Episode 20

August 31, 2020

00:46:12

Bridging the Authenticity Gap with Dan Munro

Bridging the Authenticity Gap with Dan Munro
Give Yourself The Chat!
Bridging the Authenticity Gap with Dan Munro

Aug 31 2020 | 00:46:12

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Show Notes

What happens when the lies we tell ourselves go unchecked? Are we any better than a prisoner who convinces themselves that the crime they committed was justified? What crises do we need to wake up to ourselves and finally live our authentic, best self?

These are just some of the questions I discuss with fellow coach, student of Stoicism and former parole officer Dan Munro. In doing so we explore what this means for leadership of self and others and how being truthful, exposing our vulnerabilities and going beyond the 'front door problem' is actually the height of courage and the route to rallying people to our cause or mission.

A slightly longer episode than normal but one which strips back the fundamental aspects of living a life of meaning and dealing with the root of successful personal change and high performance.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to the, give yourself the chat podcast. I'm your host, Peter Lewis. And this is the show dedicated to unlocking human potential and living a life Speaker 1 00:00:08 Performance. Speaker 0 00:00:16 Ron, welcome to give yourself the chance at another episode. Another fascinating guests with me. I've got a man called Dan Monroe who joins me from the Czech Republic, but originally he was from New Zealand, Dan. Hello, how are you doing? I'm doing pretty well at the moment, mate, as I just talked about before I'm shorts, bare feet relaxed. It's a good day. So shorts bare feet. So, um, for the, for the benefit of those, just listening where this is being recorded, obviously, um, uh, over zoom. So you're going to see on YouTube, but, uh, Dan and I have sort of similar interests. Well, we had an awful lot in common. Actually. We both work in the coaching world. Um, but we've come at that, uh, that world from very different, um, experiences. I guess, Dan, you were formally a parole officer working with, uh, uh, the incarcerated, I guess, and the rehabilitation of them. Speaker 0 00:01:05 And you now find yourself working in Czech Republic with clients all over the world. I mean, I think you've got us UK. It's amazing. Isn't it? We were talking off air how I think kind of DEMEC has really, it's presented an opportunity for people like us to, to really sort of leverage technology and reach more people, which is, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. That's I think that's probably one of the greatest benefits as you know, you can fit a certain number of people into a hole, but the underneath limitless, you could lead thousands, hundreds of thousands in a single conversation. I'm not doing that, but I could. Um, and yeah, I think the, the old school beliefs that you have to be face to face to have an impact on someone to, to move them and to help them change. It's a fallacy it's simply not true. Speaker 0 00:01:57 The principles of leadership apply regardless of the context. I think so I was put to the test, I was kind of forced to make their work before the pandemic. When I changed countries, my business model had to change for me to survive. And then I just never had a reason to go back from that. It's always worked out well, I can still do in person and stuff. And I like it. It's good to be able to hug someone after a session or whatever, but yeah, it was the interesting things aren't changing and it's not just for coaches and trainers, but, but you've mentioned leaders, this idea, I think employees and team members have got used to this. Now they are, you know, it's, it's, it is the new normal it's here. So going back to the way we used to do things, I think people would just sort of question more. Why, why would we have to just from an environmental impact, get a hundred people in a room just for the sake of meeting when we can do that virtually and get other stuff done as well. I think we're going to see an increasing pressure from employees make this new work rather than switching back, which I think I'm encouraged by it. If only from an environmental impact. I think Speaker 2 00:03:08 I hope that's what happens because you you're really hard put to make an empirical argument for commuting and stuffing people into an office building. Now there's really socially environmentally. There's no good argument for it that doesn't based on old dogma these days. This is what I think I put their message out there to my audience. Like if you're an employee and you've made working a homework insist upon it. Yeah. Make them give you a reason why you have to come in that makes you more productive because the research are the opposite. People spend about four to six hours of their Workday basically unproductive if they're in the office, whereas they can, uh, kind of double their productivity if they're at home and relaxed and doing things at their own pace. But it's that old school view like you've got to watch the employees for them to work. I know you don't. They want to do good jobs, most of them. And if they don't, they should bounce and move on to something else until they do Speaker 0 00:04:03 Well. This is interesting. Cause I know we're going to explore a lot around, you know, the scripts that we run and old dog weren't challenging them, particularly our own sort of limiting beliefs or the bullshit that we kind of tell ourselves, but we'll dive into that. But it's interesting. I I've got a coaching client who was offline and had a massive aversion to allowing his staff to work from home, complete distrust of it. And now working with him through pandemic, he's personally come around. He said, I love this. I love the fact I can work from home and everything else. So I said, so how do you feel about your staff doing the same, but he still couldn't get over that still had that twice. So w it works for me and I can trust me, but I can't trust them yet. I thought we've still got some work to do here. I think. Speaker 