todd faber: Hi there. Welcome to Finding Your Inner Mr. Rogers. I'm Todd Faber. And I believe in a world of noise and speed, the most radical thing we can be is kind. We often think of leadership as being in charge, but Fred Rogers taught us that true leadership is about being in service to the dignity of others. Today's guest sits at one of the most fascinating intersections of power, scale, and quiet inner mindfulness in the country. Jeff Walker spent 25 years operating at the absolute peak of global finance as the CEO and co-founder of CCMP Capital and vice chairman of JP Morgan Chase and Company. But Jeff's legacy isn't defined by the billions he managed. It's defined by how he chose to re-architect the concept of leadership itself. After transitioning full-time into social impact, Jeff revolutionized the world of venture philanthropy. He served as the chairman of New Profit. Co-authored the seminal book, The Generosity Network, and has spent years teaching social enterprise and system change at Harvard. To tackle the massive interconnected crises of our era, Jeff leverages radical true-based collaborations. He actively drives systems level change through his involvement with Build Bridges Collaborative, which backs mind training and mental health innovations, and the new Leadership Now project, a coalition of business leaders protecting American democracy. Democracy, excuse me. Furthermore, his work expanding human consciousness and healing includes co-founding the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative to advance clinical research as well as steering the Subtle Energy Funders Collective and its partner platform, Phenomena Held Healing, which bridges science and spiritual energy. As the chairman of the Center for Contemplative Sciences at the University of Virginia, Jeff is a fierce advocate for the reality that we cannot successfully heal our outer communities. Unless we are willing to do the quiet, courageous internal work first. He scales Fred Rogers' legacy to global lens, proving that building multi-million dollar coalitions requires building deep, ego-free, personal relationships with our partners. Welcome to the neighborhood, Jeff.
Jeff Walker: Thanks, Todd. Happy to be here.
todd faber: Well, I'm thrilled that you're here because you are gonna add so much value to all of our listeners based on your extremely incredible history of giving and developing all this amazing social enterprise for people. you know, I wanted to start off first. So as you and I talked a little bit about, I create archetypes for the show. And your archetype is the systems catalyst. And I did that because you spent so much time in private equity, which is an environment that is historically hyper competitive. Metrics driven, transactional, just atypical of what I've certainly talked to folks about. But now you lead all these wonderful global networks that are focusing on change. And it requires collaboration, it requires dropping your ego, and it requires deep trust. Fred Rogers famously said that human relationships are the primary innovations of our time. For you personally, how difficult was that psychological shift for you? coming off Wall Street and then how do you coach other type A individuals to move from that transactional mindset to this interconnected one that you've developed?
Jeff Walker: Well, it's one of those things where it it didn't happen overnight. It started really when I was much younger. And I walked in the band room when I was in seventh grade and found my people because I was told I was gonna be having to play the tuba and the sousaphone and nobody wants to listen to those by themselves. So I had to play with others. And so understanding how to play, my own unique sound and then have them play their sounds and create something you couldn't have done by yourself and then have that as impact on an audience. And to me that partnership And that playing together with others for impact has followed me the rest of my life. And so for four years when I was in junior high and high school, I was nothing but, you know, working with others on music of all different kinds. jazz is probably one of the the closest in in comparison to what I do today, just because there's very few leaders and there's many people who are creating together. and so I went Became on the board of Berkeley College of Music for 10 years, largest music school in the world. And you know, these jazz guys talk about it's a flow state. It's a spiritual experience to play with others. And to me, that's how I've evaluated, you know, the rest of my partnerships, the rest of my life. When I set up the private equity group at JP Morgan in 1983, we had eight mergers that we went through and we combined a lot of people together, but we operated and actually legally were a partnership, and so we We talked every Monday around the world, brought people together. We exchanged knowledge, information, we partnered with our CEOs and our portfolio companies that we had. And then it still was transactional. There's no kidding about that, because we were trying to, you know, make some significant returns, and we were lucky that we were successful. But I I I was searching for you know spiritual outlets, you know, all during that time. I first started meditating in 19. 73 and University of
todd faber: Wow.
Jeff Walker: Virginia, and to me was asking about subtle energy and what is this energy feels around the human body? How does that work? So while I was getting a degree in computer science and accounting, I was also doing this weird work. And so I've always kind of blended them together. And to me, that's honoring, you know, each of our growth. I continue to have to have growth. and I find I grow more with others than I do by myself. And so my to me. that's you know what's stuck with me through all the partnerships since I retired out of private equity almost twenty plus years ago.
todd faber: That's you know, it's fascinating to me 'cause I had no idea about your musical interlude in terms of the the middle school stuff. 'Cause I did play the drums in middle school. So but I'm I'm a retired drummer, haven't played in a long time. But certainly the sousaphone and tuba are are those are tough instruments to lug around too and play. So kudos to you for doing that. 'Cause the
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: drums are easy. They were set up for me. All I had to do was bring my sticks.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, there you go. Well, I'm sure you could still play today in some shape or form.
todd faber: Well, yes, some shape or form being the operative word
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: for sure. but you did. You talked a lot about just now about spirituality, and and it was nice. You actually shared with me a diagram which we'll include in the show notes, called the spiritual learning loop. And in it you place love at the absolute center of this continuous circle, moving through self-transformation, compassion, service to humanity, service with others, and and feedback from others. when you look at the world's biggest problems, they usually jump straight to service to humanity, which you had as sort of the outer execution. do you think this loop should always begin with sort of self-transformation and inner mastery and and how would that how would that inner loop help prevent a leader from burning out?
Jeff Walker: There's a couple good questions there. there's been a whole w focused effort around system change for quite a while. Started at MIT and and broadened out from there. And it was a little theoretical and then we started saying, What does that mean? you know, and worked on malaria and so how did you pull all these different stakeholders together with one of my great mentors, we can talk about later, Ray Chambers, and work with the United Nations and Global Fund and ha bring all these different st constituents so that they have a common objective, which is to lower deaths from malaria. And to me that's that's what system change is about. And so it's driving from this theory of system change down to getting things done. Well what they found was and and we were at conference two years ago at Harvard Business School on system change And they're starting they continue to study it, saying this is a better way of looking at problems rather than saying, I have the answer. And many of the nonprofits that we had supported in the old days had a CEO who says, I can fix the world. All you gotta do is give me more money and I'll scale it, and it's gonna be awesome. Well, it doesn't quite work in systems-level work where you can start companies and they will scale. So we started JetBlue, for example, and it scaled and became a cool airline, right? But that works in a four-part. profit mode doesn't quite work in a larger scale, you know, problem focused global model. And so, how do you step back and look at yourself as how you can lead these kinds of collaborations, but not with the answers, but with the ability to start moving your own ego somewhat aside and opening up to others so what the collaborations could turn out to be if you pull these disparate partners together. And what that takes is starting out with your own self. How am I, you know, working in the world? Am I working as someone who has all the answers or am I working as someone who has a lot of questions? Am I able to be someone who can listen well? Am I W and it's one of the things when we used to hire young MBAs, I would always tell them, hey, you know, listening skills is much more important than telling people how smart you are. You already know how smart you are. You have no idea what they're thinking. So open yourself up to that change. And starting to understand that this inside work, whether it's being quiet, learning meditation, breath practice, working with others in collaboration, what it means to be a good partner. These are skills. And what they found at Harvard Business School during the system change conference was you have to do the inner work first before you can do the outer work. And there's a great professor at Columbia University, Hitangra Wadha, who has a good book on that. And there's another great professor, Rebecca. Anderson at Harvard, who teaches leadership, and she's had a whole course, and it's one of the most popular ones now at the business school and the Kennedy School on this internal work. So now they've created this joint curriculum which focuses on how am I becoming a good partner? And if it's not just myself, it is what does it make me want to do? And it typically is this learning loop, it's a spiritual loop I call it, which is it pulls you. Toward compassion for others. If you start thinking not just about yourself, but about your place in the world and you start caring about others, then you start thinking, well, if I care about others, what can I do to help them lower less have less suffering and more joy? And so you can pull that into the actions you're going to be taking. And so those actions can be service of all kinds. But as I said before, service by itself about what I think is important in the world isn't necessarily the best thing to do. And so finding ways to work with others This service with others allows you to be more effective because you're hearing different people's viewpoint. It's like the jazz performance where you're bringing different ideas together and then moving that into the space where you're starting to listen to others as you're doing the work because you can learn about yourself better. So they can tell me, hey, you're not listening too well. You ought to do that more. And so then I can put that back in the learning loop saying, well, I need to work on myself a little bit more to be a better partner so I can be of service better. And so it's a loop that continues on. And it surrounds it's surrounding this whole idea of love. Love for all things. Love for all beings, love for all plants, animals, whatever it might be on this earth. And so if you center yourself around that love of all and surround it with work on yourself, with others, in service. It tends to be a path, I find, to be generative, continuing to grow. There is no nirvana. There is no, my God, I'm enlightened. It's just not no no great spiritual master will ever tell you that you're gonna get to that point where you just have to stop do all work. It is a a growing mode, but I have fun doing it. It's really fun to find people to work with and to partner with and grow with.
