My guest today is Justin Jones-Fosu, who is the CEO of Work. Meaningful., an organization dedicated to transforming corporate culture by fostering mindset, purpose, and performance. Justin is also the author of I Respectfully Disagree: How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World — a timely guide for navigating the conflicts that seem unavoidable in today’s polarized world.
In our conversation, we explore the growing divisions in workplaces and beyond, unpacking why disagreements so often escalate into toxicity. Justin sheds light on why initiatives like DEI, despite their good intentions, sometimes fall short and how rethinking our approach to conflict could make a difference.
We discuss the core of his philosophy: seeing disagreements not as battles to be won but as opportunities to understand and respect others, even when we don’t see eye to eye. Justin shares actionable strategies and mindset shifts from his book, offering a way to approach disagreements that prioritize respect, collaboration, and mutual understanding.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to engage in conflict with clarity and compassion, whether at work or in everyday life.
Justin Jones-Fosu is the embodiment of energy, both at home as a dedicated father to two spirited children and atop the world’s highest peaks, having recently conquered one of the famed 7 Summits. But Justin’s passion for elevation doesn’t end with trekking, it’s mirrored in his professional ascent as a captivating business speaker, innovative social entrepreneur, and insightful workplace researcher.
At the helm of Work. Meaningful., Justin is the driving force and CEO behind a movement that empowers organizations across the globe, delivering over 50 keynote addresses a year on the pivotal topics of meaningful work and inclusion. His mission is to ignite a transformation in corporate culture, guiding organizations and individuals to ascend to their peak potential through mastery of mindset, purpose, and performance.
Justin is not only a pathfinder in the wilderness but also in the literary world, authoring essential reads such as “Your WHY Matters NOW,” “The Inclusive Mindset,” and his latest thought-provoker, “I Respectfully Disagree: How to have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World.” His work is a compass for those seeking direction on creating connections in an often-fragmented society.
With a flair for infusing humor into his well-researched content, Justin doesn’t just give a speech; he crafts an experience, leaving his audience not just informed but transformed. His approach is not merely to inform but to inspire, not just to direct but to make a difference.
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Zack Arnold: All right. Well, if you're good, I'm good.
Justin Jones-Fosu: Good. Let's do it. Let's do it. This is how we do it.
Zack Arnold: I would say that's a great place to start today's conversation, given how much energy I think you are going to bring, and I'm going to do my best to match it. But for those that are listening, I am here today with a Justin Jones-Fosu, who is literally the embodiment of energy, like, even if you have no interest in diversity, equity, inclusion, disagreements, agreements, or otherwise, you just want to go for a run right now, or, frankly, lift a building. Watch your TED Talk for 15 minutes, and they're going to be ready to go like one of the most engaging, energizing TED talks I've ever seen. It is not your dad's TED Talk, let me just say that. So in addition to that, you're a dedicated father of two, as you say, spirited children, which does not surprise me at all. You've recently conquered one of the famed Seven Summits. And for those that don't know, that's the tallest peak on each continent, you're the CEO and founder of Work Meaningful. And for the sake of today's conversation, you are the author of the book: I Respectfully Disagree How To Have Difficult Conversations In A Divided World. And holy shit, Justin, are we in a divided world right now?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Oh yes, yes, we are. And I mean to me, let's talk about the elephant in the room, right? The biggest disagreement that ever that's on everybody's mind really right now is, could Leonardo DiCaprio have survived on a little plank of wood and Titanic? I mean, that's no question number one disagreement of all time.
Zack Arnold: So I was too scared to bring it up. So I'm very, I'm very glad that you brought it up, because I really, I was too scared to address that one. However, what's here's what's so funny. And even though you and I literally have never connected before, we got in this zoom call, I get a sense of kindred spirits, because one of the things that I teach my students, and I literally have it written in this document, is we're going to start by addressing the elephant in the room. I'm the kind of person that where most people are like, I don't know. Should we talk about it? I'm like, Hey everybody, nice to see you. Hey, what's that? Let's talk about that. Shall we? So I would say that there are numerous elephants in the room around this conversation of disagreement, political or otherwise. But for the sake of this conversation, where I at least want to started is I feel the the elephant in the room is that for the last several years, dei diversity, equity, inclusion has been a huge buzzword. It's been all over the news. It's been in politics. It's causing cultural wars. And what I'm having a hard time understanding is, what is it that seems to be broken about this initiative? And I want to clarify that when I say it's broken, I don't mean that it's something we don't need. Where I get stuck is that, and this is where we're probably going to get deeper into morals and values and how we kind of, you know, address those but I just I can't imagine a world where somebody's convinced me that somebody doesn't have the fundamental rights to be heard and understood and have their perspective valued based on the color of their skin, based on a sexual preference and ethnicity or otherwise. But I would also say, looking at it from the outside, and you're more on the inside, the DEI initiatives don't really seem to be working. The system kind of seems to be broken. So somebody that's on the inside, what are you seeing?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, so let me be very clear. I've been doing this work for over two decades, and probably for the first third of it, I felt like I was doing it wrong, and I didn't know it until I kind of reassessed, like, all right, I'm saying the same things, and I'm not getting any different results. And why is that? And I realized there's several things, but I'll call out three. Number one, it was limited in terms of how it was normally talked about, right? And so oftentimes, when people think you hear the word diversity, what immediately comes up the things you mentioned, right? Race, gender identity, right? And we started challenging that notion is that diversity of simplest form just means difference, and we can come from the same place, be look very similar and still be very different. And what I realized is that we tried to run to these micro areas that we rightfully wanted to solve grievances, discrimination and things that were happening, but we hadn't even helped people to understand the foundational level about, how do I value difference for difference sake? And you'll never get to the micro until you first focus on the macro. And so number one is that everybody is a part of diversity, no matter what you look like, where you come from, all these things and what we talk about just the leadership 101, is that people are less likely to engage in solutions if they don't feel like they're a part of it at all. And so what I'm trying to very clearly communicate is that diversity to everybody, not just the big three. And when I mentioned the big three, I'm not talking about LeBron D Wade and Bosch, right? Or the old big three, the new ones, I'm sorry. I apologize, the new school, the old curry, Draymond Green and the maverick. Now leave now a maverick, though we still love you, Clay, but, but the big three is that. And you know why I know this is because, if you remember the 2020, primaries, I remember I was listening and the newscast has been. Come on to TV, and they'd be like, we've just been to Iowa, we're headed to New Hampshire, but wait till we get to the more diverse states. And I remember screaming at the TV screen like, No, I've been to Iowa and New Hampshire. They're very diverse. The question is, what type of diversity are we talking about? And that's the thing. So I encourage people these prefixes, when you're talking about diversity, talk about diversity. Talk about what kind you talk about, religious diversity, political diversity, ability diversity, gender diversity, ethnic, whatever that thing may be. Because oftentimes we're excluding whole groups of people even in how we talk about diversity. So that's number one. Is just how we've defined it. We limited it to the three, the big three. Number two, we've often talked about it from a very shame based approach, right? It's all the things you're doing wrong. And imagine you with your significant other, your partner, a spouse, and your every single time you come home, they tell you, here's all the things you did wrong. You didn't do this, you didn't do this. And some of your some of the listeners like, are you? Are you? My soul, right? But that is demoralizing, and it flies in the face of motivational theory. Motivational theory is that people are more likely to continue and or repeat behaviors when it's approached from an abundance perspective rather than a deficit. Well, it's what's called positive reinforcement. So we meet people right where they are, because every single person has been inclusive already in their lives, even when Uncle Bob comes at a family dinner and you go and talk to uncle Bob, and Uncle Bob a little bit different, but you still love Uncle Bob because he's part of your family. That's in a moment of inclusion. And so that's one of the things. And the third thing is that we approach it from this perfection place that you almost have to be perfect at it in order to fully engage. And so I love Carol Dweck work on mindset, because she talks about growth versus fixed based mindset. And we often apply diversity inclusion from a fixed, based mindset is that I only want to do it if I feel like I'm better than other people in it, don't want to appear ignorant to other people. And when I fail, I look at it as final versus growth based is my only competition is myself. That if I fail, it's just another data point of learning. And if I don't know something, I don't know it yet, and so until we can approach it in many ways, and those and those three things a multitude of others, I think for a lot of people, there's a lot of resistance. Is going to be pushed back, and we're not going to see some of the results that we desire.
