The Down and Dirty Truth of Transformation with Rachel Burr

Welcome to the Social Chameleon show where it's all grown up. You learn, grow and transform on your path to becoming legendary. Today's guest is Rachel Burr, an executive coach, leadership consultant and people expert with over two decades of experience helping leaders and teams thrive. She blends sharp insight, real world action, and just the right dose of humor to tackle one of the hardest parts of leadership, the people. Rachel has a unique ability to help high performing leaders tap into their authentic strengths, improve team dynamics, and lead with clarity and confidence. With master's degree in clinical psychology and organizational development, she brings a deep understanding of what makes people and teams tick. Whether she's coaching executives one on one or guiding leadership teams through transition through tough transitions, Rachel is all about helping others unleash their potential and build workplaces where people can truly grow. Let's dive in to a powerful conversation with Rachel Burr.

Rachel, welcome to the Social Chameleon Show. I'm excited to talk with you, leadership, psychology and everything you kind of got.

Thanks, Tyson.

So I noticed when I was doing research for the episode, you went to school for psychology. How did that morph into leadership development?

So I was really convinced that I wanted to be a psychologist. I was on the road in a PhD program about halfway through focusing on a lot of really intense kinds of areas, folks who were struggling with a lot of really severe mental illness. And I'm not saying this to make light of, you know, those of us are going to therapy for depression, anxiety, some of those things which can be very severe. These were even more on severity, that kind of the spectrum, you know, and I have huge amounts of respect for my colleagues who still do this work and for the people who I was working with, mostly with folks to help them getting back to functioning. And the reality was for a lot of these folks, that that was, they weren't, it's going to be a constant battle. What I realized I wanted to do was help people find the best of who they are and to step into that. And so for me, we're all psychological beings. It's not just about therapy or whatever.

How we work inside has to do with psychology. So I shifted into the idea of coaching and really helping people tap into the core of who they are, strengths, weaknesses, talents, skills, all of those things, and understand their mindset and how who they are and the way they see the world impacts their ability to step into their full self. So I feel like I bring all of what I learned to what I do now and it's just taking it from kind of the foundation of that functional and really helping people grow exponentially.

So, I mean, being in a PhD program, you're probably upwards of $100,000 in debt. What's the self talk like, what's the process like of saying, you know, the safe option is like, let me just finish this off. I can always fall back on my doctorate. I got all this debt. How do I pay this back? All these things? What was that like? How did you get through that?

Well, to be fair, when I had this realization, I left my PhD about halfway through, which actually going back to the book is kind of where I start my own developmental journey. And that first big quit some of us have. Now, for me, in terms of the money part, I was really fortunate because if you're in a PhD program and, and you're a research assistant or TA or something, often they give you. I mean, they don't pay for your living expenses. They may give you a small stipend, but they don't charge you for the actual classes. So as opposed to like an MBA or some of those other professional degrees. So. And I would still say coming out, I would say where my mindset was more of a challenge was, what do I do now? Because you were saying falling back on a PhD.

It's really funny. There's this old joke, and I don't know if it's true, but, you know, people come into kind of MBAs, like, being, you know, kind of wanting to change the world and coming out feeling like they're absolutely ready to take on the world. People come into a PhD thinking they're ready to help the world, and they come out feeling dumber than when they came in because there is this mindset. And I think part of it is, you know, there's all that you can know, all that you can do. And, and. But it's very easy to feel like I have this very specific degree now. And it's even more specific because I've gone so far down this path that this is all I can do. And that's what I convinced myself of, that all I can do is to be, you know, a psychologist.

And to all of my friends and colleagues out there, that is not a dis on a psychology. That's. It's more of. I had told myself that if I don't do this, I will fail. So that was more the mindset that I had to struggle with versus, you know, kind of the monetary piece or how do I shift over into, you know, using my PhD for something else.

How did you get through that? How did you convince yourself? Trick yourself? How did you. What was, what was it that got you through that saying, I'm not going to be a failure. I'm not this one thing, you know, I'm Rachel. I'm not PhD candidate in this very hyper specific, you know, world and entity and discipline or problem you're solving and whatever. You know, how those PhD things work.

Absolutely. It was a, it was a process. You know, I would love to say that, oh, you know, I woke up, I was enlightened. You know, trumpets heralded a new era, and it's not what happened. So one of the things I say in my book is that change happens when fear of the unknown is finally dwarfed by a looming dread of the same.

Oh, okay.

Yes. I really had to get to a place where I was miserable and I couldn't fight it anymore. And that is when I talk in the book about these clicks. When you think about a combination lock, sometimes people focus on the aha moment or the lock springing open. We ignore or don't appreciate all the little clicks that brought us there. It's kind of, you know, if you hit the wrong numbers, you're locked, lock doesn't open. And looking back, I, I can see where these tiny little shifts started to happen. These, these, these steps I took, these risks I took and how I moved up.

And then all of a sudden, something kind of broke open and I realized what I was doing to myself. I realized how miserable I was making myself. And that this continuing down this path as safe as it felt, because we have this comfort and discomfort. As long as it's discomfort, we know, right? Yeah. We play small because we think we're safe. And for those folks who aren't watching the video, safe is in air quotes because that doesn't exist anyway.

Right.

So I had to make this leap out of the program. I had no idea where I was going. I happened to be engaged at the time. And so I at least had something I knew. I had no idea I was giving up a future, a career, everything, you know, that I thought was safe. And it wasn't like leaving school, which people would think of. It was like cutting off my right arm. And I had defined myself by this.

And I jumped. And that's when the real work started. I had to process, I had to take risks, I had to do new things. I had to challenge myself that I wasn't really pushing myself far enough. And I've had the good fortune along many places in my career where some things just broke like they Broke hard enough and it wasn't me breaking them always, they broke hard enough where I had to do something different. And sometimes it's like the universe just bashed you over the head. And you waited too long. You might have been getting little clues like, you should change, you should do this.

And then finally, finally the universe just gives up and it's like bash you over the head. No, this is time. You have to do something different. So it was a lot of growth. It was a lot of head bashing. It was a lot of realizing that when I would take those steps, I was more capable than I thought I was. There were other things I could do and starting to, you know, the world likes to put us in boxes, you know, because boxes are easy. We can, oh, you belong in this box.

Now I can walk away and I know exactly what that looks like. And I feel, I feel safe. And I know how everything works. And we do it for ourselves, which is even worse, right? I am this, I am that. And starting to challenge that is this really kind of gooey discomfort. And that's where the transformation happens.

Was there. I don't know maybe how to phrase this, but maybe like a technique or a ritual or self talk, a habit or something like that. When that fear is there and you're scared and it's like that unknown, our brains just, just absolutely hate that unknown. Right. We don't like that, that uncertainty that, that thing that's scary versus staying in a safe zone. How did you use that to get through it? Maybe you have techniques you teach other people. What do we do to get that fear and push through it? Knowing I don't know what's on the other side necessarily, but I have the fortitude, I have the ability and kind of get through that. I hope that.

Oh, absolutely. I think it's a multi pronged approach or, you know, kind of like a multi attack kind of. It's like a military analogy. We're coming at it from flanks in the.

And the six.

You know, we got Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines all coming in to help us. So one thing in the back of the book, I do put exercises in there. By the way, the book is Butterfly Goo, the Down and Dirty Truth of Transformation. Really looking at what it is to personally transform.

And I'll link that for you guys in the show notes, so don't worry about it.

So the exercises in the back. And again, you just get to read the book, you get to do whatever you want with it, but they're there. In fact, they're Even on the website, which we can talk about, you can download them now for free. I think there are certain kind of structural things you can do. And that, for me, anyway, my experience was, you know, we're flooded with emotion when we're. When we're scared, and it really short circuits our cognitive processing. It's just, you know, which makes sense early on in, you know, humans are hunting and gathering and something jumps out of the bush. We have to be prepared to react.

The problem is our world has changed. Our brain hasn't. So doing something that can bring our brains back into at least some semblance of, you know, cognitive processing, draining that emotion away, it's not going to go away. And I want to be clear about that, because if people still feel anxious, they'll think, oh, I'm doing something wrong, or I can't do this. No, no. So you're trying just to kind of find that foundation again. A couple of things. One, you know, to your point, it's naming.

These sounds so simple, but they really do work. What am I feeling? Naming what I'm feeling? So starting with that, and if I sit in it. First of all, I did this just the other day. I was anxious about something. I was worried, and I just sat down with a pencil and paper and I. Because for me, physically getting my. Using that, it just helps me as opposed to typing. But if you like to type, do that.

It's like just being able to get out what's going on. Getting it out of my head and seeing it on paper and it processes and I get to see it physically because sometimes when things are in black and white, they look really different than when you're just allowing them to bounce in your head and you're bringing things into the light. Because I talk a lot about. People use the term gremlin. They use the term inner critic. It's that little voice in our head that we have a dialogue. And I mean dialogue, because it's not a monologue with ourselves. We are talking.

It loves it when we just keep stuff inside because either shame or fear of addressing it, because that's where the stuff festers. It festers in the dark. And there's that. There's that sense of control that it'll just keep us small. So getting out, really sitting in discomfort, being able to process it. Now, to be fair, we all have escapism sometimes, you know, spend too much time on YouTube. Got it. You get that every once in a while.

But being able to sit actively in what's, you know, what's challenging for you or what you're scared of, it starts to dissipate when you start to work on it. You start to, you know, think through a challenge. What those critics are talking to you about it doesn't mean you're just pushing them away. Because I think sometimes people will say, oh, well, that's not true. Well, you haven't really convinced yourself. You've just pushed it to the side. It's like, okay, what is it? I'm worried about how much of that is true. What has me be concerned about that what might be true.

Instead we talk about making a decision or not making a decision. Well, that's not how this works. Making a decision to take action is one thing. Making a decision not to take action and staying the same, that's still a decision. So you got to have accountability for it because otherwise you're like, oh, I'm just, you know, I'll wait, I'll make the decision tomorrow. No, you've just made a decision.

Yeah, that is your decision.

That is your decision.

No decision is a decision. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's a lot of that processing and there are different exercises. Like I said in the book, there's different exercises for people, find what works for you. Some people, the journaling really helps. Some people it's, you know, talking to someone, therapist, friend, your dog, whatever. So you find what works for you.

AI absolutely good at these things now. Yes.

Yeah. I had a client that I was working with and in between our sessions I, I do executive coaching and he asked, you know, chat GPT like, so this is where I am with my career and asking these questions. Basically it came out, well, maybe you're in the wrong job. And I'm thinking, do you really need me or did I just lose my job? Because I'm not so sure that wasn't about that wasn't a bad question. So yes, there's so many ways and it's not if someone tells you you have to do X, Y and Z challenge that run challenge what works for you. Because when people say you should do this, one of the things is a lot of times that's built, that's built on their fear, that's built on their experience, that's built on their journey, not yours.

Right. And a lot of times I noticed that that also doesn't even come from them. It comes from somebody that taught them that as a child, a well meaning parent or a teacher or something along those lines.

Right. Yeah. A lot of people think that by giving you definitive things to work on or that you absolutely have to do this. They think they're giving you security or a path forward, and they're not. They're basically imposing kind of their path on yours. And one of the things, the best we can do for people when they're struggling is not to give them the answers. It's to come alongside them while they struggle and support them, because struggling is part of the transformation process. And as a result, when we have to struggle, we develop more confidence and we develop more agency, not just in that moment, but for all the struggles we'll face moving forward.

I. I've heard. I'm not sure this is related. I think it could be. There's a part of your brain that literally gets bigger or smaller. The harder you do things, the more challenges you have. I forget what it's called. I think I heard it on Andrew Huberman's podcast.

I'm not sure.

Yes, I heard that on Huberman's podcast. I do not remember. It's been a long time since I've been in psychology, so. Remembering the brain architecture. But, yes, I think he was talking about. It used to be that people would say willpower is a myth. And because we were trying to think ourselves into something that was, you know, biological drives, habits, all of that. What he said, at least from what I recall from the podcast you and I listened to, was, the longer we can.

