How Unfolded Is Helping Teams Dream, Reflect, and Grow

One year after the release of Unfolded: Lessons in Transformation from an Origami Crane, Dr. Linda and Brian Schubring return to reflect on how the book is actually being used with teams, leaders, and organizations around the world. 

In this episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast, Nathan Freeburg leads a conversation exploring how Unfolded has become more than a story—it has become a practical tool for team culture, reflection, coaching, and leadership development.

Brian and Linda share how they integrate the themes of dreaming, creativity, emotions, and transformation into keynote facilitations, workshops, coaching sessions, and team conversations. They discuss how organizations are using the story and characters from Unfolded to create shared language around self-awareness, vulnerability, collaboration, and change. 

This episode explores:

•  How Leadership Vision uses Unfolded in keynote facilitations and team engagements 
•  Why storytelling creates deeper team conversations 
•  The difference between strategy work and culture work 
•  How teams use the book as a reflective tool 
•  The role emotions play in leadership and organizational change 
•  Why imagination and dreaming still matter in leadership 
•  How individual coaching conversations emerge from team sessions 

Whether you are a leader, coach, facilitator, or team member, this conversation offers practical insight into how story can help people better understand themselves and each other.

Key Quotes

“We don’t need you to read the book. We need you to practice the book with us.”

“How can we work with our emotions?”

“There’s a dream that’s resting, that’s waiting to be awakened.”

Links & Resources

• Unfolded: Lessons in Transformation from an Origami Crane
•  Leadership Vision Consulting 
•  Leadership Vision Podcast 
•  Audiobook version of Unfolded
•  Animated short film inspired by Unfolded

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Leadership Vision helps leaders build positive team culture through consulting, coaching, and conversations that foster emotional health and meaningful connection.

Transcript

Welcome To Leadership Vision

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the podcast, we are finishing up with our little mini-series here where we take and look back at one year of Brian and Linda's book, Unfolded Lessons in Transformation from an Oregon Ukraine, and we look at different elements about how the book is being used. Today we're going to be talking about some specifics on how Brian and Linda are using this with Teams. We'll talk a little bit about some of the things that teams are getting out of it, how they use this to facilitate different team sessions, and also how team leaders are using some of the elements in the book to help build positive team culture in their organizations. If you have not yet picked up a copy of Unfolded Lessons and Transformation from an origami crane, there is a link in the bio or you can get it wherever good books are sold. Alright, let's get into it.

Why Teams Are Using Unfolded

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Brian and Linda, this book has reached bestseller lists. This book has been all over the world. But how are you using it with teams? Like when you take it into an engagement, do you just sit and read it like a story time? Like, I doubt it. No, of course not. That's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Put on my cardigan, take off my shoes.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

How have you integrated, unfolded, lessons and transformation from an origami crane into the work you do with building positive team culture?

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Well, the first way that may not surprise anybody is through a keynote where we are speaking on the themes of the book in front of an audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

So we talk about dreams and maps and shapes and folds and uh invite people to tell to tell their stories. And it really is a springboard to help people understand uh themselves in a new way or uncover some of the stories or dust off some of the stories that they have not told uh for a while, and it builds into the relational fabric, the social fabric of the organizations that we've worked with when we're keynoting.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

And we found ourselves speaking from 20 minutes to 60 minutes, which is kind of surprising for me. I didn't know what I expected. Um, in those uh moments when we have the chance to do a keynote, we'll often have the video as part of uh the way that we communicate the book, which is a way to capture some imagination and emotion without us needing to really say much. You mean the animated shorts that probably in the show notes, find it on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yes, yes, animated short in the promo. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

So that's the first way that we are using the book.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

So then a keynote, are these is that like at conferences? Is that like where are you presenting these keynotes?

