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The Neuroscience of Trust in Leadership · Wired For More - ADHD & Self Mastery

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, Ian May here with the Wired for More ADHD and Self Mastery podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have my good friend Kate McAleavey on the line with me today.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Kate and I have a storied history of a company that we had worked for previously.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was this very advanced, amazing startup that we were gonna change the world of tech one tech company at a time.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not getting I I joke about that.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: We were not that disillusioned as to what the technology was doing.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but we did find ourselves in an environment that had a lot of interesting structure around it, tons of visibility, cared a lot about culture.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: They were culture obsessed since day one to the point where they invited you, your spouse, your family.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: They interviewed everybody, it seemed like, to really make sure that you were a culture fit within within a startup.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that being said, Kate, welcome.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Excited for this conversation we're about to have.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm excited too.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So for the people who don't know you, um, just introduce yourself really quick about who you serve, how you help them, and we can kick it off from there.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh to keep it simple, I am an executive coach.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: I am an organizational consultant, what that means to a lot of different people, nobody knows.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I work at the individual level, the team level, the systems level of a company.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot of focus that I spend with executives one-on-one as well as executive teams.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: So that's probably one of my specialties.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Kate, I think from what you post on LinkedIn, a large part about what you talk about is the language that C-suite teams use with each other, right?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: You have an executive leader who is a strong personality and he's a visionary and he's trying to get everybody on board with his vision.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he has a CFO, a head of sales, he's got a CTO, and he kind of rules the roost a bit.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he's a personality.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've found, based on what you've shared, that you come into those rooms and you're like, I feel and love the emotional tension that everybody is just sitting with and it's bubbling, and everyone's just kind of like, you you see the problem, right?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you sit in the muck and mire of all of it and just say, Yeah, let's let's dig into this.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, let's sort through it.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you're a relationship coach for the relationships, disordered relationships of C-suites with each other.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yes, it's a big part of it, for sure.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: If I can just completely make all of the important work that you do boil down to that.
• 2:31
  unknown: I'm here for it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So something that you and I have always appreciated is the fact that executive leaders, of especially the visionary ones, oftentimes don't have really good language for the things that they care about, for how they direct people, how they set expectations for people, or how they have unmet expectations.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that you shared that resonated with me is you spoke with an executive leader.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming they were CEO type personality or pretty high-level role.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they essentially said, I can't trust people.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and you explicitly called out of like, hey, what does that mean?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I think I know what it means.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: What does trust mean to you?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I would love for you to even like pull a little bit from that thread of how do you remove ambiguity?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: How do what is trust?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: How does somebody build it?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like, how do you navigate certain situations like that on the C suite level?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: I will say I always try to have full empathy for leaders and executives.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I also would argue that most people are not good at communicating or having language for how to operate in the business world.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody is taught how to do this.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I always want to just start there to like level the playing field.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: It just doesn't get easier as you get higher up in the company and the problems it creates just get larger.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: See, Kate, you I'll just cut you off real quick.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Very loving interruption.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: You do a good job of having empathy.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone else who's like Seasque, screw them.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're numb and apathetic, they're inhuman monsters, they're ruining society.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact that you can have empathy already puts you in a perfect position.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So continue.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, appreciate it.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, back to language.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: What I loved is that you're bringing up a situation that I'm like, which CEO is he talking about?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's like most leaders, right?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what you're getting to again is like what we love to chat about is like, what are you talking about?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what what's the behavior?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: What's the meaning?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so when anybody says to me, like I don't trust people, I'm like, what does that look like?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and they're like, ooh, you know, like there's always the pause.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like I love to go after an ambiguous word that's used all the time that has 30 different meanings.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: This is applicable to alignment, it's applicable to strategy, it's applicable to every effing corporate word we've ever created, you know, and like we all speak, hopefully, you know, English.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's like the first language that people have, and it's still really difficult.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I love to clarify because I'm like, if we don't know what the meaning is, then we can't change the behavior.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you and I, I think are very connected on the fact that I'm like, I'm here for behavior change, I'm here for progress.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to talk about what happened five million times.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like the emotions are great as long as they're applied to moving forward.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm always curious.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so trust can be, you know, I love that you brought that one up because people say it all the time.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Does that mean as far as like reliability?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is that relational trust?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: Is that follow-through trust?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: I would argue there are probably like 10 to 20 different types.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: And when I ask people, how does someone try like build trust with you?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's different for everybody.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: How does somebody lose trust with you?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and what type of trust is most important to move forward in this work?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: You don't necessarily need all of them.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of asking a lot.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you're looking for the perfect manufactured human to be all the things all the time all at once.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then therefore you are perfect yourself.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's uh it's a lot to ask, but I love getting into like something that seems like nothing, and then everybody's like, holy shit.