Creativity Isn’t a Talent, It’s a Pattern You Unlock | Leslie Grandy | Becoming Series

Every becoming starts with a moment.

Not a dramatic shift, but a quiet realization that something you’ve believed might not be true.

In this episode of the Delay the Binge™ Podcast, Pam Dwyer sits down with returning guest Leslie Grandy, former product executive at companies like Apple, Amazon, and T-Mobile, and author of Creative Velocity, to explore how creativity, curiosity, and problem-solving are not talents reserved for a few… but capacities we all have access to.

Together, they unpack what it really means to become, and how the moments we question our identity are often the ones that shape it most.

This conversation explores:

• why creativity is actually problem-solving in disguise
 • how curiosity becomes a professional superpower
 • the role of agency in shaping your path
 • what happens when you stop waiting for permission
 • how AI can be a collaborator, not a replacement
 • why ambiguity can be freeing instead of frightening
 • the connection between becoming and self-trust
 • how to stay open instead of defaulting back to old thinking

And most importantly…

👉 how to recognize the moment where everything can change.

Because becoming doesn’t happen all at once.

It happens in the moment you see yourself differently.

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Transcript

A Quiet Moment That Changes You

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Every becoming starts with the moment. Not a big dramatic shift, but a quiet realization that something you've believed might not be true. Welcome to the Delay the Bench Podcast. I'm Pam Dwyer, and today's conversation is part of the Becoming series, where we explore the moments that change how you see yourself and what you're capable of. And I am especially excited about today's conversation. Because this is actually Leslie Grandy's second time joining us. And I'm just so grateful she's back to share more of her amazing message with our listeners. Leslie, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

It's great to be here. It's great to see you again, Pam. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Me too, me too. So there was so much in our first conversation, and I remember thinking, there's more here. I've got to have her back on. So I've really been looking forward to catching up with you and hearing what's been unfolding for you since we last talked.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

It's been a really an interesting journey to translate the book that you write in a very hard, you know, hard back fashion, right? Physical book and it has an end date that it goes published and it it kind of has its life in a very um contained space. But I think when the book goes out in the world, it's how people absorb it and it's how they relate to it that's been really interesting. And so creating more of a, I guess, a framework around how people can digest it, how they can apply it has been sort of the learning journey for me. I think you can put your stuff out there, but people aren't always in the same place that you were at when you wrote it. And so you have to kind of bring them into that journey that you had to write that book and why it's important. And I've learned that. And in fact, I think I kind of been told I've done things backwards where I came up with a great idea for a book and then I had to realize how people would connect with it. And a lot of times I think people find the need and then write the book. And I kind of did it asked backwards. So for me, I've been spending a lot of time really talking to people and seeing what resonates and seeing how I can make it more accessible and relatable.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I can relate to that so much. I mean, my mom even told me I was born backwards. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

I know, I always put the cart before the horse because I can't wait to get there, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

No, in pa patience. It's it is a virtue.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

It is.

Writing The Book After Launch

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So for those who may be meeting Leslie for the first time, um, I just wanted to to let them know a little bit about your work, if that's okay. Sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Um happy to to express it. I I spent I've had two careers. I've been really fortunate to have two careers, and I know that uh being successful successful in one doesn't necessarily make you as successful in another. So I feel really fortunate that both of those careers got me what I was hoping for out of them. I started out in the film industry. I had a film degree in college, and I moved to Hollywood and I worked for 13 years in the film industry for James Cameron and Brian De Palma. I became a member of the Director's Guild of America. So I had a career that was what I had thought it should be, except when I was in my late 20s, it wasn't the career I wanted for my 20s going into my 30s. Like it was great as a youngster with no roots and no anchors, but as I started to want to build family and connection, it wasn't the career for me. And so I went back and got a business degree, an MBA at the University of Washington. And that really helped me see myself in a different context because I was so focused on just the film career for so long that I really didn't have a good assessment of what I brought to the table or what someone would hire me for in a traditional role. And so the UW University of Washington was really great at helping me make that pivot, that journey. And then I went to work for companies like Apple and Amazon and T-Mobile and Best Buy and Discovery Networks, leading product teams that launched innovations in their category. I launched the first Android phone when I was at T-Mobile. Uh, I uh co-wrote a patent when I was at Real Networks for digital video subscriptions long before there was Netflix or Hulu that stood for 20 years before it became part of the public domain. So I have a lot of success in that career, but I think a lot of what I earned in that process came from really seeing myself differently as a uh a graduate of a business program as opposed to a graduate of an arts program like filmmaking.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

That is incredible. And now, so helping leaders and teams unlock something most people don't even realize they have.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Exactly. I think over the course of my career