We can postpone gratification, There is a part of our brain that, to your point, becomes stronger, bigger. You know, we always talk about it like it's a muscle. It's not a muscle, but it's a good analogy. So the longer we postpone, maybe it's 15. 15 minutes we postpone eating that chocolate cake or whatever it is we're trying to resist. Then the next time, 20 minutes. Next time, 30. So whether or not it's really, truly willpower or we're leveraging the parts of our brain that actually allow us to put off the idea of immediate gratification.

Yeah, I mean, let's do that. Just test yourself. Push your limits. And again, it doesn't have to be that, oh, I'm not going to eat any sugar now for the next month. And I've been eating sugar my whole life. Okay, what's like. What's like today? Could you. Could you push it out a half an hour? Could you push it out a day? How do you work towards that?

And like you're saying, a lot of times that just goes away. In my experience, you want the. I want ice cream. Right now. And you're like, you know what, let me go do this, let me finish this up, let me finish this project, let me waste after lunch. And then it just kind of goes away a lot of the times. And I think to me, when I do this myself, I like the phrase being comfortable, being uncomfortable. And I think about these things.

The more I do these things, the more I jump in the ice bath, the more I get in the sauna, the more I don't want to work out and I do, the more I do these things, it's, it's, to me, it's just building my self discipline, building up this thing, you know, kind of in a way telling that, you know, kind of like, you know, bitch ass part of my brain that's like, no, no, no, don't do that stuff saying, no, listen, I'm in charge. I know we don't want to do this, this is going to be uncomfortable. And then just got it doing it and building that, that discipline that will up. I like to think about like, you know, like motivation and discipline. I like to think about those things kind of the terms of like a car, right? When you sit in a car, I think the most, maybe best way people would feel this is like an electric car. Torque is what kind of gets you moving. This puts you back in your seat. That's what I think motivation is.

It gets you moving. But you need the horsepower. That's the discipline. And the discipline is what keeps you in motion, which is the horsepower of a car. So that's kind of how I like to think about that.

I love that analogy. And I think to your point, what I'm also hearing is starting a lot of times is the hardest point. Absolutely start, then you start to get some momentum, you start to get going. It reminds me I used to have, when I was in school, I had a beater of a car that would die and all sorts of problems. And it's one of those things where if you can get enough of a charge to get like, if you could or if you can just start pushing the car, if your battery's dead, it'll start to give it enough that the battery will start and then it will keep going, going. But sometimes you need a little push. But that if we can just get started and we can build that habit to your point, then even if your body's, you know, you're waking up at 5 o' clock in the morning, you want to go to the gym and your, your, your, your brain's like, no, I want to Go back to sleep. When you do that and you build that habit, eventually your body's like, nope, let's go.

And, like, what I'll do is get up and, like, just stop my brain from processing. And I go to it. I go to the Nemo place and I'm like, just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. And you. You actually tune out that voice that's telling you not to do it. And you just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Yeah. A lot of times just like you're saying, you know, it's like, well, you know, I don't want to go to the gym today, but I'm just going to go head over there. And you're there and you're like, I might as well just walk in.

Exactly.

And, you know, I. The biggest one for me is I stand in front of my ice bath every morning and I just stare at it and I pat my pockets 15 times, and I look around the garage and I'm just. Just stand in it. It takes 10 seconds, and then all the crap is over. But I stand there for 5, 10, 15 minutes sometimes just staring at it, wandering around, thinking about things, but just training myself to just, like, just get in and it's over in 10 seconds. And you don't even think about it anymore. It's very interesting.

Yep. Love it.

When you're talking about earlier, we're talking about, like, anxiety, stuff like that. I've heard that a lot of times, I think especially with anxiety, we mislabel that as, like, excitement or nervousness.

Tell me more about that.

So let's say, like, I'm getting ready for this podcast and I'm. Let's say I feel anxious, but if I actually examine that, it's like, well, I'm not actually anxious. I'm excited or I'm nervous. Like, am I gonna do good? Am I gonna, you know, are we gonna have a great conversation? Or if you're getting ready to go on stage, like, oh, I'm so anxious about this. Actually, no, I'm excited or I'm nervous that I'm gonna perform or I'm gonna do well.

Yes, I agree with that. I think. Well, I would say yes. And I mean, again, my guess, my brain, you know, kind of architecture knowledge is a little outdated, but it probably uses a lot of the same circuitry, so. And I don't think it's an either or. I had. I did, you know, plays and musicals when I was in high school. Should have kept doing it because I really liked it, you know, at least as a hobby.

Too late.

Yeah. But I convinced myself I needed to get serious. Whatever. That's a whole nother conversation.

Sure.

My director one time, because I was really struggling with stage fright. And even when I got on, when I'm nervous, my hands shake. And there's so trying to do recitals on a piano. It was horrible. In plays, I could move my hands. I could do the things to counteract that. But I remember my director telling me, if you're not nervous, you're not ready. Because if you're not nervous, you're not a little anxious.

You don't realize that what you're about to do or you don't appreciate how important it is to. To you. And so to your point, it's a little. Yes, we might mislabel. It's kind of this arousal piece. Nervous, excited. So part of it is also, you know, how do we. How do we talk to ourselves about that arousal? What's.

What. How do we. Because I think one of the big things is how do we talk to ourselves? What are we telling ourselves? What. You know, and. Because the people are going to tell us all sorts of stuff, what are we telling ourselves about that arousal? And how do we possibly change the conversation?

And I think it sounds like, to me, it kind of goes back to what you're saying earlier about labeling those emotions. I know it also works when you're talking with somebody else or whatever. You know, you come up to a colleague or a friend or maybe even just a stranger, and you're like, you look at them, it looks like they're not having. You're like, tough day. Just labeling those things seems to kind of diffuse things and maybe even open up a conversation.

It does. It's so funny. And I think this is important because from a cultural perspective, we a lot of times ask people how they are, but it's not really a question. It's more of like, you know, like, hi, how you doing? One of my really good friends, she moved here from Germany and, you know, different cultural expectations. She was in an elevator with someone. Clearly the person was then trapped with her after that. And they said, how's your day going? And she thought they really meant it. And so she started talking.

They're in headlights kind of thing. And I actually like the idea. What would it be if you saw someone that was having a bad day or you thought they were, and you asked the question and you really listened. How different would this world be?

I think we'd have so much more Compassion and empathy for the other person. I think a lot of times we don't realize or we kind of even forget that what that person is going through. The person cut you off in traffic, the person that wants to get ahead of you in line, you have no idea what's going on with that day. Maybe their kids dying, or maybe they've got a poop or who knows what it is? They're going through a divorce, their spouses, whatever. They're about to lose their job. I mean, so many things. We just had that empathy. I like that idea.

I love what you just said, because it just happened to me the other day. I was in line at the pharmacy and just waiting, and this guy in front of me kept backing up into me, and I. Maybe he was trying to, you know, just distance himself, you know, the six feet or whatever. And it was just. It was annoying me. And I was kind of like, okay, dude, stop moving. I didn't say anything. And I again, kind of assumed that he's in a hurry, he's just not paying attention.

And this woman who had been in line, she asks to go back in line. He's like, yeah, sure, blah, blah, blah. And they got on some conversation. Like, she's like, yeah, today's just not been a good day. He's like, oh, I totally know. My wife was just diagnosed with cancer.

Oh.

And, like, it took the wind out of me. And then also, I could hear him kind of joking. And you knew he wasn't really joking. You knew this was a defense, that he was trying to kind of brush it off, because it was a very intimate discussion. And we all know that, like, maybe this is a tmi, but if I turn it into a joke, and at that moment, and I didn't, and I still wonder what would have happened. I wanted to just say to him, I'm so sorry to hear that. And what I struggled with was, I will often do that. But at this point, it felt so personal, and I wasn't sure if I should intrude or how that would feel for him.

After it, I regretted it. I regretted not just saying, you know, that sounds really hard, and then letting him decide whether or not he wanted to engage with me. And to your point, my empathy went through the roof. And all of a sudden, him backing into me, I mean, how stupid is that? How could I possibly think that was important? Yes.

It's so interesting. I. I did a podcast with the two back, if you guys want to jump back and look with. About kindness. And it's kind of along these lines we're talking about here, which just. Just kind of defaulting to that and just leading with. With kindness all the time. That's.

That's. It's interesting how that comes back, right. It seems it's kind of gotten out of society in a way. We've. I. I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but definitely in America. I know, I know. I kind of are founding.

This is kind of about ourself and about freedom and doing what you want and whatnot. And that's kind of seems a little bit unique to America. But I think it's gotten even more so now about being very selfish and all about me, and I'm all that matters. My victimhood or whatever it is is all that matters. And yours doesn't matter at all.

Mm. Or we're. We're. We're so sensitive to people being sensitive that we kind of put up this. This wall. And I think, you know, I think any strength taken too far is a weakness. And to your point, other cultures have other strengths that maybe they take too far. You know, the idea of feeling that we can accomplish things, we have optimism.

A lot of folks, you know, I remember Ted Lasso saying they were talking about Americans and they're kind of being stupidly optimistic, but we are. But the challenge has been that, yes, we think we can do this. And it does become taken too far. It becomes very singular minded. It becomes really self focused and we actually need community. We need to be connected. We are social creatures. And I think to your point, not only taken too far do we think only about me, but it feels like in the last number of years, Covid other things that are challenging us, we're insulating ourselves and we're disconnecting from community.

And I do think that lowers our empathy and our willingness to be kind and understanding.

How. How can we kind of get past that? I notice when you're saying this, I noticed the younger generations, and I know every generation has always said this. They. They just. When they're faced with something difficult like this or they're faced with something uncomfortable, I notice they just. Just walk away or they just leave. Even in person, it's like they've taken this ghosting or this whatever to the physical world. Any thoughts on kind of maybe how we can get back this, maybe get more social, maybe get more away from that, maybe back to more of our social being?

You know, and I think it goes back to what you said earlier, being willing to sit in it. I mean, it's Two things, right? There is the emotional intelligence. So there's the awareness and the skill to actually do something about it. If because of, say, Covid or lockdown or a lot of reasons why maybe we haven't honed that skill or it's atrophied because we haven't used that. I think having that emotional intelligence to engage in difficult conversations and sitting with people in difficult emotions, even if it's not directed at you being able. When someone does have cancer or someone's, you know, wife has cancer or something has happened, being able to sit with them in that. Because the other thing people tend to do, and this just came up again the other day, was they'll say, oh, it's okay. Or it was every.

You know, there's a. There's a plan, or, you'll be fine, all this stuff. And technically, I know their intent is to help you, make you feel better, but really, it's making you feel better. So it's making them feel worse because it's making them feel isolated. This has happened to me. I'm sure it's happened to you. So I think one, being aware, first of all, of what we're doing, being willing to sit with people and practicing that, because that alone is a skill. Listening, not giving advice, but truly just asking a question or not saying anything and letting them talk, and then honing our skills around constructive conflict, as they would say, or difficult conversations, because when we just walk away, we feel like we're stronger.

We've put up this barrier. They haven't invaded our boundaries. The problem is you've just reinforced yourself for that. So you've reinforced the idea that barriers are the way to go. And, you know, I used to talk about pulling up the drawbridge. You know, I talked about that. The problem with that is it's hard to put that drawbridge back down. That once we start insulating ourselves against the people we think we need to protect ourselves from, it's also hard to pull it down with the people that we actually want to let in.

I. I'm not sure if it's a me thing, a male thing, or what. I like to. Like, you're coming to me. You got this problem. You got empathy. I'm like, I got solutions for you. Like, let it all out.

I'm gonna write these down, and we're gonna knock all these out.

Yeah.

How can I get better that. How can we get better than those of us that default to that?