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I like the reason why I like speaking specifically to the word trust is because of the fact that we all have some type of emotional wound where someone broke our trust, and we don't even have language for what that means.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is interesting for people who've gone through relationship counseling and therapy at some given point of each person experiences trust in a different way.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And my wife and I, as an example, are complete opposites of each other.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: How you build trust with her is by being ruthlessly honest with what you say.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: She values honesty above all else.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you know that she does because when you say the honest thing and it's uncomfortable, it actually doesn't make her happy.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like she's not happy with what you had to be honest with.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: But even then, she's super loving and gracious when she receives just the honest truth.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: How you say it, obviously, like, oh, I'm the opposite.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I'm I'm the literal opposite of like, no, no, no, like tell me I'm pretty and say I did a nice job, even if I totally hacked this together.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you can imagine the arguments that we would find ourselves in because she would say something that in her mind is loving by being very honest.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, babe, how did I do cleaning up my beard?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she's just like, and she's looking me over when in reality I was like, I'm fishing for a compliment.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I need you to tell me I look pretty and maybe smack my.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: The how the how and the packaging matters more to you, the delivery.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, absolutely.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and for me, it's hey, how do you how do I receive criticism well?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, trust, here's how you can share criticism with me when it's important.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, this is important feedback.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's important for any relationship, right?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: I love that you're just like talking about this, and that's in like the depths of your marriage, but I'm like, this is applicable in the workplace, right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like how everybody's a little bit different here and like how to do it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think uh something that surprises people is like, yes, I'm very clear and direct because I'm dealing with executives and CEOs, but I also know how to do it, right?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's the time for the two by four.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's not as often as you think, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm able to say, if they they have to be able to trust me and hear me, if I'm turning them off, shutting them down, it doesn't work, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I've had to really perfect, and maybe you saw that when we worked together, like I had to perfect how to ask the really hard question that like levels the room, but I'm doing it from a place of like love and appreciation and respect for the work, not trying to belittle or dehumanize anybody, you know, and then sometimes it's the softest underbelly question I ask that's actually like really delicate and gentle that like undoes everything.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's been a fascinating progression of like learning how and when to use these things in my work and how effective it can be.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: I love that you brought that up.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I think to your point, when I when I you and I worked together, what I noticed that you did so well was the types of questions you asked force people to have to sit in right at that boundary of visceral discomfort, as well as being very clear of like why am I even sitting in this discomfort?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's very clear, hey, why is this even important that we address this?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we're actually gonna all come to an agreement, or at least the consensus, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about that a lot.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: We'll I'll dig into that in a second.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of come to an agreement on why does this matter that we all get this right?
• 9:20
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think for executive leaders who are very much so the like just just do what I say type of leader, they struggle with the fact of I don't know and understand how to motivate people who have different types of motivations that this person's motivated by just just equity and value and as much salary as I can apply to them.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: They love that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: They want to go on their quarterly vacations, they don't care that they're burning it down 12 hours a day, as long as this is the outcome, this is how they feel the most safe and what they're valuing.
• 9:51
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Me personally, it's no, I want to go challenge myself and do my life's best work.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Surrounded by other people who are challenging themselves and growing and developing and visually, like that that excites me.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been in startups where, like, obviously, we have to care about the bottom line, but I was constantly being surrounded by people who are doing their life's best work.
• 10:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they were obsessed.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what I love is you've had both sides of it, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: So being in sales, you know how to chase a quarterly measure, right?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: The money, the bonus, like how that's all designed.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: And my argument is extrinsic motivation doesn't last very long.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's the problem.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: We can try to step on that pedal as much as possible.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Eventually, you're like, there's no gas left.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Intrinsic motivation is fulfilling at a completely different level.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we're trying to get at, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's what you're referring to.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that refuels itself, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's sustainable where external is not, I would argue.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: You need it like a little bit, but like that can't be the whole ballgame.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I would argue that's where our culture has completely lost the plot.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think to your point, even just having an awareness of what does that mean?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: What does intrinsic motivation mean?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: What does extrinsic motivation mean?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And for a lot of people, and I think this is speaks a lot to the work that I've done with burnout coaching and nervous system regulation, is most people only know how to perform from pressure, stress, and anxiety, not from motivation.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I care to work towards this thing?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they they're like, I don't know.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just know that this feels safe for me to people please people in this way.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: This feels safe for me to continue to try to feel like I'm capable and competent.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're just constantly working from a place of insecurity and overwhelm and anxiety, and just honestly this fear of appearing incompetent.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than I'm really excited to go challenge myself, I'm probably gonna embarrass myself a couple times.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And yet I'm thrilled and excited.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: I love that you bring that up because at the C-suite level, it's a little bit different.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: They're not quite as fueled by the extrinsic anymore because they're like, well, I'm at the top of the game.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm at the top of the mount, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Which brings up its own feelings and anxieties.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: But there is like another step getting closer to a lot of the work I get to is like, let's get like back to what lights you up, what is intrinsically satisfying about this.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: How do we make this work for you?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: People ask me all the time, you and I have chat about this.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, well, what's the leadership theory you're applying or the framework?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, everybody's different.