KF #3. Manages Ambiguity Archives - Page 2 of 4 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
April, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

April Rinne
Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about the wisdom you have to share about flux. But, first, I want to hear about your notorious handstands. What is the story here?

April Rinne
Oh, I’ve been outed. So, I have been doing handstands for most of my life. Learned to do them as a child, as a gymnast, and then kept doing them. And then, at a certain point in my life, realized that none of my friends that I was doing them with as a child were doing them anymore, and it became a bit of a, like, signature, I suppose. So, I travel a lot, I work internationally, and back in my 20s, actually, some family members challenged me to take a photo of myself doing handstands when I would go to interesting places. They did not realize how seriously I would take them on that challenge.

And so, here we are years later, have visited more than a hundred countries and have handstands in the most random but also most interesting of places. And so, my goal is to keep doing them when I’m hopefully in triple digits. We’ll see.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. I sort of imagine you, I don’t know, you’re at the Taj Mahal or something doing handstands, and then like you’re gathering a crowd, and so that you are also the tourist attraction. Has that happened?

April Rinne
It’s funny you bring that up. Yes, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids of Giza, the Coliseum in Rome, take your pick of well-known but also really off the beaten path places as well. And what I love is that the vast majority of my handstands over the years have been done when I’ve been traveling on my own. Now, my husband does travel with me and he knows the drill. He’s a wonderful photographer. But most of the time, I actually have to find somebody to take this picture, which means introducing myself to a stranger and trying to explain to them, and often their native language is not English.

So, I’m trying to explain to them in a foreign language that I’m going to stand on my hands and they need to take a picture. And, of course, you get this look of like, “I don’t think I understand what you’re saying at all. And if I do understand what you’re saying, you’re crazy.” And then we sort of go through the paces and they get it, and then, oftentimes, yes, a small crowd gathers, which is just fun in terms of meeting locals. But kids start tumbling and joining in, people start laughing and shouting, it becomes a bit of just like a little celebration, I suppose.

And, for me, it’s not, at that point, about the handstand. It’s about immediately getting to break the ice with people I wouldn’t otherwise get to meet. And it has often led to cups of coffee or tea afterwards, or like, “Tell us about your family,” or, usually, “Where is your husband? Why are you travelling alone?” those sorts of things as well. So, thanks for asking. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that’s just cool. Well, I don’t have a clever segue but maybe there is one.

April Rinne
Upside-down perspective on the world is what I call it, which leads into how we navigate change.

Pete Mockaitis
You do the work for me. This is perfect. Well, yeah, let’s hear about your book, Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. What is the big idea behind this book?

April Rinne
Yeah, the big idea is that in a world and a future that is full of change and constant relentless change, that we, as humans, need to radically reshape our relationship to uncertainty to have a healthy and productive outlook.

Pete Mockaitis
Well-said. So, radically reshape our relationship to uncertainty, I’m sure there’s variability and variation quite a bit from person to person. But if you had to generalize, what would you say is the “typical” relationship to uncertainty? And what is an optimal transformation of it to where are we now and where “should” it be?

April Rinne
Yeah, great question. Well, let’s just pause for a minute and think about change, which includes uncertainty, but just a sense of something what is or was something is becoming something else. Change is messy, it’s complicated. Humans tend to love change we opt into. So, a new relationship, a new job, a new adventure, a new haircut. We tend to really resist change we can’t control. So, the kind of change that blindsides you on a Tuesday afternoon, it goes against your expectations, it disrupts your plans, and it creates an environment of uncertainty.

Now, a change that’s easy for you might be really, really hard for me, and vice versa. We know that more change and uncertainty is around the corner, yet knowing this often freaks us out. So, you sort of get these layers of like it’s complicated and it’s really messy. But when it comes to uncertainty, there’s also this piece, like humans really want to be able to know what’s going to happen. We want things to go our way. We want to command, predict, control, engineer the future. And the last 18 months, but we can come back to this, I didn’t write the book about the last 18 months. The last 18 months, however, have been an incredible kind of wakeup to just how unfit, how outdated that way of seeing the world and our place in it is.

And so, this radical reshaping is like, wow, we have structured, and we can come back to this, part of it is neurobiology, neuroscience, part of it is psychology, part of it is just the human condition, we have in many ways, I think, deluded ourselves into believing that we can predict and control and command the future, and that we can have certainty, and that we can, yeah, predict things and know what’s going to happen. And nothing could be farther from the truth.

And in a world in flux, and when we think about flux as constant relentless change, and before you’ve responded to one change, something else has happened, the list goes on and on and on. And that’s actually what the future looks like. More of that, not less, that there is this kind of, “Oh, this isn’t just a wakeup call. This is also a kind of warmup for what’s ahead. And how can we get ahead of that? Instead of constantly reacting to change that something happens and you’re trying to triage it? How can we reshape our relationship to change from the inside out to be fit for this world in flux which is very different than the kind of world many of us were taught to believe we lived in?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is quite a question, and part of me wonders, “Is that even possible?” I take it you think the answer is yes. Could you share with us an inspiring example or case study of someone who’s just a flux master?

April Rinne
Well, I love that you bring this up because, by and large, humans are really pretty bad at this, and that’s part of why I wrote the book. I like to say that I’ve been working on this book since 2018, so it’s been the better part of three years, like in the writing, but it’s really been more like three decades in the making, in the seeding of these ideas. And a big chunk of that time was spent both as a futurist and a strategist, also just as a human and observing that, on the whole, humans, we can adapt to change pretty well when we’re forced to, when our back is against the wall.

But as a proactive, kind of, “I’m going to lean into change because it’s good for me, or I’m actually going to see a change I don’t want to have happen, I’m going to see that nonetheless as an opportunity for growth and learning and improvement,” we don’t do that naturally. And what was making me and, candidly, continuous to make me very concerned about humans moving forward, both individually and collectively as humanity, is that we are, in many cases, stuck in mindsets and with what I call scripts that are not fit for a world in flux, and we need help.

And so, I can point to individuals that are good at certain of the flux superpowers, let’s say. But on the whole, and at the risk of generalizing, are we really fit? Are our mindsets grooved for a future of constant relentless change? I reckon they are not. But in that is an enormous opportunity for each and every one of us to level up. So, we can come back to some of the examples, but I want to put that out there. Now, you might prove me wrong here, Pete, but I’ve never met anybody who’s like, “Change. Tick that box. I’m good.”

