EPISODE 165 | Jon Rappoport, founder and director of Rapid Fig, and Jennifer King, deputy director at Rapid Fig
We delve into the concept of cultivated communication and its importance in today’s fast-paced world. Our guests explore the idea that great communicators aren’t born but rather developed through strategy and practice. They discuss the need to move beyond simply sharing information and focus on generating receptivity and offering a clear path forward.
The conversation highlights the significance of intentionality, empathy and preparation in communication and emphasizes the importance of understanding your audience’s needs and crafting messages that resonate with them. We also explore the power of interconnectedness of various communication skills and how to navigate high-pressure situations with poise and impact.
- Learn to craft compelling messages that engage, influence and drive action.
- Get practical advice on applying intentional communication frameworks to messaging.
- Hear about generating receptivity and offering a clear way forward in every interaction.
- Identify common pitfalls, such as focusing too much on oneself or not clarifying purpose.
- Discover the power of storytelling to inspire, connect and reinforce priorities.
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Learn more about cultivated communication on the Rapid Fig website.
Transcript
Derek DeWitt: We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about many aspects of modern communications, especially when applied to internal communications, ’cause well, that’s kind of our jam. But here’s something we haven’t talked about, cultivated communication. The reason we haven’t talked about that is because I do not know what that is. However, my two guests today do. They are Jon Rappoport, founder and director of Rapid Fig and Jennifer King, who’s been on this podcast in the past, in other roles, now, deputy director at Rapid Fig. Welcome to the podcast everybody; thanks for coming on.
Jon Rappoport: Thanks for having us, Derek.
Jennifer King: Great to be here, Derek.
Derek DeWitt: And of course, I’d like to thank everybody for listening to this episode of Digital Signage Done Right. Don’t forget, you can subscribe, you can like, and you can follow along with a transcript on the Visix website.
So, right at the top of the Rapid Fig website, it says, “great communicators aren’t born, they’re cultivated”. And you have that, and then you have this language about things being rooted in strategy and grown through practice and harvested for impact, and obviously fig is part of your name. And I kind of feel like you guys are really into plants.
Jon Rappoport: It’s funny you say that, Derek, because I have the opposite of whatever a green thumb is.
Derek DeWitt: A yellow thumb or a brown thumb, I think.
Jon Rappoport: Is that what it is? I don’t know that I’ve ever planted anything. However, the metaphor that we use is really grounded in this notion of growth and cultivation. And that you don’t just start at the top, that where you start is at the roots. The F in fig is all about having a foundation.
Jennifer King: Yeah. And one of the things that I think that when we look at the idea of plants is that it is grounded in nature. And what we’re finding more and more, especially through the lens that I approach the work, is the sense of how can we humanize the workplace more and more? And certainly, that’s what I discovered through my work in theater. And through the work with Rapid Fig, you know, it really is about getting back to our human nature, being able to be more empathetic and connect with one another when we are communicating.
Derek DeWitt: Well, I mean that’s exactly so. We’ve said that many, many times on this podcast and in some of the things we’ve written that communicators have to remember that they are people communicating to people. And this is the essence of it, you know? I know that when we were all, I think we’re all Gen Xers, right?
Jon Rappoport: You bet.
Derek DeWitt: When we were coming up, you know, we got in the workforce in the 80s, and that was not really the attitude for most corporations and businesses out there, no matter how small or big they were. It was very much a, you should be thankful you’ll have a job and a paycheck, shut up. My wife and I have said this to each other many times, we’re so jealous of these younger people today, not just ’cause it doesn’t hurt them to, you know, sit in the same position for six hours, but because they’re coming up in this really interesting environment in which leadership, it has a whole different approach. And something like Rapid Fig is part of that zeitgeist change.
Jon Rappoport: It absolutely is the case, Derek. You know, there’s an interesting challenge there when you think about our Gen X versus the newer generations, is that there are so many different ways now in which they communicate. It used to be that you sat in the boardroom or the office and had that interaction. Now you start to see the bleeding of, first it was email, then it was social media, now it’s things like AI. There’s all these opportunities to communicate.