todd faber: I I I think it's amazing I mean honestly I I would less love to stop and on that because that message is amazing. But I have more questions, so but
Jeff Walker: There you go.
todd faber: be that as it may, I I do think that's a that's a wonderful mindset because we do talk a lot about I think two things that you pointed out. One is the idea that you have to listen not just to what the information, the feedback you're getting from external folks, but also the internal stuff. Because when you do that, you do grow. You do become a better person, you do become a better leader. And, you know, God gave us two ears and one mouth. So, you know, you're it's a lot easier to listen with two ears than speak with one mouth, that's for sure. So I but I
Jeff Walker: Well you could see it in your family, I'm sure, you know, when you're your spouse or your kids or they're kinda like you you're not just telling them what to do. In fact they probably won't won't do it anyway. But but but
todd faber: But I I I have I have a a a Cuban wife and two half Hispanic daughters. Yeah, listening is just not in the cards for them for me.
Jeff Walker: Ha ha.
todd faber: I I just have to go with the flow sometimes and I'm okay with that. But yes. You
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: ideally, certainly you'd like to think that, but yeah, the the idea is that you really I you you have to find ways to to improve yourself and the best way to improve yourself and to grow is to get the feedback. And the only way to get the feedback is to listen.
Jeff Walker: And work with others and and learning together. To me, one of the great paths is growing with others. And at and at Bridge Builders, our our partnership that we have, that we invest in well-being deals and transactions. One of our goals, and it's been fifteen years we've been working together, is to grow with each other. And when we can do that, you know, that it makes it more interesting and more fun and more complete. And we like to do it.
todd faber: And defin and definitely more collaborative, which is really the whole key to it. So I
Jeff Walker: Well, and you you asked another question earlier about burnout and and how, you know, this kind of work helps what I have experienced is, you know, much less likely to burn out because you're not here to save the world, you're not here to fix all things. You're here to do what you can and stimulate others so that the ripples go out into the world and it starts having positive influence. And so to me, you know, if we can teach a lot of the skills of being able to manage anxiety And depression. And these things that come with what happens, you know, students growing up, you know, they have more anxiety today than they've ever had before. And so if you give them the skills to be able to handle it, it might be being quiet, might be walking in nature, it might be taking a breath, it might be meditating, you know, it might be doing yoga, it might be doing work, you know, with others. To me, these are the skills because people are burning out at faster and faster paces, whether it's nurses or whether it's teachers entering programs or whether it's people that were in Peace Corps, because they have what they they have this desire to help, which is great, and have empathy for others, which is good, but sometimes empathy is defined as really becoming the other almost. You you understand them well enough. And so you start suffering and they start burning out. So what you try to teach is compassion. Compassion is the ability to care for the other, but then protect yourself. So that you're allowed to stand back, do everything you can, and then you have to step away because you gotta protect yourself because you're gonna continue to work another day rather than burning out and stopping all things. So to me, these are skills we're teaching at the University of Virginia in the Contemplative Science Center that we that I chair there, and we're bringing that to all the students, faculty, and staff. And it's growing because the suffering is there, the parents are sitting there going, What do we do? How do we prepare our kids for this anxiety of this world that's so unpredictable, et cetera? Well, there is tools out there for that.
todd faber: I I I think it's great and and even in its simpler simplest form, I used to tell my daughters that you can you can help other people, but if you absorb their baggage, you have to take it home with you. And then when you when you get into your room and you open up that suitcase, it's gonna be filled with things you don't want, but you now own it. And I try to get them to visualize that aspect of you can you can be a great helper by to your point showing compassion, but if you absorb all of that feedback and take it on, it becomes more difficult to help because now it gets muddied in, you know, it's in your closet and, you know, you can't differentiate between who whose clothes belong to who anymore. And so I I love the fact that you guys are doing that and, you know, It was always interesting for me, 'cause one of the things that I've learned as I've been doing more research on Fred Rogers was that, you know, he spent his entire life talking about the hardest work we'll ever do is the work we do inside, you know, facing your blind spots, owning them. And you talked about the work that you do at UVA, and you mentioned that I think nineteen seventy-three you said you started meditation. and when you probably did that fifty years ago, they were sort of considered fringy things. And nowadays I think they've become more normalized for sure. but you talk about if they they should be mandatory prerequisites for anyone trying to lead a a complex organization. And and you alluded to it, but when you think about leaders who've been doing something the same way for so long, how do you get them to kind of Adapt to that and and change their mindset so that they see it as a mainstream, helpful part of their growth as leaders.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, and there is no one path. there's a lot of ways to open people up to potentially changing the way they work. And part of that sometimes is through suffering. You know, they sit there going, you know, I had an illness. My spouse had an illness. I went through a divorce or a change in life. You know, I lost a lot of money. I don't know. So I'm trying to rethink and relook at myself. These are all periods of potentially opening, you know, people's minds so that they will look for an alternative. And I've seen that happen more and more, particularly because of this world, because you then can fill it saying, hey, try to take a breath. Maybe think about meditating. And that's what we did. We actually suggested that to many different people, but also invested in the science. Because people said, they've been doing this for a thousand years. It sounds pretty strange. Well, what if we took the science, which we did, we funded work at Harvard with Sarah Lazar and at Yale with Judd Brewer, and followed and found that there's the default mode network which goes quiet when you do long-term meditation. Literally, the monkey mind, they call it, in your brain that keeps talking to you, it slows down some. And so when it quiets down, you can be with yourself. And so when people kinda like, I just don't know what to do, I don't know how handle all this all, well, let's take a walk in nature. You know, you can do a walking meditation, you can do whatever it might take to allow you to kinda handle some of the problems that are out there. And those are openings. And people are looking for those and they're looking for other people who sit there going, you know, there's something going on with you. You seem to be happy. Why is that? You know, what are you doing? And I always look for people in joy. I follow them. You know, to it's not kinda I'm not here to have everybody tell me what to do, but if they're f if they're in joy, I kinda like, tell me more, you miss a ride. Roger seemed to be enjoy. He seemed happy, me about happy what he's doing. So I want to hear more about how he's doing that. He seems to care about other people more. Well, I would maybe he should ask more about what others are feeling or how they're experiencing life. And to me, that's part of the partnership development. That's part about caring about others. But it's also about listening at a very local level. Not at a global level. I can argue about, you know, climate change, but you know, how are we doing here where I live? You know, how am I hanging out with other people and experiencing life and experiencing the climate and experiencing people that need help and do the core work locally before I get to this global world that I'm trying to fix as well, right?
todd faber: that's great advice. I I I love the fact that you're sort of a I A acknowledging that being around people that express joy is always a better thing anyway, because it's contagious. despair also can be contagious too. And so if you can find ways to bring joy to those who are experiencing despair, then Hopefully that contagion overwhelms the despair. So I love that idea. the the idea of meditation, the idea of mindfulness. I mean, the monkey brain, this guy. Constantly. Like forever and ever. And I've tried and I continue to try to do meditation. I do do yoga, but I do think to your point, it is the way to quiet it. And when you are quieted down, I think your ability to think more clearly. for f problem solving just increases. and those are really great lessons. And certainly finding folks who can adapt to that better. We've you know, one of my daughters is got the same monkey brain I have. And so we have talked to her and say, Hey, med but it meditation takes time and it takes practice and it's not a it's it's a job in some respects in terms of the amount of time you have to put into it. And But she's sort of getting it. My wife is really good about it, but I I do love that idea. I love the idea of joy and I love the idea of finding ways to quiet your brain, so that you can think more clearly.
