What Nature Teaches Us About Leadership
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“The ultimate misunderstanding, the ultimate existential misunderstanding in our world today is that we are disconnected, that we are individuals.” – Kelly Wendorf
In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author, motivational speaker and Equus CEO Kelly Wendorf on how understanding nature can inform better leadership.
A few reasons why she is awesome — she is an ICF Master certified coach. She’s an author, motivational speaker and founding partner and CEO of Equus, an innovative self-mastery discovery and leadership development organization. She has worked with a few organizations we’ve all heard of, including Amazon and Microsoft, and her book is certainly one worth checking out, Flying, Lead, Change – 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living.
https://youtu.be/oqDU5LAbphA
Connect with Kelly and learn more about her work…
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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Kelly Wendorf and here is why she is awesome. She is an ICF Master certified coach. She’s an author, motivational speaker and founding partner and CEO of Equus, an innovative self-mastery discovery and leadership development organization. She has worked with a few organizations we’ve all heard of, including Amazon and Microsoft, and her book is certainly one worth checking out, Flying Lead… Flying, Lead, Change, comma, comma, comma. 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living. Hello Kelly.
Kelly Wendorf: Hi Russel. Nice to be with you. Hi to all your listeners. Good to be in your company.
Russel Lolacher: You as well. I think we’re both waking up this morning. Got a…
Kelly Wendorf: We are.
Russel Lolacher: We have a balance of the caffeine. We have a balance of the the adrenaline of just doing a podcast is always nice, but it’s still a mix of energies for sure. Kelly, you’re not off the hook. I asked the question.
I ask all of my guests because I’m super curious about our topic today. We’re getting into nature and how it influences us to be better leaders. And I think we’re all looking for ways to improve. But before we get anywhere there, the question I have to ask you is, what is your Kelly Best or worst employee experience?
Kelly Wendorf: You know, I just loved that question, Russel, because as I told you before we started recording it, it opened up this entire story, which I think is worth sharing. So. I’m gonna share my worst experience as a employee. I was in fact this experience was the reason why I started working for myself and vowed never, ever to be an employee again.
But it also shaped, you know, my desire to be a better leader and manager to people because it was, you know, it was actually quite traumatic. So I was fresh outta college. I’ve been recruited by the CEO of a, a radio station in Dallas, Texas to be head of marketing. Now, a I was way too young to have any business being head of marketing.
But the the, the gentleman who would be my boss, was, had come from a very large market and he, I think he thought it was gonna be a cakewalk in little old Dallas, Texas and that he could get me on the cheap. And and he was, diabolical and I, I use that word very specifically. He was cruel.
Yeah. I mean he was cruel. The kind of personality that liked to pull wings off flies, you know, that kind of very dark. Personality and as as often happens when you get caught up with someone like that, you think it’s you. So you know his cruelty. I, I mean, I would sort of see it elsewhere, but I really thought that.
On some level, I deserved it. And you know, he, he drove me very hard. And, and he was unkind and, and unfair. And and so when you asked me that question or told me that we were gonna have this question at the beginning, I thought, God, where is he? Where did what’s happened to him? So I, of course went to Google and he’s since passed away, but.
Somebody wrote a stinging eulogy. He’s quite a famous person, so I’m not gonna go too far, but and the person who wrote the stinging eulogy was none other than Howard Stern. Okay. Now you know, Howard Stern is you? Yeah. Anyway, we all know his dark humor and his dark, you know, just Howard Stern.
Howard Stern used to work for this gentleman. And said that he was by far the cruelest person he had ever worked for. And that, and I’m reading this two weeks ago, right? So this, this was a long time ago that I worked for this man, and Howard Stern said this was someone who delighted in the suffering of others.
And it was so like h go figure that I would get a healing moment from Howard Stern. Right. I felt validated. I felt seen. I felt like, wow. Yeah, I really did, you know, engage in someone that had these kind of cruel power over tactics and just that validation, just kind of, you know, it, it gave some closure to that event, so, so thank you for the question.
Russel Lolacher: We’re here for therapy as well. I totally understand. I get it.
Kelly Wendorf: Right. Where’s the line of therapy and leadership? I can’t find it.
