Justin Jones-Fosu 0:05
What I didn’t realize was on the other side of that respectful disagreement was a heritage that was holding back because he represented that. And when I chose to respectfully disagree, and I chose to forgive him, not because he asked me, but because I chose, I embrace that heritage. It can’t like and now you embrace it. It came washing over me like a waterfall, and that’s what I now. When people see me, they see me representing, you know, Ghanaian patterns. The logo in our company is a Ghanaian pattern. You know, we’re building, we’re in the process of finishing building a middle school in my dad’s home village. We did a clean water project and got to take people to Ghana once a year. These never would have happened, Blake, had I not respectfully disagree with my dad. Never would have happened. And so when I tell people and say this to your point about peace, you don’t know what’s on the other side of respectful disagreement.

Blake Schofield 1:02
Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment®. Mom to three, USA Today Top 10 Professional Coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand perspectives to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment®.

Blake Schofield 1:37
Welcome to an incredibly powerful episode of The Bridge to Fulfillment®. Today, I am interviewing Justin Jones-Fosu. He is incredibly powerful in his story, in his work, and in what he’s going to share with you today. Justin is a full time dad who happens to be an international speaker, social entrepreneur, critically acclaimed author and a mountain climber who recently conquered one of the famed Seven Summits. His passion for elevation extends beyond trekking, it’s mirrored in the work he does as the CEO of Work. Meaningful. and in his writing and his newly released book, I respectfully disagree, which challenges the reader to focus on building bridges to people, rather than barriers from them. I know I can think of no better time in our society to be having this conversation, to really be talking about, how do we create more joy, more ease, more unity in our relationships and in our society.

Blake Schofield 2:35
In this conversation, we talk about his personal journey, ways to create personal growth, more peace and joy in your life and also in your relationships. I really encourage you to listen in. If you’re driving and you don’t have the opportunity to take notes, no problem, you’ll probably want to come back again and listen to it. He gives some really simple, very practical ways to start to do some of the work that he shares that I think are incredibly powerful. And if you even take just one of these elements and apply it in your life, I think you will see huge positive momentum and benefit. So with that said, here’s Justin.

Blake Schofield 3:11
Justin, welcome to The Bridge to Fulfillment®. I’m really pumped to have you today.

Justin Jones-Fosu 3:16
Thank you, Blake, I am pumped too. I just went to the gym just to get even more pumped up for you.

Blake Schofield 3:21
That’s awesome. This topic we’re going to talk about, I think, is so powerful. And I was really thinking this morning as I was walking into our interview, what a perfect timing it really is, as a society, to be talking about this. So I know we’re going to dive into that, but before we do, I think there’s always an opportunity for the audience to get to know more about who are they listening to and what’s their background. And I can already tell, just from our short interaction that you’re going to bring a ton of energy and fun to the conversation before we even really get to the expertise and the topic. So with that said, I would love for you just to introduce a little bit about yourself, your background, how you ended up being really passionate about what we’re going to talk about today.

Justin Jones-Fosu 4:03
Yeah, well, I love long walks on the beach, horseback riding, joking, but really the background came from me. It really started from my mom, right? It’s the adage, I get it from my mama. And I remember my mom was actually one of the first black female air traffic controllers in the Air Force. And I remember when we were younger, she would take us to events, and all this impacted the journey. And I was like, Mom, like, why are we going to the events that we disagree with, and why are we even going to these things we don’t know a lot about, but my mom shared a story with me as I got older, and I interviewed her, and I was like, Where did all this come from? Because I thought I came up with this beautiful concepts, but it really received or planted from my mom, and she shared that story of being in the Air Force and being stationed in Japan for two years, and there are some soldiers in that same two year time frame that never left base.

Justin Jones-Fosu 4:54
And she’s like, Justin, I don’t want you and your brother to be like that, to never leave your metaphorical home base. And not get to experience the beauty of people and cultures around you. And so the initial seeds are planted in me for my mom. We go to Oktoberfest, Polish festivals, Hispanic heritage as much events, different faith community services. I mean, we go to first people’s powwows. I mean, I mean, we were going to all these things, and it was really my mom planting the seeds of humanity of other people, whether we agreed or disagreed, and so that became kind of like this under girth. And I remember working in corporate for a while for a top financial firm, and I was voluntold to be a part of the Diversity Committee. And you can tell why, because I’m bald. And the interesting thing throughout all of that is I really got passionate and realized that for years I was and a lot of society was doing it wrong.

Justin Jones-Fosu 5:48
It was really shame based. It was really about all the things you should be doing, rather than inspiring, and things that we can do, that everybody wants to bring their full and best selves to work. And it’s about all of us, not just the big three. And so where this came from was doing sessions. And, you know, over 18 years as a business owner, of Work. Meaningful. and of doing a session with a company and and, and actually several sessions, and I would make this statement in our inclusive mindset sessions, is that we can vehemently disagree with someone’s ideology and yet still passionately pursue their humanity. And it was always like this audible gas, like, oh, and then people come up at the end and like, Justin, I love that statement, but how do we do it? Or they would say, what? But what if they believe this? I just can’t respectfully disagree that. And this book, this, not just book, this mission, this movement, for me, was the answer to our participants question of, how do we do it? And we just wanted to create in a relatable way. And so utilizing my background of HR working with Fortune 50 to Fortune, fortunate fourth graders who are spelling their names really well, has allowed me to just create something I felt is relevant, reachable, but also research based to help the everyday person.

