Tomer Yogev and Jax Black: Episode 998

Transcript

[0:00:38] FG: Which version of leadership speaks to you more, the one you are taught you had to fit into or one that’s centered on who you really are, guided by the wisdom of your own heart? If you're ready to detach from the toxicity of a corporate mindset, The Joy Manifesto, is your guide, your motivation, your workbook, and your accountability partner, inviting you back into your heart to name, honor, and center your unique brand of leadership. This transformative work by renowned Joy coaches, Dr. Jax Black and Tomer Yogev proves that self-love is the truest compass for navigating our constantly changing world, while delivering bottom-line results for you and your organization. Through empowerment, not management, you’ll free yourself and your team to drive continuous innovation, generate the kind of success that inspires long-term evolution, and experience the joy of showing up authentically as your heart smiles back at you for leading well. This is the Author Hour Podcast and I’m your host, Frank Garza. Today, I’m joined by Dr. Jax Black and Tomer Yogev, authors of a brand-new book, The Joy Manifesto: Detach from The Corporate Mindset, Access Your Heart, Lead with Wisdom. Tomer and Jax, welcome to the show.

[0:02:04] JB: Hey, thank you. We’re excited and joy to be here.

[0:02:07] TY: Thanks so much, Frank.

[0:02:08] FG: So I’d love to start by hearing a little bit about each of your backgrounds and how that led to you writing this book. Jax, do you want to start?

[0:02:15] JB: Absolutely. Okay, this is the shorter version, so I’m going to not take up too many breaths on this but the real story is that, you know, most of my life, I was trying to sort of help everyone around me. You know, we all sort of get to that space and place in our lives where like, I just want to help in the world. So I was doing that and was helping everyone but myself. I ended up falling a little bit out of breath and actually becoming a little bit sick in that, I was invited into a different way of living and leading in this world. What that really means is, I was called to breathe first and that wait to get to breath. So I would say, the first part of my life was spent trying to breath and trying to breath and trying to help others to breath and the second part, this part of my life really been about being in my breath and in that, I found so much energy. I found the entirety of who I am and who I’m designed to be, not just part of me and who I was on my resume. I found all of me and I could honor and acknowledge, see, hear and feel all the stories that make me, me, even all the ones that go all the way back to the playground and in there, it just became so much more clear that we don’t have to struggle in order to grow, that we don’t have to wait to breathe and that we need to learn how to stop fighting the fight to never have to fight again. That is literally how we got called into this work, this opportunity and this book.

[0:03:50] TY: And for me, Frank. I’ll just say as husband and business partner to Jax, I had a front row seat to all of that for her transition but for me, it was similar but slightly different language, in that I had a lifetime of achievement. Pretty much anything I set my mind to, I accomplished and despite all of those successes, all those achievements, there is still something very much lacking. I started looking around at all the other people who were big achievers, big succeeders, and realizing that they still have these giant holes in their lives. We have that kind of that stereotypical Fortune 500 CEO but then they have, you know, three ex-wives and kids who hate them. That can’t be what we’re all shooting for and so, as I was watching Jax go through her journey, I started doing a lot of reflection on my own, and really, what it allowed me to do is as she said, kind of sit back, talk into my own heart, hear my own wisdoms that I had already had that I always had. That were part of what drove me to be successful and achieve previously but now, by sitting back and really sitting in those wisdoms, I could still have just as much “success” but without nearly as much mental chatter and energy and effort each and every day.

[0:05:16] FG: Great. So your book, The Joy Manifesto, can you talk to me about who you had in mind as you wrote the book? Who was your or who is your target audience?

[0:05:27] JB: Well Frank, I mean, the honest answer is the whole of all humanity.

[0:05:32] FG: Who doesn’t want to experience joy?

