Magic Formula: Art + Leadership = Transformation | Adam Rosendahl
In an era where executives communicate primarily through screens and organizational hierarchies create invisible barriers, traditional leadership development may be missing something fundamental: authentic human connection.
Adam Rosendahl's work addresses this gap through an unconventional method—bringing company people together to draw, share personal stories, and engage in collaborative art-making. The approach challenges assumptions about professional boundaries and vulnerability in organizational settings.
The methodology operates on the premise that workplace dynamics often stem from leaders' inability to see colleagues as complete human beings rather than just professional roles. What's particularly interesting is the reported longevity of effects—participants describe lasting shifts in how they perceive and interact with colleagues, sometimes years later.
This raises broader questions about leadership development itself. If disconnection is a primary obstacle to organizational effectiveness, what does it mean to address it through creative rather than analytical means? And what might this reveal about the limitations of conventional approaches?
Today, we'll examine how this methodology functions, what drives its apparent effectiveness, and what it suggests about the intersection of human psychology and organizational dynamics.
Disconnection is the disease and creativity is the cure.
How seriously we take ourselves as adults and professionals and
just learning from kids being able to be
in a space of creative expression without judgment of themselves.
It allows for people to go into really deep spaces without
forcing it through some kind of like therapeutic conversation.
It still feels more like a celebration and people are bobbing their heads and
it has like a cool element that is very effective,
helping people see each other more deeply, creating spaces where stereotypes
are melted and generalizations are cracked open and
people have a sense of like, wow, I was so wrong
about you, you know? Like I thought of you as like a
very guarded, you know, judgmental person and actually
like you're amazing, you know? It's like it's
like this funny thing where it's like we have
there's so many judgments that happen in between people inside of
teams and the stories compound over the years
and sometimes people just have decided that they just don't like somebody and
they've worked together for 15 years and in 90 minutes that can change.
So like that story can be broken and those people can become
friends, they can become like collaborators.
We've talked about Adam's founding stories of late night
art and how he was inspired by an art camp
that's multi-sensory, multi-dimensional, multi-
art forms experience really helps. He truly appreciated the power of art
and helped him to realize that, oh, there's a kind of leadership quality
in him and that encouraged him all the way to
build and develop and grow late night art for all the top executives
across the world. And we also talked about the secret
behind how do we actually really bring people into this
deeper, deeper mutual human connections. We talked about the power of music,
the power of stories, the power of movement, and the power of
surprise and the power of actually sharing
childhood stories and eye contact. Many and many and many and
Adam lived his whole life trying to practice
and develop and fine-tune this art and science of facilitating
art-based experiences for teams and leadership.
Welcome to Magic Academy podcast. Today is a special guest, Adam.
He is the founder and CEO of Late Night Art, a creative learning development
lab that leverages transformative experiential learning,
dialogue, music, and art to create transcending experiences
helping people to transcend beyond culture,
beyond generation, beyond power dynamics, and shift
and build new type of cultures within organizations.
And he has helped many, many organizations. He's been hosting like
600 plus events across 12 different countries
and helping people like executives coming from
all the way to probation officers from Louisiana,
Louisville, Kentucky, all come to seek Adam's help
and to build those type of transformative experiences.
And he believes the power of art to help people get out of the daily
routine, deepen our connections, connecting
ourselves to the deeper essence of our being
and build and transcend our perceptions and cultures
and humanize people more than what they are in terms of at work but
more in terms of who they are as a human.
Such a great pleasure to have you, Adam.
Thank you so much, Gianni, for having me. It was fun
to hear your introduction of me. I appreciated all the words that you used.
Can you share with us what inspired you to start late night art?
Sure, yeah. I think the story starts back when I was 13.
My parents sent me to a leadership arts camp that was very different than
the normal summer camp. Over eight days there was 50 teenagers
and 25 adults and the adults were all activists
and professional artists and educators and they would teach workshops using
different art forms to help the teenagers connect with each
other across difference and identify their strengths and what
they could do to support the world in a good way. So you can envision
this is 50 teenagers coming from all over the country
who represent many different religions and cultural backgrounds
who are ages 14 to 18. They come in wearing hoodies with a lot of
skepticism and a too-cool-for-school attitude and
hands crossed. Over the course of this
process, part of it is that as they're moving through
and each of the adults is leading workshops in a specific
discipline, like I said, around freestyling or
around visual arts, it's giving these little moments for
the young people to express parts of who they are
and be seen in different ways by each other.
