This transcript was generated by AI and may contain typos and inaccuracies.

Amie Vaccaro: Welcome to high impact growth. A podcast from Dimagi for people committed to creating a world where everyone has access to the services, they need to thrive. We bring you candid conversations with leaders across global health and development about raising the bar on what’s possible with technology and human creativity. I am Amie Vaccaro your co-host along with Jonathan Jackson. Dimagi CEO and co-founder. I’ve been looking forward to today’s conversation for a long time. Today we are joined by Jason Morris.

Jonathan’s coach. We tackled the personal, physical somatic and emotional aspects of leadership. We discussed why it’s impossible to think our way out of problems and how to tap into the body’s innate wisdom to guide us. We unpack the ways that tools like the Enneagram positive intelligence self-compassion. Labeling and more can support us as leaders. And we get a little bit personal sharing our struggles, how we’ve worked to overcome them. where we are in our journeys. Enjoy.

Welcome to the podcast. So I’m here with Jonathan Jackson, as always our amazing co host. And today we have the pleasure of being joined by Jason Morris. Jason, welcome to the podcast.

Jayson Morris: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Jonathan Jackson: Great to have you here, Jason.

Amie Vaccaro: Jason, you are Jonathan Jackson’s coach. I would love to start with a little bit of your story and how you came to coaching. I know you also have a background in international development, I believe. So I’d love to hear your journey.

Jayson Morris: well, I tend To start from the beginning which is actually in this room. I grew up here in San Francisco. This was my childhood bedroom uh, when I was brought back from the hospital. And if you were an archaeologist and you had like really fine sandpaper, you could probably find a life size big bird off in the corner.

Um, Anyway, I, you know, my journey to coaching is roundabout and I won’t do the full story, but I was an investment banker out of college. I had a lot of life things happen centered around nine 11 way back in 2001. And I was living in Australia at the time, but I went and did the Australian walkabout thing and spent About three years backpacking through the global South, Asia, Africa, South America.

And that was where I started to discover myself and I also just discovered a lot about the developing world and really grew a passion for international development. Moved back here to San Francisco, caught the first wave of social entrepreneurship pure luck. But joined Room to Read, which was at the time, a smaller international educational organization, but was one of the first Skoll awardees, one of the first Draper Richards fellows, and we caught that rocket ship and grew from a 5 million organization, and I was one of the first people in San Francisco to a 40 plus million organization, and I got to really be a big part of building out our development team all around the world.

And I burned out. I got neuroadrenal fatigue. My brain stopped producing the good chemicals. My body was producing a lot of cortisol and adrenaline and I needed to step away. And I think that was really where the passion for coaching really was born. I jumped over and I did philanthropy for a number of years where I was really fortunate to work with the Piri Foundation.

Uh, And I ran two portfolios of social entrepreneur led organizations. One that was doing work in the global south. One that was working here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I got to work with amazing leaders. People like Jonathan. Though we, our paths did not cross until many years later.

But dynamic leaders really. incredible organizations looking to change systems, and a lot of the same challenges that I faced, that I saw my colleagues face around growth in leadership, around work life balance trying to navigate the challenges of building successful organizations that are doing really challenging work.

While maintaining some semblance of our own lives and really that my time at the Peery Foundation there was a yearning to be at depth with people, with founders, with leaders around the challenges in building organizations. And when you’re. Control the purse strings.

How are you is a loaded question. And it it’s only answered one of two ways, either okay or good. And I just, I wanted to go deeper. And so that’s what got me into coaching. I do uh, executive coaching leadership. development work with corporations, with foundations, with social impact organizations.

But my passion really is in this social impact space and working with incredible organizations and incredible teams.

Jonathan Jackson: Yeah, and I can speak from my experience working with you, Jason, for over a year. It’s been really interesting. I’ve had three plus other professional coaches but none of whom had a background in social impact. I’ve deeply respected and enjoyed. All of the things that coaches offer but it was a different conversation we could have right off the bat which I think is probably something a lot of our audience faces when they’re working with professional coaches who haven’t been in the social impact space.

And so when we talk about things like broken markets or the disconnect between um, Who you think it’s to tell you what to do, what you can control and who you wish you were advocating for and supporting. Those conversations have been really rich and interesting. So I think that background for our relationship has been great, but I think in general for our audience, it’s been just, different in ways that are both good and bad, but it’s just been quite different.

When your coach comes from a background in social impact, as opposed to background in a more traditional corporate setting.

Jayson Morris: Yeah, it’s interesting. I coach across a lot of different industries and I’m coaching in a for a global nutrition company. I know nothing about nutrition and consumer products. And that has its value that I don’t get caught in consulting and mentoring. And I think, because I’ve gotten to be on the implementing side, I’ve gotten to be on the funder side.

I sit on the board of Mooso, an incredible global health organization. I’ve gotten to wear a lot of hats and bring perspective into this space that helps contextualize. Some of what we’re diving into. So I need to resist my desire to be a mentor or consultant or what have you and really stay in the coaching energy.

And There’s different challenges and different tensions for leaders. So I think to your point, I think I, there’s an empathy and an understanding that comes with it that makes it more meaningful to me too.

Amie Vaccaro: Thank you so much for talking us through a bit of your story. And I’m curious if we ever overlap because I was also in San Francisco in the social enterprise space for a while. I lived there from 2006 to 2017 or so and I remember just like the energy around Room to Read as this like beautiful poster child of the social enterprise.

Um, So just cool to hear, your background story a little bit. And I’m curious to hear from you if you’re open to it. When you talk about neurodental fatigue, it’s so fascinating because I’m I’ve myself definitely gone through some really. serious periods of burnout, but I’ve never been able to put language to it.

And I don’t even know that would have been the right term, but I’d love to just hear you share a little bit more about that experience. And then also how you overcame it and how you think about coaching others to overcome it. Because I imagine that’s, I know that’s one of the most Prevalent things, especially in social impact where people feel so connected to their work and it’s their passion too.

Right?