Zack Arnold: First of all, what I'm wondering now is, how in the world did you get access to my private Google Doc with all of my notes, because you and I are talking from the exact same playbook. It is eerie because literally yesterday, I spent all day, and have spent all week, putting together a one hour presentation helping people understand fixed mindset versus growth mindset, the work of Carol Dweck and also introducing, I'm assuming you're familiar with Eduardo Briseno, who essentially added on and layer that it's not just about mindset. It's also about making sure you're either in learning mode or performance mode, right? So I actually think a lot of that's going to factor in today, and I made sure to make in my notes. Let's talk about mindset fixed versus growth, because that goes far beyond just the work that I do, or whether I'm an athlete, or whether I'm in corporate America or I'm a creative it goes as far as our identities and how we identify to others, and our malleability and our beliefs, right, and our viewpoints and our perspectives. But I want to go back to Uncle Bob for a second. Yeah. So somebody could be listening to this in a week, in a month or a decade, and I think it's going to be irrelevant when they listen to it. But just to give people a little bit of a sense of where we're coming from with the timeliness of our conversation. We're recording this shortly after the 2024, election. So there's, there's a lot going on right now in the atmosphere, about politics, about inclusion, about lack thereof, and it's, it has gone so far beyond, well, I think we should have a 12% tax cut. Well, I think it should be 18% like it's issues aren't even a conversation anymore. This is about a war of identities and a war of beliefs and values, and I do my best to make sure that when I'm doing this podcast and when I'm working with my students, and I know that there are going to be certain assumptions that I'm probably not seeing in myself. But my goal is you probably can't figure out which direction I would vote for because I really want to have a broad perspective of all viewpoints, and it doesn't matter. And this is one of the things I found so fascinating about this election, is that both sides, it didn't matter which side of the fence you were on, both sides were completely and totally convinced this is the end of democracy as we know it. Yes, it literally went that far. So I want to take it from this huge ideal back to the dinner table, right? And I want to start looking at this from a very practical perspective, first, personally, then I want to bring it into the workplace. But Uncle Bob is coming over to dinner, and Uncle Bob did not vote the way that I voted, and Uncle block Bob is literally supporting a person that thinks they're going to take my rights away, which, again, both sides feel that way. So let's just start literally at the smallest place imaginable, Uncle Bob at the dinner table. How do we manage these kinds of situations right now?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, and I love that you bring up Uncle Bob, because where we managed it, and this is what we dug into our research for the book, is that it doesn't start at the dinner table with Uncle Bob. It starts. Works before the dinner table with Uncle Bob. And what do I mean by that? So we created what we call the five pillars of bridging, the defy, and we initially had four, but we dug deeper. We realized most of the conflict resolution, the disagreement conversations, and all the stuff, the books and stuff dealt with in the moment challenges, right in the moment conflict. But we started saying, if this is going to be a part of our mindset, if something that's just part of our behaviors and learning, why are we doing it in a moment, it should be a part of our absolute continual learning. And so our pillar number one is challenge your perspective, which happens before any disagreement even occurs. And you may say, Well, Justin, what does that look like? So one of those things, a lot of people have these, what we call open door policies, like, Hey, if you need me, I'm available to talk, right? Even as creatives, we're like, Hey, leave me alone and let me work on my project. But if you need me, I'll be available on Microsoft Teams from Tuesday to Thursday, right? And we've done that, and we've challenged this notion of open door policy to an out the door policy, where we go out to hear the stories perspectives and learn about others and hear their stories. The foundation of this is that we should seek to be more interested than interesting, and give you two strategic ways to lean into this. Number one is what we call a circles of grace challenge. And a circle of grace challenge is really essentially this. Every six to 12 months, I go to events, experiences and or I engage with people in either which I don't know a lot about and, or those I disagree with. And I go asking two questions, what did I learn about these events, experiences and or people, and what did I learn about myself as I experienced them, not convincing them on my perspective, but just going to learn and build up those disagreement muscles. Why is that important? Because the more and more we intentionally expose ourselves to differing viewpoints, differing perspectives, things that challenge us, the better we are in that moment where we're engaging with Uncle Bob, number two strategy, one meaningful connection per week, where we intentionally build into our calendar 15 to 20 minutes to hear the stories and perspectives of others. That's another way that we move to an outdoor policy. And if you like Justin, that's too much, because that's 52 point 14 times a year in a leap year. Well, then flip the W upside down and make it one meaningful connection per month, and maybe it's one hour lunch. But be very intentional to not only engage with people that already agree with you, think like you, believe, like you, look like you, but to intentionally choose to go and hear the stories and perspectives. And if you're like, Oh, that's great for the extroverts, I'm an introvert. Well, then maybe it's volunteering. Maybe it's going and participating in the large project that might ingratiate you to informal contact with people, where you can develop those one on one conversations in meaningful ways. So there are ways to lean into it, but the number one thing is to challenge our perspective before we even get to the dinner table with Uncle Bob.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I love all that, and what I really love about it is that I'm a very big believer in building in habits and systems in our lives, and essentially to all but blatantly stealer. It's probably pretty much blatantly stealing from James clear, I want to make sure that all of my actions are a vote for my identity, right? And if I want to be the kind of person that's willing to listen to somebody else's perspectives and have an open mind, I need to see that on my calendar. It's not Well, I want to wake up and my My vision is that I'm going to be in a more open minded person. Great. What the hell does that mean? Show me what you're actually doing on your calendar and your apple reminders list and your text messages that are a vote for I want to become a more open minded person. So I actually want to dig into this a little bit deeper, because I talk a lot about the process of networking and to most of my audience, and frankly, to myself, networking four letter word, but I reframe it is that it's not just about building connections. It's not about collecting transactions. It's about building meaningful relationships. And I talk to my students about how you need to make the habit of literally sending an outreach email that scares you once a week to somebody that you admire you want to connect with you're seeking mentorship, because literally, that in science has proven this, there's no more clear determinant for the quality of the of your life and the quality of your relationships, right? But I think the the lens that so many people look at it through, I want to connect with more people like me. I want to surround myself with peers, which I think is great, especially for the introverts that really feel they have very little support, and they just kind of, they live in their cave, right? Like I always make the joke that, Hey, everybody, you haven't seen me in six months, just came out from under my bridge, right? There's a lot of truth, but I think that the step that most people take that's uncomfortable, I'm going to surround myself with like minded peers, which is a good thing, but I think what you're bringing to this is a next step. It's not just about like minded peers. It's, I wouldn't, can't think of a better way to say it. But different minded peers, how would you frame that? And how can we actually be much more practical and clear about what this looks like as a regular action?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, so I love that. Different minded peers. I think I still want to echo the thing of building in. To that habit, right? Of not only just individually, but we've done this corporately about the circle to Grace challenge and y'all, I didn't create that for anybody else except Justin. I realized my mom used to take us to events that we disagreed with growing up. And I remember sitting there like, Mom, why are we here? We don't agree with this. But she was planting these seeds in humanity, and this really became the foundation of the book. Is this statement that we can vehemently disagree with someone's ideology and yet still passionately pursue their humanity. And I realized that I was confining myself to my circles of comfort, and I wanted to challenge that, and so I created what at that time called the six month challenge that are now called the circles of grace challenge. So I want to really encourage people to lean into asking the question, if you over the course of the next six to 12 months, what is a group that you don't know a lot about you disagree with, that you can lean into to better understand and engage? Well, why is this important? Getting goosebumps. Think about this because you have no idea, in the midst of challenging your perspective, the opportunities of growth and learning that you can get, but also the transformative power of those meaningful relationships. Let me tell you why. There's a guy named Daryl Davis who was a African American blues musician who had connections, and first connected with a Ku Klux Klan member over music, right? And then he had these conversations. He realized, Wow, there's so much misunderstanding and so many misperceptions that he intentionally started engaging Ku Klux Klan members. He started going to clan rallies. I mean, he started doing all these things, and over 200 of them ended up turning in their robes because of their friendship with him, their meaningful relationships. And so I tell people, You have no idea the impact that you can have. Now, maybe we don't start there, but there was an opportunity for impact. The second piece of that is, to your point, I love how you approach this is Don't, don't approach networking from the normal networking perspective, right? This is why I tell people I generally don't like normal networking events, because we're asking the two questions, where do you work? What do you do, right?