Two Careers And A Big Pivot

SPEAKER_01 4:58

working in the creative arts in the beginning, I wanted to be a creative person, perceived as a creative person. It turns out the jobs that I got in the film industry were actually more operational and more production-oriented. And so, in that capacity, I felt a little bit like I was off of the creative track until I started to realize that what my superpower was was actually figuring stuff out. And on a film set, you just can't have enough people who figure stuff out. There's just always a problem you didn't expect, always a consequence you didn't plan for. And so that really honed my capacity to solve problems. And I realized that's a creative skill. And that actually is the skill that probably got me hired in corporate America, because the first people that hired me appreciated that about the film industry and saw that as a raw skill, they could develop in a business context. And I think from that standpoint, really uh understanding that uh solving problems was an act of creative thinking was something that was easy for me to pick up. But as I moved from companies to company A to B to C, it isn't always that people in every job feel they have access to that part of their brain or they're able to use it if they're in finance or legal or operations or customer support. And in that case, I realized how much goodness was left on the table for companies in the brains of all those people who had so many other experiences to bring in to the conversation and to widen the field of vision. And so that's what really prompted me to write the book I wrote, Creative Velocity, because I felt that people needed to unlock that, that they were the ones that protected that capacity at their job and didn't feel like they really knew how to apply it. And so I wanted to make it simple for people to access it and apply it and bring it in to their personal and professional lives. I I I've helped people find jobs through this through the method, but I've also helped people solve problems they've not seen before. And and I think getting the confidence and the agency to do that was kind of the mission of the book. And so as somebody who kind of went through that journey myself of seeing myself as creative, but not really being seen as someone who was creative, I felt that I needed to speak up for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Well, and don't skim over that lightly. Your book is incredible. It's an award-winning guide, right? That shows it shows how to partner with AI, but not as a replacement as a collaborator and thinking about problem solving and innovation, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah, exactly. And I think people see it as a tool, and so they they look at it like a hammer, something you apply to a thing, right? And that thing is very specific. And, you know, maybe you can use a hammer for things that are a little less specific than hammering in an ale, you know, bashing out in a window or something, but they see it for its purpose. And I think one of the things that AI really has and has has shown over and over and over again, that it can unlock parts of things you wouldn't have access to immediately, partly because you live your daily life in worrying about paying bills and doing all the things that AI doesn't have to do, right? And so it's free to explore and wander through various patterns and domains to come up with ideas that you might eventually think of, but you'd have to clear space in your brain, given all the other pressures to get there. And so to have a thought partner that doesn't judge you and at the same time doesn't judge an idea, he really creates limitless possibilities for when you're facing one of those hurdles.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Oh my goodness, I couldn't agree more. And what a great thing, right? What must it be like to not have lower brain chatter? I mean, AI AI is just all thinking. Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Exactly. Not and not at all emotional. I'll often tell AI, that's boring. And that and I'll do it intentionally to put some sort of criticism around. It's not wrong, it's just dry. Yeah. And and and and and

Problem Solving As Creative Skill

SPEAKER_01 9:06

it takes that feedback and goes, okay, now I get what you want, as opposed to what your employee might do. But well, why are you being so critical? Can't you be more helpful? And uh it's so much more expedient when there's no emotion, right, in the middle of that discussion. Because you're able to instantly say, no, not not what I want. More of this, less of that. And that immediacy really gives you power.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

It really does. And and corporate America needs to lean in on their emotions, I think, a little more. And I think they're realizing that. I mean, have you have you noticed that too?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, I think now it's even more important because the lack of emotion in AI has the risk for companies that actually service humans of missing sort of that empathetic values-driven purpose. And so people have to recognize the offset is up to them to decide what's meaningful and relevant and purposeful and why they care about whatever particular solution of all the options. Like AI might give you six options, but for you to pick the option that you want, you have to know those things. What's culturally appropriate? What's the audience looking for? What matters? What's the purpose and intention of this solution? And then make sure that AI understands when it's on point and when it's not, to move to the degrees that you need it to move. And so I think in a rise of AI in corporate America, there has to be room for that discernment, that judgment, that morality, the values, all of that to come into play so that the company and the brand represents humans to humans, right? If you're a retailer or a service organization in hospitality, you're going to still present humans. And so how do you make sure that the thing that is uniquely human, which tends to be around emotion, right? And morality and cultural relevance and norms, are woven into the solution or to the outcome.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, I always look at it like maybe a little older than a toddler AI, because, you know, we're not born as humans, we're not born with the ability to share or do all the things that are, you know, emotionally correct, socially correct. They we have to teach them. And AI is no different, right? We just have to teach AI what we're expecting of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Totally. And I think one more point to layer on top of that, in from my experience, is in doing that, right? You also have to recognize that our own mores, our own values change. Like look at where we are as a nation today versus where we were in the 60s versus where we were in the 80s, right? As a nation, what matters to us now is different than what mattered to us two presidents ago. And so, you know, when we think about the way that humans evolve, it isn't linearly. We don't, we sometimes go backwards. And so for us to sort of relate to what AI does, we have to train it on the fact that humans are irrational and aren't always consistent and often right, choose by impulse, not by design.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Exactly. I I couldn't agree more. And this is the like evolving, becoming, I've just been really obsessed with that lately because it you can dig so deep in that and use it. I mean, if it's a perfect fit for you, this becoming series, because if you had listened to that voice all those years ago, you know, the one that told you you weren't creative, you wouldn't have become the creative, curious, problem-solving person genius that you are today. I mean, about that.

