Improving Yourself to Improve the World w/Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides
Episode Overview
Prepare to be propelled into a realm where personal growth meets the stars in episode 52 of "Making Better." Join us as Lorettaa Hidalgo Whitesides shares the "most helpful skill for success,"—letting go of resentments, a process she calls "getting off it." She unveils her unique 8-week Space Kind Leadership Training program, focused not on accolades, but on nurturing self-love, daily joy, and deep relationships. She also touches upon the significance of vulnerability and authenticity in leadership within the space industry, underscoring the need for a human-centric approach to talent development.
About Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides
Loretta Hildalgo Whitesides has had an amazing career and life spanning all parts of the space industry, from working at NASA and the XPrize Foundation to being a Founder Astronaut with Virgin Galactic. She is the Co-Creator of Yuri’s Night, a world space party celebrated in over 200 cities to celebrate the first human to launch into space. Loretta has pioneered her SpaceKind leadership courses for space professionals to help them get in touch with their real Mission, overcome imposter syndrome, and let go of resentment and frustration that is costing aliveness, effectiveness and fulfillment. She hopes to fly her suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic in 2026.
Full Transcript
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Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:00:00]:
I create the space by being vulnerable myself. Like, I do all the assignments alongside them because I'm like, look, I need this just as much as you all do. I'm not done. I'm not fixed.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:10]:
I'm not perfect.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:00:11]:
I need to be training also. So I'm doing this. It's like an aerobics instructor. I'm like, I'm doing this to stay safe, too. And so I set, you know, I come in, we do. We start off the day with highs and lows. And, you know, I'll share, like, you know, I'd lost temper at my kids again. And I'm still struggling with this and I don't know what to do.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:00:30]:
And I'm disappointed because my flight just got delayed. And so we talk authentically and vulnerable. I mean, my book is called the New Right stuff. And the old right stuff was being smart and being tough and being able to handle endure anything. And I say the new right stuff is being authentic and vulnerable and inspiring.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:54]:
Hello, and welcome to the making Better podcast where we talk about how to make ourselves, our teams, and our organizations better. Whether you are a leader, a learning development professional, or a technical trainer, this show will give you actionable insights on how to improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. Our guest today is Loretta Hidago Whitesides. Loretta has pioneered her spacekind leadership courses for space professionals that help them get in touch with their real mission, overcome imposter syndrome and let go of resentment and frustration so that they can be more effective and move towards fulfillment. She will fly her suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic in hopefully 2026. We'll get into that a little bit in the discussion today, maybe. But before we get into that discussion, I just want to remind any new listeners to make sure you hit the subscribe button so you never miss a future episode. And if you are already a subscriber, I ask that you share this show with at least one other person because that is how we grow.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:59]:
I can't tell you how much it means to me. And with that, let's get into the discussion. Loretta, how are you doing today?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:02:07]:
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me fun.
