’s actually no, no, no. Describe it as an emotion. What emotion is going to trigger you where that emotion gets to the extent it’s so enormous you would describe it as terrifying?

Michael Henderson:

It could be rage. It could be guilt. I had some of that come up when we were talking about what if we can’t get to some of the family members that we can’t save during this? I just shared with my wife, I had built come up going, “Why would it take something like COVID for me to think about doing that? Why haven’t I done that before? What’s wrong with me? Why was I so selfish never to have even factored that in before?”

Michael Henderson:

I think yeah. I think following your lead, I think if you can find emotive language, language that describes the emotions that are connected to, rather than process systems or concepts. That’s a very real way of tapping into the underlying feelings we’re having.

Michael Henderson:

But just thinking that as I said that, the other thing with feelings is you can get out of them very quickly as well. So once you declare a feeling, you don’t have to dwell. How I got out of the guilt conversation was to change the subject. I felt it, I went, “Oh, I can feel it going,” so we basically went, “Great. Do you want to feel the whole thing go?” I said, “No, actually it’s dissipating on its own,” so then you can change the subject and talk about something else.

Michael Henderson:

It’s not that you need to do sack cloth and ashes and whip yourself into how bad a human being you’ve become, it’s just acknowledging it, feeling it, knowing it’s real. And I think the acknowledgement is the freedom. I think acknowledging that, “Yeah, I’ve got this going on,” just by doing that is a relief, which separate you from it, which means that you’re then not compelled to carry it with you, not compelled to carry it forth when you go back into pretend mode, or coverup mode, or denial mode.

Michael Henderson:

I think there’s real truth and real benefit in just owning worst case scenario, having that conversation, allow it to be uncomfortable. My wife and I use the mantra, because both of us were getting quite emotionally involved with some of the conversations we were having around this on the table on the lockdown. The phrase we used was, “It’s okay to feel like this.”

Michael Henderson:

I’d be potentially upset and my wife would just say, “Just repeat the mantra and go it’s okay for me to feel like this,” which it is. It’s okay for a human being to feel doubt, or feel fear, or feel terror. It’s part of being human, so just reminding yourself it’s okay to feel that and sit with it until it … Again, it will, I promise you it will, it dissipates. It starts to relax. It starts to ease. It starts to shrink. It starts to evaporate and the moment that starts to occur, it means that you are relieved of the responsibility of carrying that for yourself.

Ali:

And also trying to fix it or do anything with it. With what you said [inaudible 00:46:27] you were describing, I think we go, “Well, if I’m going to feel guilt, then I need to know what to do with it,” and that’s another fear on its own, just acknowledging it is really powerful.

Ali:

I want to ask you some questions around values because I know you’ve done a huge amount of work on the [inaudible 00:46:48] values. I do get a sense at the moment, I think every habit that we’ve ever had is being reassessed to where collectively we’re assessing what matters to us, what things are important. For some people they’re realising it’s going out for dinners with family and friends and can’t wait to get back to be able to do that.

Ali:

But your research into values and the way that people tune into them, if someone goes, “I don’t even know what’s important to me, what my values are,” where would they start. Where would be your starting point?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah. I think the best place to do it is actually a fairly comprehensive inventory, and thanks for the invitation, by the way. It’s very difficult for most of us just off the top of our head to sit down and go, “Okay. What do I value?” And even if you try as a [inaudible 00:47:45], you grab a pen and paper or iPad and start writing down what you value, most people have run out of answers after writing about six or seven things down.

Ali:

And I found, and you might find the same, a lot of them are similar, that family … They’re very generic.

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, very exhausted aren’t they as well? They’re interconnected with each other. I think that exposing yourself to a wider values inventory that includes value that are beyond just what you would normally choose for yourself. The reason for that is that all of us are creatures of habit, so we all embrace and embody sets of values that might have been important to us when we were seven, but now we’re 37. Maybe we’ve matured beyond or maybe they’ve been evolved, or maybe they’ve been replaced and you haven’t acknowledged that in yourself, so you’re still operating off the value that you valued when you were seven.