But those opportunities may not translate to when it’s time to actually stand in front of the boss. To lead a meeting with a team and to have the impact that you wish to have isn’t the same as an email, it isn’t the same as social media. And so, what Jennifer and I talk about at Rapid Fig and work on with our participants and coachees, is intentionality. Jennifer and I both have somewhat of an improvisation background and that’s great and it comes in real handy when it’s time to be agile. But what we do advocate for is not just jumping into the mix without having given some deliberate thought to what it is you wish to accomplish.
Jennifer King: And Derek, as you and I have talked about in the past, so often, no matter what generation it is, we get so focused on ourselves. Ourselves, ourselves, ourselves. And there’s gotta be a flip to what is it that the client is in search of? Our audience, what is it they need, want, what is going on with them? Rather than solely focus on ourselves.
You know, there was one time when I was working with a client who they were saying, you know, I do everything on email, I do everything on email. And I just, you know, I get these emails back and I’ve gotta fire off on this. And I said, well, have you ever thought about applying an intentional communication framework to an email? Well, what does that mean? Are you aware, are you thinking when your blood pressure goes up, only that your blood pressure is going up, or what is on the other side of that email? What is that person going through? What are they really asking for? And parsing out that information and framing your response according to really what that other person might need, in service of what you both might need; the shared interest.
Derek DeWitt: This all dovetails quite nicely with the last couple of episodes we’ve had of this podcast. I spoke with Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix about the latest digital design trends, some of this stuff comes into that. And then I myself just did an episode about intentional communications to combat digital overload, and the idea of using particular ways of communicating, certain strategies and tactics, to not just prevent digital overload on yourself, but to assist your audience. ‘Cause you’re communicating with them in the digital way. Unless you’ve got a bullhorn or you’re, you know, you’re dropping flyers out of an airplane or using carrier pigeons, you’re communicating with everybody in some kind of digital way. And so, what can we do to not overload our audience and still make our messages impactful and meaningful?
Jon Rappoport: Absolutely. And Jennifer hit upon it. There’s a tendency we’re all guilty of it, of talking about ourselves at great length before we speak to that person on the other end, whether it’s the other end of the email or the other end of the boardroom, the other end of the conversation. And by the time it comes time to receive feedback, you’ve said nothing to that person that speaks to their concerns, that speaks to their motivations. And what happens is, whether it’s a short amount of time or often a longer amount of time that someone’s talking about themselves, your audience turns off. You might have the most brilliant things to say and share, but if you’ve lost them at the beginning because they’ve heard your biography before you even get to the point of why you are together and what it is that they might be looking for and you have to offer in return, you have diminished your chances of having impact significantly.
Derek DeWitt: So, is that kind of what this cultivated communication is about?
Jon Rappoport: Yes. So, we call every opportunity to interact with anyone in a business setting a GROW opportunity. And that stands for Generating Receptivity and Offering a Way forward. If all you have to do is share information, package that sucker up into a PDF, send it in an email and you’ve done everyone else and yourself a favor. But if it’s more than information that you need, you need somebody to do something, you’d like to move the ball, you’d like to change the way that things are done, in order to do that, you absolutely need to start by generating receptivity in your audience. And then that’s not enough. If you don’t offer a way forward by the end of that, whether it’s two minutes, 15 minutes, or an hour, again, you’ve just given information, you haven’t helped your audience get to the place that you need them to be.