Jayson Morris: Happy to talk about it. It’s something that I think one of the reasons I got into coaching and it’s, it feels very life affirming to me. We have a shared humanity. And when I started at the Piri Foundation, I was on the funder side. I would lead with some of my struggles because I wanted other people to learn.

It almost vindicated some of the suffering to, to be able to share it with others and maybe support some people along the way. But I do think, neuroadrenal fatigue is one type of burnout. I think we use burnout as a catch all, and I think there’s some people that are feeling burnt out, and that can be I don’t want to say fixed, that’s not the right word, it can be addressed, or it can be supported through some time off, three months, six months, and they might have the right Psychological framework and the right biological framework to then take that rest and just be off and running and be fine for me based on nature and nurture I run high anxiety.

I always have, I inherited that and have been doing actually a lot of lineage healing work to address some of that and very type A. And that plugged in really well with a fast moving high demand organization. And I got into this loop where I needed anxiety and stress to help me focus and it would help me perform.

And I would get praise for that performance, which was another key piece of the puzzle. And we were in this success loop, if you will, with a very toxic ingredient, quite literally. And along the way, things stopped working as well internally as I would have liked. I was waking up really early in the morning with What I would later realize were cortisol spikes where it’s that proverbial there.

You’re being chased by a lion type of feeling. And my adrenaline and my cortisol would stay high throughout the day. And eventually I started getting brain fatigue. I started feeling more depressed and anxious and it felt like my cup was always full. And so people on my team would come with challenges as, they would naturally do, and I couldn’t, I had no capacity.

I felt like I was on the brink of tears or breakdown all the time. And I was fortunate I had a, kind of a whole team of healers here. And I had been introduced to a nutritionist and we tested my neurotransmitters and my stress hormones. And I was in the lower quartile of all of the good feel good neurotransmitters.

I think I was in the bottom two percentile of serotonin. But I could see all of these markers that are supposed to be healthy were really low. And my cortisol was double what it was supposed to be. And they tracked it over a 24 hour period and it never went down. It’s supposed to rise in the morning peak midday and kind of wind down as you’re supposed to wind down.

So you could sleep, but mine just stayed above the line and that was really important to me because it normalized what was happening for me. Okay, this is why I’m feeling the way I am. So I guess to to go to the second part of your question, I think naming it and being able to talk about it.

And that’s part of why as a coach, I really try and open up and allow for whatever. is in the client’s reality. Whatever emotions coming up, whatever feeling, whatever uncertainty, it’s all welcome because it’s all part of the human experience and we need to first face it and acknowledge it in order to then do some alchemy or do some transformational work to shift it.

Jonathan Jackson: Yeah, and I think that the one of the things we’ve talked a lot about the first kind of session that we had coaching last year was a lot of kind of consulting ask business related, like, how do I think about the way I want to show up as a leader? Good, important topics, but one of the things I focused on this year, and then when Amie came back from that, we learned she was also focusing on with her coach was somatics and a lot of the physiology you’re talking about in terms of not just what’s going on in your rational mind, but What’s your body doing and how are those things linked?

And it’s been really interesting for me personally, because one of the things I started noticing over the last couple of years when I would get agitated is I could physically feel it, I could like almost feel my cortisol going up. I could feel myself being, that cup full mindset.

I was just like, if somebody comes to me with a problem right now, I’m going to. Do a very poor job being thoughtful about how to even accept the statement of the problem and definitely not going to be helpful in solving the problem. Amie, you’ve never had that experience in interacting with me, right?

That’s not why you have a huge smile on your face right now.

Amie Vaccaro: No never done.

Jonathan Jackson: yeah, and it’s in, when we were talking, Jason, I was like, Oh yeah, I want to, how do I show up as a leader? And you think it’s all in your mind, of how you’re doing these things. And that’s a critical aspect of being introspective and.

and self improvement. But a ton of it, we were just like let’s do some meditation. Let’s do some mindfulness. Let’s think about your breathing. Let’s think about how you’re, you’re physically appearing in meetings or, you know, and, and Zoom screws everything up too, in terms of the just total change in the dynamic of how you physically interact with people.

But that’s been, it’s been fascinating that we focused on it this year. So I’d love to hear. Amie, why you chose to focus on this with your coach. And then also Jason, when you think about your your coaching clientele and perhaps angled towards our listeners in the social impact sector, although we have listeners across all sectors, but how often is that somatic side of this discussion coming up and landing with people you’re coaching?

But Amie would love to hear, how did you come into that work with your coach?

Amie Vaccaro: Yeah, it’s a great question. And, Jon, I appreciate you, you sharing a little bit of that. I think. I’ve been working with a coach for 4 or so years now. And actually. shifted to a new type of coach, more of a somatic focused coach, because I felt like I was having these ahas with my, my, my first coach around yes, I need to shift from doing, doing, doing hustling.

Like just my worthiness is tied to my output kind of feeling to, to being able to sit back and relax and just be. Trust that I have the experience and the wisdom innately in me, that I am enough, I can come to a meeting, share my perspective and not feel like I need to be performing and taking perfect notes or, taking the ball, catching all the balls and holding everything for everyone, right?

I can that I inherently have value, but it was, I felt like I would have that aha cognitively. And it was hard for me to really. feel it. And that’s when I started talking to someone who was doing more somatic leadership coaching, who like spoke to me about this concept of capacity and capacity over performance and saying, yes, performances, people value, really value performance, but really what’s important is your capacity as a leader to stay regulated and stay present through intensity.

and be able to take what’s coming through the day, right? And it is intense being a leader and the least intense parts of my day. are the time when I’m actually just doing the work, right? But the most important work that I do is the interpersonal work and the conversations and the holding space for people that are in facing challenges, right?

Holding space for myself as I’m facing challenges and being honest about that. And so I realized that there was an opportunity for me to leverage my own physical body and better regulate myself and be more, Attuned to taking care of myself and my own regulation because. Like, I sort of knew this abstractly that if I’m in a rough, agitated place, and then I meet with my direct reports the meeting’s not going to go great, because I’m just going to be pissed off and impatient, and they might not notice, but they probably do at some level, right?

