Needing to Be Right, Staying Too Long, and Expecting the Organization to Love You Back: AmyJo Mattheis

---

Listen:

Check out all episodes on the My Favorite Mistake main page.

---

My guest for Episode #69 is AmyJo Mattheis, the founder and CEO of her firm Pavo Navigation Consulting.

She has worked in international development, government, higher education, and religion — a professor and a pastor. Works a lot with high-tech startups… she has managed teams, built roadmaps, facilitated groups, navigated boards, set vision, and led thousands of people to bring them into form.

Questions and topics include:

• What were AmyJo's three favorite mistakes?
  • Needing to know the answer (or thinking I had to be right)
  • Staying too long in a job
  • Expecting the organization to “love you back” (even if that's a church)
• How do you learn it’s a problem?
• Somatic indicators – signals? 
• Is it fixable? Is it mine to fix? Advice: set a timeline to see if it can be better
• Knowledge vs. assumption
• Being right vs. testing hypotheses
• Coaches people all the time who beat themselves up over mistakes — accepted part of the culture
• Believing it was my responsibility to make everything right or successful
• Founders in Silicon Valley and Venture Capital firms… fail fast, fail early?  Easier said than done

“I am exactly where I am meant to be, doing what I am supposed to do, at the exact time and place it is needed. All of where I have been now culminates into a potent product that brings results of increase for all and a new pathway to profit for you, your company, organization, or institution.”

Scroll down to find:

• Video
• Quotes
• How to subscribe
• Full transcript

You can listen to or watch the episode below. A transcript also follows lower on this page. Please subscribe, rate, and review via Apple Podcasts or Podchaser! You can now sign up to get new episodes via email, to make sure you don't miss an episode. This podcast is part of the Lean Communicators network.

Watch the Episode:

---

Quotes:

---

Subscribe, Follow, Support, Rate, and Review!

Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast — that helps others find this content and you'll be sure to get future episodes as they are released weekly. You can also become a financial supporter of the show through Anchor.fm.

---

Automated Transcript (Likely Contains Mistakes)

Mark Graban (0s):
Episode 69, AmyJo Mattheis, CEO of Pavo Navigation Coaching. What's your favorite mistake?

AmyJo Mattheis (10s):
I have three…

Mark Graban (15s):
I'm Mark Graban. This is My Favorite Mistake. In this podcast, you'll hear business leaders and other really interesting people talking about their favorite mistakes because we all make mistakes, but what matters is learning from our mistakes instead of repeating them over and over again. So this is the place for honest reflection and conversation, personal growth and professional success. Visit our website at myfavoritemistakepodcast.com. For show notes, links, and more. Go to MarkGraban.com/mistake69. Please follow rate and review. And if you liked the episode or the podcast, please share it on social media.

Mark Graban (56s):
Share it with a friend. Thanks we're joined today, our guest is AmyJo Mattheis. She is the founder and CEO at Pavo Navigation Coaching. She has worked in international development, government, higher education and religion. She's been a professor and a pastor, and she works a lot now with high-tech startups. She's managed teams built roadmaps facilitated groups, navigated boards, set vision, and led thousands of people to bring them into form. So AmyJo, thank you for being here tonight. How are you?

AmyJo Mattheis (1m 31s):
I'm good. Thank you. It's it's always fun to hear your like bio summarize like that. It's like, Oh, I did. I did do all of that stuff. Didn't I it's kind of like reminder a nice reminder, you know, so thank you. It's fun, man. I'm I'm happy to be here. Yeah.

Mark Graban (1m 46s):
Well, good. Well hearing that hopefully then is a bit of a positive boost. Get, get you hyped up to have a good conversation here. Definitely AmyJo's website. And we'll mention this again at the end and it'll be in the show. Notes is PavoNavigation.com. That's P A V O navigation.com. So there's a lot we can talk about here today. Amy, Jamie, Joe, but see, my wife is Amy. So I'm going to have to make sure I don't just have that muscle memory

AmyJo Mattheis (2m 16s):
Say

Mark Graban (2m 17s):
I apologize. AmyJo and my wife listens to these episodes sometimes. So she's going to hear my mistake, but okay. That's behind me now, AmyJo, we've heard my most recent mistake. What would you say looking back at your career and all the things you've done. What's your favorite mistake?

