174: How to Build Self-Aware Leaders: The Framework That Scales Culture | Erin Lewellen

Can you teach self-awareness—or is it innate?

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in a divided world competence gets celebrated but self-awareness is what

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sustains true leadership and the truth is most leaders are never taught how to develop it welcome to the Learn It All

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Podcast the show for today's leaders who want to get ahead and stay ahead because we believe great leaders aren't born or

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made they are always in the making i'm your host Damon Lebby two-time best-selling author and CEO of LearnIt a

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live learning platform that has helped upskill over two million people over the past three decades my guest today is

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Erin Llewellyn she's the CEO of Tilting Futures and her organization is helping

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young adults from over a 100 countries lead with empathy adaptability and curiosity by dropping them into

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unfamiliar places and helping them get out of their comfort zone and learn and grow our bigger goal is to create a

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global coalition of young people with the skills and networks needed to solve

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our greatest and most complex global challenges in our conversation today I'm

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going to ask Aaron to share her thoughts on why leadership starts with knowing yourself first how Aaron builds a

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culture where hard conversations aren't avoided they're expected respected and

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drive better decisions what Tilting Futures teaches young leaders about system thinking and empathy how to hire

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for curiosity not just competence and the two questions Aaron asks herself every week tilting Futures teaches young

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leaders from over a 100 countries how to lead with empathy and self-awareness but

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really my question for you is can you actually teach self-awareness or is it something you're either born with or not

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you can absolutely teach self-awareness it's a muscle in my opinion uh we

“Look in the mirror”: Erin’s foundational leadership habit

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develop it through deliberate practice and I want to be clear I don't think it's um I don't think developing

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self-awareness is particularly fun it requires us to have the courage to look

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for honest feedback to sit in that moment of discomfort when the truth

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comes and to be vulnerable enough to change course when needed so I think it

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absolutely can be learned and it requires a strength an inner strength

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that is also a muscle to be developed so if you're a leader and you have somebody

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on your team or maybe even a mentor and you could see somebody who struggles

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with self-awareness what is one tip or piece of advice you have for them to help that

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person become better at developing it that's a great question i would answer it in two ways first I would say I think

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it's important you start developing this muscle at a young age so that's one so

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that when you get into a position of leadership you've already got some habits underway that help you continue

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to build your self-awareness because this is a lifelong pursuit and then the second thing I would say is I've got a

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couple questions that I always ask myself and I will say they came from my

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dear mom who would consistently say "Well Erin when I was a kid and having

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trouble with friends who's the common denominator in this situation?" Or

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"Don't you think we should take a look in the mirror first before we think about that being someone else's fault?"

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And so these two questions I always literally ask myself at least weekly

What Tilting Futures is and how it works

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well let me look in the mirror what have I done to participate in this challenge or I'm having some challenges in four

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different areas that would make me the common denominator here so those are just some little clues that I would I

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use as a leader consistently i really like the one about asking yourself maybe I should look in the mirror because

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there's so many times where you get in a situation and your first instinct maybe is to blame somebody else and and maybe

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take a step back and think let me think about what could I have done differently in this situation and think about it

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before you move forward and and pass blame so I think that's a great tip right there okay let's get into young

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leaders tell us a little bit more about Tilting Futures you know how did it come to be and what is really the mission

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when it comes to working with these young people so we're entering our 15th year of existence and our bigger goal is

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to create a global coalition of young people with the skills and networks

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needed to solve our greatest and most complex global challenges so you can

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imagine this is going to require a lot of those foundational skills that start

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with self-awareness the way we do this is we recruit young people from all over the world and we bring them together in

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a context other than their own so right now we operate in Cape Town South Africa we operate in Georgetown Malaysia

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imagine a cohort of about 50 to 75 kids in that cohort they'll be from about 40

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to 50 different countries and they have an apprenticeship so they're getting real world skills in a global issue so

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think human rights think environment and sustainability com complex problems that

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transcend borders and will require global cooperation for us to navigate so

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they have this apprenticeship and then we have a curriculum that rolls through it to really maximize the learning and

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ensure that when they leave they've grown in two really distinct areas

Why ages 17–22 are the sweet spot for impact

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self-discovery self-awareness and global orientation and the combination of those

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two together is what creates the transformation transformational moment

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for a young person to think differently about themselves about the responsibility to this world we're in

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responsibility to a greater community and where they want to take their skills

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and talents next and the ages you really focus on are between 17 and 22 right yep

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and so let's talk a little bit about why you've targeted that age group so right now they're old enough to have some

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independent thinking but they're young enough to not have formed any idea of

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who they are as a person so in that moment of

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developmental stage what we can do is really give them an experience that

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allows them to interrogate their themselves interrogate some of their own belief systems get some input from peers

