The Unique You: Decoding your Creative DNA with Lisa Johnson

“So the Elements Kit is as much about who am I and as it is about what next and what choices can I make for a really fulfilled and aligned life? Bringing all those components into balance.”
Lisa Johnson

Lisa Johnson, an experienced designer with expertise spanning landscape architecture to service design, joins us to share her journey and her innovative creation, The Elements Kit. With a foundation in systems thinking and human-centred design, Lisa has built a toolkit that aligns personal talents, values, and ambitions, offering a unique path to creative self-actualisation.

Lisa discusses the origins of The Elements Kit, which started as a thesis project and evolved into a powerful tool for individuals and teams. She explains the concept of archetypes and how they reflect human behaviour in distinct ways. She explores topics such as psychological safety, the gap in traditional psychometric tests, and how teams can use The Elements Kit to uncover untapped potential. Lisa also provides insights into using this tool across various age groups and organisational contexts, from leaders shaping culture to young students choosing career paths.

Hear about Lisa’s offer to work with teams and organisations, providing a holistic approach to enhancing alignment, productivity, and individual fulfilment using The Elements Kit.

In this episode you’ll hear about

• The origins of the Elements Kit as a thesis project.
• Why traditional psychometric tools miss the mark on human complexity.
• The six key elements: expression, connection, leadership, knowledge, navigation, and belief.
• Archetypes and how they provide a holistic view of human behaviour.
• How psychological safety enables creativity and team collaboration.
• Balancing light and shadow sides of archetypes for personal growth.
• Insights into team dynamics and the importance of valuing individuality.
• The role of self-reflection in navigating life and career.
• Applications of the Elements Kit across different age groups, from children to seniors.
• How the kit enables organisations to align team values with company culture.

https://youtu.be/DKrvLkIkAXU

Key links

The Elements Kit Website
Lisa Johnson on LinkedIn
Accenture Song

About our guest

As an experienced design consultant and mentor, Lisa has a deep understanding of the delivery of creative projects from research and discovery through to design, production and implementation, and decades of experience mentoring others in human-centred design.

With broad agency and client-side experience across UX, CX, EX and Service Design, Lisa is skilled at collaborating, co-ordinating and leading diverse stakeholder and consultant teams. Lisa has a particular strength in strategic visual thinking and narrative.

Lisa has sharpened my pencil with a history in visual communication, interior architecture and copywriting, and after running her own business for over a decade she’s resourceful and fast on her feet.

Lisa lives for conversation and is as curious about all humans, particularly people & culture within organisations.

As a human-centred designer Lisa has worked across all areas of experience design, working client-side with Telstra, Australia Post, Medibank, Origin and Cbus, and at consulting agencies We Are Digital and Accenture Song.

Lisa has built and led teams, created strategies, and designed playbooks that integrate HCD and service design practice into companies, and she’s enjoyed mentoring others along the way.

With a history in graphic design, interior design and copywriting, Lisa founded and ran my own design studio for over a decade. I’ve also lectured in design at RMIT University.

As a practicing designer for over twenty years, she’s created brands, campaigns, books, apps, websites, services, retail stores, products and even houses.

Lisa designed The Elements Kit to enable individuals to discover their unique creative identity and realise their life potential. She believes company culture begins one creative conversation at a time.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:06
Hello everyone and welcome back to another exciting episode of the company road podcast, where we give you the Intrapreneurs, current and future leaders, everything you need to thrive at work and get change going within your organisations. And today I’m really thrilled to have a special guest with us, Lisa Johnson, Lisa, welcome to the show.

Lisa Johnson: 0:21
Hello.

Chris Hudson: 0:23
Hello. You’ve done a lot of things. So you’ve been a seasoned expert in landscape architecture, experience design, human centred design, lots of different things. We’re going to talk about that in a moment. You’ve got an incredible journey that really bridges the physical and digital realms of creativity. We’ll also get into in a moment and from your foundational experiences in the print industry to impactful work with Fjords and Accenture, Lisa has continually pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in experience design. And in this episode, we’re going to go into Lisa’s journey. We’re going to look at the origins of her innovative elements kit, which is very exciting. It’s pretty new. But a lot of people are using it already, which is a revolutionary approach that it kind of began as a thesis project and has since transformed into a powerful tool for creative alignment and self actualisation for those people that are using it. It’s a toolkit that’s really resonating with the industry. So there’s lots to explore. So we’re going to look at the importance of psychological safety a little bit in terms of creating a context within your teams where creativity thrives and what tools like Elements Kit or otherwise can do to help uncover certain desires, maybe repressed desires. What are the core things that we as people need within our teams and that sort of thing. So it’s going to be a bit of a journey of self discovery, I want to say. Okay. A bit like choosing which instrument you want to play, if that’s the right analogy, I’m not sure, I was lucky enough to get a VIP pass and check out the elements kit just before the show. So it’s all feeling pretty fresh and maybe we start with you Lisa and your journey and you can tell us a bit about how this all came about and its evolution from the previous work and how it came about from the thesis that I just described.

