James Rhee | How to Lead with Kindness over Ego, Dominance and Control

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:09] So have you ever felt that cutthroat win at all costs mentality celebrated in business today? It leaves you feeling empty instead of fulfilled in chasing status and wealth above all else, are we sacrificing our humanity along the way? And how can we redefine success to prioritize significance over promotion and real human connection over control? So my guest today, James Ray, he proposes a radically more holistic vision of business and life in his new book, Red Helicopter Lead Change with kindness. So James argues that when leaders stay grounded in kindness and intrinsic motivation, they unlock the potential for companies to become true forces for good. It's something I believe deeply as well. His story reveals how embracing empathy over ego and leading with compassion enabled him to turn around the fashion retailer Ashley Stewart, and now he's on this mission to inspire more leaders to follow. In that same vein, together, James and I explore questions like what will it actually take to integrate work and life instead of balancing them? How can we regain a sense of agency and demand accountability from those in power? And what will it take to prepare younger people to bring their whole selves as they navigate the future of work? Let's dive in. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. It seems like so much of the work that you're doing in the world now is, is focusing in some way around the notion of both reimagining success on a personal level, but also on an organizational level, reimagining how we actually support human flourishing. And like, where do those things all meet in the middle? And there's this there's this thread of social responsibility, corporate responsibility, personal responsibility and empathy that seems to weave through all of this. And for you, this this wasn't something that was learned, you know, in a in a class in college. This seems like this was something that's been deeply, personally embedded into you from the earliest days.

James Rhee: [00:02:26] Yeah. I'm a child of two caregivers, a pediatrician and a nurse, both of whom lived through a destructive war, one of whom lost a parent. So the Korean War. So they both saw existential despair as young children, which many children are experiencing all over the world. Um, not just globally, but obviously in the United States too, are poverty rates are horrendous, education system is horrendous. And then they came here and which was another huge existential change. And so I am the son of caregivers, um, of sort of people who were willing and able and sometimes had to change their lives. Um, and it's many generations of actually caregivers on my father's side. So it's both professional caregivers, but also just from the way we were raised, we were scolded when we didn't take care of people. It just was. And there was a deep responsibility to other people, to a common humanity. And my parents were in some ways were like the opposite of the quintessential, like, Asian helicopter parent. Um, they let me be. They let me create and live the life that I wanted to live. That said, the one constraint was that when I was arrogant, braggadocious or, um, really hurt other people's agency or really like hurt people while accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish, I was they came down pretty hard on me. So yeah, I was raised that way.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:00] What is that? Are there any particular memories, especially early on when you sort of said, uh, you know, I'm driven to go do this thing or I'm capable of doing this thing and like, it's going to help me on an on an ego level, um, feel that thing that I want to feel. And you remember your parents sort of saying, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works.

James Rhee: [00:04:18] Just almost every day and like, like little things like on the sports field, like after, like hitting a home run or slamming a tennis ace, like any sort of unnecessarily exuberant celebration. I got an earful for it. And they did not. They did not praise me. I mean, I wrote it in the book. I mean, there was one time my first academic achievement, quote, achievement was that I got into the fourth grade Gifted and Talented program in public school, Long Island. It was one of the first times that the education system did that. It was like an experiment back then, and my dad didn't congratulate me. He smiled at me and he sort of gave me a knowing look, but there was not a lot of verbal. Praise for his praise, which he didn't do a whole lot. My father like, it was just sort of looks. He didn't like to articulate praise, but when he did articulate praise, it was when I did good deeds for other people and for a broader society. And that's when he would say things. So I had a very, you know, different experience than I think a lot of, um, when I listened to like, sort of like the, the metaphoric Asian American experience growing up about what parents rewarded and what they didn't reward, my experience was exactly backwards. And a lot of ways, my life these days, it's about changing the vector of a lot of things, actually. Right. And sort of showing that if you change the vector, but then you balance out the opposing vector, things still balance.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:55] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:56] I mean, it also, you know, it really does tie in to a certain extent to how we imagine success, how we define success in the context of both personal life, you know, business, how we contribute to the world, but also just as an individual in society. And I feel like so many of us have been dropped back into that questioning over the last five years. As you know, we feel like the ground has been ripped out from beneath us. We don't know what's real and what's not real, what's right or what's not right. And so many of the things that we sort of assumed were just the way things are, we're questioning them, and we're realizing that a lot of the things that we believed and maybe built an entire life and career around, um, they didn't make us feel the way we want to feel, um, or contribute, you know, in the way that we want to contribute. And then the question becomes, well, then what what what does work for me, for the world, for the organization I'm contributing to, you know, like, and when you look at that, you know, it seems like a lot of what you've been grappling with and also sharing around and thinking about is this notion of success, how we define it, how we have defined it, and then how we might think about redefining it.

