Understanding good communication and tips for Effective Leadership with Lee Povey of Povey Performance

Are you ready to level up your leadership skills and cultivate a thriving company culture? Brace yourself for a session with performance strategist Lee Povey, where we unpack the art of effective leadership and the key to creating a supportive corporate environment. We explore the concept of feedback in-depth, and how acting upon it can instill trust, enhance performance, and foster a positive working atmosphere. 

Transcript

Effective Leadership, Supportive Corporate Culture

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Hatching Creativity . This isn't just another behavioral health podcast . This is the place where thought leaders converge to talk about real-life challenges , breakthroughs and pivotal aha moments . Thanks for tuning in to Hatching Creativity . In today's episode , I'm speaking with Lee Povey from Povey Performance . Now I know Lee from the cycling world , where he was the US Olympic Development Coach and a very well-decorated cyclist himself . Now he's a coach of a whole different kind . His goal is to help executives and leaders build strategies about being the most effective people they can be . Today , we speak about best practices around effective leadership and building a supportive corporate culture by asking and acting on feedback from your staff . And if you like what you hear , please like , share , subscribe and tell all your friends about Hatching Creativity . I am really excited for today's guest , lee Povey . Lee and I go back quite a bit and have done quite a bit of bike racing together . Lee , would you like to do a brief introduction of yourself ?

Speaker 2 1:07

Hey , mike . Yeah , I'm a performance strategist , so I now work with founders and their companies , and the simplest way to describe it is I help them understand themselves on a level so that they can be the most effective versions of themselves . There's a bit of teaching in that leadership skills , communication skills , and there's a lot of kind of understanding work .

Speaker 1 1:32

Are you speaking with founders and getting a better understanding of where their skills are and where they need complementary people on their team , or tell me a little bit more about that ? That's fascinating . I didn't know that's what you were doing .

Speaker 2 1:46

Yeah , thanks , mike . It really depends on each individual . The way I look at it , the people that I tend to work with are very smart and usually struggle to delegate and also struggle to trust others . So they struggle with that , you know . They're like I could just do better , so what ? I just do it ? Well then , there's a limit to how much you can get done if you are doing everything .

Speaker 1 2:13

We talk about that all the time because we say how you only have so many hours in the day , right , and you never want to be the smartest person in the room . So I think that kind of lends to what you're talking about maybe building a good team around you .

Speaker 2 2:32

Yeah , my clients typically are the smartest person in the room and that's okay .

Speaker 2 2:38

That's why they're the founder , that's why they're the person creating this business , and they need to learn how to work well with others , and that comes from an understanding of themselves and what might show up for them when they work with others , and then also from a greater understanding themselves , understanding how to relate well to other people , and especially people that might not do it as fast as they might do it or might not quite do it to their preferred , which is okay . There's a business guru called Seth Godin , so if you ever come across him , he's like he's really , really good .

Speaker 1 3:14

Seth Godin , seth Godin , yeah , yeah , okay .

Speaker 2 3:17

Podcasts and he's brilliant . Yeah , and one of his sayings is good enough is better than perfect . So you know the kind of people I work with . They want everything to be perfect , and sometimes things just need to be good enough and then you can move on to the next .

Speaker 1 3:34

Sometimes you also learn that it doesn't always have to be your way right , and we create things all the time and you have a vision in your head of how you want your business to look or your operations to look or your systems to look . And then you bring somebody on and they don't see it the same way you do . It doesn't mean they're wrong , but being open-minded to the possibility that somebody could have a good idea that could make your business better is also really important . Yes , yeah .

Speaker 2 4:08

So there's that kind of just working with the ego as well , of it's okay for somebody else to be smart too . And it's okay for you know if you say it's okay for somebody to have a different vision to you , as long as it fits in the overall goal of where the company is going .

Speaker 1 4:25

Do you remember the cartoon Voltron ? Did you ever watch that show when you were a kid ?

Speaker 2 4:29

I don't think so . Yeah , yeah .

