Welcome And Guest Introduction

Speaker 0:13

Hi, and welcome to the Fulfilled Leader podcast. I'm really excited today to invite Dr. Saba Hassani to the podcast for the second time. Welcome, Saba.

Speaker 2 0:27

Thank you, Jane. So delighted to be here.

Speaker 0:29

Great. I'm so looking forward to our conversation today about leadership, a topic that we both love and live. Before I do that, I'd like to introduce you to Saba, and you can go back and listen to the first episode that we had together. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But if you haven't listened to that, here's who she is. She is a global leadership authority, a coaching psychologist, and a leadership researcher, and also the managing director of OSC Leadership Development. Saba, like me, is a master certified coach, and she has over two decades of experienced. And in that time, she's coached leaders across some of the world's largest organization. Her work explores how childhood experiences shape leadership behavior, particularly under pressure, and this is such an important topic for us to be thinking about in this moment in our history. And this is the basis of her new book, The Blueprint to Leadership: How Your Origins Shape Leadership in a Complex World. I love Saba's work. It's really pivotal in helping us understand this link between our early life experiences and how we show up as a leader today. I, I often say that I think my therapy was my best leadership development ever. And in many ways, you write around that understanding about how we connect to who we are, how our origins led us to be the person we are today, and to be the leader we are today. So, thank you for doing that work, and let's jump in.

Speaker 2 2:16

Can't wait. I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 2:18

Well, let's

Leading In Unsettling Times

Speaker 2:19

start with the state of leadership today, and w- we're in these extraordinary times where we can see the pace of change is exponential. We know that even, in simple things like using AI, like using Claude, for example, I can see in the period that I've been using Claude the pace of change and its ability to work with me. And therefore, leaders are leading in this world where all of that is happening. We've got huge geopolitical tensions, uh, economic anxiety. How do you see leadership in this moment, in this extraordinary moment in history?

Speaker 2 2:59

Well, the first thing is I wanna take a deep breath when I think about it. And I think many of the clients that I work with also kinda need to take a deep breath as you think about it. Because it is enormously unsettling what is happening in the world today. I think that we default almost immediately to, to try to figure out is this good or bad? And before we get to the good or bad, it is like, what is this doing to me? And to me, that is the most profound question. I think we jump to, how do I s- navigate this? How do I figure it out? How do I stay safe? How do I keep my job? Um, but the reality is, is that all of this noise, right? Whether it's geopolitical, whether it's technology, whether it's, um, organizations contracting, expanding, whatever intersection of the world that you may be looking at, we, we jump immediately to, what do I think about this and how do I navigate through it? But we forget to pause for a moment and be like, "What, what is this doing to me, to my body, to my mind, to my psychology, to my peace of mind?" And for me, that's where I try to meet leaders all the time. You know, I speak to them and, and they're very much in their head, and they're very much talking about all of this noise around them. The first thing is just, like, let's settle in. What's happening for you in this context? Which I think is really hard.

Speaker 4:27

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 4:27

You know, last week we had the privilege of bringing together a bunch of our clients, and we had a leadership panel, and these are the best and brightest in their industry. And all of them were talking about the same thing, that no one could have predicted the world would look the way that it is today. No one could have guessed this in a million years.\ We probably can't guess what's gonna happen next year. But what we can control is our response to it. What we can manage is how do we react to it. And so for me, that- that's where I try to anchor in all of this complexity, is what can I control, what can I look at in how I'm responding to it? And hopefully that makes our navigation through that complexity a bit easier.

Speaker 5:08

Mm-hmm. A- and this is so important because as leaders, we are the tool. We're the leadership tool, and if I'm not tuning into who I am and where I am at the moment, then I'm, I'm going to leak out basically, that people will know that even without me knowing it sometimes. Because if I'm, if I'm for example, uh, a bit short with somebody, I may n- not even notice that if I'm not tuned into how I'm feeling at the moment, but the people around me will notice, and they will be feeling that.

Speaker 2 5:42

I think most of the time it is the people around us who notice it before we do, especially when we're in the stir of it, when we're in the thick of it, we're, when we're at that really, um, complex intersection of so many things hitting us at once. Um, it's very difficult to have the wherewithal to be like, "What is happening for me?" And so these mirrors that we have, right? Which is when we talk about having close relationships with people that we work with, having these allies around us, they're the mirrors that help us see ourselves when we can't see ourselves necessarily, and that's usually when we need that mirror held up the most often, so. Yeah, I totally agree. I think most of the time it's outside of us- Yeah telling us what's happening before we realize it.