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:10]:
Excellent. So, Loretta, we haven't chatted in quite a while, but we've known each other for years and you had me over for a really great group dinner years ago. We both share this incredible kind of lifelong passion for space. How did you first get involved in space? Where does that passion come from for you?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:02:33]:
Sometimes we joke that I was just born that way, because I've had this as long as I can remember. So first memory, kindergarten. I can remember sitting in the classroom, the teacher putting the Apollo astronaut on the bulletin board, and she said, if you could learn all your Alphabet, you could get your school picture in the faceplate of the astronaut. And I just remember at like five just being like, oh, man, I got to do that. I better learn my Alphabet. So already at five, that was there. So I think it could have had to do with a little bit of Star wars influence. And also we did a trip to the Kennedy Space center when I was five, and I don't really remember the trip, although there's pictures of me on the lunar rover holding on my space books, all excited.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:03:13]:
So I'm guessing that was one of those sort of, really one of the foundational moments that shaped me. It worked.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:24]:
It worked. Absolutely. Yeah. There's nothing like when you have those experiences going to some of these places and standing next to the hardware. It is different. It can be a life changing experience, for sure. But I do think a lot of people have that experience or start there, but you've really moved a lot closer to that. So we were just chatting before the episode.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:54]:
You're in line for going up on a virgin galactic flight. It looks like it's been pushed back a little bit. Now, for anybody that hasn't followed spaceflight a lot, what is Virgin Galactic and kind of how are you involved there?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:04:10]:
So Virgin Galactic is Richard Branson's space tourism company. They founded in 2004 when the Ansari X prize was won by Britt Rattan and scaled Composites. And basically they have an airplane that has a rocket attached to the bottom of it and they take off on a Runway, fly up to 50,000ft, drop the rocket, light the rocket motor, we go up to space, just for a couple of minutes, look at the curvature of the earth, the blackness of space. Float around weightless and just take in. Be the longest three and a half minutes of your life. And just being bowled over by the incredible planet we get to live on. We're so lucky. This is by far the coolest planet we found yet.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:05:01]:
Come back and land on the Runway like a glider, kind of like the space shuttle did. So been excited, bought our tickets. I worked for the x price foundation at the time of that flight, so I was right there when Virgin Galactic was announced and we bought our tickets a couple of months later. So we've been waiting since April twelveth 2005 for our flights. My husband and I, we're going to fly together as a honeymoon flight. But we've been married. We've got teenagers now. We're going to go.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:05:35]:
We joke the flight is always two years off. And it was sort of funny this week when we got an announcement of a flight delay because it's like, oh, our flight is two years off again. This is perfect. With the flight being two years off, that's normal.
Matt Gjertsen [00:05:48]:
Yeah. Space is hard for sure, as anybody who is in the business will tell you. But that's crazy that it's always been perpetually two years off. Have you gotten to talk to anybody that's gone up on a galactic flight yet?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:06:02]:
Yes, I'm a founder astronaut. I think there's about 50 of us now. And let's see, I'm number 17, so we've flown seven of them. Now. I'm 10th in line, although they'll have some research flights and other flights they may be putting in between, but yes. So I was fortunate I got to be out in New Mexico, which is where the Runway is, where we fly. Our spaceport is in. It's gorgeous, by the way.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:06:42]:
If you're a Star wars person like me, you got to go visit spaceport America in New Mexico because it looks like it's straight out of beautiful. It's a perfect place to launch space missions from. So I'm super excited for that. Anyway, I got to be at Spaceport America back in October for, let's see, it was galactic four, they called it, which was Ron Rozano, Trevor Beatty, and Namira Salim. And it was fantastic flight. I'm so grateful I got to be there just to be caught up in the excitement of it all. And Trevor is a dear friend of mine. He's a british.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:07:17]:
And it was such a treat. I feel so grateful to be able to been there for his know. You know when a british guy is at a loss for words and overcome with emotion, it's a big day.
Matt Gjertsen [00:07:31]:
That's a big.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:07:32]:
You know, they handed the microphone right when he got off the ship, which is cool, kind of like they did with Shatner. Sorry, William Shatner. I'm speaking a little colloquially from origin two years ago. And he was know to see him overcome with emotion, talking about fulfilling a dream and being blown away by what he saw. And that touched me. That's great. And if you follow him on Twitter, I think it's Trevor Beatty. Anyway, if you search Trevor Beatty, you'll probably find him virgin galactic.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:08:06]:
His tweets have been the best so far. He's an ad guy. He's from the advertising world. So he knows how to sling wow out. And all his tweets before and during and after his flight have been amazing. I'm like, can I just hire you to do my tweets? He's a lot of fun. So it's great to get to be there, to be first hand experience that and turn insights into what I should be expecting for when we do ours.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:31]:
Exactly. Yes. That had to have been amazing, because for anybody, kind of what you're talking about, the term of art for it is the overview effect, this feeling that people get when they can really see the curvature of the earth. And for anybody who know, go back and either watch, it sounds like this flight, or. Definitely the thing that I was amazed by was when William Shatner came down after his blue origin flight. And this is William Shatner, somebody who has been on screen for longer than most people have been alive. Like, it's what he does. He just is out there talking.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:06]:
And for this man to just not be able to find the words to describe what he experienced, I think it was a real testament to just how powerful of an experience that must be and why these kinds of things are important, because I think the talk of the tourist nature of it can sometimes diminish the importance of what having more people having these experiences could do for us as a species, I think.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:09:44]:
Absolutely. Yeah. That's the part I get excited about. It's powerful enough to sort of wake you up and shake you out of whatever rut or autopilot we're in and realize what's important. And that's what we all want, is to not get caught up in the day to day or the minutiae or the trivia or the upsets, but focus on what matters and make sure we're just like you did at 911. I mean, those really intense moments make you hold the people you love close and appreciate every breath, and it's beautiful.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:23]:
Yeah, absolutely. So you had been involved with the x prize. You then got involved with Virgin Galactic, got on the list to fly there. We've done a lot else. So you have your space kind leadership course. Where did that come from? How did that get started? And I honestly even don't know a whole lot about it.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:10:45]:
Yeah, that's a good question. There's so many pieces of the origin story, I'm sure, but the crystallizing moment was in 2014. I was out in Mojave for one of our test flights, and that was the day that the feather mechanism was deployed. Early wings came off the ship, and we had a. We call it a bad day, a disaster. We lost the spaceship and we lost a pilot. It was a very hard day. And it reminded.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:11:30]:
I was 6th grade when challenger disaster happened, when we lost our first space shuttle. And then I worked at Johnson Space center at NASA and really felt.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:45]:
Like.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:11:45]:
It was important to make sure that never happens again. We learn the lessons from them and learn to take care of ourselves and each other and have tough conversations. To me, it's always been a very human problem. It's not a technical issue.
Matt Gjertsen [00:12:06]:
100%.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:12:08]:
Yes, there was rubber and it was cold. But rubber cold doesn't equal death unless there's people who are like, oh. Who are not listening to each other or misrepresenting the information or under pressure and stress from outside forces that give them to make decisions that maybe we shouldn't have. So it's the people that are dealing with the hardware that makes the problem. I mean, you have to deal with both. You obviously, you want to make sure your technical things are all lined up well. But I felt like our industry wasn't putting enough attention on making sure the people side of the equation was being taken care of, that our egos were being kept in check, that we were healing rifts that are building up between different departments and teams or between individuals. Like, I can't believe he said that to me.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:12:55]:
Do you hear how he's talking to me in that meeting? And when you have that kind of tension building up between humans, it's going to compromise our work. And what we do is so technical and so precise that those things can have disastrous consequences. And so after the Columbia accident, I was like, I can't believe. In 2003, I said, I can't believe we did this again. Um, and I really felt like it was my job to help us learn those lessons that we hadn't learned before. And then when it hit so close to home, I was like, okay, I've got to do. And so that was October 2014. That spring, we launched the first ever Jedi training at Virgin Galactic.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:13:40]:
And it was completely ad hoc. We did it in a conference room. It was not from on high. It was like I said, these are my friends. So I just had come. Who wants to develop themselves? Who wants to be a Jedi? We're doing this. And we just created this new hero's journey for people to go on to deal with their own insecurities, to deal with their own, because that's a lot. What brings these tensions? It's like I'm triggered by you because I've got something going on with me.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:14:14]:
And so just giving them the chance to step back and see some of those dynamics and be like, oh, I did do that. That was me. Oh, yeah. That wasn't Matt. That was me. Help them get some power and agency and help. I had a guy come in and say he had a 0% relationship with a colleague. And as somebody who's going to fly on this face.
