Driving Disruption: Danielle Lord and Monty Smith On The Innovative Approaches They Are Taking To Disrupt Their Industries

An Interview With Cynthia Corsetti

Moving from transactional to transformational: Living systems are observable on all levels as mutually transformational. Transactional exchanges, where fuller connections are not honored, are corrosive if not cancerous to life.

In an age where industries evolve at lightning speed, there exists a special breed of C-suite executives who are not just navigating the changes, but driving them. These are the pioneers who think outside the box, championing novel strategies that shatter the status quo and set new industry standards. Their approach fosters innovation, spurs growth, and leads to disruptive change that redefines their sectors. In this interview series, we are talking to disruptive C-suite executives to share their experiences, insights, and the secrets behind the innovative approaches they are taking to disrupt their industries. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Danielle Lord and Monty Smith.

Danielle Lord, PhD

As a small business owner and the principal of Archetype Learning Solutions, Danielle focuses her leadership development efforts on small business and individuals because everybody should have access to leadership development. Prior to starting her own Organizational Development Consulting & Coaching practice, Danielle has developed and led Leadership Development efforts in multiple organizations. This work includes The Port of Seattle, as the Chief Learning Officer for the State of Washington, and for Providence Health and Services, a five-state, 75,000 employee health system.

Monty Smith, JD

Monty Smith holds a BA and JD degree from Gonzaga University; a Masters of Divinity from St Paul School of Theology; and Certificates in Life Coaching and Purpose Guiding ™. In addition to working as a civil rights lawyer and United Methodist minster, he served as an Army Officer, Ashram manager, non-profit & environmental activist, community organizer, and seminar & retreat leader. His coaching approach supports the whole person with goals of well being, learning, and growth. He inquires deeply into the invisible dimensions of personal wholeness and leadership. Listening to stories , values, world views and leadership models is his passion.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about disruption, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

Danielle: I have a lengthy background in the field of organizational development, specifically developing and managing leadership development at an enterprise level. I also spent 13 years teaching university graduate students in the field of leadership studies. Within the organization, my role also extends into employee engagement. In my observations, those formal leaders, doing the work of leadership, who slow down to connect at a human level with team members within and across the organization is incredibly powerful.

I have heard many anecdotal stories about leaders, CEOs specifically, who took the time to personally connect with every member of the organization. Stopping to focus on the team members: what they need, how they were doing, their family members, etc. The shift in engagement upon their departure, and the installation of a new, less engaging CEO was very dramatic. In one instance, employee engagement scores dropped by nearly 60 points. This work has really led me to realize the power of focus over frenzy (Authority, March 2023) when it comes to leaders engaging with team members. Its time to move beyond the “be brief, be bright, be gone” mentality of executive interactions. This has become a very important part of my message to leaders and brought me to Monty and our collective work.

Monty: I worked in a neighborhood grocery store from 7th Grade until my sophomore year in college. Early on I was struck by how different my experience was in working with different people, their attitudes and the ways that they did things. I noticed how some of those same things, and the ways that I showed up, affected the enjoyment the customers the store.

As an Army Office I was exposed to a broad diversity of leadership styles in the people I served with. And again, I noticed how systems were set in motion and affected because of the people involved. Then, leading spiritual communities and and non-profit organizations over thirty years deepened my commitment to pay attention to culture and the way people show up and are present. Over the years I stayed devoted to evolving personal practices of mindfulness, inner development and self-care.

In one sense, Life / Leadership Coaching is an extension of my personal practice. I learn by sharing with others. In another sense, I see that we are awash in systems gamed for the benefit of a few. Over my life there has been dramatic erosion of systems designed for the common good. We are literally and systematically destroying life on the planet. I want to stay connected to the spirit of life and love on the planet.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Monty: The Collaboration of Archetype Learning Solutions and To Be Curious Coaching stands out because it weaves into learning experiences for others the diverse interests, education and work backgrounds of the two principals, Drs. Danielle Lord and Monty Smith.