Blake Schofield 7:07
I love that so much. Before we were on the podcast, we were talking a little bit about my background and how many different places in the country I’ve lived, which to me, is normal, but I recognize to most people, is very atypical. Most people grow up in the same state, stay within half an hour of wherever they grew up. And to your point, I love what your mom said about staying in home base. That’s most people’s experience. And when you talk about being able to experience different things and different people and different cultures and different belief systems, I think that’s probably one of the greatest things I got out of these moving to different parts of the country and having to start over, you know, in many cases, from scratch, beginning to realize how different life looks based on the environment that you’re in, the belief systems that you are formed with as a little kid. And then the ability to start to challenge are my beliefs accurate?

Justin Jones-Fosu 8:02
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 8:03
The only way to live life. Why does somebody do this this way? That’s very different than the way that I do things. And for me, that was probably one of the most eye opening experiences, right? The first time that I went overseas and went to Europe, was an eye opening experience, of which then I said, I love travel. The first time I picked up from growing up in the South and moved up to Minneapolis. And some of the conversations that I would have with some of the teammates at Target when I worked there were really eye opening, I know. Greatest place that I worked, when I worked in retail and worked in in the corporate space, but some of the conversations were really interesting, things that were very normal to me, that I had been surrounded by my whole life actually might have been really offensive to somebody that I worked with, or they saw completely differently, and I was so blessed to be in an environment where people could talk about that, where I was given opportunity to be given feedback and see it differently.

Blake Schofield 8:54
And so I’m really excited to hear your perspective, because in my journey, I’ve seen how living in different places, experiencing different cultures, having to start over, being in an environment like Target that really was focused on diversity and inclusion. But to be honest, when I got there in 2010 was almost all people from like Chicago or Minnesota. So there wasn’t diversity at all in the corporate office, and they didn’t even know that they weren’t diverse. Because often we don’t. When we grow up and we see things from one standpoint, we often don’t realize how many opportunities we’re missing or how limited our view is. So I’m really excited to hear your perspective on how we can begin to shift and open our perspective and become more inclusive and more accepting and more loving of other people’s perspectives. Because if you don’t have sort of the forced opportunities that maybe you had growing up, or that I ended up choosing by moving to different places, you’re likely really blind to your own blind spots or your own perspectives, the own ways of which you have opportunities to create a better environment for yourself in other people.

Justin Jones-Fosu 10:00
Absolutely Blake. And if, would you allow me to nuance one of your statements a little bit?

Blake Schofield 10:05
Yeah.

Justin Jones-Fosu 10:06
You know, you talked about just not being diverse in Minneapolis and different things. And one of the things that we’ve been really challenging people is to utilize prefixes, and what we mean by that is to talk about what type of diversity. Because I remember in like the 2016 run up to the elections, I remember the newscasts will come on and be like, you know, we just went to Iowa. We’re headed to New Hampshire, but wait till we get to the diverse states. And I remember screaming at the TV like, no, well, those are very diverse. The question is, because I’ve been to both is, what type of diversity are we talking about? And so unintentionally, we have excluded people in talking about diversity and inclusion, because we’ve said, Oh, they’re diverse, but there’s so diverse, but there’s such a range of diversity that exists with racial, ethnic, religious, ability, socioeconomic and all these places. And so yes, there may not have been, I think, a lot of racial and or ethnic, and depending on where more being geographical sounds like with Target or Tar-Jay if you’re, if you’re nasty, sorry, Janet Jackson reference.

Justin Jones-Fosu 11:00
But the interesting thing is that a lot of these places are uniquely formed, and I’m actually a former uh, team leader, and actually a team leader, store team leader for Tar-Jay or Target. And so interesting. It’s kind of kind of talking through that. So I grew up in Michigan. I’m originally from Ghana, so my mom’s from America, my dad’s from Ghana. Makes me African American. You may get that joke later, but the interesting component of this is that I then moved to the east coast and went to school in Baltimore, and then did grad school in DC, and then I moved to Mississippi for seminary, and now I live in Charlotte, and so a nice little mixture of like I did the reverse what you did if somebody didn’t get to the east coast. But I do think that that has helped to shape how I see things as I had to learn and experience people. But I’ve also talked to people who have never moved but they’ve chosen to intentionally engage in conversations and relationships and understanding us different than theirs. And so one of the practical ways to do that actually starts off with our pillar number one, and that is to challenge your perspective.

