214: Building Relationships in the Workplace with Kimi Avary

Adam Lamb: 00:00:00

We'd like to welcome a relationship expert,

Adam Lamb: 00:00:02

Kimmy Avery to the show.

Adam Lamb: 00:00:03

Hi Kimmy.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:04

Hi Adam.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:05

It's great to be with you.

Adam Lamb: 00:00:06

It's been so long since we've spoken and I have to own

Adam Lamb: 00:00:10

that and say I'm sorry because you are not only an amazing, trusted

Adam Lamb: 00:00:16

advisor to Jennifer and me, but you're also a heck of a great friend.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:19

I'd say that's probably one of the challenges of my coaching practices.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:22

My coaching clients become my dearest friends, and I love that.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:26

It's amazing.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:27

I wanna help people have great lives, and it's fun to do that.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:30

And when their lives are better.

Kimi Avery: 00:00:33

We like to stay connected.

Adam Lamb: 00:00:35

Do you ever find that it can sometimes be a challenge

Adam Lamb: 00:00:37

keeping the proper boundaries set in regards to your coaching clients?

Adam Lamb: 00:00:42

Now I know that from our experience that what you did with us was you

Adam Lamb: 00:00:46

would talk to each of us individually during the course of the week, and then

Adam Lamb: 00:00:49

we would have a collective call, the three of us together, which was always.

Adam Lamb: 00:00:54

I found fascinating because you're actually getting such a wide view

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of what's happening, speaking to us individually, and sometimes I know

Adam Lamb: 00:01:01

from my own experience there might be stuff that I bring up to you in an

Adam Lamb: 00:01:05

individual call that would sometimes be very difficult to do in a group call.

Adam Lamb: 00:01:09

So how do you help maintain the boundaries?

Kimi Avery: 00:01:13

When I meet with each person individually, the

Kimi Avery: 00:01:15

goal is for me to understand.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:18

Things that they cannot share for whatever reason in front of their partner.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:23

And then my job is to be stealthy to help drop subjects and topics

Kimi Avery: 00:01:28

into the joint session so that each person feels oh yeah, so we're

Kimi Avery: 00:01:34

addressing something important.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:36

I didn't have to be the asshole to bring it up, but we're talking about it and.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:42

You know it.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:43

Wow.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:44

It amazingly works when we do that.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:46

And then you get the skills of having had the facilitator guide that conversation.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:52

Either it's with forgiveness or understanding the different perspective.

Kimi Avery: 00:01:57

My job is a translator to help each person navigate

Kimi Avery: 00:02:02

their relationship experience.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:05

And I know that.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:07

I think you and I share the same perspective in that it doesn't

Adam Lamb: 00:02:11

matter what business you're in, it's all about relationship, right?

Adam Lamb: 00:02:14

Relationship with your salespeople or their customers,

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or your purveyors or whatever.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:21

It's all relationships.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:23

So once you can master relationship building and

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maintenance, then your life is.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:31

pretty amazing.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:32

And I also know that only speaking for myself, one of the biggest lies

Adam Lamb: 00:02:36

I ever told myself going into work is I leave it all at the door, . And

Adam Lamb: 00:02:40

that just, that's not, it's not real because, but it's not true.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:45

No matter where I go, there I am.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:47

And I'm carrying.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:47

the fact that maybe Jennifer and I had a beef in the morning and I'm carrying

Adam Lamb: 00:02:51

that energy back in with me to work and people don't necessarily know that.

Adam Lamb: 00:02:55

And if I'm not completely transparent and I'm not talking about dumping all

Adam Lamb: 00:02:59

over everybody, but just prefacing that so that they know that I am

Adam Lamb: 00:03:03

in the process of working through that and not want to impact them.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:07

And I also know that in professional life, it's not necessarily very PC to talk

Adam Lamb: 00:03:13

about how the masculine and feminine.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:15

Are different, right?

Adam Lamb: 00:03:17

Everybody's expected to have the similar opportunities,

Adam Lamb: 00:03:20

which I completely concur with.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:22

But the fact of the matter is, again, just based on my experience, is

Adam Lamb: 00:03:26

that the masculine and feminine here differently, they process differently.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:31

They go about their tasks differently.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:33

And you and I were working at one point about actually bring.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:37

Your work to the organization that I was in, and I was really

Adam Lamb: 00:03:40

sad to see that didn't happen.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:42

But I have a sneaking suspicion that you and I will continue to work for

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an opportunity like this because I think it's so powerful to, to bring

Adam Lamb: 00:03:49

to an organization that realizes that only until they build true community

Adam Lamb: 00:03:53

within their organization can folks feel like they're a part of it.

Adam Lamb: 00:03:57

Speak a little bit about the differences between the masculine and the feminine.