Lisa Johnson: 1:58
Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. And what a journey it’s been. I often refer to myself just as a designer, but that means so many things because I’ve covered a full spectrum starting in that spatial realm and then working right through to experience design and service design. So I’m really a natural born systems thinker, super interested in the way that systems fit together and serve humans. So the elements kit itself began with a question around something I was really deeply curious about, which is why people that I was observing in their twenties were able to align. best of themselves, like in terms of their skills and their talents and their passions into a singular focus that put them in good stead in a very linear, almost straight line trajectory. While I watched other people like myself spending a lot of time dabbling and bouncing around cross discipline, exploring different things, which is very much the nature of the seeker, which we’ll talk about later. I was super curious about why some people are able to find that balance. And why others take many, many years. So it was really just a question and a hypothesis around early bloomers versus late bloomers. And if there was any sort of method or reason why this occurred. And then later, when I was evolving into sort of more than 10 years of really focused practice around, experience design, sort of moving through UX and UI and CX and EX, employee experience, right through to service design. I was really interested in an observation that I was making, especially in big organisations, about the underutilisation of human talent and skill. So really those two things that really fuelled the desire to develop the elements kit. underutilisation and how we can actually just maximise people’s potential, not just for their performance, which obviously organisations are really interested in, but also for their fulfilment and to get them to that space of beautiful balance.

Chris Hudson: 3:56
Yeah, it is realisation and that moment doesn’t always occur to us, as you were saying. you could be an early bloomer, but you might not realise that you’re blooming. You might just be doing what you think is instinctively right. And late bloomers, it feels like they’re a bit more deliberate about their decisions because they’re so fed up with everything else. That’s how I feel mainly. But yeah, it does feel very instinctive. And I think. having just looked at Elements kit, it does feel like it’s looking to pull apart what lies deep within, right? how did you go about capturing that in some way or understanding that?

Lisa Johnson: 4:27
Yeah, it’s an interesting one because Over the, over many years of needing to participate in different psychometric tests, like Myers Briggs and CliftonStrengths and all these tests that many of us in big organisations are familiar with, I really started to see gaps in the way that those tests were profiling humans. And then of course, at the same time, as a human centred designer, which is all about the holistic view of the human and how humans think, act, and feel. I could see that there were ways to be exploring human behaviour to really catch some of the deficit of what wasn’t being explored. So for example, there’s six elements within the Elements Kit, expression, connection, leadership, knowledge. Navigation and Belief. Belief is a super interesting one because it talks very much about your personal values or your cultural values. Things that a lot of those psychometric tests don’t lean into. In their ambition to be able to classify people, in the case of Myers Briggs, it’s one of 16 different types and we all know ENFJs and INTPs. So, that’s interesting as an observation in itself over the years. More than 10 years I’ve been asking people if they know their Myers Briggs type. So I can’t let you escape this. Do you know your Myers Briggs type?

Chris Hudson: 5:44
Oh, yeah, I think I do, but I don’t know, some letters, I, yeah, INFT, INFJ, something like that.

Lisa Johnson: 5:51
This is a standard response because most people, they think they have an idea, but they’re not quite sure. many people change Myers Briggs type. And the reason they do is because life changes and humans are not necessarily an exact science. So there were many areas of that psychometric testing where I could see it fell short of what as a human centred design practitioner we were really interested in uncovering or understanding about human behaviour. So the elements kit was going some way to answer some of that uncharted territory and to begin to look at people. as distinct and entirely unique, rather than one of 16 types. And then of course, the bigger ambition of it was to not only discover who you are uniquely, but to be able to use different human centred design tools to work out what to do with that information. Because it’s all very well that you’re an ENFJ or an INTP, but then it’s all about, what do I do with that information? even if I can remember my type, what next? So the elements could use as much about who am I. As it is about what next and what choices can I make for a really fulfilled and aligned life bringing all those complaints into balance.

