Marc Lesser | Finding Clarity Through Compassionate Accountability

Srini Rao: .

Mark, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the

time

Marc Lesser: to join us. It's good to be here. Yeah, it is my pleasure to

Srini Rao: have you here. So you have a new book out called Finding Clarity, all of which we will get into. But having read the book and having particularly read the very first line of the book I wanted to start by asking you what social group were you a part of in high school and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made with your life and career?

Marc Lesser: Yeah I would say my prime social group in high school was my high school wrestling team. Where I was my senior year, I was captain of my high school wrestling team and so many lessons, I think lessons around that was maybe if one of my early experiences of being part of a supportive community people who really had each other's backs and wanted the best from each other really was even though it's interesting, even though wrestling is one on one when you're out there, The matches against working wrestling, other high schools, it was a team sport.

It was really the you really wanted your teammates to win. Many lessons about the power of letting go of wanting to win and the fear of losing. And what, one of the things that I noticed. In high school wrestling was that the good wrestlers they really wanted to win and they really didn't want to lose, but I was picking up something about the best wrestlers.

They seem to have a different relationship with winning and losing. They seem to be just present in some way that was beyond fear and beyond grasping. And I was picking up that and I noticed that was. That I had some work to do to get there. And I think there's something that I've, that I really love these days about athletes and watching sports and really wanting to enter that space of beyond effort and effortlessness which I think is really important in sports.

Thank you. Creativity and business and all of life.

Srini Rao: It's funny you mentioned wrestling of all things. Cause what that triggered for me as a memory of the conversation I had with Tim Ferriss, who had mentioned that his wrestling coach was one of the most influential people in his life.

And he said that almost everybody who had been on his wrestling team went on to do some incredibly extraordinary things. The guy who founded donors shoes came from that same wrestling team. So when I wonder what is it about wrestling in particular that draws certain people that are like that?

And as somebody who was the captain of the team, like what kind of leadership lessons did you want? Because I think that was one thing for me in high school is I felt I had no athletic ability when I was in high school. So I didn't play any sports. And it was something I regret because I feel like every person I've ever talked to who has played high school sports.

Marc Lesser: Yeah, it was it was really huge. Again, I think something about developing my own sense of confidence in myself. It was like there was a certain level wrestling's amazing, right? That there's a level of of mastery and speed and strength and skill involved in the repetition.

I remember practicing over and over again, repeating certain moves. And really getting them down, getting them completely in my body. So that I didn't have to, there was not, there's not time to think about things. So something about being able to transcend our thinking mind and being fully in our body and mastery.

And Yeah it's interesting. I feel a lot of that one of the things I love doing is teaching and speaking, and I hadn't thought so much of this. before, but so I'm appreciating this line of questioning. I feel like there were some early lessons that I learned in high school wrestling that, that I bring into being up in front of the room, leading a mindfulness workshop or talking doing a talk about leadership accomplishing more by, by doing less.

And there was some way that wrestling provided a strange and I think profound base toward a lot of the things that I'm doing in my life right now. I think the reason that I started with that question was that there was one thing in particular that caught my attention that you wrote about in the book where you said, I dreamed of becoming a professional bowler.

Srini Rao: When I was 13, I thought to myself, I don't think I know anybody who has ever dreamt of becoming a professional bowler. And I was thinking, I said, what if there's a movie about professional bowling? Like somebody trying to, Woody Harrelson. I'm sure you know what it is. I can't remember what it

Marc Lesser: is. Is it Big Lebowski?

Is it

Srini Rao: Big Lebowski? Okay. I know the Big Lebowski. I didn't realize the Big Lebowski was about bowling. I remember there was an aspect of it that was.

Marc Lesser: There may be another, maybe you might be thinking of another movie, but I was recently reading about the Big Lebowski and how, yeah, that part of that movie takes place in a bowling alley.

Yeah. That's such a bizarre sort of dream to have to me, I thought like most kids are like, Oh, I want to be a professional basketball player or professional football player, professional bowler. Where did that come from?

I think it came from that my family my, my father and my older brother this was winters, long winters on the East coast in New Jersey.