Speaker 1 4:31

Yeah , so there was a show called Voltron and Voltron was all of these little robot kind of action heroes and they all had their own superpowers . But when the superpowers all come together into the big giant robot , right , it creates this unstoppable force that , no matter how bad the bad guys are right , they're never going to overcome this Voltron . And we've got a teammate , chris Rivera , and Chris started with us as a contractor software developer who is a contractor and he built himself into our chief technology officer and then he built himself in . Now he's our chief operating officer and Chris always talks about our team as the Voltron , right , and that's kind of what you want to do . Where you've got . The whole is way bigger than the sum of all the parts . What are some of the best strategies that you could say to somebody who is starting their own business or a treatment center , a healthcare clinic that can help them to find the right people that can help them get where they want to go ?

Speaker 2 5:46

Yeah , I think instinct is actually for people that don't know me , I'm very science and data driven . You know , former elite sports coach , everything was about the data , analyzing everything and not but , and we tend to have pretty good instincts as human beings around other human beings on our relationship to them . So employ people that make you feel good , employ people that you think I'm going to have a good working relationship with this person . Then you configure the rest of it out .

Speaker 1 6:25

It also leads to the culture that creates the culture at your company that you want to work at .

Speaker 2 6:32

Yeah , yeah , and that's another important piece as well . You know , I see leaders that almost suffer in silence working with people that they don't necessarily like or they don't get on with , and we spend the majority of our time in our work environment . Even now , most of the people I work with are in a remote or hybrid situation , but you still have a meeting all day , every day , with these people . You could , you're actually enjoy the work . So that's the first thing , you know work with people that you enjoy working with . And then just be really honest . You know , do they have the skill sets ? And if they don't , and it's not working out make that decision quickly .

Speaker 2 7:09

Again , I see people work with people for an extended period of time . They know are not really going to work out , but they don't want the they don't want to difficult conversations , so they avoid the difficult conversations , so they keep working around somebody rather than either coaching the person to be better at their job or going hey , this isn't working and that's okay . We see firing people , letting people go . Is this really bad thing ? And it's not , because what you're doing is you're allowing them to get to what they should be doing faster , because if it isn't working with you , then you're actually getting in their wire of what they should be doing , lee , you just hit on a few things that I want to just recall back , because there's some things that really stood out .

Speaker 1 7:55

The first is an expression my dad used to always say , which was if you're given 100 envelopes and you're told that one of those envelopes has $100 bill in it , and you open the first couple envelopes and you don't have that $100 bill , what's your reaction ?

Speaker 1 8:12

Do you get disappointed that you don't have it or do you say I'm that much closer to the goal ? Right , and that's a really good way of looking at hiring too . We've had to let people go from time to time , and it's always hard because genuinely in our company we love the people people as people but sometimes the fit isn't right and while it's really hard to do that , the other point that you had just made which is really important is you have to hire slow and make good decisions on hiring , but you have to let go very quickly when something becomes not working or something is not working as it should . And we look at a thing at our company . We call it skill sets versus personality , because a skill set can always be learned , but if your personality isn't right , then it definitely is going to affect the longevity of the relationship or the longevity , of how they fit into the culture .

Speaker 2 9:22

And that's tiring , mike , you know we've all been there working with people , that . And you don't have to be best friends with people , you don't have to have to share the same hobbies , you don't have to have the same interests , you don't need to be close friends , but you need to respect their work and like them . That's important . Otherwise it's just so emotionally draining to be working with people . You know like , oh , do I have to get on a meeting with that person ? Oh , I don't really want to . And we've all been there , we've all been in these situations where you're working with people to think this isn't right for me , this isn't right for them .

Speaker 1 9:59

You know , we had somebody that worked for us for a little while . She was here for a few months and when I looked at the resume and I saw that she had very short tenure at many companies , that was a first red flag , right . And I always I do a lot of speaking on human resources and hiring and always say if somebody's averaging three to six months at a job , you are not going to be the one to change that or break that cycle . Don't put yourself in that position , right ? And I remember she was here and she kept saying that the whole company felt like a club and she was on the outside and at the same time , her attitude and her personality was so negative and such a dream that it wasn't that people didn't make an attempt to get to know her . It was that she was boxing herself out of the culture of communication and you know , these are again personality things you recognize .