Speaker 6:30

Hmm. A- and I see this in the, the clients I'm sitting with as well, who are all in very senior leadership positions. Now more than I remember, we spend more time at the beginning of the session just dropping into that, you know? It's, it's usually they've come from hectic chaos, and it's, it's that space spent reconnecting with themselves and coming into the present moment that gives them the choices and the ability to think about what's happening and how they want to show up. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 2 7:06

I was speaking

Always On Culture And Lost Space

Speaker 2 7:07

to a leader a couple of weeks ago, and she had said to me, um, that her travel... So she has a very intense travel schedule. I'd say she's traveling about three weeks out of every month. And she told me that she said that she, she enjoyed the travel, not necessarily for the sake of travel, but being on the plane was a disconnect for her. So when she was on a plane, no one could call her. She would not be answering real- so she'd download whatever she had to and work on it, but she said, "I was not accessible." And that was an enormously freeing and liberating space for her to be in. She's like, "I miss that because that's not possible anymore." Right? We are so connected. People expect that if we're on long-haul flights that we'll be connected to the Wi-Fi, we'll be able to connect. And so she's like, "My ability to create peace in an enormously intense, um, lifestyle was that disconnection." And now she doesn't have it anymore because the world is continuing to be connected and online even when it's meant to be offline. And so it is that, like, When do we have time to drop in to ourselves? And I think that's what we're missing so much more. And especially now that we can send our AI bots to kind of curate information and go through our emails, like, there isn't ever a time where, unless we construct it to be, that we can truly be offline enough to then center in who we are. So yeah, I feel a lot of that energy and that anxiety that that creates for a lot of people.

Speaker 8:37

Mm-hmm. It's a, it's a bit of an aside, but it's something I've also been thinking about a lot recently in my own life and, and because I'm running something in Flourish about time and energy, and us thinking about what's happening to our time and energy, and this idea that it feels like time is speeding up, and what's that about. So on Monday was a public holiday, and I chose to put my phone somewhere where I couldn't see it, couldn't access it, put it on silent, and time slowed down. Mm. And I was like, "Wow, I wonder if it's as simple as time feels like it's speeding up because we're just losing time, sinking into- Notifications and messages and work and distraction and everything. And when we're doing that, we're not centering, we're not connecting in with ourselves, and so it just feels like time is disappearing. So it's a kind of curious thing for me about that, and I'm gonna play with it a bit more. What, what is happening to time and how important that is for us as, as leaders. The, the other thing I want to say about this not having time to connect in with myself is that also that means I don't have time to think about strategy. I don't have time to do deep work. I'm, I'm not able, as a leader, to, create the thought leadership to be thinking about hard problems because I'm interrupted all the time. And so I think it's, it's hitting both us internally, who we are, and also how we lead. Um,

Speaker 2 10:20

so- Yeah. I completely agree with you.

Speaker 10:22

Mm.

Speaker 2 10:22

Time is, our most important resource and the scarcest one of all, isn't it?

Speaker 10:27

It is. We can't change it.

Speaker 2 10:29

Mm-hmm.

Why Childhood Belongs At Work

Speaker 10:30

Let's come to your book- Mm-hmm The Blueprint to Leadership. And in your book, you bring to life case composites, case studies about this connection between what's happening for us as leaders and the patterns that we have, and how far they go back, those patterns. And also in thinking about how can- we can respond differently. So it would be lovely if you could just bring this to life for us by perhaps sharing an example of how you see this journey between who I am now, how my past impacts me, and how I can shift that, I guess, to impact my future and the way I'm leading today.