Well, I love what you said, first of all, just recognizing that might be your M.O. and to your point, research, maybe we talk about a lot of that. Maybe there is some gender differences on that. Whether it is or not, it's more important about you. How do you tend to approach these things? First of all, how do you notice when you're doing it? Because if you don't notice it, you can't do anything about it. So first of all, how do you notice? And then stop talking, Listen, Ask an open ended question, not a question that's going to. One of the things that's funny is a couple things people tend to ask. Yes, no questions, which gives you no.

First of all, it assumes you're going to go one of these two directions or they'll say, don't you think X? Not a question, it's a statement disguised as a question. So instead you can say, you can ask a question like, okay, what's going on with that? Or how is that for you? Or it can also be a statement, tell me more about that. And then stop talking. Because we tend to fill in the blanks that we don't do well with space. Talk about a cultural piece as well. The US tends to be built on the idea that extroversion is the best possible personality. And first of all, we are not all extroverts. Some of the folks who are introverts have actually learned to pass as extroverts, I want to call it.

But we tend to fill space. I do it so it's like this uncomfortable silence that for us feels like ages, but really it's been like three seconds. So sit with yourself, wait until the other person responds. It will be hard if that's not your regular mo and it's again sitting in the comfort, getting comfortable in your discomfort and just wait and wait and see what happens. Wait and see where they take the conversation. If it is their conversation self manage, watch your reaction and try to truly be present for them. And it's practice. So notice practice and just assume you're not going to be perfect.

Just like anything else, it's a skill, so work on it.

And I've talked to this on a few other episodes. I, I like to challenge people and I to challenge myself to this too is try and have a conversation with somebody where you barely talk. And then when you're done they're like, that was a wonderful conversation. I've had this happen. And I'm like, I didn't say anything. But that's when they're able to feel heard. They're able to let that out, that space. Yeah, it's tough to start.

But I think, to me, what. What I think when I like to talk to. I like to just keep going, and I need to solve everybody's problems. But when you're able to just practice that and just be quiet and really, truly listen.

Yeah.

The things that come out of people, first of all, are just absolutely mind blowing.

Yeah.

But when you're just listening and you're truly not like, I try to tell my kids and stuff, you. You might have heard what was happening, but you're not listening because you're waiting to talk or you're. You're waiting for this to be over or whatever it is.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Yeah. Waiting to respond. That's not real listening.

No. Change my characters maybe just a little bit here. What are the most common things people are stuck with?

Wow. The most common. Feels like there's just such a litany of options.

Maybe go top three. I don't know.

I think. Well, okay, so one of the things is, I think, one of the pieces. We look at the different stages of our life, and really, it's a continuum. Right. But we tend to hit milestones, we tend to hit points. The idea that what's worked for us in the past and what has been our goal and vision in the past should be our goal and vision and what's worked going forward. And it's that old adage of what worked for you, what got you here won't get you there. It's not just true in our jobs, it's true in life.

And so I see people hit certain milestones in their career or just their journey, and they get stuck because all of a sudden what they've been doing doesn't work anymore, and they don't know what else to do. And so they feel mired in that goo, mired in that stuck. And because we do have this very individualized society, overall, they don't ask for help. I mean, we give lip service all the time to. Oh, asking for help is a strength. You know, Being vulnerable is a strength. Yes. And we still don't do it.

So that's, I think, one of the key areas that. Where people get stuck. Before I go on, let me. Yeah, let me. Before I keep going, tell me what you're hearing or what do you want to say about that?

No, yeah, that's. It reminds me of, I mean, these cliches, these old adages, you know, if you want it done right, do it yourself. You know, if I'm trying to think of something else. But I mean, so Many of these things, it's just like, they're so stupid. But only when you're. When it's not you, right? Yeah, it's me. I'm like, of course I'm just gonna fix the toilet. I.

I don't need help. I don't need anybody. Of course I can carry three things at once. I don't need your help. But when you're watching somebody else, you're like, I can help you. But it's so interesting to me. But I don't know where I learned or how I stopped or whatever it is, but I don't know. But in my mind, it's just stupid, absolutely stupid.

But I think it's taken time. I don't probably recognize when and where, but I've learned that it's so much easier just to have everybody else help you. Maybe call it delegation, you know, whatever it is, that is a hard thing to do. It's easy just to always do everything yourself. That's the easy thing. I think the hard thing is to let go and let people help you and let delegation happen and let, you know, you know, let Bob take on the project. Maybe it's going to be 80% as good as you were going to do it, but you're not doing it. And that's the real thing.

And then now Bob's getting experience, and then you're really, you're really actually being a better human, a better co worker, boss, leader, when you're letting these other guys take responsibility and do what needs to be done.

And even what you were saying, even in the small ways you were talking earlier about being open, just listening to someone else, they feel stuck, they may need help. And it can feel like I'm not taking action, so I'm not helping. But stepping back and just listening, that is helping.

I wonder when you're, as we're talking about this, is this maybe like an IM kind of thing where it's like, I am the boss, I am the senior manager, I am the doctor. Is there something maybe a little bit of that where your personality or your identity is wrapped up in. I am.

That was actually one of the next pieces I was going to say is sometimes to your point, it's a career. We've chosen a stage of life. We are like, you know, I'm. I'm a mother, I'm a husband. We have these labels and we have these ideas of what that means, and we get very. Our ego gets involved. You know, when it's our job, I am this. I, you know, Whatever.

And. And I want to be successful. A lot of that also comes to. I have to prove something, whether it's to others or myself. I, you know, I am. And it does. It becomes. It's not us.

It is something we do. But what's really important is that we try to extract that. Because when the label or the stage of life that we're in, when we don't see that as separate from who we are as a person, we can get pulled in all sorts of ways and have to face the expectations of what society says it is to be a good mother or husband or doctor or whatever. I mean, technically, doctors have boards that they're supposed to be certified, maybe a little different, but we have these labels and our ego gets involved that we are supposed to do X because we have this label. And I think that's where people get stuck. And that's also where a lot of people are less likely to ask for help because they feel there's an expectation. And that by being vulnerable and asking for help, they violated that expectation or they are not living up to the expectation that everybody else is able, you know, to do. And it's like, yeah, everybody else just has, like, really good armor.

It's. You're not the only one. And that's. That's so important. We are not alone. No matter what you're doing. You're not the only one struggling with this.

It's interesting because from what I see in my experience, whatnot, when you let people know, I don't know how to do this. I don't know what's happening. There's actually more strength than that. And then pretending or trying to, you know, especially when somebody is an expert or good in this thing and you're pretending like you don't need help and you know what's going on. There's actually more weakness there than just saying, I don't know what's going on. I need help.

Oh, yeah. I mean, our egos do all sorts of funky things that they get us wrapped in pretzels. It's. It's. Yeah. But being able to say, I don't know and. Or, you know, I need help. Those are very powerful.

And not trying to make an excuse or feel bad that we don't know everything. Everything there is to know about everything, to your point, that's just stupid. It's unrealistic. And yet we convince ourselves that that's what we're supposed to do all the time.

It's funny, it reminds me of my son was man, he Must have been like three or four. And he, he just was, he just, I think it's just a maybe access to information, whatever it is. He just knows so much about so many things. And we're just walking, I think we're walking to the park or from the park or something like that. He's asking me about like how far Mars was away or something like that. And I, I was like, I have no idea. He said, he just looks at me with the most disappointed look a 4 year old can give you. He's like, dad, I thought you were a scientist.

And I was like, dang, man. I was like, listen, son, I don't know everything. He's like, sometimes it seems like you do, dad. It's like I, we just get lucky, buddy. Like, I know most of the answers to your questions, but I just don't know. And, but that to me was one of the great lessons I think I could have taught. I taught him, was just, dude, it's okay to say you don't know. I'm gonna find out.

Let's look this up. Especially now, I'm just like, I just, I talk to my car, I'm like, hey, Google. And it's just like. And we just start going off on the thing.

Yeah.

So easy nowadays. And like, like we're saying, I think there's so much strength and saying, I don't know. And it's tough. Like, you know, I know we're both in like the client business and whatnot. And when you ask a question and somebody's paying you thousands of dollars and it's like, I don't know. But that's a hard thing to say to somebody when I, I came to you because I think, you know, yes, that's very tough.

That is. And it's also an opportunity to say, I don't know and I'll figure that out or I'll get that, or I will find someone who can help you. I do want to go back with your son. I think that's a beautiful example of modeling, of being able early on to say it's okay not to know. I think too often we think what we know, we think intelligence, we think all of that is static, that we're either born with it or we're not. And it is such a load of crap. I mean, we have been fed IQ tests that somehow there's this, you know, authority out there that measures exactly how smart. What exactly does that even mean? It's a number, you know, it's not correlated to success overall.

It may be correlated to how well you do on a test, but that's not life. Motivation, tenacity, willing to learn and put yourself out there and try new things and learn new things. That is what success is. And this idea that it's static and that we are afraid people will find out, the imposter syndrome that, oh, my gosh, I don't know, and I'm an imposter, that makes us so small. And the willingness to take risks and fall on our face, that's what allows us to grow. That's what makes us successful. And I think it's really what you were showing your son is such an important thing to model for kids, for everybody, but especially for us early on in our lives.

Thank you for that. Imagine you had another yesterday. I've been having some issues with. With my car. There's a. There's a. It's. I got.

Brought a brand new car and some trim piece is just not fitting well. They brought my car back to my house yesterday. Some. Just some random kid dropping it off. And I open the door and I just lose it because this is now the. This three times and they can't get it done. And my son's sitting there standing there with me, and I'm just. I just.

I'm just like. And then the guy dropping up the car, he's just like, listen, I'm sorry, man. It's not you. I know you have nothing to do with this. I'm just upset. Sorry about this. Nothing to do with you. And he wanted me to sign something and say, listen, you know, and.

And then after he left and, you know, and my son's like, wow, dad. He's like, most people would have yelled at that guy and never apologized to him, knowing whether they knew it or not, there's nothing to do with him. They would have just taken all their anger and frustrated on you and said, not only did you not do that, you told him that this has nothing to do with you and you're sorry and this is nothing to him. And. And I was like. I was like, I didn't think nothing of that, but how impressed he was that I was able to just kind of not belittle this guy and not take all my anger out on this guy. I think that's. To me, that's a.

A great example, like you're saying, of showing, you know, how we can, you know, maybe not be emotional, maybe control this a little bit. Being able to apologize, being able to know I'm wrong and not being wrong.

Yeah, well, And I think, wow, first of all, your son, he's pretty perceptive. You're going to have to watch him. You got your work cut out in a great way.

Yes, yes.

And I think back to what you're saying too. I think they're. People confuse our emotional reaction with our response. In between reaction and response, there's a gap. And in that gap there's an opportunity for choice. We can do a lot to help with our reactions. People, they do yoga, they meditate, they do all those things. And if we're not there yet and we still have that reaction, we have to recognize that we have choice.

That they say, well, I got upset because of, of this. And it's really funny. Psychologists from way back, Aaron Beck used to do cognitive behavioral therapy said nobody makes you feel a particular way your body may react, Right. But you, you get to choose between reaction and response. And there's a great quote by Viktor Frankl who wrote Man's search for meaning.

Yes.

And it's for those of you out there who don't know him, he survived a concentration camp, his whole family died. And he is known for this quote, and I'm going to butcher the exact phrase, but you know, nobody can take from you the last of human freedoms. No matter what happens, nobody can take from you your ability to choose how you respond. And I really hold that because I think everything that man has gone through, nothing in my life compares to that. And if he can find that choice, if he can find that peace, then I, I've, I've got no reason to think that I can't do that and be the same.

Yeah, that. It's a beautiful book. I'll link to that for you guys. It's a short read, but it's profound. If you guys are into stoicism as well, that all kind of links together. Epictetus and Marx and all these guys have said similar things. And it's a funny, I like how you were saying that it's just so beautiful that we. Maybe it goes back to earlier conversation of how we're so self centered, self centric, where it's like, you did this to me.