Russel Lolacher: Two things. Two things. Thank you for sharing that story. Two things come up for me in that one, how horrible of a. Leader and boss, you have to be to have somebody. Eulogize, how horrible a human being. So it wasn’t just your experience, it was their career. That was their journey was to be horrible. And that high profile, to be that high profile from Howard Stern as, as as people who have had bad bosses.
Many of us don’t get the megaphone publicly that you got to have everybody know how horrible that person was. The other piece for me is that how young you were. And if you enter the workforce, or at least mid-career, early, mid-career, and you’re too young for your role, but you really don’t have experience, that’s your normal, you don’t realize that that is not how it’s supposed to be.
You think, you know what? I’m in this role. Maybe these are the dues I’m supposed to pay. This is the experience I’m supposed to have in order to be successful in this environment. It’s all bullshit. And yet, as.
Kelly Wendorf: right.
Russel Lolacher: So what, what was the trigger for you? It was just sort of you going, okay, this never again. ’cause you said you were quite young, so did you start your own entrepreneurial existence right outta the gate?
From there…
Kelly Wendorf: You know, so, and just a third thing to add to this list and Thank you. I just think that’s really impor, it’s important to hear because our position as leaders is, you know, it’s, it’s a position of power. On, on tons of levels, not just organizationally, right? Psychologically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, relationally that someone like that with a career of cruelty rose to such levels of power and, and and, you know, was lionized in his, in his domain and it’s like, wow.
You know, good leadership isn’t often rewarded. What’s often rewarded and celebrated is quite the opposite. Right. And what’s that about? I mean, I’m very curious about that. So, so I remember after like, you know, some, you know, after a dozen working until 3:00 AM you know, moments calling a friend and I, I had started to become sick and I’m in this I’m 24.
I’m in a high rise apartment corner office with windows being paid way more than like any of my friends, let alone any of my older friends. And it’s sort of like this gilded cage and I’ve got ulcers and I’m, you know, depressed and I’m on the phone with this friend saying, Ugh, what, what am I gonna do?
What am I gonna do? And I, I just didn’t see my way out, which is interesting ’cause there was such a way out and he just said, you know. If you could do anything in the world, just imagine it for a moment, what you know, what would you do? And I said I’d move back to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I’m from, and I would start a, a horse training facility and a riding school.
And just the dream of that was like this little, it kind of like a little positive virus that just like went into my nervous system and within a week I was, you know. Dismantling my life and, and moving out to New Mexico and, and starting my own business. So, you know, also sometimes these darker forces in our life can be, you know, these disruptors, so to speak.
Even if it’s terrible, these crises can be such an instigator for change. So, you know, thank you.
Russel Lolacher: And, and, and I mean that’s the thing is like, and it’s so funny ’cause as I’ve asked this question over the years, a lot of it is trauma. They’re not bad experiences. They’re not oh, I had a bad day. They’re always from 20 to 30 years ago. And it’s something people have at the top of their mind and they immediately can jump all over.
I’m like, that is trauma that you’ve been carrying with you. That is not just, Ooh, I wish it had been better. So that easily segues us into the conversation we’re having today. So looking at that, looking at how bad leadership is rewarded and let’s not get ourselves It is. And it is. And it is ’cause people reward delivery.
They reward the what? Not the how, and because the peop, the leaders above them. Are not curious enough, don’t ask enough questions or don’t care because they’re getting what they want. ’cause they’re bad leaders so they reward. It’s an ecosystem problem. So when I say words like ecosystem, I think nature, I think the world we live in.
How have you seen from your research and your own understanding of nature and the world we live in be different or align with that way of thinking?
Kelly Wendorf: So, so, you know, part of the bounce off place where I started to part with conventional corporate culture, you know, with thanks to this gentleman it, it spurred a question in me that was. What conditions need to be in place to ensure a culture, a system, a person can thrive? What are those conditions?
Because I had experienced what those, what conditions created the opposite. And, and just a kind of little non sequitur, but you referred to, you know, sometimes it’s not the how, it’s just the what, like getting that thing accomplished. But I would also argue because trauma is so pervasive, there’s a lot of internalized.