Danielle: I love that you brought up collaboration Monty! I really believe that if we want to cause disruption, collaboration is key. I think its time to move past the era of competition. Imagine how much more creative and productive we could be with the sharing of more ideas, new perspectives, and creative conflict. Even within our modern organizations the degree of silo’s is pretty astounding and it really limits our ability to collaborate and function as a system.

Here’s an example of silo’d and competitive thinking in healthcare. My mom has a friend who has multiple medical issues and sees as many specialists. Not one can tell her exactly what is occurring medically, and have basically told her there is nothing more that can be done for her. Each specialist physician is operating in a silo or paradigm, which is limiting their beliefs and therefore actions. Imagine what they could do for her if they all came together through a process of collective thinking through listening or being present. Instead, they’ve all dismissed to her to live a life of pain and frustration.

As Monty mentioned collaboration and the ability to be vulnerable through both listening and curiosity, are the very things that do make both our organizations unique and successful. Its also a powerful tool to help us see beyond our own paradigm. Paradigms are great models, but its easy to get trapped in them. It makes me think of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal work: the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), paradigms are a bit like a spiders web, if we are trapped in the web, we can no longer see how different threads are pulling on one another that either trigger change or foster inertia.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Danielle: I believe that they are firmly linked to both my own Sage archetype and my core values: empathy, experience, and education. I do rely on the collective wisdom and journey of my own experience and education. I work in a field that is complex and requires a great deal of experience that enables to me to look beyond what is said, ask difficult questions, and make assessments that are both informed and empathetic. This is work that cannot be done without experience.

Monty: The thing that has served me most has been to develop as a listener. From that I have tried to learn to be more compassionate and empathetic. Listening is a core dimension of mindfulness. Particularly the somatic or embodied mindfulness that I support leaders in learning and practicing. I repeatedly have heard from others that they could not remember a time when the felt so grounded as they did after a mindfulness exercise that I facilitated.

I once hired a church employee who was in a half-way house coming out of a substance rehab program. Over several years I helped shape a work environment that insured a safe community of compassion and empathy for that employee. They went on to lead their own organization that reflected those same values received acknowledgement from the State of Washington.

Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.

Monty: At the beginning of an appointment to an historic downtown church I was faced with the choice to follow the path of contraction and protecting the status quo or to finding collaborators who would support the spiritual and economic viability of a large building. I choose the latter. From that successful experiment I became an advocate for collaboration, democratizing leadership processes and de-siloing organizational structures.

Danielle: I think for me was a lesson that occurred early in my career, as a young manager. I was working in a mid-size organization that was undergoing a very dramatic re-organization; almost more like a coup. The HR manager was out on maternity leave, my director was on vacation, and the HR generalist (also very early in her career) and myself were tasked with terminating two team members. There were two paths to take: the cold, calculated abrupt approach, or a compassionate approach ensuring these team members were treated with respect and compassion, leaving them as whole as possible in a difficult situation.

The HR generalist and I were in graduate school together, so our shared-commute gave us the opportunity to discuss our approach. We were both aligned on the latter: ensuring that we were as kind and compassionate as possible. I always remember this event, which I believe has shaped my approach to any difficult situation. While many have difficult outcomes, there is one thing we can stand on — our values, while ensuring that we are as human as possible, recognizing that we are working with other humans.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. In the context of a business, what exactly is “Disruption”?

Danielle: From my perspective, disruption is a macro-level event, in which we did not see coming — either through the swiftness of the event or simple naivete — as such it’s something that is beyond our control, but we are compelled to act.

Monty: For me, disruption is best seen in the context of a systems lens that focuses on an understanding that the quality of results produced by any system depends on the quality of awareness from which people in the system operate. The formula for successful disruptions or a change process is not “form follows function,” but “form follows consciousness.” The structure of awareness and attention determines the pathway along which a disruption unfolds.

Danielle: I agree that there is so much that we can learn from how systems operate. Both Monty and I have mentioned organizational silo’s, which is the lack of or an inability to see our organizations as living systems, or the left-hand doesn’t know what the right-hand is doing. It’s frustrating for team members and limits creativity and productivity. I believe this silo mentality is the exact thing that leads to the naivete that limits our ability to see or plan for a disruption.