Zack Arnold: And I just, oh, dear Lord, the first thing I was, I'm literally going to be hosting a networking event tonight for all my students, and my one rule is you are not allowed to start any conversation with, what do you do, or what are you working on Yes, those are my rules. Other than that, you could talk about anything you want, but you cannot start the conversation that way. That's always my rule.
Justin Jones-Fosu: I love that you and I are definitely Kinder spirits, because my first book, your why matters. Now we have what we call the negative two happy hour. You couldn't ask those two questions. We gave people like a list of five to 10 sample questions. If you've taken a vacation, what's the best vacation where somewhere in this city that you've never got to experience, if you could create one additional thing that you've never created? What could that be? I mean, so there's so many awesome questions, but I want to speak to the realistic nature of that, because you may go to some events, not yours, but you may go to some events, and people still may ask you those questions. And I don't want to be a jerk, right? I was recently doing this in Charlotte, doing a program for leadership. Charlotte and these two bankers were like, having this conversation with me, right? Normal thing, what do you do? Where do you work, right? And, yeah, I'm not gonna be a jerk. So I answered and then, but I realized that we have the opportunity to transform the conversation into more meaningful ones. And so instead of asking them that question back, I was like, oh. And as I listened to them and engaged them, I was like, Oh, I noticed you mentioned you've been here for 17 years. You've been here for six years. Like, what's something in Charlotte that you've never have done, but always have thought about doing? And it paused. It made them go, huh? Because they didn't have a normal surface level canned response for this. And when we go into the relationship buildings, I want you to ask the type of questions that don't have normal canned responses to them, right? Like, not, Oh, how's the weather? Oh, are you enjoying the sports? Are you, you know, but something that's meaningful, you don't have to go deep, like, what's been a meaningful moment in your life to shape who you are today, right? But it can be these moments of just like, wow, I just noticed as you as creative, like, is there something you've never created, but this is always on the top of your mind to create, right? And those are the type of it makes people go actually, and it develops these moments where the dopamine is released and people actually connect with you more when it allows them to take time to think and process even something historical, like, what's the most memorable thing that you've ever created in your life? And guess what people gonna be like? Oh, let me tell you now, guess what? They've just thought about a moment that was memorable, potentially happy, that that had a lot of great experience for them, and you've now been attached to that. Those are those opportunities to build relationships. And when you do a follow up with them, you can recall that thing like, I hope you're creating more of that. One painting that nobody else got, but that's just hanging up in your bathroom.
Zack Arnold: So all of this, by the way, I love it reminds me of a quote, one of my favorite quotes, and it's going to be a little cheesy, but I work in the entertainment industry, so everybody's just gonna have to go with it. It's the TED lasso quote, be curious, not judgmental, and it sounds like that's very much what you're talking about, however, easier said than done, right? If you're going to have a conversation with like minded peers or at a networking event or an industry get together, you have similar interests, maybe you work in different sectors of it. It's not too terribly hard to be curious and not judgmental, but now all of a sudden, you're either voluntarily or have found yourself involuntarily being with different minded peers that may see the world differently. Being curious and not judgmental is difficult. So now I want to start to get to the heart of this idea of respectfully disagreeing, because I think right now that's really, really hard for a lot of people to be able to walk and say, I absolutely disagree with your viewpoint, but I see our shared humanity. It's only I disrespectfully disagree with you, and it creates all this animosity and this separation. So let's start getting to the heart of this idea of understanding disagreement. And let's, let's just get real right now, because there are a lot of lot of friendships that are breaking up there. I'm literally seeing people's marriages are breaking up because one person voted differently than the other one, because, again, this is no longer about issues or policy. This is about morals, values and character. So it seems, it seems great to respectfully disagree, but how the hell do we get there?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, so let me preface this by there's another category that we didn't even realize existed, not just disrespectful disagreement, but disrespectful agreement, and that has been something that has pervaded our society and workplaces as well. And what does that mean? This disrespectful agreement exists. Can be like we could be having a conversation like Zack. I think that was a great idea, but then, behind your closed doors, I'm talking to Jenny. I'm like, Jenny, what was Zack thinking? That was stupid. I don't even know why we would do that. And I'm in the moment agreeing with you, but behind your back, disrespecting you. But let me give you the other side of that. There's also this aspect of culture, a family structure, sometimes situation where we were taught, some people were taught as kids, that children should be seen and not heard. And they brought that into the workplace. They brought that into their friendships that are just after keeping the peace right. And they're, they're, I'm not going to rock the boat too much, but in their silence and even in their tepid disagreement or tepid agreement, they're disrespecting themselves. And so I do want to give highlight that that's also existing, because there's some people who are like, Oh, I'm good. I don't have these big blow up disagreements, and it's because they might be disrespectfully agreeing. And so how do we lean into this? So pillars two and pillar three, I think, are very beneficial for us. Pillar two is be the student. And when you're being the student, you focus more on listening and learning, rather than lecturing. And so when I go into a conversation with someone that might be ideologically different, I don't go into it. I have to prove my point. I have to prove my perspective. Because everybody's trying to do that right now. It's about winning the debate. And we've asked, What if the new winning was learning? It changes how we approach conversations, where we can be more curious and learn. And there's a concept called the inverted U theory. And inverted U theory normally applies to performance, but has also been attached to learning. Is that there's two places we don't learn effectively. When one, we think we don't know anything, and two, we think we know absolutely everything. And so the person who doesn't think they know anything, that's why the circles of grace challenge or one meaningful connection per week, or diving into deeper gets them on the arc of learning, which helps them build that motivation. But the person who thinks they know absolutely everything, this person well, one will live longer and realize that we're never stopped learning until we're done, our journey is over, and that a person's perspective is different. Pillar three is cultivate your curiosity, and that's where our focus is filling in the gaps more with curiosity, rather than conclusions. And in fact, our brains are working against us. And I really want to call this out to people, because people think that they're horrible people, or I'm not. I'm not engaging in ways. And I want to share this because Monday through Friday, you take this exit. If you drive Monday through Friday, one day you're supposed to go straight. But what do you do? You take the exit. Why? Because your brain wants to conserve energy for things and things it doesn't know. And we, we're getting all this information, second, third hand information, news, social media, all these places. And so right before we get to know somebody, we end up taking the exit, because our brain wants to conserve that energy. But instead of taking the exit, what if we drove forward towards some really amazing humans? And here's how we do it, we go by realizing that we operate by what we call the dotted line dilemma. So let me ask you a quick question. Don't think about this. Just want you to answer real quick. To answer real quick. Even those listening, once you answer real quick, what's the right side of the road to drive on? Go to the right side. Of course, right. But what if you're in Australia?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I figured that was coming
Justin Jones-Fosu: right. Well, if you're in UK or Jamaica, and I was recently on a podcast with Australians, and they were like the left side. Like, why they're like, because you want to be safe. And I was like, see, this is this is why our context, our environment, all this stuff, shapes us, that we end up immediately making these quick judgments. And that's how our brain works. And so we have to be intentional to challenge those moments. And so how do we do that? Well, we call this by listening to the power of three. So if you're listening to somebody and they might think differently, believe differently. Our normal inclination is to jump in to tell them why they're wrong, to tell them you don't have the facts, you don't have the real numbers. If you only knew this situation, but what if we listened at least into the third level of the conversation to better understand and so how does that apply? Zack, how are you doing today? I'm fine. Oh, I'm fine too. That's power of one. Power of two. Zack, how you doing today? I'm fine. Well, it makes you fine. I heard this interesting bald head speaker. I remember that bald head sneak like That's power of two, but power of three goes at least into the third level, because our goal in listening and engaging with people is to better understand how they got there, not for us to think about if we can understand, if we would get there, and that's the journey of having the conversation in bridging divide. Is those two things, being a student and cultivating the curiosity.