Oppression that we have in our body, that even if we see someone who is sort of sociopathic in nature, there’s this internalized oppression part of ourselves that partners with that or celebrates that we may not want to, it’s subconscious, but I think as long as we’re not aware of the way we internalize these things.
These forms of power start to, you know, they still come to the fore, they’re still celebrated, they’re still honored, or at the very least they’re just excused. So, so this question, you know, what are the conditions led me to you know, I had this riding school and, and it was very successful and, it.
And it put me in an environment where I was sort of front and center of this question because I wanted my students to thrive. I wanted my horses to thrive. And I’m not saying like I did it perfectly. I mean, I made a lot of mistakes ’cause I was young and you know, I’d never done my own business before, but I started to see that there were certain. Elements lining up that helped my students to thrive. They would, you know, do better at school or get along better with their siblings, or if they were adults, they were getting out of that toxic marriage or they were starting a new business of their own. And, and so that became very interesting to me and it became more interesting to me than running a riding school.
So I, I. I let go of this school, went around the world, did a lot of, a lot of exploring and self-exploration, but also just kind of being a student of the world. And again, and again and again, the, the arrows pointed to either the natural world or those systems that honor the natural world, like indigenous wisdom.
That these were the places where people were thriving, systems were thriving. And you know, our colonized worldview kind of dismisses nature and a little bit, you know, may romanticize indigenous cultures or kind of dismiss it as kind of quaint, but you are looking at. 3.8 billion years of evolutionary intelligence.
The natural world has so much heft in terms of longevity and in terms of how it prototypes and when things aren’t working, it’ll dump it. It’ll dump those systems, you know, species will go extinct, species that are kind. Evolving and, and, and figuring out the way to do it correctly are the ones that survive.
And, and so this became very interesting to me and and, and, and largely informed so much of my work. So if you were to ask a 3.8 billion year old system, what is the. What is the optimal way to lead? It has to do with a power, with paradigm of leadership rather than a power over. Systems that work in concert with each other where there’s where there are mutualisms and symbiosis and, and partnerships, these systems thrive and systems that are more parasitic, more power over, they tend not to have as much longevity.
And so it’s really interesting. Darwin, the word he used the most in his research, which most people don’t know is the word love. He didn’t use, you know, survival of the fittest. That was just a big distortion. So if we were to model our leadership after a 50, a 3.8 billion year old system and learn from those systems and, and look to nature in a biomimetic, lens, you know, what can we learn from life? What can we learn from leadership? We would learn things that both validate our intrinsic desire for connection and cooperation and and also validate our intrinsic capacity to care. And we would see that that was very powerful. So I said a lot just there.
Russel Lolacher: No. Yeah, there’s a few things I wanna jump in there. And one thing you mentioned was, and it had kept coming in my mind, is that. Misunderstanding of survival of the fittest. Because if you think about it how many movies from the eighties, like, you know, wall Street and all these things was all about make as much money as you can crush as many enemies as you can.
It was all about the hustle, the money, the power, but it was always gone back to nature, right? The strongest survive, the, the weakest of the herd will be weeded out. That’s where a lot of people will think nature really is what we’re talking about here. So. Besides getting that quote wrong by Charles Darwin, what are we getting wrong when we think about how we operate?
Kelly Wendorf: Oh, that’s such a big question. Well, I think. The ultimate misunderstanding, the ultimate existential misunderstanding in our world today is that we are disconnected, that we are individuals. So little bit of anthropology, archeology here you know, humans, 200,000 years depending on where you put the, the needle. 6,000 years ago, we shifted from a primarily power with partnership model of society that recognized not just intellectually, but a felt sense of our co-mingling and kinship with the natural world. We parted with that. And when into nature can’t be trusted. She has to be controlled. We are individuals.
We’re separate. It’s like this fear-based. And there’s a lot of, you know, kind of questioning as to what made that split happen 6,000 years ago. And there’s some evidence that points to a series of cataclysmic events that happened on earth, you know, climate change and drought and volcanoes.
And tsunamis. And so if you think about it from a human’s point of view, in those days, and we didn’t have internet or news, we couldn’t see that. You know, there’s a tsunami here, but there’s not a tsunami in the country next door. It just seems like suddenly nature has turned against us in a very, very significant and sudden way.