And then to kind of debrief and talk about how that was in front of
the group and in front of the entire camp. And little by little,
turns from strangers into a community and through the arts and through this
creative practices of singing together and dancing and doing
art, it uncovers certain layers of vulnerability that just can't happen
with just talking. And so we start to gain more
empathy and more compassion for people's different circumstances and
people who are really different from myself.
And I guess, yeah, people start to feel almost like family.
It's like a sibling connection versus just a random stranger.
And I remember being so surprised that I felt like the people that were at this
camp with me felt almost like my best friends and
even deeper than the relationships I had with a lot of my
friends at home. So that was just all a representation of
really good facilitation and intentional use of the arts as a tool
to connect people across difference and to create
strangers into a sense of community. And so what happened for me the first
year that I went, I came home and I really didn't want to talk about
it with anyone. And what my mom, the language that my mom
uses is that I had a spiritual experience
and that my heart was cracked open. And what happened was that
and it was through different art forms, including freestyling and beatboxing and
visual art and guitar and capoeira, I started to, I'd say, probably show more
of who I was. And I was seen on such a deep level by
my peers that it was almost, like I said, it was
like a spiritual experience for me. And it happened through the arts.
And so that kind of just set off a little bit of it.
It started me on a new path in life that I think I've been following ever since
then, which is how to use art forms not just for beauty
and aesthetics, but with a strategic purpose to connect
with ourselves and connect with other people in a really meaningful
and intentional way. And so that's, that was the spark.
And there's many steps along the journey.
So 13-year-old Adam, I was very small. I had braces. I was socially awkward.
A lot of self-doubt and, you know, kind of
awkwardness, anxiety, not trusting in my own voice.
I certainly didn't perceive myself as a leader.
I always was oriented towards art and creativity, but I never
had really done it with other people. So coming in, I was the youngest kid at the
camp. And so, and what happened for me, I guess
like fast forward to the end of this experience,
and I'm part of a group of eight people, which was called my family group, and
they were reflecting back to me the strengths that they saw in me throughout
the week and how they perceive me. And they saw
me as a leader, and they saw me exhibiting certain
strengths that I didn't see in myself that really kind of expanded my
idea and my identity of who I was and think that was really profound for me
and just establishing like who I wanted to become
and who I wanted to step into more of, especially the aspect of me being a
leader, which I really didn't, I did not see myself that way.
And so it was powerful to be reflected back.
And then the art gives you space to be who you are
and then for people to see you. I think that's the magic.
Yeah, I mean for me, I think I just realized like I feel
kind of at home and most comfortable when I'm in
creative spaces. So if I'm dancing with people or drawing with people,
the key element that I didn't mention though is creating a space that is not
that is not where there's no judgment.
And it's actually, I'd say it's almost I can't think of almost
any other spaces in life that I've seen that happen.
So even though like a lot of people want to create like quote-unquote safe spaces
that are judgment-free, I think it's extremely difficult to do
that. And so in order to create a judgment-free space, it requires a
certain level of there's really good facilitation that we
can trust that can be a guide to create a container.
But it also requires a lot of people who are on a similar level
who are able to hold that space with each other. I think that's
what allowed me to actually expand and feel free and
feel like I was able to access another part of myself.
How then do you translate and transform this experience now to executives of
Kickstarter and LinkedIn and Adobe and all the other leaders?
Yeah, well I was part of that Youth Empowerment Arts program
for 20 years, but that's like the spark was when I was 13.
But it was a thread of a big part of my life and really was like a training
ground for me to become a facilitator. And I learned from
I'd say some of the what who I would consider like the world leaders
in this unique niche of creative facilitation using the arts
as a tool to help create these non-judgmental environments that allow
for people to drop in and connect with themselves and with
other people. And so that that really created the
foundation for my I guess like my my unique skill set
which is both as an artist, as a facilitator, as somebody who really
has a strong value around depth and meaningful conversations and connection
and being able to create environments where people feel
seen and heard and understood in a way that just doesn't happen in a very
in like normal life. So yeah, the big thread was how do we use
art as a tool to help people feel seen? So that that's been the kind of like
I'd say one of the biggest threads of my life and a lot of the work that I do
revolves around that that value or that like desire.