How do you perceive the role of ‘disruption’ within your industry, and how have you personally embraced it? Is it a necessity, a strategy, or something else entirely in your view?

Danielle: In the work I do, it’s definitely been the work-from-home initiative that resulted from the Covid lockdowns in 2020. This was a significant paradigm shift in so many ways. For our employees, there was this substantial change that I believe was very positively disruptive for many. For many that disruption led the idea that there is a different reality. Lets explore some of those:

• Time: millions of people no longer spent hours on the road getting to and from the workplace,
• Money: gas, dry cleaning, lunches, time — all substantial amounts of money that we were able to put into the savings account,
• Work-life balance: suddenly working moms were able to prepare meals, and eat them with family, that did not seem rushed, or as I like to refer to it as combat-cooking, better work-life balance also means better self-care,
• Self-care: many reported having a greater opportunity to exercise, eat better, spend time in the yard, engaging in new hobbies, etc.,
• Decrease in stress and anxiety: being away from the office, and away the over-lords of prying eyes and micro-managing has been just one way that team members have reported a decrease in anxiety.

Of course this was also a time of great stress for many others who did not experience some of these things in the same way, but this was a lot of what I heard. Now many months later, there is a push to return to the office: a potential to ameliorate all of these events that many experienced as positive. With that, it has brought a significant amount of employee dis-engagement, quiet-quitting, apathy, increased organization-to-organization movement, to name just a few. Its got to be a necessity, something that becomes part of the culture. If it’s a strategy its too easy to become a checkmark rather than a way of being.

Monty: In a sense, my purpose and work as a Coach is to help individuals and organizations navigate and instigate disruption. Insightful observations of what we are seeing in 2023, variously stated, is that humanity and our planet are in a time of global crises. All of our institutions (social, educational, economic, environmental, governmental and spiritual) and our ecological life source are falling apart.

In this context, I take most directly from the observations of MIT’s Presencing Institute. Learning methodologies have relied on learning from the past, while most of the real leadership challenges in organizations and communities now requires something quite different: letting go of the past in order to connect with and learn from emerging future possibilities. Learning to lead, internally and externally, from the emerging future requires from most of us massive levels of practice and reeducation.

Danielle: this has definitely been the basis of our collaboration!

What lessons have you learned from challenging conventional wisdom, and how have those lessons shaped your leadership style?

Danielle: Much of my own leadership style was influenced from the story I shared earlier in this interview, but there have been other events as well. I spent 13 years in Catholic Healthcare. This was a time of great disruption for the Sister’s who had traditionally managed many of these institutions and were now turning over this fiduciary responsibility to lay persons. This disruption introduced a change that was designed to hold onto very specific cultural elements cultivated by the sisters: a culture of calm, reflective thinking and decision-making. Each meeting began with a reflection. Some reflections were short, some were interactive, some depending on the situation were two-hours. The intent was to be fully present as we left one meeting and mentally and emotionally entered into another.

Second to that was during the work from home period, where there was an on-going sense of frenzy, that really began to feel like gas-lighting. This is what really influenced me to get very thoughtful and intentional about mindfulness and the need to slow down.

Monty: The biggest lessons I have encountered in challenging conventional wisdom sit on the reality that people, individually , collectively, and organizationally resist change. Culture trumps policy. We humans evolved socially. Neurologically we are wired for predictability and stability. This reality requires checking in repeatedly about what people are thinking; how they are feeling, what emotions they are experiencing, and how their world views are being shaken.

Danielle: So well said Monty. This is why change management in organizations is challenging because we so often fail to account for the psychology of change: those elements that Monty listed above, the very things that make us human and predicate the need for authenticity, vulnerability, listening, and curiosity.

Disruptive ideas often meet resistance. Could you describe a time when you faced significant pushback for a disruptive idea? How did you navigate the opposition, and what advice would you give to others in a similar situation?