2 00:04:48 Yeah. Well, I think it brings up the sort of category of probably the most unhelpful limiting beliefs. And that's, they're the ones that come under the umbrella of being judgmental without being, you know, fairly based on evidence and thinking I would work harder by Malone alone, but others won't without anything to base that on, just coming up with it, that kind of entitlement, uh, it's amazing how many business businesses shoot themselves in the foot by insisting on doing something based on judgements when that actually do a lot better off, if they did a based on reason and evidence and tested these ideas, you know, you see what actually happens when you try it. Speaker 0 00:05:29 Well, that's it. And so therefore back to your point about the employees insisting that here, the here's, the evidence, here's the work I've done. You give me a compelling argument. Why it shouldn't, we shouldn't either come up with a hybrid or something different than I think it's a really difficult position to own. It's interesting. Isn't it? That whole sort of judgment of others. I forget what I read it. I think it was in one assignments next book, he talks about a abstraction bias. And the example of, you know, you're in the, in the supermarket and you raise your voice with your kids because they're being unruly. And, and in your mind, it's because of, you know, you're not feeling particularly good or they've been really pressing your buttons, or there's something that if you see somebody else doing it, it's like, well, they're a bad mum. They're a bad father, you know, and, and that sort of distraction bias and that judgment that we don't apply to ourselves, which I know there's, it's kind of really touched on a lot of the work that you do as well. And helping people sort of challenge their limiting beliefs, but also see the opportunities that that may be in front of it gives us a sense of the work that you do. Dan, I'm fascinated because there's paradise, but there's, I'm sure there's lot of differences perhaps with your approach. Speaker 2 00:06:38 Yeah. Well, I was just thinking then I was kind of prompted by nature a little bit. There's an old quote of hers, which I'm going to misquote. Cause I can't remember word for word, but basically, you know, the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we tell others are relatively exceptional. Um, most of the time we think we're telling someone else the truth, but it's based on a lie that we believe internally. So one of the most fundamental things I had to get my head around before I made my big changes was that I can lie to myself. And I have been for quite some time of in fact trade in a whole fancy world in my head based on nothing it's fiction. Uh, and it rules most of my decision making. I'm starting with that as a platform. So all my decisions are faulty and that was really, really hard for me to accept because no one else had really done that to me, that was my reaction to situations I couldn't handle when I was younger. Speaker 2 00:07:34 And so on. I created these childlike immature strategies based on deception and dishonesty people pleasing was my main one. And then I just carried it on. But in adulthood, I'm making all these poor decisions based on this framework and I'm doing it in my own head by myself. There's no one to blame here. Yeah. But I couldn't see it. I was blind to it. When you'd lie to yourself, you kind of know what's happening, but you kind of don't, it's a really bizarre experience. You'll know whenever you have to talk yourself into doing something, you know, is wrong, like eating the rest of the chocolate cake. There's a great little example. There, you watch yourself tell a story. I deserve it. You know, it's been a hard week. I've already started eating it. So I might as well just like the lawyer and your brain comes out, argues for it. Speaker 2 00:08:24 And the funny thing is when you're being truthful and authentic, there's no argument required. It's just the right thing to do. That's it. When you have to tell yourself a big story, minimizing certain points, justifying things, you're watching yourself, lie to yourself. One part of you knows you're doing it. The other parts actually being lied to and convinced it's like a whole committee and they're arguing. And then you end up with, you know, for me, after doing that for decades, I ended up with a life that was a lie. A, that was a lie. Everything was bullshit. I think we were talking about it offline. I just woke up one day and just went, what am I doing? Who am I? I don't know what the hell's going on anymore. I felt like I'd been dropped into someone's life with no context. That's bizarre. Speaker 0 00:09:10 So, so was that we sent, you sort of woke up, but was it a gradual awakening or was there some sort of event in your life that really was such, you know what, that's it no more. I mean, w Speaker 2 00:09:21 It was a series of those, each one kind of rocks the, the paradigm a little bit more. Um, I remember one, you know, for me, I really struggled with women in particular when, when I was younger, because I was just so nice, such a people pleaser as a strategy to fit in. Um, but that meant I was just friends with everybody and nothing more. And I was with the skill once and I was doing this thing. I used to do a lot, which is self deprecating humor. I'd make fun of myself, which may people laugh. I was the funny guy. That was my thing. And everybody thought I was naturally funny, but inside of my head, it's all strategy and gears turning, you know, and I was doing that and she has looked at me and she's like, that's pathetic. It was like, Whoa, that's a last thing for a people pleaser to hear, you know, like, that's my, my nightmare as a girl saying something like that to me, did you say no, no, you're funny. Speaker 2 00:10:16 And it's kind of charming, but I know you mean it. And that like, it's like, Ugh. And she was right. These jokes weren't really jokes. There was self-loathing disguises humor. And you can see this with some standup comedian. Sometimes they're funny. And sometimes they just make you cringe because