Awarepreneurs Interview - Dr David Gruder

Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On the show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneur. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit that subscribe button and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps this show grow. It helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to doctor David Gruder, and our topic is boosting collaborative accountability in impact organizations.

Let me tell you a little bit about David. Doctor David Gruder is a corporate counsel with 12 award winning, best selling clinical and organizational psychologists. As an executive team orchestrator and culture catalyst, he makes integrity profitable by equipping socially responsible businesses with missing mindsets, skill sets, and procedures to actualize their unique calling in helping humanity's most elevated future emerge. As president of Integrity Culture Systems and director for the Center for Enlightened Self Sovereignty, he provides keynotes, training programs, executive consulting, writing, and media interviews. He also hosts the reimagining humanity's future and your show, and his main website is doctorgruder.com. David, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, Paul. It's a pleasure to be with you.

You've you've done this once or twice before. You're your own podcast host, and you've been a guest many, many times, so I'm thrilled to be here with you. And before we get into this specific topic about collaborative accountability, David, If somebody hears that bio and they're like, that's cool, but I want a little more texture. Who is this guy? What you know, he's been doing some things for a while. What would somebody not know about you and your work based on a one paragraph bio?

Well, they they wouldn't know things like my parents sent me to Woodstock, for example. Not that they knew what they were sending me to, and that's its own really delicious story. They they wouldn't know that I have been basically a futurist my whole life. I didn't know that at the time, but I grew up in and around the New York City area. And at 10 and 11 years old, the New York World's Fair was going on in 1964 and '65, and it sparked in me a massive passion about the future. They wouldn't know about me that my favorite history course as an undergraduate was called history of the future. So, there and they they they might not know that I'm a huge science fiction and fantasy fan.

Nice.

And they also might not know that I'm a recovering musician.

What'd you play?

Well, a lot of instruments out of self defense, but my extensive formal training is in classical and and Broadway and jazz trombone and classical and Broadway voice.

Very cool. Okay. Now I'm really glad I asked the question. Thanks for giving us a little nuance, a little texture, David. So this idea of collaborative accountability, when we were talking, there's there's many ways we could position your work, but I have never heard anybody talk about it this way. And I was thinking about our audience and how much our audience wants to build collaborative culture and collaborative communities, and how sometimes when that's the value I'm thinking of a client of mine, we talk about accountability, but we're not always great in progressive circles at actually creating systems of accountability. Right? So the first question I have for you, before we talk about collaborative accountability, let's back up a little bit and just say, what do you mean by accountability, and why is it important if you're somebody who cares about positive impact and a positive future? Mhmm.

Well, let me start with my one sentence definition of accountability, which we might need to unpack because I've condensed a lot into a single sentence, and we can go from there. So I define accountability as taking responsibility for the impact that the choices I make about how I spend my life energy have on those to whom I've made commitments.

It's a great definition. Can you say that again? That was really helpful.

Sure. Taking responsibility for the impact that the choices I make about how I spend my life energy have on those to whom I've made commitments. Beautiful.

So it's a it's a relational frame. Right? Like, accountability we we can be accountable to ourselves. And the way we oftentimes use that on an entrepreneurial podcast, we're talking about being accountable to those that we go to work with. And we're moving so we're working to move certain needles and then trying to move those needles, whether it's, you know, whichever sustainable development goal we're talking about, you know, water tech or gender equity or helping young people or sustainable agriculture, we're we're we're gonna be doing something on a day to day, week to week basis and then the people around us are gonna be doing things. And if they think I'm gonna do a thing by Friday and I don't do it, that might really affect their next week because they might need the thing that I'm supposed to do. Right? So so it's important in that both we're being as impactful as we can, but it's also important in relational context because oftentimes, our results are wound together with others who are working on the impact goals that we have. Right? Is that is that part of the reason that you would say it's important?

Yes. It is. Because and and you raised something really valuable that's, I think, worth underscoring, which is that there there are basically three dimensions to accountability. What we're focusing on is relationship accountability. You also mentioned a second dimension of accountability, which is self accountability. And a third dimension is collective accountability, accountability to the groups that I'm part of and the countries that I'm part of and the communities that I'm part of. So accountability has three dimensions to it as I see it. And our focus for the sake of socially responsible companies is that kind of relationship accountability.