Speaker 1 11:00

She was pretty good at what she did , but nobody could stand working with her . So the other thing I was going to ask you about you mentioned data driven and you talk about data and we talk about data a lot in behavioral health care . We also talk about data a lot because we're a software company and the importance of data . You had talked a little bit about building a team . What kind of data would you be looking at and what should somebody be tracking or wanting to keep track of to build a good culture ?

Speaker 2 11:37

Yeah , I mean there's various tools so you can do things like 360s for your leaders . So a leader might have an impression of themselves and think , oh , this is how I lead , this is how I work , this is how I run my company .

Feedback and Culture in Company

Speaker 2 11:51

And then we do a 360 , which is to interview the most important people in their life , the people that work with them anonymously , so that they give that really good , clear feedback . And we're skilled at making sure that we get the right feedback out people in the right questions to ask , so we get a pretty good look at how that person actually shows up in the work . And then we can use that with the leader to say well , here's how you think you show up , here's how your team is reflecting you show up . How do we get from one to the other ? Where do you want to be and what needs to change for you to get to where you'd like to be instead ?

Speaker 1 12:29

I love that , so your company , so you do things like that .

Speaker 2 12:35

I source that to other companies that specialize in that work , and then I use the report with the founder of the company or with the CEO , or with the executive team , depending on who we're doing the 360 with . So you know , when you're looking at culture , it's very clear culture comes to the top . So how the founder is is how the rest of the company is going to be , because they are setting the tone for the company . Or how the CEO is , they're setting the tone for the company . So if you're going to change culture , you've got to start there first . You know , I've been in companies where they're very about and this happens often where they're very about looking after their staff and making sure the staff take enough time off and they don't overwork . And then the founder works 80 hours a week and it doesn't matter what their policy is . Everybody's looking at the founder and going well , there's still in the office , so I should probably still be in the office , and then the founder goes . I don't understand it , ladies . People don't take time off . I can't get them to rest , they will burn out , like here's the mirror . Let's reflect back how you behave and then how that sets the tone for the company and culture .

Speaker 2 13:47

People make culture more complicated than it is . It's not actually that complicated . Just be a decent human being . If your colleague reaches out to you for something , respond to your colleague . Have an idea of what you're there to do . So I work with a lot of kind of newer tech companies and you know Google set the store there that you have to have on site massage , therapists and play rooms and all of these things . When we actually look at what human beings need , none of that stuff really matters .

Speaker 2 14:24

You get paid what you believe is a fair rate for the work you're doing , so a market comparable compensation . You understand your role in the organization , so you get feedback from the people that you work with . You get feedback from your team leaders , your managers , the CEO , whatever saying . This is how you fit into our culture and this is how you are fitting into the mission and you understand what the mission of the company is and that you're aligned with it . So if you work in a company that you don't understand what the mission is , you don't know how you fit into . It Doesn't really matter how much money you get paid . You're going to eventually feel disenfranchised , disheartened , like I don't understand why I'm here . And if you don't get feedback about it . So you don't get clear feedback of am I doing a good job ? Am I not doing a good job ? Where's my areas for growth ? Again , people get really unsettled .

Speaker 1 15:20

That's it .

Speaker 2 15:21

Talk about that , the bonus structure staff , the you know the unlimited pay , time off and things like that . They sound great and there can be a place for them . They're not really what keeps people in businesses .

Speaker 1 15:36

I really like what you said about letting people know if they're doing a good job , and it's really important to have those benchmarks set ahead of time . I'm guilty of that at times . You know , we get busy in our own day , we get busy in doing our particular role , and then somebody's work anniversary comes around and you go oh crap , we haven't had any kind of performance review or evaluation or discussion about what they've been doing versus expectations , and I think that's really important , that that's a really good point that you let people know how are they meeting , how are they working towards meeting your expectations . It's huge , and one of the things that is really helpful in our software that we do is we have anonymous employee satisfaction surveys looking at employer , the leadership of the company , the management team , your workplace safety , culture , all of those things . But , as you mentioned , it's all about the data .