And somehow they were in these bowling leagues. So that was part of, that was part of my childhood. I think as soon as I could, as soon as I was able to stand up, I found myself with a bowling ball and I think there was a a part of me early on, I think that had this sense of mastery and competition.

I hope healthy competition. Yeah. I I think I was really young and I was in bowling leagues and was quite good. And I think I really wanted to master to master the sport and I had some vision of of, Oh this could be what I do with my life is become a bowler.

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Yeah I think to me,

Srini Rao: there's something to be said for the fact that you were good at it. Cause I noticed that was something about me. Like I was completely drawn to anything that I seem to have the potential to be extraordinary at. I remember my band director basically told me in seventh grade, he was like, you can either go be an average athlete and extraordinary musician.

I was like, I don't want to be average at anything. And so I pretty much chose band and ended up accomplishing a lot more than I thought I could. And I wonder what that is, why is it that we're so driven to those types of things, but then the downside of that is that we don't allow ourselves to compensate for our weaknesses or we don't actually work on the things that we're not

Marc Lesser: good at.

Yeah, for sure. I noticed I I think it's a human tendency, right? To we like doing things that we're good at. But I think what I hear you getting at too, it's it's really important, right? To be able to have enough self confidence to be able to step out and do things that, you know, to, cause there's something about learning new things.

Like I'm so many things I was just I was just outside putting an electric lawnmower together. And man, there's, I was I love reading instructions about how to do things and I'm like, man, why did it why did they make this so hard, but little by little.

There was something very satisfying about finding learning new things, finding the keys, make, making putting things on backwards and then having to undo them. But I feel like it's really good for the brain and the body to to be to allow yourself to be, do new things where you don't quite know what's happening.

And little breakthroughs, like even in putting this this electric lawnmower together, there were a series of, Oh that's where that goes that's and something very I think useful and important about doing things that where we're, where we are. awkward where we don't know what we're doing.

So how in the world do

Srini Rao: you go from captain of wrestling team to dreaming of becoming a professional bowler to teaching about mindfulness? Because that like most of the people on your, it doesn't seem like a particularly linear path.

Marc Lesser: Oh man. It's so it's really? I think I think that in some way a few things, I think somewhere in there.

I read the book Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow when I was a freshman in college. And and there the spork was being a full human being. He was describing a study that he had done about how there seemed to be a small slice of people who were particularly. self aware who were had an emotional freedom in both in terms of their joy, but also their sadness and grief.

And when I read, about Maslow's study I was aware, I became really aware of how much work I had to do and my own lack of emotional freedom. And that seemed to be an area that I really wanted to enter more, this sense of I feel like I, I realized that my, my relationships, my way of being in the world were pretty, pretty narrow that I think I, I had just gravitated, I think, to things that I like you were saying, I gravitated toward what was safe and easy, what came.

safe and easy to me, but relationships and emotions, those did not come easy to me. And and that led me to a a meditation practice. I walked I walked into the San Francisco Zen center one day, and there was something that just really struck me about this practice of meditation. And in some way, it was the practice of how to be a more full and thriving human being and and it was one of the things that surprised me in my I ended up my, my one year leave of absence from Rutgers University turned into 10 years of living at the San Francisco Zen Center.

And one of the really surprising things was that I kept being. I was asked to take on leadership roles, which was very puzzling because that was not at all how I saw myself. But I was surprised when I got asked to run a kitchen and when I got asked to then be the director of this Zen monastery in the mountains in central California.

And I was surprised how much I got from and was learning and enjoyed. leading and managing people. So that was the through line there was Maslow to to the Zen center, meditation and leadership and getting a call one day. Hey, how would you like to figure out and develop a program for Google engineers that would combine mindfulness, emotional intelligence and leadership.

And and that really I was surprised again, how much it allowed me to bring all these different parts of my life together. And that I completely loved teaching and teaching mindfulness and leadership.

Srini Rao: You alluded to something I think that I've spent a lot of time thinking about maybe because I turned 45 this year, especially the last year, Finding like in my notes, the amount of times the phrase self awareness shows up in all of my various notes that I've taken in my note taking app.

