Revolutionizing Workplace Culture and Leadership through Art with Ashley Fluellen

[INTRODUCTION]

"Ashley Fluellen: I was working with a group of students in a student leadership program. And again, I decided to act like a jester. And in the middle of them working on their large-scale pieces, I made each group rotate to the piece next to them. They were no longer working on the piece that they started with. They were now working on a new piece."

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. Happy Monday.

Alex Cullimore: Happy Monday. Yeah, we are totally different – I don't think we're even at a different energy level. It's just a different focus level sometimes on Mondays. 

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely. Different focus. It's kind of nice to have a happy Monday with somebody like Ashley who brought in the energy of a happy Monday as opposed to our first meeting this morning when I said happy Monday and everybody's faces just dropped to the floor. I'm like, "Okay. And not happy Monday." Is it Monday? It's not happy. Is it not Monday? 

Alex Cullimore: Looking forward to seeing you all on 2024. No. As you alluded to, our guest, Ashley Fluellen, she's always incredibly energetic. We've only gotten to talk to her a couple of times. But every time, I leave with more energy than when I started. And she's just got such incredible ideas. So much energy behind them. Already delivering them in such a powerful way.

She got to walk through what she's doing. And a totally new take on some ways to get people out of their own skin and get people into what is truly developmental as far as leadership and as far as just people in general. It's really exciting to hear her ideas of it. How she came to it? And what she wants to do with it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Super exciting. And just the clarity on how she explains it, I almost wanted to sidetrack and reach out and be like, "Can you come and write that curriculum for our stuff in this much of a clear matter?" Because it is amazing. She just started a couple of years ago. But she's so clear and has an incredible way of approaching leadership and just bringing that collaboration into workplaces, and schools, and colleges and teachers. All sorts of different industries that can definitely use what she's out there doing.

Alex Cullimore: It's cool where we get to like meet people like Ashley. And we've had a few people. There's all kinds of them are scattered throughout our podcast guests. We got to meet so many interesting people doing things. But there's so much emphasis on how do we make the human life better experience overall for everyone? And there's so many different ways of going about it. And every single piece of these is necessary. It's just so exciting to see this mosaic of things come together and push towards, "Hey, we all want a better future. Everybody has a different way of doing it." We have never met one where it was like, "Well, that's not helping.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: But actually.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. No. We'll leave that one out. 

Alex Cullimore: But it's cool to see how many different ways you can do work like this and how many different ways it's needed. I think everybody's feeling it. Everybody always – there's so much going on just geopolitically. The world's also having climate crisis. And with all of this going on and everything that needs to happen, it's so exciting to see all the different angles. And Ashley brings a new one today. I hope you all enjoy seeing what this is and getting to connect with a whole new way of living better. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Definitely. Enjoy.

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. Let’s dive in.

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I are joined with our guest, Ashley Fluellen. Welcome to the podcast, Ashley.

Ashley Fluellen: Hello. Thank you, both, so much for having me.

Cristina Amigoni: Nice to have you.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Welcome. We're excited. Give us a little background. What's your story? And what brought you here? 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Okay. My story. I got the wrong degree. I think that that's maybe a good place to start. I graduated from college with a degree in English literature hoping to become a teacher. I did teach for a minute during the pandemic, which was a mess, as I'm sure you both already know. 

But the good thing about that is that it did put me closer to where I feel like I wanted to be in my career. But after that, I decided to make a pivot. I worked in local government for a minute. Again, not quite the correct fit, but it got me closer to where I wanted to go. And that position allowed me to kind of stack up some money. That way I could move across the country to Chicago. Because I'm originally from Nevada. 

And after coming to Chicago, I worked in EdTech sales at a startup. Startup culture is just rough. We talked about this during our initial meeting. And I was in that position for about a year and decided that it wasn't for me. Quit. And kind of went back to the drawing board and jumped into to what kind of a lot of people give the advice not to follow your passion in your career. But my passion is an art. So, I decided I'm going to start a business using my arts background. That's where I'm at now. I'm a new business owner and an artist. 

Through my business, I facilitate workshops with corporations as well as local colleges and universities. And in these workshops, I help teams and individuals develop creative confidence, leadership skills and communication skills using arts-focused programming. We're always creating something with the goal of developing these soft skills. 