James Rhee: [00:07:08] Yeah, I think in fairness to a lot of people, and particularly I'm spending a lot of time with young people as well, in fairness to a lot of people, there's really good grounds and cognitive reasons why people are lurching for short term success these days. Right? That they, they, they're grabbing it's survival instinct and that there's a certain amount of like philosophical, biblical level despair. And that's what animals do when you don't have faith in a long term system or long term longevity, you define success in a really short term way, and you want instant gratification. We've got a bunch of tech companies very willing to sort of profit off of that emotional motivation, and it's the hamster wheel. And so I it's very understandable. And I think the reaction, instead of being disappointed with people, I empathize with a lot of people. It's really hard to sort of extract yourself from that. And so a lot of the things I'm doing, I don't think a lot of them are particularly original. It's a lot of this is, um, restatement communication of some really pretty classical philosophies. Um, maybe the originality is that it's bridging multiple cultures because of the way I've grown up. I've grown up in a lot of different cultures. So success classically has always been a civically minded person who creates broad success for many.

James Rhee: [00:08:34] And that during the course of and that how you did it was as important as what you did. So if you look at the Greeks and like what leadership is there, and even in sort of ancient Asian philosophies, it was someone that created a stadium for other people, where leadership was actually quite quiet and that success was not noisy, it wasn't ostentatious. Um, but that in the end of the day, you were very comfortable in your own skin, that what you did was intrinsically motivated, that you created value, and that toward the end of your life or during certain unexpected moments, people would recognize that success without you beckoning it to come. And that's how I view success, is that it's intrinsically motivated. Um, it's why I taught high school after graduating college for 12 grand a year. It's why I did what I did at Ashley Stewart, when most of the world thought I was nuts and I was being made fun of. And I just was like, your definition of success is different than mine, and you don't have to have the same definition of my success for you. But like what we would tell our children growing up like, please don't yuck my yum. Mm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:43] Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting as you're describing that, you know, you think about, you know, ancient Greek culture. Um, I was very recently revisiting, I think, the 1953 classic movie Julius Caesar, um, you know, Marlon Brando starring Mark Antony. And, you know, at the end they, they, they get together and they take Caesar's life, and then they go up on the pulpit and, you know, Brutus says, like, Caesar was an. Vicious man. And this is why we took him. Because he was ambitious. And then. And then the classic line. Yeah. Like Marc Anthony comes up and says, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. And then he goes on to say like, well, he was ambitious. And then he lists out all the things he was ambitious for. And these were all of the the civic things that he created for culture, for society, for. And he's listing them off. And at the end he's like, I have in my hand, you know, like the Caesar's will, but you don't want to read that, because Caesar was an ambitious man, and that's not the man that you and then, you know, like so it's a fascinating thing to think about, you know, like we do have this history of being, civic mindedness, of being empathetic, of really looking not just at ourselves, but like more expansively at culture when we think about success. But as you described, you know, when you when you go and then come out and then decide to teach high school and then you decide to go into Ashley Stewart in effectively a bankruptcy, like in a rescue situation. And all these people around you are looking at you with raised eyebrows. You know, to me, the raised eyebrows are coming from the place where people assume that's not what someone like you at this moment in life, in your career does. You know, like, this is so the I feel like in the last generation or two, the success definition has really morphed to become much more self-centered. Um, and not necessarily because it's tied to crisis, but just because it's become part of the culture.