Michael Henderson:

I think that’s a really good starting place is to locate a wider set of values than the ones that you hold true to, almost to test your own values against those. So it doesn’t mean you surrender your values. It just means you’re given options that you wouldn’t normally consider to go, “Well, what about this?” So I think that’s a really healthy place to start.

Michael Henderson:

And the reason I was thanking you for the invitation is I think the COVID-19 situation is a really contextually important challenge to our values. So maybe I should just pause here and just explain what I mean when I use the word values, because different methodologies or different disciplines refer to values using different language.

Michael Henderson:

We describe values as being your preferences, what you prefer to experience, as you said, dinner with friends. And in my case, it’s regular coffee at the local cafe, which is off the agenda at the moment. So it’s a preference you have. And then, if you like, multiplied by or amplified by the priority that you have on that preference.

Michael Henderson:

So let’s say it was health is a value, as a preference. I prefer to be healthy. You go, “Great, Michael. To what extent do you prioritise in that in your life?” And I go, “Look, if I’m really honest I don’t. I only really pay attention to my health when it’s suffering otherwise I don’t really particularly watch what I eat or don’t exercise much.”

Michael Henderson:

So a value is both the combination of the concept that you want to experience, coupled with, or associated with the amount of energy and attention that you give it. So it’s back to what you described earlier in our conversation earlier where you talked about, it’s not just the doing it’s the being.

Michael Henderson:

So it’s the understanding of, and the relevance of the value, like family, or friendship, or health, or faith or whatever it is that you’re into, but then also looking at what is the doing of that? Do you actually practise what you preach here or is it just a concept that you’re playing with?

Michael Henderson:

The reason I’m saying all that is that COVID will be messing with our preferences right now. A lot of our preferences will have been restricted or paused or challenged even. And so rather than rail in defiance against that, and sulk and get really annoyed, it’s a really good opportunity to sit down and go, “Okay. Who am I here? What does the current version of Michael value based on what the world’s context is providing as a opportunity to reconsider those or reflect those or recalibrate those.”

Michael Henderson:

And actually, I actually did this for myself last week. So I went through that process and found, in fact, that I’m very familiar with my own values and my core value hadn’t shifted at all, but had suddenly become possibly 100 times more important to me than it was before. And it was already really important to me before.

Michael Henderson:

So now it’s just become so dominant to me that all my other values almost don’t matter in comparison to it. And that’s the first time in my life, because of the COVID situation, where I went, “Oh, I’ve always known this to be important. I’ve always acknowledged it and practised it as important. What it’s just asked me is to become that value, not live that value. This is an invitation to become it. Because right here right now, is the only thing that actually matters to me.”

Michael Henderson:

And so that’s been really challenging invitation that I’m both deliriously excited about, and that’s the conversation we had also brings up every kind of level of fear and doubt. Now, I didn’t even know I had it going, “What? Wow. Where’s that come from?” So that may sound a little melodramatic, but I’m actually having a lot of fun and creativity and spending a lot of my contemplation time around that and feel like it’s a form of metamorphism.

Michael Henderson:

I feel like it’s like that journey from caterpillar to butterfly opportunity, just by allowing myself to go into the cocoon and meltdown on this thing, to find that level of truth that maybe I haven’t yet expose myself to before, or that any of us could do. Expose that level of truth to ourselves to find out what’s really going on. What we really are, what we really believe in so that we can re-emerge maybe still in COVID, or maybe post-COVID, and become that thing.

Ali:

To me that almost begs the question of what do we care for, wouldn’t you say, once some of those restrictions have been lifted and the big question is when, and we don’t know and we’re sitting in that uncertainty and certainly preparing for a longer period of time. But certainly something I’ve been sitting in and following on from your story, I guess my question to you would be that interest of what will you say no to when things change again? Because I think as people have the space to pause and maybe reflect on that question themselves, what really matters? What do I actually believe? What’s important to me?

