A Concept That Saved Us

Katie 0:00

Today, I'm introducing you to a woman whose writing changed my husband's and my life. I am not exaggerating. What she wrote gave us an explanation and a vocabulary for what my husband was experiencing when we first moved back to Germany. Now we understand it to be reverse culture shock. And with both of us experiencing identity shifts and changes because of the cultures that we've lived in, we understand that we are triangles. Now, don't worry, this episode is going to explain what that means. But the key piece I want you to really pay attention to is when we're able to explain what we're experiencing, how it helps connect us better. Not only as a couple, but to others who get it too. So let me introduce you to Naomi Hathaway. The Naomi that I was aware of created the I Am a Triangle movement. She wrote an article that went viral overnight about being a triangle, basically about what it's like when you move to another country and you notice you've changed. And when you return to your home country, how it just doesn't feel the same. Now, Naomi is the founder of Leaving Well, a practice devoted to helping organizations treat leadership transitions not as a crisis or cleanups, but as acts of cultural maturity. She works with mission-driven teams to move beyond transactional fixes and into values-aligned relational practices that honor complexity, grief, and growth. Her work lives at the intersection of trust building, systems change, and the radical belief that how we end things matters just as much as how we begin. It is my deep honor and pleasure to introduce you to Naomi and to gift you this concept as well that helped my marriage at a really difficult time. So go grab yourself a warm drink and let's dive in. Welcome to Relationship Reset, a podcast for high-achieving couples who've been together for over a decade and don't want to feel like roommates anymore. I'm Katie Russler, relationship strategist and couples counselor with almost 20 years of experience helping ambitious couples reconnect, strengthen communication, and turn their relationship into the best part of their success story. This podcast is about using practical tools and a lot of real talk to help you understand your patterns, stop feeling stuck and discouraged, and start working on your relationship in ways that actually fit your busy life. Because your relationship shouldn't be the cost of your success, it should be the best part of it. So let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast. As you all know, I live internationally. Married a German guy, I'm from the States, and living abroad has been eye-opening. Throughout the process, we've dealt with my husband's reverse culture shock, my culture shock. And in that process, I learned about the I Am a Triangle movement. I have Naomi Hadaway here today so that we can start talking about what it means to be a triangle, the impact of finding our tribe and our community, and how that impacts our relationship too. And then when to decide it's time to move back. So, Naomi, thank you so much for being here and talking with us today.

Naomi 2:52

I'm really excited. It's been a while since I have lived overseas, but the concept of I am a triangle still resonates and it always will. I think that's the part of that's so juicy about it is once a triangle, always a triangle, with some extra edges added in there too.

Square Circle Triangle Explained

Katie 3:06

Definitely.

Speaker 1 3:07

Start us off with the story of I Am a Triangle, the square, the circle, how we become a triangle, so that those who don't know this concept have a better understanding.