James Rhee: [00:11:38] Yeah. I mean, look who we're celebrating. Its short form clips, you know, it's, um, it's the histrionics. It's easier to tell a story of power, of, like, real fame and like that one that sells. But if you think about the medium itself to tell a longitudinally patient story of an existence, I think most really good success takes a long time to play out. It's like It's a Wonderful Life. At the end of the movie, you sit through two, 2.5 hours of things and then at the very end. Success. Right, but it takes 2.5 hours and then a near-suicide for that to play out. And people don't have the patience for it anymore, and it's to our detriment. I think the good news for all, for Jonathan, for all your listeners, is that I've been in dialogue with lots of people from many different cultures, companies, ethnicities, I think deep down, which is why I wrote the book the way I wrote it. Intuitively, people know what leadership is and successes they do, and that's a that's at a different level of understanding that's not learned. It's it's I would like it's humanity. It's the Buddhists would say it's even beyond wisdom. We do and that's, that's we just need it's a gentle reminder of people and saying to people, you're all right. You know what it really is? And that's that's I think we need more of that these days.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:12] Yeah. So agree. You mentioned that you're doing a lot of work with younger adults these days. Um, it's interesting. I was recently looking at actually the report that came out from McKinsey looking at Gen Z, the, the, the quote Zoomers. Um, and they were the only age group that considers meaning as a top two reason to take, to keep or to quit a job. So it seems like there also is a generational reclamation of these things that you say, like we've all known deep down really matter. But the rising generation right now is saying, no, these actually, like, we really know this, but it's not enough to know it. We need to embody it and live it, and we need to claim it in the way that we step into the world. Is that what you're saying?

James Rhee: [00:13:56] It is what I'm seeing. It's I'm seeing a fair bit of, uh, kind of two sides of the barbell behavior from younger people. And so for everyone listening, like, I'm spending a lot of time a third of my time in the classroom right at Howard, MIT, Duke, and then informally at a lot of other classrooms. So on the one hand, you have a lot of despair, actually, um, don't want to live in this country. 100% of my Howard students this year wanted to move home and just leave. And they said that they were sort of dying a slow death in this country. They felt it. Us is not the only country, right? I'm spending a fair bit of time studying like Korea where populations are declining. Right. It's so on the other hand, though, it is, I think, FOMO. I don't love acronyms. I think FOMO is too simplistic a, um, explanation as to what's going on, because it's sort of tied into the lying flat movement in China is that people in a very Whitman Emersonian sort of way are lying down and saying, you know, what am I doing right now? I don't think it's cavalier. I don't see the young people saying, we don't want to work, we're just going to go party. And that's not what I'm hearing. They're thinking, why should I be with people where one, I'm going to sacrifice or curtail some of my agency in exchange for what? What's the consideration? I want to know, like, I don't want to work for you for 80 hours a week and then have you fire me in 18 months and outsource me.

James Rhee: [00:15:35] Mentorship is sort of dead. Apprenticeship is sort of dead. What am I getting in return? Those are the type of questions that I think they're very thoughtful questions that they're asking. And, um, and then I, of course nudge them and say, you know, going to work physically is also sometimes a good thing, too, like that, that sort of, um, that feeling of being with other people neurologically is very important. So it's two things, I think that the younger people are actually quite thoughtful. A much more thoughtful than I was when I was their age, where I was sort of going on a path. And, you know, it took me a long time to realize that, oh, I don't want to live a simulation. I don't want to be an algorithm. I own my life like, and I don't want it to be a zero or a one. I'm a two and I'm going to create the life I want, and I'm going to help others create the lives that they want. I think that type of thinking, particularly given where we are with zeros and ones, speaking of zeros and ones, I am surprised at how many adults are actually on the groupthink bandwagon and just sort of saying, oh, I kind of, I'm willing to not be a two. I want to be a zero or a one. I think the younger people are actually much more thoughtful about it these days.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:50] Yeah, it's it's so interesting. And I completely agree. You know, I'm seeing that in conversations that I'm having. And, you know, one of the things that you speak and you write about is this notion also of integration, this notion of, well, you know, maybe it's okay, maybe it's actually even a bit of a personal mandate to not have to bifurcate myself or live as three different people in three different modes and three different parts of life, but that the notion of integrating, bringing all parts of yourself to the table and all parts of life is actually something to be explored and celebrated, rather than living in a state of disintegration, which I think so many of us have been for so long.