Speaker 2 11:11

Yeah. Thank you for that invitation, Jane. If I may, I'm gonna start with why I wrote this book, before I, I share the story. And I think this notion of childhood and its relationship to leadership tendencies as we spoke about in the first podcast is, you know, for a lot of people, very revelatory. And, and they're like, "I- I'm surprised by that," or also feel a bit taken back by the fact that you wanna talk to me about my childhood when we're, we're talking about me as a CEO or me as a m- managing director. And I always find that really, really interesting 'cause, you know, when we think about any biography that we've ever read about someone we admire or some world figure, it always starts with their childhood. And yet somehow in organizational life, we've just removed any conversation around that. And so, I've been doing this work for a couple of decades now. I've written academic books because that's kind of true to my heart and my soul. And it's an intellectual get, but somehow it doesn't land in the body. It doesn't land on an emotional and visceral level. And so what I noticed really shifted is when I told stories. Right? When I talked about either other clients or, um, when I was in leadership programs and I was sharing stories about other organizations I worked with and what it unlocked, almost immediately there was, like, this recognition. There was this, instead of being skeptical about the message, they were, like, listening to the story. They were allowing themselves to get lost in the story. And so what I realized is the power of storytelling around this link was the most essential aspect. So all of the research and the link to psychology and theory, I mean, while all useful, it never landed with people on a very emotional level. And so I always talk about the emotional brain and the rational brain. So the emotional brain was never turned on by that. So this book was about that. This book was about, let's, let's explore it through stories. Let's explore it through real-life, composites of clients. About how they link coming to me and our work together and the leadership problem they had, and then the journey they went on to make that link really omnipresent for them, through their early formative experiences. And the feedback that I've gotten is that lands. Right? Because now the starting point is not, "Let's talk about your childhood." The starting point is, "Here's my leadership challenge. Here's a goal that I'm working on." And then we kind of navigate backwards into the story of childhood and connecting it to the present, and I think that that is what makes this book feel very different than a lot of leadership books. It's like 24 mini stories in one book and all related to leadership. Now, to answer your question around, um, bringing a story to life, all of the, the composites that are in this book are very near and dear to my heart. I think I spent months curating kind of the 10,000 hours of, of clients that I wanted to bring into this and saying what would feel right, and so I feel very emotionally connected to so many of them. But

Elsa And The Cost Of Excellence

Speaker 2 14:25

one of them, the, the client composite that I talk about, her name is Elsa, and Elsa was the child of immigrants. Enormously capable and competent parents, and in their attempt to, raise Elsa with as much, agency as they could, they'd already always created this environment of like be the best that you can be. So when I met Elsa in our coaching work, um, I met someone who was highly anxious. I had met someone who was enormously capable. I had met someone who had had promotion after promotion after promotion, and we had met at an intersection of time where she's like, "I just don't know what's next." And what you could feel was that to continue on the pathway that she was on was not gonna be sustainable. Both physically it was taking a massive toll, emotionally it was taking a massive toll, and eventually those two things together meant that intellectually it was a- starting, no one could see it yet, but she could say that her capacity for some of the more creative and innovative, the ki- a higher prefrontal cortex work that happened, she just wasn't engaging in it the way that she used to be able to find ease in that. And so what we knew was, or what she knew was, that it was probably not sustainable to stay here. But she could not conceptualize a world where her work was not a defining characteristic of her identity. And so to not work or to ease off the work felt almost more painful than what she was living with today. Mm. And so I could feel that emotional dissonance in her. I could feel this idea that she knew that the pace that she was at was not sustainable, but she also could not fathom a world where she would be happy with anything less than excellence professionally. And so then of course as we unraveled the stories and moved into her biographical data, the story of the immigrant parents came up, and the story of working harder than anyone else came up. And this inexplicable, not inexplicable, completely explicable, but this correlation between identity and hard work was so implicit that whenever Elsa felt less than, she knew that she could turn to work and it would make her feel more than, because she was so good at it. And so then what was is that like to me this is like when the rational brain and the emotional brain are at war. The rational brain is, "We can't keep doing this, Elsa." But the emotional brain is, "This has kept us safe. This has kept us good. This has kept us happy, so what right do you have now to change that on us?" And how terrifying it is that when we feel at our weakest that we start contemplating different ways of being in the world. That feels even more exhausting than just continuing on the beat you. And so that is kind of how, um, each of these stories start, which is what was a leadership tension that brought them to coaching, and then we navigate back into the story and then come back up to present and say how did they create more choicefulness in what was going on for them.

Speaker 17:40

Thank you. Uh, what's coming up for me as you're sharing this is it's a story of integration in many ways. The integrating of our whole journey into who we are now. And my experience of integration both personally and seeing it in clients is, is that that even in itself can be healing because that sense of I can make sense of what's happening for me now because I can feel that all of that story that of course was held within me and I wasn't aware of it being held within me is there.