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get some input from the organizations and impact leaders that they're working with and then begin to formulate a way

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of being in the world that is consistently building self-awareness

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consistently building leadership not sort of thinking about it as a place to arrive and then get stagnant but rather

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I have a way of being in the world that can work with people who are very different than me that can think of

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compromises or solutions that will serve two distinct needs rather than just my

Teaching empathy through global immersion and collaboration

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need that's a way of being in the world and if you can tip that thinking at an

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early age the impact actually ends up being quite large across their lifetimes

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and so that's why we focus right there and now more than ever it's super important i mean look at the world we

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live in how polarized everything is right so is your hopes that by getting these

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young adults at an early age through this program that they will come out the

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other end with a different view than how things are now and less polarized absolutely that's a huge piece of what

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we do and some of that we have a research team at UC Berkeley and a research team at Harvard that help us

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understand the impact of our work and one of the big pieces that we found is that our young people feel a sense of

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belonging to their global community and then when you break that down what it means is that when you're feeling a

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sense of community among people from really different backgrounds you're able

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to think about their perspective in a different way where's this perspective coming from and why do I have a

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different perspective rather than oh that perspective is wrong and that's a

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different approach to being in a community and I think that is a big

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piece of how we can navigate some of this divisiveness that we're seeing

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right now you got to get into the world you got to have experiences that make you realize what you thought before

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isn't quite true or isn't quite the whole story those are the types of

Travel as a tool for leadership and adaptability

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experiences that a young person needs to have so when they enter a situation

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where they're seeing something that doesn't quite resonate with them it's not an automatic push away it's actually like

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let me get a little closer to this to understand that perspective that's a different approach and one we could

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desperately use right now absolutely and look at your background we joked about this beforehand you got all kinds of

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books back there i got all kinds of books here myself and yes reading books

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is great for learning but also what's great for learning is travel and I'm not

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just talking about you know going on a you know trip to Paris for for a week or so but traveling and living in these

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different locations whether it's Cape Town or anywhere so share a little bit of why travel can have such a huge

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impact on learning you're completely right it's a a type

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of traveling that we think is important so when we think

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about where transformational learning can really happen where and what I mean by that is you have a fundamentally

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different perspective when you come out than when you came in on both yourself and something in the

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world that happens when you're outside of your comfort zone and so travel is a

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very natural place for that to happen you can go into a different environment

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and suddenly your ideas about how you solve a challenge how you create

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dialogue how you eat all the ways that people do things differently when you're

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in a new environment all of your senses are so alive and I think that is

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required for the deeper learning i can sit in a classroom I can feel very comfortable i can feel a little less

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comfortable if I know the professor might call on me at any moment that might make me feel a little less

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comfortable but I'm still in a familiar place i know where the bathroom is i

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know how to speak the language i can kind of predict what's going to happen in this setting when you're in a

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different environment that all of those things are up in the air and it forces an awareness that's very heightened and

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I think that opens your learning up in ways that just don't happen in a

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traditional classroom you literally you just can't fake it anymore because yeah you can't because you're in the middle

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of it where you could be sitting in a classroom and you could be zoning out and you know that hey I'm good at

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memorizing facts or information and passing a test but when you're in another country and you're in a Uber or

Erin’s Cape Town story: Context, humility, and lifelong change

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a cab or ordering at a restaurant and maybe you don't speak the same language so sure it builds self-awareness i also

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like to think it builds a tremendous amount of adaptability which is so important these days

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absolutely and I think about some of the lessons I've learned from traveling personally and one of them is I I know

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you know this about me but I'm a from a blue collar family so I have this

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incredible family and my dad uh was very insistent that as a young woman I speak

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my mind i raise my hand i am engaging i you know I like building this confidence

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in me right to stand up for myself and go after what I wanted which I have been

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appreciative of my whole life i go to Cape Town i have an internship i'm 22

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and I have this mindset and I'm in this you know it's a meeting of women around

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some of the I I got this incredible opportunity to go to this meeting where women were talking about some of the

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challenges in Cape Town facing women specifically and I

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started speaking in this meeting as if I had any authority my 22-year-old self

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right and it was such a good learning

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opportunity it was deeply embarrassing and humbling as you can imagine to have someone turn to me and say "Hold on

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first off who are you?" And in this space you should probably listen first

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kind but clear and I had this moment where I was like "Right context context

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matters." And in my former context that made a lot of sense you know I was

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working my summer job was at a lumberm mill yeah speak my mind you know go

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after things that's a very different context than being in a meeting of women

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leaders in Cape Town where my job was to learn and listen and be grateful for being in the space and it was just this

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moment it's very it feels very small but it forever impacted how I enter a space

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from here on out that's a great That's a great story thank you thank you what