Adam Lamb: 00:04:01

See if our listeners can get hit in the chest a.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:04

So the masculine is this provider, protector, producer, energy.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:11

It is single, focused and driven, committed to an outcome.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:15

Once they don't commit until they're sure they can do it, and once

Kimi Avery: 00:04:19

they're committed, it's only that my husband just remodeled our kitchen.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:25

It was only that for months.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:28

Okay.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:29

Only that.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:31

And the feminine is the supporter adapter enhancer energy.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:35

And that means we go into many directions.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:38

We change our commitments based on circumstances.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:43

So the context affects how we're going to do.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:47

So let's say we have an upset child at home and we're committed to

Kimi Avery: 00:04:52

something at work, we're probably gonna take care of our child because the

Kimi Avery: 00:04:55

commitment will shift in that context.

Kimi Avery: 00:04:58

We all have masculine and feminine within us.

Kimi Avery: 00:05:02

You could call it the individualist and the relational, that some

Kimi Avery: 00:05:06

corporations prefer that, but we all have that within us.

Kimi Avery: 00:05:09

And if you think of it like a yin yang symbol, then they compliment each other.

Kimi Avery: 00:05:16

The supporters love to have somebody to support and it feels sad when you don't.

Kimi Avery: 00:05:22

The provider's protector energy loves to have somebody to provide and protect

Kimi Avery: 00:05:28

or an organization or my father had a travel agency years ago and he considered

Kimi Avery: 00:05:34

his employees his family, and he kept this thing going for years because

Kimi Avery: 00:05:40

even though it wasn't making money, They were in his commitment circle, he

Kimi Avery: 00:05:45

was committed to taking care of them.

Kimi Avery: 00:05:48

And so that dynamic will impact how we work, how we get things done.

Kimi Avery: 00:05:58

So somebody who's really single, focused at work, for instance,

Kimi Avery: 00:06:03

on getting an event done.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:05

I'm thinking it's coming to mind.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:07

Something that had happened at your past work, I can't remember all the details,

Kimi Avery: 00:06:11

but you're really single focused.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:13

That energy to a woman can feel like a bull in a China shop, and

Kimi Avery: 00:06:19

we are like, whoa, calm down, and we react because you're so intense.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:25

And then on the other hand, You are single focused and you're like,

Kimi Avery: 00:06:28

get with the program, do your job.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:31

And we're like, we are.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:32

There's so many things in the background that we are doing that

Kimi Avery: 00:06:36

you have no idea about, so that if we can step back and go, oh, that's the

Kimi Avery: 00:06:44

landscape, that's what's happening here.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:47

Now we can talk.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:48

Now I can understand that when my husband's single focused.

Kimi Avery: 00:06:54

We have to plan time to have connection time because for four months, nothing.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:01

Because all he could think about was that kitchen.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:05

And it does.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:05

He's not trying to be a jerk.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:09

On my side, it feels like that, but I know that our kitchen was done

Kimi Avery: 00:07:14

and it's done beautifully because he was single, focused and in a timely

Kimi Avery: 00:07:19

manner because he was single focused.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:21

Same thing happens at work, right?

Kimi Avery: 00:07:24

And if we don't know how to navigate this stuff, then we

Kimi Avery: 00:07:30

get ourselves into big trouble.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:31

We spend a lot of time upset.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:34

And we end up either quitting or battling with the people we work with.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:39

And that doesn't feel very good.

Kimi Avery: 00:07:41

You spend a lot of time at work.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:42

Yeah.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:43

Nothing sucks More to, than to resent your boss or the

Adam Lamb: 00:07:47

guests or your kitchen staff.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:50

There was a time in my life where I just fucked everybody.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:53

Fuck them.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:53

Fuck this, fuck that.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:55

This job would be so great if it wasn't for the people.

Adam Lamb: 00:07:57

, right?

Adam Lamb: 00:07:58

Because then it would just be detailed, but.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:02

Another one of my teachers as Satya and Raja, I heard him in a in kind

Adam Lamb: 00:08:06

of a high level presentation, talk about the masculine and the feminine

Adam Lamb: 00:08:10

as not a polarity, but along a spectrum of masculine and feminine.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:15

And that somewhere along that spectrum you fall.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:18

And it could be, I consider myself you 60% 55.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:23

Masculine and 45% feminine.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:26

So I share a few of these attributes, but he brought it down as to if you really

Adam Lamb: 00:08:31

wanted to motivate a crew, what you would need to do is you'd need to look at

Adam Lamb: 00:08:34

each person individually and figure out where on the spectrum they most likely.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:39

Fall and that if you wanted to motivate somebody for the masculine,

Adam Lamb: 00:08:44

it would be loving challenge.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:46

And for the feminine it would be loving praise, but the

Adam Lamb: 00:08:50

operative word being loving.

Adam Lamb: 00:08:51

So can you speak a couple minutes on this idea of us having both aspects of

Adam Lamb: 00:08:58

masculinity and femininity and now that we are becoming much more inclusive,

Adam Lamb: 00:09:02

especially with L B G T Q folks how do.