Jeff Walker: And try and try this, you know, I there's a chapter in in our book, General Reset Network, and it's on Jeffersonian dinners. And I was chairman of Monticello, which is Thomas Jefferson's, you know
todd faber: yeah.
Jeff Walker: in outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. And he used to have a lot of cool people at dinner. They used to eat in the afternoon, by the way, but they used to, you know, had a lot of cool people at dinner and he was a little hard of hearing, so they wanted to listen to everybody at the table. So at times they had these whole table conversations and we call them Jeffersonian dinners, but call them whatever you want. But your dinner table, you say, Okay, we're gonna listen to each other one at a time. And we're gonna we usually have a some kind of simple question, you know, it might Be, you know, what's your favorite song of all time? Or what is your best concert you ever went to? Something easy. And then people go around the room and everybody wants to hear each other. That actually is a fun conversation. And I actually want to listen to everybody at the table rather than just the person to the right or left of me. And so this whole table conversation quiets the whole dinner down. But it opens up the entire dinner to listening to others. And I have a TED talk we did I did on it and we can talk about it as well. But to me it's a simple idea. It's a simple idea just to have a change in format of how we eat together. And it could be at a family level, and I've done this with extended family for sure, and had a conversation or with complete strangers. And it's unbelievable what complete strangers will talk about together when they start listening. And they start then connecting to each other. And to me that's all we're trying to do is develop these local connections to people we care about or people we want to learn from rather than, you know, the same old thing that we're living every day.
todd faber: I I I love that, Jeff. And you know, one of the core tenets of the of for me with the podcast was the idea of finding a shared humanity. And when you do sit down with people and you have these conversations, you do find that. You do find those connections. And those connections really help to bind us and make us feel comfortable with each other. Even if you you know, you start off as strangers, but you have a dinner like that, you are no longer strangers. You have found that that core piece of interest, or even joy that you share with them and all of a sudden strangers are no longer strangers. And they are they are friends, they're human beings that have a connection. And ultimately, you know, that's part of what we look for. You know i and again going back on the the notion of joy and and you would you've you've talked about this before, But when you you've written, I don't know if where I read it, but you talked about mass s massive social collaborations where you say, if it's not fun, let's not do it. Right? And in the corporate world, you you look at at a quarterly KPI report and somehow joy doesn't seem to be anywhere within the confines of that report. and Fred Rogers was a big proponent of play. Right. He brought this distinct sense of play, lightheartedness, and just joy to these sometimes heavy, complex emotional topics. For you, what is it about preserving the sense of joy and shared fun so vital to keeping teams at work motivated, especially when what they're doing have financially high stakes and quite frankly can be pretty exhausting.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, it's Joy is infectious, it makes it interesting. How do you bring that about? You know, I was I've been lucky to be around as long as a Dalai Lama, and when he speaks, even though you know he's kicked out of China and Tibet, he you know has had a lot of suffering, he has gone after, he laughs all the time. And he will just joke around, he will grab your nose, he will, you know, laugh out loud. You know, at a at a half an hour I ty I timed it. There was like five times. He just outrously laughed, you know, a joke he told himself, you know, whatever. And you know that he's just learning. And to me, the best times, some of the best times I've had is working on really hard things with other people, and it turns into a flow state. It's like solving a really tough puzzle, and we're doing it with others, and you just kind of lose track of time. Yeah, lose kind of like, this is hard. How am I gonna think about this? How am I gonna No, it just kind of starts flowing. And that moves a little bit out of the mental and turns into, you know, the body, the emotional side, the connection to others, the energy around the room, and how that kind of worked together. And I can tell when I'm in a partnership working in this more of a flow state, than when it's not, because it is fun. Because you sit there going, I'm not even thinking about is this over yet? You know, I'm thinking about, you know, this is interesting. That's a Interesting question. How do we solve that together? that was an interesting idea. And you get into that mode, you know. some of the some of the great basketball players, you know, talk about these spiritual connections, these flow states they get in when they're playing a game. And and some of them were coaching us in our leadership programs with JP Morgan, and they talk about you know the time where in one quarter they just lost the track of where we were, but I just knew where all their fellow players were and they knew where to throw the ball. And they cat he said, We scored more points during that period. There was a guy from the Celtics. He said we scored more points in that quarter than we've ever scored in our lives. And we walked out and go, what in the world just happened? Cause it was just flowing and connecting. Well to me, that's how I figure out whether these partnerships are working. And there's nothing better in my mind in not only getting to know somebody, but then finding, let's do something together.
todd faber: Yeah.
Jeff Walker: Take a small thing, whatever that small thing is, and let's do it together so you get to know each other better. It's an action. And so it's not just, you know, sitting there going, How are you doing? Well, it's nice to ask how the person is doing, but then you know let's get to know each other a little bit better by doing something together. Something that's a little difficult, something that's a little hard, and it kind of gets you to stress, stretch a little bit. To me, that brings about the joy. You keep evaluating and saying, Hmm, how does it feel? You know, what does it seem like to you? And if it gets too hard. you probably oughta take take a breath and pull back and find out why is it hard. Am I pushing too hard? Am I not listening enough? Or have the right people in the room? You know, what's going on?
todd faber: Well, it's that idea of of your introspection too, in terms of looking at, you know, where are my blind spots? What am I not doing? and and that kind of ownership from a leadership perspective is huge. Because you know, great leaders acknowledge where they're at fault. And if something is difficult as opposed to looking outward and saying, Well, what has that person done wrong? Where where what stakes have I not put down to that that have caused whatever these problems are, right? And I love the idea that you are introspective enough to acknowledge that because that sense of vulnerability is also contagious. Because when you as a leader show, hey, what have I done wrong? How could I have done this better? Then others are more comfortable to do the same. And that's how people grow and that's how problems get solved. Because if somebody is, you know, I'm never wrong, I'm always right as a leader, then people are going to be afraid to sort of express how they feel or express where they're f falling apart because they're going to just mirror what they're seeing and and that's never a good thing. so I that is that's great advice to be able to look introspectively when you're creating these partnerships. And yes, you know, one of the folks I I interviewed, Dave Harmon, who's the the chief people officer at USA Today, he said every day he went down to the floor, of course, before COVID When everybody was in the office, and he would make a point to try to learn something new from the folks in his office, but something real, something that he could go back to two weeks from then and say, Hey, how did that go? Because that's when people feel heard and they feel like they're part of it, as opposed to simply just a cog. And clearly that's one of the things that you're doing. you know, in your in the generosity network, you talked about this idea of building these authentic partnerships. That they weren't going to be transactional. And, you know, Fred Rogers, when you would watch him in the program, his superpower, for lack of a better term, wasn't what he said, it was how he listened. And he always made the person he was with feel like they were the only person in the universe. You know, and sometimes we struggle with that because we're thinking about other things when we're talking to somebody, and it's hard to sort of stay focused. But when you are working with partners like Bridge Builders or the Psychedelic Science Found Funders Collaborative, how how do you really practice? I mean, I'm talking about deep empathetic listening so that you really see the person that you're with, as opposed to again, sort of that presumptive peripheral kind of on the on the face of it. I hear what you're saying, but you don't really understand what they're saying. You don't really know what's behind them. Cause I think people struggle with that. They really do. And I've seen it firsthand. I've I've done that myself. And so I think it'd be great to really understand how you're able to effectively do that.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, we're never perfect. So I'm always concerning to learn how to do that in a deeper way. curiosity is a a really useful skill and
todd faber: Yeah.
Jeff Walker: to me being, you know, just how did that work? You know, tell me about yourself or tell me about, you know, living in Massachusetts, you know, and tell me about, you know, what's what's what's pass what you're passionate about because I might be passionate about that too. And that's what we talk about in the book, where People ru trust me, you don't really wanna be called late at night asking for having somebody ask you for money. That's like what? This is a transaction. I don't
todd faber: Right.
