Ep 3: Core Values with Richard Chapman
92,000 Hours
Join us for a conversation with Dr. Richard Chapman, a renowned economics professor and former director of the Coaching and Mentoring Center at Westminster College. He opens up about his personal journey of self-discovery, courage, and happiness, all of which sprouted from aligning himself with his core values.
This episode explores the link between personal values and how they prompt our decisions, both in our private lives and professional spheres. Dr. Chapman's personal narrative of ending a marriage that didn't bring him joy, and the bravery it took to put his happiness first, serves as a testament to the power of authenticity.
Transcript
0:00:02 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you know that the average human spends 92,000 hours at work during their lifetime? That's more than we spend eating, cleaning, driving, watching TV or even surfing the internet? In fact, work is what we do most. It comes second only to sleeping. Welcome to 92,000 hours, the podcast that believes in the integration of life and work.
I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe. Before we begin, I wanted to tell you a quick story about why this podcast is so personal to me. I began practicing law at age 26 and learned many valuable lessons, including that I was deeply unhappy at work. Although I was on a path that looked like traditional success, I realized that I needed to quit my job in order to align myself with my passion and purpose. Now I am dedicated to making sure all of our 92,000 hours at work are spent well instead of simply spent.
How do we construct a working world that values and accommodates our humanity? How do we construct a life that is not separate from, but fueled by, the purpose we find in our work? In this podcast, we will explore those questions and more. In each episode, I will speak to someone that demonstrates meaning, passion and purpose in their work. Join me in discovering what happens when we bring our whole selves to our work, schools and communities. This week, I am joined by Dr Richard Chapman. Richard is an economics professor and director of the Coaching and Mentoring Center at Westminster College. He is also involved in consulting and coaching for higher education institutions, corporations and nonprofits. In this episode, we will learn about Richard's core values and how they inform his work as an educator, mentor and boss.
0:02:12 - Annalisa Holcombe
Hi Hello. So we just introduced you by talking a lot about what you do and of course, these things are connected, but this question is about who you are. So the question is this if you remove any reference to work, school, sports, volunteerism, church activity or research interests, what is your greatest accomplishment or what are you most proud of yourself for as a human being?
0:02:40 - Richard Chapman
I've asked that question quite a few times and then I've thought about it quite a few times, so my answer kind of puzzled me when I came up with it. But I think the thing I'm proudest of is that I found the courage to get a divorce from my first marriage. That's fascinating.
Which sounds odd, but I've thought about it a lot and that was a difficult decision. There was no history of divorce in my family on either side for generations. Wow, my mom and father both taught that it is your duty, once you're married, to stay in it and to make the best of it, and got married too young and drifted apart and for years I wanted to leave the relationship, but I stayed out of duty For the children and because I was worried about my partner and I had spent a life trying to minimize her stress and maximize the happiness of everyone else. And I just had this epiphany one day that I have the right to be happy, that I have the right to be happy and that I shouldn't count on, like the traditions of my parents, that angels on high are tracking my sacrifice.
And I'll be rewarded because I went man. I am miserable and I have the right to be happy and in a way I also. You know I was enabling my partner not to grow and so yeah, that decision was not easy and it was difficult. My family had an intervention and it was ugly.
0:04:35 - Annalisa Holcombe
But you went through with it.
0:04:37 - Richard Chapman
Went through with it and I told myself I'm going to keep those relationships with my children and help them financially and be there for them when they need it. And I ended up finding happiness and found someone else, that I was, a much better partnership and better for me, and so, yeah, I had a good ending to it.
0:05:00 - Annalisa Holcombe
But it was so brave in the meantime.
0:05:03 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, it was, it was. It was a really hard thing to do.
0:05:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
It's really interesting because when you talk about making that decision, we've decided in advance that this conversation we're going to have today is going to be about values and even in that, in talking about that decision and being proud of yourself, there are values that were caught up in that, like the values of your parents and the values of your family and the values that you had, and then the value that you put toward intrinsic happiness and like there's a lot in that, yeah, yeah and I do think, ultimately, it was a conflict of values that led to the divorce.
That's so interesting.
0:05:50 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, and it's.
0:05:50 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you come up with that just to fit into this subject matter today?
0:05:54 - Richard Chapman
No, I'm a processor. I think way too much about things, and I've thought about it for years. Yeah. And yeah. I realized. I wasn't being true to myself, maybe an image of what my parents think is good, but I don't know if it was something I owned.
0:06:15 - Annalisa Holcombe
Wow, yeah, that's awesome. That's really awesome. So, as I just mentioned, we've agreed that we're going to talk about an overarching subject in our conversation. We'll be values, and then different things will come out, but we're talking about that and I'm interested in just talking about your own thoughts on that subject matter generally, like what do I don't know, what do core values mean to you, or how do you even define what values are?
0:06:48 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think they're the essence of who you are, so I'll tell you my three. Okay. My three are the same. I've taken tests on this like 30 years ago and they've never changed. Most people's changed a little bit, but mine, are, and you know me, so that'll make sense. I rank them actually in order Humor, relationships and joy, and I think those are truly my core values. When I deviate from them, I have trouble.
0:07:27 - Annalisa Holcombe
That makes a lot of sense. Do you think that, with those three values, are they the same for you, regardless of whether you're thinking about your personal values, your professional values, your community values? Like are they all? Is it similar? Yeah?
0:07:42 - Richard Chapman
yeah, so I'll give you two examples. So in thinking, because I do a lot of discussion for companies about core values and being true to those, but a good example is humor, so that's not a typical one.
But, it's critically important for me and when I was in my 20s, I was working for an organization and I had been designated as a future leader and the CEO calls me in and he says I think you could climb to great heights in this organization, but you have one problem you are way too much of a joker. You're always having fun times, you're always being humorous and it's not our vision of a leader. He said look at our organization. They have a lot of the skills you have, but they're serious and at the time you know this is the early 70s and they're all men right. So serious men right.
And so he said I'm going to give you a challenge. And he said for the next two weeks I want you to work here without being the funny guy. Okay, so for two weeks I did not crack a joke, I didn't tell any humorous.
0:09:03 - Annalisa Holcombe
You did it, I did it.
0:09:05 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I can do it if I really have to. And he calls me in at about 10 days in and he said everybody is complaining. He said customers that know you are complaining, that you're not.
And are you okay? And your team members every one of your team members have come in. The person that supervises you has come in. One of the vice presidents has come in and said what's wrong with Chapman? Do we need to look into, you know, if there's something wrong in his family life or whatever? And he said it is too much who you are. So don't change that, but you'll never be at the top of this organization.
0:09:50 - Annalisa Holcombe
Wow.
0:09:51 - Richard Chapman
And I went. That's good to know, because I shouldn't be here.
0:09:55 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you leave the company? Not right away?
0:09:58 - Richard Chapman
But yeah, as soon as I got an opportunity, I did.
