Empathy-Driven Change: Turning Disruption into Connection ~ Theresa M. Ward

In this interview, we dive into Theresa's story, and what she thinks about stories, systems, and mentoring. We were connected through our mutual Design Thinking friend, Sara Musgrove. Check out the conversation below, where Theresa shares her story and the lessons learned along the way.

• Atomic Habits Book by James Clear
• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Podcast Episode Transcript

Theresa Ward (00:00)
the thing people forget about empathy is you can have empathy for someone else without agreeing with any of their choices.

Jason Scott Montoya (00:06)
Today on an inspirational people interview on the Share Life podcast, I'm speaking with Theresa Ward. Theresa, say hello.

Theresa Ward (00:11)
Hello everyone.

Jason Scott Montoya (00:13)
I'm Jason Scott Montoya and this interview we're going to dive into Theresa's story, what she thinks about stories, systems and mentoring. Theresa is a keynote speaker, a facilitator, culture and communication coach and the founder of Fiery Feather, which helps organizations get things done while enjoying the process and the journey along the way. So Theresa, to get us started, tell us about you, your story and how you ended up where you are now.

Theresa Ward (00:41)
Thanks, Jason. OK, so my story, I guess, starts with a lot of change. I moved around a ton as a kid. So adaptability around the Midwest. Popped around from Cleveland, Ohio, down to Cincinnati, Indianapolis. A lot of my extended family is from Michigan. So spend a lot of time in the Great Lakes region.

Jason Scott Montoya (00:50)
Okay, like around the country, around the world. Okay, Madre Rezvez. So where did you start? What state?

Okay.

Wow.

Theresa Ward (01:08)
But as we moved around as a family, my dad changing jobs and whatnot, constantly having to go to new schools and make new friends, I had to learn a lot of adaptability, which you do as a kid to socially survive, but it's hard then to find your true sense of authenticity. So after...

Jason Scott Montoya (01:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what age

range, like how old were you when the movie started and until about what age did it ever stop? Okay, so you went through it all every season, wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (01:33)
Preschool to high school.

Yeah, so that's neither good or bad, right? It's just

a pattern you get used to, a skill that you develop. So then you kind of settle in, right, to adulthood. And after school, I think I really had to get in touch with, well, what are my authentic passions? What are my authentic strengths? And how can I showcase those in a meaningful way?

Jason Scott Montoya (02:05)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (02:06)
Even though I'm like a Gen X millennial cusp, but I feel in my soul very Gen X. So when I got into the working world, I just started in sales, you know, in a call center. And I was kind of just blindly ambitious. This is what you do. You work a job, you get a raise, you get a promotion, you don't look up, you don't take vacation days, you don't think twice.

Jason Scott Montoya (02:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (02:32)
get the 401k, you make dad proud. along the way then, 15 years in, 12, 15 years into my career, I kind of looked up and.

wondered, well, what am I doing here? I was in the financial technology space. I had done sales and product management and relationship management and innovation, all kinds of things. And then one day I was like, I'm not even passionate about this industry. I allowed to say that? Am I allowed to have a longing or a seeking for something that is more authentic to me beyond just working hard?

Jason Scott Montoya (02:44)
and

Hmm... Yeah.

Yeah, no, can relate. I I had a marketing agency for seven years from 2007 to 2014. And one of the questions I asked at the end was like, if I could do anything vocationally, would it be to own and run a marketing agency? And my answer was no. I was like, this is what I want to do. So I ended up shutting it down, which was like a big deal. But it seems like a similar dynamic to your experience.

Theresa Ward (03:31)
Well, absolutely, and I think it's undervalued to ask yourself those questions.

or I think it was historically, I generationally, things are getting a lot better about being introspective and reflective about your sense of purpose and your passions. So it took me a while to get there. When I did finally leave the traditional corporate America space, what I realized looking back, and that was in 2017, 2018, what I realized looking back, pre-pandemic,

Jason Scott Montoya (03:39)
Yeah.

Mm

Okay, pre-pandemic.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Theresa Ward (04:04)
It was post-election 2016, but pre-pandemic, right? Which was like,

it was a transitional time for a lot of folks. The thing that I realized was in every single role that I had been assigned to or had taken, I always ended up doing the training.

Jason Scott Montoya (04:10)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (04:22)
and formally then got trained in adult learning theory and facilitation techniques. That really allowed me to diversify outside of the specific financial technology industry that I was in and to say, these are human skills, being able to walk folks through change management and behavior shifts and learning new skills and new product knowledge that then they can go apply in real life.

Jason Scott Montoya (04:43)
Hmm.

Theresa Ward (04:51)
So it was fun to then diversify my skill set. And I just did that as a freelancer for a couple of years. So 2017, 2018, I just went through my Rolodex of contacts and said, do you need help with any projects? And that is nice that I would recommend to other freelancers and entrepreneurs who are getting started. Just ask people if they need help with projects and you'll figure out something.

Jason Scott Montoya (05:00)
Yeah.

Yeah. Now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So tell me, well, two questions there. I'll start with the first. Going from corporate America to freelancing is a big change. How did you feel in that transition?

Theresa Ward (05:26)
Well, I did have a part-time job to, you know, contracting job to kind of help pay the bills. So I was very grateful for that ridge. I didn't have to completely swim across the river. I had some stepping stones, but.

Jason Scott Montoya (05:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (05:43)
In all honesty, I felt quite a bit of shame because I had developed an identity and a story around ambition and promotions and raises and successes. And all of the sudden I had no good story to tell.

I knew that I needed to leave deep in my soul, but it didn't look good when I was people. you must be leaving for a much more high powered opportunity. You know, where are you going? And I'm like, don't ask. I just got to figure this stuff out.

Jason Scott Montoya (05:59)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah

Was that a self-imposed shame or something that you grew up with that you carried with you?

Theresa Ward (06:19)
maybe a little bit of both. Mostly self-imposed, yeah. Any a grim one. If you're familiar with that language, perfectionist, basically.

Jason Scott Montoya (06:21)
Okay, yeah. You okay?

What would, okay,

what would that be on Myers-Briggs?

Theresa Ward (06:33)
Hmm. Yeah, I don't know that would necessarily translate, but just an inner drive or desire to always be right, to always be good, to always do the best.

Jason Scott Montoya (06:34)
Or what do you know your Myers or John or big five.

Okay.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, so tell me more about that. Well, yeah, where does that come from and how did that evolve during that moment?

Theresa Ward (06:49)
About that part of me.

Yeah, I think it helped in a lot of ways. I was blessed with not only that internal sense of drive and ambition to just hustle and figure it out, but I had also stuck out a lot of grunt work, I guess, early in my career.