Chris Hudson: 7:01
Yeah, brilliant. there is a lot in that. I think there’s a lot to say about not just showing the answer, but showing the truth. Then what you can do with it because there are so many things in the world of work that are like that, you’re past the piece of work and you’re expected to then, it’s your job to basically figure out what, what it is you’re going to do with that. But I think some framing in and some bridging. Really between that artefact and then the future application of that to your own context is incredibly important. Otherwise it’s not easily done for one but it’s not feeling like it’s something that would be generally agreed as the way forward. You’d have to then take that step on work, work it out with the team or you’d have to decide whether it was a priority or not. and this way it just makes it simple because it’s taking it not just the first step, but the next three or four maybe as well.

Lisa Johnson: 7:48
Yeah, exactly.

Chris Hudson: 7:49
Yeah. There’s something around, obviously you go about doing this for yourself. I love the kind of distance that you can create from yourself and the way that you would usually think about yourself in the way that the kit is perceived. But a lot of people listening to the show may not have really seen what, they won’t have seen it necessarily. Maybe you could just describe some of the different elements and Brings to life that sort of thing, because I think that’s really where the magic lies in a way from just having seen it. It feels like it takes you into, takes your brain into a different way to think about yourself. but how would you describe that?

Lisa Johnson: 8:23
Yeah, I think firstly, fundamentally, we talked a little bit about human centred design, but we haven’t talked much about archetypes and archetypes are, they’re the components of the kit. So the kit in physical form is a card deck of hexagon cards that all fit together like hand time. as you work with the kit and an archetype in simple terms is a pictorial metaphor that describes human behaviour in a single word, super powerful. And we use archetypes in our language every day. And interestingly, we use archetypes like captain, mentor, angel, bully, these are all terms that we are using because it’s a very efficient way of understanding human behaviour. Where it gets a little dangerous is when we begin to stereotype people. So we define an entire individual as one stereotype and sometimes detrimentally so we can give a person as a bully. But the important thing to know about the elements kit across that full spectrum of those six elements, make choices so that you end up with a creative DNA profile, which is called your discovery chart. And that has 24 components to it. And those components sit within the six different elements, which is how you, you experience life essentially, holistically. And so there’s an opportunity to understand that you have 24 primary archetypes that are all at play in your existence. You’re not just one stereotype, you’re a beautiful sort of component system of all of these different parts that sit within those six pillars. And that’s hugely important and interesting because of the pinnacle of how you are mathematically entirely unique. So when you do the discovery chart, no one will ever do the chart. It’s mathematically impossible to do a chart that’s identical to anyone else’s. So that chart and the information on it is literally as unique as your fingerprint. And then you have all of these components that are so interesting to unpack and explore with other tools in the kit that allows you to look at the relationships So, you’re never just one thing, you’re myriad things and there’s a continual dance, that’s happening all the time. And this is why we can have dichotomies in our personality as well, where we’ve got two competing archetypes, where we may be a hermit, for example, good example of an archetype. and yet at the same time, there, there are also aspects of our personality where we may be entertainer or comedian. And it’s really, I think this is what’s beautiful, as I said before about Myers Briggs. Sometimes, you’re oscillating between introversion and extroversion. This happens really commonly. People will do the test and then three years later, they will have moved from an INFJ, for example, to an ENFJ. And that’s, that just shows us that the context, the experience that people is having at that time, the level of psychological safety, which I know we’re going to talk about further, they may be experiencing in their current role. it may have flexed somewhat over those years. So we’re constantly in this state of flux. It’s this constant dance between these components of self, which make us hugely rich and beautiful and complex as individual human beings.

Chris Hudson: 11:33
Yeah. the complexity I think is the harder part to solve for in a way, and it feels like you’ve definitely addressed that because you can bring in the combination of archetypes to represent you and yourself and the prominence of any of those archetypes in any given situation can be something that you can begin to understand, which I think is really cool. so for the people that don’t like, if you haven’t seen Alan’s kit, then you’re trying to visualise this a little bit. It’s probably a little bit like a pack of top trumps in a way, and you’re picking out the archetypes that are most relevant to you, that kind of speak to you and what you value and how you feel. so it’s a bit of self analysis around that. And then you might then, and then effectively you’re labelling it and then you can see how they present and we’re describing how to present, when you build up the entire picture across the six elements. Is that a good enough summary?

