Peri is the author of Leadership Flow: The Unstoppable Power of Connection. She’s also a coach, consultant, herbalist, and leadership educator. Working for years in the field of wilderness-based leadership, she ran her own leadership school in Colorado, as well as in South Africa and Bulgaria, and has worked with clients in private, governmental, and nonprofit sectors, including Disney Theatrical, USDA Forest Service, World Bank, Stanford Woods Institute, University of Chicago, and Renaissance Reinsurance.

In this episode, Peri explains how the people she worked with kept asking her for more information on what she taught them, but there were no other resources she could direct them to. Finally, she decided to write the book herself.

Peri’s Links:

• https://medium.com/@perichickering 

•  https://www.perichickering.com

•  Twitter: @SilentTogether

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Josh Steimle: ​​Today my guest is Peri Chickering. Peri is the author of Leadership Flow: the Unstoppable Power of Connection. She's also a coach, consultant, herbalist, and leadership educator. Working for years in the field of wilderness based leadership, she ran her own leadership school in Colorado, as well as in South Africa and Bulgaria. Taking her leadership experience from the outdoors, inside Peri has worked with clients in private, governmental, and nonprofit sectors include including: Disney theatrical, USDA forest service, world bank, Stanford woods Institute, University of Chicago and Renaissance Reinsurance. She holds a Master's Degree in Human Development and a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems.

Now she's in Hancock, New Hampshire with her husband, their cat, and two horses and 55 acres of beautiful Woodlands that was passed down to her from her grandmother. Peri, welcome to the show.

Peri Chickering: Thank you, Josh. Great to be here. 

Josh Steimle: I'm excited to talk with you about your book because I love leadership, I love books, and I also love this word connection.

That word connection. I really got attached to it after reading Love Sense by Sue Johnson, which is a psychology book, but she talks a lot about connection in relationships and uses that word a lot. So when I saw the word connection in your title, I thought, oh, this is going to be good stuff here.

But before we dive into your book and talk about it, give us a little bit more background on yourself and where you come from and how you developed this experience. You've really got some impressive experience in your background that I'd love to learn more about.

Peri Chickering: Thank you. Thank you, Josh. I love the thumbnail sketch you did. 

Yeah, so. Where would I begin? Actually, I think that, so I grew up in Vermont and I'm now back in New Hampshire and I've traveled a lot and I've spent a lot of time in the outdoors as a Mountaineer, as a wilderness guide. It's beautiful you picked up on the word connection because for whatever reason I was born with a profound sense of connection and the way I felt connected was to everything. Like for me being in the outdoors, I just feel like I'm a part of it. And I was born that way. And what has taken me 60, I guess I'm 63 now, 63 years to come to terms with is that a lot of people actually don't have that experience. And for me I can't imagine how you could actually survive without feeling connected to rhis deep web of support, of intelligence.

So that's been a lot of my life inquiry is about connection and feeling very profoundly connected, such that I've never actually felt alone, even when I've been alone, even when I've been leading people, you know, in very remote places like the middle of the Kalahari desert for a month where, you know, the main result is you go in with 28 people, a month later you be sure you come out with 28 people or mountains. So the whole first part of my life, I started actually leading outdoor kind of trips when I was 19. And all of a sudden that responsibility when you're with people 24 hours a day in environments where back when I did it, no cell phones, no radios, no, you know, you can't just phone a friend and say, “Uh oh, we're in trouble, rescue me!”  That just didn't exist. So I had to cultivate, it's like an inner technology, of perception, of awareness,  and of being connected. “Like okay, I'm not sure what to do, but, there's some option. I'm just not seeing it yet.” So, I did a lot of this more outdoor based sort of work, until, and I spent probably six months a year off continent as in, off the United States, out of the U.S. until I got into my late thirties, early forties.

And I was like, “Oh man, I wish I'd taken stock out in loof dawns or whatever. I got tired of traveling. I got tired of feeling so responsible. And at that point I had set up these other leadership schools in South Africa and trained people to run that school in Bulgaria. We tried a few other schools in Korea.

In Brazil, that sort of, kind of took off. The Korea one we had to give away cause anyways, for a variety of other reasons. So I had a real dance in that world of the nonprofit sector. Leading, myself and then creating organizations and helping other people lead, which sort of led me into teaching leadership, which is really different than leading.

