KF #33. Strategic Mindset Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Muriel, welcome back!

Muriel Wilkins
Thank you. I’m delighted to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m delighted as well. Last time we talked executive presence, and that was very fun. And it looks like your executive presence and star has continued to rise and rise. So, congratulations on everything.

Muriel Wilkins
Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
You got a fresh book here, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential. That sounds so important. And I would love to hear, for starters, what’s one of the most common beliefs you’re seeing widespread that is limiting a lot of folks’ potential in their careers?

Muriel Wilkins
I think, probably, the one, they’re all equal opportunity, but the one that I see that really halts people in their career is, “I need to be involved,” because it gets them involved in places that they actually don’t need to be involved in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we need to be involved, as in, “I’m reluctant to delegate, let go.” Or, what are the flavors of “I need to be involved”?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, I mean, it’s this unsatiating, almost compulsion to have to be engaged in all the things. So, it looks like, “I have to be at that meeting,” “I have to be cc’d on all the emails,” “I have to be the one that has the conversation,” “I have to weigh in on that document.” And what it does is, it does a couple of things.

Number one is it keeps you from being able to advance in a way that you need to because the more responsibilities you get, the more you would need to be involved in in order to deal with all the complexities of your job.

And, secondly, it actually creates a clog in the system, meaning it keeps others from being able to develop, because they then end up become habituated by the fact that you’re involved in all the things, so then why should they do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, and I’m thinking of yet another downside there is, I recall I was having chat with a fellow Bain colleague. We were talking about, “Oh, what have you been up to? What are you doing?” And he was looking at all kinds of cool opportunities at buzzy startups that had hefty funding and dozens of employees.

And there was one that he got pretty far in the interview process and he was considering it. And he told me he was leaning towards rejecting the offer because of one of several reasons. The CEO of many dozens of employee companies still wanted to review every email that went out to the users.

And I was really struck by that because it’s like, I’ve lived that myself, but then I have a much smaller team. I managed to let it go a long time ago and life has been so much better.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. And, look, the thing with a belief like “I need to be involved” is, at some point, it served you, right? That CEO, it probably helped him in some capacity at some point where he was cc’d or maybe he had had an occasion where he was not copied on an email and all hell broke loose as a result of that, or he thinks as a result of that. And, therefore, his mantra then became, “You’ve got to CC me on all the emails.”

You know, I think the point here is that just because it works in one situation doesn’t mean it’s going to work in all situations. And, certainly, from a leadership standpoint, there’s no way you can have the sheer physical capacity to be involved in all the things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you share with us a cool story of someone who had that limiting belief and what they did to evolve beyond it and what, ultimately, happened for them?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. I’m thinking, even as you were sharing the story of that CEO, I’m thinking about a client that I had who, and this is something that I often find, particularly if you’re the founder of an organization or a startup, or you were there from the beginning, even if you’re not the founder, you were one of the early employees, where, quite frankly, it is required that all hands are on deck.

And so, this particular person, she had founded this nonprofit on her own, it was just her. And so, she was used to doing all the things. But then as the nonprofit grew, and again, she really needed to be focused on external fundraising and being motivating staff and thinking strategically and dealing with the board.

I remember one of the conversations we had, she’s like, “But I just find I don’t have time to do all these things.” And I said, “Well, what are you spending time doing?” And she said, “Well, for example, like this morning, I was checking the bathrooms to make sure that there was toilet paper in there.” And I said, “Is that the best use of your time as CEO?”

And it made her really think about it from the perspective of, “Why am I the one doing this?” Not to say that it shouldn’t be done, but that wasn’t where she added the most value. And so, it wasn’t that I was telling her it’s not the best use. I just asked her whether it was the best use.

And so, when she started shifting to “I need to be involved where it’s the best use of my time” it gave her an automatic filter for how should she be prioritizing where she spends her time. And I think that’s what we all need to be doing, is really thinking about it through a filter rather than a universal level of engagement that we need to have in all the things in order to keep things from going wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Muriel, now for just our human need to have stories completed, how did that toilet paper get handled in the end?

Muriel Wilkins
She delegated it. And what’s funny is there were people in her organization who wanted to help. But she also, it’s interesting because these beliefs never come from a bad place. She was also very concerned because they were doing a lot of work and they were a service-oriented organization.

She was also concerned about putting more burden, as she put it, on her staff. She did not want to burden them with more. So, she took it upon herself. She’s the one who would do all these things, but they were like, “Look, you’re better off going out and raising money for us because if you don’t do that, you’re the only person who can do that. If you don’t do that, we’re not going to survive as an organization.”

So, these little things, and the toilet paper was just one example, but when you add up all those little micro examples of where she was spending the time, and we started calling them breadcrumbs, right? Like, stop focusing on the breadcrumbs and focus on the loaf, the mana. Then she started getting it, and her staff was more than happy to focus on the breadcrumbs.

And you know what? They felt like they were adding value by doing that. And so, kind of it worked out. So, it required not only a shift in belief in her, but she needed to have some conversations, be clear around what she was delegating and ensuring that her staff was also aligned around those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into the rundown of the top seven beliefs that limit us, as well as your approach for addressing them. But before we do it, I’d like to hear, any other surprising, fascinating discoveries you made as you were digging into this research?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, so I think there were a couple of things that really struck me, two, in particular. The first is we just talk about beliefs, and what they are. Because when I say the word beliefs, some people are like, “What are you talking about?”

And so, when we think about what a belief is, it really is just an assumption we’re making or a story that you’re telling yourself. Like, are they true? I mean, you came out of consulting, so you know this. I did as well. We make assumptions when we model something or when we put a budget together. But do we know if it’s actually true? We don’t. It’s a hypothesis around what’s going to happen.

And if you put in one thing I learned in consulting was, you put in garbage assumptions to that model, that spreadsheet model, what’s going to come out on the other side is garbage. And so, one of the things that I really loved digging into was the impact of our thoughts and our beliefs on our outcomes.

And there’s been some interesting studies, everything from Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset to Ellen Langer and Alia Crum’s work around the impact of thoughts and beliefs on health outcomes that undeniably show that it’s not just what you do, but it’s what you think about what you do that has a huge impact on the outcomes you have. So that was number one.

I think number two, when I looked across all of my clients, or I looked at 300 of them, to see if there were some commonalities in terms of the types of beliefs that they had and, lo and behold, I did find that there were some commonalities, the one that surprised me the most is the belief of, “If I can do it, so can you.”

And it surprised me, Pete, because that is a mantra that we use, I have used so many times that I thought was like very motivational, very inspirational. And it can be, but it isn’t always. It can actually be quite debilitating and demoralizing and, quite frankly, get in the way of the thing that you’re supposed to do as a leader, which is to also coach and develop others.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I want to hear, when you mentioned huge impact that you’ve seen from the research, can you share with us any sort of eye-popping discoveries or experiments, pieces of research that made you go, “Whoa”?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, my favorite, which I write about or summarize, synthesize in the book is the one by Ellen Langer and Alia Crum. And so, they were looking at, and they were at Harvard. But they basically looked at a group of hotel attendants, so the people that you see when you’re in a hotel cleaning the rooms, doing all the things.

If you’ve seen these folks, they’re on their feet all day or they’re pushing things. They’re doing very much physical labor for eight hours a day. And they ask these folks, “Do you believe that the work that you’re doing is exercise? Like, does it equate working out?” And most of them said, “No, we’re just doing our job. It’s not exercise. Exercise happens after this if I get around to it.”

And so, they introduced to them, “What if you just thought about your work as exercise? What if you just considered your work to be exercise?” which is a belief, right? It’s just a different assumption you’re making about your work. And then they tracked what happened. And what they saw that four weeks after introducing this notion, they saw material enough improvement in a bunch of different health metrics in the folks who they had assigned this new belief.

And so, their conclusion was, and that was the only thing that changed, Pete, nothing else. The work didn’t change, the people didn’t change, their uniform didn’t change. That’s the only thing that changed. So, the conclusion was, again, that it’s not the work that they’re doing, that necessarily just drives the outcomes, but it’s what they think, the thinking about that work, what they believe about that work that then also impacted outcomes.

You know, when I read this study, as well as again, the growth mindset study that Carol Dweck has done, where she did almost the same type of thing as it relates to education, I thought, “Well, my goodness, like, why doesn’t this apply from a leadership standpoint?”

And I have experienced in my own work, part of my frustration as an executive coach for the past 22 years is I would help my clients move to action, move to doing something different but they would always come back to the thing that was frustrating them to begin with or the outcomes that they weren’t getting to.

And what I realized is they were changing what they were doing, but they weren’t changing what was driving the behavior, which is the belief or the thought or the assumption or the mindset. But if we could change that or expand on it, I don’t even like to use the word change, it made it much more sustainable in terms of them being able to have new behaviors, new ways of doing things to then make the out more sustainable.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve heard of this study several times, and whenever it comes up, I just wonder, like, what is the intermediate mechanism by which that is occurring? And so, I can only speculate, and maybe they’ve got better speculations or you know, and you can solve this mystery for me.

But in terms of, if you think about it as exercise, you then do it differently and you actually appreciate, “Oh, my heart rate’s getting up a little bit.” It’s like, “Ooh, I’m going to have a little bit more gusto in the way that I’m moving.” And, thusly, there are physiological impacts of that? Or, what’s that sort of intermediate step?

Muriel Wilkins
Think about it in terms of, you know, if I am watching a scary movie, again, I’m saying scary. If we’re watching the same movie and my belief is, “This is scary,” how does my body respond? My body responds for me, I might sweat, I might go like this and hide my eyes. I might clench my fists and my heart might start pumping fast.

But if you’re looking at the same movie, let’s say Chucky, which was the first movie my husband took me on a date, I would say that was scary for me. He thought it was funny, right? So, what did his body do? His body, his eyes lit up, he was jittery in his seat, he was laughing. Same movie, different response based on what we think about what we’re seeing in front of that screen. So that is my anecdotal way of explaining it.

And I think the same holds true in anything that we do, right? We all might look at a situation and approach a situation, and certainly in the workplace. How we experience any workplace situation, in particular the challenges, is impacted by the way we think about that situation, by what we think about ourselves, about how we think about the other person that’s part of that situation, or what we think about the context.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yeah. I’m thinking about perhaps giving a speech or presentation. Some people say, “I’m so scared. I’m nervous. I’m terrified.” Others say, “I’m so excited. I’m pumped up. This is going to be awesome.” And it just has that whole cascade of downstream effects there.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah. And, look, and, by the way, I’m not a person who sits here and say, “Oh, my gosh, just think it and it will happen.” Like, that’s not what this is all about. I think it’s much more about having alignment, right? If what you want to have happen is to show up as confident in that presentation, or what you want to have happen is the audience leaving feeling like you’re engaging, then you ought to work backwards and say, “If I want to show up as engaging to the audience, how would I need to act in that presentation?”