0:10:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
Well, it certainly provides you with feedback that that is authentically you, but that is an important value. My question that I had right out of this is that, from an outside perspective, I see all of these values being central to the overarching value of human connection. Yeah, and that's you.
0:10:24 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, sometimes the one. So all gifts, all skills are to its sort. And the one thing I've discovered is not everyone loves the funny guy in the room, and that's been hard, because not only do I like to connect with people and have authentic relationships, but I do want people to like me. It's just you know. Third, son, I need people to give me attention and love me, and there are people that do not like that side of me, and so that's just, you know how it is sometimes.
0:10:59 - Annalisa Holcombe
Is that something that is painful for you?
0:11:02 - Richard Chapman
Sometimes I've had people work on teams with me, under me in organizations and they've said at the end of working together man, that was really hard, you're just too funny, which you know. I guess that's an insult, I don't know.
0:11:25 - Annalisa Holcombe
To me that's a compliment.
0:11:26 - Richard Chapman
If you think about the people that I'm close with at work, or yeah, they're funny.
0:11:30 - Annalisa Holcombe
They're funny or witty, at least Witty yeah.
0:11:35 - Richard Chapman
And my second wife. That was like the most important criteria and she passed.
0:11:39 - Annalisa Holcombe
She nailed it. So let's talk a little bit about humor. I went to your page on rate my professor as a quick review prior to this interview, and humor is mentioned in one way or the other, over and over and over again by your past students. What is that like for you?
0:12:00 - Richard Chapman
Well, I haven't been there for a long time.
0:12:03 - Annalisa Holcombe
It's still there, trust me. It's right, it's front and center stuff.
0:12:07 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I don't know. I think when I read things like that or in teacher evaluations, you know like we learned a lot and he was funny and I went okay yeah. I did my job. So I taught a class in the spring and it was a lovely class, small bunch of students, all very motivated, and we had a lot of fun and we learned a lot. And I finished up the last lecture and there was some time left, so I was talking about the final exam, and a student said can I?
Just say I loved this class and we have just enjoyed coming to class and we're going to miss it. And I said, well, you know we can do barbecues or what, and just like Sunday night I had two alumni over to the house and I had a barbecue with them.
0:13:00 - Annalisa Holcombe
Nice.
0:13:03 - Richard Chapman
And it's yeah, I think, if you keep those core, so for me relationship, so they're going to develop and that then yeah, I think you can find it.
0:13:12 - Annalisa Holcombe
Results in your joy.
0:13:13 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, and it just that just made me so happy that the students were kind of like, can we just keep going another semester?
0:13:20 - Annalisa Holcombe
They probably said it to get a better grade, but I'm going to believe it was honest. Yeah, it's a wonderful answer. I love to hear about you putting those values to work in ways that also provide not only joy for you in your life, but also for the people that you work with. Does your value for humor inform your passion or purpose for the work you do now?
0:13:45 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think so. I'm definitely in teaching, definitely in relationship building, Mentoring. I think humor has an important part of building those relationships. Where I struggle more is where we're getting into authentic, genuine, sometimes difficult and hard conversations that are people are going through or that you're processing in self-growth and humor is not appropriate and there's a part of me that always wants to diffuse, sort of like.
When everybody's crying, you hug and that can stop the crying or give them a bottle of water Sometimes a good joke if it's like man, this is getting a little deeper can make everybody get out of that.
0:14:39 - Annalisa Holcombe
Go back to the surface.
0:14:41 - Richard Chapman
And there are times you need to go there, and so I have to put that. My initial response to almost anything is a joke, and so I have to really work on controlling that tendency.
0:14:56 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What about your other two values? How do they show up in your personal or professional life?
0:15:06 - Richard Chapman
Well, relationships, I think, show up everywhere, because that's what matters to me. When I think of work, I don't think of tasks. I tend to think in terms of relationships Relationship with students, relationship with faculty, relationship with staff. I don't dwell too much on relationship with administrators.
0:15:28 - Annalisa Holcombe
However, you are one now. Yeah, that was a plan when I missed there, I guess. What is it like to think about your value of relationships when it comes to being a supervisor or a boss?
0:15:47 - Richard Chapman
It gets tricky. What's helped so Richard 30 years ago versus Richard today is realizing that relationships can be strengthened by serious, difficult conversations. So one of the problems I had in my first marriage and all my relationships earlier in my life is I would never have that difficult, hard conversation with someone.
So, if something was not working in the relationship, I would just ignore it. Yeah, avoid it at all costs and be funny and have fun and not deal with it. And it took me a long time to realize that was a failing in me and was leading to failings in relationships and that having those serious conversations and working to resolve that actually strengthens the relationship. So, I thought I had deep relationships, but they were always because I avoided the deep problems.
0:16:51 - Annalisa Holcombe
Um, what about Joy? What does that show up in here? Passion for or purpose in your work?
0:16:59 - Richard Chapman
Everything. If I don't get joy from it, I'm out of it. I won't do it. So I love teaching. I get a lot of joy out of it. If it stopped being something I enjoyed, I would do something different. That's nice.
Yeah, corporate training is hard for me as an introvert, just because you have to be so up and you have to play the role of an extrovert to be successful, because you're up there and you have to kind of lead everything and the cost of that emotionally, physically, it sets it out. I don't know if I'm going to continue doing that. You know I enjoy doing it, I enjoy seeing people learn and increasing their skillset, but it's at a cost that I'm not sure I could keep doing it.
0:17:51 - Annalisa Holcombe
Alright, so I want to maybe move this conversation to a wholly different place, but I can't help myself, so I wanted to go to your work as an economist. Okay, because we're in this moment right now and we're talking about values, and I rewatched your Westminster Things Big Talk recently.
0:18:11 - Richard Chapman
Oh, yes, yes.
0:18:12 - Annalisa Holcombe
And in that talk you presented on economic inequality and I know that that is something that you study and you're interested in and I'm interested in how your values over time, or even at the beginning or now, how did your values tie into your study or interest in economic inequality as a research interest or other research interests that you've been in working on?
0:18:40 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, that's a complicated one. Thing that I've always kind of struggled with is my parents were ultra conservative, so I'll tell a story. I mean, my dad would hate this story if he was alive, but we were watching my dad always watch Walter Cronkite and we're watching the nightly news and there were riots in LA and they talked about the Black Panthers and my dad was going off about it and I remember thinking if I lived there, if I was black, I'd be a Black Panther, because the system doesn't work for them.
And when a system doesn't work for you, what other reaction would you have other than pushing back? And so I think my parents taught me to be empathetic, but I think their empathy had limits and I didn't realize you're supposed to only have, like, empathy for family or kin or tribe, and for me it was too general.
0:19:49 - Annalisa Holcombe
So to me it's kind of like when you say you're supposed to, you just mean that that's how they believed.
0:19:57 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think there was a disconnect between what they taught me and what they were.
0:20:02 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah.