Calling, being a inside sales in a call center is not glamorous, right? You get hung up on and sworn at a lot. Yeah, but it's like bootcamp for life. So I think that really helped me in my entrepreneurial journey. So a little bit of grit maybe and realizing that not everything was going to be easy or to be smooth, but it's a bit of a number.

Jason Scott Montoya (07:22)
Yeah.

rejected over and over.

Theresa Ward (07:47)
You know, you just keep trying, you just keep asking, you explore, and then you iterate if it doesn't work. Yeah. So I think that helped. It was a lot of also...

Jason Scott Montoya (07:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Theresa Ward (07:58)
again, really doing that internal reflecting and checking in and realizing where am I rare? What is my value? You know, when you're in a corporate space, everyone around you knows how to use Outlook and spreadsheets and everyone's kind of got the type A suit thing going on. And then, you know, would go and work with like you, a small business entrepreneur who ran a creative agency or a marketing agency or folks who ran a nonprofit and

Jason Scott Montoya (08:05)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (08:26)
it's like they're so good at their craft, but they didn't have that structure or the systems in place that corporate did. So all of a sudden something that's common in one space is now rare in another. So that was really helpful to realize.

Jason Scott Montoya (08:32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah,

I can relate to that a lot because when I jumped into freelancing, I applied my business systems and structures and insights into my business of one. And I had no intention of building a team, because I'd kind of been there, done that. But then I discovered what you discovered, which is within the freelancing world, freelancers, it's a famine of the, there's an absence of that structure, which is why so many of them struggle.

And that was an opportunity for me and it sounds like that was the opportunity for you as well. Yeah. Yeah. So where does that take us? Where does that go? From that point, you're transitioning from corporate world to freelancing. You have this bridge business or bridge job. And what then?

Theresa Ward (09:12)
Totally, yeah, I can see that, yep.

Hmm. What then? A lot of those bumpy lessons, right, that you learn up front, not charging enough.

taking on too many clients, over promising and under delivering. Let this be my public service announcement to apologize to every client I had during the first year of my freelancing because you're just figuring it out. But I did have a lot of really supportive folks in my network and they were willing to give me real feedback. So I'm very appreciative of that. And I think I did. Go ahead.

Jason Scott Montoya (09:43)
Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So, go ahead.

Well, I was gonna say, you have a time machine. You go back to that version of you that first year. What do you tell her?

Theresa Ward (10:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Well, I'm not sure that I would tell her to do anything different because I think we have to learn through our mistakes.

Jason Scott Montoya (10:17)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (10:18)
And then we have to just fall in love with those mistakes so that we can have these wise, redemptive, reflective conversations like we're having now. So I think I would just tell her, like, you're doing OK, right? It's not perfect. And I know that's uncomfortable. And you think you're letting some folks down. But it's all for the best. It's all for the bigger. yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (10:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, have you ever seen the movie Interstellar?

So remember the scene at the end when he's looking back and he's trying to tell her something and she can't hear him? That's an interesting dynamic of being able to see something that someone else can't. In his case, he wanted to tell her and he was stopped. In your case, you would maybe want to tell her something, but you know you shouldn't, so you wouldn't. But I think to let past you make those mistakes,

Like if you think about being a parent or just a boss, sometimes you have to do that. So tell me about that dynamic of just letting people fail.

Theresa Ward (11:07)
Mm-hmm.

Jeez, letting people fail.

Jason Scott Montoya (11:18)
especially people you love.

Theresa Ward (11:19)
That's a really interesting area to explore. One of the keynotes that I'm preparing right now is called true confessions of a toxic manager. Because I think when I was in my early corporate leadership roles, I was so afraid to fail.

that it made me very worried about other people failing because it would be a reflection on me. So yes, definitely reputation. that, again, that internal sense of...

Jason Scott Montoya (11:48)
Yeah, so your reputation or something else. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (11:56)
you know, being enough, being successful and having that just kind of that low key anxiety all the time. So I think the thing that I would coach some of my clients on now, especially those who are new managers and new leaders, there's a concept about the water line. Okay, so you picture a ship and it's sitting in the water and part of the hull is underneath the water and part of it is above.

Jason Scott Montoya (12:18)
Okay.

Theresa Ward (12:18)
failures that happen above the water line are not going to sink the ship, right? So if you poke a hole in the side of the boat that's above the water line, okay.

This is inconvenient. We will patch it up with some duct tape or some tar or whatever and we will we will sail on. And I think it's important for leaders, mentors to allow people to fail above the waterline. Now, if it's, hey, you're 22 and we're going to just fly you out to see our biggest client alone, unprepared. And if you mess up, you're going to ruin 70 percent of the company's revenue. Like that's a

Jason Scott Montoya (12:33)
Ha ha.

Yeah.

Ha ha.

Theresa Ward (13:00)
the waterline failure so leaders should not set up their folks that are really going to sink the ship.

Jason Scott Montoya (13:04)
Yeah.

So I think

that, yeah, I think that's such an amazing visual because, you know, obviously we have to discern like what is below and above the water line, but it creates this visual framework to identify the difference between what is an existential threat that will destroy us all and what is a failure, maybe a safe failure is a good way to say that. And I think,

Theresa Ward (13:16)
That's hard.

Jason Scott Montoya (13:32)
I think as a society, or a large portion of our society, we have become so controlling that we protect the upper side of, above the water line failures to such a degree that the under the lines become more likely because people aren't who they need to be in order to go up, yeah, dive into that.

Theresa Ward (13:50)
developing trust.

Yeah, well, you know mistakes are going to happen. So I think as a leader, how can you create a psychologically safe space where folks can say, I don't know, or they say, I need help, or I messed up. So if you can establish trust with the small failures, I think it protects you from the big ones.

Jason Scott Montoya (14:11)
So what do you mean by that? Because

are you suggesting like, hey, someone fails, but you still have trust, enough trust to operate within those failures? Is that what you mean? Or do you mean something else?

Theresa Ward (14:21)
When I think about how leaders can establish trust with their teams, I think it's everything from demonstrating vulnerability to expressing genuine concern for who are you? Do you have kids? What do you like to do on weekends? Someone said to me once, I wish I could remember where I read this or where I heard this.

But if you don't try and get in touch with your own inner child, your team's inner child, they're going to bring it to work anyway. You just won't be able to recognize that they're bringing in, know, their father was very hard on them, or they had to compete with, you know, 13 siblings to get attention and those kinds of things.

Jason Scott Montoya (14:56)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (15:11)
So I think it's really just opening up a lot of those soft conversations when things are, when the boat is not even in the water, when not even working on a project where there is potential failure.

Jason Scott Montoya (15:19)
Yeah, yeah.

And so where does the controlling behavior, how does it unfold from protecting below the water line to starting to protect higher and higher up the water line?

Theresa Ward (15:33)
When you say controlling behavior, what do you mean?