Adam Lamb: 00:09:07

And I'm not trying to pigeonhole somebody, but I really want to be

Adam Lamb: 00:09:10

able to communicate them with them effectively and provide them the

Adam Lamb: 00:09:14

guidance, love assistance that they're looking for as a boss and a mentor and

Adam Lamb: 00:09:18

a coach, so that they can produce the best results for them for their lives.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:22

Sure.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:23

So everybody has masculine and feminine within them.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:26

Okay.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:27

The masculine, the person in a male body typically knows exactly what

Kimi Avery: 00:09:33

their percentage is, and it doesn't.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:36

Adapt the way it does with women in a, people in a women's body.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:41

Like my stepson, when he first learned this, he came up to me and

Kimi Avery: 00:09:44

he said, Kimmy, I am 40% feminine.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:48

I went, okay.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:49

Like he knew.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:50

That's his sense of himself.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:52

And just like you described, that's your sense of yourself.

Kimi Avery: 00:09:56

The feminine is focused on adapting.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:01

That's literally, if you imagine a gatherer going out in the

Adam Lamb: 00:10:04

meadow.

Adam Lamb: 00:10:05

Oh, thank you.

Adam Lamb: 00:10:06

Thank you for this.

Adam Lamb: 00:10:07

I was, oh, if you didn't bring this up, I was gonna ask this, cuz this

Adam Lamb: 00:10:10

really helped me out with Jennifer.

Adam Lamb: 00:10:12

This whole idea as the feminine as the gatherer versus the masculine, the hunter.

Adam Lamb: 00:10:16

So please go

Kimi Avery: 00:10:17

ahead.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:17

Yeah.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:18

So she goes out in the meadow with typically a group of gatherers because

Kimi Avery: 00:10:23

you wanna, and you chit chat along the way because you need to scare the

Kimi Avery: 00:10:27

critters and your building connection.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:30

It's all about relationship because if you don't fit in, if you get

Kimi Avery: 00:10:36

expelled from the tribe, what your tiger food it's like, it's dangerous.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:41

So we're all connecting, we're all visiting that way.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:45

And then we.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:48

If we were single focused on finding only one thing and that

Kimi Avery: 00:10:52

thing wasn't there, then we'd come home with an E empty basket.

Kimi Avery: 00:10:56

So I happen to be an avid chanter mushroom gatherer.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:00

I know exactly where they grow.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:02

I go out and do that, and if they're no chanterelles, I might look for

Kimi Avery: 00:11:06

bay leaves because they grow near the bay trees or bay laurel trees.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:11

I think that's what they're.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:13

Or maybe we look for berries or we look for things that are beautiful or usable.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:18

We're constantly adapting based on the context.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:22

Okay.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:23

And and here's the deal.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:27

Men and women across the spectrum, Satan is absolutely right.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:32

There's a spectrum and each person is going to have.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:38

Different ways that they need to be motivated.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:43

And so it's loving challenge or loving app approval.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:50

Those are great and.

Kimi Avery: 00:11:53

Typically, like I worked with a woman or had a friend of mine who she was

Kimi Avery: 00:11:58

trying to lose weight and I was trying to quit smoking, and her motivation

Kimi Avery: 00:12:02

strategy was to rip me to shreds.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:04

Oh, you stink.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:05

You gotta quit smoking, blah, blah.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:07

It's all that.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:09

Which caused me to wanna sit in the corner and smoke

Kimi Avery: 00:12:12

It was not my motivation strategy.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:14

Yeah.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:14

So hers was or I was all loving and kind.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:18

Oh, I'm so proud of you.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:19

You can do this.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:21

And she just wanted to sit in the corner and eat chocolate eclairs.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:24

So one day we said we had the epiphany.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:27

This is through my NLP training.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:28

We had this epiphany.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:30

I need to motivate her and her style, and she needs to motivate me in.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:34

So she started saying, Kimmy, I'm so proud of you.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:37

You're doing such a great job, which is totally foreign to her to do.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:41

And I had to say, Alison, you're a fat pig.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:43

You better walk the fattest dog because you're so fat.

Kimi Avery: 00:12:46

And that, that got her walking right?

Kimi Avery: 00:12:49

And it was the di The point is that the different motivation strategies, Are are

Kimi Avery: 00:12:58

unique across across every person and everybody is their own unique culture.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:05

I happen to focus more on the masculine and feminine because with

Kimi Avery: 00:13:08

my master's in counseling psychology, my bachelor's in Family Studies and

Kimi Avery: 00:13:12

human development, my, I'm an N L P, that's neurolinguistic programming,

Kimi Avery: 00:13:17

master practitioner and trainer.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:19

All those skills were really great, but it still didn't,

Kimi Avery: 00:13:23

he help me have a great relat.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:26

And then I started 15 years ago studying about men from a masculine perspective,

Kimi Avery: 00:13:31

and it literally changed everything.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:34

So all I could see were these patterns of how these elements relate to each other.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:39

And that doesn't mean I don't rely heavily on the other skills I have,

Kimi Avery: 00:13:43

but this is often the first place we look because, so here's an example.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:50

Women are notoriously bad about expressing what we need until we're upset without.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:56

We just don't know.