I can't possibly do anything to you at all. You've allowed this in your head. You've allowed me to get into your mind and, and not control yourself and have. No, A lot of times I think to me it's no, no discipline, no self discipline, no accountability. Boy, one thing that makes me mad, madder than mad at anything is when somebody starts blaming everybody else for their Own things.

Oh, yeah.

Boy, does that just. Just get me going. Yeah, but that if we just realized, no, I'm not doing anything to you. Trump's not doing anything to the news is not doing anything to you. The comments on Instagram is not doing anything to you. It's how you're reacting, how you're responding. I would even take this one step further and is when those things bother you, I'm examining what about that is bothering you. Why are you so bothered by this? To me, I would think, and the way I think about this for myself is something in this is true and it's hurting me and it makes me feel some kind of way.

Maybe it's bruising my ego or something like that. And I need to examine this, like, back with my car thing, when I went back to the dealership, it took everything in me to just not be extremely mad and, and pissed off. And I talked to the guy and I was like, you know, I told him, am I being unreasonable? And he said, you know, you are difficult. And I was like, you know, am I being difficult? And that's, that's. I. Instead of saying, I could have easily just gone off on him and took this in a whole nother direction and not took accountability or blame, but I was like, you know, maybe I'm being a little difficult. You know, whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter. I thought took that as an opportunity to examine my behavior and, and how I was handling things.

It's like, you know, am I being difficult? I probably am. Could I be kinder about it? Could I. I word these things better? Could I get my point across in a. In a better way instead of maybe being, you know, gotchas or whatever it was I was probably doing that was hurting his feelings or bruising his ego or something along those lines. Sorry.

Yeah, no, no, I think you make a good point. And I think, you know, the other piece too, with ego, I think there's also a sense of some value of ours is maybe being stepped on and. Or we feel a lack of control. We feel a lack of control about how someone is treating us or what we can do. And we. We step into that and that again, boundaries go up, anger goes up, we get triggered. And to your point, how do we stop? And. And again, naming, kind of just naming even how we're feeling, my understanding is it pulls us a little bit out of that emotion, at least enough back to the cognitive to help.

And one of the things, again, instead of reacting, what question could we Ask in that moment. And I was thinking with the gentleman at the car situation, and cars as they get more complicated. You know, I used to change my own oil when I was a kid and, like, don't even know where it is now. Asking him. And. And again, tone is so important. It. No matter what you say, if what they hear is, you know, you're an idiot.

That, you know, because words. It's like, you can say things that sound right, but the tone comes across. You didn't say they were an idiot. They know that's what you meant.

Right.

Instead asking him, look, difficult situation. If you were me, what would you do? And meaning it genuinely, it's like not to your point, going off and say, well, what would you do?

Right.

Right. But it's like, help me. If you were me, what would you do? See what they say.

Yeah. That I could. I could just feel how that could be so diffusing from both of us. You're. I'm upset at you. You think maybe it's not a big deal or. Or you're right or whatever it is. Yeah, I could see.

I could. I could feel that being diffusing.

Yeah. It's hard to do in the moment.

It is very hard. It's very hard. Like, you know, with. Back to this thing yesterday, I had to. I literally had to walk away because I was so upset. And like I said, when people start blaming and having excuses, that's like my. The one thing that just throws me off the deep. And I just.

I just can't do eyes, like. But I. I know I. I literally had to walk away. I was like. Because just start. He starts coming to all these excuses and all these different things, and I'm like, all right, I got. I gotta go because I.

I'm just gonna start yelling at this point, and all the words that come out of my mouth after that is just gonna make this worse.

Well, and I think, you know, acknowledge the fact that you recognize that. And sometimes in the moment, we have the tools and capacity to deal with it. Sometimes we don't. And sometimes the best thing we can do is to go take a break, regroup, when we can actually come at this in a way that could be helpful and, you know, try something different. But I think recognizing that in that moment, there's probably nothing you can do that was going to be productive. Walking away sounds like a pretty good idea.

It took me many years to figure this all out. Don't worry, folks. If it's not happening right now, you can work on it.

Absolutely.

When we were talking just a little bit earlier about being stuck and stuff, something that popped in my head was group thinking. Yeah, I personally, I try to stay away from group think. I don't want to be part of a tribe. I don't want to be, you know, part of a thing I don't understand, like these political tribes. I purposely want to stay uninformed and unaware because I don't want to wind up accidentally falling into a group or a tribe and then suddenly you start justifying, well, my group does this or my tribe does this. My thing does this. How do you think about group think? How should we maybe think about this or maybe protect ourselves from it or maybe if some parts are good, I don't know, how should we think about this?

Well, I think a couple of things. One is challenging ourselves, that it can be an unconscious bias. So one of the questions for yourself might be, how do you know you're not engaged in groupthink? Again, I think it goes back to the best thing we can do is to question it, to challenge ourselves, to actively think, okay, this is what I feel about this situation. Say I take the other person's point of view. It goes back to empathy. It goes back to understanding. It doesn't mean you have to agree with someone. And a lot of times we're like, well, I can't give them an inch.

I can't give them understanding because they don't deserve it. Okay, do you deserve it? Because we're talking about you. We're talking about your understanding, your being connected in, and how do you want to show up? Who's the person you want to be and how do you actually engage in a way that's more likely to bring that out? So first of all, if you're in something and you're really upset, you may not know. Like, there's so many subgroups that we belong to. You know, there's, you know, family, country, you know, ethnicity, gender, all of these things. A lot of it is. We don't even know how much of that is us versus the groups we're in because it's almost infinite the number of groups we belong to. If we're on a particular topic that we're feeling triggered about and you're thinking, no, this is right.

Okay, just take a moment. Devil's advocate, just play with it. If I believe this is true, this were true, or if I believed X, why might I believe that? What might I be thinking? You know, in debate, a lot of times I wasn't on the debate team because we didn't have one. Sounded like a good idea. Probably should have. You have to take opposing views, and you may not agree with that opposing view, but what if you were to actually have the argument with yourself and force yourself to take that step outside? I irritate the crap out of some of my friends because I try to take different. I don't always succeed. I am not standing here on a pedestal.

I am standing here in the muck of it because it is hard. But really being able to see where are they coming from, why might they believe this? And being able to sit with that again doesn't mean you have to come away agreeing with it. But at least you might understand the other person better.

I like that. Okay. What patterns would we see if we could listen to a leader's self talk?

Probably as many patterns as we could, depending on the individual.

Is there some common things?

I would say one of the things that's most surprising is that people think when leaders get to a certain level, echelon, whatever you want to call it, C suite, that they're super confident. They know exactly what to do. They're very decisive. I work with leaders at every level. People in general. Last time I looked, people were leaders or leaders were people. Both. The number of people that still struggle with imposter syndrome at every level, genders, all of it.

It's amazing. And the fact that they will with my clients, that they allow me the privilege to. For them to share that and open up, I am honored because that is not an easy thing and that we're hopefully creating a space where they feel comfortable enough to do that. Because I always say, look, it's like what you're thinking, or if you disagree with me or whatever, then tell me, challenge me, you know, let me know. Because if, if we can get it on the table, we can work with it. If you keep it in your head, I can't do anything about it. And I think that struggle, ongoing struggle, struggle with imposter syndrome, that we think we're not good enough, or we think that someone else is going to find out, or back to your point about I don't know, everything. And then of course, because we're worried people are going to find out, we stay isolated, we stay insular, and that exacerbates the problem because we think we're the only one experiencing that.

Now. I would say with vulnerability, there's always a balance. People earn your vulnerability and there's different kinds of vulnerability. Finding someone you can be vulnerable with, that you trust, that you can work through some of these things, like a coach, like a therapist, like a really valued, trusted confidant friend. It is huge because you start to get outside this idea of it's just me. Because as a leader, my behavior has an exponential impact on an organization. And if I'm making decisions out of fear, and let's face it, all of us are going to be afraid at times, I'm not saying it's going away, but if I am making decisions out of fear and fear of control, fear of, fear of loss of power, fear of people finding out that maybe I'm not what I think I am or not what they think they are, we do not tend to make the best decisions for ourselves, for the organization, for other people. And as a leader, because of the impact we can have, we have a much bigger responsibility to gain a laminar understanding of what it means to be engaged and really process that thinking in a way that will benefit the organization and the people as opposed to keeping them small and at the whim of the decisions you make out of fear.

How would you define imposter syndrome? And maybe what are some of the symptoms of such a thing?

Well, and the beautiful part is a lot of times on the outside, there aren't symptoms because we're masking it, which is why most of us run around thinking people in executive positions don't have it. I think internally what we're experiencing, going back to the gremlins or the inner critics, is they're like, oh, I should know this, oh, I don't know this. Oh, they're going to figure out that I don't. It's so much of it is the self talk and the mental pieces and the decisions we make as a result. So again, watching the conversation you're having with yourself, noticing, sitting in it, being mindful of it, so many things we've talked about, first of all, notice it. Just take stock, like what am I telling myself? And then challenging it, not eschewing it, not like pushing it away because, oh, that can't possibly be true. Clearly there's something in you that thinks it is. So let's have the conversation and then challenging that and testing it, experimenting.

I think that's one of the key things is I'll have coaching sessions with folks and we make great progress and they'll have wonderful insights. And if you don't take that back out into the real world where the wild things are, it won't matter because if it doesn't shift your behavior, it really doesn't matter. For your leadership. So being willing to experiment, go out, try, fall on your ass, whatever it is, then you'll start to challenge also that inner critic, that imposter syndrome. Because yes, you are going to screw up and yes, there will be people who judge you. Congratulations, you're part of the human race. And there will be times where you realize, huh. Nietzsche, I think said, that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

That's not what makes us stronger. What makes us stronger is we fall on our ass and we choose to get up. We make ourselves stronger because we choose to grow instead of letting it knock us down and not getting back up. So experimenting and pushing it will be uncomfortable, it will sometimes be very unpleasant and it can be invigorating and it can be confidence building. And the only way to do it is to get out and take action.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That is so, so much of that like going back to earlier, right? That self discipline to be able to, to, to. To sit in the uncomfortable. Fail, fail. I mean so much things. If we thought of. I think we need to rethink failure a lot of times.

I know I've talked about this on the show before. Everything comes from failure. Everything we've ever thought of was because somebody failed before. The way the iPhone is now, the way your computer is now, because somebody may failed prototypes. The Edison made 10,000 light bulbs that didn't work. All complete failure. Everything's from failure. We, we have to have a better relationship with failure.

We have to embrace failure. Failure is okay. Especially like, you know, we're saying if you can admit it and take ownership of it and embrace it, there's so much to be gained from failure.

Yeah. And to kind of put it out there too. This does not mean failure is ever going to feel good in the moment. You know, it can feel good once you get past it in the moment. If it sucks, then great, it sucks. And be okay with that. Give yourself some race and really being conscious of. Okay, what did I learn because I learned something.

Well, if I allow myself to really examine it, doing the after action review kind of thing, then I can learn if I just keep making same mistakes or I keep retreating back into my, my comfort zone and say, well, see, I shouldn't have tried that because clearly I don't know what I'm doing or I can't and I can't. No, you get to choose. We will learn something. If we, you know, if we fall, maybe even physically fall off, fall off a curve. Okay, well then stop texting on your iPhone while you're trying to walk near the street. I learned something. Now, will I put that into action the next time I'm doing that? Well, that's up to me. So that's growth.

If I keep, you know, falling over the same curb, well, that's a whole different story.

You know, one thing I, I think helps with that is writing down, in whichever way you want to write something down, what you think is going to happen before your predictions, you know, the outcomes, whatever you want. And then so when you go back after and you do that post mortem and you look back and, and you don't have that revisionist history in your brain of, of thinking things were maybe going to be different, you look back. I think that helps a lot. Having that grounded sense of, of your what actually you thought, not what you think you remember and then going, okay, oh, I did think this was going to fail, or I didn't think that was possibly going to work or whatever it is and being able to ground yourself. And I think that helps a little bit with the failure and kind of getting this thing off of it and adding an element of able to learn from what happened.

