Jennifer Selby Long
speaker
698 appearances
14 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Jennifer Selby Long’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And in fact, staying in that mode of venting and complaining about a situation actually feeds the neural networks that don't resolve anything, right? It feeds the neural networks that are more survival-based, right? To keep you in that more survival-based mode. But actually staying in that mode doesn't help you to be a better problem solver, right?
And if you think of politics as a problem to be solved like any other, you really need to get your brain going with every possible strength that it has. The second one is step back and analyze with a certain curiosity and even some empathy. Be curious about it versus frustrated by it. Even if you can only maintain that curiosity for a few minutes as an alternative to your frustration and anger.
And so say, I'm really curious. I wonder why... someone would think that would produce a good result. I wonder why someone would behave in that way. I wonder what's going on with them. I wonder what kind of a situation they're in. I wonder what they've been instructed in.
And continuing to just stay in this curious mode could give you some insights into the interests of these various people in power. And then you need to look at how are your interests aligned with the interests of these people in power. Right. And if you do have interests that are aligned with some of these people in power, that's when you need to find yourself an ally among those other people.
And get that person to become a co-leader with you in whatever it is that you want to happen, whatever change it is that you want to happen. That's not just someone who says they agree with you, but someone who would step up, put some skin in the game, co-lead with you. Someone who would get as much credit as you get for maybe solving the problem that people were in a power struggle over.
And maybe that person will get even more credit I put myself in situations like that. Even though it's not particularly fair, if it does help to break down those power dynamics, having that ally who is really a co-leader is pretty important. Stay focused on the outcome that you want and the interests and needs of the people involved.
That's really the last real ongoing thing in that little process. approach that I've recommended because the interest and the needs of yourself and the others are what drives really just about everyone's behavior. And staying attuned to those becomes pretty vital to lessening the power struggles, right? And to keeping them at bay over the long time. I think we talked a little bit about how
Sometimes very sort of average people seem to excel in these environments that are politically charged. And one of the surprising reasons is there's maybe 25 to 35 percent of the general population that has a natural temperament that's just generally not bothered as much by political issues.
clashes they just aren't they're just they just naturally get very interested in quickly assessing the situation figuring out how to get to the goal and i would imagine those people aren't even listening to this podcast they're not even interested in it and so there are some people who are just they're built in a way that they just have a natural buffer against it so sometimes someone might look very i don't know cold to you if you're bothered by the power struggles that are underway
because they're not particularly bothered by them, that stuff doesn't really trouble them too much. But they seem to do fine and not be troubled by that. In fact, I think I mentioned in our last conversation, Vince, about a client who came in, first time C-suite executive, walked into, and not the senior of C-suite, the next level down. So he walked in
to this brand new role in a different industry. And he found that he was in the middle of a colossal political battle that he had found with Thunderwood. It only annoyed or troubled him to the extent that it triggered him being a little judgmental. And so all we really worked on was keeping that judge at bay and bringing forward his best self so that he could just step back.
empathize with all of the people involved and navigate to a solution that was a win and very much the win that his organization needed in terms of budget in particular for more headcount. His people were grossly overworked and he was able to do that.
And to this day, in that same organization, probably four out of five clients there will periodically sigh and complain to me, oh, wow, it is a densely political environment, but it doesn't faze him at all. He's just naturally built in a way that's not going to work too much. So I think in my tips that I just gave, to some extent, I've dissected the way those people do think and behave.
Yeah, I think it's a great question because it is very much our current situation for many businesses. And I wish the answer were super simple. It's not quite as simple as I wish it were because it does depend a little bit on your situation. In the hybrid work model, are people going into the office to just work on their own work?
If so, I'm not sure you're going to get huge benefit out of that in terms of lessening politics or political alliances because they're not really interacting that much. Nor do I think you're going to get much of the benefit of obviously working on very complex problems together if you're not really there to work together.
The other particular challenge I'll play you with is most of the clients that we work with are distributed not throughout one metropolitan area, but across the globe. People who are lonely at work and don't feel connected. It's a big problem. It's a big problem in a lot of places. It causes a lot of additional problems.
And from my point of view, it feeds notions of politics because there are people who feel connected and people who don't feel connected. So I think that this is one we need to keep observing, assessing and experimenting with. across time. It's a super new way to work when you look at how very many years people work together in person.
And it's really only been the last few where the majority do not work together in person.
It's such a great question. And as you were talking about this experience of you leave, you're starting a business, you see your colleagues get promoted. They're still sitting in their six figure incomes. Oh, believe me, that one resonates with me personally. And it's not a straight line.
When I started this business, which is actually my second business, a few years after it started, we hit the dot-com bust. And the business sank, right? And really struggled. And then again, we got hit in 2008 when the economy collapsed in the United States. And it is so easy to fall into the self-sabotage. The reason, though, is really interesting.
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