And I realized we're not taught to cultivate self awareness. Like it's just one of those things. Like I remember one of my mentors said, he's most people don't know they're the asshole in the room when they are. And why do you think that is? Why do we not? Cultivate self awareness and because I had this experience once with this person who just was really awful to me and ended up even writing a book in which she actually dedicated an entire chapter to how much she hated me based on a reality show.

And I remember reading the memoir and I was you know what, this to me is just basically a 200 page diatribe about your complete lack of self awareness. And I just, it surprises me that that is something that people don't think about. And I also know we're not taught to think about it at all.

Nobody in college teaches you, Hey, you need to take a self awareness

Marc Lesser: class. Yeah. Interesting. I think I think that was a big aha for me was realizing that every class I took in college turned into a self awareness class especially reading it's amazing what we can learn by reading fiction.

One of the classes that became one of my all time favorite classes that I took ever was French, German, and Italian literature in translation. And being introduced being introduced even just to Sartre and these are like the masters of self awareness of looking of or even the German German writer Kafka and I thought these are all, these people are teaching whatever they're saying.

Stepping back and looking at why do we think the way we do? Why do we do, why do we and others do what we do? Very different than I think how I, and most of us grew up and you just, as you're saying nobody ever asked those things. Nobody ever talked about the why are we doing what we do?

How do we how do we make choices based on what, or even. Even things like, what am I feeling? I can remember one of the first trainings I did for a group of Google engineers, we did an exercise where you would have a conversation with someone and then reflect about how you were feeling.

And also what did you notice about what the other person that you were talking to was feeling? And this was like this amazing unbelievable thing, especially to men. I think I think women in general tend to gravitate more towards their own emotional lives and feelings. And men, especially in the,

,

in our culture, in United States culture not so much.

I think all those things and I think now there's more and more recognition of how important self awareness is towards leadership toward being a a competent and effective collaborator and team member. It all starts with what I think of as a practice, the practice of self awareness.

Srini Rao: Speaking of leadership, I know that one of the things you said early on in the book was that when my board became aware of my ambivalence, they asked me to leave, which made my exit from Brush Dance bumpy and stressful. No one likes being fired from the company they began. And so I wondered like what lessons in self awareness did you take away from that experience?

Marc Lesser: Yeah. Yeah. Ouch. I think that there are many kinds of emotional intelligence. And one, one is a kind of in companies is what I think of as, and I think Daniel Goldman even used this language in the original book emotional intelligence, political awareness. Knowing, being aware of what the streams of power are and how decisions are made.

And I think when I look back at that incident of me, me sharing with my board that my heart wasn't really there anymore that was probably not very skillful. It was true, but I think I probably needed to better under, I think, better understand what seeing. Seeing the company and my role through their perspective.

So this is one of the things that I now feel like I've gotten a lot better at and that it's something that comes up a lot in my coaching practice, working with executives is right. Understanding the political awareness, understanding decision making and power. So Thank you. Yeah. Ongoing lessons in that role.

Srini Rao: I think that makes a perfect segue to talking about the book itself. So what made you want to write this book at this time? What was the impetus for writing this book?

Marc Lesser: This book grew out of some some work that I was doing a little bit of work with another consulting company in which they use the phrase compassionate accountability.

Absolutely. And I really was drawn to to better understand and look at how to incorporate that, that practice of accountability with more trust and connection and compassion. And then I started working with a a socially responsible bank. In which I mentioned that term, compassionate accountability, and they just lit up and their CEO and their management team said, that describes so well, the kind of culture that we want to create in our organization.

And I began developing trainings and programs around compassion and accountability. And the book grew out of my my developing and teaching those those training programs. And I have to say, I really, I learned a lot through not only through teaching those programs, but through developing and writing this book and turning it like looking at how to how to go about actually teaching and training in accountability and accountability with compassion.

You know what's

Srini Rao: interesting to me is that you open the book by talking specifically about clarity and you say to me clarity begins with acknowledging and embodying the world is not always what it seems clarity means seeing the world from both perspectives the ordinary and every day where the tree is just a treat and the mysterious which means acknowledging the unknown sources of reality.

Living with this awareness creates something of a paradox in ordinary reality. We face many dualities of life and death, you and me accepting what isn't seeking change, being confident yet humble. And these dualities are important for living our ordinary lives. So talk to me about this whole idea of clarity, because I feel like people, I feel often feel that they're stuck because they like clarity or that they can't do something because they like clarity.