Zack Arnold: I love all that. So now I'm going to start just throwing all these challenges right. Basically, my goal is to make this as hard for you as humanly possible. I love this, right? So I want to have a conversation with somebody, a meaningful conversation, and I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that maybe it's not something like you said. I'm not literally going to go to a Klan rally on day one, but I want to really find somebody where I'm pretty confident in some way their viewpoints are different than mine, right? And I want to talk about some of the issues that are going on, whether it's with religion, whether it's with all the, you know, these kind of hot button topics and immediate it's like, Nope, sorry, off limits. I don't talk about politics. I don't talk about this or that or the other thing. I feel like there's a lot of that right now because people want to have their safe space. That's not helping anything other than it's avoiding conflict, but it's not resolving conflict. So if I start having these conversations where either that's the reaction or that's my own reaction, it's like, Nope, sorry. This is a politics free zone, yeah. How do we, how do we start to manage that so we can have a meaningful conversation?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Ooh, this is why I love that. I love your challenges, because this is now the gray space, and I love operating in a gray so it operates differently. But the foundational to this, the foundational level to this, is Zack, who's the only person that you and I can control. This guy, yeah, yeah, our kids and so the interesting thing,
Zack Arnold: well, until they're 18, yes, myself and my children, it doesn't work even depending on your viewpoints, by the way, relevant to the conversation, maybe your wife or your spouse, right? But that's also true.
Justin Jones-Fosu: So, but like, we're the only person that we can control. So if a person doesn't want to have a conversation with me, I'm gonna tell you what old Justin used to do. Old Justin didn't deal with rejection. Well, so old Justin burned a bridge down. Like, it's cool, I wanna have a conversation with you anyway, right? Newer Justin is improving and growing that I'm keeping the bridge open. And so if they don't want to have the conversation, I was like, Hey, if you're ever open having that type of conversation, I'd love to have with me. Love to have it with you. Let me know how balls in their court. We can't force anybody to have any type of conversation even right now. There are people who I've encouraged to take a break, to not have these conversations right now, and that's the boundary that they need, because they actually might damage relationships in the midst of being heated, not feeling like they're at a place in their mental health that they can actually have productive and meaningful conversations about it now, but I want to caution people that you can't live in that space forever, and that's the difference between a boundary and a barrier. A boundary is a momentary moment. It allows for your your you to operate in a brave space, for you to be able to create these somewhat conditions, to be able to have healthy conversations, but about a barrier completely cuts the person off. And that's where I think some people are. So some people might need a month. Some people may need two weeks. Some people may need three months to really get in a brave space where they can actually have these conversations. So that's number one. Number two is, if you're engaging with someone, maybe you feel that way, then maybe you need to take a momentary break. But I want us to come back to maybe it's not the politics, maybe it's not diving into the thing that's the biggest challenging thing for you, if, even if you've attached it to your identity, maybe it's identifying something that's low to medium and your ideological continuum, right? We call it the high commitment versus low commitment in our ideological perspective. And maybe you start there of just having conversations with people about something like if you're dealing with something like gun rights or gun safety or gun control, right, that you might be invested in, but it's not hardcore. Attached to your value systems. And you start having these kind of like, hey, one of the things I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to hear from different perspectives, from people. I'm trying to learn and hear journeys. I want you to be very careful in going into these conversations you have to communicate. One, your vulnerability. Two, communicate that you're trying to learn and not trying to have a debate with someone. And three, the explicitly express your curiosity, not like, Hey, I noticed you think differently about, you know, gun control and gun safety. Tell me why you believe that. No, no, that's not going to work immediately. Defensive wall is going to come up. People aren't going to come up. People aren't going to talk to you, but if we go into it from a posture of, hey, you know, I'm trying to do my best just to learn about different perspectives and hear different viewpoints. And one of the things that could be really helpful for me is I'd really just love to hear your perspective and viewpoint. We don't have to engage mine unless you want to, you know, after the conversation. But I really just want to understand, help me. Help me understand those are ways we go into conversations with that level of vulnerability, that level of humility, that people are willing when you know what's one of the old adjutant set. And I hope you love this one is that the teacher appears when the student is ready. And I think that we go into conversations trying to be teachers, and wonder why we're butting heads with so many people, because everybody's trying to teach right now versus people trying to learn. So those are some practical ways to lean into those types of conversations. But I wouldn't start off with the thing that you detest the most. I was doing a learning session with Toyota and a lady, she's like, I just can't, I can't respectfully disagree with people who believe in Hitler or the values of Hitler, because she was Jewish. And I was like, damn, I understand how you got there. And I was like, let's not start there. Let's start with something else, because there's hundreds of things that you can lean into conversations, like with Uncle Bob, where you can have the conversation pull Uncle Bob to decide where you're not creating this dinner table spectacle. But like, Hey, Uncle Bob, I noticed, you know, you may have voted in this way and and I just, I just want to learn. I want to better understand that's the approach that we can take that is more meaningful.
Zack Arnold: So then, just to clarify, you're saying I shouldn't start the conversation with what the hell is wrong with you? Why do you see it this way? You're saying that's not the best strategy. Because if so, I might have to rethink a few things.
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, I think you need to rethink a few things. Yeah, that's why I tell people take a break, right? Because if you, if you're going to start conversations like that, let's just be honest, when's the last time somebody changed their mind because you called them stupid, dumb or that's idiotic, like it never happens, nor does it create these, these relationships that are able to come together in meaningful way? So, yeah, take, take a different page. Yeah.
Zack Arnold: So obviously, I'm being, you know, sarcastic here. I know I'm not right, but the the idea here, and the the thing that I want to dig a little bit deeper into, and I'm glad that you just went right for the jugular. You're like, I'm Jewish, and I can't support anybody that believes in the things that Hitler believes in. Like, that's, that's just, you know, kind of one of these fundamental conversations that we're hearing right now, and hopefully that conversation has changed by the people listen to the by the time people listen. I don't know if that's going to be the case, but I mean, that's just like, you're talking deep core values, about the value of a human life based on their ethnicity, their background, their religious beliefs, like that's when you're getting to the core of it, right? Yeah, so I'm just, I'm just gonna take this from from my own personal perspective, because I've been, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, where I try to consider myself an open minded person, and I am very much one that I my entire life, I've kind of been the mediator, right? Like, my joke is, I'm Switzerland in every conflict, in every relationship, whether it's professional, whether it's personal, I'm the problem solver, mediator. Everybody comes to me and says, How do I deal with this? How do I, you know, we're in the middle of this argument? Or, like, how would I resolve it? I feel I'm very good at being that mediator. But then one of the things you mentioned is that sometimes we're not as good at kind of reading the label from inside the jar, and we have these assumptions we're not seeing. So I'm just going to kind of walk through one of my own viewpoints where I'm a little bit stuck, right? So right now there are certain core fundamental beliefs that nobody's going to convince me otherwise, that it's wrong, andor I need to see it from a different perspective, right? Yeah, one of them is that I really believe that the character of a person matters, how they treat people matters. I believe the strength of a person's values matter. I believe that regardless of what you look like, whatever you think, whatever you believe, whoever you love, you have the right to do those things, as long as you're not infringing on somebody else's right to do or believe those same things, right? So there's a lot of different policies and issues, but I can't imagine a world where somebody's going to convince me otherwise, to see those things from a different perspective. So that makes me feel like maybe there's a bias, maybe there's assumptions, but I just I don't see a world where somebody's going to convince me like, Oh, you're right. Character doesn't matter. I don't care if you treat people like shit and you disrespect them. So when it comes to core fundamental values, example, I'm Jewish. I cannot support people that support the policies of Hitler. Yeah. How do we start to respectfully disagree? I don't know what color it is in your spectrum, but there's nothing gray about this. Yeah.