Jason Scott Montoya (15:36)
Well, like

a protective controlling behavior. I can't let them, let's say it's in your business, I can't let this person have, let's say social media, control over social media, because they might post something and it has a spelling error. So now I'm sort of controlling something that like, if there's a spelling error, probably no one's gonna care.

Theresa Ward (15:47)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (15:52)
But now as maybe a business owner has become so controlling that they're literally micromanaging in that way. Whereas they're, instead of going, okay, that's an above the line issue, I'm controlling it as if it's a below the line. Does that make sense? So I think that creeps over time, yeah.

Theresa Ward (15:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think I get what you're asking. Yeah.

So one of the things that I've coached a client on recently around this area is get together with your folks and hit reset and establish what are sort of those minimum baseline

requirements of success. This is what's most important on our social media account. Does everything need to be spelled perfectly? No. But just riffing and making some big political statement without approval, okay, that goes in the squarely not okay category. So I think if you can democratically involve your folks in saying what are those minimum requirements of success and as long as these are taken care of, I'm not going to get in your way. But if we are not sure

Jason Scott Montoya (16:39)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (16:54)
is this political or is this not political?

Jason Scott Montoya (16:58)
Yeah,

well it sounds like I kind of which I guess what I'm hearing you say is do define where the line is what is above and what is below Yeah

Theresa Ward (17:04)
I think so. But

not just doing it with a bullhorn, with a megaphone, right? Doing it democratically.

Jason Scott Montoya (17:08)
Yeah, as a dictation, but as a collaborative

participatory process.

Theresa Ward (17:14)
it's slow. And I think that's why a lot of leaders avoid doing it. It can feel nonlinear, inefficient, but slow is smooth and smooth is fast. know, I love that phrase.

Jason Scott Montoya (17:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

All right, so where are we at in your story? Let's go to the next part.

Theresa Ward (17:31)
Well, I guess in the first couple of years of my freelance slash entrepreneurial journey, yes, I figured out where I could help people, what skills were more effective. I started marketing myself as a productivity consultant because I was so good at time management and prioritization and setting goals. And I nerded out over all of those books. So 2017, 2018, going into 2019 and 2020.

Jason Scott Montoya (17:45)
Okay.

And what year was that? Okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Theresa Ward (17:58)
So

when the pandemic hit, was a real hot success time for me because a lot of my clients were, we were already kind of struggling and now we're really struggling. How do we work from home? How do we manage remote employees? Which goes back to the trust conversation that we just had.

Jason Scott Montoya (18:08)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (18:15)
how do we measure certain metrics? How do we even sustain our basic cultural values now that everybody's at home in their sweatpants doing God knows what? So that was great until about Q1 2021.

Jason Scott Montoya (18:33)
Hmm.

Theresa Ward (18:33)
So

if we think back to, you know, January 2021, again, we had just had another election. There was a lot of social and political unrest. People were so burnt out from the pandemic that was, I think, before the vaccine had even been approved. So people were drained, burnt out. That's when we started to hear the great resignation as the season that employees were in, just saying,

Jason Scott Montoya (18:43)
Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (19:01)
I don't feel cared for by my company. They don't align with my values. They want me to work too hard when I'm trying to get, you know, have my kids at home, virtual learning. I'm done.

Jason Scott Montoya (19:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (19:11)
So

then, none of my clients wanted to talk about productivity because productivity was causing them and their employees too much stress. So we had to shift the conversation. So since, you know, from a marketing expert, can't change who I am. can't, you know, I'm not completely doing a 180 on the value, but instead of doing workshops on time management, now I'm doing workshops on.

Jason Scott Montoya (19:27)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (19:39)
getting in touch with your purpose or communicating with emotional intelligence and some of those softer skills, which was a really important, that was an important evolution, not just for my clients, but for me as well.

Jason Scott Montoya (19:41)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. Well, and that seems to me as the origin story of with Fiery Feather being it was helping people get stuff done and that was the evolution of adding in the and enjoying the journey along the way. It's both together and that fused it. It seems like that moment fused it together, but you tell me.

Theresa Ward (20:10)
always had that tagline, but I think I made it more authentic during that season. Because yes, absolutely effective teams need structure. They need guidelines. They need shared agreements. You need policies in a lot of cases, depending on size of your team. And you need to be able to support authentic relationships. Again, have those trusted conversations. So it's both the systems and the soft skills that are really, really key pillars.

Jason Scott Montoya (20:14)
Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So Andy Stanley says something like, we can't have certainty, but clarity is the next best thing. And so clarity, I think that's what I'm hearing from you, is like you get clear on these things. So now everyone understands there's no ambiguity and that gives them stability and security, which they can operate within or around.

Theresa Ward (20:46)
Ooh, I like that.

Do you know the locus of control? Yeah. So I think no matter what degree of clarity or certainty you have or you don't have,

Jason Scott Montoya (21:05)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (21:13)
one needs the discerning skill of remembering there are things I can control, there are things I can influence, and then there's everything else. So what's the only thing you can really control is sort of your own behavior and how you show up when things are clear and how you show up when they're unclear. So VUCA is this acronym, V-U-C-A, that originally was a military term and it's how do you, how does one operate in volatile, ambiguous,

Jason Scott Montoya (21:18)
Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

Theresa Ward (21:41)
chaotic and uncertain environments. Sorry, volatile, uncertain acronyms. can spell, swear. Volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous environments. And that's one of the reasons that I love teaching change management and resilience to change.

Jason Scott Montoya (21:43)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (21:58)
Because there are companies, we all know teams and company cultures where they spend so much time planning and their strategic planning spreadsheet is, you know, a thousand rows long and they think they've got everything very, very clear, but they aren't able to pivot when a curve ball comes in, whether that's a huge thing like the pandemic or even just some small thing, right? Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (22:14)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

like the Titanic, when it sees the iceberg, it can't get out of the way, right? It just crashes into it and then all the tragedy unfolds. take a pause there for a moment. Did your upbringing, did your pivot from corporate America to freelancing?

Theresa Ward (22:25)
They're scrolling through their spreadsheet going, we didn't play this. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (22:42)
how did that equip you for the pandemic chaos and in the 2016 chaos, in the 2020 chaos? How did it prepare you or did it, like were you ready for it or did you have to kind of go through another learning process as well or a combination of both?

Theresa Ward (22:59)
I

don't think anybody can claim that they were ready for it. Have you ever interviewed somebody who says they were ready for it? I don't know, I think they might be lying.

Jason Scott Montoya (23:07)
tell me more. So

what was it? Was it the scale that hit you?

Theresa Ward (23:12)
think any more or less than anybody else. I think in all of the changes that have been handed my way, if I can again think back to as a kid being, hey, pack up, we're moving again, know, we're moving cities again. My parents did a great job of emphasizing the positive, of emphasizing the benefits of the change that was coming.