I had a stint at Regis University running their Masters of Nonprofit Management Program. And then it was right about then that I got very tired of being in Colorado and said, “I got to get to where it's green, where it's rainy day. So this is where my grandmother's property, which is back here in New England, came up and then I had to figure out what to do in this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. So, I became a consultant and that's where I started actually the sort of third leadership piece of my journey, which was coaching and growing others to grow their own leaders. And in each one of those places I had to, I had to learn a different skill set. Because it's very different to coach others than to lead and to teach.

And so that's a little bit of the leadership arc and the two things I'd say about that is the other two threads that were always central, were my connection to the outdoors and to spirituality, as in there's an inside job that goes along with the outside work. So that's a little background.

Josh Steimle: And who do you primarily work with today? Who are your clients?

Peri Chickering: Oh, well and this is what's interesting with the timing of my book. So at the moment,  I've dialed back the amount of work I'm doing right now. I'm kind of wondering about what might be next. The only clients that I'm actively working with at the moment is the U.S. Forest Service. There's a new chief in town and he did call and ask if I'd come back and work with his executive team. I agreed to do that. I have a five-year commitment with the University of Colorado. It's a leadership fellowship out of CU where they're growing interdisciplinary leaders across the University to try to work on the culture. And a lot of my consulting work was more deep systems change, which involves longer arcs of work and working with the top as well as the bottom and a lot of people in between. And those jobs, one of the reasons I'm not taking on those is those are often a seven to 10 year commitment and they involve showing up alot. 

Josh Steimle: That sounds like a very long-term commitment.

Peri Chickering: Yeah. Yeah. So it's very different than, you know, the other work. Again, I did a lot of startup work. Then when I was running smaller organizations and then when I moved to the consulting, which was more systems, culture change. I was like, whoa, these are like serious commitments here. So I'm more judicious about taking those on.

Josh Steimle: And when you mentioned spirituality, you said there's this inner… How did you put it? 

Peri Chickering: I said, there's an inner job that goes along with outer work. And oftentimes, in my experience, people get really caught up in the outer work and they forget to pay attention to the inner things going on to compel them to act in ways and then they go, “Woopsie. Whoa, what did I just do? I didn't want to do that.” Because they weren't paying attention to the inner aspects of leadership and being human. 

Josh Steimle: So it's not necessarily a religious thing. It's more that just recognizing that there's an inner person inside of all of us, and we need to be in touch with that inner person, as well as the physical outer person, more or less. 

Peri Chickering: And I mean, in one sense, the phrase human being, in my worldview implies the two, like there's a being and then there's this whole process of figuring out how to live on planet earth, which is kind of the human part. And those aspects of ourselves are always dancing together. 

Josh Steimle: Got it. 

Peri Chickering: If that makes sense. 

Josh Steimle: Yeah. So at what point did you say I'm doing this consulting, I need to write a book that encapsulates my ideas or what was the motivation? What was the impetus to come out with this book? Leadership Flow, the Unstoppable Power of Connection.

Peri Chickering: So, a few different threads. One, the domain of the book, I've been kind of thinking about my whole life.  I got my PhD when I was 30. My dissertation was actually almost a first pass. It was using quantum physics to talk about how science, the ideas that personality and people, because of the industrial age, had gotten very parked from the more spiritual mystical and quantum physics was beginning to remarry science and mysticism. You could say. So back 30 years ago, my dissertation was pointing towards this. It's like, there's ideas about how we are wired as people and how we're meant to live and lead that are not in the mainstream conversation. So back then I wrote, I did my dissertation. People wanted me to publish it. My committee did. And, and I just said, “No, I can't, I don't, I don't want to do it anymore.” So I parked it. So part of it was always kind of in the back of my head that I might want to pick it up again. Then, I actually, because of all my outdoor stuff, I ended up having a hip operation. And so I knew I was going to kind of have to lay low for a little while.

So that was the moment I thought, “What the heck? I'm going to need to take a break from all my traveling. Maybe I'll write a book and just take a pass at it.” So that was where I did draft number one, and man, I'd tell you, I had no idea what I was in for. I wouldn't call it a joyful ride. Let's put it that way, but it was like something just wouldn't die. So I kind of had to finish it. I'm glad I did, but it was challenging. 

Josh Steimle: Okay. It's interesting how many people I've interviewed, who say that something happened in their life that forced them to take a break and then they thought, well, I might as well write a book. A lot of people I've interviewed have said the pandemic was that break for them.

