 But I'm really excited to have our guest with us today, Mary Gleason, founder and CEO of Mary Gleason Consulting. She and I connected. Gosh, it's probably been over a month now, because time just zips on by. But we connected on something, of course, within the business world. And then I feel, Mary, no pressure. But I feel like we also just had a whole nother level of connection when it comes to our personal space. So I'm really glad to have you here today and share with us on a topic that is so important, I think for all of us to really dive deeper into, and that is removing barriers to your success. So that is what Mary has come on today to share with us on the nonprofit show. Of course, we cannot do this without our wonderful presenting sponsors. These companies exist for your purpose. They are here for your mission, your mission-driven goals, and they really are in your corner and your community across the globe. So reach out to them, find them online. They're not hard to find. Internet, World Wide Web, LinkedIn, very, very active nonprofit leaders. So thank you for showing up and supporting us in these conversations. And thank you to Julia Patrick, who shows up each and every morning as well. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, and I get to play alongside Julia each and every morning. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as your non-profit nerd or the non-profit nerd, a CEO of my own consulting firm called The Raven Group. So thank you again for joining us today for the live episode, again, either live because these are every weekday live as well as 350-ish archived recordings. So, Mary, welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you. Hey, let me just tell you a little bit about me before we dive right in. And that is I am an out-and-proud woo-woo executive. Woo-woo! And by that I mean for far too long, I hid my intuitive self behind what I thought everybody else wanted to see from me and I was trying to be so logical and reasonable. And for over 30 years, I've worked in very high-level non-profit positions and I've been a consultant with non-profits and over here on the side, I had my intuitive practice where I do hypnotherapy and I do intuitive readings for people, psychic readings, mediumship, and I one day decided to stop pretending I'm two people and I put them together and now I call myself an executive intuition coach. And really what I like to do is help people do just what we're talking about today, which is get unstuck, get out of their own way. So many things that I deal with with my clients now are problems that came from bad decisions. So it's like, where did that come from? How did you get here and how can we get you out of it? You know, this is great because I think so many of us for those of you that were able to join us on the Chitty Chat Chat, you know, we are a mixture of our home life, our work life, our community life, all of these different things. And it can be really a challenge in the best of times. And now we're in definitely and have been in a challenging time across this country for many reasons. And so I can see where a lot of us could have roadblocks and be frustrated and just say, oh, it's just the times, everybody's like this. And then we kind of don't make self-corrections. And so I'm really excited to hear what you have to say. You've got five basic strategies or tips for removing barriers to our success. Let's take it off, tip number one. Tip number one is ask yourself, is it really true? Whatever it is that you're responding to in your own head and we all do this in these conversations with and then this is gonna happen and then that's gonna happen and we spin up and we can't make a clear headed decision. When I work with my clients, I find so many times they come back to something maybe their third grade teacher said or something that their grandmother said to them when they were three, that has become a truth that they believe about themselves and I'll never get this right and this is never gonna happen the way I need it to and blah, blah, blah, blah, people aren't gonna like me, whatever it is. And it's like, okay, stop. Where did that voice really come from? Is it true? And one of the things I exercise is that I have my clients do is just close your eyes for a minute. Figure out where that voice came from. Go see it as if it were a movie in your mind and maybe you were eight when that happened but watch it as an adult and broaden your perspective and say what else was happening around you and it's amazing how often you go, oh, that wasn't about me at all. Teacher was having a bad day or mom was really sick or you know, anyway. So I tell people, ask yourself, is it really true? Maybe it's, there's just this fear growing inside of you and it's like, stop, breathe. Is it really true? How do we know that's true? I have a feeling, Mary, you've probably read some Brene Brown as well. I know I have. I go to Brene Brown's readings and podcasts often and I found myself repeating something that she said which I believe kind of complements this, is it true? And she, her saying is, that's a great rough draft, you know, like that's a great rough draft. That's your first storyline. Now let's rewrite it. So that kind of relates to me of rough draft, is it true? And I do have a very tragic story in the third grade of a teacher telling me, I will never go to college and I will never be able to do anything by myself. And I just want to make it public that I sent her my college graduation invitation. You know, I was like, how dare her? But that really hit and it wasn't true. It clearly wasn't true, but that really was a hook in my story of my rough draft that I really had to work through. So if that's the number one, we've got a lot to go and I'm really excited to hear what they are. I know, well, you know, I've got one quick question before we go to tip number two. Does it always have to be negative? Can it be something that was super positive that yet it's not really, it's not realistic? Or is this always a negative thing? I think if you're stuck and you're stuck in fear, then somehow it's playing out negatively. And sometimes I love that question because what comes to mind for me instantly is we are