How to Read the Room and the Hidden Forces at Play

Have you ever walked into a room and felt something you couldn't quite name? A tension, an energy, a sense that something invisible was shaping everything happening around you — and inside you?

What if that feeling wasn't imagination? What if there were hidden forces actively at play in every meeting, every team, every relationship — and most leaders have no idea they're there?

In this episode, Alan Briskin and Mary Gelinas — authors of Space is Not Empty — reveal what those forces are, why they matter more than ever right now, and how developing awareness of them could change the way you lead, collaborate, and make decisions forever.

This one will shift how you see the room you're sitting in right now.

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Transcript

The Invisible Atmosphere At Work

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. This is the podcast for leaders and HR decision makers who want to bring out the best in themselves and others. Every other week, I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep dive conversations about the strategies, insights, and tools that drive personal and organizational success. And in between, I bring you one simple thing: short episodes that deliver practical insights and tips for immediate use. Whether you're here for useful tools or thought-provoking ideas, leading people is your guide to better leadership. Have you ever walked into a meeting and felt something was off before a single word was spoken? Or have you ever sensed that two teams or two people were never going to find common ground, no matter how good the process? And here's a more personal one. When you walk into a room, do people cheer up or do they start looking for the exit? If any of those questions resonated with you or grabbed your attention, then today's conversation is going to give you a whole new way of understanding and seeing what's actually going on beneath the surface in your teams, in your organization, and even in yourself. My guests are Alan Briskin and Mary Jelinis, authors of Space is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Shape Your Life and Our World. What they've uncovered is that the space between people is never empty. It's full of invisible forces that shape how we feel, how we behave, and how we lead. And once you can see those forces, everything changes. So let's get into it. Alan Brisken and Mary Jelinas, welcome to Leading People.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So glad to be here, Jerry. Thank you for the invite.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Thanks, Jerry. Good to be here with you and Mary.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

So you're coming in from which part of the world today?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Uh, let's see, Northern California, and I'm in Northern California, and Alan is in Central California.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Oh wow. I I bet the weather's pretty good there at this time.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Well, it's actually a pouring rain today here.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Oh my God. What a disappointment. Which is great, because we need it. Well, we're going to bring some sunshine to people's lives now during this conversation. So before we talk about your book, um, perhaps please share with my listeners the journey that led you both to where you are today. And were there any epiphany moments along the way? Mary.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Well, thank you, Jerry. Yes, I am a um, how shall I say, a longtime experienced organization development consultant. I've worked in all sectors for decades. And um how Alan and I connected is we were at a conference of the uh Global Learning and Exchange Network. Gosh, this goes back, I think, eight years ago now, where we connected, and I happened upon Alan talking with our dear friend and colleague, David Sibbett, about the history of field theory. And I wasn't part of the conversation, but I was eavesdropping. And as I listened, I did have an epiphany, so it's interesting you use that word. Because as I listened to um Alan talk about his interest in and passion for fields, it was like a lightning bolt went through me. It was kind of a um was like the missing link for all the collaborative work I've done for so many years. And of course, I always tended to the context in which I was working with clients. But this was a new, this was a whole different level of um information that was exciting and new to me. And I just immediately was drawn to Alan and to that conversation. So, Alan.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Thank you, Mary. You know, I think early on you and I talked about the book's title being Revelations. So again, the theme of Epiphany. And uh my background is uh 40 years of uh of a consulting practice uh leadership coach. Uh I was trained, this is back in the early 80s, in um perceiving the unconscious dynamics of groups. And the epiphany there was that there were patterns that were influencing groups uh below consciousness and uh defensiveness, for example, or confrontation and aggression. These were patterns in groups that any individual may not be aware of, but was influencing everyone's behavior. And so the the epiphany here was to be attentive to patterns. And uh I began looking at the the the research that was being done on fields. Um and we're talking in biology, Rupert Sheldrake in psychology, uh Jung's notion of the collective unconscious, uh in physics, David Bowman's notion of the implicate order. Uh and I began really just trying to understand how these different perceptions of reality were coming together, uh, mostly invisible to anyone in everyday life. And it was that energy that I think I brought when Mary and I met. I was not only talking kind of intellectually about what I had studied, but I was sort of embodied with this way of understanding reality that was not uh self-evident or obvious. And Mary became kind of the if if Field was the missing link for Mary, Mary was the missing part of bringing this book into manifestation uh because she brought her own background in neuroscience. We both shared having worked with many different kinds of organizations and people. And um we began to see that it was in the embodied state, it was in paying attention to one's own emotional regulation, to one's own fantasies, to one's own inner life that opened a portal to seeing larger patterns in groups and in society.