AmyJo Mattheis (2m 32s):
Yeah, I love this question. And I've been thinking about it a lot in preparation for this podcast today, because of course, as I said, when we, when we met earlier is like, gee, which, which one do I want to choose? Because I've certainly made a lot of them. And I think I, I have three and I'm going to start with the third one first, because literally before getting on this call with you and your listeners, I, I was just coaching somebody, somebody else in, in, in the startup world.

AmyJo Mattheis (3m 13s):
And we were just talking about this, which is the mistake of meeting to know the answer or needing to think that I had to be right, right. Like, and what I was sharing with my client is when I was a pastor, you know, I I'm a biblical scholar. And you know, you study for four years in graduate school. You, you come into this position where you're supposed to be this leader, you know, and, and you're supposed to have quote unquote, the answers, the right answer, the right way of understanding.

AmyJo Mattheis (3m 54s):
And I felt both like good and not good about that because I, I, I w I'm an excellent scholar and I felt really strong about being able to communicate that I was also a young woman and coming into a congregation full of all kinds of not young women. And, and, and so what I found was that people were not shy about telling me when I was wrong or when they perceived needs to be wrong. And, and what I wish I would have done, because what I did was I argued with them.

Mark Graban (4m 37s):
Yeah.

AmyJo Mattheis (4m 37s):
Like I are, because here I'm the theologian, I'm the biblical scholar. I'm the one who's spent all this time investing and researching and studying and learning Greek and learning Hebrew and all of this stuff. Like I, and, and so I would argue about, because these were very topical things that we were discussing, right? LGBT LGBTQ rights, women's rights, environmental actions, all, how do we understand the scriptures? And so I was very passionate about it. And so I think that instead of arguing it to be right, what I would do now, and what I do do now is I allow for curiosity to lead instead of being right to lead.

Mark Graban (5m 30s):
And, and do you mean your curiosity when you're being challenged or the person you're maybe debating, arguing with?

AmyJo Mattheis (5m 39s):
Right. It starts with my curiosity, because if I get curious, then I create space for them to be curious. And so for instance, in that situation with the scripture, which is, which is kind of a good example, actually, because like my per my perspective and perception on, on scripture is, you know, it's always interpreted by every single human who interacts with it and that's true for everything, right? So it's going to be true for any kind of thing that we are all debating about or talking about, or, or looking at.

AmyJo Mattheis (6m 19s):
And my way of thinking is there isn't ever just one right. Or wrong way to look at something. Right. So that curiosity, even though I have a very strong stance, like still, so let's take, for instance, the LGBTQ question, what I wish I would have done with my pressures is said, well, you are 100%, right? That there are multiple ways of understanding these words and these texts and your way of understanding them is certainly one of them. My foundational belief is that these, this book that we call the Bible is primarily it's foundational belief is that every single human is precious and valued as they are.

AmyJo Mattheis (7m 6s):
And so your way of looking at this violates that for me. So I can't affirm that, but it's like would have been like not making them wrong and me right. But opening up the conversation to allow for more and then that allowing for more conversation.

Mark Graban (7m 26s):
So when did you start becoming aware of this dynamic that you're arguing that might not have had a positive effect, or it might've been frustrating or both like, when I'm always curious, like when, when do people start getting an inkling or start to discover that, okay, wait a minute. This might be a mistake.

AmyJo Mattheis (7m 47s):
Right? Well, that leads me to my second favorite mistake that I wanted to offer your listeners, which is staying too long in a role and in a place that you, you just know, it's time to go. Right. Well, how many times do you want to learn? Like definitely being a pastor? I think definitely when I was leading an international nonprofit and like I knew I, I knew I needed to go because I, I knew that let's take the pastor piece.