[0:05:34] JB: All the hearts and mind, yeah. The way that we say it is, we kept meeting leaders and it didn’t matter what organization they were at, whether they were for-profit, nonprofit, community organizing, in the midst of a job transition, whatever. They were just human and the way in which they were working was not working for them. In other words, they had like, done all the tricks, they had done all the things that everybody said you should do in order to climb the corporate ladder of success and they still felt like an imposter in their own story and the book is written for anybody who is like this, like, “I can’t do this anymore.” You know, we all went through these two years of a global pandemic that is still I think, unfolding before us and people fell completely out of breath, like, “I can’t keep doing this, this is too much” and in that space, you know, the book is written for that heart and that soul that is like, “Is there any way I can move to this world all while breathing?” Because I love myself, I know how to move and a way that allows my heart to smile, or at least I’m curious about that and I don’t want to try and become somebody else’s version of a leader that I was never designed to be. That is very much our language. That is our truth. We kept having and meeting with leaders who were saying, “Is there any other way?” So in the midst of a global pandemic, as we were navigating our own breath through that journey, the other way was illuminated from our hearts and so that’s why we brought it to the hearts of other leaders to say there is another way. It doesn’t look anything like what you thought it would. It literally looks like you going back to who you are, always knowing yourself to be.

[0:07:21] TY: For me, obviously, I echo. It’s really for everyone but it’s specifically, it’s people who have come to the realization that trying to move forward in their brain is not getting them any further. The example I use with a lot of my clients is, we’ve all been to the gym and you see that guy who’s got the huge chest and arms and then the toothpick legs, right? All he does is upper body every day and that’s what so many of us are like. We’ve been working with our brains all day every day, we were taught to from a very young age. It is the model of success that is usually put before us and actually slowing down, actually going in, actually hearing our own hearts and our own wisdom is usually considerably less developed. So at the very, very least, your biggest gains are going to be by exercising that other muscle just like that guy in the gym. His biggest gains is going to come from a leg day once in a while, not another arm day and so it’s that same message. It’s, you’ve done the brain work, it’s there. What you now need to do is go into the heart work because that’s actually where you're going to find the most progress and the most benefit.

[0:08:46] JB: I love that because you know, I can out squat him, right? I can still out squat him.

[0:08:50] FG: Yeah, I love that.

[0:08:50] JB: I’m just saying.

[0:08:51] TY: We could all out squat that guy. Those little toothpicks.

[0:08:57] JB: And he got probably two, didn’t he? He got covered first.

[0:09:01] TY: And then again.

[0:09:03] FG: Yeah, that’s a good picture to keep in mind. Thank you for explaining it that way. Part one of the book is called, Detach from the Corporate Mindset. So how would you describe the corporate mindset and why is it so important to, you know, consciously detach from that?

[0:09:22] JB: So the corporate mindset is a list of unspoken rules that we’re all supposed to follow and if we don’t follow them, something is wrong with us. It’s the system of leadership that was created in order for leaders at the top to be able to manage all the leaders “at the bottom.” I mean, they really don’t even call them leaders, right? So the corporate mindset is this thing that like, it’s now embedded in our educational system, it’s imbedded in how we think about success, how we think about becoming who we want to be as a leader in this world and there’s always this like, mechanisms that we are to follow or a formula we’re supposed to follow. It really comes out of the industrial complex, mapped on to humans as if that was ever going to work. In other words, how do we cultivate leaders according to the corporate mindset? We put leadership on a conveyor belt and we try and stamp out leaders, which leads to this question of, is it nature versus nurture? Which is just mind boggling, right? And we have to detach from that because none of that included, like that entire system, the conveyor belt, right? None of that included who we are in our hearts. As Tomer was, you know, delineating and explaining and giving that metaphor for, none of it included the rest of our bodies and the fact that we are whole beings and I’m pretty certain, none of us were born to try and become the leaders we’re designed to be on somebody else’s conveyor belt. That’s not real leadership.