Who The Book Is For

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Okay. So I hope as somebody who came come from who comes from rural Ireland, I hope now the listeners know that we're not talking about agriculture here specifically. We're talking about a whole different notion of what a field is. Um and uh it's actually thanks to something that probably was in the field, uh, a mutual acquaintance called Marcia Reynolds, who was a guest on the previous guest on the podcast, who said, Ah, you've got to talk to these people because uh it's so relevant to coaching and so many other things that that are going on in the world today. So let's get to the book itself.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

The title is Title is Space Is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Are Shaping Your Life and Our World.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Okay, so who is this book for and why now?

What A Field Really Means

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Oh, I think this book is for, oh gosh, you mentioned several leaders, consultants, coaches, um, and leaders who are, you know, not necessarily in formal, formal leadership roles. Um, you know, as Parker Palmer once said, you know, we cannot not lead. You know, we're always influencing the space that we're in. We're always influencing the people around us. Um, and I think why now is, you know, fields are where interactions take place. And they are the fields are filled with forces, both visible and invisible, that are influencing our um influencing our our emotions, our body sensations, and what we do and say. Um unfortunately, most of that goes on at an unconscious level. Um, so for now, I mean when you point to now, I think it's more needed than ever that we're able to track our internal, you might call it, atmosphere, or we call it the personal field inside us, so that we can both perceive what's going on for us, but also perceive what's going on in the space in which we are interacting, so we can make conscious choices about how what we want to do, what we want to say, um, as opposed to being driven perhaps by the more primitive parts of the brain. You know, if we're in a state of upset or anger or fear. Um, and you know, because the the more primitive parts of the brain can start driving our behavior outside of our awareness unless we become aware of it. And that's what I think one of the emphasis for us, for Alan and I, is around why becoming aware of fields is perhaps more important now than ever, um, given what's going on politically in our country as well as around the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So perhaps at its most basic level, perhaps you could talk a little bit about um what do you mean by fields, because you you mentioned some uh physics and various other um influences way back from your early days. Perhaps you could, for my listeners, help define maybe from that perspective, what do we what do you what do you actually mean by fields?