Oh, absolutely. And I like the structure and I would say yes. And there's also the option to say, here's what I'm going to do, what am I afraid will happen? What's the worst that can happen? What's the best that can happen? And then talk about, okay, if this is the worst, what is that? What's, you know, what's going on? And then if the best, what will that bring to my life? And then flip it, if I do nothing, what's the best that can happen? What's the worst that can happen? Because a lot of times we forget there are consequences to inaction. And a lot of times what I see working with leaders and just people in general is I don't want to take risks, I don't need to grow in this area. I'm fine the way I am. Great. But here's the deal. The world is not going to stand still.

We are, we are on a path. So even if you're not stepping outside your comfort zone, the world is going to make your comfort zone smaller because it is going to move on without you. AI is a great example. It's this whole revolution, right? And it's one of those where we can say, well, I'm not comfortable with this, I'm not. Okay, well, you know what? If you're fine with basically not being engaged in any kind of career or in any kind of. Or working with technology for the rest of your life. And you want to go live in a cave, Great, do that. Everybody else, this is going to happen.

There's a lot of. It's kind of the idea of the horse and buggy and the car. Much easier to see in retrospect. Right. You can say, I'm not going to get on board, but the world's going to move on without you. So being clear to your point about what do I think is going to happen, what's the best? What's the worst case? And then being able to look back on it and flipping it if I take no action, what's the best? The safety piece. What's the worst? What am I going to miss out on? What am I going to lose? Because we are very motivated not to lose.

Yes, the fear aversion, loss of fear, whatever. I forget what it's called, but yes.

Fear of missing out, that kind of thing, Right?

Yeah. Loss aversion. That's the word.

Loss aversion. Yeah.

Right. It reminds me of this. This reminds me of the stoic exercise. I think it's from I was Epictetus or Seneca. It's. What is it? I fear the scat food, the clothes, the, you know, laying on the floor. And I took that literally. We did this for a few years where the last Sunday of the month, we ate beans and rice.

I showed my kids what this is about. It's funny because this is pre Covid and, you know, you know, what is it like? So what are we scared of? What am I, am I scared of being homeless? Am I scared of sleeping on the floor? Like, what? All these things we're scared of. A lot of times it's so built up in our heads, the reality of it. But if we practice this, we literally practice it. Sleep on the floor tonight, eat only beans and rice. You know, practice being homeless. Whatever you're scared of, just actually practice it. And it's funny.

My daughter was like, when we're just eating beans, right? She's like, dude, this is ridiculous. We live in America. We're. We're middle class, upper middle class. Like, there's no way in my life I'll ever have to eat crap and not. But a couple months later, does the world shut down and ain't no food on the shelves. And I was like, but, you know, you can survive because we've already been through this exercise. And it was a nice.

It was kind of a nice wake up call. Coincidentally, I had nothing, nothing to do with It, I didn't plan it that way. But what is it we're afraid of? Right. Tim Ferriss has got a great exercise. I'll link it to you guys. It's a, it's this fear thing. Writing down your fear. But it's a great little work, kind of worksheet he goes through about what, what is it you fear? What, what are we so afraid of? Yeah, but practicing and, and getting into that and realizing that what we make up in our heads is nowhere near reality.

Even the worst case thing you can think of. It's usually nowhere near what really actually happens.

Yeah. To your point, I think that's, that's a really good point. That even. And again I'm not talking about the extremes of extremes. I'm talking about the extremes of most of what that we're facing. That even the thing that we're afraid will happen when it happens. It's not even as bad as what we imagined it to be. Right.

It's like even if that comes true, then what's the worst that could happen? And I like your idea of kind of going back and examining what was I telling myself? What was the reality of what happened? I mean not telling yourself so that it. To the point where it keeps you from actually taking the action but watching how we, we all can catastrophize because our, our brains are wired for threat. We look for threat. So really assessing like how bad was it even if that thing happened or what was the reality versus to your point, what was I predicting? We're a lot more capable and resilient than we give ourselves credit for.

Absolutely. You talk about authentic leadership. I do not like the word authentic. I think it's been overused. Co. Opted. I think a lot of times it's an excuse for lack of discipline showing up in a weird way. What is your definition? How do you like to think about that?

I love that. And I do think it's overused. I don't have a better word. So if somebody out there has a better word, please let me know. It's kind of like soft skills. Hate that term. And I started saying what was it? Kind of critical. Kind of critical intangibles.

And it's like I don't think that's going to catch on. But you know, it is what it is. So I'd love yes. Because I think authentic. It gets misused in the fact that I should be able to show up as whoever I am and you all just have to tolerate that's bullshit. It's like if you think that's the way the world's going to work and that everybody else should just take you and that you don't have to be accountable for your behavior. No. What I think about it as is we have a core of who we are.

Yes, we have skills. We have other things that are, you know, we're adaptable, we're trainable, learnable, however you want to call it. But there are some core pieces of who we are. We have talents, we have strengths, we have values. We have a core of who we are. And I'm not saying it's static, but I'm saying recognizing who you are in that moment is really important because the world is so ready to push us into a cookie cutter. Leadership is not a cookie cutter. It's like we push, and I use this term a lot.

And so for those of you who've heard me speak, you've already heard me say this, but it's worth repeating that when we push, you know, a cookie cutter into some dough, like, let's say it's a little star. Yeah. We come out with a perfect little star to make a cookie. We have also just left all of the rest of the goodness, the dough that's there outside the cookie. When we try to push ourselves into a preformed mold, it's like there's a. There's an old Greek myth, Procrusteus, that has. He's an innkeeper. He's actually, I think, a demigod, and he's a jerk.

And he has this inn, and he has travelers come along, and, you know, they want a bed, and he's like, that's fine, but there's only one bed, and you have to fit. So if the bed is too long, he will stretch them like on the rack. If the bed is too short, he cuts them off at the knees or wherever. And the trick is, the bed never fits. Just like the idea that someone else has of leadership never fits exactly who you are. Are there competencies? Of course. Do you need to be a good speaker? Do you need to be strategic? Do you need to be all of those things? Sure. But knowing who you are.

Strengths, weaknesses, all of it. First of all, that knowledge and awareness. Very important. Second, then how do you bring that to what you need to achieve? We're going to have different jobs. We're going to have different organizations. It doesn't mean we're twisting ourselves into a pretzel to make us into something we're not. We're taking that core and we're bringing it to the challenge in the best possible way. And if there are things we need, skills we need to develop all of that, then absolutely, we go out with that awareness and knowledge of who we are and where we're starting from.

For me, that's authentic. It's not me trying to lead the way you would. It's not me trying to lead the way Steve Jobs would. Whatever. I am who I am. And again, not static, but here's where I am and here's where I start. So how do I bring that authenticity and not trying to be something I'm not to the role to be most successful?

Is this maybe as a starting point, finding your core values? Could be.

A lot of things could be. I think a lot of it is first, our strengths and weaknesses. And really our weaknesses. Not this. Oh, you know, I work, so I work too many hours and too hard. It's like we wear overwork as a badge of honor in this culture. It's ridiculous. But being real, like, really, what are your weaknesses? And someone asked me the other day is, do you think everybody should just focus on shoring up their weaknesses? I'm like, I think she was surprised because I said, no.

I said, you know, it's like that, 80, 20, you're going to spend so much time trying to overcome that weakness. Now, if it's a fatal flaw, sure, yeah, do that. But to your point earlier, is it something we can delegate? Is it something that is in somebody else's wheelhouse? Is it something where it's a growth opportunity for someone else? Focus on your strengths, not staying small, not staying safe. But how do you grow that or how do you use that to take those risks? So we have the strengths, we have the weaknesses, we have our passions, we have our talents. Being able to spend time in ways that we think we are serving the company or the organization or your family, whoever, the best, because this is something you're motivated by, you're passionate about, you're good at it, as opposed to trying to constantly fit ourselves into. Well, this is what it should be. So I'm going to push this into that. We do have our values, we have what's important to us.

And it's important to recognize that because the world a lot of times is going to be at odds with that. Okay, so what are the values that absolutely have to fit for you in this situation? Like, what are non negotiables? And also, how can your values show up in this space? Because we also get very rigid sometimes about, okay, my value means X, maybe not, but how do you be true to that core? And then understanding all of that, that to me is really understanding who we are because we are multifaceted. It is not just one thing. And we'll learn along the way because maybe there's also something we just don't know. And all of a sudden the world shows up. It gives us a chance to learn a little bit more about how we operate.

Absolutely. I like to think of when you're talking about these, the different, like, weaknesses and strengths. I like to think about this. Like, on a scale of like 1 to 10, like let's say writing, I'm a 3. If I work my ass off and I did everything I can, what am I going to get to? A 5? I don't know. Versus communication. Let's just say I'm an 8. If I work my ass off, can I get to a 9 or a 10? Sure.

What's more valuable? What's more important? Where can I continue to be world class? I can be world class at the things I'm already good at. And then shoring up, you're saying shoring up those other things, like, let me. I should get to maybe a four or five so I can communicate better. But I'm going to bring in somebody that's an 8 or a 9 and I'm going to let them handle this piece. But I'm going to be able to understand what's happening because I have a little bit of competency where I can say, oh, I see what you're doing here. This is what I want, or something like that. You know, intelligently talking, maybe direct or give guidance or something like that.

For the other, I absolutely agree. And I'll go back to what you said earlier about authenticity as well. It also doesn't give leaders the excuse to say, oh, well, I'm not good at this, so I'm not going to do this. For example, I worked with a leader who, as an extrovert, like to just wing it. When he would go up and do a town hall or whatever, he's like, well, no, this is just who I am. You suck. So as a leader, you choosing not to prepare because that's just who I am. That's also not okay.

So anything taken to an extreme starts to. It can really be a weakness. And thinking again, because I can just be who I am, especially if I'm the CEO. Well, as long as you're willing to have people who are disengaged, communication is not clear and people aren't following you because they don't understand your vision. Great, do that.

I couldn't set it better myself. What is a popular leadership trend you think is overrated or even harmful?

Well, well, I think some of them are really clear. I'm trying to think of something maybe that I'm seeing. It's different. I think one of the trends I actually just wrote a blog post about this is we have this idea of, okay, we're going to develop leaders. Best intention, right? A company says, okay, we're going to develop leaders. A lot of times we have this very static leadership development program. We have this module, this module, this module, everybody goes through it, it's a really nice assembly line and you come out and you get a Lexus. Well, okay, that's not true.

So we have this very static approach and then we don't get the development we think we need. Somehow needing to develop leaders in a dynamic environment that's constantly changing and unpredictable. Static development doesn't seem to give that to us. Imagine. And yet do we go back and look at how we're doing this or do we just blame the leader? We just blame the leader and then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Because then we take away, we say, oh, this development stuff doesn't work so we're just not going to invest in it anymore. That's like saying, I expected to triple my investment in stocks. And what I did was I hid the money under my bed and now I'm shocked that it hasn't grown magically since I've been there.

And by the way, my house had a fire and all my money burned to the ground. Okay. So I think it's really challenging ourselves to understand what does it take to develop leaders, not just for today, but what they're going to need to do. And I say this as though it's easy. It's not. But it goes back to again, understanding a leader, understanding where they are, first of all, where they're going to grow, where they want to go. Not assuming, you know where they want to go just because they are on this track that you've created. What's going to help them get there? And by the way, everybody owns this.

People a lot of times just kind of say, oh, well, HR owns developing leaders. It's like, no, it's like. And then as an executive, I can just walk away. No, everybody owns this. It takes a village. Takes a village to build a leader. It takes a village to build an idiot. You choose.