Naomi 3:17

So it's not geometrically correct. Like people always get in their feels about how like this isn't actually the way that it works. And like, okay, just go with the concept and the idea. So the idea is that when you are at home in the country that you call home, whatever that might be, for a lot of people, the easiest way to understand it is your passport country. You are a square. It's everything is known to you. Culture, maybe the different varieties of religion, food, how you make community, how schools work, all of those things are very known to you. And then you move abroad and you move to what we call circle country. Everything's different. And very few things are the same or have similarities. And so you have to relearn everything. The idea then of I'm a triangle is you can't really stay a square because now you've shifted and you've got new perspective on things that are outside of your passport country, but you also will never be able to truly become a circle. And so here's where the geometric conundrum comes in place. You become a triangle. I know, I know it's not right, but go with it. The idea then is that when you become a triangle, you also then, when you move back, quote unquote, home, you're really struggling to then belong. Add to this if you're raising children, add to this in your case, Katie, having, you know, you've married into a different culture, a different nationality. That just gets really prickly. So then a lot of people also then call that a star because you're adding all the other points. And what happened was we moved to India. So my husband and I are both Americans. My husband had lived and worked internationally for quite a while before we met, but I had never been. India, as we now know it, was a decision that we both made for each other. We thought we tell the story that we were at a party many years later, and he overheard me saying that I said yes to India because I knew it would help his career. He came over and he was like, actually, I recommended India because you were having a hard time where we were living, and I thought you needed a change of pace. And I was like, um, anyway. So we lived in India for three years and we actually moved there with the intention of it being permanent. Uh, so we sold everything, we packed up a shipment full of things and we moved. We then spent a year in Singapore and then we were repatriated very quickly because of an illness that we don't need to get into today. But it was because we intended to live there, and then because we repatriated so quickly, I had a lot of shock on the way back. And my mother had served as a missionary in Africa and she heard of the concept first, and then I wrote a blog post about it, and it touched a lot of people. And I wrote a blog post or a series of posts after that, trying to just reconcile how I could support the community that was forming naturally. And the short of it is we formed a Facebook group. It grew to 17,000 people. And like you said, the movement was born and it really provided just such a beautiful way for people to say, oh, that's me.

Katie 5:58

And it allowed people to one better understand themselves, but two, find their people, find their community. Because once you're a triangle, it's very hard to fully connect with the square or a circle or a, you know, another square or in a different country, or it's other triangles that you go like, ah, you get it. You understand me. Did you have that same experience too?

Naomi 6:20

I did. And when we repatriated back, we moved to a community of stayers, people that had really never left their community. And I, not on purpose, but I realized I put away all my bangles and I put away all of my amazing jewelry that I had just collected from India and Singapore. And it was because I totally didn't fit in. And showing up in my jingle jingles and my really boldly colored clothes, they were really not going to welcome me in. And so I I think you're totally right that it's much harder to connect. The other thing that's really funny is we started having people in the triangle community say things like, if only we could have an identification of sorts. And so we made luggage tags. And Katie, we started getting pictures of people that would not knowing each other in airports would see a luggage tag, immediate friendships. They would introduce their spouses because that connection, like you mentioned, was so quickly there because they knew they had, they understood, they understood what had happened.

Katie 7:13

Yeah, definitely. We have found in our community here, as much as we've tried to integrate in many ways. And even though my husband is German, he lived in the States for six years. So he full on was a triangle and then came back here. And our children, even like really get along with stars, other star kids, much better than they do the kids that are fully completely German. And that's because they can speak in either language, they can use different terms and things, and it's not like, what? Why are you saying that? Or go back to your home country. Things like that. Those types of comments that kids will say to each other because they learn it from their parents, those things fear.

Finding Your People Abroad

Naomi 7:50

And our kids, as they've gotten older, uh, we joke about this, but I think there's some truth to it of like one of their first like making friends questions is do you have your do you have a passport? And if they say no, that's a really clear indicator to our kids that it's like, oh, we probably won't have much in common. And you know, you can say what you will about privilege around passports, especially as an American, but there are certain things that you're gonna be able to, and your kids will be able to identify as like these are my people or these are not. It's real.

Katie 8:16

Yeah. Here in Europe, a passport is like, you don't have a passport. Are you okay? That's something wrong. Like you literally drive two hours, you're in another country, you need your passport. It's so normal. Share with me your experience then of living in Indian Singapore, finding your tribe and community, and also what that was like for you guys as a couple.