unknown 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Thank you for the question, Jerry. Uh let's go back to your uh rural Ireland and the field. Uh you know, this is a space, and within that space, different things are growing underground. Uh uh you know, cows may be uh above the ground, people come in and out, rain comes into the area. So if we think of field as a basic uh metaphor, uh we're looking at the entire field, not just one part of it. And why this is important for uh organizations for social interaction. So the book is for, if you will, concentric circles of um that a person who is dealing with challenges in their life, they may be emotionally uh upset at times, they may have things that keep happening to them. Uh that the book will help them think about their own patterns and how to disrupt those patterns for you know more life-giving purposes. But they'll also realize that how they interact with people is affecting the people around them. You know, if we think very basically, when you walk in the room, do other people cheer up or do they slowly start leaving? You know, because you're impacting and who you are and who you have been to them in the past is impacting how they view you and the field that's being created. But now let's move to the leadership, uh leadership or coaching. Now we're dealing with not just the personal, we're dealing with patterns in the larger system. And so uh, you know, you mentioned Marsha, who's a colleague. We worked together shortly after I wrote about collective wisdom. She was really exploring the power of a coach not trying to control the situation, but trusting that there was a field they were creating together in which a person's own insights can come to the top. Uh at the level of society, and Mary, you know, referenced this, the experience of polarization that we're experiencing is part of the larger fragmentation of views and people not knowing how to bridge between these differences. And so our work maybe most directly is about helping people think about characteristics of fields that we call resonance and valency. You know, resonance is creating the conditions for people to amplify their coherence, to amplify how they get work done. Valency, which is another characteristic of fields and and of physics, is actually the ability to work with differences. Uh what was it you said, Jerry, about uh you grew up where Ireland, where you say there's some people call it a partition and other people call it what? What was it, the difference?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Well, some people call it a bore border because I grew up near what and some people prefer to call it a sort of partition or a temporary line on the map. Uh and once again, that's coming from uh their respective perspectives on defining what you know, defining what that whatever that means for them. Um, but actually to just to take up your point about the polarization, um when when you have polarization, which is which is very, very prominent in the world today, it's not just in your country where we that gets more media attention, I think, but it does exist quite quite extensively in today's world. Um it would maybe you can correct me on this, but it would seem to me that what we have are separate fields where there's no, doesn't they seem to be pushing like a magnet, two magnets pushing against each other rather than finding some sort of overlap uh between them? Would would that help explain the the notion of polarization to some people that there's no there's instead of when you try to bring people closer together, they almost get repelled back because they're actually defining their field so differently from each other? Or is that a oversimplification of what you would refer to as a field?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, I'm not sure it's an oversimplification. I think it's a part of it. Um, you know, if we look at the work of um, oh gosh, I dropped his name now. But anyway, around um uh social uh capital. You know, there's a notion there of bonding social capital, you know, where people um um feel safer, you know, they tend to gravitate towards one another and feel safer, you know, when they're with people who are like them. So that's a bonding social capital. Um, but there's bridging social capital, and that's a harder uh resource to tap because bridging social capital means that we are consciously and hopefully skillfully reaching out to people who really differ from us. They have a different worldview, they have a different mindset, and that is a harder social capital to build. And I would say that the bonding social capital and the bridging social capital have a particular field of energy. So in bonding social capital, if there tends to be if people go outside the norm of what people are believing or be how they're behaving, they can be ostracized or pushed out of the group, which is an immense threat because we all feel safer when we're connected. Um, and the bridging social capital means it's inclusive, it's including other people. And, you know, Alan mentioned valencency yesterday, yeah, excuse me, a moment ago, which is um one of the characteristics of fields, and what it means is people can work together, you know, even though it's so it includes differences as opposed to pushing out differences. So that's a form of social social capridging social capital.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

So, Alan, how how can uh uh an understanding of fields um deal with this fragmentation?

SPEAKER_02 17:00

I think the fragmentation, as painful as it is, is actually helping people recognize that there are fields. So it's a it's a different way of answering the question. Um because if everything begins with disagreement and gets even further polarized, that's the that's the pattern in the field. You have to interrupt that pattern. You can't just change it with some kind of new skill like active listening. You know, active listening is not going to be enough to change the deeper pattern. And so the analogy we make is directly to what we've come to understand in physics. For 300 years, we lived with Newtonian mechanics, which is also sometimes referred to as classical mechanics. And that said space was empty and what you looked at is is uh distance of mass and things were separate from each other. And there was really no way of connecting things together because things were just separate and had to be either forced together or split apart. That changed, obviously, with Einstein, and we get relativity relativity. And these are different, referred to as mechanics again. And it's what you were pointing to earlier, Jerry. It's just everyone has their own view, it's all just where you stand. So there's no connectivity. It's it's all just uh separate ego tunnels and everyone choosing who they want to uh agree with. The idea of field is an idea centrally of that we are connected, that we don't stop at the separation of Newtonian mechanics or the or the relativity of Einstein. We move forward to what's now referred to as a quantum field, which is at the macroscopic level, something else is happening that we're not recognizing at the at the microscopic level, something is happening that we don't recognize. And that's what fields means to shift that we are connected, and now we have to find our way back to what that connection can allow us to do.