Yeah, but I mean the the path for me to then now working with executive teams
around the world and using this process like for very strategic like business
problems like onboarding and leadership development and
culture challenges, it's not a straight line.
And there's been a lot of different ways in which like the practice that I
started when I was younger has kind of evolved and grown into a
methodology and then an organization and then now
somewhat of a movement and and a practice that I can teach other people
that they can then use inside of their organization as well.
But it started as an idea and then it became something I was leading in a
classroom and then it became something I was leading
as a nightlife event and then from there it turned into
something that was in conferences and then team building and then just over
the last five or six years it shifted into more
focus around leadership and executive leadership development
and working with the people who are running
organizations and who are in some ways have no
time and so how to basically support them in
the shortest amount of time possible in creating a deep sense of connection
and ongoing collaboration so that they can hit their high priority
goals and the the kind of bigger goals and dreams that they have in
their organization in their life and watching how that then trickles
down through an entire organization. So that's been the focus.
Because especially when our leaders are
in a holistic healthy and inspired state
the impact is tremendous.
That's where the impact comes from. That's the source of the impact.
Curious, what was the most memorable transformative or transcending
moment late night art is able to create or cultivate?
The most important moment there's been yeah so I mean
at this point I've lost a little bit of track but I think we've led around 700
events and we've done in 18 countries. I have a
team of nine facilitators now so it's not all the events are not being led by
me but one event that stands out
I was in Germany and I was working with a
massive pharmaceutical company that also does a lot of work
in agriculture and it was the the board and then the CEO and the top 50 leaders.
It was a very very sort of like high leveraged executive
off-site. There were security guards. I had to take three or four
COVID tests in one day before they allowed me to step into the room. It was
like this really intense kind of environment.
There was a lot of skepticism around like what is this guy going to do?
Something with art and creativity and like how does this
connect to our high priority goals and like our two-day
agenda and part of what happened at that off-site though is
I was asking people right from the beginning to think about one thing that
they're celebrating in their life and some of these executives they started
standing up and sharing about really deep personal things that were
going on with their kids, that were going on with their health,
that were going on with the kind of situation in their country that they were
from because each one is from a different country and
yeah you could feel like the emotion in the room and I could feel
like the room kind of dropping into a level of depth and that
coming from that place that changed the tone of the entire session and
people are along these long banquet style tables that are covered in
a thick roll of drawing paper down the table and there's art supplies
and flowers and I'm in the front of the room with a microphone leading them
through this pretty vulnerable spontaneous facilitated
process where I ask a question and then they connect with the person
across them in some way and then they're drawing
some part of their partner's response on the table
and then reflecting that back to their partner so it's really around using
storytelling music and art as a tool to help
people connect with each other in a deeper way after each question they
rotate to another chair and over the course of two hours they
maybe connect with about 10 new people and over that process there was tears
there was a lot of vulnerable sharing there was a lot of epiphanies that
people were having and I could viscerally feel the barriers
melting down between people because in this particular situation there was a
lot of sort of charge around the power dynamics
in the room and the people who are new and the
people who are older and people who had authority and
I could feel that the humanity coming into the room as people talked about
their life as they were kids or the the kind of passions that they that they
have outside of their work and so it's an
interesting thing because what I do is both mixing and allowing
people to talk about their greatest challenges at
work as leaders and executives but it's also getting them outside of
that range of work and talking about some of the experiences and stories from
their life that have shaped them so all that to say I think it was part of
it was like the intensity of the build-up for that and then watching how
vulnerable people were and for people to share with me that
that's never happened before like this group of people and this
configuration of people they just don't go there for me to be the one who's able
to create the space for leaders to do that it feels very
special and important and so needed because each one of these
people has thousands and sometimes even like I
think I don't even remember eight thousand people under them
and so like the impact of them connecting with each other and
connecting with themselves can have a huge ripple on the entire organization
I really love that that moment where you mentioned like the
humanity is really coming into the room and dissolving all the power dynamics
the divide among people
how do we build because 90 minutes it's very
I mean very short period of time or like 90 to
120 minutes very short period of time how do we and especially folks who are
leaders and they are responsible for a lot of people