Matt Gjertsen [00:14:36]:
Wow. Yeah, you don't want that.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:14:39]:
Sound safe. And I remember at the end of the course, sort of checking in with him, like, hey, how's it going? Yeah, I think it's like, at about 80%. Our relationship is, like 80% now. I'm like, wait, wow, how did you go from 0% to 80%? I'm like, did you talk to him or something? He's like, no. It's like, I just realized that it was what I was bringing to it, and I stopped doing that, and all the drama went away, and I was like, wow, great. So that's how it started. I mean, there's a lot more to mean. I started to learn all this stuff because when I was in graduate school at Caltech, I was doing a PhD in biology.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:15:20]:
Well, I didn't finish the PhD. Don't worry. My life started to fall apart, and I realized that my overachiever. I'm going to be a NASA astronaut. I'm going to be the first woman on the moon. I'm going to achieve my way out of this into joy and fulfillment. I realized there's no cheese down that tunnel. That wasn't going to work.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:15:41]:
I miserable then, and I was going to keep being miserable. But another achievement on top of it wasn't going to fix it. And so I started the hard inner work, the inner journey to, like, who I am. And I was so grateful for that intervention in my life at 27, changed the course of my life, helped me heal my relationship with my dad, helped me open up the possibility of romantic relationships for me and open up family and have kids and you have a grandfather. All these things that wouldn't have happened otherwise if somebody like, hey, wake up, change path. Like interrupt forward.
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:20]:
Yeah, I can't think of a better. The way you just said it was so amazing of, I'm going to achieve my way out of this. It's just the lie that so many of us tell ourselves. And, yeah, for anybody who's been on any kind of self development journey, feel like they hit rock bottom, work their way back out. That's so, the root of so much of it is just this. It can be for a lot of people. It certainly was for me, this idea that to go down a whole another rabbit hole of fantasy instead of Sci-Fi I'm a big fantasy book fan of the wheel of time, and that's the whole arc of the story. Is the main character just for what seems like 80,000 pages because Robert Jordan never stops writing.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:10]:
He's just all about getting harder and harder, and I have to be harder. And it's not until he has that realization. It's this arc of so many heroes journeys of that realization that you have to kind of let go of that ego. It's such an important lesson to learn.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:17:31]:
Yeah, exactly. I had an astronaut friend when I was working at Johnson Space Center. I was working really closely with the mds in the astronaut office and became really good friends with Dr. Chuck brady. And he was just a delight, just an incredible human being. And I really enjoyed getting to know him and him sharing with me all his journey and going to space and how profound it was for him. Five years after I met him, he left NASA. He retired from NASA as an astronaut.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:18:05]:
And five years after that, he went back to the Navy. He committed suicide, or allegedly committed suicide. There was reports that he died of allegedly self inflicted wounds. And so that was also a big wake up for me. And I wanted to be able to tell that story to my community, my industry, and be like, hey, anyone else here think that getting to space is going to solve our problems and make us enough? Guess what? There's plenty of NASA astronauts. People have been to orbit. People have spent time, two weeks in space that still are not happy or still haven't worked through all their own challenges. So it became really important to me not to stop wanting to go to space or to stop wanting to build rock, but we got to do this also, because if we want to really have that Star wars or Star Trek future for humanity, we have to work on creating the culture and the humans that go along with the technology.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:19:16]:
Our intelligence is progressing a lot faster than our wisdom, and we need to sort of catch it up a bit.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:22]:
Yeah, no, I think that's right. And you see the same thing. Know, Michael Phelps has done a lot of work with Olympic athletes and trying to bring to light this idea that so many Olympic athletes right after the Olympics suffer from major depression and have a lot that they have to go through. And I think a lot of it comes back to this. I'm going to accomplish my way out of this. I'm going to succeed my way out of this. You're touching on. It's such an amazing message to bring to people, and it's a very hard message and potentially vulnerable.