Monty: As Covid became a reality, I was working with a community where there were complex issues of hospitality for long and short term overnight visitors; participation in community gatherings; food preparation and service; care for vulnerable employees and more. The disruptive idea was that changes needed to be made. There was substantial disagreement on how to change behaviors on all issues . A successful outcome required deep consensus for the community to remain intact. In the end, opposition and conflict were navigated first by insuring there was process and a sense that people were seen, cared for and respected. There were affirmations that people loved each other and the shared work. Then more technically by agreeing on communication standards and values and by agree on the values by which all people would measure the wisdom of decisions. I feel that others in similar circumstances would profit by taking a similar approach.

Danielle: This is a constant in my world! Working in organizations and with executives, there is a strong push for hard, concrete data. Others include:

• Sense of urgency with everything — always putting out fires along with the sense of always needing to move rather than thinking, this is also perpetuated by the “be brief, be bright, be gone mentality,”
• A sense that many formal leaders believe that they have to have all of the answers, this has really eroded their ability to listen to the perspective of others,
• Not doing the real work of leadership. The human connection of vulnerability, authenticity, connection that is the work of leadership.

The idea of presence — slowing down to take it different views and perspectives, and even reflection — are quite ironic when viewed through the conventional idea of disruption. Something that is seen as an event, even something cataclysmic. We believe, however, that this is a disruption to the current state of affairs in how the modern organizations function. I am again reminded of the old saying, move slow to move fast.

Helping leaders to realize that there is a different way to approach their work, through presence, through systems-thinking, is a pretty big event in what we see as the traditional paradigm in our modern businesses. It takes time to slow down, to think, to reflect. It really does require leaders to be in a completely different mindset.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Innovative Approaches We Are Using To Disrupt Our Industry”?

Our innovative approaches are grounded in the research and science of systems. We find the most insightful and accessible research for organizations and communities is being done at MIT and their Presencing Institute. For individual and internal / neurology based systems research and practices we look to a variety of resources that include: The Mind Sight Institute at UCLA; the Capra course; Somatic researchers and teachings from both secular and spiritual traditions.

Five approaches we currently support are:

1 . Our leadership development series and coaching circle on Presence: These are grounded in notion that communities of practice are one to of the most efficient means to deliver innovation.

I think what really makes this powerful, is the ability step past the didactic session and return to the coaching circle after the brain has had a chance to process the information using both hemispheres, reflect, apply, and reflect some more. What is missing in many elements of our collective or organizational learning is the ability to step away…again we’re back to the false sense of immediacy versus time needed to process new and even dissonant information.

2 . Leaving the Ego behind and embracing the eco-system: The global evidence is that humanity, in order to survive, must make the transition for ego- culture to eco-culture. This requires, in the first instance, seeing the systems reality that life flourishes and is sustained through cooperative and caring networks — not though extractive competition.

This makes me think of animals, specifically those who live and exist collectively. I’m not sure if ego exists among animals. They seem to naturally work in harmony with one another in an eco-system model that is based on mutual protection and survival. There are countless stories of leadership lessons from animals: bees, geese, elephants…

3 . Introducing tools that help leaders search for information from unlikely sources: Theory U, being developed at the Presencing Inst. is a primary tool for leaders to learn who to look to the emergent future as a source of information and innovation.

There are great tools that exist to ensure that leaders can collect information through a different lens, gain perspective, or “hear” other ideas in a safe way. We introduce these tools so that our learners get access to real, viable tools that support their ability to be present, therefore disruptive.

4 . Moving from transactional to transformational: Living systems are observable on all levels as mutually transformational. Transactional exchanges, where fuller connections are not honored, are corrosive if not cancerous to life.

Transformational work is so powerful. We know through years of leadership research that the transformational approach is powerful! Imagine how our team members can transform their commitment to the organization by feeling valued, motivated in a meaningful way, and inspired to do their best work. This is by far disruptive by the very nature of allowing our team members to work to their fullest capacity.

5 . Introducing awareness of the universality of trauma and it’s impact on perception and performance: The individual and social cost of systemic racism, classism and much more is currently studied and seen most clearly in the discoveries and field of trauma theory. All effective leaders should be minimally trauma informed.