unknown 12:47

You're well.

AI As A Thought Partner

SPEAKER_00 12:50

If you had listened to that, you wouldn't be making the difference that you're making today.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah, it's such a it's first of all, thank you for the compliment. But I think it's also one of the elements from my perspective has always been to take ownership of my outcome. And so even when I went into the film industry uh without a creative job, my parents thought it was a stupid idea. My father was a doctor, my mother was an English professor. They thought this was just folly, just silliness, and that there wasn't any chance that with no contacts, no connections, never having set foot in Los Angeles before in my life, that this would actually work out. And so even that taught me, right, that I have to look inside myself to succeed despite the odds, because nobody was going to hand it to me in Hollywood. And so even having the motivation not to fail, right, was a propellant forward for me to succeed. And then once I kind of understood what success looked like for me in that environment, then owning it, right, as my differentiator, as my superpower, the thing that people would value, even though it wasn't the thing when I set out on that career that I thought was what I was going to be doing or what I wanted to be doing, I didn't know it was a thing. But when it became a thing and I recognized and I took ownership of it, then I doubled down on it, right? Then I recognized, oh, it works for you in a way it doesn't work for other people because they're not as willing to question the status quo or accept failure as a possible option and plan around it. And so I think what makes you capable, right, of really evolving is agency over your evolution, choosing to recognize where those moments are telling you you can move.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Right, which, you know, I was going to ask you because this is such a deep-ended question about, you know, where do you think that belief came from? I mean, how did you find it, especially, especially if your parents weren't endorsing it, they weren't supporting it, they were actually against it, which I relate to me growing up where I was being told I was worthless, I wasn't worth anything. You know, we can choose to believe that. And as women, I mean, we pick up beliefs early in life. But you you overcame that. And I was just wondering, is there a way you can put into words how you did that?

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Well, um, I I think there's two things. I think I know I satisfied my parents being good at school, which is really what they thought my career should be based on. And I think getting into a good college and giving them at least that back that I wasn't giving up on being smart, which to them mattered, right? Being smart mattered. And I also don't think they thought the film industry was very smart. And so I think they thought it was a step down for me intellectually. And I think in in the general scheme of things, I think school was always the um the the solution to getting them to accept accept something that might have gone off. Because if I think that if they if they thought that I had not valued what they valued, I think it would have been worse. Yeah. I think that would have been worse. I think it wasn't that I didn't value it. I was good at it. I got into school. I graduated in three years. I I did what they wanted me to do. I just didn't come with the outcome they wanted for it. And so I felt like I had paid the piper a little bit in, you know, in showing that I wasn't really, you know, turning my back on what was valuable and important because I did appreciate the value of a good education, and I still do. Um, and and I think that was a safety net that they saw I had that if I had to go back to do something, I wasn't going to be completely helpless. So I think I I paid a l a little bit into the bank there to buy myself a little space. But at the same time, I also said the only way you get to say that to me is if you pay for things. And now that you're not paying for anything anymore. I mean, literally, I got a graduation check and they said, good, good luck to you, have a great life, because this isn't, you know, what we think is right for you. And I was like, okay, well, so now I'm not taking anything from you. If I'm not taking anything from you, I don't have to be as beholden to your dreams for me. And I think that helped a lot. And in that, that also kind of created the environment for me to take ownership of my success, which was you didn't have to get a film job in the first year. I just had to stay alive and pay the rent and pay the car insurance and pay my car payment. That was success. I defined success as proving my parents didn't need to give me money. That's how it was. And that allowed me to get the distance, to meet people, to build my network, to get known in the community. So it was a really conscientious, conscientious pivot from you know, they supported me and I had an obligation to deliver what they had invested in me. And I felt I had done that. And then after I had done that, I didn't feel they needed to support me if they didn't dis if they didn't agree with me. And in that I made a point of assuring that I wouldn't need to come back to them for anything. And so that allowed me to distance myself from their definition of success.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Well, and as parents, I guess most parents just want to give you tools, right? Give their children tools so that they can succeed as an adult. That's that was my goal. And I'll never forget, as soon as my my oldest child, my son, turned 18. I remember the day he asked me, he goes, So I don't have to do what you tell me anymore, right, mom? When he turned 18. And I said, Well, son, I just, you know, I don't want you to make mistakes that you'll regret. And he looked me right in the eye and he goes, but they're mine to make. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