And this all sort of started happening in the fertile Crescent area, you know, of the Middle East and. We went, we sort of collectively felt a trauma, a historic trauma that was very significant that said, whoa, we can’t trust nature. And you know what? We can’t trust each other at all. And so now we have to go to war with each other and we have to fight for lands and we have to kill each other and we have to control nature and, and that.
Assumption that we’re disconnected and not connected to nature, and that nature is dangerous, I think is the fundamental misunderstanding that now informs, you know, all so many dimensions of human life, parenting our institutions, how we lead, how we run our organizations, just like you said, Wolf on Wall Street.
Like we have this distorted idea of what power is. And in order to kind of shift that paradigm, we have to make a very deep fundamental shift of our understanding of our belonging to all of life. And, and, and then that translates into some very, very practical ways that we apply that into how we lead our organizations.
Russel Lolacher: So why I think that’s the bigger question too, is. Because you’re talking very big concepts here. We’re talking, I mean, how can you not, when you’re talking 56 million to billions of years of evolution and ecosystems and how we interlock, but I’m also thinking, well, are we talking about animals? Are we talking about indigenous people?
Are we talking about the ecosystem? Like it feels really hard to go, okay, as a leader listening to this, what do I grasp onto? ’cause there’s so much diversity even within that scope, much less the diversity we deal with every day. So you focus on the horse herd as a large way of informing. So I wanna kind of bring it down to relatability a bit because I think people might just not know where to hook their teeth into, for lack of a better metaphor.
How does that translate into better leadership?
Kelly Wendorf: Well, so you know precisely for the reasons you’re talking about. You know, where could we go to a more, to a more centralized place to learn some of these lessons And of, because I was you know, immersed in horses and horse culture and horse, everything. I started to learn from the way. They did things and, and see the outcomes of that.
So I’ll kind of be wide and then take it into more pra how this translates into our daily life as a leader, as a human being. The horse is one of the most successful mammals on the planet. Second only to the platypus 56 million years. Okay? So they’ve been around a really long time. What is it about this species that has ensured their success?
So remember my question. What are the conditions that need to be in place to help us to thrive as a company? Let’s just take it there. Well, let’s look to a system that has already done that. Let’s be scientists and look where is there a system that has ensured its longevity and success in thriving? The horse system is an interesting one to look to primarily because of their success and their mammals like we are.
The reason for their success has to do with their culture, and you could call it their organizational, organizational culture. And that culture focus on focuses on key five key, let’s say values or principles. And those key values are safety, connection, peace, freedom, and joy. And the leader of the herd is the one who’s selected.
They don’t appoint themselves. They don’t go, Hey, I’m the best and I’m the be biggest and brightest. They are selected by the herd, based on their ability to keep those five principles intact. And so they do it through care and presence, not dominance and force like we’ve been taught to believe in the Hollywood, you know, stories.
So check it out. We’ve got a 56 million year old system that has been successful because of principles of safety, connection, peace, freedom and joy. So how if I were to take that little model, that little framework, and embed it into my leadership style, how can I help my people to feel safe? How can I support connection?
How can I cultivate joy in the workplace? And peace and freedom? Freedom to fail, freedom to choose, freedom to try things out. Enough safety that I have, freedom to prototype things or to ask what I think might be stupid questions. These are very, very tangible principles that actually do ensure.
The wellbeing of an organization or a team. So before I started writing about this, I, I decided to play with it. You know, let, let’s just see, does this work? And, you know, these are fairly lofty attributes to strive for, but you know, you see these kinds of words on posters over the water cooler, right?
Russel Lolacher: Don’t get started on values posters, but yes, go on.
Kelly Wendorf: That is posters, right? So, you know, and, and they’re not just sort of theories for the head, like, how do I embody safety so that when, when I walk into a room, the impact I have on others is that they feel safe. We’re talking real mastery here. That’s a sort of lifelong endeavor. And, and we strive very much at e equ at my coaching organization to embody these principles.
Some days we do really well. Some days we really suck at it, but we get to fail and fail forward, right? We get to learn from those places and what’s not showing up. So it’s, excuse me.
Russel Lolacher: All good.
Kelly Wendorf: So it’s a way of, it’s a way of life. You know, it’s not just something that we put on when we walk into the office. This is a, this is a way of life.