Justin Jones-Fosu: So for me, I'm be honest with you, that's always gray, and here, here is why, right, which is pillar number four, and I'm glad you went there. It's seek the gray. And because we live in a nuanced world, we have these perspectives, if it's a concept, psychological term called naive realism, that if people just had the same set of facts that I had, they would obviously agree with the same things that I agree with, right? And not everybody agrees. From a character perspective, not everybody agrees is that the best way to get the business results right is how Steve Jobs treated people. He got some amazing results. Now, Tim Cook may treat people very differently, but he's also getting different type of results with Apple, right? And so there, there's this myriad of gray space that exists. And this is one of the things we've been actually rallying against, this whole concept about open mindedness. We love open mind. Open mind is great. I love you know, there are things that we should all at times, and that's why the circle of grace challenge is helpful to be open minded about. However, it's not just about being open minded, because even when we're closed minded, we should still be open hearted. Now, what does that mean? That means that I don't have to take on your values, I don't have to believe your perspective to still value you as a human being. And this is this tricky part is that even when you don't give that to me back, and this is one of the things that is the struggle for many people. Is in our society today, we have this whole concept, I'ma match your energy, what you give me, I'm going to give back. But we've been challenging people. What if we're simply seed planters? What if our conversations our seed planters of moments that people will reflect them on, reflect on later, and it might not even be immediate, but because we're in such a microwave society, I want to say one thing, and you to be like, yep, you're right. And that is not how society works. If, even if I told you you have bad posture, you're sitting at home all day creating and your posture sucks, and I tell you, hey, it's better for you to sit up straight. You're not going to sit up straight all the time just because I told you once. You're going to need consistent conversations. Some of you going to hurt your back, some of you going to need to go to the chiropractor, some of you going to do all these things. And it's going to be these consistent moments that allow for this transformation of even in your own life. And so how do you get there is one by realizing that everyone has their own power to lean in or lean out of things that we share, and it's not our job to tell people and then immediately expect people to believe what we've already told them we are seed planters. Why is this important? Even in the book, I talk about this story about one of my former colleagues, who's a former skinhead who had very racist, misogynistic viewpoints, very hateful things. And he was like, you know, as I talked to him about, like, how he got in, how he got out, he was like, Oh my gosh, Justin, we love when people call those names. He's like, I loved it. It was the very same people who we demeaned and disrespected that still chose to show me respect that became those, those catalyst moments for change for me. And he's like, they'll never know because they don't run in the same circles. And so I tell people, you might just be a seed planter, but it's our opportunity to lean into this conversation. And so it comes down to this summer summarization of simply this, how do you define respect? And we actually went through this whole we call it the 10 characteristics of gold and respect, where we look at what society normally defined as respect, and we challenged it to what we call golden respect. And I call it one. And one of those is that you must earn my respect, even the phrase of Respect is earned, not given. And we started saying, but why? Why is this something, and where did it come from that you have to earn my respect, rather than it being a free choice that I give to you. So I love Man's Search for Meaning. Victor Frankl, powerful, powerful book where he talks about, there's always a gap between stimulus and response, and it's always our choice and how we respond. So I want to, I want to plead to all of us. And I'm not saying it's easy, but that's why, the more and more we practice this, the more and more we build the James clear five minute habits of the diving deep into this, it allows us to more readily receive it. And so do you have to believe what someone else believes No. Can you still humanize them? Yes, can you still show that you value them, even if they don't value you? Yes. Is it hard? Yes, the more practice that we have in doing it. Does it become easier? Yes,
Zack Arnold: All right, so this is where this is just becoming down, where it's scary and that I think you might actually have surveillance in my house. It isn't just that you've you've broken into my Google Drive structure, and you see the notes in front of me. I say this because
literally, have
an entire box right now, at this moment, filled with copies of Man's Search for Meaning, for for the in person retreat that I'm doing for my mastermind students starting. Tomorrow, right? So, like now it's like, Where, where are the cameras on
your computer? I just tap into the needless
to say, it's, it's very clear that you and I are on the same page, in the same wavelength, and I agree that, going back to this conversation earlier, about, you know, how, who can you control? And you can only control yourself, ultimately, like you said, it's all about my ability to have that space between what's happening and how I control my response to it, right? So I tell my students all the time, you know, this comes from Viktor Frankl, comes from stoicism, right? I can't control what's happening around me. I can control my reaction to it. Like you said, Holy shit, is that hard right now, with all the things that are going on and, like I said, it doesn't matter if this comes out in a week, a month or a decade. I don't think this is going to be any easier when somebody hears this conversation. And one of the areas that I am both fascinated by this, but it also it's very frustrating to navigate it as an individual, kind of as an extension of where you said, Well, if you just had the information, if you had the facts that I do, you would agree with me, and I think that what happens so much is that we we don't have enough perspective. Again, this idea of you can't read the label from inside the jar, where people say, Well, this is just how the world works, but your version of the world and your perception of it and your experiences, you don't live in the same world that I do like technically. Do We all objectively live on earth? I would presume Yes. But if you listen to Elon Musk, there's more than a 35% chance for living in a simulation. Let's assume for the moment that we actually live in a reality where all of us are on the same planet. Outside of that, I firmly believe that objectivity is mostly gone at that point, because the way that you're raised, the people that you're surrounded by the education that you get. When you say, well, that's just how the world works, my response is, no, that's how your world works. That's not how my world works, and it's all about you need to understand and see the world that I'm in. So you can see this is the right one, right? It's the same thing with religion. Yeah, one of the people that I really love following when it comes to talking about religion is Ricky Gervais. I love this idea where he says, and he's an atheist, by the way, not I don't follow him, because I, too, am an atheist, but the fact that he says he's like, All right, so of all the gods, all the ones that are out there, you're confident the yours is the right one, and everybody else is wrong, because all of those different beliefs believe the same thing, and they're saying, no, no, this is how the world works. This is how we believe. But everybody's worlds are different. So again, once, once you start to have those perspectives, rather than, well, let me tell you about my world, yeah, how do, how do we start to have conversations? And more importantly, I'm, I'm a really big fan of, I basically, I call myself a collector of good questions, yeah, what are the kinds of literal questions we can ask. Rather than I want to make sure you have my facts, it's more I want to understand what's the world that you live in, and why do you see the world the way that you do?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll also get to ways that you can actually respect others and just in a vulnerable moment, right? I also don't believe that you have to be absent of values or absent of things to be able to operate in a space where you operate in a world of respecting others, to be truth, truth told. I'm a Christian. I went to seminary, I studied Hebrew and Greek, right? I operate from a Christian lens, but I don't devalue people who don't op don't operate from the same lens I have who have different faiths or that believe in anything, right? And there's ways to do that. And number one, it's by the type of questions we ask people is being curious, and so in the power of three, it's listening and telling us. That's why there's not like this. Here are the three types of questions to ask. No, it's by communicating your humility, by communicating you'd like to learn from this person. If I was coming to you or talking about this, I was like, Hey, man, like, Have you always been atheist or or is did you grow up in a religious household like and now, now the conversation is going right. Instead of having these canned Conversations, I'm now able to kind of hear you and as I'm listening deeply, and this is the part I'm not listening to refute what you're saying. I'm listening to understand how you got there, and if I can communicate better, how you got there. And even if you don't know what else to ask, one of the things we tell people is use the power three words of Tell me more, where you're inviting that person to be able to share more. Now here's the thing is, it comes into our pillar number five. Actually, I'll jump into pillar four first. I think it's helpful in seeking the gray we're after finding common ground, not middle ground, because common ground often imply a middle ground implies 5050, right? I'm meeting you in the middle No, no, but common ground, it's like, where is there a shared mutual understanding? We both share the mutual understanding that people should be treated well, right? Whether you come from that, from a religious perspective or not, that people genuinely should be treated with value, with dignity and with respect. We come to that in the same place. You know what? Zack, I'm really grateful that we both believe that people should be treated with value, dignity, respect, not like well, I believe, because you're an atheist, you. Got to do no no right, and that common ground place is a place to start. Let me give you another example, gun rights versus gun control. Instead of saying you're stupid, why you have a gun in house? Why don't you have a gun in the house? Why you should keep guns in school? Why You Should don't have guns in school? You know what? I really, I'm really glad we both really care about the safety of our kids. That's a different starting place, and it elicits a different type of response, rather than you're stupid, you're dumb. Now, how can we still respect in the midst of those disagreements? Now I love what we call the three FA framework, where we can fully acknowledge people, whether we 100% agree, 100% disagree or partially agree and disagree. There's always a way to fully acknowledge people, but we often conflate full acknowledgement with full agreement. Let me tell you how we glean. In Sean Zhao, Stanford professor, has this great concept called thank you because, and she took it from what's that the comedy type of comedy where it's not stand up, it's improv, improv, yes, right, yes, and right. She took it and she applied it and did a great research on this. And so simply, it's something like this, you know, Zack, I want to thank you for sharing your perspective today. It's something I never heard before, and I really appreciate that. Zack, wow, you shared three things. Number two really stood out to me. I'm have to dive in deeper for that research, but, but, but thank you, or simply, wow, this was a really big conversation for us to have, Zack and thank you. You didn't have to have it with me, but I really appreciate you leaning in and sharing. Now, not once did I just tell you I agreed with you, but there's always an opportunity to leave people fully acknowledged. And that is the beauty, that's when we don't have to be open minded all the time, that even when we're closed minded, we can be open hearted. And one of those ways to lean into open heartedness is by fully acknowledging people. I often talk to people, and I don't have to tell them my perspective. I don't have to tell them why I disagree, right? I'm like, You know what? Thank you. Thank you for sharing your perspective, and I move on, right? It doesn't necessarily always impact or challenge mine, and sometimes it does, but that's one of the things that we have to come to this place of that I can still fully acknowledge people even when I don't agree at all.