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, that's very fascinating.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. We've definitely been in the startup culture. We also found that there may be some opportunities for improvement. Went into the leadership development space as well.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. There really are. Like I said, I was just listening to your last episode, I believe. Yes. It was your last episode. And you both were kind of defining what a leadership is in the Siamoverse. That was what it was. 

And Cristina, you brought up what a leader isn't. And I was really fascinated by like a leader not being driven by their ego. Because I think in sales culture and specifically in startup sales culture, like the Venn diagram, in the middle of those two things is ego. It's just always ego. It's so – and that was what I experienced. Using art, I'm trying to kind of like massage that culture out of workplaces.

Cristina Amigoni: That's funny. I actually read an article. I'm trying to remember from where. Honestly, I think like some of the big research groups like Harvard Business Review, McKenzie and some of these other ones either listen to our podcasts or somehow have bugs all over our house, houses. Because every time we say something out loud, then there's an article that actually comes up that says exactly the same thing, that proves the same thing. 

And so, the ego piece. I read an article this morning and I have to figure out where I read it from, where it actually talked about how ego is the number one enemy of successful leadership. And I'm like, "Didn't we have this conversation last week? I'm pretty sure that's what we said in our podcast episode." But thanks for writing an article validating that. 

Ashley Fluellen: That's powerful. Y'all have power. 

Cristina Amigoni: I guess so. Unintentional. 

Alex Cullimore: Tell us a little more about how you're using art to kind of influence some that culture and what you're hoping to see. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Well, A, the reason why I decided to go in the direction of using art in this space is because, unfortunately, creative thinking and artistic practices, they just don't really exist in corporate culture right now. It's kind of like you see it in school. Maybe. Maybe you see it in school. And then you go to college. And if you're not majoring in art or in like an artistic study program, then once you enter the workplace, it's like it's gone. 

I want to bring that back for play, A. B, I have seen within myself and I've seen in facilitating these workshops the way that art has the ability to kind of make people aware of blind spots that they're maybe not conscious to yet. Whether that'd be like lacking of skills, or insecurities, or inability to communicate an idea in a way that we're not used to, art has a way of bringing that like right to the forefront. 

And I think my goal with this – oh, man. There are so many goals. Well, the first, this is like a big heavy one, is when I was developing my curriculum, I developed it using four foundations of creative thinking. Those are abstraction, collaboration, incubation and reclamation. 

And as I was writing my curriculum, I came across the tenants of white supremacy culture. And my pillars work in conversation with as a rejection of a lot of the tenants that show up, like perfectionism, urgency, hierarchical decision-making. Just all of these pieces that are really, really prevalent in corporate workspaces. 

Through a DEI lens, I'm trying to use art to help create more equitable workplaces. And then like I said, through just a fun lens, I want to see more play in workplaces. Because I think if you can play, it opens your mind up in a different way than always looking for the right answer. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And so many things, especially to innovate anything takes being wrong a couple times or being okay with like just forming an idea over time by virtue of making mistakes, which is also not acceptable in the urgent perfectionist culture that is a lot of corporations.

Ashley Fluellen: Exactly. Yeah. And there's such a fear around failure. But yeah, you have to fall in order to get to the finish line. 

Cristina Amigoni: You should probably start changing the word from corporate to ego. Because that's really what drives most of the toxic stuff that happens. And then the companies that are actually almost non-corporate or far away from the traditional corporate are the ones that also are far away from the ego-centric ways of doing things. And they focus on collaboration, and trying things out, and creativity and innovation in a different way. Not innovation as in like go do this my way. And then let me punish you when you don't do it that way. 

Ashley Fluellen: That is how so many look at innovation. And it just is not that. Yeah, go do this my way is not what innovation means. 

Cristina Amigoni: And don't ask any questions.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Figure it out on your own. 

Cristina Amigoni: Because if you do, it means you're not – you didn't quite understand the directions.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: But go create. Please, create. 

Alex Cullimore: Go be innovative. Create. break things. I mean, not like important things that we would – don't do that. Don't break. Fail fast. Fail so fast people can't notice. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: Fail flash fast. But don't bruise anybody, any egos on the way. 

Ashley Fluellen: And then come back to me in 10 minutes with exactly the right answer that I have in my head, but that you don't know that I have in my head. 