Naomi 8:36

I think that one of the things that I always have to preface my what I'm about to say is that because we had children that were school-aged at the time, finding my community was a whole lot easier than the experiences of my friends who either had kids that were already out of high school or that didn't have children at all. I think there's something to be said about drop-off. And of course, every location is different. But for us in India, we had drivers. And so we would get driven to school, to the American Embassy School and dropped off. And right inside the gate were all of the other moms. And so we would drop off kids and then we'd go have tea or we'd go shopping or we'd go do a photo walk, or my community literally was baked in and was right there. One of the things that I did know that I experienced there wasn't a welcoming committee. There, so we started at two of the schools that my kids went to, um, partially because I saw that it was missing, a buddy program where over the summer, because normally people vacate and they're not there during the summer, new families that come in don't have anyone there to guide them or show them around. Anyway, all of that to say my experience at finding community was quick and fast and furious. I also was blogging before we went to India. And so I was also able to make relationships and friendships because people would meet me and they'd be like, Oh, you wrote Delhi Bound. And so I think there's ways that we can, not everyone, you don't have to write a blog necessarily, but I really encourage people to kind of make their newness known. Don't hide it. You know, it's kind of the thing where we talk about be kind to everyone, you don't know what they're going through. It's the same of like smile and introduce yourself to everyone. You don't know if they're new or not. Like, don't make assumptions, just introduce yourself, you know? And also I think the other thing that's beautiful about my experience of international living was you get past the kind of surface level stuff really quickly and you go really quickly deep. You know, it's like England before, how many assignments have you done? How old are your kids? Where are you living? What's your favorite place? What have you found that's amazing? And so right away, then you can kind of find your folks. What I will say is that my husband's experience was radically different. So he was working for an Indian-owned company. And so he was not around folks that he might have felt would be future friends, you know, to us would be future friends. But because he had done it before, he lived in Moscow, he lived in Rio de Janeiro, and also lived in Rome for a while. He was used to making friends and building community. What was challenging, though, for us as a couple was finding it that fit for all of us. So we had eventually we did find amazing humans that both of us as a couple really got along with, and kids also got along with each other, and those became tight-knit butts for us the whole time. But it was, it was more challenging for my husband for sure.

Katie 11:06

Yeah, it's funny you mention school and drop-off. So, you know, I'm military kid, always was the new girl every two to three years, right? And I remember dropping off my daughter to the kindergarten, and this is not a being a mean stereotype, but in general, I have found Germans are not the first to be like, you're new. Hi, welcome. They kind of stay in their own lanes with their own people. And if you show up, they kind of just stare at you. So I remember it was probably the first week of that. I'm pregnant. I, you know, it's just this difficult time. And I'm like, huh. And I sat in my car and I started crying. And I text messaged the one friend from my last high school I went to who was like, hey, new girl, come sit by me. Cause she had been the new girl two years before. She was the one like you was like, we're gonna bring the welcome committee. Nobody's doing it. I'm gonna be that, right? And I I said, Thank you so much. I started crying. I was like, Thank you so much that you welcomed that 15-year-old who was brand new and didn't know anyone and was like, my parents are getting divorced, my whole world's going up, and I need somebody. I wish I had that now in this kindergarten. I just thought, how can I be that for other women who show up? Whether, you know, here with the Ukraine war, we had many Ukrainians. And I was like, hello, hi, what can we do? How can we support you? Their children didn't know German. And it was just such a challenging time. And for my husband to come back and try to reintegrate with people that he used to be able to, it was so different for him. So we both had this sort of like, where did we move? And it takes a toll on the relationship because there's a bit like in your experience, well, you've got your community, you've got your tribe. Your husband's a little bit like, let me tag along. Maybe there's a husband, right?

Naomi 12:54

Yeah. Well, and in our situation, my husband was gone a lot. And so he would come back after one or two weeks of being out kind of on the road. And I would have people, I would have my crew. And so that also caused some friction and some rub because if he was miserable, shouldn't I be also? Like if he was not finding why do I get to be happy and have events and things to go to? So there was definitely that that friction. I think the other thing for us that was an interesting friction was he thought, because he had lived overseas before, he thought that I was going to struggle more. And when I didn't, I mean, there was of course struggles, and there were plenty of times crying in the car. Like, yes, of course. But because I didn't struggle as much as I think he anticipated, he couldn't be the helper. And so then he was like, Well, what's my identity? If I'm the one that came into this, you know, kind of recommending that we do this really crazy wild thing, and then she doesn't also need me, then where are we at? You then bring in, Katie, like all of the cultural competencies of different cultures that you're around and different organizational structures. And so it's, yeah, it can be really complex.