Everyone struggles with some part of it, but we’ve all developed our own unique ways of dealing with it, talking about it, feeling about it, etc. There’s a lot we can learn from one another, but I believe we are very early into this journey into a future full of flux but, as such, we will all have homework to do but we’ve all also been given, I look at it, almost like this gift of growth and improvement by upgrading our mental muscles about change.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, sure. Could we hear an example of someone who has got at least a couple of the superpowers of flux going for them that seems to be doing pretty good when it comes to constant relentless change in their world?

April Rinne
Yeah. An example that I often talk about in regards to flux, and again it’s not all eight superpowers, it’s a couple of them, but it is Airbnb and founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. And if you go back, and here I’ll tease out a few of the flux superpowers, they built this company that’s home-sharing.

They saw value in empty space in people’s homes that hotels wrote them off as crazy and foolish, said, “This is never going to go anywhere.” Lo and behold, one of the eight flux superpowers is to see what’s invisible. They saw value in what other people couldn’t see. They saw invisible value, basically, and tapped into that and unlocked it, and created a company that is more valuable than the five largest hotel chains combined. That’s a very flux-y way of seeing one’s business model, if you will, to see what’s invisible, find what other people can’t see, and unlock the value that’s in that.

But, at the same time, another one of the flux superpowers is called “Start with trust.” Again, go back to Airbnb, what were people telling them? “This is crazy. People will never stay in other people’s homes. Why would we trust other humans?” And I’m looking at this always against the backdrop of, “How do we navigate change?” and think about who you turn to when change really hits. You turn to your trusted relationships. And if you don’t have many, you’re in a world of hurt far greater than if you do.

And Airbnb, early on, signaled, “We actually think humans are trustworthy. This isn’t blind trust or naïve trust, but we actually think that we can build a business around humans trusting one another.” Lo and behold, they have. And that, too, I’m looking at this from the perspective of, “How do we navigate change together? How do we navigate change better?”

So, I’ll pause there but those are some of the superpowers start kind of surfacing as we dig deeper.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, maybe let’s have a quick overview of the eight superpowers and maybe have your definition and a sentence or two for what that means, and then we’ll see where to dig deeper.

April Rinne
Yeah, sure. So, there are eight flux superpowers, and I always like to say they’re a menu, not a syllabus so you do not have to do one before two, or two before three, but they stand on their own and they also enhance one another. So, the first flux superpower is to “Run slower,” which says that in a world with an ever-faster pace of change, your key to success is to slow your own pace. And I’ll put in a quick caveat here too. Each and every one of these is counterintuitive in some way. It goes against what, oftentimes, society teaches us. We can circle back to this if you’d like.

The second flux superpower is one that I was just talking about, which is, “See what’s invisible.” And this says that when the future feels uncertainty or blurry, rather than focusing on what’s visible and what’s straight in front of you, we need to focus on what’s invisible. Now this includes both identifying your blind spots but also uncovering new forms of value, new forms of talent, new ideas, new forms of inspiration.

The third flux superpower is “Get lost,” which is all about going beyond your comfort zone and your relationship with the unknown. The fourth flux superpower is “Start with trust,” that says when trust seems broken, assume good intent. And this is all about, as I was mentioning, how we navigate change better together.

The fifth flux superpower is, “Know your enough.” And this gets at our quest for happiness and satisfaction, and really the tension between our obsession with more, kind of more, more, more everything, and how that’s mostly making people miserable, in my experience. The way I like to put it is when you’re always after more, you will never ever find enough. And, yet, when you know you’re enough, you’ll immediately begin to see abundance. And, again, more, we can think of as more income, more power, more prestige, more love, more likes, more clicks, more everything.

So, what does it mean to “Know your enough”? And that’s Y-O-U-R. People often ask me if that’s a typo, and I say no. Knowing your enough includes knowing that you are enough just as you are without doing anything more. So, we can come back to that if you’d like.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny when I read that, I guess I didn’t even think about the apostrophe, and I was like, “Know your enough. Like, your number, your level. And what is the level at which it is enough?” which could be different for you versus me versus another. But, yeah, layers. Thank you. Okay, what’s next?

April Rinne
So, the sixth flux superpower is “Create your portfolio career.” This is about designing your professional development and identity in ways that are fit for a future of work in flux. And the punchline here is that I firmly believe that the career of the future looks far less like a singular path to pursue and much more like your portfolio that you create and curate as an artist or an investor would.

The seventh superpower is “Be all the more human,” which gets at our relationship to technology and the tension that we have in spending ever more time with our devices, yet ever less time with one another. And last, but not least, the eighth flux superpower is “Let go of the future,” which is all about our relationship to control, something I have found is tricky for most everyone today, and I always put a caveat on this one as well.

Letting go of the future does not mean giving up. It does not mean failure. It does not mean doomsday-ing. It actually means quite the opposite. So, again, going back to this counterintuitive-ness, even this contrarian-ness, that pervades much of the thesis of flux.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Ooh, so much fun there. So, tell us then, when it comes to professionals seeking to be awesome at their jobs, what’s your take on what is the most important yet also most rare of these superpowers that we should really zero in on cultivating?

April Rinne
Well, I’m not sure that I would put the most important and the most rare…

Pete Mockaitis
We could take two. We’ll take two.

April Rinne
Yeah, I think we’ll do two because I can definitely tell you which ones are most popular. Let me do this, I’m going to put out a few because they’re all very, very sticky for professionals in the workplace of how to be awesome at your job. No question.

So, no doubt, no question, or perhaps no surprise, the first superpower “Run slower” absolutely popular and difficult because this is burnout, this is exhaustion, this is anxiety, this is “Why am I doing what I’m doing? Why am I constantly…? Why am I in this rat race? Why am I on this hamster wheel? How did I end up here? This is not what I had planned for my profession, for my livelihood, etc.” So, “Run slower” for sure.