“How would I need to behave in that presentation? And if that’s the way that I need to behave, then what do I need to think in order to be able to behave that way? Or, how do I need to feel in order to behave that way? And if I need to feel that way, then what do I need to be thinking about the audience, about the presentation, about me, in order to increase the probability that I can actually feel and behave in that way?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot. So, working backwards there, in terms of my thought or belief leads to my feeling and then my presence, how I’m showing up leads to the impact or transformation. And then as you explore that chain, you could even see, “Well, I need to think or believe that,” I don’t know, “this thing’s really going to work.”

And so then, we’d say, “Well, what are my doubts? Well, why don’t I go investigate those? OH, hey, what do you know? It looks like the odds really are good that this thing is going to work, and that it will naturally flow through.”

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah. And, look, and it’s not to lie to yourself. It’s also the point that many beliefs can exist at the same time, right? And so, again, going back to the example of the presentation, yeah, I could still say, “Oh, my gosh, like, I might mess up my words.” That certainly could be true. We don’t know if it’s actually going to happen.

And I have this belief that, “If I mess up my words, people are going to think that I don’t know what I’m talking about.” And I can also believe that what I have to say is really interesting and that others will be interested in it. So, which of those two is best going to serve me if my goal is to be engaging in that presentation? The second one.

So, it’s not to say that the first one doesn’t exist. It’s just that it’s not helping me right now. So why pick it up, right? It’s like if I’m trying to be healthy and in front of me is a carrot or a bag of potato chips, right? Both are good, and I’m making the choice based on the outcome of I want to be healthy, I’m going to pick up the carrot.

If it’s like, “Muriel, you just want to satiate your taste buds right now,” if that’s the goal, then I might pick up the potato chips. Just make sure that the way you’re thinking about something and the way you’re acting is aligned with the outcomes that you want rather than just based on default or habit.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, could you give us the quick, I don’t know, two- three-minute version of the rundown of the seven beliefs you highlight here?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. So, we already spoke about one, which is “I need to be involved,” which is basically, the way you see it is somebody just wants to be involved in all the things. I think the example of wanting to be copied on everything is a great one, and that’s a telltale sign that that might be there for you.

The second is “I need it done now,” which has a sense of not only wanting completion on all the things, but also urgently. So, there’s almost this, what it leads is what’s known as toxic productivity, which is everything needs to be done at any cost.

The third is “I know I’m right.” It typically shows up as the person who, you often hear them called as they always want to be the smartest person in the room. What’s tricky about that one is those folks actually do have an uncanny ability to know the answer and see around the corner. They’re just doing it in a way that doesn’t serve their goal, which is to also get other folks to align with them.

The fourth is “I can’t make a mistake.” And so, that’s pretty self-evident. It’s this belief that no mistakes are acceptable in any type of way. And it really is grounded in this notion of underlying it all, feeling like, “If I make a mistake, I won’t be able to recover.”

The fifth one is, “If I can do it, so can you,” which is, again, one of those that sounds motivating, but can be quite debilitating. We have, “I can’t say no,” as the sixth one. And then the last one is, “I don’t belong here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so what’s interesting is each of these has many particular flavors, variations, facets. For example, “I can’t say no,” I can imagine it’s sort of like there’s a, “Or, what?” And like the, “Or, what?” it could be totally different for people.

Muriel Wilkins
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “Oh, they’ll think I’m not a team player,” or, “I’ll get fired,” or, “I will miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’ll never come back.” Just for one demonstration, can you give us a feel for the different variants of, say, “I can’t say no”?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, I think that’s a great nuance that you’ve pointed out, Pete. And I think, in order to understand the variance, because, by the way, you can have this belief and it shows up in varying ways depending on the situation or different even times in your career or your life. But what I think is important to understand is where these beliefs come from, right?

You weren’t born with them, they were learned. And they were learned because it is what got you through something, that got you through to the other side. They actually helped make you successful. A lot of times, in your family of origin or maybe in your schooling or maybe in your community or maybe just out in the world, but now in this particular context, it might not be helping.

Even though they are variants, they all have a commonality, which is, “What is the need that they’re trying to fulfill? What are they trying to make sure that you get?” Fundamentally, under each of these beliefs, we are all trying to get three needs met. The first is the need to feel worthy. The second is the need to feel connected. And the third is the need to feel safe, okay?

We all have these fundamental needs in the workplace, outside the workplace, when we were two years old, and when we are 55 years old, right? So, many of these beliefs come from a place of trying to get these needs met. So, the, “I can’t say no,” for example, well, when you dig down, when I work with my clients and we dig down and say, “Well, why can’t you say no?” They might say like, “Well, I don’t want to disappoint them, right?

Well, what would disappointing them mean? Ultimately, when you feel, you know, I remember my daughter told me once when she was younger, she said, “The worst thing that you could ever tell me.” She was like eight. She said, “The worst thing you could ever tell me is that you’re disappointed in me.” I said, “Really?” I said, “It’s not that I don’t love you.”

She said, “No, no, no. It’s that you’re disappointed in me.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “Because I would feel like you’re literally just, like, turning your back on me,” which basically told her those words meant that she would no longer be, in her eight-year-old mind, would no longer be connected to me, right? And so that was her articulation.

But at the root of “I can’t say no” is a sense that, “If I say no, I will be disconnected from the people who I am trying to do something for, or from the work. So, yes, on the other hand, means that I am connected, right?” And so where might that come from? Maybe at some point in your career, in your life, or whatnot, you learned that saying yes kept the relationship going, kept the connection going.

But does it still serve you? And is it necessarily true, now, universally, that if you say no, it will destroy the connection? And vice versa, as many people find out later in their career, “Even though I’m saying yes to everything and taking all the things on, I still am not maintaining the connection. I’m still not getting the promotion. I’m still getting fired. I’m still the last one here and abandoning myself rather than being able to care for myself and care for the work at the same time.”

So, it’s not that, all of a sudden, I want people to say no, no, no, no, no, no, no all the time. It’s just understanding that that rule that you have in your head that may have served you at some point is not a universal rule. You have to be able to adapt and recognize “When is it helping you, and when is it not?” So, there are times with my clients where I’m like, “Yeah, you can’t say no. This is one you can’t say no to. You got to do it.”

But then there are others who’s like, “Really? What are your other options?” Well, you’ve got yes, you’ve got maybe, you’ve got a stream of other options that you can choose as a response. It doesn’t always have to say yes, be yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that. And it sounds like we’re starting to get into it a little bit, the process, your framework, when you are addressing these pieces. Can you walk us through these steps?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first step is that you have to uncover that there’s actually some place where there’s misalignment. And so, what I tell people and try to short-circuit it and I talk about it in the book is the minute you feel something is off, that’s the only way I can describe it. And that can come from an external cue.

Somebody’s not getting what they want or you didn’t get the promotion or you’re not getting the feedback you want or you’re not, something is off. There’s a gap between what you want, the outcome you want, and what’s actually happening. The audience seems bored. But there are also internal cues, and I would much rather people face the internal cues, because they usually suggest it before the external ones come up.

And the internal cues, you know, I’m pointing at my chest, my heart space here, is my chest tightens. Something feels off. I get like a little tingly. Something feels off. I’m worrying about something, but I don’t even know what I’m worrying about. Something feels off. So, the first question is, or awareness is, “Something doesn’t feel like it’s happening the way I believe it should be happening.”

And then the second question is you have to name what is the belief that might be driving that dissonance, right? So, “What is it that I’m believing?” And this is a simple question, “What is it I’m believing about myself? What is it that I’m believing about the situation? Or, what is it that I’m believing about the people involved or the stakeholders or whatnot that is contributing to me behaving or feeling in this way?” Okay? And so, that’s where the naming happens.

And what I found is that when we got down to it, it typically, at least for my clients, ended up being one of these seven. Those were the top seven. There are certainly others. And so, I’m not suggesting that these are the only seven. It’s that at least it gives you a jump start as to what they might be. Once you can name the belief, then you want to move to, before you move to action, which is, “Okay, well, Muriel, what do I do about it?”

You want to actually unpack it a little bit, and that’s step number two, unpack it. The unpacking is becoming friendly, getting to know that belief, because it’s been around a long time. You better believe it. So, you’ve got to look at it and say, “In what way has it helped me? And in what way is it not helping me? Why do you want to do that?”

Because this is not about getting rid of the belief. Again, it’s just putting it to the side so that when it is helpful to you again, you can pick it up. And the only way you’ll know when to do one or the other is if you become familiar with it. And just asking yourself, “In what moments has it helped me? And in what moments does it not help me?” you are then having more agency and taking control more about what your beliefs are and your thoughts and assumptions are, rather than just, again, looking at them universally.

Once you do that, then you can move to the third step, which is the unblocking. The unblocking has two pieces and it’s very important. The first step is reframing the belief. So, you’ll say, “Okay, well, if that belief’s not helping me, which one would?” And it’s just as a reframing. So, instead of, “I need it done now,” what if it’s, “I need certain things done now,” or, “I need the things strategic, that have strategic value done now,” or, “I need the things that are most important done now”?

Or, we even drop the now, “I need to focus on the things that are important for us to do.” And that little reframing, you can then channel into the last step, which is the actions. If that is my new belief, then how will I approach this situation or this work in front of me or my team or myself, right?

The issue is most people try, because we are so action-biased, most people try to short-circuit the whole process and go straight to, “Oh, there’s a problem? What do I do? What do I do?” And that works, but that’s the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach and it’s not sustainable. We see this happen all the time with people outside of the workplace, with people who try to lose weight, for example.

It’s, “I’m just going to start exercising January 1st.” Well, we all know what happens by Feb. 14, right? Valentine hits and it all goes out the window. Why? Because the action change, but the mindset around relating to exercise, relating to working out, relating to all those things are not sustainable. And so, you go right back to the actions you were doing before because your actions will realign with the way that you think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, sticking with that example for a moment, let’s say that we’re faking it till we’re making it in the world of exercise, your diet, health stuff, what are some ways some of these particular beliefs show up? Maybe just walk us through that whole process in which someone is engaged in that but it’s not going to end well, tell us, how might the execution of the three-step framework unfold to land in a happier place?

Muriel Wilkins
I’ll use me as an example. So, I have wanted to build my strength for a while. I’m a cardio person. I have been a long-time runner. Did distance-running for a long time, until my hip gave out on me.

And I thought to myself, I’d been told for years, “Muriel, you need to balance out your cardio with strength.” Okay, I tried. I would say, “Okay, yep, I’m going to start this program.” Went to action, but never, mindset-wise, it was, “No, cardio is where the real value is at. Running is where the value is at.” So, guess what I did most of the time? I ran, and within a couple weeks I would give up my strength training regimen, okay?

Until I recognized that, because of my hip injury, a couple ortho doctors told me, “If you don’t strengthen your hip more and your muscles around it, you’re going to have some serious issues down the line.” Okay, so how do I need to rethink about this? I need to rethink about this not in terms of training for a race, I need to rethink about this in terms of longevity, right?

