the more attentive we are, the more we see and hear and feel what is other than us. My name's Katrina. And I'm Steve. And we are curious about how changing conversations can change organizations. Yeah. And together with our community of transformation nerds, we're exploring how to leverage conversations to make our workplaces more fit for humans, but also more fit for the future. We'll use our podcast series to do just that while being in conversation with business and thought leaders who have interesting perspectives on the topic. So without further ado, let's start the conversation. In today's episode, we are joined by David White. As a poet and philosopher, David has challenged our understanding of what a conversation is, not just being in the form of an exchange of words, but rather a lens through which you can look at your life and way of being. If you haven't read any of David's work, there are so many remarkable pieces out there waiting for you. His most recent work is David White. In his recent publication is the book, is the book still possible. Through his writing, David explores the conversational nature of reality. Thank you for being here with us today, David. Thank you. Very good to be here. You're here because your work has made a significant impact on us. It's touched us and particularly you, Steve, can't stop going on about it. So why have we invited David? David White. You have been my main inspiration when it comes to reconfiguring what a conversation can be and how I can be in conversation differently in the world. I used to have an idea about a conversation being a little bit mechanical, ping pong between two people. And from listening to you and speaking to you, that has changed. So I now feel that I'm in conversation in a different way. And I would like more people to have that same experience if possible. And we are geeking out, if you will, on changing conversations, which is also something that I know that you've spent a considerable time thinking about. So we'd love to explore that together with you. You talk about, in real conversation, you talk about, you listen in a certain way, you listen as an intimate act. Exactly, yeah. And you also have, I've heard you talk, you speak to this idea about listening with is different than listening to. Could you put some words to that, David? Well, yes, you are listening as a separate being to begin with. But I think as you start to inhabit this third body, which is the meeting place, you know, between what you think is you and not you, whether it's between you and a colleague, you start to inhabit their body too, in a good way, not in a way that's violating their sense of themselves. And they start to inhabit yours too. So it's that physical letting down in a way. It's a form of rest into this physical form of what we describe as vulnerability. But it's actually just another form of robustness that we're not used to. We think we feel vulnerable to begin with. We feel fragile in it because we're not used to living there actually, because it's asking you to be much larger than you think you deserve or or can incarnate or can incarnate or inhabit. So there's always a sense of being broken open by a real conversation. I often say no one survives a real conversation in the manner to which you want to be accustomed. It will always break you apart, whether that's in your marriage or with your kids and with that stranger in the mirror who you're getting to know through succeeding decades. of your life moving towards this. Strangely, as you mature and supposedly learn more and more about the world, the conversation of self-knowledge is actually about unraveling. And I always say that the first step is just to stop the conversation you're having now. Not to improve it, not to ameliorate it, not to re-engineer it, but just stop having it. How do I find that out, David? How do I identify the conversation? Well, the interesting thing is if I've found almost always in every organization that everyone already knows what the conversation is they need to stop having. They just haven't had the conversation about what it is. Because it's always in the conversation. Because it's always in the conversation. Because it's always in the realm of taboo or beyond what you think you can do anything about. It always feels like it's in the realm of powerlessness. One of the things that one of our colleagues said is that the answer is often in the system. And that just reminds me of that as well. So it's more clear than we think. But just to clarify here, and I'm trying to bring things to the ground for those who might be listening here. When we're talking about conversations, we are talking everything that is at the intersection of us and everything. So it's a conversation within your own mind. It's a conversation with others, with the environment that we're in. So it's everything, really. Yes. And, you know, the phrase, it's already there within the system. The equivalent of that in your very, very personal life is it's already there in your own body. Your body is already experienced. It's both its sense of entrapment and imprisonment and what it feels like to be far from where you want to be. And it's also glimpsed where it needs to go. And there's even a