Lisa Johnson: 12:26
Yeah, I think so. And you know, it’s designed as this sort of dynamic and visual tool. so that this all makes sense when you’re laying it out. But it is quite like a game. and when you are developing impression of self, because you are doing it incrementally, It’s challenging to game it for that reason, because of the way that you build this slowly and then finally at the end you have this almost like an omniscient view of the way this chart has landed and who you are and this unique creative DNA you have, but also it’s very retrospective in the sense that, like psychometric tests, They will actually ask questions of your past experience. And so you lean into that as well in order to determine, am I more this or am I more that based on when I think about these experiences from childhood until now, for example, or when I think about these experiences in my adult life and different sort of career or vocation. So, it’s very self reflective and self determining, and of course, when you do this with a group or with a partner, there’s all of that, sharing of impression of self that can happen. It can be super enlightening in a team when other people bring to the fore something which is very natural about your personality that you don’t necessarily honour or champion. I think that’s an important point to make as well. This is all about just championing that the colourful and kind of bright side of who you are creatively or into those six elements.

Chris Hudson: 13:48
Yeah, so it’s around superpowers as opposed to any flaws for it.

Lisa Johnson: 13:53
And that, that’s the thing, you know, a lot of this work and including, thefts like Myers Briggs, obviously that harps back to a lot of the more contemporary work that Carl Jung was doing as a psychoanalyst at the turn of the century. So he popularised archetypes and brought that into. common everyday language and he started in 1920 with 12 archetypes because he too was determined to define all humans according initially to these 12 archetypes. What was interesting is that once he started digging deeper and deeper and deeper as he observed patterns of human behaviour in his practice, he realised this was infinite and endless. Archetypes are you know, they really are infinite and archetypes have been written about since Plato’s time. Essentially he was trying to make this a language that people could explore and use and understand. And he was very aware that every archetype has a light side and it has a shadow side. So when you get into the six tools and the elements bit, the first is the one I’ve described, which is a discovery chart. But when you get into the later tools, you begin to work with the idea of what happens when a particular archetype in its light form, such as an orator, what happens when that is actually influenced by shadow forces and shadow forces being fear and fear inducing or anxiety inducing. So a common, let me give you an example of a common shadow archetype. A great one is saboteur. Saboteur is almost a character in and of its own right. And people might describe it as a gremlin or a troublemaker. The way that saboteur actually shows up and the way that it feels in, in, in your mind and in your body is sabotaging. It’s where a fear oriented thought might take place at the thought of you trying to achieve a goal, for example. So the way that you can work with the light side of any archetype is to have a look at what happens to it when it’s put under pressure and that shadow influence is happening. The idea is to champion humans to such a degree, whether they’re in teams or whether they’re doing this for personal development. It’s to champion humans to such a degree that they can remain really steady and balanced in that highly productive and fruitful state of what it is to be in that colour spectrum of archetypes.

Chris Hudson: 16:08
Yeah, well, I mean that’s the next level is in terms of self understanding, it feels like there’s a lot that you can understand about yourself. Even just the architect names. I was just looking at them again. So I’ve read out a few, so Hermit, Follower, Hustler, Dreamer, Gorge, Futurist. it’s taking the world of work but it’s taking the conversation into the realms of fiction and fantasy and it all of a sudden sounds a lot more exciting just describing you or me as green, red, yellow, blue, or a load of letters as you describe it. So, so I like that. It conjures up a preconception and it allows you to work with that preconception of that definite definition and that archetype. For that to make it useful really. So I think it’s very exciting and you’ve run this a lot of people. Tell us a bit about how it’s been running either with individuals or within teams, how’s it running?

Lisa Johnson: 17:00
Yeah. So to take it back a step further, you talked about the thesis and the idea of where those ideas seeded. That was way back in 2008. So for a long time I was studying archetypes. I was writing, I was just exploring a lot of theories. it wasn’t until 2020 when the first rough prototype of the elements kit landed, and that was a week before COVID hit here in Melbourne, which is super significant when we all went into the first severe lockdown. So it’s really interesting timing because I had this opportunity to go and begin testing, physically, and then I had to quickly translate that into a digital kit. as we went through the ups and downs of all of that lockdown sort of period. And so I was working one on one with individuals and just testing with hundreds of people from 2020 until now, mainly working one on one. And then obviously when things returned to some sense of normalcy, just getting out and about, allowing people to explore the discovery chart and testing it with people who are from age 10 to 83, which is hugely interesting as an experiment in and of itself. This idea of what it is to be on the cusp and right at the beginning with childlike wonder versus someone who looks retrospectively and completes their discovery chart, based on their reflection of self across a whole lifetime. So all of that was happening one on one. And then this year has been the big year in terms of extending that out to leaders and teams, which is obviously much more complex. So all of that groundwork and just working individually really paved the way of how to make this a super robust product to be using in more complex environments with more complex problems and many more moving parts. And essentially, we’ve moved this year as well into producing an amazing suite of customisable reports. So it’s now not just about doing this as a process and enjoying it at the time and the conversation that naturally happens between people, which is very insightful and enlightening in and of itself. But now it’s really moving it into that next realm of how do we take this data and make sense of it and who you use for ways. So we’re producing reports that are highly customisable in terms of what a team or leader might want to learn about the dynamic of the team, the relationships and how everybody fits together and can work more productively and more or happily and really engage. The best of their skills and talents, as I said.