They may not say anything, but they feel it. That’s not a great thing, right? You want, I want my team to leave a meeting with me feeling excited, engaged, and having some clarity on what to do next, right? So I just realized okay, what’s, Most important for me as a leader is to build my own capacity to take better care of myself so that I am in that regulated place and that I can co regulate with my team and help, help them grow, help them be aware of what’s, different factors affecting them.

And it felt like somatics had a lot of potential there. So I’m still very early in this somatics journey, but it’s been really fascinating for me. And I’m actually taking a coaching training right now, just because I want to go deeper into into the space. Cause I think there’s so much there for me.

Jayson Morris: I want to hear about that coaching training. We’ll have to talk about that offline. But just to build on a couple of things. One, I need to out myself. 10, 15 years ago, I had no concept of, Somatics, no concept of any emotions other than maybe a couple base emotions like anger and sadness and happiness.

I remember going into my first therapist and I’m a huge proponent of therapy and coaching obviously. And they handed me like this sheet of all of these emojis and they’re like, here are all the emotions and I’m like, what’s that? And so I say that and really somatics for me is itself, understanding that we have bodies that have a body intelligence is probably five to seven years old for me as a concept.

We’re sold this false narrative, ever since Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. We have been these thinking beings, and we forget that the prefrontal cortex is young, and the body has, I don’t know, I I won’t do it justice, but many multi fold uh, um, more experience, here’s more experience and so we’ve cut off that, and I’d say to, to Jonathan, to your question, almost every leader Uh, that I work with there is some element of somatics that would be supportive.

Not everybody is ready for it. Some people, because when we go into the body, there’s a lot of charge, there’s a lot of energy, there’s also a lot of stored trauma, and we could get into that topic of intergenerational trauma, either now or in a future podcast, we could say a lot. Some people aren’t ready for that.

And I think the body is a key mechanism for regulating ourselves, as Amie was saying, and slowing down so that we can start to see what’s happening within us, what’s happening within other people, what emotions are present, what energy is in the room. It’s an incredible resource, and we’ve often lost touch with it.

And so doing somatic work just opens up this, like I said, this deeply wise intelligence that, that many of us have. have lost along the way.

Jonathan Jackson: Yeah, I think I had expressed, maybe this is also something that never happens with you and I, but I had expressed some level of skepticism as to the value of focusing on the body and semantics. And then we started to do even just a few kind of guided meditations at the start of our coaching sessions.

And you could really feel the difference for me, being heavy on the thinking and reading side. I also coupled that with a few books that you’d recommended um, that we can link to in the show notes. They kind of just grounded it in the science and the history of where some of these practices and ideals came from.

And I think for me, that was a really helpful intro. I’m only six, six months in on this journey myself, but, It really is amazing how much you notice it really quickly when you start to think about it. And then it, it becomes very obvious once you start to try to feel it. Because that physiological sensation that I was talking about, that I’m like, Oh, I can feel myself getting angry.

That’s actually, it’s not my brain getting angry and then telling my body. to then respond to my brain’s anger is my body sensing something’s wrong and then it’s screwing up my brain. And so it’s also that dimensionality of thinking everything’s one way that, that you and I’ve talked about from your, oh, your brain controls everything and so when your body feels weirder, it’s your brain telling your body.

And it actually runs the opposite where your body’s smarter than your brain is in terms of detecting these things and the sensations and then that, that triggers your brain to react differently. And so. I’ve really enjoyed digging into it and have very, very, very far to go and have even had trouble, we just talked about this week of institutionalizing the practices of doing some of the physical exercises, remembering to think about these things at various points throughout the day.

But Amie, as you said, a lot of it is about if you want to be a leader and particularly for my leadership type that, wants to be in control, wants, clear options, wants a lot of logical and fast action. In today’s world, in the U. S. and in the development sector, there’s just a huge amount of uncertainty looming with the presidential elections in the U.

S., looming with challenges in global funding in general. increasing levels of demand and need with climate change and other areas. My, my natural leadership style doesn’t necessarily perform well in a high uncertainty context that we currently find ourselves in. And so for me personally, it’s even more important that I get good at this and adopt some of these practices as quickly as I can to make sure that I can continue to be a leader, both for my direct reports, you need emotional or other support for me, and also to make the right decisions.

On behalf of the organization, but it is tough to flip out of that kind of default mindset that I think a lot of us are taught, which is oh your brain runs everything, like everything’s in your mind. So if your body feels weird, tell your brain to stop doing that, as opposed to, figure out how to really embrace how your body’s feeling and make that part of the overall way that you’re thinking about approaching things.

Jayson Morris: And just to add something to that, as I heard you talking the other, I think, false narrative that’s been sold is what leadership is. And I think we’re learning that it’s not just about knowing what to do and leading from the front and, various war motifs and metaphors that are used, but it’s about Inspiring.

It’s about helping the organization to regulate, you know, in times of uncertainty, leaders that are open and grounded and calm can calm the team. We, we have mirror neurons. And so sometimes just that presence, that work that you’re doing somatically on yourself will translate to the team without having to say anything.

And so I think we’re also in this. period where we’re examining what makes strong leaders. And we’re seeing more Amie Edmondson’s work on psychological safety, Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability, Kristen Neff’s work on self compassion. There are these quote unquote softer components of leadership that are being proven to be so essential.

And how we go about tapping into those, I think, is a lot through. this somatic work and some of the emotional and relational work that we do in coaching as well.

Jonathan Jackson: Yeah, Amie, you always tell me that’s the reason you love Dimagi is my soft skills, right? That, that’s been really just a highlight of your,

Amie Vaccaro: definitely. Yeah, sometimes I

Jayson Morris: I will give you credit though. You like to play, you like to play the the hard ass. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that on a podcast or the tough cop, but I see your heart and your openness and this this passion for the team.

And so that’s, if we pivot at all and talk about Enneagram at whatever point I, there’s a tough exterior, but you’ve got that, that you’ve got it inside of you. You can’t hide it. Sure.