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: I do not treat any leader as the same person because that would be denying the critical details that make them into a great leader.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I'm always curious.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just like, what about this?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Light to up?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you get here?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you try so hard?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think people are struck by how deeply personal this work is.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because then it impacts their entire life.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just how they lead a company.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think to your point, the entirety of the human being is here present in the work that they're doing.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So for the emotionless leader who's like, no, I don't, I don't feel very big strong feelings.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I can't work with people who are very uh emotional, whatever language you want to give to that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: When in reality, it's just like you're not even realizing that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let's maybe not use the word emotions, because that by itself is ambiguous, but you largely work from heightened amygdala activity.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just put it that way, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like in a large amount of times, you're constantly just putting out fires left, right, and center, and you've somehow achieved success as a result.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so now when you're all of a sudden at this peak, you've reached the top of the mountain in terms of how high you can climb, maybe you've even seen an exit or two.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I here?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like why am I building this thing anymore?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why does it love, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because now we're removing, like for me in the world of personal development and looking at like human behavior and what we're trying to attain, right?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like now you have these variables removed, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: These people have achieved the thing perhaps they always wanted to achieve or they never thought they could achieve.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: So once you're at the mountaintop, the deeper humanity has to come out because now you're like, well, I have the money, I have the power, I have the influence.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: Now what?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now we're asking like brass tacks questions, and like that is the most fun.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Up until then, a lot of people can hang their hat on once I once I get to, if I get to, right?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: The money, the things.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so I, you know, one of the first books I ever read in psychology was What Happy People Know, written by a therapist who dealt with the rich and the famous.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, this is what I have learned from the people who have made it to the mountaintop and the things that they struggle with.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it was just such, it was so striking to me.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm only connecting now that like that's also what I care about in my work.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: You know, meeting the humans who are at the top.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It it's so hard to ask somebody who's quote not at the top those types of questions, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because you you you'll ask something like, Hey, if money was no object, what would you do?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's true.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's really, really true.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I have to be like, okay, like I just struggle.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I say to anybody who does hear this or what have you, and people who, you know, try out different areas of coaching.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: I've coached every level of an organization, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: Every level of ICs, manager, middle manager, VP, director, everything.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I love the C-suite because now we're cutting out the bullshit.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: We're cutting out so much bullshit, it is like so satisfying and the accountability.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: This is what nobody knows, right?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: And why have such empathy?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: The C-suite, they are not sitting around smoking cigars, being like, our sales team is terrible.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's all their fault.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my God, like what's wrong with HR?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: They are not sitting around blaming everybody else.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: They are sitting there thinking, what have we done?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: How do we change it?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: And how are we part of it?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like the accountability is so high at that level, it's deeply satisfying for me to work at.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's those are the people I want to rock and roll with.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: You've kind of ruined my goals to become an executive leader because I was really hoping it was uh whiskey and cigars talking about being masters of the universe.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I can't do that.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, sure.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: You can do something if you want, but it's not very applicable.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's not gonna get you very far.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not to say, like, this isn't to say like there aren't toxic leaders out there.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: There are toxic leaders everywhere, you know.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm just saying the people that I encounter, the reason I love this work is like it's about really dealing with like the depths of humanity and a real real pressure cooker.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think even when you talk about there are toxic people everywhere, one thing that's been interesting for me in my own burnout experience is recognizing all of the ways that I was the toxic person.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, tell me more.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, we're gonna cry through this.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um but let's do it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're beautiful, you got this.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I know, yeah.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody, anybody who knows me, they're just kind of like, of course, Ian's gonna cry about it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's totally reasonable and appreciated.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: But so I think for me, kind of coming out of my burnout season, I was going through addiction recovery and all stuff like that, a bunch of marital issues.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And while that was all happening, I was still like, okay, but in the work side of things, I'm gonna go climb this mountaintop because that's all I know.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's one of the few ways that I feel safe in all number of ways with my masculinity and my self-image and all the things, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I inevitably got to a point where I closed the the biggest deal in company history up to that point, probably 15 to 20 times the average deal size.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the night after I was just racked with anxiety.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because one, I had to go find three more of those deals the next quarter in order to hit my number.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there was some little bit of the like some cultural issues going on there and my frustrations about that.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: But essentially, I just lost all energy and ability to turn it on anymore.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: To why am I even doing this?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why does this matter?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, from that place, all of a sudden I became the toxic guy, where I was inevitably a couple months later put on a pip and like you can't put me on a pip.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just blah blah blah.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I've got the belt.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Man.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I end up leaving to a different department, but I still sat there in that bitterness and angst and anger for I'd say months, but I can, I'm sure anybody who's listening who's at the company is like, it was years.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: How could let's just because we were talking about this in the beginning, how would you define toxicity?