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Wherever we get invited, whether it is to an off-site that an organization is doing, whether they're they're kicking off a quarter or kicking off something uh that they're trying to do, it could be with a current client uh that we're working with that wants to have people to gather together um as a way to provide a unique and strategic interruption to their day or their week. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

But the keynote is just one of the ways because I think there have been leaders that have read our book and said, okay, like we don't need you to write read the book, we need you to practice the book with us, like f help us with some of the yeah, some of the nuances, some of the concepts that are in the book. So the majority of our work, right? Well, the majority of our work has been with teams. It has been focused on teams and and once again, not just turn everyone turn into page what 40, um, but rather um practicing the concepts.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

So one of the ways that we want to integrate the book directly

Keynote Facilitation That Keeps People Engaged

SPEAKER_02 3:53

was how is it that we can take a book that we wrote and integrate the concepts and themes of the book into our current practice? So not changing our delivery, maybe modifying how we engage teams, because we we know that how we engage teams work, so how we we introduce the book into that process, that's been the trick. And so what we came up with was what we call a keynote facilitation.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

So then a keynote, when I'm thinking of a keynote, I think of I'm in the audience, speaker up there, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, done, yay, thank you. Next speaker. You don't really do that in all my experience with you. It's like talk, talk. Now you guys talk. Now talk back to us. Now we talk, now you talk. It's like it's it's more of like an interactive experience, correct?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yes, and we call it the the a keynote facilitation. Uh and we know that we run the risk every time we invite people to turn to a neighbor and talk, or get in a small group of three, that in a large format that people that's when people stand up and leave, or that's when they go use the restroom, or that's when they go quick take a call. And we believe that the the material and their lived experience is is catalytic and my and attention grabbing enough that they will stay. And those that stay really lean in. We just like to break it up because we we know that we are competing with people's devices.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

So Linda and I will talk about a chapter for four or five minutes, and then once we get done talking about the themes, we hand it off to the audience to get in in those groups, like Linda said, to talk with each other. We know that the themes have direct applicability and and that style of going of us speaking, people talking with each other, makes the content uh last longer and embeds itself within someone's own story, which is the whole point.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

And you don't need to read the book in order to uh step in and engage in the concept.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Listen, you can just watch the movie. Um listen to the audio. Or listen to the audio.

Practical Principles Over Quick Fixes

SPEAKER_01 5:56

In our last six minutes here, I want to get very practical because I if someone's listening to this thinking, I read the book or I want to read the book and I want to use this with my team, like give us I hate to say sales pitch, but like what does that really look like? Because I think there's so many books out there like this that not necessarily allegories, but are just like, oh yeah, use this with your team, and then it's kind of like ah, figure it out. But like, what does that look like, maybe through story or like example of how it's sort of been an eye-opening moment? Just share that with us here.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Nathan, you're very accurate in what you said. The applicability of the book is really the number one way that we are uh applying it. We are not trying to solve an organization's problems. We are not trying to help an organization define and align on strategy, and we're not teaching them how to navigate change. What we're trying to do is we're trying to apply the principles of the book that are, no matter what's happening around us, how do we understand where we are? And that's the whole idea of the playground. And people to pause and to ask themselves, what's happening here? What's the environment of the playground? What are the opportunities that are here? That gives people pause to zoom out and really take an evaluative look on what's happening around them. When we introduce the idea of the characters, we may not do it directly, like which character are you, but we will talk about how do you work with the people that are around you because no matter what you're facing as an organization or team, what you're facing isn't going to change, and the people you're with are not going to change. How do we work with the people to address the challenge that's ahead of us? And most importantly, is how can we work with our emotions? Whatever we're facing in the midst of these changes, how can we work with our emotions? So it's those principles that we're applying, and we're not forgetting the fundamental theme of don't be afraid to dream. And we interpret dream as be creative, be imaginative. How can we work together to think of new ideas? And so when we talk about creativity, innovation, new ideas, collaboration in new ways, it's our way of saying ignite a dream, lean back and let yourself imagine of what could possibly happen with the people around you, where you're at. And that kind of application of the book gets really specific on addressing our human nature, the human beings that are around us, and the environment that we find ourselves in.