So you've got executives who invest. And when an executive, for example, shows up to Maybe there's, you know, a culminating piece of the leadership development. Someone's taken on this stretch assignment or this role, and they're going to come back and talk about what they've come out of, you know, this and what they're going to do, what the impact is they have. Having executives in the room is so powerful for these folks to get visibility to maybe people they'd never have. And for an executive, they think it's nothing, right? They think, well, I'm just here. They don't recognize the power their presence has. The team leader, whoever this person may be, being engaged along the way, being able to, like, help, help understand. Like, well, what are you learning? How are we applying this? That it's a dynamic kind of, you know, opportunity.

Mentors, coaches, all of these things. The idea that, again, we just take people through an assembly line, then you're going to get a very static, consistent. Well, really nothing. Because people will normally walk away and say, well, that was a waste of time, so you might as well do nothing. But if you can actually put together a way of looking at it, and it doesn't even have to be revolutionary, I mean, we're talking, like, information, great foundational, go out, experiment, come back coaching, you know, what is it you specifically need to work on individually mentoring? Who are the people you could learn from? And by the way, it's not always somebody up in the organization. It could be somebody outside, could be somebody that has a lower title than you. Like, if I don't know, AI, maybe I go to somebody that is like a genius at it. But if I'm a director and they're a manager, I think, oh, you know, all of us have something to learn, all of us have something to teach.

So this idea of static, anything dynamic, look at what's truly going to prepare the leaders and then invest in that. Otherwise, don't bother.

You know, how are we. How are we doing this? How maybe are we giving them a project? You know, like the guy you see some potential in or maybe the top performer on your team or whatever, you're like, hey, let's get him a little lightweight project. Nothing too crazy. Nothing. Is that how we're thinking about this? What are we other than, you know, like you're saying Craftsman training? Is this more of a OJT kind of thing? How are we thinking about this one?

Like, one thing, challenging yourself to assume that you already know what he wants or she wants or they want. Right? Because I had a beautiful manager early on, and he knows I tell people all this all the time is. And he sat me down and I was doing market research at the time, trying to figure my way from psychology to what I do now. Behavior, people, data figured, okay, give it a shot. We sat down at our annual review, and he's like, so do you want to be a director of strategic marketing? And I said, not really. And I know he was kind of taken aback, but he's like, okay, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to do organization development. And he's like, great. What is that? And that is a great manager.

It is really understanding where you want to go and helping you get there because it benefits not only you, it benefits the organization, it benefits all of it. So understanding, okay, first of all, where are people motivated to go? What are the opportunities and where do you need them to go in the organization? Because if they tomorrow I want to be an astronaut and I'm working at the local grocery store. I don't know that they really need me to become an astronaut. So maybe it's also maybe a different path or outside the organization. And I would challenge back to what you said is maybe it's a little step, really. Why not give them something huge? Why not give them something that's really going to stretch them? And again, you come alongside them, you got support. You don't just send them out, throw it over the wall and go. And then as the person who technically has owned or has done this, you know, kind of led this role before, how do you get out of your own way? Like, how do you make sure you're not jumping in and saving them when really they need to struggle? Yeah.

You know, again, not fatally, you know, throwing people in the deep end, letting them swim. You're not going to let them drown, but they, we have to struggle. So what, where are you going to challenge them? Where are you going to get them outside their comfort zone? Where are they going to have agency and how you come together and create this and then stop stopping them? You know, so many leaders are like, well, I can't let them fail. I can't let them this. Well, you're not going to hand them the keys to, you know, being in front of, you know, the entire board the first day on their job, it's like, what's a stretch assignment for them? And then do that and support them.

It reminds me of a story from IBM. Some, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but some guy, junior guy or something, he went up doing something, cost him $10 million, and he walks to his boss, obviously, I'm. I'm done. I'm fired. And he walks in, the boss is like, you know, hey, I mean, whatever. He's like, well, I guess it's been fun working. He's like, where. Where you going? He's like, all right.

Fires like, no, we just spent $10 million training you. No. That's interesting. Is there a. Is there a, like a best time in. Maybe you're in a career, whether not necessarily age per se, but, you know, you're new to the job and maybe somebody sees something in you, whatever. Is there a time where you go like, hey, I should go talk to Jerry right now. Looks like he.

He's got a good grassman's job, and maybe he wants to be a leader. Is there some type of timing or something that helps develop somebody or talking.

To them or I would say keeping a pulse? I think one of the biggest disservices we do is do annual performance reviews. I think we should just get rid of them. I think they're absolute crap. That, what are you doing? You're waiting for a whole year to give somebody feedback on what they're doing. You're waiting a whole year to get their input on their career and what they're doing. Nothing should show up in a performance review. That's a surprise to the employee. You should have been having these conversations all the way through.

Because here's the deal. If I don't know what I'm doing is wrong, I can't fix it. If I don't know what I'm doing is right, I won't necessarily keep doing it. So keeping your finger on the pulse, having regular conversations, you know, one on ones are a great thing. People misuse them all the time, and they become one of those meetings. They're like, oh, well, it's not important. I don't have anything to talk about. It's like, yeah, you do.

It's a touch point. And I'm not saying it's easy to do this, but it could be 15 minutes. We're not talking. I talked to one leader. It's like, well, it's hard to get an hour with each of my people every week. I'm like, an hour. What are you doing? And just having those regular conversations and encouraging people to bring them to you. Because you may not notice.

You probably won't notice the first flicker of insight that they have that maybe they're interested. But if you're having regular conversations, then you'll know when something starts to shift because it might be different for you than it would be for me. Even if we're on the same trajectory, in the same path, we're not the same person. So trying to predict where that's going to happen, I mean, you might, but it's also kind of like, you know, shaking a Magic 8 ball for those of you who remember that. It's like, you know, you might be right, you might be wrong. Wouldn't you rather know?

It reminds me of some of these, like, great founders. Maybe like Sam Walton's coming to mind, where you're walking the floor. You're out there with everybody. You're talking to the employees, you're seeing the trends. You're just out there in the field in the nitty gritty of things, looking, seeing.

Yep, I agree. I think it's so easy. Especially there's a great book, Leadership is Language, and it's a follow up. I can't remember the name of the author to turn the ship around.

I like it.

Yeah, loved it. And the Leadership is Language is more of a how to book. And he talks about the fact that as leaders go up in an organization, people start to edit themselves. They start to not tell you things, and the leader still sees themselves as the person that's, you know, down, you know, sleeves rolled up, all of that. And I've had folks tell me that, no, no, they still see me this way. I'm like, you do. They don't. I can guarantee you, you may have a few people, but you end up with the emperor who has no clothes.

People won't tell you, Right. That things are going off. And unless you can be down and because you're gonna. The longer you stay in the ivory tower without, to your point, getting on the floor or at least connecting with people, they still may not tell you exactly what you, you know, kind of like what. Because there's always going to be a power differential. Even in the US we like to think it's super flat. It's flatter than other places. But it's not 100% flat, and it shouldn't be.

People still need to make decisions. Somebody does. But if you can bridge that gap and spend less time in the ivory tower, more time where the work is being done and how you're connecting to the business, to the people, you're going to be far more successful in really having a pulse on what's going on and understanding where things may need to shift so that you aren't the emperor who's walking down the street and has no clothes. It'd be Nice to not have to wait for the little child on the road to tell you that you have no clothes. As opposed to all the people around you who really don't want to look stupid in front of you. How do you make sure you're connecting with them and understanding what's really going on?

It reminds me of. I'm not sure if it was a book or a podcast I was listening to, where the guy. They do mergers and acquisitions and. And their policy is every time they acquire a new company, they go and ask every employee, what are we doing horribly here? What would you change? And. And also, conversely, what are we doing? Well, that you would keep. I love those questions. I'm trying to implement that into things I do as well. Asking the people, especially on the front lines, what are we doing? That's stupid.

What can we. Because I. I mean, it reminds me of. This is this massive worldwide chain. I was in there one time with my daughter and all these fancy computers, right? I mean, there's. They scan the clothes, and then the lady starts typing, and I'm like, what is she doing?

Yeah.

I said, what are you doing? She's like, oh, I'm inputting the size and the color and the style. Like, you scan it. It just doesn't have this. But what. What I think has happened is that's how they used to do it 30 years ago. And nobody has ever walked in the store and understood, why are we still doing it this way? And nobody says anything. We just keep doing what we've been doing. And if you were to serve.

And then. Because I couldn't understand why the line was so long, this is. There's six of us. Why are we standing here for so long? And we got to the front. I understood what was happening. Nobody's come down and audit that in probably 20 years.

There's this great approach, too, because in terms of that, there's also. When we have challenges, human beings create workarounds. And we get to the point where. Where we don't even remember or don't recognize the workarounds we've created because we've been doing it so long. And there's. It's called ethnographic research, which is basically what anthropology is. You go in, you observe. And I think it was.

I want to say it was Quicken Loans that did this, where they would send people in, or maybe it was QuickBooks, actually one of the quicks. And they would send folks in to kind of sit beside users as an experiment, and they'd watch them and they Would say, well, why are you doing that? What is that? And then they would be able to. To see some of the workarounds that people had created and the flaws. And to your point, if someone had been in the store, someone who knew what efficiency looked like, continuous improvement, all of that, and you just watched what the person was doing, and you ask questions really with curiosity, not with, again, the tone, you're an idiot, but like, okay, why are you doing that? What is that? You know, what does that give you? And then being able to take that step back and see this is what. Because people may not even know what's going wrong, but being able to have that view and bring that perspective, then you can really improve the system. Because sometimes we don't even realize the water we're swimming in.

Yeah, absolutely. You talk about people not unlocking their full potential. What's one unconventional barrier leaders or people never realize is holding them back?

Well, usually it's themselves. I mean, fundamentally, going back to your point, I'm not even sure that's unusual, but it's prevalent, ubiquitous. So you were saying earlier about, you know, kind of. We were talking about mindset. We were talking about how we think. We were talking about, you know, the impact that has. And I think one of the biggest pieces is we. Someone told me, it's like we were talking about the potential and what they could do.

And he said, oh, don't worry. He's like, you know, I know what mean I capable of. I'm like, that's your mistake. You have no idea what you're capable of. And he thought it was a positive. And what he didn't realize he was capping his own potential. We do that all the time. We think, oh, I'm not capable of that, or I've reached my potential, or maybe, you know, oh, I, you know, I already know I can do X, Y and Z.

Really? How do you know you can't also do M, J, and Q? You know, So I think that's one of the biggest pieces. It's, again, it's not revolutionary. It's ubiquitous. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

I know with physically our bodies, our brain caps us out at about 40% of our capacity. So we hold back 60. I like to think that I like to take that and expand it to my mind as well. If I'm like, you're saying, if I think I can do it all. And I meant I like, I'm only at 40. I know there's more in the tank now. It's hard to get that extra 60 out even physically, mentally with skills and stuff like that. That's how I like to think.

I don't know if you have any, anything similar to how you think about that as well.

I think, you know, and I like, to your point, I don't know what capacity we use or don't use or what I'm using. I do know I'm probably spending too much time on YouTube which I don't think is probably the best use of my brain.

It depends what you watch.

I think it depends. Yeah, you know, good documentaries here and there. I think that that's probably pretty good. I think that when we challenge ourselves, one of the things, you know, they've talked about is, you know, okay, the simple version of this is brushing your teeth with. If you're right handed, you brush it with your left hand and you're starting to trigger pads in your brain that have it. They either aren't there or they, they haven't been kind of used in a while. And the more we can challenge those paths, the more, you know, we talk about plasticity, plastic, whatever. And plastic seems rigid but more flexible.

Will say that our brain is. And being able to find those routes. I was listening to someone do a speech a long time ago, presentation about the brain and someone had had a stroke and the brain was. This person was older, it wasn't a child. But because of the way they were engaging and because of. And again, maybe this is correlational but the idea was of how they, how they'd really been using maybe their brain or the capacity before that this person, the brain rerouted more quickly. It was almost. The way I looked at it was almost like there was a big traffic jam.

