Welcome!

Below is a lightly edited and polished transcript of Season 1, Episode 1 of the Forging Common Ground podcast, released today.

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Hi everyone. Welcome to the first few seconds ever of the Forging Common Ground podcast. Thanks for coming.

A mentor of mine once said to me that engaging people's listening is a privilege, not a right. And my only goal here today is to make sure that this is worth your time. And we'll see how we do, but that's my one goal.

It feels a little bit strange to be all up in your ears without knowing who you are, and also to have a podcast called Forging Common Ground that's just me talking. I don't think that the podcast is going to always be that way. I think it's gonna change. I'm not sure when. It's really hard for me to imagine that I won't have guests on, because dialogue. But for now I'm experimenting with this format. We'll see how it goes. And really what I want you all to know is that your feedback is going to be the number one factor in determining the direction that this podcast ultimately takes. You can tell for now I'm taking a pretty minimalist approach to this. No intro music, no outro music. And that's really kind of for my own selfish purposes. I just want it to be really easy for me to just sit down, record something, put it up, generate some conversation.

So what happened yesterday…I'm recording this on January 8th, 2026, and just yesterday it hit me that really what's been missing for me in my professional life, and also in my life as someone who feels like I've got a lot to share, is conversation. Since my last full-time job ended in June, I've spent a lot of time by myself. You know, I'll post on LinkedIn. I've got blog that I occasionally post to. I've got a mailing list, but it's all so slow and I don't know. I just, I want to be able to reach folks in this kind of more intimate and human way, and that's why I decided to go ahead and start this pod.

I'm hoping that this format kind of brings things to life in a little bit more of a real way. Again, it's an experiment. We'll see how it goes. But that's why I'm doing it.

So that's kind of the preliminary preliminaries. I do want to also talk about what I envision this pod as ultimately being able to do. So there's a few things. First is to build community around forging common ground. The polarization that we're living in in these times is real. And, the media environment that we're living in also makes it more real by reminding us, telling us how polarized and divided we are. I think maybe we can do something about that together.

I also want to share with you from my own experience forging common ground, first and foremost as a human, and also as a leader…and really in that order. When it's helpful, I'll put a name or a frame to it. I know all kinds of tools and models and frameworks around forging common ground from my career as an interculturalist, as a leader, as a teacher, lots and lots of other things as well. So sometimes things might get a little bit nerdy, but we'll always bring it back to what we can do every single day to forge common ground.

And then finally, personally, I want to grow as a human and I want to grow as a leader and I want to do that in community with you. Yes, I have some expertise, but I personally have to be ever changing and evolving and learning if my life is going to ultimately have any meaning.

So yeah, that's kind of the basics. There's another key point that I want to get at here in this first episode before getting into some more specific content. And that has to do, it's just a fundamental orientation of the pod, which is that in my view, forging common ground starts and ends with me. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is I have to be constantly looking inside myself for the source of what I want to heal in the world. I have to look at the seamy underbelly of my own thoughts. I have to look at the harmful impact of my deeds, whether I intended to be harmful or not. I rarely, I think rarely consciously intend to harm others and yet I end up harming others. And how does that happen? I wanna be always asking that question and chances are I can trace it back to some kind of unconscious thought that was unkind that led to the action, whatever action it is that I took that ended up harming somebody. I want to be able to bring the unconscious into the light, see how my own thoughts and deeds might be undermining the project of forging common ground. I could sit here and pontificate all day long about forging common ground, but if I'm not engaged in doing that hard work, I don't really have any right to be sitting here talking about this stuff. And I want to use these insights to have more of my impact on the world be positive and life-affirming.