What do I believe about longevity? Oh, what I believe about longevity is both my cardio and my strength is equally important to contribute to the type of healthy longevity that I want. Reframe, okay? That mindset of training for a race, “Cardio is where it’s at,” was not helping me. Okay, that I realized.

Once I understood where that original mindset came from, which was past the uncover, I could move to unpack. Why was I thinking, why was it helping me all this time? I knew that my success had come from racing, so I wasn’t letting go of that being the belief. I became very clear. I’m not racing anymore. That got me past the second phase.

Third phase, reframe, I now have new ways of thinking about my exercise routine. Okay, now I’m thinking about it differently, I can move to action. And every time I slip up on the strength training, which I still do, I go back and I say, “Okay, how am I thinking about this? Why am I slipping up on the strength training? I’ve got to rethink how I’m framing it.” And I go back to the longevity piece, which helps me continue with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, perhaps we have an eighth major belief there in terms of this isn’t valid. Maybe that’s related to “I don’t belong here.” It’s like, “You know, doing the strength training thing, that’s not really me. I’m more of a cardio person, a racing person, not down with the gym bros grunting and doing huge plates and all that. So, I don’t see the value here.”

But then, when there’s a new belief, indeed, it is transformational. I think I felt similarly, in that having a bodybuilder-like physique, I think, once appealed to me as maybe a 16-year-old. Never really happened. But now that’s just, it doesn’t matter at all in terms of my interest. But when you talk about longevity, I think about Peter Attia, and Outlive, and some of his things.

It really is, “Oh, well, would you like to be able to play with your grandchildren in your seventies and eighties?”

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, different outcomes.

Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to being sort of stuck in a chair the whole time, and I’m like, “Well, I would. I would like that.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, you mentioned him, but that is what changed my framing of thinking about this was actually reading his book.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s a good one, Outlive.

Muriel Wilkins
And so, it was like, “Yeah, I want a different outcome. So, what do I have to do? I can’t keep thinking about it the same way. I’ve got to change the way I think about it or else I can’t get with this program.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think about beliefs about value can be interesting, in that you may come to the opposite conclusion in terms of, “Hey, you know what? This thing really isn’t worth doing. I could just stop beating myself up and trying to get back on the wagon and just let it go.”

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, here’s the thing, and what really drives me, Pete, like we ought to work every single day or we have work, but work is part of our life, whether we like it or not. And it can be truly challenging. A big part of my career is built on the fact that work is challenging for people. I would be out of a job if they didn’t consider it challenging. And I want to be out of a job. I truly do.

And what I find, though, is that people do not give themselves credit for how much control they actually have about how they experience work. And this might sound very controversial, right. because we tend to say organizations have a responsibility to make us feel like we belong, organizations have a responsibility to make us feel like this, this, and that. And I actually absolutely agree.

I am not absolving any organization or system for making you feel a certain way. They have a responsibility. And you also have a responsibility for yourself when you go into that job or into that workplace. And so, your part of your responsibility is saying, “How am I approaching this? And how am I thinking about it?”

Because, again, what the research has shown is how you think about something does have an impact on how you experience it. And I don’t know about you, but if I know that I actually have half the currency to influence how I experience anything, why in the heck am I going to wait for somebody else to change my experience?

I’m going to at least try to make it 50% better, my part of it. If they don’t want to clean up, and I don’t want to rely on the other person cleaning up their side of the room, let me clean up my side of the room and at least know that I’ve shifted the energy a little bit by cleaning up my side of the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Muriel, could you give us another fun example of someone who worked through this kind of process of examining the belief, starting from sensation, and, in fact, saw just this outcome, a transformation of the experience of work into something much more lovely?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think one that comes up also a lot is the belief of “I know I’m right,” you know? And these are the folks who, quite frankly, they tend to be high achievers. They have been known as being very smart, particularly as they were growing up. They get things very quickly. I suffered from this one, quite frankly, and still have to manage it.

And so, I had a client where he received some feedback. The feedback didn’t say, “Oh, he knows he’s right all the time.” It didn’t say that. What it said is, “He talks over people. He interrupts in meetings. He makes people feel like they’re not smart.” I mean, so the feedback said, “You talk to him and you feel stupid afterwards because of the way that he responds.”

“He did not give a chance for people to come up with their own responses. He would question them in a way that, quite frankly, they didn’t even want to share what they thought out of fear that he was going to sort of come down on them.” And we’ve all experienced those individuals at some point in our life. I will raise my hand and say, unfortunately, I have at times been that individual.

And with my client, even when he got the feedback, he was very like, “It’s wrong. It’s not right. It’s not right.” And it wasn’t till, and I talk about this in the book, like he not only got it from people on his team, he got it from his peers, and that became an issue. And because they didn’t want to work with him, quite frankly, at that point, which was hard to then get the work done, because he needed his peers to get the work done.

And it wasn’t until he saw himself on a Zoom, we had recorded a Zoom meeting that he had been in, and he saw not how he was behaving, he saw how others were responding to how he was behaving, which was again, the interruptions, the constant “Got it, got it, got it, got it.” And, particularly, he saw the look of frustration from his boss, and he valued what his boss thought a lot.

And that’s when he said, “Okay, that’s not the way I want my boss reacting to me.” So that was the beginning, for him the large part was even getting the, like, “Yes, there is dissonance and I want to do something about it.” So, then we were able to name like, “Why do you think she responds that way? When you speak in this way in a meeting, what is going through your head…” that’s the question I ask him, “…when you interrupt, when you talk over people?”

And I remember, he just with exasperation, he’s like, “Because I know what we need to do.” He’s like, “I know what we need to do. I know what the answer is. Why are we spending time talking about this? We’re wasting time.” That was the belief. And he was applying it for everything. And so, for him, the unpacking piece, which is the second stage, came from this place of his whole life he had been valued for being right.

He was a top tier scholar. I’m not going to go into specifics because then he might be identifiable, but like, he was top of the top of the top. But anybody who has done well, particularly at school, and gotten rewarded for it, may suffer from this one. So, he understood that, while it may have served him well at school, or it might have annoyed other students, but he didn’t really care, it wasn’t serving him well in this role that he was in now.

And so then, we reframed it, right? And the reframe was based on, “What’s the outcome that you need to achieve?” And the outcome he needed to achieve was, “It’s not just about getting the task done. I’m now in a position where I also need to get buy-in from my peers, and certainly buy-in from my boss. And so, what would I need to believe? What would need to be my operating assumption and principle in order to show up in a way where I was more collaborative in order to get to that outcome?”

And it was, “My job is not to always give the answer. My job is to help guide people to the answer,” which then led to him being able to listen a little bit more, ask the questions, wait till at least people finish talking. Now, will he ever be known as the warm and fuzzy guy? No.

But was there a marked improvement in terms of how others experienced him? Absolutely. And he was able to then move through some of these projects that he needed to get done with others a little bit more seamlessly than he was in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
What I like a lot about that story with uncover the blocker is there are perhaps many ways to illuminate this above and beyond simply introspection. It’s like here we’ve got some technology and work, a recorded Zoom meeting, “Oh, okay.” And that shows some things that you may not get with looking into the sky with a journal in hand.

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s why I think it’s both sort of a mechanism of there are external cues and then there are internal cues. For me, personally, I don’t really care where your cues come from, know. As long as you are aware that, again, the math isn’t math-ing, what you want to have happen is not actually what’s happening, or something’s getting in your way.

And sometimes, again, you know, it’s nice to know about the internals because you can short-circuit that a little bit faster than waiting till you get, you know, so for him, what would have been an internal cue, an internal cue would have been able to read the room, not necessarily waiting for the Zoom. Now what’s interesting in this particular example is that, with practice, he became better at reading the room, right?

And that’s what I’m looking for. It’s not necessarily that you get it right every time. It’s that he got to a point, and that’s what I look for with each one of my clients and I look for, for myself, is the course-correction time taking less time. So, “Am I able to notice?” It’s, was he able to notice in the moment that, “Okay, yeah, I just interrupted for the third time, and that person looks a little exacerbated. Maybe I should switch course right now.”

“Yep, I’m totally anchoring in the ‘I know I’m right.’ I can hear it. Let me reframe so that I can be more collaborative in this meeting if, indeed, that’s my goal.” Because if that’s not your goal, if your goal is to come off as the smartest kid in the room, as the 360 said, then keep doing what you’re doing. We don’t need to do anything differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I’m thinking, when it comes to these reframes, so we move from “I know I’m right” to “My role is to help others find solutions, not to always give them the answers,” I think that, in my experience when making that shift, in the moment it can feel revelatory like an epiphany I’m kind of excited about.

And then, yet over time, it doesn’t really feel as though that is, in fact, the dominant operating model inside of my feelings, nervous system at work. Do you have any pro tips on reinforcing the enlightened reframed such that it’s really sticking and taking root?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, look, I think that what’s very cool about beliefs is that they’re so malleable, right? And so, I actually think that this model works if you are curious. And so, I encourage people to continue to be curious about it because that may not be it. The reframe might not be what’s going to last forever and ever and ever. You may need to reframe that even more.

And so, you want to constantly be asking yourself. The real rule of thumb is really keep being curious about, “What am I thinking in this moment?” And the more that you can keep thinking, or, “What am I thinking as I walk into that meeting? What am I thinking as I go into that conversation? What am I thinking as I’m about to do this presentation?”

And the more you can make that curiosity starting point, the beginning of your planning for anything, the more you will let those beliefs evolve even more so that you can discover, “Oh, that’s not it. Maybe it’s something else,” and that’s okay, right?

The issue is when you just are so attached to that one fundamental belief, one of the seven or whichever other one you’re tied to, that you end up not doing anything differently. You just keep doing the same thing over and over again, which as we know is the definition of insanity if you’re expecting different outcomes.

And so, the whole notion is, if you want to do something different, just being curious about what’s driving that doing. And continue to mold it, continue to, I personally practice this a lot and it comes a little bit more naturally, but it’s taken me years to master. I don’t even think I’ve mastered it, but years to kind of habitually be curious about what I’m thinking in the moment.

And I will be like, “Yep, I got it.” And then three months later, I’ll be like, “Oh, there’s another level to it. It’s not only this, it’s also that. Okay, that’s cool, let me try that one now.” And so, you have fun with it a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Muriel, tell me, any other key things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Muriel Wilkins
I mean, look, I think the main thing is, that I would love for folks to take away is, again, this notion of you have so much more in control than you might give yourself credit for. And true agency is an ability to have a choice.

And one of the areas, and probably the primary area that I believe we all have a choice with is how we think about anything. And so, if you want to have a choice in how you experience anything, start with what’s most in your control, which is your thoughts, your assumptions, and your beliefs.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Muriel Wilkins
Well, one of the quotes that inspired this work, and is a favorite quote of mine, that comes from the world of Buddhism is, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” And that’s the quote, right? Pain is always going to happen. Challenges are here and they will cause us pain. The goal is not for the challenges to go away. But how we respond to those challenges can either make us feel like we’re suffering or we can have a different experience with them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Muriel Wilkins
Right now, my favorite tool is breathing. It’s, literally, recognizing and applying the fact that I can change how I experience anything by just changing the way I breathe as I’m going through it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Muriel Wilkins
My favorite habit is every night texting my kids because they are now off to college, and I text them “Good night” and “Love you” every single night.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with the clients, they retweet you and you’re known for?