But I have a GPS system and it'll tell me that if I take this road and I take this side road, it'll get me around that traffic jam. We may not clean that up for a long time. And for those of you who are neurologists out there, you can tell me I'm full of crap. So it's an analogy. But I think the more we stimulate different areas of our brain, first of all, I think that's where creativity comes from, you know, connecting one thing in one area to one thing in another and doing the things that are easy. I can use this app, elevate to try to train my brain or exercise my brain. And I love language, so the language ones are really easy for me. And I like math, but it's, you know, I haven't used it much Since I left, we got these calculators now, you know, whatever.

And I find those hard. And so I gravitate towards doing the things that are already easy for me. And it's a little different back to using strengths, et cetera, but I'm learning. I'm trying to expand my brain and doing the things that maybe aren't as much fun. Going back to, you know, huberman, like, you know, kind of pushing ourselves to do things that maybe aren't as good. You know, for example, learning a language or maybe if you're already, you know, liking that, maybe you learn a musical instrument. Maybe you go out physical, you know, being in exercising and all of that blood flow to the brain, doing different things and creating those pathways. And I think it makes it easier for our brain to not only connect the different pieces, but it creates new roads that, you know, either weren't paved before or maybe they're overgrown.

I love an analogy that my psychology professor gave me as an undergrad. When you're learning language, a lot of people will say, oh, I learned that, and I've lost it. The way he said it is when you build information, because there's no indication that we have limited capacity at this point. I mean, the way we think, we would think at some point we'd hit capacity. But what he said is that if you learn something, you learn this language, for example. It's like a cabin in the woods. If you go to that cabin every day, the path is very well worn, very easy to get to. If you stop going to the cabin, the path grows over.

You end up like, maybe a tree falls, hard to get through. That cabin is still there. So kind of challenging. Those paths, even re establishing them, connecting them. That's where we really can take our capacity, our understanding, and even our connection to other people. It exponentially grows. Because back to your point about just needing to listen, I had someone tell me, like, oh, I love talking to Rachel because. Because I can talk to her about anything.

It's like the stuff that he was talking about. I don't. I don't. I don't know, like, you know, the ins and outs of that. But I can ask questions. I can be really curious. And as a result, our connection grows and hopefully few synapses, you know, new connections are made. So kind of went down.

Yeah. Kind of talk.

Yeah. No, I love it.

I love it.

No, no. A couple things I'd like to highlight. There's a great book by. I think she's a neurologist where she had a stroke and she documented it all. She wrote this fabulous book about having a stroke, going through it, and her recovery. I'll link this for you guys if you're interested. It's a fabulous book on how that whole kind of thing worked for her. And it's a nice.

It's an interesting perspective because she was a neurologist. I think she's a neurologist. Not. I'm sorry, but she was like. She actually says, I was in the shower and I was like, I'm having a stroke. And she's like, this is great. Like, I. This is the best experiment ever.

She said it was great. But yes, she was very aware this.

Is what she was saying to herself in a way. But you gotta. If you're interested in the book. It's a great book. And how. How she thought of it from her perspective and the experiments and going through it and getting back from all that. It goes a testament about how our brain will rewire. It'll.

It'll let the traffic jam be and it'll find a workaround. It's a great testament to that. I'll link to that if you guys are interested.

I think too, I can't think of the name of the book, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

I can't think of it for the.

Life of me either.

I think she wrote two books and I think maybe a TED Talk as well.

Oh, I'm sure.

Nevertheless, I'll. It's in my book list. I'll link it for you guys if you're interested. Fascinating stuff. How our brains just. I used to think when I was younger, I don't know where I got this stupidity from, that our brains were limited. And I was like, I. I actively taught myself to discard information that I thought was worth this.

I was like, I don't. I'll never meet you again. I don't care what your name is. I'm not going to attempt to remember it. I have a limited capacity in here. You are unimportant. And when I realized how stupid that was, it was very, very hard to unlearn and relearn just some simple things like remembering people's names. To this day, I still have a little bit of a problem with it if I feel like you're unimportant in a stupidly egotistical way.

I guess I don't understand where I get this from, but it does seem like there is an unlimited capacity for our brains to just keep the things that pop up in our head sometimes interesting. Where where was that? Lying in there somewhere. I was 4 years old. How did that. But some little thing, a smell, a sound, especially if you have children, I think you can really bring this home where my kids will say something to me. I'm like, oh, wow. You know, I remember when I was. And it's like, where did that come from? But it's in there.

The cabin's in there. You just got in there. You just got to weed whack the path.

Even talking to you. Little triggers for me are coming up. Two more books. One, there's a great book, it's called Moonwalking with Einstein.

Okay.

So it's about a journalist who went to cover a memory competition. So, you know, the folks that do all that. And he was flabbergasted. And one of the people he talked to said, you know, this isn't rocket. It's like, it's.

It's.

It's something you can do, too. And he really didn't believe him. They talk about the idea of the memory palace and the fact that we're leveraging visual memories for other content. It's fascinating. And he goes and he decides that he's going to go take a year or whatever it is to learn how to do this and compete. So it's a really interesting read in terms of us all expanding our memory and working with it. The other book is called From Strength. Strength.

And I have it sitting here somewhere. And I think part of that is we get this IDEA that after 40, is it right here? Strength, finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of your life.

I'll link to these guys.

Yeah. So, Arthur Brooks. So we kind of get into this idea as, oh, I'm getting older. Oh, I can't learn things. We even have stupid, you know, like, ideas that, oh, you can't. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. One of the things that I like in this is that. And I'm not saying this has to be true or limit our mindset, but in a general, our brains tend to be more kind of flexible and agile and using things like maybe quick computations of math and things like that when we're younger.

And maybe we do then slow down as we get older. As we're older, the next strength is that we have this huge, vast repository of knowledge and information that's connected to things, and we. And we're able to draw on that in a way that when we were in our 20s, 30s, we couldn't. So it's not about not being able to teach old dogs new tricks or, you know, well, we can all think we're stupid when we're a certain age, when we're young, but recognizing the strengths we have and leveraging those throughout our lifespan, because we can always be learning. And to your point, as far as I know, science knows, they haven't at least found the tipping point or the capacity that we may have hit. So, you know, don't underestimate the power of what you can learn and what you can bring in the wisdom you have.

Strange fun fact here. Do you know where the memory palace comes from?

I do not.

So it was back in Greek or Roman times or whatever. The palace that fell down. And then I think it was some famous person was like, oh, who was in there? And he was like, oh, Rob was standing by the pillar and then Janet was over by the, the cathedral. And that's where that came from. He used the, the palace. He kind of walked through the palace and remembered where everybody was standing when the palace collapsed. So they. Who knew who was inside.

And that's where that technique comes from.

Oh, wow, that's fascinating.

Yeah. One of those things that are in there in my brain somewhere for some reason.

Absolutely.

What's one invisible script that keeps people from having honest conversations? And how can we help break that?

When you say honest conversations, tell me a little bit more. What do you mean?

Telling ourselves the truth, Being honest with ourselves. I think it starts with ourselves. We lie to ourselves so much for so many different reasons. Right. A lot of times, like we said earlier. Right. They're a habit or there's something that some well meaning person told you when they were younger. You know, maybe somebody said, that's silly.

A lot of times they're, they're things that I never got to accomplish. I was like, why? Because I couldn't go in the NFL. I'll tell my child, you can't go in the NFL either. These are invisible scripts that are running in our, in our heads. Right?

Yeah.

And for whatever reason, I think there's something. If you, if you have that running and you're not aware of it and you can't be honest with yourself, then you can't truly find out what's the problem or what's the solution or whatever it be.

Yeah, it's a good question because one of the things that comes up is there's the honest conversation with other people. And to your point, honesty can have different layers. The honest conversation with ourselves is harder because part of it is we've been using these scripts for so long, we don't even remember where they came from or why they're there. And if or not they're true, we don't even recognize it when we're using them. So I think one of the questions might be, how do you. First, how do you even figure out when that might be happening? And maybe the question more is some scripts may be benign. Like, they may be something like, well, I don't like oysters, which I keep trying because my husband does like them, and it's not a script. I don't like oysters, but I try them once a year just in case everything changes or my case buds die.

So. Well, anyway, so for those of you who like oysters, just pretend I didn't say that. So I think the priority is probably. Because there's a. There's probably thousands if not millions of scripts that are running in our head. The priority probably is, where is this causing us problems? Where is this getting in our way? And I think some of that going back to. We talked about full circle or multiple circles in loops, that arousal or that anxiety or what we're feeling. I like to talk to leaders because a lot of them, they don't like the idea of emotions.

They're like, oh, emotions. Well, first of all, we make most of our decisions based on emotion, whether we like. And then we use logic to kind of justify it. Right? And the reality is we have emotions. So if you are ignoring them, you are leaving data on the table. So it doesn't mean going back to reaction and response. It doesn't mean we have to. We have to do exactly what those emotions are telling us, but they're telling you something.

So there's maybe a red flag or there's something nagging at you. Maybe there's that. Maybe there's a fear that shows up. Maybe there's an insecurity that shows up. So there's the visceral, and then your interpretation of the visceral and stopping and then having that conversation, not that you're talking to yourself about what you can or can't do in that moment, but the conversation with yourself about, what is that? What's going on? What am I experiencing here? And I did that the other day. That's when I was writing. It was like something's making me anxious. Okay, so what are you experiencing right now? What are some of the thoughts that are coming through your head? No judgment, just kind of research with yourself, like kind of your own little internal anthropology or therapy, whatever.

So really starting to look at. And challenge where you might be doing those things and where are they not serving you? Because, like I said, there's probably thousands, if not millions of scripts running. What are the ones that are most important for you? Because those are the ones that are keeping you from stepping in your potential or from doing the things that you really want to do and becoming who you really want to be.

I love this. That's beautiful. That's a great perspective. So as I was looking through your things, I noticed you like to live a little dangerously and use humor. How. How do we navigate humor? It can be maybe a tricky space.

Oh, it's very tricky.

How do you use it? What are maybe some techniques? How can we maybe use humor in whichever way you like to practice that?

It is tricky. And just as another resource, we're going to have a list of books. There's a book called Humor Seriously. It's probably on my bookshelf. It's written by a couple of women that work in Stanford. One, I think, is more of a traditional professor. The other one is also a lecturer, but she came also out of business and improv. And they.

In their. The MBA program, they teach humor and the idea that it serves you in life and in business. And it's funny because in the book. The book's really good. The book's funny, too. They talk about giving this assessment, and apparently folks get just as much credit for this class as they do for taking finance. So it's equally weighted. They have them go through an assessment to say, when was the last time you laughed out loud? And they said, a lot of people struggle with that.

I read that and I thought, well, I don't know. What time is it? It's like, if I don't laugh out loud at least several times a day, then I probably have the flu or something. I think it is. So a couple of things. One, when I was younger, I used sarcasm more as a defense mechanism.

Me, too.

Right? And it's like, you know, I wielded that sword with, you know, precision, like, rapier, sharp wit kind of thing, and it did its job. It defended me, and it kept people at arm's length, at least, because that sword was kind of long and it didn't serve me. And it. It's. The idea of humor doesn't need to belittle other people. If you and your friend, for example, are agreed on what's, you know, what's a joke and what's funny, you know, then that's fine. You all have that relationship. You have that agreement, and what's funny.

If not, and you kind of start using those same approaches. It's not okay to make fun of somebody else. And I don't say this in, in the world that you know, like oh, we're not supposed to offend someone. You can go ahead offend somebo. Just be prepared for the consequences because there will be. So if you're at work and you say something that's really super offensive and making fun of someone else, then just be prepared for what the repercussions might be for you. That's true of any behavior in life. If you're willing to suffer the consequences, then go ahead and do that if you want to wield humor in a more productive way.