Speaker 1 16:53

If you're conducting surveys and you know in behavioral health it's required that you're collecting surveys from your staff that if you're collecting them in a manner that doesn't allow you to aggregate the data and actually use it for anything of importance , then what ends up happening ?

Speaker 1 17:10

Is it actually works against doing these surveys , because anytime you ask somebody to do something like a survey or for their feedback on anything , and if they you don't do anything with it , they remember that really well and then they say , oh well , they're just wasting my time . Conversely , if you take these surveys and you look at them with your management team and you look at them with an objective opinion and you look at them objectively , you can see a lot of areas that people can improve . I know you and I have spoken a couple of times about Ted Lasso and I love the analogy of his suggestion box and everybody just you know , they call , call them a wanker and everybody just nobody showed him any respect until he took the one suggestion and did something with it . And that sounds like exactly

Effective Leadership and Feedback Strategies

Speaker 1 18:13

what you're saying . I love your concepts on culture too .

Speaker 2 18:17

People just you know , ultimately we're all little kids that wanna be loved . It's really not much more complicated than that . We're walking through the world trying to find ways to be seen and be loved . So if we come from that understanding you know the people working with you , for you they wanna be recognized . And , as you say , if we go to them and say , you know how does your manager show up ? What are the things that you need to do your job better ? And then we don't do them , well , then they feel unloved because , as far as they're concerned , they're now being actively ignored and there's a difference between being well . They just don't know what I need to . Okay , now you're actively ignoring me because I told you what I need and you're still not doing that .

Speaker 2 19:02

So , yeah , I completely agree with you Don't do a survey if you're not gonna put , if you're not gonna put the results of it into action and at least explain . You know , I think I run workshops on communication , so I run workshops on how to give feedback and I'm well-classic given feedback . And the reason I'm well-classic given feedback is because I used to be absolutely atrocious at given feedback . I mean , you might have even seen this , mike , as a sports coach . At times I would see somebody doing something and I'd go up to them and like , why are you doing ?

Speaker 2 19:34

it like that . Why don't you do it like this ? Instead , you're gonna go faster . Now , my intent was always from a place of love , of like I love the sport , I love track cycling , I love seeing people be better . I'm trying to help them .

Speaker 2 19:47

But my delivery was appalling and the impact would be these people would feel judged , they'd feel belittled , they'd feel slighted , and I couldn't understand it , because I'm like I have a fairly tough skin around feedback . So I'd be like great , tell me all the stuff . I don't care if you can tell me how to do it faster . But I realized I'm a little bit different from most people like that and actually the way you deliver the feedback has a huge impact on how the feedback is being received . The feedback can be basically the same feedback , but the words used to change it completely , and I realized I wasn't asking for permission and that's a huge bit about giving feedback . So I teach people now , when they're giving feedback , the first thing is hey , you open to some feedback on this . Then the next bit is what's your experience ? Hey , I saw this . You know how did it go for you ? What did you think ? That's part of the data gathering . Okay , right , oh , they know what they're not doing well and now I can target what to do to help them . It changed my world as a sporting coach . But I had to upset a few people to get there , to go . Hang on a second . I'm not being as effective as I'd like to be . How do I flip this around to become more effective ? And then I started studying how to give feedback and learning more about human beings and studying what high performance really meant . And it's all partnerships . Like you know , work culture is partnerships . Just telling people what to do doesn't make people feel very valued , so the more autonomy you can give them while they understand how they fit into the overall mission is incredibly powerful , and that's what we're always trying to do is empower your staff to be leaders for themselves and for their own departments and in the company .

Speaker 2 21:31

You know I'm a basketball fan , so it's . You know I moved to America , you know , 10 years ago . I've got to pick some American sport to be able to talk to people about . I tried football . It takes four or enough hours . I haven't got the patience for that . I'm a sprinter like that . I can't do that . But baseball takes even longer . I watched Icehockey . I couldn't follow the park I'm like I can't see what's going on . So okay , basketball I can get it . They're athletes . They sprint really fast . There's a skill element to it . I could understand it and I lived in the Bay Area , so I became a warrior fan and for me , I think one of the biggest parts about the Warriors success apart from having the best point guard ever in Steph Curry is their team atmosphere and ethos and everybody's encouraged to be a leader on the floor .