The idea that I don't have clarity is something I've seen over and over again. And even Stephen Kotler talks about clear goals as the sort of ultimate flow trigger.

Marc Lesser: Yeah. I think I was in writing this book, I wanted to, I think, present a wider view, maybe a more both what I think of as the, maybe a traditional business view or work view of clarity, right?

Where clarity of purpose, clarity of goals, all that, all those things, those are important, right? To have a clear. a clear vision. I wanted to emphasize that. But in stepping back, I wanted to present something wider. And as you were just I have to say, as you were reading from my book, I thought, Oh, that's pretty good.

That, that clarity also means entering the world of the sacred, entering the world of mystery allowing ourselves to not be quite so sure of things. And this gave me, I think, the entrance point for how to talk about the practice of clarity or the practice of accountability, that in practice it means identifying where we're not clear, identifying what we don't know, identifying what is what and feel, feeling, allowing ourselves to stay with and I, there's a one of my favorite chapters to write in that book was chapter I called mind the gaps and seeing the gaps between what is and where we want to be. And this is this is the life of being in business, right? We're always. We're always envisioning and projecting programs or products or services or teams or revenue. And there's a gap. There's gaps between where we are and where we want to be.

And so there's some clarity involved in actually identifying those gaps or even identifying the gaps. in terms of the kinds of things that we want to grow and develop in ourselves. I want to be better with conflict. I want more courage. I want to be a better presenter or speaker. Again, the with as much clarity as we can muster not sugarcoating and seeing what is and having a clear sense of where we want to go, where we want to be, what we want to develop again, both internally and externally.

This is some of the flavor that really excites me about this practice of of finding clarity. I had to get so many of these things. There's so much overlap, I think, between self awareness, finding clarity emotional intelligence and leadership. This ACAS podcast is sponsored by NetSuite, 36, 000.

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com slash unmistakable. Let's talk about this idea of compassionate accountability because you open the section on accountability by saying accountability is about more than simply living up to our obligations and responsibilities. It means devoting ourselves to seeing clearly and aligning around facts.

It means practicing skillful truth telling. Rather than turning away from conflict or practicing avoidance. It means working with conflict and destructive emotions to resolve them. Accountability means dedicating ourselves to connecting and aligning with one another for the benefit of all, and working toward a shared vision of possibility, transformation, and success.

And just as I was reading that out loud and thinking about this section, the first thing that came to my mind. When I was thinking about that is people that I should have fired and kept on board for way too long at my company. So talk to me about this whole idea of accountability in the context of business

Marc Lesser: and leadership.

Yeah I think accountability is one of those terms, one of those words that gets used a lot in business. As I as I talk about we generally don't like it it usually, it feels, it can feel a bit tight, a bit oppressive. If we were to do an association game, the word that would come up after accountability would be lack of or people often go right to thinking about those those dreaded awkward performance reviews.

I, I think I've gotten to fall in love with accountability and to see that a word that I found myself substituting a lot in thinking about it as a practice is the word alignment. Alignment, somehow, is much more much more likable, much more yeah, attractive word than accountability. But I think there's an awful lot of overlap between the two.

We think about holding ourselves accountable. To me, what that means is... Noticing our own inner alignment in what way is, are my values and purpose and meaning aligned with how I am showing up in the world, in, in my work, in my relationships. And then in, in working with others or living with others, it's aligned, right?

Aligning around what does success look like, right? In the workplace, this is this ongoing coming back to. We all want to be successful, but what does it look like and to name it and to align around both the the what the, maybe the financial goals the things that we can measure, but also the the emotional intelligence and cultural goals and aspirations.

How do we want to work together? How's it going? What does that look like? So all of this to me is this this realm of accountability and alignment. Very, just super rich, important

Srini Rao: territory. There's one line in particular that really caught my attention. When it comes to this, you said a strange and rather pervasive human behavior patterns that we tend to judge others by the impact their actions have on us.

We judge ourselves by our intentions. Like I was thinking about that. It was like, wow. Okay. So talk to me about that phrase in the context of accountability.