Matt Gjertsen [00:20:03]:
You have to be vulnerable to hear it and be in it. I have so many questions about this, but my first would be, how do you think about creating a space where people can talk about these kinds of things, especially in a world where we live in a world these days where very much it's like, no, I don't want to be uncomfortable. I only want to be around things that reinforce me. How do you create a space where people can embrace that uncomfortableness and talk about these issues?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:20:38]:
Yeah, I think that's my favorite part of space kind training, or what I'm most proud of is that we do create that space, and it is really magical. It's like no other Zoom call you'll have this week. I say, I think we have that because I create the space by being vulnerable myself. I do all the assignments alongside them because I'm like, look, I need this just as much as you all do. I'm not done. I'm not fixed, I'm not perfect. I need to be training also. So I'm doing this.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:21:11]:
It's like an aerobics instructor. I'm like, I'm doing this to stay shape, too. And so I come in, we start off the day with highs and lows, and I'll share, like, I lost my temper at my kids again, and I'm still struggling with this, and I don't know what to do. And I'm disappointed because my flight just got delayed. And so we talk authentically and vulnerable. I mean, my book is called the new right stuff. And the old right stuff was being smart and being tough and being able to handle endure anything. And I say the new right stuff is being authentic and vulnerable and inspiring.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:21:50]:
And that's what we need. Now, in the book, I share a lot of my stories and my journey and my faults. And luckily, when I create that space and open up that space, people step into it and we'll start off when we do introductions, the first class is just introductions. Same thing we did at our dinner, earthrise dinner, where you were is we share something that we struggling with, and then you share what you're on earth to do, your mission, your vision. And it's fascinating because people will share the most incredible things that they're struggling with, they're dealing with. And it's so raw, it's so real. And like aging parents, cancer diagnosis, being laid off like bulimia, and so everyone's like, oh, whoa, this just got real, real fast. And because somebody is willing to be courageous like that, it gives other people the space to follow suit and we create a safe space where you don't have to, too.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:22:55]:
In every exercise, I always give them a choose your own adventure. I'm like, look, if you want the most impactful version of this exercise, when you get in that breakout room with your buddy, you read them exactly what you wrote in the exercise, verbatim, no filter, just share your heart out. And I'm like, if that's too much intense for you, paraphrase, great. And if that's too much for you, just talk about what it was like writing it like, wow, that was really intense. I can't believe we brought up a lot of stuff for me that I'm still dealing with. We make a safe space. We have introverts and exterior cultures, we have people from all over the world. So making sure it's a safe space for everyone to engage, to choose their own adventure, engage at the level that they're ready to.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:39]:
Yeah, I think for any other facilitators watching or listening, I think it's a really good sense of. I think to think about how you start any kind of facilitated session and that to really realize that you're setting the stage for how things are going to go. And sometimes it's easy for us to get into kind of a rote system of how we start. We start with the title slide and give an introduction and give the course objectives and it's just like this standard thing. And of course then when we're twelve minutes in and we want people to engage, it's difficult to get them to engage because they've already checked, they've already said, oh, I've seen this movie before, I know what's happening here and this is something that I can do while I'm on my phone versus what you just talked about of starting from like, no, this is what this is about. We're going to start real because this is meant to be real. And then people, oh, I haven't seen this movie. Okay, I'm going to be here and pay attention and really take part because I think you're right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:50]:
It's surprising. I'm constantly surprised and I'm constantly surprised. Even if I have some sense of a room of who I think is going to engage and not engage. I'm never right. You never know who's going to be the one that steps forward and sets like a new standard for what participation in this session is going to look like.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:25:11]:
Absolutely. That's great.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:12]:
Yeah. So it sounds like there's many components to it. How do you have this mix? How long is it? There's journaling. What are the kind of different modalities of how this training works itself out?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:25:30]:
It's eight weeks. We meet once a week over Zoom. We do an hour together and then we have a 15 minutes small group session. So there's about 40 people in the main zoom. And then you have a ta and a small group just to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak and be heard. So the 50 minutes at the end is for the six people. So everyone gets to talk.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:54]:
Basically.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:25:55]:
Nobody's going to listen for that long. And I don't even lecture much. It's mostly discussion and exercises because I have a short attention span, which I consider a great gift because when I get bored, I know that they're getting bored. So we switch. Keeps it short. And the modalities. Yes. The other trick is I use Star Wars, I use Yoda.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:26:21]:
When we used to meet in person at Galactic before we had to show clips from the movie. And you have Yoda on screen and people and he talks about the force and the music. John Williams, you're just like, I'm in. Like, what do I need to, to. I want to train. So that's really powerful. We start off with dancing. 1 minute of dancing, just know, get in your body and change gears.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:26:48]:
And I tell them if you're not a dancer, just do jumping jacks, like cool, whatever level you can handle, but just to change things up and show them that this isn't normal, this isn't anything you've ever done before. This is a totally new journey. And yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Matt Gjertsen [00:27:06]:
Very cool. And then I guess the final question I have with is you talked about there's a lot of goals to just kind of make people learn more about themselves, have a little bit of vulnerability. What's your goal for somebody to get going from the beginning to the end? What's the biggest change that you're hoping to make with them?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:27:29]:
That they realize that winning isn't the gold medal or the astronaut pin. That winning is loving who you are and enjoying every day and having relationships that you're proud of.