Sensing Fields In Real Organisations

SPEAKER_00 19:28

My guests today are Alan Briskin and Mary Jelinas. Coming up, how to recognize the hidden forces at play in your organization and what you can actually do about them. So if somebody's working in an organization, um how would they how would they recognize fields uh and at what what sort of levels have you in your work in consulting, etc. I guess you're bringing this into the to the the situations, you're bringing it into perhaps people trying to understand their culture, people trying to understand why there's conflict in in parts of the organization, what is it about those two departments that they can never ever seem to find some sort of common ground or common field? Um how would our listeners know that they were exp how to experience how they're experiencing, but to also maybe help understand the pattern that they're that they're caught in or that they're I mean caught in maybe not the correct word that they're they're operating in.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Well, yeah, I would say first it's um uh it it's the it's a it's it's kind of a somatic awareness. You know, you can feel it in a meeting or when you're you know talking with to use your example, you know, if you're talking with another department with for with whom you have not with whom you're having a hard time collaborating, coordinating. You can probably feel it in their body, you know, you can feel the the uh dissonance or the discomfort um uh that's that's going on. You know, you can both feel it in your body, you can hear it, you can see it in people's faces and their expressions. And and what's intriguing is that um one of the ways you can change that, change the dynamic is actually managing your inner state, so not letting it um become, you know, that you're angry or frustrated. And because that's gonna come out. People will feel it, even if you're trying to hide it with the with your expressions or your tone of voice, that the other people will feel it. So one of the ways to actually um try to shift a field that isn't, that isn't, that is kind of dissonant between departments or in an organization is there are there are many ways to do it, but I start with the personal. How do you manage your internal state so that You're not denying your emotions, but you're not letting them um drive your behavior and you're calming yourself internally because other people will feel that. Other people will pick up on that.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

You're sort of touching on an area I think they that they call today interception, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yes, exactly. That's the exact that's the exact word.

Trauma That Freezes A Relationship

SPEAKER_00 22:24

And you talked about defensiveness earlier. What strikes me from the neuroscience point of view is that if you're if you're allowing your feelings to run the show, the amygdala is going to get a wee bit um nervous about things and perhaps get decide that they're going to throw a different kind of party, which and if you bring mir mirror neurons and that into the mix, now you've got everybody sort of egging each other on and escalating a situation that probably didn't need to get escalated. And often in those situations, when I'm teaching negotiations or collaboration skills, I'm asked, I'm looking for a third or fourth position with which to try and take in the situation to get some context around whether the behaviors are necessary or not. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how these because I think for my listeners, uh relating it to their day-to-day and and then perhaps giving we can move to sort of talking about what sorts of things can people start to do when they start to sense this type of thing happening around them. They feel this field that they're going into is not the field they want to be in. Alan, I think you maybe want to talk about these.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Yeah, there's two brief organizational stories that I think speak to what we're we're talking about. One took place early in my career, over probably 25 years ago. I was speaking with um the engineering department, and they had a long-standing problem with one of the clinical departments in the hospital where I was consulting. And so I asked him to go more into what had happened, and he described an incident, there was misunderstandings, and he felt betrayed. And then I paused and I said, you know, and how long ago did this happen? And he thought for a moment, he said, Oh, probably about 15 years ago. Well, what occurred to me then um is that when we are activated, you know, the Megdilla gets activated, we we we move at some point into what could be called trauma. And uh trauma is timeless. It's like once we're in that field of of uh traumatic injury, uh, there's a way nothing shifts, nothing changes. It's frozen in place. And what they were dealing with was still real to them in the moment, but had occurred 15 years earlier. Fast forward to an incident um last year where I was working with what was supposed to be a partnership between a nursing director and a chief of surgery. And when I talked to the uh nursing director individually, she very vaguely mentioned that um there was a bad vibe between them. And I didn't respond right away, but when we talked again, I said, you know, you mentioned this this you know bad vibe. What were you referring to? And she described an incident where he had been quite angry about something and been in her office in an enclosed space and she felt really intimidated by that, and came to the conclusion that she never wanted to be in a room with him again. Well, how could they ever partner if that was the underlying unsaid uh uh feel between them? And they both agreed to talk with each other with me there and try to describe what happened without judgment or accusation. And um I worked with her just so she could get a sense of how to do that without spilling over into the the way she felt violated. She did a remarkable job, and in response, the surgeon said, I apologize. I I would n I would never want you to have to feel that way again. And something shifted in the field something shifted in the field.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah, uh Mary, um the one of the things uh that you you talk about in the book is compassion.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Um was that an example of where compassion emerged from your work yeah, it it it certainly it certainly appears to appears to have been, and I and I think one of the one of the important aspects of field awareness, you know, is if we if we experience ourselves as being interconnected with other people, like in the example that Alan, the two examples, you know, how the larger space affects us, and and even over years, it's still affecting us. That one of the, I think, important aspects or of importance of field awareness is noticing our impact on other people. You know, that we know that we're interconnected and we affect other people. And are we affecting them in the ways that we want to? So sometimes, and in this case, fortunately, Alan was working with people who are open to that possibility of actually sharing, talking with one another about their impact, you know, the doctor's impact on the nurse's behavior. You know, it's that's very tough to do because it's a level of honesty and intimacy that can be very challenging for people. And yet it's where's the juices, you know, where where we can actually know, oh gosh, that's the impact I had. I didn't intend that. So that's that's the compassion part. You know, when you hear the impact, it's you know, and that doctor fortunately just opened up with compassion. It's like, oh gosh, I'm really sorry. Didn't don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