Justin Jones-Fosu 12:04
And out of our five pillars, this was the last pillar added, but it’s the first pillar of the five pillars. Now that could be 100 pillars, but these are the five that we found in our research that really elevated to the top and challenge your perspective like happens before any disagreement even occurs. Why? It is because it’s doing the things my mom challenged us to do. Well, we call this the circles of grace challenge, where, for me, I found that I was not going beyond my circles of comfort, that I was just hanging around, spending time with, connected to people who look like me, believe like me, thought like me, and I realized I wasn’t leaving home base, and so I was like, strategically, what do I do? And so I created this thing at the time. I called the six month challenge. But we’ve elevated that, this circles of grace challenge. And every six to 12 months, I go to events, experiences, or I engage with people in either which I don’t know a lot about or I disagree with, and I only go asking two questions, what did I learn about the defense experiences in our people, and what did I learn about myself as I experienced them?

Justin Jones-Fosu 13:05
And it’s so profound, all the different things, from going to a mosque to hear chronic scholar talk about the issues of that day, to studying police officers and going on a police ride along in Charlotte, to learning and reading about how I can be a better advocate for women in the workplace, all the way to better understanding the different ethnicities, ethnic groups within my neighborhood. All these things have been profound. But you know what it has helped me to do is it’s helped me to build the muscles of learning and understanding and engaging in difference before I get into these disagreements, so that now I’m used to hearing things that are contrary to what I might believe. And so it’s not going to be a big shock value as I have these types of conversations and and that is something, whether you live in different places or not. That’s something practical that we can do is identify where our circles of grace challenge and our first one could be, so that we can engage and learn about different ideologies and or different people.

Blake Schofield 14:00
I love the simplicity of that and the beauty of the continuous growth and learning as I think about where you’re coming from, what I’ve experienced, how I’ve seen people struggle with this, I think often the biggest thing when you talk about being open to a new perspective or a new way to looking at it is to also recognize our own personal discomfort in things, because I think that’s usually where we aren’t open first, because we think, Oh, I don’t know anyone. I’m uncomfortable. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. And if we stay stuck in that, we miss the gift of all of the beauty of the things that we can learn. One of my mentors, talks about this thing called an open loop, this idea of when you’re presented with an idea, a situation, a circumstance that’s different than what your belief system is or what you expected, our brain will naturally try to close that loop like, oh, well, this is why this happened. Let me research that. Let me see if that’s true. Let me understand.

Justin Jones-Fosu 15:00
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 15:01
And I think that can be one of the biggest barriers to us having the open mind that you’re talking about, right? If I really stop and say, I think there’s really two things that stop us from even getting started in the journey that you’re speaking about. One is that discomfort, and sitting in that discomfort, or believing that discomfort is going to happen, so we don’t want to put ourselves there. And then the second thing is closing the loop, because we don’t actually allow that new information or that new experience to sit for a while, we’re trying to decide whether it’s true or not true, and in doing so, we miss the lessons so often. And it took me a long time to begin to understand the concept of an open loop and the power of what you’re talking about. And I can sit here today telling you that seven eight years ago, my belief system, eight years ago was 90% different than my belief system is today.

Justin Jones-Fosu 15:48
Wow.

Blake Schofield 15:49
That is how drastic my life is. I came to understand the level of conditioning, belief systems, subconscious, triggers, issues that were driving my life, because that’s how I thought the way life was. And in beginning to learn the power of your mind and the power and the ability to change the course and create the life that you want, and understanding how to challenge your belief systems and get uncomfortable, it has enabled me to create so much fulfillment and joy and connection in ways I didn’t even think were possible. And I often think those who struggle with discomfort or struggle and get emotionally triggered by other people, circumstances, things they’re unaware of, it’s because they have a level of discomfort internally with themselves.

Justin Jones-Fosu 16:34
Yeah, I mean, I would agree with you, and first of all, kudos to you for doing the hard work, and what we also call the hard work to continue to grow right? And 90% Wow, that’s that’s a lot of percentage, 10 percentage points. But some people have done 30% right. Some people have done 20 right. Some people have done 100% and there’s a couple things that you mentioned I really want to hit hard on, because the research actually backs this up. Number one is the discomfort that we face. They talk about in what’s called an inverted U theory. And an inverted U it normally talks about performance, but it’s also been applied to learning. That shows that there’s two places where people don’t learn effectively. Number one, when they think they know absolutely nothing, and when they think they know absolutely everything. And those are two places that it’s really hard to get people onto is called the arc, essentially, of learning. And what’s profound is if we just take a small step like we’ve been conditioned to think that we need to know everything, right?

Justin Jones-Fosu 17:33
And that’s why I love Carol Dweck work and mindset. Phenomenal, right? This growth versus fixed based mindset. And in our society, we’ve conditioned people to be fixed based mindset. What is that? Now that’s simply, I only want to look good, especially compared to other people that I look at failure as final, that I don’t never want to be ignorant. But the growth based mindset says I want to learn something new, and failure is just another data point for learning. And if I’m ignorant or don’t know something, it just means I don’t know it yet. But in our society, we’ve conditioned people to be fixed based mindset. I mean, even me. I mean, one of the things that I remember doing, I encourage people to do this thing called a birthday challenge. And a birthday challenge is simply this, Hey, I’m not a big New Year’s resolution person, just because the research bears out. Those aren’t really effective. But I was like, what is more meaningful? Well, my birthday, all right? Your birthday, right? It’s more meaningful to us and a rebirth of of who we can become.