0:20:04 - Richard Chapman
And so for me, it was like I bought into it and I went, yeah, everyone should have empathy, we should love one another, and if you love one another, you would want to help those that can't help themselves or have different opportunities than those that have.
0:20:19 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think you're getting to something that is really important to me. That I think comes up a lot when we talk about values and I have this in some of the questions I wanted to talk about but it really has a lot to do with the difference between the values that we state and the values that we live, and when it's clearly inauthentic and what that can lead to. And I think you're telling a story about being a kid and learning to grapple with seeing that in your family.
0:20:49 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, it was like on Sunday you would preach you love one another, and then six days a week my dad was a racist and it was just. Yeah, I believe those general principles, even though I didn't see it lived.
0:21:10 - Annalisa Holcombe
Do you think that? I mean just that you talked about the story of the Black Panthers and then you go into later researching economic inequality and generational poverty and things like that, right, and the systems is that. Am I right? Is that something you?
0:21:31 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, exactly, it's just like my dissertation. My dissertation was on looking at people that had experienced welfare AFTC and what led up to it and what happened after, Because growing up in.
Orm, utah. There was this cultural myth that these are lazy bums that won't work and they shouldn't be getting their welfare. And why do we have it? And it's horrible. And so I looked at the data and you realize that almost everyone. So I looked at 500 families that went on welfare in the 80s and almost every one of them had a catastrophe financially that led to this problem. So the most typical one was divorce.
And in the 80s it was typical that if a husband divorced a family and left out of state, they didn't pay child support. And it left a family economically in trouble and I was like, well, most of us would want welfare for that.
0:22:42 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right, right, and then who?
0:22:44 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I mean, like 80% of the people that received benefits from welfare are under the age of 10. Wouldn't we want to help them and so? Yeah it was kind of getting rid of the myths that I think hurt us from seeing real issues. Nice.
0:23:18 - Annalisa Holcombe
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at ConnectionCollaborativecom. Welcome back. You're listening to 92,000 Hours and today we're chatting with Dr Richard Chapman about values, so let's jump back in.
0:23:39 - Annalisa Holcombe
So recently I read this article. A Harvard Business Review article started with a list of values and it had communication, respect, integrity, excellence, and the author went on to talk about how these words generally make us feel good. Those are nice words.
And they seem like great corporate value statements and then he drops this bomb that they are actually from Enron's value statement, which, for our listeners that may not know, that's a company that, to continue the bomb metaphor, blew itself up through unethical and behavior and corruption. And I was I'm, interested in bringing up that idea of corporate value statements and what that leads to Like. Here's corporate value statements, here's our cynicism about them as employees, how having inauthentic stated values within an organization could be even more detrimental than not having value statements at all. And you work with lots of companies. You've probably seen this. What do you think about the role of value statements in general in our workplaces?
0:24:49 - Richard Chapman
They should and could be, I think, a powerful tool for an organization. Culture is very powerful and you have to always be aware of what your organizational culture is and all that. I do think there's a large disconnect for most organizations, so I've which is unfortunate but true.
0:25:14 - Annalisa Holcombe
I imagine you're right.
0:25:15 - Richard Chapman
I've done so many corporate trainings where we've talked about you know they might have a core value of like acceptance, and yet conformity is what's valued most in their organization. And the minute somebody would raise a voice at Discord, I'm not so sure it would be respected, because the true value I see manifest is comply. Fit in and yeah, I mean it's an interesting thing to watch.
0:25:53 - Annalisa Holcombe
That is interesting Just from where I said. I wonder where one how difficult it might be as a leader to both you know understand corporate organizational values, even those that might exist that you don't know about. That are you know underneath the surface? Yeah as well as how to make sure that the values that matter to you as the leader are being lived in the organization, are true to it and not just you know something on a shelf.
0:26:30 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think the informal values that everyone embraces are much more important than the stated ones, and so unless they could be the same.
0:26:38 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, well, ideally, that's what you'd want.
0:26:41 - Richard Chapman
I don't see a lot of organizations where that's true. What's difficult as an outside observer doing trainings is very difficult. To be very honest about what you're seeing.
0:26:55 - Annalisa Holcombe
I bet.
0:26:56 - Richard Chapman
Because almost everyone will say oh yeah, we do these core values and that, and as an outside observer, you can go no.
0:27:04 - Annalisa Holcombe
You actually don't, you actually don't, there's something else going on there.
0:27:08 - Richard Chapman
But what's also interesting is they typically don't want to hear that as an organization.
0:27:13 - Annalisa Holcombe
So what do you think that is about?
0:27:19 - Richard Chapman
Well, I think all those beautiful things that are usually in the core statement is what we want to believe that we are. So a good example is Google has some amazing core values and they had a situation where an employee sent out an email where he said women programmers don't work as well in organizations as men and stated all these very gender specific stereotype reasons of why women were, in fact, inferior to men.
And it was almost like one of those fun discussions on the Constitution. What do you do when there's two conflicting core values? So opinion and saying what you believe is valued there, but then that's not going to be OK to say generalizations like that, and it was a very difficult thing for their organization.
0:28:26 - Annalisa Holcombe
I love that, though, like just the whole story is difficult, but when you have conflicting values that show up and how to lead through that, how did they do?
0:28:38 - Richard Chapman
Well, I'll let you decide. I think they did the right thing, but I think it's because there was a flaw in one of their core values, and that is. I think you can't let that go. I don't think so like we believe in academic freedom in colleges and universities too. But there are times when that has to be superseded by something more important, and in that case I think we value your opinion, but this is not acceptable to have these kind of generalizations.
0:29:19 - Annalisa Holcombe
So what kind of a. If you had to think about the value statements, the values of the classroom communities you built, what would that be like? Would it be similar to your own personal, because you would, you know, you led in your classrooms.
0:29:38 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I'd say that one difference is I try very hard to make sure that we're learning, so we have fun but we learn. And I remember a student years ago saying he said you know, I was talking to some students that took your class last semester and they said you'll never laugh so hard in your life as in this class, but you better work hard because he demands a lot. And so, yeah, I think that demanding a lot is Not in my three, but I do that with myself. I demand a lot in things I care about.
0:30:22 - Annalisa Holcombe
There's a lot of things I can let slide as you know, if they aren't important.
0:30:29 - Richard Chapman
But if it's really important. So if somebody's paying the money to go to college, they should learn.
0:30:34 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, that makes sense and they should be willing to work.
0:30:38 - Richard Chapman
And I do think speaking about mentoring if I could bring that in and coaching. People are at their best when they're pushed. And it's interesting you think back about teachers that you loved in junior high, high school, college. It's not the ones you were friends with. I think it's always the ones that cared about you and pushed you, and so.
0:31:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think that that's the. I just had a conversation with someone about her niece coming to Westminster in the fall and she was asking me questions about the college and I told her that the value that the community has is of faculty who will both support you and see you as a whole person, really provide both support but challenge you to make you be your best, and I think that is a hallmark.
