0:00:00 - Betsy Jordyn
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Well, hey there, and welcome to the Consulting Matters podcast, where we dive into all kinds of issues, little and big, about what it takes to grow a thriving, purpose-driven consulting or coaching business. I'm your host, betsy Jordyn, and I'm a business mentor and a brand positioning and messaging strategist. You can find out all about my programs on my website at www.betsyjordyn.com. And don't forget, Jordyn is with a Y, not an A. There's some other Betsy Jordyn out there who's getting all my emails and visitors to the website. So let's get into today's episode.
I'm usually up for a good debate, you know. I think debates are awesome. They're a great way to stretch your thinking and come up with new ideas. But one debate I'm not a huge fan of is when we're trying to parse out the differences between consultants and coaches and framing up those differences as simply this you know, consultants tell and coaches ask, and the reason why I'm not a huge fan of it is I don't think this is the right frame, because I don't think the core of what we do as both consultants and coaches is simply about the advice we give, or even about the questions we ask, but it's really connected to how well we listen. And today we're going to get beyond trying to figure out like what are the right questions to ask our clients in a discovery meeting or stakeholder assessments or in our coaching, and we're going to dive into what really matters in those circumstances, which is our ability to listen.
To help us with this, I'm bringing on the show Dr Rick Bommelje, who spent the past 25 years helping leaders become more successful through the power of listening, so he's the founder of the Leadership and Listening Institute.
He's the author of three books on this very important topic and, most importantly to me, he was my professor at Rollins when I was in graduate school, learning how to become an organization development consultant, and he was my first mentor.
So I talk about Dr Balmage all the time because he was the one who helped me first discover the importance of strategic positioning that led to the career that I have now, so I am so excited to have him on the show. It's an opportunity for me to offer tribute to the impact that he's had on my career and also to give you a glimpse into how he came to this particular advice that really changed the trajectory of my career and how I help my clients right now. So I'm really excited to get into both aspects around how do you navigate the complexity of getting your seat at the table and how to use your listening skills as a way to make the impact that you want to have once you arrive. So, without further ado, welcome to the show, rick. I normally would call you Dr Bommelje because of our past relationship, but welcome, welcome. I'm so thrilled to have you here.
0:04:25 - Rick Bommelje
Thank you, I'm so thrilled to have you here. Thank you, I'm so delighted to be with you.
0:04:33 - Betsy Jordyn
I really don't think I can get into all the questions I want to ask you about the importance of listening and how that is really a key skill for consultants and coaches and leaders all to have, without acknowledging who you are and what you've meant to my career. So I want to tell you I don't know if you remember this experience or I remember it, you know, because it was so transformational for me but I had just graduated from the Rollins program and the last thing I did in my graduate program, my last class, was having you as my mentor and I had the official title as an organization development consultant within my nonprofit organization and they had just announced this big org design project and I wasn't even I wasn't leading it. I thought like I, at least I was going to be leading it and I wasn't. And I wasn't on the team. And I remember how you coached me through that process and what you had told me back then.
Is you told me, no one's going to use my expertise like exactly the way that I want? I don't know if I'm paraphrasing, but this is the gist I got out of it. Is it no one's going to use my expertise necessarily the way that I want. It's up to me to position myself for the work that I wanted and the role that I wanted.
So, with that advice, what I did is I don't know if you remember this like coaching, because I'm sure you've mentored like hundreds of people since then but I went to the VP in charge of that particular project, based on your advice, and you told me just offer my availability. I'm a student, just to be there, just to learn. You know, I'll just be a fly on the wall. And he's like great, and he put me on the team. Not even he didn't put me on the team, he just put me as were on the team.
And then you told me to make myself indispensable to the external consultant who was there. And then I went and offered my availability what do you need to do? And so he was in Atlanta and the team was in Orlando, so I'd go and facilitate different things, you know, on his behalf. And then he started like delegating more and more of the project and by the end of the project I was leading the whole thing. He was done. I was in charge of the, you know, leading that whole initiative. I got all this recognition from that and that's what changed the game for me in my consulting career is I never waited around to get invited to the table.
I always knew I had to get in there, so that when I left that nonprofit and I went to Disney, I took the accountability. Like I'm going to go break in, is the way I looked at it is not marketing, it's like I'm going to break into my client system. I'm going to, you know, find the way in, offer my availability, and then I continued on. And then when I started my own business, it was just that became like a different kind of marketing. It's not like I'm breaking into a client system. I had to break into a market, you know, and I had to do that and I continue on and I influenced everything that I have right now because of that moment.
I don't know if you remember it as clearly. Obviously I was the mentee, so it meant more, you know, or maybe it was more vivid for me, but that's that's the impact that you had. You completely transformed my career. Everything I do as a positioning person was based on that one piece of nugget that you taught me and I've helped tons of clients because of that perspective on taking charge of the positioning. I'm getting emotional. I'm so grateful that you're here.
0:07:35 - Rick Bommelje
Wow and as you described that, Betsy, I need that today. I need the wisdom that you have gained through your experiences. I need to hear that. I need to deeply listen to that today.
0:08:03 - Betsy Jordyn
Before I go on with the rest of the interview. Sorry, I just wanted to let you know you've meant so much to me.
0:08:11 - Rick Bommelje
Oh, thank you so much.
0:08:19 - Betsy Jordyn
I'm just awestruck by the whole dynamic of this. Sorry, sorry, listeners, get the raw.