Speaker 2 22:18

You don't often see Steve Kerber rating his players . He's very upbeat and he trusts them a lot and he gives them a lot of trust and then he'll course correct as needed , and I think for me , that is great . Leadership is trusting the people that you're working with , giving them opportunities when they fail . Teachers are learning opportunity , not a discipline opportunity Yep .

Speaker 2 22:41

And obviously people can't do the job . As we said earlier about hiring , there's some people that just are not suited for the role , and if they keep not being able to do the role , that's one thing . Most of us just need training , we just need support . It's like oh , what did you learn from that ? Okay , how are you going to do that differently next time ? Like , if that go , go and do it , let's see how you get on .

Speaker 1 23:01

Sure . Well , you know , my dad always had an expression and I've been using this since I was a kid and he says tacked is the ability to make a point without making an enemy and having an understanding of the experience of somebody else . Right , we talk about trauma all the time and one of the side effects of trauma is a trauma response . Sometimes people think that they're okay with criticism , or even if it's a constructive criticism , but when they get criticized , the word used , the context used , the tone of voice used could really trigger trauma responses and do the opposite of what you're looking to do . You know , even if you're looking to just hey , you hired me as a coach to give you good information . That's exactly what I'm doing .

Speaker 2 24:00

I'm not trying to offend you , but you know , being able to step back and look at everybody's life experiences and how they're different can also be really important with that you know , for me , moving countries made me have to be a better coach because a culture here is very different to the culture in the UK and I just didn't know that until I moved here . People are blunter in the UK , much more direct with their feedback in the UK than they are typically in America . So you know , I went with that kind of British . You know , one of my friends was I hope I can throw in his podcast one of my friends would say one of the first things I said to her is well the fuck , you're doing it like that , mate . This American guy is looking at me like that . Why it's just a different culture , you know , same as Australians are very blunt and direct as well . And it made me have to really stop and think about again .

Speaker 2 25:00

Coming back to that word of being effective , how can I be effective ? Because the way I've done it before , that worked before in a different culture , is no longer working here . So I've got to change . And I can say , well , I'm British , that's the way I behave . Or I can say I need to change and adapt to be more effective . And you know , one nugget from me about leadership is I strongly believe the best leaders are the most adaptable leaders . When I hear somebody talk about their leadership style , I immediately know they're going to have limitations in their leadership , because if they have a leadership style , that means that they can only work with people that work with that leadership style and I believe you've got to adapt yourself to meet everybody where they're at their level of education , their level of understanding about what you're doing , their communication level .

Speaker 2 25:54

And another G I like to use a lot about feedback is a cookie jar , and I used to use this about track sprint , cycling , right . So you know , michael , know this is sprint athletes you have so much energy in your system that you can use in an effort and once it's gone you need time to recover and replenish the cookie jar . Well , feedback is the same . When somebody gives you critical or opportunity feedback , it has a hit . And when somebody gives you appreciation , acknowledgement and compliments , that's putting cookies into the jar . And then when somebody gives you that , hey , here's something I think you missed that's taken some cookies out of the jar , what I see a lot is empty cookie jars and when you get to that point , the person can no longer receive any kind of critical feedback . And I'll often see this when I'm working in relationships and companies . A manager will say I can't train this person anymore . Whatever I say , they argue with me , they get defensive .

Speaker 2 26:59

The first thing I say to them is how often do you praise them ? How often do you point out what they do well , and they'll kind of look at me blankly like what do you mean ? Like how much time do you spend acknowledging them as a human being ? And usually it's very little to none . And it's not because they're bad people , it's because they believe their job is to tell you what you're not doing well Right . If you don't also tell people what they're doing well . Going back to what makes somebody feel good in a company , they don't know how they're part of the mission , they don't know what is they're doing right . And we've got to point out what they're doing right . And the best leaders do that on a round of 50-50 scale . So it's 50% . Here's all the stuff you're doing well , 50% opportunities and not in the old sandwich one of like here's a compliment .