Speaker 2 18:17

Yeah. When we're trying to prove something to the rational mind or the intellectual mind, we want data. When we're trying to prove something to the emotional mind, we need to feel it. We need to believe that there's a sense of possibility. to get to integration. And I think creating possibility in the emotional mind is enormously frightening because it's suggesting that the earlier intelligence that we had built over 30, 40, 50, 60 years, name the age is we're saying that intelligence is no longer serving me. There's nothing more frightening than that, and yet if we can imagine possibility through that very frightening experience, that I think is what makes integration possible. And, you know, it's kind of like when you're at your lowest, the last thing you want to do is think about something that continues to make you fearful, and yet also this is the penultimate moment for possibility. So yeah, I completely agree around integration.

Speaker 19:25

I think this leads us quite nicely into the idea, you've just, mentioned it, about the connection between leadership behavior and the intelligence that sits- Mm underneath it. And, uh, I'd love it if you could share a bit about that and, and also how that links to your work around the origins map which you've built, and share a bit about those. 'Cause I'm imagining that they're quite connected, those two worlds.

Speaker 2 19:51

Yeah, yeah. So

Every Behaviour Has An Intelligence

Speaker 2 19:53

the intelligence piece is fundamentally my view around behavioral change in general, is that we often look at behavioral change as this thing that we wanna change about ourselves that is no longer serving us. So i.e., this behavior that is not functional or not helpful needs to be changed. And so I start with absolute nonsense. Every behavior has an intelligence. Even if the behavior is costing you something really, really significant, at some point in your life you learned that behavior because it gave you something really effective. So the way that I can bring that to life is, you know, if you think about the micromanager, or you think about the leader who can't delegate, right? Intellectually, um, leaders know, "I need to, to delegate more." Intellectually and rationally they know, "I, I can't jump in and control everything when you know what hits the fan. I know that I need to not do that." And yet, when you know what hits the fan, when under pressure, when all of these, we still default to our poor behavior. And so for me, the most important starting point is not do you really realize the behavior needs changing, 'cause almost everybody will tell me, "Yes, I know." What I think is more useful is why did you learn that that behavior was useful? When did you learn that that behavior was useful? And most of the time it goes back to your formative years where potentially there wasn't a lot of control in the system. Potentially there was chaos. Potentially there was, um, a system where that individual realized that, "If I take over and I become responsible for the elements around me, then everything will be okay." So I have a client who has talked about the fact that, um, his parents separated very early, and there was a lot of animosity in the systems between them. And so this person learned very early, "I will be the peacekeeper. I will be the one that holds everything together. I will make sure that I keep them in separate camps." I... Right? And this person, I think, was seven when the marriage dissolved. And so as you can imagine, this person has created this dependence n- not intentionally, but because the situation required it of him, he started to control as much as he could to try to keep everyone at bay. And then in high school, he found that very useful in navigating relationships and friendships. And then in college, he found that very useful in navigating workload and navigating a- And then in leadership, he found that very useful, till eventually he reaches that point where it's like, "You need to delegate more. The people under you are feeling constrained. The people want to be given more authority, m- uh, you know, give me enough room to make mistakes." That was completely foreign to him. And so while he knew he needed to create that, he defaulted that seven-year-old when tension rose to be like, "I wanna protect everyone." So it came from an enormously, um, value-additive place. He's like, "I didn't want anyone to feel overwhelmed. I wanted to protect everyone." But what he didn't realize is the consequence was suffocating people in the process. So recognizing that intelligence, and that intelligence is very, very long-rooted, you know. He'd, he'd been working on that, that framework of intelligence for 40-plus years. To be able to catch himself in that, I think, was the most profound moment, and recognizing it's not my rational leader self that's responding in this moment, it's that seven-year-old who's completely overwhelmed with the situation who's gotta figure it out. And even pausing, right? Remember when you're like, just drop into it. Pausing and recognizing you're responding from that place immediately allows for more choice points, right? Immediately allows for the emotional brain to relax and for the rational brain to be like, "How could we shift this by asking a different question?" Right? It doesn't mean we're gonna drop it tomorrow, but the intelligence of that had served him for so long. And so it's not to say that intelligence no longer matters, I'm gonna deny that part of myself. That part is essential, but it's about working with it in a different way that allows people more agency over what they do rather than him coming to the rescue. And so there's versions of all of that, and so that's what I found, find the most important, is whatever the behavior, no matter how functional or dysfunctional it may look, there was a rationalized intelligence around it.

Speaker 24:43

And for the leader, for, and those of us who aren't leaders as well, understanding that intelligence and the, the rationale or reason that we created as we were developing is sometimes enough for us to choose a different behavior.