They said, “Hey, I was stuck at home. I couldn't travel anymore. And I thought maybe I should write a book.”

Peri Chickering: Yeah, here's the moment. And it's, and it had been, I mean, it kept coming up. When I taught at Regis University, I was teaching leadership and I couldn't find a resource. It's like, none of these things speak to some of the dimensions I think were critical.

That was almost pre even books, like emotional intelligence or whatever, you know? And then a lot of people who I work with say, “Where can I read more about what you talking about?” And I'm like, “I don't know.” So its a combination.

Josh Steimle: So it’s a combination that maybe you should write it, right? 

Peri Chickering: Yes, exactly. There was outside input inside and then space, which I don't know how people have a full-time job. And I don't know how you do that. I mean, God bless people who write and have a full-time job.

Josh Steimle: Yep. It's true. It's a lot of work to put together a book. At no time in history has it been easier to write a book. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. It just means that it's easier compared to what it used to be, right? Because it's still, it is so much work to put a book together and get all those thoughts in one place. 

Peri Chickering: Tell me why, why you think it's easier now? Or why did they say it's easier? 

Josh Steimle: Well with self publishing and word processing, I mean, compared to writing with a pen and paper. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So, I mean you think about the person writing a book a hundred years ago, you know, they're sketching it out on paper. I don't, I mean, I can't stand handwriting. It's so hard for me. My hands are weak now because I haven’t written by hand in so many years and just think, how would you do that? And even a typewriter, I learned how to type on an old fashioned typewriter. My teacher, she was religious that way about you have to learn on a real typewriter.

So I knew how to do that. Today I can bang away on a keyboard. And I just think, “How could I do this any other way?” It's just, it's so much easier than it used to be. How did people write these huge books? A hundred, 200 years ago? It's just, and then with self publishing too, it's just so easy to go on Amazon KDP and you can publish your book pretty much instantly

Peri Chickering: Yep, out it comes. Yeah. You're right. It’s beautiful. That whole end of it. Absolutely. 

Josh Steimle: But it's still a lot of work. And so how long did it take you from the time that you started working on it and working on your first rough draft until it was published? What was the timeline like?

Peri Chickering: Seven years.

Josh Steimle: Oh, yep. Long term commitment. 

Peri Chickering: Seven years. And you know, those first few drafts where you know, get people like the first draft, my father and a very good friend read. And my father is wonderful. He has published a bunch of books. He was an academic. You know, so very positive first couple of pages, then it gets to of course the real thing, which is a nice dry and 72 key concepts is too many.

I'm like, okay. You know, so, you know, first few drafts, they just parked them and tried again and tried again until I got basically the structure that I ended up with. Cause I was one of those people. I'm like my debt. Some people are very linear, I'm experiental, I just sorta jump in the deep end.

And, for some people they write an outline and then they just write to their outline and that's not me . I had to just get stuff out there. I write through story. Then I had to wander my way to the right structure. And when I finally hit it, which is the seven directions of my book, it was like three weeks and it came out and I thought, “Oh, there we go.”

Josh Steimle: It clicked. So take us through a little bit of the book. Can you give us kind of the high-level version? I know we can't cover the whole thing here, but give us some of the key points of the book and why you included that in the book, why it was so important for you?

Peri Chickering: So, as I alluded to, when we first started, the three threads of my life, so my book is hopefully designed to use my story and the stories of others to inspire people to claim more deeply their own story. Because as I was saying, I hold the worldview that everybody's contribution is important. So the book redefines leadership as everybody leads and everybody follows because everybody's got a part of the larger whole. 

So leadership flow is about the fact that your own personal leadership comes by a way of life where you're in the right place at the right time to make your contribution. And then you also are very relaxed to sit down and let others make their contribution. So it's very reciprocal and that's why the subtitle, The Unstoppable Power of Connection is about being connected to your own story.

Letting go of everybody else's stories and your parents' stories and listening deeply for your contribution to the whole. That's why the book, it weaves nature, spirituality, and leadership together as the three threads, which have been the three threads of my life and the seven directions is a native American image that actually holds those three threads together and always has. And as I say in the prologue, it's the way I've always understood the world is through those seven directions. And I can say them very quickly or not, but the book is an invitation to live deeply connected to the large intelligence and to play your part very precisely. And when you do, a lot of power comes online, that you have to learn how to live responsibly with.