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were you going to say i didn't mean to cut you off i was going to say and it it affects me right now i don't speak first in a meeting i I don't ever i'm the CEO

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always listen people ask a question I'm not going to be the first to answer it

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i'm not going to not participate as the CEO because that doesn't work either but I would much rather be second third

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fourth in the conversation because it allows for opinions to be put at the

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table in a different way so the it's still alive today there's two things there so

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first I give a lot of credit to the person who turned to you and said that because that could be uncomfortable as

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well right i mean that's a little bit of a difficult conversation and so I think that when we're in a situation like that

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whether it's as a mentor or maybe even just sitting in the same room with somebody having you know getting out and

Leading meetings with curiosity and silence

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saying that what a difference that makes cuz she could have just sat there but she basically changed your life or or

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helped frame how you want to look at things which I think is so cool and the second thing that I think you're

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bringing up is really cool for all the leaders and CEOs out there listening let your team go first when we have a

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meeting I'm the same way i don't want to jump in with ideas right off the bat because then the tendency might be like

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let's agree with what Damon has to say so it's always better to kind of hold your tongue and kind of sit back and and

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see what happens and transpires and then add in your ideas so those are two great points right there thank you i

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completely agree that your team has way more answers than you do well and I'll

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speak for myself than I do my team has m many more answers than I do and if I go

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first I just leave a bunch of the best ideas on the table or not on the table

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they don't even make it to the table yeah absolutely and if you do that too often or you jump in too often your

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team's not going to even come up with ideas anymore because they're going to know they're not going to be heard but I want to get I want to get back to Okay

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so these students they leave this experience you know they're for I think what six months four months or four

What changes in student mindset after 4 months

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months what are some of the immediate shifts that you tend to see in a

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student's mindset or behavior well I think so if I come back a little bit one

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of our goals the reason that we have built this concept this framework this

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model of take action lab and paired up with two research teams at UC Berkeley

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and Harvard the reason we've done that is because we are trying to prove the efficacy of this type of learning and

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the reason we want to prove that is because the idea the bolder idea is how

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does higher ed integrate this truly into a degree seeeking pathway rather than a

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nice to have a you know yeah if you can get a summer internship great go for it

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sure we'll give you a few credits for that experience you had but nothing there's really very limited there are

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some great examples but there are limited examples for where it's truly integrated you will do something akin to

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a take action lab in your pathway to that degree in environmental studies or

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that engineering degree and we're trying to shift that and so that's why we

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measure how what our impact is and what we see is exactly what we would hope so

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we see improvement in a young person understanding with more clarity as they

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pursue their higher education purpose what is the and a sense of agency so

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they can navigate both first the world of the university but also navigate

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career they have this way of taking initiative in a different fundamentally

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new way and then the other pieces that are and I think those are just skills that help them navigate that world right

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both of those worlds but then the other pieces that I think are even I think

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more community-minded is this greater sense

The research: Reduced bias, more agency, stronger leadership

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of self-awareness being needed in the context with whatever

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they're doing so a lot of these young people are going to go on to be leaders and they're going to lead either

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initiatives or they're going to lead organizations and for them to have a practice of self-reflection a practice

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of asking themselves well what role do I want to play and what role am I playing and how are those two different is

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critical to building a leadership pipeline that has empathy that can work

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with people that can bring a team along those are critical and then I think the other piece that we see is one of the

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things that's really interesting we did a control group analysis and we learned a ton of things through doing that about

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the impact of our programming but one of them that I think is so critical is reduced prejuditial attitudes and this

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for me is if you're going to be a young leader being able to not make

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assumptions about someone who's sitting across the table from you before they've even spoken is critical being able to be

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more curious rather than judging what an idea and where that idea is coming from

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and who has this idea is critical for finding the best idea so these are some

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of the pieces that we find um our research shows that lead a young person

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to navigate differently and then they go on to you know all kinds of jobs we've

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got young people working cross- sector so they're working in the private sector they're working in nonprofit they're

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working in government but they're taking this approach with them which is I think

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going to make us all better once they rise into positions of leadership let's go back a second to them being less

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prejudice so to speak do you believe this is happening because their opportunity because they're living

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in a different country a different you know continent and they they have so many different connections of of people

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from all around that they're seeing and experiencing things from a different point of view yes I do and I was

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actually this may sound strange but I was I was surprised by this coming out

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because this came from a control group analysis of young people who had applied for our programming so they were

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inclined to want something like this they had gotten accepted but weight

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listed and so they were young people with I would think a mindset that you

How global cohorts shift perspective and prejudice

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could say "Oh well they're already kind of in this they're they're going to

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think this way they're going to be open-minded but when we took that group and we measured them against the group

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that went through the programming going through the programming produced reduced