Jonathan Jackson: it’s so tough because even though we’ve been actively working on this for six months like, you’re just default into, like, why can’t I think my way out of this problem, right? Or, Why, how do I figure out the right answer?

And it’s sometimes it’s just not there. And we’ve talked a lot about this of just the discomfort I have and that I would assume many others have and just sitting with uncertainty and expressing the ability to be just still be present, still be there for the team, not have great answers. Sitting with that uncertainty and having the patience to wait feels extremely uncomfortable particularly for, the way I traditionally have liked to have led be super smart, figure out the right answer push, push go.

And then, we find ourselves at increasing levels of. Difficult decisions, difficult market conditions. And you’re like, look, gotta take a breath. You gotta sit here. You gotta really contemplate options. And you sometimes have to pick between two bad options, which is also not a lot of fun.

I like finding the best option and having it be good and then going and doing that. It’s hard to. To have the best option be bad, which, the reality is a lot of organizations and post COVID um, times have faced that a lot of organizations are going to face that. And it is very difficult coming from uh, the, the background that I have at least in the leadership style.

And you mentioned Enneagrams, which I’d love to touch on for a second, because the other thing that we did when we first started working together and I know a lot of coaches use Enneagrams and other kind of styles of leadership in terms of figuring out like not what is the behavior you’re going to likely exhibit as a leader, but what is driving that underlying behavior?

What is the subconscious or conscious motivations of the reasons you lead in that way? So I would love for you to give a overview of Enneagrams and how you use them in your,

Jayson Morris: And one of the things it actually dovetails nicely on this the, as you were talking what happens with all, I would say in all of my coaching, relationships. What’s gotten us to where we are and made us successful isn’t going to get us where we want to go. And we want to acknowledge and affirm all of the strengths and the good qualities and the positive aspects that have gotten us to this point.

We need to celebrate that and then acknowledge, okay, there’s limitations here. And the Enneagram, I think, is a powerful tool for that. It’s a really deep personality assessment tool slash framework that’s steeped in modern psychology and childhood development. And it gets at our core motivation and our core fears that underlie our different behaviors, both the ones that show up as strengths and the ones that show up as challenge areas.

And it’s a tool or a framework that I learned in coaching. That. unlocked a lot for me personally. I could see we, we have a core type or a core style that never changes throughout our life. And when I looked back at, the last 40 years for me, I could see this, I’m the type three achiever.

I could see the positive qualities and the strength and sometimes the strengths that, that. We each assume that everybody has but they can actually be pretty unique as well as the challenge areas and the places that I stubbed my toe or hit my head against the wall over and over, with different teams, whether it was an investment banking or room to read, or even at the period foundation, or even as a coach, I still see it, you know, these unconscious ways of working that, that bubble up.

And um, so it’s a, it’s a framework that, that I use because it works on our, inner world or it um, it tracks to our inner world. We can use it across different cultures. So I do Enneagram work in East Africa with different organizations. I’ve done it with clients in West Africa and U.

S., Europe. There’s cultural differences in how those behaviors show up, but the inner motivation and fears are the same across cultures. I could totally geek out and take the rest of the time talking about the Enneagram, but I think it’s a framework for building self awareness and a lot of what we’re talking about in terms of somatics as well as the Enneagram is how do we slow down and pause and get really aware of what’s going on within me uh, in terms of my body sensations, in terms of my emotions, in terms of my thoughts, and Is that what I want to work with or do I want to pause and shift?

And again, going back to somatics, the shift has to happen in the body first. And once that happens, then we can shift how we are relating or communicating to people, how we’re leading. And to what you said, Jonathan, I think the world demands this now. I think the days of the five year strategic plan, unfortunately, are behind us.

I think things are moving at a faster clip and there’s a lot more uncertainty and a lot more just risk, or maybe it’s a different type of risk. And what it calls for is the ability to make sense of things, to sense make. And respond the best way we can in the moment without knowing where things are going and knowing that it’s highly dynamic and probably going to change anyway.

So the Enneagram helps us understand ourselves in the way that we’ve historically been programmed much like a operating system or an algorithm. So that we can then find new ways of doing things, new ways of communicating, new ways of leading that, that complement what we already do and may be the better tool to pull out of the tool chest for the problem at hand.

Amie Vaccaro: I’m a few different threads in my mind. I think I’m fascinated by this idea of the Enneagram as a way to point, point the direction. And actually, that’s not an area that I’ve. I’ve done a lot of work. I have, I do know my Enneagram. I think it’s a nine, which is the Peacemaker, although I’ve got some one in me as well, which is I think the Reformer.

So there’s some tension there, but I will, I think the thing that I’ll share here is that for me I guess I want to underscore what you said around like what got us here won’t get us where we need to go. And that’s been something I’ve really. It’s really scary, I guess. Like, um, I I think for me right now in this moment, I’m realizing my operating system actually like, I, I need to fundamentally shift it in certain ways.

I think and maybe this gets back to intergenerational trauma that you’ve, you mentioned that I’d love to pull that thread a little bit too, of like, I, for whatever reason, and maybe this is part of the peacemaker, I’m, I think I’m pretty good at attuning to other people. and not as good at attuning to myself.

And what I’ve been really trying to push myself to do is to like, find this space, take the pause even just have some like tactile practices of rubbing my fingers together to slow me down a little bit, so that I can allow that inner knowing to come out. And instead of operating in this way of just go, go, go, and I think when you, Jason, were describing your time Your kind of burnout period of that feedback loop of high stress, high speed, producing incredible, great high volumes of work, getting good feedback on it, but really just like burning yourself to the ground.

Like I think I can relate to that and it’s, it’s an entire reprogramming of like, how do I show up and. And how do I actually like have the opportunity to be even more impactful if I move away from that? Right? But it’s scary because what I know is the ability to like churn out, to complete tasks and like move through a to do list.

Right? And like, how do I shift from saying like, yes, Jonathan, I’ll produce that deck for you. Like, No problem. Here it is 5 minutes later to saying like, actually, Okay. Let’s pause. Let’s think about the bigger picture here. What are we actually trying to do? Is that the right thing? And, you know, just having that confidence to push back and realign to top level priorities.