AmyJo Mattheis (8m 30s):
I had outgrown that, and I had come to another understanding about, for me, what I believed was true about how the world works. And so I could no longer, you know, preach something that I did not, I did not support anymore and, and attached to that. And it's the same thing with the international nonprofit. I understood that that no matter what I did the dysfunction in the board and in the, there for the programs, weren't, they, weren't going to change. And in both places. And I see this with my clients now too all the time, like we think it's our responsibility to fix something that's not working.

AmyJo Mattheis (9m 20s):
Like, I'm, I'm going to fix this. And usually, and this is a, I think this is a great piece of wisdom for all of us. No, you're not like, like you're not, well, especially for, you know, systemic processes and systems that were in place before you got there. And maybe if you're in a startup, weren't in place before you got there, but have you have been part of developing or been part of participating in, if they're dysfunctional, systemically, they are not something that one person can change or fix or make better.

Mark Graban (10m 7s):
So, so going back when you said you outgrew, you had outgrown the role of being a pastor, you didn't just leave and go to a different church. You do. I understand, right. You stopped being a pastor.

AmyJo Mattheis (10m 18s):
I did. I did. Yeah. Because I, well, there's a lot of reasons for that one, as I referenced earlier, I, I came to understand that I no longer believed the story. And part of that was because of the exclusivity and the separation that I witnessed it creating. And, and, and I just couldn't, I couldn't, I just couldn't continue to support that. The other piece was being a woman in the church and being a woman leader was incredibly difficult.

AmyJo Mattheis (10m 59s):
Talk about, talk about going into a male club profession. I mean, that is the ministry, right. That is one of the oldest and, and it's alive and well. And so it was very the two together. I just couldn't couldn't, couldn't actually let me restate that the two together. And this is an answer to your question previously of like, how do you begin to notice, right. I was, you know, anxious more often than not.

AmyJo Mattheis (11m 39s):
I was always worried about how I was going to be perceived. I was over-preparing for everything and still not able to get done what I wanted to get done. And, and this goes back to the needing to be right all the time and arguing my case, right? Like that the reality ended up being that the congregational members and, and the leadership, they, they just, weren't going to do it no matter what that go. They weren't going to start the preschool. They weren't going to get to vote for, for what we in the Lutheran church called reconciled in Christ carnations, which would mean we were, we were open to LGBTQ pastors.

AmyJo Mattheis (12m 28s):
Like they weren't going to vote for that. They weren't going to, even though I had done quote unquote, everything, you know, right. We'd had all these educational classes, we'd, I'd prepared everything for the preschool to start in the other two. Like there wasn't there, it wasn't that I was wrong or did it incorrectly, but there comes a time, I think, where we look honestly at the landscape that we're in and we admit what is real, and that can be incredibly challenging to do, because once we see the landscape for what it is, then we get to make a choice.

Mark Graban (13m 11s):
Yeah. And so it sounds like in, in, in both of those kind of types of mistake of the wanting to be right, the arguing, the, the staying too long in a role that there, there, there was a pattern that at some point you have the recognition of the anxiety and the worry, and you kind of trace back, well, what seems to be causing this? Is that fair to say?

AmyJo Mattheis (13m 36s):
Yeah, sure. I mean, and always like those, the feelings of the, I call them our sematic indicators. Like our body is our, one of our best allies who, and, and they give us all kinds of signals about, about this stuff. Right. And so not sleeping consistently feeling, feeling a tightness in my chest all the time, having a nervous tummy, you know, and I think two simple things, like just not having fun, being stressed all the time, feeling like I was, I was needing.

AmyJo Mattheis (14m 20s):
And this is, this is really true for a lot of people in a workplace is feeling like I'm needing to walk on eggshells all the time. Like, I'm, I have to be very careful about what I say and to whom I say it to and how I say it. And those are all indicators of, I think, you know, work environments that are, that are not healthy places to grow and learn and innovate and create in. Yeah.

Mark Graban (14m 50s):
Yeah. And I've had a couple of other guests about listening to your gut and developing intuition and they'll point to similar things like you were saying, like, there's, there's something there's something to be said for listening to your gut of like, I just feel comfort constantly uncomfortable in a certain situation. And maybe even if you can't explain why that recognizing that feeling could either say, well, I'm going to remove myself from that situation. Or maybe I can figure out why. And then I think you raise a really good point. Is it fixable or not? Can I fix it or do I need to just remove myself and find something someplace else?