Marc Lesser: Yeah, that is I think everyone should have that phrase sewn into their clothing that we this is one of those I think it's a way that we humans have evolved that.

whenever, whatever someone else does or says, or even a look that, that the impact might be an ouch or a fear or an anger that we unconsciously go right to blame, right? We go right to blame because it's such an evolutionary part of self protection, right? We need to protect ourselves.

We need to be okay. We need to be safe. So it's so interesting. Anytime we feel threatened, right? Anytime we feel the impact of what someone else is doing or saying we, we almost unconscious, unconsciously think that we know what their intentions or motivations are. We, of course, we're all we're all good people, right?

So that line is right we judge others by the impact their words or actions have on us. And yet we ourselves we're all good people. We always have, we've almost always have the best of intentions. If we could just if we could just walk that talk. In all parts of our lives, man it would but it's hard.

It's hard because this is as I say in the book we are we humans are descendants of the nervous apes, right? The our ancestors who were chill and cool they all got killed. The ones that survived were the ones that were really good at scanning for threats. So we humans, we are really good at just almost automatically, unconsciously looking for anything that can threaten us.

And I think this is both external in in, in our environments, and it's also internal, right? That inner critic, that inner voice that's, that often seems to be relentlessly looking for, am I okay? Do I look okay? Do I sound okay? This is, I think, a huge part of developing self awareness and it's also an enormous ability and practice in order to be skillful at accountability and accountability with compassion.

This is the. This is the ground in which we, the work that we need to do is noticing, how do we do? What's our tendency when we feel conflict, when we feel threatened? Can we somehow be curious about our own emotions? Can we be curious about what's actually happening? Be curious about other people's intentions and motivations.

Instead of going to fight, flight, or freeze, which is the the more way that's how we've evolved for fight, flight, or freeze.

Srini Rao: One of the things that you say in reference to what you said earlier about the gaps, as you said, that dissatisfaction is our default mode, no matter what we bring our attention to our clothes, entertainment, our job, our spouse, we always want more and better again, from an

,

evolutionary perspective, this is great, but it's not so good for our wellbeing or our relationships.

And this is something I've asked so many people and I've yet to find an answer that I think really answers it because I'm convinced at this point, there is no answer, which is how do you find the sort of balance between fulfillment and ambition?

Marc Lesser: Yeah, I think, oh, I'm hoping I'm going to give you the answer that you've been looking for.

It reminds me a little bit of an example would be when I'm teaching people the practice, say, of meditation why do you meditate? Why do you want to meditate? What do you want to get? There clearly is some motivation, some ambition. It might be we want to be calmer.

We want to have a, we want to have a better relationship with stress. We want to be a better leader. We want to be better human. There's always going to be some motivation. However, once you. Sit down and do mindfulness practice, meditation practice, let it go. The practice is give it up. And part of the training of meditation practice is to be able to let go or at least loosen expecting anything, right?

As you

were just describing wanting something to be different, never being satisfied. Meditation practice could be described as training the mind and body to know what actual satisfaction looks like and feels like. What is it like to not need anything? What is it like for there not to be anything missing?

And I think there's something so useful, simple, profound about this practice, right? Because So many people in the business world, so many leaders unconsciously or sometimes consciously feel that they have to beat themselves up. You have to be hard on yourself in order to get anything done in the right.

If I weren't being hard on myself, man, I wouldn't do anything. It turns out, and there's even some really interesting research about this, that if we're actually more accepting, if we're actually more kind to ourselves. We are smarter. We're more creative. We can get not only, we can get more done than when we're, than when we're harder.

So this is that, that interesting territory of ambition and vision and aiming for things. But doing it differently, doing it like from a place where there isn't anything missing, from a place of even self love and self compassion. And and I think that there is a a really, it's a different, it's a different way of being in the world.

And it's certainly. Is something that is greatly supportive of our own well being and our own state of mind is this kind of radical sense of acceptance. And it doesn't mean at all that we're letting go of ambition, right? So it's a I know it sounds paradoxical and I'm curious what you think of this, but it's this paradoxical blend of great ambition.

And great acceptance. So it's like accepting what is and working toward whatever kind of changes we're looking to make. Yeah it's funny. I think that in a lot of ways one of my favorite quotes came from the musician A. R. Rahman. I remember watching this documentary that he did.