And I think that's the most that that does really, that agency that he's expressing there, right, is a willingness to separate from the expectations someone else may have had. And I think that's the start to becoming your own person, to finding your authentic approach. And so I think what what allowed me to do that was I felt like I had done what they had invested in me doing well enough that I could feel okay about letting go of it. I think that's the first thing. The other part of it too is um I've always been a person who's been curious how things work. I I always have been a curious person who wonders uh how it happens for people and what happens. And so part of the journey for me is in understanding that allowed me to be somebody who recognized I'm really good at it. I'm actually, I the curiosity is actually a skill for work. It's actually something I can imply on a film set to figure out how to

Keeping Human Values In The Loop

SPEAKER_01 19:40

get it done. So if somebody wants me to go find a decommissioned aircraft carrier to shoot a Kleenex commercial, I don't know, I've never done that before as a 25-year-old, but I'll go figure it out because if I don't, someone else will. And so I always felt that figuring it out was something I liked doing and I was kind of good at it. And that became sort of my um uh calling card, if you will, why people would hire me.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Exactly. And I think that, you know, a lot of times we expect clarity, clarity like that to feel good.

unknown 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

But a lot of times it's just unf it feels unfamiliar, right? Right. Right. What did you start seeing differently that you hadn't seen before when you put all this into place when you were realizing what your strengths were?

SPEAKER_01 20:28

You know, it's funny. I think when we're younger, especially, we don't see ambiguity the same way as when you're older, because everything's kind of ambiguous. You kind of don't know how anything goes or what's it, you know, what's the way it's supposed to work. And so I remember in college I did an internship and I went to uh and I was in New York City. I had gone to school in Chicago and I went to New York City to do an internship. And um, I packed up all my stuff and I parked a car in a parking lot in Manhattan, and I went off for my interview and I came back, and my car was just completely robbed clean, completely picked clean. And I thought, well, now what do I do? Like, you know, like at that moment of everything's ambiguous. Like other people know you call your insurance company, but you know, you do things, right? Like, I don't know. And so I feel like in in some ways, people look at that ambig uh ambiguity as anxiety producing. Right? I I I wish somebody would tell me what to do now. I I don't I've never been in this situation, I don't know how to get out of this situation. I always felt those situations were freeing because uh there wasn't a clear answer, and so I couldn't be any more wrong than anyone else. You know, I I'm just as wrong as everybody else. And so it had a lot more freedom because everything was ambiguous and everything I had to figure out. And I also feel I did have the kind of parents that weren't really the helicopter parents. They weren't in there, you know, providing me, you know, playbooks or when I was your your age or what I did. And they We're living their own adult lives. And so the resources of figuring things out were kind of things I accumulated. And I felt like those were value points that were sort of somewhere in the back of my head I'd go back and use at some point. I don't know what I was going to use it for, but I was like, okay, I just figured that out. When will that be useful again? But at the point at which you're sitting with ambiguity and you're not anxious, it's kind of freeing. And it allows you to kind of pick a lot of different ways to go and learn from them. And maybe the one you didn't imagine that somebody else suggested isn't the one to go. Maybe it's the one that you know best for you is going to feel like you can be successful on or that you can be comfortable doing. And so I think from the very beginning, ambiguity never frightened me. It wasn't a cause for fear. And I do think that's a real asset. Uh as you're kind of wandering

Owning Success Without Approval

SPEAKER_01 22:55

around the 20 as a 20-year-old not knowing anything, then you're more likely to absorb things and be less defensive and be more uh open, right, to an experience that you hadn't considered because your world was so small before that point, you hadn't even known that was an option.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Right. I I I call it the messy middle, right? When we're learning a lot all at once, and that creates that anxiety. So I think it's the messy middle is the hardest part for transition. You know, so was there ever a point in your life when you were going through that phase, the messy middle, that um you doubted what was, I mean, you doubted yourself? Totally.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