Speaker 2 25:02

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 25:03

And sometimes not enough. You know, sometimes we still behave in the way that we have been, habitually. How do we, bring about that shift? Once we have that understanding, once we can see, "Ah, okay, that makes sense. I understand now why this might be happening in the moment."

Speaker 2 25:24

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 25:25

How do we shift that more? How can we access more of the rational brain in collaboration with the emotional self in that moment?

Speaker 2 25:36

So

Pause And Measure The Cost

Speaker 2 25:37

what happens is when we default to these be- I mean, there's a lot of complexity in it, so I don't wanna make it sound as simple as here's the very, the, you know, the very strict formula, A plus B equals C. But what often happens is that when these default behaviors come online, the emotional brain goes to- Okay, I'm controlling it in the best that I know how. And so we seek validation in data to say, "Ah, here's why I had to do it." So the micromanager will say, "You know, okay, fine. I will let you do this project, and I'll let you take this on." And then, you know, things, um, go awry or instability comes or complexity comes, and then we're like, "See? This is why I don't..." So we seek out validation for the behaviors that we want to rationalize So for me, the rational brain is like, find me data to support the evidence that keeps me doing what I need to do. For me, what needs to come online is the emotional brain being able to process the cost of that behavior and looking at that as data to say, "We can't stay here." So what, again, our default mechanism is to seek data to rationalize our behavior. The harder mechanism is seek data to help us understand the cost. So an example of it is, you know, the, the, the very overworked, um, individual. Remember I was talking to you about Elsa, and she knew she couldn't do it. So it was about recognizing that every time she overrided her body, every time she had a migraine and said, "I'm gonna push through," every time she had only four hours of sleep and, "I'm gonna push through," it was about recognizing before she made the choice to hold her day exactly as it was, that she paused for a moment and say, "What is this gonna cost me by 7:00 PM tonight? Where am I gonna be? Where do I know I'm gonna be by 7:00 PM tonight?" In that moment, recognizing that cost is like, so to, so right now, is that cost worth it? Mm. And being able to recognize that it's not about... 'Cause if, 'cause she sought data all the time to be like, "Push through the meetings 'cause rebooking them is a challenge," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But when she also took a moment to recognize, ooh, I'm overriding this moment, breathe into it, and then the choiceful response for her was, "What is this gonna cost me?" And for her it was at 7:00. That was usually when her ecosystem was like, "We've had it."

Speaker 28:17

Mm.

Speaker 2 28:18

And to be able to connect with the emotional state of that cost said, "Okay, I ha-" almost to the point of I have to choose differently in this moment.

Speaker 28:28

Mm.

Speaker 2 28:28

It's the same thing, you know, if, if you are a leader who controls too much, or a leader who has too many ideas, or a leader who has anything. In that moment it feels so satisfying to stay in what we know, but then if we can find a moment to pause and feel into the cost, I think almost immediately that puts our rational mind in a different place. And so it's almost like, oh, I can't unsee it now. And even if you intentionally override it and choose otherwise, you've now created a moment or a window of, ah, it was not default. And I think it's just i- interrupting the default that eventually gives us the capacity To, to act differently

Speaker 29:08

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I c- I completely see this. One thing that's coming up as you're describing this is about a beautiful honoring of all that has come before, and the intelligence that's brought us to this place. Mm-hmm. Finding a pause and then almost saying, "I honor you and I am going to choose a different way because I can see that the cost of me continuing in this way is actually detrimental either to me or the people I'm leading."

Speaker 2 29:37

Yeah. Yeah. We vilify, uh, um, behaviors we wanna change too much and, and that's why I use the word intelligence. 'Cause to me, there was such wise intelligence in all of these strategies that we adopted. It's just that the intelligence is now costing us more than it's giving us. And so that is then where we can honor it, and then also choose differently.

Speaker 29:59

Great. Y- your origins map helps to- Mm bring a bit more color and language around this. I wonder if you could briefly just outline the components of that.

Speaker 2 30:09

Yeah.