[0:10:52] TY: Specifically, the detachment comes from the fact that we have to recognize that we’ve been indoctrinated into this pretty much since birth, right? If you spent more than one year to accomplish first grade, you have failed. That is the language we use and that is the language that was put upon us when we’re four, five, six, when we were just getting into this and even at that stage. Another example we use all the time is, you take an eight-year-old and one of them can do calculus and the other one can paint the Mona Lisa. The example we go to the first one and say, “That’s the genius. That one’s going to be successful, that one’s so smart. The other one has a talent, that’s nice. But that one’s going to really be something” So it’s these rules that are so, really kind of arbitrary, we can kind of trace them back and see where they come from and they really do tend to come from awful places, which we go into in the book that it does tie back to the early stages of the industrial revolution but even before that, it’s tied to colonialism. It’s tied to slavery, it’s tied to these really awful ways that we now look back and go, “Oh my gosh, we would never do anything like that” but then, that’s exactly what we do and it’s not just in the educational realm. It’s in the leadership realm, it’s in the career progression realm. It’s you know, if you’re 50 years old and you’ve never gotten married, there has to be something wrong with you. There’s all of the stuff that we’re expected to do and for every bit of it that we don’t do to its fullest, we now need to rationalize and excuse and pardon ourselves and what we’re saying is, be done with all of that. That’s not what any of this is about. All of that has really only served to get us further into our brains and further away from our hearts.

[0:12:57] JB: Joy is not found in your brains, period, the end, you got to go the other way. At least, we can all understand that we’re going to need a little bit of heart. Possibly a lot of heart in order to get you joy. So it goes in the other direction, breathe. Know that you are not designed to conquer or accomplish somebody else’s, like, rules of thumbs that aren’t even clearly stated in this world and really aren’t working for those who try to abide by them to when they get to the top and say, “Ah, now I’m a leader.” We’ve worked with those leaders, they cry too because they go, “Oh my gosh. I mean, I remember when I was five and all I really wanted to do…” I’m not going to say the Mona Lisa, you know I’m not going to say Mona Lisa, but they just wanted to paint too and so the only reason they’re not painting is somebody told them they could never make enough money. They could never become a leader if they remained an artist and we’re like, “Oh no, artist, keep painting” Keep painting.

[0:13:54] FG: So, each of you have talked several times about, you know, listening to your heart and you know, that leads us well into part two of your book, which is called Access Your Heart and one of the things you review in this part is you have what’s called three core principles of the heart and leadership and I’d love to dive into one of these. One I’m most interested into digging into is principle one, “The Path to Radical Transformation is Paved with Simple Truths.” Could you please tell me more about that or if you think another one of the principles would serve our audience better or feel free to choose one of those instead.

[0:14:31] TY: No, we can definitely start with that principle because it’s a reason why it’s the first one. It’s – when we look back and I think most, any listener can look back on any moment in their life with something really dramatic changed. The core truth, the core principle that underlined that change was probably something really basic and fundamental. We’d love to make leadership this ultra-complicated thing that you have to be able to do 97 different things at the same time and you know, you don’t have to look hard. You know, “The nine things all great leaders do before breakfast” or “The seven things you have to read before you can…” whatever, you know, all of that stuff and it really just boils down to something really simple. Obviously where we’re advocate for is that answer was joy. Get into your joy, lead from joy, everything else will follow but we can look at nature transformations individually, societally and they boil down to really basic truths. So like one of the examples we talk about in the book is the Civil War. We had a huge war, thousands of people died, cities burned, all the rest of it because why? Treat people the same, slavery is bad, right? It’s these unbelievably basic concepts but then, we have to pull it all apart, you know? State rights and generals and this and bill it like what? Just stop doing that. All hearts are equal, people are saying slavery is a bad idea. Stop doing it. You can explain it to a four-year-old and yet, we have to have years of violence over it. It’s simply that, that we can look at these grand and that I would contend is the grandest transformation of this country was that war on a really simple truth. So same holds true with the individual level, organizational level, so on and so forth.

[0:16:49] FG: Part three of your book, now we’re getting into Lead with Wisdom and you all have something, a dynamic model called The Joyful Evolution of You with three different cycles and I would love to just hear you talk us through, you know, what those cycles are.