Ali:

When we go back, I don’t know if there is a going back, but if there is, sometimes habits can just meant that we forgot or we let go of some of that. So, are there things that, without going into the details, but things that you will say no to again or suggestions on the way that people can carry forward that those things that they’ve revealed that are important to them? What are the ways that we [inaudible 00:55:00] that?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah, I’ve got two responses to that. I’ll start with the what do you say not to, and then I’ll come back to, if you can remind me in case I forget. I’ll come back to my actual responses, not so much what I say no to, but what do I now say yes to. They sound similar, or potentially just even the opposite of each other, but again, I think there’s a subtle difference that could make all the difference in understanding.

Michael Henderson:

But let’s starts with what do we say no to. I’m just going to quote my brother here. My brother is a phenomenon. He’s an incredibly disciplined human being, three time Olympian, and he has a wonderful … He’s retired now, but he had a wonderful discipline around his diet because Olympians, even when they get sick, there’s a whole bunch of medicines they’re not allowed to take because it gets into their blood system and then they have blood tests to make sure they’re not doping, and that can be four years of hard work down the tubes because the blood test comes out and says, “Look. You took this painkiller.”

Michael Henderson:

So he was absolutely fanatical about what he put into his body and I just found it absolutely phenomenal to watch. I was asking about him one day and said, “How on earth do you have the discipline to do that?” He said, “Oh, it’s really easy. I just do a diet.” I said, “Yeah, I know. But everybody does diets but hardly any of us can really stick to them, and especially to the degree that you’re doing,” and he grabbed a piece of paper and wrote the word diet, D-I-E-T, but he wrote it vertically and I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “It’s a formula that stands for Do I Eat This?”

Michael Henderson:

So he has that as a mantra in his head when somebody would say to him, “Hey, mate. Celebrating a birthday. Bought you a beer.” He can’t drink alcohol because of what he does and so do I eat this comes into his head, which is, “No.” So he goes, “Thank you so much for the beer. I really appreciate it. That’s so thoughtful of you and thank you for celebrating my birthday with me, it’s so great that you’re here to do that.”

Michael Henderson:

And he would turn into a bit of a joke and would go, “Just to let you know how much you mean to me as a friend that you are here to celebrate my birthday, I’m going to gift the beer back to you, so here it is back to you. Thank you.” And he’d let them know, obviously, “I can’t drink alcohol, but I appreciate it.”

Michael Henderson:

So I think that’s a really powerful way of looking at whatever the offer is in front of you and just asking yourself a question, “Do I entertain this?” No, I don’t because of who I am, that’s not an option for me. Or he used to exercise religiously, and I’m sure we’ve all done this where we join the gymnasium and then don’t turn up. So he did the same thing-

Ali:

Ever. Ever.

Michael Henderson:

No, right. [crosstalk 00:57:52]. He did the same thing which is, “Do I exercise today?” And if his calendar yes, at 3:00 in the morning, then he did it and ignored how he felt about doing it, he just got up and did it. I’m not suggesting we can all be disciplined to that Olympian a level, but I still think there’s a lot of merit in that in just having as a checkpoint, “Do I eat this?” Or, “Do I entertain this idea?”

Michael Henderson:

I used it even with people insulting me, right? So someone would give me an insult and I could feel in my gut a response to it straightaway of, “How dare you,” and I used to remember my brother and go, “Well, do I entertain the insult?”

Ali:

Yeah, no.

Michael Henderson:

Actually, no. They’re entitled to have an opinion of me. I’m entitled to disagree with that opinion or I’m entitled to hear that opinion and go, “Yeah, okay. I can see how I could come across to somebody that way. It’s not what I meant or not what I intended or, if I did, I’m really sorry,” and so it just gave me a breathing space, a flexibility to see what I didn’t want to accept into my life. That would my no response for you.

Ali:

I love it. And so the yes response, which is different?

Michael Henderson:

Yeah. For me is no is a response in the absence on the yes. This is a really recent discovery for me, which I’m finding so entertaining and so inviting. Is the option of no is only going to turn up when I don’t have clarity on what the yes is already. And this is where that invitation’s been in there with that core value for me.

