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When Jerry Coloner writes about being presented with the chance to finally fully grow up,

he's talking about leadership and our lives at work.

That's not the experience that formed me and so many others in the culture of work that

came down to us from the 20th century and still shapes cutting-edge companies now.

Leadership is top-down, isolated, perfectionistic, and lonely.

We still work with old ideas that all of us should check the messy parts of ourselves

at the door of our professional lives. New generations, millennials most famously,

are challenging this. But how to bring our whole selves to work as the saying goes,

without descending into chaos or emotional free-for-all?

So you do name something that I often encounter which is, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I don't want to turn the work place into a therapy session. I am not suggesting that in any way,

but here's a simple way to understand it. These forces are at work anyway. They're there,

and unless we create spaces to name these things for ourselves as individuals or collectively as a group,

we're going to continually get stuck fighting against these unconscious forces.

Let's recognize that these things are underway so that we can then pause and move on from that,

so that we can actually be productive.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on BeA.

Jerry Colona is a bit of a legend inside the world of startups and CEOs of tech companies

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