AmyJo Mattheis (15m 29s):
Right. Right. And, and I, I think one of the, another question that goes along with that is it fixable is what is mine to fix. Right. Which is E even if I might say, yeah, it's fixable, then I'd look at my role and my purview and say like, okay, and what is my arena of choice here? And will that have impact? You know? And, and if anybody's feeling any of this, like in any of your listeners in, in, in their workplace right now, one of the things that I recommend my clients do is, you know, once they've asked the question, is this fixable and what is the arena that I have choice in?

AmyJo Mattheis (16m 21s):
And they identify something that they can choose to do that may be, may amend. It may, may adjust it to the point that it's okay to be there, set a timeline for yourself, like, okay, I'm going to take this action. I'm going to follow this process. I'm going to give this feedback. And I'm gonna, I'm going to say, I'll give it four weeks or six weeks or whatever. And for, for some adjustments to be made, because part of what happens is we take steps and then it takes forever. And then leadership doesn't respond and then we're waiting. And then pretty soon a year goes by. And two years go by. And what happens is we get, we get hurt, you know, we get wounded and, and we're also not very good at that.

AmyJo Mattheis (17m 8s):
We're, we're also not very good at expressing that and allowing ourselves to talk about the wounds from the toxicity. And so we get bitter and we get angry and we get kind of brittle, you know, and that's, that's not good for us, and it's not good for anybody else sunk it for our family. And that's how toxicity spreads.

Mark Graban (17m 40s):
Yeah. Yeah. Cause people, people start snapping or kind of lashing out and you're not sure why, but it's it's yeah. That, that deeper rooted frustration. Yeah. And,

AmyJo Mattheis (17m 53s):
And right. And, and also I think they, you know, I'll, I'll say we, you know, we, we, we, back to being careful and cautious. And so maybe we have a question, but we don't ask it because we're afraid if I ask the question, I'm an expose that I don't know something, or it just doesn't feel safe. And if in a work environment doesn't feel safe, what happens in to put it in a general space is we shut down and when individuals shut down, so does communication. So does innovation. So does, you know, problem solving all of that shuts down

Mark Graban (18m 32s):
Yeah. Without, as some frame it, and I'm a big fan of the work of Amy Edmondson at Harvard. I'm hoping she'll be a guest on the show here to talk about what she frames a psychological safety, the feeling, feeling safe to say in a nutshell, and paraphrasing feeling safe to say, what's on your mind to speak up with ideas, to speak up about problems and that you're not going to be blamed, bullied, harassed, I'm paraphrasing. But I think directionally that's true to what she has seen from her research without psychological safety, you can't have innovation or problem solving or improvement. Our brains shut down the, our fight or flight instinct or reptile brain takes over.

Mark Graban (19m 16s):
And that's not

AmyJo Mattheis (19m 17s):
Totally a hundred percent. And, and it, the thing is right, is it doesn't have to be this way, but most workplaces actually operate like that without the psychological safety. Because I, I, my, my perception is because we, we have learned that domination is the way to get people, to do what we want them to do fear and, and, you know, goals that are impossible to meet, you know, our, our, except for the sales team, because that's, what's going to get them motivated and, and going and, and competing as opposed, posed to achievable goals.

AmyJo Mattheis (20m 14s):
Right. Or, and, and, and so when we, when we lead with domination and, and fear and threat, yeah. That's what we get. We get it back.

Mark Graban (20m 22s):
There's, there's probably an evolutionary trait or two in that mix of what was helpful for prehistoric people and some of this for different reasons, maybe, you know, natural selection of more of a male trait in a lot of ways of what was helpful in the past. It doesn't serve as well today.