0:08:26 - Rick Bommelje
This is not the way podcast interviews are supposed to go.
0:08:29 - Betsy Jordyn
This is the real deal, you know, because it's not every day that you get to give tribute to somebody, and so thank you for that. What I would like to do, though, is draw out a little bit more of the transferable principles to other people. Like all these years, I've been wondering, you know, what was behind that perspective of what created this career changing advice that I have from you Like how, like, what was? Is that like just something in the moment that came up in our conversation, or is that a perspective that you had that you typically use with the mentees like I was at the time?
0:09:05 - Rick Bommelje
Wow, what a great question and, as I'm thinking back, that was in the 97, 98 period Was that correct.
0:09:22 - Betsy Jordyn
Yes, I was in the inaugural MNTR class and I think our mentorship was in 99.
0:09:29 - Rick Bommelje
Okay, oh, no, no.
0:09:32 - Betsy Jordyn
It wasn't in 99. It was 98. You're right, it was 98. No, no, no, no.
0:09:35 - Rick Bommelje
Okay.
0:09:36 - Betsy Jordyn
It was 97. You were correct in the first place. 99 is when I went to Disney. You're right, it was 97.
0:09:42 - Rick Bommelje
Okay, well, what was happening in my professional life at that time is that I had been at Rollins for over two decades in an administrative role and I had been drawn to professional development. I was the through a number of. I started in an entry-level position at Rollins after graduating with my bachelor's degree from there and got into continuing education and I was the assistant to the dean. I was his helper. He was ex-military, as was I. He was just a war hero, a colonel, an amazing person, and he needed a helper, and so I was able to come to join Rollins. I was able to come to join Rollins and, from that point forward, had tremendous growth opportunities under his wing, and eventually he retired and I was really at a transition point because there were lots of things happening internally from a shift of administration, philosophy, vision, mission, all that and our vibrant continuing education program was being shrunk to be able to move in a different direction. And so I was at a crossing point and I decided to create an idea. It was to form a new unit within the college that had never been before, not relating to a formal degree, anything that was education oriented, and in my mind, in my mind my interest was management leadership not listening at the time and all of a sudden they said, okay, well, that sounds harmless, go ahead and do it. And over a period of gee whiz, over a decade, we grew from myself and one other person to a team of 12. And so at that point when we connected, I had a number of different learning experiences through this venture and I guided the unit especially into professional development, where we were doing all kinds of workshops and seminars, and I started to do external coaching and it was really a fascinating experience on my academic journey, going and receiving the master's from Crummer and post-master's degree in educational administration. Then went to UCF, got my degree in educational leadership, but always with the idea of thinking about what can I do to be able to serve other leaders and serve myself too in this role? Always learning, always teaching, is one of my philosophies, and I learned so much more from what people learned from me, right.
And so at that point I was invited to consider coming in as a visiting professor, to leave my role as an administrator. Come in as a visiting professor. Now, a visiting professor means six years maximum and you're out, and I had over 20 years with the college, and so this was a real risk point for for me. I talked this over with my wife. I wanted to develop a business and as I'm learning more about your business, betsy, I'm, I want to be like you, you know. At that point, and Quinn, my wife, said well, go ahead, go for it. You know, six years you'll be able to teach and you can grow your business.
And so, a year and a half into it, I was approached by the provost saying hey, we have an opportunity here that I think you could fit perfectly in, where there's a tenure track position open up. And what that means is, if you go through all the gates and you publish and you do all that stuff and you gain tenure, it's essentially lifetime employment. And again I went back to Quinn and I said, well, what do you think, because there's limitations too, to this. And she said, well, you know stability. And so we went in that journey. But at that time when we connected, that's when I was in this transition point of this new beginning role as a visiting professor and making that shift from an administrator and making that shift from an administrator to a brand new journey where I took a hefty cut in pay to be able to pursue this in my dream of building the business Right. That's what the real goal was. So that's where that, as you echo, I was really telling myself too.
0:15:54 - Betsy Jordyn
So you weren't a full-time professor as part of the MHR program. You were a visiting professor as part of our program.
0:16:01 - Rick Bommelje
Exactly.
0:16:03 - Betsy Jordyn
Okay, nobody would have known. You seem like the heart of my program.
0:16:07 - Rick Bommelje
Yes, yes, I was a part-time. They call them adjunct instructors. Yes.
0:16:16 - Betsy Jordyn
Had no idea. I thought you were like core, core creator of like. When I think about my master's, I don't really think about the HR side as much as the OD side and you taught the OD class and you were my mentor at the end and I never would have imagined the way that you were showing up, that it wasn't like a big part of your brainchild to create this program.
0:16:38 - Rick Bommelje
Yeah, absolutely not. That program was created by Don Rogers, who was at the time a full tenured professor. But the uniqueness of the program is that just about everyone else was an adjunct. So all of your professors with the exception of Don and maybe Bob Smith was involved in that at the time, I'm not sure Most of them were adjunct professors.
0:17:12 - Betsy Jordyn
I think I had a choice to take a class with him or you, and I picked you. I think you guys are both.
So I wound up in your class. That is so interesting. So it seems like where the advice that you were giving me was coming out of the situation that you're at, and I think that that is an interesting insight that sometimes you know, as we're in this learning mode, like sometimes we teach what we are in the middle of learning all at the same time. So the advice you gave me came out of your own own understanding of like I have to really kind of create the opportunities that you wanted and that they, like it's almost like they're just not going to pop on your lap, like you have to create them.