Alex Cullimore: I need you to validate me.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: I really love that the first pillar of your curriculum is abstraction particularly. That's one that I think we've played with a lot is like, "Boy, how can we find the pieces that end up applying just to humans in the workplace?" Because everybody at the end of the day is human. So, you get to play with these real abstract layers where it's how do we work? Regardless of industry and regulations, those are all things you figure out over time. Those are all things you could Google. Those are all things you can figure out how to upskill a very specific hard skill, so to speak, would be – it's easy enough to go do that. The soft skills are the ones that actually play in all realms and are necessary for anything that anybody's going to do. And that layer of abstraction is super interesting. I'm curious how you landed on that one as a good pillar.

Ashley Fluellen: Thank you. Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad that you liked that one. That one has changed the most often. Now that I've landed there, I feel really good about it. Like I said, it's changed. It started as innovation. Yes, it started as innovation. Then it became improvisation. And then there was one other word somewhere in there, but then I landed on abstraction.

And the reason why is because, A, I did want anyone who was engaging with my curriculum to kind of immediately be able to identify that it was arts-focused. And abstraction isn't usually a word that you hear in these other spaces. It's not like a corporate buzzword like innovation is or whatever. 

Cristina Amigoni: Go create an abstract Excel spreadsheet.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: Third-quarter abstract.

Ashley Fluellen: I wanted something that like pulled people out of corporate speak. That like foreign language. And then I've very recent really gotten into abstract artwork and the beauty of representing something I guess in a non-representational fashion. Rendering something is a better word in a non-representational fashion. Looking at a painting and not immediately knowing that that's a flower. 

And there's so many pieces to be able to create an abstract piece just like there's so many pieces within a corporate company. You mentioned that it's all human work. Every single human being is different. Every single human being is different. Everyone is their own abstract piece. And if we put together a bunch of abstract pieces, we're going to end up with a beautiful but abstract work. I really want to start by like – hammering is such an aggressive word. But yeah, hammering that in. 

Cristina Amigoni: We say shoving down their throats.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Shoving down their throats. 

Cristina Amigoni: Suffocate them with – 

Ashley Fluellen: Suffocate. Yeah, smother them with this concept. 

Cristina Amigoni: Smother them.

Ashley Fluellen: That, yeah, everybody's coming in from a different place. And there's no right answer. There's no perfect way to make all of these pieces fit together. But regardless of the way that they fit together, it's still going to be amazing and beautiful if you approach it from an appreciative place.

Alex Cullimore: That's a wonderful lens to think about. This is going to be something abstract. It's going to be all these individuals. There's not about a perfect fit. It's about them still just being able to operate together. It's a great image. I love that.

Ashley Fluellen: Thank you.

Cristina Amigoni: Which, yeah, if you think of art, that's what it is. It's abstract in the sense that you can follow the directions and it's still going to come out completely different. You can paint by numbers and it's still going to come out completely different. It doesn't matter. It's the individual that brings it. The uniqueness of the individual gets translated into the art piece. 

Alex Cullimore: We like to approach a lot of our leadership stuff, we start with like communication basics. Because it is about like, "Hey, everybody's entirely different." They got a different style. They're going to absorb information differently. Rather than that being overwhelming, how do we get back to those more abstract skills that are, "Hey, how do we connect the dots between people?" Everybody is coming at this entirely individually. How do we leave enough space? And how do we understand other people? And that's where we tend to jump into try and start just to get people to think about that. But I kind of like this layering in just the, "Hey, let's take an even larger view of like what are we really intending to do here?" Remember, here we are. All individuals would be in and out. And how do we make this work as a whole? 

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. Yeah. And you brought up communication. I love talking about communication. Because at least, since I've started this business, I've begun to really approach it in such a different way. And my favorite workshop of mine, I'm going to tell you guys what it looks like. One of my collaboration curriculums. And it does really, really focus on building up communication using like non-hierarchical decision-making practices. 

What that looks like is each group gets a large canvas and their task in this is to create a large piece of artwork without speaking to each other. They have to rely on different ways of communicating and of getting an idea across without just relying on saying, "Hey, we're going to paint a water bottle. Or we're going to paint a pineapple." 

And it's beautiful to watch in action. Because the whole point is cohesion. You want your piece to be cohesive and you want it to work with the ideas of the other people in your group, which is applicable to workplace goals as well. But in the art making – 

Cristina Amigoni: In theory. 

Ashley Fluellen: – we hope it is. 

