275: Making Change Happen – Why Not You? with Nyota Gordon Greater Than Code

01:47 - Nyota’s Superpower: To hear and pull out people’s ideas to make them more clear, actionable, and profitable!



Acknowledging The Unspoken
Getting Checked


07:15 - Boundaries and Harmony


10:35 - News & Social Media



Addiction
Filtering
Bias


18:54 - The Impact of AI


23:00 - Anyone Can Be A Freelance Journalist; How Change Happens



Chelsea Cirruzzo’s Guide to Freelance Journalism
Casey’s GGWash Article About Ranked Choice Voting
First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy | Derek Sivers


40:13 - The Intersection of Cybersecurity and Employee Wellness: Resiliency



@selfcare_tech


Reflections:


Casey & John: “A big part of resilience is being able to take more breaths.” – Nyota


Damien: You can be the expert. You can be the journalist. You can be the first mover/leader. Applying that conscientiously.


Nyota: Leaving breadcrumbs.


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Transcript:


PRE-ROLL: Software is broken, but it can be fixed. Test Double’s superpower is improving how the world builds software by building both great software and great teams. And you can help! Test Double is hiring empathetic senior software engineers and DevOps engineers. We work in Ruby, JavaScript, Elixir and a lot more. Test Double trusts developers with autonomy and flexibility at a remote, 100% employee-owned software consulting agency. Looking for more challenges? Enjoy lots of variety while working with the best teams in tech as a developer consultant at Test Double. Find out more and check out remote openings at link.testdouble.com/greater. That’s link.testdouble.com/greater.


DAMIEN: Welcome to Episode 275 of Greater Than Code. I'm Damien Burke and I'm here with John Sawers.


JOHN: Thanks, Damien. And I'm here with Casey Watts.


CASEY: Hi, I'm Casey! And we're all here with our guest today, Nyota Gordon.


Nyota is a technologist in cybersecurity and Army retiree with over 22 years of Active Federal Leadership Service. She is the founder, developer, and all-around do-gooder at Transition365 a Cyber Resiliency Training Firm that thrives at the intersection of cybersecurity and employee wellness.


Welcome, Nyota! So glad to have you.


NYOTA: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.


CASEY: Yay! All right. Our first question—we warned you about this—what is your superpower and how did you acquire it?


NYOTA: My superpower is to hear, pull out people's ideas, and make them more clear, more actionable, and more profitable.


DAMIEN: Ooh.


NYOTA: Yeah, that's one of my friends told me that.


And how did I get it? I'm a words person. So I listen to what people say, but I also listen to what they don't say.


CASEY: What they don't say.


NYOTA: Yeah.


CASEY: Can you think of an example?


NYOTA: Like that. Like when you did that quiet thing you just did, I saw that mind blown emoji because there's a lot in unspoken. There's a lot in body language. There's a lot in silence. When the silence happens, there's a lot when someone changes the topic, like that stuff is a lot. [chuckles] So I listen and I acknowledge all of that. Maybe we all hear it, or don't hear it depending on how you're processing what I'm saying, but we don't always acknowledge it and respect it in other people,


DAMIEN: You have to listen to the notes he’s not playing.


[laughter]


Do you ever have an experience where things that are not said do not want to be heard?


NYOTA: Absolutely. But that's part of acknowledging and so, you can tell when people are like, “I do not want to talk about that.” So then I would do a gentle topic change and not a hard left all th