Justin Jones-Fosu 18:26
And so the birthday challenge I did because I wanted to embody this aspect of the growth based mindset. And simply, I do this every birthday. I challenge myself with what I call the birthday challenge, which I do one thing that I’ve never done, but I’ve always thought about doing, or at least would consider doing. And so I remember one year I decided to go skiing, all right? And I went skiing. It’s a little place called Vail, Colorado. I’m sure nobody’s heard of that, but I remember being there and and trust me, I didn’t grow up skiing because I was in my third little 30s. We grew up poor. We didn’t have a lot of money up. And so I remember going and I’m in my little 30s with some of my fraternity brothers, and I’m struggling. I’m up the magic carpet falling over, right? And I’m just like, oh my gosh, what am I doing here? And then these little kids are, like, four or five years old, like, whoosh, whoosh, right, just killing it, down the mountain. And I’m like, so why am I here again? And I started to feel so conscious of my, well, I perceived my inadequacy, and I almost gave up, but I decided, You know what? I realized what I was doing. I was like, Justin, you gotta keep going back. Now, I didn’t keep going back to Vail, because it was very expensive, but in Charlotte, in North Carolina, is a place called Sugar mountain, and I started going back every year, and I got better right now, I’m on an immediate slopes. I only fall down four times, right? So I’m getting better. But guess who I bring with me, Blake? I bring my kids, and they became the kids that are like, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

Justin Jones-Fosu 19:52
And that’s the beauty of learning, instead of operating from the space where we feel like in our discomfort, we feel like we should know it all, because society has said you need to be, you need to know it all. You need to be the fastest, you need to have a tattoo on your left arm. You need to and unless you do that, then we’re criticized, and we’re critical, but what we call encourage people to do is to embody what we call the tortoise principle. And the tortoise principle comes from the tortoise and the hare, and a tortoise and the hare, if you don’t know that fable. It’s simply the tortoise and the hare, were about to race. The hare was like, I’m faster than the tortoise, I’m good. Became overconfident. Jar it out without it’s like, oh, I can rest. Took a nap, and by the time it woke up, the tortoise across the finish line. Now what we normally call the tortoise is we’ve called the tortoise slow and steady wins the race, and I’ve been rallying against that statement for a long time. The tortoise wasn’t slow. Blake, the tortoise was strategic.

Justin Jones-Fosu 20:49
It strategically and steadily moved forward. And in a society that caters to hares, we need more tortoises who are willing to strategically and steadily move forward, even in a discomfort. And so that’s the place, not that you have to be perfect, not you have to know it all, but in the discomfort, lean in. Remember, you didn’t, if you know how to ride a bike, you didn’t always know how to ride a bike. It was uncomfortable. You fell right. If you know how to swim, you didn’t always know how to swim, right. And those are the moments. And we encourage people in those moments of discomfort to remind themselves of areas where they used to be uncomfortable and that they’ve grown more comfortable with the discomfort. That’s the power of moving forward.

Blake Schofield 21:33
I love it. You know, we didn’t really have growth mindset and those things on the agenda to talk about, but there’s no way that you can’t really address that when you’re talking about a divided world, how to have difficult discussions, how to get along and disagree with people respectfully, because ultimately, that is the foundation. Like you said, if you aren’t open minded, or you’re so self conscious about your own discomfort and believing you have to know everything, you miss the opportunities in front of you. You know, as we started this conversation, I said, I can’t think of a better time. We are in an election year. We are in a place where, in so many places, society is divided. And interestingly enough, if you look at the workforce, if you look at where we are going as a society, the jobs our children are going to have don’t even exist yet.

Blake Schofield 22:22
The workforce is rapidly changing with AI, with technology. We have to learn how to adapt and be comfortable with the unknown in ways I think we’ve never as a society. Had to be a tenant of being able to be open minded, be strategic, understand how to have more dialog and more discussions and work together, all of us from different perspectives, I think could not be more important than ever. And so I’m interested to hear your perspective. Let’s just start with, you know, how do we have difficult conversations in a divided world? Because every day we’re faced with that, whether it’s when we’re going to work, whether it’s in, you know, our day to day life, or whether it’s sitting on social media and seeing the back and forth dialog that’s happening. What are your secrets?

Justin Jones-Fosu 23:08
Yeah, wow.

Blake Schofield 23:09
New Board.

Justin Jones-Fosu 23:11
Wow. First and foremost, I want us to realize and I want to, I want to say this to you, I still make mistakes. I while writing the book, I respectfully disagree, I disrespectfully disagree with someone in my writing retreat. So let’s, I want to clear that up so everybody’s like, just use these principles and you’ll be 100%. No, right? It’s about the journey of getting better. Now guess what I do, and I’m more quickly apologize and get back on to the five pillars. So I want to start with the foundation, and then kind of give some practical ways to lean in in a divided world. One, I want to slightly challenge the statement that or add to it. Let me put it this way, that we need to be more open minded. And I’ve really been processing this a lot, because I’ve been hearing people say this often, over and over again, just need to be open minded, more open mind. And I’m like, Yes, that’s true, but it’s not complete to me.