So from the field uh perspective, what what's preventing but I'm sure there's lots of people listening to this now going, I I'm having those experiences in my daily life, or I'm witnessing them in my in organizations I either work in or work for. What's preventing people from doing what you just said, Mary, was quite challenging to do. What sorts of forces are holding are holding in place uh an inability to to address these things?

SPEAKER_01 29:11

You know, I just had this conversation with a client yesterday afternoon. So so your question is for is is perfect.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Um that you can I just say, Mary, before you answer, um you do talk about synchronicity in the book as well. Yes, we do. So this is a moment, this is a moment of synchronicity for you.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

This is a moment of synchronicity. Thank you, Sherry. That's true. Yeah. So um so when I talked with my client yesterday, you know, it was trying to, because they were all talking about the difficulties they had together working as a, you know, this is a leadership team of a governmental agency. And, you know, they were all talking about the issues, but they never spoke to one another, you know. So, so, you know, that'll be my next step with them. But I, but I, you know, they did right towards the end begin to speak directly to one another about behaviors that were influencing them in in not very positive ways. You know, but the but the but I had said prior to them going there is I talked about the difficulty for human beings. There's a level of intimacy, there's a level of um fear. If I say this, am I gonna hurt the other person? If I say this, are they gonna fire me or are they gonna decide they never want to talk to me again? So I think what gets threatened in those kinds of difficult conversations, because our sense of survival is so connected to our sense of connection and belonging, when that belonging gets threatened, that sense of connection and belonging, we don't want to go there because I think it's tied in to our deep sense of survival. We learn to survive in tribes. So it's really a very ancient um legacy from our time our about our time.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Yeah, so this podcast is entitled Leading People, right? And um what so leaders have a probably disproportionate leverage influence from a systemic point of view, leaders have a huge influence on organizations. So what can leaders uh start to do or do more of to because you talked about these factors here, Mary, there, which echo some of the work that Amy Evanson has done on psychological safety, that people feel they can express themselves without consequences or let's say negative consequences. So, what what can leaders do or how can they create use what you're talking about in fields? I think Alan, maybe you have an idea on this.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Well, again, I'm gonna start with a story, because stories I think bring us in at an emotional as well as a cognitive level. Uh, at a different hospital, I was asked by the CEO and the uh chief of nursing, they had been getting very poor scores in patient satisfaction. And she said to me, Can you bring a group of nurses together and ask them what is uh impairing their ability to give compassionate care? And I said, I think we could certainly do that. We could get uh 20 nurses together, and um in 13 or 14 years, we probably have a very good list of all the things that get in the way. And they uh took my humor and and I said, you know, I think there's another way we can ask the question, which is what is already happening where compassionate care is happening? Who among your nurses are already in your mind offering at least to some degree uh that compassionate care? And could we invite them and ask them what has uh what has allowed them, even if it's not all the time, what has allowed them to provide that care. We ended up meeting over two years with a group of uh 40 nurses over that time, and from that uh was a book called Daily Miracles. So what leaders can do is they can start asking different questions. You know, rather than what's gonna fix this, what what's the new tool or instrument, what new book should I hand out to everyone? They begin to sense the fields they're in. What is working? What it why is it working in those cases? How do they amplify that with others? How is their own interactions with people affecting their ability to respond compassionately or effectively? And this is true whether it's uh a sales force, whether it's in a hospital, whether it's in an engineering group. Between Mary and I, we've worked, you know, across the board. And we're uh I think what I hope people get from the podcast is that we're asking the wrong questions partly because we're living in a delusion. We're living in the delusion of our separation or of just relativistic thinking. The bigger story here of the book is that we have to ask different questions and we have to show up differently for anything to be different.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