Kimi Avery: 00:13:57

I was talking to a friend this weekend and I said, you've

Kimi Avery: 00:13:59

gotta tell Greg what you need.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:00

And she said, but I don't know what I need.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:03

And I said, that's the first step.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:05

You have to tune in.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:07

If I, what do I need?

Kimi Avery: 00:14:09

So that I'm not upset about this.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:12

And so we say, I want this would be nice.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:15

And most men go, it's like it, it just flies over their head.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:18

They don't.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:20

So we think we've been telling you sometimes for years what we need, and

Kimi Avery: 00:14:28

then when you don't do that thing, we need that we're unclear about.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:34

Then we think you don't love us, care us, or care about us or respect us.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:39

So then we're hurt and angry.

Kimi Avery: 00:14:43

So you try to do something nice and we're snippy or worse, and you're

Kimi Avery: 00:14:50

like wondering what the hell happened?

Kimi Avery: 00:14:53

Like why are you so mean to me?

Kimi Avery: 00:14:56

And we're thinking, you never do the things I need, and

Kimi Avery: 00:14:59

so you don't care about me.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:02

And then she seems bipolar because she's insane, because she's so hurt.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:08

I don't necessarily think that's true.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:11

I think if she understood, and this has been my experience

Kimi Avery: 00:15:14

by understanding this dynamic.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:18

All of a sudden you're like, oh, he's been single focused.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:22

I need to learn how to tell him what I need in a way that works.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:27

He gets to win.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:28

He gets to be my hero.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:31

I'm happy because he's providing the thing I need, and it's a win-win.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:36

Everybody's happier.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:38

But all the, there's a lot of mental health diagnoses that

Kimi Avery: 00:15:41

I think are relationship based because of our misunderstandings.

Kimi Avery: 00:15:45

Yeah.

Adam Lamb: 00:15:46

I think that is true.

Adam Lamb: 00:15:47

My personality's made more complex because I've spent a

Adam Lamb: 00:15:50

lifetime in the service industry.

Adam Lamb: 00:15:52

So I've spent most of my life, my waking moments in service to

Adam Lamb: 00:15:56

someone else because, It felt good to me to be in service, like

Adam Lamb: 00:16:02

whether it's a guest or whatever.

Adam Lamb: 00:16:04

And I just want to round back to this idea of hard women not powerful women,

Adam Lamb: 00:16:09

but one of my first formative culinary experiences was with a female chef in

Adam Lamb: 00:16:15

suburban Chicago at a country club, and.

Adam Lamb: 00:16:19

I wish I could remember her name, but she made it a point to visit upon

Adam Lamb: 00:16:23

me all the kind of ills and slights that had been thrust upon her as

Adam Lamb: 00:16:28

she was coming up her career ladder.

Adam Lamb: 00:16:30

So I spent a year pretty humble in front of her because she was

Adam Lamb: 00:16:34

gonna take me down anytime I thought I was doing anything good.

Adam Lamb: 00:16:37

And that's not germane to the question, but I learned early

Adam Lamb: 00:16:40

on the power of having the.

Adam Lamb: 00:16:43

Balanced in a culinary environment.

Adam Lamb: 00:16:46

My very first executive chef job I had a sous chef feminine sous chef,

Adam Lamb: 00:16:51

Lori Walker, and so I've had a deep appreciation for what the feminine brings

Adam Lamb: 00:16:55

to an organization, especially a culinary team, and balancing out the energy.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:00

But my experience has been almost universally that the women in the culinary

Adam Lamb: 00:17:04

industry are fucking way harder than any man because they can't they can't

Adam Lamb: 00:17:09

take a day off, they can't complain about their period because they're

Adam Lamb: 00:17:11

gonna get joked out of the kitchen.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:13

They're afforded no quarter to actually be that soft sided feminine.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:20

And so when you've got somebody who really is.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:23

A girly girl, but she's chosen to be in this industry.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:25

She toughens the fuck up really quickly.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:28

And then for most of it, they're not seeking any contribution but

Adam Lamb: 00:17:33

they're looking for a level playing field and opportunity

Adam Lamb: 00:17:37

that's the same as anybody else.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:38

But I'm thinking about two people in particular where underneath

Adam Lamb: 00:17:42

it all, there's still a woman and they're still primarily feminine.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:48

Not knowing the whole basket idea.