Zack Arnold: All right, so now I'm basically going to get some personal therapy from you. So this is not even going to be about the audience. This is just me totally taking advantage of the fact that you and I are on this call right now. Yeah, and this is me having developed a tremendous awareness of myself over the years through therapy and a lot of the explorations that we're talking about, I have a tendency to do what's called perseverating, and perseverating is just continually trying to be understood. When you feel like somebody's not hearing your point, it's like, no, I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. I don't. It's not even a matter of you don't agree with me yet. It's that i My fear is that even though I'm saying these things, I don't feel like the point is getting through right. And that's created a significant amount of friction, both in my personal and my professional relationships. When I collaborate where somebody says, well, we want the scene, you know, to be shorter. Well, I will continually try to explain to them over and over here's why I really believe the scene needs to be longer, instead of shorter, just going on and on and on, right? And what I find happens is, and I think that this happens at a lot of both personal and professional relationships like Yep, no, you're right. No, that's it, yep. We're good, right? But there's no amount, there's no amount of actually having felt understood or heard it's that they've just given up. And I think that this kind of goes along with this idea, or that these kind of different categories or buckets of respectful disagreement, disrespectful disagreement, disrespectful agreement. Where do we kind of put the category of, yep, no, you're right. Conversation over you're good, you're always right, never mind, like, where does that disrespectful agreement?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yeah, that's disrespectful agreement, right? I'm agreeing, but I'm I'm actually disrespecting you in that moment because I'm being sarcastic and I'm being I'm playing it off, and I'm disrespecting myself because I'm actually not sharing my viewpoint. So there's a couple of ways to approach this, and it's a myriad of different things, but one is, but we have to model the behavior. We can expect somebody to understand our viewpoint unless we have even also chosen to lean into theirs. And so instead of trying to continue to convince somebody, Oh, you didn't hear me. Didn't hear me. Let me take a step back and say, Huh. I love to hear how you got there. Why you think that this is not why we need a longer scene rather than a shorter scene. And now, in modeling the behavior, it creates an opportunity and a space to potentially have a more productive conversation. Because normally what happens is that people's defensive walls come up. People are trying to convince you of a, and people trying to give you b1. Of the best books I read during my MBA, I had one of those really cool MBA professors who was like the Dead Poets Society late Rob Williams, right, like he would have us sit in the middle of a room for 10 minutes, do nothing and write a 10 page paper about it, and he had us read one of the books called um. Dialog, the art of thinking together. And it talked about by William Isaacs. And it talked about, you know, normally people going to conversations with a, trying to convince the other person of A and B, trying to convince the other person to B, but his challenge is, What if we created C together? What if there was a C? What if it's not all a and not all B and C is not often 5050, C could be 95 5c could be 6040. C can be 3565 right? I was 99 99% talent math, so I can get to my numbers, right? So in finding C, when we go into these conversations, some of the best creative moments, the innovation, even business results, have operated in a place of C, how we even have the computer and the graphics came from calligraphy and all the ENCODE and all these things that Steve Jobs able to see, this was a C, right? And so until we get to this place of let's find C and not try to debate about why a is completely right and B is completely right is that we'll often be locked into these conversations that aren't going to be super meaningful. Now, you may say, Well, Justin All right, they're just absolutes. I'd say, Well, maybe it's 99 one, and the simple 1% is that they are a human being worthy of value, dignity, respect, that's worthy of hearing their story worthy of listening and worthy of fully acknowledging them, even if you don't use anything of what they shared. And that's that's the different type of conversation, is it shifts from, you just need to hear more what I'm saying, because if you knew my facts, you would, you would come to the conclusion. It shifts from, hey, help me understand how you see this. Oh, you just hit me, Zack, I got to share this. I got to share this because I want to share what I suck, right? So we call these the three selves, and it falls into normal psychology. But the three selves is that you operate by these three cells, either superior self, inferior self or equal self. And I often find myself, find myself falling in Superior self, right? And I disrespectfully disagreed with somebody on my writing retreat if I respectfully disagree. And his is how it happened. So this guy named Daryl, not the same Daryl Davis, different Darryl or on my writing retreat, we're talking and I noticed him throw away some food, and I'm like, bro, what you doing? Because if you knew my how I grew up, we grew up on welfare, we were unhoused, we had government cheese, spam, we ate whatever was given to us, right? I didn't have the luxury of throwing away food, so I'm like, dude, like, Why are you throwing away food? He's like, I don't like it. I'm like, do you always throw your food that you don't like? He's like, Yeah. And then I went for the juggler challenged his parenthood. I was like, so, um, you let your kids throw away food too, just because they don't like it. And immediately, defensive walls went up, and I realized that I was operating in Superior self, that my relationship with food allowed myself to say I'm better than you because I don't throw away food. Now here, here's the kicker. I did this thing a psychologist called cognitive dissonance and or this term called ili ism, I L, L, E, I S, M, and I didn't think it worked before, until I practice it, and it's to talk to yourself in third person, because what they show is that it creates just enough emotional regulation when our amygdalas is hijacked, that we can create it so we can think just a little bit more logically than in that moment of seeing red. And so what I did in my superior self, Justin. I said, Hey, Justin. I didn't say this out loud, by the way. I said, What would equal self Justin have done? And I was like, well, equal self, Justin would have asked more questions. Would have asked Darryl how he grew up with food equal self. Justin would apologize and and this is important, because Isn't it interesting how we have so much great advice for our friends, but we don't often listen to the same advice that we give to them, and that's what that moment of cognitive dissonance and alienism does. It creates a place, as if we're talking to a friend, that we would give the same different type of advice when we're dealing with the emotions within ourselves.