James Rhee: [00:17:32] Yeah, I think this concept of oneness is, um, again, it's not an original concept that I'm writing about. It's a pretty classical concept of living, you know, a whole life I've for the life of me, maybe because I'm naive, but I remember taking personality tests during my finance days and they would give me results and they would say this in a bad way. They would say, we've never met anyone whose personality results are the same at work and not work. And I would say, isn't that a good thing? Like, don't you want that that, you know, it's I'm complicated enough. Like, I can't put on 2 or 3 different lives at the same time. I can't keep track. And I've never sort of I've always been the same person, like, I just in every aspect of my life. And I think it's exhausting otherwise. And this was even before social media. Right now. Take those existences and multiply them with your personal social. And it's it's exponential. Now some people have like 9 to 12 identities now. And that's just it creates dissonance. It's not good for you. Um, so yeah. Like and that's why I in the book and then on the, there's a lot of music, the way I convey the thought of this is through music. It's very difficult to compose art or a piece of music that's not consonant like, it has to be structurally consonant. And so when I think about work life or personal life, it's hard to have a consonant life when your work melody and your life melody are that disharmonious, right? It it creates that type of dissonance. And so that's what I sort of nudge people. I'm like, think about the music of your entire existence. I'm not saying your work melody and your home melody have to be exactly the same, but you probably want to sing two songs that are, when you merge them together, sound pretty good to one another. Mhm. Yeah. I think for many of us, you know, we, we struggle with that, particularly with technology creeping into our house where your work, your work persona is now in your house.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:41] Mhm. Yeah I think that's something we're definitely all kind of navigating. Um but it also brings up the topic of this word that have really mixed feelings about which is balance. And again this is something you write about and you speak about this notion of the role of balance in work and life and, and for so many years I, you know, I heard the phrase, you know, work life balance. And to me, maybe it's because I look at work and life differently, much more aligned with the way that you do. I, you know, when I, when I see the word balance, you know, like what I assume is you've got two opposing things and the work here is to balance them against each other. Yeah. And I just, I reject the fundamental assumption there, which is that this thing called life on one side and this thing called work on the other side, are these two opposing things that you actually have to balance, you know, and it really goes back to this notion of integration, you know, like, what if what if actually they could be harmonious and yeah, um, really just support each other in a way where, you know, the, the aspiration was more blend and harmony rather than sort of like opposing forces in balance. I'm curious what your take is on that. Yeah, I.

James Rhee: [00:20:51] Agree with that, Jonathan. I think that it goes to the earlier point about me saying like, I'm enough, like handling and any of us handling ourselves is enough work that balance, that inner work of balancing your better inclinations and your worse inclinations. We all have them like we're all wonderful people and sometimes really selfish people that we are. And so I would rather focus on that balance. And then in each of the domains in which I live, work life at a concert, on the bass, wherever I am, I'd rather sort of be working on that central balance rather than introducing another sort of dichotomy and saying, okay, now I got to work on myself at work in a different set of norms and remember the rules to that. So that's why I write about balance. It's really me, but it's the same me and all of the existences. And, um, you know, you think about it, it's just funny. I mean, like, they never teach you this in high school. At least they didn't teach me at Home-ec, I learned how to bake a casserole, you know?

Jonathan Fields: [00:21:54] And then I learned how to sew a teddy bear. So, yeah, I did.