Because if I’m gonna embody, say the principle of safety, it has to be embodied. Or I’m invited to embody it when I’m at home with my kids, with my friends. And yeah, it becomes a kind of lifelong, you know. Way of moving forward. So care and presence as a leadership style is, is very different than domination force, charisma, you know, being leading, leading ahead, being at the front of the line.
You know, there’s a whole, there’s a, it’s, it’s a very, it, it creates an environment where people. Want to do the best that they can. Yeah. Go ahead.
Russel Lolacher: I was just gonna, so listen, of course, listening, care, presence, safety, connection, peace, freedom, joy, I, I’m, I’m paying attention. All really, really important. However, it feels like they’re all values. ’cause a lot of these are words that people put, like you said, on a poster and then never talk about it again.
Or it’s on a website to promote how the web they are. Is this replacing existing values that organizations already perpetuate, or is this a supportive framework for what already exists? I just, I see these words and I think, oh, well, those, those are values, those are things that we should embrace. But there’s a lot of organizations that are already sitting here going, but Kelly, I have eight values already.
Those aren’t, those aren’t my values.
Kelly Wendorf: I would say they’re kind of, that’s a great question. I would say they’re meta qualities that inform the values. So let’s say an organization has a value of accountability, right? Well, accountability is until I’m able to create conditions of, of safety and peace, accountability is not gonna happen if you’ve got, let’s just use the safety as one of them.
If you’ve got an organizational culture where people aren’t. Living into the experience of creating safety for themselves and others, then, then people’s brains aren’t gonna be in an optimal state to create accountability. And so what you’ll find is that and their embodiments, whereas values can kind of be and this is just my, this is just my framework, but values can be things that we go, oh yes.
And it’s sort of mental. Yes, I align with that. That feels right, you know, that. That seems like a good thing for us to aspire to and let’s all be accountable and, and those are terrific, but how do we, what do we embody so we can bring those values forward? So I would call them meta states. Let’s just call them that.
Meta states that inform the things we wanna get done. So for example, our, you know, one of the, the tenets of our business is to be very, very high touch to make sure that from the moment somebody contacts our company to the moment they leave, you know, engaging with our company, they feel cared for, they feel like we have a attention to every detail of their engagement with us.
It’s the embodiment of these principles that allow us. To to do that and be present to that and accomplish it. So does that answer the question?
Russel Lolacher: It does. I, I also like that you highlight and I talk about this a lot, is that leadership’s a journey not as to inform the destination. It isn’t just the destination. Because when we get back to the problem we talked about earlier, which is all about the deliverable, not the way in which, or how we got to that deliverable, so.
Understanding care is being much like a mother, much like a father, a parental energy figure who’s bringing somebody through the journey while they’re within their care because, you know, as they move somewhere else. But that brings me also back to conflict. ’cause I’ve seen enough David Attenborough and enough, you know, wide, you know, the, the, the National Geographics were conflict when it comes to those.
Animal nature systems, they’re a little violent, Kelly, so I’m what?
Kelly Wendorf: Nature’s tough. Well, so that is a great question because let’s, you know, people often they’ll look at, say, let’s, let’s look at a horse hurt. And they’ll look at some of the, like clashing that can happen or where a horse will be really fierce with another horse and say, move out of the way. You need to move out of the way.
And, and it’s hard for humans to hold this paradox of where, wait, what does that have to do with care and presence? Well care from a natural point of view has to do with being connected, showing up, and being willing to challenge. We have to be willing to challenge, so care is just absolutely toothless if we’re not willing to challenge, and challenge is completely unconstructive if it doesn’t come with care.
So, so part of the care paradigm is just like a parent, you know, disciplining, having clear boundaries, having the hard conversations, right. But all with a you know, all with a sense of caring for the whole. That this has to serve the whole not, and not just individual interest. So there’s a very robust dimension to this care and presence that is uncompromising, strong, clear.
I mean, if a, if a male horse. Is not behaving in a way that works for the herd in care of everybody’s thriving. That horse is not allowed to be inside the herd until he can figure it out. And that’s just the deal. And he may die. He may. Right? And so, in a power with paradigm there is. Plenty of room for that kind of robustness.