0:17:51 - Rick Bommelje
Exactly, exactly. And as I sit in my trajectory today, I need to do that again because I'm not full-time employed at Rollins. Now I don't call it retire, I call it. I've shifted and to be able to now, and I feel that, as far as the game, I'm at the top of my game in terms of all I've gained and I still have this voracious appetite to learn more and more and more and to be able to pass it on to other folks as well, because I've had so many of these experiences that are quite different from most.
But what propelled me initially into the listening world were mistakes, mine. I almost lost my job because I was not listening and I almost lost my marriage, not once but multiple times for the same reason. And that awakening that I was a lousy listener propelled me into a search and I couldn't find a course. I couldn't find a mentor, like you were mentioning, but I found an organization, the International Listening Association, and I connected with one person who was the founder of the organization, dr Manny Stile, and he introduced listening into corporate America in the late 1970s. He also was a full professor at University of Minnesota and studied with the father of the field of listening, dr Ralph Nichols. They were partners and I learned from him. He became my coach, my mentor, everything he had I needed and that's how I started.
And so the first maybe year and a half I was just learn and apply, learn and apply in all these different areas, not even thinking about teaching. And then, after a considerable period of time and maybe a year and a half, in a one day workshop I included 15 minutes on listening, just some basics. And folks came up to me and they said do you have any more of this? I said yeah, so the 15 minutes went to 30 minutes in a eight-hour program, leadership program, and I was doing that and then I got a call from the chair of the communication department at Rollins who said hey, rick, I hear you just doing some stuff on listening. How would you like to create a course for us? We've never done anything on listening and I'm thinking well, I'm good for 30 minutes, how am I going to fill 40 hours? Right? But I figured the call was coming in for a reason. I said I'll do it and that started the journey.
0:21:19 - Betsy Jordyn
And I want to get into all of the listening part, can we?
put a bow on the positioning part Because I think that this leads into the next part.
It sounds like the advice that you gave me came out of your own personal experience, but it seems like there's different threads that go along with taking responsibility for the positioning is there's a little bit of learning and a little bit of entrepreneurship, you know is that there seems like there's like learn and apply Like I just want to.
You know, I have something to offer, but I have something to learn, but at the same time, like I have to kind of be entrepreneurial about my work. You know that I have to kind of have that mindset, like I have to create opportunity and then respond to the opportunities. It feels like like even as you moved from the different phases, like when you moved into the listening part, it's like I need to learn more about this for myself. So there's a personal component. And then it was like proactively kind of putting some stuff out there to see what happens and then let people respond. And then the response came is it went from this short 30 minutes into a 40 hour type of program and now you have the opportunity in front of you to create something now.
0:22:30 - Rick Bommelje
Exactly, exactly, and it was. I didn't have this grand vision of connecting the dots of listening leadership until many years later. It was, quite frankly, okay. I've got this course now and I figured in the beginning it was going to be a small group Rollins has small class sizes and it's going to be for adults. So I'm thinking, well, we're going to have 12 students. We had 40.
Wow, and there were waiting lists and there was no empty seats and they came to hear from the master, you know, and I had 30 minutes and a textbook and I told them you know, don't read ahead, because I was literally one chapter ahead of them each week, them each week, but they at the end of that. Betsy, what I really learned that has sustained to this day is that if you want to learn it, you teach it, because your fellow learners will teach you in the process with their questions, their challenges, their insights, their perspectives. And so it was a full circle process and it was just okay. Well, let's keep going.
All of a sudden it bloomed no-transcript, and so I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and my mentor, dr Stile, had created this definition of listening that it's a complex, it's a natural, but it's also a learned human behavior of doing five things Sensing. That means taking in the message not just with your ears but with all five senses Hear it, see it, taste, touch, smell, interpreting, understanding what you're taking in, asking questions, encouraging people, all that. Then you've earned the right to go to the evaluating stage. You can make a judgment because you understand very succinctly what's happening. Then you respond. Now, in this definition of listening, there is a responding piece verbally or non-verbally and the last stage is the memory piece, or remembering what's a value that you can use going forward. So we take the definition and we take those five components and we have a new word, and the new word is S-I-E-R with the asterisk at the end SEER.
0:26:01 - Betsy Jordyn
I want to take notes. It's like I feel like. I'm in class and it's like I want to take notes. It's like, no, I'm doing a podcast right now because I want to be able to remember all of these. So it's like, okay, I'm paying attention, there's sensing, there's the response there. Like paying attention, there's sensing, there's the response, there's the valuation. I forgot what the things are in the middle.
0:26:20 - Rick Bommelje
So yeah, we got an acronym, so it's S-I-E-R, and I put an asterisk at the end to signify memory, and that asterisk could also be the golden pause, as I put it.
0:26:39 - Betsy Jordyn
Could also be the golden pause, as I put it or mindful silence.
0:26:41 - Rick Bommelje
So what's the I? Again, the I is interpreting.
0:26:43 - Betsy Jordyn
Okay, so we go from sensing to interpreting, to evaluating, to responding to mindfulness and memory of some type.
0:26:53 - Rick Bommelje
Right, and this happens in a nanosecond. We're doing it in this podcast.
0:27:00 - Betsy Jordyn
Could you provide examples of like how are we doing this in this?