Beautiful. Okay. So I think I think if I'm a listener, our listeners are smart. I think they got a general idea of what it is and why it's important. Now alright. Collaborative accountability. If I've been doing this work for a really long time, and I've never I know what collaboration is. I know what accountability is, but I've never heard anybody put those two words together.

What do you mean by collaborative accountability?

Right. Well, I'll start by responding with the opposite of it. So there's a lot of accountability abuse that's gone on in the business and nonprofit world where accountability has been misrepresented as coercion and punishment and things like that. So accountability has a bad rap. It's got a bad reputation because it's been used as a shaming and manipulation and control mechanism, and that's not what accountability is. That's that's accountability abuse. So that's starting with the contrast first. So that's that's what it's not.

What accountability is is the cornerstone of what I refer to as impact literacy, which is where I am fully awake about the impacts that the choices I make have on those with whom I've made commitments. So if I make an agreement with someone and I don't follow through on it, it has negative impacts on the people that are impacted by that agreement. And in the end, it doesn't really matter why I didn't follow through at the level at this at the following level. Let's suppose you and I are really good buddies, and we're physically horsing around, and I accidentally step on your foot with 20 pounds of pressure. The amount of pain your foot is going to experience is identical to the amount of pain your foot would experience if I stepped on it with 20 pounds of pressure on purpose. Impact is impact, and accountability is not about shaming. It's a it's a personal and collaborative growth mechanism.

Dude, you're on my foot. Get off. Right?

Yeah. Either way, whether you're mental or not, get off my foot.

Exactly. Exactly. So this idea that we can be accountable collaboratively. Like, what helped you come to that frame? Were there examples of people you saw either doing it well, and you're like, oh oh, more of that, and I wanna teach people that? Or were there some examples if you saw people, oh, they're not doing it so good, and they're dropping a lot of balls, and there's a lot of people who are wasting time because their colleagues aren't getting things done, and there's no accountability measure, and I wanna introduce one. Like, what helped you formulate this idea?

What helped me formulate the idea was the seeing the problem over and over and over again. So what I was seeing in the corporate and nonprofit and socially responsible realms that I that I work in, I was seeing, for example, good intentions being confused with accountability capable commitments. Yeah. And when people treat good intentions as though they're commitments, they're setting themselves up to be disappointed and frustrated and let down and guilty and all kinds of things.

And burnt out. Right?

Yeah. So I was seeing that. I was seeing groups trying to have conversations about elevating best practices where the conversations really weren't about that. They were basically shame and guilt fests that were focused on blaming people for what went wrong rather than looking at how to elevate how they collaborate based on what did go wrong. I've I've seen groups of, you know, like work teams that where conflict emerges or broken agreement has happened, and World War three breaks out rather than a really effective process of people coming together to identify what their unintended roles in the breakdown were without shame or guilt and to recognize what those unintended impacts were and to to make repairs to the extent that repairs can be made and to develop upgraded plans for how to handle future similar situations more effectively than we knew how to do this last time around. So I I've seen all of that. I've seen I've seen the abuse of of performance reviews where the only performance review someone gets is is this annual review that's basically about whether they're going to get a raise or a promotion or fired. And that's not performance reviews that promote elevated growth and effectiveness and accountability.

And I've seen disengagement happen in ways that really tear people up rather than that are collaboratively facilitated, if you will. So I've seen all of those problems, and I did not find step by step by step procedures that turned the good intentions of healthy accountability into actual repeatable processes.

And we're gonna get into some of your ideas on that. Before we do that, David, I I love this idea of being mindful of the difference between good intentions and what actually got done and having that conversation in a healthy, respectful, not attacking or shaming, and also that good intentions don't make successful organizations real world behavior does. Right? So

Exactly.

Before we get into what some of those actionables you know, you have you're you're a master at creating frameworks. I learned this about you. Right? I know you got a framework for that because you got frameworks for everything, Dave. We're gonna get there. Hold on, listener. In my mind, there's probably some organizations and teams that are better suited for a collaborative accountability approach. There's probably some. I was thinking, like, if you're an active duty military in a war zone, you're probably not thinking about collaborative accountability.