Using Story Characters To Talk Honestly

SPEAKER_00 8:27

And that's how some teams have used it almost like a book club. And they come to the table. And once again, when you can use a story, in some ways you can it's not hiding behind it, but it's it's allowing the story to help amplify your own experience. Or hey, is anyone does anyone else resonate with the character of Fox? Because that's my internal voice. Uh we we hear so many leaders that that resonate with that self-criticism and self-judgment. Um we we just yeah, we hand it to uh we hand it to people and and let the the story emerge.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

What I hear you saying, or what I'm gonna interpret, is it's you're you're giving them a tool to help them build their team culture.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

A way to say, here's some things that we value, like where do you fit into this? How do we talk about not hiding behind it, as you said, but like, oh, here's a let's talk about this fox, this little this little difficult character in some way. And it's it's helping, it's get it's a tool to help build that positive team culture. That's right. Which I think is so difficult to do these days because of Brian, you said, like, this isn't strategy. We're not coming in there, and this book isn't gonna help you figure out your Q3 fiscal strategy for whatever. It's how do we create this culture, how do we build a culture that's focused on trying and flying and dreaming and all of these things so that all of these individuals can feel empowered to contribute to that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

And that's it. And that's it. So that's why some of the work starts with the team, but then it trickles to the individual.

From Team Session To Coaching

SPEAKER_00 10:03

So in most of our engagements, we do something with the teams as a whole. And then um we divide up the group in half. Brian takes half, I take the other half, and we meet with some of the team members uh one at a time. And it's in those that said, Well, I don't know if you caught it in the team session, but I am so rabbit and I need a pathway out of that. Or you know what, I used to be embarrassed for being so loyal, or um, you know, but but I'm looking at Turtle as someone else that has a plan and that could be with you, or man, I thought I was just flighty, but there is a place for the jubilance of YC. And our coaching practice isn't explicit, like, oh, could because that that's what this is. Right. Um, instead, uh we are trying to um integrate some of the principles, some of the concepts of unfolded into our one-to-one with people and allow others to tell their story and to figure out um how it resonates. I know Brian's used it a lot.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

And that last part is really what motivates me is these days there isn't a coaching session that I'm involved in that isn't integrating the principles of the book in in some way. It's it's serving as a reminder to me of how I can integrate and give the principles of the book away. Because sometimes I feel that, hey, we have a book is a distraction to the actual work that we're doing with a human being, and to help people to be able to discern between who's saying what and how someone's interacting and reacting is so important. And to identify the people that are helping them, it's another important piece of the puzzle. And to understand that no matter what someone's going through, deep within inside of them, there's a dream that's resting, that's waiting to be awakened. And if I can help someone get one unfold closer to understanding that there's a dream asking to be set free, then I know that I'm helping that person walk one step farther down their journey. And for their day, if they feel enlightened and imaginative and curious about their own life, then that's the moment I'm seeking every time I get a chance to talk with somebody.

Where To Get The Book

SPEAKER_01 12:23

The book is unfolded, lessons in transformation from an origami crane. If you have not yet picked up your copy, there's a link in the show notes, or you can buy it wherever you get your books. Brian and Linda, thank you. This is fun to be revisiting Unfolded a year later and learning how it's actually being used. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Thank you, and there's an audio book too.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And there is an audio book too. That's right. I think that's the reader. Ohio, though. Yeah, who's a reader, Linda? Yeah. Thank you, listeners, for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. If you have found value from this episode or any of our other material, we would love it. If you could subscribe, go to Leadership Vision Consulting.com slash subscribe, link in the show notes, subscribe to the podcast, the email newsletter, follow us on all the socials, share it with somebody that you think could benefit from this. My name is Nathan Freeber.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

I'm Linda Schubring. And I'm Brian Schubring.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

And on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening. Awesome. We did it. Good job.