Adam Lamb: 00:17:51

I spend a lot of my time in conversation with people in the kitchen in

Adam Lamb: 00:17:55

small groups and one-on-ones because now I realize the power of these

Adam Lamb: 00:18:01

small conversations about, I got 10 minutes, I wanna know what's going on.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:04

Empty your basket.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:05

Cuz this is our opportunity to clean some stuff up.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:07

And that's proven to be very powerful.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:10

And I just want to make a general comment, which.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:14

The work that we're doing here on the show of you coming on and other

Adam Lamb: 00:18:18

industry leaders and thought experts and practitioners in the field, not

Adam Lamb: 00:18:22

just people who are thinking, but people who are actually changing lives.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:25

I hope that very soon these women who have fought very hard to be regarded

Adam Lamb: 00:18:30

as coveted professionals don't have to be more masculine than their masculine

Adam Lamb: 00:18:35

counterparts because I do know that there have been studies that biologically

Adam Lamb: 00:18:41

over time their body will start.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:43

Upregulating and downregulating genes based on proteins that their

Adam Lamb: 00:18:47

brains are producing so that they become chemically more masculine.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:50

Not growing a set of cast iron ovaries, but you know that they're

Adam Lamb: 00:18:55

at some point during the day they have, it has to balance out.

Adam Lamb: 00:18:58

Someone has to be able to allow them to be girly so that they can re-enter

Adam Lamb: 00:19:02

their body in a in a real way.

Adam Lamb: 00:19:04

Can you speak to that a little

Kimi Avery: 00:19:05

bit?

Kimi Avery: 00:19:06

Absolutely.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:07

So there are a couple things come to mind.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:08

One is that we have more.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:11

Estrogen, then testosterone throughout our lives, especially

Kimi Avery: 00:19:15

in our younger years as women.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:17

And what else?

Kimi Avery: 00:19:19

What comes or where we get our energy from and our single

Kimi Avery: 00:19:23

focus from is that little bit of testosterone and our adrenal glands.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:29

A lot of women will experience chronic fatigue syndrome and adrenal

Kimi Avery: 00:19:32

burnout because they're single focused for long periods of time.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:36

I can't have a fully leaded cup of coffee now because I was so

Kimi Avery: 00:19:40

single focused for a long time.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:43

And now that I've been through menopause, I do, I have testosterone and estrogen

Kimi Avery: 00:19:47

that I take and progesterone and that kind of thing, and a balance so that

Kimi Avery: 00:19:52

it keeps me from having brain fog.

Kimi Avery: 00:19:56

But what often happens is as a woman goes through menopause,

Kimi Avery: 00:20:00

her estrogen levels drop.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:02

So that means the testosterone appears higher just in the

Kimi Avery: 00:20:06

ratio that she normally had.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:09

And the corpus callosum that's the center of your brain literally

Kimi Avery: 00:20:13

narrows so you're able to single focus more than when you were younger.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:19

And for men, typically that widens and he's able to multitask a little bit more.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:26

One of my trainers described the first time she'd left something at the bottom

Kimi Avery: 00:20:30

of the stairs, and she always would do that to bring things up and down, and

Kimi Avery: 00:20:35

her husband literally picked it up.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:38

And took it upstairs and she was like, oh, it's happening

Kimi Avery: 00:20:42

Cause he's able to multitask more.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:45

And so there's that aspect.

Kimi Avery: 00:20:47

But I wanted to get back to something that you said about women and I have a

Kimi Avery: 00:20:53

program that I did at Shell Oil years ago with the men and women engineers there.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:00

So the program was called Beyond the Glass Ceiling.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:03

And.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:04

When a woman asks a male counterpart for help about something that feels good to

Kimi Avery: 00:21:12

a man, cuz typically he'll wanna help her and then she gets the help she needs to be

Kimi Avery: 00:21:18

able to do whatever project she's doing.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:22

My belief is that there's no glass ceiling.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:25

If we allow the men in our lives to contribute to us, men

Kimi Avery: 00:21:30

typically want us to succeed.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:34

In at, in Shell's case, they spent a ton of money recruiting, hiring,

Kimi Avery: 00:21:39

and training women only to lose them after about four years, which is

Kimi Avery: 00:21:44

why I was brought into this program.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:47

And they lose them because women don't often know how to interact with men.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:52

They're not getting the mentoring from the men.

Kimi Avery: 00:21:54

They're not getting the support, and it's not because men wouldn't do it,

Kimi Avery: 00:21:58

but we also have this weird climate of potential sexual harassment.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:04

And so two, a man and a woman going out to lunch together to talk about

Kimi Avery: 00:22:08

business can look suspicious depending on where, what the context is.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:14

So allowing.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:18

I keep saying that word, allowing yourself to receive support from your

Kimi Avery: 00:22:27

male counterparts allows you to be in more feminine mode, which is can be great.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:34

And also allows you to be more of the queen of the realm, who is

Kimi Avery: 00:22:38

the leader the guide on where you wanna go, and you've got people who

Kimi Avery: 00:22:43

want to support you in that agenda.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:47

So that's where the glass ceiling disappears because you are, you

Kimi Avery: 00:22:53

become a pleasure to work with.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:55

Because you are giving clear information to the people around you.