Interestingly, as soon as you start getting into “Run slower” you do end up often over at “Know your enough,” and that’s sort of, “How do we define what is valuable and important? And what metrics are you using not just to judge how you show up at work and what you ‘do’ but also how you show up in life?” And so, it really starts to unpack some of our values and whether or not those values are reflected at our organization, so on and so forth.

And then the third one, which, not surprisingly, it is the one superpower that is related to work and the workplace, and that is “Create your portfolio career.” So, any of those would be ones I would start with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, when we talk about “Knowing your enough,” Y-O-U-R, no apostrophe, tells us, how do we arrive at that knowledge?

April Rinne
Arriving at that knowledge, I think there’s a process of kind of peeling back the layers of your unique onion around this. And I like to ask people, and this does relate to every one of the superpowers in some way, kind of getting your flux baseline is what I call it. And most people haven’t really thought a lot about their relationship to change as a whole. We’re busy reacting to change, “Something happened and I need to do something about it.”

But we’re not really thinking about, “What are the things, what are the emotions, and the feelings, and the experiences, that are driving me to react in the way that I am? And what is…” what I call in the book, “What is my script about change? What are the stories and the narratives and the norms that I’ve been taught about how the world is supposed to work, and what my role in it is supposed to be?”

And I share this because a lot of our scripts, really, it’s directly related to knowing your enough, a lot of our scripts are increasingly being shown to be not that fit for a world in flux. They’re quite good for worlds that we can command and control, and sort of tie up in a neat tidy bow, but they’re not that good for when the future you thought you were going to have just sort of melts or falls apart or doesn’t work out like you thought it would be, like you thought it would, which I think many of us had experienced in different ways over the last 18 months.

So, back to knowing your enough. For a lot of people, and here I would include myself, we were taught that more is better, and like inherently better, and that the more you had, the more important you were, the more valuable you were to society. And I think, for a lot of people, that’s more money but also more power, more prestige, more love, more choices, more clothes, more clicks. Like, I was saying, it’s more everything.

And, yet, look around and ask yourself, “What is that getting me? Is more actually…?” and here I would say in the workplace, the more meetings you have, the more productive you are. The more productive you are, we can come back and question, meetings are not a good metric for productivity, but the more hours I work.

Pete Mockaitis
The more emails you get, the more important you are. The more emails you send, the more productive you are.

April Rinne
Yes. Yes. And, yet, and again, we can put this on a financial metric, an emotional metric, a workplace metric, take your pick, more is mostly making us miserable. It’s not necessarily leading to greater happiness or satisfaction. It’s not necessarily…it might be making us feel more productive if you’re measuring your life in how many emails you send, but not if you’re measuring it necessarily in outputs, impacts, ways, number of people that you’re able to serve and better, and the quality of your own life that you’re living.

And so, what I like to ask people, the punchline, the metric for this superpower is, “What is your enough-ness? Have you thought about your point of enough?” Because what I find a lot of times, and I’m generalizing a bit here, but we are, particularly in Western culture, we are really over-indexed on stuff. We have more. A lot of people have more than they need in terms of stuff, and whether that’s cars or clothes or physical possessions. But we’re kind of under-indexed on a lot of the humanity stuff. We actually don’t have enough human connection. We don’t have enough dignity. We don’t have enough tolerance. We don’t have enough integrity. So, we’ve got this kind of too much and not enough but not really a sense of what’s in the middle.

And so, I ask people, “What do you have too much of and what do you have too little of?” And too little can include, “I have too few hours in the day,” “I have too little time to spend with my family,” “I have too little…” and you get into this sense of where we have a culture of insufficiency. And so, finding your enough requires getting clear on, “What are you over- and under-indexed on?” And, partly, I’m not giving one specific answer here because everyone’s equation, everyone’s relationship is different because each of us has a different lived-experienced and different things that we’re strong at, weak at, etc.

And so, it’s interesting because even on the enough factor, “Did you grow up with enough love in your household?” I know it sounds a little bit woo-woo but, in fact, not enough love and care as a child will show up in all kinds of ways as an adult but don’t actually get you closer to your enough. You start to compensate for love with money, etc. And so, all of this, I throw out to get people to start peeling back the layers of their own onion around enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that’s really thought-provoking in terms of what you have too much of and not enough of. And it’s funny, when it comes to money, maybe nobody would say they have too much money but they might say that they have more than enough money, so you can just change the words around a little bit.

April Rinne
Well, what’s interesting, can I…? Oh, sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
Go take it away, yeah.

April Rinne
So, this cycle of more. And, again, to be really clear on all of these things, I am not saying that more is bad or anything. I’m just saying let’s get clear on what’s really what here. I’m not saying that for any of the superpowers, I’m not saying like the counter is not good or bad. It’s more like, “Have you thought about this that there are more options on the table than you might realize?”

Here’s the thing about more though, how many people do you know that say, “I will be happy when…” “I will be successful when…” “I will be…” fill in the blanks, when? When implies that you don’t have something you need. You need more. And, yet, when you get to that point, so let’s just say more money, “When I have more money…” then what do you need? You need more money. It’s no longer enough. You need more.

And you get on this kind of vicious cycle that feeds on itself and that never allows you to acknowledge and rest and be easy with enough. And that’s the part we get stuck, call it a hamster wheel, call it our own monkey brain that’s kind of running laps around our minds, but it keeps people from realizing that, actually, a decision to be happy, it actually can happen right now. And when you realize that you might already have enough, and that’s kind of that’s your point of sufficiency, satisfaction, again not too little, not too much, that’s the kind of contentedness. And we can talk about the difference between happiness and contentedness, but that sense of kind of peace and comfort as opposed to this drive for ever more.

Now, I’m not saying don’t strive, don’t try to do things, and I’m not saying…What’s interesting too is if you want more and more and more, okay, what’s that more going to get you? And this is where it gets super interesting because of the belief that if you want more, let’s just use money, you want more money so that you can hoard it or keep it for yourself, okay, I’m not sure how much better that’s going to make the world.