Decision Matrix For Moving Choices

Katie 13:56

How was it for him and for you with the moves and work and the shifts and changes and like, okay, now we're leaving this company, we're going to the next. What was that like? Yeah.

Naomi 14:08

So I think that from my point of view, I've always been very proud of him because we call him the fixer. He is asked to come into a company to help get their bottom line or their maintenance or whatever it is under control. And then he fixes that. And then he's ready to move on, or they're ready to have him move on because the thing is no longer an issue. To me, during the early part of our kids' lives, it felt exciting and really intriguing to be able to have new things all of the time. As our kids got older and as we were patriated back to the States, I got really, really tired of that. And I started to cement my own roots with my work, my civic engagement, my owning my own business, those kind of things. And so then the frequent moves became not so cute anymore. Um, and it started to be also in the same time when our kids had, in my opinion, less need to be as rooted. I think it's more important when they're younger as they were getting into high school. I didn't see it was as big of a deal. And so over the last seven to eight years, I have made my own decisions around staying or going, moving or being put. And then he's the one that kind of oscillates around. Currently, he lives in a different state than I do, and he travels back and forth. So he's the one that has to relocate himself for his job. And I'm the one that is choosing to put roots down. And I think that is something you also have to navigate in your relationship is whose decisions way heavier, who has decision-making power. And when we were forced to reckon with a new move, we put together a matrix. We called it the decision-making matrix, and it had a series of questions about what we each needed to feel whole in the places that we lived, what the climate was like, you know, even specifically around weather, how close was the opera, how close was the countryside, how long was it going to take for our kids to get to school? And then we ranked all of it, we weighted all of those answers. And so it popped out this beautiful formula that basically said, yay or nay, like you should do this thing. And that helped also take away from ourselves as individuals the weight of having the conversation. It gave us this tool, which then prompted a lot of beautiful conversations. It was awkward and complex and terrible at times trying to make those decisions. Now we kind of laugh about it because it's like, good gosh, like all the things that we've done and all the places we've moved. But yeah, I don't know where I was going with all of that, but that's my answer to whatever it is.

Katie 16:23

Yes. Well, it's funny, my husband and I had the Excel spreadsheet that weighed everything on a scale of one to 10, and then what percentage importance with each of those categories. And then it had this whole math equation. And at the end of the day, both America and Germany at that time were equal. And it was like, okay, so it's what we do, right? And it was like, well, we've lived here. Let's go live in the other place and explore and see what we think. And we always said three to five years. And then close to the five-year mark was COVID. So it's like, well, we're here. And at that point, my mom had died. And it was like, I don't, you know, I've got family to go back to, but like, really, let's let's make this work here.

Kids Reentry And Hidden Stories

Naomi 17:03

I think you raise a good point that I think is really important about time. I think it's really beautiful to be able to say, even if it's not what ends up happening, what your expectations are of the time that you're going to give a place. I talk to my clients now all the time within the same kind of leaving well work around executives. How long do you want to stay? And think about that on the front end because then it makes it a lot easier to design very intentionally the time that you're there. I think giving yourselves for your to your example three to five years means you can also design what does year one look like? And what do you want to feel at the end of year one? What does year two look like? And then when you design those things, then it's easier to point when are we going off the rails? Like I wanted to, by the end of year one, I wanted to have seen specific things in India. By the end of year one, when I did do it, I was like, what's stopping me? Like kids, is it finances? Is it time? Is it, you know, what is it? So that year two then was beautiful. We got to do all the exploring. And so I think that's I just am so glad that you mentioned that about like the intention of three to five years as an example. Yeah, definitely.

Katie 18:05

I want to bring up the experience that our children have. I remember you telling me the story about how at school, when you guys were turned back to the States, your daughters basically first ABCs were not the ABCs in English, and how the teachers were like, There's something wrong, there are issues. And you're like, hello.

