Step Outside Your World and Challenge Your Own Perspective | Between The Builds

Chris Fay: Welcome to Built With Purpose. I am Chris Fay, and this is the show where vision meets execution and leadership leaves a legacy. From design studios to innovation hubs and product lines to skylines, we meet the people building more than great companies. They're creating culture, driving impact, and shaping what's next. These are the stories and strategies behind how the world gets built with purpose. All right, everybody, welcome to Built With Purpose. Today is another episode of Between the Builds. funny, I just sat here. For some reason, every time I say welcome to built with purpose, I tend to like laugh. And I don't really know why. I think it's because maybe I'm excited to kind of get into this or, or, you know, I'm thinking about something right before I start saying something. So anyway, I hope it doesn't mess you all up. But interesting today, I'm recording actually from a hotel room. I've been on the road quite a bit for various conferences and work meetings. And so You know, I've got this beautiful green hippie vibey background here in the back. It's fake sitting in a hotel room recording from my AirPods and from my iPhone, ⁓ which has been pretty, been pretty fun, but hope you'll be flexible with me. You know, had a great conversation last week with Joe Singh, great buddy of mine, knew him from ⁓ YPO and then our families have hung out with one another and he's in the tech space and I'm in the tech space. And so it's really cool for us to spend time. And I was so excited to have him. on the show because he has a truly amazing story. And so we heard a little bit of that last week, you know, immigrated from India, met his wife, started a company. I mean, this guy is the ultimate embodiment of the American dream. know, immigrate here, start a company, create wealth and create a great family and be able to do these amazing things inside of our country. And so it's so cool to see his perspective of his view of our country. We talked a lot about AI. mean, he is a whiz at artificial intelligence and technology. That's what their company does a lot. And so we started talking about AI and what makes AI even more compelling and more useful for all of us in its context. It's the more context that artificial intelligence has, the better value that it can provide to you. And we were talking about this story, told this really emotional story about a friend of his getting killed when he was... when he was working getting hit by a car and he said, you know, I went left and he went right and that was the last time I saw him and he was reflecting back on these experiences and how that shaped him. So I thought today what would be an interesting conversation for us to have is to really lean into this word context. In Chicago last week at a leadership summit. ⁓ And it was really interesting. was riding an Uber with this lady and the Uber driver, know, when they have like the little app comes up that says, you know, no conversations, preferences, I don't ever do anything. Like I feel like if I say no conversations, I feel like that person is gonna judge me or something like that. So I never do that. I'm always like open for conversations. And obviously you get some drivers that are more conversational than others. Well, by God, this lady wanted to talk. I think she had either just been sitting in her car all day. She was sitting there just wanting to talk. And she was obviously from another part of the world, had immigrated here to the United States, had found herself in Chicago. And we started sitting there talking about how we think about our children. She has a daughter that is in ⁓ college. And I was telling her about my boys and starting kind of this college journey. And what was really interesting is we saw the world very differently. Number one, she was in Chicago. I live in South Carolina. She was from another country. I was born in this country. She's part of one sort of culture. I'm part of a different culture. And so even though we saw eye to eye on a number of different scenarios, we actually ⁓ saw things very differently as well. But what's so cool about it is that we could sit there and we could listen and learn from one another without any judgment, without any judgment. And that is honestly one of my favorite things to do. As I was walking through Chicago, I was thinking about just the different experience you have when you live in a large city like that. I live in like a, you know, small to mid-sized city, but nothing like Chicago. And I started thinking back to this conversation with Jote, and I started thinking back to this conversation around AI and ultimately just thinking about leadership. You know, what truly makes us the best leaders, the best versions of ourself, whether we're leaders or individual contributors, what is it? that makes us the best. It's typically as leaders, it's when we can make the very best decisions and create the right strategy and the right direction for the people and teams that we're leading. And so how do you ultimately establish that level of education? It's context. It's context. You think about our own biases. I I grew up in Atlanta, a very diverse culture, moved, went to Clemson. You know, was raised by upper middle class family. You know, I haven't had some of the struggles that other people have had in their life. I was very fortunate to be healthy. I was raised by a healthy set of parents. They taught me to take care of myself. I played sports and athletics growing up. I was fortunate to be in some very positive positions from time to time that actually ended up shaping me to who I am today. Certainly I had challenges, I had struggles along the way, I got in trouble a little bit along the way, ⁓ and had some times that probably weren't as exciting as they could have been. But they're all who made me who I am today. And the one thing that I really love to listen and learn from, I love to listen and learn from other people that have had different experiences. And not judge them for their experiences, but to actually understand where their experiences came from. And to truly understand that their experiences probably actually came from a different lens that I'm seeing my life from. Whether you're Republican or Democrat, whether you're, you know, Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, whether you're a female, whether you're a male, whether you're from the West Coast or