and they need to they want to take care of them as leaders so there's a lot of
pressure and and stress and expectations
how do you set the stage or or kind of prep the environment for people like
that to really let their guard down and really start
to prime themselves their heart ready for a deeper journey together
yeah I think that it's it's so the opening is so important and the
like as you're saying the primer of how people feel when they walk into the room
and what are the kind of small steps that I take at the beginning
to help create the environment where people feel like they can let their hair
down and there's a lot of elements that happen
underneath the surface that allow people to feel more comfortable and safe
in work event because they're not they're not opting in everyone is forced
to be there so there there's a lot of people who are
coming in with resistance and they have their own
kind of challenging relationships with team building or what they consider
forced fun or forced connection activities or
an outside external facilitator who's telling them what to do
so part of the way I diffuse that is through music and
like in this particular offsite that I'm describing that happened in Hamburg
Germany I had participants who are there from Brazil and from Italy and from
China and Japan and I'm very intentionally using music
from all of the different countries where people are coming from
and not a stereotypical song from that country or or that culture but
a song that would really surprise someone who's from Japan for instance
like an old folk song that is beautiful but
very subtle and they might come and so I've had
just recently like at an offsite that I was at a couple weeks ago
I played a song from Nigeria a song from Brazil a song from Italy
a song from Spain and each time I played one of these songs like the person who
was from that country they came up to me
separately and they said like how how do you know this song
like you know this is a song from my country and I was like yeah and they
said like playing this makes me feel like I'm at
home and so that's like one thing that I'm able to do is
the curation of the music that creates an environment where people feel like oh
this is gonna be this is gonna be fun this is gonna be
exciting I feel like I want to be here and that goes a long way just in terms
of that's kind of a building block to then
what comes next but generally I think the way I think
about it is creating building blocks of increasing levels of vulnerability or
risk taking so I'm starting at the beginning I'm not
forcing people into a space where they're having to answer a
like what is the biggest challenge that you're facing in your life right now
it's more starting off like what's what are you celebrating and so it's very
it's very accessible and then the next exercise takes it one step further
and getting them to be a little more reflective and then
I might get them into a story from their life but
it's very careful in forcing people too far before they're ready to go there
so I think that's one of the ways yeah that's one of the ways that I think
it's really important to in order to create an environment
where people feel comfortable that it has a casual feeling to it but
it's structured and there's also an element of facilitation in this practice
that is not authoritative and so as a facilitator I'm really working with the
balance of how can I feel like a peer and an equal
to those in the room I'm mostly facilitating with questions
and I'm not inserting myself too much in the process so I'm not
really a keynote speaker I'm more the guide
that is supporting the process and setting the container and
it's a very different feeling so people feel
pretty quickly they realize that late night art is not about me or it's not
about the facilitator but it's about the process
and it's about them connecting with this person in front of them
it's almost like visibly invisible yeah yeah there's a lot going on but it's
hard to tell all the layers yeah yeah just like when artists want to
explain how do they create this masterpiece
well it's challenging because it's like 20 some
20 plus years of experience your whole life yeah
and your whole life your whole life
yeah
there is a lot of power dynamics so human and human there's already a lot
of divisions and and masks and and and
separation adding on top of that the power dynamics
and so how how do we navigate that how do we
what is this kind of power dynamics being
mediated or smooth yeah yeah i mean every single room that we're part of
there's there's the invisible power dynamics that are
kind of like you know planets orbiting each other and
certain ways like when i'm walking into executive off sites like everyone is
subtly looking at the ceo and how are they orienting to the
program and so there's like a gravitational pull in
different directions and so i'm very aware of the power dynamics
even for me having a microphone and being a facilitator that's hired to
lead this program it gives me a certain level of power in
the room which i never want to abuse especially
when i'm working with leaders if i'm like
hogging the microphone for instance and sharing overly about myself
it can start to feel like i'm i'm i'm forcibly
you know inserting myself in a situation but
a big part of what i do is about melting barriers and melting
hierarchy and creating a sense of when i say humanity i think about creating
a sense that everybody is equal and people look at each other as a human
being and not as the head of marketing or you know the
like head of customer success so and that part of that comes through
personal stories when people share a story about the
neighborhood that they grew up in or an experience from their life that
shaped them and they're starting to weave in
some of the nuances of their culture and where they grew up and
who they are and what drives them it really starts to open up