But what happens is that very often people conflate conflict with power over that conflict has to be dominance over win lose. Right, right, wrong.
Russel Lolacher: So there’s one of your principles, your meta principles, that I feel like it might butt up against a lot of this, which is freedom, because how that’s defined by people. Because you’re talking about, well, you know, if you don’t play well with the team, then you’re gonna be ostracized until you play well with others.
And that ostracized persons like. You’re, you’re taking away my freedom. You are taking away my ability to show up as my full self.
Kelly Wendorf: Yes.
Russel Lolacher: So how do those butt up against each other when you’re trying to work as a unit versus that diversity and people’s differing definitions of what freedom is.
Kelly Wendorf: So remember that understanding that we are all connected. So freedom without that understanding, you know, is just. Anarchy, you know, that my, you know, everything I do has an impact on others. Everything I do. And so yes, I’m, I am free. And that freedom comes with responsibility, that recognizes that we are all connected. Right. And so a lot of folks get this freedom thing a little bit confused because they think about their individual freedom. There is no individual scientifically, you can’t find where my molecules end and your molecules begin. There is no individual, you know, and that idea that there’s an individual is the original lie that creates so much mass.
And I get to have my uniqueness, but my uniqueness is within this field of interconnectivity and kinship, right? So it’s a, it’s a rather esoteric edge, and yet it’s not, because if you look at the neuroscience, right, and you look at the biology, you see that this is, so, it’s just that our brains have been so, conditioned.
To see an individual self that has some, you know, as if somehow I had a cocoon around me and whatever I do has no impact on you. Right? So it’s always back to care for the whole.
Russel Lolacher: How do you talk to a leader? And I put air quotes on this because leadership’s not, you know, leadership is defined very differently, but organization to organization, how do you talk to them when they’re all celebrating newness, they’re celebrating innovation, they’re celebrating ai, they’re celebrating, like it’s all about the new and the shiny when you’re talking about.
57 million years of evolution and they’re like, but that’s, looking back, we wanna look forward. It’s such a paradigm shift for how they approach the dollar, the the next steps. So what are you saying to them to sort of make them rethink this?
Kelly Wendorf: Well, first of all, you know, I think it’s important when you’re teaching new ideas or new concepts, not to polarize with where people are because it’s not that the newness and innovation. Is wrong. And it’s not that the newness and innovation are polar opposites of the ancient and the tried and tested and true.
In fact, they’re, they’re complimentary pairs. So how can. Having a biomimetic, that’s a very fancy word. It simply means looking at life, you know, biomimicry means, you know, we look to life in living systems to help us solve modern problems. So how does a biomimetic point of view help to create a more robust, innovative process?
What happens to ai? In fact, if AI starts to learn from 3.8 billion years of evolutionary intelligence, now that you know, and not just source information from humans, which is a very, very new, you know, I mean, hu humans haven’t been on the planet for that long, so what happens there? And so it’s an invitation to turn it into a complimentary pair so that these bright, new, shiny things are even better. What more could we add to this trajectory, right?
Russel Lolacher: But we don’t have influence over entire organizations. So as a leader, I’ve can model and I can influence my team. I can look to nature as, you know, models for that as a horse herd going, okay, I’m this role within the hor to to, but there we’re also working in environments. That completely disagree with this.
They completely work in other ways. So we have ecosystems butting up against other ecosystems. Where where do we approach that if we’re trying to think differently and yet and
Kelly Wendorf: Yes. Yeah, that’s a beautiful question. Just like the natural world, right? We have ecosystems in the natural world that are. Thriving and doing very well and practicing different PRI principles, if you could put it that way that are working. And you know, like you look at mushroom colonies and how they can collaborate to.
Clean up water, you know, clean up ocean, ocean toxicity. So you have these systems in nature that are really inspiring and doing amazing work. And then you have these other systems that are like, Hmm, I, we wonder how long that species is gonna last for. Right. And. And I often think about that because the organizations that come and work with me and the leaders who come and work with me privately, you know, then go back into these larger meta systems that are, you know, power over or quite toxic.