0:27:03 - Rick Bommelje
podcast opportunity to sense your nonverbals and, as you share a message with me, I'm understanding what you're saying and you have the ability to articulate very clearly your message. So I'm not having to ask you a lot of questions for clarification. But then I go to the E stage, the evaluating stage, and I start asking myself questions here. Right, how credible is the person that's sending the message? What about the evidence here? And I'm learning about all this evidence that you have in your career trajectory about how you've succeeded and then the responding piece is what I'm saying or showing back to you, and I'm remembering what you're saying in the process. So that's a if. Over the last almost 40 years now of being able to immerse myself in this, some folks have asked me well, what's the most important thing of all of it? Just just give me the. This is it Seer. If you know it and you do it and you be it, all of a sudden it's a game changer.
0:28:42 - Betsy Jordyn
So I'm getting an image in my head of your definition. So that seems like what's the difference between like hearing and listening? And I picture like a couple people like throwing balls at each other like they're playing catch back and forth, throwing balls at each other like they're playing catch back and forth, and like hearing might be is like I see the ball and it comes my way and it kind of plops in front of me. But it seems like listening is as I catch the ball, I receive the ball and I experience the ball before I throw the ball back.
0:29:10 - Rick Bommelje
A hundred percent. That's a wonderful metaphor and I'll give you another example of how we can take this to a new level. It's from hearing to searing. Right, because too many people equate listening with hearing and it minimizes it. Another dimension is the word active. We hear the word active listening. That's such a buzzword, it's redundant. Why don't we say active speaking, active writing, active reading, right? Active listening comes from Carlgers back in the 1960s, in the whole realm of therapeutic listening. He wrote the book active listening. Some folks along the way have grabbed hold of that and taken the concept of active listening and have said well, well, I'm going to give you eye contact and I'm going to nod, I'm going to say some verbal prompts.
0:30:20 - Betsy Jordyn
Yes, uh-huh, dr Ramos, I mean Rick.
0:30:23 - Rick Bommelje
Mm-hmm, and you could be miles away, right, and so you know when someone is deeply listening to you, because you can feel it. There is an energy exchange, there is a vibration, and that's through the power of seer.
0:30:45 - Betsy Jordyn
I love that because it's like you're really connecting with the person that you're with.
It's almost like we are going into like a unique kind of space together, like there's a container for a real meaningful exchange, rather than I'm going to play act, these, these different behaviors that make it seem like I'm really listening but I'm not, which goes to why this is super important. So I work with consultants and coaches and they are very worried about figuring out what the right questions are. And you know like what are very worried about figuring out what the right questions are. And you know, like, what are the questions I should ask in a discovery meeting, what are the questions I should ask, like, in an assessment or a stakeholder type of thing? And I always would tell them like it doesn't really matter what your questions are, it matters what your listen-fors are. Like the listen-fors are what matters, you know. Can you elaborate on the rationale for that advice? Why is this a really important skill set for consultants and coaches to have? That, I think, makes or breaks their role as a consultant and their effectiveness.
0:31:46 - Rick Bommelje
Without a doubt, without a doubt, and it crosses over into sales. It crosses over into every single field. In my view, listening is the ultimate leadership competency, the ultimate leadership competency. And if we're not fully knowledgeable of why we listen, how we listen, when we listen, we miss the golden opportunities, and for a coach or a consultant, that's your whole job. I always had, oh kind of in my mind, a timer that in my coaching sessions it's a 90-10 split 90% them, 10% me. In terms of speaking, I'm at the 90% level throughout searing, searing and when I come in, most of the 10% is not going to be fixing, saving, advising or correcting. Most of my 10% is going to be asking honest, inviting questions.
0:33:09 - Betsy Jordyn
It's interesting because I did this survey with a bunch of my former executive clients when I was pivoting and to the work I do now, and I was asking him, like why, why do you hire consultants? And one of these leaders who leveraged me all the time, you know like what was it about it? And he's like because you could get into my head and organize my ideas and help me see things that I'm thinking clearer than I was realizing, thinking clearer than I was realizing. I'm like but you know, what about my master's or what about my time at Disney? He's like I don't care about any of that. He's like I care about how I asked. Enough. I asked questions, like, but not on the surface level, like I kept probing and like pulling ideas out of his head and then like organizing it and then he really liked that.
I did that sometimes with groups, you know, like with executive teams, like listen to everybody and then like found the through line. So there was like a lot of questions and questions and questions. But then there was like that moment where you're almost like doing that, mirroring back to them, like no, this is what I think I'm hearing you say. And then they're like yes, exactly what I was thinking and that is like all this relief just washes over them. And I think there's something about like people like really having a deep, deep need as a human level, Like I want to be seen and I want to be heard, and when somebody can mirror back what I'm saying, then it's like then they're golden, like they're credible.
0:34:45 - Rick Bommelje
They mean something to me, they care about, because there was instability in his law firm and within I would say, max, maybe three to four months, he had all that cleared up. Our relationship went on for four years. Wow, Andando, time for you to leave. And he'd say no, no, no, I want to go a little bit further. And finally I said what value are you getting from this? He says I need the questions, and it was the accountability questions, questions because he wasn't getting that anywhere else and I learned so much from him in this process in the power of questions, Because in my mind, that's what a coach or consultant gets paid to do is ask these compelling questions and you feel those.