part of your body that's already got there. But it's the part of your body, the part of your physical experience that cannot as yet articulate itself. I heard you say at one point, I might have not gotten it right, but you said something about that when we live, we're a good seven years behind who we really are. So we have access to a more evolved version of ourselves. That was how I heard it. Yes. But we don't have the courage to step into owning that part of ourselves. Is that correctly? Yes. I'd say that most of us are living a good seven to ten years behind the revelations and the consequences of those revelations that the most mature part of us has had. And why? Because we built a life around a previous personality. And if you caught up with yourself, you'd have to break that life apart in order to live in it. So you begin, once you understand that you're actually, say you're in an unhappy workplace and you suddenly realize that the excuses you've been given yourself about why you should stay are because you're frightened. You're frightened of the truth, of the revelation that you need to be somewhere else. So you slowly have to start dismantling until you get to the point. You just live in, you don't have to do anything about it. As I say, the conversation is merciful in that you can choose not to have it actually. You can say, that's enough for today. Thank you very much. And I will come back to you tomorrow. The main thing is, will you return to it? It's just like in meditation practice. Will you return to the cushion? Or will you take the walk every day that's good for your mental health in silence? Will you do the things that are good for you? Will you get back in the conversation? Will you return? And I always say that it's the conversation that does the work. You don't have to do the work of transformation. In fact, you'll make a mess of it if you try to do it. You put yourself in the meeting and the meeting will affect the transformation. If I allow it to, right? Yes. If I allow myself to be in conversation with that. Yeah. Openness. If you allow yourself to be undone. One of the things that you have talked about in terms of transforming, in terms of changing, I guess the conversation is the concept of a beautiful question. Yes. And one of the quotes that I've read from you, which I'd love just to read back is, the marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering. And could you tell us about beautiful questions and what are they and what can they be used for? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, there, a beautiful question is shaped towards something you don't fully understand. And that you intuit, you will have your heart broken over understanding. And so, so you know that it is a path of undoing. It's a path of heartbreak. And when you think about it in a human life, there's no sincere path a human being can take without having their heart broken. A relationship will do it. If you want to start anywhere. Being a mother or a father will do it. There's never been a mother or a father since the beginning of time hasn't had their heart broken by their children. A good work will do it. And if you're sincere about your work, it should break your heart at times. And then the person who most break your heart is the person looking back at you in the mirror. Continually disappointing you. Continually disappointing you. And how they're going about things. And, and so, so the beautiful question is shaped towards that path of heartbreak. The way that feels for me, when I'm, I can feel when, when there's a conversation that I really don't want to have. Yeah. And, but you just somehow know that you, you have to. And, and, and I suppose that's the potential of, of knowing that there's going to be something on the other side of this. So, so there's that, that courage drawing upon the courage. Yes. And you can even turn that into a beautiful question, which is one I ask people actually, which is what's the conversation you don't want to have, even when you're not thinking about it. And, and, uh, as soon as you ask that question, uh, you're being invited into the courageous conversation because almost by definition, the conversation you don't want to have is, is the courageous conversation. So, uh, so it's a lovely question to ask yourself, even in the abstract, when you're not feeling besieged, when you're not feeling scared by just to ask yourself, what's the conversation at this point in my life that I don't want to have? And it's almost always, uh, and it's almost always, uh, the inverse representation of exactly where, where you need to go. It's the beckoning, the beckoning finger. Yeah. But I also wonder, Steve, in some ways it feels like our organizations, many of them are also not designed for, for accessing those courageous conversations or making space for that conversation that you don't have. There's no invitation built into the structures of our organizations, but you've been, you've been working with different companies for a long time. So what would you say to that? Yeah, I think you're right. I think for many people, we show up, um, professionally, as we talked about before, a little bit masked. So we show up with the personality that we think is being