Kimi Avery: 00:22:59

They know what to do.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:01

They're able to win with you.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:03

You are able to be happy.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:04

You're able to be the visionary leader, and I'm speaking specifically

Kimi Avery: 00:23:08

to women in this context because if you are thinking that you have to.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:15

Do it all yourself.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:16

You're doing this lone wolf syndrome where I'm in charge of everything.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:20

I have to do everything.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:22

You're exhausted, overwhelmed, overworked, and you are not nurturing

Kimi Avery: 00:23:27

your body and you will collapse.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:30

You will.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:30

And I, we, you haven't brought this up, but I know that in the.

Kimi Avery: 00:23:35

Culinary industry, drugs and speed and cocaine and stuff is a big deal.

Adam Lamb: 00:23:41

Yeah.

Adam Lamb: 00:23:41

I don't know anything about that.

Adam Lamb: 00:23:42

. Kimi Avery: Do you

Adam Lamb: 00:23:43

Like that dude.

Adam Lamb: 00:23:43

Yes, absolutely.

Adam Lamb: 00:23:44

You're always looking for the edge and it's not speaking of my own experience,

Adam Lamb: 00:23:48

I started with my very first chef job.

Adam Lamb: 00:23:53

I started using and abusing cocaine primarily because, Not as a party

Adam Lamb: 00:23:59

drug where you take it out after work and then stay up all night.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:02

It was an eight ball split up amongst three people so they could

Adam Lamb: 00:24:05

get through the weekend on point.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:08

So it was more performance enhancement than it was partying.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:12

And I collapsed that pretty significantly for most of my career.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:16

I'd say for the first 10 years it was ever present and you're talking

Adam Lamb: 00:24:20

back in the eighties and nineties when it was all over everywhere and

Adam Lamb: 00:24:23

nobody really was calling out the D deleterious effects, especially.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:28

long-term use.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:29

And for me, what it ended up happening is I gained weight and suffered for sleep

Adam Lamb: 00:24:33

apnea undiagnosed for about 10, 15 years.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:35

So here I'm burning the candle at both ends.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:37

I'm not getting any sleep.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:39

No restorative processes are happening in my body.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:42

Consequently two back surgeries later it's a excellent prescription for how

Adam Lamb: 00:24:46

to screw yourself over when in fact, back then it was all about performing

Adam Lamb: 00:24:52

better than anyone else, as opposed.

Adam Lamb: 00:24:55

because at that time I liken it to being a chef as the apex

Adam Lamb: 00:24:59

predator in the kitchen.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:01

And you were expected to know everything.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:03

And if you didn't, that was a problem because now you've promoted

Adam Lamb: 00:25:07

yourself beyond your skillset and we need to bring in somebody who

Adam Lamb: 00:25:11

actually knows that kind of stuff.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:12

So it provided an atmosphere by which you would never ask for help.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:18

You would never admit any type of shortcomings, and

Adam Lamb: 00:25:21

you would do almost anything.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:23

To stay on top of the game, I worked at a small hotel, Sheridan Hotel,

Adam Lamb: 00:25:27

next to the airport in Fort Lauderdale that was owned by a small management

Adam Lamb: 00:25:31

company that was taken over by Starwood.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:33

Back when Starwood had 65 hotels.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:36

They'd just gotten into the real estate investment trust business, and

Adam Lamb: 00:25:39

this was like their 65th purchase.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:43

And in 12 months, they would grow to over 6,000 hotels and

Adam Lamb: 00:25:47

buy the Sheridan brand outright.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:49

But the very first transitional.

Adam Lamb: 00:25:52

Food and beverage manager and general manager that came in, this

Adam Lamb: 00:25:56

food and beverage director says to me, okay, so I'm gonna need all

Adam Lamb: 00:25:58

this data in an Excel spreadsheet.

Adam Lamb: 00:26:00

I'm gonna need it Monday morning.

Adam Lamb: 00:26:02

And I said I don't know Excel.

Adam Lamb: 00:26:05

He said you better learn.

Adam Lamb: 00:26:06

So I spent 72 straight hours in my office teaching myself the rudimentary

Adam Lamb: 00:26:11

basics of Excel so that I could produce this report, because I knew that

Adam Lamb: 00:26:16

if I showed up, Having accomplished that, that probably meant my job.

Adam Lamb: 00:26:21

I love the fact that the culture has evolved such that as the chef, it's not

Adam Lamb: 00:26:26

important for me to know everything, but it is important for me to field a team

Adam Lamb: 00:26:31

that can accomplish everything and to maximize their experience as well as mine.

Adam Lamb: 00:26:35

And give and take between one another the things that would most benefit one

Kimi Avery: 00:26:41

another.

Kimi Avery: 00:26:42

Lemme just say something I That pressure to burn the candle at both ends.