A good reminder that trauma is not your friend, yet we continue to see trauma in our organizations specifically through the transactional lens to which Monty referred. We’ve also seen this approach to learning in medical school. I’ve done research on the needs of physician-clinician to physician-leaders that outline the very structure of medical school trauma. Aspiring physician experience several powerful neurological processes that result in the psychological event of splitting (Lord & Schecter, 2016). Regardless of how we experience trauma it really has no place in our modern organizations. If you really want disruption, remove the trauma and allow your team members to really come alive!

Looking back at your career, in what ways has being disruptive defined or redefined your path? What surprises have you encountered along the way?

Monty: The name of my coaching practice is To Be Curious. Being curious is essentially a disruptive attitude and stance to take in the midst of experiencing life. This name comes as means to both understand and define my life’s work. What surprises me is how helpful curiosity can be to me personally in my moment to moment awareness and as a support for not repeatedly falling into unhelpful habits. Being curious about what I am doing and how I am being. But, it takes practice.

Danielle: I taught graduate students for many years. The MBA students were required to take a class on creativity and innovation. Preparing for teaching the class the first time, I learned a tremendous amount about the brain. We have two hemispheres of our brain, each plays an important role in how we take in and process information. Our businesses continue to operate in this model of frenzy. What this means for us is that we fail to take in as much information as necessary to make fully informed decisions. We make decisions from the dominant side of our brain

We do not take into account creative or innovate ideas, and we rely solely on hard data rather than intuition.

Beyond professional accomplishments, how has embracing disruption affected you on a personal level?

Monty: Embracing disruption of a kind is a spiritual practice for me. I try to embrace, with care, the feelings and effects of the many “pandemics” of disruption ( from Covid to inequality to ecological ) our planet is experiencing. My ego or small self is not at all prepared or able to cope with this level of disruption. Within me though, as Jung points out, there lives an archetypal presence of wisdom. My practice is to try and echo that presence. To not fall into despair or helplessness.

Danielle: From the perspective of presence as a disrupting force, its been more of a spiritual journey for me as well. Realizing that change and yes sometimes disruption is a part of the natural evolving part of life, provides us with the opportunity for reflection. Even those frustrating, painful, watershed moments have a lesson for us. It’s about embracing that lesson so that we can make transformational changes as humans and leaders. We may not grasp the lesson or the why for months or even years, but it will reveal itself at some point, but only if we look for it. An ending always brings a new beginning. It’s actually quite ironic to think of presence, being able to deepen our ability to listen and really hear perspectives of others, as being disruptive.

In your role as a C-suite leader, driving innovation and embracing disruption, what thoughts or concerns keep you awake at night? How do these reflections guide your decisions and leadership?

Danielle: I have been spending a great deal of time thinking about how the AI will disrupt our workforce. I cannot see any real good coming from its use. I think this is particularly true in our work of wanting to bring the idea of presence into the organization, as well as our work of simply connecting at a human-to-human level.

Monty: Capitalism has lost its’ grounding in tending to the common good. Our global culture of monetizing exchanges without regard to consequences for others, the whole of society and creation is unsustainable. I keep asking questions about: how we can all together change this? Living these questions and centering world views that are most in service to the common good is itself disruptive to our current consumer culture.

Danielle: My husband was just telling me of a new hire that was terminated within a couple of weeks of his employment. It was really heartbreaking to hear about how the events unfolded. There are ethical and monetary consequences to these events. They impact our communities and the organization as well. This story was another example of how the art of being present, to hear and take in a different perspective, might have had a vert different outcome for all involved. Though, I hope this particular ending brings a wonderful new beginning for him.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Monty: I love the notion of our individual and collective responsibility to hospice modernity. This has researched and written about by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira in the book “ Hospicing Modernity — Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism”. If I had the influence, I would start a movement for the international and universal propagation of Communities of Practice to hospice modernity in all individual and collective life on the planet. My work, in a piece meal way, points in that direction.

Danielle: I strongly believe that we need to leave behind the industrial-era mindset that still exists within our organizational model. I hear stories of executives laughing as people are laid-off, terminations that humiliating, promotions that get cancelled with a brief phone call. We can do better.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Danielle: you can follow me on IG at Dr_Danielle2 or Linked in at https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-lord-phd-b6b4263/

Monty: You can follow at ToBeCurious.com and on LinkedIn and facebook

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.