0:36:03 - Betsy Jordyn
Like ask the questions and draw out the answers. Like it's not enough to ask the right questions. Like I can give you a question bank, you know. Like what's the point of a question bank?
You know, and I think there's a wasted debate that people have around like oh, what's the difference between consultants and coaches? Like coaches ask and consultants tell like well, what's the point? Like you could tell like that they're, they're both all part of the same. I don't know why we're parsing it out, because it still feels like ultimately, at the end of the day, it's about listening and asking deep questions, not the surfacy level questions Like you can go to ChatGPT and get some questions that are interesting but nobody's listening to them. Like I think there's something about the relationship. I think that there's something on a limbic level. Like it's not just about the questions, it's the questions and the witness of the relationship.
0:37:10 - Rick Bommelje
Yes, and it's the for Meaning his wonderful book. He talks about this space where there is a point in a conversation or a communication. There's this space where he calls it the opportunity for growth and freedom, but that happens through the power of silence. I call it the golden pause, and so it's not in my mind about having this list of questions. Throw the questions out. The questions will emerge if you're deeply searing the person.
0:37:53 - Betsy Jordyn
Yes, Say that again because I think this is quotable, you know the questions will emerge continue.
0:38:04 - Rick Bommelje
Yes, that's why I believe we're listening leaders, leaders and I'm viewing leadership through the lens of adaptive leadership in the work of Dr Ron Heifetz at Harvard, where it's not about position title authority, any of that. It's about tackling these tough challenges of life called adaptive challenges, that many, if not most, clients come to coaches and consultants for the answer. They're facing an adaptive challenge. Our role is to come alongside of them and to help them on this journey, and we don't have to be subject matter experts, we just have to be listening leaders.
0:39:05 - Betsy Jordyn
What's an adaptive challenge? Can you put more words around that? I think that's really powerful, because that does seem like a lot of my clients are struggling with. Like what do consultants do? What's the value that coaches bring? What's the market need? And it sounds like you're really just framing that out Like what is an adaptive challenge, and then we could talk easily about what the value at a consultant coach can bring to an adaptive challenge.
0:39:31 - Rick Bommelje
Exactly can coach can bring to an adaptive challenge. Exactly, an adaptive challenge is something. We'll contrast it with a technical problem. A technical problem there's uncertainty. You're facing uncertainty, and other people have faced it too, but it's been systematized in a rule, a guideline, a procedure. You follow the steps Happens all the time with technology. Follow the steps, just as we were trying to get the echo out of the voice right. Follow the steps and solved Uncertainty with a short time frame. But with an adaptive challenge new territory Haven't faced this one before. I have to figure it out, find a way and make something happen, and that becomes the true spirit of leadership. I view it as a leadership ship on a stormy sea, not a calm harbor. So we're on the stormy sea and the clients are on the stormy sea and we're on the boat with them and we're helping them, we're serving them through the power of listening.
0:40:51 - Betsy Jordyn
I think this is why what you're saying makes me realize, like why I always use the heroic journey, the Joseph Campbell myth structure, to describe the role and purpose of consultants and coaches is your clients are the hero and they're about, or heroine and they're about to go into the unknown world, like they're in a step change, something different, and every hero or heroine has a mentor, like every single one of them, because there's all this unknown, all this uncertainty, like, like Marshall Goldsmith said, like you know what got you here won't get you there, you know, but you know and trust what got you here and everything else is a big unknown.
So, therefore, this is when you bring in a real consultant or coach, not somebody who's just there to do work for the organization, but people who are going to guide them to what your colleague was describing as adaptive challenge. It seems just like they're in some sort of transformation space, they're in the liminal space and they need somebody to come alongside because it's so confusing and it's so all like. To me it's like a full body, like when you go through transformations, like it's full body. I mean, the butterfly sounds lovely, like hop into a cocoon and you know caterpillar hops into a cocoon and, you know, flies off later on. But it's like but inside the cocoon, the butterfly, the caterpillar, literally digests itself of everything. That's not the butterfly, that's a pretty violent process, like. That sounds like really difficult. Why would you want to do that alone, you know, when you can have somebody who helps guide you through that type of adaptive challenge?
0:42:19 - Rick Bommelje
Yes, I call it the work, the work of leadership.
0:42:26 - Betsy Jordyn
Yeah, and it is. That is the work part that gets hard, it's not easy, it's difficult.
0:42:35 - Rick Bommelje
And everybody is a practicer of leadership. I say everybody because what's the work? It's called life, and if you're not facing adaptive challenges on the job, you certainly are when you're off the job, that's for sure.
0:42:57 - Betsy Jordyn
Especially nowadays, like there's lots of adaptive challenges that we're all facing. Can you paint me? A picture of a consultant or coach who has like greater mastery in these listening skills versus one who's just okay with it. Or I don't want to necessarily. We don't need to paint a picture, I think, of horrible listeners, because I don't think anybody would choose consulting or coaching if they're just abysmal with listening but just kind of like okay, like they're so-so, but they're not as good as they could be.
0:43:26 - Rick Bommelje
I think it's a person that has an open mind. They have an open heart, has an open mind. They have an open heart, they are extremely curious and they have a strong stomach.
0:43:43 - Betsy Jordyn
What does that mean? Like why did they need a strong stomach?