Jason Scott Montoya (23:32)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (23:33)
and

saying, hey, there's something in this for you. I know it seems sad right now and it seems disruptive and you have to leave your favorite neighborhood park or you're not gonna be a part of that cheerleading squad anymore. But I think that's a real strategy, which is to focus on what you can control and to focus on the positive.

Jason Scott Montoya (23:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (23:53)
So I think that was part of it. I am also just in my DNA, whether it's from my upbringing, nurture or nature, whatever you want to call it, I'm a very action biased person. So for me, it's relatively easy to sift through, decide what I can control and then run with it. Even if the decision and the action is not always the wisest or the most thought through. To me, a lot of times like.

Jason Scott Montoya (24:04)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (24:19)
Like motion feels better than indecision. So doing something rather than nothing worked for me. I'm not saying that that's gonna work for everybody when they get big, big curve balls in life, but it is one strategy. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (24:21)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me throw this at you then.

When is doing something actually harmful instead of helpful?

Theresa Ward (24:39)
Whew, I've done that enough times, I think, to actually have an answer when it doesn't align with your values.

Jason Scott Montoya (24:43)
Hehehehe... Hehehehe...

That's good. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (24:51)
when you haven't taken a deep breath and tuned into your gut, when you don't trust yourself, you know? Which is, mean, gets, thankfully it's one of those things that gets easier as we get older. You're like, I've been through this before or something similar to this.

Jason Scott Montoya (25:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (25:10)
Let

me just close my eyes, take a deep breath in, get in touch with what's going on in my belly right now. And I know that sounds a little silly and a little woo woo, but they call it your gut instinct for a reason. And a lot of times I think I'm finally learning that my gut will direct me towards a better place than my brain.

Jason Scott Montoya (25:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, the visual that comes to mind is the Navy SEALs. You know, as part of their training, they drown them. And I can, I think if you don't have that experience and then you're out in like an actual situation and you're having that same situation and you feel those same things, you've never felt them before, so you're going to react to them as if it's the first time. But if you've experienced it before and you know how it unfolds and how that plays out,

Theresa Ward (25:50)
Mmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (25:54)
then you have something you didn't have before that helps you when it happens again. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Theresa Ward (26:01)
Oh, totally. Yeah.

I feel like I read a book that sort of talked about that. You know, people, people who tend to survive plane crashes and, you know, these big disasters and how their brain works and the choices that they make that are different. Getting lost in the woods and those kinds of things.

Jason Scott Montoya (26:06)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah,

and Denial is a part of that. Amanda Ripley wrote a book on that topic. she tells a story about this person that was in the Twin Trade Towers on 9-11 after it got hit. And in her mind she just said, everything's fine, it's just a fire. You know, it's just her normal category of making sense of it.

convinced her that it was fine but there was somebody else like you're describing which was like we have to get out now and this person was able to save all these people because she got them out of the building when they were just thinking nothing was wrong.

Theresa Ward (26:52)
Wow. Yeah, I wish there was an easy formula for those kinds of complex situations. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (26:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so 2021 to now, what's what's the last leg of your story here?

Theresa Ward (27:09)
Hmm, 2021 till now, I think there's definitely a sense of settling and, you know, I bought a home, right? In Atlanta, Georgia, and you put down roots with your community and it's nice to be in a season where, yeah, entrepreneurship is hard, right? It's a roller coaster. You're at the whims of the economy and a lot of other factors.

Jason Scott Montoya (27:18)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (27:36)
but I am learning to just ride it out. I am learning to trust myself in those patterns, right? Of, this isn't an epic disaster. I mean, I know it's kind of the opposite of what you just said, but it is kind of like, it's okay, there's a little smoke and there's a little fire. I don't need to leave the building right now. Like I am going to be okay.

Jason Scott Montoya (27:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (27:56)
And yeah, settling and putting down roots really has both within, I mean, mean that metaphorically, both within myself and literally here in my community. It feels really good after all of those stories I told you about bopping around different cities in different neighborhoods as a kid that now I know all of my neighbors' names. So I don't know when you'll release this, but.

Jason Scott Montoya (28:02)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Theresa Ward (28:19)
As of today, Atlanta had some snow. As of yesterday, Atlanta had some snow, which some people can deal with easier than others. And I'm really grateful that my neighbor sent me a text.

Jason Scott Montoya (28:22)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (28:30)
this morning and she said, hey, I got in a wreck, you know, on an ice patch, I'm stranded. Can you come help me? Can you take care of my dogs? And it was like, absolutely, right? And we just got in the car and she was so grateful. And she's like, I'll bake you some more pumpkin bread. And you know, that's a really nice place to be when not only do I know my neighbors names, but they know that they can reach out to me for help.

Jason Scott Montoya (28:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

and that they did it and that you provided enough of a relationship for them to want to do that. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (28:59)
Yeah, so

that's where I think, you know, big picture speaking, it's been for the last couple years. And do you know the Japanese concept of Ikigai? Okay, so for listeners then, just a quick recap. It's sort of this sweet spot of living into your purpose.

Jason Scott Montoya (29:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (29:20)
where you are operating at the intersection of what you are good at, skill-wise, what you love doing, what brings you energy, what the world needs, and what your society will pay you to do.

Jason Scott Montoya (29:33)
to do it.

Or to buy.

Theresa Ward (29:35)
Yeah, so I am very grateful to be operating in a sweet spot of Ikigai and I hope that I can just continue to pour out what I've learned sharing that in my workshops and my coaching with my clients. And also, you know, it's like a spiral, right? So you pour out what you've learned and just when you think...

Jason Scott Montoya (29:52)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Theresa Ward (29:57)
you've got it, then here comes a big old learning opportunity, right? Where you fill back up and you kind of continue that upward spiral. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (30:01)
Hmm.

Yeah, and it

almost is, I think, in different realms. like, you might, like in one relationship, you might kind of figure it out, and now you've got it at your business, it's a little bit bigger this time. And then you've got it in your community or in your society. Like the problem is the same at the root, but it kind of manifests in a bigger way, and so the challenge gets bigger. So you have to navigate the complexities of those different dynamics as they get bigger. Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (30:27)
yeah. that's beautiful. Yeah, that's really juicy. Yep. I like

that. That's good.

Jason Scott Montoya (30:33)
So,

how does Icky, so Icky Guy, you seem like you've got all these concepts you discover and then you latch onto and they help you and then you share them. Tell me about that.

Theresa Ward (30:45)
Well, I think I said this actually before we started recording, but there's nothing new under the sun. There's just different seasons of our culture and our society. What do we need to hear? Who do we need to hear it from? Like you said, where do I apply it? Is it, you know, in my personal life, my relational life, my, you know, Brock community life?