Chris Hudson: 19:27
Yeah. Nice. I love the backstory, the fact that you tested it with young 10 year olds and 83 year olds, and that, that would be a whole topic of conversation, but almost the slice of life or the slice of corporate life that you’re now going into now where you’re working within teams and within groups, what are some of the observations, is it giving you a read on the industry in some sort of way? I’m curious to ask that question.

Lisa Johnson: 19:50
Oh, yes. it’s so interesting because I think what I would have thought I would answer is now quite different having experienced this really what I’ve learned, which makes a lot of sense because the whole premise of the elements kit is that every individual is unique. And naturally what that means is that every team is unique. So as much as I would love to be able to classify and having moved through and worked in so many different types of experience design teams, perhaps it would be a more convenient truth for us to think that a CX team looks and feels like this or a UX team. And I think there’s definite commonality. Because again, the remit and the expectation of the work that you’re there to produce as a team is similar, but every single team is so different. if you did an elements kit workshop with five different CX teams, without a doubt, the ambitions would be slightly different. The values of the actual company, which would be influencing the culture in which those people sit, not to mention the leader being a completely unique, creative, individual and every single person within that team. And then you get into the dynamics and the spaces between all of those individuals and the political aspects and influences of that business and the structure. So I don’t think there is such a thing as one common team or one common methodology. And I think what mirrors that nicely is the idea that having built so many different human centred design playbooks over the years. Particularly as a service designer, every time you would build a playbook, it would need to be different. So it would borrow some common language. And similarly, every time I would build a service design blueprint, it was just a different artefact than the previous one. Because not only was the brief and the remit different and the expectation, but that artefact was being influenced and shaped by people who had different prerogatives, different ideas, different ambitions. And then the nature of whatever the content needed to be within that blueprint made it a completely unique artefact. So yeah, I think there’s a common thread here, which is who are we as unique individuals? Who are we as leaders and who are we as unique teams?

Chris Hudson: 22:02
Which is an interesting question. I’ve got this feeling looking back at my career is that your place within the timeline of work or in the timeline of your career is only, it’s only there for that moment, right? So it’s only going to be the same for maybe a week or maybe a year. If everything kind of stays roughly the same and you’re working in the same team, some, somebody is going to change at some point. So I’m wondering. for intrapreneurs as well, you know, what, what feels like it’s sort of safe enough and fixed to be able to plan around and what feels like it would be changing around you and how could they navigate that best do you think?