Jeff Walker: wanna be treated like a transaction, you know, or like a checkbook, you know, give me a break. So to me what's great in the development side is finding people who can develop deep relationships. And so I'll ask, you know, you Todd, what you're most passionate about. What are the things today? Not yesterday, not Ten years ago, you know, can tell me all those, but what today are you particularly interested in working on or you're passionate about as well? And it might be, gee, I'm really passionate about going hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire. You're like, okay, then tell me about that. That's interesting. You know, there's an experience there, there's a story there. So people start telling stories. They like to hear stories and they like to tell stories. And it's like, you know, tell me about yourself or tell me about, you know, the things that you wish you were or wish you could do. You Know, I always wanted to play blues guitar. I never could, you know, I never have, but I love blues. So I like, I wish I always well, let's go do something like that together. And so you find you know these people who have sets of passions and you try to match them up. And what I always think is really fun to do is weave, is weave these connections together,
todd faber: And
Jeff Walker: saying, you like doing that? Well, so does this other person. I may not, you know, be the person that's really you know interested in in climate change. Because I'm really focused on global health. But I do know somebody that's really into particular climate change in Africa that you're gonna want to talk to because you're interested in that too. And they and to me one of the joys is connecting those two together and they call back and say, Wow, that was amazing. We're gonna work together and this is gonna be fairly fun. And you say, Okay, my work is done. That one was good. I'll I'll move on to something else, right? So to me, you know, you have this this interest in connecting things together, weaving them together a little bit. And maybe I'm a collie dog at heart, you know, kinda like how do you kind of pull together some people and pull them into different collaborations and and all. and in valuing building relationships, you know, I think we all over time stopped having enough space for that. So how do we always make sure we have, you know, ten percent of your life that's focused on growth, on new. Never stop that. I have too many people who are friends of mine who are big investment banks coming in and say, I'm I'm kinda tired of doing what I'm doing, I've done it for long time, made enough money. Now what do I do? And I go, Well, what do you like doing? Well, I don't know, I worked a lot. And you gotta go, Well, you know, why don't you try a few s different things before you decide what next to do? Because you can Be a different stage of life, and you can open up a couple of different angles that you might not have experienced before. And to me, you do that a lot with the relationships as well. So, what are the things you do? That little, you know, piece of a nonprofit you spent time on. You say, Well, I started liking that. that was interesting. And then try some other things, say, I didn't like that at all. You know, that's fine. You know, no problem. So to me it's continuing to be curious, it's continuing to explore, it's continuing to set up new relationships and meet new people. that keeps you to me, that keeps you younger than you probably would normally be is is as as we're all aging.
todd faber: I I I like the idea and I guess to your point is that it starts with the curiosity in terms of asking the questions, but then you have to be that active listener once they've answered it, because then it begets that next set of questions. And then that's to your point how you weave it together. And and I love that you you said, you know, you like to put people together and then you step away. And then maybe you hear from them. Colette Phillips, who I interviewed about a month ago, who's from Get Connected, which it fits, she likes the idea of giving without expectation. And that's clearly what you've been doing is i in terms of this this phase is giving without expectation. I mean, you know, the expectation is I hope it works, I hope these people get together, and then I'm gonna feel good about it. And there's that's lovely. I mean, that's that's your joy, right? Like you get joy from that. I'm gett I'm getting joy from these conversations that I've been having on the podcast because I've been learning stuff that I didn't think about. I'm hopefully becoming a better listener. I guess my wife and the girls might beg to differ at times, but that's okay too. But it's just the idea of we learn by having these conversations. We learn by being curious. I'm super curious about all the people that I I I meet with. and for you, I c I kind of have one last question that that I've I've tried to ask a lot of people because I feel like we we've gotten to the point where we are today, but we don't get there without somebody behind us in some capacity. And, you know, Fred Rogers always believed that we're all molded by the people we choose to love and do existence. you've had quite an extraordinary life, you know, between navigating Wall Street, writing books, advising global leaders. And and to me most importantly, championing this idea of mindfulness. But when you look across this incredible spectrum of experiences that you've had, was there a particular person, a mentor, a helper, or a family member who really kind of helped model for you what you are today?
Jeff Walker: Yeah, I mean there's clearly a a set of people. One person that stands out is a guy named Ray Chambers. And Ray started out in Wall Street. He invented the leverage buyout, which is a classic financing tool. But in the day it wasn't. And he retired at fifty-three years old. And he became known as the philanthropist out of the the confidential philanthropist, and then he finally admitted his work for Newark, New Jersey. And then he worked on global health and he became the Secretary General of the United Nations envoy for global health and malaria. And I became vice chair because he's a good friend of mine, and he was a bit of a guru. Introduced me to a guy named Deepak Chopra and a variety of days ago, years ago. And he was a deep meditator and he was a deep explorer, and so I would introduce him to people, he would introduce me, but we'd go on these long walks, and he talked about giving back, and he talked about doing the everything you can to reduce suffering and then stepping away to protect yourself. And he introduced me whole sets of other people who were also in these global spiritual growth paths that were these senior executives. They're all out there. And all of a sudden they're kind of like, whoa, you're interested in that too? Can you tell me more? Whereas you didn't think they would be, but he's like, no, I'm trying to grow. Right? And so where do I go? And kind of how do I think about that work? And so we started down the path of of yes, meditating and getting together and meeting the Dalai Lama and others. Like, whoa, who'd have done that? And that was a lot of weird things that became not weird because we invested in the science and got reimbursement. Insurance companies started paying for it and kind of it became a real thing. And likes that was that we're doing in subtle energy, kinda like, this is still a weird thing. What is this thing called Ricky? What is this thing called healing touch? What is this energy field around the human body? That sounds weird. Well, so now we've done the science that shows an MD Anderson Cancer Center outside healers can stop pancreatic cancer cells from dividing in pastry dishes and In small animals. In the and this is the top cancer center in the world saying, like, this is actually happening. And we showed that Harvard and Utah show that Reiki actually works. It's as effective as opiates in controlling pain. You can like, what? How does that work? And so these are all openings, kind of like people leaning forward going, Well, okay, tell me some more about this one. How do we embed that into the medical system? How do we get reimbursement? How do we kind of think about other partners coming in? So I'm just walking it. This is go to phenomenahealing.com and you'll see kind of what we've got in doing so far. We have a podcast. now one of the most senior women at at Google, Ivy Ross, is our narrator because she's so into it. And then we've got another team of people kind of working on how do you get communicating to other practitioners about how this works. So it's just a fun puzzle. But it all started with Ray, you know, starting to talk to me about you can integrate spirituality and caring about others into a transactional world and turn it into a place that you can continue to grow and we can work with each other to kind of rebuild faith and confidence in the system rather than just saying, I give up.
todd faber: Yeah. I I that's amazing. I mean, 'cause when you do think about the difficulties people have with grasping concepts that not I don't say they're foreign to them, but to your point, they could seem a little weird or outdated or out there. and when you can take that in a capitalist society, right, and figure out how it gets monetized within the system so that it's it becomes normalized because you're proving the science. And you know, I've experienced some of this stuff. I had had prostate cancer and I did certain things in addition to the traditional stuff to help it. because a lot of it was a mindset too. And yeah at the time when it first happened, I was like, okay, this is kind of weird. Like, is this really gonna work? But it does. Because it does. Like there's just it just does. You know, I one of the folks I interviewed, Jugen Veen, who's a biologist and psychologist from Switzerland, we talked a lot on the podcast just about the impact stress has on you physiologically and on your nervous system. And if you find ways and you can see the changes when you address this. strange thing. It's stress. Well what what is stress? How do you define it? And you can't, but you can feel it and you can also feel when it goes away. And
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: the idea that folks who are senior executives who were in these transactional worlds have acknowledged that and found ways to get it better identified through science is to me it's mind blowing. And I and I love it. And I love the fact that
Jeff Walker: Well, and opening up the medical system so then it'll start saying, maybe we ought to shift the way we treat people and connect with people and have them open. So yeah, no, it's we got more more more room to go.
todd faber: I mean listen, but that's the point, isn't it? It's the idea we talked about. It's about growth. And when you collaborate with the right people, like you have, you grow. And through that growth you learn. And through learning you make change. And through those changes you make the world a better place. And it's just a nice process that you've engaged in in your sort of I guess almost second career. Which a lot of people don't do. I mean, you know, you talk about some people retire at fifty three and they buy a boat.
Jeff Walker: Right. No, it's boring. They won't live long enough.
todd faber: And and and and and and they might get some joy from that, but to me, yeah, the joy is finding a shared humanity, making the world a better place, helping other people grow. And and that to me is the real joy. That there's everything else is sort of secondary, but again, when you find people like yourself who say, I've done all this, but now I'm gonna do something more. And and I love it and I'm so thrilled that you took the time out of your day, which I know is very busy, to sit with little old me and have this conversation. if for no other reason then I'm a better person for it. So I appreciate that very much, Jeff.