Justin Jones-Fosu 24:02
To me, it’s yes, there’s things that all of us should be more open minded about, but Blake, there’s things that you and I are very close minded on, and we hold them true to our values, the things that we’ve grown into, all these things and what I believe that even when we are closed minded, we should always be open hearted. And this is the distinction that we’re making with respectful disagreement, that it’s not about all holding hands and singing Kumbaya and U and I-T-Y says unity, Queen Latifah. It’s all about how do I humanize someone in the midst of a place where society wants us to dehumanize each other? And how do we do that? Well, one of the practical ways that we can do that first, obviously, is pillar one, of challenging our perspective.

Justin Jones-Fosu 24:45
We move into pillar two, which is being a student. So as you’re having these types of conversations with people, or people are sharing, you ask yourself, all right, how can I be the student? How do I take a posture of learning? And one of those things, and this is so powerful and profound, I had to realize for myself, is that, when I used to struggle with trying to prove my worth, I was losing opportunities to simply be my worth. Now, what does that mean? This sounds like really metaphorical, but when I was trying to prove myself to others, there was less time I could actually hear them, because I’m trying to prove and hey, did you know about this? Did you, did you know about this? Versus being settled, settled in who I am, and a lot of that has come from great therapy. So please, y’all, please consider therapy. I get therapy not because there’s something wrong with me, even though my kids may say there’s something different, but because I want to keep things going right. And as I’ve now approached things, I ask, What can I learn from this person? And so when I’m the student, I approach it from a position of listening and learning rather than lecturing.

Justin Jones-Fosu 25:42
And so I first go into opportunities and moments saying, I wonder what I can learn, and I literally will say that in my brain, what can I learn from this conversation? And so as I’m the student, well, guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to engage in more meaningful conversations. It’s going to lead me to pillar three, which is cultivate your curiosity. And when I’m cultivating curiosity, well, guess what I’m gonna do, Blake, I’m gonna challenge what I call the Double Dutch style of communication. It’s similar to the open loop that you mentioned your mentor said, like, in Double Dutch communication, for those who don’t know Double Dutch, is two ropes like, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. And somebody waiting to jump in, like, trying to jump like, okay, okay, okay. And they jump in, and that’s how we end up communicating, whether we hear a new idea or the thing we try to jump in, because our brains are wired that way. Our brains want to conserve energy for things it thinks it doesn’t know.

Justin Jones-Fosu 26:28
And so when we acknowledge that, we end up challenging what we call not taking the exit on people, right? That’s what my TEDx was on like, we take the exit right before we get to know somebody, our brains goes to second and third hand information the same way that we take this exit every day, Monday through Friday, and then one day we’re supposed to go straight. But what do we do? We take the exit. And so when we cultivate our curiosity, we deeply listen to people. It’s what we call the power of three, and in the power of three, it says, I’m not going to respond, I’m not going to interrupt, I’m not going to engage until they’ve gotten at least into the third level of their conversation. And so if I’m talking to you, Blake, I’m like, Hey, Blake, so you’re telling me about what you believe when you’re this political party, and the things, instead of me saying, Well, let me tell you what I believe, I would say, Blake, well, tell me when you first came to that conclusion, or how’d you come to that understanding. Power two. Well, and you may say something else, awesome, like and so have you always believed this, or has this changed over time? Power three. And so that at least three questions in before I even share, if I choose to share, because I may get into the point, you know what, I actually agree with that, or, you know, like I don’t.

Justin Jones-Fosu 27:36
But oftentimes we’re arguing over things we don’t even know we disagree on, or if we disagree that love when people say I don’t love, I hate diversity, and I love that statement. I love it. I see it all the time, and I’m like, my first question back is, please tell me how you define diversity, not I think that’s stupid. How could you, this is why our society is going bad, but because we’re often arguing over things that we already have different definitions on. And so how do we have more respectful disagreements in a divided world? We first have to realize that there’s a human being right in front of us, and we don’t have to agree with them, but it is our imperative to humanize them, same way we’d want our family members or our children, our grandchildren or our aunts and uncles to also be humanized.

Blake Schofield 28:21
So good. I love the fact that proven principles always show up in different ways, over and over and over again when you talk about your three questions, that’s exactly actually one of the exercises is a leader in Target that I was challenged to do to improve my resilience and adaptability. Right in any circumstance as a leader when you are presenting a topic or, right, seeking that feedback or trying to get people on board, was to not state your opinion or not come back with anything until you had asked two or three questions and gain that feedback. And what a gift that was for me, all the way back when, to begin to understand the value of that, rather than feeling like I had to know everything, or I had to have all of the answers. And so the beauty of what you’re sharing echoes my own personal experience, my own successes, and the ways I’ve seen the power of being able to do this.