James Rhee: [00:21:58] A nerf I got. I did like a cushy football. That's what I did. Which ripped apart in like two weeks. Um, but it's really in law school where I really learned when you learn all of the statutes and rules of work, this is the whole. It's a funny concept, right? We don't teach kids, I do my kids and then my students. I'm like, you're literally entering into a different country. It's different rules, different norms. And so I always wonder, I ask the students, I'm like, when you go to a different country in your personal life, do you change your personality? Does the language force you to do that? Like, are you as funny in a different language as you are in English? And so these are the things I think about and like, um, no one ever teaches you the language of work. And so like, people I've, you know, been involved with, I don't know, like 40, 50 companies. It's it's it's been progressively amusing to me and sometimes not amusing, sometimes frustrating that people put on this persona at work. And I'm like, why are you doing that? That's not let's just get the truth. Like we want the truth. That's generally, I think most most of us want than our personal lives and our professional lives. And then truth generally scales. Truth generally leverages. And, um, it's hard to get the truth when you put on that extra persona. And so it's one of these things I use a lot of humor and self-deprecation. I make fun of myself a lot. I'm like trying to get people to just laugh and just stop with the facade. Um, it's one of my big pet peeves is just the facade. And I used to, as a younger person, get frustrated. But now as I've gotten older, I'm done. I put it more as my responsibility to make people comfortable enough, which is why I write about kindness that they don't have to. They don't have to be like that. You know, let's just be ourselves and let's get the best answer and hopefully kind of quote, win.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:53] Yeah. I mean, speaking of kindness, also, you know, this is sort of part of really a core part of your philosophy of living and also of working. It is interesting to sort of see that because, again, you know, so often and this is part of your own like educational background, but, you know, sort of like the classic MBA approach to business, the fundamental ethos was kill or be killed. And this was taught for generations. Like, this is how you win in business. This is, quote, success. It's dominance oriented. It's, you know, and it's take oriented and often, you know, brutal. Not but not just brutal to whoever it is you're quote, competing against. It's brutal to you and your own psyche as you sort of move through that experience. So it's really interesting to use like centering and saying, look, we really need to give equal credence to the notion of kindness here. And kindness does not mean weakness in the context of building your life, building your career, or building a company.

James Rhee: [00:24:49] Yeah, I think kind people, kind brands create using economic terms, positive externalities. Kindness creates intangible value. Kindness. When you think about intangible value, what is it like 70 to 80% of the market cap of the current stock market? It's that's what kindness is. I mean, we all know what kindness is. It's a great coach, great teacher. But for some reason, those qualities that make you want to run through a wall for your favorite coach or teacher, we don't use that word at work and it's all just mental models, right? It's the way people are taught. There's a whole debunking of that theory going on right now in business school curriculum, addressing all the deans of business schools next February and saying, it's just it's a mental model. It's why kindness is sort of relegated into like niceness or it gets feminized or it's in a place of worship. It's just cultural norms. And I'm trying to normalize your the talking about the qualities of kindness in other environments. It's just it's social pressure. And I think a lot of the reasons why people don't talk about kindness at work is because they don't. They haven't graduated from, like, junior high school because they're worried that they're not going to be cool. And like, I'm I'm done trying to be cool. I'm not cool. And, um, I'm 53 years old. Like, that's I'm not looking for someone to tell me that I'm cool. Yeah. I've been.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:13] Living. I've been living in post cool world for a long time.

James Rhee: [00:26:15] A long time. Right. And it's really and kindness, you know. And it also requires like competence. I think kind people are very calm. And because they also have competence, they don't need to, you know, prove themselves. They don't need to have their ego stroke. So you give by definition then a lot of space for other people to speak and to shine. And they're very comfortable and actually quite happy and joyful that you've created this environment that people are, quote, being their best selves and collectively that you're winning. And that's what kind leadership is. And and the whole destructive like, uh, you know, there's, you know, I'm not the right person to sort of expound on this in depth, but there's a lot of games. In theory, experts that talk about and document the theory and the the strategy of being kind. In game theory, kindness longitudinally wins in simulations. It sort of takes a beating for a long time, and it shrinks like the kind people kind of shrink in numbers, but they don't ever get extinguished and they grow back. And I think that's where we are in the continuum of where of humanity right now, is that it has been a brutally eat or, you know, be eaten environment that's been fueled by a lot of cheap money, that's fueled a lot of neurologically astute tech that only a few people know. And it's triggering us to be our worst, our worst selves. It is. And I am hopeful, and I want to be a small part of this, that to just remind people about. There are a lot of other things about humanity that we know all know intuitively, are beautiful and regal and actually quite necessary for the continuation of our existence. And I think that's what we're seeing. I think that you're going to see a in game theory, this population shrinking, but over the next five, ten, 20, 30 years, it'll repopulate.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:18] I certainly hope so. You know, and it's interesting because you use the word longitudinally in there also, which also implies long term thinking. You know, it means that we can't be focused just on this moment, you know, like on tomorrow on the, you know, the numbers for the quarter. Um, but we really got to be in this and thinking, okay, so long term, um, what are we here for? You know, like, what is the game that we're actually playing? Are we playing, you know, the zero sum game for the short term or are we playing the infinite game just to be able to like, create something so glorious and inclusive that we never wanted to end?