Alex Cullimore: Under best intentions, yes.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. But it's great to see. If you're on one side of the canvas and you see your teammate add yellow to their side. And then you think, "Oh, my gosh. It would be amazing if like who whoever the viewer was of this piece saw yellow over there and then I forced their eye to move up to my area. So, I'm going to add yellow here too." Or maybe I'll walk around the table and like splash yellow paint across the entire canvas. Just watching people kind of come up with those different ideas is really amazing. And I make them do it for a long time. This workshop is usually an hour and a half and the art-making processes an hour. 

The piece evolves. You start with just like happy faces and it becomes like splatters. And then people like start thinking about different tools. They start using their hands. They make stamps. It's amazing. But yeah, going back to communication. Just finding different ways of communicating even in silence is really powerful.

Cristina Amigoni: That's awesome. I love that workshop. I want to be in it. 

Ashley Fluellen: Thank you. 

Cristina Amigoni: One of the things that we love about running workshops and learning and development programs in general, even meetings, honestly, working with people is providing the space for a new experience or a slightly different experience or some new information to kind of hit people over the head if necessary. But it's those moments of when you finally see it click. Individuals and then all of them. And then you know that something resonated to the point that now cannot be unlearned. 

And so, I do have a question besides this. And it's where do you find those moments when you're running these workshops where you're like, "This is it. This is where I'm supposed to be right now. I figured it out." 

Ashley Fluellen: For myself or in like the practitioners I'm working with? 

Cristina Amigoni: For yourself.

Ashley Fluellen: I shine in conversations. I shine working one-on-one with people. But having a background as a teacher, I have been able to like find my shine in leading a group toward a goal. And my personal favorite part is when I can like bring them together in the reflection. All of my workshops are set up with a warm-up, the actual activity and then a reflection at the end. 

And a reflection is facilitating kind of one-on-one conversations in a group setting. Asking the question. Hearing the answers. Responding to that. And whenever I get to the reflection, I get to hear the way that people resonated with the work that they did. Oh, man. It's like savory. And those moments are when I'm like, "Yes. I started this business. And I'm in the right place. I might have gotten the wrong degree. But here I am like years and years later." And everything brought me closer. And now I'm here. And it's wonderful. I think that that's – yeah, that's where I'm like maybe the most in tune with the work I'm doing.

Cristina Amigoni: I love that. Okay. Now I'm going to ask the question that I actually wanted to ask.

Ashley Fluellen: Okay. 

Ashley Fluellen: That was an amazing question though.

Cristina Amigoni: It does relate to where you just said. When you hear those reflections and you have that moment of like, "Yeah, this is it. I got through." The shoving down the throat. Whatever happened. Actually, it seems to be working. What do people – if there's like a top three. What the people usually share back? As in that's their moment of I had a light bulb? Or I had a moment that I'm not going to unlearn.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Top three. Okay.

Cristina Amigoni: It could be more than three. Just what seems to be coming back. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. I'm thinking about like my favorite answers to some of the questions I've asked. Okay. One of my favorite things to do is, in the reflection, I've often gotten like why did you have us do this thing. Oh, and I just love to like be a jester. I love to play. And be like, "Well, why do you think I had you do this thing? You answer your own question." And the answers to why they think I had them do that thing are usually very different from my initial reason in the first place. But it's just great to hear. Like I said, abstraction. Everybody's different and everybody's receiving things differently. that's one. 

Another one was going back to the collaboration curriculum that I just told y'all about. I was working with a group of students in a student leadership program. And again, I decided to act like a jester. And in the middle of them working on their large-scale pieces I made each group rotate to the piece next to them. So, they were no longer working on the piece that they started with. They were now working on a new piece. I didn't come into the workshop with that plan. But I was just kind of standing around and thought, "Why don't I try this and just see what comes of it?" 

Again, at the end, I decided to ask them why they think I had them do that. And their answers were just so amazing. And these are students who, for the most part, have never worked in a corporate workspace. But they were immediately tying it to what they assumed that they'll come in contact with in their future careers. 

And one student even brought it like to a way overhead macro level. And he said that he viewed this as a practice in like advocacy and politicism. And he said that each generation makes something. They make something out of policies. And then that generation passes on. And the next generation, it's their job to come to those policies and make whatever changes need to be made or adjustments. But they don't always have the communication from the last generation to tell them what they were thinking when they put these policies in place. 

He drew it to our activity. Because he was like, "I was working on my piece. I was making all of these policies. Me and my group were." And then we ended up going into a brand-new space where they had already made their policies. And I couldn't ask them, "Do you want me to continue with this in your piece? Can I completely change it? Can I uproot and destroy?" But they just had to figure it out in that way. 