Jeff Walker: Well, it's been a joy and I wore my Mr. Rogers sweater so just for this so
todd faber: Well, I and and and that didn't go unnoticed. So thank you for that. you're the first person to do that, which
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: is great. I have I have mine hanging up and my these are my grandfather's Jack Purcells from the seventies that I've kept.
Jeff Walker: Okay.
todd faber: but yeah, it was funny because somebody asked me, says, so are you gonna wear like a cardigan? I said, I'm not the Mr. Rogers here. It's the people that I'm interviewing. They're the Mr. Rogers. So I appreciate that, Jeff. And And thank you for the wardrobe. and you take good care, keep doing all the great work that you've been doing, and and hopefully the people that watch this will will learn something more. So thank you again.
Jeff Walker: Talking to you too.
todd faber: You two take care. Bye-bye.
Jeff Walker: Thanks, Todd. Happy to be here.
todd faber: Well, I'm thrilled that you're here because you are gonna add so much value to all of our listeners based on your extremely incredible history of giving and developing all this amazing social enterprise for people. you know, I wanted to start off first. So as you and I talked a little bit about, I create archetypes for the show. And your archetype is the systems catalyst. And I did that because you spent so much time in private equity, which is an environment that is historically hyper competitive. Metrics driven, transactional, just atypical of what I've certainly talked to folks about. But now you lead all these wonderful global networks that are focusing on change. And it requires collaboration, it requires dropping your ego, and it requires deep trust. Fred Rogers famously said that human relationships are the primary innovations of our time. For you personally, how difficult was that psychological shift for you? coming off Wall Street and then how do you coach other type A individuals to move from that transactional mindset to this interconnected one that you've developed?
Jeff Walker: Well, it's one of those things where it it didn't happen overnight. It started really when I was much younger. And I walked in the band room when I was in seventh grade and found my people because I was told I was gonna be having to play the tuba and the sousaphone and nobody wants to listen to those by themselves. So I had to play with others. And so understanding how to play, my own unique sound and then have them play their sounds and create something you couldn't have done by yourself and then have that as impact on an audience. And to me that partnership And that playing together with others for impact has followed me the rest of my life. And so for four years when I was in junior high and high school, I was nothing but, you know, working with others on music of all different kinds. jazz is probably one of the the closest in in comparison to what I do today, just because there's very few leaders and there's many people who are creating together. and so I went Became on the board of Berkeley College of Music for 10 years, largest music school in the world. And you know, these jazz guys talk about it's a flow state. It's a spiritual experience to play with others. And to me, that's how I've evaluated, you know, the rest of my partnerships, the rest of my life. When I set up the private equity group at JP Morgan in 1983, we had eight mergers that we went through and we combined a lot of people together, but we operated and actually legally were a partnership, and so we We talked every Monday around the world, brought people together. We exchanged knowledge, information, we partnered with our CEOs and our portfolio companies that we had. And then it still was transactional. There's no kidding about that, because we were trying to, you know, make some significant returns, and we were lucky that we were successful. But I I I was searching for you know spiritual outlets, you know, all during that time. I first started meditating in 19. 73 and University of
todd faber: Wow.
Jeff Walker: Virginia, and to me was asking about subtle energy and what is this energy feels around the human body? How does that work? So while I was getting a degree in computer science and accounting, I was also doing this weird work. And so I've always kind of blended them together. And to me, that's honoring, you know, each of our growth. I continue to have to have growth. and I find I grow more with others than I do by myself. And so my to me. that's you know what's stuck with me through all the partnerships since I retired out of private equity almost twenty plus years ago.
todd faber: That's you know, it's fascinating to me 'cause I had no idea about your musical interlude in terms of the the middle school stuff. 'Cause I did play the drums in middle school. So but I'm I'm a retired drummer, haven't played in a long time. But certainly the sousaphone and tuba are are those are tough instruments to lug around too and play. So kudos to you for doing that. 'Cause the
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: drums are easy. They were set up for me. All I had to do was bring my sticks.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, there you go. Well, I'm sure you could still play today in some shape or form.
todd faber: Well, yes, some shape or form being the operative word
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: for sure. but you did. You talked a lot about just now about spirituality, and and it was nice. You actually shared with me a diagram which we'll include in the show notes, called the spiritual learning loop. And in it you place love at the absolute center of this continuous circle, moving through self-transformation, compassion, service to humanity, service with others, and and feedback from others. when you look at the world's biggest problems, they usually jump straight to service to humanity, which you had as sort of the outer execution. do you think this loop should always begin with sort of self-transformation and inner mastery and and how would that how would that inner loop help prevent a leader from burning out?
Jeff Walker: There's a couple good questions there. there's been a whole w focused effort around system change for quite a while. Started at MIT and and broadened out from there. And it was a little theoretical and then we started saying, What does that mean? you know, and worked on malaria and so how did you pull all these different stakeholders together with one of my great mentors, we can talk about later, Ray Chambers, and work with the United Nations and Global Fund and ha bring all these different st constituents so that they have a common objective, which is to lower deaths from malaria. And to me that's that's what system change is about. And so it's driving from this theory of system change down to getting things done. Well what they found was and and we were at conference two years ago at Harvard Business School on system change And they're starting they continue to study it, saying this is a better way of looking at problems rather than saying, I have the answer. And many of the nonprofits that we had supported in the old days had a CEO who says, I can fix the world. All you gotta do is give me more money and I'll scale it, and it's gonna be awesome. Well, it doesn't quite work in systems-level work where you can start companies and they will scale. So we started JetBlue, for example, and it scaled and became a cool airline, right? But that works in a four-part. profit mode doesn't quite work in a larger scale, you know, problem focused global model. And so, how do you step back and look at yourself as how you can lead these kinds of collaborations, but not with the answers, but with the ability to start moving your own ego somewhat aside and opening up to others so what the collaborations could turn out to be if you pull these disparate partners together. And what that takes is starting out with your own self. How am I, you know, working in the world? Am I working as someone who has all the answers or am I working as someone who has a lot of questions? Am I able to be someone who can listen well? Am I W and it's one of the things when we used to hire young MBAs, I would always tell them, hey, you know, listening skills is much more important than telling people how smart you are. You already know how smart you are. You have no idea what they're thinking. So open yourself up to that change. And starting to understand that this inside work, whether it's being quiet, learning meditation, breath practice, working with others in collaboration, what it means to be a good partner. These are skills. And what they found at Harvard Business School during the system change conference was you have to do the inner work first before you can do the outer work. And there's a great professor at Columbia University, Hitangra Wadha, who has a good book on that. And there's another great professor, Rebecca. Anderson at Harvard, who teaches leadership, and she's had a whole course, and it's one of the most popular ones now at the business school and the Kennedy School on this internal work. So now they've created this joint curriculum which focuses on how am I becoming a good partner? And if it's not just myself, it is what does it make me want to do? And it typically is this learning loop, it's a spiritual loop I call it, which is it pulls you. Toward compassion for others. If you start thinking not just about yourself, but about your place in the world and you start caring about others, then you start thinking, well, if I care about others, what can I do to help them lower less have less suffering and more joy? And so you can pull that into the actions you're going to be taking. And so those actions can be service of all kinds. But as I said before, service by itself about what I think is important in the world isn't necessarily the best thing to do. And so finding ways to work with others This service with others allows you to be more effective because you're hearing different people's viewpoint. It's like the jazz performance where you're bringing different ideas together and then moving that into the space where you're starting to listen to others as you're doing the work because you can learn about yourself better. So they can tell me, hey, you're not listening too well. You ought to do that more. And so then I can put that back in the learning loop saying, well, I need to work on myself a little bit more to be a better partner so I can be of service better. And so it's a loop that continues on. And it surrounds it's surrounding this whole idea of love. Love for all things. Love for all beings, love for all plants, animals, whatever it might be on this earth. And so if you center yourself around that love of all and surround it with work on yourself, with others, in service. It tends to be a path, I find, to be generative, continuing to grow. There is no nirvana. There is no, my God, I'm enlightened. It's just not no no great spiritual master will ever tell you that you're gonna get to that point where you just have to stop do all work. It is a a growing mode, but I have fun doing it. It's really fun to find people to work with and to partner with and grow with.
todd faber: I I I think it's amazing I mean honestly I I would less love to stop and on that because that message is amazing. But I have more questions, so but
Jeff Walker: There you go.
todd faber: be that as it may, I I do think that's a that's a wonderful mindset because we do talk a lot about I think two things that you pointed out. One is the idea that you have to listen not just to what the information, the feedback you're getting from external folks, but also the internal stuff. Because when you do that, you do grow. You do become a better person, you do become a better leader. And, you know, God gave us two ears and one mouth. So, you know, you're it's a lot easier to listen with two ears than speak with one mouth, that's for sure. So I but I
Jeff Walker: Well you could see it in your family, I'm sure, you know, when you're your spouse or your kids or they're kinda like you you're not just telling them what to do. In fact they probably won't won't do it anyway. But but but
todd faber: But I I I have I have a a a Cuban wife and two half Hispanic daughters. Yeah, listening is just not in the cards for them for me.