whether you're from the East Coast, whether you're from outside of this country or inside of this country, the reality is all of us are so deeply shaped by the environments that we have grown up in. and by the teams and the companies and the people that we surround ourselves. And then we're also wired a particular way. I talked about this in a previous podcast. You can see if you have kids and you look at your children, I have two boys, they're wired completely differently. And the reality is the way that you're wired, combined with the experiences that you've had in your life, pretty much make you who you are. They give you the belief systems that you have. They give you the habits and the values that you have today. And then it's up to you to execute all those habits and values in your life. So what Jode reminded me of and my trip to Chicago reminded me of, and I'm sitting in Atlanta here, you not too far from where I grew up right now. I started thinking about these AI conversations around context. In order for me to be a more powerful leader, in order for me to be a more educated and powerful human to either serve our country, to serve my community to serve the company that I work in, to serve the teams or the groups that I lead, to serve my family. The broader perspective and the more context that I can gain about the world, the better I'm going to be at making the right decisions for those teams and those people and those individuals that I lead. And I just wanna challenge us as we think, how often are we reaching outside of our comfort zone? to gain more context. How often are we going and speaking with people that have completely polarizing views from us, or live in completely different parts of the world, or have completely different perspectives? Oftentimes I feel like we wanna stick with people that think and act just like us. But the reality is when you surround yourself with a bunch of people that are just like you, all it does is it validates your thinking. It validates the way you live your life. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing to surround yourself with people that are like you. We all tend to do that. That's who we hang out with. Those are our friendships. But if we're really trying to develop ourselves as a leader, we need context. We need to get outside of our groups. We need to get outside of the norm and go interact with people and individuals and companies that have different perspectives than we have and understand that their perspectives are not necessarily wrong, but they could be different because of their wiring and their experiences. And it's incumbent upon us, especially as we begin to lead more diversified teams, larger teams that might live in different parts of the country or different parts of the world, we have to have that context in order to lead and to relate to the people that we have. You know, I think all of us today, this is just my personal opinion on politics, and I'm not gonna talk about politics as it relates to anything on this show, but you've got the left and you have the right. My true belief is that most Americans are probably somewhere right in the middle. You you might lean a little bit farther left, you might lean a little bit farther right, but most of us, I truly believe if we really were open and honest with one another, most Americans are typically kind of right in the middle. And you've got the kind of outliers off on the far left and you have outliers out on the far right. But sometimes I'm like, ⁓ I'm not sure I wanna go over there and talk and learn from that individual. or ⁓ no, this person has a different perspective or a different business model than I have. I'm not sure I wanna go over there, because maybe it's gonna put me outside of my comfort zone. And that's the exact opposite of what we need to be thinking about in our lives. We need to put ourselves in positions where we can get outside of our comfort zone and go listen and learn from people that have different perspectives. You don't have to agree with them, but you have to listen and understand their context, where they've come from, and you take that learning. inside of yourself. So my challenge for you this week is this. What is one thing that you can do to maybe expand the context in your life? To go speak with somebody, to read something, to watch a show, have a conversation, to learn something new that might be outside of your comfort zone, maybe outside of your belief system. And I bet you if you'll do that, you're gonna begin to bring more context into your life. It's gonna give you a little bit of a different perspective when interacting with individuals. And also, what if we gave people that have a differing opinion from us a little bit more grace and expected them also to give us a bit of grace? Just because they have a different opinion from us or have come from a different culture or environment or a different upbringing or a different belief system doesn't mean that we should judge them. It just means we should listen, learn, understand, and have that grace. So I'm gonna take my own advice today. I'm gonna go talk to somebody new. I'm gonna ask them about their lives. I'm gonna ask them what experiences they've had that are different than mine. And I'm gonna try and learn one new thing that I can apply to my leadership style and what I do each and every day. And so I think about Jot's example of, know, he went left and I went right and never saw his friend again. And those experiences shaped who he was as leader and what he's done in his life today. But what it did is it gave him context. It gave him context to reflect back on a moment in his life that shaped who he is today. So let's think about this week, how do we expand our context? How do we know a little bit more about more unique things in this world that will help shape us into being a better leader? So with that, I hope you all have an awesome week. We got some really cool episodes coming up. Please reach out to us on the website, on social media, give us any thoughts and ideas. And with that, I hope you all keep building with Purpose. Have a great day. See ya. Okay, thanks for joining me on Built with Purpose. If you have enjoyed today's episode, subscribe, share, and leave us a review. It helps more bold leaders find the show. For resources and show notes, visit our website and connect with me, Chris Faye, on LinkedIn. Until next time, keep building great companies, cultures, and legacies with Purpose.