Jason Scott Montoya (30:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (31:08)
So I've always enjoyed learning, digesting, know, different concepts from a wide range of authors, experts, you know, different sources, different metaphors. think one of those skill sets that I didn't realize was rare.

but if I can toot my own horn, guess it's pretty rare, is being able to synthesize all of these different frameworks. And then when a situation calls for it with an individual or a team that I'm coaching or I'm consulting with, it's very, I liken it to Mary Poppins. I mean, she's kind of my imaginary character hero where she's got that carpet bag and that thing is...

Jason Scott Montoya (31:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (31:47)
Who knows what's in there? It's way bigger than it looks on the surface. And she can kind of stick her arm down in there and pull out the lamp or the umbrella or whatever tool is needed in the situation. So that's how I think about some of these frameworks, keeping them all in my Mary Poppins carpet bag. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (32:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love it.

Just as a sidebar, one of my favorite lines from Mary Poppins is, but firm. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (32:11)
yeah.

I think she is a really, you know, how fiery feather is kind of this dichotomous brand. It is meant to be about focus and getting things done as well as a lighthearted exploration of what's possible or what's yet unseen.

Jason Scott Montoya (32:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (32:28)
And she really does truly embody she is no nonsense, but you are also going to have a good time. You are going to learn something and have a really memorable experience while you're doing it with her.

Jason Scott Montoya (32:35)
Yeah. Well, yeah.

Yeah, well I'm gonna throw out

an idea. When you go and speak at that next event, I want you to walk out with your Mary Poppins bag in your umbrella and your hat.

Theresa Ward (32:49)
Yeah, and it'll be a bonus if I can get the end of the umbrella with the little parrot to talk on stage.

Jason Scott Montoya (32:54)
Yeah, there you go. But the synthesizing,

Adam Grant put out a quote the other day. He said, the hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know, it's how well you synthesize. Information scarcity rewards knowledge acquisition, but information abundance requires pattern recognition. So it's not enough to collect the facts, the future belongs to those who connect the dots.

Theresa Ward (33:00)
Yeah?

Isn't that... strange?

That's so true, and I think that's just been the shift of, I was not a digital native, right? When I was born, when I was in school, you had to memorize things. And now, why would you? Why would I use up brain cells remembering people's phone numbers? Or any other factoid that is Googleable. That's vulnerable, thanks for sharing that.

Jason Scott Montoya (33:24)
Yeah.

yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't even know my wife's phone number.

Theresa Ward (33:43)
So yeah, now it's more just how do I develop the skills for resourcefulness? And we'll see, right, with the advent of artificial intelligence, what is the most meaningful thing that we can do with the information that's out there? Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (33:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So tell me, when you think about the idea of like living better and working smarter, what comes to your mind? How does one go about that?

Theresa Ward (34:05)
Okay, so I am gonna read a quote since you just read an Adam Gray quote. I've been thinking about this and this is a quote from James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits. He just posted this a couple weeks ago. You have to work hard to discover how to work smart. You won't know the best solutions until you've made nearly all the mistakes. So when I think about working smarter, I think

Jason Scott Montoya (34:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (34:34)
think it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier that you gotta get a couple holes in the boat first. Like you have to kind of feel what it feels like to be a Navy SEAL who's drowning or to feel like the ship is going down.

Jason Scott Montoya (34:42)
Hahaha

Yeah.

The stakes, you have to feel the stakes at hand.

Theresa Ward (34:52)
Yeah, because if working easier isn't the same as working smarter, I think there is. Just because something is more efficient doesn't necessarily mean it's more wise or more intelligent. Yeah, so I don't know. That's what I was thinking about. That answer might evolve in a couple weeks, but what are you thinking about lately when you think about what it means to work smarter?

Jason Scott Montoya (34:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Hehehehe

Well, think, well, so the idea of prioritization comes to mind. And so there's a lot of things we could be doing at any one time. And you mentioned iteration multiple times. So think iterating our priorities, kind of putting out a hypothesis of, hey, if I do this, I think it's gonna benefit, have a benefit. Like there are 10 things that I think can generate the benefit I'm looking for, but the...

When I work with my clients, I operate in this framework and the first step in the process is what I call low-hanging fruit, which is high impact, low effort. Yeah. You got it. So that is what I'm looking for with my clients when I work with them. So if we're doing like, okay, they've got a content library, they've got all these blogs.

Theresa Ward (35:47)
Sure. High impact, low effort. Yes, that's exactly what was in my mind was that too. If I could put my whole life in a two by two matrix, like, yes, I'm totally with you.

Jason Scott Montoya (36:06)
How do we get more traffic from Google? Let's go, well, what are the things that can do that will have that high impact and our low effort? In the technical sense, with SEO, it's title tags. You update your title tags. And so for me, I'm thinking about that in terms of, in that sense, I've done SEO for so long that I've identified those things beforehand.

Theresa Ward (36:15)
Okay.

probably through some mistakes,

right? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (36:30)
Yes, there are a lot of mistakes in experimenting.

But when you're going in a direction you haven't quite been before, you kind of have to think of it like in Star Trek. The Enterprise sends out these probes into the nebula. And there three or four probes to kind of survey the area. so these experiments, sending out four or five experiments in these four or five directions that I think are the best of the directions.

Theresa Ward (36:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (36:56)
and seeing which one makes the most sense to move towards. So I think of working smarter as having a system and process for being able to do that, but also to adjust priorities in almost as real time as possible to move towards the goal, which requires vision and clarity at the beginning of the process to know where you're going. Because if I'm running a race without a finish line, I'm just going to wander around in circles.

Theresa Ward (37:00)
Mm-hmm.

amen. Right. Knowing what is good enough. Yeah, knowing what the big goal is and then holding your little goals along the way more loosely and more flexibly. think the other thing that I'm learning to honor is really the seasonality of our life. So if you think about the four seasons,

Jason Scott Montoya (37:24)
Hahaha

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, that's

Theresa Ward (37:50)
and you

this is a good New Year's resolution kind of thing to do is to put everything in your life into one of these four seasons. So if things, if you have things in your life that are in winter, it's sort of like, this is an idea and it hasn't really, nothing's really happening with it yet. I might write another book or I wonder if I should reorg my team. Should I redo my website? Those are winter things. And then, you know, spring is what we are traditionally used to.

Jason Scott Montoya (38:16)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (38:21)
to

in the corporate and professional space. You work and there needs to be results and it's growth and you're pruning and you're mulching and it's like the flurry of activity and there's a lot of visibility. But I think we also forget that things can be in summer where you are meant to just sit under the apple tree and the apple falls and you go, this is so nice. And you just eat the apple.

Jason Scott Montoya (38:33)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (38:47)
And I think we tend to put everything in our life into spring. At least that is what a capitalist society is mostly centered around, is spring style activity. So to know it's okay for things to sit in winter and germinate. It's okay for me to, you know, let certain, I don't know, call it your relationship with your best client. It's probably in summer. It doesn't need the same amount of effort as it did last year or five years ago.