So, that’s really what cultivated communication is all about. And it starts beneath the ground, the parts that people don’t see before you have the chance to communicate them. What are the roots of the problem that you’re trying to solve? What are the seeds of insight that you have about your audience that you can plant beneath the surface, so that when that tree, when that plant emerges, it’s grounded in something. And so again, a lot of times (I think, especially internally), people don’t necessarily take as seriously the need to prepare. This is really all about preparation. And without preparation you’re leaving a lot to chance.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, I think that’s especially true when it comes to meetings, whether they’re face-to-face or online or a hybrid. How many meetings have we been through where you’re like, this could have been an email? And honestly that email, that didn’t need to be a whole email. I didn’t need complete sentences. You could have stuck that up as a digital signage message and that would’ve done me just fine. You had five things to say, I don’t need subject-verb-object, just throw up the basics and tell me to look at the screen and I’ll take a look at it, and I’ll process it in my own way and in my own time. Don’t make me get up and walk down the hall and or turn on my computer, and now I have to turn on Zoom and wait, and everybody’s there, and then we have to say hello, and then the person spends, you know, 15 minutes of the 30-minute meeting just giving, basically, school bulletins, announcements. And you’re just like, dude, this is a waste of my time.
Jennifer King: And on the other side of that, too, is that when you’re in that meeting where it is important to be one-on-one, and Jon was mentioning agenda, you know, how many times have you heard someone sort of give their pitch, but then they say it over and over and over and over again, multiple ways, where there becomes a time where you just tune out. That is also showing a lack of trust in your audience. And when you are displaying a lack of trust, then trust can’t be built, and a mutual foundation can’t take place.
Derek DeWitt: What does all this look like in practicality? So, let’s take as an example, earlier you said something about an email. An email can be done in a cultivated communication kind of a way. How?
Jon Rappoport: I think the first thing, Derek, is consistent with what we’ve said before is that email, even from the subject line, needs to be about the recipient of that email. The beginning of that email should, again, speak to what it is that you are asking or you are trying to understand the person on the other end of that email wants, before you go into the laundry list, before you go into the bullet points, and before you write a preamble that’s so long that somebody closes the email, deletes it and moves on to the next one. We’re not talking gimmicks here. It’s not about language that grabs, necessarily. But what you do want is you want the head nod. In the case of digital communication, you want the audience to lean into their screen or their laptop because they believe that you’re offering a solution or information that is going to be of value to them.
Derek DeWitt: So, I mean, what is that practically like? So, for example, would it be something like, hey, I know we’ve all been working on project X for so long and, and we’re still behind. Why is that and how can we speed things up? Like something like that at the top of the email?
Jon Rappoport: Yes. And there might be a slight shift to that, Derek, and I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but a lot of times that word “we” is a loaded word. Because you are writing to someone about something and their circumstances and where they fit within the puzzle. And a lot of times “we” is a weakened way to say “you”.
Derek DeWitt: Aaah, that’s true. I think people use it, though, because they’ve been told, you know, we’re all in this together, we should create community, say “we”. And yet, as someone who has been a sullen employee in the past, I could also see myself, depending on my mood, reading that and going, oh yeah, who’s we, Kemosabe? I haven’t seen you do anything except make coffee and have meetings.
Jon Rappoport: Exactly. “We” can be a cop out, in some sense. It’s forced mutuality. When in fact you might have different perspectives and different opinions. There’s “we”, there’s “I”, which, right, is the leading with the ego; here’s what I want, here’s what I see, here’s what I need you to do. You may be surprised, or you may not be, that there is significant power in the word “you”. It’s a demonstration of empathy without having to hit people over the head of it. When you start with the “you” instead of the “I” or, maybe the “we”, I don’t want to say that it’s completely out of bounds or that that rule is sacrosanct, but “we” can be a bit of a, yeah, like I said, a cop out.