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pre prejuditial attitudes and I think it's a few different things i think once you've been in a situation where you had

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a perspective and you develop a cohort of people from very different backgrounds across the world that

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challenge that perspective you begin to realize and recognize that your own

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perspective is literally just that it is a perspective that can be changed

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shifted challenged appropriately and it makes you think differently about other

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people's perspectives and I think if we think about even in this in our own in our own country in the United States I

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mean if we could get the right and the left to stop having these prejudices

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against each other we would be in a totally different situation where we could listen to each other and

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understand where is our common ground it would it would make a lot of a lot of

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difference I think absolutely i mean not to get political but yeah but if each

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side could just be curious and and even for a second Eron say let's just look at

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this person this from their perspective and see if there's any truth to it you know and just look at it from different

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angles i think we can get along a lot better and that's why I think what you're doing at Tilting Futures is is

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amazing and it also helps you with uh problem solving right even just understanding and uncovering what

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problems are yes yeah i think it helps you get to the root of a problem and I

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think that's a big piece of what we do so part of our curriculum is this

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self-awareness and global orientation and that's where we spent a lot of this conversation but there are two other

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really key pieces to a take action lab that a young person walks away with and one of them is and this is with the

Systems thinking and asset-based problem solving

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curriculum obviously the experience gives them a lot of a lot of richness but the curriculum teaches systems

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thinking and the reason is we're always working at these two levels so a young person has an individual experience with

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a social impact leader say they're working at a food bank for example and they're working with that social impact

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leader on developing some fundraising campaigns for their food bank i'm just

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making this up that is a real thing that someone is doing right now but so let

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let's say that but what we don't want is them to leave this experience thinking

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only about that food bank and not thinking about the systems with which

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created the need for a food bank and what levers at the system level would

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need to be pulled to make sure that food insecurity went away because we want a

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person to be thinking on two levels and the second thing we teach is assetbased

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solution seeking so this is critical because if we

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approach challenges from a different understanding if we approach challenges by saying

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"Okay this community has so many strengths and there's this

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challenge what strengths in our community can we bring to bear to meet

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this challenge?" That is a fundamentally different place to come from rather than this idea of oh

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you know there's so many deficits in this community it's got so many challenges where do I even start right

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you start to there's some nihilism that can come in there right why why would I even pursue this at all instead flipping

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that frame for a young person at an early age helps them navigate challenges from a strengthbased perspective for

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themselves and for the greater community and so it's always like that self community self community because we

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don't exist on our own yeah and it can be overwhelming especially if there's so

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many things that look like they're not going well right you know or just too

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hard to fix if you could focus on some of the strengths and and like you said flip the script I mean I think it works

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well for both like you said self and community so and by the way I love Take

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Action Labs i I wish I could have come up with that myself for Learn It you know i mean it's it's just great and um

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but so obviously there's a huge impact for your students and your learners but in order for all of this to go really

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well you have to have a great team behind the scenes internally at uh Tilting Futures so let's talk a little

Behind the scenes: Building Tilting Futures’ internal culture

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bit about your culture and your organization starting with the onboarding process i think culture is

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critical in any team environment i'm a also with my wife coached high school

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basketball for 20 years so the culture of your team I am a a team culture type

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of person and luckily so is the entire team at Tilting Futures but we have we

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cultivate this and to just I think what we're I'll start maybe controversially

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with where I think a lot of leaders go wrong on this which is let me go into my

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office or my little area and let me draw up what our culture will be let me just

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write this out and then here it is deliver it this is our culture and everyone is looking at each other

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thinking that's not our culture that's not my experience of our culture i wouldn't participate in building that

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and there's this idea of it should be aspirational and therefore also often

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divorced from reality so at Tilting Futures we do things a little bit differently we talk about our culture

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our val we talk about our values and what we're trying to do as we work

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together within the context of those values and so then that sounds lofty

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then it gets into working agreements it gets into how do we work together and

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then you back that up into okay you've got a new teammate how do you onboard this person to make sure they're

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maximally successful so of course we onboard them with walking them through our values and how they get played out

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and what our expectations are walking them through our working agreements but then there's also a meeting that I have

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with every new employee and this is I think a really great opportunity for them to get some time to

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talk with me to share to learn from each other i get to learn about them they get to learn about me but it's this

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fundamental what my whole session is on i've seen a lot of folks at Tilting

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Futures be really successful and what do they have in common and then that's what I walk them through and we get to have a

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conversation about what that means what what things do they do all these

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employees have in common so I'm happy to walk you through those if you want me to well that's that was my question so you

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referred to it when we spoke before about what made them wildly successful so what are the traits that make

“There is no ‘they’, only ‘we’”: One of their core principles

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employees at uh Tilting Futures wildly successful okay sorry then i should have led with that um okay so here's here's