AmyJo Mattheis (20m 45s):
Absolutely. And, you know, I think one of the, one of my areas of scholarship is in the history of how patriarchy came to wipe out matriarchy and matriarchical cultures, which also associate were associated with goddess worship and sacred, feminine, as opposed to patriarchy father rules and sky God and monotheism and all of that stuff. And that's, that is very interesting massively understudied arena that also talks about how we got to domination as opposed to collaboration.

AmyJo Mattheis (21m 31s):
And so, yeah, I think it goes back to, you know, when we're running away from saber tooth tigers, but I think it also, there's also another piece of the, of the history there that the patriarchal tribes from the steppe region over a period of thousands of years, you know, just overwhelmed the other cultures and they were warriors and these people were not. And, and that's also how we came to get to where brands at today. So either way, what we know is it's really, really deeply ingrained in us. Like we've all learned it very, very well.

Mark Graban (22m 13s):
Yeah, for sure. So, AmyJo, before we talk about, you know, like talk a little bit about your work, you know, in Silicon Valley, but you, you had a third story that you wanted to tell.

AmyJo Mattheis (22m 27s):
Yeah. My third one is a lesson that I, I learned the hard way in, and it's this lesson that the company will never love you back. And you can, you can take out company and put anything in there. So for me, the first time I learned it was the church was never going to love me back. You know, the institution is not going to love you. And this is a hard lesson for us to learn. In fact, I was just talking to a client about it today, which also affirmed like, okay, I'm going to talk about this with Mark, because we, we love our companies. We love products.

AmyJo Mattheis (23m 8s):
We love our teams. We love, you know, we spend all our time there. And so we give and we give, and we give, and sometimes oftentimes we're, especially for startups that are scaling quickly, kind of asked to cut our, cut our cut ourselves and give our blood. And, and there's a point in there where we need to realize this is not going to be remunerated to me. Like, yes, yes. I'm I am receiving an excellent comp package and I have equity. And, and that's that that's as it should.

AmyJo Mattheis (23m 49s):
Right. And that's for, you know, 50 hours a week kind of thing used to be 40 right now. Like we can say average people are working 50, 55 when it, it, those boundaries need to continue to be set. Right. And one way to help liberate ourselves to do that is to say, wait a minute, this, this company isn't going to love me back. I'm going to give until they're, don't need me anymore. And when they're done with me, they're going to let me go.

Mark Graban (24m 23s):
And so that, yeah, that does not sound like you could use words like love or loyalty or that yeah. There's that transactional, I'm working super hard. They're compensated me. Well, that's different. That's, that's transactional as opposed to a longer term commitment between the company and the employee. And there's probably this fine line where, you know, this is not the old, you know, there are downsides to the old Japanese model of lifetime employment. My dad had one paycheck his entire life, and that was general motors for 40 years. I've had very different paths where I've had, you know, and, and so there, there were times where I felt like, yeah, there was one time a company was not loyal to me.

Mark Graban (25m 8s):
You know, I got laid off by a company a few months after 9/11, and eventually had a chance to come back to said company, which, you know, it was fine. And then there are times where I've left companies for good reasons where I, I feel like at least at one case, they felt like I wasn't returning the love, the loyalty or the investment they had made in me, but I'm like, well, my wife's taking the job in Texas. What can I do? But I think, you know, people are going to view it the way they look, they view it. So it's interesting to think of those changing dynamics, not just around work hours, but what is the expectation around loyalty?

AmyJo Mattheis (25m 43s):
Yeah. Loyalty's a good, good question. I mean that, you know, it's, it's funny. I was, I was just with a founder that I'm coaching this morning and we were talking about setting up the setting up the system. What is it? What's it going to be like? And they were saying, I think it would be really excellent to integrate a program where we tell all our employees, look, there's going to be a time when we're going to separate from each other. We know that either you're going to choose to leave us, or we're going to ask you to leave, right? Like, there's, you're not going to spend your whole life with us. So one, we just want to make that clear so that everybody's aware of that.