Naomi 18:26

She learned it was actually currency. It was they were currency. And my daughter could not get dimes, pennies, and quarters back in the United States. And I got this very worried call from her teacher saying, we really need to have a parent-teacher conference. And we sat down and she was so, I mean, her whole face was so fraught with worry that there was something wrong with this sweet child that she may have had a learning disability. And when she said that, I didn't catch it at first. I was like, well, that is strange that she doesn't know currency. And then all of a sudden it came to me. I was like, oh yeah, that's because she knows rupees, not dollars. And what was interesting about that, Kitty, was that I realized that our kids were not telling the story of where they had just been because of their own struggle to try and figure out, like, if I tell them, will I fit in? And I don't know if this is true, but I would guess that maybe one of them, like maybe she did say to a new friend that she'd lived in India. And I'm sure that maybe it's possible they make got made fun of that she got made fun of or someone didn't believe her in her little mind. It was, well, I won't tell anyone then. And I think I resonate with that because if someone doesn't get you or doesn't understand the why or how complex of a human you've become because you've lived outside of your home country, it's easy to just be like, oh, then I'll just, I'll just go inside my little, my little shell. And I see her now. She's now a sophomore at college. And I see her gravitating towards either kiddos that are international foreign exchange students or that have a very deep connected lifeblood to their culture in a different homeland than America. And so I just I think that we will, again, like we talked about the beginning forever, be triangles and stars.

Katie 20:03

Yeah, definitely. There is such goodness to living abroad, to giving your child that experience. And as you said, it comes with an adjustment if you go back to your home country and how the other kids will interact because their stories will be like for my kids, oh, we went to France for summer vacation. That's normal here, but it sounds bougie when you're in the state, like you, oh, you went to France. Like, no, literally, it's just a few-hour drive. Like it's not that crazy.

Naomi 20:30

Even the Lilt that you know, people always call it the expat Lilt, or for kids who are bilingual or trilingual, slipping into using other words or slipping into an accent, or my kids' comfort food is Indian food, not mac and cheese. You know, and so it's all of those things are both positives and negatives. And it just depends on who you surround yourself with. We often used to say in the triangle community that we wished we had a little ticker, a digital ticker above our above our heads that could say, here's who I am and here's where I've been, so that people could see you and gravitate towards you instead of trying to do the hard relationship-building work of unearthing those things. Yeah, it's it's hard.

Loving Different Versions Of A Spouse

Katie 21:06

Definitely. Again, absolutely worth it, but something to be thinking about for those of you listening who are like, okay, we're trying to navigate this or trying to decide if we're gonna move back to one of our home countries. Another piece I always find interesting, and it sounds like with your husband, there's a little bit of this. I always joke that like I fell in love with the American version of my German husband, and then we moved to Germany, and I got the German version of a German husband, and I was like, I don't know about you. Wait, who are you? Like, you seem different. I think as we become triangles and we're then put back in our home country or even in a totally different new country that's maybe different from where we became a triangle, versions of us come out that are sandpaper in our relationship. How was your experience?