He was talking about like when we come in contact with these huge struggles. And we don't have the opportunity to talk to the class that put those policies in place. How can we approach it and make the adjustments to move it forward? I think that that was my favorite answer. I was like, "Wow. You are so smart." 

Cristina Amigoni: That is so applicable to so many things.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. 

Ashley Fluellen: And it's true. You don't always get get the opportunity to just ask why did you do this? But you're often having to like make changes, or adjustments or whatever the case is.

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. I'm out of questions. It's all your turn, Alex. 

Alex Cullimore: We've seen that happen within even companies. People get shifted to a new position even within the same company. Now everything is different. They're inheriting some other team. They're inheriting some other process. They're inheriting whatever. And now you've got to do exactly that. You got a team that is used to what they were doing before. And now they're entirely shifted and you're trying to get like on top of all of that without disrupting everything and trying to make it a positive change. It's a lot to take on all at once. 

Ashley Fluellen: It's a lot. Yeah.

Alex Cullimore: Well, it's really cool. How was this received in some of the corporate spaces you've done? This is a really cool way of looking at it and very different from anything I've seen.

Ashley Fluellen: Let's see. I've worked with two corporate teams. For the most part, I've seen my blessings working with students. And then I've worked with two corporate teams in a teacher team. Corporate is a bit more of an uphill battle to start just because it's such like a breaking-off from what they know and what their general workday looks like. 

But thankfully, the teams I've worked with have been really adaptable and just kind of down for the challenge. Teachers, the teacher team that I worked with was really interesting. I was thinking that teachers would actually maybe be the easiest because my background is in teaching. I know what it's like.

And with this particular group, we were doing our incubation curriculum, which is all about like cultivating productive rest and how you can find the right answer by kind of striving for zero. Striving to not find the right answer will get you to the right answer. 

Teachers don't have a lot of time to be productively resting. The reflection was a little bit tougher just because of the barriers that just naturally exist in like the American school system and in how they have to allocate their time. But even allowing for that space for two hours and watching them fall into flow state was really, really amazing. But it was kind of like once they – it was so quick to make that change from flow state into, "Okay, that was really cute and fun. But now I literally have to grade my students' work." Yeah. That one was just – it was just really interesting to see like the difference in audience and how they received it. 

Alex Cullimore: That's really cool. That definitely reflects kind of some of our experience especially in corporate. We'll go in there. And people that are like, "Wait. What is this? What do we – Oh, hey. That's cool." You give them a chance and then they're like, "Oh, hey. I like that. This is interesting. We could totally do this this way." You're like, "Yeah. Yeah." You just give them the permission. They just have to get over that first hurdle and then they love it.

Ashley Fluellen: Students just take anything. You give a student something and they run with it. Knowing that students are going to eventually hop into corporate workspaces, it gives me a lot of hope that there will be more of like taking and running with it in the future. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's like get them when they're young and their minds are open. 

Alex Cullimore: Every new cohort pushes the needle a lot more than I think they think. Because they're all in the learning curve when they step into jobs and careers, whatever. They all have to learn some much, they feel like they're at the receiving end. But there's a lot of push that they can give and provide and create a total shift based on what they're coming in with and their expectations. And they'll meet resistance. But that's how we change.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Okay. I'm curious ious just to hear more on what you like think about that. You said that every cohort pushes the needle more than they think. Have you like seen that happen in action? Can you just speak more to that? Because that's really interesting to me.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. When you see it in the meta scale of all the articles that come out about, "Oh, my God. Gen Z's in the workforce. Here's what they want. And Millennials are asking for this. That's what they want." And you kind of see some of that start to change and there's some pushback. But then individually, when you get into these companies, you just see different expectations. And as we do, we do a lot of work with like middle management. And so, there's a lot of this feeling of like, "Oh, yeah. I will totally do this. I want to help my team with this. I'll help them this way. But I don't know how to move this up the ladder. What are we going to do there?" 

And the more that they let go of that a little bit and then just start to grow as a group of people who have the same shared language, the more they suddenly start to push back. And then the senior leaders – and not necessarily pushback and then fighting them. It's just they have a different style and culture. And then suddenly, senior leadership turns around, it's like, "Oh. Well, wait. We got to catch up with this now." 