Jennifer King: It goes back to intentional communication. I spent years before getting into this work, just firing off emails, just wanting to get it done, just get it off the list. And it literally is taking that pause and doing what we go through. And that is reflecting on who they are, who we are, where we intersect, and what we are about together. And doing that pre-work that is not in an email but is something that you take yourself through a process for. And yeah, in the beginning it can seem like, oh, I’m working on this preparation, it feels like I have to do an exercise. And it really isn’t. It’s just retraining your brain and your process to be able to communicate more effectively, more efficiently and more connectedly with your audience.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, it’s interesting you should say that ’cause I could imagine, first off, a manager or someone who’s HR or whoever’s gotta send stuff out saying like, oh my God, it’s a minefield out there. First, we’re not supposed to say “I”, we’re supposed to say “we”, now I’m supposed to say “you”. Now I’m supposed to completely change the way I think about things, thank you George Orwell. And you know, I could see people getting sort of frustrated. And you know, what’s gonna be the new advice in three years? You should make sure that you’re always upside down when you write an email? Like I could see people kind of going, this all sounds really just kind of modern business gobbledygook. How am I supposed to change the way I think about things? Shouldn’t I just be efficient and go, look, I need you to do this; do it?
Jon Rappoport: You’re touching on another point, Derek, and that’s a great word, because if you don’t come to the point, it does just become static. To touch on your question, if you’ve ever sat with someone at a bar or a restaurant or on the phone, and they talk about themselves for 10 minutes before you can get a word in edgewise. That does happen quite a bit. And again, especially because of this age in which we are asked to post what we are doing, what happened to me today. So, I think it’s ingrained, especially in new generations, there’s a default to talking about oneself. So, I don’t see this so much as a newfangled way that’s going to be replaced by another way to write or to communicate in the future, but rather some muscle memory that needs to be rebuilt, that again, speaks to the “you” before it speaks to the “I”.
Now you used the word “point”. If you don’t get to a point, if you don’t get to the point of why you are writing someone or why you’re speaking to them, again, you’ve missed an opportunity to let them know what it is they need to know. And so, there is a pivot moment. If the, speaking to the “you”, if the seeds of insight are what captures their attention, it doesn’t need to keep going. If you’ve captured that attention, now it’s really about what do I want them to understand as the essential takeaway of this communication. Sometimes that’s nested or it’s not even there and you leave it to chance and hope that the person on the other end of the email or the meeting just intuit what it is that you’re asking for. With cultivated communication, we’re speaking about intentionality, not only in terms of being intentional about who you’re speaking to, but also intentional about what it is you’re asking for. And that doesn’t often come in the preparation. You might be surprised.
Derek DeWitt: Well, I’m not surprised actually. At all. So, through your programs, you guys kind of do five things, basically. Craft, Cultivate, Harness, Facilitate and Navigate, which if we were gonna acronym that, I guess would be CCHFN, but that doesn’t sound very nice. So, let’s talk about these five things. The first one is “craft compelling messages that engage, influence and drive action”, which is, I mean, that’s what we are all about. That’s certainly the entire point of digital signage is not just tell people something, but get them to do something – sign up, scan the QR code, go to the cafeteria for the cheap muffins, whatever.
Jennifer King: Exactly. And that digital signage, you’ve been very successful at that. But imagine we’ve worked with companies that they don’t have a sense that that’s what they have the opportunity to do. And so, this can be a whole world for them that opens up in terms of crafting the message that they wanna get out and how they want it received in order to actualize change.
Jon Rappoport: I think the key word there is craft. We are all the victims of our own expertise and knowledge. And when we bring that to bear, often it’s more than we need to share in order to get the point across, make the sale, whatever it is. And I think that’s the same for digital signage. There could be thousands of messages you wish to share, but ultimately it comes down, forgive me for using another word from the metaphor, but pruning. And again, the pruning happens throughout, rather than in the moment where the words have already escaped your mouth or the words have already been posted or sent via email, and it’s too late to really cut to the chase. And so, that’s what we mean by crafting. Not crafting in the moment per se but actually crafting in advance of that communication opportunity. And then being agile enough in the course of action to prune as well.