Because I truly do believe that when humor is used productively, I think for example, it opens people up to vulnerability. Not sitting necessarily in an audience watching someone perform on stage, but when you're in a group, I don't know, being able to laugh together in a way that it's truly open. It's very hard to be defended when you're laughing with someone. And I love that. And I honestly just find, I find life funny and I love to laugh. I would say the other piece is it's okay to make fun of yourself. It's not okay to make fun of somebody else. Now I will say that you'll see a lot of research and things that you have to be careful with self deprecating humor, especially say women because we tend to do it and it gets interpreted differently.

But a lot of it is also how you, you come across in your delivery of that humor and just owning it. And the knowledge that I do X, Y and Z. And sometimes you are going to step over a line, sometimes you are going to hurt someone. No intention. You aren't doing that. Okay, well, can you say I'm sorry? I mean, is that in your kind of portfolio of things you can do? I think it's a balance, but I think people too often think it's too dangerous or there's all of these things and we're afraid of offending anybody in the world right now. That's not a good place to be because then everybody is shrinking back and just knowing that we will make mistakes. But oh my gosh, the ability to laugh and to make people laugh, it is just, I think it's a huge release.

And you know, I'm sure if you look at the, you know, the science behind it, I'm sure there's dopamine, I'm sure there's all different kinds of chemicals in your brain that fire off, that do so much good for us, especially in a world that takes itself way too seriously. And it's not that it's not serious. Right. I'm not saying maybe light of it, but in terms of meaning, like don't, don't appreciate what's really going on. But we can't be serious and intense all the time. It's just, it's not healthy and it really doesn't. It doesn't help prepare us and help equip us to deal with the reality that's out there.

I love that. I like, I like how you, how you frame that. There's something it reminds me of, like breaking bread with somebody. There's something, something seems like something is there when you're talking about this. This is what I kept going back to in my head was, yeah, there's something like maybe a lightness that comes in, maybe some type of bonding that goes on when you get to laugh, break bread. These types of social things like we talked about earlier, right? That maybe you're lacking from life and you don't allow comedy or laughter or, or maybe some light teasing in a way where it's good hearted. You know, you miss that connection. You miss that, that social bond.

Some. I think something's there. I like what you're talking about with that.

Yeah.

I wasn't gonna shy away from here at all. I was just maybe, maybe some tips to keep me out of trouble. I've gotten good at saying I'm sorry. I'll tell you right now that's, you.

Know, that's actually a very important skill. And that is actually a part of being vulnerable is being able to say I'm sorry. So I will say when I don't mean it. Oh, well, that's a different conversation. Maybe the question, maybe in your own mind is why don't I mean it? Like, what's going on?

I usually don't mean I'm sorry because I actually wasn't. It's like you're not crying because you can't handle the truth and I was a little harsh. So I'm sorry for my part, but not your part, if that makes sense. I'm not trying to be a dick. No, my brain works about it.

Well, we all own our own reaction to things. I will put it that way. The one thing I would say is, and this goes back to when I'm working with leaders, I like to consider myself direct and supportive. Meaning I will tell you the truth. Meaning I will tell you my version of the truth. It's how I see it. It's not unbiased. You're not unbiased.

Nobody's unbiased about ourselves or anybody else. We got our stuff, right? Direct and harsh slash asshole are not the same things. And that's why people confuse the two. And again, me telling you something in a way that I think I'm sugarcoating it, but you still get the idea that I think you're an idiot. That's not helpful. And the sugar coating. The sugar coating just makes things unclear. And so people are likely to not understand and therefore do the thing you don't want them to do, and then you think they're an idiot.

It's like, no, not really. You were really not clear. So it's one thing for me to say something. I can. I can tell you it's like, I'm really upset with this. I'm not understanding why this happened and that kind of thing. Or I can tell you that, you know, you really, you know, when you said this, this was my experience of that. So it's not even that you hurt my feelings or whatever, because I'm not saying you did.

I'm saying, here's my experience. So sometimes in those conversations. Yeah, someone's going to get upset. Let's. Let's assess again. Yes. Are some. Are there times when.

Some things. There's even times I feel overly sensitive. I'm just having a bad day or something. Something's piled on. Or. The gentleman in front of me at CVS whose wife was just diagnosed with cancer. We don't know what's going on in somebody else's life, but it is about. Well, something happened.

What is this? What's going on? So I think it's. Yeah. So there's. There's different ways and we'd have to look at specific examples, but if you're not. Sorry. Let's. Let's look at it. Like, what's going on? Like.

And again, not saying you're an asshole. I'm saying something's happening and there's some disconnect.

I could definitely be a bit of an. At times. I. I don't mean it. My sister is really good. She says I lack empathy, and I think she's right. There's a lot of things I don't have. I don't have any empathy and I have no sympathy for your stupidity and the dumb things you do.

But if I'm telling you these things, I'm going to be also be your biggest cheerleader. Let me Tell you right now, I'm gonna make sure you get this done, and we're going to work through this, and I'm gonna support you, and I'm gonna tell everybody about. I don't know. I'm sure that's my character flaw.

Well, you know what it's all about, you know, how we. How we show up in the world and how we engage in the impact we want to have. And you know what? If we're having the impact we want to have, then we must be doing something right.

I agree. I think I am. And that's. That's. This is kind of the. The show and some other things I do. It's like being legendary, right? How can we show up? How can we do these things to. To.

To lift others up so they can have a legendary life or how I. And then that makes my life legendary in a way. And it's not a grandiose type of thing. You know what I'm saying? It. It's. It's like we talked about so many things. We talked about, you know, grounding all these things in being a good leader and finding and helping the other people and showing compassion and all these different things we talked about here. Just.

Just today. That's kind of what I think about. That's kind of how I like to try and live and emote myself, and I hope it catches on.

Yeah. That reminds me of the. The analogy. A little boy, you know, walking on the beach, and all of these starfish have. Have kind of washed up on shore, and now the tide has receded, and he's walking along, and he's picking up a starfish, and he's throwing the starfish back into the sea, and he picks up another starfish, and he. He's like. He's like. Somebody comes along and says, you know, that doesn't matter.

There's no possible way you can throw all these starfish into the ocean. You know, it doesn't matter that you. You threw that starfish back. And he's like, it matters to him. It matters to this one. And I think what you're saying is. Is important because it's the Emerson quote of, if Ian even one life has breathed easier because I have lived, that is to have succeeded. We don't have to do things, like, on a grand scale, I don't have to change the world.

Great. If I could, that'd be wonderful. Well, depending on how I change it, because sometimes, who knows? But if I can change one life, if I can have a positive impact and I May never get to know what those are. People may have an experience of me that really is really powerful and really impactful. All I can do is to create the environment where that is most likely to happen. Yes. Sometimes specifically, I know what I'm doing to help them. I may not know kind of the ripple effect it has, hopefully for good.

But don't limit yourself to. If I can't change the world, then, you know, I can't. I can't do anything. It's like, that's not true. You can affect at least one life. So do that.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

So if we want to learn more about you, get in contact with you guys, we have, hopefully I'm saying this right. Adamentum.com.

Yeah, that's good.

We have your book Butterfly Goo. We talked a little bit about it. I'll link you guys. You're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. I'll have all the links for you guys there. Anything else? Any other resources you want to point people to at all?

No, I think especially the book. We didn't get to talk about it, but I'm super excited.

It really quick little thing about the book.

Absolutely. So Butterfly Goo, the Down and Dirty Truth of Transformation. It is a humorous memoir, unlike somebody asking me if it was a science book. It's not. It's not butterflies. So it's an analogy of really looking at. We distract ourselves a lot of times with the beautiful. You know, that that final piece of transformation, the ta da, the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, the cocoon.

And it distracts us and undermines our ability to understand the arduous nature of transformation. And that it's not only okay that we struggle, it's necessary, it's part of it. And my goal with this is, well, one, to make you laugh. And I hope you do that because, you know, not to be arrogant, but I think I'm funny. I think I'm hilarious. So using my own path. And again, muck goo. Failings, triumphs.

All the things I get to learn along the way. Tongue in cheek, I use Campbell's the Hero's journey, or in my case, the heroine's journey. And for those of you who don't know, Campbell was a philosopher writer, and he talked about the idea that while all our journeys are different, there are kind of stages that we all go through along the way. And, you know, you could see him in Greek, you know, mythology, Grimm's Fairy tales. He Consulted on, you know, Star wars and, you know, when Luke did this and Darth Vader did that, all of that. And what I. What I. What I challenge is that the way he's kind of got this, usually it's represented in this neat little circle, and it's just not.

It's messy, and there are. It's painful, and there are people that come along the way and they help you, and there are mentors, and there are all these things. So at the end of the day, if all you want to do is laugh, and especially at me, have a little schadenfreude, you know that. So glad I'm not you, it's great. Or if there are exercises in the back and there are takeaways, and I'm really clear, look, you get to use this book however you want. If you just want to laugh, great. If you want to examine some of the takeaways, maybe you take away something different. Great.

If you want to start playing around with the exercises in the playground, and I call it a playground, because it's not about forcing transformation. It's just willing to experiment, play around, do as much or as little as you want. It's your journey, so you get to choose. But my goal is to make transformation more understandable, therefore more actionable, and therefore more achievable.

I think you're doing a great job. This has been a fun podcast.

Oh, great.

The one last thing I like to do here on the Social Community show is I like to do a weekly challenge. I know we've covered a lot of ground. We've gone all kind of different ways. It doesn't have to be something we talked about, but I'd like you to issue a challenge for the people to do this week.

Excellent. I would say, going back to what we talked about, about noticing, and then listening to what we're telling ourselves, just notice this week, notice where that whether it's anxiety or it's just that physical kind of something shows up in terms of whatever you want to call it, stop, listen, ask yourself what's going on, like, what is this? And just dig in, sit in the goo that is going to show up and just listen. And from there, you don't have to do anything at this point. That's the challenge. But if you want to, what's the conversation you're having? And if it's not a good conversation, what's the conversation you want to have?

Oh, that is powerful. What's the conversation you want to have? I need to write this down and then I'm experimenting with this last question here. I want to kind of end the show with. This is the first time I'm doing this, so bear with me. What does becoming legendary mean to you?

Oh, it's funny. The first thing I think about with Legendary is the show How I Met yout Mother and Neil Patrick Harris saying Legendary. I think it depends on your definition of legend. Legend can be this huge, big thing that the world recognizes you and you're having this huge impact. Like we talk about. Legend can be a story that has been passed down through generations. Sometimes it can be a legend that's here, do this. This is really powerful.

It can be a legend of, like, don't do this. It's not powerful or it's really bad. I would say, what's the legacy you want to leave? When you think about Legendary, what's important to you about that? What's important about the impact that you want to leave and therefore, what's the legacy you want to leave with the world? We're not going to live forever, and maybe most of what we do will be forgotten, but what's the impact we want to have? The fingerprints that will be there whether people recognize it or not.

That's a beautiful thing. I like that. Thank you so much, Rachel. This has been amazing interview. We've gone all kind of directions. I absolutely love it. I've got an entire page of notes. Thank you so, so much for sharing all this stuff, having a great conversation.

I really, truly appreciate you.

Oh, thank you, Tyce. I had so much fun and I did laugh. I love coming away from a conversation where my cheek hurts. To me, that's like the measure of success. Perfect.

I'm glad we achieved that. What an amazing conversation, Rachel. I got a page full of notes. I hope you guys too. That was fun. While we went through so many topics, so many things, I got some great insights here. That last part with Legendary, what is the conversation you want to have that's on my list? I'm going to contemplate that. I'm going to work through that myself.

As you guys know, here in the Social Community show, there's no paywalls. There's no premium content to subscribe to. We give you everything up front and only ask if you found value from this episode. Share with at least two other people. As always, you can connect to us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. For past episodes and links to everything we discuss here today, head over to the SocialCommelion show. Until next time, keep learning transforming and growing on your path to becoming Legendary. Connect On Social This podcast is available on… You can listen to all our episodes on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Overcast , Pocket Casts , Castbox , YouTube Music , Amazon Music , Audible , Substack, or your favorite podcast platform .