You're thinking about, hey. There's one rule, and let's not try to keep people from getting shot. Right? There there are certain scenarios that are probably a better fit than others. Tell us about when is an organization or a team a good fit to lean into collaborative accountability, and when is it not a good idea? This like, why don't you stay with a more traditional approach to accountability until you're in a better position to implement something more collaborative? Does does that question make sense?

It makes huge sense, and I'm loving that you're asking it. So what collaborative accountability is not designed for is crisis situations, where you have a crisis situation. Like, let's say you and I are walking down the street, and we're engrossed in conversation. And me being a typical male monotasker, I am so engrossed in our conversation that I don't realize that I'm about to step off the curb and get hit by an oncoming truck. I don't want you turning to me in that situation and saying to me, David, how do you feel about the fact that you're about to

get hit by a truck?

I want you coercively pulling back me back to the curb, and then we'll talk about it after you've saved my life. Yeah. So crisis situations, war situations, first responder situations, these aren't situations where collaborative accountability is called for. They're situations where hierarchical chain of command, this is what's going to be done, crisis intervention is what's necessary.

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that. So let's say somebody's listening and they're like, okay. That makes sense. We're not in a crisis in my organization. We're very much a values impact driven organization, and and I like this frame of collect of collaborative accountability. How do I do it, David? Alright? Like, we're we're okay if I am really honest about accountability, but not great. And it usually comes from the top, and we wanna be more collaborative, but we don't know how.

Now it's time to pull out that framework, David. Give us some tools.

Sure. Well, where I start with is normalizing or or helping people understand why accountability

has

a bad reputation so that I take the, you know, the shame and the guilt off the the map, off the table. And then I I offer my definition of accountability, which I've already offered, and contrast it with good intentions where where among well intended people, there are still accountability breakdowns because in most settings, accountability is a especially socially responsible businesses. Accountability is an embraced value. It's it's a it's a a an embraced concept, but where they haven't figured out how to translate the good intention of accountability into step by step by step procedures. And by mapping it out that way, they, of course, say to me, oh, well, are there those procedures? So that's where I start.

And you're like, I got a procedure for you. Right? So so Mhmm. See, you give them that top level kind of help them understand what it is and how to start moving in this direction, and you're getting head shakes, and everybody's like, yes. We're in. What's the next step?

The next step is that I provide an overview of what the accountability suite of procedures is. So starting with accountability capable commitments and then moving from there to elevating best practices and then moving from there to repairing implementation breakdowns, agreement breakdowns, and then from moving there into growth oriented performance reviews. So I provide that kind of overview of here's the suite of step by step procedures that are all interconnected. Even though each is freestanding, they're all interconnected. They're part of a lay a greater whole. And then I go from there into the first ingredient because this ingredient is the foundation from which all of the other procedures stem and and what they rely on, which is establishing accountability capable agreements. How do

you do that? Tell us about that. I was like, alright. Wait. Wait. That's part of the secret sauce here. Give us what does that mean? Accountability capable commitments. What what am I if I'm gonna make one of those, what am I doing differently than what might happen in workplaces that haven't thought much about that particular frame?

Well, I start with an analogy that's outside the workplace just to make things really, really simple to understand the nature of accountability capable agreements or commitments. And so where I start is I invite people to imagine that we're all really good friends, and we've decided to rent a big Airbnb together. And we're gonna be there for a little while, and we've gotta figure out who's gonna do what chores. And so in the process of that conversation, I step up and I say, okay. I'll take care of the garbage. Now that sounds really good, and when I you know, because a lot of people don't wanna do that particular task. But the problem is that most people take that as an accountability capable agreement or commitment when all it is is a good intention. Whereas if I say, what I will do is I will empty all of the wastebaskets and all of our common space once a week no later than 10PM every Wednesday night.

I will then take the the big trash bins out to the curb no later than 10:30PM each Wednesday night. Now we've got an accountability capable agreement because we've got an observable behaviors that a fly on the wall can verify those behaviors happened or didn't happen. We have attributes. We have specifications and quality level. And what what it doesn't include, like, I'm not gonna empty the waste baskets in people's individual bedrooms, for example. And we have a time frame, a specific point in time where those observable behaviors are going to occur.

It's 10:31, and the trash isn't down at the end of the driveway. We know we got a problem.

Exactly. So when I contrast, oh, I'll take out the garbage with those specifications, we've got the difference between a good intention and an accountability capable agreement or commitment.