[0:17:09] JB: Yeah, absolutely. I smile and chuckle as you even name them. The joyful evolution of you, number one, self-awareness. Because leadership has been put in a bucket of you must become a leader you’re designed to be at a struggle, then we’ve all gotten about this world living in a survival mindset and we call that, “Ah, I’m resilient” and we’re like, “Okay, grace and gratitude for your resiliency and your heart was worth so much more the entire time.” So self-awareness is because most people have been taught to only know who they are because of their weaknesses and what somebody said they should have and could have and all of these different things and I’m like, “That is not you” and so we need to come into a space and place and what we name as joy is the data from the other half of your soul. What are the experiences of you and whole self when your heart smiled back at being you? That is the data that we need from you to honor and acknowledge who you are and who you would have always become despite their struggle. When we say despite their struggle because often, that struggle was brought to our hearts. That’s not actually our struggle, it’s the struggle possibly of generation’s past. It might even be the struggle of our parents. It was not a struggle that you were actually born into. In other words, that struggle doesn’t live in your heart. Who you are in your heart, clear as day, you look at any child and it is like you’re a flower growing. That’s why children can access joy so quickly, so clearly and why it literally just takes over their very presence, full body, whole self. Well, that’s not just true for the children around you, that is true for you too because you were once a child and so where are those experiences of you and how do we center those above your resume? That is self-awareness and we need that data now because the weightedness of the corporate mindset has all got us still trying to fix things. You know, 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 years later, we’re still trying to fix things. I am still trying to figure out how to be quiet, right? I can’t to do it, not in this life time, right? My teachers are still upset because I haven’t learned how to whisper, get it, got it but you know what? Let’s talk about all the times in which when people needed to communicate something in a loud space, they were like, “Hey, can you let everybody know?” and I’m like, “Yeah, everybody.” I know how to do that thing. Well, that’s a different side of my heart moving that actually worked for me and everybody else and that connects to why I can talk more openly and why I can talk in groups of a 150, 300, 500 and still be an introvert. So it is a different side of our story when we talk about self-awareness. Once we understand who we are in joy and we have that data, then what happens? It’s like, “Oh, well now, I can be more expressive in my authentic understanding of who I am.” My authenticity now, listen Frank, if we were in the same room and probably even though we’re not, you can hear I am quite an animated individual.

[0:20:31] FG: True.

[0:20:31] JB: Tomer, you’re like, “Oh always, just all over the place with all of our, you know, actions” and how we’re jumping around and arms flailing and all of those different things. That is actually who we are and we can be more authentic in that expression if we’re tapped into that fullness of understanding of who we are in joy. So now, I don’t have to walk through the world as many of us do trying to dim my light, trying to fit into the corporate mindset, wondering if it’s okay to bring my whole self here but yet, still expecting myself to get amazing things done every day. I actually can just show up and go, “Hey everybody, you all know this is me. I’ve been this way forever.” I am going to choose my whole heart because I want to bring the best of who I am to this world. When I do that, I radiate my joy forward and then people’s experience of me is less about my skin color, it is less about my hair, it is less about my body type or size, it is less about all the ways in which we stereotype each other because we have been told there’s a way you have to look in order to be a leader. In this model, every heart has a wisdom to share and we name, center and honor that. We invite them to bring their whole self so that we can hear it more fully and with complete clarity to say, “Ah, I see how your heart shines.” When leaders do that, there are so many amazing ways in which they leave and lead in this world, such that the what they do, the bullet points on their to-do list are less about their humanity. It is more that when we talk about that third phase in self-efficacy, it’s how you do it so well. So once you understand self-awareness, self-expression, we invite leaders to honor and name and center that joy. From there, you activate that joy first, now you move through the world and you’re just going to give good shit done throughout the day. It is going to be even better than the shit you were trying to get done while you were out of breath. You were fragmented because you couldn’t bring your whole self to work. From there, you’re going to trust yourself that the things you need to do in life, you will do them wholly and completely and you might even draw, I’ll give it you Tomer, you might even draw a little Mona Lisa along the way. I just couldn’t come up with another name but you might draw something like that. You’re still bringing in your creativity to that. So what actually lands up landing you in a space of transcendence, you are actually able to get good shit done and even better than what you thought you could do even more than what you thought you could do simply because you are whole and you are bringing your joy to the work instead of waiting to get to joy afterward. So those three phases, self-awareness, self-expression, self-efficacy are to give people the space and place to lift their own authentic leadership presence out of them. So in this model Frank, we replace that notion of executive presence because people are like, “I got to get executive presence. Can you help me with that?” I’m like, no. No, in fact, we cannot and the people who have it like, I don’t know if that’s really it. Because their heart is not smiling as they do it and they look like they’re out of breath and people have learned to fake that. That false sense of that is causing a lot of damage in the world because like you can fake it all the way to the top and then, oh my gosh, we find out you don’t know who you are and you’re not real and you haven’t resolved any of the triggers or your traumas. In this model, it is designed for you to lift your authentic leadership presence out of you and for us to name and honor and center it together such that you carry that with you. Now, authentic leadership presence is far more power than what any executive could offer. It’s like all of you and it radiates into the world and naturally inspires other people and their hearts to be more free and to bring their whole selves and it embedded in there. Because as you are authentically leading from within, your heart is smiling back at being you, then the accountability that you have to be the leader that you’re designed to be in this world is in your heart and so you being you is what you will want to do. It’s what you’re designed to do and so it’s even just way lighter, there’s more breath in there for you and for everyone around you. It's a lot more fun and then we can be curious about what you're going to do today and tomorrow, simply because you are whole and you know how to move through this world with your brilliance.