Derek DeWitt: See, I love this word agile. I use it a lot. And I think it’s important for organizations of all types in the 21st century to be agile. Because, you know, like for example, all our businesses got shut down for a period of time that was at that moment undetermined, nobody knew how long. And so, some companies just, they just went, bye-bye, you know, they had no agility, they had no plan and so on. So, the second C here is cultivate. And you say you cultivate, or you help people “cultivate executive presence, resilience and agility”. And those things help them lead with confidence. How so?
Jennifer King: I think that for many, there are times where one cannot self-regulate or doesn’t have tools to maximize what I’m gonna call their gifts, I’m gonna talk in a little woo-woo language. So, you know, one of the things that I came up in is as a performer, that’s where my skillset is. All right? So, I’m feeling great being in front of a room. If I have a script. If I have content. And there it is. The other piece of that though is I have, you know, the ability, through years of training to be able to modulate my voice, to apply vocal variety. So, people actually want to listen to me.
I also have an awareness of my body. And so, I know that I’m not repeating gesture language all over the gamut or wandering around in front of people, you know, doing things that can be distracting to your audience. And so, the first thing, you know, is becoming very aware, very intentional about how are you using your voice and body in service of your message. And then finally, you know, this is a huge time of great change, and as you were speaking of, the ability to be agile. And what can happen for so many is rather than becoming agile, we can become frozen, or you know, when the wind blows, we can literally fall over because it just feels too much.
Derek DeWitt: Or we dig in because we think that’s what strength looks like.
Jennifer King: Exactly. And then something comes along and plows us over because we’ve become so rigid. One of the things we really take a look at are what are the tools that you have? Or what is the condition that is inside of you that can be modulated, that can be grown so that you can be strong without being rigid? Just allowing yourself to be able to be flexible when things can seem as though they are not.
Derek DeWitt: Now, since you come from the theater background, obviously storytelling is a big part of that. It’s a big buzzword in communications today, it has been for a number of years, even before COVID. “Harness the power of storytelling to inspire, connect, and reinforce business priorities.” I don’t know that a lot of people out there know what storytelling can entail. They think maybe it’s just like, oh, have a cute mascot, which is great. I mean, it’s a great way to pull people in, but I think it’s maybe not just about connecting with people on a surface, sort of almost a consumerist level, but you know, we are homo narrans, we’re the storytelling animal. Stories are the very foundation, I think, of what it is to be human. And so, if you can tap into that very real thing, I think you got something powerful.
Jon Rappoport: You said it exactly the way we think about it, Derek. It’s the oldest, not just art form, it’s the oldest form of communication there is. So, while we’re not writing on cave walls these days, we are using stories to amplify and supplement that message that we’ve crafted and to make it more felt relatable, memorable to people.
And so, our belief, and what we teach, is that even in the most serious of business moments, there is a place for story. Not necessarily an Aesopian fable or a Shakespearean play, but to utilize story, anecdote, as a way to reinforce that core message, that point we talked about earlier, is something that anyone, no matter how high up in the chain they are, can appreciate. Because when you hear a metaphor about my five-year-old daughter learning to ride a bike, and that’s exactly what this has been for us over the last quarter of business. Eventually, it doesn’t take too long, you let go of the handlebars and the five-year-old, and our work, is often running, but it takes some time, and it takes some courage. That’s not a long story. I didn’t put too much texture or richness into it, but it is a story.
Derek DeWitt: It’s not gonna win a Pulitzer Prize, but that’s not its point, obviously, right? More importantly, it creates images. It creates images and movement. Anybody who’s ever done memory tests and, recall, techniques, memory palaces and associations and narrative; here’s a list of stuff, I’m not gonna remember it, but if I can turn that list of stuff into something visual or something that seems to be telling a story or a narrative, we remember it, right? I heard a joke 35 years ago, I still know that joke today, because it’s a story.
Jennifer King: The other thing that it does is it again humanizes the experience, and it really allows us to relate on a different level because it brings us back to our human selves. And so, we can talk about numbers and all of that, but then if that can somehow be related in a contextual way in terms of a story that we can understand that we’ve been through, that is in our bones, that can really help to create a bond which allows people to move forward together.