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so in that particular case, the toxicity really came down to a hypersense of like ego and perception of self where you're not taking ownership of something, where you're constantly shifting blame, pointing the finger.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're really the way that you're showing up is constantly victimizing yourself against your environment, circumstances, and everything that's outside of your control to a point where no one wants to be around you.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a great definition.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Takes a lot of self-reflection and acknowledgement.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like with all the humility in the world, like there's a lot of apologies that I've gone into where leaving the corporate environment, being like, hey, you didn't deserve the fact that I was shaking my fist this way for the longest time.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I needed to be allowed to hit that rock bottom.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, also, then I think part of it too is what skills did I need to learn in order to create some resilience to the things that were potentially toxic in that environment, some ways that there was problems with leadership and the way that they were leading and incentivizing or disincentivizing behaviors that they should have wanted to see more of.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that ownership though is largely what allowed me to obsess about doing my job really well.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about finding purpose and meeting an intrinsic motivation.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: When I got to a point where I could do my job in about three hours a day, the thing that I did, because I was expected to fill my chair to spend hours in the seat showing up and and you know, clocking in and out.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that I felt called to do, the thing that intrinsically lit me up, is the thing that I did with all of the excess time, which was essentially sitting with other top performers on the team who are experiencing burnout, who were tired, exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, feeling frustrated by their circumstances, and just sitting and being present with them.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: I want to do that.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like ownership is, I think, for the people who want to ignore reality, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Who they want to blame other people or they want to be in the sense of victim, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Life is just happening to them.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: What I want to say, and I'm curious about your experience, is the freedom that comes with ownership.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it is like the recognition and reckoning that you were part of that situation and how you can do something about it.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: But as long as you are not taking any accountability, you're actually trapped.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: You're trapped in your own situation and their situation.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think that is something that's often misunderstood and not talked about very often.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll take it a step further.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Within a large amount of the communities that I work with within ADHD, part of the frustration that they feel and why they've kind of almost created even more of that victim mindset is that oftentimes they see feel like they're a victim of their own nervous system and their own brain border.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, tell me more.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so they they almost have developed an identity around their nervous system responses to external circumstances.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so they've created, well, that's just my personality.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just not capable, no, I can't do this, I can't focus, I can't any number of things, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they have this strong identity attachment to it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's beautiful when you talk about extreme ownership, is that once you get to a point where you can even observe your own visceral experiences and responses, amygdala activity as part of external circumstances, yeah.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now I can choose to observe those experiences and then decide how I want to respond.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And that is the thing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: If I could teach everybody in the world, you know, that I would teach them that.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and especially with the we'll get to nervous system work because I like, you know, I love that we're using that language.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of people are like, what is the nervous system?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like good question, you know, but being able to, I learned at a very young age again through the book What Happy People Know, written by Dan Baker, was about perception, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: You are in charge of how you perceive things.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that blows people's minds, even at the age of 60, 70, whenever they learn it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like how you perceive it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: You can say, you know, you drove to work today, you know, you got there on time.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the perception could be, Oh my God, do you know how many green lights had to happen for me to get there?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know how many things had to go right for me to get here?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: Versus the one time you're like, ah, I hit this red light and then we got trapped, you know.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then our amygdala is like getting super focused on that.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um the perception is so important and the bodily awareness.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: And the nervous system work is like, I have to say, as I have moved along in this work, being the tool, I joke, it's like very funny.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of my clients call me a kate, like I'm the product.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: I am the product, but I love a kate.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: They can't really like put me somewhere, so they just refer to me like that.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's always happened.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: And a big part of my work is like I am the regulated nervous system in the room.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I am stepping into an entire team, when there's tension, whether it's one-to-one or the entire room is listening to me, it's critical that like this part of me is extremely regulated.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: When I'm sitting in conflict between two leaders, you know, I I they they center on me, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like I am their North Star in that way.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's an interesting thing to talk about because it's not commonly communicated, you know, about the coaching world.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I well, I love the fact that you're the way that you represent that of sometimes you have to be able to lead from the front to be able to show, hey, this is what it looks like.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in this with you.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm literally sitting in the same experience that all of you are.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And yet.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you look at the flight attendants, you know, you're like, if the flight attendants are freaking out, like I said, that, you know, once at our old company, I was like, you know, one of the leaders was like, when do we freak out?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because things were going down.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, if I'm freaking out, like it's a good signal.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he was like, Okay, okay, okay.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, uh, because I'm not, you know, I'm not part of the power system usually.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not like all the way in it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm able to stay also like more outside of things.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: You can still be the observer, yeah.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and to that point, of again, you're reflecting what it looks like to be the observer, and that is a skill, right?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that I coach ad nauseum is metacognition, your ability to just observe your own internal human experience.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if I can't give language for what I'm feeling right now, what are you feeling?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And people are like, I don't freaking know.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had a coach, you know, say, like, well, give it a color and give it a texture.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I tried to do that with my wife, and she's like, the hell are you talking about right now?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: She was pissed at me for even like attempting to try to share that with her.