Jason Scott Montoya (38:51)
Hmm

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (39:16)
But also everything eventually has an autumn. It has a season where you have to kind of burn it down and either like creatively reinvent it or just compost it and let it go. So I really love that as Working Smarter, yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (39:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. that, that, that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's

good. I, in my book, The Jump, I talk about when I ended up shutting down the company, the final year we actually took a Sabbath year. And so we, you know, I'd never heard of any of a company taking a Sabbath for a year. And so we kind of had to invent it. But it was exactly what you described as like, we knew going into it that it could either be like this ends and something new is.

Theresa Ward (39:44)
Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Nice.

What?

Jason Scott Montoya (40:00)
or the company is reborn in a new iteration. We didn't know what was going to be next. And it ended up about halfway through discovering actually shutting it down was the right thing to do. Which was traumatic in a lot of ways, but like you said, it died and then out of the ashes came something new for all of us that were involved.

Theresa Ward (40:12)
Hmm.

That's, I love that you just like, let me just pull up my book that's like right here. And the one I have right next to me is Wintering. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, I mean, it's a relatively easy read and I've got a few things dog-eared in here, but I will say if there ends up being listeners of this episode, Katherine May, M-A-Y. Yeah. So it's really like.

Jason Scott Montoya (40:24)
okay. I've heard of it. I've never read it though. Yeah.

Okay.

The Wintering. What's the author's name?

Catherine May, okay. What's the basic premise of the book for those that might

be?

Theresa Ward (40:46)
that you need to let yourself slow down for longer than a five minute YouTube break, that there are often extended seasons where you are not going to feel productive. You're gonna feel kind of terrible. And we did all experience that during the pandemic lockdown. So I think...

Jason Scott Montoya (40:54)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (41:09)
We now know viscerally what that feels like. Nobody really wants that to be forced upon them. But it's kind of like you either recognize it when it's happening and you let it happen, or you hear about this all the time, right? People just going, going, going, working 80, 90 hours a week, and then they have a literal physical breakdown. So their body puts them into winter.

Jason Scott Montoya (41:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I've done that. yeah. Been there, yeah. So, yeah, that's idea of being sustainable, sustainability. yeah, at every level, like the individual level up to society, you know, so.

Theresa Ward (41:30)
Yeah, we've all been there. You're like, how convenient. I have the flu now. Yeah.

Absolutely, yes.

Yeah, yeah, so I think working part of, know, to go back to your original question, part of working smarter is thinking about the long.

Jason Scott Montoya (41:52)
Yeah. So kind of on that note, like if you kind of flip that around and we're talking to people that may be going through these things that we've experienced and learned from and may experience and learn from at another level, how do you think about helping those people? What do you think about the importance of mentoring? How has mentoring played a role in your life? How does it unfold in your work?

Theresa Ward (42:10)
No.

I think my favorite kind of mentoring is the very informal kind. I've had weirdly negative experiences with, and now you will click this button and sign up for a mentoring program, and then we will put it through a spreadsheet and you will get assigned a buddy. I'm not saying those are inherently bad, but it's a little awkward. And then you're sort of like, well, we're supposed to do this thing because this system was set up with these guidelines.

Jason Scott Montoya (42:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (42:41)
Usually I love a system, right? Like I love, give me some guardrails and give me some homework and I'll slay this. But I have found that the most valuable mentors have been really informal, random coffee meetings.

Jason Scott Montoya (42:43)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (42:55)
almost like I ran into you and I just, a problem that I was having and you gave me some advice on it. So that is the spirit that I am now trying to carry into the mentoring that I'm doing is always be generous. think, especially in my industry, I do not believe in competition. I believe that the pie is big enough for all of us.

Jason Scott Montoya (43:07)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (43:20)
You know, people, ops, culture, consultants, coaches. You know, there's a lot of us out there, but it's for a reason. And the less cutthroat we can be and the more generous we can be, because like I said, there's nothing new under the sun. So there's no real secret here. Okay. We're not protecting the recipe of Coca-Cola. So just share your wisdom. And I guess there's a theme here, you know, I don't want to keep repeating myself, but

Jason Scott Montoya (43:38)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (43:47)
share your wisdom in a really vulnerable way. Like talk a lot about your mistakes. Talk about where you, where you messed up or you've asked me. Yeah. You've asked me a lot of really good questions and I'm like, I don't really have an intentional answer for that. You know, I don't have a, well I was, I was really, you know, strategic about how I went about that thing. Luck exists.

Jason Scott Montoya (43:51)
Yeah.

Why is that important?

haha

Theresa Ward (44:16)
And blessings exist and serendipity exists. So I think it's important as a mentor to not always take, just don't take credit for everything, right? Kind of acknowledge that there is not a formula, a silver bullet. It's very nice.

Jason Scott Montoya (44:24)
Mmm, yeah, yeah.

Why do people want

a formula in a silver bullet?

Theresa Ward (44:35)
Hmm. Maybe it goes back to your question of they equate working smarter with working easier. Yeah. Yeah. Just I think maybe they are just cultural obsession with efficiency and results. Yeah. Instead of that true deep wisdom that comes from the ebb and flow of things. Hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (44:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What, when you think about stories, real and fictional, what narratives or stories have shaped you as a person?

Theresa Ward (45:01)
goal to read as many books each year as I am years old. Which means the goal gets harder every year. My age changes, the number of weeks in the year do not. But that is where I want my life to go.

Jason Scott Montoya (45:07)
wow.

Theresa Ward (45:19)
That to me is the definition of success is if I have increasingly more time to be still and to read both fictional and non-fictional narratives. man, I think it's so important. So I've always loved reading. I've always loved story. I mean, I could point to, I guess, you know, some of my favorite narratives or stories growing up.

Jason Scott Montoya (45:19)
Okay.

Theresa Ward (45:42)
But I think some of the most impactful ones on me lately have been to read fictional stories where I have a really hard time empathizing with the main character because they are not.

Jason Scott Montoya (45:53)
Okay.

Theresa Ward (45:56)
white or female or raised in the Midwest or you know whatever fill in the blank version of my identity. So I think to be intentional and to seek out narratives that have like or stories where there's like a little bit of friction against your values. If you're like this is what I believe about the world and this is what's right and this is what's wrong and then you read a story about a main character who who pushes against that.

Jason Scott Montoya (46:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (46:22)
That's where I think the real opportunity is with story is to get underneath the clickbait headline or whatever and get into like, what's the real emotional like complexity of those characters in these stories. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (46:27)
Hmm.

Yeah,

and so because that creates attention you have to intentionally lean into it whereas it may not be a natural thing to do what you're describing. Is that correct?