Muriel Wilkins
Every now and then we get we go there, and I said, “Listen, I’m not religious, but I’m going to drop some Buddhist knowledge on you, right?” And, yeah, I tell them like, you know, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. And you can just see in their face that they get it.

Again, this whole notion is they have more control around how they experience something. And, particularly, from a leadership position, if you’re in a leadership role, the way that you respond to something has so much impact on everyone else. And so, the ripple effect is real and be a good steward over that.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Muriel Wilkins
Yeah, so if you want to learn more about all the things that I’m involved in, MurielWilkins.com is the best place to take a look. And I’m on LinkedIn at Muriel Wilkins, and on Instagram @coachmurielwilkins.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Muriel Wilkins
My final call to action is be curious about your mindset. Don’t go straight to doing. Take a pause and just be curious about how you’re thinking or what you’re thinking about what you’re about to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Muriel, thank you.

Muriel Wilkins
Thank you, Pete. Always a pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Rosalind, welcome.

Rosalind Chow
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about sponsorship, and your book, The Doors You Can Open. And so, maybe just first things first, a matter of terms or definitions so we’re on the same page. Sponsorship versus mentorship, what’s the distinction?

Rosalind Chow
So, my easy way of telling the difference is to ask yourself, “Who is being acted on?” or, “Who’s being asked to change?” So, with mentors, they change mentees. So, when we give coaching or feedback or advice, we’re essentially telling the mentee, “Here’s how you should be thinking about a situation. Here’s how you should be acting.”

Whereas, a sponsor is not asking the protege to be any different than who they already are. They’re actually asking an audience, some external other person, to see or think about or behave differently toward the protégé.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. That is clear and direct. So, that’s what we’re talking about here. Not so much getting advice, seeking advice-givers, but serving as a sponsor or seeking out and enjoying the benefits of having a sponsor in your world. So, could you maybe kick us off with an inspiring story of a professional who came to get a good understanding of these sponsorship concepts and saw cool career results unfolding from that?

Rosalind Chow
Well, so I start the book with the example of Kim Ng and Derek Jeter. So, if you’re not a baseball fan, he’s a very famous Yankee player. And Kim Ng, actually, was an assistant manager on the Yankees during the Yankee dynasty of the early 2000s.

She’s been working in baseball for a long time, but she only, in 2020, got to be a general manager of the Miami Marlins. And that was a big deal because she is the first, and to this day, only female general manager of a major baseball league team, had probably been ready and qualified to be one for at least a decade before that.

But really, she needed a sponsor. She did not need a mentor. She did not need anyone to tell her how to be a better candidate. She just needs someone to really convince other people that she was the right candidate. And so, that came in the form of Derek Jeter, who was, at that time, a co-owner and CEO of The Marlins.

And so, that would be an example where Derek Jeter clearly helped Kim Ng and her career. I would argue that it also helped elevate Derek Jeter as well. So, when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he was lauded not just for his ability and performance on the field, but also because of all the work that he did in helping to elevate diversity, equity, and inclusion in baseball as a whole. And Kim Ng was certainly touted as one of the ways in which that drive of his was manifested.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool and nifty. And so, there are so many threads to go down here, but I want to address this one head on, just in case there is a segment of listener who, they bristle or they resent the DEI trainings they’ve done, could you make the case for why this stuff is worthwhile and valuable and impactful for them and others in their careers?

Rosalind Chow
So, great point. Sponsorship is something that benefits everyone. And also, it benefits the people who are being sponsored, it benefits the people who do the sponsoring, and also benefits organizations. And so, I like to help readers think about organizations as, you know, organisms, where each part of the organism has certain things that it needs.

And what sponsors do is essentially make sure that the right nutrients or resources go to the right places where those nutrients or resources are needed. So, it’s not DEI necessarily related at all. It’s something that we all actually do already in our everyday lives. Whenever we recommend someone for an opportunity, or even when we praise someone, when we’re introducing them to other people, these are all forms of sponsorship that we engage in all the time.

The thing that I think people don’t recognize is that when we do that, sort of when we engage in that kind of behavior, yeah, we’re making other people look good, but we also look good by saying nice things, introducing people to each other, because, at the end of the day, what we’re helping is the group. And in the book, I have this conversation about how for people who care about having status, being seen as someone who helps the group is one of the best ways to increase your status.

And so, that’s why everyone should be a sponsor because it actually helps raise your own status. That’s what’s good for you, but also helps the group because it makes it so that the group has a better grasp of what sorts of resources are available, who ought to be working on what sorts of problems, so everything runs much more efficiently.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that metaphor, as I’m imagining the right nutrients going to the right places. It sounds then there’s sort of like an underlying presupposition here that sponsorship isn’t just talking up your buddy or trying to be nice and friendly, but that your advocacy is actually helpful in terms of, “No, this person really is awesome, and it seems like we might not be aware of that.”

And I’m having a memory flashback here. I remember we were reviewing resumes at Bain and Company, doing some recruiting at the University of Illinois, my alma mater. And so, we all had our, geez, we all went through like 500 resumes, and so we were going to share, “Okay, who do we think is great?” And so, we were going through them. And then someone said this name, and I said, “Oh, yes, she is my number one.”

And then I remember my colleague said, “Really? Why?” Like, this person was not even on his radar. And I was like, “Well, look, she was ahead of this. She started that. She figured out this. And check out this down here.” And so, it was like, “Oh.” And then he was like, “Okay, I see.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m not done yet.” And I had like six things that, and so he’s like, “Okay, okay, you know, I get the point.”

And so, it was telling for me, in a world of 500 resumes or a lot of noise or chaos or distraction or whatever, it is very easy to overlook and be completely unaware of the amazingness of people in your midst.

Rosalind Chow
Absolutely, yeah. So, Pete, I feel like what you’re highlighting there are kind of two things, that we live in a world where we’re just inundated with so much information. And so how do you get people to rise above so that others actually pay attention to them? And this is where sponsorship becomes really important.

One is maybe there’s not enough information, and so sponsors are providing additional information. But the other version is there is so much information that sponsors, essentially, are saying, “Okay, there’s too much information, but I’m going to highlight why this person is the right match for this opportunity or for this problem.”

And so, the other part that you’re highlighting that I think is implicit in what you’re saying is that there also needs to be some accuracy in making that match. And that presumes then, for you to make a good, accurate match, is that you understand what the nature of the problem is or the nature of the need, and you also understand the other person’s strengths and how they fit that need. And you need to be able to articulate that clearly to be an effective sponsor.

And if you get it wrong, and this is also where sponsorship is different from mentorship, if you get it wrong, it’s not just bad for the person you’re getting it wrong about. It’s also bad for you because in the future people are not going to be as likely to weigh your advice or your recommendations as heavily.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I think that’s helpful because it can be tempting to just, if you’re a friendly, helpful person, to just want to support, like, put in a good word for anybody, that’s like, “Oh, hey, I like them and I want to see them succeed and flourish and prosper. And here I am with some influence in a room so that’s a thing that I might just want to do to be a friendly fellow.” But to your point there, yes, that accuracy is key and it should, indeed, be the right nutrient and the right place.

Rosalind Chow
Right. Yeah, you want to cultivate a reputation for yourself as being group-oriented, as being a helper, someone who is willing to make connections when those connections make sense, but you also want to be a discerning helper, right? This is not, like, shotgun approach of like, “Hopefully, we’re going to send everything out in all directions and hope something hits.”

You want kind of more of that, like, sniper sort of accuracy there in terms of diagnosing, “Okay, this is your need. I have something in my arsenal that I can bring to bear on this problem that you have.”

Pete Mockaitis
And to that end, I’m curious, if folks are asking us to serve in a sponsor role, and we don’t think it’s the right move, do you have any pro tips on how to let folks down gently?

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, that one’s really hard. And so, this is why I do recommend for people not to ask people to sponsor them. This is not to say that you don’t let people know that you are looking for sponsorship, but you have to do it in a way that gives the sponsor autonomy and freedom to decide for themselves if they want to do it or not because, otherwise, it becomes very awkward.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. So, can you give us any scripts or pro tips or stories to illustrate how that’s done in practice?

Rosalind Chow
Yeah. So, my favorite way of approaching that sort of situation is to go to someone who you believe has influence in a particular domain, and you ask them for advice. So, it’s always, ask for advice, not help. Help makes it seem like you don’t know what you’re doing. Here, it’s not that you need help.

It’s, “I’ve thought about it. I have this plan or this desire. Here are my action steps in terms of how I plan on going about getting to this goal. Given your experience and wisdom, I would love to have some other person’s perspective on what I’m planning on doing just in case I might be going about this the wrong way or there’s something else I haven’t considered.”

In that way, you’re essentially conveying, like, “I have put a lot of thought into this. This is something I care about. I’m not just kind of flailing around and don’t know what I’m doing,” but it gives the other person an opportunity to weigh in on what your plan is. And, usually, at that point, is when they spontaneously start brainstorming with you about what you should be doing.

And if they’re being very thoughtful and think well of you, they will also then say, “Oh, well, that’s a step I can help you with,” or like, “Oh, I know exactly the person you would want to talk to if this is the thing that you want to be doing. Let me go ahead and make that connection for you.” So, putting them, you know, you’re pushing them in the direction of seeing how they can be helpful, but also offering them the opportunity to offer you that help instead of asking for it directly.

Now you could, at the end, be like, “That was so helpful. You laid out all these points. You mentioned this person who would be really helpful for me to get to know. Would you feel comfortable with making an introduction?” Now that would be, that’s pushing. But a thoughtful sponsor would be like, “Okay, let me think about that. Let me see if that makes sense.”

And I would also say for potential sponsors who find themselves in a situation where they don’t want to make the connection, there’s a couple ways you can handle that. One is you can just say, like, “I don’t really have the kind of relationship with that person that I would feel comfortable doing that.” And that’s just being kind of honest.

The other version is you can say, “Let me think on that and let me see what I can do.” And then you can, behind the scenes, you could reach out to someone and say, “Hey, this person came to me. I don’t really know if they fit with what you’re looking for at the moment. But, in case they do, I thought I just, like, give you a heads up, that they came across my radar. Would you like me to make that introduction and if not, like, no big deal.”

So, you’re still giving them the choice of whether or not you take their time in making this connection. Because the worst-case scenario is that you say, like, “Okay, I don’t really want to make this connection, but I’m going to do it anyway because I want to be a nice person.” And you introduce them to each other, and then now you have put the other person, that external person, that audience on the spot.