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here's my session uh we talk about the first one is there is no they there is only we and this principle I think is

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critical because I think one of the things that I I mean we've all been in uh organizations where the culture is

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off or we have a great culture and then it gets a little sideways and you got to kind of bring it back and I think what a

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lot of things what a lot of times will happen is well well they if they would just stop doing this or they decided we

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should do this there's this dynamic of two teams and they is almost always some

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sort of mythical entity when you really get into it so if everyone is participating and

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there is we as the grounding force then when you feel like maybe the morale

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isn't that great it's not because of something they did you're saying okay well we've gotten ourselves to a point

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where our morale is a little low how do we how can I participate in helping fix

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this that's a shift right rather than blame it's you're a part of this it's

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about self-awareness without looking in the mirror it's the same things we've been talking about but this is a key

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tenant there's no they only we the second one is we lead with curiosity and

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relentlessly search for better so we're looking for teammates who are always wanting it to be better they want our

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impact to be better they want our admissions to be better they want our culture to be better and they're leading

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with curiosity around how can that happen and let's talk about that one for

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a second great because I love the lead with curiosity and always looking uh to get better and I just wrote that down

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what does that look like in interview process how do you identify individuals who could fall into that type of mindset

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so we um believe in I'm going to get technical in a competency based approach for interviewing and this is something

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that I have always thought i'm not a fan of hypotheticals because you can just make up an answer and they all end up

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sounding the exact same in my opinion so give me an example when you finished a

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project and you were thinking about how you could have done it better tell me

How Erin interviews for curiosity and growth mindset

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what did you do and how would you have made it better the next time so you're just trying to get at do they look for

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self-improvement are they self-reflective what would they how would they characterize it and you can

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tell if someone does not have an answer to that then they that they don't reflect after their projects that's

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problematic or you say "Tell me about a time when you had a project that was wildly

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successful." D what went wrong in that process that where you had to course

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correct where something was not right and you had to fix something that's illuminating because

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basically everyone who's ever done a project has had something go wrong that they've had to pause recalibrate and

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move forward and if they can't find something then you can really understand

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that they're not reflecting throughout the process they're not thinking critically about their own pathway so

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those are some of the ways I we get at it we're looking for continuous learning we're looking for consistently measuring

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their own performance trying to be as objective as possible in that and then we're looking

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for someone who finishes something and then very next time they do that they already know how they're going to do it better the next time i agree with you

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when you say that you don't like hypotheticals but where I disagree is on the spot I think it's hard to make up a

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story like that and I think it's so important to in interview process to

32:01

connect them with stories or have them tell stories because what I like to look for as well Erin is when something goes

32:08

wrong where is the blame falling is it because of the manager is it because somebody else did something or are they

32:15

taking accountability and ownership themselves and saying "Well here's something I could have done differently you know which I think is great to have

32:21

that type of vulnerability especially in an interview because you might be worried of the other person on the other side saying "Well I don't want to hire

32:27

them because they're admitting mistakes." I don't think we're disagreeing at all i think you know

32:33

there's a whole sort of ethos around interviewing and making the person feel comfortable and making sure that it's a

32:39

conversation and putting our culture and values in the middle of that interview

32:44

right so I'm going to show curiosity too i'm going to probe to make sure I'm understanding but what I am looking for

32:51

is the ability to self-reflect the ability to have the that ask those

32:58

deeper questions about there could be another way to do this and after I

33:04

finished it or once I reached this obstacle I was able to find that better path and I think those stories are hard

33:11

to come up with which is why I always say take a second just think about an accomplishment that we can kind of dig in together because I'm going to ask you

33:17

lots of questions about it and give them a time i don't expect them to have it

33:22

perfect out of the gates but I do think I'm looking for the exact same things that you're looking for great and uh

33:30

what we're talking about here are these soft skills which I hate that term soft skills because they're not soft skills

33:36

you wrote a great article in Forbes that we'll I'll place in the show notes and these are also skills that won't be

33:44

replaced by AI i think that they'll be supplemental and it's so important we've

33:49

talked about adaptability critical thinking problem solving curiosity all

33:54

working together those are fantastic the other thing that I really appreciate that you and I spoke about before I want

34:00

to get into one of the working agreements is being able to say "I

34:05

disagree," and have these conflict type conversations share a little bit more about that that is one of our core

34:13

working agreements for us disagreement is a normal part of finding solutions to

Why soft skills are the hardest—and most critical—to teach

34:18

problems and we encourage disagreement so if there is no disagreement in any of

34:25

the things that you're discussing you inevitably are not going to come up with the best idea and so one of the big

34:30

pieces for our senior leadership team is we're much more interested in the best

34:37

path the best idea rather than our own self-interest that we had the best idea

34:44

and when you have that orientation then that allows for disagreement and it encourages disagreement because it makes