I'm I'm hearing about uh pattern recognition in what you're talking about. You know, I'm a big fan of systems thinking. I have been for a long, long time, and I'm it always never ceases to amaze me how limited people's awareness are of systems and impacts and consequences, and um like your your example there about looking for what's wrong, you know, that looking for almost looking for who to blame rather than looking for what's right, or it I'm using wrong and right selectively here. Well, you know, what's actually working versus what's not working, and and modeling in some way what's working and understanding what's what's driving what patterns drive what works, it's probably uh actually a more efficient use of leadership time, no?

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yes. Absolutely, Jerry. You're you're very much picking up um and and because you mentioned synchronicity, I want to come back to that. The we we know the word now, and we kind of know it has to do with things happening unexpectedly, but its origins was actually uh developed by Carl Jung and a physicist named Wolfgang Pauli. And what they were investigating is that we had a delusion about time, that we thought everything happens from a material cause. And Jung was seeing in his own practice that things were happening not just out of mechanical uh cause and effect, but out of meaning, out of how people are working different um emotional, their emotional life is active, and that activity tends to bring forward actions from outside that coincide with it. And so even the notion of time has been an era of perception. And when we think of change, I think no longer can we think of this five-year plan and that each phase will be exactly mechanically lined up with each other. But we have to be able to ask the questions that you're pointing to, Jerry. What is giving, what is working, and what are the patterns behind that? Uh Mary's and my work, you know, we're systems practitioners, but with fields, we took the idea of systems to a more embodied and emotional plane.

Kindness And Compassionate Accountability

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Yeah, and then it it comes a little bit towards this, you know, okay, so we talk about leaders, and at the same time, what about the rest of us? What's what it why is cultivating field awareness particularly urgent in this, let's call it, cultural or social moment that we're going through in history?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Well, I guess I would say the choice is ours. Do we want to feed the field of fragmentation and polarization and seeing one another as enemies? Or do we want to feed that field of energy and information something different, you know, where we where we know we're interconnected, that we care about one another, that even though, you know, a different person's um perspective may set our hair on fire, and yet we're we're all we're all I mean it sounds so silly to say it, but we're all in this together. And I think what we don't understand is actually what that actually means. Um so I think being able to to um to notice um and to make um conscious choices about what do we want to feed the field of energy and information around us? Do we want to feed it compassion and caring and connecting with people, or do we want to feed it something that is um, you know, that is not um that is toxic, that is combative, that is truculent, that sees other people as the enemy. Um and all of that makes a difference. You know, just one, I have seen other times in meetings where one person, you know, even though Ellen said earlier, active listening can't change a field, actually I would say sometimes it can. You know, if a meeting or group of people are are having a hard time with one another, if one person, if one person says aloud, you know, I'm noticing that we're interrupting one another, I'm noticing that we're talking faster. And so what I'd like to do is slow this down and try to act to listen and summarize what I hear people saying, the different points of view. Just that simple act can change the whole dynamic in the room.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