Theresa Ward (46:49)
of course

not. Yeah, absolutely. Our natural tendency is to just keep listening to the same, to go towards our tribe and to listen to the same self-validating, like, yeah. That's what I love about TED Talks is a lot of times they just share stuff that you kind of already knew or already believed. And you're like, yeah, that one's so good. Cause I already basically thought that or had that high. Yeah. So I think.

Jason Scott Montoya (46:58)
huh.

So what what

what cast a vision, a compelling vision for why people should do what you're describing even though they may not feel like doing it.

And it could be whether it's reading or watching a movie or maybe it's just talking with someone that has that story too.

Theresa Ward (47:28)
Yeah, well that's the thing is talking with somebody who has the story I think is a real, it's a challenge. You meet someone in real life and you're like, I want to honor the fact that there's a real human being sitting here in front of me, but wow, you voted differently than me. You go to a different, you know, faith institution than I do. And then you kind of swallow and you're like, nope, is this safe? Like, what do we talk about?

Whereas when you read or you watch movies, it's a safe place to practice. It's a safe place to practice empathy. And then you can kind of bring those two dimensional characters into your three dimensional life. I don't know if I am up to the challenge of your question of casting a vision. All I can say is that when I've listened to

Jason Scott Montoya (47:57)
Okay, that's interesting dynamic,

Theresa Ward (48:19)
Did you ever listen to Blue Babies Pink? It's a podcast series from BT Harmon and it's his story about growing up as a Christian boy in the South and realizing that he was gay. And it's like seven minute episodes, you know, and there's like a few of them.

Jason Scott Montoya (48:21)
Mm-mm.

Okay.

Okay, yeah.

Theresa Ward (48:39)
But it's like you're listening to this person tell their real story, but you're sort of digesting it and processing it in a safe space where you don't have to react and go, well, I agree with that, or I disagree with that, which I did 700 times as I was listening to all that story. Or you listen to the moth or the story slam kind of.

Jason Scott Montoya (48:41)
you

mm-hmm yeah

Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (49:01)
I think it's powerful to hear the audio part of it, right? When they're telling their story about, I never thought that situation would warrant that much internal struggle about what you decided to do with your...

Jason Scott Montoya (49:02)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (49:17)
Or like I listened to this story about a dad, a single dad raising a four year old deaf child. And as soon as the child got implants so that they could communicate with the world, believe it was a little girl and the little girl, the first thing that she said when she started to be able to listen and communicate was, I'm a boy and everybody needs to know that I'm a boy. And then it's like, what do I do with this? Right. Like already I've

Jason Scott Montoya (49:27)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (49:43)
gone

through all these struggles and like here's another thing to address with all this.

Jason Scott Montoya (49:47)
Well, here, that kind

of illuminates a very interesting dynamic, because you say it's safe for the person to consume that and think through it and hear it, but it requires someone to step out of safety to share it. They're stepping, they're filling the gap in order for that safety to be provided. That's an interesting dynamic.

Theresa Ward (49:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So that I hope, right, the more that we hear people being raw in their and sharing their own stories, that we feel more comfortable and sharing that with others. And the other thing that I really like is, you know, NPR StoryCorps, where, you know, you listen to two people having a conversation with each other. I just signed up for, I can't remember the name of it, but I'll find it so we can put it in the show notes. But it's like you submit your profile and all of

Jason Scott Montoya (50:16)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (50:37)
your, you know, identity stuff and they match you up to have a recorded conversation with somebody who grew up in very different way than you did or whatever. yeah, yeah, the middle, middle ground or common ground. We've been watching a bunch of that. And, yeah. So you go from watching people doing that in the room to like, okay, well now I signed up to do this myself and it's definitely less safe.

Jason Scott Montoya (50:38)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a show on YouTube like that called Jubilee. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (51:06)
But I'm excited that it's out there for us.

Jason Scott Montoya (51:07)
Yeah, people

willing to take risks, be vulnerable. And I think of the idea of permission to go second. They're giving people permission to go second, because they're going first. no, go ahead, go ahead.

Theresa Ward (51:17)
Here's the thing I think about, yeah, sorry. I'm so sorry, Jason, I finished your

thought. Obviously this is an exciting conversation for me. I think the thing people forget about empathy is you can have empathy for someone else without agreeing with any of their choices. Empathy, think is a safer place to be. Empathy is kind of only in a lot of cases, it's just an intellectual place where you can go,

Jason Scott Montoya (51:40)
and

Theresa Ward (51:41)
I wouldn't have made that choice to steal those shoes, but I understand I am, my brain can process your story that you stole those shoes. And that's different than, my gosh, now I'm gonna go change my life and be more like you and go steal shoes. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (51:56)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think that's great. think, and that is a really powerful, that's a way that stories, one of the things that I've discovered, I had this parable that he used to tell and he actually did a workshop, and I just discovered that stories have a way of disarming all of the fortresses that we build to protect us from the things on the other side of those insights and revelations. Stories like sneak through.

Theresa Ward (52:21)
Yep.

Jason Scott Montoya (52:22)
And

it's just a powerful way to accomplish what you're describing when we might want to guard ourselves against it for variety of reasons, some positive and some negative, but of which may cause negative consequences.

Theresa Ward (52:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's great. I love that. Stories sneak through.

Jason Scott Montoya (52:39)
Yeah, yeah.

What about the flip side? Systems. What do you think about systems? You said you love systems. How do you think about systems? What are systems to you?

Theresa Ward (52:48)
I guess, you know, it's maybe habits, rituals, things that can show up consistently, guardrails. I think I used to be a lot more obsessed with systems than I am now.

And I think that's our all of our maturity. You kind of as a kid, it's like you do not cross the street. You do not touch the hot stove. You this is when you get on the bus. You have to get this GPA. There are so many externally enforced systems and it gives you this false sense of, I know how to win the world, right? I know how to please authority and like check the boxes. So.

Jason Scott Montoya (53:08)
Hahaha

Hahaha

Theresa Ward (53:28)
Maybe you notice like as we were having that empathy story conversation, I think I got a little like, ooh. And then now that you want to talk about systems, I'm like, meh. The season that I'm in right now is a belief that I just got trained in organizational relationship systems coaching. And some of their principles are that systems are emerging all the time. They are always changing. So.

Yeah, we can set up some habits and some rituals and some guardrails like my workflow system that works for me in a day or in a week or in a month. But it's gotta be open to change, right? It's.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:03)
So when

does a system become tyrannical?

Theresa Ward (54:06)
when you don't, when it doesn't honor the humanity maybe. Yeah, the humanity of whatever makes up the system. So I think that's probably true. I love that. I love that question, Jason.