So switching careers was the, you know, version of that for me, because once I knew I didn't want to do what I was doing, picking what I could be doing felt a little bit more uh important, intentional. And going, going to business school, uh, I thought, oh, everybody's getting a business degree. I'm gonna have to differentiate myself in some way. So uh I'm gonna get an environmental MBA because that's gonna be a rising field, and then at least I'll stand out as somebody with that specialty skill. And I made that choice for very non-personal reasons. Like I thought it was a good idea, I thought there would be lots of opportunity, I thought the timing was good. Um, but nothing about it that I really knew would be great for me or bad for me. Like I just thought, okay, let's randomly pick this. I got into school, and the very first technology class, IT class I took was a database modeling class, and I was like, what the heck am I doing in environmental MBA? I don't even know why I thought about this. I gotta figure something else to do with this because this stuff is fun. And in that period, I still didn't know what that would mean. Like I didn't know what that job would be. And I didn't know how to go tell all the 13 years of experience that I had in a way that meant some made some sense for that job. What does working on a film set have to do with anything in technology? What was a what is, you know, corralling 200 extras on a, you know, on a TV commercial gonna teach them about why I should be hired? They they had no idea. So I had to build a real self-view and a uh perspective about what I could bring to the table, but it was very difficult because the proof points weren't relatable for people. And so the anxiety-producing part for me was I knew what I could do, but I couldn't figure out how to make it recognizable to people. And I just got really lucky. I feel like most of my career, Pam, has been forced gumpy. I really just feel like I've been at the right place at the right time for some really great, crazy opportunity that I shouldn't have been in front of. But um, I got an internship at a company that was going public at the time, a company called VizioCorp, and it was drawing and diagramming software, and they were going public, and they needed an IPO roadshow film. And so the person who hired me said, I think you'll be great for that. Why don't you go out with the crew and help them figure out this film? And I was like, Well, okay, it's a bridge job, it's still film, but at least I'll get to understand corporate America through that lens and that'll be worth it. And we went all around the country interviewing customers about how they use the product to make this film. And when I got back, they offered me a job. And they said, you've got the best experience understanding customers from being on the road all summer and talking to them, then we think you're gonna be a huge asset for us. But if I hadn't had that, that one little kind of cross-hatching moment between my old career and my new career, I don't know what that opportunity would have looked like. But it's partly, again, being open to it, right? Being open to saying, I never done that before, but I think I could figure it out. And if they think I can figure it out, I don't want to disappoint them. And so that moment of I maybe I know how to do this or not, was trumped by the fact that I really wanted to learn how to do it. And by going out and doing it in hands-on ways, I was actually learning their business. And that was the side benefit that I didn't even figure, right? In the, in the, you know, crazy moment of saying, yes, okay, I'll do it. I didn't really know where it was going to take me. And I think that's been the other part of this is saying yes to things that I don't really understand in a way that allows me to get the thing after that that's even more exciting than the first thing was when it wasn't really known to me.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Exactly. And I'm I'm a firm believer in the fact that we're always being led somewhere with our strengths, you know, because if I look back at every single job I've ever had, um, or just any education, it it does revolve around the creative process of writing and helping other people thrive in one way or another. So I see where it I was developing that skill, you know, to use now, and I'm happier than I've ever been. So I love that.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

I love that. And I think that's the thing is it's your happy place personally because it's what you feel good doing, but it also uh has opened you up to applying it, I'm sure, in ways you haven't thought about it.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Well, that and and confidence. You know, the more I do it, the more I learn. It's like this podcast.

unknown 28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Please don't go listen to episode one. I tell everyone don't listen to that.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

It's so funny. Dentistry and being on video camera, those are my two crazy, crazy fears in the world. And I have to do both of them because unless you face your fears, right? You can't you can't see what's on the other side of them. So I'm with you.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Yeah, yeah. Fear, anger, and shame. Those are the biggest Yeah. How do you think that that your journey um that has brought you to where you're at today, you're becoming, how do you think it shaped the way you think about creativity today?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Well, I think what I I felt in the sort of in the way that you talk about, I felt that it's my kind of duty, even as a manager when I worked in companies, to encourage people to um move beyond what they know and be curious enough to learn how to solve something they haven't seen and to create not expertise in one thing, but expertise in problem solving. And I think in a world that's gonna be heavily driven by AI, that expertise is going to be irreplaceable. And so I think it was nice and important for people to have, but before there was AI, there were there were doers and thinkers and ideators and all of that. Well, now you can get an idea in two seconds flat. You can get 15 of them, a million of them. But the person who's really going to be able to manage which is the right way to solve the problem, the right problem to solve, is going to be the person who can sit through all of that noise and find the pearl, the gem right inside of it. And so that's what when you were talking about that emotional resonance and all of that, but also that confidence in saying, I now have more to sift through. I actually have a chance to be better, not overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Exactly. But I do know, I've heard a lot that with AI, people are not only fearful, but questioning their value. They feel like they're going to be replaced. This is where human creativity matters even 100% right now, correct?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

100%. Yeah. If you look at the studies from the World Economic Forum and Deloitte Global HR human capital studies,