Blake Schofield 29:15
And I think people often don’t understand the personal joy and ease that comes with the ability to humanize others, because that means you also humanize yourself. You know, one of the things I’ve often been told is that, you know, I’m probably one of the most compassionate, or have some of the most empathy of friends, family members, etc, that they know, and they’re like, you know, you’re always surrounded by people that are suffering, and you have so much compassion and empathy for people. And I would say that growing up that was really easy for me to have compassion and empathy for people, but not so much compassion and empathy for myself. But when I came to have that compassion and empathy for myself, and my ability to recognize that I didn’t have all the answers and that was okay that I had imposter syndrome, or worried that I wasn’t good enough. Not only was that not okay, but everybody else also has it, that, you know, as a leader, I felt pressure to always be on top of it, to make sure my team was taken care of, to make sure they weren’t overwhelmed, and that that wasn’t my job. My job was to be there as a support, a partner, somebody to move things forward from a thought and a vision standpoint. And so when I gave myself compassion, I could show up more clearly and give others compassion.

Blake Schofield 30:27
And so I think there’s so much beauty in what you’re saying. And there also can be the counterpoint of, can I begin to see myself with that same humanity? Because when you can do both is truly when I see the power and the movement of like so much more ease and joy and momentum in terms of progress for everyone.

Justin Jones-Fosu 30:48
You are spot on, right? I think, I think the points you shared are brilliant, and the gift that others and leaders have given you again, you’ve done the hard work, right, like it, it’s been, it’s evident, and one of the things we discuss in the book is that we call the three selves, right? And they show up in different forms of research. That we often approach these conversations from three different aspects of self, superior self, I’m better than you. I have the facts you don’t. I have a better lived experience. You know? Then the other place that a lot of people approach these conversations is from inferior self, you’re better than me. I don’t have enough. I didn’t go to this type of school. I didn’t have this type of experience. I didn’t have this right? And our challenge, our goal, is to spend more time.

Justin Jones-Fosu 31:30
We’ll never spend 100% of the time, but more time in equal self. And we asked the question of, like, when I asked myself, What would equal self do, Justin? And there’s been times when I’ve operated in both right, where I’ve been in Superior self, and I’m like, I need to listen more, or when I’ve operated from inferior self, and I need, I need to speak up more, which is particularly interesting, like, because we uncovered this whole other aspect that we never planned on focusing on, and it happened because of respectful disagreement. So I submitted my book to my publisher, and I had 75% as three of the four editorial board members who were on board, and there was one holdout that was going to reject my book. Now I didn’t need this person to approve the project, but not only my editor, but I also wanted to ask, Well, why was she going to reject the book? And so I sent her email, and we got on a phone call, and she shared something so powerful. She said, Justin, when I was in my early career, I felt like I couldn’t disagree with others. I felt like I had to always say yes. I felt like I didn’t have a voice, and that disagreement was seen as disrespectful to my superiors, and she was like, I finally found my voice, and your book doesn’t reflect that narrative.

Justin Jones-Fosu 32:52
And it opened up the whole door of this other category that we call disrespectful agreement. And in disrespectful agreement, it happens what we found in two different ways, and it’s on a continuum, but two major ways. One is maybe you were a child and you were told that children should be seen and not heard, or maybe you’re in an underserved group that your voice wasn’t really valued, and so you never learned to value your voice. You may be operating from this place of inferior yourself, right? But on the opposite side, we found that this, this respectful agreement is also true, is that sometimes you might say, you know, Blake, I thought that was a really good idea. And I may talk to your producer like, I don’t Holly Molly, I don’t know why Blake said that was stupid, like, and what the young people might call gaslighting. And so I’m agreeing with you in the moment. Happens a lot in teams, we do a lot of work, and it happens a lot. We’re in the moment, they’re like, Oh, that’s a great idea. Oh, great job, Susan, right. But behind closed doors, they’re like, I think that was stupid. Why did she even say that? And we’re either disrespecting ourselves or disrespecting the other person in agreement.

Justin Jones-Fosu 33:58
And so I think that work, that heart working out. Here are three things that we found to be helpful. There’s many more, but three things that get to be felt helpful. Number one, I mentioned before, therapy, please, please consider it. A lot of this stuff helps us. Since we encounter things like self awareness, my therapist, throughout the years, has helped me uncover these blind spots and things where I found myself inferior based upon past traumas. That’s why I love, I love Oprah’s book with the neuroscientist. The book What Happened to You, and they’re changing the narrative from What’s Wrong with You. I remember as I wrote chapter three about a picture of our past, like I remember crying so much right in that chapter, because I started uncovering my past and what led me to disrespectfully disagree with people in a way that I did. So that’s number one.

Justin Jones-Fosu 34:43
Number two is consistently learning about things, whether audiobooks, other things and areas that you want to grow and learn and under uncovering your unique superpowers and unique ability, as Dan Sullivan calls it. And number three is the work that you did, right? And whether you’re moving physically or geographically, or you’re moving mentally, it’s choosing to ask questions and learn. And maybe you have accountability partner that you’re like, hey, let’s learn about this together. And so you now are going in and learning about unique experiences, whether it’s different abilities, right, or different cultures or different races or or different professions, even in companies, different divisions, right? Could marketing learn a little bit from finance, and from finance learn to build our marketing. Understanding that, those are some of the things that allow us to deal with a little bit of discomfort and move forward towards a better understanding people.

Blake Schofield 35:41
So good, so good. I could not agree anymore. Let me ask you, how would you suggest people could cultivate that curiosity and stay open hearted?