I'm wondering if it's, you know, if it's our own systems, like when we, when we lose touch with ourselves, again, like losing sight of our own, our own values or like that, that trust in your gut kind of thing. But yeah, when does the system become tyrannical? I think is maybe when there's a really out of sync, you know, power dynamic that doesn't honor the intelligence of the whole, right. Of every component or every voice.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:42)
Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (54:44)
that makes up the system.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:44)
Yeah. Yeah. And maybe a part of that would be pushing people out of the system in an unhealthy way.

Theresa Ward (54:56)
Okay, so, right, to be fair, you know, I think there's systems that we choose to be a part of, and then there's systems that we don't have choice on, you know, whether we're a part of it or not. So I think there's something to be said about like, if you're in a system that isn't working for you anymore, like leave the system, if you can. But if you are responsible for a system where there isn't as much choice,

Jason Scott Montoya (55:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Got it, yeah.

Theresa Ward (55:23)
That's a lot of responsibility.

Jason Scott Montoya (55:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I think of Martin Luther King Jr. just as a great example of like, how do you change a system from the inside out when it's, when it is tyrannical? And he found a way to do it miraculously. it's it's a, but it was, it was, it was very, there was a huge sacrifice. Yeah, there was a huge sacrifice that it required both for him and a lot of people and then a lot of suffering to get there, but.

Theresa Ward (55:38)
Yeah.

and he paid for it with his life.

And yeah, and right, somebody that I was listening to the other day reminded me that he was hugely unpopular at the time of his death, right? He was not, we've sort of made him Santa Claus, right? Like we've kind of made him like, he was a great guy and yeah, I kind of loved him. Yeah, so I think there are,

Jason Scott Montoya (55:59)
Yeah. yeah.

Like looking back we were we are not as antagonistic towards it. Yeah

Theresa Ward (56:16)
in real systems. Now that you know I'm like, yeah, it's habits and it's guardrails and it's structure, it's actually they're really messy. Real systems are really messy, aren't they?

Jason Scott Montoya (56:24)
Yeah, lot of times

there are layers that are invisible to see. Yeah.

Theresa Ward (56:29)
Yeah, yeah.

But at the end of the day, right? I think honoring change is the most important thing, whether we're talking about stories or we're talking about systems. I think it's I'm so. Glad that I've been able to change and to learn from my mistakes and to go back and fall in love with those mistakes and be in a safe place where I can voice them.

Jason Scott Montoya (56:50)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (56:51)
And that is sort of my big message in my life and in my community right now is if you're managing somebody at work and they're a pain and they're not doing their job right or whatever, they can change and you have to give them the opportunity to change. If your family, when you go home for Thanksgiving dinner is constantly being ignorant and voicing a bunch of stuff that you disagree with.

Jason Scott Montoya (57:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (57:17)
They also, like everybody can change and it's never too late. So that's sort of the positionality and the wisdom that I'm trying to bring into the world. That's what consulting and coaching and you my work is all about creating the ground conditions for change so that, you know, people have the opportunity to, like you said, like kind of just keep evolving in this like bigger spiral.

Jason Scott Montoya (57:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what parting words of wisdom do you have for us? Is there something you want to share that you didn't yet get a chance to do? Yeah. Okay. So that covered it.

Theresa Ward (57:48)
can I rewind 15 seconds? Because what I just said, I think is it. Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. It's kind of, I don't know if I have anything more wise than that.

Jason Scott Montoya (57:56)
You put it all out there. So

let's say someone's listening and they say, know what, I wanna hire you, Theresa, to speak at our event, or I wanna work with fiery feather. Who's a good fit and what's the problem that they are having that is a good fit for either of those?

Theresa Ward (58:14)
Well, as far as who's a good fit, I'm industry agnostic. I love working with like big fortune 500 companies. I love working with startups and like nonprofits. And I know that's kind of, that's supposed to be the kiss of death for entrepreneurship, but humans are humans in every system. I really like working. It's very stimulating and energizing for me to connect those dots between big and little companies and all kinds of different industries.

Jason Scott Montoya (58:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (58:44)
problems

or pain points that I that my clients usually have when they bring me in is they're trying to get their team or their company from like this level to the next level, right? In professionalism, in cohesive culture, in communication skills. It's kind of like they know that they need to level up. But who has time as a leader, a manager, a CEO to stop running the business and get every

Jason Scott Montoya (58:57)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Ward (59:13)
everybody, you know, functioning better with different communication skills or get everybody working more on their emotional intelligence or to get everybody more aligned with a strategic plan. So I love being able to not only go in and speak to teams and organizations about these things and these frameworks and these skills and these best practices, but I love also supporting them in kind of like a long tail way and being a champion.

to, I mean, accountability gets a bad rap, but really to hold them accountable to the change that they know they want to see for their individuals. Yeah, did that answer the question?

Jason Scott Montoya (59:46)
Yeah, okay.

I think so. mean, what about speaking? If someone is interested in having you speak at their event or their conference, why would they want you to come and make a Mary Poppins appearance?

Theresa Ward (59:57)
Besides the fact that I'm going to like promise a talking umbrella on stage,

jump into a chalk painting. I'll tell you, I guess the three most popular topics that I'm being asked to speak on lately are navigating change with resilience, whether that's

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:13)
Yeah.

Theresa Ward (1:00:19)
The economy is changing, know, the administration is changing. Folks are dealing with change and unwelcome change can cause us to just like lock up, right? And get frozen, paralyzed and get cranky with one another. And it's completely unproductive. So I've been doing, I've been talking a lot about how to navigate change. I've also been talking a lot about how to help leaders and managers spark the entrepreneurial spirit in their employees, which does not mean get a side hustle and leave your

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Theresa Ward (1:00:48)
job like we were talking about. It means how do I take ownership of what's happening in the workplace and not be a victim of it. Not sort of be a passive consumer of, my boss or my company or, you know, nobody wants to talk to me on Slack and like all of this. It's like, no, no, you have your, your locus of control is bigger than you think. So how can you, get

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:50)
Haha

Yeah.

Yeah.

Theresa Ward (1:01:14)
more junior employees more engaged and taking more ownership. So that's two. And then I think three is like that seasonal strategic planning that I was talking about with, yeah, embracing the winter and the spring and the summer of all of your different projects. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:01:17)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah.

Okay, cool.

Now, and how do people find your, what's your website? How do they, are you on social media? Which ones?

Theresa Ward (1:01:38)
Fieryfeather.com is my website, F-I-E-R-Y Feather, and I am predominantly on LinkedIn. So I'm there as Theresa Ward, as in Marie. And that's usually where I'm sharing a lot of the things that we talked about today. You know, these like little James Clear quotes and videos on seasonal strategic planning. So yeah, hopefully that'll be a helpful resource to your folks.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:01:56)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Theresa, thank you so much for sharing your life with us today.

Theresa Ward (1:02:07)
Jason, this was a really energizing and stimulating conversation and I'm gonna be just riding high for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks so much for the chat.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:02:15)
Alright.

Yeah, you're welcome.