If they care about their relationship with you, they can’t just ignore the email. So, then they feel like they have to respond. And then if it turns out that it’s a total waste of their time, you, again, as the sponsor, have also suffered because now, in the future, when they see an email from you, they’re going to be like, “Ah, Pete, no.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I appreciate you speaking the truths of what’s the dynamics underneath the surface, and I totally agree and resonate. And I don’t know where I heard this but someone just called it the practice of a double opt-in for introductions, as in general. It’s sort of like and that’s kind of what I do almost always.

I was just meeting with my podcast mastermind group and I’m just thinking about how we always do that with guests, and say, “Hey, this person was amazing. Let me know if you want to talk to them,” because the prospective guest, you know, they already want to talk to all the podcasters. They got the book, they’re ready to go.

So, it feels nice on the receiving end. Like, I never am upset with someone asking if they may introduce, because it’s like, “Oh, that was thoughtful of you.” And I’m not put on the spot, and with the exception being, I’d say if there’s, like, folks who clearly always want these introductions, “I sell a thing and there’s a person who wants to buy the thing.”

There’s no need for asking permission. I always want the hot leads. Always. I think that’s probably fair and, generally speaking, in terms of folks, like, “This is clearly what you want always. So, we could just sort of skip right to it and accelerate.”

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, I mean if I am going to make an introduction without first getting permission from the person who is kind of the recipient of the introduction, is that I am very clear when I make the introduction why I am making it, and what one person wants, what the other person might be looking for.

So, I might say, like, “I remember in our conversation the other day, you were having a challenge with X, Y, and Z. And then I just happened to be talking with this person. It turns out they have expertise in exactly X, Y, and Z. So, I figured you should probably talk to each other because it seems like there would be mutual benefit here.”

So, what I really dislike is the thing where everyone’s on the email, and it’s like, “Oh, let me introduce…” you know, like, “Pete, let me introduce you to so-and-so. So-and-so here’s Pete. Take it away.” And there’s like no other context around why this introduction is being made. That one really irks me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. I suppose, unless of course, you have already talked to each other about each other, and now this is just the formality. It’s like, “Hey, you both know what each other is about, so here you are.

Rosalind Chow
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you’ve got a nice little categorization of four categories of sponsorship. Can you run us through what those are?

Rosalind Chow
Sure. So, it’s what in academic terms we would call a two by two, where you want to, first, think about, like, “Do the people know each other already? If yes, are you trying to maximize a positive impression or are you trying to minimize a negative impression?” So, for your listeners, I think it’s easiest to just stay on the positive side. The negative side is a whole other animal that we can talk about.

But so, assuming that what you want to do is create positive impressions, you’re either creating, because you’re creating a new impression, a new positive impression. If you’re thinking about this in marketing terms, this is when you’re introducing a new product and you need to raise audience awareness. And then there’s the confirming form of sponsorship, which is when people are already aware of the other person, and now you’re just essentially, like, boosting their already positive impression.

So, this would be again, going back to marketing, right? You have your product, it’s already been out for a while, but you’re just reminding people that this product exists in the world, and just refreshing their positive sentiments around that product.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that so much. Well, it happens all the time. It’s like I’m thinking about, I’ve had two guests on the show, Maui and Steve, and so they know each other, but it took a third party to say, “Wait, wait, Maui, do you know what Steve does? He’s doing this team clock business. You’re doing this leadership development business all the time. Have you talked about that thing that you’re both into?”

He’s like, “Well, no, I guess we never have.” And then away they go and a beautiful, fruitful partnership was born. And so, it’s funny and yet happens all the time, that we are just unaware of the tremendous assets that’s right in our midst.

Rosalind Chow
Right. Yes. And this goes straight, you know, going back to that earlier point about making sure that the right nutrients and resources go to the right places. Here’s an example where there were resources and opportunities that existed, but people were not aware of that potential match until you have a sponsor who is making that connection for them, often because that sponsor is having different conversations with each party than they typically have with each other. And so, that sponsor holds different information about each person than they hold about each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. It’s like, “We usually talk about our kids” or fill in the blank, as opposed to, “Oh, this completely different domain.” Well, let’s also talk about the negative prevention part of the two by two, just to round it out. The prevent and protect, can you lay these on us?

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, so prevention is, and this one’s hard, I think, to see in real life because it’s essentially the creation of a non-event. So, I talk about this in the book, it’s like if you’re familiar with the movie, “The Minority Report.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah.

Rosalind Chow
This is Tom Cruise running around, as he does in all his movies, but he is part of this special organization where in the future, they have Precogs, these people who can predict things that are going to happen. Whenever they see a crime about to happen, Tom Cruise’s unit swoops in and essentially arrests the person right before they’re about to commit the crime.

So, the crime never actually happens. It’s been prevented from happening. So, this is when you’re a sponsor and you have a protégé, and you are kind of like, “Okay, I need to manage, potentially, like this information about them that might not work to their favor.”

Or, “There’s this opportunity and I think it’s a bad opportunity for them. And if they take the opportunity, it’s like not a good match. It’s going to make them look bad. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to try and make it so that that doesn’t even happen.” And we talk about this, usually, in terms of dead end-like projects, the projects that nobody wants to take. They’re not glamorous. They don’t get you sort of any sort of promotional type of credits in terms of being chosen to advance or get raises.

Somebody’s got to do them but, like, it should not be, if you’re a good sponsor, it should not be your protégé. So, your task as a sponsor is to just say like, is to try and head that off and get somebody else to take that on, and, essentially, protect your protégé’s time, their reputation. Another example is like if you know there’s a problematic person, like a problematic manager who tends not to treat their people very well, you may not want your protégé to be associated with them.

So, then, you essentially step in and you’re saying, necessarily like, “Pete’s too busy doing work on this project over here. Tony is going to have to find somebody else. Not going to happen.” So, that would be prevention. It’s preventing something bad from happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if I may, on prevention. So, prevent a crime from unfolding to your protégé’s career. And so, I guess within the framework of sponsorship, we are asking other people to change, like, “No, don’t pick this person. Pick someone else.” Although, I suppose we could just dip over into the mentorship category and tell our protege very simply, “Hey, this seems like a really risky project. I would suggest you not try to get on it.”

Rosalind Chow
Yes. And so, one is, you’re absolutely right, one version, and this is always a yes/and. It’s not an either/or. It would be, in addition to trying to make sure that people don’t assign your protégé to this bad assignment, it is also telling your protégé, “If anybody asks you if you want to join this assignment, say no.” But sometimes, protégés or mentees or people who are lower in the hierarchy don’t feel like they have the ability to say no.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I got you.

Rosalind Chow
Right? And so that’s when a sponsor really does need to step in and be like, “Okay, I know they can’t say no, so I’m going to say no for them so that I take the heat for that. If they say no, they’re going to be seen as like not a team player, as someone who’s not willing to kind of do the hard work for the team or for the group.” And you don’t want your protege to have that kind of reputation. So, as their sponsor, and you’re saying no on their behalf, you’re essentially taking that risk off them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Rosalind, I appreciate the way you’re talking about the gritty realities because in a naive, idealistic view, would be, “Well, then that organization ought to abandon that project and find ones that are truly more value creating for the enterprise.” Or, “Hmm, it sounds like there’s some toxic cultural forces that really need to be cleaned up if these things are in existence.”

And so, like, yes, I guess there’s another yes/and. Like, yes, that should happen, but unfortunately, it can often be the case that these things exist and we have to deal with them.

Rosalind Chow
Yeah. I think my answer to that also is, like, there will always be the less desirable things to do in an organization that are still necessary for the organization to function. And so, one thing that a leader could be doing is thinking more systematically about how those projects or tasks are allocated so that it’s not just based on people volunteering or being voluntold to do them.

Or, make it very explicit that like, “Yes, this is not a fun thing to do, but it’s something that we’re now going to reward by making it more promotion worthy, so that everybody understands just how valuable it actually is.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And protect?

Rosalind Chow
So protect is one that we don’t see often but, actually, is consistent with, I think, how many people think of sponsorship, when they think of sponsorship or if they think of sponsorship, which is that whole proverbial, like, someone’s pounding the table for you in these backdoor meetings.

Well, the only reason someone’s pounding the table is because they’re disagreeing with other people. Otherwise, there would be no table pounding. And so, this is when people are talking about you, maybe they don’t have really great things to say about you, and your sponsor is there, and they’re saying, “No, I don’t agree with your assessment of this person at all. This conclusion is flawed. Maybe it’s based on inaccurate information, maybe incomplete information. Let me give you some context around what happened so you can better understand why they made the choices that they did.”

All of this is as, you know, we talked about earlier, it’s to mitigate these negative impressions. I don’t know that you’ll ever get to a situation where people then have positive impressions of a person who’s being talked about in this way. But if you don’t have a sponsor in the room who is reframing the conversation, bringing new information to light, giving a different interpretation to things that had happened, that’s when people are shown the door. So you definitely need sponsors to be there to protect you.

But hopefully, if you are doing sponsorship well, you won’t ever be in that position because your protégé will always be seen as positively as possible, and no one will ever have anything negative to say about them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, Rosalind, can you give us any other top do’s and don’ts for getting sponsors, doing sponsorship well?

Rosalind Chow
So, one of the main points of the book is that we typically think of sponsorship as something that only people with power can do. And it’s true that people who have lots of power are typically able to sponsor in kind of these much more visible, obvious kinds of ways. But that does not mean that people can’t be sponsors.

So, I like to encourage everyone to think about how they can be sponsors, usually in the form of, as we talked about earlier, what do you notice about other people and how they’re positively contributing to the group or to you?

Not only should you be letting them know that they’re having that impact, but you also want to make sure that other people are aware of that impact because, as you already pointed out beautifully, oftentimes people are completely unaware of what other people are working on or doing or even passionate about or things like that.

And so, any of us can go out and kind of amplify other people’s good news. There are no bad ramifications for saying nice things about objective, verifiable accomplishments that other people have either done or have expertise in. So that is the safest way to be a sponsor is just to say, “You know, I know Pete’s a great podcaster. I love being on his podcast.”

Pete Mockaitis
Fact.

Rosalind Chow
Right. Fact. Exactly. And there’s no cost to doing that, because you’re not asking for the other, the audience to go take a leap of faith in any real sort of way. It’s when we start projecting into the future, when you start kind of making some sort of a guarantee about how a person’s experience is going to be when they engage with this person. That’s when you start putting a little bit more skin in the game as a sponsor.

Pete Mockaitis
“He will not let you down.”

Rosalind Chow
Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. I know, right? So, be careful, like, how hard you’re pushing, because the stronger your guarantee is, the larger the penalty if you get it wrong. But so, everyone, though, again, if you notice people doing good things and you can speak to it confidently, there is never any downside to making that more well-known to others.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and this just makes me think of, like, any time we recommend any product or service or business to anyone ever, I can just say, “Yuri at Lille Flooring was quick and responsive, and installed my flooring beautifully within the price range that ChatGPT told me it should cost. These are facts. So, if you’re looking for a flooring person, and you’re like, ‘Oh, well that sounds better than what I’m dealing with right now. I would like to talk to this person. Thank you.’”