And so, there’s two things I think about with respect to that. One is. You know, we do, we, we live this way and lead this way because it’s in alignment with who we are. So we do it for us, right? So I may be in a whole toxic suit, but I’m gonna show up as the leader. I know I can be in spite of what’s happening because it feels right to me and it feels congruent to me.
Sometimes we can a little bit Trojan horse, our approach and get in there and start to positively inform and inspire others. And just by modeling, just simply by modeling. And sometimes sadly, they clash and you know. The team that is, is operating in a more toxic manner, just isn’t gonna work with the team that’s operating in a, in a less toxic manner.
And, and that’s just sort of the rub of where we find ourselves right now. And so I just encourage people to stay in alignment with these things that resonate with them for its own sake. And it’s kind of not your business, whether it does or doesn’t have positive impact on the others, just you shine like a beacon and be you and model you, and hopefully that has positive influence on others.
Russel Lolacher: I like what you said in there too about to be blunt, curiosity, because as we look to other systems, not every system is gonna work where you work. It has, it has those principles that you’re talking about. But if we’re to. About interconnectivity because you can’t work in a vacuum. Even when you’re modeling, you’re still gonna have influences on you that you do not like, you do not want, but you still gotta work there.
So looking at different systems in nature to see what might work better for you. Maybe it’s a horse herd, maybe it’s a completely different, you know, plants of how they work together with photosynthesis. And so I’m not science, I’m just throwing things out. Hey.
Kelly Wendorf: I am sorry. We’ve got ranch thing happening. Okay, I got her.
Russel Lolacher: It’s all good. It’s all good, but it, it really reinforces how important it’s to be curious because there isn’t firm and fast answers to this either. There are so many things you could be looking up if we’re talking, me and Kelly are talking and you’re like, horses. I can’t, what, what is that to me? Look at other systems. There are other ways of looking at things.
Kelly Wendorf: Absolutely look at mycelium networks and soil. You know, there’s a whole emerging field that’s very exciting called biomimicry. And you know, there’s a website, actually a friend of mine puts together called Biomimicry for Social Innovation. There are so many. Emerging platforms, frameworks, sub frameworks, and that are, that are showing up from looking to nature and nature systems that are, that are so practical.
I mean really practical and like, oh wow, this is, this is how, you know. A, a bee colony can be so efficient. These are some of the things, and the, and the, the great thing about biomimicry and some of the scientists that are showing up in this field is that they are translating the complex, the complexity of these natural systems and putting them into translatable forms.
For us as leaders, as innovators you know, so that we can, we can practice systems that, that actually work and have just far more, far more better outcomes. I mean, an example of this, I love this story so much, is and this is how biomimicry informs structural engineering. So the Japanese bullet train traveled at like.
Incredible speeds. But they ran into this issue where when the train ran into a tunnel, it hit this, so it would create this sonic boom because. Because of the change in pressure, and this was super disruptive to the neighborhoods where the tunnels were happening. So the scientist looked to nature.
Surely this issue of hurdling at great speeds and changing of pressure. Has happened in nature and they found the king fisher bird, who’s one of the most successful fishers because when he hits the water, he like plummets through the air when he hits the water. No splash, so the fish don’t get scared by him.
So then he’s a great fisherman. So they reshaped the front of the Japanese bullet train to mimic the skull of the kingfisher. What happened? The train went faster. Was more had better fuel economy and no sonic boom.
Russel Lolacher: Love that story. Love
Kelly Wendorf: that a great story?
Russel Lolacher: And it comes back to curiosity and, and I think there’s so much pressure on leaders because, and I’ll go back to you being a 24-year-old, putting in a position that you shouldn’t probably be in, is that we’re so quick to put bums in seats to fill roles rather than the right person in that role because they, we haven’t nurtured them.
We haven’t grown them. To be mature enough to be in the role they’re supposed to be. The thing is, is that when we do that, when those ecosystems of leaders do that, we expect those leaders then to have all the answers. Which we never do and we shouldn’t. As leaders, we should be curious. So I love stories like that because we’re looking at our environment going, I don’t have the answers, but there might be an answer out there that works for me.
If it comes from nature, fantastic. But you can’t just go through life thinking. You have it all, have all the answers. When you really just by nature, can’t.