• 24:29
  unknown: Love it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: But but so being able to give people more language of like, okay, well, if you don't, if you can't give a a name for the emotion that you're feeling, let's just talk about the visceral experience you have.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like blood pressure, pulsing in your temple, tension in the muscles in your eyebrows, like clenching in your jaw, adrenaline and shaking in your hands, maybe a tapping of your foot.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you noticing?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Just so that we could start to even hear yourself say, Oh, I'm noticing.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there's activity that happens that moves you from more of the amygdala part of the brain that's ruminating and catastrophizing and spiraling to the part of your brain that's forming logic, forming words, the mechanics of even forming sentences.
• 25:08
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And super hemispheric laterization, right?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like ability to have both parts of that, your full brain working and operating.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then let's add in, oh, you're gonna be on your laptop in a meeting, and there are 40 different things happening, and like you're thinking about like every minute of the day, and we're all surprised.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: We're like, why is nothing moving?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Why, you know, heaven forbid there's like any cognitive overload when you know, one thing I do in order to like bring everybody present is like we close laptops.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: I force executives of Fortune 100 companies to close their laptops in their meetings, and they're like, the first time I asked them to do it, mind blown.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, this lady's crazy.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: Right after the first meeting, they go, wow.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and then they start talking and they start seeing each other and being present, right?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: And getting back to like, how do we operate?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: What are the rules of engagement?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: How do we engage?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like, who talks about that?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: I assure you, nobody teaches the problem with making it to the C suite, there's no C suite school, Ian.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's why I exist because there is a playbook.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: There are things that change dramatically from the VP to the C-suite.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like I was talking to somebody the other day, and he's like, the VP, VP level is the best, the best.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: You want to stay there, everybody.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you if you want to really enjoy everything, you want to stay at the VP level, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to like really launch yourself into the stratosphere, you enter the C suite.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: You're the goalie.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's nobody else behind you.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: There's nobody coming.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody, somebody just got promoted to senior VP and they're saying, oh dang it.
• 26:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Made a mistake.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm rooting.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not for everybody.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to say it's not for everybody.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's not for the faint of heart.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, the point is just like rules of engagement are something that I talk a lot about with teams.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I, you know, I I like to move quickly.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like I always say to clients, I'm like, you should see and notice this stuff very fast.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: This isn't, it shouldn't take two years.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we're gonna start tweaking and playing with this right away.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not interested in like navel gazing for hours and hours and hours and hours.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's not, I'm not that person.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: They you can find them.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's not me.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think that part of even acknowledging, hey, one of the things that's causing all of you to distrust each other, not engage with each other, is constantly thinking that your attention is required elsewhere.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Not here in the present moment.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: And some of some amount of that too is your unwillingness to say no to other people who are trying to draw your attention elsewhere.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: I yeah.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Talk me through that of like the executive leader who's always on all the time is always thinking that there's a fire drill just ready to happen.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: You tell them to close their laptop, and then what?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, if we're in a meeting, you know, then I'll also like help run the structure so we change it up, right?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'll sit in and observe a meeting, then I'll run through what I observed, uh, right?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I like teach the action meeting format.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And once we close everything, you can have a pen and paper out, you know, but now like I'm just watching where they get stuck with each other.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, ooh, let's go over the updates of this deal.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, why are we going over updates?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: Could that be done in, you know, on chat or like in some type of, you know, other asynchronous way.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then they have to like look at each other.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm paying attention to who's present in the room, what energies come up, right?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's also a lot more data for me.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, ooh, why would we talk about this big deal?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: Is the level of anxiety in the room, like through the roof?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'll pause.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Be like, hey, can you talk to me about what's going on here?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and then like more happens, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: There's just like a lot of threads that are a lot more available once people are present.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: And also, as far as like, you said it quickly, but as far as like how to calendar, how to work with an EA, also there's no training with that.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: So one of the things I do, and I've done this with so many leaders, and they're always like, Thank God.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: I call it, you know, I made it up.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: I call it the red, yellow, green exercise.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: I said, open up your calendar, show me everything's like quadruple booked, right?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: For like the next five years.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm like, okay, go through this and like you have to bucket it.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: What do you have to be in?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: This is non-negotiable.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is at the executive level.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: How is that your priority?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yellow, questionable, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: Not sure.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about it.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: But energetically, I'm like, you have to fill all of these.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then red being, it's just cumulative crap that I've been saying yes to, or people are just like taking up my time.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: So it's one of the first things I do with a new leader is I free up their time and give them ownership back.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Simple exercise.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's never that complicated, right?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: But then they have to kind of keep maintaining that.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: And that's very helpful when they're like, oh, I'm in charge of my time.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: I say no to things.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's something that came up for me as you were talking about that of you know, needing to feel like you're in every meeting, needing to feel like every decision needs to run through you.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of the exercises that I used to run when I was consulting engineering departments was chaos engineering.