Zack Arnold: To unpack just the last five minutes is probably going to take four additional episodes, because there are so many good things you brought up. But the two things that came to mind immediately that can be extensions of both of these conversations are actually podcast interviews I've done with other authors. You may already know that might be in similar circles. One of them, the author's name is Chris Deaver. He wrote the book brave together, and it's all about how it's very similar to this idea, how do we have a dialog where it's A versus B but we come to C? It's very much about creative, collaborative environments. He was a former consultant that worked for Pixar and Disney, and it was all about understanding that, like when we're in our little vacuums and we're coming up with our own ideas and tried to prove our points, the best ideas and the newest ideas come from collaboration, and they wouldn't come from an individual otherwise. So this idea of I'm a. A, your B, but now let's find c, right, that that's one you kind of gave me this amazing realization, just as you were talking about this, where, professionally, I'm very, very good at this. It's like I said, I'm usually the mediator, and I'm Switzerland, where I can have a bunch of different voices, whether it's a studio, executive, a director, whoever might be, it must be this way? No, it's got to be this way. But for from my perspective, even if I might agree with something totally different, it's what, what are the the problems or the story points or the feelings that are leading you to this conclusion? Great, yeah. Now what's leading you to this conclusion? Let's not talk about how we solve it. Just tell me what problems led you here, and then all of a sudden, you're like, now I see like this is the version that I think appeals to everybody's needs and problems, but it's not the solutions that we're bringing towards so what I often tell people, and I collaborate with is, don't tell me how to solve it, just tell me what's not working so that I can understand from everybody's perspective, why doesn't this work for you? And usually I can connect the dots and find the piece in the middle. But here's the realization that I just had. Why am I not doing that in my personal relationships? I'm really, really good in the room with people, but when it comes to a personal relationship, it's so much more about well, but no, you must understand why I came to the conclusion that a is correct and the other person is saying, Yeah, but B isn't I'm like, All right, great. To disagree, right? Like I'm hearing agree to disagree is like one of my biggest triggers, my other big trigger, and the the other, the other reference that I wanted to throw in really, really quickly about this idea of speaking to yourself, third person. I want to make sure that we throw in the show notes my interview with the author, Ethan cross, who wrote a book chatter, and it's all about how to manage and have discussions with the chatter and the voices in your head. And one of the most powerful strategies that I got from it is exactly what you said talking to yourself in third person. Yeah, right. It's not this idea of, I can do this. It's this idea of, you can do this. You've got this, right? Yeah. Or Zack, why are you experiencing so much anxiety right now, right? But the for me, the the biggest part of all this is just really having a better understanding of, again, not this is how I see the world, and this is how you see the world. It's just, let's for me, I really want to understand what is, what are the conditions that created the current viewpoint that you have? And sometimes it's just, well, I like these kinds of movies versus I like these kinds of movies, or it's this is the way that I was raised, and I didn't have any money, and we didn't waste food, versus we were really affluent. And who gives a shit if we throw our entire meal away, if it doesn't taste good, right? So ultimately, again, it comes back to this idea of being curious, not judgmental, just better understanding. Describe to me, the world in which you live, the created, the conditions that you see it this way, right? That that's and I can't it's just, it's amazing to me that I've gotten so good at this professionally, but it just clicked. I'm like, I need to get much better at this in my personal relationships. First of all, thank
Justin Jones-Fosu: First of all, thank you for your vulnerability, because not everybody's willing to admit stuff like that. So I appreciate that now he lets me know, like you're all definitely on the right track, because none of us are perfect at this, including me. I still make mistakes, I still disrespectfully disagree and all this kind of stuff. Tell you a quick story, because you told my personal is that I almost realized that this happened before I leaned into respectful disagreement as a focus, that I did this with my dad. And what most people don't know is I didn't grow up with my dad when my parents divorced at four, and I'm getting emotional and talk about this. You know, I saw my dad every other weekend, and then one weekend a month, and then sometimes I didn't see and or hear from my dad for two or three years for Myrtle reasons, right? And it didn't bother me when I was as much when I was younger, just because, like, I didn't want to always be taken away from my friends, right? Because they were doing stuff on the weekends, and I wanted to be able to hang out. But as I got older, Zack, I remember sometimes I pulled off onto the side of the road and just started weeping because I felt like I missed something. Now, what I'm not saying? I'm not saying, just because people grew up with both of their parents or guardians that they lived a perfect life, because I've heard those stories, too. But for me, I felt like I missed something. So in 2019 I was going to go, um, back to Ghana, because my dad's from Ghana originally. He was born and raised there, and I was going to go confront him. Will Smith style, right? And I'm not talking about the Chris Rock slap version, but like the Fresh Prince of bail air version, right? Where, you know, in this episode where his dad came back into his life, and his dad left, and he's like, it's cool. I'm learning how to change the tire, get married, all these kind of things. And what most people have no idea was an unscripted moment. He falls in the uncle Phil's arms. He's like, why didn't he love me? So that's what I was going to go do. Why don't you love me? Why don't you fight for me? But because I have a really good therapist and a great leadership Charlotte cohort, by the way, you all get therapy. Uh, Zack talked about it. I'm going to talk about I don't go to therapy because there's something wrong with me, even though my kids might say something different, but I go to therapy because I want to keep things going right. I'll never stop going to therapy. I may change the frequency, but I never will stop going. But because of my therapist, my leadership, Charlotte court, they challenged me to going instead of going to confront my dad to going and hearing his story, a participant later told me she like Justin, they helped you turn a confrontation into a conversation. And as I went and go and heard his story, I was like dad. I realized I never heard your story like I want to learn more about how you grew up and what were the conditions and things. And I learned that my dad, my grandfather was a polygamist, right? Not all of Ghana was like that, but my grandfather polygamous. And my dad was the first son of the first marriage, and he saw his dad maybe once that week, not once a week, once a month, if that. I learned at the age of 14, my dad went off to school by himself, and at the age of 16, he came to United States by himself. I learned so many things. I learned that Ghana was more matriarchal society, and so I learned that my dad grew his strengths, not from his dad being there, but from the challenges and things that he had, that existed, that created who he was. He went on to work for United Nations and lectures at Oxford and all these places on developing countries. Developing countries and economics, and so I better understood how my dad got there. Now I still communicated my truth. I still shared, hey, I wish you you would have fought for me. I wish you would have done but I was able to say, you know, I better understood how you got there, right? I still disagree with the outcome. Now, why is that important? Because I challenged my perspective with my therapist and my leadership Charlotte cohort, because in my brain, I had every right to tell him off, to tell he should have been there for me. I became the student by asking dad, I've never heard your story. I cultivated my curiosity by asking more questions. What happened with you and my mom? Why? Why was this disagreement? Why did you try to reach out to me? And so I sought the gray by finding that common ground of like, oh, I can see how you got there. And I agreed to respect, not agreed to disagree, but agreed to respect. And I chose to forgive him, not because he asked me, but because I better saw how he got there, and he was doing the best with what he had. And that allowed me and freed me to forgive him. And what I didn't realize Zack that was on the other side of that forgiveness was aspect of my heritage that washed over me in that moment of forgiveness, that I holding back because he represented that. And so I tell people, You have no idea what's on the other side of respectful disagreement? Because I wouldn't have realized all the work we're doing now in Ghana, and building a school and doing clean water projects and representing my heritage in a way that I've done, and going back to Ghana once or twice a year now, and now having more meaningful conversation, not perfect relationship, but meaningful conversations with my dad stem from respectful disagreement. And so to your point, the same things that we would apply in our professional lives can actually have an impact in our personal
Zack Arnold: First of all, I really appreciate you going there and sharing all that. I think that's an amazing story. And it's it again, it kind of shows that it's not just a matter of, you know, I do leadership development and give speeches, but I'm a very different person behind the scenes, because I'm sure you see that a lot, where somebody's got a book or a framework or a course or whatever it is, and they're espousing all these things, and you realize behind the scenes, they're the exact opposite of everything they talk about. And one of my core values is that I want to make sure I'm the kind of person that practices what they preach. And if there's a misalignment of the things that I'm talking about or recommending my own behaviors, that's something that I need to course correct. And I've learned over the years that that's one of the most common pieces of feedback I get from people that listen to the podcast, read my newsletter, are part of my community. They're like, holy shit, you actually kind of do the things you talk about. I'm like, Yeah, that's a core value of mine, and it sucks. It's really hard. It's so much easier to, you know, pontificate on a bunch of bullshit, and I'd have to follow it, right? But if I'm not actually doing the things I'm talking about, like, that's really important to me, and that's, that's a core part of the the world that I lived in, and the world that I grew up in, is being authentic, right? Yeah, and that the reason that I go there. I often deliberate when I'm going to record a podcast. I always want to dig into the deeper why. Ultimately, I want to understand why is a person the way they are? What are the conditions that made them the way they are, that see the world the way that they see it, not just in this conversation, but in all of them. So I always ask myself, and this is blatantly stealing from Simon Sinek, do I want to start with why? And today, I didn't want to start with why, because I really wanted to go right to the elephant in the room that everybody's thinking. But what I want to do is I want to end with why. And I don't think there's an accident that you became the person that's talking about all things, these things, and espousing these ideas. And I'm going to give a very practical example of why I think it's so important to understand where somebody came from, but also where you. You Yourself came from because I will fully admit, like, I get a lot of books and do a lot of podcasts, I don't read every word, but I read enough to understand the gist of the idea, to know, where should this conversation go? But as soon as I saw the design of the book cover, I said, there's a reason. There's a place that this design choice came from. And for those of you that are listening, it looks like a black and white cookie. It's half black and half white with a line in between. And I said that there's a story behind this. It's not just the story that happened with a creative team or a publicist. There's core values in the creation of this. And as soon as you started talking about your upbringing and your mom, I'm like, I get it. So tell me a little bit more about the why. What were the conditions that really created the kind of person that you are in the work that you do, and the central why to all of your work?