Speaker 1 27:46

Not the shit sandwich , not the shit sandwich .

Speaker 2 27:49

Here's a compliment . Here's the thing that I need you to do better . Or here's another compliment for the icing on the top . We actually find it's better if you just stick to the individual things at a time . You see somebody doing something well , point that out . You see some opportunity , point that out . Don't think you need to play a game with them , just be mountaining your own self . Am I giving this person enough praise ? And almost nobody , even the best leaders , really struggle to do that . Given enough price .

Speaker 1 28:23

There's a couple of things that you hit on here that's , in my opinion , really important . We have a similar type of a conversation with our 13-year-old daughter and we refer to it as our emotional bank account , and you've got to make deposits before you can take out of that bank account , right ? And if all you're doing is taking and taking and if every conversation is a pull from somebody's emotional bank account , sooner or later that person's going to lower that entrance into it and you're not going to be able to get in and you're going to have a wall when you're trying to relate to somebody . So it is really important . I like the cookie jar aspect as well . You know we have to give if we're going to take .

Speaker 1 29:13

The other thing that I think is really important that you mentioned , lee , is authenticity . You know you didn't use the word , but what I'm hearing you say is having an authentic relationship , that feedback is given . So authentic feedback is good and it's corrective at the same time . It's almost like the . Oftentimes managers feel like they have to play this role and anytime we try to fit into a role or a construct , that's when we're not authentic . Right , we're trying to do this manager role or this parent role .

Speaker 1 29:59

I always found it's much easier to just talk on the authentic level about what I'm thinking , what I'm experiencing . What are you thinking and experiencing , rather than trying to put boss and employee role or any of that Speaking of . Have you ever read the book Flat Army ? Are you familiar with it ? Flat Army , they talk a lot about this and it's really talking about hierarchy , and oftentimes when you have a hierarchy in a company , it's I'm above you or you're below me , and the Flat Army really talks about a hierarchy that doesn't involve that and it involves an overall team rowing in the same direction for the same goal , which is exactly what you were talking about about everybody being understanding of where they fit in their contribution to the overall mission .

Speaker 2 30:56

Yeah , yeah , and there's a lot that I could respond to there and I didn't respond to earlier , but I just want to say that sounds like a lovely guy .

Speaker 1 31:05

He is , he's , he's my best dude , he absolutely what a bunch of pearls of wisdom there .

Speaker 2 31:12

I can understand how you're the man you are . I Just go back to you know we're little kids that need to be seen and loved and you know some of the work I do , especially with leadership teams , is we actually we do what we call essence and survival mechanism work .

Genetic Personality Traits and Survival Mechanisms

Speaker 2 31:30

So the essence is what are the genetic personality traits you were born with ? So my mum fostered a hundred kids over a 10-year period Maybe high-risk kids , so reasonably short stay and I helped her with some of that and I watched some of that happen and I learned a lot about human behavior just on that period . I was in my late teens and early 20s when it was happening . And then , as I study and learn more now it's this mix of nature versus nurture . Well , some of it is .

Speaker 2 32:00

We are born with certain genetic traits . Any parent will tell you they've got more than one child and children are different and they just have different genetic traits , right ? Some are really outgoing , some are more introverted , some are very curious , some aren't very curious . And Then we enter the world . We enter off our familial you know situations . We're growing up , we get feedback and we get feedback on those genetic personality traits , and then we adapt because we want to fit in right . So we've got to adapt to our family system , we got that to our school system , our culture of our countries , the culture of where we grew up . So we adapt and then we put on what we call some vital mechanisms , and these are shields to protect us From the way the world is viewing us about how we are as a person . So as a kid I was incredibly curious . Well , I often got told to shut up because I'm asking so many questions . People are like enough .

Speaker 1 33:00

Okay , kid , shut up .

Speaker 2 33:02

And .