Jeff Walker: Ha ha.
todd faber: I I just have to go with the flow sometimes and I'm okay with that. But yes. You
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: ideally, certainly you'd like to think that, but yeah, the the idea is that you really I you you have to find ways to to improve yourself and the best way to improve yourself and to grow is to get the feedback. And the only way to get the feedback is to listen.
Jeff Walker: And work with others and and learning together. To me, one of the great paths is growing with others. And at and at Bridge Builders, our our partnership that we have, that we invest in well-being deals and transactions. One of our goals, and it's been fifteen years we've been working together, is to grow with each other. And when we can do that, you know, that it makes it more interesting and more fun and more complete. And we like to do it.
todd faber: And defin and definitely more collaborative, which is really the whole key to it. So I
Jeff Walker: Well, and you you asked another question earlier about burnout and and how, you know, this kind of work helps what I have experienced is, you know, much less likely to burn out because you're not here to save the world, you're not here to fix all things. You're here to do what you can and stimulate others so that the ripples go out into the world and it starts having positive influence. And so to me, you know, if we can teach a lot of the skills of being able to manage anxiety And depression. And these things that come with what happens, you know, students growing up, you know, they have more anxiety today than they've ever had before. And so if you give them the skills to be able to handle it, it might be being quiet, might be walking in nature, it might be taking a breath, it might be meditating, you know, it might be doing yoga, it might be doing work, you know, with others. To me, these are the skills because people are burning out at faster and faster paces, whether it's nurses or whether it's teachers entering programs or whether it's people that were in Peace Corps, because they have what they they have this desire to help, which is great, and have empathy for others, which is good, but sometimes empathy is defined as really becoming the other almost. You you understand them well enough. And so you start suffering and they start burning out. So what you try to teach is compassion. Compassion is the ability to care for the other, but then protect yourself. So that you're allowed to stand back, do everything you can, and then you have to step away because you gotta protect yourself because you're gonna continue to work another day rather than burning out and stopping all things. So to me, these are skills we're teaching at the University of Virginia in the Contemplative Science Center that we that I chair there, and we're bringing that to all the students, faculty, and staff. And it's growing because the suffering is there, the parents are sitting there going, What do we do? How do we prepare our kids for this anxiety of this world that's so unpredictable, et cetera? Well, there is tools out there for that.
todd faber: I I I think it's great and and even in its simpler simplest form, I used to tell my daughters that you can you can help other people, but if you absorb their baggage, you have to take it home with you. And then when you when you get into your room and you open up that suitcase, it's gonna be filled with things you don't want, but you now own it. And I try to get them to visualize that aspect of you can you can be a great helper by to your point showing compassion, but if you absorb all of that feedback and take it on, it becomes more difficult to help because now it gets muddied in, you know, it's in your closet and, you know, you can't differentiate between who whose clothes belong to who anymore. And so I I love the fact that you guys are doing that and, you know, It was always interesting for me, 'cause one of the things that I've learned as I've been doing more research on Fred Rogers was that, you know, he spent his entire life talking about the hardest work we'll ever do is the work we do inside, you know, facing your blind spots, owning them. And you talked about the work that you do at UVA, and you mentioned that I think nineteen seventy-three you said you started meditation. and when you probably did that fifty years ago, they were sort of considered fringy things. And nowadays I think they've become more normalized for sure. but you talk about if they they should be mandatory prerequisites for anyone trying to lead a a complex organization. And and you alluded to it, but when you think about leaders who've been doing something the same way for so long, how do you get them to kind of Adapt to that and and change their mindset so that they see it as a mainstream, helpful part of their growth as leaders.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, and there is no one path. there's a lot of ways to open people up to potentially changing the way they work. And part of that sometimes is through suffering. You know, they sit there going, you know, I had an illness. My spouse had an illness. I went through a divorce or a change in life. You know, I lost a lot of money. I don't know. So I'm trying to rethink and relook at myself. These are all periods of potentially opening, you know, people's minds so that they will look for an alternative. And I've seen that happen more and more, particularly because of this world, because you then can fill it saying, hey, try to take a breath. Maybe think about meditating. And that's what we did. We actually suggested that to many different people, but also invested in the science. Because people said, they've been doing this for a thousand years. It sounds pretty strange. Well, what if we took the science, which we did, we funded work at Harvard with Sarah Lazar and at Yale with Judd Brewer, and followed and found that there's the default mode network which goes quiet when you do long-term meditation. Literally, the monkey mind, they call it, in your brain that keeps talking to you, it slows down some. And so when it quiets down, you can be with yourself. And so when people kinda like, I just don't know what to do, I don't know how handle all this all, well, let's take a walk in nature. You know, you can do a walking meditation, you can do whatever it might take to allow you to kinda handle some of the problems that are out there. And those are openings. And people are looking for those and they're looking for other people who sit there going, you know, there's something going on with you. You seem to be happy. Why is that? You know, what are you doing? And I always look for people in joy. I follow them. You know, to it's not kinda I'm not here to have everybody tell me what to do, but if they're f if they're in joy, I kinda like, tell me more, you miss a ride. Roger seemed to be enjoy. He seemed happy, me about happy what he's doing. So I want to hear more about how he's doing that. He seems to care about other people more. Well, I would maybe he should ask more about what others are feeling or how they're experiencing life. And to me, that's part of the partnership development. That's part about caring about others. But it's also about listening at a very local level. Not at a global level. I can argue about, you know, climate change, but you know, how are we doing here where I live? You know, how am I hanging out with other people and experiencing life and experiencing the climate and experiencing people that need help and do the core work locally before I get to this global world that I'm trying to fix as well, right?
todd faber: that's great advice. I I I love the fact that you're sort of a I A acknowledging that being around people that express joy is always a better thing anyway, because it's contagious. despair also can be contagious too. And so if you can find ways to bring joy to those who are experiencing despair, then Hopefully that contagion overwhelms the despair. So I love that idea. the the idea of meditation, the idea of mindfulness. I mean, the monkey brain, this guy. Constantly. Like forever and ever. And I've tried and I continue to try to do meditation. I do do yoga, but I do think to your point, it is the way to quiet it. And when you are quieted down, I think your ability to think more clearly. for f problem solving just increases. and those are really great lessons. And certainly finding folks who can adapt to that better. We've you know, one of my daughters is got the same monkey brain I have. And so we have talked to her and say, Hey, med but it meditation takes time and it takes practice and it's not a it's it's a job in some respects in terms of the amount of time you have to put into it. And But she's sort of getting it. My wife is really good about it, but I I do love that idea. I love the idea of joy and I love the idea of finding ways to quiet your brain, so that you can think more clearly.
Jeff Walker: And try and try this, you know, I there's a chapter in in our book, General Reset Network, and it's on Jeffersonian dinners. And I was chairman of Monticello, which is Thomas Jefferson's, you know
todd faber: yeah.