Kimi Avery: 00:26:46

My hope is that some of this culture is gonna shift, especially during, after

Kimi Avery: 00:26:51

Covid, people are realizing that we don't have to be just workaholics

Kimi Avery: 00:26:58

and cuz because what you mentioned earlier was that there are chef

Kimi Avery: 00:27:03

suicides, Like a heartbreaking thing.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:07

These people have put their hearts and souls into something.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:10

Of course the most famous is Anthony Bourdain.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:13

It's what the hell?

Kimi Avery: 00:27:15

And getting support in how to navigate and work with people so that you are

Kimi Avery: 00:27:23

getting support because you need that.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:27

If you're gonna be this pillar of strength, you need that

Kimi Avery: 00:27:30

as a coach or as a chef.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:33

Everybody needs support.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:35

My husband and I have a relationship coach.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:38

It's like we need support to be able to do our jobs better.

Kimi Avery: 00:27:44

Yeah

Adam Lamb: 00:27:45

There's some memes I've seen on Facebook around chefs who have

Adam Lamb: 00:27:50

transitioned to say being performance coaches specifically around health

Adam Lamb: 00:27:55

and wellness, physical training and they're trying to give back to.

Adam Lamb: 00:28:01

The industry that they love so much.

Adam Lamb: 00:28:03

And there are chefs who are like pissing all over that

Adam Lamb: 00:28:05

saying he's not a chef anymore.

Adam Lamb: 00:28:06

What the hell does he know?

Adam Lamb: 00:28:07

And I shit on all that because for the longest time, we as a culture

Adam Lamb: 00:28:13

have been behind the times their industries that have been using

Adam Lamb: 00:28:16

webinars for 15 years to increase.

Adam Lamb: 00:28:20

Skillsets, and yet for the longest time you really didn't take any courses or

Adam Lamb: 00:28:24

sit in a classroom style setting unless you went to a national conference, which

Adam Lamb: 00:28:28

you know, might be three times a year, which I find to be wholly unacceptable.

Adam Lamb: 00:28:34

And because everything's moving so fast that again, , it's for our health and

Adam Lamb: 00:28:41

benefit to co-create a culture that's worth staying into, but more importantly

Adam Lamb: 00:28:45

to be able to communicate that in any way, which this is a way to do that so

Adam Lamb: 00:28:50

that others get the idea that it's not a scary place to come back to work to

Adam Lamb: 00:28:54

like I get it fucking sucked for many years and that's why during Covid, when

Adam Lamb: 00:28:58

people were basically getting paid to stay home and they were with their families

Adam Lamb: 00:29:02

for six and eight months at a time.

Adam Lamb: 00:29:05

like I I get for some it might have driven up crazy because

Adam Lamb: 00:29:09

they, they had nowhere to run to.

Adam Lamb: 00:29:11

And that's what I knew Covid was gonna do.

Adam Lamb: 00:29:13

Covid was going to slow the whole world down so nobody would be

Adam Lamb: 00:29:15

able to run away from their shit and they'd have to stare at it.

Adam Lamb: 00:29:20

Hence, that's why Jennifer, who's transformational coach and like you

Adam Lamb: 00:29:24

probably had the best years ever.

Kimi Avery: 00:29:26

It's been good.

Kimi Avery: 00:29:27

. Yeah.

Kimi Avery: 00:29:28

People are desperate for support and they're willing to reach

Kimi Avery: 00:29:32

outta their comfort zone to get it, which is really important.

Kimi Avery: 00:29:35

And I've had to make a sliding scale because people, there are some people

Kimi Avery: 00:29:40

who just really are having a hard time financially and yet, Getting

Kimi Avery: 00:29:47

out there and getting support now.

Kimi Avery: 00:29:50

I have business coaches and relationship coach like to be

Kimi Avery: 00:29:54

your best and optimal self.

Kimi Avery: 00:29:56

It's really important to get that support.

Adam Lamb: 00:29:59

Sure.

Adam Lamb: 00:30:00

I completely get that.

Adam Lamb: 00:30:01

I completely get that.

Adam Lamb: 00:30:02

Actually, I have two other questions.

Adam Lamb: 00:30:04

Number one, now that more and more people are self-identifying as

Adam Lamb: 00:30:11

non-binary or gender fluid, , I have a particular opinion about that.

Adam Lamb: 00:30:17

But is does it change relationship building at all given that

Adam Lamb: 00:30:22

there's the desire to identify as they or them, yet biologically

Adam Lamb: 00:30:27

there's another thing happening.

Kimi Avery: 00:30:29

One of the things that makes me unique as an NLP practitioner, and this

Kimi Avery: 00:30:34

is pretty much across the board with NLP people, is that I wanna understand you.

Kimi Avery: 00:30:41

I wanna understand how your brain works.

Kimi Avery: 00:30:43

So it's not a cookie cutter saying, oh, you're in a masculine body, so

Kimi Avery: 00:30:47

you must be this way, or feminine, or and somebody who's non-binary,

Kimi Avery: 00:30:53

they're gonna find their spectrum.