So yeah it’s, it’s everything we’re talking about here to me is very profound and very, very personal to me in this, in this moment as a leader. And I think maybe one question or possible pathway here is like, And this might be useful for listeners is like, what are some of those practices that can help you slow down and shift from that place of like, operating reactively like, this is just how I, I react and sort of notice and then make a different choice.

Maybe that’s a place we can, we can go into a little bit.

Jayson Morris: Yeah. First just, I think, What you’re experiencing in terms of some of that fear is totally normal. Like the Enneagram helps us understand our personality structure and our personalities get formed at a very young age. You know, We biologically, I think we have that largest period of being requiring the need of others to survive of any animal.

And so. it starts to form super young. Some Enneagram theorists say you’re born into your Enneagram type. I’m not an expert so I can’t comment on that, but certainly by age two or three it starts to, our personalities start to shape. And they, you’re here. So it’s done a wonderful job keeping you safe and successful.

And it does that by reinforcing certain ways of being in the world. So you mentioned the Type 9 and this orientation towards peace and harmony, which can come at the cost of knowing yourself or embracing your own needs and wants, and leaning into potentially conflict, things like that. So that can feel really uncomfortable.

And I just, I, so I wanted to normalize that because across all of the Enneagram types, everyone has fear, a core fear, and everyone has shaping that has helped us survive. And one of the things that I love about the Enneagram is it’s really helped me build compassion and understanding and curiosity for others.

And rather than, judging and trying to maybe not trying to, but devaluing other ways of orienting in the world, starting to really understand that it’s just different. We all have different color lenses that we’re walking in the world with, and they’re not right or wrong. They all have strengths, they all have challenges, they all have areas that we don’t like about ourselves.

And can we bring curiosity and compassion instead of judgment? Just wanted to add that because I think it’s helpful for everybody, for all listeners as we’re talking about some of these things to know that This is part of the shared human experience. And we can get into imposter syndrome and all of those things that show up in, in leaders, but it’s all tied to this.

In terms of the practices, one of my favorite ones I’ve coached in a fellowship program called Venture Leader Academy for rising nonprofit talent. And uh, they tease me cause I will say, find your feet. Um, And quite literally, I mean that feel your feet on the ground, feel the contact with the ground, take a couple breaths, and bring your attention down there, and what it does, we can start to feel the sensations of the contact with the ground, whatever sensations in our feet, any type of throbbing, or pain, or tingling, or heat, or cold.

is bringing us into the moment, out of thoughts. And we can just hang out here, feeling our feet, feeling our lower legs. and just breathe.

And there are ways we can build on this. Sometimes I’ll have people visualize roots coming out of their feet, like tree roots, and going into the earth, and breathing it, breathing up energy from the earth that’s grounded, and breathing out tension. Um, But just the mere act of bringing our attention to our feet, it’s the opposite end of where our brains are.

And so it takes some of the energy out of the swirling mind and can start to slow things down. And there are things like that in terms of feeling how we’re seated. I love an open mouth inhale because it really oxygenates and energizes the body. But then sighing. With a vocal exhale, also triggers the parasympathetic nervous system to let go.

So we can combine some of these things. That’s one of my favorite simple ones. But having a meditation or a mindfulness practice. even if it’s only three to five minutes a day. And I, I will, with client, with almost all of my coaching clients, that’s one of the practices that we start with to encourage at least and consistency, over duration.

So rather than trying to be I’ve had a meditation practice for It’s been a while now, 15 years or so, but I was told very early on by a monk that it was better to start at three to five minutes and do it every day than to try and start with an hour and crash out and fail after a few days or a few weeks.

So I think the consistency is key. But that practice. What happens over time, and I think one of the things that I talked to Jonathan about early on was this idea of compounding returns. If we invest and we’re earning 1 percent a day, each day, it doesn’t seem like much, but when we look at it over six months or a year, the compounding returns have created the benefit.

Same thing with meditation. We don’t notice it the first few days, first few weeks, maybe even first few months, but over time, that mindfulness state comes in the middle of a meeting with the board or a high stress meeting with the team. And we. remember to feel our feet or feel our bodies. And that’s the pause that we need to resource and to then shift the direction of the way things are going.

Jonathan Jackson: Yeah, I think that’s great, Jason. And if you were one of the hundred people in a room with me in Morocco, when I told you to feel the energy coming out of your feet, it came from Jason when we were doing that. I’m a big proponent of that. And one of the things we’ve talked about that I haven’t been successful in forming a habit of is mid meeting, I can recognize how I’m feeling that I’m off between meetings. You know, Group meetings going sideways or you’re just not feeling it. And one of the things about I’m a type eight challenger. And one of the things is you’re not as good at hiding how you feel as you think. And so like in your head, you’re like, Oh, I feel bad internally. But nobody knows he was, he was laughing at me again, but uh, you think you’re hiding and you’re just not, you’re doing a terrible, like your emotions are just wide out there.

And so you’re also putting energy out there. That’s like bringing down the meeting and making everybody else feel your pessimism, just exuding. And so having that reset moment. So we, we’ve been talking about. Different approaches to go over the top with it and, just make it like in everybody’s face and try to really bring that to the forefront, which I have not started to do yet, but it’s something that I’m, tempted to do because I do think so often we we can feel it like, it’s really obvious to everybody, including ourselves that this media is going sideways.

Everybody’s, Not bringing the best version of themselves to the argument, not being supportive of what other people are saying, but it’s just hard to break out of that move. So you just, you keep doing the last 30, 40 minutes of the meeting. Everybody’s even less happy. But if you can call that time out and say, look let’s, regroup and do that.