James Rhee: [00:28:52] Yeah. And the the I agree with you. And then the, the the things that concern me and it makes sense. Right. So um, declining birth rates. So children are a really good catalyst to think longitudinally and not about yourself and your own. You want the world to exist and be better for your children. I mean, that's one and then two. Like, financially, I always laugh, like putting on my investor hat, you know, Buffett and Munger, um, late Charlie Munger, they're pretty good investors. Like.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:24] Kind of hard to argue against that. Yeah.

James Rhee: [00:29:26] If you really read what they're writing. Right. They could be on this conversation right now and saying, oh yes, longitudinal investing like little friction. Make wise decisions, be calm, find those type of leaders and back them. And that's Charlie Munger. I mean, he was very well versed in Buddhist philosophy. And so that sense of mutualism and needing one another and, and not sort of succumbing to groupthink and not trying to eat everything that's in front of you and like day one and the marshmallow. Remember the marshmallow test for young people? I mean, it's these are just truths. And for some reason, like we teach otherwise in schools. And I think that will change. That's what I'm trying to be part of that change and saying, listen, there's a lot of science, financial reasons, the for you to think long term, to create great teams, to create value for other people. And you don't have to extract every dollar of every value that you create. But if you create enough value and you take a percentage of it, you can do quite well financially too. And by the way, you may find that you won't be lonely. You'll have lots of friends, tons of people will show up at your funeral, you know, and you won't have to take, uh, antidepressants. You may find real joy in your life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:54] Which sounds like a pretty good thing for us to aspire to. You know? Um, one of the things I want to ask you about, and it really comes up in this context, too, is this, this notion of and you write about this again, is this notion of the role of agency in our lives, because I think that's another you know, you referenced earlier when you're talking to some younger adults that they're like these two experiences, you know, one is yes, there is. You know, we're really centering the things that matter to us. But the other one is despair. And I wonder some of that despair is because they have this sense that they don't have agency, that they don't feel either personally, um, empowered to do what they want to do, be how they want to be and make a difference that they want to make. And they don't feel like, um, in the settings of work often that they have that either. And I think, you know, this leads often to a bad rap for so like the quote, young adults because there's a quote entitlement. Um, but my sense has always been it's less than. Entitlement that we deserve this thing. And it's more of we know what we want and we know how we want to contribute, and we know how we want to show up. What we're asking for is the right to to to have a certain amount of agency in making that happen.

James Rhee: [00:32:13] Yeah. It's um, I think that agency, you know, a lot of the book is sort of defining words again and saying, hmm, maybe, maybe it's not that, maybe it's this. So I think agency, it's gotten misused during the same period that we're talking about, like people think it means I can do anything I want, I can do anything I want. And on the one hand, that's one extreme. And then we've divorced the cons of agency from actual accountability. Like, I think, agency without accountability. That's not what agency is. Agency you're accountable like. And without accountability. Free agency means chaos, right? It means dissolution of the social compact. It means just dissolution of your business compact, the social compact within your business. So that's one extreme. And then the other thing I think with about agency is that, yeah, I think that people are increasingly there's a lot of a lot of attention on AI and just it's a lot. And I don't want to underestimate the importance of AI because I'm it is important. But agents, people are worried that yeah that their decisions their I believe that people are too easily willing to relinquish their agency to cool technology. And that is also worrisome to me. And I think part of that is also not understanding the definition of agency correctly, that people think agency means you get fully informed and you're in full control of all outcomes. Whereas I think agency means being informed, having free will, trying to make rational decisions for yourselves and then realizing it's still out of your control stuff still happens, and that there's a beauty to serendipity, too. And so that's the other nuance I think that's going on. And then the third thing I think economically is just, you know, I think people are, in some cases rightfully skeptical that the economic compact that was maybe made available to you and me, that if you go to a four year school and you, you know, you'll be taken care of by a company and that you'll have a lot more stability.