Matt Gjertsen [00:27:44]:
Yeah.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:27:45]:
And then go to space on top of that, you're golden. Yeah. So we give them real assignments. I give them real assignments in their life challenges. And it's not a degree granting program, so they're not going to get an a. Although they're over. So they're going to try to get an a anyway. So that helps.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:28:04]:
But I'll give you an assignment to go upgrade your relationship with your parents. Who does that? Nobody's going to assign that to you, but that's thing that's really going to help us adult and help us become who we've always wanted to be and grow up. What we need to do species. And to do it as a species apparent, apparently we have to do it as individuals.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:28]:
There's not a pill yet.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:28:31]:
It gets really personal. We always talk about bringing your whole self to work. If somebody's got a romantic relationship that's rocky, that's going to affect your work, you're going to be distracted, you're not going to be doing your best work. So as a space person, I want my team to be whole and complete, not just at work, but with their families, with their romantic relationships, with their finances, with their health. Like, if they're overweight and they're going to go in, they're going to have to be hospitalized. If their health is impacting their cognitive ability or their physical abilities at work, all those things impact us. For me, the training isn't like how to deal with your subordinates or how to better handle your schedule, how to make your life work so that you can powerfully.
Matt Gjertsen [00:29:28]:
Yeah, and we kind of skipped over it earlier just for anybody that this feels maybe too touchy feely for something to do at work, or you're into it, but you don't think your organization would buy into it. The challenger and Columbia accidents are because they were so well reported and had such thorough investigations. They are such tremendous case studies in why this stuff is important for an organization. Because both of those disasters that cost so many lives, yes, there was a technical failure, but it was a technical failure that didn't necessarily need to cost lives. And it was the human error, it was the human element that made it so that the technical error cost lives. And it was all about everything exactly that you're talking about. So for anybody out there who's trying to find ways to convince their organizations to do this stuff or find good intros into explaining to people why this is important, look those up, because they are tremendous stories and case studies in.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:30:44]:
This stuff, and also retention. I can't tell you how many times I've heard aerospace companies talking about their retention being abysmal and being like, oh, they're just finding better opportunities at other companies. We can't compete, or they've got whatever explanation they're coming up with, we want to be close to their family or they want to make more money or they need to move up in their title. No, it's because things got rough with their boss or things got rough with a colleague. There was too much tension and friction in the human relationships. Nine times out of ten, that's what causes your retention issues. Like, I can't deal with these people anymore. I'm out.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:31:21]:
And we don't have any other skill sets, any other tools we're given to resolve this. And you go to HR, and that never helps. But we're not empowering people with the tools to solve those frictions that show up between humans every day, everywhere. And so people just leave. So if you have retention issues, so if you're dealing with management, just be like, look, this will help with retention. People aren't going to want to leave. And I've had people say, we had somebody leave and then they came back because they're like, oh, we went to somewhere else, and it was way worse out there. We're treated as humans, and they understand how important relationships are and how important it is to take care of the whole human.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:31:59]:
They're like, we didn't know how rare that was. But you guys are the only company that does that. So we're coming back here.
Matt Gjertsen [00:32:04]:
It's so funny. Do you know who Gary Vee is? Gary Vaynerchuk?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:32:09]:
I don't think so.