Lisa Johnson: 22:35
Yes, well, if you look at a discovery chart, essentially within the six elements. There are four archetypal cards that you choose and you number those in, in order. And that order is essentially about the resonance or the dominance of that archetype in your life. So, a good example might be architect, where you feel through and through. Even if your vocation or your career is not an architect, you might feel most resonant with that idea of how you think and behave and feel and navigate in the world. And so essentially you end up with dominant archetypes on your chart, particularly in positions one and two. And those are usually a predominant aspect of your character or personality that has expressed since a very early age. That’s usually the case. Sometimes there are anomalies because sometimes in the case of, say, a later bloomer, a vocation might come to the fore that for whatever reason, the opportunity just hasn’t been there to explore. So it’ll become very dominant and it’ll become a pivot in life that sets you off from being, say, a lawyer to being a social activist or however you define yourself. Or you might move from a musician to being a managing director in a corporation. So the point is that there are patterns of things that feel much steadier for a number of reasons. And then there are other lower down the ranks of the archetypes you choose on your chart. These ones tend to ebb and flow. They tend to flux. They tend to sort of move in and out of your story. So I think the short answer to the question is, It’s usually a safe bet to lean into those things that have been predominant in your life. And to know that they’re surefire bets of the fundamentals, they’re like the root stabilisers, I suppose, of who you are. And then other things tend to shift around that over time. And as things change as your circumstance changes or your career changes or whatnot. So I think it’s all about really leaning into the things that you have the most evidence for, I suppose. Or conversely, if there is just such a strong compulsion of uncharted territory or untapped potential and, you know, this can happen if you’ve had a traumatic experience when you’re a lot younger, let’s say you’re actually an incredible performer on stage as a kid, but you, and you’ve got a very natural sort of predisposition to want to perform and entertain or make people laugh or sing. If you have a traumatic experience at that time, you can just shut up, shut up. This happens a lot with children where for a very, very long period, This is not untapped potential because it’s been there, it’s been recognised before, but it’s just needed to lay dormant for whatever reason. This can then be something that you re tap into and bring to life again, given the right circumstances, to really wake it up. So it’s not just about saying, well, I’ve always been this thing, therefore I will just continue to be it. It can sometimes be about unearthing things that just haven’t had a chance to be explored. And this is what I often say about Myers Briggs, CliftonStrengths, it’s only ever recalling who you’ve been in order to determine who you, how you will likely behave and who you’ll be in future. I love the way the elements kit goes a little deeper and says, okay, well, this might be your primary stance on who you are based on evidence and how it shows up now. But what about all that what about all that online treasure? so it’s very much about compulsion and passion. If there’s a real passion to explore something that might not show up in a psychometric test for you. But again, navigating by feeling and resonance can be a way to bring yourself home to that and move into that as a primary in future, which may not be a primary now.

Chris Hudson: 26:16
Yeah, super interesting. I guess it comes back to the question around when in your life you would be best placed to understand yourself to that degree or does it not matter? Do you just keep revisiting it? What have you got a feeling there on the perfect age?

Lisa Johnson: 26:30
I think you’re never too young to begin. As I said, I’ve tested this with 10 year olds. I tested it also with different young people, emerging people who are 17 year olds who are trying to make their decision around their final year of school subjects, which can be really interesting when you compare to a lot of tests that are out there that are being used in secondary schools. I think there’s huge potential for this because often you’ll hear very disgruntled parents talking about how those tests are really failing young people. Because they’re just not looking at young people’s potential or just their holistic DNA with enough clarity and not giving them agency to be able to self reflect either, which is super interesting. I think the idea of when is it? I think you could literally quite safely use this with kids that are 10 or 11, again, depending on how it’s facilitated right through to secondary school, university and onwards. I have a friend who is an occupational therapist. And when she was testing the kit with me way back in 2020, actually, right, right at the beginning, she said, gosh, this would be so interesting to use this tool with Alzheimer’s patients. Who she was working with at the time. And she said, even if this gave them a chance, a sense of agency to self reflect, even for a lucid hour, they build this chart physically. And then there is something there, which is evidence that they can share with family, even if they’ve forgotten the next hour and this idea of just being able to revisit. I think it’s applicable to people of all ages and the context in which you would use it is quite different depending on what stage of life you’re at.

Chris Hudson: 28:08
Yeah, that’s useful. What’s interesting to me is that I’ve gone into a lot of companies, joining a lot of companies over my career so far, and you always feel like you’re becoming part of something else because that, that as a construct is established in some ways. So an organisation if you joined Google, that’d be a Google way. If you went to work at Bunnings, they’d be doing that in a certain way. And you feel like you’re giving yourself to that. Yeah. That as an essence and as a kind of a whole it’s like a, it’s a universe that you’re walking into and there’s a whole being that you’re becoming part of that and that culture. So what’s interesting about this conversation is that it gives people a chance to really reflect on themselves and the self reflection I think places well, it gives you more accuracy by which you can determine what your next step might be, where you think you are relative to where you want to be. is the context for where you’re working right for you? Is it wrong? is there something that could change? And then if you’re using it with other team members. Members as well, then you’re looking for other ways to find connection points and opportunities from there as well. So as a navigation tool for one’s own career, it just feels like it’s very, very insightful from that point of view. And it’s not like you’re just turning up to work and expecting the world of work to kind of imprint itself on you. You’re actually able to understand yourself and express yourself outwards to the company that you’re working. Four was probably more, a more convincing argument than maybe before. What do you think?