AmyJo Mattheis (26m 25s):
And to that doesn't mean you don't love the product or love the company, or love your work or have loyalty to it. It just means that there's, there will probably come a time when something like your wife taking a job in Texas means that you need to, to separate, or you feel like you've learned all you hear, and now you're ready to move on to the next place. Or like, there's all kinds of reasons. But instead of making them like negative or making that somehow like not loyal or wrong, presencing it right in the beginning and saying, and so therefore we have this program where when you depart, this is the severance you'll get, and you'll get a coaching session with our coaching team and you'll get access to our network.

AmyJo Mattheis (27m 13s):
So that to help you move to where you want to go next, it's such a much more unifying, freeing allowing model. Right. And the funny thing is, is that will keep you loyal, right? Like if you leave that company, who's actually helped you have a healthy departure and also giving you support for your next step. You're going to talk about that company highly.

Mark Graban (27m 44s):
Yeah. There are companies in different industries that are known for having a strong alumni network and in different ways sounds like an example of what you're describing. Right, exactly. So, yeah. So I wanted to also ask though, when, you know, you're talking about Silicon Valley and I think you, you and I met Joe, are aligned from what I've I've seen of, of how you describe situations that mistakes are learning opportunities in some way, whatever happened in our past, including our mistakes forms, who we are today. So we're, we're aligned around that.

Mark Graban (28m 24s):
And I know personally, you know, I'm hard on myself when I make mistakes. I try not to be hard on others when mistakes are made, but, you know, in Silicon Valley, the one thing I think is really fascinating is this idea of supposedly like, you know, embracing failure, fail fast, fail early, is that easier said than done. Like companies are, you know, Silicon Valley as a whole can, you know, sort of spout spouts, not the right word. That's not a nice sounding word, but they can spout these ideals. But then when it comes to us as individuals and as complex as individuals can be long, long question, shorter is embracing fail, fast, fail, early, easier said than done.

AmyJo Mattheis (29m 10s):
Yeah, absolutely. And I keep in mind that is a phrase meant for the product designers and the engineers, right. Companies are a whole lot more than that. No offense to the engineers and the product designers out there, but we're talking about they're, they're, they're wanting to build these exciting new tools. And so, yeah, fail, you know, go ahead and risk it, go for it, take the risk if fails. Awesome. We'll, we'll learn more. And the, the, the area where it's harder or excuse me, easier said than done is allowing that to be true throughout the entire company.

AmyJo Mattheis (30m 2s):
And when you're setting up, you know, roadmaps and process for how you do your HR team for how you handle your financing, how you do the sales, how the like, marketing, how all of those need to have that applied as well for it to really, really be true. And we don't tend to do that. Like you said, we're hard on ourselves. We're hard on ourselves. We're really hard on others, too, when mistakes are made. And I have not only our mistakes. Okay. But they're necessary.

AmyJo Mattheis (30m 43s):
We need mistakes because that is how we, that is one way that we've learned is when we are doing something and a ball drops somewhere like, Oh crap, I didn't see that ball K missed that one. Or when we are all involved in rolling something out, that's new presence that like, instead of because the, our instinct is to, okay, I'm rolling this new program out. I have to know everything for everybody in the entire company, as opposed to saying, Hey folks, rolling out this new process that we're all going to be interacting with. It's new for everybody.

AmyJo Mattheis (31m 24s):
So let's all co you know, bring awareness to when it's working and when it's not working. And, and that's point that out in a way that will, will help us improve it as opposed to attacking somebody, you know, for something not being right. Or, and then finally, I'll just, I'll just end with I, my definition for failure, which is like associated with mistakes, right? My definition of failure is simply I'm missing the Mark. And, and as I was talking about this one time with a client, I realized, Oh, that's just the scientific method.

AmyJo Mattheis (32m 9s):
Like you, you're, you're setting a hypothesis. This is where I think I want to go. I want to go to X, X is my deliverable. And so then you set out to do X and you actually end up at Y and you're like, Oh God, how did I, okay. How did I end up at Y? And then you look back and you see, and, and, and, Oh, okay, well, I've learned now, you know, I've learned that this doing these things, didn't get me to X. It got me to Y and, and then et cetera, et cetera. And, and when we can allow for that, like, it's all about allowance and permission for those, for those interactions, with mistakes and failure to be the one that is predominant, as opposed to, Oh, I did something terrible.