But if you want more in order that you can share it with others, in order that you can gift it, be generous, help better the lives of others, that’s actually a pretty good more but you’re not keeping that for yourself. So, you start getting into issues around ego and generosity as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I guess if we talk about hoarding it, like you probably won’t feel much impact in terms of, “I want more money because, I don’t know, going in an unsafe neighborhood with my children, and I’m worried that they’ll be shot.” Okay. Well, if you have more money and you get to a different neighborhood, you’ll probably feel that as an upgrade in the happiness and peace and contentment parts of your life versus, “You know, I’ve got one million in my mutual fund account, and two is just so much cooler,” then you probably won’t even feel that impact at all except when you refresh the page and go, “Oh, two. Nice. Now it should be three.” There you are.

April Rinne
Yeah. And it’s interesting and, if I may, I’m going to share a personal story here because it factors in exactly into what we’re talking about. And it is interesting because a lot of times people are like, “Oh, I want more money because it’s actually a hedge against uncertainty.” And I totally get that. It is kind of the more money you have, the more options you have, the more ways that you can potentially navigate uncertainty and change. That’s somewhat true.

I also would say that that way of thinking can blind you to what’s really needed when we navigate change. And the story I have to tell, it relates to why I ended up writing the book as well, and I sort of mentioned that I bring the lens of a futurist to change, I bring the lens of a global traveler and global citizen, if you will, to change, but I also bring other human and lived-experience with change and uncertainty. And I often say that my journey or my baptism entry into flux began more than 25 years ago when I was in college and both of my parents died in a car accident.

And I share this because I was 20, and speaking of careers and jobs and all of that, 20 is a really interesting age because I was old enough to be living on my own. I was at college. I could take care of myself day to day, but I was young enough, I really did not know how the world worked or my role in it, all of that. And it had a profound effect on how I thought about my career and how I thought about more versus enough.

Now, back then, I never would’ve expected that I’d read a book about this kind of thing. That wasn’t in the plan at all. But I started asking questions at the age of 20 that I now see, many years later, people going through some kind of a mid-life crisis or some kind of real-life, “What is my purpose on earth?” kind of thing. And the question that I would ask myself every day was, “If I were to die tomorrow…” because look what just happened. No one knows how long we have, “If I were to die tomorrow, what would the world need me to do today?”

And it wasn’t about me, like, “What do I need?” my ego. It was, “What does the world need?” because we all have finite time, and we all have a lot we want to contribute and can contribute to others. So, I keep asking myself this question, and then the answer was never “Get more money.” It wasn’t. It was this sense of, “Yes, I need enough money, for sure.” At that point, I was 20, I became, overnight, self-sufficient. There was no back stop. There was no house to go home to, so to speak, when my parents died. It was like, “Okay, I’ve got to figure out a way to move forward.”

And so, it was very clear to me that I needed enough money to be able to take care of myself, but anything over that became like this, “Is that what the world needs from me today?” And it’s interesting because I spend a lot of time talking to people about grief and loss and this kind of change and uncertainty, and, “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?” as well. And never, never has the answer been, on someone’s deathbed, that, “Oh, I wish I’d earned more money.” It has definitely been, “I wish I’d prioritized my family more. I wish I’d gone after that job that spoke to my heart, but maybe I would’ve earned a little bit less,” kind of thing.

And so, it’s interesting because even when it comes to how to become awesome at your job, these are the kinds of value judgments and value assessments that we’re doing all the time. And I think one of the best ways to be awesome at your job is to make sure that you’ve got a job that aligns with some of these bigger even existential questions, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, thank you. That’s powerful and a lot there. And so, it sounds like you’ve worked through some powerful questions that really get you places. Can you maybe give us a rundown of some of the most insight-provoking questions and how you recommend sitting with them effectively?

April Rinne
What a great question. So, I don’t mean for this to be a pitch for the book but it’s going to sound that way, and that is simply that, at the end of each chapter, I wrote the books because I wanted to help people ask these questions. And these questions that don’t…they don’t have easy answers, and the point is not to come up with the answer. The point is to actually sit with them and think about, “Wow, I’ve been so focused on metrics A, B, C, I hadn’t even paused to consider what might be behind that or this other set of questions.”

So, at the end of each chapter, there are a series of five questions for each chapter that are designed to provoke exactly this kind of thing, and, again, each one tailored to the superpower. So, I’m wondering which one you want start with. What’s interesting is the “Know your enough” is kind of the questions that we were just going after. Like, “What do you have too much of? What do you have too little of? Have you ever thought of that before?” And, also, “Could you draw what enough looks like to you? Don’t write it. Could you draw a picture?”

That gets really interesting because if you have somebody who’s drawing a bunch of houses and cars and stuff, that’s one view of what is more. But then, actually, if you see somebody who draws a kind of Earth where humans are connected and it’s sort of peaceful, that’s still enough but it’s a different worldview. So, that’s “Know your enough.” But let’s just take another one, “Start with trust.” It gets really interesting.

So, generally speaking, are you quick to trust or to mistrust? Just your default, like, if you don’t know otherwise, do you trust or mistrust? And why? Where does that come from? Most people, our tendency and the script that society has taught us is that humans should not trust one another. That, candidly, Pete, I shouldn’t trust you right now and you should not trust me. That’s what society says. And, yet, where did that come from? Like, really? Because we’re in the midst of a trust crisis and trust is the way forward and yet we’re doing everything we can to undermine it.

And so, you start unpacking questions around trust and you start realizing how often, without our even noticing it, we have a narrative in our mind that humans, on average, are not trustworthy. And what’s worse, very few people actually trust themselves. I mean, we learn to. But, like, how does it feel, do you trust yourself? How does it feel when others don’t trust you? Oh, it turns out, you don’t actually generally trust other people.

So, we’re trying to reset our relationship to trust because, as I was saying earlier, trust is the path forward. If we don’t figure out that one thing, there is not a future in which any of us actually can have a lot of hope. But when we learn to start with trust, and what I call design from trust, a whole new universe of opportunities and goodness of others shows up.

So, those kinds of very essential questions. Back to “Run slower” do you feel like you’re running faster today? Why? Where did that come from? When did it start? Is it something you’re driving yourself to do or others are driving you to do it? You got to get this baseline and then you can start saying, “Okay, how do I need to kind of bring the pendulum back, bring more balance, harmony into my life?” And then, in the book, the superpowers are kind of the how-to and what are the practices and disciplines and exercises that you go through to improve that part of your relationship to change.