afraid of just how powerful we really are. And if we take that next step, it means we got to hit that next level and we got to do it consistently. And so we shrink away, right? We shrink away. We let ego keep us safe. Ooh, we better stay here. We better stay here. This is comfortable, yeah. Right, and that is like code for stuck. Right. Code for stuck. Wow, okay, this is cool. Well, I love tip number one, tip number two. Tip number two. Do you make one door or two door decisions? I read this great interview not too long ago with Jeff Bezos and they asked him to, what is his secret to keeping his company moving forward? And he said, there are two kinds of decision makers. And one is the person who sees it as one door. You go through the door closes behind you and that's it. So you better get it right. And he said, I could never have grown my company on one door decision-making. If you do two door decision-making, then you say, I'll go through, I'll check it out. Oh, look, there's another door. I'll make the adjustments. Maybe I can go back, but you know, very few decisions we make are like, if I do this wrong, we're all gonna die. And yet we carry that need to have it all figured out before we can move forward. It is black or white, right? Like you said, the door is gonna- All or nothing, the whole world is on my shoulders kind of thing. And it's like, really dude? Cause I doubt it. Two door decisions. So Julia knows this. And maybe- Can you hear that? I see many of you that are avid viewers and we're so grateful that you're here. I am very visual, Mary, very visual. And so when I hear this two door decision, my eyes close and I'm seeing like this Fourier, or I don't know if that's how you say it, HGTV says it always really beautifully. But so right, it's like you walk into that front door, then you have this beautiful space. And then there's another door. My childhood home actually has the same like setup. So I love this two door because I also, also firmly believe in course correction. And what I'm hearing you say with this two door approach is you walk through one door and then you assess, right? Now what? Now what? And then there's another door or there's another window or hey, this was really great. I think I'll stay here a little bit longer, you know? Or this was good, but I need to fine tune over here or whatever it is. But if you always see that there's another door ahead of you that's an option, it makes it easier to make the decision. But if you use one door decision-making, I gotta get this right or the whole world is gonna implode as I know it, then that is truly being stuck. You've made the decision to stay stuck. I needed to hear that today. That was so good, that is super good. Okay, one and two and then two door decision-making. Okay. One and two have been really ding dang good. Now, tip three. Okay, tip three. Here's another visual for you, Jared. Tip three is use your whole brain. Use the left and the right. And I spend a lot of time on this that call it bring your whole brain to work. B-Y-O-B, bring the whole brain. So we tend to get stuck in all of what we know in the left side of our brain. And that's the numbers, the data, the logic, the reasons, we've got them there. On the right side is your intuition and creativity. When we allow just the facts to dictate, then we are making half brain decisions, right? You might as well leave half, the other half of your brain in the car. When you take the time to give equal weight to both the facts and that other sense of knowing without overruling it, talking yourself out of it, then you make whole brain decisions. So again, you can just close your eyes and you could take that decision you're thinking of, give it a name, put it on the left side of your brain and say, what do I know about it? Okay, I know about how much it's gonna cost. I know how long it's gonna take. I know how many people are gonna need to complete the project, whatever it is, boom, boom, boom. Great, now take that same problem over here and put it in your right brain and just be quiet. Just sit with it for a second. It's amazing what will come to you. You'll get a vision, you'll hear something, you'll, something will trigger for you. You'll feel an emotion you weren't expecting, right? That's data too. And sometimes that data is telling you, go for it. And sometimes it's telling you, I need to take a moment. I can't make this decision yet. I need to get more information. I need to let this ruminate for a while because the number one way to stay stuck or go backwards is to make quick decisions poorly. Because that stuff will boomerang on you quickly. So my question to you is, we've become so data focused on making decisions. And I have found that with my team comes to me and says, well, the data shows, the data shows. And I don't have that sense. I have a sense of, yeah, that might be what you're picking up on this sample set. But and I think to your point, maybe it's my intuition or whatever that is leading me in a different direction. How do you communicate that? Or how do you sell that back to your team? Because that's what we're saying. You know, Reed Hastings of Netflix is known as just this brilliant, brilliant person. And he has the data. Jeff Bezos has the data, right? They have the data kind of thing. But Reed Hastings says, that just tells me what is in this moment. That doesn't tell me where I want it to take me. So in that way, your left brain is your COO, right? Your chief operating officer. They got all the methods in place. Your CEO is your right brain. And it says, great, now what do I want to do with it? And what you can say to your team very often is, here's how I'm feeling or here's what I can't get past or here's what I'm envisioning. Help me make this take me there. Right? The other thing I've done with teams is have them just close their eyes and that leads me right into tip number four if that's okay with you. Yeah, yeah, please do. I say, scan your body from head to toe. Put that problem, that named problem right here in the just over your head and just feel that energy flow all the way from the crown of your head to the root, the base of your spine. Does it flow? Does it dissipate? Does it get stuck? Does it expand? That's