asked for there. And I think in, in most organizations to get to where we really want to go, where people bring their creativity and their inspiration and their passion to work. We need to show up, uh, more as, as our full selves. Um, because we simply bring more when we do that and we create more together, but it is courageous. Uh, and you need, you need to develop a certain, marinate, uh, marinate, uh, marinate, uh, culturally, uh, for people to dare to, to have these conversations and, and also to voice when, when it's not happening and, and take responsibility for the conversation they want to be in. Yes. And the other side of that too, as I'm often amazed, you know, given, given, given the, uh, powers, um, of, uh, um, of human beings, and the human evolution and the human necessity for hierarchy at times and the precariousness of human life through all the centuries, that, uh, that it's possible to have as many conversations as we do have in organizations. Yeah. And so I always think that it's, uh, it's really necessary to have compassion for, uh, people who are defensive within organizations. Yeah. Because, uh, life has brought them to that place and society has brought them to that place and society has brought the organization to that place. So the corollary of that is there's only one place you can start and that's where you are now with all your defenses, all your difficulties, all your unwillingness to have the conversation and the ability to make the invitation in the midst of that. I often say that the conversational identity is actually the invitational identity. First of all, you have to invite yourself. Yeah. And, uh, and then you have to find a kind of art form and whether it's the voice or presence or practice on a daily basis to take that invitation out to others. I always remember when I, you know, I've, um, I'm a poet first and foremost, and then I started speaking in the organization world. And then by default, I'm a poet. I, I'd, I'd be acting as a consultant at times, you know, I was asked to do more. And, uh, so I worked for years and decades, even as a consultant. And then one of my colleagues within my small organization said, I think we should get, I think we should invite some consultants in actually to, to reorganize things. And my first, I was, no, no consultants don't work. They're too expensive. And then I said, wait a minute. No, David, I caught myself, you know, cause there I am, you know? And I said, okay, but it wasn't long before I understood the realize the reason they wanted the consultants in was me because I was the biggest thing stopping my little organization from growing and from actually serving me better. And, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and these two fellows came in and they were absolutely brilliant actually. And they interviewed everyone and it's just half a dozen people, but, and then they got to me at the end. And as soon as the conversation, conversation started, I realized the game was up. The biggest block, the biggest block to things changing was sitting right here. And it was a wonderful moment actually. And I had a laugh with them. I said, I said, whatever you think should happen, we'll do it. I said, I'm giving up. Yeah. And it was a giving up. It was a giving over of control. It was giving over where I, where I sat in the office even. And where I sat when I was traveling, even I was still there like, you know, like, uh, some missing icon, you know? And, uh, and so, it was just this invitation to give over and, uh, to let some other, some other conversation occur than the one that you are steering. Yeah. So all of us, I think all of us carry these, these cloaks. Uh, they're both cloaks, uh, uh, that they're cloaks, you know, in every myth mythology, there's a cloak of invisibility. You put it on and you can't be seen or found, you know, and many of us use that cloak of invisibility, especially in leadership positions, you know, you're there, but you're not there. Yeah. And it's one of the, uh, one of the most difficult things in an organization is when a leader is occupying a place, but they're not there. You know, no one can find them. No one can be invited. No one finds out what the invitation is. Yeah. And then the most heartbreaking thing, you know, you know, you're not there. The most heartbreaking, disappointing moment of all is when you corner them and you actually find that there is no invitation actually, because they're in, they, they've not invited themselves. They're scared actually of turning up. It's often, as we know, hidden under bluster, hidden under, under, uh, I'm in charge. It's my way or the highway and all those things. Well, you shared one thing with me the other day that, that, uh, that touched me and we were talking about how to own one's own vulnerability. And you said a great first step is in owning your own vulnerability and bringing that into the conversation is to ask for help. Yes. And it, it touched me when you said that. Yeah. And for me, it's not easy, uh, to ask for help. Um, and I think for many leaders, it's not easy to ask for help. Why? I think I've, I think many of us and I have created a feeling that I should help. And therefore I don't, I don't think about asking for help. That's