Derek DeWitt: And hey, let’s face it, you know, sometimes. We have these meetings or quarterly reports of like, here’s how we’ve been doing financially. Nobody reads it, nobody retains it. But if you can find a way to get the broad strokes across, the stuff that people need to know, I can remember it. Because I always think that the one of the power powerful things about narrative is you should tell what you’re gonna tell them in such a way that they could relate it to someone else themselves.
Jennifer King: That’s a really good point, Derek. That if you’re in a meeting, you should be able to walk out of that meeting, someone asks you about it, and you’ll be able to give it in like 30 seconds what was it about, because it was meaningful to you when you were in there. If people are practiced in the storytelling, they create meaning that is able then to be transferred when you walk out of that meeting to someone else, because you have transferred something memorable into the imagination of someone else.
Derek DeWitt: And this idea of taking the internal and externalizing it into the community, ties in quite nicely with this next thing, “facilitate group interactions with clarity and confidence to foster both collaboration and results”. What?
Jon Rappoport: It’s interesting, because this virtual world that was somewhat foisted upon us back in in 2020, I think, has increased the need for people in business to facilitate interactions where there is not just the feeling of, but it is the reality that, participation is being maximized, that questions are being asked, that people aren’t being pushed in the direction of the facilitator or the leader in the room. Rather, there is facilitative expertise, whether it’s online or in the room, to ensure that there’s not only participation, but that there is movement toward resolution. And, if not total agreement, at least acceptance that this is the way as a group we’re going to go.
There are facilitative strategies and tactics that both Jennifer and I have utilized in our respective worlds throughout the years that lead to better outcomes. So, Derek, when we talk about facilitating group interactions, we are specifically talking about facilitation in business, where an objective needs to be met. You’ve got a lot of cooks in the kitchen and there’s somebody there at the head of the kitchen that makes sure that things move the way they do, no one walks in the in door and the out door at the same time, and that the dishes stay on hands and not broken on the floor.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Though I also think there can be a collaborative element. It isn’t always this top-down, look, my job as the boss or as a boss of your boss is to push my vision upon you, I measure my success by how well you obey (because that’s how I can measure whether or not you internalized what I instructed you to think like). And, instead, there’s almost even this idea of like, well, I’m the boss and I’m coming in saying this is kind of what we decided. And yet I got brains here that I’m talking to. I’m open to suggestions, and if somebody suggests something that is impactful and can help us, then I’m gonna take it on board.
Jon Rappoport: And Derek, we work with power dynamics. And in fact, because a lot of our work, most of our work, is with rising professionals, it’s actually the opposite. When you as a junior executive or a first time leader or a close to being entry level employee are asked to lead the meeting, to share the results and the boss is in the room, that’s another one of those times where not only is agility required, but the savvy to know how to pass the ball, how to keep the ball, how to manage the conversation is a skill. It’s a skill that can be experienced and learned over time.
And our hope is that we can accelerate that learning process with those rising employees by putting them into the laboratory environment, asking them to facilitate meanings in which there is a status or power dynamic. And again, whether that’s virtual or in person, we work with people on both, they have slightly different ways and means to success. But again, how do you manage the stress, the demands and just the people dynamics of those group interactions? Especially when you’re not the boss. Though, if the boss comes in and says, this is how she wants to do things, hard to argue with that.
Jennifer King: Derek, are you also asking about the framework of command and control that so many leaders, or leaders that we know? The flip side though is that, you know, when we’re in meetings, yes, they require a lot of collaboration, but there also needs to be an outcome that is met. So, how do you do that, where you all have to find consensus and move forward? That can also seem impossible. If you can apply some of the work that we’re doing to how to meet an outcome and allow every voice in the room to be heard and valued, that’s a way that, you know, young leaders can come together and find a way forward without needing to control the room so much.