they mean it they're actually depressed or whatever. So I had moments like that where somebody just kind of got through my arm or a little bit in poke the wound kind of thing. Just went you're full of shit. And it started like, it's not like the next day I was a different person, but I stopped talking to her cause I was so uncomfortable with that truth that she bought up. And that discomfort sat with me and events would happen. That really didn't go my way and just felt like I was so miserable. And there's pockets of, even until feedback would come through saying, you're doing this to yourself. Speaker 2 00:11:10 This is you, you set this up, you follow through on it. Now here's your result. You earn this. And I think I was about the age of 25, something like that when I had my big sort of accumulation built up, I just, I don't know what set it up. I just woke up three o'clock in the morning, one night and just said, fuck this. I can't not anymore. I can't do this anymore. I can't be like this anymore. I can't do the rest of my life like this. The burden's too, too heavy, too strenuous to just put on this act all the time. And that's when I started searching like, well, what else could I do? What I'd never looked before? So it's interesting. The, Speaker 0 00:11:54 So it's the accumulation of events. And I guess it can be the accumulation events over a, could be quite a protracted period of time, but there must be some sort of store in us that it gets to a point. And for all of us, it's a different point. Um, and some of us have to experience real pain before we make a change and other people will probably change, you know, with less. So, but that, that idea of in isolation, the comments might hurt, but actually they don't really have that much until they're kind of stacked. It's almost like a stacking of, okay, I'm hearing there's enough time. So it's it's how soon do we wake up to that? Because you can wake up to it really quickly and make change in the bank and others are asleep to it their entire life. So I wonder why that is. I mean, why, why does some people wake up to it and others don't. I mean, you've, you've got the experience with, as a parole officer and working with incarcerated and the criminal justice community and rehabilitation. When do they wake up to it? Well, what do you notice about that moment? Where in others, when they've made that switch or turned onto it? Speaker 2 00:12:59 Yeah, we often talked about crisis when I was doing rehabilitation. I think that's the right word for it. Um, you have to have this crisis and it's a, can be an external thing. You lose your house to get divorced, whatever Mesa injury, but really all those do has prompted the internal crisis. That's needed the emotional crisis, but I can't do this anymore crisis. Um, it's different for everyone, but the theme is that the pain of staying the same becomes worse than the potential pain of mixing it up and changing things. And that's what happened for me. Like being a nice guy, people please, or worked pretty well for me in terms of instant gratification and approval from others, and slowly stopped working as well. Or at least the rewards didn't feel that rewarding anymore. The high kind of wore off as I got into my twenties. Speaker 2 00:13:54 And that's what built up the crisis was eventually it's like a drug addict who doesn't even get high anymore. There's nothing good happening. Just know there's no pleasure anywhere to be found. Um, no deep inner pleasure. I mean, there's like highs, but there's no kind of, I like who I am. This is a good life. I wouldn't trade with anyone. There's none of that. Yeah. Um, this is why I do what I do is because a lot of the work is trying to help people have the crisis. You know, a lot of people, when they come to me, it's what I call the front door problem. It's what they think is wrong in their life. You know, there's are, you know, my, my, my wife's not talking to me properly or, you know, I don't like my career or whatever it is they say, I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's get down to what it really is. Speaker 2 00:14:42 And we dig in and I'm looking for, where do you breach your own integrity? Where do you let yourself down? Where do you do what you believe is wrong, no matter who else approves of it, you know, where have you sacrificed who you are to get some instant reward or to fit in or whatever it is. And that's what we look for. And then what I helped them do is have the crisis by going well, how's behaving like that worked out for you. What is it doing to you? How do you feel when you see yourself internally and so on? Um, and this is what I used to do with criminals. Like one of my favorite ones is the kind of two hands approach. You say like, Hey, so you want to be a gang member. You want the patch on your back and the big Harley and you want to beat the shit out of people every other day. Speaker 2 00:15:30 And you say, you also want to be a good father. Yeah. How do those two things reconcile? How has your son watching you be that guy come under the banner of good father? Now I'm just asking. Yeah. But what I've picked up on is this guy is actually in breach of his own values here. He hated the way his dad was, and yet he's being his dad right now. And I just helped him see that. And I go, what are you going to do with that information? You're being a guy you hate, how help me understand? How do you make that work for yourself? What do you have to tell yourself to be able to sleep at night? And of course, a lot of these people can't, they literally can't sleep. Speaker 0 00:16:08 I guess it's the tension of holding those existing parts. And it must be really quite hard work. And we all experienced it. You've got to satisfy that part of them that wants to be the gang manga member and whatever. And, uh, you know, the Harley Davidson kicking the shit out of people. And then there's going home to be a good father. That's some really tense. And I guess when people realize that there's that tension kind of washes away, but I think you have to reconcile or legitimize, both parts of self it's an, I guess