Now if you looked closely at the cover art for the pod, which you probably didn't, it's also…the cover art shows up so small on the phone. But if you did, you may have noticed a lotus flower. To me, the lotus has become a powerful symbol for the possibility of transformation. I stole the idea from Buddhism. Lotus ponds, the bodies of water where lotus flowers grow, are disgusting. They're really gross. The flower grows out of the yuckiest yucky muck that you can imagine. And then you have this beautiful, almost ethereal flower that comes to life. And I do want…just an aside, if you've never seen a lotus pond in full bloom, add that to your bucket list. Beijing college campuses in August, to me, is like the ultimate time and place to see lotus ponds. They bloom earlier further south, but anyway, go find a lotus pond in full bloom and just take it in. It's the most amazing thing. To me, this represents what might be possible for humanity, and also for our planet, if we have the courage and the steadfastness to honestly look at the seamy underbelly of what's happening in our own minds — and also the harmful actions that can result from that seamy underbelly.

One more preliminary, and that is power. That's gonna come up again and again on the pod and I think in all of our conversations. And the reason is, power is baked into human existence and it's baked into every single human interaction. And whatever unsavory thoughts that we might be having, and whatever actions we carry out based on those unsavory thoughts, the more power we have, the more harm we can do. The flip side of that is we can also do a lot more good. So we just need to be aware of differential power. And by power, I mean a whole constellation of human phenomena, organizational power, there's unearned advantages, privilege, other forms of power as well. But that's going to be a key theme in the pod.

Well. Okay, so with all that in mind, what I want to take a little bit of a dive into here in this first episode is, I want to start at the beginning of the book that I published back three years ago now, Humanly Possible: A New Model of Leadership for a More Inclusive World. And I want to start with where that book started because it's kind of an example of everything that I have been talking about so far. So I'm just going to read the first little bit here and tie it all in.

Who do you think you are? I say to Liz. Well, I don't actually say it, but I do think it. We're in a meeting to divvy up the tasks of a departing staff member, Katrina. It's a tough meeting. I'm Katrina's boss. Katrina is Liz's boss. Liz is upset. Katrina is leaving. She's told me as much. She feels like she's losing a trusted mentor and friend and hinted that she thinks it's my fault. We dig into the list of tasks.

Some go to Liz, some to another colleague, and some go to me. As my list grows, out of nowhere Liz interjects with a severe tone. We need to be sure to hold you accountable for doing your part. Wait, what did she say? I'm reeling. Suddenly there's all this noise in my brain and I don't know what to do. It's like a bunch of radio stations vying for my attention. Don't you know how hard I tried to take care of Katrina? I thought we were on good terms. Guess not. Why are you focusing on me anyway? The chatter makes it impossible to think straight.

What really jumps out though, what's yelling at me the loudest is this: Who do you think you are, talking to me that way? Do you know who I am?

So yeah, that was a real experience I had in the workplace several years ago. And I go on from there in the intro to kind of talk through power and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the reason I thought I'd highlight it here in the first episode of the Forging Common Ground pod is it encapsulates the themes that I was just talking about. It's something that happened in my mind that threatened to have me carry out harmful action. And I felt very lucky that I was able to interrupt it in the moment. But damn, it was really, really, really, really hard in that moment. Later in the chapter, I detail about what actually ended up happening as a result of all of that.

Why would we not want to know what's going on in our minds, even if it's unpleasant to look at? So.

I'm now gonna start reading again.

If it's true our actions are dictated by mostly unconscious feelings and thoughts, wouldn't we want to understand those feelings and thoughts better? Wouldn't we want to find ways to counter their tendency to rule us? My reaction to Liz is a case in point. At the time, I barely managed not to react externally to the intense noise in my brain. I paused for a bit, said something like, sure, okay. And then we continued the meeting.

Over the coming weeks and months, Liz and I were able to build a relationship of mutual trust, doing impactful work together, all the while doing our best to stay intentional about how we related to each other. That's a sort of happy ending, but much as I want to wish it away, I can't deny what I heard in my mind that day. It was there. It was real. In that moment, that voice told me Liz did not have the right to say what she said. That voice told me I was up on a pedestal. That voice told me I was better than Liz.