data too. And they don't have to be able to have the words necessarily to expand it but they can say, hmm, got to my stomach and made my stomach hurt or I really do have this little man sitting on my chest when I think about this or I instantly got a headache. That's your intuition too. That's information for you too, right? I have a question and all of this resonates with me. 100%, right? So let me just let me give you that affirmation. Absolutely, I'm on board. How do you relate this information to someone who has that mentality of you leave everything that's not work at the front door, right? I'm not that kind of person but I know that that culture still exists of no, you bring your work self and I'm the culture that I am oneself, right? I bring all selves with me when I come in this human body. So that as well as how do we quantify this data, right? Like how do we quantify this gut feeling or this man sitting on my chest which for those of you that might not know this feeling for me, I would describe it as like my chest gets tight, there's a sensation, there's something there that just doesn't feel like a normal breath that's being able to come in and out. That's how I would describe that man sitting on my chest. So how do you then talk about this? And I'm thinking in a professional setting and I'm, you know, I gotcha. How do you do this? When I work with my clients, I get them really in touch with things. So I'm gonna just mark, my book is on the table, could you bring it to me please? On the dinner table. Anyway, I just, I want to work about this, okay? I let go of my intuition until I had a nervous breakdown. Until I had five stomach ulcers, until I had all these things. So this is my book and I'll tell you about it in a sec. But the idea is that not listening to it has a cost and that's very quantifiable. You can get all kinds of medical tests you never thought you'd need. You can take by all kinds of prescriptions, you can use all your benefits and then some, you can lose time at work, the cost to not bringing your whole brain into your work, into every area of your life is very, very expensive. Okay. And you want to listen to it when it first starts. Don't wait till you have five stomach ulcers. I mean, my stomach was trying to get my attention and I just kept saying, I'll take some tums. Didn't work. So I should have listened to the twinges. It shouldn't have to shout. And when you say quantify the level of anxiety that is good information, but has it been trying to get your attention for a while and it just got to that height or did it just bam, land on your chest? Cause that's information too. Interesting. Thank you. So that's with us. And I get that, but how is it when we have a board room or we have with team members that might not really respect that or even be open to it, do you have any thoughts on how we can bring them along? So I worked, it's really funny. I worked with a couple of executive CEOs and one of them was like, I can't just go in and tell my board, I don't trust this without the numbers. And I said, you can't go in and tell your board anything less. That's your job. Your job is to bring them the data and say, for me, I just can't endorse this yet. I think we need more time. I think we need maybe some more experts on this, whatever it is, or I'm just really concerned it's gonna cause a conflict down the road. My team's not ready and I need more time with that. So that's my recommendation, right? We all know you can't tell your board no. That's just silly. Their job is to tell us no. But you can't tell your board no, but you are obligated to tell them all your thoughts on something that's going to impact the organization. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does make sense, but it's not without its challenges. No, it's not. It's not without its challenges. And there's so many leaders and whether they're reporting to a board or just their team members, their staff. Or themselves. Or themselves, yeah. They live in this fear of communicating something that doesn't have that hard number to back it up. Yep. So nothing happens on one level. You get sick physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, right? You get better when you take all those things into account. You can't lead an organization and say 80% of this is good and 20% not so good. And think it's not going to affect every area of the organization and come back to bite you because it will. Yeah. I like that you said that. I think that's really incredibly wise. I think that's incredibly, incredibly wise. Okay, well, tip one, two, three and four have been amazing. Tip number five. Stop waiting for other people to change. Okay. We have a tendency to think that everything would be right if everybody else would just do these things or the situation would change or whatever it is. And that belief that if you do the things that, we talked earlier about the age difference kinds of things, we can't do the same things we did in one generation with the next two and three generations. We have to change things. If we say, look, I know this worked because this is the way we've always done it and it always worked before. You're ignoring all the change, right? I mean, I stopped- That makes my chest tight too. I stopped saying that I consulted about major gifts which I had done for many years but it's a completely different environment now. I came up in the school of Penelope Burke with donor centered fundraising, which was a huge change from banker strong arm fundraising, right? So this was really good. But now the next one is deconstructing philanthropy and it's really getting into cultural shifts and engaging your donors in a different conversation. I'm not trained in that. I'm not prepared for that. It would be silly for me to go out and do that. So what did I change? Did I get out there and say, no, no, no, everybody has to go by the old rules? No, I said, I either have to get in there and learn new things or I have to seed that role to somebody else who's already up to speed on that. I changed me, right? You work in an organization that does absolutely everything wrong, hoping that everybody else and everything else is gonna change, isn't realistic, you make the change. You