the who like who is the person in front of you
is so different than what stereotypes or small boxes or
you know ways that we categorize people and so
generally you know our idea of somebody is is
pretty limited and so when that starts to open up
it really shifts the dynamic and when we talk about who we are as kids
it also immediately kind of equal equalizes
the power dynamic between two people so i have like a very visceral memory of
working for a private equity firm in which the
managing partner who is a very big bulking guy who is actually
like an olympic rower you know you know a professional
athlete and now manages like billions of dollars and is a
highly respected person in this firm and then intern who joined that week
who is very you know smaller person and clearly intimidated by his boss
and they'd never had a conversation before and so they were partners in this
activity and i was watching them the body language of the guy who was big
and then the the guy who is like kind of small and more contracted
and then i just watched the body language shift as they were talking
about the neighborhood that they grew up in
and then they were drawing an image from each other's story
writing three values that they saw in their partner from their story and then
reflecting that back to each other and there was laughter they were hugging and
there was a sense of they were just two humans even though
they worked together it felt like the power was diffused from
that moment and i think that's really effective in the future as they engage
with each other and they see each other in different ways
not just based on their type i really appreciate
that story sometimes it's we just need to we're forgetful sometimes we just
need to get nudged a little bit and and start
remembering yes we're all humans and we have different
childhood probably all like a particular flavor of
cakes when we were little and there's like more similarities to us
than the difference that we have and sometimes when we put a title to
someone it's one of the easiest way to separate
people and the title matters but it does not
matter at some point of our lives yeah it's
tricky yeah it just it does become it becomes like too much of a way that
we categorize people is the title that they hold
yeah so i think it's it's i love creating spaces where stereotypes are
melted and generalizations are are cracked open and people have a sense
of like wow i was so wrong about you you know like i thought i thought of you
as like a very guarded you know judgmental person and
actually like you're amazing you know it's like it's
like this funny thing where it's like we have
there's so many judgments that happen in between people inside of
teams and the stories compound over the years
and sometimes people just have decided that they just don't like somebody and
they've worked together for 15 years and in 90 minutes that can change so
like that story can be broken or the spell can be
can be broken and those people can become
friends they can become like collaborators you know so
i think that's a really powerful opportunity
and it's kind of like you see person you think you know them maybe on the
three level kind of depths and then with art
with dialogue with with drawing out with
opportunities to tell stories they are able to
actually kind of peek behind the curtain and see
see more in-depth layers of that particular person and that
very moment of surprise gets our attention
and opens our heart open and ready to receive oh wait a second okay so
what's more i guess the curiosity kind of lead the way for us to
start exploring the other person as like
a different universe or planet something that's
mystical and and i wanted to learn more like
yeah and just the way that we work we have like a lot of
whatever affirming ways that we we affirm the stories that we have about
people so there's so many little pieces of evidence
to to see why i don't like that person in my team
and like they constantly are reinforcing that but so like you said like surprise
is kind of the key element that i use and late night art and the
method that i created a big part of it is around
harnessing the element of surprise and so
um and part of it is that using music and storytelling and collaborative art
and constantly switching partners and
getting people into like a space of like where they don't know exactly what's
going to happen it especially when yeah there's a moment
of surprise and you could see somebody take an
inhale like and like their their eyes go wide
and usually it's a moment in which somebody has drawn something on the
table that represents their partner's
experience and when they reflect it back that person
says wow like you really get me or you saw me in a certain way
and that moment it's that's where i could like i could see the
things melt away and um it's it's beautiful because
i've had people that they remember they're like nine years later they said
i've done like thousands of workshops i've been in this company for you know
however long everything i forgot you know the only
thing i remember is like when i did late at art like these moments with people
they're so memorable partly because of the surprise and the novelty of it that
it sticks with people so that's that's part of the impact i
think is that like creating opening up the door to build a
real relationship or a friendship or a new perception of somebody in an
environment that you work together you see each other every single day but
that could just change the course of a relationship and it changes
the energy of a team help us to see each other for who we really
yeah and you know yeah bernie brown talks about like people are hard to
they're hard to judge or hard to hate when you get close up
so yeah the closer you get to somebody and the more you kind of learn about
their life and what they've been through i think it's a really beautiful way to
build empathy and just more understanding and