AmyJo Mattheis (32m 58s):
I made a mistake. You're that means that that means I'm awful at my job, or it means I don't know what I'm doing, or it means, you know, that it is when they become empowering, as opposed to defeating.

Mark Graban (33m 12s):
Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, there's some connections drawing back to some of the stories you told early on around needing to know the right answer being right versus discovering testing. I policies understanding the difference. And, and this is different than a Silicon Valley setting. But when it comes to, let's say scientific method and scientific problem solving coaches I've had coming out of Toyota manufacturing company will often ask, what do you, what, what is knowledge and what is an assumption? What do you know and how do you know it? And I think sometimes people, they get stubborn and being right, even if data or market forces or other things may be disproving, a hypothesis, people dig in, they get stubborn and they confuse what we know versus what we're assuming to be true.

Mark Graban (34m 8s):
And I think those are interesting ideas. I'm, I'm involved in a software company KaiNexus that would still be considered probably still call us a startup. And even in sort of like these older industrial companies, it's interesting that there are, I think parallel lessons of you could call them cognitive biases or traps that we fall into. And I'm sure you see that that's a lot of what you're coaching people through. It sounds like,

AmyJo Mattheis (34m 32s):
Yeah. I mean, we can just take this, make this one nice big little bow here, because that's also exactly what I experienced as a pastor, right? Like people dig in to a belief and quote unquote proof for that belief because it makes them, well, let me back up and say, because they have a perception that that is safe. Right. And, and the if, and, and if I accept a different understanding of this, then that's going to change my whole world.

AmyJo Mattheis (35m 13s):
And it doesn't even matter if it means, like, in the case of the congregations, that we will be able to thrive and expand and increase our numbers and take good care of our facility and be able to help a bunch of people. I would actually rather choose a crumbling facility and, and less and less people coming every week because that feels, and that feels like I'm going to keep my world intact. So, so in the case of, of business, yeah. Right. Like even if you have, you have data and analysis and, and you're presenting some, like this is going to make us more money, it still can be very difficult to accept that different worldview, which, you know, cognitive biases and a fancy way to say, yeah, like I am committed to this way of looking at the world.

AmyJo Mattheis (36m 14s):
I have. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And that is really incredibly powerful for people, for me. I mean, for all of us, I'm not separating myself from any of this, you know, evolving, evolving our understands the standings of the world and how it works for me is that it is ongoing. Right. And it can be challenging to allow that to be true.

Mark Graban (36m 43s):
Well, AmyJo, thank you so much for sharing some of your stories. And I think, you know, and, and your reflections and your learning, I think, from your own career and how you've brought that into your work with others. I think it's really interesting to hear about those connections. So thank you. Thank you so much for being a guest.

AmyJo Mattheis (36m 59s):
Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure,

Mark Graban (37m 1s):
Sorry. I guess again has been AmyJo Mattheis. I'm her and she is the CEO and founder of Pavo Navigation Coaching. You can learn more about AmyJo and her firm and her work pavonavigation.com. And again, I'll make sure there's a link to that in the show notes. So thanks again, really, really interesting discussion today. Thank you for that.

AmyJo Mattheis (37m 21s):
Yeah. You're welcome. This has been fun, Mark. Thanks.

Mark Graban (37m 24s):
Sure. Well, thanks again to our guest, AmyJo Mattheis, again for show notes, links, and more, you can go to com/mistake69. And I hope this podcast inspires you to reflect on your own mistakes, how you can learn from them or turn them into a positive I've had listeners tell me they've started being more open and honest about mistakes in their work. And they're trying to create a workplace culture where it's safe to speak up about problems because that leads to more improvement and better business results. If you have feedback or a story to share, you can email me myfavoritemistakepodcast@gmail.com. And again, our website is myfavoritemistakepodcast.com.

Mark Graban (38m 7s):
Since every podcast asks you to do it, it would be a mistake. If I didn't ask you to please follow rate and review, but most importantly, thank you. Thank you for listening.