Derek DeWitt: And the last thing that you have listed is that you teach people how to “navigate high stakes moments with poise”, which is a word that is not used enough, “adaptability and impact”. So, this is really about when the temperature rises and it might, sometimes it comes outta nowhere, you need to keep your cool, you need to be able to do things, continue this stuff. It doesn’t mean, oh, now there’s an emergency, so all that modern way of communication that’s now out the window, and I’m just barking orders at you again. That can’t be the goal. That can’t be the outcome.
Jennifer King: You know, where someone just fires off something, you know, or the blood rises, the temperature rises and suddenly they’re seeing red and we’re hearing, you know, yelling or there’s an emotional response that is not intended. And that’s because we go to default. And how do we now start recognizing our default mechanisms, so that we can step back and then be intentional in that moment that for you can feel like crisis? But then what happens is, what you’re doing is if there’s a fire, all you’re doing is throwing gasoline on it. So, how can you be in those situations and be able to be in service of that moment? Even though for you, and it may be real, it may be so high stakes, but how do you get to show up, so that you are able to provide the support to others in those moments, so you can get through that moment together?
Jon Rappoport: And what we really talked about today, as we like to define it is an ecosystem. We’ve kind of gone through the path. You can’t have one without the other. When we talk about crafting the message, that’s great, but if you don’t bring forth the presence and the intentionality, the content doesn’t sing. If you aren’t grounded and able to handle those high-stake moments and have the strategies and the wherewithal to field those questions, fend off those pests, deal with the natural elements that arise, you know they’re going to happen, that you can’t anticipate exactly what they are, it all falls apart.
So, back to the acronym we started with F is foundation, I is intention being intentional, but that G that’s all about grounding. If you don’t have one of those, the other two don’t matter, because something is going to be missing. You know, when it comes down to it, when someone gets intentional about cultivating their message, everything shifts. People stop winging it, they stop making it about themselves, they start growing trust, clarity and they achieve outcomes. And so again, generating receptivity, offering a way forward. We’re not leaving it to chance, we are being deliberate and we’re cultivating leaders who communicate well.
Derek DeWitt: There’s been all this talk recently of life-work balance and it’s often interpreted in terms of, you know, what people’s chairs are like or how often they come into the office and so on. But I would argue that this approach, and these things that you’re talking about, is an abstract part of it, but nonetheless, a very real part of it. Life-work balance is they don’t have to be separate, you know? I mean this is what meditation and many religious leaders will tell you is that this mind, body, spirit split is artificial. It’s a purely intellectual exercise. In fact, it’s all one thing. In many ways.
You could argue, like, you shouldn’t have to be a different person at work because you’re there 40 plus hours a week. So, that’s just schizophrenia. Why can’t they just be the same thing? I don’t wanna talk about work outside of work and I’m not gonna waste time at work talking about, you know, the video game I’ve been playing. But there’s no reason why I can’t integrate my work-self and my home-self into a fluid and flexible whole.
Jennifer King: I think that you are speaking, Derek, to something that is absolutely crucial and that is cultivating the authentic self, wherever you are, in that moment. And what we help people do is to get out of their own way so that they can show up as that. Whether they are at home or they’re in the workplace. You don’t have to change fundamentally who you are if that is strong, if that is rooted. It just gets reflected different in the different places.
Derek DeWitt: I’ve been speaking with Jon Rappoport, he’s the founder and director of Rapid Fig and his deputy director, Jennifer King, all about how we can have cultivated communications in the modern workplace, not just the modern workplace, but the future workplace because I can’t help but think when I hear the things you guys are talking about, that organizations that do this stuff will be stronger and more flexible and more able to handle whatever the future throws at us than those that don’t. And so, really, we’re talking about the future of communications in many ways.
Jon Rappoport: Thank you so much, Derek.
Jennifer King: Thank you, Derek.
Derek DeWitt: Thank you very much. And of course, again, thank you everybody out there for listening. I remind you that there is a transcript of the conversation we just had, with some helpful links, on the Visix website.