I met Justin Jacobs on LinkedIn. We were in an exchange which became testy for some, but not for us. We stayed respectful as we engaged in a sincere exchange about an issue, probing for truth as Justin put it. We followed up by phone and subsequently decided to record an episode. And I've glad we did.

Listening to the audio file very closely as I do to edit, I was reminded how blessed I am to have spoken with Justin and so many guests like him. He tells it like he sees it, and by that I don’t mean "others" or "situations." I mean Justin. He's candid about himself and his experiences, including a recent and significant transition from 22 years in the Coast Guard. As he launches a new coaching practice focusing on leadership and people in transition, he's doing what he tells clients to do: Continue discovering, learning and growing to show up as your best self in what you do.

I know you'll have some ahh-ha! moments in this episode. Here are a few of mine:

1:28 - I was out of my depth and posing as a leader in my first formal leadership position. The Coast Guard offered officer leadership training and it as the first time in my life I did any real introspection about who I was.

3:58 - The relationship between getting on the same page with oneself and with others, especially when in a leadership role.

8:00 - Why understanding the 'why' of a plan or a direction matters.

16:22 - Why it's important to know what you're wired for - and not.

24:02 - A definition of being on the same page.

34:48 - The benefit to being on the same page with your team and the different mental models team members have about any situation.

42:09 - Does getting on the same page assume good intent? And what do we do if that's missing?

53:57 - What to do if you can't get on the same page with someone.

When Cal Shintani and I discussed recording a podcast episode, it was clear to me we'd talk about mentoring. Cal has a long mentoring background and described some ideas about the same page mentors and proteges get on that I wanted to record. Cool.

Then he mentioned his merger and acquisition experience. M&A's are common in the Federal contracting community. What's not common is for a consultant to be involved in several. And what's even less common is for a consultant to connect mergers with mentoring. But Cal had. He'd added mentoring to mergers and learned some valuable lessons about getting two organizational cultures on the same page while connecting individuals to the newly emerging culture. To the merged culture. Very cool!

In this episode, Cal discusses his experience getting people on the same mentoring and merger pages, and what he did when people couldn't get there. Here are a few of my favorite ahh-ha! moments:

3:57 - Building trust and relationships through the mentoring program of a government-industry IT professional association - ACT-IAC

6:58 - A mind-bending exercise - you be me and I'll be you

8:40 - The same page mentors and proteges should get on

11:50 - Resisting the temptation to advise as a mentor, and how it can change the conversation

16:32 - How a same page emerges from a trusted relationship

25:44 - What you see, what you make of what you see, what you would do, to what end

29:44 - What if you can't get on the same page?

37:00 - Mergers and cultural fit. We both say we're entrepreneurial, but are we saying the same thing?

46:11 - Mentoring and mergers

In Part 2 of our conversation, Dr. Gerhardt and I dig deeper into what it means to be on the same page across generations in the workplace. Her Gentelligence mantra that we each have something to contribute and something to learn was an ahh-ha! moment for me, enough to make me re-think what I think it means to be on the same page! We look closely at generations and organizational culture, ageism, how questions have the power to create Gentelligence, and what it was like writing Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce. Here are a few of my favorite ahh-ha! moments:

0:07 - If getting on the same page is about alignment, believing each of us has something to contribute and learn can create alignment across generations

2:07 - Tension in the workplace between digital natives and digital immigrants - or how young Millennials and Gen Z have certain expertise early in their careers

6:02 - Psychological safety in organizational culture, and what different generations really want from culture

14:40 - Age, generations and people strategies at work

19:15 - Megan calls me out for age bias I didn't even see!

27:45 - The next book project about integrating age into organization's DEI strategies