0:43:46 - Rick Bommelje
Because they're into the unknown with their clients and you can only show up, in my opinion, for who you are, what you can bring. It's not about impress, it's about impact and you want to try to deeply and I always come back to this deeply sear what their need is. And if we don't have a clear understanding of that need, I've had some clients where I just say you know, I think that there's probably a better matched person for you than me, and maybe the crass term is you fire the client. But I realized that there and I see it in the classroom too. You know, I can't fire students. I would like to, because their mindset's not there and so it's being in sync, and so it's being in sync, trying to be in continuous sync.
My wife is world champion, us champion, ballroom dancer, was on America's Got Talent. They won the Golden Buzzer. She started dancing at age 60. I mean, never having danced before, went on America's Got Talent at age 70 and her and her partner won the Golden Buzzer. You know we're on the Dolby Theater and I say this because as I've learned now as an observer, more about what she's doing observer more about what she's doing.
0:45:36 - Betsy Jordyn
Coaches and clients are in the dance.
0:45:37 - Rick Bommelje
Beautiful analogy and you've got to be in step with your client, not step on their toes.
0:45:48 - Betsy Jordyn
I got two things in response to that. One is I want to meet Quinn because I want to learn ballroom dancing and I'm at the older age I'm not quite 60 yet, but I'm a few years from that so I definitely want to. I want to meet her, so maybe afterward you can get me contact information.
0:45:58 - Rick Bommelje
Yes.
0:45:59 - Betsy Jordyn
But second, you know, if we're supposed to be in this dance with our clients, you know, and we're supposed to have this relationship, but we're in this crazy AI world. You know tons of technology, social media, like, how does technology affect our ability to develop that type of dance, that fluidity with a client when they think that they can just go to chat GPT and get the same quality advice? You know that they can. You know, just do a Google search and you know, like, how do you like how does technology fit into this priority of listening to this?
0:46:30 - Rick Bommelje
priority of listening. Wow, this is really timely because I've just started a newsletter on LinkedIn, the Listening Leader. My idea was I've been out of full-time employment at Rollins now for two years, but I still want to contribute, right Yet my client base that I previously have they're on to their next step in the life's journey. So I'm at a point where it's like new consultant, right, and so I'm thinking, okay, well, what can I do to be able to go beyond just a post on LinkedIn? I'm gonna go ahead and create this weekly newsletter. Have no idea what it's going to do, but I wanna just share what's on my mind, and so I think that it was maybe in one of my first posts.
I did something about AI and listening and talked about what the robot can't do. In fact, I'm preparing for the next week right now. What can the robot do to pair with searing, and there are so many things that I'm learning that it can do that I could never do and it around technology in terms of gathering data and sending, sending, survey and analyzing trends with speech patterns and all that stuff, and it can do that really, really fast and give me necessary information. That's the I in SEER, right, and if it fits with the E evaluating, if it fits this, then I can respond appropriately and serve even better. So where I'm thinking, I know very little about AI and I'm trying to become a voracious student, but what comes up for me, betsy, is that if we don't, we are going to be left behind because other coaches and consultants are going to know how to be able to. It's not either or it's both, and Bring them both together to be able to optimize a client relationship.
0:49:18 - Betsy Jordyn
And I think it's like the low value tasks are the things that chat GPT can do or AI can do for you. You know, like, if you're talking about things like okay, so I have a data set, now I did qualitative research and I need to flag each one of these things and theme them, you know like there's you could have a research assistant go through and just like theme it. You know, but it's like making meaning out of it. That's what you do. But I still think that, like, when consultants and coaches are worried that they're going to lose their jobs you know we're going to lose our relevance I'm like, but the whole point of transformation, you know, in that book called the General Theory of Love you know, talks about like, how do people change, and it's in the context of, you know, the limbic revision regulation. It's like that it's through the relationship, and I think that that's the part that I get worried about is chat GPT is not like the collective unconscious, you know it's just it's a data scraper from what's existing. It's not like the universe that's got like some sort of unique message that's there to deliver something to you and it's. I think it's really easy, you know, to fall into that trap and you know the way the program sets up. It looks like it's listening. That's a great idea. You know, here's, here's exactly what you said and it's like that's not what I said.
You know, like like I think chat GPT you're gaslighting me a little bit, but the but that's not what it's designed to do.
Like you have to ignore all of that kind of stuff and and let it be its junior person. But I still think, like at a human level, like we can't lose the human in this whole part, cause it feels like, even as you're talking about, like the magic and the power of listening. It's like I feel like you know that connection. Like I know, when you and I step aside from this conversation, I'm going to be filled up in a way that I would never get from AI. I'm going to be like, wow, that was such an interesting perspective, what a unique point of view. Like we went back and forth. It's kind of like stone soup you know where, you know we had stone conversation soup where somebody put the stone in and you're like, hey, I got potatoes and you threw the potatoes in, and then I threw in the carrots and then we both ate the stew and it's like wow, this is amazing. You can't get that with a non-sentient being.
0:51:19 - Rick Bommelje
Exactly, exactly, and that's going back to Sear again, not to belabor the point. But AI interprets what we give it, but the evaluation piece can be questionable, right, right, how does it evaluate in a way that's going to bring benefit to me? Even the interpretation stage can miss the mark and so you have to go back and try again and again and again. Right, and it's also, at least at this point, probably going to change is does it go beyond reading the words? Is it detecting my voice tone? Now there are programs that do that, which could be a great assist in like meeting um analysis. But I think it's just a wild wild west opportunity to be able to say I think there's some value here. I'm not going to just give everything over to it, because that becomes an adaptive challenge, betsy, in itself. How can I optimize AI for my coaching and consulting journey? For my coaching and consulting journey?