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: But not chaos engineering for like, you know, automated processes and so on.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was more of like chaotic chaos engineering for the sake of, hey, take your subject matter expert and make them not available for three hours where they're just in a stacation.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: They are not allowed to respond to any.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And now let's see how our team responds to information not being available through subject matter expert, right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like let's understand processes that are happening there.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like you could run things like that through the C-suite.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the other ones that I really liked was have your subject matter expert all of a sudden start giving erroneous or intentionally errant data to also see your team response.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: And what Ian is referring to is like how engineers build resiliencies by removing critical players to see how things, how the system moves when something is taken out of place and how to build around it.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think that's that's a part of for every C-suite.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's some amount of, hey, how do you build a team that's resilient enough to be able to handle decisions when you are not in the chair?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, absolutely.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: And like what happens if the CEO is hurt or like what, like everything should be able to run relatively smoothly if one person isn't there, right?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: Building in like asynchronous resiliency and also like decision making, which is a massive part.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: Again, no one teaches you how to make a decision as a team, as a group.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard enough with one other person, right?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard enough on your own.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: Hard enough is one person.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: Then you add another person.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, okay, now we're debating.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: Now you have seven people, maybe ten.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: How?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: How do you do it?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: It is messy, it is not perfect, and there's a reason leaders push this stuff off forever.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a perfect segue because I started to allude to this earlier.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Something that you taught me and honed in significantly was consent versus consensus.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would love for you to share what that is when it comes to decision making in large groups.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: How what is what does that mean?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: What do those two words mean?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then how do you go about creating consent or versus consensus?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, I love that you bring it up.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's so important because people always say, right?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I love when they say it.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, whoa, we need consensus.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, oh, great.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for the invitation.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a trigger word.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Let's have a conversation.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, what does that mean?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm curious, I'll put it back to you really quickly.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: What does consensus mean to you in the corporate world?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in a corporate world, consensus to me means that everybody agrees on what experiment that we are running or what up standard operating procedures we're all moving forward with.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like everyone agrees and we can have a consensus on how we're moving forward based on the conversation we're having.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's consensus is essentially we can just agree to the terms.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: Which usually means three people agree, everybody else doesn't, and then everything falls apart sideways.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: And the point of talking about, I'll just say consent versus consensus is finding a way to have to decide something as a group that sticks.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: Consent is really pointing to the fact that you're like, I might not want, I might not like it, right?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: People say like disagree and commit.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't love that one either.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because in this, it's like, hey, I don't feel good about this, I don't trust this.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: The people were under, we're not talking about the fact that people need to feel good about a decision, right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: Consensus, I feel like, is actually saying, does everyone feel good about this?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: And unfortunately, that's not enough.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because feelings change.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: You can go home and be like, what the hell did I just agree to?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, no, we don't want to include Europe in this deal.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know what I mean?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't give you a lot of conversation.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Consent to me is at the very end of a rigorous process around being like, hey, how do you feel about this?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Let's have like, right?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: So we like the emotional round.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: You have to consider the emotions in the room.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: I feel anxious, I feel freaked out, I'm scared, I'm worried, right?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: Does somebody have other information?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: You go around, being like, you know what?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen this deal happen three times with this company, and I need to share that with the team, you know.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: So why do you have the anxiety?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Is it based on anything, or is it because you had like a really rough weekend and like your dog had surgery?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like, who, you know what I mean?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, who knows?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: You just got back from a trip to Tulum where you've spent a certain amount of time being accosted by government and so on.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not at all a personal story.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not at all.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: So the point is, right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like consent, the reason I wanted to address like the decision-making process is important.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Consent is at the very end, where it's like we have we've gone through the multiple layers, and consent is I have the information I need.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: I may not feel comfortable, I may not even feel good about it, but I hear the point that we need to move forward and it's going to be more harmful in the long run to not move forward.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: And when I give consent, it means I fucking agree.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: And like we are not going out of this room and dismantling it because that's how you lose trust in yourself, everybody else, and the company.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the consent then is I understand the marching orders.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone understands the concerns that I have, but we have all consented on what data am I going to collect so that I can make sure that I'm saying, hey, this is the belief that I have or the story I'm telling myself is that when you make this decision, it's going to affect my marketing team.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to see these numbers impacted, and this is going to be a problem.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I could be like, well, this isn't going to work because of these things.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, okay, well, do you have data to support that?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 35:16