Kimi Avery: 00:30:54

I'm gonna un, I'm gonna navigate that with them and help them

Kimi Avery: 00:30:58

understand in this context, maybe you're more feminine in this context.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:02

Maybe you're more masculine.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:05

Masculine and feminine does not have to do with your gonads.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:09

It has to do, it's just a framework that we can build upon and I always

Kimi Avery: 00:31:14

ask my clients, I'm gonna describe something and let's see where you

Kimi Avery: 00:31:18

fit in this picture, because I don't know where I can make an assumption.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:25

Which they say don't make assumptions cuz it makes an ass outta you and me.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:30

If you have to make one assumption that's that you have no idea

Kimi Avery: 00:31:34

what anybody else is thinking.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:36

Make that assumption.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:38

Be curious instead of furious.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:40

So with the non-binary people, or I'm still trying to get my head

Kimi Avery: 00:31:45

around pronouns and all that stuff.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:48

I just like names.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:50

I want to use whatever pronouns or names.

Kimi Avery: 00:31:56

That somebody name, that somebody prefers, I think that's respectful.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:01

I've got a friend in Bahrain and he the Arabic translation, his name comes out

Kimi Avery: 00:32:07

tfi it's spelled about a dozen different ways every time it comes through.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:12

And I said what's your preference and how do you say it?

Kimi Avery: 00:32:15

Because you know that is important.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:19

I wanna know his name, not how I would say it.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:24

That's my own assumption.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:27

It's not.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:27

It's not.

Kimi Avery: 00:32:28

It's not respectful.

Adam Lamb: 00:32:29

No, I get it.

Adam Lamb: 00:32:30

And just reflecting on if there's one attribute that you're advocating

Adam Lamb: 00:32:35

would best serve us, it would be this idea being enli, endlessly curious

Adam Lamb: 00:32:39

about other people to the point of.

Adam Lamb: 00:32:41

Actually stepping outside of our comfort zone and asking vulnerable

Adam Lamb: 00:32:45

questions like, Hey, what motivates you and what best serves you?

Adam Lamb: 00:32:49

And how do you want to be treated?

Adam Lamb: 00:32:52

And what pronoun would you like to use?

Adam Lamb: 00:32:55

Because I get that some folks may not necessarily be comfortable with that, but.

Adam Lamb: 00:33:00

Tough shit.

Adam Lamb: 00:33:01

We want to be able to provide, or at least the hope the desire should be to provide

Adam Lamb: 00:33:05

a, an environment by which they can grow richer and we as an organization can

Adam Lamb: 00:33:09

become richer by their participation.

Adam Lamb: 00:33:11

So yeah, we're just gonna have to get out of our own way.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:14

Absolutely.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:16

Asking permission or setting up a time.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:21

Sometimes somebody might wanna do that conversation in private

Kimi Avery: 00:33:24

and not in front of other people.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:26

That's a kind of a given, but I wanna just make sure that was clear.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:31

And the other piece is that I would, I really need to get to know you so I

Kimi Avery: 00:33:35

can better serve you as your manager.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:40

And I'd love to ask you some questions to help understand your style of working and

Kimi Avery: 00:33:44

how you operate and what motivates you and what inspires you to take more action.

Kimi Avery: 00:33:52

Whatever those questions are, I wanna understand you because hopefully we'll

Kimi Avery: 00:33:57

have a long, fruitful time working together because that's important to me.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:02

I didn't hire you because I thought you were a dope.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:04

I hired you because I thought you were amazing.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:07

Or I could see potential in you.

Adam Lamb: 00:34:09

can't tell you how much I so appreciate your vulnerability and

Adam Lamb: 00:34:12

partnership in the show and offering your wonderful pieces of wisdom that

Adam Lamb: 00:34:18

certain a lot of people are gonna at least take a look at themselves and how

Adam Lamb: 00:34:22

they can actually communicate better, if not, and professionally, certainly

Adam Lamb: 00:34:25

personally, because I don't know anybody that doesn't want a more harmonious.

Adam Lamb: 00:34:29

Personal life, and I'm curious to know if you would be willing to do this

Adam Lamb: 00:34:33

again, but do it in a live stream between you and me on the Facebook channel,

Adam Lamb: 00:34:36

because I'm just really feeling how important it is to do this again.

Adam Lamb: 00:34:42

So I'm just curious whenever you can fit it in your schedule.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:45

I would love to do this again.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:46

I ido you and I love talking about this stuff and I.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:51

Love your heart and how much you want to help people.

Kimi Avery: 00:34:55

Every time we're talking, I'm thinking about my stepson who just

Kimi Avery: 00:34:59

finished his internship in South Carolina as a chef, and I just, I

Kimi Avery: 00:35:05

want what a great community feel, support in navigating work and love.