Could there be a more toxic thought for a leader to have? And yet if the words and deeds of many leaders I've known over the decades are any indication, this thought or something close to it is shockingly common. In his poem, We Wear the Mask, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, 1896, beautifully captures the human tendency to hide from the truth: “We wear the mask that grins and lies. / It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes. / The debt we pay to human guile. / With torn and bleeding hearts, we smile. / And mouth with myriad subtleties.”

And I can't help but wonder if “subtleties” is supposed to be pronounced “subtle ties” so that it rhymes with lies and eyes, but that's beside the point. Okay, back to me writing.

We need to pull back the mask and reckon with our dark thoughts if there's to be any hope of not being ruled by them. We resist this because of shame for having such awful thoughts, fear of the work it would take to unpack them, or concerns we might end up losing power. But those aren't actual reasons. They're excuses.

Okay, yeah, okay, I'll stop reading there. And again, just hope that kind of conveys the tenor.

Here's a footnote that's kind of hard for me to talk about. I had that experience. Liz and I worked through things. And I wrote about it. And I thought I'd reached a certain level of, I guess, evolution, learning, growth. I don't know. That nothing like that would ever happen again. Boy, was I wrong.

Let's fast forward. So this was...I'm going to say it's, I'm going to say seven or eight years ago. Well, just over a year ago, fast forward now to October, 2024 in my last full-time position. I was dean of a gap year program, a global gap year program. We had about 100 students from about 40 countries and we were traveling the world together to seven global regions. We were in region two. We were in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. I had an experience where I approached a junior colleague of mine, somebody who reported to me, and well, she had a dotted line to somebody else, but anyway, that's kind of a irrelevant organizational detail. Much younger than me, woman, and I came up to her and she was just really, really busy at the moment. And I came up to her and I had a request and I said her name and she, without even looking at me said, “Jason, it's going to have to wait.”

And I freaked out. I mean, not externally, but oh my gosh, all the feelings that I had had when Liz said what she said came back and they were even stronger. And I seriously could not think straight for 30 minutes afterwards. I sat there and I tried breathing and I was just going over and over it in my head. Why is this bothering me so much? Why is this bothering me so much? So…I never really had the chance to work through it. This person and I did go on and have a very trusting, I think mutually trusting relationship throughout the rest of the year. I debated whether or not I wanted to coach her on that. I think maybe I should have provided some coaching just like, you know, I mean, power hierarchies do exist, yada, yada, yada. I ultimately chose not to. A lot of that had to do with the fact that the working conditions in this job for everybody were very, very intense, pressure packed. We were trying to get 100 young people around the world safely. So I chose not to do any coaching, but I did have that experience. And I'm mentioning it to you now just because these, whatever it is that's triggering us, it's powerful. It's really, really powerful. And the reaction was so strong and it took every last little bit of self-discipline that I had not to say anything in the moment.

So yeah, y'all, I'm so in the muck of all of this and I really want your company.

To wit. I've been talking about this being a conversation. So I'd like to hear from you. Have you had any experiences that resemble this in any way? Have you identified triggers for yourself that are really hard to come back from? Have you got any thoughts or comments or advice on this topic more generally? I just really want to hear from you. So please send me your thoughts. I'm just gonna see how it goes with email. The email address is common@jasonpatent.com. And that email address is also in the show notes. So let's see if we can get this conversation going.

So I think I'm gonna just wrap up this first episode right about now. I hope that you have found it to be worth your while. I'll be dropping a few other episodes in here soon. And if you look in the show notes, you'll see a couple of different ways of sending feedback. Ooh, before I forget, please, please, please, please, give me, give me, give the pod a five star rating and tell other folks about it. Spread the word about the pod. Yeah, and follow it. That's the other thing. Five star rating and follow. Those are the two like technical things that you can do that are going to help people find the pod. And also if you follow it, you won't miss an episode. Okay. Thank you again so much. I've had fun. I hope you have too. Bye bye.