Josh Steimle: I'm really enthusiastic about how much more story is being used in business contexts these days in leadership situations, we've got Donald Miller's book StoryBrand, which has been a huge bestseller. And I think has helped a lot of perhaps a more buttoned up executive types, embrace story as a part of their leadership style.

But what is that critical connection between leadership and story? Why is story so important for an effective leader to embrace?

Peri Chickering: Because it connects the head and the heart. Stories bring the heart online and when those two get…  cause very often, and this was of course in writing my book and for me books that, and of course everybody has their own preference, books that don't have stories kind of embedded into them for me I kind of get bored and disengaged from, but when the stories come online, all of a sudden it's like, “Oh, there's a real person there because the heart engages when you tell a story, and this is why it's wonderful that more storytelling in all its various forms, short, long is coming into the world of business and leadership is because it's very, it's super effective because it begins to bring the whole person. And it honors that we are whole people and we have emotions as well as minds and we have bodies that carry, you know, our story very deeply.

Josh Steimle: I have… what you're saying is reminding me, one of the friends students in one of my groups, she deals with wall street people, investors, dealing with billions of dollars, very number driven industry. And she said that the deals, she helps people close deals for hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. And she said, she would go into these situations and talk about numbers and it was always a hard sell to get them on board. And one day she went into a meeting and she just told a story about a client she had worked with.

And, it was just all story-driven and she said at the end, they said, “All right, we're ready to work with you.” It was the story created trust. And those people said, “Okay, if you can tell a story like that, then yeah. You're our gal that we want to work with.” And she and I have talked about this over and over again, talking about how she's writing a book too. And we say, you've got to make that story part of your story because that shows the power of what you do and how you do it. And I just thought that's such a great example of how it doesn't really matter the industry. It can be the most number driven industry. And you think this is all about math. No, it's about that heart and the feeling.

Peri Chickering: Right? Cause there's people. I mean, one of the very first clients I worked with, when I began consulting was a small re-insurance company in Bermuda. You know, talk about numbers, all about risk and numbers and you know, and I coached 25 of the… they're mostly men, a couple of women in there, you know, their senior VPs. And I had to get over a little bit of my… cause coming from the nonprofit sector, as that as my first client, you know, you know, small numbers to these huge deal numbers and I had to get over my issues relative, any shadows I had about money, people who do that kind of work and judgments in my mind, otherwise I couldn't be helpful.

And some of those people have remained my best friends and they're… everybody is…  people is people and, you know, hearts, minds, bodies, they've got families. The thing that I loved about that company just to say was, I thought, “Oh my God, the issues are sort of slightly different. You know, people have got different problems they're trying to solve, but we're all trying to figure this out together.” And none of these jobs are easy. They just have different sorts of challenges. So yeah.

Josh Steimle: Now what is it that makes connection unstoppable?

Peri Chickering: Well, there's so many threads to that one. Alright, let's see. So one, people can think they're not connected, but they are. This is why as I often remind people, there's no such thing as like a significant moment, because every moment matters. Like you can close the doors and pretend you're in private and whatever. And if you understand that you are fundamentally as a human being born connected, live connected. Both my parents died last year and I feel like they're still connected, you know? It's unstoppable. It's a through thread. And the other riff I'll do on the word unstoppable is it means this thing of never being alone. And there's always so much more intelligence and possibility in every moment than people imagine.

Like, you know, you may be looking this way. But, there's all this stuff behind you that you're not even thinking about cause you just sort of plowing ahead. And that's why a lot of the practice or some of the practices in the book talk about being, you know, pausing, stopping, stop yourself long enough to open to so much possibility. So it's a couple of rifts on the word unstoppable.

Josh Steimle: And the word flow in your title, leadership flow, is that related to the flow that we often associate with, and I'm going to butcher this Mahely Chikmenspie. Hi, people know who I'm talking about, but I know I butchered that a bit.

Peri Chickering: Yes. Those are wonderful books. Yes. And the reason I used the word flow, with a couple of rifts on that one too, one is, as I said, that putting leadership and flow together, this book was designed to be sort of a bridge book between bringing some ideas that are less familiar in business and still connecting with that business leadership community.