Srini Rao: And in India, he's like one of the most famous people. He pretty much does all the compositions for the Bollywood movies. And he's had this really just iconic career. And the thing that struck me most about that entire documentary, this coming from like this wildly successful guy is when he said, when you expect nothing, everything comes

Marc Lesser: to you.

And

Srini Rao: that really stayed with me and as something that one of those things I should probably get tattooed on my arms.

Marc Lesser: Yeah. I love that. I love that. There is right there. Yeah. Just even trying it on, what does it feel like? What does it feel like to expect nothing?

Srini Rao: So this is going to be a kind of funny order to do this.

And we talked about this idea of bridging gaps and how you talk about gaps later in the book. So one thing I was wondering is like, how did we use the concepts you talk about, because in the interest of time, I think it would take us too long to go through all of these. But this idea of shifting, reframing and acceptance, our stories.

The ladder of inference, our commitment to create this vision that allows us to bridge this gap between where we are and where we want to be. Because I think to your point earlier, I even have a blog post titled the eternal gap between who you are

Marc Lesser: and who you want to be.

Yeah. What's fascinating about it is it right in light of what we were just saying is. Thanks. That how can you, and again, I think this is, this I think is why I think meditation practice is so valuable because it's a way without that kind of, like it's a way of stepping out of the stream of activity, the relentless stream of activity in our lives and training, training ourselves to.

With every breath to accept what is let go of expectations so that we can bring a bit of that mindset into closing gaps. So it's, again, it's a bit paradoxical. But it's being really adept at both this kind of radical accepting what is and being really good at staying with working for change solving problems letting letting things Letting things unfold and learning and growing and developing through this really interesting mix.

The soup acceptance and ambition. Cool.

Srini Rao: We'll talk about this idea of visions 'cause you said that vision is a powerful, they named the place we want to reach. And the reason for what we're doing, a vision is a roadmap that defines success in how we imagine getting there. Cultivating a clear, credible, and inspiring vision requires a unique blend of passion, artistry, and imagination.

It requires curiosity and is supported by deep listening. A vision can help cut through the frustration of gaps and transform those gaps into stories of possibility, clarity and success. And immediately the first place my mind went was these people who just make vision boards and sit at them staring at them without doing anything, thinking that I'm going to stare at these pictures of expensive cars and suddenly my life is going to change.

So talk to me about how you bridge this gap between visions and actions. Because I feel like there are people who have these like grand visions. I have friends like this that have these just ridiculously bold visions it doesn't translate into action for so many of

Marc Lesser: them.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is terrible maybe an interesting example that you used about envisioning having a grandiose visions or envisioning is what you're describing sounds to me a little bit more like magical thinking than

Srini Rao: vision. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like that's really pervasive in the self improvement

Marc Lesser: world.

So vision to me is a vision kind of rooted in what's actually possible, right? Now, again, you can have a you can have a really wide Wide sense of what's possible. And it's amazing. You write it I think about look at the things that we've created.

Look at the magic of of technology and what people, what a lot of people can do when they come together. So there is something about having a large vision, but it's, I think it's a actionable vision knowing what the next step is. So it's great. It's great to have a large vision.

But we need to know, okay, what's next? What's next? Or what's the problem we're trying to solve here? What people do I need to bring in to help me solve this problem? So many of the of the visions that, that I have, even You know, like I, I love writing, right? I love, I, there's something that I really enjoy and found and find really satisfying about envisioning a book.

And then there's the whole process for me of assembling a team of people to help me from editor, publisher. designer and then step by step learn, learning from and having the vision also be quite flexible. I was saying to someone that I've now written five books and not one of them did the original vision of what the title was going to be whole.

It changed and usually changed many times throughout the process. I think

Srini Rao: you brought up an important point. You talked about this idea of what's possible. And I had a mentor who was always just harping on this idea of this distinction between what's possible and what's probable.

And my favorite example that he gave was when he and I were talking here on the podcast, he was like is it possible that you and I could win an Olympic gold medal? Yeah. He's is it probable? No. Yeah.

Marc Lesser: Yeah. I find I'm I think the ability to apply those kinds of the odds, right?