Pete Mockaitis
And on that trust stuff, it gets me thinking of Dan Ariely’s work, and it’s not bad. Yeah, people do cheat but humans are pretty good. It depends on the context and all kinds of variables that you modify but it could be a lot worse.

April Rinne
Right. Well, I love that you bring that up because I am not saying there aren’t bad apples out there. I’m not saying blind trust, or naïve trust, or just like willy-nilly trust but don’t verify kind of thing. But what’s fascinating to me is that we have designed so many of our structures, institutions, systems, from the basic premise that the average individual cannot be trusted, and that’s the key. Because when we design that if we don’t know, we do not trust.

A minor flip of the switch that, again, you need to account for bad things happening and some people not being trustworthy, but if you treat that as the exception not the rule, you design a different system. And that’s where it gets fascinating because what happens when we design from a premise of mistrust, we throw out so much goodness in people. When I think about, “Would I rather assume that people are good and have an abundance of goodness and generosity show up, and, yeah, I may have to pay a price every now and again, bad calculation, didn’t work out,” versus, “I’m going to live my life assuming that no one is trustworthy, and live in a system that is designed for untrustworthiness?” you’re basically sucking the life out of you and the people around you. So, you do have to be willing that you won’t always get it right, but that price you’re going to pay is worth its weight 10,000-fold over for all the goodness and generosity that you’re going to see instead.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, April, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

April Rinne
Oh, goodness. FluxMindset.com? No, it’s a joy to join you today. I’m really just happy to be able to share more about it. And, yeah, the way I like to put it is when everything is in flux, everything can benefit from a flux mindset. So, there you have it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

April Rinne
One of my favorite quotes is inspired by the last superpower, “Let go of the future,” and it’s by Lao Tzu who wrote the Tao Te Ching, and it is, “When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be.” So, I love that. Lots of good quotes from Lao Tzu.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

April Rinne
I think one of the books that shows up in Flux, and I continue to refer to time and again, is called The Body Keeps the Score and it’s about the relationship between mind and body, particularly around trauma, but there’s a lot around just anxiety and mental health. And the body of research that’s in this book around how our body holds what our minds and hearts and souls are feeling, but without necessarily words, the ways that shows up and how much we need to pay attention to our bodies, and the kinds of things that we’re holding that we’re often burying, absolutely cannot recommend that book enough.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

April Rinne
I was thinking about this because it’s so basic and yet so powerful. I use Post-its. I use Post-its for absolutely everything. I have a wall that’s covered in Post-its on any given day. If you ask my husband, when I travel, what’s the first thing I pack on a business trip, it’s actually Post-its. So, it’s simple but it has been my super tool over the years.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate; folks quote it back to you?

April Rinne
There are increasingly ones about flux but I actually kind of want to come full circle on this one, back to the handstands. And it does show up a little bit in the superpower “See what’s invisible,” but this whole notion of the upside-down perspective on the world. So, I do have people often quoting some aspects of my handstands and upside-down perspective. Why bring this up is that we are trained to see things, literally, figuratively right-side up. There’s one way that you look at something.

And, yet, this goes beyond change. When we flip our perspective, and here I’ll say literally and figuratively, when we look at something upside-down, we see it completely differently. And what I can tell you is sometimes it looks even better. So, I love this like flip your perspective, go upside-down, see something you’ve been struggling with in a fresh light, you might not only see it better but you might find your solution in your path forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And, April, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

April Rinne
FlexMindset.com is for all things Flux and book related. AprilRinne.com is my personal site where you will find the handstands.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

April Rinne
I’m going to show my bias but it is all about think about get clear on your flux baseline, groove a flux mindset, open a flux mindset, harness your flux superpowers, and reshape your relationship to change from the inside out from here on forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. April, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck in your fluxing.

April Rinne
Thank you very much, Pete. And may the flux be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Gina, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Gina Osborn
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we need to start with an exciting FBI story, Gina. Can you give us a riveting tale that tees us up for talking about calm and crises and managing our emotions?

Gina Osborn
I’ve dealt with cyber crises, I led the team that investigated the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack. I dealt with terrorism in Southeast Asia, so, gosh, a specific story. There are so many.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, how about the Sony one if you’re open to suggestion, let’s hear it.

Gina Osborn
Sure. Okay, yeah. So, the Monday before Thanksgiving in 2014, we got a call from Sony Pictures Entertainment who had a very menacing screenshot on all of the computers for Sony Pictures Entertainment, and it said that the Guardians of Peace had taken over their systems and some menacing language about “We told you…” blah, blah, blah.

And, essentially, what the whole thing was about was that North Korea was very unhappy with the way their supreme leader was being depicted in a Seth Rogan-James Franco movie, and they had sent their displeasure to Sony as well as, I think, the State Department. And so, one day, the Monday before Thanksgiving, they pretty much shut everything down. And then, over the course of a couple of weeks, they were putting it out on Pastebin, all the information, emails between the executives, embarrassing emails, content, scripts, things like that. So, yeah, it was pretty devastating.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And how did you resolve it?

Gina Osborn
So, I had a crack team of cyber people that I’m very, very proud of. And they went to work and, within a very short amount of time, they identified North Korea as the culprit. And the investigation continued, and it turned out that North Korea was also behind the WannaCry ransomware that was out that caused, I think, a billion dollars’ worth of loss as well as a hack into the Bank of Bangladesh where they stole, I think, about 81 million dollars. So, my folks wound up indicting some folks over in North Korea, and it was just a very, very interesting insight into how they’re basically funding their nuclear weapons program.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. That’s wild. And so, I understand that when you started that you took over the FBI cyber and computer forensics program, you didn’t have much technical knowledge. Can you tell us how that came to be and how you managed?

Gina Osborn
Yes, I’d like to say that I was a very good leader, but when you don’t have technical credibility with your team, it’s kind of hard to lead. So, I was on the FBI inspection staff. In order for us to get promoted into the executive ranks, we have to do about 18 months on the mothership. So, I went back to Washington, D.C., I was on the inspection staff, and I was a team leader, and none of the other team leaders volunteered to inspect cyber programs because cyber back then, this was like in 2005, it was relatively new, and not a lot of people had the technical expertise to really inspect a cyber program within a field office.