34:50

the idea stronger and so another place where we have an agreement that helps

34:56

facilitate this is if we are having a feeling and we have the capacity we name

35:02

that feeling this may sound touchyfey but here's how it translates if I'm saying

35:09

something and someone's feeling like I'm not saying my full opinion let's say

35:18

someone could say "I'm just having this feeling that we're not getting the full story of how you feel about this." And

35:25

this happened to me just the other day and you know what these things are important for creating a culture but

35:30

they make you feel uncomfortable so they're not always like it's not La La Land it's actually disagreement is hard

35:37

and disagreeing well with respect and civility takes practice and having

35:42

someone say "I feel like you're not really telling us the whole like your whole sort of perspective on this like

Encouraging disagreement to find the best idea

35:48

you're holding back forced me to say yeah okay so

35:54

here's how I'm feeling about this." And we had to kind of take a step back and recognize that my line of questioning

36:02

did have um reasons behind it that I wasn't being explicit about and I needed to be called out on that and then we had

36:08

a much better conversation after someone had the courage which is one of our

36:13

values to step forward and there's language behind it we say you know we've got these working agreements so the

36:19

person got to say I'm going to live into one of our working agreements and say I feel like I'm not getting the full story

36:27

of what how you're feeling about this and then boom it led to a much better outcome so

36:35

I'm in agreement with you on that but what do you say to the leaders who will

36:40

say "Well feedback should always be done in private you shouldn't be having this kind of conversation in front of other

36:47

people." One of my key pieces as CEO is

36:52

to always try to make the implicit explicit and it creates the context that

36:59

we all need to be able to make good decisions so if the team is guessing how

37:04

you feel or how you think and you're not being explicit then you're you're you're um

37:12

you're shortch changing their ability to lead well and I think that's that's what

37:17

I would say to that now if someone wants to talk to me about something deeper

37:23

that they're worried about with my leadership or I'm not looking for some sort of call out culture where we're

37:30

just calling each other out and it's ruthless in its you know way of being

37:36

it's much more about how can we get to the best outcome

37:42

and if I need to name a feeling that is happening here for me that I think is

37:48

maybe impacting the group or whatever I'm going to name it so that we can get through it and move to the solution

37:54

that's different than if someone's just you know I've noticed a pattern with something that's happening with you Erin

37:59

lately and I want to talk to you about it sure take me aside have a conversation with me about it and then

Practicing emotional honesty in meetings

38:06

we can move from there it's not about blasting someone it's about getting to the best outcome and I think it takes

38:13

practice it's not This is not an easy You don't just jump into this we've been practicing it for over a year now and

38:20

it's made a huge difference in levels of trust among us well I think the key word

38:25

you said right there is trust i think in order to have this type of culture and these types of conversations it has to

38:31

start with trust where everybody knows that they respect each other and that

38:36

you all have a common goal of well whatever your common goal is your northstar that you have at Tilting Futures or you have at Learn It to be

38:43

able to have those kind of conversations and you want to do it with respect what I hear you saying is that you also want

38:51

to get to a decision or whatever it is quicker by not having you know when you're sitting in a team's meeting or a

38:57

Zoom meeting and people are IMing each other on the side saying "I wish we could just say that." Knock that and the

39:02

water cooler stuff off and just bring that to the forefront instead of having it happen after you know the meeting

39:09

that happens after the meeting oh yeah i am very much not a fan of the meeting

39:15

that happens after the meeting and in fact even with my with our board of directors we had this wonderful moment

39:22

where we decided to bring our working agreements and our values to our board of directors and have a conversation

39:28

about it because what we wanted to do this is a few years ago was shift into a

39:34

new dynamic where we're one team and we're having a conversation that is with

39:40

that is that feels together towards solving some of these challenges so that we can have the greatest impact in the

39:46

world the reason someone joins a board is because they're excited about your mission and they want to help you move

39:51

it forward so how do we recognize that building a team requires investment it

39:58

doesn't just happen and for us it was about three years ago we recognized hey

40:05

we've got this we're building this amazing rapport and way of working together on the senior leadership team

40:11

let's just make that explicit to the board and say this is the type of working relationship we want with

40:17

you game changer i mean we are we really feel like one team and the senior

40:22

leadership team and the board are very fluid working together supporting each other naming some of the hard truths

40:29

where if we don't feel like a strategy is tight enough if we don't feel like that idea for a donor is good enough I

Ditching “the meeting after the meeting”

40:37

mean we speak these truths to each other so that we get better and it's made a huge difference so I'm thinking about

40:43

again the take action labs and you know in the curriculum that you use for your

40:49

students is there anything that's come up from the what you learned from the students that you've then imported into