Michael Henderson:

Once I accept the invitation to become that core value, that core value is a yes statement about me in the world and therefore the no’s will be deaf to me. There will be no need to do no’s. They’ll be no need to hear them because if I get it right, and there’s a lot of work to do, but I’m looking forward to it, I’ll be the embodiment of the yes.

Michael Henderson:

Therefore, even the choices will be evaporate. It will just be this is just the way to be for my time on this earth in a manner that I can live with, that I can honour out of just the sense of its rightness, or its truth or its power. I think … And even to say that I got some shaking a little bit, so that’s what I mean. There’s a lot of doubt came up even around that, which I’m going to embrace and then work with.

Michael Henderson:

But just if I can just allow myself to walk through that trepidation to the other side, I have a sense, and this is for all of us, actually, not for me here. I think for all of us, if you can walk through that trepidation through to the other side, there’s got to be a calm clarity waiting for us on the other side where you become the thing that you aspire to so it’s no longer an aspiration, it’s no longer a goal, it’s no longer an objective, it’s a sense of identity or it’s a sense of awareness that before you were just playing games at, or pointing at or fishing for, and it’s now a subjective reality, if that’s not getting too technical.

Ali:

I guess what you’re describing is there’s no longer a decision.

Michael Henderson:

Right.

Ali:

It just is.

Michael Henderson:

Yeah.

Ali:

That pathway.

Michael Henderson:

Thank you. That’s really helpful. From just, as you know, that the decision word is to decide, isn’t it? It’s to cut off the options, to cide errors and pesticide, suicide events. So it’s to cut off what we don’t want. I guess that’s what I was alluding to when I was saying imagine if there’s not need to say no because we are the yes. Thank you, Ali. Actually, that’s going to serve me really well even [inaudible 01:02:09].

Ali:

No, there’s something really enticing and, for me, it’s almost about embracing the space, but carving out the intentional purposeful that all of us have at the moment. And we have those choices around what you consume and that’s fine. When I say consume, it’s the insults, the conversations, the news, the narrative, the fears, those sorts of things or we can consume other things. Yeah, it sounds like there’s an invitation to consume something else.

Michael Henderson:

That’s lovely.

Ali:

Which might be who else we are and what that might look like and mean. I’m interested in the uncertain, in the unknown. It sounds like there’s a few things that’s exciting you, but what’s exciting you about what’s next for you in terms of your own creativity and exploration?

Michael Henderson:

I’ve just been spending a lot of time acknowledging creativity, so as I say, I mentioned earlier I’m a really, really frustrated singer/songwriter in me somewhere that just doesn’t have the capacity or capability or the skill to do it. So I was watching things like Ed Sheeran has a movie, I think it’s out on Apple, where they literally document him writing his most recent album that he put out.

Michael Henderson:

So just watching him at work being creative and watched another one with Bruce Springsteen. Again, recently released an album and has a concert that he plays in his barn on his property. It’s just beautiful to watch but, again, he talks about the songs and what they mean.

Michael Henderson:

Revisited an old favourite of mine. I’m a huge Sting fan and watched an old movie of his recently as well, where pretty much the same thing. They were documenting his creative process and just fell in love with creativity as a way of celebrating life. It’s not an area that I’ve particularly over-embraced. I tended to be a little bit too, I guess theoretical, so that’s reawakened a bunch of opportunities for me.

Michael Henderson:

One of the things I did was I’ve written a number of books which are non-fiction, but always wanted to write a parable, fiction. And again, just had real concerns about the ability to do so. Anyway, long story short, I’ve done it during the COVID. Sat down and wrote it and just loved it. It’s like lighting a candle and just going, “Whoa,” you can shed a light on this whole area of life that I know others have done, I’ve just never really tapped into that before.

Michael Henderson:

The writing itself is pretty terrible and that’s absolutely fine. It was just the enjoyment of engaging with it, so that’s definitely something I’m going to really pick up and play some more with. And then the other side is back to the conversation you were saying earlier, is my wife and I just starting to play with a new offering we’re going to go to market with around those personal values, which we’ve been doing that for some time now, but I’ve always been quite careful, and I’m going to use the word, even cautious around how deep to get into that conversation.