And one of the really great things that you sent us when we were doing a pretty intensive leadership uh, set of meetings was this above the line, below the line. And we can link to that too. And Amie, you and I talked about this after Jason sent it over, but it’s really about that, can you be in an open um, mindset and can you be open to new ideas and can you contribute to an open conversation or are you closed off waiting for your turn to talk and you’re below the line and you’re kind of closed

Jayson Morris: So one of the things that I am hearing from what you’re saying, Jonathan, that I like to invite is the pause. And we can, it can be as simple as saying let’s pause, because that’s what stops the inertia in the room. And then can we introduce something and, like we’ve talked about earlier, moving the body is one of the first steps towards moving the energy in the room or in the individual.

So what can we do? Do individually or as a team, and we can, I think I’ve told you well, you’re CEO, you could do whatever you want, so you could make it fun, you could put on Taylor Swift’s uh, Shake It Off song, I have some clients that do that, and they dance to that, and that’s a fun, silly way. to move the body and that will will definitely move the energy or it’s let’s take a breath let’s take five minutes let’s go outside let’s just get up and stretch whatever it is but it’s it’s recognizing that the inertia and stopping it and then doing something about it.

And I talk about, I will facilitate sometimes a workshop on navigating difficult conversations. And one of the most important concepts is this idea of labeling. Let’s label what’s in the room. And that’s as simple as saying, let’s pause for a sec. I’m sensing a lot of agitation or I’m sensing a lot of fear or, and then can we invite a shift or can we invite curiosity?

And so It’s it’s not easy to do it. The concept is somewhat simple. It’s a lot harder to do it in the moment, but the first thing is that noticing piece that you’re talking about.

Jonathan Jackson: But the problem is, if you do it in the moment, Jason, how do you win the argument? You gotta keep pushing. But no, I think, I’m just thinking back to this week and several conversations that, Both myself and the other people are one on one or in a group. Everybody went into the conversation open and then just through, a couple pieces of dialogue where just okay, I’m a little bit more dug in on my position.

You’re a little bit more dug in on your position. Now we’re just not searching for. Maybe this open discussion I wanted to have and we’re like now trying to win the argument or, trying to get to a place and as you said, being able to call a timeout, pause, reset, move around.

But it is interesting, like the few times I’ve successfully pulled this off. Either kind of planned physical movements or others. It has, it’s really impactful. It’s surprising how very simple kind of just break the energy, stand up, shake it off, do whatever’s needed. And it’s interesting, Amie, I’m now thinking about a lot of the summits that we do as teams.

At Dimagi, we do a lot of really cool icebreakers because our teams are expert in like icebreaking techniques due to all the trainings we run. And almost all of those are very physical in nature. You’re getting up, you’re moving around, and even that, you know, to break up these, sessions. they’re, They’re a good intellectual break cause you’re not just like being bombarded by PowerPoints, but they’re also really important physical break throughout the energy of the room.

And so I think that’s really interesting. And I, I, I struggle, I think I, have found this easier to build a habit around when I was more in person with people. Because I think it’s just much more, like it’s much more obvious to me that my physicality matters and like obviously I’m giving out signals of how engaged I am or not.

I find it much harder to do this over Zoom. To pick up on these signals and to have it feel as important to do, but it probably might be even more important now with everybody kind of of isolated at their desk and in this new virtual world.

Jayson Morris: Yeah, no, I think you’re, I think you’re right. It’s harder to pick up on that being said, I think there are there, it is well known and documented, you know, zoom fatigue, and so I think we can almost assume that it’s in the room. We’re on the zoom. And what do we do about it? And so, even starting a meeting with five minutes of self care, self practice, exercise, or movement.

I, again I talked to a lot of clients that run their teams or their organizations. And so you’re the boss. So if you want to say all meetings end at, five to the hour or all meetings started. three after the hour and take those first few minutes to do X, Y, and Z with your bodies. Then you’re starting with a leg up as opposed to trying to react. To the situation, but I think again in this world that we live in, we’re trying, we’re like, oh, great zoom. Now I can do seven meetings in a row without acknowledging that I have to eat and go to the bathroom and I have a body that needs to be moved and maybe some fresh air would be nice.

And so we have to vigilantly work proactively. to address that.

Jonathan Jackson: As a, As a side note, you just made me realize I forgot to eat lunch

Amie Vaccaro: Oh, no, Jon. No.

Jonathan Jackson: I’m curious, Amie, your perspective, because I think. It feels weird, right? Like even in our one on one meetings where I know you’re into this stuff, where we talked about talking about this, it still feels weird to try to introduce because it’s just not what we currently do.

And our one on one syncs. And so Jason, from that perspective, like what, yeah, technically I can do anything on the CEO. I can change how our meetings run, but like forming new habits is incredibly difficult and we’ve talked about that challenge, but for me and this conversation is really in and of itself, sparking a renewed interest in doing this just because we’re talking about it.

But I go very hot and cold on things. Right? Like back in February, March, I was reading three to four books on this stuff. We were super into it. I was applying it. And then as we talked about this week, I’m just like, the last month has been really not interested in it, not feeling it, not practicing it.

and so, you know, as you talked about, you get those compounding returns, but obviously you hit. ebbs and flows and your adoption of these things. And so what either in your own meditation practice, as you’ve done that over the years, to an extent that I find painful and would never opt into myself as we’ve talked about in terms of multi many day silent meditations.

But these habits can be daunting to build, even if you’re totally bought into the theory, the practice, the benefits, just hard. It’s hard to shift how we show up. It’s hard to remember to care how we show up. So what have you seen work in your support of others trying to shift some of these practices?

Jayson Morris: Yeah the number one ingredient that comes to mind is self compassion. Kristen Neff, and maybe we can link to her books, N E F, is the thought leader on self compassion and its ingredient in our own growth. And it’s value and leadership and I think that it starts with that. So all of us are gonna struggle at times if we’re building new habits and practices we’re gonna, we’re gonna backslide.

We’re going to lose momentum and what exacerbates that then is when the inner critic comes and beats us up and shames us and then we’re just pouring gas on the fire. Having a little bit of self compassion to start and say, okay, this is hard, a new habit is hard, meditation is hard. Our minds are not designed to sit still, and if you go, whether any meditation teacher will teach, will, I shouldn’t say any most meditation teachers will start with the fact that the mind is going to wander.