Beautiful. I'm thinking of a business example. Recently, one of my colleagues and a friend said they were talking with a start up, and the start up was saying how they were gonna get the word out about this awesome impact focused thing. And they said, we're gonna go viral on social media. My friend is a very good marketer. Virility is not a marketing strategy. It's the sometimes unintended consequence, a good one. We want it, but it it it's things you do that lead to virality.

And like, are you gonna do a podcast? Are you gonna get on Instagram? Like, and how often are you gonna post them? What's your strategy there? Right? That that at times, we are way over generalized, and we're sort of saying things that might be they they sound like they mean something, but in and of themselves, they're not measurable and they're not achievable because it's just a big, vague word. Virility is a marketing desired outcome, but it's not something that you get in and of itself. You have to do a bunch of things to hopefully get there.

Right. It's an outcome. It's a an intention. And even the wording of that intention is too vague to be useful because everyone can have their own definition about what viral means, what what level of visibility constitutes virality. So

Exactly.

You know, that that's all, you know, vague philosophy. It's it's in the category of what I refer to as true but not useful.

Yes. Yes. And a more new nuanced example in the marketing realm is I've been doing this podcast almost every Tuesday for eight years now, and it's the longest social entrepreneur podcast in the world. It's verified. You can go back and count hundreds and hundreds. Not sure everybody would wanna do that, but you can go see. I've been doing it for a really long time. And for the most part, unless I am on vacation or with family, it happened every Tuesday for almost eight years.

That's a very tangible outcome. Right? So if I said to somebody, I'm gonna help move the needle by doing something that they can see and they can check-in on, is the trash at the end of the driveway? Is the podcast live on Tuesday morning, that is something that we can all have a data point for so we're not fighting about or or confused or hurt or upset about vague generalities that we're interpreting different depending on what that word means to us. Is that part of what you're trying to get to?

That is part of what I'm trying to get to. And what's built into your example is also another crucial aspect of accountability capable agreements, which I refer to as MIDs. M I d is an abbreviation for mutually interdependent deliverables in a specific sequence. So, for example, you go through a process of vetting potential guests. And once you decide that you want a particular guest, there are things that that your guest needs to provide you with in order for you to be able to do your magic.

Not that you would know anything about that having submitted your bio and headshot and all those good things on a form online. Yeah. You wouldn't know anything

about that. No. No. I wouldn't know anything about that from the guest point of view or the or the

Exactly. Yeah. We're gonna get into your podcast a little later. But yeah. So so these are things that we can point to, and I love that, the mid. I love that acronym and what that stands for because you're giving people a way to talk about it. What are our mids for this particular area we wanna move the needle on? Now we're getting into tangible things that everybody can see and can base their oh, you're gonna do that by Tuesday morning? Great. By Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday, I can take what you did and build on it in terms of what I need to do.

And if it's not there, I can say, hey. I thought we had an agreement that was gonna get done Tuesday morning. I was planning to spend Tuesday afternoon doing this thing that built on that. And, you know, can we talk about the fact that this isn't done?

Exactly. Exactly. And so we've got these mutually interdependent deliverables, and they are efficiently sequenced. This thing has to happen before that thing happens. I need to get from you what you need from a guest. I need to then provide to you what you need from a guest so that you can then take the next steps of of crafting the episode. So mutually interdependent deliverables aren't complete until they are sequenced properly, and we know who's handing off what to whom by when.

Let's hold that thought. When we come back, David, I wanna hear more about that, and I also wanna hear about some of the other steps in the process and get a little more into some of the other aspects of your work. Before we do that, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. If you got the chance to interview over 300 of the world's top social entrepreneurs and impact investors, you'd have to be pretty clueless not to learn something. Fortunately, I've been paying attention. Over the years, some clear patterns have emerged. Balancing profit and purpose isn't optional. It's a strategic advantage.

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Welcome back, everybody. We are talking about boosting collaborative accountability and impact organizations with doctor David Gruder. And, David, right before the break, we were talking about this idea of mutually independent deliverables. I love that language. And what would you say, like, once an organization starts to wrap their head around getting specific and how that allows people to build on each other's work, you were talking about sequencing it most effectively. My hunch is you've thought a little bit about what does that look like, right, when a team is like, okay, we're gonna take this collaborative approach to accountability, and we're gonna recognize that our work you know, I need something on Tuesday afternoon that you said you'd finish by Tuesday morning. That that as we start to build those muscles, there's ways in which we can get better at that. What are some of those ways that people can really optimize that kind of interdependencies so they can do more impactful work burning less calories?