And then that starts to push the other way. Even though they feel like, "Oh. Well, we can't make the decisions. We get them handed down to us." When they actually start to band together and just act in a certain way, it just influences the whole system. And I think there's too much expectation that it is hierarchical. When in reality, there's a total ebb and flow just of who's pushing out what – just whatever you're exuding in a culture is going to eventually help influence and dominate what's happening. So, the more you grow that like middle cohort, you see that push both ways. 

Ashley Fluellen: That's so hopeful. That gives me hope. 

Cristina Amigoni: We hope that it's hopeful. 

Ashley Fluellen: And it's amazing. Yeah. And you're right. Coming in at the middle is kind of like the best place. Because middle has access to both sides. We don't want it to be hierarchical. But in a hierarchical structure, hitting the middle kind of levels out the playing field between the top and the bottom. Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: If they are moved enough to want to disseminate to the people that really look at them, the one gift of the middle management is that whoever works for them or with them, using the lower and upper levels, but from the lower levels, that's who they look at. They don't necessarily go all the way to the top. They look at their direct managers in that layer. 

And so, their influence, if they can harness the idea that their influence is actually pretty spectacularly powerful, because they have all of the people that are doing the actual work. But they also – especially in certain places, they're also big enough as a unit that they can influence up. And so, it's a good space to be in if you can start shifting how you see it as opposed to seeing it as you're being squeezed by both sides. Yes, you are being squeezed by both sides. But you can also bend together and cause change on both ends.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Middle managers are really important. In my background, I kind of grew a bit of a disdain for middle managers just because there was so much culture around the squeezing and like not letting that disruption to take place. 

And again, going back to what you said in your last episode, just like understanding how middle managers are specifically like people workers. They really have to have an understanding of people. And the shift, checking boxes I completed all of my tasks. To now, I'm a middle manager. I'm working with people. And I don't have to complete these tasks anymore even though I was like rewarded for completing these tasks and that was incentivized. But then how could we better incentivize devoting all of your time, and energy and attention to growing your people? It's not a matter of checking boxes anymore, which is – I don't know. It's just interesting just the amount of shifting that that requires that I don't think a lot of managers get a ton of support on. 

Cristina Amigoni: They don't. They definitely don't. And like you said, it's a shift from tactical to abstract. Now you're in full abstract. All of it. Your goals, your boxes, your check marks, your metrics. Everything you're doing is abstract. But there isn't enough support to actually help with that shift. 

Alex Cullimore: We have to make like actual tangible results happen with abstract moves, right? You have to be able to motivate a lot of people. Get everybody on board with something. These are all the ways that you deliver on what everybody else's discrete checkboxes are. And they can go say, "I've completed this task." You are now a vessel for helping other people complete tasks. And that is a very abstract job. And the more "up the chain you get", the more that becomes even more abstract. Now you're just helping people who are helping people who are helping people. 

Ashley Fluellen: Oh, my gosh. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's like you're shifting that canvas that you have and you're like, "Okay." You're like, "Shift." And then 30 seconds you're like, "Shift again." And then 10 minutes go by and you're like, "Shift again." 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. And in the end, you're not even working with the canvas. Now it's like clay. 

Cristina Amigoni: Now it's just paint flying all over the place in the air. Super fascinating. Where do you want to go with all of this? 

Ashley Fluellen: Oh, another really great reflective question. These questions are so good because I feel like the end of the year has made me really just spiral into myself. I'm happy that you're making me think about these things. 

Where do I want to go? I think I definitely want to work more in corporate spaces and just gain more of an understanding around the structure of corporate spaces and what different ones look like and what different goals could look like. I also see a future for myself around consulting. And I'm really not sure what that looks like or how that would look pushing forward knowledge on such like an abstract concept. Like using art in a corporate space. How could I shift that around a consulting lens? But I want to go there. So, I'll figure it out. I'll read some books.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And if you ever want to talk about consulting, just let us know. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. Yes. I plan to reach out to you. 

Cristina Amigoni: We can tell you where the landmines are.

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. Sounds good. I appreciate that. 

Alex Cullimore: There are one or two.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. And then I think, otherwise, I just want to keep on developing myself. I mean, I'm 27. I'm glad that I was able to kind of get started developing my own business so early. Because I really don't have much of a fear of failure. Because I know if I fail, I have so much time. Life is so long. And I've really accepted that this last year. I have plenty of time to figure it out. I think I'm excited to just figure it out. That's where I want to go.