I suppose the the concept of active listening is over overbaked, and and most people don't really know what it is in terms of it's listening for deep meaning is really what we're trying to do. But I want to take what Alan's story and I want to ask another question uh based on the story you told there a little while ago, Alice, about the nurses. What gives you hope when you look at the larger social field right now? So let's not look at all the things that aren't working. What what sorts of things do you see that have potential to unify this fragmentation?

SPEAKER_02 40:13

I I do think Mary's and my work on this book has um given me a new perspective on hope as a survival instinct. And as a practice, uh I think anyone listening can try out uh a small act of kindness and see how it affects the field. Whether it's shopping, whether it's with the spouse, whether it's with your children, to see how immediate acts of kindness can alter a situation and alter how people interact. So that's just something you don't have to believe that you just have to practice it and notice. Uh I think in organizations, because they're social complex systems, it takes more time and attention. But I want to offer again an example of changing the question. When we talk about accountability in organizations, we often don't realize it's within the framework or narrative of reward and punishment. So when we talk about accountability, we're not we're talking about you'll be punished if you don't do hit the numbers that I've put out for you. Uh there's a very different way of thinking of compassion and accountability, which is we all want to feel we're contributing. We all ultimately are capable of being responsible for ourselves. How do we call that out? How do we create the conditions for people to take responsibility for themselves, for people not to feel under threat to be able to do something right? And that's a much long-term change, but it starts with people, whether in leadership positions or not. Um, you know, Mary and I take the position that you can't not lead because we are always impacting each other.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yeah. And this was kind of this has answered one of my final questions, which was what would be one big idea that people could take away? But the whole idea of kindness and showing people that they matter, that they are there, that they're seen, that they, you know, they have significance, is probably as powerful an idea as any, and uh actually reflects a lot of what other guests on this program have been saying uh over the last couple of years. Mary, would you like to add to that and then we'll wrap?

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Um yes, um, it's interesting the question of accountability, because just yesterday afternoon again, the conversation was about how do we hold one another accountable. And I offered, I did a little, I mean a little mini role play with one of the one of the directors. And I just said, you know, and maybe instead of saying, why didn't you get this done? the phrase I used, which several people picked up on, was help me understand why this isn't getting done, how you are not able to get this done when we had had an agreement about it. It opened up a whole different conversation for them. So that to me is a demonstration of really a compassionate and kind way to offer accountability that's not about punishment or you know, fear of punishment. So I think the big idea for me in the book is we are all interconnected, we all impact one another. And how might we choose to do that a little more skillfully and heartfully with one another? With compassion, as you point out, Jerry.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

That's a beautiful thought to leave my listeners with. How can people contact you both? I guess you're both on LinkedIn, I guess, and then there's a website, and I'll put links in the show notes, but how can people reach out to you both?

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Uh yeah, certainly the books website is a great place to go. It's space is not empty, all lowercase, no spaces.net. Um we also are both on LinkedIn. And what would you add, Alan? We both have separate websites for each of us. But what would you add in?

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Well, just to build on what you said, Mary, we we um we're both on uh Facebook and LinkedIn uh under our names and also uh under Spaces Not Empty. So they can uh sign up for Spaces Not Empty, and then you continue to get the social media posts that we're putting out uh weekly.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Yeah, and we're also now on Substeck, so that's another place under the name of the books.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

And Jerry, thank you so much. I want to thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

Yeah, thank you, Jerry.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

It's a lovely conversation.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Yeah, and I I want to just end by thanking both of you, Alan and Mary, for sharing your insights, your tips, and wisdom with both me and my listeners here today.