Naomi 21:51

So I'm so glad you brought this up because I haven't talked about this, I don't think, with anyone. My husband is southern, Georgia in the United States, uh, very southern. I mean, you don't talk about. An accent, the way words are pronounced, behaviors, all the things. When I met him, he had been living in Rio de Janeiro, right before that was Moscow, and before that was Rome. And so I fell in love with the international version of my husband. We are now back literally on property or two away from where he grew up. And I am relearning the southern Georgia version of my husband. And then with the edge and the scratchiness of having lived abroad. So his brother and their family live literally, I mean, we can't see them from here, but it's like over the creek and across the woods. They are so similar, but my husband has this added triangle-ness to him. And so watching him even go in and out of how he behaves and how he acts, the other thing that was really wild to me was watching him interact with his Indian counterparts. So in India, there's literally a term called peon. I mean, they literally, it's like a title. And I mean, to me, peon means like little guy or like bottom of the rung, but that's a role that people have. And so he would come home and he would say the peons. And I'm like, that is so rude. Like that's not who I'm who I love. Like, why are you acting like this? And then he would translate for me, like, no, that is for me to be culturally appropriate. I need to refer to build trust. And so I think that there's this scratchiness around our own, the advancements of ourselves as humans, and then how we watch our loved ones advance. And then sometimes it feels like regression. The one thing I will say though is that we always relied on each other and we were able to say, you're doing that thing again, or you are going a little too too far into the caste system-esque version of when we lived in India. Like it's really helpful to be able to just name those things with your loved one, especially when, like you said, you fell in love with maybe a different version. Yeah, so much. There's so many complexities to this, Katie.

Katie 23:49

I'm telling you, my book is coming. It's it's this is like I have to write a book about this because it's so it's the I am triangle, but couples edition. So many layers to it that you don't go into, you can't. There's no way anyone can prepare you for this.

Naomi 24:04

Yeah. So many times too, even if you did prepare yourself, your unique experience is going to be wildly different, even than the book. A family that has, I think, three redheads, and I think they call themselves the three gingers or something. It's a family that lived, I think, in Hong Kong, maybe as expats. And they were so popular during the time we were living overseas because kids could see themselves in these three girls. But then what would happen is they'd be like, but that wasn't my experience. My school experience was different. And so it really brought up all these beautiful things around you can't prepare for it. You can research and have things inform, but your unique experience is still going to be yours, which is why I'm so glad you offer your services so that people then can come and say, okay, help me through this and help me navigate.

How To Move Back With Care

Katie 24:47

Right. Absolutely. Let's talk about the challenges and the preparation of moving back, stepping away from your work, leaving the community built, even making the decision to go. I know you shared for you guys there was a health reason, but you've navigated it with others where it's a maybe one of them's not happy. Maybe one of them says, okay, well, the job here is done, and there's nothing more for me to do. What would be some tips and some things to help couples to navigate that next stage?

Naomi 25:16

I think we've already kind of talked about one of the big things, which is do it together. There's nothing worse than making assumptions, similar to my husband and I going to India. Like making assumptions about what the other person needs is, I think, one of the most harmful things. The other thing I think that I would recommend, and you may feel differently about this, we did not consult our kids about our decision. We told them, of course, but they were not part of the decision making. And one thing that I have learned that we did that was a mistake. So when we lived in Singapore, I had moved with the kids to Singapore because of my health issues. My husband remained in India. And so once a month-ish, he would come visit us in Singapore. And it just got to be too hard for our family. And so he and I made the decision to move back to the States. But what precipitated that decision was our middle kiddo saying to my husband, asking questions about the money that he made. And what he was getting at was, is the money so good that you're never home? Now, what we didn't realize was that burden he still carries to this day was he feels like he was the reason that we moved back. And so I just would strongly encourage, as you are talking to each other about when it's time to go, do not put that burden on your children. Communicate with them once the decision is made. But unless they are like 19, 20 years old, I think that you should keep that away from your kiddos. The other thing I'll say that really helped us was celebrating very intentionally once we made the decision, going to all of our favorite spots, saying goodbye to the hawker stand of our favorite, you know, our favorite person, letting the kids really design their goodbye also. You know, for one, it might have been a pool party. For another, it might have been a hike at their favorite spot. Choosing to leave some things behind and pass on to another family versus what do you take with you is huge. I think that there's also something to be said about once you've made the decision, sit literally sit together and decide what are some of the traditions that you've learned from the place that you've adopted that you can take back with you. We make olive-fried rice quite a bit. Uh, it is a very specific recipe from Singapore that we had someone teach us how to make. When I make that, it's like this really beautiful hearkening back to that time. We brought some furniture back. Um, you know, I think there's some ways that you can really honor your time. The other thing that I would recommend is that you document your reasons why, because when it gets hard and when you are angry and tired and, you know, going through it, being able to go back and say, like, oh yeah, this is why we're doing this. Sometimes that's obviously also not in your control, especially I think about depending on the administration of wherever, you know, sometimes you've been sent to a place. And so that can also end. That brings up a whole nother host of challenges. It's one thing to decide for yourself when something ends, and it's a whole nother thing to have it decided for you. 100% encourage folks to get professional support and help. The strongest of us always think we can do it by ourselves, and we can't. We're not meant to do hard things always by ourselves. So I think it's really all about talking and communication, being transparent and protecting your kiddos as much as you can.