And it’s not about keeping the mind focused, it’s about bringing it back again and again and again. And the way we do that, so I, I’ve done a number of 10 day silent meditation retreats, Vipassana meditation retreats that were taught by a gentleman named S. N. Goenka who has since passed, but he really took the Vipassana movement and spread it across the world.

He was a businessman turned kind of Vipassana senior teacher many years ago out of Myanmar and India. But he always says, start again. Start again and start again with a calm and quiet mind. We have to keep bringing ourselves back. Jack Kornfield, another leader in the American Vipassana movement talks about how you train a a puppy to use a pee pad, you don’t yell at the dog, you gently teach it.

Oh, and over time it learns how to. how to do what it’s being trained to do. And our minds are the same way. Our whether it’s with meditation, whether it’s with journaling. So bringing ourselves back, but self compassion is not a license for self pity or self um, for, for not doing it. We also have to bring the accountability and the growth mindset.

Like, I want to do this. This is gonna help me. I need to recommit to it. And then we fall off again and we recommit again. So it’s that process of doing that and reminding ourselves why we’re doing it. And again for leaders in this space, it’s tying it to the bigger why why do you do the work that you do?

The organization does the work that it does. And. Linking it to that, I think, can be really helpful. How do I want to show up as a leader? And to Amie’s point, I think a while back, all these practices are building the container for how you show up, and then how you impact people on your team. So if it’s not enough for your own self and self care.

Do it for others, do it for the team, do it for the Dimagi mission, and keep coming back and practicing.

Amie Vaccaro: I, I really appreciate Jason, the way that you’re encouraging us to start with that self compassion because it all, it all comes back from that, right? If we actually aren’t feeling

love for ourselves, we can’t show love for anyone else, right? And it will come out in how we’re interacting with them. So finding ways to Nurture that in ourselves first and foremost, before bringing it to the world feels so, so important. Yeah. And I think sometimes for me, like when I’m feeling, what you shared in the beginning, Jason, around just feeling anxiety and type A, like I can wholly relate to, and I think my, oftentimes my kind of hustle drive is is that feeling of, okay, I’m only.

As good as the next task I achieve, right? And like, reprogramming myself to feel good enough, even if I don’t send the 3 to 4 emails that I need to send before I sign off for the day or whatever it is. So I love that you’re encouraging us to start there. And then I guess the other thing I would say is Jon, maybe we can experiment in our one on ones with opening with some sort of practice.

And I think actually in our next company wide all hands, I had heard about Jonathan’s visioning exercise in Morocco. And so I’ve, I’ve got you on the, on the hook to try to do that with the whole company. And I think carving out a few minutes at the beginning of a company wide meeting and showing that it’s important that we reconnect to ourselves and do a little bit of self care. I think that’s a really powerful message that we’re sending to people that we need people showing up whole for this work. It’s too important to burn ourselves out on, right? If we’re burnt out, we’re not bringing our whole selves and we’re our power is limited.

Jonathan Jackson: Yeah, I’m excited to do that, Amie, that you’re forcing me to do, and we can try different practices at the start. But I found the Vision Nexo is really fun to lead. It was again, we talked about this. I was back in March, April. I was in really good. Um, Now it feels a little bit scarier, cause I’ve been less on top of the work and the practice. Amie, your point on self care and Jason, what you were talking about, I’m remembering, I have a, the Nike run club app, which has a running coach that talks to you when you run. And one of the things that coach says on one of the runs I do a lot is, you don’t quit when you stop, you quit when you don’t start again.

And so I think that’s a really positive, cause sometimes, you know, you, in my case, stop doing these practices that I was really trying to build a habit on. And that’s going to happen even if I start again, that’s going to happen again. But the point is to keep starting again and eventually getting there.

And Jason, as you said that getting to that level of compounding returns where, maybe it’s not a perfect habit, but there’s a little bit of a baseline and then you can build on that one and build. Gets you to where you, you need to go, but it can feel the first time it doesn’t work out, it can feel like failure.

Like, Oh, I tried it. I was really into it. I thought it was like bought in and then I stopped. So what does that say about me and like my belief in doing this work and trying to continue going forward. And so having that mindset of of course you’re going to fail. Nothing works the first time.

But again, with my, my type eight challenger leadership style, you can be like, Oh like it, it should work the first time, here’s the idea of if these people could do it, they’ll get it done. And if they can’t do them, that’s something’s wrong. As opposed to some of these things take, repetitions and multiple fits and starts.

Jayson Morris: Yeah, I think a couple things. One, I need to out myself based on something that Amie was saying, which is, even with self compassion, I find myself my inner critic voice, the self flagellation that comes up, the imposter. So even practicing self compassion. is a iterative, keep coming back to it don’t judge ourselves when we can’t do it, which is easier said than done.

And Jonathan, to your point yeah, I mean, I guess for me, I get inspiration from teachers like Jack Kornfield and other Sharon Salzberg. And there’s so many Tara Brock, I’m reading her book right now on radical acceptance. And they all point to the same message that, I certainly didn’t invent any of the stuff that I’m saying today.

It’s people like that, but it’s normalizing it. And if we, I think sometimes, particularly in the U. S. context, we have this problem this hero worship or this Hollywood sense of what it’s supposed to be like. And I think we have to keep coming back to the real stories and the truth of how these habits get created and all the behind the scenes that happens for people to meet the moment.

Jonathan Jackson: Amie, I know you um, uh, have a young daughter, the Tera Brack point you’re making Jason, she had, uh, two books that I listened to when I had my first child. And I remember. One of the techniques she taught was really feel the ends of your fingertips when you’re, close your eyes, breathe.

And so I’d do that when I was walking my newborn in the stroller around Cambridge on, on pat leave. And so that, that comment just brought this very visible, visceral memory of doing that with the stroller, trying to be in that, that open mindset. Obviously having a child is a huge transformation.

wants life. And so I was like, really okay, I’m going to get into it. And I’m like, I haven’t thought about that until you just brought it up, 10 years ago. So it’s not just that this most recent somatic experience has been a fitness start, but I’ve if I’m honest, looking back have attempted many times and just need to keep attempting.