And so, I didn’t learn in the Army not to volunteer for things, which is something I should’ve learned, but I’m glad that I didn’t learn it because I volunteered to go and look at the Chicago office, and they had a very large cyber program. And then I just sort of became the cyber programmatic expert within the inspection staff. And then, right when I was going back to Los Angeles, they had created the first Cyber Assistant Special Agent in Charge position, so I put my hat in the ring, and I wound up getting that.

And, yeah, I definitely had to change my leadership style because I would always lead from the front leader, but when you can’t lead from the front when you don’t have technical knowledge when you’re cyber person, so I became a servant leader, and I got my cyber geniuses, everything they needed to do their jobs, and they were wildly successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then, I’m curious, in terms of just your own, the chatter in your own head and your mindset, when you find yourself in that place, are you like, “Oh, shoot. I’m going to screw up. I’m going to fail. I’m not equipped for this,” like how does your brain go and how do you manage those sorts of thoughts?

Gina Osborn
Well, when I went into the military, I think fewer than 10% of the soldiers were women, and that was in ’87. When I went into the FBI in 1996, there were only 14% of all of the agents were women, so I think I kind of, in the beginning, I had the negative thoughts in my head. I had gone from a cocktail waitress to a counterintelligence agent in the Army pretty much overnight, like within a six-month period.

So, I had experienced those things back in the day but I think, at that point, after I’d been in for about 15 years in law enforcement, I think, really, all of the skill, the leadership traits that I had taken on up until that point had been very masculine leadership traits that didn’t really suit me because I was a very good communicator, a good problem-solver. I was very empathetic. I like to build teams and create relationships and things like that.

So, when I could no longer lead like a man in a male-dominated environment, because my cyber folks kind of forced me into a whole another leadership style, I really began to shine as a leader because I was leading authentically, because I was using the skills that I was authentically good at, as opposed to taking on leadership traits from the men around me. And I was able to build an empire with my team in cyber and computer forensics because everybody had ownership in the mission.

My job was to keep the race horses on the reservation and, like I said, get them everything they needed to do their jobs. So, I became more and more confident in that position because I was leading from the right place.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, can you give us some examples of what are some things that maybe race horses don’t get, or they find frustrating, or where you specifically add value and make their lives great?

Gina Osborn
Well, I would say the communication was a big thing because although I didn’t speak their language, I learned enough about their language to be able to dumb it down to share it with my bosses so I can get them funding and approvals for operations that they wanted to do. So, that was one thing. And we would go to these presentations, and whenever they started to speak over everybody’s head, I was the one where I was kind of saying, “Hey, we need to dumb this down just a little bit so the common person can understand what’s going on.”

I had been at headquarters so I knew where all the money trees at headquarters were, so the way to a cyber person’s heart is through their equipment. And so, they gave me a list, a huge list of equipment that I wanted, and I was able to procure that for them, and really building relationships. I had been in the Los Angeles division for pretty much all of my career, other than my time at headquarters, and I had really good relationships with chiefs of police because I had worked with them when I was a working agent.

So, when my folks needed additional resources because they wanted to build task forces, I could go out to the chiefs, and say, “Hey, can you give us a detective or two so we can have them participate in this upcoming threat, and teach them how to do these cyber investigations,” and that worked really well. And we were able to build a $6 million, or a $7 million state-of-the-art computer forensics lab as a result of relationships that I had, and my team had. And so, really, when I built trust with them by finding how I could contribute, and although it wasn’t technically, I had other things that they really needed, and so that’s how we wound up being a really good team.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so your book Becoming Unstoppable, I’d love to hear more about that. If we’re not already unstoppable, how do we become unstoppable?

Gina Osborn
So, we’re still working on the book. However, I’m an executive coach, and I coach people on how to lead through chaos, crises, and change, because so many times, when we’re looking at, say, chaos, for example. And, really, what is that? That’s the nagging little things that are coming up all the time, and we just are on overload because we’re looking at so many emails, and we’re getting so many phone calls, and COVID, and you’ve got family problems, you’ve got all of these things.

And so, when I talk to people about chaos, the first thing I say is, “What are you tolerating?” Because the more you tolerate, the more chaos you’re going to have in your life. So, when I’m working with my clients, I have them make a list of all of the little nagging things. These aren’t the monumental relationship problems because we can work on those a little bit later, but if you just identify the little, the energy zappers, the annoying things, the things that are keeping you from getting to where you want to be.

And then, just for example, you have boxes in the garage, and you know they need to be unpacked, so every time you pull into the garage, you’re thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to unpack those boxes,” or the leaky faucet in the kitchen. That’s another thing that every time you walk into the kitchen, you’re confronted with this leaky faucet. Well, take a couple of hours on a Saturday, have the kids unpack the boxes, call a plumber to fix the kitchen, and then every time you go into the garage, in the kitchen, you’re going to feel that sense of relief, right?

So, if you do that and you start really eliminating these tolerations, you’d be so surprised at how much space that you have to deal with your priorities and getting down the road to where you want to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really interesting. So, things like unpack boxes and dripping faucets can, indeed, impede our ability to move forward on what matters. So, you’re saying the best move isn’t just try to ignore them and hunker down on your priorities, but rather, first, address them.

Gina Osborn
Yes. And when you address enough of them, and you find that you’ve got this extra space, you’re going to be able to see chaos coming from around the corner, and then you’re going to be able to prevent it before it gets into your life.

I can’t stand it when I’m not getting the ball down the field. That’s my place where it just drives me nuts when things come up and I have to deal with other things. And then, all of a sudden, I’m dealing with so many things that I’m not even thinking about getting the ball down the field. But that, if we actively just eliminate the things that we’re tolerating.

And these can also be relationships that we have, they can be arguments that we have with our friends, or our family members, or our significant others that are never going to be won, so why are we even bringing up someone leaving milk glasses around or someone not picking up their dirty laundry or something like that? It’s like why are we having these arguments that we know that are never going to be resolved?

So, I think there’s so much room for us to get rid of that clutter. And once we get rid of that clutter, that’s when we get closer to becoming unstoppable because it’s not the little things that are going to trip us up. We’re going to be prepared for when the big things come down the pike that we’re going to get over or around or under that wall, but no matter what, we’re going to get through that wall.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you say it’s not going to be resolved, so let’s not just have this argument, what does that look like in practice?