Justin Jones-Fosu 35:52
Yeah, it takes practice. This is not one of those easy fixes where it’s like, oh, just, just cultivate curiosity. It’s starting with what we call our ideological low commitment. In the continuum of ideological commitments, we have low and high commitments, and in the continuum, right? There’s things that we have low commitment. Is Michael Jordan, LeBron, the goat, right? You know, they may have a low commitment, even though there’s one real answer to that question, but there may be a high commitment area as such as women’s reproductive rights or gun control, or religion or other things. Don’t start off with your high commitment area. That’s oftentimes where we go. I was just doing some workshops with Toyota at the headquarters, and one of the things I was in a session, and one of the ladies who’s Jewish, she said, I just can’t respect or disagree with anybody who loves or appreciates Hitler. I just can’t. And I was like, it’s like, Man, I mean, I understand your perspective, you know, and where you’re coming from. I was like, but let’s not start there, right? There’s like 100 other things that we can focus on, and maybe you make it there. Maybe you’re not, I’m that’s not my call.

Justin Jones-Fosu 36:56
But what if we started with the area of either low or medium commitment, where we’re not so tightly coupled to that challenging area. Start there. Be curious there. You might not know a lot about, or you disagree with someone about not the sports team, or about certain types of food or these crash diets, or whatever the thing may be, and you might just start practicing the behaviors of being curious in those low to medium commitment levels, to that ideological commitment. And as you build the muscles and you practice, you get used to it. One of the things that I found the more and more I’ve done this, the more and more I’ve leaned into these types of conversations, and more and more circles of great challenges I’ve taken, the more that I’m comfortable with increasing where I’m getting closer to that high commitment level where I’m now at the place where I’m like, Hey, I’d love to really sit down with the Ku Klux Klan member and better understand how they got there, right? Not trying to change them or challenge them, but just understand because I’ve done some little research. I’ve done some of the background stuff already on my own. I haven’t sat down with anyone, but I’ve done a lot of research. And I’m like, I think, I think I want to do that. Not everybody’s ready for that, nor should you start there. Does it make me better or worse? It just means that I’ve started to do the work that helps there. So when cultivating curiosity, start at a lower, medium commitment level, number one.

Justin Jones-Fosu 38:16
Number two, try to put yourself in positions on where you’re going to learn, right? And maybe it’s slightly unnatural. Maybe you join an employee resource group or business resource group that has nothing to do with you, right? And that’s a great place of being curious and learning and engaging. And the last thing that we say that we encourage people, we call it the three by five beginner allyship model. And you don’t have to be an ally to be able to engage in these things, but this creates what we call that beginner, that foundation of learning, whether you become an ally or not. And it’s to read three books on this topic or area, to talk to three people, to watch three movies, to engage in three YouTube videos or some type of videos, and then to read three journal articles, and that’s the three by five, five things, three things each those areas. And it will help you begin that place of learning.

Justin Jones-Fosu 39:10
And what I’ve seen as I’ve done that, oh my gosh, it’s piqued my curiosity. That’s how I started off with, how do I learn how to be a better advocate for women in the workplace? Is I started off at a three by five, and I started talking to three of my friends were women and asking the questions, right? And started looking at the articles on lean in. I started when you’re watching some of the TEDx’s and the videos, right? I started reading books, Harvard Business Review, women at work, and other things. And then I started reading some of the articles about the research, but trying to pay gap and the differences of pay gap for different women within the different racial and ethnic groups, right? And so like it began a learning that really, oh my gosh, how do I learn more, and how do I lean in to help? So those are ways I think that we can practically be more curious.

Blake Schofield 39:50
Justin, this has been such a fantastic conversation. I am such a big fan of the work that you’re doing and sharing the world. I think I.. well, I know that not just does this create more unity, more growth, but it creates more personal fulfillment and happiness for people that do this work. How can if the audience is equally as excited and passionate about you and the work you’re doing, how can they find you? How can they find your book?

Justin Jones-Fosu 40:17
Yes, whether you’re passionate or not, you can disagree with me, just do it respectfully. It’s at a howtorespectfullydisagree.com and so they can find information about the book, our videos, our quiz that’s coming out, so where people can identify their RDQ or their respectful disagreement quotient and practical ways to get just a little bit better.

Blake Schofield 40:38
Awesome. So with that said, Is there anything I didn’t ask you today that I should have, or anything that’s just on your heart to close this out for today?

Justin Jones-Fosu 40:47
Yeah, I want to close out with the why. Because oftentimes we’re like, oh yeah, we just we should do that better. And you’ve mentioned it a little bit about unity and self fulfillment and personal growth. I’ve also seen something profound. And for me, you don’t know what’s on the other side of respectful disagreement, you don’t know. So what do I mean by that? I’ll tell you in story. 2019, going to go to Ghana to confront my dad because he wasn’t active in my life. And through leadership Charlotte and a really good therapist, they challenged me from going to confront him to going to hear his story, as one of my participants later told me they helped you to move from a confrontation to a conversation. And as I went to go hear his story, I realized I challenged my perspective with therapist leadership, Charlotte cohort, I became a student. I was like, hey dad. Like, I realized I just never heard your story. Would you mind sharing it? I didn’t go, you were wrong to your story. So he shared a story, and I asked more questions. Cultivated my curiosity.