More as we go forward.

Amie Vaccaro: Yeah. I can relate to that, Jon. I feel like I I can relate to that. Throughout my life, there have been like moments when I’ve gotten really into mindfulness and read a book and it really inspired me and then it it fades away and I love Jason, how you put it. It’s just like self compassion for the fact that we’re going to keep coming back to this work, right?

And continuing to come back to it and being okay that yes, it fell by the wayside for a bit. But here we are again one, one framework that I want to share with you both that maybe you are aware of. Have you, have you, have you read Positive Intelligence? Shain.

Jayson Morris: I haven’t read it, but I know of. of his work.

Amie Vaccaro: Yeah I’m actually really getting a lot from that framework. So you’ve, I’m sure you’ve both heard of the saboteur test, right? Where you can take an online test and find out your saboteur. Recently I’ve been digging into the full framework behind that, and there’s it’s based on this idea that we all have.

This judge, this kind of inner critic, right? That’s there. And then there’s a saboteur, which is like the accomplice to your judge and your flavor of judge. There’s a number of them. I think pleaser is one of the ones that I have that kind of ties into that peacemaker piece.

Part of it is just becoming aware that judge is not you. That judge is is a voice in your head that you can acknowledge but it’s not who you are. The second piece of it is like building your ability to, they, they call it flexing your sage muscles, right? And the sage abilities are curiosity, empathy, innovation, activation using your brain in a positive way.

And so kind of saying that anytime that, You’re in a judgment thought or you’re having a thought that’s like negative, but not tied to something that you can do about it. That’s you’re actually sabotaging yourself. You’re cutting down your, your ability. Right. And so, if I think about for me day to day, like I often lose time.

Mulling over something that went wrong or something that I didn’t do or, and that’s just wasted time is his theory. But then the third component of his framework is really around strengthening what he calls your PQ muscles or your positive intelligence quotient muscles, which is that, Jon, what you were saying about fingertips, right?

It’s any way that you can shift where you are in your brain from reactive to actively sensing what’s happening in the world. So it can be taking some time to hear, to listen, to hear, okay, what’s the most furthest away sound that I can hear right now? Okay, it’s there’s a breeze outside or what’s the closest sound?

Okay, it’s my like lips smacking on the, you know, the, um, the microphone or whatever it is. Um, And then, noticing the different sensations in different parts of your body with your toes and your fingers and, really taking time to rub your fingers together so that you can feel the ridges on your fingertips.

And the science behind it is that every time you spend 10 seconds in that mode, it shifts your shifts where you are in your brain. And I don’t know the full neuroscience behind it, but, it’s calming, right? And it gets you into a more proactive, spacious place where then you can sort of make more of a decision about how you’re engaging and break that cycle.

So I’ve been, that’s actually something I’ve been digging into a bit more lately is like, how can I embed these moments of PQ reps, he calls them, but it’s really just moments of mindfulness, right? Throughout the day and. You can just keep coming back to it. Every hour you want to do, maybe a minute of PQ reps at various points.

So that’s been, I’ve been finding actually a lot of, a lot of value in getting, getting into that framework.

Jayson Morris: Yeah, there’s a tie to just a lot of people will talk about awareness, and we aren’t the thought, we aren’t, I love that Pixar’s latest movie uh, Inside Out 2 has come out that, there’s, there was a lot of neuroscience behind that, and we aren’t the parts of us, whether it’s anxiety, or curiosity or, the critic, or the judge we are the, awareness of that.

And if we can remember, oh, a part of me is criticizing, a part of me is judging and come back to awareness, as you’re saying, our senses, feeling, I love the fingertip thing, and I’m going to try that or the sounds, we come back to the present moment, that is pure awareness, and that’s where we have the most capacity to then move with thoughtful response as opposed to a reaction.

Jonathan Jackson: Well, That was a great overall episode. There’s a million things we could talk about on a future episode and tons of links we’ll have for all of you in the show notes, but Jason, you’ve been incredibly generous with your time and we kept you late but really fun to have you on and looking forward to continuing all the discussions.

Jayson Morris: This has been a blast. I’m happy to come back whenever. I’m sure we could talk for another five hours.

Jonathan Jackson: I realized the thing that sucks about, yeah, the thing that sucks about doing this though is Amie heard it all. So now I’m like accountable. I guess the whole world’s going to hear it

Amie Vaccaro: Yeah, the whole world’s going to hear

Jonathan Jackson: I’m less worried about the world. I’m really worried that like Amie was like, Oh, that’s what you said.

Okay. All right.

Amie Vaccaro: Yep. I’m going to hold you accountable to some of these things.

Jayson Morris: That might be helpful. Actually having an accountability buddy.

Jonathan Jackson: Exactly. This is great, Jason. Thank you so much. And pleasure to have you on.

Amie Vaccaro: Thank you so much, Jason.

Jayson Morris: me.

Thank you so much to Jason Morris for joining us today. This was a really thought provoking conversation. I had a number of Ahaz during the conversation. But I’ll share just a couple of here. First leadership starts with self-compassion. If you’re not able to show compassion to yourself, , it’s going to be really hard to show compassion for others and lead your team forward.

Second as much as we want to, we really can’t think our way out of every problem. Sometimes there to move our body, to move our energy and change our minds. This also applies to group work and meetings. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to take a pause. Label what’s happening in the room and invite a reset.

 Third, when your head is swirling. Try finding your feet. And focusing on the sensations there. And see what that can do for you. Lastly, I highly recommend checking out some of the authors and frameworks that we mentioned in this podcast and that we’re linking to in the show notes. But I do want to caveat that you really can’t just read about this stuff.

We each need to discover the physical practices that are going to support our own nervous system regulation.

That’s our show. Please like rate, review, subscribe, and share this episode. If you found it useful, it really, really helps us grow our impact and write to us@podcastatdimani.com. With any questions, ideas, comments, feedback. This show is executive produced by myself.

Michael Kelleher is our producer and cover art is by Sudhanshu Kanth.