Cristina Amigoni: That's awesome. It is. I love that.

Alex Cullimore: One more thing that's really cool about what you do is this – you mentioned it up front, like the idea of playing. You get this play in there. And I think people really discount that. Because, A, they miss out on what the actual opportunity is. Play gives this whole boost of creativity. There's a whole different way of thinking about things. 

But then there's the second layer, which just fills your energy back up. And when you just fill your 40 hours with tedious tasks and you're supposed to continue to endlessly find new energy to keep doing this. I've been there. And I definitely believed that that was what you're supposed to do for a long time. That you're just supposed to just like – yeah, it's not even supposed to be enjoyable. It should just be work and you just devote as many hours as you possibly humanly can into it and, hopefully, you get some rest occasionally and so you can keep coming back and hitting that. And the idea that we just keep doing this – 

Cristina Amigoni: Sounds so appealing. 

Alex Cullimore: I know. Right? Ah, it's so great. I miss it. 

Cristina Amigoni: How can I do that for 40 to 50 years? 

Alex Cullimore: And why are people so bitter in retirement? That's weird. I don't know. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah, weird. Who would have thought? 

Cristina Amigoni: Why is everybody just a grumpy old man or a woman when they walk around? 

Alex Cullimore: Here is kind of how you fell into some of that realization, since there are some influences that might oppose that idea. And what you'd like to see is like the future of work and play.

Ashley Fluellen: Ooh. Going back to the dystopic. The dystopic picture that you just picked painted for us. 

Alex Cullimore: Happy holidays, everybody. 

Ashley Fluellen: Happy holidays. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Life is miserable.

Ashley Fluellen: Miserable. The thing is, is that that's how workspaces are built. And that's how school is built. It's like how can we stretch your mind around this right answer until you like break trying to figure it out? And students are doing that all day. You get 50 minutes in one class. And then, boom. You're in the next class. You have to shift from English to math now. And there's no space except for maybe recess in elementary school. And I guess, electives in middle school.

Anyways. But there's very little space to like stop. Just like chill out. And I think that at the beginning of this venture, I really moved away from play. And I did not want to lean into play. Because there's no like tangible ROI on play and on playing. But I guess the further I've gotten in meeting people, and hearing their perspectives and doing my own research, the ROI on play is that there's employee retention. Your people will want to stay by encouraging a culture of play. You're seeing a holistic person before you. You're not just seeing a computer that can go for eight hours. 

The second piece of this – and me and my best friend talk about this all of the time. She's also self-employed. And both of us in our early self-employment journey, we're trying really, really hard to work eight-hour days. But what that looks like when you don't have a manager kind of looking at you the entire time is micro-dosing work for a period of eight hours. You're sitting down and working for 30 minutes and then you're on your phone for another 45. And then you come back and do an hour and a half and then you go and make like an extravagant meal just to waste time. And micro-dosing is so unproductive. 

All of this. Long-winded answer. I think I, A, want to see – oh, my gosh. This might be a crazy opinion. But I want to see a death to the eight-hour workday. I don't want to see it anymore.

Cristina Amigoni: I'll vote for that.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: I'll give you the rag to choke somebody with it. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. I will shove that down someone's throat. We do not need eight hours. People can't be productive for eight straight hours every day. 

Cristina Amigoni: They're just not. It's not a can't. They're not. Nobody is. 

Ashley Fluellen: No. They're not.

Alex Cullimore: It's already not happening. You can ask people to sit for eight hours. You're just making them more burnt out.

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. Yes. Exactly. By the time we're 60, just a bunch of grumpy old with hunches in our back. People, we don't want that. And then in getting rid of the eight-hour workday, I also want time devoted to the other parts around like being a human being. Community engagement. Time devoted to developing each person's goals, and needs and aspirations. 

The last part is just freedom to sit and look out the window for a little bit. Having that – I'm thinking about a certain philosopher. Is it – it starts with an H. It's not Hegel. I can't remember. But having more of a – 

Cristina Amigoni: Homer? I don't know if he was a philosopher. 

Ashley Fluellen: Oh, it'll come to me right after we got off of the podcast. I'm just thinking about like the philosopher that really encouraged people to just lay around and not focus on capitalism and on work. Just lay around. Be a person. Don't do anything and everything will work itself out. I want to see a little bit more of that.

Cristina Amigoni: It sounds like the entire country of Italy, honestly. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. And you know what? They're happy. And they're living to a hundred. 