[0:25:36] FG: Thank you for that and using the example that you know, executive presence is kind of the opposite of this that has very helpful. It helps me understand it more fully. Well, writing a book is such a feat, so congratulations to you both about putting this out into the world. Before we wrap up, is there anything else about you or the book that you want to make sure our listeners know?

[0:26:00] TY: Yeah, I think after we wrote the book and after we kind of came up with those three sections, the piece that at least stood out to me as I started to consider where this book sat and sort of the realm of all the leadership and self-help and so on and so forth, books that are out there, what I came to realize is, there’s a lot of books that try and tackle sort of what we do in the first part with Detach the Corporate Mindset. Where it’s says, “Hey listen, leadership is broken, the way we run organizations is broken” you know, they’ll hear all these problems, here’s how it’s rooted and trauma and history and all these other sorts of things and you’ll find that a lot in sort of the leadership section of the bookstore and then the third section, the Lead with Wisdom, there are also books that say, you know, “Hey, lead this way, here’s a better way to lead, you know, kind of do it this way.” What I think is really unique about this book and is that middle portion and the fact that we allow for all three portions to kind of live together in one book, which says, “Hey look, let’s just call a spade a spade, here’s what we’re really dealing with” section one. Section two, “How do you as an individual tap into those trues, hear that wisdom, access your heart, get your own toolset” and then section three is, “Now that you have that, go lead with it, run with it.” right? So it’s that uniqueness of that middle piece of giving people the tools and the resources, the activities to really tap into their own heart and hear their own wisdom, their own model of living and leading and then section three is really just a freedom to do it. It’s, “Now that you know that, go start applying it.” It’s not our model of leadership, it’s not us telling you how to be. It’s you telling yourself how to be and I think that’s the things that really separate this book, at least for me, as I reflected on what we achieved in writing it.

[0:28:19] FG: Jax and Tomer, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. The book is called, The Joy Manifesto: Detach from The Corporate Mindset, Access Your Heart, Lead with Wisdom. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

[0:28:35] TY: We have our own website which is bigjoytheory.com and then we do try and keep off of social media for all the noise that’s there but we are both on LinkedIn and are happy to connect with people there.

[0:28:46] FG: Thank you Tomer and Jax.

[0:28:47] TY: Thank you so much, Frank.

[0:28:47] FG: Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find The Joy Manifesto on Amazon. A transcript of this episode as well as all of our previous episodes is available at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.