0:52:51 - Betsy Jordyn
Yeah, so that you have more space, more time to do that relationship building that you actually love, and maybe it's like it gets rid of all of the other tasks that you don't love. Like maybe you don't love you know spending hours on an email, you know, so let it do the email. Or you could spend more time you know like one-on-one.
0:53:12 - Rick Bommelje
Exactly, exactly.
0:53:14 - Betsy Jordyn
So I want to take you in a different direction, if that's okay with you.
0:53:17 - Rick Bommelje
Sure.
0:53:18 - Betsy Jordyn
So I'm very excited that you are part of the Center for Courage and Renewal with Parker Palmer, and I know that there's people out there who may not be familiar with his work. His book on Let your Life Speak was a massive guide for me when I left Disney to start my own consulting business, and what I really loved about the whole idea of what he said there is like listening, the importance of listening to the he says, like listening to the voice of your vocation, and he's inspired me so much. Like the first step of my brand positioning process that I do with my clients is I have an initial phase where I say, like the first phase, and I call it listening to your life, and I have my clients do an inventory, you know, on their past experience and on their life story and like their passions, like I have them do all this like listening posts on that which I, you know, I feel really passionate about it. But again, we're still in the role of listening, you know.
So I would love your perspective because you're part of this particular world and I I would just love to have more insight on like, who are you listening to? Like if you're listening to the call of your vocation. You know who are you, who, who's talking to you Like, whose voice are you trying to hear? You know, and what are you listening for? Like you are, if you are going to guide, like my clients, who are mid-career professionals, who are looking for significance, not just success, like they really want meaningful work, can you speak a little bit more of like how do they hear that? That? Who are they listening? Does my question make sense?
0:54:49 - Rick Bommelje
Oh yes, okay, yes, make sense. Oh yes, okay, yes. So the work of Parker Palmer is at an entirely different plane than what I was accustomed to. Around listening, I'm moving from the cognitive dimension to the spiritual dimension without religion specifically connecting to it. And so when I had my first, my first experience with Parker Palmer was his book, the Courage to Teach. And the Courage to Teach can be boiled down into it's not what you teach or how you teach it, it's who is the person, who's teaching, evolving as a person. And that struck me.
And as I started to learn more about this, I saw that there was a like an open call, not an open call, but if people were drawn to the work, that it's possible to not be certified. To not be certified because there was a long process to be able to enter this family or community or space. But I felt that I needed more, and so I was able to, again, without having a lot of background and courage, work, enter the space. And it goes really back to the first point about opening the door yourself. Because they said, well, you need to have had at least 10 retreats under your belt before you can even be considered. I had one, and I wrote an impassioned letter and called the people that make the decisions and after a while they said okay, we'll bring you in for a pre.
It's all about retreat, not workshop, not seminar. It's retreat and it's totally counter-cultural. I mean, we're sitting in a circle. There's a candle in the middle. It's totally in a different dimension. But after going through the initial retreat, I came out of that and I said, betsy, I don't know much about listening After all these years. Experiencing this retreat was a whole new experience for me. And it comes back to the who are we listening to me? And it comes back to the who are we listening to? Who is the voice? The voice is the, that inner space within ourself. That's, in fact, it's all about listening to the voice within, because that's the essence of of all of this work is we come together to give space to one another. And it's rigid in terms of the disciplined work, but it's like a duck. All of that work is underneath as the duck is paddling across the calm lake. You wouldn't even know it right, until you lead a retreat and then you know it.
0:58:39 - Betsy Jordyn
So it sounds like you're connecting it to his quote about, like the soul, being like a wild animal and it's shy and it hides, and you have to like create a safe environment. That it's like you're listening. You're listening to the inner wisdom. That's like maybe connected to your soul, or is that what he's? Is that what this?
0:58:57 - Rick Bommelje
is about exactly exactly and it's telling the truth slant. In other words, you come to the realization primarily through honest, inviting questions that are served up for you from others and the only purpose of them asking you is so that you can listen to your own voice. It's not about their curiosity about your story. Now think about this in the coaching and consulting world, if I'm asking you honest, inviting questions for you to be able to listen to your own voice, that's exactly what you need. You don't need, and one of the touchstones, as it's called, is no fixing, saving, advising or correcting. That is out, which is contrary to what many coaches and consultants feel they get paid to do.
1:00:05 - Betsy Jordyn
So can you give me feedback on something I do in my branding approach? Because there's some things like when my clients are so after I have an interview with them, like I got a feeling or a sense of like. I have like one of my clients right now, like he's like the. I think he's like meant to be an executive coach for the introvert. You know he has this like life story about introversion and overcoming introversion and he's got this like really quiet demeanor about him and it's like and he just got his PhD or his DBA, you know, and it's and he has this whole research project on it. And then there's like this practical side of him that wants to go after corporate and, you know, help them just do executive coaching for their succession plans. And I asked him in our last coaching session I'm like all right, we're gonna take a break.
You know, like you go off in like process these two different directions and I really want you to listen to see like which one's accurate, like my senses, and I see you much more alive. It connects with your story. You know, am I stepping over or am I holding up a mirror like am I being too advice? Because it was like because he's because he started going on this other path, and it's like this just doesn't feel, like it's just I'm not. I'm not feeling like energy wise, like I'm just. This just doesn't feel like it's totally aligned. So it's like am I being in the right space or am I stepping over, moving too much into advisory?