40:58

your existing team it's a really good question i mean I would say it is a

41:05

consistent conversation that what we are teaching we need to also learn and so it

41:13

really is it's very alive and there was a moment we've been around about 15

41:19

years and I came on around 12 years ago so there was a moment there where we had a set of uh values that had been drafted

41:26

up and put on a pretty web page and then we had our behaviors and values for our

41:33

our students and they were different and I remember saying "Wait hold on

41:39

shouldn't we have a set of these that if you are a student graduating from a Tilting Futures um program or you are an

41:48

employee who worked here for 5 years and then went on to do something different you could recite these and they would be

41:54

the same." And it was this moment where everybody was like "Yes these should all

Aligning staff and student values: One unified culture

42:00

be aligned." And so that's a big piece of us like there's nothing separate around what we're teaching for our

42:05

students that we are not trying to live and model every day and it's hard work

42:11

what we're asking them to do is hard being vulnerable is not easy but it

42:18

facilitates richness that that is worth it and I think that's what we're trying to teach young people and we're trying

42:24

to teach ourselves as we move in the world well what I hear you saying and I agree first of all learning is hard

42:31

that's why a lot of people don't continue to do it because it it takes consistency and it takes work the other

42:36

thing I hear you saying which is exactly what I believe in at Learn It is we're out teaching all these leaders and these

42:44

you know people B2B well you can't just say one thing and then do another so that's why I'm

42:50

always trying to invest in our own team to continue learning and model it myself

42:56

you know continuing to learn and grow and get better because how are we going to be passionate about it and help others if we're not doing it oursel so I

43:03

think that that's really important i completely agree with that i completely agree with that and the only way you can

43:10

it it gets back to the very beginning of this conversation self-awareness and building

43:16

self-awareness is a muscle building a collaborative culture that produces

43:21

excellent results is a muscle and if you're not exercising it and working on

43:27

it every day it will atrophy just like a muscle will so I think there's something

43:32

there that the consistency we review our working agreements and a team member leads this

43:40

process every every meeting that we get together and says something like uh what's one way a team member of yours

43:47

modeled one of our working agreements give them a shout out what's one working agreement for this particular

43:54

conversation that we're about to have that you know you're going to need to really be aware of for yourself all

43:59

these different questions that we're interacting with our working agreements every single staff meeting that we have

44:06

that makes a huge difference in exercising that muscle how often I was

44:11

going to ask that question how often does that take place where a team member leads that conversation so we have a

44:16

weekly staff meeting that's all an all hands meeting and that's it that happens every week and then our senior

44:22

leadership team meeting is also every week and it happens at every senior leadership team meeting it also happens

Keeping values alive in every meeting

44:27

at the team meetings le level so where there is a meeting of a group that's

44:34

consistent and even when it's ad hoc we will start with our working agreements it's five minutes we get right down to

44:40

business we're quite efficient but it sets the tone every single time no I think that's great and otherwise the

44:48

values or working agreements they just get stuck in the on the wall or in a drawer but if you're asking people to

44:55

come and think about and share it that's how it keeps it alive i think that's

45:01

fantastic we're almost at time here but I I wanted to ask so you've been doing these for about 15 years right these uh

45:09

ventures not adventures but you know these action labs for the students mhm how have the students changed over the

45:15

years do you feel like that they're the same or is there a noticeable difference maybe in their mindset that going into

45:23

these action labs i think how I would answer this is their context has changed

45:30

dramatically in 15 years so in 15 years if we think about what I mean by context

45:37

a the phone smartphone social media right so they are in a relationship with

45:44

social media in ways that 15 years ago young people weren't whether they're trying to not be on it all the time

45:51

whether they're trying to engage responsibly that all you know is individual by individual but the fact

45:58

that they're contending with that is very dramatically different the other context is that they're living in a much

46:06

more polarized context right now the a much more polarized environment than 15

46:11

years ago and so they're being asked to participate in that polarization and

46:18

divisiveness in lots of different ways that they might feel uncomfortable with but don't have yet words or uh ways of

46:27

navigating that that feel right to them and so the things they're they're being

46:32

asked to navigate and contend with right now are radically different and every generation contends with

46:39

complexity this generation is contending with complexity I think at new levels as

How this generation of students is different

46:45

we introduce AI as we introduce social media uh connectedness that is not

46:52

actual connection through digital challenges i mean channels digital channels i think there's a lot of things

46:59

that were asking of them that were not asked of certainly of me but even the young people we were working with in the

47:05

first year or two that we just have to be really mindful about as educators and

47:11

as adults who are ahead of them in their journey that this kind of context really

47:17

matters for how they're ask being asked to navigate no that's so important and I was just thinking about

47:24

uh I got a three-year-old and a seven-year-old and what's that going to look like in 10 years from now and what