The Origins Map In Six Fields

Speaker 2 30:10

So the origins map has six fields, and I break those fields into anchoring fields and orientating fields. And so the anchoring fields is what I call, like, our inner architecture. It's the foundations in which our leadership, our way of being in the world kind of exists. And for me, those fields are around self, rules, and trust. So rules are like the rules of the game, the rules of engagement. How do I have to be in the world? Self is how do I look at my own worthiness, right? How do I judge that worthiness? Is it intrinsic or is it extrinsic? And trust is how am I in relationship with others? How do I navigate that? How do I build trust with others? So to me, these are kind of like the core anchoring foundational inner architecture. So if you don't remember anything, remember those three, because I think they're enormously valuable. And then I talk about the orientating, fields, and that is fundamentally how then we take that inner architecture and navigate all of the complexity and the experiences that we have in life. And so those three fields are emotions, world, and belonging. So then, you know, immediately what we recognize is a lot of the patterns, that inner architecture, is because we feel certain ways about things. So then we learn to have this relationship or not with our emotions, and then when we're confronted with emotions, we kind of make choices, right? And that's how the brain is processed too, right? So the limbic system is always looking for emotional data. Um, how we look at the world. Do we look at the world as filled with possibility, or do we look at the world as filled with threat? And then belonging. How much connectedness do we feel with the ecosystems and the environments around us? So again, the first one is around kind of what we build our architecture on, and then the second one is how then do we take that architecture and figure out our strategy in the world. And of course, we have our formative imprint, and so all of these are experiences that help us build the architecture of all of these pieces. And then the most important part is then looking at what happens to us under pressure, and then the link between that. Because us at our most resourced selves, we're wise, we're rational, we're objective about what's happening, but unfortunately, we're not always at our resourced self. And so it's what happens to us when we lose access to that sage and wise self, and we default to something. So the, the sentence I always use is that under pressure, leaders very seldomly rise to the level of their training. They default to something much older, and that's kind of how we help clients navigate that world.

Speaker 32:51

Mm. Yeah. Thank you. Those components I think make a lot of sense and, and that idea of who we are internally and how we're connecting with the world externally.

Pressure Turns Complexity Into Threat

Speaker 33:03

So I think this takes us nicely into the topic of pressure. We started our conversation by talking about the incredible climate that we're working in at the moment, and we've already talked a little bit about what happens to our hidden self, in a way, under pressure. But could you tell us a bit more about this, and why it is that we keep making the same mistakes even though we're really smart, and how we can continue to deepen our understanding of this so that in those moments of pressure we can find more choices, you've been saying?

Speaker 2 33:41

Yeah. Again, there, there's an enormous amount of complexity around what is happening for individuals. But, if you start with the foundation that we're kind of optimized as these really energy resource efficient people. And so what that means is that, you know I, I think we hear data all the time, right? You know, kind of the default neural network or autopilot, you know, in kind of mainstream vernacular. But it's this idea that we kind of chug along life, and we're not fully present to all aspects of life. We're just kind of on this default mechanism. And then I think what happens is that when pressure hits us, when enormous complexity hits us, all of a sudden it's this jarring moment where, you know, you come into the office and you have a meeting with your leader, and they're like, "Okay, we've gotta cut 20% of the workforce," or, "We've gotta roll out this new AI system," and you're thinking, "I haven't figured out the last three. Um, and now you're asking me to do another one." It is this jar. It is this hit. It is this, um, interruption in that system and that software, and it's like, "Whoa. What, what do we do here?" So that complexity interrupts our autopilot, and it feels like threat. It feels like risk. It feels like, hang on a second, I can't just kind of operate as I usually operate because something feels under risk, or something feels under threat for me. And then that threat in our brains registers as, like, physical risk, right? It registers as we are under threat. And when we're under threat, we default to old. We default to what will keep us safe. What is that intrinsic It's like, um, you know, when we read about people who've been through enormous physical, challenges, right? A, a car accident, or, you know, have been in extreme environments. There's almost, like, this disconnection between self and person that happens, and then we kind of They just figure out some way to move through it. This is the d- this is that default mechanism within us. And so when we're under pressure and when we're strained, this risk comes. And then this risk is we're not safe. And so then that lack of safety, we default to what has always kept us safe. I'm gonna keep doing that because I got 40 years, or 30 years, or 50 years of re- of suggesting saying, "When I don't feel safe, this is what I do, and eventually I'll find safety." So that is kind of the non-rational brain coming online and saying, "Let me take over. I got it from here." And I think that is the hardest thing to interrupt because fundamentally when we don't feel safe, the last thing we wanna do is experiment with something new. When we don't feel safe, the last thing we wanna do is, ah, let me connect with what's going on and experiment with new ways of being. It is the last thing we want. We're under threat. And so it's this irony that when leaders need it the most, it's when they're least resourced and available to really think about it. And so that's why most of the time when I'm working with a leader, you know, I'll ask them like, "How long have you been working on this issue?" When they tell me it's been at least a couple years, I feel good because then I'm like, we can do something about it. If it's been like, "Oh, I found out last week through this 360 that I do this and I never knew I did it," I'm like, "Oh, we are so far from being able to change this yet." Because it's that, it's that default mechanism that you don't even have awareness of That how could you possibly change something that you don't see?