Speaker 2 33:02

I get it but then you build a shield around that right to protect myself from being told to shut up , because little kids Don't like being told to shut up . I just want to be loved and heard . So some of the work I do with leadership teams is we actually establish these Essences and survival mechanisms and they know each other survival mechanisms . So then they start to look out for it and own as well when they're showing up as it and they're like , oh , I'm showing up like this . So you know my essence is our brilliance , playing , vision , connection and presence . I'm very aware of what's going on . I'm very strategic mind to see patterns and what's going on . I'm , if I'm with you and very present , you're gonna know I'm in the room , I have a presence . You know me . I'm reasonably big physically and you'll know I'm there . But I'm also very good at being with people and listen to them and seeing them very deeply , which is why I can do the work I do when my survival mechanisms one is tyrannical Einstein .

Speaker 2 33:59

You know , I didn't have the benefit of a very good father . My father was about as bad as the father can come . So to protect myself I just used my smartness . So I was smarter than him and I would use that to protect myself from him and the damage that he could do . Well , that doesn't work so well as an adult , right ?

Speaker 2 34:22

You know , nobody wants to be around a tyrant and I have very high standards and that would come out in tyrannical ways . Why haven't you done this ? Why isn't it done the way I want it done ? Why haven't you done this and I , until I gained understanding around it ? It would affect my relationships . So people would see this really sweet kind of loving part men and be like why are you showing up like this ? If I know that in a leadership team , I can share that with the other leaders in the team and say , hey guys , if I start to get really stressed , you might see some of this behavior , I'm okay with you calling out a reminder and then what I do is for me , if I start to feel myself becoming a tyrant , I lean back into my essence of play . It's very hard to be a playful tyrant , so I , you know I'll take the piss off myself and I'll laugh at myself , or I'll go go kind or I'll .

Speaker 1 35:13

You know , I'll do something competitive With a play element to it that exercises that part of me so that I don't bring that so much into the workplace Do you have any ideas or thoughts on how you can recognize your own patterns of defense there for people who may not really know where their own patterns are hidden , Because it's hide right . It's not something that we're not supposed to be aware of . This right , this is your subconscious coming out . How would you recommend somebody find out or realize what their defenses are ?

Speaker 2 35:53

The only way I've seen it done , or I've been able to do it , is to have therapy or coaching . You've got to have that outside reflection and perspective . It's you know , you named it very accurately it's the shadow self , as Carl Jung would describe it . So it's these parts of ourselves that we know exist and we , you know you're in a relationship with somebody . You think I just felt icky right now . Why do I feel icky ? What's this about ? So you know it's there , but it's very hard for us to look at .

Speaker 2 36:27

And also we usually have a lot of negative judgment of this part of myself . You know , when my coaches said , right , we're going to call this part of you tyrannical , einstein , I'm like I don't want to be a tyrant , like , fuck you , I don't think of myself as a tyrant . And then they're like , well , reflect on this behavior . I'm like , oh God , yeah , I'm a tyrant . So you know , I think it's very hard to do with outside reflection . That's why people pay me a lot of money to come in , because the work is incredibly powerful and once you see it , then you can't go back . You know , once we , once we give people these names , it's impossible to go back from it , unless you're a sociopath and you just don't have any empathy .

Speaker 1 37:07

But you know , for us as normal human beings .

Speaker 2 37:10

You can't come back from that and it changes the world , the way that you see the world . Your experience of the world is just different . And then you know my wife will reflect to me when I'm behaving like that and I've now established two more survival mechanisms . So one is heartbroken head shock . So people had often described me as a bit prickly to begin with , but then once I get to 90 , unlike this big teddy bear and I remember when I did the Olympic development program , the athletes were so scared of me to begin with . I'm like one of the other coaches , like lead , they're really scared of you and I'm like I don't understand why .

Speaker 1 37:44

I'm like I'm gonna do anything to really lovely .