0:31:38 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think that's true too.
0:31:40 - Annalisa Holcombe
I want to talk about your work with the coaching mentoring center. Within your work there, or as a performance coach, you get a unique opportunity to interact with and witness other people really trying to either live out their values or grappling with or challenging or even defining what their values are. From your vantage point there, as a coach and a mentor, what have you learned? Watching other people think about their values?
0:32:14 - Richard Chapman
Well two things pop up in my mind. One is identify your obstacles. Most of us have patterns of what stops us from being who and what we want to be. Or we fail at something.
0:32:33 - Annalisa Holcombe
What is it and?
0:32:36 - Richard Chapman
what we do a lot of times is we get ourselves in circular thinking and it's like you can convince yourself this is just the way it is and it's a truth, and so you never fix it.
So, yeah, that's one thing that pops up the other is especially with coaching we learned in the coaching, training that you and I both did, that people are whole and they have the answers, and what I found as a career as a professor, I learned very early you have to know the answers. There's only so many times you go. I don't know that. I'll look it up, which you should do if you don't.
0:33:30 - Annalisa Holcombe
But you just can't go into the classroom and not know what you're doing.
0:33:33 - Richard Chapman
You're supposed to be an expert, and what I found interesting about coaching was that you take that hat off and you're not there to be the expert, and so one of the things that was fascinating for me was allowing people to solve the problems themselves, because it's so easy to hear someone and go oh, I know what their problem is and I know what the solution is, and that's not coaching. It's much more powerful to ask questions, to care and invest the time that they find an answer. They're much more likely to do the answer if they think it up, and what I discovered is I'm not the genius at solving problems.
0:34:22 - Annalisa Holcombe
Or your answer just might be different than their answer.
0:34:24 - Richard Chapman
Well, that's what I'm saying is there's times I'd go, oh, this is the answer, but I'll play this coaching game and ask questions and let them find what they think the answer. And the answer might be totally different, but it was the answer for them. Had I been doing what, that probably was my answer.
0:34:42 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right, right, I love that. As you know, I'm personally very passionate about the role of mentors in our lives. Have you had any particular mentor that was important to you, and what lessons did they impart?
0:34:58 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I've had some key I've never done formal mentoring. And I think it's because I'm an introvert and I'm afraid to ask. So that's one thing people should learn is ask.
0:35:13 - Annalisa Holcombe
And if you weren't an introvert even at this stage in your career, are there people that you could identify, that you could ask?
0:35:20 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think that almost anybody can learn from other people. Just another set of eyes on the problem can help. But yeah, there's a few key people. Do you want me to talk about any of them?
0:35:32 - Annalisa Holcombe
You don't have to say their names. But what about them? What lessons did you learn from them? What made them a good mentor?
0:35:39 - Richard Chapman
Well, you know the one story. So I had a leader that we had an interview and he said Richard, in every measurement. You're the exemplary employee. But I know you're coasting and that surprised me because I didn't think anyone knew that. I knew that, but I didn't think anyone else did.
0:36:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
So it was so nice that this leader really saw you and knew you.
0:36:11 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, yeah. For some reason he was the only one I'd ever, for decades, identified that and he said I want to give you a challenge. He said I think you'll enjoy your career more, you'll enjoy work more and you'll be more valuable to the organization.
0:36:26 - Annalisa Holcombe
Not that you weren't.
0:36:27 - Richard Chapman
You know, your numbers are all great. But he said find something that you feel passionate about, find a way to integrate it into what you're doing and do it, and for me that was like a perfect mentor leadership. I needed to be called out, which he did, but not in a mean way, but you know, just like you know, I know that this is the way you're doing things, and then give me a challenge and said you know, come back and tell me what you discover, and that's all I need.
Give me a nudge, I'll do all the rest, and so that's how I got into coaching, as I thought you know I went into academics because I wanted to change the world and help people realize their dream, and coaching is another great example of how people can do that. Awesome.
0:37:23 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, and it's all about relationships. So yeah, then I brought it back and certainly the overarching connection stuff that.
0:37:30 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, that I care so much about.
0:37:33 - Annalisa Holcombe
I want to check in with you. Are there things that we haven't talked about, that you were hoping we would get to? Ok, I'm just going to make sure Good deal.
0:37:41 - Richard Chapman
They're organic. Yeah, interviews are organic.
0:37:44 - Annalisa Holcombe
All right. So as we close, I wanted to go back to the theme of the podcast, this whole idea of the 92,000 hours. I thought that you would find these statistics fascinating because I recently looked up this research that we spend the most of our time in life. We spend sleeping. After that, do you know that we spend? It's something like 27 of our years are sleeping and then another seven years on top of that is tossing and turning and trying to get to sleep.
0:38:18 - Richard Chapman
I thought you were going to say napping, isn't that?
0:38:20 - Annalisa Holcombe
sad though, Like that is a lot. We need to not spend seven years. Trying to get to sleep Me too, but like trying to is a big, not good use of our time. But then after that we spend 13 years at work. That is the average person that lives around 80 years. So 13 of those years are at work. Compared to that, the next closest thing is 11 years and it's like and it's screen time. Oh yeah.
And the amount of time that we spend with family and friends is down in the one digits. It's like it's three to five years.
0:38:55 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, what I'd say is people need to reverse that and. I have, and I learned very early in life that an eight to seven, eight to five job wasn't going to work for me, and it was one of the things I found appealing about academics is the work's different. I mean, there's still a lot of work in academics, but it's it feels different, like my dad worked in a factory. Yeah. And that's a very different type of 40 hours a week than I might do for 40 hours a week.
0:39:28 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right.
0:39:29 - Richard Chapman
You know where I'm like part of my time is talking to students. Right.
0:39:33 - Richard Chapman
Reading or writing, and so yeah.
0:39:36 - Annalisa Holcombe
Which is a lovely thing, because you were able to find your purpose, your passion in that time, so that those those years that you're spending feel good, feel not wasted.
0:39:51 - Richard Chapman
And because relationship is so high, I can tell you I'd get a lot more hours of relationship and probably than normal person, the normal person, and that's good.
0:40:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
So that's what we have for today.
0:40:04 - Richard Chapman
Well, thank you. Thank you so much for this interview.
0:40:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think that our audience will love it and in fact, I'm sure of it, and I learned a lot about you, so thank you.
0:40:21 - Annalisa Holcombe
Thank you to Richard for his candor and, of course, humor today, and thank you for joining us for this week's episode. I hope you all found it as enlightening as I did. You can learn more about Richard by connecting with him on LinkedIn and you can find a list of his publications on Google Scholar. Next time we'll speak with Andrew Taylor about expectations and risk as an entrepreneur. Andrew shucked the expectations of his family, society and even his own expectations of himself to start an outdoor adventure therapy program in Costa Rica.