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, exactly. So, yes, being careful about whether or not you’re talking about your own personal experience, things that happened already in the past, versus things that are in the future and uncertain.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well said. Well, now could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Rosalind Chow
So, you probably know of this idea of team players, right? And the question is, “How do you know someone is a team player? How do you identify who they are? How do you even know how they contribute to the group?”

We all have this kind of vague sense of, like, “Oh, Pete is a team player.” But then if you were asked, like, “Well, what do you mean by that? What does Pete do that indicates that he’s a team player?” Well, one version is like, well, it’s because you do things on behalf of the team. But there’s another version that these researchers found, which is that there are some people who, just by their presence in the team, actually amplify the performance of other team members. And they don’t even have to be talking to each other.

And that’s the part that kind of blows my mind, is that they have these tasks that people do together in groups, and some of the tasks don’t require anyone to talk to anyone, but just they’re able to statistically pull out the fact that when you have a team player in the team, they actually help other people perform better, just their physical presence. And I just find that so amazing.

I think what’s going to be hard for organizations is figuring out who these people are. And my guess is that at least some of what these team players are doing is they’re sponsoring their teammates. They’re saying, like, “Oh, okay, we’re working on this right now. Actually, Pete’s the right person to be doing that task because Pete has got the right skills for this.” And naming all the resources that are in the group and just making sure that they’re going to the right place.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Rosalind Chow
Probably somewhere between Cryptonomicon, so that would be Neal Stephenson, and he has another one called Anathem. So, I’m just a big Neal Stephenson fan.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Rosalind Chow
You can go to my website, that’s RosalindChow.com. Also, I post fairly regularly on LinkedIn. And just to be clear, I don’t post about myself or my own research, actually. I like to post about other people’s research because I think there’s so much great research that happens in academia that doesn’t get kind of translated and sent out into the world for other people to know about. And so, that’s one of the things that I love doing on LinkedIn. So, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you will get lots of posts in your feed about new research that’s really exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Rosalind Chow
If someone’s doing something that is really great and has a positive impact, go ahead and name that for them, not just to them, but to everyone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Rosalind, thank you.

Rosalind Chow
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Ryan, welcome!

Ryan Gottfredson
Hey, thanks for having me on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to talk about personal transformation. It’s one of my favorite things.

Ryan Gottfredson
Mine, too. And I think I’ve kind of learned that the hard way, which is where my new book comes from. So, I’ve got my new book coming out called Becoming Better. And part of it comes from my failures in trying to develop myself and some of the things that I’ve learned from that.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, could you share with us, perhaps your most dramatic and instructive personal transformation?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I guess let me set it up this way. Like, I’m just curious if any of the listeners, if you’re listening to this, have you ever been in a position where you felt like you had the knowledge and the skills to be successful, yet you weren’t as successful as you wanted to be? I imagine most of us have been in that space and that’s an incredibly frustrating space to be in.

So, I’ve been there in several different ways. I think about, like in high school, my goal was to get a college scholarship to play basketball. And I think I was good enough, I had the knowledge and the skills to do it, but it didn’t happen. Fast forward, I’m in my doctoral program at Indiana University, and I think I had the knowledge and skills to be successful in my program, but I failed my first comprehensive exams. I went on to pass them the second time, but there was a failure moment there.

And then fast forward several years later, currently I’m a professor at Cal State Fullerton. I teach and do research on leadership, but I took a leave of absence to do some consulting work with Gallup. And 10 months into the job, and I feel like I had the knowledge and skills to be successful, but 10 months in, I got fired. And I never thought I would get fired.

So, these are three examples where I feel like I had the talent, the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be successful, but I didn’t perform at the level that I could have. And that said less about my talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities, and it said more about something else. And that’s what I call our being side.

So, we’ve got our doing side, which is our talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities, and we’ve got our being side, which is actually the quality of our character, our mindsets, our psyche, our consciousness, and even our emotional regulation abilities. And what I’ve come to learn is that, most of the time, when we feel stuck or when we fail, it has less to do with our doing side and more to do with our being side.

Pete Mockaitis
This is reminding me a little bit of Pat Lencioni, teams smart versus healthy. Just about all the teams he encounters are smart, but not all of them are healthy. And so maybe we could zoom into the Gallup situation. Could you share some details about what went down?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I mean, there was a couple of factors that went down. One was when I took the job, they didn’t necessarily communicate clearly what position I would be in. So, when I got into the role, it ended up being a much smaller position than what I had anticipated. So, I kind of felt like I was boxed into a corner. And what I was trying to do is try to expand out and do more than what they wanted me to do. So, there was some frustration there.

But, ultimately, one of the things that I learned is that, and this is only in hindsight, but what I’ve come to learn as I reflect back on that experience is, again, while I had the talent, the knowledge and skills and abilities to be successful, I actually had mindsets that didn’t set me up to be successful. And what I mean by that, and what I’ve learned in the mindset research that I’ve done, is that we all have mindsets, they all dictate how we see and interact with the world, and our mindsets can range in quality, from on one side of the continuum to being more wired for self-protection, and on the other side be more wired for value creation.

So, for example, many people are familiar with fixed and growth mindsets. So, a fixed mindset is actually a self-protective mindset. It’s something that makes us wired to avoid learning zone challenges because we don’t want to fail or look bad. Whereas, a growth mindset allows us to step into learning zone challenges.

And so, what I learned from my experience at Gallup is that while I did have talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities to be successful, I had some self-protective mindsets, like a fixed mindset, a closed mindset, an inward mindset that ultimately caused me to be more focused on protecting myself than on creating value for our customers, stakeholders, and team members.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting as a continuum, self-protection versus value creation. And just conceptually, I’m hanging out there, like these things don’t necessarily, on their surface level, sound like opposites of each other. Like, black, white; short, long; cold, hot; self-protection, value creation. They don’t sound like opposites per se, and yet you say they represent the extremes or the opposing ends of a continuum.

Ryan Gottfredson
Yes. Right. When you think about a hero, like think about Superman, Spider-Man, right, why do we celebrate them as heroes? Well, it’s because they’re willing to step into short-term discomfort, right, they’re willing to step in and fight the bad guy, put themselves in harm’s way. They are not being self-protective. But the reason why they’re doing that is because they want to create value for the people that they’re saving.

So, if we ultimately want to be value creators in our world, then we have to have a certain degree of willingness to step into short-term discomfort.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it seems like there could exist a world in which you are being self-protected and also value creating.

I suppose, if you’re doing the same comfortable thing you’ve been doing for a long, long time that people appreciate, like, “Hey, you crank those widgets out real great, Ryan. Keep up the good work. Thanks, buddy.” You’re like, “Hey, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. It’s easy to crank these widgets.” So, I suppose some of those contexts exists. Although, as a counterpoint, I suppose you might say, “Well, by sticking your neck out a little bit, you could be creating substantially more value.”

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, yes, and what this allows us to do is to connect back into our motives, “Why is it that we are doing what we are doing? Are we doing the comfortable thing that we’ve done forever because it feels comfortable to us? Or are we doing it because we see it as our purpose and our way that we create value in our world?”

And, ultimately, what we’re finding that matters when it comes to leadership, when it comes to influence, when it comes to impact, is it’s less about what we do and it’s actually more about why we do what we do. So, if we’re doing something from a self-protective perspective, that doesn’t mean we can’t create value, but the impact is going to be limited. But if we do something from this place of kind of love of creating value, it’s going to have a much greater impact.

Pete Mockaitis
That tracks in terms of what is being transmitted and coming across and received to the people that you’re interacting with as you do the thing, in terms of love, like, “Oh, you care about me and my happiness and satisfaction with this project, this product, this process,” whatever.

And it is a good feeling to hear that, as opposed to, “Well, this is our policy and this is what we do.” And it’s like, “Oh, well, okay then. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you, service provider.” It’s not nearly as edifying and valuable an experience on the receiving end.

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah. And let’s bring this to life just a little bit more. So, I’m going to give you four desires, and I want you to tell me if society says these are good or bad desires, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ryan Gottfredson
We got a desire to look good, a desire to be right, a desire to avoid problems, and a desire to get ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
Look good, be right, avoid problems, and get ahead. I think, generally, society, well, it’s funny, like, I guess, it’s like a hypocritical mixed message is the answer from society on these matters. It’s like, if someone’s told you, “You know, Ryan, what I’m all about is looking good, being right, avoiding problems, and getting ahead.” I’d go, “Yuck. I don’t think I want you on my team, Ryan. That doesn’t feel like the energy, the culture, the vibe we’re going for here.”

And yet, at the same time, when one looks good, is right, avoids problems, and gets ahead, we pat him on the back, like, “Good job. Look at this star. Wow, Ryan is so wonderful.”

Ryan Gottfredson
You’re spot on. And I love how you articulated that, right? Because we could justify these desires. Because who likes to look bad, be wrong, have problems, and get passed up? Well, nobody likes that. So, when we have these desires, we’ve got to kind of ask ourselves, “Where’s our focus?” Well, it’s on ourselves. It’s me looking good, me being right, me avoiding problems, and me getting ahead, right?

And these are actually desires that are fueled by the more self-protective mindsets, fixed clothes prevention, and inward mindsets. And when I first started to learn about mindsets, this was really eye-opening because all of these desires resonated with me, right? To your point is I didn’t celebrate them, “Oh, look at me. I always want to look good.” But that was a core desire that my body had, that I wanted to avoid failure.

But what we’ve got to understand is there’s kind of this different side of the continuum with more value-creating mindsets and value-creating desires, such as to be able to learn and grow, to find truth, to reach a goal or a destination or a purpose, and to lift others. And here’s the thing about it. If I want to learn and grow, I’ve got to be okay failing at times.

If I want to find truth, I’ve got to admit that I’m wrong at times. If I want to reach my goals, I’ve got to wade through problems at times. And if I want to lift others, I’ve got to put myself on the back burner at times. And I don’t know about you, but those at-times moments are really tricky to navigate. And it’s our mindsets that dictate which way we lean in these at-times moments.

Do we lean more towards self-protection when we’re in a situation where we might fail? Or, for example, with from close to open, do we lean more towards doubling down on being right? Or are we willing to admit that we might be wrong to explore a new way of operating? And what we find is that, when people operate with more of these self-protective mindsets, is that helps them with their emotions in the short term, but inhibits their ability to create value in the long term.

And so, I think it’s really helpful to have a framework like this to help us to awaken to how our body is wired. Is our body wired more towards self-protection or more towards value creation? And what I found, so I’ve got a mindset assessment, it’s free on my website and people can take it and awaken to where they stand along all four of these continuums.

And to kind of give you a highlight of one of the things that I found, I’ll give you two highlights. One is, across 50,000 people who have taken it, only 2.5% are in the top quartile for all four sets of mindsets. So, most of us have some mindset work to do. Most of us, myself included, have some self-protective tendencies, and that’s natural.