Michael Henderson:

But I think COVID and people just being sent into meditative contemplative retreat, as the Buddhists would say, during COVID, I suddenly went, “Wow. Okay. Maybe this is the opportunity to actually provide a language and a vehicle for supporting people to go into that deeper level of inquiry. So just going to play with that over the forthcoming weeks to see if we can do something creatively with that, but takes the whole thing considerably deeper than we’d ever done before.

Ali:

I’m excited about that and the contribution that you’ll bring to that conversation because I think areas are craving for it and there’s some time and space. I know even just for families, when you talked about sitting down with your kids and talking about fears, and talking about values is something we don’t often A, have the time to do, B, have the language so use, so I think that contribution will be really powerful.

Ali:

Michael, I feel like we talk for hours and hours and hours. I’m conscious of the time that I have taken up with you and so appreciative of your thoughts and insights. I want to finish off with one final question. Then ame of this podcast is called Stand Out Life. When you hear that term, what does it mean to you to life a stand out life?

Michael Henderson:

Hmm. To be fully conscious, so to be fully aware. It has nothing to do with doing anything. Has nothing to do with achieving anything, has nothing to do with any level off status in society or my profession or my work. So stand out life would be one whereby the level of consciousness that is being expressed is optimised. It’s pushed to its … And pushed is probably the wrong word. It’s probably accepted to its highest possible level and a willingness to sacrifice anything to get to that place. Yeah. I think that would be it.

Ali:

I’ll sign up for that.

Michael Henderson:

Yeah.

Ali:

Thank so much for the invitation. Thank you for your time. It’s been such a delight to chat with you.

Michael Henderson:

You too, Ali. Can I just share something with you that’s just wanted to … What’s the [inaudible 01:08:26] while you’ve been this? I know you’ve got an incredible skillset with this and an empathy level that maybe a lot of your listeners or even are familiar with, but I don’t want that to put them off. What I’ve just realised is what you’ve just done here just by interviewing, could be a wonderful thing to ask any of your listeners to use as an opportunity with their own network, their own family.

Michael Henderson:

We started this conversation talking about organisational culture and there’s some research done fairly recently that said, I think it was 82% of employees would be far more engager in their work if they understood the people they worked with better at a human level, if you knew what was going on in that person’s world and life and what they …

Michael Henderson:

And I just thought, “Wow. What a wonderful thing you’ve just done here.” I’ve got enormous value, so thank you so much, out of listening to my own thoughts while we’ve been having this conversation because they’ve been triggered in ways that I hadn’t anticipated or prepare by your questions and your generosity, and your empathy, and your curiosity.

Michael Henderson:

And so it occurred to me while you were doing that, I thought, “Wow, what a wonderful thing that maybe employees could do with one another or a granddaughter could do to their grandfather is get on Zoom and conduct it like an interview and just say, ‘Where were you born?’ And, ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ And ‘What’s the song that’s meant most to you in your life?’ And, ‘If you weren’t doing the work you currently do, what else you have aspired to?'”

Michael Henderson:

Just to reveal that human side behind some of the identities and roles that we play in each other’s life. There’s backstories in there that maybe we’re not familiar with that could be a really cool way of spending some COVID time is just chatting and going deep in with each other.

Michael Henderson:

So I’ve taken a lot from even just how you conducted yourself in this discussion in relation to that, so that’s something yeah, wanted to share back with you.

Ali:

Thank you. I think that’s a beautiful gesture. I can imagine kids and giving some purpose to that, to find out from their grandparents. Sometimes grandparents will reveal to their grandkids what they won’t reveal to their own children.

Michael Henderson:

It’s so true.

Ali:

And again, I appreciate that. One of my KPIs, so to speak, is that people feel like they get as much out of it as I do in doing these interviews, so I appreciate that. I think there is something really powerful in sharing our stories and hearing our thoughts out loud.

Michael Henderson:

Yeah.

Ali:

Yeah. That encouragement to do that with each other, really, really strong. Thank you, Michael. Enjoy the rest of your downtime.

Michael Henderson:

Thank you.