Lisa Johnson: 29:39
Oh yes, I agree. And I feel that I often talk about how when we apply for a job, we’re actually applying to insert ourselves into a job description and that may or may not be wholly compatible. We would hope that it would be if you’re passionate and interested enough to want to join a company within that sort of almost uniform state. Which, as we know, is bound to performance metrics and KPIs and OKRs, according to whatever you’ve signed up for in that job description. But again, we talked about that full colour spectrum of who an individual is such an interesting way to even recruit people. There’s potential there for the Elements Kit, because it’s who am I uniquely which is immediately visible. As a self reflection on my own terms, showing my desires, my interests, and my passions, as well as what skills and talents I can bring to the table. That is a way more holistic conversation in and of itself, and a really championing conversation, getting back to that word, compared to how effectively can I meet the needs of this job description. And it’s interesting that you talked before about the idea of what it is to insert oneself into a culture or perhaps more positively to join a culture and immerse oneself in that culture. And we’ve been asked before to produce reports that show a team alignment, for example, with the overall, values of a company, which is super interesting. So how aligned is this team and the individuals in it to the overall culture? Fascinating question. but one would hope as well that it’s not necessarily a demand of the culture in an organisation just to force people into compliance that you know, if a culture is an organism and it’s growing and evolving over time, you would hope that the flavour of the people that come in can help to shape that. And that gets back to your other point about fully utilising not just what people can do and are good at doing or fast at doing and have superpowers in, but also what they value, what they cherish, what lights their fire and excites them, which gets back to that fulfilment point. So when people can be fully seen and heard and embraced for who they are. There is a beautiful, potent opportunity for how every single unique individual can influence and help that culture to flourish, rather than it being a controlled act of almost, not reprimand, but just Alignment that’s how companies can grow over time, which is a great way that new younger talent can be brought into an organisation with all of that youth and vitality to help shape a brand and bring it forward in terms of its cultural evolution.

Chris Hudson: 32:14
I like that. There’d be a North Star that everyone individually would be aiming for and it would all ladder up to a combination of things that would help the company or the organisation as well. That’s amazing. You’re a bit idealistic almost, but it feels like it could be possible, right? Could be made possible.

Lisa Johnson: 32:29
Yeah. I think as well, I often describe the Elements Kit as a conversation tool, like obviously it has all these outputs, these tangible results. With common language that makes it really relatable.

Chris Hudson: 32:40
I was going to maybe bridge into the next question, which is probably more around how you feel within an organisation if you’re an employee and almost the safety and extending out from psychological safety and what can really enable people within teams to achieve more. And I think a lot of what we’ve been discussing is definitely there. So understanding where you are where you would value certain things what you’d be aiming for it plays a role in what you would aim for obviously, but you’re thinking about safety at the beginning, is this the right environment for me? And what are you seeing in terms of psychological safety and what can contribute to that meaningfully, do you believe?

Lisa Johnson: 33:19
Ah, psychological safety is such a, I have a friend who’s doing a PhD on this, again, it’s a really fascinating and complex domain, but I think in simplest terms for me, and looking at this from the lens of the element skip. It is about people feeling that they can be valued for who they are. And that wholeness of who they are is not necessarily a prescribed job description, something that’s applied to them or that they’re conforming to. It’s who they are on their terms based on their very unique history, based on their culture, based on any other factors about, how they express as a human in the world. So for me at the core of that psychological safety, again, it’s about being seen and being heard and ultimately being valued. I think that’s what creates trust and value within any company and it’s often I think it’s just taking the time and it’s the power of conversations and the way that people can connect through conversation to really explore that or something like that the elements kit becomes a tangible output as I say

Chris Hudson: 34:22
Yeah, so to anyone who’s not feeling totally safe or comfortable in their work environment. what would you recommend as a first step? Because we’ve talked about self evaluation a little bit, but would you start with that or would you go about it differently? any advice?

Lisa Johnson: 34:36
Yeah. Well, I think to have an empowered conversation, I think the word that comes to mind is a society of embodying as your own self knowing human first, it’s actually about really understanding who you are. Yeah. And that’s, again, getting back to why I designed the kit. That’s very much about, the first question is, who am I to myself? What is my impression of self? Because until you know that, it’s really challenging to have an expectation that others should know you, or should understand how you feel, or should understand what you dream of, what your desires are, or how you want to fully utilise. So, it’s that idea of self actua

Lisation, which Jung spent a lifetime writing about. bringing into balance all of these coordinates and components of self. I think it’s know thyself first and foremost. So in a way that, that really is the foundation point for psychological safety. It’s knowing and feeling comfortable. And when I use that word embodiment, I think embodiment is that, you know who you are, know what you stand for, and you know what your desires, your dreams are in order that you can healthily project that, communicate that. And then hopefully be in an environment where that’s heard and seen by others. But the first step to self actualisation is the self, I think, in self actualisation.