As always, thank you for listening to 92,000 hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative. You can find us at ConnectionCollaborative.com or send me an email at Annalisa@ConnectionCollaborative.com. Thank you and see you next week on 92,000 hours. 92,000 hours is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Brianna Steggell and Lexie Banks. I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe.
0:00:02 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you know that the average human spends 92,000 hours at work during their lifetime? That's more than we spend eating, cleaning, driving, watching TV or even surfing the internet? In fact, work is what we do most. It comes second only to sleeping. Welcome to 92,000 hours, the podcast that believes in the integration of life and work.
I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe. Before we begin, I wanted to tell you a quick story about why this podcast is so personal to me. I began practicing law at age 26 and learned many valuable lessons, including that I was deeply unhappy at work. Although I was on a path that looked like traditional success, I realized that I needed to quit my job in order to align myself with my passion and purpose. Now I am dedicated to making sure all of our 92,000 hours at work are spent well instead of simply spent.
How do we construct a working world that values and accommodates our humanity? How do we construct a life that is not separate from, but fueled by, the purpose we find in our work? In this podcast, we will explore those questions and more. In each episode, I will speak to someone that demonstrates meaning, passion and purpose in their work. Join me in discovering what happens when we bring our whole selves to our work, schools and communities. This week, I am joined by Dr Richard Chapman. Richard is an economics professor and director of the Coaching and Mentoring Center at Westminster College. He is also involved in consulting and coaching for higher education institutions, corporations and nonprofits. In this episode, we will learn about Richard's core values and how they inform his work as an educator, mentor and boss.
0:02:12 - Annalisa Holcombe
Hi Hello. So we just introduced you by talking a lot about what you do and of course, these things are connected, but this question is about who you are. So the question is this if you remove any reference to work, school, sports, volunteerism, church activity or research interests, what is your greatest accomplishment or what are you most proud of yourself for as a human being?
0:02:40 - Richard Chapman
I've asked that question quite a few times and then I've thought about it quite a few times, so my answer kind of puzzled me when I came up with it. But I think the thing I'm proudest of is that I found the courage to get a divorce from my first marriage. That's fascinating.
Which sounds odd, but I've thought about it a lot and that was a difficult decision. There was no history of divorce in my family on either side for generations. Wow, my mom and father both taught that it is your duty, once you're married, to stay in it and to make the best of it, and got married too young and drifted apart and for years I wanted to leave the relationship, but I stayed out of duty For the children and because I was worried about my partner and I had spent a life trying to minimize her stress and maximize the happiness of everyone else. And I just had this epiphany one day that I have the right to be happy, that I have the right to be happy and that I shouldn't count on, like the traditions of my parents, that angels on high are tracking my sacrifice.
And I'll be rewarded because I went man. I am miserable and I have the right to be happy and in a way I also. You know I was enabling my partner not to grow and so yeah, that decision was not easy and it was difficult. My family had an intervention and it was ugly.
0:04:35 - Annalisa Holcombe
But you went through with it.
0:04:37 - Richard Chapman
Went through with it and I told myself I'm going to keep those relationships with my children and help them financially and be there for them when they need it. And I ended up finding happiness and found someone else, that I was, a much better partnership and better for me, and so, yeah, I had a good ending to it.
0:05:00 - Annalisa Holcombe
But it was so brave in the meantime.
0:05:03 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, it was, it was. It was a really hard thing to do.
0:05:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
It's really interesting because when you talk about making that decision, we've decided in advance that this conversation we're going to have today is going to be about values and even in that, in talking about that decision and being proud of yourself, there are values that were caught up in that, like the values of your parents and the values of your family and the values that you had, and then the value that you put toward intrinsic happiness and like there's a lot in that, yeah, yeah and I do think, ultimately, it was a conflict of values that led to the divorce.
That's so interesting.
0:05:50 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, and it's.
0:05:50 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you come up with that just to fit into this subject matter today?
0:05:54 - Richard Chapman
No, I'm a processor. I think way too much about things, and I've thought about it for years. Yeah. And yeah. I realized. I wasn't being true to myself, maybe an image of what my parents think is good, but I don't know if it was something I owned.
0:06:15 - Annalisa Holcombe
Wow, yeah, that's awesome. That's really awesome. So, as I just mentioned, we've agreed that we're going to talk about an overarching subject in our conversation. We'll be values, and then different things will come out, but we're talking about that and I'm interested in just talking about your own thoughts on that subject matter generally, like what do I don't know, what do core values mean to you, or how do you even define what values are?
0:06:48 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think they're the essence of who you are, so I'll tell you my three. Okay. My three are the same. I've taken tests on this like 30 years ago and they've never changed. Most people's changed a little bit, but mine, are, and you know me, so that'll make sense. I rank them actually in order Humor, relationships and joy, and I think those are truly my core values. When I deviate from them, I have trouble.
0:07:27 - Annalisa Holcombe
That makes a lot of sense. Do you think that, with those three values, are they the same for you, regardless of whether you're thinking about your personal values, your professional values, your community values? Like are they all? Is it similar? Yeah?
0:07:42 - Richard Chapman
yeah, so I'll give you two examples. So in thinking, because I do a lot of discussion for companies about core values and being true to those, but a good example is humor, so that's not a typical one.
But, it's critically important for me and when I was in my 20s, I was working for an organization and I had been designated as a future leader and the CEO calls me in and he says I think you could climb to great heights in this organization, but you have one problem you are way too much of a joker. You're always having fun times, you're always being humorous and it's not our vision of a leader. He said look at our organization. They have a lot of the skills you have, but they're serious and at the time you know this is the early 70s and they're all men right. So serious men right.
And so he said I'm going to give you a challenge. And he said for the next two weeks I want you to work here without being the funny guy. Okay, so for two weeks I did not crack a joke, I didn't tell any humorous.
0:09:03 - Annalisa Holcombe
You did it, I did it.
0:09:05 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I can do it if I really have to. And he calls me in at about 10 days in and he said everybody is complaining. He said customers that know you are complaining, that you're not.
And are you okay? And your team members every one of your team members have come in. The person that supervises you has come in. One of the vice presidents has come in and said what's wrong with Chapman? Do we need to look into, you know, if there's something wrong in his family life or whatever? And he said it is too much who you are. So don't change that, but you'll never be at the top of this organization.
0:09:50 - Annalisa Holcombe
Wow.
0:09:51 - Richard Chapman
And I went. That's good to know, because I shouldn't be here.
0:09:55 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you leave the company? Not right away?
0:09:58 - Richard Chapman
But yeah, as soon as I got an opportunity, I did.
0:10:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
Well, it certainly provides you with feedback that that is authentically you, but that is an important value. My question that I had right out of this is that, from an outside perspective, I see all of these values being central to the overarching value of human connection. Yeah, and that's you.