the work that you're doing there is there's some positive behavior or positive. There's a payoff. Isn't there for wanting to be that part. And there's a payoff of wanting to be the great father. And I guess some of the work must start with, well, what's the motivation of those, those parts of yourself and recognizing that it's interesting. You use the word, create the crisis. So, so you're talking about creating the crisis in a sort of controlled experiment type of way, rather than having to live live out there. Speaker 2 00:17:07 Yeah. Crisis doesn't have to mean like living in a bus stop and shooting heroin. You know, it's crisis can just be quite often at my clients. Describe it as like dying because who they thought they were comes under heavy scrutiny and they see all the holes and the plot kind of thing. You know, one of the biggest ones I used to do with criminal offenders, I was like, you tell me that you're basically a good person. And most of them did tell me that very few of them want to be the bad guy, the ones who are, they need to be locked up for it because they have sacrificed actual evil. Yeah. The psychopaths, you know, the sadists, but most of them are just like, I'm a good person. I have to do these behaviors. Society's forced me, whatever. It's, it's only fair ravine, et cetera. Speaker 2 00:17:53 And I'd say, well, okay, so you say you're a good person. And then you do this and you do this and you do this. If somebody else did those things, would you say they're a good person? So what does good person mean? And so on? And you just, and this is the same. This is what my breakthrough really came from, was watching criminal. Bavers bullshit to me about how they're a good person and going man. That's what I sound like. That's me talking to myself. I'm hearing right now. That's what I sell. All the people that I'm hearing myself speak. And I thought, you know, I talked about one of my books, how we're all criminals and what I mean by that is the same thought processes they go through to commit crimes are the ones we go through to cheat on our partners or overeat or blow our money or put up with a shit job. Speaker 2 00:18:40 None of these things are illegal, but they're very, very harmful. Some of them should be illegal. Can you imagine if you weren't allowed to lie to your partner by law, but you are, you can totally string them along for years and steal their whole life away if you want. And there'll be no legal recourse for that, you know, but you still want a car and you go to jail. I used to think that was quite bizarre, what we've made illegal because you can harm someone quite legally. And that's what I had to face as like, I'm actually quite a harmful person. And if someone else behaved the way I do, if I knew that they were doing that, lying to their face and manipulating them and stuff, I would think they behavior was awful. You mentioned that accompany versus when we were talking offline or now, you know, somebody sort of yelling at their kids at the supermarket and they think this is just by, because my kid's been this, this and this, they see someone else don't go, Oh, what a horrible parent. Yes. Yeah. You're like, dude, it's the same behavior. So how do you feel about the behavior? Not the story, but the behavior, you know, somebody gets cut in front of you in traffic. You like, Hey, you must be a Dick. You cut in front of drivers. I'm late for my meeting. I need to, you know, yeah. Pay the cutting in is the behavior you actually call it the behavior. Speaker 0 00:19:52 It's interesting. Yeah. So that, that sort of attribution bias, but you've reminded me of, um, I'm a big fan of, uh, Ryan holiday and his sort of modern interpretation of stoicism and things like that. I love the stoic philosophy. Um, you can see behind me, I've got marks, the radius quotes and offices and stuff, but it's such a practical. Speaker 2 00:20:12 Yeah. Well, Speaker 0 00:20:13 Of Ryan's recent, um, uh, videos. Um, was it, isn't the Kong he's talking about, you know, when you, when somebody pulls to your point, when, so we pause in front of you and you get really angry at the, he said, have you ever noticed how ridiculous you look when you're angry? You know, why would you want to sustain that? And why would you assume that you're any better than that person? That's just cut in front of me. And it's seen that, that there could be 1,000,001 reasons why they've done that. And yet you've decided to waste energy and look absolutely ridiculous your face and just, and it doesn't help at all. It does it solve it. And yet we've very easily just fall into those without challenging ourselves. So, um, what do you think is that, cause when you said about when clients come to you and they say, Hey, look, I've got a problem with STR, okay. Right. Yeah. I can't wait to get to the real problem. It's the same. When people come to me and it might be, you know, I've got to work on my productivity, I've got to work on my relationships. And I think I always said, nod politely. So yeah, let's get to work. And you know, within two or three sessions, you're going to have to go deep. So when we go deep for you, what is it that you find has the greatest effect on creating this crisis and the awakening for the people that you're working with, Speaker 2 00:21:31 It's different for each person. Each, each person has a kind of, I call it their expect or it's this thing that if you leverage it, they can make the biggest changes. But usually it revolves around what I've come to call core values, which I got from acceptance and commitment therapy. It's different to say virtues like in stoicism, like all things that everyone should live by. Yeah. Values are more your own version. You, you decide what the rules are. And what I'm looking for in terms of the expectation is what's the one value that they hold a really high esteem, but almost never lived by where's that big mismatch. I call it the authenticity gap. The difference between who, you know, you should be and who you're actually being, you know, the bigger their gap is, the more miserable you are essentially. Yeah. And so let's