Jeff Walker: in outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. And he used to have a lot of cool people at dinner. They used to eat in the afternoon, by the way, but they used to, you know, had a lot of cool people at dinner and he was a little hard of hearing, so they wanted to listen to everybody at the table. So at times they had these whole table conversations and we call them Jeffersonian dinners, but call them whatever you want. But your dinner table, you say, Okay, we're gonna listen to each other one at a time. And we're gonna we usually have a some kind of simple question, you know, it might Be, you know, what's your favorite song of all time? Or what is your best concert you ever went to? Something easy. And then people go around the room and everybody wants to hear each other. That actually is a fun conversation. And I actually want to listen to everybody at the table rather than just the person to the right or left of me. And so this whole table conversation quiets the whole dinner down. But it opens up the entire dinner to listening to others. And I have a TED talk we did I did on it and we can talk about it as well. But to me it's a simple idea. It's a simple idea just to have a change in format of how we eat together. And it could be at a family level, and I've done this with extended family for sure, and had a conversation or with complete strangers. And it's unbelievable what complete strangers will talk about together when they start listening. And they start then connecting to each other. And to me that's all we're trying to do is develop these local connections to people we care about or people we want to learn from rather than, you know, the same old thing that we're living every day.
todd faber: I I I love that, Jeff. And you know, one of the core tenets of the of for me with the podcast was the idea of finding a shared humanity. And when you do sit down with people and you have these conversations, you do find that. You do find those connections. And those connections really help to bind us and make us feel comfortable with each other. Even if you you know, you start off as strangers, but you have a dinner like that, you are no longer strangers. You have found that that core piece of interest, or even joy that you share with them and all of a sudden strangers are no longer strangers. And they are they are friends, they're human beings that have a connection. And ultimately, you know, that's part of what we look for. You know i and again going back on the the notion of joy and and you would you've you've talked about this before, But when you you've written, I don't know if where I read it, but you talked about mass s massive social collaborations where you say, if it's not fun, let's not do it. Right? And in the corporate world, you you look at at a quarterly KPI report and somehow joy doesn't seem to be anywhere within the confines of that report. and Fred Rogers was a big proponent of play. Right. He brought this distinct sense of play, lightheartedness, and just joy to these sometimes heavy, complex emotional topics. For you, what is it about preserving the sense of joy and shared fun so vital to keeping teams at work motivated, especially when what they're doing have financially high stakes and quite frankly can be pretty exhausting.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, it's Joy is infectious, it makes it interesting. How do you bring that about? You know, I was I've been lucky to be around as long as a Dalai Lama, and when he speaks, even though you know he's kicked out of China and Tibet, he you know has had a lot of suffering, he has gone after, he laughs all the time. And he will just joke around, he will grab your nose, he will, you know, laugh out loud. You know, at a at a half an hour I ty I timed it. There was like five times. He just outrously laughed, you know, a joke he told himself, you know, whatever. And you know that he's just learning. And to me, the best times, some of the best times I've had is working on really hard things with other people, and it turns into a flow state. It's like solving a really tough puzzle, and we're doing it with others, and you just kind of lose track of time. Yeah, lose kind of like, this is hard. How am I gonna think about this? How am I gonna No, it just kind of starts flowing. And that moves a little bit out of the mental and turns into, you know, the body, the emotional side, the connection to others, the energy around the room, and how that kind of worked together. And I can tell when I'm in a partnership working in this more of a flow state, than when it's not, because it is fun. Because you sit there going, I'm not even thinking about is this over yet? You know, I'm thinking about, you know, this is interesting. That's a Interesting question. How do we solve that together? that was an interesting idea. And you get into that mode, you know. some of the some of the great basketball players, you know, talk about these spiritual connections, these flow states they get in when they're playing a game. And and some of them were coaching us in our leadership programs with JP Morgan, and they talk about you know the time where in one quarter they just lost the track of where we were, but I just knew where all their fellow players were and they knew where to throw the ball. And they cat he said, We scored more points during that period. There was a guy from the Celtics. He said we scored more points in that quarter than we've ever scored in our lives. And we walked out and go, what in the world just happened? Cause it was just flowing and connecting. Well to me, that's how I figure out whether these partnerships are working. And there's nothing better in my mind in not only getting to know somebody, but then finding, let's do something together.
todd faber: Yeah.
Jeff Walker: Take a small thing, whatever that small thing is, and let's do it together so you get to know each other better. It's an action. And so it's not just, you know, sitting there going, How are you doing? Well, it's nice to ask how the person is doing, but then you know let's get to know each other a little bit better by doing something together. Something that's a little difficult, something that's a little hard, and it kind of gets you to stress, stretch a little bit. To me, that brings about the joy. You keep evaluating and saying, Hmm, how does it feel? You know, what does it seem like to you? And if it gets too hard. you probably oughta take take a breath and pull back and find out why is it hard. Am I pushing too hard? Am I not listening enough? Or have the right people in the room? You know, what's going on?
todd faber: Well, it's that idea of of your introspection too, in terms of looking at, you know, where are my blind spots? What am I not doing? and and that kind of ownership from a leadership perspective is huge. Because you know, great leaders acknowledge where they're at fault. And if something is difficult as opposed to looking outward and saying, Well, what has that person done wrong? Where where what stakes have I not put down to that that have caused whatever these problems are, right? And I love the idea that you are introspective enough to acknowledge that because that sense of vulnerability is also contagious. Because when you as a leader show, hey, what have I done wrong? How could I have done this better? Then others are more comfortable to do the same. And that's how people grow and that's how problems get solved. Because if somebody is, you know, I'm never wrong, I'm always right as a leader, then people are going to be afraid to sort of express how they feel or express where they're f falling apart because they're going to just mirror what they're seeing and and that's never a good thing. so I that is that's great advice to be able to look introspectively when you're creating these partnerships. And yes, you know, one of the folks I I interviewed, Dave Harmon, who's the the chief people officer at USA Today, he said every day he went down to the floor, of course, before COVID When everybody was in the office, and he would make a point to try to learn something new from the folks in his office, but something real, something that he could go back to two weeks from then and say, Hey, how did that go? Because that's when people feel heard and they feel like they're part of it, as opposed to simply just a cog. And clearly that's one of the things that you're doing. you know, in your in the generosity network, you talked about this idea of building these authentic partnerships. That they weren't going to be transactional. And, you know, Fred Rogers, when you would watch him in the program, his superpower, for lack of a better term, wasn't what he said, it was how he listened. And he always made the person he was with feel like they were the only person in the universe. You know, and sometimes we struggle with that because we're thinking about other things when we're talking to somebody, and it's hard to sort of stay focused. But when you are working with partners like Bridge Builders or the Psychedelic Science Found Funders Collaborative, how how do you really practice? I mean, I'm talking about deep empathetic listening so that you really see the person that you're with, as opposed to again, sort of that presumptive peripheral kind of on the on the face of it. I hear what you're saying, but you don't really understand what they're saying. You don't really know what's behind them. Cause I think people struggle with that. They really do. And I've seen it firsthand. I've I've done that myself. And so I think it'd be great to really understand how you're able to effectively do that.
Jeff Walker: Yeah, we're never perfect. So I'm always concerning to learn how to do that in a deeper way. curiosity is a a really useful skill and
todd faber: Yeah.
Jeff Walker: to me being, you know, just how did that work? You know, tell me about yourself or tell me about, you know, living in Massachusetts, you know, and tell me about, you know, what's what's what's pass what you're passionate about because I might be passionate about that too. And that's what we talk about in the book, where People ru trust me, you don't really wanna be called late at night asking for having somebody ask you for money. That's like what? This is a transaction. I don't
todd faber: Right.
Jeff Walker: wanna be treated like a transaction, you know, or like a checkbook, you know, give me a break. So to me what's great in the development side is finding people who can develop deep relationships. And so I'll ask, you know, you Todd, what you're most passionate about. What are the things today? Not yesterday, not Ten years ago, you know, can tell me all those, but what today are you particularly interested in working on or you're passionate about as well? And it might be, gee, I'm really passionate about going hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire. You're like, okay, then tell me about that. That's interesting. You know, there's an experience there, there's a story there. So people start telling stories. They like to hear stories and they like to tell stories. And it's like, you know, tell me about yourself or tell me about, you know, the things that you wish you were or wish you could do. You Know, I always wanted to play blues guitar. I never could, you know, I never have, but I love blues. So I like, I wish I always well, let's go do something like that together. And so you find you know these people who have sets of passions and you try to match them up. And what I always think is really fun to do is weave, is weave these connections together,
todd faber: And
Jeff Walker: saying, you like doing that? Well, so does this other person. I may not, you know, be the person that's really you know interested in in climate change. Because I'm really focused on global health. But I do know somebody that's really into particular climate change in Africa that you're gonna want to talk to because you're interested in that too. And they and to me one of the joys is connecting those two together and they call back and say, Wow, that was amazing. We're gonna work together and this is gonna be fairly fun. And you say, Okay, my work is done. That one was good. I'll I'll move on to something else, right? So to me, you know, you have this this interest in connecting things together, weaving them together a little bit. And maybe I'm a collie dog at heart, you know, kinda like how do you kind of pull together some people and pull them into different collaborations and and all. and in valuing building relationships, you know, I think we all over time stopped having enough space for that. So how do we always make sure we have, you know, ten percent of your life that's focused on growth, on new. Never stop that. I have too many people who are friends of mine who are big investment banks coming in and say, I'm I'm kinda tired of doing what I'm doing, I've done it for long time, made enough money. Now what do I do? And I go, Well, what do you like doing? Well, I don't know, I worked a lot. And you gotta go, Well, you know, why don't you try a few s different things before you decide what next to do? Because you can Be a different stage of life, and you can open up a couple of different angles that you might not have experienced before. And to me, you do that a lot with the relationships as well. So, what are the things you do? That little, you know, piece of a nonprofit you spent time on. You say, Well, I started liking that. that was interesting. And then try some other things, say, I didn't like that at all. You know, that's fine. You know, no problem. So to me it's continuing to be curious, it's continuing to explore, it's continuing to set up new relationships and meet new people. that keeps you to me, that keeps you younger than you probably would normally be is is as as we're all aging.