Gina Osborn
It’s about setting boundaries, and that’s another thing that we need to do in our relationships. Because when you set boundaries, that means we’re going to create a safe place around us to work and live. And, also, it teaches people how to treat us. So, if we know that every time we decide to go down this road, that’s a trigger for an argument, let’s not go down that road. Let’s just agree that this is never going to be resolved. Otherwise, we’re just going to be wasting our time.

So, really, it’s about time management and really recognizing what’s going to get fixed and what if it doesn’t get fixed. Okay, so you leave the milk glasses out. All right. Well, maybe I’m doing something that’s bothering you, and then you can clean up after me in other places. But I think if we just let these unresolved issues just continue to grow, it’s just going to, again, zap our energy and not allow us to get the ball down the field.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess with the milk glass example, you’re freeing yourself from the burden of having that argument repeatedly, and so that mental energy is liberated there. Now, if the milk glasses remain there, and so you’ve got some mental energy drain from seeing them repeatedly. So, is there also sort of an internal mindset shift that occurs there? Or, it seems like, in a way, you’ve eliminated one problem but you still got another.

Gina Osborn
Right. So, you have to make a decision. Either you’re going to pick up the milk glasses and put them in the kitchen or you’re going to argue it, or argue with it. And you have to evaluate, “Is this relationship worth me having to pick these milk glasses up and put them in the kitchen, because this person refuses to do it?”

I mean, maybe it’s just a symptom of a bigger issue. And as we clear out the things that we’re tolerating, we need to evaluate relationships, “Are they working or are they not working? Does it work for you when you see your neighbor, and you’re getting ready to go to work and you’re going to be late because you’re always kind of running late, and then you’ve got a neighbor who wants to talk to you for 20 minutes before they let you out of your driveway?”

So, we just have to set the boundaries so we can choose, “Okay, is this going to be part of my priorities? Is this relationship going to be part of my priorities?” Because if the relationship isn’t going to be part of the priorities, then you don’t have time to spend that 20 minutes with the neighbor. You’re going to have to create some sort of boundary to let them know that this isn’t working for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And so then, that’s interesting because you may decide, “I’m okay having no relationship with my neighbor ever.”

Gina Osborn
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And if it goes to the darkest place in terms of, like, “I’m willing to take that risk when they say, ‘Bob, I’m done with the morning conversations.’”

Pete Mockaitis
So, you start with that intent of clarity in terms of “What’s at stake? What’s the risk? Can I live with that?” and then that gives you some power. But, yes, it sounds like that’s where we’re going to go next is how you have those conversations about setting boundaries effectively.

Gina Osborn
Yes. Well, everything can’t be a priority. So, if you want to have time with your family, you want to get a promotion, you want to spend time with your elderly parents and take care of an elderly parent, where does the neighbor come in on the priority list? And everything can’t be a priority. So, if the neighbor has got to go, then, like I said, you can’t do everything right. And that, again, brings chaos into our lives when we don’t have priorities set and everything is a priority, and so all we’re doing is juggling all day, and that doesn’t make for a good quality of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great. So, we’ve set up some things here such that your overall mental peace and space is in a better place for when crisis does happen. So, when the crisis happens, maybe first can you define that for us, a crisis? How do you recommend we navigate through it?

Gina Osborn
So, before we go there, just remember that if we don’t deal with chaos, it could very well turn into a crisis so we definitely want to know that the importance of getting rid of the chaos before it becomes a crisis, that’s going to help you in the long run. But what is a crisis? So, a crisis can be anything from a death of a family member, illness, it could be a divorce, it could be any major change, anything that happens at work. If we’re watching the news, there are so many cyber attacks that are happening. That would be considered a crisis as well.

And I’ve had to deal with a lot of these crises between my time in the military as well as my time in the FBI. And so, whenever something major would happen, the first thing I would do is set priorities. First, I want to hear about everything, of course, what’s happening, everything that everybody has, give it to me as the leader. But then I need to set priorities.

And those priorities can change but at least there’s got to be some sort of roadmap out there that, “This is what we’re going to follow until there’s a change.” Now, as new information comes in, you need to be flexible and you need to be able to change with that. It’s also important to have a great team with you. Whenever I would have a crisis, the last person that I would want on my team is somebody who is going to be zapping us of our energy, somebody who would be complaining, somebody who wouldn’t be working as hard as everybody else. So, you definitely want to choose a good team around you to deal with the crisis and eliminate anything that’s getting in your way of going down the road to getting your priorities checked.

And then it’s just working every day and keeping your eye on the ball and getting through it. I think a lot of time, people maybe give up before the crisis is dealt with but, sometimes, we don’t have that luxury. But a lot of times, people will grieve for a very, very long time because they choose not to deal with the crisis. So, I think when there’s a crisis, or I know when there’s a crisis, setting priorities, having a good team, having a roadmap to get to the end of dealing with a crisis, and also knowing what success looks like so that there can be an end to what this crisis is.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so then, when it comes to the setting of priorities, how do you recommend we arrive at them? Like, are there some key questions or a thought process that you go through?

Gina Osborn
Well, my crisis would be different than other people’s crisis, but if you look at what the crisis is and, really, identify, “Okay, again, what does success look like? Where are we going with this? Are we going to be mired in the crisis until it chews it up and spits it out? Or, how do we get out of it or evolve out of what’s happening now?” So, really, that’s where the priorities come in, and setting those priorities of, “Okay, we’re going to do X, Y, and Z. And this is what we’re going to do until this time.” It’s very important to know where you’re going as opposed to just being stuck into an undertow of a crisis.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess what’s tricky about a crisis is that there could be very well be dozens of directions that feel kind of urgent all at once. So, maybe could you walk us through an example of, hey, crisis appeared, and here’s how you arrived at the priorities, and what they were?

Gina Osborn
Sure. So, with Sony Pictures Entertainment, looking at, “Okay, we have this crisis because we’ve got a company that’s on American soil that has been attacked by an adversary, a nation state. That is a problem. Okay, what do we know? So, send people out, get the team together, identify who’s going to be on this team, who has the skills to be able to identify who did it,” because that’s what the FBI does is they conduct the investigation.