Cristina Amigoni: There's a lot of laying around and not doing.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: It'll be fine. Just think about it tomorrow.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. And it will be fine.

Alex Cullimore: There's some quote, which I will totally butcher and paraphrase here that's about like the most of the issues of humanity can be traced back to man's inability to sit with his thoughts for 15 minutes. It's just either with the inability. Like can't sit still that long or don't have the time and space to do it. There's so much value in that. 

And I was getting some goosebumps and worried about the general future of what we're facing when you're talking about teachers not having any time for that kind of thing for any kind of reflection, any kind of pause. I mean, that's such a crucial element of all of society is teachers being able to help students. And we're not giving them the time and space to do that anywhere near effectively. Much less budgets. Much less every other thing that comes into play with the American education system. But, man, it's tragic to think there's also just not that time. There's no open space.

Ashley Fluellen: It's tragic. Yes. And teachers are teaching the students. Teachers with no time are teaching the students with no time to enter into a workplace where no time exists. To work it for the next 50 years. We need time. 

Alex Cullimore: So that way, you're prepared.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. Oh, no. We don't need that. We need time. 

Cristina Amigoni: And the only thing that prospers is Amazon. Because people just spend all their time not working and shopping on Amazon.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: There's too much change. Sometimes we feel like – at least I feel like we're with these tiny little micro-doses of something, of epiphanies, and activities and experiences that hopefully won't be too easily unlearned and forgotten. I do sometimes feel that we're arming the people of France to storm against Versailles. It's like, "Come on." 

Alex Cullimore: That's revolution. Let's do this. 

Ashley Fluellen: Let's do this.

Alex Cullimore: System's not working. Let's take it down.

Cristina Amigoni: Time for a different system. Start again.

Ashley Fluellen: It's always good to start again.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Get that blank canvas out. 

Ashley Fluellen: Come think outside of the box. Come up with a new idea and just run with it. See how it works. And then if it doesn't, try again.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Start just with nothing and see what happens. 

Last couple of questions for you. One is what does authenticity mean to you? 

Ashley Fluellen: What a great question. You told me you were going to ask me that at the beginning of this and I was like, "I'm going to think about my answer this whole time." And then I didn't. Because we had such a great conversation in other ways. 

Okay. Authenticity, I think it means really, really deep acceptance. Deep acceptance of yourself, and of others and of all the space in between yourself and others. Deep acceptance. Just knowing that everybody is operating differently. You are operating differently day-to-day and every single morning choosing to – yourself for all that you are. I think that that's authenticity. 

Cristina Amigoni: I actually felt in my heart.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That's wonderful. That's new. 

Ashley Fluellen: Thank you.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that's amazing. And it's so easy to now distinguish when we're not able or we're not allowing ourselves or other to live authentically is when that acceptance is not there. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. And even if – I mean, even if changes need to be made, in all of these spaces there's always going to be new ways of adapting and wiggling yourself to fit somewhere. But approaching that with acceptance I feel like makes the whole process easier.

Cristina Amigoni: It definitely is. Acceptance is extremely hard.

Ashley Fluellen: It is hard.

Alex Cullimore: Extremely valuable and extremely difficult.

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah. That's always how it is. 

Cristina Amigoni: So, where can people find you? 

Ashley Fluellen: LinkedIn is a really great space. I'm Ashley Fluellen on LinkedIn. Business owner at Express Ease Workshops. Through email is also the best place to reach me. My email is afluellen.art@gmail.com. That's where.

Cristina Amigoni: Awesome. And we'll have all this in the show notes. 

Ashley Fluellen: Oh, I also have a beautiful website. Sorry. I just want to plug that. My website's amazing. It's ashleyfluellen.com. Yes. And my artwork is up on my website too.

Cristina Amigoni: Excellent. 

Ashley Fluellen: Yeah.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much, Ashley. These are great thoughts. And thank you for sharing this. Let us know how we can help you. Really, can't wait to see what you do with this journey. This is very exciting.

Ashley Fluellen: Yes. Thank you so much. And thank you all both for giving me this opportunity. I had the best time talking with you today. 

Cristina Amigoni: Awesome. Oh, we did too. Definitely. Let us know we can help you. And let's stay in touch.

Ashley Fluellen: Sounds good.

[OUTRO]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood. 

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review, and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast wearesiamo.com, or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others, and always uncover the human.

[END]