James Rhee: [00:34:33] I think they are right to sort of be reevaluating that financial compact right now and realizing that the curriculum that's being taught to them, the younger people, it is not giving them the tools to have agency, which is why in the book I focus on accounting, finance, cognitive science and like legal schema. That stuff is not taught in high school and college generally, um, unless you're a specialized major and then unless you go to grad school and a lot of people can't afford to go to grad school, you know, and so like, it's that's those are that's my long answer to your comment about agency. I think it's it's I try to spend a great deal of time in the book specifically, but generally trying to explain what agency means. And it's not perfection. It's not control, certainly not despair. Um, and it doesn't always mean that you have guaranteed success. But I do know that agency always means you are accountable for your decisions and your actions. And I think that accountability part of the equation right now, it's very troubling. I don't think it's the younger people, um, who are not being accountable. I think it's people more of our generation and older people in real leadership positions right now. It is shocking to me how we are allowing leaders in every part of our culture to not be accountable for what they say, how they behave and the decisions they're making. I it's concerning to me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:04] Yeah, you and me both and I think a lot of other folks. But I, I'm hopeful at the same time. Me too. I'm. And maybe it's because both of us seem to also we take that longer term lens and we kind of see you know, there's a pendulum that's swinging out in one direction right now, but the pendulum doesn't keep swinging out at some point. You know, it comes back through the center. Um, and how long that is what it looks like when it does and how it shapes things and speed that is traveling. We'll see. But I do see like there's a I feel like there's a growing energy that says this. This is just not the way that we want to be or build our world or build our companies or our ecosystems. Um, and, uh, I love that you're sort of stepping in and playing a role and saying, let me see if I can actually help share ideas along the way so that we can we can we can almost validate them earlier in life. And. Allocate energy and resources behind them to create the world that we want. If you could sort of sum up, or you think about the book that you put out into the world, is there any one big invitation that you would make on the back of that?

James Rhee: [00:37:13] Well, I think that I would the symbol of the red helicopter into for the people to sort of read. It's called deceptively simple, I wrote it. Why did I write it like a parable? I think that's the thing that I would like for people to ask me. It's like, why did you write it this way? And because, you know, people wanted me to write a business book, and then they wanted me to write a book that it's like, here are the five things you're terrible at, and let me tell you how to fix them. And I'm like, I'm not going to condescend to people like that. That's ridiculous. Like, so it's sort of more like, why is it the red helicopter, the red helicopter story people can read in the prelude, and I'm asking people, what's yours? It's that intuitive feeling. It's not discounting intuition, which is intuition is very human. It's the most human thing. And we tend to stress deduction and like again zeros and ones perfection. But intuition we need more creativity right now. And it's something that a lot of colleges and high schools are actually going away from. And I'm sort of a Stem guy, but I'm also a creative guy.

James Rhee: [00:38:22] We need more humanities in creativity right now to really reimagine solutions. Right? So that's number one. The second thing is more the trope of a helicopter. I think that it's a really good I wish I had this mental model when I was younger. I think a helicopter is a better symbol for agency for your life, that it's messy, but it can fly in six different directions. It can hover, which is very difficult to do, and it may look like you're standing still, but the but you're actually moving a lot. You're making a lot of small adjustments, and sometimes you just have to breathe and pick the vector that you want to go, that life's not linear and that it's going to require a lot of ability, like helicopters to have vertical lift. But you also have to learn how to land. Helicopters can land. Good pilots can not only just hover, but they can land anywhere. So they don't crash. And life is going to be a lot like this for younger people. Many careers, a lot of change, a lot of war is it's very complex. And are we teaching young people and the young person inside each of us, the adult, because it's that person is still there.

James Rhee: [00:39:33] Can we unlock that child again that was willing to fly in six different directions, fall on the bike, know that they don't know all the answers, that life's constant learning, and you're not supposed to know everything. That's the trope. And I think that we have as, as a society, because we've had a pretty golden period the last 40, 50 years, particularly in the US and generally global peace, like we have taught everyone that you're supposed to be like a Learjet or an airplane, right? Straight, linear, like everything is going to be great. 45 years of progress. I just that's not reality. And it's definitely not going to be a reality over the next 20, 30 years. And so that's what the the book is both like the physics of a helicopter and then the heart of a helicopter, that red helicopter story, a childhood tenderness. Can we combine kindness and math? Right. Empathy and, you know, quote, achievement. And I think that it's not an Or it is. They're very related. If we really take the time and to be thoughtful about it and to sort of resist the urge of trying to be cool, let's just be truthful.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:46] Hmm. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey. So I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life, take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and Me, Jonathan Fields. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this. Episode. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.