Kelly Wendorf: You can’t. And another quick story about a team learning that lesson just the other day was here with me and it was a team of eight senior level leaders and they had, they each had a horse and they were getting the horse to go. From one cone to another cone, and we had two people per horse, so it was one on each side and they had to get there together.
Simple enough, not so simple. This is a 1500 pound animal who has ideas of his own, and they had to do it in a way that was non-coercive. Non-manipulative, and non forceful. Right. Well, what they learned through this exercise is that they might drift. But getting feedback from the horse and from the environment allowed them then.
Allowed them then to course correct and then get back on track again. And so the path looked a little zigzaggy, but they got to the cone, but they, they said, wow, it’s not linear. We had to be curious about what was working, what was not working. We had to be willing to make a mistake. We had to be willing to stop and course correct, but it got us there and it got us there.
Well, like back to your, how. We got there. Well, in right relationship to each other, to the project, to the goal, right?
Russel Lolacher: So somebody’s listening to this. I love wrapping it up a little bit with okay, what if I want to dip my toe into this, but you know, I don’t know if I’m ready for the full everything. What would you recommend to someone who’s might be a little skeptical of this, but they want to experiment. They want to maybe see what it looks like to shift their perspective.
What would you recommend is that toe dipped in the water?
Kelly Wendorf: Well, I first would start with where one’s frustration is, you know, where are you frustrated either with your team or yourself or an outcome, because that frustration always signals an opportunity for growth. Frustration is wonderful that way and then. Just be curious. First of all, don’t vilify the frustration.
Don’t vilify what’s going on. It’s just an opportunity to course correct, right? That’s all it is. So then be curious, and I would challenge everyone to look somewhere in the natural world and see how they solve that problem. Just a little thing, a little shift, you know, does it have to do with conservation of energy?
Does it have to do with a mutualism? You see? But just have a look at what it’s modeling and, and just see if there’s something there for you that that might add something different than you would get from the human world. And.
Russel Lolacher: So as an example, I was just curious as an example, when have you been able, like what problems have you found and where did you pull it from?
Kelly Wendorf: Oh, wow. What problems have I found? Okay, so just recently, so, you know, climate change has really impacted this little ranch here in northern New Mexico. We’ve had fires and, and the last couple of monsoons here have been very, we’ve had just violent rains and flash flooding and water. So all the systems we had on this land were actually contributing to making the water run faster and be more damaging and start taking out like fences and gardens.
The feedback was, this isn’t working. The way we’re managing our water is not working. So we, we paused and looked at the way the desert handles water and. How ancient systems handled water and what we found is that you look to some of the Native American people who farmed for 6,000 years here and they did these things called Zuni bowls.
So we were channeling, channeling water off the land that makes it run faster and makes it more dangerous. Zuni bowls, spread it out, slow it down so it can sink in. So we built Zuni bowls on our land, which are kind of like plates with rims, like pasta plates, right? And sure enough, the water would come onto our land, spread out, slow down, sink in.
The trees started growing. The bushes started growing. The butterflies started coming. It was crazy. It was crazy. So this crisis called flooding suddenly became this opportunity to learn something from the ancient world, do it their way. And I mean, not only did the water situation get healed, but we had all these benefits just like the, the Japanese train story, right?
So I get so excited about that. I get so excited.
Russel Lolacher: Love that you, we went, I mean, what better way to end this than on the idea of turning crisis into opportunity and going back to the point that we shouldn’t have all the answers. So if we have these glaringly huge problem in front of us, stop looking internally, start looking externally. ‘Cause that might be the road to the solution.
Kelly Wendorf: Yes, and reframe crisis as simply a disruption point. That is an opportunity to bounce forward evolutionary, right evolutionarily.
Russel Lolacher: Yes.
Kelly Wendorf: You know, it’s, it’s not an opportunity to double down and keep doing things the way you’ve been doing it. It’s an opportunity to be curious and look and see what’s something new that can, you can learn or do.
Russel Lolacher: That is Kelly Wendorf. She is an ICF Master certified coach, author, motivational speaker and founding partner and CEO of Equus, and she’s got a book. Well, if you haven’t been listening, you really need to be checking out this book, Flying, Lead, Change, 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living.
Thank you so much for being here, Kelly.
Kelly Wendorf: Thank you Russel. I loved our conversation.