Ambiguity And The Messy Middle

SPEAKER_01 30:29

there's no way that any of these at the global universal level in any industry will tell you that creativity is becoming less important. Just because it can be generated out of the machine, we we now see what happens is slop, right? It's not meaningful, it's thin, it's redundant, right? It's it's uh not reflective of a unique point of view. It's homogenized. And so all of those things that come from this vast knowledge coming up with a single answer, which it's kind of prime to do, is actually at at risk of making us dumber. I mean, it actually has a chance of saying, I took the first answer and it worked, but it wasn't the best answer or the right question to be asking.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Exactly. And and I try to use AI like that in writing, it is such a challenge. You know, I use it for punctuation or proper sentences, you know, or something like that. But there's no way it can cat capture the essence of my writing style. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

And and and you know, grammarly was the greatest invention for me because my mother was an English professor and she used to send my letters home from camp corrected with red pen. So I feel like I have my mother in digital avatar form every time I write something, it's like, well, that's a sentence fragment, or you wrote that in the passive voice, you know, all the things my mother would say to me when I when she was trying to make my writing better. But I don't, I don't feel the essence of the idea ever originates in that I uh AI conversation, right? It it may evolve and there may be a new point of view I want to explore, but I always feel that the starting point, right, is what's important and the uh the shepherding, right? The shepherding of the exploration, the way that I think about where I want to, you know, because it'll always come back with now, do you want me to do this? And so it's so easy because it's doing all your work to keep saying, yes, do that, yes, do that. But I I kind of find myself purposely breaking that routine to kind of go back and say, I didn't like the thing you said about this. Explain to me, unpack that for me. And sometimes even asking it to explain it, it finds flaws in what it suggested. And so then I get smarter about how it works.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yes, because we can learn so much. It's so vast, right? You can ask it literally anything and learn something. What helps you stay so open in the moments when it would really be easy to default back to old the old ways of thinking before AI? You know, what helps you pause, stay curious, and make a different choice instead?

SPEAKER_01 33:07

It's such a great question because I think there's there's two things that I I lean into. One is I always recognize there's more than one story about what happens. And a really great example, I was having a conversation with somebody who uh saw something completely different than I did and started criticizing me for not seeing it that way. And I after I got after I got off the call, I talked to my husband. I said, I got to process this. He goes, Well, you don't need to worry about them. Just walk away. It doesn't matter. I'm like, no, there's something about why that happened that's gonna inform something for me later. I don't need to make them right and I don't need to be right. But I need to understand how did I miss that so much that this person had this perspective that didn't even occur to me. And part of the curiosity is processing other people's versions of what happened, other ways that people are impacted by things. And so I think it's easy to be self-centered in this mattered to me most, and this person is evil and this person is good. And we're so easy to label things, but there's always a tell somewhere, right? That you might decide, okay, that tells me about them, and I don't need them in my life, but that's okay, that that's what the processing tells you. But sometimes the processing says you used a word that really triggered them, and that's an interesting thing to kind of unpack. And so I've learned that my story and my version of the story is never the only version of the story. And I'm always curious why somebody has a different version and reacts differently.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

I mean, and as as a writer, that's that's what our books, our stories are all about. It's not for, I mean, my memoir is not for everyone. Some people just don't like memoirs, it's nothing personal. Right. It's just they're not my audience, right? And that's why they always stress to you find your audience. Yeah. Because you will get people that will hear you and and really respect what you have to say. But then it's those people out there that don't enjoy it, you know, and though for some reason, those are the ones we listen to. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

I think the second thing, though, and I I I I think in the you know, real arc of becoming for me, um, I want to be a part of the world. I want to be uh able to understand when I read the news or what's happening in in my stuff portfolio. And and I want to be a part of it. Like I don't want it to happen to me. And so as I've gotten older and I'm less in the mainstream of working in a corporate job and working, you know, in those conversations on a daily basis, that hasn't gone away. I still have investments I want to understand. I still have places I want to understand. Are they going to be enjoyable for me? I meet new people and are they gonna be enriching for me? And so the as I've gotten older, I think not just staying relevant for other people to like me, but to be a part of the world, I kind of have to keep asking those questions, like, why is it work like that? Or what the heck are we going to the moon for now? Like, you know, questions that just I think make me much more comfortable in the community that I'm in, whether however you define that, right? Whether it's uh a community of friends or a community of alumni from a a school I went to or wherever. The I want to participate. And I think if I don't lean in and ask those questions, as I get older, I'll feel more isolated. And to me, that's really the drive of my cu curiosity is it it's an antidote for isolation.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Wow. Now I've not heard it put like that, but I mean, curiosity is everything. That is how you grow as a person, like the becoming. So if you if you had to describe the person you've become today compared to who you were back then,