  unknown: Yes.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Are you going to collect the data?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the time I don't.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a feeling.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, 30 years of experience.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, okay, yeah, right.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I run into this a lot when it comes to coaching, of being like, well, I've been in this industry for a long time.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, so what I'm hearing from you is you really need to make sure that this is true.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if this is not true, you're gonna have 20 years of experience.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna have to reflect on of wait, has have I always been wrong about this?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: And if it feels like the decision is too big, yeah, and we've talked about this, right?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: If the decision is too big and it's too scary, I'm always like, is it safe to try?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Make it smaller.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: If you're like something, even if if I hear a leader say something about this feels deeply wrong to me, and they are standing there very much like I'm in alignment with myself, first of all.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna write that off if they can't give me data, right?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I say, okay, let's make this smaller.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: What is the next step we can make in order to get more information?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: We are not going to stall out.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: We are not going to sit here for six months, I assure you, of that, right?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't write that off either because it is information.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's hard to put into words.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I think what I I love about the consent versus consensus is it does force everybody to participate in how you run this experiment, right?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is the safe to try experiment?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: What data are we gonna go collect?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: And can we get agreement on what type of data everyone is going to go collect?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna meet in six weeks with the data that we've all collected based on our purview of our departments and our positions and so on.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Gavel.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: And like risk tolerance, right?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: And like how to move through things.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, often I find teams where I get worried about an executive team uh and a CEO is when decisions stop, when they really stop being made, when the hard decisions are not being made, right?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh another favorite word is prioritization.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Guess how many clients I have met up with who are like, we prioritize.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, show me.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, well, here are my 95 priorities.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, okay.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's like hilarious.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's like so comical.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, they're all important.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, no, like you just haven't prioritized anything.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so it is sitting with the emotion of severe discomfort and being like, we might be losing out.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that is the nature of business.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: You might be losing out, but you're absolutely going to lose out if you do not prioritize.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's interesting about the nervous system work is this idea.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Once you can start noticing, okay, I'm having really heightened amygdala activity about this thing.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: The whole point of the amygdala is to narrow our vision.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And make it to where I can't come up with creative solutions while in this state.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: So all of my thoughts are going to be all or nothing.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: All my thoughts are going to be catastrophizing.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: All my thoughts are going to be trying to predict five steps ahead.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think what's beautiful about that, again, this metacognition of noticing the types of thoughts that when I'm working with somebody, as soon as I notice they have these black and white, all or nothing thinking, I can just be able to say, hey, we we've agreed that this is a cue that there's heightened amygdala activity happening right now.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the statement that you made.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just work backwards real quick.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do some amygdala-calming practices in real time.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna come back to this kind of this statement.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: This statement.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: What about this?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel is triggering your sense of psychological safety, perception, or like some identity or worldview that you have?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then let's work backwards to or to the thing that's predicting outcomes when you don't really have that much data, right?
• 38:47
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: What I love, the reason I smile is you use more psychological terminology than I do.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: But that's partly because of the fact that I'm working with ADHD squirrel brains who are so fast at all of these processes happening.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: The speed at which these intrusive thoughts happen, it's like thousands of arrows are blotting out the sun, and I have to do it.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you're you're getting into yeah, the how they operate at like a very granular level.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: And also, you know, I mean, like I love it because it's all true.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also helpful to educate them on what's happening in their brain in order to do something about it.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I was just like laughing because we've been talking about language, right?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember, you know, so my undergrad is in psych, my master's is in organizational psychology and evaluation, right?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember sitting in my org psych masters being like, there's no way you walk into a business and talk like this.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, absolutely effing no way.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I went and did purely because of language, I did my MBA.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I like did a joint program at my MBA at the same time.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I was sitting in those business classes and I was like, I was fucking right.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, nobody talks like this.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: And guess what?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: They don't care.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'd love to hear you like you're speaking to like the deep, nerdy side of me that I don't really let out anymore because I can't, not that I can't, but like I don't want to lose a leader when I'm like nervous system, you know, I'm thinking about all of it, right?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: But the language I have to use with them is like, how do I take a belief you have about yourself and weave it all the way through to the bottom line?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: That is my task, right?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it has to be about the business and the behaviors and really concrete steps.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say one of my superpowers is like meeting them where they are and breaking it down into like the smallest steps that move them forward and then they build confidence in themselves again and their team.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I love hearing you literally speak all about the nerdy things because nobody, nobody in my world talks like that.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, it would be great.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't I don't know if anybody in my world uh likes that I talk like that.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but I don't I don't ask for for permission when I do.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: No, but I think you're educating people.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think you're helping them understand how the brain works, and that is a critical component of your work.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think that's the part of the ambiguity of I work in the ambiguity of focus and the ambiguity of flow state.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And for a lot of people, especially with ADHD, it's not that they they have uh inattention, so they have too much of it.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's usually driven by this chronic levels of heightened amygdala activity.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so how we can help them turn on these crazy hyperfocus moments.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've ever interacted with somebody with ADHD where they've gotten out of an eight to ten hour binge of crazy focus.