feeling like more flexibility of like yeah these people have quirks and they
they operate differently than us and everybody has a different personality
type and so we think that you know why why are they doing things so
differently but it's amazing how i think because the art element it
turns us into kids really quickly so it just like feels
less it allows for people to go into really
deep spaces without forcing it through some kind of like
therapeutic conversation gut you know so there's a way in which what i do a
lot of people think it's like art therapy and inside of organizations
but it still feels more like a celebration and people are bobbing their
heads and it has like a cool element that is very effective just in terms of
like the or if the whole goal of what we're
doing is helping people see each other more deeply
it's it's really important that they don't feel like they're being forced
into like a a kind of therapeutic experience that's
like making them uncover their old challenges
from their childhood or something like that
yeah the therapeutic i mean when people think about therapy it's usually like
technological it's very kind of they all and step by step and
but when we think about art it's very like fluid and intuitive and it's like
very human based and it can flow with with the
dynamics dynamics at that particular time
and it's a collaborative experience rather than just a singular person
sitting in a room talking to a stranger
yeah yeah and there's a lot of learning that happens through
the group experience and seeing ourselves and others and
yeah this is also the power of experiential learning yeah
collective moving into the future if you were to
envision an ideal future where late night art will be able to
create fantastic experience what would that look like
what role does technology play or not yeah yeah it's an interesting
moment that we're in with like screen addiction and mental
health crisis and this uh disconnection and loneliness
epidemic being called out as the one of the
greatest challenges of our time in the world
especially in the u.s and so the work that i'm doing feels like
it's directly addressing getting people off the screen it's you
know we have a no phone policy during our sessions
getting people off the screen to look each other in the eyes and to kind of
like teach them again how to be compassionate
human beings i am actually in some ways like guiding people through a process of
like looking them in the eye acknowledging
them with a handshake a high five a fist bump
saying thank you you know it's kind of like step by step just like
helping people engage socially they're also using their hands there's this
tactile element where they're using art tools
to create with each other and a lot of people haven't touched paintbrush
since they were kids or if they've done it they've done it with their kids you
know as uh and so it's a very novel
experience i think for people to use art supplies in the in the workplace
and that is just like i said it's a very
effective way of like dropping the the normal ways that people operate
with each other so it's it's been there's a certain level of like
self-judgment and uh the inner critic that needs to be released
and there's a whole process that i do about like releasing that
so that people can just enjoy the process of using the art supplies to
so as we move into the magic portion of the conversation i would like to give a
brief recap for our audience we've talked about
adam's founding stories of late night art and how he was first
inspired by an art camp that's multi sensory multi-dimensional multi
art forms experience really helps he truly appreciate the power of art
and help him to realize that oh there's a kind of leadership quality
and in him and that encouraged him all the way to
build and develop and grow later late night art for all the top executives
across the world and we also talked about the secret
behind how do we actually really bring people into this
deeper deeper mutual human connections we talked about the power of music
the power of stories the power of movement and the power of
surprise and the power of actually sharing
childhood stories and eye contact many and many and many and and adam
lived his whole life trying to practice and develop and fine-tune this art and
science of facilitating art-based experiences for teams and
leadership moving to the magic portion of our
conversation what did you you kind of maybe shared
a little bit like however maybe just for for you without
the camp or just you on your own what did you enjoy
creating so much um in your childhood that time
disappeared for you yeah uh well like
the story has it i don't remember that i was started painting when i was two
years old and there's a lot of a lot of pictures of
me with a canvas and doing like crazy you know paintings and i was
um so art has always been like a through line
you know and even like saying it out loud i'm like oh i would love to
actually do more like big scale like abstract paintings like
even like the pictures of me just drawing like big on these huge sheets of
paper when i was kid i could see that but i don't know when
maybe 11 years old or so i started making uh mixtapes
and so i was i would be like totally addicted to listening to the radio and
then when i would hear the song like a really
good song come on i would record it and i would just make these mixtapes
and i would make hundreds of them and then came burning cds and then i
was making you know making burned cds and
and then came eventually came spotify and now it's like curated playlists but
the act of putting songs together and putting it into a flow
and having that be a kind of soundtrack to life or to an experience or as a gift
that's always been something that i've done since i was in sixth grade i think
fifth or sixth grade and definitely kind of taps me into
somewhat of a flow state i love that and does that tell like