Bridging Film Experience Into Tech

SPEAKER_00 36:57

what's I mean, what would you do differently compared to how you did it in the past? That's what we look, we reflect on it so that we can grow from it. We don't start over, we start off where we left off and use that and then you know continue to grow. But man, getting along with other people is critical these days. But, you know, as a mom, I try to take the most diplomatic approach. I just want everybody to win in the room. But sometimes it's impossible.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Exactly. And I do think that um was always my challenge in uh uh determining what's serving me still and what's not, and being okay about letting go of something that I thought was my identity, but it's really not serving me. Uh and I'll give you a really quick example. When you work in the film industry as an assistant director, you order people around. That is your job. You are in a hierarchy and you tell people when they have a lunch break, when they can go home for the day, when they can go to the bathroom. I mean, literally, you are command and control. That is not gonna work in a corporate environment. And I had to unlearn that. And and and when I say that is servant leadership became really big, right? As a way to build teams and grow value for a business by making sure everybody can bring their best self to work. Well, that is not what an assistant director does. And so that letting go of that sense of authority and still being a leader who people will follow was a really big pivot. And I think that recognizing that it wasn't serving me anymore was that aha moment, and that it was actually hurting me in some ways because it was creating judgment and and um uh side effects of trust that I didn't really mean to have happen.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

I so get that because I look I ask myself all the time, and I'm gonna ask you too, because this is my favoritist question to ask the guests. And um, but I always ask myself, what would I tell Pam 10 years ago? What what advice would I give her? That's my question to you is what advice would you give the old version of yourself today? So lighten up and don't be so emotional.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

That would be it. That would totally be it. Everything seems so important and seemed so personal and seemed so critical to every and if I look back, I even things I didn't control that went well, I I would still feel that sense of, you know, potential failure, or or or somebody doesn't like me, or you know, like, and so I just I I couldn't really in the beginning of my career lighten up, go with the flow. I felt like everything had to be activated and had to be intentionally triggered in some way. Um, and that it was my responsibility to do that. And when something interfered with it, it was my responsibility to bat it away. And so I just think I think lightening up and recognizing that sometimes that interference is a positive signal in some way you're not prepared for just because it's not the one you thought about as a signal, that opens the doors, right? Uh being emotional shuts people down. And so they don't want to help you, even though you think you're attracting attention for that emotional reaction. People don't want to help you in that case, or have a hard time helping you. And I think as I've gotten older, recognizing that that coming around with this dark cloud of you know, despair or anxiety or anger or whatever was actually ceding everyone else to have that feeling, which is exactly the opposite of what you want a leader to do. And so I think I learned that lesson way later. And I I blame uh I take accountability for having to make the change, but I blame the idea that being good at that in the film industry actually is important. And so when I changed careers, having to let go of it because it didn't serve me was hard.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Right. And that's the change that

Creativity Still Matters With AI

SPEAKER_00 41:10

people dread. But I always tell them it's not change. You're just evolving, using all this experience to become who you are now or who you will be. But you are always the same person inside. You just have to give yourself a little time. And and things are not as bad as they seem. I always tell people that. But yeah, that's great advice.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

But you know, I think that's the part of the emotion, right? It the the black becomes pervasive, right? Like the the cloud becomes heavy. And so it's hard to see the light through it, or it's hard to navigate through it to the light. And so I think that's a lot of what emotional baggage did for me early on. Um, you know, insecurity, all of that. And then I think as you sort of let go of it, possibilities show up and people offer things that they wouldn't have when they were you were too difficult to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yeah, it can be a it can be a wall, it can be a barrier, that's for sure. If someone listening is still sitting in that place of uh, I'm just not that kind of person. Because a lot of times I tell people about the pause and they're like, I'm sorry, I'm just too exhausted to even think about this pause. What would you want them to do with that thought?

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Yeah, no, I think for me, um possibility has to be uh invited. And so one of the ways that you can do that is to pose a question in the form of what if. So what if that wasn't the case? Or what if I did actually fail when I went to LA? What would that look like? And how can I manage to live with that failure if it occurs? Or how can I create a scenario where that negative is actually less impactful to me if it occurs? And so I I found that the what if I did it differently? What if I thought about it differently? What if I heard somebody else's perspective on this? What if I imagined it in a different way from a different vantage point? Would it look the same to me? And I think that opens up at least your capacity to imagine the only way you see things isn't the only way it is. And that's why I keep kind of going back to there's always more than one story. What if it wasn't that? What if it what if the thing you fear the most is actually the thing that's going to propel you to a place you want to go? Right. And so that what if question can really, I think, give you permission to imagine without actually having to be fearful of the consequences. And then once you kind of make them real, those answers like, well, what would happen if I failed in Hollywood? It would have been because I couldn't pay the rent and I couldn't put food on the table and I couldn't buy the car and I couldn't last long enough to get a job. So, okay, let me go fix those things. And then it becomes more manageable. Right. It becomes something you can actually believe you can take on.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