say for somebody, I often ask the question, like, who do you admire and why do you admire them? Speaker 2 00:22:27 And they'll give me whatever their role models. And so on. When I asked them, I use the word admire very carefully because admire means looking up to someone as in different to respect when you're looking across at appear, admire is their personal do something. I'm not as respect as they're doing something I also do and agree with. And so I asked them, you know, what do they admire? Who they look up to and inspired by so on, because I'm what I'm trying to hear is like, what are you not doing that, you know, you should be, and I'm looking for it at a core value level. Like, is it honesty? Are you being dishonest a lot? There's a courage. Are you being a coward a lot? Is it acceptance? Do you fight against reality a lot? Or is it responsibility? Do you blame a lot instead of taking ownership? Speaker 2 00:23:14 What is your core value that like, it's like my coach says it's always a recurring problem. You'll find it dating back to the beginning. It's always been there as the main kind of thorn in the side and dishonesty was mine. You know, that's what I looked at when I looked at my life. As I tell myself, I'm nice. What I really am as emotionally manipulative, I use niceness to make people like me on false pretenses. They don't really know how I feel or what I really think of them or my true opinions about anything. I used to call it being the chameleon. I think there's even a word called the chameleon effect. It's like a behavior. Yeah. I would just adjust it, whoever I was talking to to be exactly what they want me to be. And I was like, that's, that's not being nice. Speaker 2 00:24:02 That is like, that is ruthless Mackey of belly and level manipulation. Now I don't harm them with it. I'm just trying to make them like them. So I don't panic, you know, it's just a loneliness thing. I'm not stealing their money or doing anything like that, but it doesn't matter if I'm not doing those things. I'm still mine. And most of the people I work with, I'd say probably because of the stuff I put out there and honesty, that's their main problem. They're living a lie. They're pretending to be someone that they aren't, they've been doing it so long that it's become what they think is their personality. You know, you can do something for decades and it's never true. That's the persistence doesn't make it any more true. You can pretend to be something for a long time without making it real. And that's what I'm looking for. Like, where's the pertains in this person's life because that's the real source of this offering. Speaker 0 00:24:58 So that you mentioned that sort of people pleaser thing. I mean, how much of this is just, we have this facade as a protection in some way to, to, to uphold and letting that down is it takes a lot of courage and you've really gotta be open to vulnerability. Well, you've got, gotta be open to accept the fact that actually, you know, you've told yourself this lie, and then you've got to be courageous enough to keep that guard down. Because one of the things I'm interested in exploring with you is there's one thing to be become aware of it and say, when a complete Dick, or I just, haven't been honest with myself, but then how do we sustain that level of openness and courage and vulnerability without going back to type it's like any, any habit, I guess it's so easy to snap back and they might have a good week, but what have you found? And I guess this kind of speaks to this, the theme of this podcast and give yourself the chat that the practical reality of, okay, you've got the awareness, but then the work has to be done. How do you help people stick at it? Speaker 2 00:26:05 The beautiful thing is I don't have to because once they start doing it and they get a taste for it. Yeah. It's, it's a door that once you open, you, can't close. You know, you can keep lying to yourself for a long time. But once you started being honest, dishonesty will be glaringly obvious to you from there on out. You'll know you're doing it. And it won't sit right with you so you can relapse and you can go back, but it will hurt a lot more because now you're doing so with full awareness, it's kind of like knowing that overeating causes you harm and actually thinking about it while you eat, it's very hard to keep eating. When you think about it, you have to be unaware. Yeah. For me, the breakthrough is understanding that you don't have to go from zero to 10. You just go from zero to one and you acclimate. Speaker 2 00:26:52 Then you go from one to two. So somebody is like, what? So I just tell all my employees that secretly I'm burnt out and scared of their disapproval. So, well, maybe not right out of the gate, but maybe you choose one employee that you have the closest connection with and you sit them down and you tell them a little bit more than you usually would. And you just see how it feels. You just give yourself no obligation or pressure to continue this beyond what you're happy to do, because almost immediately you'll start to have experiences that just shattered your belief. That being dishonest is necessary. You know, I, uh, there's one of my key ones. I remember confronting a group of people at my work who were backstabbing someone they're having like a gossipy lunch, you know, that one of those sorts of things. And I felt this urge, I just been focusing on all this honesty stuff. I thought, this is, this is my moment. You know, this is what I usually join in them. Speaker 2 00:27:50 And I just cut her and like, yeah, it was just so awkward. I just cast it and said, look, guys, would you say this up there in the room? Cause that's not, listen, not very cool. And it was just like dropping a bomb. It was just so uncomfortable. And this is what people predict will happen. And that's what stops them. But I just sat there and was uncomfortable instead of trying to fix it. And then I'll never forget it. They all started lighting up red. They were embarrassed at first. I thought they were embarrassed for me as I, okay. I've made a big scene here, but then they say, Oh yeah, I'm sorry about that, blah, blah, blah. I realized they're embarrassed of themselves. Yeah, definitely for me like, Oh, I've actually helped them by doing this, you know? And so you had, you started to have evidence cause this is what your emotional brain needs to see. You can't convince your emotional brain, to be honest, it has to see you, then it's okay to do it. It has to see proven, feel proud of yourself and so on for you to go. Yeah, I can do that again. Or what's the next step. Um, and you just choose a small thing that you think you can handle and just run a little test if you like it. Do it again. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:29:01 Yeah. Well that says, so you get feedback and you know, in that moment there that would have really sort of bolstered your sense of courage and identity and you think, okay, well that works. I'll do it again. And it's, it's that sort of aggregation and compounding effect. But it's interesting. My, my question to you was how do you make it stick? And you very rightly said, well, it's because we're working on the deepest stuff and it's not once, you know, you know, the tastes that cake is never going to taste the same or you're going to, you're going to be consciously violating everything that you hold, dear, if you go against it. Whereas, you know, initially when that person comes to you and say, I've got this product, product productivity here or whatever, you know, that's the surface stuff. It's the service stuff that we, we often default back to because there's no consequences, there's no pain. Speaker 0 00:29:48 But once you reveal and open the door onto that self awareness, then yeah, you're right. It really is hard to step back on it. But equally I think people have to recognize there is that journey, that incremental step piece, because if you try and bite off too much, you'll either get mad. You'll either get burned and that'll just retrench you even further back. So what I've tried, it didn't work. So it's fascinating. I find it absolutely fascinating that what do you think it means for this, this work around values and everything else like that? What do you think it means for leadership? And in this particular environment, we talked off air about pandemic and, and how you and I, as coaches are sort of really reveling in the opportunity to, to reach thousands of people. If we could, you know, what, what does it mean for those that, Speaker 2 00:30:34 Oh, in leadership positions or leading teams and this idea of Speaker 0 00:30:39 Values and vulnerability and, and that sort of courageous position, what, what kind of advice do you think we can share with them for them? Speaker 2 00:30:48 Well, you know, right now I think we've got two great role models to help us look into this, just under our doing prime minister of New Zealand, Donald Trump, president of the United States, what we've essentially got a polar opposites in terms of honesty. I don't, I don't have any political leanings. I don't really care actually, but I just find people fascinating in terms of leadership, Donald Trump, as a leader based almost entirely on dishonesty, almost everything that comes out of his mouth is factually incorrect or could be challenged. Descender are doing as far as politicians go is about as open and transparent as I've ever seen in my entire life. That doesn't mean she's as honest as she could be, but I don't know what the limits are in politics, but she was living like Facebook lives from her lounge and just answering questions spontaneously and stuff, and just actually answering them ducking and dodging. Speaker 2 00:31:42 And so I'm just watching this there's messaging of like, what you see is what you get versus the performance. And you have no idea what's really going on. And look at the way the two countries respond. One country has calmly gained through the pandemic safely. Another country is the worst in the world for dealing with it. And I don't think those are random occurrences. I think the effect is coming back to my own life. There was this moment as a manager where I was like, I'm going to put this in POS. I just finished reading a book on imposter syndrome. I was like, I'm going to try this. And in front of a team meeting, I told the team that are stressed and that I didn't know what I was doing, which was the last thing I wanted to tell them. Right. It turns out they already knew. Speaker 2 00:32:35 Anyway, you don't hide it as well as the thing, what amazing was the immediate surge of loyalty and support that I got from them. They rushed to my aid. Essentially. They didn't care that I was weak in the sense that they were like, Oh, let's put them out as the leader. Yeah. They're more like they're. So I don't know connected with the honesty I kept up. I kept it up. I thought, well, they responded pretty well to that. So I'm just going to start being honest about everything. I even started being asked about the stuff that managers typically lie about. You know, like you'll sell them, there's some new policy and you don't explain why it's happening. I'd just say what's actually happening. What's going on behind the scenes. And so on all the stuff you're not supposed to say the loyalty from the team got to the point where they were being offered, like lucrative promotions and turning them down just so they could stay on the team. Speaker 2 00:33:31 I'm not saying that's just because of me. But that honest style of leadership created this environment without like a family and multiple occasions. And usually about three times out of 10, we were the highest performing country team in the country. Yeah. Uh, objectively measured. And I absolutely think that's all connected is like, you know, talking about offline you role model, honesty. They all start being honest with each other. They know that they can do it safely without losing their job or being punished. Yeah, go first. That's the job. As the leader, you have to not say, you can do it. You have to show yourself doing a vulnerably. Well, they won't believe it. And then they go and then because they start to relieve themselves