47:29

is the world that they're going to have to navigate look like tilting futures what's one moment from a student

47:37

or a team member where you reflect back and say this is exactly why I'm doing

47:43

this work there are so many moments i think of a young woman who is came

47:50

into the program she's a scientist she's from Ashona village in

47:56

Zimbabwe and she is uh came in very focused on biomedical engineering this

48:04

is her passion and her passion is really born from something very near and dear to her heart how do you think about

48:11

disease and disease eradication as it impacts different populations

48:17

disproportionately so it was really all science-based it was just very technical

48:22

and what she speaks about coming out of a take action lab is that hold on yes

48:29

all of these medical advances are important and I'm going to participate in that but I'm never going to lose

48:35

sight of how is this not just a narrow

48:41

science focus but how do I also learn around how do you bring people along in

48:50

the science how do you create awareness around the things that might pro you

48:56

know could be like prevention or community-based uh public health practices how is it how

49:02

do I not get very siloed in my thinking which in her mind she was when she came

49:08

in but because she started thinking about systems and because people interrogated some of her ways of

49:15

thinking she thought she's thinking much more broadly around what's possible as

49:20

we think about health health care disease it's not it's the science is

49:26

critical but if you don't take into community adoption and you don't take into the fact that like some communities

The Zimbabwean biomedical engineer who redefined her mission

49:32

are going to get the cures for this and some communities are not and how do we design something that can go global

49:39

those types of approaches really change the way a young person thinks and then what they ultimately pursue and that's

49:46

just one example of a young person having their perspective broadened and she's just been named to a

49:52

couple UN councils and she's she's this dynamic young woman and the experience

49:59

with a global group of peers getting outside of her comfort zone made her think dramatically different but also

50:06

you know it just supercharged her passion and power in a different way so how does that make you feel as a a CEO

50:13

knowing that you help contribute to an individual's life like that that's why I get up every single day i every day this

50:20

is what we work on how do you get more young people to have experiences that take their kernels of ideas and really

50:27

help them put those into practice and make a big impact in the world that's what we do that's what we try to do

50:34

every day and that's what we're working on expanding every day well this has been wonderful erin is there anything

50:39

else you want to leave us with i guess I would say we've talked a lot about

50:45

self-awareness and I can't really emphasize enough the

50:51

importance of looking in the mirror and I think I would just say I ask myself

50:57

that consistently and I do think Damon you were so right that our instinct sometimes is to want to say h if only

51:05

this person would do something different then everything would be better but really it's us that need to do something

51:12

different to enact that change and I think that it all starts there to recap

51:18

what we talked about we talked about Tilting Futures and your mission there

51:26

the experience that the students from over a 100 countries receive and how it's designed the takeaways and the ROI

51:33

from the programs not just short term but long term and on your website all the stats that about that then we moved

51:41

into your team internally that's delivering and the working agreements i

51:47

really like the curiosity and how could we always get better and of course discomfort and conversations and

51:54

labeling those and so many I mean Erin this has been one of my favorite conversations i mean that and so thank

Erin’s why: Helping young leaders unlock their impact

52:00

you very much as for Tilting Futures you know as far as applying I saw something

52:07

that like 17,000 people applied at one time and I assume as well maybe you

52:12

could share this a little bit that there are scholarships available for individuals who maybe can't afford

52:17

tuition absolutely so a big piece of my role is to raise the philanthropic uh

52:24

revenue to be able to support young people from all over the world and from all different backgrounds to have an experience like this and so if you're a

52:31

young person and or you're a parent of a young person and you want them to have a tilting futures experience you know our

52:37

website is tiltingfutures.org take a look at it and when you

52:43

apply the process is you apply if when you're admitted then you go through a

52:48

financial aid process and we have a need-based system much like a college or a university and this is also why we are

52:56

trying to embed ourselves into higher ed because the idea is that you shouldn't

53:01

have to go find a program and apply it should just be part of your degree and

53:07

that's the next step and where else can people connect with you at i assume LinkedIn oh absolutely please connect

53:14

with me on LinkedIn and you can connect with us on LinkedIn you can also connect with us on you know the usual Instagram

53:21

Facebook those types of things too all right Erin this has been awesome and for our listeners out there do me a favor i

53:28

want you to think about well maybe it's yourself but I want you to think about other parents and young adults who could

53:34

benefit from uh Tilting Futures Experience and send this episode to them

53:40

or if you know individuals who might want to contribute and donate to the cause and and help other maybe

53:46

underprivileged kids experience this because at the end of the day if we can build future generations of better

53:52

leaders it's going to benefit all of us so until next time everybody stay curious keep learning and have a great

53:59

day thank you [Music]

Scholarships, access, and how to get involved

54:12

[Music]

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