at least how I think I carry myself to a large extent. And, and I would like you to maybe open up and share this notion of visible and invisible help. Yes. Because there's, there was something in that. I think it's also part of the masculine inheritance. You know, I do think women in general, uh, it's not true for every woman, but women in general more easily ask for help without feeling that their identity is at stake. Yeah. And the whole way, you know, again, in general, the way men grow into the world is this is me and this is not me. And then later in life, you know, the masculine journey matures into this. This is not actually me. Uh, I'm much larger than this. Yeah. And, uh, and in many ways, mythologically, and again, no one should be held to these generalities, but in general, the women, the woman's, um, journey later in life is more to a definition of herself. Yeah. This is me independent of children. This is me independent of being in relationship. This is me independent of being subservient to a hierarchy. Yeah. This is me independent of being subservient to a person. I'm going to find out what this me is. So it's, they've got this ancient mythological journey that we're on. And, uh, and so it's a big thing for, especially for a man, but also for a masculinized workplace, uh, to ask for help within that environment. And yet it's very, very powerful because we don't understand the power of asking for help because asking for help is recognizing that there's someone or something other than you. So if I ask you, I say, you know, I may be above you in the hierarchy, but you're actually much better at this particular task. And can I ask for your help? Because I can't do it as well. If I don't ask for you, that is incredibly empowering, especially for a younger man or woman. I've been seen and I've been asked and I've been wanted. This is what creates real loyalty in a way in a workplace. is my talents are seen. I've been, I'm being invited to bring those talents along a road. That's going to be a path of discovery. Yeah. And I will work, you know, in difficult conditions. I will work when, when not everything is perfect. And I will work where I wouldn't be paid as much as I might be at another organization because I'm on that road here. So I think that's the overarching physical, frontier is, frontier is, and so to ask yourself, here's a beautiful question, is how, invitationally is my character? And even what invitation am I making just by walking into the room? Because people instinctively understand, you know, oh, oh, your invitation is for us to go away and stop disturbing you. So that's one pheromone we can give off. So, so I often think about this with, you know, with my organization. I go through each person in my mind and say, what invitation do they think I'm making to them? And just from my intuition, intuitive point of view, having spent time with them, what invitation do they actually want me to make to them? And then you almost always find that you're not living up to that. invitation that you're not living up to that. And that's when you're not living up to that. And that's when you reach out. And that's the moment of vulnerability. You say, you know, I really, and it has to do with emotion, you know, so we've often, we've often separated emotion from a professional environment, but you can't make, you can't make a proper invitation without reaching the edges of emotion, because emotion is practically the edge where you can't make a proper invitation without reaching the edges of emotion. emotion because emotion is practically the edge where you cannot hold the identity anymore. It breaks open what the vessel you have, you know, in order to make the invitation. And Camus, the great French philosopher said, live to the point of tears, which is not an invitation to modeling sentimentality. It's an invitation to feel everything as much as you can in order to understand where you are. When we think of sort of the conversations at work, one of the hypotheses that we have about if we were to go into that differently is just bringing a different intention, having thought about it. So when you talk about the invitation that you bring, I think that really speaks to that as well. Just spending a moment before you go into this next interaction and saying, you know, what is my intention? What is the invitation I'd like to bring to the people I'm going to interview? Yes. And so, and then the other parallel, which you hinted at is the, is the, is the, the asking for invisible help. The, the invitation to what is not physically present. It's not in the form of a person. It's not in the form of a practical dynamic around you. It's just over the horizon. It's something you intuit. Yeah. And, and, and, and you almost always meet it right at the edge of your understanding. You don't actually, you only half recognize it when you see it. All of us can look back to our younger years and think of moments where someone, someone offered us help. And we, we said no. And we walked right past it. And we said, no, I can do that. I don't need help. I don't need help. And then that, but you look back and you say, Oh my God, you know, if only I could have actually taken that, I would have saved myself a