But then another finding that I found interesting is I find that 60% of leaders in organizations have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. And what’s interesting about this, if you were to speak to a room full of a hundred leaders and you ask them, “Do any of you have a fixed mindset?” I’m pretty certain nobody’s going to raise their hand.

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, we know that’s a bad thing.” So, it’s like, “No, we don’t like that.”

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah. So, despite the fact that most people think that they have a growth mindset, what we find is, at least leaders in particular, 60% have a fixed mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so funny because, like, we all know, if you read books and have been, like, listening to that improvement-y podcast that, “Ooh, ooh, growth mindset, good; fix mindset, bad. And, therefore, we don’t want to self-disclose that.” It’s like, “Do any of you…? Who in this room looks down on poor people?” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s me.” Like, people are not going to self-disclose that.

Although, sometimes you can tell from people’s actions and the way they’re treating folks that, “Well, you do.” So, we won’t cop to it. I’m intrigued then. So, what’s the magic of your assessment? How does it get folks to land in the fixed mindset zone without them just saying, “Yep, I got a fixed mindset”?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, yeah, the assessment presents kind of polarized options to choose from, and these options like, so we’ve got some fixed mindset options and ways of thinking, and we’ve got some growth mindset options and ways of thinking. And to somebody with a fixed mindset, the fixed mindset options feel right. To somebody with a growth mindset, the growth mindset options feel right.

And so, it’s actually, what I’m finding fairly difficult to gain because it’s really about how our body perceives our world. And so, when we were presented with these two options, one generally is going to feel more right to us than another, and that corresponds to our mindsets.

And so, with two people look at it, if I have a fixed-mindset person look at it and a growth-mindset person look at it, they’re going to see those options and going to feel differently about those options. They’re going to see one as being good and the other’s going to see the other as being good. So, it’s really interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, lay it on us then, Ryan, if we would like to be shifting our mindset, how is that done in practice?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, so the first step is always awareness. So, here’s the thing, our mindsets are the most foundational aspect of who we are, and they largely reside below the level of our consciousness. So, for example, how would you say most people respond to constructive criticism? They get what?

Pete Mockaitis
Defensive.

Ryan Gottfredson
Defensive, right? That’s our bodies’ kneejerk reaction, and it’s something that occurs at a non-conscious level. It just happens, right, “I get thrown into this defensive mode.” And so, that’s an indicator of the quality of our mindsets. So, the first step to elevating our mindsets is to become aware of our mindsets and their quality.

We tend to all think that we have good mindsets because, whether they’re wired for self-protection or for value creation, they feel good to us because they’re serving a certain job. The self-protective mindsets are serving the job of protecting our emotions in the short term. So, therefore, it feels good to us.

So, for example, many people seek to avoid taking risks. Well, they have a mindset about risks that kind of directs them in a non-conscious way. So, but if we could put labels and descriptions to these mindsets, then we could bring them to the level of our consciousness. Then we could become aware of them. So, that’s the first step, is becoming aware of the quality of our mindsets.

Then when we become aware of them, we might come to learn, “Oh, I have more of a fixed mindset,” or, “I might have more of a prevention mindset. Well, now that I know that, then I could do something about it.” And so, what we could do about it is what’s helpful for us to recognize is our mindsets at a neurological level, our neural connections in our brain.

And the reality is, Pete, in your brain right now, you’ve got a fixed mindset neural connection, and you have a growth mindset neural connection. Now, one of those is generally stronger than the other. And when one is stronger than the other, that becomes the default mode by which we process our world. So, let’s just say, I’m not saying you have a fixed mindset, but let’s just imagine that you do.

And that doesn’t mean that you can’t turn on a growth mindset at times. You can, you’ve just got to be intentional about doing that. But, by and large, your default mode’s going to be the fixed mindset neural connections. So, the reason why this is valuable for us to understand is because our neural connections are a lot like muscles. The more we use them, the stronger they become.

So, what that means, if we want to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we’ve got to activate, regularly activate and strengthen our growth mindset neural connections, and this is kind of just simple things. This is things like meditation, gratitude journaling, watching videos related to this, or reading books or articles, having discussion questions, and then working on, like, journaling or self-talk exercises.

Research over the last 40 years says that if we could do these types of, I’m going to call them, experiments or habits, on a regular basis, like daily, then over the course of about 30 days, we’re going to see significant shifts in our mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s fixed versus growth. Can we do another one?

Ryan Gottfredson
So, there’s two exercises that I mentioned that I’m going to call they’re global mindset exercises. So that’s the meditation and the gratitude journaling. Both of those, researchers are finding, that will shift across all of our mindsets more towards being value creating. But then some of the other exercises that I mentioned, like reading books, reading articles, watching videos, journaling, discussions, we could tailor those specifically to the mindset that we’re working on.

So, for example, if I’m working with somebody that wants to develop a growth mindset, I’m going to recommend a Carol Dweck’s book, Mindsets. Or, if I’m going to be self-promotional, I’ll recommend my book, Success Mindsets. But if I want to work on developing more of an outward mindset, where we’re more focused on lifting others, then I’m going to recommend the Arbinger Institute’s book, Leadership and Self-Deception.

So, depending upon the mindset that we want to work on, we could cater those different activities – again, books, articles, videos, journaling exercises, discussions – more tailored to those particular mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Ryan, as I’m thinking about learning and neurological connections, I think the learning that is in me, deepest, comes from lived experience, in terms of, “I tried a thing and this is how it went.” And then I kind of get that connection up in my nervous system, like, “Oh, stay away from that thing. That’s bad news,” or, “Hey, that worked out really great. Hmm, maybe more of that would be good.”

So, as you lay down these things, I mean, hey, I’ve got a podcast about being awesome at your job. I love that sort of stuff in terms of, like, the content, the media, these exercises. But I’m thinking about getting out and having some real lived experience can make a world of impact on the learning and neurological connections.

Because I mean, part of me is thinking, “Hmm, if I want to get better at not being defensive with criticism…” I’m thinking about general, you know, approach versus avoidance and exposure therapy-types interventions. Like, “Maybe I would do well to get a lot of criticism and somehow enjoy and appreciate it as being good for me.”

Do you have any thoughts on this, Ryan, in terms of how can we take it out of the safe confines, if you will, of this zone of exercise to really get some experiential learning up in there?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, so great question. And, to me, that’s kind of a step two here. So, it is helpful for us to kind of push against some of our self-protective wiring in some of these ways, and I’m going to give some examples on how to do that. But before I do that, let me kind of tell a little bit of my own story. So, when I first learned that I had all of these self-protective mindsets, then I’m thinking, “Okay, what do I do about this?”

Well, one of the desires that I had at the time is I wanted to start a business. I got fired from Gallup. I come back, I’m a professor at Cal State Fullerton, but I decided I still want to do this consulting work. I’m going to start up my own business, or that’s what I would like to do. But I was really scared to do so because I had a prevention mindset. I was really, like, fearful of taking risks. I didn’t want…I was kind of raised by a dad who failed as an entrepreneur.

And so, I always kind of saw being an entrepreneur as being super risky and dangerous. And that’s not something that I wanted to do. But so, what I did first is I started to work on my promotion mindset, neural connections. I picked up a book, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it’s called The Five-Minute Journal.

And every day, I’m answering a question, which is, “What are three things that would make today great?” And this is something that activates the promotion mindset because I used to kind of wake up in the morning, and think, “How do I survive today in the easiest ways possible?” Well, after doing this over the course of a few weeks, I’m starting to think not, “How do I survive today?” but, “How do I make the most of today?”

And then by shifting my mindset now, I built up the courage to start actually practicing being an entrepreneur, taking the steps to start my own business. So doing the mindset work first helped me kind of break through some of my fears and insecurities, which allowed me to kind of push against some of these beliefs.

So, the reality is, and you’re spot on, so when we start to do this mindset work, we’re going to come up against places where we’re hitting a roadblock or a hurdle, right? Or, for example, as you mentioned, if we receive constructive criticism and we recognize that we’re really quick to get defensive, well, one, I’m going to suggest, let’s work on developing more of an open mindset.

But then, two, let’s actually strategically seek out constructive criticism. And there’s an approach that we could do that, right? If I’m going to seek out constructive criticism as a way to practice whether or not I get defensive, I don’t want to start with my boss, right? But maybe not even my spouse, right? But maybe I want to start with a good friend that I’ve known my whole life, that I have some sort of, you know, a certain degree of psychological safety with that individual.

And so, I want to start small and then, over time, I want to build that up and expand. So, that’s the second approach. So, first approach is let’s work on those neural connections first and foremost. Second, let’s now start, engage in experiments to practice in these different ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And as I think about that experience of receiving that constructive criticism alongside the journaling, that could really go hand in hand, in terms of, “Oh, I had some constructive criticism, and actually it was really useful and eye-opening and valuable in these ways.”

And then I imagine some of the journaling is, likewise, reflect back into times in your past in which you’ve received some constructive criticism that turned out to be very useful. And then I could sort of feel a shift happening in me right now, as I’m thinking, “My freshman year of high school, my teacher, Mrs. Judy Federmeyer, gave me a not-so great grade on my first writing assignment.” And I thought, “What is this? I am accustomed to A’s always. That’s just very unsettling.”

But, sure enough, that was extremely useful in identifying how to improve my writing. And now, what do you know, I’ve got a couple of books, I’ve got a career doing content stuff. So, thank you, Mrs. Federmeyer, for that feedback, even though, in the moment, it sure was a gut punch to look at a not-great grade for perhaps the first time.

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, spot on.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m thinking about how there’s variability in my day-to-day lived life experience in terms of the more that I am stressed, frustrated, exhausted, hungry, under-slept, just generally don’t have needs met physically and psychologically, the more likely I am to be in that self-protection mode.

Like, “You know, I really don’t feel like making that difficult phone call,” as opposed to, if I had all the things going for me in terms of, “Oh, I’ve had some wonderful friend conversations, some good food, some good sleep, dah, dah, dah,” I would feel much more equipped and ready to take that on. So how do you think about the daily fluctuation and variability of living this stuff?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, and I’m even going to expand it even wider because you’re spot on. So, I think it gets us to ask the question, “Why do some of us have more self-protective wiring?” Well, it’s really one of two large, broad reasons. The first is our life’s experience, and the second is our current culture and our current environment.

So, our life’s experiences are things like trauma. One of the things that we’re finding, the more trauma one experiences in their life, the more their body becomes wired to be self-protective. And that makes sense, right? It’s our body’s natural reaction to these difficult circumstances. The same thing goes with our current culture. If I’m in a work environment that doesn’t feel psychologically safe, I’m naturally going to turn and be more self-protective.

If I’m more hungry, if I’m more tired, right, those are also factors that are going to impact my body. So, what we’re starting to connect to, where we started was, we’ve got a doing side, that’s our talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities, and we’ve got a being side. And that’s effectively the quality of our internal operating system, how our body’s nervous system is actually wired to operate.