todd faber: I I I like the idea and I guess to your point is that it starts with the curiosity in terms of asking the questions, but then you have to be that active listener once they've answered it, because then it begets that next set of questions. And then that's to your point how you weave it together. And and I love that you you said, you know, you like to put people together and then you step away. And then maybe you hear from them. Colette Phillips, who I interviewed about a month ago, who's from Get Connected, which it fits, she likes the idea of giving without expectation. And that's clearly what you've been doing is i in terms of this this phase is giving without expectation. I mean, you know, the expectation is I hope it works, I hope these people get together, and then I'm gonna feel good about it. And there's that's lovely. I mean, that's that's your joy, right? Like you get joy from that. I'm gett I'm getting joy from these conversations that I've been having on the podcast because I've been learning stuff that I didn't think about. I'm hopefully becoming a better listener. I guess my wife and the girls might beg to differ at times, but that's okay too. But it's just the idea of we learn by having these conversations. We learn by being curious. I'm super curious about all the people that I I I meet with. and for you, I c I kind of have one last question that that I've I've tried to ask a lot of people because I feel like we we've gotten to the point where we are today, but we don't get there without somebody behind us in some capacity. And, you know, Fred Rogers always believed that we're all molded by the people we choose to love and do existence. you've had quite an extraordinary life, you know, between navigating Wall Street, writing books, advising global leaders. And and to me most importantly, championing this idea of mindfulness. But when you look across this incredible spectrum of experiences that you've had, was there a particular person, a mentor, a helper, or a family member who really kind of helped model for you what you are today?
Jeff Walker: Yeah, I mean there's clearly a a set of people. One person that stands out is a guy named Ray Chambers. And Ray started out in Wall Street. He invented the leverage buyout, which is a classic financing tool. But in the day it wasn't. And he retired at fifty-three years old. And he became known as the philanthropist out of the the confidential philanthropist, and then he finally admitted his work for Newark, New Jersey. And then he worked on global health and he became the Secretary General of the United Nations envoy for global health and malaria. And I became vice chair because he's a good friend of mine, and he was a bit of a guru. Introduced me to a guy named Deepak Chopra and a variety of days ago, years ago. And he was a deep meditator and he was a deep explorer, and so I would introduce him to people, he would introduce me, but we'd go on these long walks, and he talked about giving back, and he talked about doing the everything you can to reduce suffering and then stepping away to protect yourself. And he introduced me whole sets of other people who were also in these global spiritual growth paths that were these senior executives. They're all out there. And all of a sudden they're kind of like, whoa, you're interested in that too? Can you tell me more? Whereas you didn't think they would be, but he's like, no, I'm trying to grow. Right? And so where do I go? And kind of how do I think about that work? And so we started down the path of of yes, meditating and getting together and meeting the Dalai Lama and others. Like, whoa, who'd have done that? And that was a lot of weird things that became not weird because we invested in the science and got reimbursement. Insurance companies started paying for it and kind of it became a real thing. And likes that was that we're doing in subtle energy, kinda like, this is still a weird thing. What is this thing called Ricky? What is this thing called healing touch? What is this energy field around the human body? That sounds weird. Well, so now we've done the science that shows an MD Anderson Cancer Center outside healers can stop pancreatic cancer cells from dividing in pastry dishes and In small animals. In the and this is the top cancer center in the world saying, like, this is actually happening. And we showed that Harvard and Utah show that Reiki actually works. It's as effective as opiates in controlling pain. You can like, what? How does that work? And so these are all openings, kind of like people leaning forward going, Well, okay, tell me some more about this one. How do we embed that into the medical system? How do we get reimbursement? How do we kind of think about other partners coming in? So I'm just walking it. This is go to phenomenahealing.com and you'll see kind of what we've got in doing so far. We have a podcast. now one of the most senior women at at Google, Ivy Ross, is our narrator because she's so into it. And then we've got another team of people kind of working on how do you get communicating to other practitioners about how this works. So it's just a fun puzzle. But it all started with Ray, you know, starting to talk to me about you can integrate spirituality and caring about others into a transactional world and turn it into a place that you can continue to grow and we can work with each other to kind of rebuild faith and confidence in the system rather than just saying, I give up.
todd faber: Yeah. I I that's amazing. I mean, 'cause when you do think about the difficulties people have with grasping concepts that not I don't say they're foreign to them, but to your point, they could seem a little weird or outdated or out there. and when you can take that in a capitalist society, right, and figure out how it gets monetized within the system so that it's it becomes normalized because you're proving the science. And you know, I've experienced some of this stuff. I had had prostate cancer and I did certain things in addition to the traditional stuff to help it. because a lot of it was a mindset too. And yeah at the time when it first happened, I was like, okay, this is kind of weird. Like, is this really gonna work? But it does. Because it does. Like there's just it just does. You know, I one of the folks I interviewed, Jugen Veen, who's a biologist and psychologist from Switzerland, we talked a lot on the podcast just about the impact stress has on you physiologically and on your nervous system. And if you find ways and you can see the changes when you address this. strange thing. It's stress. Well what what is stress? How do you define it? And you can't, but you can feel it and you can also feel when it goes away. And
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: the idea that folks who are senior executives who were in these transactional worlds have acknowledged that and found ways to get it better identified through science is to me it's mind blowing. And I and I love it. And I love the fact that
Jeff Walker: Well, and opening up the medical system so then it'll start saying, maybe we ought to shift the way we treat people and connect with people and have them open. So yeah, no, it's we got more more more room to go.
todd faber: I mean listen, but that's the point, isn't it? It's the idea we talked about. It's about growth. And when you collaborate with the right people, like you have, you grow. And through that growth you learn. And through learning you make change. And through those changes you make the world a better place. And it's just a nice process that you've engaged in in your sort of I guess almost second career. Which a lot of people don't do. I mean, you know, you talk about some people retire at fifty three and they buy a boat.
Jeff Walker: Right. No, it's boring. They won't live long enough.
todd faber: And and and and and and they might get some joy from that, but to me, yeah, the joy is finding a shared humanity, making the world a better place, helping other people grow. And and that to me is the real joy. That there's everything else is sort of secondary, but again, when you find people like yourself who say, I've done all this, but now I'm gonna do something more. And and I love it and I'm so thrilled that you took the time out of your day, which I know is very busy, to sit with little old me and have this conversation. if for no other reason then I'm a better person for it. So I appreciate that very much, Jeff.
Jeff Walker: Well, it's been a joy and I wore my Mr. Rogers sweater so just for this so
todd faber: Well, I and and and that didn't go unnoticed. So thank you for that. you're the first person to do that, which
Jeff Walker: Yeah.
todd faber: is great. I have I have mine hanging up and my these are my grandfather's Jack Purcells from the seventies that I've kept.
Jeff Walker: Okay.
todd faber: but yeah, it was funny because somebody asked me, says, so are you gonna wear like a cardigan? I said, I'm not the Mr. Rogers here. It's the people that I'm interviewing. They're the Mr. Rogers. So I appreciate that, Jeff. And And thank you for the wardrobe. and you take good care, keep doing all the great work that you've been doing, and and hopefully the people that watch this will will learn something more. So thank you again.
Jeff Walker: Talking to you too.
todd faber: You two take care. Bye-bye.