Justin Jones-Fosu 41:55
I didn’t, when I didn’t know what to say, I said, Tell me more. Pillar three, pillar four. He shared how he got there, and I oh my gosh, there’s some of you think I didn’t know. Now, Blake, I still disagreed with the outcome. I wish my dad would have been there for me. I wish he would have fought for me. I wish he would have spent more time with me. But I better understood why he did what he did, even if I disagreed. I sought the gray pillar four and pillar five is agree to respect. And so I, even though I disagreed with it, I fully acknowledged him. And that’s one thing, if you if anyone’s listening to this, one way that we can respectfully disagree with someone, whether you do all the pillars or not, is to leave them fully acknowledged. Now, how do you do that? Right? John Zhao, Stanford professor says she called it thank you because, and thank you because is, you know, Blake, thank you because you didn’t have to have this conversation with me, but you chose to, and I appreciate it.

Justin Jones-Fosu 42:51
Or a different way to phrase that, you know what? Thank you because, Blake, you told me something today that I never heard before. And I’ll say thank you, or like you said three things, and I want to thank you because, like, number two, it really, really piqued my interest. I’m going to dive deeper into that. Like, not once did I just say I agree with you, but in those moments and those phrases, in those moments of sharing, understanding is full acknowledgement, and we often conflate full acknowledgement with full agreement. So if we leave each conversation and we challenge and we’re going to mess up, we’re going to make mistakes, and we go back through the pillars, but challenge ourselves to leave each conversation, or at least leave more conversations, with full acknowledgement, I think that will make for a beautifully fuller world.

Blake Schofield 43:37
I love that. Oprah Winfrey always talks about, right? Most people just really want to be seen, heard and understood. And I think at the heart of it, as humans, we are wired for connection.

Justin Jones-Fosu 43:49
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 43:50
And yet, there’s so much in our world that counteracts that connection, that being seen, that being heard. And so your story, to me, is such a beautiful example of that the power of this work and enabling you to heal, likely, your dad to heal.

Justin Jones-Fosu 44:07
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 44:08
Brings you back to that humanity of, okay, it wasn’t that I, my dad didn’t care or didn’t love me. It was the lens of his experiences and the decisions that he made that made him believe that was the right approach, or made him believe that that was the way that it was. And the power of releasing both of you from that, I think, is so incredible. You know, when I was a young teen, I started studying the reasons that people what regrets people had when they died, and that stayed consistent for generation after generation after generation. Right at the end, it almost always comes down to our relationships, the things we wish we would have done or said that we didn’t. And I truly believe that at the heart of all of it is to be able to lead a life of peace, to a fee, felt, seen, heard, understood, loved and connected. And when we do that, everything else becomes easier.

Justin Jones-Fosu 44:59
I love that Blake. And I, Oh, that word of peace that the end of the story is, that’s what I have. What I didn’t realize was on the other side of that forgiveness, respectful disagreement, was a heritage that was holding back because he represented that. And when I chose to respectfully disagree, and I chose to forgive him, not because he asked me, because I chose, I embraced that heritage. It came like and not even embrace it, it came washing over me like a waterfall. And that’s what I now. Some people see me. They see me representing, you know, Ghanaian patterns. The logo in our company is a Ghanaian pattern. You know, we’re building, we’re in the process of finishing building a middle school in my dad’s home village. All these things. We did a clean water project and got to take people to Ghana once a year, like all these things, they never would have happened. I recently got married, and we did a traditional Ghanaian wedding. These never would have happened, Blake, had I not respectfully disagree with my dad, never would have happened. And so when I tell people and say this to your point about peace, you don’t know what’s on the other side of respectful disagreement.

Blake Schofield 46:14
So powerful. Thank you so much, Justin. And for those of you guys listening, I encourage you go back and listen to this again. There were so many points in this podcast that are simple things you can do to just start to take these steps forward. And I think often this is where we get it wrong. We think that respectfully disagreeing with people or seeking more unity is about other people, and it is, but ultimately, I think it’s about yourself. You know what I’ve come to learn and understand? If you study most of the major religions, they all come back to one premise, which is self love. And when we don’t fully love ourselves, we can’t fully love others. And that’s where we’re talking about, the humanity piece in your ability to see and hear your father, in his journey, it allowed you to forgive him and also love parts of yourself that you had disowned.

Blake Schofield 47:07
And in that loving of yourself fully, you are able to step out in peace, and what massive impact that is having for other people, because you now can own yourself. And I see that over and over and over again, that the gift for yourself, then exponentially grows for everybody else. And so, like I said, I just am really honored to have you here. Thank you so much for sharing your journey and your message in the world. It’s so needed. And I just love how simple that you can make this for everybody, because it really is doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does start with you, and it starts with you making an intentional choice to grow, an intentional choice to be uncomfortable and recognize that you don’t have to know everything, and in that discomfort, you can find that peace and joy for yourself and for others too.

Justin Jones-Fosu 47:57
Yes. Thank You, Blake.

Blake Schofield 47:59
Thank you.