of all the insecurities that come with putting on a performance where they can just be sick or tired or unsure or whatever it is. We usually experience being as you and I talked about, I think the default is high performance after they're, they're focused. They know what they're supposed to be doing. They don't have to worry about stuff that doesn't matter. They paid more attention to facts and feelings and they get shit done. Speaker 0 00:34:37 Yeah. It's, it's quite extraordinary. Isn't it? There's a number of things he talked about that is that sort of that safety within the team. And there's, there's no there's authors that we've quoted already. Simon snake talks about that circle of safety, Pat Lencioni, with his five dysfunctions of a team and the, you know, the, the baseline is trust and creating, you know, leaders go first, they're vulnerable. They demonstrate their model the way. And yet it's so far so refreshing for everyone going back to the politicians example, you know how refreshing it is to hear a politician speaking. Honestly, we all know that works. And yet going back to the bullshit scripts that we run and those lies that we turn out ourselves, we have in our, in our hearts, that leaders aren't allowed to be weak. You know, saying, I don't know is a weakness. Speaker 0 00:35:22 No, it's not. It's a courageous position. I think what is weak is when we say, look, I don't know the answers, but then doing nothing about it. I often say to my audiences, especially I've worked with a lot of leaders is let's just give up on the hangup about wanting to have all the answers, get better, asking the questions. And the only way you get better is by saying, I don't know the answer to this white team. What question do we need to ask ourselves? And then automatically it's inclusive automatically. You demonstrate vulnerability, but equally you're, you're still a sort of front footed leader because you're taking action. So you can be decisive. You can be strong. In fact, strength comes from that vulnerability in that courageous position. And yet so many people don't get the joke. Speaker 2 00:36:05 Yeah. You know, I think one of the things as the oppressively dishonest global culture that each and every one of us exists. And for you to be honest is an act of leadership because you might be the only one in the room doing, that's actually the most likely scenario you'll be in as if you want to be fully honest, you're going to be going first. You're going to be putting your head above the paramount sort of thing. And I mean, you know, the example I gave about catching all these people of whole group of people being gossipy, and I hit to go first, cause no one else was going to say, Hey, we shouldn't be talking like this. Yeah. And that's a really common scenario. It is such an act of courage and leadership to be more honest than everyone else has been. And that's, I think I made a video a while ago, being honest in a dishonest world where I said, look, here's the kind of the hard truth of us. Speaker 2 00:37:01 You want to have integrity. You are going to face resistance because most people don't not to the level we're talking about. Most people are putting on an act and by most I'm talking what like 90%, maybe more, you know, I walk around, I kind of do this thing. I talk about a lot. When, when you are lacking self confidence, all you think about is yourself and you think everybody else has got it sorted. And you don't that's, you're just not paying attention. If you start worrying about your own insecurities and you start actually observing people with some sort of objectivity, you'll see that most people are falling apart. They're barely holding it together from little signs, like someone who can't leave the house without wearing makeup through to the guy. Who's always exaggerating his stories through the person who only puts on a good performance. Speaker 2 00:37:50 When the boss is watching the person who complains about the family all the time, you'll start to see like most people are actually pretty miserable and kind of putting on a front. It's not that sophisticated of an act. It's just, you don't have to act that hard because most people are so worried about themselves that they're not really paying attention. Um, as like I said, like when I tell the team that I was stressed, the more confident team members like, and like, it was the most obvious thing in the low, they could see the bags under my eyes. I could see my snappy irritability and whatever, but I thought I was brilliant performance and nobody could see through that. Everyone saw me as this calm, collected, cool guy or whatever. That's funny how delusional we are. But, um, it's in my mind, like I, the simplest definition of leadership I can think of is go first. Speaker 2 00:38:45 I think that really sums it up. Like you create a safe space to do it by proving. It can be done, not by talking about it, not by asking for it, but doing it. And it's amazing how effortless leadership can be because that's kind of all you have to do. You know, they want to shine. They want to be good at what they do. They want to perform. You don't have to do it for them. In fact, that would be stealing the glory. You know, I often talk about leading from the back, like I want to, but my team does really well. I only want people to know about the team, not me. I want them to see the stars I want, you know, I want the Michael Jordans and stuff to stand out to be unleashed and not see that there was the coach behind the scenes that just unleashed him. Cause they asked Speaker 0 00:39:31 So true. I mean, when I talk about leadership, often put a diagram up on a slide when I do use and it's, it's an inverted triangle. So normally you have the pyramid leader, the top very sort of autocratic, command and control top down, turn it on its head. You're all about just making sure that they have got a paved way to Excel because you know, to your point, people want to do a great job. They want to have an opportunity. This idea of, um, leaders go for it. I love that leadership. Just go first. I was working with a group recently, we