And so, mindsets is one way to gauge our altitude along our being side. Self-protective is more towards the bottom of our being side. Value creating is more towards the top of our being side. And so, there are factors that can temporarily kind of pull us down. But we do, what the research has found is we do tend to have a center of gravity where we tend to fall along that continuum from low being to high being.

And what I’ve learned is that, as we elevate along our being side, our body’s internal operating system, our nervous system, actually becomes more higher quality and more sophisticated, so that, even in the times where we are hungry, tired, stressed, we’re feeling a lot of pressure, our body is able to still stay in value-creation mode, even though we’re feeling the pressure or the pull to move into self-protection mode.

So, this is why this concept is really important for leaders, because when leaders step into leadership roles, now their stress, pressure, uncertainty, complexity elevates. And if their being side isn’t a very high quality, then they’re going to really struggle to navigate that particular environment because they’re going to pull and be more self-protective.

So, if we’re in an environment where it’s really high pressure, high stress, the only way that we’ll ever be able to navigate it more effectively is not by focusing on improving our knowledge, skills, and abilities. It’s actually on improving our being side, upgrading our own internal operating system so that we have the emotional regulation abilities to navigate those circumstances in a healthier, more productive way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we talked about a number of ways to do these upgrades. I’m curious, from all your research, what does the science say is the most reliably effective kind of ROI in terms of being upgrade per minute, “I invest in doing the thing” that you would highlight for us?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak, is maybe not the best place to start. So, here’s the way that I think is helpful to think about it, is there are what I call starter-level strategies, there are deeper-level strategies, and there are deepest-level strategies. Now, you don’t have to necessarily go in that order, but I do think that there is some value to that because it opens up our body more and more to doing that really deep work.

So, we’ve talked about some of the starter-level strategies. That’s things like meditation, gratitude journaling, yoga, even cold plunges. Those are all factors that serve to upgrade our nervous system. So, that’s our surface level. We’ve also talked about the deeper-level strategies. That’s focusing on our mindsets specifically. And that’s a deeper way, a more precise way of helping us elevate along our being side.

But at the deepest level, this is where we get things like psychological and trauma therapy. So, for example, research has found that EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, may be one of the most effective trauma therapy approaches to healing our body’s nervous system. If we have, let’s say, ADHD is something, it’s a neuro divergency that affects our being side altitude.

One of the things that research is finding is that neurofeedback therapy is helpful for rewiring our mind. And then, if we’re really going to go for the biggest bang for our buck, it’s kind of a controversial area, but it’s a burgeoning area of research. And what researchers are finding is that psychedelic-assisted therapy might be the best approach for us to upgrade our body’s internal operating system. So, those are some of the deepest level approaches.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Ryan, these three interventions that you highlight here, my impression, I’m not deep in the literature, is that they’re new, they’re hot, they’re trendy. And I’m curious, though, you’re saying they also have the most phenomenal results in the systematic reviews of the human randomized control trials?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yes. And here’s part of the reason why that is. Yes, they feel hot, they feel trendy, and here’s why. It’s because of technological advances, there has been more neuroscience research that’s been done in the last 10 years than all of time before that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we talked about healing from a trauma. I just wanted to find terms with trauma. Now, is it fair to say that trauma need not necessarily be an unspeakable horror or crime that befalls us, but rather something that sticks with us.

For example, if someone made fun of us for something at an impressionable age, and it hurt a lot such that we want to never do that thing again, and it feels very uncomfortable if we approach that. Does that qualify as “trauma” in how you’re using terms here?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yes, and you defined that really well. So, trauma is not what happens to us. It’s our body’s response to what happens to us. So, it could be something relatively insignificant that changed how our mind and our body operate. Let me give you a personal example. I’ve got some emotional neglect in my past that has played a significant role in how I show up today.

But on a more minor note, I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, Pete, but I used to love to fly, like, go to airports, go on trips. I loved, like I just thought it was a lot of fun. Well, on one of my trips, I missed one of my flights. I was actually sitting there and I was waiting for my flight and the time zone, I didn’t switch the time zone on my watch, and I effectively watched the plane take off in front of me that I was supposed to be on.

And so, this is relatively insignificant. Most people have missed a flight, but for whatever reason, this jarred me, right? So now, every time I go to the airport, I’m anxious about my flights. I’m checking my watch like a hundred times an hour to make sure I’ve got the right time zone, right? And it’s changed how my body functions in that airport environment. So that’s a relatively insignificant thing that’s occurred, but it has altered how my body functions. And, therefore, it would be classified as trauma.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and what’s interesting is that it’s super conscious, I imagine. As I think about my experiences of that, it’s like you go to the airport, it’s like, “Oh, I hope I don’t miss this flight. No, I hate missing flights. Missing flights is the worst. I remember that time, the flight was terrible.” So much so as it’s not in the conscious brain, but it’s just in the body. Like, “Ah, I feel kind of antsy and agitated here at this airport.”

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah. So, when we start to connect to these ideas like anxiety, for example, the more that we…now there could be some chemical imbalances, right, that are impacting our anxiety. But when we’re having anxiety, that’s actually an indication that we’re not yet where we could be along our being side. That means that kind of our environment is feeling overwhelming and our body isn’t able to deal with that environment.

And so, the only way we’re going to be able to navigate that environment is, ultimately, and this is kind of why I love focusing on this. And here’s the core message is if we want to become better, transformation-ally so, we’ve got to focus on healing our mind, our body, and our hearts. And what’s kind of eye-opening to me is that, when most people try to improve, they generally don’t go there.

Where they go is they focus on, “How can I gain more knowledge, more skills? What’s the next degree or certificate that I need to get to be able to advance in my career?” They’re generally not thinking, “How do I heal my mind, my body, and my heart so I could show up as a more positive force for good within the space in which I operate?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very well put in terms of a distinction. And, boy, there’s probably so many reasons for that. It’s uncomfortable for us independently, individually, and it’s almost not okay to say in a professional work environment, in terms of it’s like, “Hmm, you keep making some sloppy mistakes in your client deliverables.”

And so, it’s like, “What I need you to do is heal your traumas.” And it’s like, “Are you allowed to say that to me? Should I talk to HR about you, sir?” But that might actually be what is necessary in terms of, if there is a block, an emotional thing going down that prevents them from doing the things that need doing, it may very well not be a matter of learning these spell-checks software or whatever the thing is.

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, let me give you an example. So, in the consulting work that I do with organizations, I’m helping to develop leaders. And some of the organizations that I work with, we’re kind of helping leaders go from good to great. Well, sometimes I get called in, kind of head of HR calls me up, and says, “We’ve got a CEO that is really wrecking a havoc. It’s kind of operating at this bad level.” And they kind of say, “Can you help this guy? Can we get him from bad to good?”

And, generally, I’m, “Yeah,” because I want to help, I want to help the organizations, and I want to help these leaders. In every single one of these circumstances where I’ve done this coaching with CEOs that are, I’m going to say, are operating at this bad level, and we’re trying to help them just to step up to that good level, every single time, what comes up in the coaching process is they bring up a trauma from their childhood.

I’ve had one CEO tell me, “When I was a boy, my best friend was my bike.” I had another CEO tell me, “When I was a kid, my parents divorced, and I didn’t really see my dad, and my mom really wasn’t around. I never was recognized.” Another executive, this wasn’t a CEO, but another executive said, “When I was a boy, I could never please my dad, no matter what I did.”

And all of these things have left an imprint on these leaders that causes them to show up as a leader in really self-protective ways. Some of them are, “Oh, I need to be seen. And so, I’m willing to run over others in order to get the fame, the accolades, whatever that might be.” And, ultimately, it’s because they’re driven by past hurts that have made them develop certain insecurities and fears that are holding them back.

And here’s what I’ve learned. We’ve all got these. We’ve all got past hurts. We’ve all got fears. We’ve all got insecurities. And unless we’re willing to lift up the rug and start to look at them and start to do work with them, they’re going to continually hold us back from becoming the people that we want to become.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Thank you. Well, Ryan, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I think we’ve covered it, right? But I want people to just understand that there’s really two paths that we can develop ourselves. One is by focusing on our doing side, and that’s what most people focus on. That’s our education systems, our athletic programs, most of our organizational development efforts.

But what I hope we’ve opened up for people is to help them to see that there’s another path, there’s another side for them to focus on, and that’s their being side. And I know that for many people this is new. And so, let’s open up this so that they have the opportunities to now start to do this work. And what I’ve learned is that when we improve along our doing side, it’s helpful but, generally, only incrementally so. But when we focus on our being side, it could be transformational.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, one of my favorite quotes is by Anais Nin, and it is, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” And I think that speaks to some of this being side growth that we’ve been talking about.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ryan Gottfredson
I will point people, there’s a great TED talk by Alia Crum, and it’s all about the placebo effect, and it dives into mindsets. And there are several studies in that that I just think are incredibly fascinating. But one of those studies, it identifies how some of these exercises, like we’ve talked about, watching a three-minute video can shape our engagement, our performance, and even our blood pressure two weeks later. That’s one video.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to watch that video. And, hopefully, in a good way. It shapes in a good way or it makes our blood pressures sky high?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, well, it depends on the video. So, they showed them a video, they had two groups. One group saw a video that said, well, stress is bad, and another group saw a video of how stress is good. And the people who saw the stress-is-good video, they had higher engagement, higher performance, and lower blood pressure two weeks later than the group who saw the stress-is-bad video.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Ryan Gottfredson
I’ll go with The Choice by Edith Eger. This is a memoir of a Holocaust survivor, and it’s less about her Holocaust experience and more about her life recovering from her experience. And I think she is such a great case study of doing this being-side work, which really started 20 to 30 years after her Holocaust experience. And it’s just an incredibly moving book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I would say a tool that I use every day on my phone is the Insight Timer app. That’s what I use to meditate as a part of my being-side work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Ryan Gottfredson
Oh, next up, right after I’m done meditating, then I pick up my book, The Five-Minute Journal. And, to me, that’s been game-changing. So, I’ve been doing that for the last seven years, and I credit that to most of my growth and development.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate and folks quote back to you often?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I hope some of the ideas around doing side and being side helped, but I think a quick little tagline might be, “Success starts with our mindsets.” And if we want to elevate our success, we’ve got to focus on our mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, I’d point them to my website, RyanGottfredson.com, also any social media outlets. And, in fact, if people wanted to comment, find me on social media. And if they were to comment in that they listened to this show, then I’ll give them access to my mindset assessment. And I’ll even offer up a free phone call with them to walk them through their mindset assessment results.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome with their jobs?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, I mean, just go to my website. I’ve got two personal assessments that are there that are free. We’ve talked about one of those, the free Personal Mindset Assessment. And then there’s also a Vertical Development Assessment, which is a different way to measure our altitude along our being side. So, those are a couple of free resources that can help you awaken to your altitude on your being side.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. All right. Well, Ryan, thank you.

Ryan Gottfredson
Thanks for having me.