I love that. What if the what ifs. I think that's my next my next story. I'm gonna use that. What ifs. But what if instead of trying to fix it, right? They just get curious about it first. Exactly. Curiosity, I always say curiosity creates clarity. Totally. I hundred percent agree.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

I think the whole what if is to sort of activate the curiosity muscle. That's what it is. I mean, I think that's it's a lever, right? No matter what the question is, you know, what if I'm making the wrong choice? What if this is the safe choice? Is it the best choice? Right? Like asking the question just forces a moment of curiosity around that decision or that hurdle. And it gives you a little bit of distance in the way that AI does to ask and imagine a different possibility or a different outcome. It doesn't mean you're gonna do it, but if you at least see what bad could happen on the other side of that and you're prepared for it, maybe it's not so bad. You know, maybe the maybe the good thing is also as likely to happen. Maybe that what is what occurs. I I I think about, you know, so many times in my career where I didn't really think it would work, but I went anyway. I went for an interview or I went forward with a plan. Well, what if it did work? It's just as important as what if I failed? Because going forward with it actually made it work. You know, putting my effort behind it actually, you know, was what was needed to make it work. And so you could just as easily say, well, what if I fail? But why not think, well, what if I'm successful? What would that look like? And so that becomes more motivational than just avoiding failure.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Well, and that question is the first small step, right? Everybody thinks they have to make this giant leap into a huge change, you know, whether it be a job or family or what a relationship, whatever it is, but really it's just a just a small little step in that direction. Yep. Long enough for evaluate and analyze.

unknown 46:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

And what if I'm wrong is a really good one because we all think we're we know what we know uh with a a level of expertise, you know, whatever that is. But what if I'm wrong? Um, you know, what did I miss? What opportunity did I did I look over? You know, what did I what did I consider as being less important? But what if I'm wrong? What if it's actually the more important

Lighten Up To Lead Better

SPEAKER_01 46:30

thing? And I think all the time questioning it and processing it opens up that curiosity um as a pattern in your thought process. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

It it is. And before we uh I just I could just talk to you for hours, but before we close, I just want to let everybody know how they can find your work because it your work, I will say, is making a phenomenal difference in the world. I mean, that's so kind of you. It really is. I mean, it it's taking the current things like AI, all the technology, all the the fat. I mean, it's happening so fast, right? Our heads are spinning. But to have something out there that will guide us in a way where we can still be human, still have our emotions, uh it there's not a whole lot of that out there. There's a whole lot of opinions one way or the other, but not a lot of solutions. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

So LeslieGrandy.com, there's a a tab on the navigation bar said resources. And in that tab, you'll get downloadable worksheets. I had interviewed for the book 10 people, but because of length, the publisher cut down the length of the interviews. So the full, complete, unedited interviews are available for download from the site as well, so people can can read the full story. And I interviewed 10 different people who, over the course of my career, were very inspirational to me in different ways. Uh, they're creative in different jobs. Uh it started out with people who are screenwriters, and what you would think from my career I would do. But it's all sorts of people from entrepreneurs and uh um uh people who are my managers and people who have started companies and and and seeing they're just everyday people who have this passion for curiosity, this sense that failure is a necessary step in learning. And through all of that, that what's possible it only is possible if you believe, right, in your capacity to think through things you haven't seen before. And so in in in seeing these full interviews, you get a bigger picture of their of their journey and their perspective. But I I I I even have uh uh an emotional regulation chat GPT that you can use to help you manage your emotions so that you can be more clarifying when you're facing a problem rather than foggy from all the emotion that you're managing. So all those resources are available outside of the book and people can try them on my website.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Oh my gosh, that is a huge resource. Everybody, let's all go use it and we can go compare notes. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Thanks so much, Pam.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

I you've been so kind to me. Oh my goodness, yes. And you're kind to give us your time. I keep thinking about something from this conversation. I try to glean what I can from each guest. And what I'm I've gathered is that that who you become doesn't start with confidence. It starts with a moment, a moment where something you believed no longer feels true. And what we tend to do, especially as women, we push past that moment. We stay busy, we keep performing, we don't stop long enough to actually listen. But that moment, that's where everything begins. If you can pause there instead of running from it, if you can get curious instead of judging it and make just one different choice, that's how you begin to evolve, to become into who you've always been. You're here. Yes, Leslie, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story, your perspective, and just the way you think about all of this. I know this is pleasure with people. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Thanks so much, Pamancy. So easy to talk with you.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Oh, thank you. And it is a pleasure speaking with you, too. And for those of you listening, if something in this conversation stirred something in you, don't rush past it. Sit with it, share it, and get curious about

What If Questions That Open Doors

SPEAKER_00 50:35

it. Thanks for being here with us today, and I'll see you next week.