lot of grief. Yeah. So it's really interesting to ask yourself, what are you walking? Right. What are you walking past right now? What help are you being offered that you're not cognizant of, or you're not seeing, or you're not paying attention enough to be able to see? There's a, you know, there's a tide of experience, which gathers, you know, gathers in cycles and then it dissipates. You know, there's another tide that comes along, but it won't be the same tide. Yeah. So, um, I did, uh, find these two dynamics, uh, drawn together in a poem I wrote, which was, it's the only commissioned poem I ever wrote actually. And it was commissioned by the Boeing company. I worked with all their top managers in the late nineties for, for a year. And then, uh, in the midst of all that, the triple seven airplane was launched. And, uh, and, and it was one of their great successes, not only the plane itself, but the way they came together and broke down barriers in the organization to make the plane. So the, the logo on the side of the plane was working together. That was the slogan they used, which was very effective because it, it wasn't abstract. It was old. It was Anglo sex and, you know, working together. And people could interpret it as they wanted. Um, and they said, would you write, we've won this big aerospace trophy and we're having a celebration dinner. Would you write a poem for the triple seven? I sold your soul. And I said, I said, poets don't do very well under these circumstances, but I'll have a go. And then I thought of all the times that I was up there at 30,000 feet. I spent half my life in airplanes. And I said, and I said, what's going on up there. And I was thinking about the dynamic of the way sometimes you're looking out and you see these biblical scenes, you know, just extraordinary scenes, cloudscapes and mountains and rivers and, and oceans. And, uh, and yet people have the blinds down and they're, and they're watching some nonsense, you know, on the back of the screen. And I said, what, what is that dynamic? And part of it is, is this denial that we are up there at 30,000 feet with no visible means of support. You know, the whole feeling is I am not here. I am at home watching television. But, and so because everything that's holding you in place is invisible. But every now and again, when you drop down through layers of humidity and temperature, you will see that solid white line of condensation, which, which passes over the wing. And you realize, you realize, which passes over the wing and, and below it too. You realize that the forces that are holding you in place are as solid as concrete. But they're made up of a conversation actually between the shape of the wing and velocity. So this is, this is working together. I did feel like I wrote something which was, which was worthwhile. Working together. We shape ourselves to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. We shape ourselves to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. The visible and the invisible. Working together to create the miraculous. I'm thinking of the way, I'm thinking of the way the invisible air traveled at speed round a shaped wing easily holds our weight. So may we in this life trust to those elements we have yet to see or imagine and find the true shape of our own selves by forming it well to the great intangibles about us. There's something so beautiful about the potential that you allow for. It's really acknowledging that everybody has something to give and allowing for those elements that we can give to play together. And there's something really special about allowing for that space and not overriding it with the cloaked version, with the masked version of ourselves. Yeah, and also this sense of you're not alone. There is invisible, invisible help out there. It's more a matter of whether I allow myself to be in conversation with that. What do you, Katrina, what do you pick up from this conversation? What sits in you? For me, this thing about invitation and how inviting am I inviting for? It's something that I need to think more about. I don't think I am as inviting as I would like to be. And therefore, I will probably receive less visible and invisible help. What about you guys? What are you sitting with? I think it's, or I feel that it's this image of the wing on the air and this thought that it looks like there's nothing there, but there is so much there. Yes. That one I'm going to go and think a little bit more about because that's, again, again, so comforting. I think that's what I find in reading your poems and your work as well. There's something so comforting about it. We're all just humans just trying to figure this out and it's really connecting. What's in you right now, Daisy? Oh, just a lovely reassurance of a real conversation. And it's the conversation that does all the work. You just give yourself over to it. So it's just a feeling of having done the work by undoing in a way during this time together. And just a lovely feeling of having had a good exchange about something that's quite often difficult to speak about, which is speaking itself. Exactly. Conversing. Thank you so much for joining us. Lovely. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. Thank you.