either get in line with where it's going, give it a try or switch environments for yourself. But boy, so many clients say, yeah, the reason I can't move forward, the reason I'm stuck is because somebody else won't change. Right, it's this, right? Stop, right. And the thing is that, doing the same things and expecting different results we know is crazy, right? But doing the same things and ignoring all the changes is even crazier. So if you're not willing to change, then nothing's gonna change. And that's a great way for you to blame everybody else. But you're the one who's stuck, everybody else moved on. Right. This has been fascinating and I'll witness to everybody. Jared and I actually, and Kevin, Pace, our executive director, we have a team executive meeting in a couple of hours. So I'm gonna be really interested to see. I'm bringing my whole brain. Oh my God, I'm so interested to see how some of what you've said bubbles to the top. Hold up your book again. Because I'd love to share that with everybody. And I will say, I do work with teams so they can all get in touch with the chakras and all that. But this is being woo-woo in an engineered world. Is that backwards to you? No, no, pull it. Okay, that's perfect. So tell me, and actually I was sharing the Chitty Chat Chat, or maybe even before we went live on the Chitty Chat, that I was working with my coach yesterday and ironically, Mary, she is an intuitive coach. And I was like, you know, how does this work? And I thought, well, maybe this is really just about Jared, the person. But I, again, again, I wholly believe that Jared is like, this is my body. This is my vessel, right? And it's like, I take Jared everywhere Jared goes. And so really having that personal professional side kind of talk together, and which is also why I don't believe and subscribe to a work-life balance. I talk often about a work-life blend, right? Like we need to blend that work-life balance. So talk to me a little bit about what you do as an executive intuitive coach. Because I'm curious, because my coach is not specific with the nonprofit sector. So you have tons of background. Okay, you either. But you have tons of background in the nonprofit sector. So how does this work? I mean, just with our short amount of time that we have left, what is it like working with you as an intuitive executive coach? So there's a couple of basic things that everybody does. And one of them is I have them give me their Myers-Briggs results with percentages. So I know where are their skills, where are their talents and where are they spending their real time? We get into that balance, right? So we tend to spend 80% of time on 20% of the things we can't do well, right? So we make that shift. And then I also do a lot, I spend a lot of time on the chakras so that they can use their body as a barometer and getting them really, really familiar. And then we walk through what's on their desk. You know, what is more important on your desk that you can't get out into the community? Or what's so important in the community? You haven't got time to paint what's on your desk, whatever it is. And we overcome that. I'm sorry, Mike. No, you're good. So I work with first the leader and then if they're willing, the team. The team. Because I don't care if you have a team of all engineers, they're all intuitive too. Yeah. We'll have that creative side. And I have also worked with those great visionaries and their team is always running to catch up with the next great idea. And we talk about anchoring, appreciating that people are trying to follow you and how do you tap into that left side of your brain? And things get very, very personal after that when a full fashion, a full coaching package kind of thing where we really get into and where did some of this come from? Fascinating. So Julia, pull up her contact if you would. So I want everyone to know how to reach Mary if you're interested. And of course, also purchase the book that she has shared with us. I am so grateful again to have you here. Not only is this perfect timing for a conversation, but as we were saying, there's so much going on in our world, we're all entering COVID rebound with this Delta variants really spiking. There's a lot going on with this personally, outside of our control within our families and other relationships. So perfect, perfect timing. I am so grateful to have you on here for an episode of the nonprofit show. I hope maybe you're interested to come back on and share a few more nuggets because I know I took a lot away. I always take notes and I have a page filled of like scribbles. So I hope I can be intuitive on what the heck they say. Well, you can call me and we'll interpret them together. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. It's been really great. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, joined today by my trusted nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. We want to make sure that we really thank our sponsors who allow us to have this really interesting conversations. Tomorrow will be totally different. Yesterday was totally different. That's what you get with the nonprofit show. There's never the same message or guest. And so our sponsors appreciate that and allow us to move forward. And we thank them for that. Don't miss another episode of Fundraising Events TV. This is a new show of ours that just delves into the mysteries of fundraising through events. We like to say from golf to galas, from ballrooms to barns, we got you covered. So check out fundraisingevents.tv. Wow, Jared, I think this is so interesting that we would have this guest today when we have an executive meeting later on. You think that was planned? You think that's by mistake? It's called divine timing. Divine timing. My intuitive self aligned this perfectly. So I am just so grateful. This speaks volumes to me and where I am. I've been doing a lot of work in my life and as a person and how I show up for myself and for others. So couldn't have been better. Mary Gleason, thank you so much. And to all of you that joined us live are watching this recording. So grateful to have you here. We end every episode with this mantra of please stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.