So when you immediately use the word leadership. People default to position, you know if you have a formal role, you're a leader, and if you don't, you're not. And so I did want to keep the word leadership, but it's kind of problematic because of that association. So there's a lot of people who now are reading the book who love it and think, well, I don't think of myself as a leader.

They're sure as heck a leader. They just don't think of it that way. So for me, the tying it to flow is the acknowledgement of everybody's got a leadership gift and to where you started, the way they most effectively show up is in the moment when you're in the flow. That's when you most effectively deploy your gifts instead of, you know, and I'm sure you are well familiar with people in formal leadership roles when they do it well, they often look like they're following more than they're leading, in the traditional sense of the word, because they're in the flow. They're listening. They opened the mouth and then they shut their mouth. 

Josh Steimle: It's interesting how you say we can essentially provide more value or we can serve better. We can contribute more when we're in that state of flow. I was watching a TV show the other day called Artful and they interview artists, and they talk about their journey and what they do. And they talk about spirituality a lot too in that show.

But one of this, this artist, he's a potter, he makes pots, he works with his hands and makes these beautiful ceramics. And he was talking about being true to yourself and how if you're not true to yourself, you're robbing the world of your full potential. And I see that connection with what you're saying here that in order to be in a state of flow, you have to be true to yourself because if you're not being true to yourself, how do you get into that state of flow? Right. And so I'm just seeing this… connecting these dots here between being true or authentic, or being your real self, and getting into that state of flow and then be more productive as a result of that. That's cool. That's fun. Isn't it?

Peri Chickering: It's fun. It's fun. It's challenging. And this is the other thing about flow because people have this funny idea that, you know, flow, you just sort of blissed out. It's like, Nope, wrong answer because it, and I described this in the book where, you know, there was this experiment done, I don't know if you remember that biosphere thing with the trees remember? Actually, I think it was even in Arizona, they created this utopian environment. Everything was, you know, and they planted trees and grass and flowers, and they all grew really fast. And then everything fell over.

Josh Steimle: Everything died

Peri Chickering: Well, basically, because there's a part of a tree and I believe this is very true of us as humans as well, it's called the Heartwood or the stresswood that get strong because it tussles with the wind, if there's no, and this is why they fell over, the grass, the flowers, everything. Cause they weren't being challenged by the natural forces of life. Flow involves a lot of tussling. But tussling in a more aware way. Like, “Wow, I'm really noticing that right now I don't like anything that's happening around me.” Hmm. Okay. Pick a breath. So that's the other thing I love about the word flow and taking these funny definitions, you know, people, again, sort of blissed out is where you're aiming for. Not at all.

Josh Steimle: No.

I mean, there must be opposition in all things that's like without opposition, without challenge. How do we grow strong? I mean, it's the same reason we go to the gym to work out, right? You don't go to the gym to take it easy

Peri Chickering: Well some people do. 

Josh Steimle: You go to the gym to be challenged, to put stress on your muscles because you know that that stress makes those muscles stronger. And you see this with people who are disabled or bedridden or something like they atrophy and they get weakened every way. I mean, their bodies fall apart when they can't move and expose their body to the stress of normal everyday life. I try to remind myself of that every time I get up in the morning when I really want to stay in bed, but.

Peri Chickering: ​​Exactly. And as you know, when your body is resilient, your emotions often are, you know, a little more available and your mind is softened. Sometimes if your mind is spinning, go for a walk, go for a run, you know, get on a treadmill.

They're all, all of those things are connected. And I just wanted to loop quickly back to this beautiful example you used with the potter, all about staying so connected to your own part and really boy it's so… and you know, maybe it's just also when you get to 60, you stop caring or whatever, but it's so nice to attend to my own life. And that's what this book is. This is my contribution as I've understood it. And everybody's got a different piece of the pie and then you begin to love everybody else's contribution. Cause you're not trying to do theirs. You're only trying to do yours. It's quite relaxing in that sense. It's wonderful.

Josh Steimle: Yes, it is relaxing to be true to yourself because then you don't have to do all that work of putting on a show for everybody. 

Peri Chickering: Exactly. Yes.

Josh Steimle: ​​I mean, that's hard work. 

Peri Chickering: It is.

Josh Steimle: I'll actually, I wrote down the quote from him. His name is Joe Benny, and I liked this so much. I stopped the show and wrote this down. He said in trying to be anything other than who you are really. You cheat the world out of the potential that you have, you rob the rest of us, of the beauty that would have been you.