Right. Well, first of all, I know it's a new concept for most people. Most people aren't trained in sequencing. And so I start with a demonstration. So when I'm doing this in in a group, I have them imagine a particular process. So depending on the group, it might be developing a website or it might be producing an event. And then I ask the group, what's the first step in that process? And we ultimately the group comes to consensus. Okay.

Here's the first step. So I have someone in the group come up to the front of the room, and they stand at the front of the room representing that first step. And then I say, okay. What's the next step? Once that's done, what has to happen next? And they get into all kinds of confusion, and and the confusion then gives way to clarity, and they identify what the next step is. So I have someone step up to the front of the room to represent that next step, and I just do that through the entire sequence. And in that process, what they end up discovering was, oh my gosh. We got the sequencing wrong. The person who represents this step, they need to actually move their position to further up in the line, earlier up in the in the sequence.

And once once they get the feel for how to how to really dialogue about that in productive ways, then I set them on the task of now now let's create an accountability capable commitment that's relevant to your work team. And once we've got that commitment specified with the with those three attributes, observables, specifications, and time frame, then we're going to sequence that. What has to come first? Who's on point for doing that? By when? What has to come next? Who's on point for doing that by when? Do you see where the handoff happens? Who's who's next? Who's next? Who's next? So that they end up with a tactical implementation plan that is the accountability capable commitment.

Beautiful. So is there somebody that comes to mind, an organization, a team that you think did this really well? Could be a client of yours, could be an organization that you observed that isn't a client of yours, but who what what's what's an example that we can give to our listeners to help them sort of wrap their brains around when this is working, what it looks like in a little more tangible and real world application?

Sure. Well, I've I've done this in a lot of different settings. The the first the first one that comes to mind is when I was on faculty and occupied other roles for a period of time, a board member, cochair faculty for a particular period of time with an entrepreneur development organization that was really focused on pretty much on social entrepreneurship. And they would put on five events a year that their members could attend. They weren't I mean, members could decide how many of those they wanted to attend, but there were five events a year, and each event had a different staff. They the each event had the same head of staff or co heads of staff in that case, and there were people on staff that would participate multiple times. Others were coming in for the first time or had it had been a long time since they had last staffed. So we had to retrain the staff literally in an hour Wow.

In how to function as a high performing team. And they utilized me to train them in these accountability procedures, and they found that in implementing those procedures, two things happened. Number one, they really functioned as a high performing event production team. And secondly, that they were bringing what they learned back to their businesses, and their businesses were benefiting from them too.

Beautiful. So let's widen out a little bit. If anybody's interested, we'll give you contact information for David and his website. Let let's widen out to your work in a little more, yeah, bigger picture perspective, David. See, your your podcast, your show is called Reimagining Humanity's Future and Yours. And you've been thinking you told us you were futurist, right, in your intro. Right? Like, even thinking about humanity and how we're living on this planet and how we live with each other. And as you're thinking about other tools in addition to collaborative accountability, what what if some if you were gonna give somebody your top three tools to help humans live on this planet in a respectful, in a impactful, in a moving towards the future that you'd like to see and I think a lot of listeners.

So let's put collaborative accountability as one of the tools. What would be some of the other tools that you feel like this would be really helpful for a futurist, a humanist, you know, to have in their tool bag that maybe isn't taught in school or isn't as well developed even among people who are really passionate about making the world a better place?

Sure. Well, the for me, the foundational tool is what I refer to as impactful resilience, which is a peculiar blend, or it shouldn't be peculiar, but it's certainly an unusual blend where where we're wetting high level resilience rather than, you know, Band Aids and first aid stuff, but deep, sustainable, durable resilience with having positive impact.

Mhmm.