Katie 28:09

Definitely. I love that you said write down your why. I just wrote that down as well. Cause I was like, gosh, it's so true. If we don't write ourselves a little love letter, this is this is your why, it's okay. There's a reason, there's a purpose. Because we don't like discomfort and pain and sadness and hurt and what feels like breakups. But when we know that on the other side is something better, greater, you know, whatever it might be, when sometimes you don't know. You know, we're willing to take that chance. And kind of like my husband and I, let's try it for three to five years. And if it doesn't work, we have the freedom and opportunity to return back. Not everybody has that, I understand, but knowing that it's not always forever. I think sometimes that would people get scared, right? Like it'll be for if we move back, it's forever.

Naomi 28:53

Yeah. I think that it's interesting because I always hear people say, I don't have the same choices or I wouldn't have the same luxury. And it's like, I don't know, really. Have you examined that truly? I think there are ways that we can all take advantage of making a decision to live somewhere else. I think that we have lulled ourselves into complacency around, I don't have that privilege, I don't have that choice. And I think more of us do than we think. I also think the other beautiful thing to think about is a lot of my clients now, when I start, I will say something like, things are gonna get crispy, crunchy, and really, really sad, and you're not gonna know why. Cause I work with folks and organizations around workplace transitions, and they're always a little skeptical. And I say every time that you have ever moved, those feelings are gonna come right back up to the surface when we're talking about workplace transitions. And so even thinking about as you are navigating, as you're listening to this and whatever form of transition you're navigating, the way that you handle and navigate it now will also help firm up or erode your resilience in the future. And so think of it also as a future level to yourself to really be kind, thoughtful, intentional about how you're designing and processing it. I think so many of us naturally push stuff down. But if you think of it in a what's the you of tomorrow, you of next year gonna need, do some of that stuff today.

Leaving Well At Work

Katie 30:06

And you're exactly right. Resilience isn't suck it up, do it, push it down, don't feel it. Resilience is I can feel it and move through it. Yeah, we need that. Talk with us a bit about leaving well. This is your your next movement, right? Your new movement in the last few years that you're really building it. And and for great reason. I remember when this started, you started writing about it, there were so many layoffs and so much was happening. And you were like, no, this is not okay. Companies and organizations are not preparing individuals for this in correct ways. It's not helping teams. And you started by working with the individuals, but now you've said, no, it's time to talk to the organizations. Walk us through a little bit of that now.