1:01:30 - Rick Bommelje
No, no, You're at the E stage of SEER. You're evaluating and your response is let's take a moment here for you to think about what really matters most to you. Yeah, and without that opportunity that's the responding side of it for you to be able to offer this to the person, they will continue to spin with, not putting their focus where it really needs to be.
1:02:07 - Betsy Jordyn
And maybe if he comes back and says this is the other path, it's like cool, that's great, you know, but it's like at least we took the moment, like we took that Viktor Frankl moment of you know, like let's just take a beat and really think this through. And I think sometimes with my process, people get annoyed, as like they want to go faster. But I'm like we just need to sit with this, because this is your life story that we're, this is your life work that we're. That's that's at risk here. You know, why are we going to get it wrong? Like let's just take some moments to let this moment kind of marinate and see how it goes.
1:02:38 - Rick Bommelje
Yes, and and that that's where Viktor Frankl says it's freedom. That's where the freedom comes in, because you've become liberated with your choice.
1:02:53 - Betsy Jordyn
Love that. I want to talk to you forever but I know we can't. This has been so helpful. I would love for you to share a little bit more about your LinkedIn newsletter and how people can sign up for that. And I do know you have your Listening Pays book and you have like consulting and coaching programs. You have a whole bunch of things. So can you share a little bit more about the things that you offer and how people can get a hold of all of these different resources and things that you have available?
1:03:21 - Rick Bommelje
Absolutely Well. The LinkedIn newsletter is called the Listening Leader. I don't believe there's two of them, right. I think it's the only one Easy to get to and it's a weekly. I'm committed to it. The Listening Pays book is really a condensation of the work on listening leadership in a parable. It's a leadership story. It's about a troubled sales director gets into a jam because he's not listening to his team, not listening to his boss, not listening to himself, and he finds an unsuspecting sage, a car detailer who happens to be deaf. And that car detailer had a transformation in his life. He lost his hearing at age three, At age 40, got a cochlear implant, could hear again, got confidence, went back to school, found his way to a listening course at Rollins College and I spotlighted Alfred Marino in the book as the hero, or the consultant, if you will. That helps the troubled sales director and he helps guide him using all of the foundation material that I've gathered.
1:04:46 - Betsy Jordyn
Interesting. Okay, I'll definitely look at that up. But as it relates to your consulting or coaching, I think that you are in an interesting point in your journey because if you do have the LinkedIn newsletter and you also have, you know, your books that are out there, it's like how do you make all of those things kind of like serve in a way that like brings the right people to you? And then it sounds like the way you want to engage people is at a much deeper level, like. It sounds like it's a combination of somebody who is not just like how do I help improve my leadership, but it seems like with the background in the, with the Parker Palmer work, there's a way that you bring all of those pieces together too. So we could definitely talk about that offline. I would love to talk to you more about that. I have a million ideas and I also would love to see you do a mentor program, like what you did with me, like that just-in-time advice.
If it wasn't for you and that just-in-time advice, I'll tell you where my career trajectory would have gone. I would have sat there in my little OD bubble with my OD language, in the formal position as an OD consultant, but having no seat in the table, I would have been implementing like training workshops and I would have been doing like a lot of low level work. I would have never really been against those bigger projects. I never would have got to Disney. I would have never survived and thrived at Disney. Because of that, like I had a different perspective. I was, like, clearly outstanding from the beginning because I didn't wait for the leaders to invite me, you know, to the table. Because of what I learned, I wouldn't have the business I have now. So I would love to see other people have the opportunity. I mean, just just in terms of I don't know, I could start crying again. Just the level of impact that you've had on me is tremendous and substantial.
1:06:35 - Rick Bommelje
Wow. Well, I'm so humbled, truly humbled, and I wish I could tell you that there was a master plan. But I believe there is, but it's beyond me.
1:06:51 - Betsy Jordyn
Well, this has been a wonderful full circle moment. I highly, highly, highly, beyond highly, encourage you to check out. I know I'm supposed to call him Rick, but he's still Dr Bommeljay in some ways to me, because you know, when I'm around him, like, okay, I'm still in my 20s, but I'm not, you know. But I highly recommend checking out anything he is working on and done, read his books Definitely. Subscribe to that newsletter. I will be signing up for that newsletter immediately, and I think that this is so timely too, in a world where we want to keep our human connections in the middle of a world that doesn't feel like human connections is the priority to that level.
So thank you, thank you, thank you so deeply much for being on the show.
1:07:29 - Rick Bommelje
Forever deeply grateful.
1:07:31 - Betsy Jordyn
Okay. So you can obviously tell by how emotional I got and how much I gushed about the power of having not just a mentor but the right one at the right time. So if I might be that one for you like Dr Ramajai I mean Rick was to me I get to call him Rick now. Please head on over to my website at www.betsyjordyn.com to learn more about my programs. If you strongly suspect that we might be a fit, just go ahead and hit that big pink button at the top and request a discovery meeting now. So that's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to just hit subscribe wherever you're tuning in, pass it on to your colleagues and friends, and I'd love it if you could take a minute and review it on Apple Podcasts, because it really helps more people find the show and I just really appreciate it. And until next time. Thanks so much for listening.