Also, we had to be mindful as to what was going on with the victim company because, I think, 47,000 – someone will have to check my math – employees and former employees, all their information, their Social Security numbers, privately owned everything was out there in the wind. So, now you have a workforce that’s been victimized so we had to address that by giving presentations about identity theft, and also having great…there is a huge media push, wanting to know what was going on, what happened to Sony, all of this information was coming out about every three days, it was posted to Pastebin by the adversary, so that was going on. So, really, understanding what success looked like as far as helping the victim get through it. And then working every day to conduct the investigation so that we can identify who did it and bring those people to justice.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you’re in the midst of things and if you find yourself freaking out, how do you return to calm and collected and wise?

Gina Osborn
Well, as a leader, you can’t really freak out because the biggest way to lose trust with your team is through unpredictable behavior. So, if you are going to be leading a crisis, it is very important for you to maintain your people’s trust and confidence by keeping a cool and level head, and really leading. But there are times, in the middle of a crisis, that people are going to get tired, and that’s why it’s so important to have a good team around you.

If you’re going through a divorce, if you’re dealing with an illness, different things can happen within a family, making sure you have that team. A lot of people are fearful or they’re embarrassed or they’re ashamed in reaching out to other people to ask for help. I don’t know about you, Pete, but whenever somebody is going through a problem and they ask me for my help, I am honored to help them out with the problem. And I think a lot of people feel that way, so people shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help because if you’re going through something very, very difficult, you don’t have to do it alone. Get a team around you that’s going to help you through that crisis, and that’s very, very important.

So, whenever I would get tired, I mean, I had other leaders that I work with, and they were doing a great job, so, really, that’s why you have a great team around you because sometimes you can’t throw the punches every day. Sometimes you got to sit down and rest for a minute, and that’s why you have a good team around you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we talked about the chaos, we talked about the crisis. Now, how about change?

Gina Osborn
Change is inevitable. Change is going to happen. And I’ve worked with some clients who have a very, very strong culture and tradition, and their workforce is resistant to change. In fact, I dealt with it myself when I was with the FBI, especially after 9/11. How do you go from being a criminal investigative organization to a national security intelligence gathering organization? We went from investigators to intelligence collectors almost overnight. And so, how do you take a workforce that were working gangs and drugs and organized crime and bank robberies, and tell them that they’re going to work terrorism now?

So, I definitely got an education because I was counterterrorism coordinator in Los Angeles after 9/11, and we had to create 15 terrorism squads within like an 18-month period. And so, really trying to enlist people and giving them ownership and being part of the change, that’s going to break down the resistance as opposed to saying, “This is how we’re going to do it,” and then do it. I don’t think…it has to come from the top down. I think it has to be very collaborative when you’re trying to turn the ship, do a U-turn on a great big ship, and it doesn’t come overnight.

But people are going to be resistant to change and, again, it comes with communication, “How can I communicate this change? How can I get people involved? How can we give them ownership in having this change take place?” And I think the more people who are involved, the more it’s going to be an easier change for people. But, yeah, when you’re steep in culture and tradition, it’s very difficult to change, but it can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you’re having some of those communications in one-on-one or in small groups, and trying to bring about some additional ownership, do you have any favorite approaches or phrases? What do those conversations look, sound, feel like?

Gina Osborn
Oh, boy, my favorite military phrases. “This isn’t a volunteer army,” sometimes. It just depends on what situation you’re in. But I think it’s really important as a leader to understand why there’s resistance because sometimes resistance, I mean, most of the time resistance is going to be fear-based. So, they don’t understand it, maybe they don’t think it needs to happen, maybe they’re afraid that with the change comes other responsibilities that the employee may not feel that they’re going to be able to do.

So, I think really understanding where the resistance is coming from and addressing those issues. Okay, so perhaps it’s a training issue, so bring training in and talk about it. Talk about what the change is going to look like, and talk about the reason for the change. If that’s communicated, I think people, “Okay, I understand that so maybe I’ll get on board.” But it is a process. If you’re in a resistant workforce to make change, but change can happen but you have to be consistent with it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Gina Osborn
If anybody is looking to eliminate chaos from their life, for your audience, Pete, I have a free e-book called 7 Key Ways to Eliminate Chaos From Your Life and From Your Business. And if they go to GinaLOsborn.com, they can
download that e-book for free.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Gina Osborn
Okay, I’m going to modify it a little bit, “She who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.” And that’s a modified quote from Albert Einstein.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Gina Osborn
I’m learning patience. I’m still a work in progress but I think I’m a big believer in embracing your weaknesses because your imperfections are what make you extraordinary. So, yes, these days I’m kind of working on patience a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Gina Osborn
I like to play. I definitely like to play. I like to write. I like to fly kites. Any playful things, I just really enjoy doing. Letting the little Gina inside me go out and have fun. That’s always good.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you again and again?

Gina Osborn
You know, it’s funny, yes. My dream when I went into the military was to work for the CIA, and I didn’t get into the CIA, and it was devastating to me. But I had to figure something else out, so I like to say that even if your ship comes in, if your port is not built, your ship is not going to come in to where you need to be. So, you definitely need to work on your port to make sure that you’re prepared for when your ship comes in. So, yeah, I’m a big believer in that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Gina Osborn
I would say you can listen to me on my podcast. It’s called Lead Like a Lady. And it features remarkable women who have made it to the top in male-dominated fields. And I also have another podcast called Behind the Crime Scene, which is a true crime podcast. You can find those on your favorite podcast provider. And I’m also an executive coach. And for more information about that, you can go to GinaLOsborn.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Gina Osborn
I would say lead authentically. Be who you are. Embrace whatever things that you’re really good at and don’t take on the leadership characteristics of other people just because you want to lead like they do. It’s so important to really embrace who you are and to lead authentically because you really can’t fake it to make it when you’re in a leadership position because people will notice that right off the bat. You’re not going to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes.

But when you lead authentically and you really rely on the things that you’re really good at, no matter what it is, do an assessment and find out what your strengths are, if you rely on those things and make it your contribution using your leadership skills, and lead like an authentic leader, I think you’re going to be much better down the road.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Gina, thanks for this, and I wish you lots of luck in the crises to come.

Gina Osborn
Thank you very much, Pete.