Speaker 37:27

Mm.

Speaker 2 37:27

So for me, I, I know I've gone kind of a long ways away- Mm but fundamentally what happens is that threat mechanism is real, it's profound, and it almost feels debilitating. It almost feels like there is no possibility of choice in that moment. And what I think is recognizing when you're in that moment is the first and most critical step. Because once you start seeing it, and by the way, when I say see it, I mean feel it, right? Your body will feel it. And you're smiling 'cause I know you, like, you are a master practitioner in this, but I'm sure you resonate, right? It's like- Mm you feel it. Your body feels it way before your bra- your brain tunes into, "Ah, here's where I am." And when you get into the pattern of recognizing how often that comes online, there's something enormously revealing in that. Because it might feel like something, oh, that happens to me once a year. Like, you know. But actually, the minute you start recognizing the sensations in your body and how often that happens, it's, it's really revealing that you recognize that you're dipping into that way more often. And I think that this context, every time I wake up in the morning, I go for my run, and then I sit down and I go through the news, it's like, boom, I fall into it. And boom, I fall into it immediately. Like, I can feel the sensation as I read more and more of the news of me dropping into this very threat response.

Speaker 38:52

Mm.

Speaker 2 38:53

And so I think that that is fundamentally what happens. And if we can even just build the muscle to recognize that's where we're at, already enormously valuable.

Speaker 39:02

Mm.

Speaker 2 39:03

What are your thoughts on that, Jean? I know you work with this so much too.

Speaker 39:06

So 100% agree, and just want to, uh, credit you by saying that was the best description I've ever heard of what's happening to us under pressure. Great. And so that's incredibly helpful. Thank you, Saba, for sharing that. Um, uh, what I, what resonates for me about this is, is that when I'm working with a leader, f- for example, a leader who's had the feedback, who's come because they've had some feedback, or they know they're being derailed a lot and they're not really sure of what's going on, is that I send them away to do an awareness exercise for a month. And

Build Awareness With Daily Check Ins

Speaker 39:40

I ask them to set a timer, and three or four times a day, the timer goes off. They need to stop where they are in that moment and just notice what's going on, what are they feeling, what are they experiencing, how are they showing up in that moment? Because no change can happen until that depth of awareness comes into that present. And I, I worked with a woman many, many years ago who did that, and by the time she came back the next time, she saw what you've described. The pattern was showing up not just when she finally shouted at somebody, which was her exhibiting behavior at the end. She noticed the, the niggles of that showing up many times a day- And so she actually very, very quickly was able to interrupt it because she learnt the warning signs, she learnt the feeling that was coming, and so that when then she was in the situation that she, she identified the situation that triggered the pressure feeling, the warning, she was able to get that pause and, and stop it. So what you're saying, it, it really completely resonates with me. But we can't change it without deep awareness, and that requires a commitment to ourselves to begin to tune in. And, and a lot during this conversation you've been, uh, sort of demonstrating to the body, for those of people who are listening, that we need to tune into how we're feeling about it physically and emotionally. How is it showing up in our whole physiology, that experience? And then once we learn that, we get much, much better at noticing. Going into the conversation with the boss, you've gotta make 20 people redundant, oh, here's that familiar feeling. I feel the feeling. I know it's a warning sign. Honor it. I choose to stay present in the moment.