just kicked off a program. And I said to the leader of the organization, I said, the biggest example you can set is in the, in the virtual classroom. Be the one that asked the questions. When I ask for a volunteer, stick your hand up and go first and just demonstrate it's safe to do so because until you do that all hold back, no matter how great you think your culture is, um, w w almost coming to there. But I want to explore around this idea of imposter syndrome and that when you understand that everyone is barely holding it together, how liberating it can be. But in my experience, I'd be interested in yours as well. Those that suffer imposter syndrome, the most tend to be the one with the greatest degree of talent they're experienced and the ones that have got it. There's something about imposter syndrome, which probably gets worse. The better you get, which is sounds quite perverse, but do you recognize the truth in that statement? Speaker 2 00:40:58 Absolutely. And even to the point where let's say you look at the people who have broken through and just done something incredible, the great artists, the great scientists, the ones that seem to be from another species, they just, you know, I think of those really high performance with imposter syndrome is actually being limited. That's the thing they're doing better than most, but that's not them at their best. And that's, it's kind of almost frightening. I work with a lot of creative types. I love working with musicians, shifts, um, dances, and some of them are top of their game. They're winning awards. They've got metals on their chest and everything, but that's them coming from a scared place. Can you imagine if they came from a confident place and I've seen it, I've seen go, go from like a great opera singer to like an excellent world renowned opera singer. And he actually already had their own, I'm not teaching them how to sing. Yeah. It's just, he was actually muted and that's, that's what blows my mind. And, you know, I used to work with one of the ways I worked with criminals is I'd actually look at their criminal criminal behavior and pull the strengths out of it, but you've gotta be brave to break into a house. Do you know what I mean? I was like, I couldn't do it. Speaker 2 00:42:17 Um, you gotta be brave to be violent. You, you, you have to be like a leader to run a gang. Like you think running a team of office workers as hard, tried running a team of psychopaths who want your job. Yeah. You just stay in that position. You've got to be a very powerful, quite Machiavellian leader, but still powerful. Yeah, sure. You've got to understand human psychology better than most psychologists combined. You know, I meet these guys with tattoos on their face and just knuckles the size of walnuts from all the fights I've been in. And they understand human psychology better than people with like double doctorates. Yeah. You know? Um, but yeah, that was my problem. My imposter syndrome worked very well for my career. I shot up the ladder. Um, but me being a coach running my own business now and impacting like thousands of people in publishing books, that's what was waiting for me. Speaker 2 00:43:10 That imposter syndrome was mean limited. Like me climbing the ladder for us was actually a limited performance. Most of the people I think are actually capable of great performance, but because of the lies, they tell themselves not only are they imposters, but they're in the wrong place, you know, how many great ships are working at a bank, you know, and how many fantastic athletes only play basketball once a week on the weekends. And so on, you know, there's people who did the job because of the lights. They need to be safe. They need the money, they were blah, blah, blah. It's all bullshit. And if they didn't live by those lies, they'd find the area they're supposed to be in. And you combine that with taking the mask off, which is another way of just unleashing everything you've got, being limitless to whatever your capacity is. That's where you see the great breakthrough. That's where the Michael Jordans come from is other people could do it, a hypothetically speaking potential as there. Yeah. But they've got the limiter on. And I, and I believe personally, the limiter is made of a kind of self dishonesty Speaker 0 00:44:18 Done. Perfect. Thank you. I really enjoyed chatting with you today. Um, we, you have a global reach. So if people want to get in touch with the, um, how can they do that? Speaker 2 00:44:29 I like the personal touch. They can just email Dan at <inaudible> dot org. That's usually where I start the <inaudible> communities, where I pull everybody in, um, basically a community based on trying to live with integrity and everybody supports each other to do it and challenges each other and such. Um, so you can come join the crew. If you want to check it out, it's free to join a personal touch. That's what I like. Speaker 0 00:44:55 Fantastic. Dan, thank you so much for your time today. You and I could shoot the breeze all day. Um, so perhaps we'll, we'll have you back on the podcast if you episodes down the road, but for the time being, thanks so much for your time. Speaker 2 00:45:09 Thank you. <inaudible> Speaker 0 00:45:17 There you go. A slightly longer podcast episode than usual, but, um, we went to such depth there around what can be a pretty tricky subject. So facing up to our own self deceptions and really uncovering our own truth and having the vulnerability and the courage to, to face that. And then particularly as leaders facing up to that at truth and being vulnerable with those that we have the privilege to lead. So I hope you enjoyed that one. I certainly enjoyed my time with Dan. Um, if you're interested in connecting with me, then the place to do that is at my website, Peter Lewis, coaching.com. Feel free to shoot me a message as to which guests you'd like to see on the podcast in the future. And indeed any subjects you'd like me to explore, but for the time being, thank you very much for being a listener, more seal on the next one.

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