And so I I have a whole program that's that's a an impactful resilience program. That's another, I think, incredibly important skill set for people to have. And when they the more that skill set is embedded in them, the easier it is for them to actually utilize the collaborative accountability procedures suite. And then the the other has to do with a next a next iteration of leadership, which is leaders as facilitators, leaders as midwives, leaders as as people who know how to help collaboration occur rather than the the old style of do as I say and not as I am. That that's done. That that old leadership style is over. And even the more progressive I I don't mean that politically, but the more leading edge leadership styles like transformational leadership and situational leadership are good pieces, but they're not going far enough. I think what we need today is what I call transcendent leadership, leadership that helps people transcend divisiveness that is based in higher meaning and purpose beyond ego, beyond self absorption, beyond entitlement, and that is facilitative rather than dictatorial.

So listeners, I'll put links in the show notes for the impactful resilience program and some of David's thinking about transcendence leadership and other good resources. We don't have quite enough time to dive into all that, but there's lots of great resources on the site. Go check out the program. So talk to us a little bit. You've been at this a little while now, dear. Right? You're talking about the, the world's fair that was slightly before I was born, and that doesn't happen very often these days. Right? Even thinking about the future and good leadership and organizations really having impact. Like, when you look at your work now, right, we're recording this April 2025.

How is your work different than it was, let's say, five years ago? And the question I have is, what do you think the the forward thinking, you're a futurist. Right? What do you think your work looks like five years from now? How is it different? Mhmm.

Right. Well, I'll answer the second part first because I I think five years from now, what's different is that it's got a lot more traction, and it's becoming basically best practices. It's becoming standard rather than, you know, revolutionary. And what I see related to your question the other part of your question is an outgrowth of the evolution of consumer demand in the marketplace. So back in the fifties and sixties, the marketplace consumer demand was all about buying making people buy products and services. And in the early two thousands, it switched into what's called, not not by my name, but in the marketing world, the experience economy where people were looking for great experiences with the products and services that they were buying. That evolved in the late twenty teens into what the marketing field now calls the transformation economy, which is where people were looking for transformational experiences through the products and services that they were purchasing. And COVID, one of the unexpected, unplanned, positive benefits of the COVID lockdown was that more people than otherwise would have been the case were doing really deep soul searching around higher purpose, higher meaning, higher impact in the world.

And that has launched the next evolution of the of consumer demand from the transformation marketplace into the transcendent marketplace sooner than I think it otherwise would have happened. So I am at the forefront of leading the charge into the transcendent marketplace.

One of the things that that same period has you know, one of the lasting effects of COVID is the number of people who want their work to reflect their values. Like, that's always been there, but there it it it went from a, like, that'd be nice to have, but I like my paycheck, and I like my car, and I like whatever house I'm living in. So just forget that. To people making very significant choices based on their values and working to find an expression of their day to day going to work energy and sync that up with the world they wanna see at a rate we might not have ever seen before as planet Earth or certainly in modern human times. So that's one of the things, you know, I get inbound from young people all over the world, all age people, but especially young people who are really passionate about that. And I think that we haven't seen it to this extent as what we're seeing right now.

That's the essence of the transcendent marketplace and transcendent consumer demand. It's it's a a deep thirst for higher meaning, purpose, and values in what they do in in embodying their unique role in helping an elevated future to emerge.

Yeah. Yeah. It's such an I I don't know if you feel like it. I happen to be an early adapter. I started my business in 02/2008 when there was one big disruption going on in our world, and we're in another period of a lot of disruption. But just because I've been at it for a while, I I get to be in conversation with people who are really looking at big decisions. And it and because I've been at this a while, I know books, and I can make introductions or whatever. But just it just feels like such an honor to be in that one place that people can reach out to and say, Paul, whatever I train for, whatever I was doing, I'm not feeling that sense of values or not to the extent I want.

And there's a shift that wants to happen, and I'm reaching out to you as somebody who's been in these conversations for a long time. It's such an honor. I don't I don't I see you shaking your head. Do you feel that way?

Oh, it's it's a huge honor, and it's the fulfillment of a lifelong dream where I've been wanting this virtually my entire career, but my vision was way ahead of market demand.