Speaker 2 41:38

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it is, it's ironic for me, as a self-professed, cognitive, rational, prefrontal cortex person, um, I remember for hearing for decades, right, feel it in your body, or the body keeps score. And I read all of these books, and I was like, "Oh, okay, yes, but some of us are just so much more evolved beyond it." And it took me being betrayed, right, the story I created, and, and, and what I didn't even realize, but my therapist played back for me. So when you said earlier in our conversation therapy was the best developmental tool you ever had, Agreed. Fullheartedly agree. But I remember in one moment my therapist saying to me, "Do you realize that..." So I went through a health crisis, a, a mini health crisis of the moment, but felt like a very big one for me. And I said, "My body betrayed me." She's like, "How interesting that you use that language, which suggests that you were allowed to override your body so much. And then when she's like, 'Enough,' you felt betrayed by her. What about systemically what you had been doing to her for," you know, at that point it was like 40-some years. And that was a really revealing moment for me, where I could go back to books like The Body Keeps Score, and I could really read it. Instead of dismissing it as this thing that, ugh, you know, like I have a, a headache, take Panadol, right? Um, oh, I'm feeling a little bit of discomfort or unease in my neck or my muscles or whatever. It's like, oh, I'll go to the, osteopath and get it worked out, rather than recognizing this is my body giving me signals of something that I had not learned for the first kind of 40 years of my life. I was just like, ignore it, or it's not important, or it doesn't mean anything. But the wisdom in it is so profound and... So anyway, so it is, I'm very conscious of that. They're like, "You seem very somatically aware." I'm like, "Well, that was very painfully achieved in my life."

Speaker 43:42

Wow. And it, and it's important that we all achieve it painfully or not. Yeah. Saba, we could talk about this for hours. I could talk about this for hours with you because I, fundamentally believe that what you're talking about is at the heart of the work we could and should be doing as leaders. This understanding our deep origin story and how that is impacting how we show up. I believe, as you're saying, that when we do that, we have so much more choice- Mm about who we are as a leader and how the impact we have on the people we're leading. Mm. And I'm really so grateful for your work, and your book, and the journey you're taking us all on in this world. And I wonder if, if there's any final thoughts that you have or wisdom that you'd like to share with people who are listening about how to engage with this type of work-

Speaker 2 44:43

Yeah

Speaker 44:43

for themselves.

Speaker 2 44:45

Well, I

Future Self Thinking And Small Shifts

Speaker 2 44:46

mean, first and foremost, I kinda feel like I wanna piggyback off of what you said versus what I said, which is this idea of building awareness and interrupting our daily lives. Like, Jean, that, that was a magical strategy, and I, I kinda wanna s- if I may, with your permission and your attribution, borrow it. Because, you know, taking these inflection moments throughout the day, being like, "Where am I? What's happening for me?" Recognizing what might be happening in the body and the mind, and the internal thoughts that we're percolating with, I, I think is immensely, immensely important. And so I think for me, it's like finding moments of pause to recognize what's happening. Um, I was a very late stage journalist as well. Like, journaling was something that took me a long time to get to. Mindfulness was something that took me a long time to get to. But being able to create these pauses in our lives, whether it's the start of the day, the end of the day, at several points throughout the day, to recognize, "Where am I?" Right? Anchoring in that very simple question, where am I? What am I feeling? What am I noticing? What is happening in that internal dialogue is immensely important. And then I think what else is really important is we don't think about the costs of our behaviors until the costs add up and break us. And so recognizing that we are always looking for data to validate the choice that we made. If we can start searching for data to say, "If I put myself future forward," right? If I put myself at 7:00 PM tonight, or if I put myself at the end of the week, or if I put myself at the end of the month- What is that person, what is the wisdom that person is gonna say to me in this moment? Which is, it's easy to do what I want to do. It's a harder choice to do what I think I should do, but the future self will be better off for it. So it's about having that capacity to look at that future forward person and say, "Here's a cost if you don't do something." And so it doesn't mean you do a 180, the right thing. But even if you make a mi- you know, like James Clear, like, you know, his idea of atomic habits and, like, these mini... Transformation doesn't happen in these revolutionary moments where we change our whole world. It might just mean that we interrupt our default behavior by 30 seconds, and that 30 seconds will become a minute, and then that minute will lead to a different question we ask, and then that different question leads to a completely different habit over a period of time. So for me, it's put yourself in that future forward person. What is that person gonna be saying to you? And can you make a different choice, even if it is to interrupt the autopilot by a few seconds? That's movement, and that is a win in my books.

Speaker 47:28

Thank you.

Speaker 2 47:30

Thank you.

Speaker 47:30

I'm on the case for myself and, also bringing your wisdom into the work that I'm doing with clients and in my community flourish.

Links To The Book And Closing

Speaker 47:41

Thank you, Saba, so much, and I will link to Saba's book and also her LinkedIn profile and her organization OSC so that you can go and find her and begin and continue a journey of inquiry into who you are and how you're showing up as a leader. So thanks, Saba, for your wisdom and teaching and guidance.

Speaker 2 48:06

Thank you for your very important work. It was an honor to speak to you again.