What are the odds of making this happen? And it's interesting to me though, it's when I talk about these what I think of as these three leadership practices that I got from reading about Winston Churchill and how he led during during some of the most difficult.

Challenging parts of World War II in London. And he says no sugarcoating cautious optimism and bringing, bringing in a sense of meaning and purpose. And to me, this is a really great prescription for how to vision, right? To really be, bring in as much reality and clarity as you can.

And I think that might involve like what you're saying how likely is this going to happen? But then it goes right to cautious optimism, right? That it's important. It's important when it comes to creating things, building things, solving problems that we Absolutely. That there is a sense of cautious optimism rooted in no sugar coating.

And then to step back and. And be able to have that sense of meaning and purpose in, in whatever we're doing. Ray Dalio

Srini Rao: had a way of putting this in his book. He just used

Marc Lesser: the phrase, stay grounded in reality.

Srini Rao: And the thing I wonder is when it comes to these sort of just grand visions, why do you think people are so resistant to

Marc Lesser: reality?

Because reality always wins yeah, that again, I think this is we humans we have great imaginations. And also I think it comes back to a sense of avoiding, there's a tendency to avoid conflict or to avoid what's uncomfortable, to avoid what's painful. So much of reality has to do with disappointment.

and pain and being let down. And I think so much of this practice around finding clarity is to not avoid things that are difficult and painful but to learn again and again to engage with them and transform them, to transform. Pain and challenges and difficulty into possibility.

Usually we want to skip over, we want to skip over the painful parts and get right to the good stuff or the and I think that's kind of part of this process that I think you're getting at about avoiding reality because reality can be hard.

Srini Rao: What are the sort of tangible outcomes that you have seen in individuals as well as organizational outcomes as a byproduct of this work.

Marc Lesser: Yeah, I think I'm amazed at how vital and useful and effective this work, the work of self, whether you call it self awareness or mindfulness or emotional intelligence or compassionate accountability.

It's the it's the inner work and the outer work, the inner, but it's, I think it starts with. the inner work but as as I was describing earlier in this conversation, I think once you go down the road of making a a life commitment to clarity, to your own self awareness everything becomes a course.

Everything becomes a learning opportunity to learn more about ourselves. All, every I, that's one of the things I love about being a an executive coach and a mindfulness teacher. I feel like everything I'm reading or watching or listening to is of course, sometimes it's just about enjoyment.

But it's always, there's always some edge of what am I learning from this about myself? What can I bring? What can I bring from this into my relationships, into my writing, into my working with leaders?

Srini Rao: So with both age and as the result of this work, how's your own personal definition of what it means to be successful evolved over

Marc Lesser: time? Yeah. Great question. As I've I think a lot of success. It is really about a kind of deep sense of satisfaction with and seeing the richness and wonder, being able to see through the lens of wonder.

To me, that's I think really the the ultimate success that's less, less about financial success, less about. Again those things are can be important but ultimately I think it's developing oneself into being a a warm hearted, satisfied human being while we strive and struggle, while we while we continue to grow our personal lives, our family lives and our work lives.

But to bring. bring that sense of wonder and warmheartedness to to whatever we do.

Srini Rao: Wow. This has been amazing. It's funny because I feel like conversations like this are ones that always leave me with more questions than answers, but I think that's a good thing because those are the conversations that force you to really reflect. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews with the unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something

Marc Lesser: unmistakable? Genuineness genuine. This combination of transforming pains and challenges into into wonder and possibility.

Srini Rao: I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners.

Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else

Marc Lesser: that you're up to? Yeah. My new book is Finding Clarity available everywhere books are sold. And my website is marklessor. net M A R C. L E S E R dot net and lots of writing and guided meditations and try and make it a a useful visiting place and thank you.

I really appreciate this conversation a lot. And for everybody

Srini Rao: listening, we will wrap the show with that.

Marc Lesser: This ACAS podcast is sponsored by NetSuite 36, 000. The number of businesses which have upgraded to the number one cloud financial system, NetSuite by Oracle. 25. NetSuite just turned 25. That's 25 years of helping businesses streamline their finances and reduce costs. One. Because your unique business deserves a customized solution.

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