Chris Hudson: 35:57
Yeah, for sure. I think that’s a more useful step than maybe you know, a lot of people, and I’ve been included in this, where you’re in your career you’re in a job or actually just at any university. It’s kind of the possibilities are there and you’re excited about possibilities, but the commitment to one of those possibilities feels like it’s really hard to navigate. So almost understanding yourself will give you that compass and it’ll help you land on the thing that might just be the first step to understanding that better, or it might just be in line with what you know is like, It’s what you do and what you believe in already. So, I feel like that’s a good navigation tool for careers. if careers exist anymore, I don’t know.

Lisa Johnson: 36:36
And that’s the thing. speaking of how much industry evolves, like I remember there was a time when experience design, all this UX and UI and EX, the whole X factor just didn’t exist at all. That’s just something that we’ve all evolved and shaped ourselves into. But I love this idea of know thyself first, because then it’s an opportunity for you to be, rather than, as I say, fitting yourself into a box, or into a type, you’re then figuring out, if I was to shape and evolve, how might I create a world for myself to step into? And it’s funny, actually, because I remember, right, journaling a lot about this with the Elements Kit. In a way, I was very aware of the fact that I was creating my own world to step into. The kit itself just has its own. And in fact, the elements kit has its own discovery chart. So we’ve cast that chart, that impression. So it has its own personality. It’s ever evolving. Every conversation about it, every workshop we do. it’s ever evolving too and trying to get to know itself and then shaping its world and its experience based on that. So I think it’s just, it’s a beautiful way to start. It’s just, who am I first? Who am I first? And then how can I coordinate and how can I shape shift this world? Shape shift my career that may not be that you have one career and then some hobbies outside. It may be that you’re looking for something that just integrates the best of yourself in one centre or there are many, many different ways that you could do it, but the idea of just evolving your reality based on who you are central to that, I think is a really beautiful way to navigate life.

Chris Hudson: 38:14
Yeah, these are some big questions, huge questions, right? And it feels like it makes it practical and impossible to do that. Who am I is. Wow. That feels like it would keep you away for several nights or years, but I’m wondering as well, whether there’s almost too much introspection. Is there too much of that? Beyond a point? Do you feel like it’s good to get the answer and almost the catharsis is there and it’s happening and it all comes out and you can then move on. Do you feel like this is an ongoing exercise? What’s too much or too little or just about right, you think, in the self analysis kind of space? Yes.

Lisa Johnson: 38:51
I think it’s a great question because, and I can answer that by saying it depends if you have a philosopher archetype, I have a philosopher archetype so and a seeker, so I’ll always be questioning, introspection for me will never stop because I talked about the primaries before, they’re primaries for me. that may not interest other people at all depending on what their DNA looks like. so yeah, it utterly depends on who you are. whether this is important, more important, less important. but almost anything about any question about human behaviour, you can almost be answered archetypally. Sure. And it will show up somewhere on your chart. If you’re a thinker, it’ll be there on your chart. If you’re introspective, it’ll be there. It turns out a lot of our approach to life turns up there.

Chris Hudson: 39:32
Perfect. maybe you should have told me you were a seeker at the start of the interview. I could have got you to ask the questions instead of me. Exactly.

But yeah, it’s really interesting. there’s a lot in this chat around, how to understand yourself and obviously how to promote your own, Self fulfilling behaviours, where you can aim your career, how you can understand other people better, obviously EQ and empathy and emotional intelligence. I mean, all of these things are quite topical or have been for the last, last few years anyway. So it feels like it’s helpful from that point of view, and it’s successful. So Lisa, I just want to say massive, thank you for coming onto the show and explaining and sharing your wisdom and your stories and perspectives on this fascinating topic. I think it’s been really interesting. Thank you.

Lisa Johnson: 40:14
Absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Chris Hudson: 40:16
And if people want to get in touch, how would they find you? Where would they find you? Is that a question or anything like that?

Lisa Johnson: 40:22
Yeah, they can go straight to our website and find all the contact details there. And it’s just the elementskit.com.au

Chris Hudson: 40:29
Brilliant. All right, we’ll wrap there. Thanks so much, Lisa.

Lisa Johnson: 40:31
Thank you so much.

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