Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bytes podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.

So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode 92 with the title Listening, not fixing, and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Greg Wasserman. Greg describes himself as the head of community, partnerships and growth for an AI startup called Castmagic. When I asked Greg to describe his superpower, he said he is a gladwelling superconnector, someone who spreads ideas. Hello, Greg. Welcome to the show.

Pleasure to be here. Great to join in with your audience.

Thanks, Greg. We've chatted a bit on slack via the cast magic community, so I kind of feel like I've known you before we connected today. So absolute pleasure to finally meet you logically, physically, virtually, in person, whatever. So, Greg, reading through the show notes, you pulled together ahead of this, and I put out the title listening, not fixing. So what does that mean to you? Why is that important to you?

I mean, there's so many ways to think about this, and I think we have a fix it culture and if we now take a step back, how did I actually get to this point of a fix it culture? I guess if we get raw, and this is what I love about the show is a year ago I entered a programme for rehab. Truly was not wanting to be here. This is the first time I'm joyfully sharing this message with your community because I say joyfully because it is a message that I think others need to hear. Because I was in a dark place and I got there because we have a fix it culture. I grew up in an amazing hoUsehold. Love my family, unbelievable parents, showed nothing but love. And the problem we have is the lens that we look through is not necessarily the lens that other people are intending us to look through. And no one actually understands that.

So if you're like, everything was done with love, doesn't mean that it can't hurt. And so if we have a fix it culture, the fix it culture is we ourselves are in discomfort when someone shares a problem we want to fix that, we want to solve that. So instead of understanding that a person is just sharing that, they are in a position to feel comfortable with you, and they're like, I'm just sharing this now. We also don't, as a society, say, hey, I want to share something with you. I don't need you to respond. I just want you to listen. Maybe as a society, we need to start doing that as well. So there's a duality to this.

If we can start training people to go, I want you to listen, and the other side to go, what do you need me to do with this information? I feel we will start improving as a society. Then people will actually feel that they're being listened to, they're heard their validation. There's more validity there. So if we take my story, like, I grew up, and a lot of what I went through was this feeling of not being good enough that anytime I said something, it was met with, well, have you thought with this? Whether it was a parent, a teacher, a friend, it was always, how do I give you a solution? Or the other side of that is, it's a me too. Like, oh, I've been through this. And so now the other side doesn't feel validated. They're like, well, now, all of a sudden, the story I'm telling you is one that you are trying to create connection with. But instead of actually creating connection, I'm now catering towards you because you are feeling like you have this connection with me.