wonder still live within you and what role does it play now
yeah you know i mean it's funny that on one hand it's great that i have
aligned my life and created a business that is
aligned with my values and what i truly care about
and then of course on the other side of that is like when the things that i love
that i'm passionate about become my work and the ways that i'm also
making a living it's kind of like how do i have
space to just be free and be creative and playful
outside of the the world of commerce and you know other people's opinions so
i think hanging out with kids has been like a really important
part of that yeah just the playfulness and imagination and kind of like wild
creativity that is in my godson who's two years old
like is like a great reminder and a teacher
um yeah a lot of my friends have kids and i'm very close with them too so
i feel like that infusion of energy is really helpful in taking myself less
seriously and giving me an outlet to like be more like in theater
improv or dance like without judgment or
drawing wildly or a number of or just like playing into characters
you know so um yeah this is the way i want to live and i feel like
a lot of my work is helping adults get to that place and i think
for me like the biggest teachers right now have been kids i love that
i i there there have been research about how we should really learn from kids and
there's like people are conducting research and so
there's the truth is always there and we're
we're just yet able to measure and quantify and explain
explain that yeah especially with like how
how seriously we take ourselves as adults and professionals and
you know i think just learning from kids being able to be
in a space of creative expression without judgment of themselves
like and you know usually the judgment starts i don't know
like 11 12 or something but like before then like they're not second guessing
themselves and that's such a powerful teacher
for us right yeah and i think for me i'll just speak for myself yeah it's
like it's a powerful teacher for me to like
especially dance to like to dance freely without
self-criticism in front of a group of people and not worry about what other
people think of me when i watch kids dance i mean that's
super inspiring i resonate with that as well and i hope
our audience resonates with that as well such a great conversation and we're
near the end of our conversation for today i wish it can
continue
the next question is overall what do you think is your magic
i think a lot of people have been surprised by my ability to enter into
so many different rooms and environments and connect
and build trust and rapport with different audiences
from like you said like law enforcement or the mayors of cities or executives to
kids and youth from many different
countries so there's i guess you can call it magic i
think it's there's something that i've learned that has helped me be
a cultural translator or a shapeshifter that allows me to
connect with really different groups of people and have them feel like i am one
of them and i'm not an outsider and
so i say that's my magic and it feels in some ways like
an important skill to cultivate now because
there's so much polarization and division and like in-group out-group
energy politically and like geographically and
like all around there's so much kind of like this is
this is um yeah this is like the people who are who are part of the group these
are people who are not part of the group and
you know i used to think that between art art and tech there used to be a huge
division and and so it's interesting to be weaving in
my way through all of these groups and um i think it's such an important skill
for people to learn is how be able to be curious about people who
are different from them and to be able to
to enter into different spaces of people who have
totally different life and personality type and
skill set i really appreciate your sharing your magic with us in this
conversation and i i agree with you that
the world is being more and more separated and divided maybe out of fear
maybe out of fears of big players right there i think
and i think if we're able to really open our hearts
and see each other as who we really are
multi-dimensional multifaceted and and we all grow up from a little
cell little baby cell into this human and
and and then just we just have more similarities than the differences that
we have so thank you so much adam for this
important work that you're doing weaving the world
together one art session at a time yeah thank you
and thank you so much for coming and i hope our audience having a good time
and listening to your stories and as a
result maybe they will start asking themselves i wonder what
did i enjoy doing when i was little kids and
with that little pen brushes i need to pick up over this weekend
just by myself yes absolutely yeah yeah the the phrase that i've been
saying a lot is a disconnection is the disease and creativity is the cure
and so i think the arts and creativity it's funny that we i think we keep
getting like reminded like all of the ways that they can be used
as a healing tool for the time that we're in with our tech addiction and all
of the things that are ailing our society but
yeah it's i think there's just like endless
opportunities to continue to use the arts as a tool to address the
challenges that we're facing right now and so i hope that there's some some
ideas like sparked for people around how they might be able to do that
wherever they they live and whatever industry they work in
and for folks who are interested to get connected with adam
his information and social links are in the show note below
so we strongly encourage you to get connected and create
new heartfelt deep connections for you your teams your organizations
and wherever you want the impact to be it's your stories to write
thank you adam thank you gianni for bringing me on you're welcome