Peri Chickering: Exactly. That is so beautiful. And it's so true. Cause nobody can bring your piece but you, nobody else can do that. Yeah, that's gorgeous. Thank you. That's wonderful. 

Josh Steimle: Now a lot of what we've been talking about back and forth here to some people might seem a little bit touchy feely, a little bit spiritual, a little bit hippy-ish or whatever you want to call it, but you're implementing these ideas with executives in business rooms, conference rooms, and such. Can you tie that together for us a little bit more and show us how these ideas are very practical in the business world in running large organizations?

Peri Chickering: Ah, yes. And the book seeks to dance between stories about how to do that. For instance, with the work with the US Forest Service, we were, I was brought in to help on the team from Dialogos, with the fatalities. They were in a perfect storm of increasing numbers of people dying every year. And everything they'd been trying to do was not working. So we were brought in to diagnose the situation and help them get through it. And some of the things that they really had to do in order to get underneath the habits, there were habits in the organization that they thought were helping and they were actually hindering.

So some of the practices that they had to get very good at were things like stopping talking and relaxing inside themselves with their image of what it meant to lead long enough to let there be space in the room for new information to surface. It sounds so simple. But the book goes through every of the seven directions there's practices in every direction of stopping of, they had to actually let go of a story they were telling themselves that even though they wanted zero fatalities, it was not possible. So we took them to other organizations who did work as dangerous, if not more, who had zero fatalities. And then it's like, “Okay, wait a minute. We say it's not possible, but they are doing it.” So shedding stories, stopping, owning your own habit that's problematic. And then shifting it to something more creative. You know, the coaching work. So you work with individuals, you bring teams together and teach them how to have conversations where they're not running all over each other and there's space for learning and all that kind of stuff. And that stuff is hard. It's very hard to do because we're not trained. Kids don't, we don't get taught this stuff in school. 

Josh Steimle: We sure don’t. And yet this is some of the most valuable stuff when it comes to living a happy, productive, fulfilling life and serving others and helping them do it

Peri Chickering: And being effective in any job and particularly in a leadership job where others are, if you're in a formal position of leadership, others are relying on you to create an environment where they can play. Otherwise they won't play. They might do their job, but they won't play. And there's so much research that says you can get what, 60%, maybe capacity. The other 40% is only given if people want to play. Otherwise they do their job and they go home.

Josh Steimle: Yeah. So after you publish your book, what kind of response did you see? How has it helped you? How has it been of service to you?

Peri Chickering: Of me personally?

Josh Steimle: Yeah. 

Peri Chickering: Oh, God, I have no idea. Other than it’s one thing to write the book, totally other thing to “Promote it.” So I'm just doing that and it just came out in August. So I'm now going, oh, I have to talk about it. Well, okay. That's a new skill set. The whole, and I think this is kind of your sweet spot, you know, the whole marketing. The good news… I don't know, that's maybe not the right thing. I was going to say the good news for me, and it's a little bit my world view that for those people who need to find my book, they will. And that's all. That's all that's needed, which also doesn't mean I don't have responsibility for, you know, I can't just leave them on my porch and hope they stumble into New Hampshire. I do have to make it so people can find it. But this book I didn't write it to promote myself or to get business, which I think is different than a lot of people. For me, I wrote it because I felt like I didn't have a choice. It was like a giveback or a legacy piece, which I think is actually different than if you're using it to promote your own business and work.

So if for me, if I got no business from it, I would be totally happy because I have gotten a lot of feedback already that people are finding it super helpful.

Josh Steimle: And sometimes that's the biggest payoff is just knowing that, Hey, I created something that people value and that they're glad that I did it. 

Peri Chickering: Yeah.

Josh Steimle: Well, Perri, this has been great to chat with you about your book. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and what you do?

Peri Chickering: Hancock, New Hampshire. No, just kidding. It's beautiful here. Come for a walk. People do do that actually, but Perrichickering.com. My website has ways to get ahold of me. It's got a few things and I also do a day of silence. Which people can participate. There's a monthly message that comes out because that's part of my personal practice and that's at silenttogether.com.

Josh Steimle: Great. Well, thank you Peri, for being a guest here on the show with us today and sharing your thoughts and talking about leadership flow, your new book.

Peri Chickering: Thank you, Josh. It's been a real pleasure.