Naomi 30:49

Well, and I have to give credit to Jerry Jones, who was a fellow expat. He was living in China at the time, and he really developed leaving well as a tool and a coping mechanism for expat folks. How do you leave one post to uh well to be able to land in the new one even better? And that served us well while we were leaving uh both India and Singapore. And so I asked him if I could borrow it for the organization and for the workplace. And what I think is interesting about this is none of us have the first job that we've ever had. Yet we act surprised, so surprised, when a job ends and someone leaves, whether it's us or someone else. And we always act like, oh my gosh, I thought they'd be here forever. Why do we think that? And so part of my work is to just normalize and get more and more people to say the reality is that people leave. And then the second piece of what I'm hoping that people will catch on to is, and we can actually plan for it, prep for it, and make it part of our culture. I do have a dream, Katie, that one of these days, you know, I don't know if they do it in other countries, but in America, they always have like the best business award of the year. And there's all sorts of things about retention and customer service and whether they have Fridays off or whatever. I would love to see a future where part of what we judge as a company's wholeness is how do they treat departures and how do they plan for them. It's also not hard. It's really not hard. When I say the things of what I recommend to companies, they're always like, oh, that's totally doable. But it takes a mindset shift and it takes intention. The best companies roll out the red carpet when they have a new person starting and then they do the complete opposite when someone has gone. And there's all sorts of beautiful things that can be done around stay interviews is one good example. Talking to someone midway, do you still want to be here? Is this job what you thought it was going to be? Are there things we're missing in your potential that we could really elevate? Are there things that you are ending up doing that weren't part of what you thought your job description was going to be? The other thing that goes back to what we were talking about, I love asking leaders to set a timeline. When you start a new job, whether you say it to your board of directors or to your, you know, whoever you report to for yourself, is this a three-year term? Is this a five-year? Is it 10 years? A lot of the work I do also, Katie, is helping founders leave something that they have birthed, which has its own sweet special set of complexities. Um, it does. Yes. Yeah. But it's been good. And like you said, I realized that helping individuals was beautiful for that one individual, but really the onus and the responsibility is on the organization to get it right and to keep practicing.

Katie 33:10

I'm so glad that you are bringing light to this. And, you know, when I think about how over the last several generations the workplace has changed and I reflect on like when someone's retiring, usually people stayed at a company forever. The retirement party was a big thing, you know, like every month. And now it really is like, oh, see it. Bye. Hey, great. Yep. And there isn't this, you can spend as much time as you do onboarding as you do offboarding in a way for like and having them step away. So I love that you're bringing like to that and making it practical so that companies and organizations can do it.

Naomi 33:45

And and if you think about, so I'm also very curious about the sports world. And so if we think about in sports, performance is what it's about, right? It's winning. We talk about coaches and they're winning, their their winningness. Like, and when you think about all of the transitions that happen in sports, that impacts performance, wins, all of those things. Coco Goff recently for the US Open, she changed her serve because of a new coach. She, news alert, she didn't win the US Open and her serve, she kept faulting at the serve line because of this new it affected her performance. And so if we know that it affects performance, we also owe it to our organizations to is if a nonprofit, if a hospital system, you have to keep the mission moving forward to serve your clients and your customers. So letting a disruption of someone leaving impact your ability to serve is like a huge miss. And we can avoid that. Anyway, I could talk about this three episodes. So I'll stop there. But it's really important and I'm I'm excited to be doing this work.

Katie 34:41

Oh, I'm grateful. Naomi, if people want to connect with you after listening to this episode, where's the best way for them to find you?

Naomi 34:47

Yeah, the best way is NaomiHattaway.com. On there is an organizational assessment where you can find out the kind of uh workplace archetype around transitions that your organization might be. There's four of them, and it's a pretty enlightening assessment. So I would encourage folks to check that out. There's also almost a hundred episodes of a podcast and lots of articles. So you can peruse and spend lots of time learning about it there.

Katie 35:08

Yes, definitely. I'll make sure the link is below in the show notes. Again, Naomi, thank you for sharing your story, your experiences, and your wisdom with us today.

Naomi 35:17

Thanks, Katie, for having me. So good to chat with you.

Katie 35:19

And dear listener, we'll see you next time. Before you go, I want to leave you with this. The effort you put into your relationship is one of the most important investments you'll ever make. How you communicate and grow together shapes your home, your leadership, and the example you set for the people around you. Relationship work is truly legacy work, and it quietly impacts more lives than we often realize. If this episode resonated, consider sharing it with someone you care about, a partner, a friend, or another couple who's building a full life and want their relationship to be the best part of it too. And if you're enjoying these conversations, make sure to follow or subscribe to Relationship Reset. Leaving a rating or review also helps this message reach more couples who are ready to grow with intention. I'll see you next week.