Matt Gjertsen [00:32:10]:
He's a media personality. He runs a media agency in New York. And so he's really big. Know all the social media channels. And he talks about this a lot because he always talks about how the superpower of business is empathy. And their head of HR is called the chief heart officer. So they're a very people focused organization. And he says exactly what you mentioned happens all the time of he has people, they come in straight out of college, they're working for him, they're working really hard.
Matt Gjertsen [00:32:39]:
They think there's some better opportunity. They go elsewhere, and then a year later, they're back. It's like that place was a disaster. I got to come back to. Yeah, it's incredible what it can do. Well, Loretta, this has been a lot of fun, a great conversation. I want to kind of close it out with a few questions that I try to ask every guest. So, first off is, what is one book or podcast that you think everyone should read and why?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:33:09]:
Michael Singer, book or podcast. So, the book I like the best, he's got three, but I think the best one to start with is living untethered his third, fabulous. He's like a yogi, and he was the CEO of a billion dollar publicly traded company. So he's like this fabulous guy who's got able to traffic in both worlds. He runs the temple of the universe now in central Florida, and he's just like the wisest American I've encountered. And I was like, wow, that's fantastic. So he breaks down real simple, real easy, accessible and fun and always with great space. I'm, I'm like, you had me at the space metaphors.
Matt Gjertsen [00:33:51]:
Yeah, that's excellent. Awesome. Okay. And I think we've been touching on this next question a lot throughout this episode. But what's the one skill that has helped you most be successful throughout your life?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:34:05]:
It's called getting off it, which is, I learned at landmark, it's just like being able to let go of your upsets or resentments. And the faster you can do it, the better. I'm still not as fast as my daughter. She's really good. And it's just like, instead of just letting it eat you up, when I'm upset about, or if I'm pissed off at something, it's hurting me way more than it's hurting them.
Matt Gjertsen [00:34:28]:
Yeah.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:34:29]:
And so learning to let that go, because then I can function again. I can become a high functioning human again instead of just a tornado of grievances. It's a superpower. And you walk around, you'll see people flying off the handle about a stepset or their righteousness about this or that. And they might be right, but they're also miserable. Being able, seeing that and being like, oh, wait, I don't need to do that anymore. And practicing, like, just letting it go. I want to enjoy my dinner tonight.
Matt Gjertsen [00:35:07]:
Have a good. That just triggered a memory of me, of, I'm listening to Elon Musk's interview on the Lex Friedman podcast that just came out yesterday, I think. And at one point, he's talking about how just go watch, like, a group of chimpanzees. And that's just your limbic system in real time, right? Like how it's just like extreme emotion and you touch somebody and they fly off the handle and it's all in there. And it's just like, we just have other stuff built on top of it that you got to learn to let the newer parts control you rather than the older parts.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:35:46]:
That's great. I love it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:35:49]:
And then the final question, you've gotten to work with a lot of different people. You've been inside a lot of organizations. What's the most common opportunity you see for organizations to improve talent development.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:36:02]:
Making it personal, making it human. If you're the lead for development, like be vulnerable, be authentic, share yourself, skip that whole PowerPoint slide. Skip the objective slide. Just get real with people and give them a space to be real and they'll follow you to the moon and back.
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:18]:
I love that. That is such a great place to end. Loretta, if people want to learn more about you, find out more about you. Where should they go? How can people get in touch with you or learn more about you?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:36:29]:
Thank you. You can go to spacekind.org to check out our spacekind trainings or lorettawhitesites.com.
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:37]:
Find me awesome well, thank you so much. Have a great evening and I look forward to talking to you again.
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides [00:36:44]:
Awesome. Thank you so much. Pleasure.
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:47]:
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked the discussion, make sure to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. As a reminder, if your team is struggling keeping up with the training development demands of your organization, we want to help. Better everyday Studios is a full service instructional design team that can help you with everything from ideation to actual content creation and delivery. Please reach out to us using the link in the episode notes below. Have a great day.
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