Speaker 2 37:47

But I have a certain presence and some of that is to protect myself from being hurt right , because I'm quite soft . So to protect myself . There's a bit of a shield and that's that hedgehog part of it . And then one of the young girls on the program , like a few months in or whatever said oh I've got it , you're just a big , soft teddy bear , like , I'm not scared of you anymore . So it's knowing that we have these things and I've known for me as a obnoxious hero . So I love to be the hero . You know , I want to be at us to help you . I don't want to be able to save you , but there's a part of me that wants to kind of rub it in your face so I can go look , I saved you . I can have noxious . Nobody ever wants that right . So , being aware of it again , you know , when I have that feeling I can look at myself and go why do ?

Speaker 2 38:34

I need to rub this up . It's because I need to feel good about myself . Let me give myself a reflection . I did a good job there , right ? The work I did , that was great . I don't need this person necessarily to give me feedback . I can give it all on itself . Now I do .

Speaker 2 38:50

I am a human being and you know I've been in situations where my cookie jar was empty and now , knowing that I can go and fill it in different ways , my coach has me keep a sheet of all the times that people appreciate me or acknowledge me or say good things about me .

Speaker 2 39:07

So if I feel like , oh , my cookie jar is empty , I go back to that sheet and I read this sheet and I can see all of these people that , like Hailey , here's this great thing that you did for me . Oh , hailey , here's how you impacted my life . I was 50 a couple of months ago and my wife organized a big birthday party for me and at the end of the party she went around and she asked everybody , like tell me something about Lee . And most of the people talked about how it impacted their life , like how I've done something for them that changed their life . And that's who I am . That's the way I walk through the world , that's why I do the work I do now . But to hear it and get it reflected , I mean it was difficult for me . I had to kind of sit there and shut up and just listen , and this is too much loving .

Speaker 1 39:53

One go for me . The hedgehog is getting a little bit prickly .

Speaker 2 39:57

But yeah , I took that on and now I have that video . So if I'm again , if I feel overwhelmed , if I feel my cookie jar is empty and all I'm getting is negative feedback , I can go to that and go oh , here's this bunch of people that love me and support me .

Speaker 1 40:10

That is so cool . I gotta say , one of the things that I really struggle with is accepting when somebody gives me a compliment and being able to internalize that as a placement of cookies back into my jar . And it's really difficult because when we hear somebody give us a compliment , it kind of rolls off our back real quickly . As soon as we get criticized it's like , oh , I'm gonna hang on to that one , that's the one that I wanna hang on to , and we don't choose to do it that way . But it is a defense mechanism , right , because when things are going well or you're doing something well , we go . Okay , it's going well , you're complimenting me , but I already know that these things are going well to a degree , right . But when somebody approaches you with something you're not doing well , that's the one that you have to latch onto , because that's the one that could come back to bite you . Whatever it is For me if I feel like or not bite you , I mean I'm gonna stop you there .

Speaker 2 41:24

The reason I'm gonna stop you is because you've demonstrated exactly the human condition and the problem that we have . We're programmed to look for sabertooth tigers . Yes , that's our being .

Speaker 1 41:37

Where is the threat ?

Speaker 2 41:38

coming from ? Where is the threat coming from and what do I need to do ? And there's four responses that we have to threat . There's flight , right , there's a threat , I'm gone , I'm out of here , I'm gonna run away from it . Okay , I can't run away , I'm gonna stay and fight . I can't run away , I can't fight this thing . So I'm gonna pretend to be dead , I'm gonna freeze or I'm gonna fall , which is , I'm gonna try and feed it and I'm gonna try and stroke it and I'm gonna try and befriended it so that it doesn't kill me .

Speaker 2 42:09

That's our four psychological responses to threats .

Understanding Human Instinctual Reactions

Speaker 2 42:13

The problem as humans now is most of the things that we encounter they're not threats anymore , but we believe they're threats . Just road rage is a great example of this how angry people can get when somebody cuts them off or doesn't let them out of a junction or something . And it's pure primal , it's an animal , instinctual reaction . So a lot of the work I do is getting people aware of how they respond and what their pattern is , how they tend to respond and how they come overcome .

Speaker 1 42:48

Thanks for tuning into Hatchin' Creativity . We appreciate your support . Please don't forget to like and subscribe and tell all your friends about the show and remember it's never just about one thing .