0:10:24 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, sometimes the one. So all gifts, all skills are to its sort. And the one thing I've discovered is not everyone loves the funny guy in the room, and that's been hard, because not only do I like to connect with people and have authentic relationships, but I do want people to like me. It's just you know. Third, son, I need people to give me attention and love me, and there are people that do not like that side of me, and so that's just, you know how it is sometimes.
0:10:59 - Annalisa Holcombe
Is that something that is painful for you?
0:11:02 - Richard Chapman
Sometimes I've had people work on teams with me, under me in organizations and they've said at the end of working together man, that was really hard, you're just too funny, which you know. I guess that's an insult, I don't know.
0:11:25 - Annalisa Holcombe
To me that's a compliment.
0:11:26 - Richard Chapman
If you think about the people that I'm close with at work, or yeah, they're funny.
0:11:30 - Annalisa Holcombe
They're funny or witty, at least Witty yeah.
0:11:35 - Richard Chapman
And my second wife. That was like the most important criteria and she passed.
0:11:39 - Annalisa Holcombe
She nailed it. So let's talk a little bit about humor. I went to your page on rate my professor as a quick review prior to this interview, and humor is mentioned in one way or the other, over and over and over again by your past students. What is that like for you?
0:12:00 - Richard Chapman
Well, I haven't been there for a long time.
0:12:03 - Annalisa Holcombe
It's still there, trust me. It's right, it's front and center stuff.
0:12:07 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I don't know. I think when I read things like that or in teacher evaluations, you know like we learned a lot and he was funny and I went okay yeah. I did my job. So I taught a class in the spring and it was a lovely class, small bunch of students, all very motivated, and we had a lot of fun and we learned a lot. And I finished up the last lecture and there was some time left, so I was talking about the final exam, and a student said can I?
Just say I loved this class and we have just enjoyed coming to class and we're going to miss it. And I said, well, you know we can do barbecues or what, and just like Sunday night I had two alumni over to the house and I had a barbecue with them.
0:13:00 - Annalisa Holcombe
Nice.
0:13:03 - Richard Chapman
And it's yeah, I think, if you keep those core, so for me relationship, so they're going to develop and that then yeah, I think you can find it.
0:13:12 - Annalisa Holcombe
Results in your joy.
0:13:13 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, and it just that just made me so happy that the students were kind of like, can we just keep going another semester?
0:13:20 - Annalisa Holcombe
They probably said it to get a better grade, but I'm going to believe it was honest. Yeah, it's a wonderful answer. I love to hear about you putting those values to work in ways that also provide not only joy for you in your life, but also for the people that you work with. Does your value for humor inform your passion or purpose for the work you do now?
0:13:45 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think so. I'm definitely in teaching, definitely in relationship building, Mentoring. I think humor has an important part of building those relationships. Where I struggle more is where we're getting into authentic, genuine, sometimes difficult and hard conversations that are people are going through or that you're processing in self-growth and humor is not appropriate and there's a part of me that always wants to diffuse, sort of like.
When everybody's crying, you hug and that can stop the crying or give them a bottle of water Sometimes a good joke if it's like man, this is getting a little deeper can make everybody get out of that.
0:14:39 - Annalisa Holcombe
Go back to the surface.
0:14:41 - Richard Chapman
And there are times you need to go there, and so I have to put that. My initial response to almost anything is a joke, and so I have to really work on controlling that tendency.
0:14:56 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What about your other two values? How do they show up in your personal or professional life?
0:15:06 - Richard Chapman
Well, relationships, I think, show up everywhere, because that's what matters to me. When I think of work, I don't think of tasks. I tend to think in terms of relationships Relationship with students, relationship with faculty, relationship with staff. I don't dwell too much on relationship with administrators.
0:15:28 - Annalisa Holcombe
However, you are one now. Yeah, that was a plan when I missed there, I guess. What is it like to think about your value of relationships when it comes to being a supervisor or a boss?
0:15:47 - Richard Chapman
It gets tricky. What's helped so Richard 30 years ago versus Richard today is realizing that relationships can be strengthened by serious, difficult conversations. So one of the problems I had in my first marriage and all my relationships earlier in my life is I would never have that difficult, hard conversation with someone.
So, if something was not working in the relationship, I would just ignore it. Yeah, avoid it at all costs and be funny and have fun and not deal with it. And it took me a long time to realize that was a failing in me and was leading to failings in relationships and that having those serious conversations and working to resolve that actually strengthens the relationship. So, I thought I had deep relationships, but they were always because I avoided the deep problems.
0:16:51 - Annalisa Holcombe
Um, what about Joy? What does that show up in here? Passion for or purpose in your work?
0:16:59 - Richard Chapman
Everything. If I don't get joy from it, I'm out of it. I won't do it. So I love teaching. I get a lot of joy out of it. If it stopped being something I enjoyed, I would do something different. That's nice.
Yeah, corporate training is hard for me as an introvert, just because you have to be so up and you have to play the role of an extrovert to be successful, because you're up there and you have to kind of lead everything and the cost of that emotionally, physically, it sets it out. I don't know if I'm going to continue doing that. You know I enjoy doing it, I enjoy seeing people learn and increasing their skillset, but it's at a cost that I'm not sure I could keep doing it.
0:17:51 - Annalisa Holcombe
Alright, so I want to maybe move this conversation to a wholly different place, but I can't help myself, so I wanted to go to your work as an economist. Okay, because we're in this moment right now and we're talking about values, and I rewatched your Westminster Things Big Talk recently.
0:18:11 - Richard Chapman
Oh, yes, yes.
0:18:12 - Annalisa Holcombe
And in that talk you presented on economic inequality and I know that that is something that you study and you're interested in and I'm interested in how your values over time, or even at the beginning or now, how did your values tie into your study or interest in economic inequality as a research interest or other research interests that you've been in working on?
0:18:40 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, that's a complicated one. Thing that I've always kind of struggled with is my parents were ultra conservative, so I'll tell a story. I mean, my dad would hate this story if he was alive, but we were watching my dad always watch Walter Cronkite and we're watching the nightly news and there were riots in LA and they talked about the Black Panthers and my dad was going off about it and I remember thinking if I lived there, if I was black, I'd be a Black Panther, because the system doesn't work for them.
And when a system doesn't work for you, what other reaction would you have other than pushing back? And so I think my parents taught me to be empathetic, but I think their empathy had limits and I didn't realize you're supposed to only have, like, empathy for family or kin or tribe, and for me it was too general.
0:19:49 - Annalisa Holcombe
So to me it's kind of like when you say you're supposed to, you just mean that that's how they believed.
0:19:57 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think there was a disconnect between what they taught me and what they were.
0:20:02 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah.
0:20:04 - Richard Chapman
And so for me, it was like I bought into it and I went, yeah, everyone should have empathy, we should love one another, and if you love one another, you would want to help those that can't help themselves or have different opportunities than those that have.