• 41:22
  unknown: Yeah.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: The difficulty they have is hey, I don't know how to turn that on at will.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I actually don't know how to recreate that.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so we work backwards from that.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's happening in your nervous system so you can increase the likelihood that you can actually generate that on demand rather than by accident.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to look at the nervous system.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And especially since ADHD starts and ends in the nervous system, it has to be part of the conversation.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And from I don't want to compare myself to therapy, but part of the difficulty of a lot of modern therapy approaches is yeah, they ask a lot of questions about what's happening and tell me about the story and how this relates versus me.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: I treat that more of like physical therapy versus a personal trainer.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: You've told me you want PEX.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna tell you what exercises you need to do in order to increase the likelihood that you grow PECS.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to nervous system, it's the same thing.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: I look at emotions as just part what parts of the brains are is active, heightened amygdala activity, extra amount of activity in the hippocampus, and some type of external context.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: And all of those things we can practice and rehearse, recreating the visceral experience so we can prepare for the context.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when I work with the executive leader who's saying, when I get into a meeting, I have this insecurity that's coming up.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's this fear of appearing incompetent.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always have to be in command and control and intense and aggressive.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, hey, how is that serving you?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's not.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody likes working with me.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone tells me I'm an asshole.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: The board is telling me that I need to work on my emotional regulation and so on.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so my practices are okay, you need to go do four sets of 20 of this particular exercise that recreates the visceral experience of the fear of appearing incompetent story.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then in real time, we're gonna practice the calming regulation strategies.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I love that because I'm like, what I'm hearing you do is at the independent, like deep level is the work I'm doing in entire company, like in a company, right?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: I work on the nervous system of a company.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I'm reading, like 24-7.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I love about the work that you do is the fact that people don't realize that they're co-regulating or co-disregulating, right?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And to that point of hey, I can't single out an individual being like, you need to leave and go run the right thing.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: But what I love is like a team, once it's like clicking into place, it is it is my drug.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: It is my drug of choice.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: It is like all of a sudden they're rowing together, right?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: The motion is there.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: They are regulating, they are doing phenomenal work and they can feel it.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: They can absolutely feel it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: They know the difference.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: They're looking at each other and being like, why does this feel so different?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I feel like I'm the coxswain, you know, and like it's just early morning and we're just practicing and we're getting into it, and it's like the most beautiful thing.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I I joke because, you know, our buddy Isaac will be like, hey, like nobody cares about executive teams.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like nobody cares about the health of an executive team.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, you know who does care?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, once they're dysregulated enough, once the board starts to see it, you know, they've seen it enough times, and that's why I work with a lot of older people, right?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because they're like, ooh, they call me in because like they have been there, they know what's going on, they understand that something needs to change.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then also once it starts to change in a good way, it's phenomenal.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just the the visualization that you just brought up of the coxswain and that early morning dew over the water, and it's calm and serene, but you have six people rowing in a boat, potentially all disorganized and yeah, it's chaotic and frustrating.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you can feel alignment.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's the thing.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, people are like, I want alignment because at some point they did feel it.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: They have felt it.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: You can't just talk about something you've never felt before.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so that work is very complicated and complex, you know.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: But once you have it, you're like, this is it.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is our North Star.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Kate, I promised you that I'd help you land the plane.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we are at that point.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Kate, what anything that you're working on or anything you're excited about that you want to invite anybody into, or for anybody listening knowing how to work with you?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, I mean, I work still with individual executive clients who are wondering to themselves, like, I'm I'm here, I've made it.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I've been here for three or four years, maybe 20.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's a long time.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't love it.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm miserable.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, could this be better?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: Those are some of my favorite clients to work with because the answer is yes.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you can absolutely love where you are.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's just gonna look different and feel different.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, I've seen complete transformations happen and I think that's beautiful.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then executive teams who want to have that feeling, that real feeling of alignment and working as a team, which is rare.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of the few places in the organization that's actually a team, and people don't talk about that.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: So if that's something that you're interested and curious about, I'd love to have a conversation.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I will post your LinkedIn and your website uh in the show notes.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Kate, such a pleasure.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate the banter and just love seeing you continue to flourish in the work that you're doing.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: You too, Ian.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, friends, for joining.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Take care for now.