Interview With Invisible Mentor Dan Elash, Principal, Syntient, Part II

Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Dan Elash, Principal, Syntient

To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Interview, while you are reading it, answer the following questions:

1. Are their similarities between the Dan Elash and yourself?
2. In what ways can you use the information?
3. In what ways would you respond differently from Dan?
4. What are your five takeaways from the interview?
5. After reading the interview, what is one concrete action you can take?

Invisible Mentor: Dan Elash, Principal

Company Name: Syntient

Website: http://syntient.com/ 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Dan Elash:  I started off life as a clinical psychologist. I have a PhD in Psychology from the University of Kansas, and it has served as my credentials, my platform for all the work I’ve done in my life since. After some time doing therapy in various clinical settings, I was drawn to the world of business and organizational effectiveness, and I worked there for about 35 years until now. I’m back doing a wide range of different things. I’ve lost my travel calluses that kept me going for all those years on the road, and I’m enjoying life a little closer to home.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Dan Elash: It has never been a challenge. I found a way that allowed me to go to work and to be my best self. In that sense I do not feel like I have to play a role. When I’m on the job, of course you have to be considerate and in context, but I feel it requires me to be my better self and that’s been very rewarding for me. 

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it? 

Dan Elash: My job requires me to be up and on so downtime is really an opportunity for reflection, for spending time with people I care about and a few good friends. I also enjoy spending my day with a good book.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Dan Elash:

1. You have to move forward in life and use your past to promote new learning.
2. You can’t love someone enough to heal them if they don’t or won’t love themselves.
3. Excuses only serve to keep us comfortable with inadequate effort. You are responsible for what you choose and what you do. There is always a choice and the easiest is seldom the right one.
4. Today is all that we have. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is uncertain and the focus is to make the most of today. Make it as rich as possible.
5. We have the ability to lighten the load of other people. We can be our own best selves by helping others to live richer. A life of service is a life well spent.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Dan Elash: My secret is that I do not try to generate great ideas. Whenever I have tried I ended up frustrated and getting nowhere. But what I do is look at the challenges of the people in my work, and I try to discern what they are missing about the situation that has them stuck. Then I try to distil the lessons I’ve learned from a lifetime of observing and thinking about people, trying to articulate those lessons in ways that people can relate to and can help them to envision or get excited about a novel option or alternative. That’s where I find my best thinking comes from.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Dan Elash: It’s quite long and it’s a quote from the American folksinger Woody Guthrie from a book of his called Born to Win. I have had this quote on my wall for almost 40 years in my office. “I hate a song that makes you feel that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you re too old or too young or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck, hard traveling. I’m out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.”

Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Dan Elash: I really found success to be striving for a worthy goal. A goal bigger than myself where the effort of striving causes me to learn or to grow. Some victories create new problems while some failures can teach invaluable lessons, so I don’t like to look at it in terms of a win or a loss, but rather to find success in rising to the challenge because it makes me feel I have given the situation my best effort.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Dan Elash: The fundamental one was the ability to look at issues as if it was my job to speak the language of my client rather than expecting the client to understand my language. That kind of flexibility, being willing to embrace change, and being committed to continuing to learn, has been critical to all that I have done and any success I have had. What I believe from my work is that what works today will be obsolete tomorrow and that we really stay relevant by staying current.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Dan Elash: I would give the advice I mentioned above. I would tell people to embrace change, to be flexible, to continue to learn, that what used to work is not going to work tomorrow and that we stay relevant by staying current in thinking and technology.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Dan Elash:

1. Mark Twain: I would want to talk about learning from life and from observation. I think he did those things brilliantly and it would be fun to talk about with him.
2. Lieutenant Michael Murphy:  He received the Medal of Honor in Afghanistan a few years ago. Lieutenant Murphy was a Navy Seal and what I would want to talk about is being dedicated to a purpose worth giving your life for.
3. Michelangelo: I would talk to him about the nature of creativity and passion.
4. Carmack McCormick: I would want to talk to him about the power of story and imagination to move people to effect the way they look at life.
5. Jesus Christ: I would talk about living a spiritually rich life in a day-to-day world of the mundane.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Dan Elash: It’s one of the more recent books that I read, and that would be The Shack by William Paul Young. What touched me was how profoundly moving it could be for people to feel valued and loved for who we are. That struck a chord with my life’s work.

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million? 

Dan Elash: I tend to look at how I make the best of the situation that I’m in and two years on a deserted island would be a great opportunity for reflection, self-discovery, observation and contemplation.

Two Years

My mission would be to get the most out of that quiet time.

Five Books

1. Pete Seeger wrote Pete Seeger's Storytelling Book.
2. Paul Young’s The Shack.
3. Richard Mendius wrote Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.
4. Marcus Luttrell wrote Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.
5. John Wiseman’s SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition: For Any Climate, in Any Situation.

One Music CD and One Film

The movie would be Braveheart (Sapphire Series) [Blu-ray] and the music CD would be Bob Marley’s Songs Of Freedom.

In my suitcase I would take writing pens and paper, photos of my family, swim fins and a snorkel, several floppy hats because I have a bald head, and a dozen pairs of reading glasses because  I tend to lose them even though that might be hard on a deserted island.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Dan Elash: Tomorrow and its possibilities. You never know what’s going to happen or what opportunities will present themselves. I find that fun.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Dan Elash: By exercising it in serving others. I feel like my job has been to help people, individuals, teams, organizations reach their potential. Doing that kind of work is really sustaining to me. I would also add reading haiku poetry which I find fascinatingly complex.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Dan Elash: I would wish for a supply of options that my life would be about choices rather than imperatives.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Dan Elash: I’m at peace with myself within my work. If I can look back and feel that I didn’t screw anything up too badly, I’ve come through the day having made some contribution to my community or my world, I am happy.

Redemption Song – Bob Marley – Song of Freedom

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