0:20:19 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think you're getting to something that is really important to me. That I think comes up a lot when we talk about values and I have this in some of the questions I wanted to talk about but it really has a lot to do with the difference between the values that we state and the values that we live, and when it's clearly inauthentic and what that can lead to. And I think you're telling a story about being a kid and learning to grapple with seeing that in your family.
0:20:49 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, it was like on Sunday you would preach you love one another, and then six days a week my dad was a racist and it was just. Yeah, I believe those general principles, even though I didn't see it lived.
0:21:10 - Annalisa Holcombe
Do you think that? I mean just that you talked about the story of the Black Panthers and then you go into later researching economic inequality and generational poverty and things like that, right, and the systems is that. Am I right? Is that something you?
0:21:31 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, exactly, it's just like my dissertation. My dissertation was on looking at people that had experienced welfare AFTC and what led up to it and what happened after, Because growing up in.
Orm, utah. There was this cultural myth that these are lazy bums that won't work and they shouldn't be getting their welfare. And why do we have it? And it's horrible. And so I looked at the data and you realize that almost everyone. So I looked at 500 families that went on welfare in the 80s and almost every one of them had a catastrophe financially that led to this problem. So the most typical one was divorce.
And in the 80s it was typical that if a husband divorced a family and left out of state, they didn't pay child support. And it left a family economically in trouble and I was like, well, most of us would want welfare for that.
0:22:42 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right, right, and then who?
0:22:44 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I mean, like 80% of the people that received benefits from welfare are under the age of 10. Wouldn't we want to help them and so? Yeah it was kind of getting rid of the myths that I think hurt us from seeing real issues. Nice.
0:23:18 - Annalisa Holcombe
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at ConnectionCollaborativecom. Welcome back. You're listening to 92,000 Hours and today we're chatting with Dr Richard Chapman about values, so let's jump back in.
0:23:39 - Annalisa Holcombe
So recently I read this article. A Harvard Business Review article started with a list of values and it had communication, respect, integrity, excellence, and the author went on to talk about how these words generally make us feel good. Those are nice words.
And they seem like great corporate value statements and then he drops this bomb that they are actually from Enron's value statement, which, for our listeners that may not know, that's a company that, to continue the bomb metaphor, blew itself up through unethical and behavior and corruption. And I was I'm, interested in bringing up that idea of corporate value statements and what that leads to Like. Here's corporate value statements, here's our cynicism about them as employees, how having inauthentic stated values within an organization could be even more detrimental than not having value statements at all. And you work with lots of companies. You've probably seen this. What do you think about the role of value statements in general in our workplaces?
0:24:49 - Richard Chapman
They should and could be, I think, a powerful tool for an organization. Culture is very powerful and you have to always be aware of what your organizational culture is and all that. I do think there's a large disconnect for most organizations, so I've which is unfortunate but true.
0:25:14 - Annalisa Holcombe
I imagine you're right.
0:25:15 - Richard Chapman
I've done so many corporate trainings where we've talked about you know they might have a core value of like acceptance, and yet conformity is what's valued most in their organization. And the minute somebody would raise a voice at Discord, I'm not so sure it would be respected, because the true value I see manifest is comply. Fit in and yeah, I mean it's an interesting thing to watch.
0:25:53 - Annalisa Holcombe
That is interesting Just from where I said. I wonder where one how difficult it might be as a leader to both you know understand corporate organizational values, even those that might exist that you don't know about. That are you know underneath the surface? Yeah as well as how to make sure that the values that matter to you as the leader are being lived in the organization, are true to it and not just you know something on a shelf.
0:26:30 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think the informal values that everyone embraces are much more important than the stated ones, and so unless they could be the same.
0:26:38 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, well, ideally, that's what you'd want.
0:26:41 - Richard Chapman
I don't see a lot of organizations where that's true. What's difficult as an outside observer doing trainings is very difficult. To be very honest about what you're seeing.
0:26:55 - Annalisa Holcombe
I bet.
0:26:56 - Richard Chapman
Because almost everyone will say oh yeah, we do these core values and that, and as an outside observer, you can go no.
0:27:04 - Annalisa Holcombe
You actually don't, you actually don't, there's something else going on there.
0:27:08 - Richard Chapman
But what's also interesting is they typically don't want to hear that as an organization.
0:27:13 - Annalisa Holcombe
So what do you think that is about?
0:27:19 - Richard Chapman
Well, I think all those beautiful things that are usually in the core statement is what we want to believe that we are. So a good example is Google has some amazing core values and they had a situation where an employee sent out an email where he said women programmers don't work as well in organizations as men and stated all these very gender specific stereotype reasons of why women were, in fact, inferior to men.
And it was almost like one of those fun discussions on the Constitution. What do you do when there's two conflicting core values? So opinion and saying what you believe is valued there, but then that's not going to be OK to say generalizations like that, and it was a very difficult thing for their organization.
0:28:26 - Annalisa Holcombe
I love that, though, like just the whole story is difficult, but when you have conflicting values that show up and how to lead through that, how did they do?
0:28:38 - Richard Chapman
Well, I'll let you decide. I think they did the right thing, but I think it's because there was a flaw in one of their core values, and that is. I think you can't let that go. I don't think so like we believe in academic freedom in colleges and universities too. But there are times when that has to be superseded by something more important, and in that case I think we value your opinion, but this is not acceptable to have these kind of generalizations.
0:29:19 - Annalisa Holcombe
So what kind of a. If you had to think about the value statements, the values of the classroom communities you built, what would that be like? Would it be similar to your own personal, because you would, you know, you led in your classrooms.
0:29:38 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I'd say that one difference is I try very hard to make sure that we're learning, so we have fun but we learn. And I remember a student years ago saying he said you know, I was talking to some students that took your class last semester and they said you'll never laugh so hard in your life as in this class, but you better work hard because he demands a lot. And so, yeah, I think that demanding a lot is Not in my three, but I do that with myself. I demand a lot in things I care about.
0:30:22 - Annalisa Holcombe
There's a lot of things I can let slide as you know, if they aren't important.
0:30:29 - Richard Chapman
But if it's really important. So if somebody's paying the money to go to college, they should learn.
0:30:34 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, that makes sense and they should be willing to work.
0:30:38 - Richard Chapman
And I do think speaking about mentoring if I could bring that in and coaching. People are at their best when they're pushed. And it's interesting you think back about teachers that you loved in junior high, high school, college. It's not the ones you were friends with. I think it's always the ones that cared about you and pushed you, and so.
0:31:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think that that's the. I just had a conversation with someone about her niece coming to Westminster in the fall and she was asking me questions about the college and I told her that the value that the community has is of faculty who will both support you and see you as a whole person, really provide both support but challenge you to make you be your best, and I think that is a hallmark.
0:31:38 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think that's true too.
0:31:40 - Annalisa Holcombe
I want to talk about your work with the coaching mentoring center. Within your work there, or as a performance coach, you get a unique opportunity to interact with and witness other people really trying to either live out their values or grappling with or challenging or even defining what their values are. From your vantage point there, as a coach and a mentor, what have you learned? Watching other people think about their values?