Justin Jones-Fosu: Zack, I love my mom. She been one of the single most transformative figures in my life. I'm a mama's boy for the best sense of that word. Before I tell you about her, let me tell you about the why the bulletin design. And so it's interesting, because I initially gave it to, you know, my publisher to have the creative to come up with the book cover, and none of them just resonated with me, because I'm for me, it has to be meaningful. It's not just about will eyes get on this? Will people like it? Well, it's like, I have to have a meaning behind it. And for me, I actually drew this up, and it's somewhere around here where I have the initial design that looked much horrible than what they created. But I was like most people see the world in black and white, and until I tell people, they often don't see that there's a thin line of gray in between the black and white that you have to choose to see. The other thing is, why it's slanted is because when you slant your head to look at it and read it, slanting our head is like the universal sign of pondering. It's even when you see we see like dogs or, you know, pets do it. We're like, and it's like, this curiosity of like, huh, tell me more. And that aspect of choosing to slant our heads and leans into that. Now that's the why kind of the cover. And then obviously respect is in gold, which is gold and respect, which all these things kind of flow together. Now my mom was the foundation of this for me, because my mom and I didn't realize this till later, I realized I had never asked my mom her story. And so if you have parents who are living please ask them their story, or grandparents, like don't assume you know. I thought I knew their stories until I really sat down and asked him this story. And it wasn't till my grandmother died that I started doing these story sessions with with my mom and my dad. Of just like hearing the story, and my mom told a story to me as I listened to her story, she was one of the first black female air traffic controllers in the Air Force, and she shared, so, Justin, there are some times, there are some soldiers when it two year timeframe that she'd be stationed in Japan that never left base. She was like, Justin, I don't want you to be like that. I want you and your brother to leave base to get to experience the beauty of people and cultures around you. She's not talking about physical base. She was talking about just a metaphorical base about what we're comfortable with, what we learn. And so my mom we she would take us to events. We went to Oktoberfest and polish festival and Hispanic heritage, Heritage Month events and first people's powwows. We had exchange students from France and Brazil and Germany and Japan, right? And remember, we didn't have a lot of money, but she did all. She didn't just do that. She would take us that I mentioned to these events we disagreed with, and what my mom had communicated that she she calls herself a child of the universe, that she was constantly learning. We went to different faith communities, right? Even though we grew up, we went to church. We would go to my we would go to mosque, we go to Catholic Church, we go to a Jewish event. We went all these things. And it was to plant these seeds. And when I noticed, even in my own life many years ago, I realized I was confining myself to my circles of comfort. I wasn't living up to my mom's challenge of leaving home base to get to not to have to, to get to experience the beauty of people and cultures around me. And when I started doing that, I started learning more, and I started taking the circles of grace challenge. It allowed me to see people and humanity very differently. It allowed me to challenge a lot of my long held assumptions and beliefs, to take myself out of the jar, to see the actual labels on it and see other people's jars. And allowed me to create with people together, and even when I didn't agree and vehemently this. Read to create the simple fact that they're human being worthy of value and dignity and respect, which my mom taught me that still exists in my heart today.
Zack Arnold: Well, I very much appreciate you again, being willing to share such a, you know, a heartfelt and meaningful story. And as soon as I saw the book cover, I'm like, There's got to be a story here. There's there. There's something behind this. And I just could not imagine a boardroom where they said, Well, this color is the one that's converting the most on bookshelves right now, because you probably had those conversations right like, based on these leadership circles and based on the very specific niche of your audience, like, these are the color palettes that people are using. And I could, I could see, as soon as I saw the book, I could see the meeting. I'm like, I bet he's like, no, no, this has got to be something else. I'm really glad I asked, because I could just tell. I could just feel it, because it feels very unique and different, and it feels like it's saying something, which means that you are, you are saying something. So I like I had said before. I really feel like I could unpack this over four separate episodes, and we well, as always, I probably got about 10% of my prep sheet where I've actually crossed off the boxes and said I covered it. But I also want to be respectful of your time. So the last question always the hardest one, what I call the shameless self promotion portion of the program. Somebody either wants to find your book or they want to find you. How do they engage with and interact more with the work that you're putting out into the world. Yeah.
Justin Jones-Fosu: So I love LinkedIn, and maybe on LinkedIn a little bit less. I've been reading Cal Newport's digital minimalism, but
Zack Arnold: Two times yesterday in the show, by the way, totally, I totally endorsed Cal Newport.
Justin Jones-Fosu: Yes. Love His Word. I'm like, Oh, I just deleted all my social media apps on my phone, by the way, nice. Yeah. So LinkedIn, Justin Jones-Fosu. You can find me there. I love interact with people there. But you can also go to how to respectfully disagree.com. Where we're continuing to put out more information content. We have a holiday guide. Our respectful disagreement quiz is coming out soon as well as we have a course. So there's a lot of stuff that's happening, but just practical ways. We're trying to give people more value to have more respectful disagreements. Here my heart more, not perfect, but more. And so I'll end with this. Y'all practice the tortoise principle, practice. And what does that mean? My favorite, favorite growing up, was a tortoise and hare, right? But I been really going against this whole concept that y'all, we've been mislabeling the tortoise all these years. For those who don't know the story, tortoise and rabbit, or tortoise and hare are getting ready to take a race. The rabbit's like, of course, I'm faster. Starts out super fast, great, awesome. Looks really good. It's like, I'm ahead. Let me take a nap, goes take a nap, wakes up. Tortoise is crossing the finish line, like, ah. And for years, I felt we've been calling the tortoise the wrong name. We call the tortoise slow. That's the wrong label. The tortoise wasn't slow. The tortoise was strategic, resilient, and steady. There's a lot of people in our society who are hairs and take the hair approach. It looks really good in a moment. They may try it a couple times and be like, Oh, I look good, and then go and take a rest. And there's no long, lasting foundational growth that consistently builds into what is that mindset? Take the tortoise approach. Y'all,
Zack Arnold: I'm gonna, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, I'm not strategic. I'm gonna add two more words. I would say that the the tortoise was deliberate and the tortoise was consistent. So again, you and I are on the same page, because one of the core mindsets that I teach my students is you gotta play a game of chess, not a game of checkers, right? If you're just looking for that next move and that next jump, yeah, it might work in the short term, but you gotta be willing to step back and play the game of chess. So once again, you and I are on the same page. So you can go ahead and invoice me at any point for today's personal therapy session, all of the seeds that you planted and incepted in my mind. Very, very appreciative of all that, but genuinely, this has been an amazing conversation, and I'm going to do my absolute best to try and integrate the things that we talked about into my daily life and my my relationships. So really, I really appreciate it. I hope that everybody listening find Justin and interact with his work, because it'll make the world a better place for all of us. So thank you, sir. Really appreciate it.
Justin Jones-Fosu: And thank you Zack, thank you for asking good questions. Thank you for providing vulnerability, and thank you for your resources, because I've already went and saved the Brave Together on my Amazon wishlist. So thank you.
Zack Arnold: You're going to love that, and if you want to connect with Chris, just let me know. I'll make it happen.
Justin Jones-Fosu: Thank you, brother.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
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