I was I was so early. It was ridiculous. But now it's a good thing that I was at earlier. I think you were even earlier than I was. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

It's very gratifying, and I really believe that that where the magic is occur is occurring, it's where where I've seen it occurring, is be is collaboration between the the wise and awake among the baby boomer generation and the wise and awake among the Gen z and Gen a postmillennials.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very dynamic I'm gen x, and we're caught between all of that. But, yes, I see I see what you're talking about. It's a huge they're cultural forces that are that are absolutely immense that my little brain sometimes is trying to figure out and I can't, but I'm in great awe of it. Yes. Mhmm. So speaking of David, as you're thinking about that next generation, the Gen z, the Gen a, the folks in the early part of their journey in working to make a difference, and they're trying to navigate some pretty turbulent times.

There's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of things that want attention in our world, and one human can't do it all. As somebody who's thought a lot about positive impact, what would you suggest to somebody who's on the early end of their career trying to optimize for having the most impact that they can possibly have in their lifetime through their work in this time of a lot of uncertainty? Any suggestions for that person?

Yeah. Yeah. Some some very specific suggestions, which is which include the following. The first is take note of whatever societal spells or personal spells have been holding you back from full expression. And find a method or a process or a mentor who is going to help you free yourself from those things so that you become capable of doing the next thing, which is to fully envision the most elevated future you want for humanity and yourself. With that as the true north, as your your with your best future now fully articulated, inside of that, identify your two pronged purpose in helping that future emerge. And the two prongs are, what is your soul growth mission? What what development do you have to do in order to help that future emerge? And what is your impact mission? What are you called to do in the world to help that best future emerge? When you've got the clarity about the best future that you want and your role in helping it emerge, then you're in a position to identify the capabilities that are the most important, that highest highest leverage capabilities to develop or upgrade in you next on your journey toward fully actualizing your purpose in helping that future emerge. And then from there, ally yourself, connect yourself with initiatives that are best designed to help you amplify your impact in helping that future emerge.

If you follow that sequence, you're going to have an incredibly fulfilling career.

So one thing we didn't talk a lot about, and as we're starting to wind down, David, I wanna hear, like, who hires you? Right? Like, is it organizations? Is it individuals? Is it some of both? If somebody's nodding their head and they're liking what they're hearing, who would be a good fit to reach out to you and say, hey. You know a lot about things that we're struggling with.

Yes. Well, who hires me are people businesses and events that want a keynote speaker. Who hires me is organizations, whether whether b corps or traditional c corps or or nonprofits, five zero one c threes, for example, that are looking to elevate their leadership and their culture. And then who hires me not enough of the time, but who has hired me and I I hope will hire me more in the future than in the past are people in government leadership roles who want to finally step into higher levels of nonpartisan, transpartisan leadership.

Beautiful. David, there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to, and we haven't gotten to it yet. Or there's something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

Sure. Well, there's nothing that we should have covered in the time that we have. I think we've we've really covered a lot of ground. The the takeaway of all of the ones that I could offer is this. The sky is not falling. We are transcending.

David, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do that?

Well, probably the the best way to get ahold of me is through the contact page on my main website, which is doctorgruder.com. That's drgruder.com. And if you wanna schedule a conversation with me, I have a special link for that that I can also offer or unless you wanna put that in the show notes.

It's up to you. So if you wanna put it in the show notes, I'll put it in the show notes. Otherwise, we could just tell people to get ahold of you through your site.

Just just get ahold of me through through my site. That's fine. And I can give you more for your show notes around around humanity's best future as I envision it and how to schedule a what I call a super insights conversation with me and things along those lines.

David, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Paul. I love what you're doing.

So, listeners, let's do what we do. Please go tell your friends about this great work, and let's get the muscles of collaborative accountability built because I'm thinking of a client of mine. Awesome human, loves working collaboratively, and said to me not too long ago, Paul, I'm so frustrated. We all get together and we talk about doing impact work. What David says is, like, great intentions, and then I feel like I'm the only one who actually does anything and everybody else kind of puts their feet up on the table and you know? So such a great gift that David has given us. So please go tell your friends, go share the episode. We'd really appreciate it. I wanna remind you that we love listeners suggested topics and guests.

This actually came this interview came from a wonderful listener who said, Paul, you need to in interview doctor David. So this is not a theory. About 40% of our shows come from you, listeners. So please let me know if you think that somebody be a great fit. Go to the AwarePreneur's website, and on our contact page, we have our guidelines. Take a look if it feels like a fit. Send in your ideas. And lastly, I wanna say thank you so much for listening.

Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.