0:32:14 - Richard Chapman
Well two things pop up in my mind. One is identify your obstacles. Most of us have patterns of what stops us from being who and what we want to be. Or we fail at something.
0:32:33 - Annalisa Holcombe
What is it and?
0:32:36 - Richard Chapman
what we do a lot of times is we get ourselves in circular thinking and it's like you can convince yourself this is just the way it is and it's a truth, and so you never fix it.
So, yeah, that's one thing that pops up the other is especially with coaching we learned in the coaching, training that you and I both did, that people are whole and they have the answers, and what I found as a career as a professor, I learned very early you have to know the answers. There's only so many times you go. I don't know that. I'll look it up, which you should do if you don't.
0:33:30 - Annalisa Holcombe
But you just can't go into the classroom and not know what you're doing.
0:33:33 - Richard Chapman
You're supposed to be an expert, and what I found interesting about coaching was that you take that hat off and you're not there to be the expert, and so one of the things that was fascinating for me was allowing people to solve the problems themselves, because it's so easy to hear someone and go oh, I know what their problem is and I know what the solution is, and that's not coaching. It's much more powerful to ask questions, to care and invest the time that they find an answer. They're much more likely to do the answer if they think it up, and what I discovered is I'm not the genius at solving problems.
0:34:22 - Annalisa Holcombe
Or your answer just might be different than their answer.
0:34:24 - Richard Chapman
Well, that's what I'm saying is there's times I'd go, oh, this is the answer, but I'll play this coaching game and ask questions and let them find what they think the answer. And the answer might be totally different, but it was the answer for them. Had I been doing what, that probably was my answer.
0:34:42 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right, right, I love that. As you know, I'm personally very passionate about the role of mentors in our lives. Have you had any particular mentor that was important to you, and what lessons did they impart?
0:34:58 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I've had some key I've never done formal mentoring. And I think it's because I'm an introvert and I'm afraid to ask. So that's one thing people should learn is ask.
0:35:13 - Annalisa Holcombe
And if you weren't an introvert even at this stage in your career, are there people that you could identify, that you could ask?
0:35:20 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, I think that almost anybody can learn from other people. Just another set of eyes on the problem can help. But yeah, there's a few key people. Do you want me to talk about any of them?
0:35:32 - Annalisa Holcombe
You don't have to say their names. But what about them? What lessons did you learn from them? What made them a good mentor?
0:35:39 - Richard Chapman
Well, you know the one story. So I had a leader that we had an interview and he said Richard, in every measurement. You're the exemplary employee. But I know you're coasting and that surprised me because I didn't think anyone knew that. I knew that, but I didn't think anyone else did.
0:36:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
So it was so nice that this leader really saw you and knew you.
0:36:11 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, yeah. For some reason he was the only one I'd ever, for decades, identified that and he said I want to give you a challenge. He said I think you'll enjoy your career more, you'll enjoy work more and you'll be more valuable to the organization.
0:36:26 - Annalisa Holcombe
Not that you weren't.
0:36:27 - Richard Chapman
You know, your numbers are all great. But he said find something that you feel passionate about, find a way to integrate it into what you're doing and do it, and for me that was like a perfect mentor leadership. I needed to be called out, which he did, but not in a mean way, but you know, just like you know, I know that this is the way you're doing things, and then give me a challenge and said you know, come back and tell me what you discover, and that's all I need.
Give me a nudge, I'll do all the rest, and so that's how I got into coaching, as I thought you know I went into academics because I wanted to change the world and help people realize their dream, and coaching is another great example of how people can do that. Awesome.
0:37:23 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, and it's all about relationships. So yeah, then I brought it back and certainly the overarching connection stuff that.
0:37:30 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, that I care so much about.
0:37:33 - Annalisa Holcombe
I want to check in with you. Are there things that we haven't talked about, that you were hoping we would get to? Ok, I'm just going to make sure Good deal.
0:37:41 - Richard Chapman
They're organic. Yeah, interviews are organic.
0:37:44 - Annalisa Holcombe
All right. So as we close, I wanted to go back to the theme of the podcast, this whole idea of the 92,000 hours. I thought that you would find these statistics fascinating because I recently looked up this research that we spend the most of our time in life. We spend sleeping. After that, do you know that we spend? It's something like 27 of our years are sleeping and then another seven years on top of that is tossing and turning and trying to get to sleep.
0:38:18 - Richard Chapman
I thought you were going to say napping, isn't that?
0:38:20 - Annalisa Holcombe
sad though, Like that is a lot. We need to not spend seven years. Trying to get to sleep Me too, but like trying to is a big, not good use of our time. But then after that we spend 13 years at work. That is the average person that lives around 80 years. So 13 of those years are at work. Compared to that, the next closest thing is 11 years and it's like and it's screen time. Oh yeah.
And the amount of time that we spend with family and friends is down in the one digits. It's like it's three to five years.
0:38:55 - Richard Chapman
Yeah, what I'd say is people need to reverse that and. I have, and I learned very early in life that an eight to seven, eight to five job wasn't going to work for me, and it was one of the things I found appealing about academics is the work's different. I mean, there's still a lot of work in academics, but it's it feels different, like my dad worked in a factory. Yeah. And that's a very different type of 40 hours a week than I might do for 40 hours a week.
0:39:28 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right.
0:39:29 - Richard Chapman
You know where I'm like part of my time is talking to students. Right.
0:39:33 - Richard Chapman
Reading or writing, and so yeah.
0:39:36 - Annalisa Holcombe
Which is a lovely thing, because you were able to find your purpose, your passion in that time, so that those those years that you're spending feel good, feel not wasted.
0:39:51 - Richard Chapman
And because relationship is so high, I can tell you I'd get a lot more hours of relationship and probably than normal person, the normal person, and that's good.
0:40:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
So that's what we have for today.
0:40:04 - Richard Chapman
Well, thank you. Thank you so much for this interview.
0:40:08 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think that our audience will love it and in fact, I'm sure of it, and I learned a lot about you, so thank you.
0:40:21 - Annalisa Holcombe
Thank you to Richard for his candor and, of course, humor today, and thank you for joining us for this week's episode. I hope you all found it as enlightening as I did. You can learn more about Richard by connecting with him on LinkedIn and you can find a list of his publications on Google Scholar. Next time we'll speak with Andrew Taylor about expectations and risk as an entrepreneur. Andrew shucked the expectations of his family, society and even his own expectations of himself to start an outdoor adventure therapy program in Costa Rica.
As always, thank you for listening to 92,000 hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative. You can find us at ConnectionCollaborative.com or send me an email at Annalisa@ConnectionCollaborative.com. Thank you and see you next week on 92,000 hours. 92,000 hours is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Brianna Steggell and Lexie Banks. I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe.