Speaking and Communicating Podcast

What we recognize is that emotional intelligence is not a doing-side ability.

It is a being-side ability.

And it's all about how our brain is wired to operate.

And what we know is that at least 70% of adults have experienced trauma to the degree that it disrupts their emotional intelligence abilities.

And so if we want to improve along our being side, if we want to become more emotionally intelligent, it actually means at a foundational level, healing our mind, our bodies and our hearts.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Professor Ryan Gottfredson during us from Orange County in California.

He is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author.

His upcoming book is Becoming Better, and he is a leadership and personal development coach, and also a professor at a college in California.

Professor Gottfredson helps leaders become better, and is here to teach us as well that doing more is not always the answer.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, Ryan.

Hello.

Thank you so much for having me, and thanks for having such a great podcast.

I know that having these podcasts are not easy things to do, and you probably don't get enough credit and enough thanks.

So thank you.

I really appreciate that.

That's so kind.

Thank you so much.

And I appreciate you being here with us.

And I know that, as I said, when I reached out to you, I thought our listeners will benefit so much because the conditioning that you're going to talk to us about today and how we've been conditioned to just do more and more and more.

And a lot of people are stressed and burned out.

You're going to be helping us with that.

So we're excited to have you here.

Yeah, thank you.

I hope, you know, one of my hopes and maybe one of my intentions for our conversations is we actually help people upgrade their strategy for how they improve themselves and how they become the better version of themselves that I think we all want to be.

Certainly.

But before we get into the deep dive of that, please introduce yourself to your listeners.

For sure.

And you gave such a great introduction to myself already.

So I'll probably repeat some of that.

But Professor in Cal State Fullerton.

So if you're not familiar with Cal State Fullerton, we actually have the second largest business school in the United States.

So that allows me to do research and teaching in the areas that I'm most passionate about, which is about leadership and leadership development.

And then I utilize the things that I learned through my research and take that to organizations all over the world to help them develop their leaders.

And then I try to capture those in the books that I've written.

So when you do this work, especially with regards to leadership, what have you seen have been the changes?

Because this wasn't always the case that we focus so much on how leaders should be, how more women-centric they should be.

Since you do research, how did you see this evolve over time?

Well, I think we're just actually starting that evolution process.

And to give you a sense of this, I did my PhD at Indiana University.

And I did my dissertation on leadership that allowed me to review the last 70 years of leadership research.

And to your point, I think one of my primary takeaways from that was that there's really been one primary question that's been asked and answered over the last 70 years.

And that primary question is, what do leaders need to do to be effective?

And I think that that's a good question, and it's led to some really good answers.

But it's always felt short-sighted to me, because I don't know about you, but I believe that leadership isn't about doing certain things.

It's about being a certain type of person.

And so after my PhD program, I joined Cal State Fullerton.

That's been the focus of my research.

How do we tap into the being side of leadership?

How do we become better leaders, people that others want to follow?

And I'm not unique in that, but at the same time, I do think I'm fairly rare.

These concepts and ideas around the being of leadership is a fairly new approach to leadership.

So it feels to me like we're on the cutting edge when we're playing in this space.

And what about your clients?

You have global clients in this space.

Do they also have this perspective that, wait a minute, I was conditioned to just do, do, do, do, or make my team do, do, do, do, but now it's about me being.

Yeah.

So I feel like I get two general types of clients.

One type of client is where they bring me in because leadership is broken in some way and they just feel like they need fixing and they don't know how to fix it.

So they bring me in to help with that process.

So they don't really know about the being per se, but they know that the being is off.

The other type of clients that I work with is they already value the being side of leadership.

They're already promoting that in their workplaces and they want to promote that in a stronger, more effective way.

So those are generally the two types of clients that I work with and both are fun for their own reasons.

But one of the things that I found across my research and this research comes from the field of developmental psychology.

So developmental psychology has found that adults can operate at one of three altitudes of being.

So there's these different levels, adult development levels.

I call them Mind 1.0, Mind 2.0 and Mind 3.0.

And what we find is that across all adults, if we were to just survey everybody, let's just say in the United States, we would find that 64% operated the first level, Mind 1.0, 35% operated the second level, Mind 2.0 and only 1% operates at that top level, Mind 3.0.

So that's all adults.

When we look at just leaders, now these percentages are quite different.

What we find is that 8% operate at Mind 1.0, 7% operate at Mind 1.0, 85% operate at Mind 2.0 and only 8% operate at Mind 3.0.

And so what we find is that most leaders in organizations, 85% are largely, and this is one of the hallmarks of these Mind 2.0, they're largely focused on what do I need to do to be effective.

We could give them tools to put in their tool belt, but what we're not helping them with is the person wearing the tool belt.

And when we get to those Mind 3.0 leaders, those are these types of leaders.

They're less concerned about the tools on their tool belt, and they're more concerned about the person wearing the tool belt.

I had a guest, she's a leadership professor in Texas.

And the reason she did, just like you, she did her dissertation on leadership was, she didn't know at the time what she was going to do.

And her guide said, you need this.

And she just attached a file on empathy.

That completely revolutionized, first of all, how she saw herself, how she saw her leadership, how she reflected and realized that what she thought she was right about, the doing, it was lacking the human side of it.

She wasn't being the person.

And because of that, not only did she get her PhD, obviously, but it also improved her personal relationships because she had become the person rather than, oh, checklist, empathy.

Oh, I got that.

You know, because that's what sometimes people do.

Yep.

So you're spot on.

And you're touching on an idea that I think is incredibly valuable for us to connect with, which is an idea that we have two different sides of ourselves.

We've got one side of ourselves, which I call our doing side.

If you kind of think about the, an X axis on a graph, we got our doing side.

That's our talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities.

And then what we've also got is we've got our being side.

That's on the Y axis.

And our being side is more closely akin to our character, our mindsets, our psyche, our consciousness, our emotional regulation.

And so what I hear from this example that you brought up is here's clearly a really brilliant lady on her doing side.

She's got a lot of talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities.

But as her advisor, it sounds like, pointed out, hey, while you might be really far out here on the right on your doing side, you may be lacking on your being side.

And empathy, just like all great humanistic characteristics, resides not on our doing side, it resides on our being side.

So things like empathy, vulnerability, courage, authenticity.

These are the patience.

These are the types of characteristics that actually exist along our being side.

But where we get tripped up is how does most people try to improve their ability to be empathetic?

They generally focus on their doing side.

What do I need to know and what do I need to do to be empathetic?

And this is from my perspective because this is a place where I need to improve.

It's one thing for me to know what empathy is and even know how to do it.

It's a completely different story of whether or not I can actually be empathetic in situations of stress, pressure, uncertainty, complexity, etc.

And that's what our being side is all about.

So I can know empathy and I could even say, I imagine everybody can relate to this.

I think we all know what patience is.

We know how to do patience, but can we be patient is a completely different story.

So hopefully those are some examples that helps us connect to this idea that we have a doing side and a being side.

That is very clear because here's why, and I always say this, with all the episodes that we've had, we've mentioned empathy like how many hundreds of times, all the soft skills, the emotional intelligence, the patience.

What distinguishes one from another one is the story behind the concept, showing how there was a transformation because of the concept.

But also, like you said, it's all about doing this and we all know this, but how have you changed?

Have you really become that person?

If any of our listeners are wondering, Ryan, does that mean that if I don't feel like I'm so good at empathy, I should call my therapist?

Maybe.

Actually, if you're willing to go here, let's talk a little bit about the neuroscience behind some of this, which is really fascinating.

One of the things that neuroscientists have found is that there's three brain networks in our brain that impact how we process information.

These brain networks are salience network.

Our salience network is the first place in our brain where information goes to.

Our salience network is the home of our emotions, and it's the place where our brain assigns meaning to the signals that come in.

So that's our salience network.

Then our salience network will activate one of two other networks to help us navigate our world.

One of those networks is called the central executive network.

The central executive network is our home of conscious processing, our rational decision making.

And then the other network is what's called our default mode network, and it's our home of non-conscious processing.

And our default mode network is actually the network that is most responsible for dictating how we think, how we learn, and how we behave.

So those are the three brain networks.

Does that make sense there?

Yes.

Okay.

So one of the things that's been absolutely fascinating for me to learn is that, and you brought up this idea of connecting with a therapist, right?

So when these three brain networks work effectively together, it allows us to encode our world in an accurate way.

So for example, Roberta, how would you say most people respond to constructive criticism?

They get a little defensive.

They feel personally attacked.

Right.

So that's one way to make meaning of constructive criticism.

But is constructive criticism ever really an attack?

Meaning that is anybody attacking our physical well-being?

Obviously, it's emotional.

It's kind of is an attack on how you feel about yourself.

Now, there's a whole other discussion on whether does Ryan have my best interest if I listen to him giving me constructive criticism or you know, it's better to listen to my mom.

You know, it depends on the source as well.

But just in general, people feel like you are attacking my very core, who I am.

Yes.

Good.

So one of the things that we want to pay attention to is one I love, right?

It can feel like an emotional attack.

But this constructive criticism never puts our life in danger.

No.

Right.

But we oftentimes respond as though it had.

Right.

And when that's the case, what that is signaling is that these brain networks are missing coding this information.

They're saying this thing that is actually relatively safe, right?

It can be emotionally harmful, but it's physically relatively safe.

Yet our body is treating that as though it is actually dangerous.

So one of the things that happens is when these brain networks are not working effectively together, we tend to see safe things as dangerous and dangerous things as safe.

So ideally, we want these three brain networks to work effectively together so that we could best encode our world.

Well, what causes us to encode our world in appropriate ways?

Well, one of those things is trauma.

One of the things that we've learned in the research on trauma is trauma is when we, of course, experience a rather difficult situation.

And when we experience that difficult situation, our body's nervous system actually rewires itself in a manner to help us better protect ourselves from future trauma.

And so what actually happens is when we experience trauma, it disrupts how effectively these three brain networks work together.

In fact, there's kind of two natural consequences of trauma.

One is called hypervigilance.

So hypervigilance is when the salience network becomes overactive and the default mode network can't regulate it.

Let me give you an example of this.

So my wife, she had a couple of mean older brothers when she was little, and they made her watch the scary movie, It, when she was three years old.

It was actually a traumatic experience for her because it's rewired her body's nervous system such that whenever she sees a clown, she freaks out, right?

And it could even be a picture of a clown on her phone, and her body still freaks out.

Her heart starts to raise, her palm starts to sweat, because what's going on is the salience network is running rampant, and the default mode network can't step in and say, hey, you don't need to freak out.

This is just a picture of a clown.

You're not even in harm's way.

But right now, her body interprets this picture as you're in danger.

I need to react to this danger.

So, she's seeing a safe thing as being dangerous, and that's hypervigilance.

Does that idea of hypervigilance make sense?

I'm thinking of so many instances where we do the same thing because of previous experiences.

It's like so common.

Yes.

We could feel into these by if-then statements.

And this is getting into our internal programming, right?

If I see a clown, then my body freaks out.

Or if I receive constructive criticism, then I get defensive.

Or if I get cut off on the freeway, then I get angry.

These are just all patterns of programming that we have built in to our internal operating system.

And these patterns of programming are baked into this relationship between our salience network and our default mode network.

So the first consequence of trauma is hypervigilance.

The second common consequence of trauma is what's called dissociation.

And it's actually the opposite.

It's where our default mode network over regulates our salience network and doesn't allow emotions to come online.

So people who are more dissociated have a harder time connecting in with their own emotions.

They generally don't have a lot of emotional fluctuation.

They're kind of calm, cool and collected.

And while that might serve them well in some ways, it holds them back in other ways.

And that's what I want to get into next.

But these are two neural adaptations that occur as a result of experiencing trauma, hypervigilance and dissociation.

So before I kind of tell you the implications of that as it relates to communication, let me see if you have any questions or if I need to clarify anything.

No questions yet.

But I'm just, as you say, talking about the dissociation as well.

It's funny because one moment you would explain it that way and how it can have disadvantage.

Like, I don't know if you know Jim Marrone, Tony Robbins' mentor.

He used to say, when you have walls, you block out the hurt.

You're also blocking out the love.

Everything is just barriers.

Because what happens is with that, we also get taught that we need to be stoic and self mastery and be in control.

So which one is it?

Yes.

So here's what's fascinating about this, is when we understand these two common consequences of trauma and we map this on to our basic idea of emotional intelligence, some key ideas start to come out.

So I generally like to think about emotional intelligence is like, I've seen it described as kind of on a two by two matrix.

We've got ourselves and others and our ability to connect with our own emotions and navigate our own emotions as well as our ability to connect with others' emotions and to be able to navigate their emotions or the context where their emotions are at play.

So there's these four kind of boxes or quadrants that are a part of emotional intelligence.

And if we are more wired for hypervigilance, we are typically more focused on our emotions, which hinders our ability to connect with others' emotions.

And so if we are over relying upon and over connected to our own emotions and aren't concerned about the emotions of others, it's really difficult for us to be emotionally intelligent.

On the flip side, and you already referenced this, if we are dissociated and we can't connect with our emotions, how are we going to be able to connect with the emotions of others?

Well, we're not.

And this kind of brings up, to me, one of the biggest pet peeves about emotional intelligence development, is most emotional intelligence development focuses on our doing side.

What do you need to know and what do you need to do to be emotionally intelligent?

But what we can understand when we understand the neuroscience behind it, what we recognize is that emotional intelligence is not a doing side ability, it is a being side ability.

And it's all about how our brain is wired to operate.

And what we know is that at least 70% of adults have experienced trauma to the degree that it disrupts their emotional intelligence abilities.

And so coming back to your point that you made, if we want to improve along our being side, if we want to become more emotionally intelligent, it actually means at a foundational level healing our mind, our bodies and our hearts.

And sometimes that may mean working with the therapist.

Sometimes not, but at the end of the day, if we want to improve, if we want to be an effective communicator, it is actually about healing ourselves.

And to me, that's maybe one of the most beautiful messages about personal development that we could put forward.

That is so true.

And that's why with regards to this show as well, somebody once asked me, what's your favorite books to read?

And because we talk about communication, it's funny that the first thing that came to my mind was not communication-related books, even though I read them.

But it was more, I love reading memoirs, especially people that we know that are famous because a lot of the time, when I understand their experiences, it makes me understand why they behave the way they do, why they communicate the way they do, why they act the way they do.

It's actually such a window into why they do the things they do and communicate the way they communicate.

Yes.

Can I give you an example of one of my most favorite memoirs?

Please do.

Please.

Yeah.

Okay.

This memoir actually, the woman has written two books.

I'm looking at them on my shelf.

Her name is Edith Iger.

She's written a book called The Choice and another book called The Gift.

Edith Iger is a Holocaust survivor.

So she survived the atrocities of multiple concentration camps when she was late in her teenage years.

Shortly after she was fortunate to survive, she was one of 70 out of over 10,000 Jews in her community that survived World War II.

So in her early 20s, she married another Jewish man and they immigrated here to the United States.

And she clearly had been through a lot and she comes over here and they start a family.

They actually relocate to El Paso, Texas and she raises her kids.

And she tells a couple of stories about when her kids were growing up, for example, her daughter came across a book on their bookshelf on the Holocaust, opened up this book and there's pictures of these skeletal corpses in the book.

And she asked her parents, what is this?

She said in her memoir, she said, immediately, I got sick.

I ran to the bathroom and I threw up.

And she's in the bathroom and she could hear her husband say to her daughter, did you know that your mom was there?

And she says in her memoir, I was wanted to scream, no, no, no.

She's like, I wanted to break the mirror in front of me because this was the first time her past was connecting with her child.

Fast forward several years and her daughter gets picked up for prom.

As the daughter's walking away with her date to prom, Edith's husband says, Enjoy tonight.

Remember, your mom when she was your age was in a concentration camp.

And Edith, you know, probably not the best thing to say, but Edith was just demonstrably upset that he would say something like this.

Because she had tried, she was dissociated.

She was trying to keep her past in the past and she didn't want to even acknowledge it.

And we understand why that would be.

But what's interesting about this, you know, in her own personal development journey, she goes on to decide she wants to be a therapist.

She gets a PhD in being a therapist and she comes to this epiphany, right?

So what she's done is she's improved along her doing side.

She's given knowledge, skills and talents to be able to provide therapy to people who have experienced difficult situations.

But what she acknowledges at late in her life, in her fifties, is she acknowledges, while I may know how to do therapy, I haven't done the work on myself.

And what she recognizes is that I never supported my children in these situations, right?

In these situations where the Holocaust was brought up, it was my time and it was my responsibility as a parent to step in and tell them about it, but also love them and nurture them with this really difficult topic.

And she wasn't able to step in and play that role at that time in her life.

A really cool part about her story is she actually got connected with Victor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search For Meaning, and she became Victor Frankl's, essentially his protege later in both of their lives.

And she went on to do this work of healing herself, which led her to acknowledge, and this is the whole premise of her book, she says that the prison that she put herself in after her concentration camps was worse than being in a concentration camp.

Oh no.

And it took doing the deep healing work to get out of that prison that she had put herself in.

I share that because one, I hope everybody goes and picks up her books because they're amazing.

But then two, just to acknowledge and use her as an example of how she struggled to have emotional intelligence because she had not yet healed herself.

And I can imagine when you've gone through so much, usually just the survival instinct of it is to just dissociate.

The dissociation, the second part you've explained earlier, because sometimes you think life requires me to put one foot in front of the other.

I don't have time to, we usually say, I don't have time for this.

I don't have time for this.

I got things to do.

I got bills to pay.

And so we disassociate, we bury it under the rug in order to just put one foot in front of the other.

But then we do the things that are right and we get the certifications and everything, and we graded our jobs and then we get promoted to lead people and then this kicks in.

Precisely.

I think you summarized that so well.

And this is probably one of the primary reasons why we find that 64% of all adults operate at the base adult development level.

It's because most adults have experienced trauma that makes them more wired for self-protection.

And that's one of the hallmarks of operating at these lower being side altitudes.

We operate in a manner that protects us.

But when we elevate to the higher being side altitudes, we start to operate in a manner that doesn't necessarily protect us, but actually helps us to be better value creators within our world.

Let me give you an example of this.

I would say, and tell me if you disagree with me, most people try to avoid failure, right?

Yes, by not doing anything about whatever they were thinking of doing.

Yeah, avoid challenges or learning zone challenges because they don't want to fail.

In fact, I'll give you a quick example of this.

I have a 10-year-old son and I coach his basketball team.

So these are a bunch of 10-year-old basketball players and they're not very good, right?

But I want to try to help them to develop.

And so one of the things, and they're all right-handed, and one of the things that I've learned as a basketball player myself is that to be an effective basketball player, you really need to learn how to shoot a layup with your left hand or your offhand when you're on that offhand side of the basket.

I invite my players, I have them line up, we call them layup lines, I have them line up to shoot layups.

And when they're on the left hand side, I invite them to shoot a layup with their left hand.

And I get three responses from my players when I do this.

So one response is that they don't even try to shoot with their left hand.

Well, why wouldn't they try?

Well, because it feels uncomfortable, they're going to look awkward, and they're probably going to miss their shot.

They can justify why they didn't try.

The second response that I get is I get some players who are willing to try in practice, but they're not willing to try in games.

Well, why aren't they willing to try in games?

Well, now they've got their parents recording them for the rest of post-apostity to see.

You know, of course, they don't want to let their team down.

There's now greater performance pressure in that moment.

So that could be justifiable.

But then I get one or two players, I have one or two players on my team, who are willing to try in practice and in a game to shoot a layup with their left hand.

Well, why are they willing to do this?

Well, they're actually willing to sacrifice and willing to feel bad, look bad and miss their shot in the short term, because at some level, they know that if they try in practice in these different settings, that will help them develop the skill more quickly so that they could be a greater value creator in the long term.

And so across these three examples, I hope you can recognize that the ones who avoid shooting with their left hand, their bodies are more wired for self-protection in that moment.

They want to do what will make them feel most comfortable in the moment.

But the people who operate in this environment the very best are the people who are willing to step into short term discomfort for long term value creation.

And so what we find is that most adults, 64%, their bodies are wired to avoid the things that will make them feel uncomfortable in the moment.

And while that might help them feel good in the moment, it's probably holding them back from being the person they want to be in the long term.

You know what I'm curious about now that you've told me about your team?

Was it the marshmallow experiment with the kids?

Yes.

And they came back 20 years later.

I'd be very curious to see about those two players 20 years from now.

The difference is because, as you said, because even as grownups, we go to all these seminars and we pay thousands of dollars and they keep telling us, do it afraid just to fail forward.

But we still have that thing of, no, I don't want to do the past.

I don't want to embarrass myself.

No matter how much is drilled into us, the doing, because we haven't become people who are comfortable doing the uncomfortable, we still repeat these cycles.

Yeah, you're spot on.

And so this was for me a place where in my own personal development journey, I got to a few places where I was extremely frustrated.

I actually remember setting New Year's resolutions to improve my ability to communicate better with others and to better network with others.

And I remember setting that New Year's resolution and fast forward, you know, six months or so.

And I'm reflecting back on this New Year's resolution.

I'm thinking, I have tried so hard to develop some of these skills, yet I don't feel like I'm any better.

I don't know if anybody else can relate to that, but there's been times where I just feel like I've invested so much in my development, but I actually don't feel like I've become that much better.

The reason why, and this is part of what has helped me learn about these two different sides, is I just came to learn that what I was focused on was my doing side and not my being side.

If you're listening to this, a natural question might be is, how do I elevate along my being side?

What I've learned, if we want to elevate along our being side, one of the best ways that we can do that is to focus on our mindsets, the mental lenses that we wear that shape how we view the world.

Because when we focus on our mindsets, what we're actually connecting into is how our brain is wired to process our world.

One of the things that I've learned in my own development journey is I used to have what's called an inward mindset.

When we have an inward mindset, our body is wired to see ourselves as more important than others.

One of the ways that this manifested to me, well, I'm not proud to admit this, I'm rather ashamed to admit this, but for most of my adult life, when I would see a homeless person, I would get rather critical of them.

I would think, why are you asking me for my hard earned money when you are just standing there?

Why don't you do something more productive?

Maybe go get a job, right?

And the reason why I was seeing them in this critical way was because I was seeing myself as more important than them, which caused me to see them more like an object.

And it's really difficult to be emotionally intelligent when you have an inward mindset.

I didn't realize this, but until I read a book that's called Leadership and Self-Deception, it's written by the Arbinger Institute, and they talk about the difference between an inward mindset and an outward mindset.

And when we have an outward mindset, our body is programmed to see others as being just as important as ourselves.

And when we see others as just as important as ourselves, it allows us to see them as somebody of value.

And so when I got introduced to these ideas, I then was effectively in my own mind, I kind of gave myself the invitation.

The next time you see a homeless person, don't get critical of them.

Don't see yourself as better than them.

See them as being just as important as you are.

And when I tried that out, it was like a light went off.

Because rather than get critical of them, it led me to ask a question that I had never asked before, which was what has gone on in their life that has led them to believe that this is the best way to live?

And even further, if I had been through what they had been through, would I be in the same position?

And so hopefully you can sense that by taking this different position, more of an outward mindset as opposed to an inward mindset, it elevated my ability and willingness to be empathetic and sympathetic to these individuals, and much more inclined to navigate that environment in a much more productive way than before.

And so just to kind of put a bow on this is what I realize is that time when I set a New Year's resolution for becoming a better communicator, a better networker, and I tried to improve, all I focused on was my doing side.

And I didn't get very far to be transparent.

What was messed up was my being side.

And it was only after I shifted my mindset from an inward to an outward mindset, that I then was able to more effectively employ the tools that I had put on my tool belt in my development process.

Does that make sense?

It does.

And I'm wondering about that parallel to when you're a leader and you have a team and one of your team members is not up to par, so to speak.

I mean, I'm not talking about growth and competence.

That's a separate discussion.

But if you have that inward outlook, if you have that perception of them, because some leaders think when I was in the job, I used to do this better.

Yes.

Yes.

No, you're spot on.

So what I see when I work with organizations and their leaders, the leaders with more of an inward mindset, when they're in this circumstance, so they've got an underperforming employee, what they're inclined to do is just fire them.

Let's get them out.

They're broken, they're deficient.

We need to get them out.

They're not important.

They're expendable, right?

It's kind of this idea of an inward mindset.

But the leaders with an outward mindset, firing sometimes is the best approach.

So I'm not saying don't ever fire.

But a leader with an outward mindset doesn't immediately write these people off.

The leader with an outward mindset wonders, if they are trying their best and they're not performing at a high level, is there any obstacle or barrier or cultural element that is getting in their way that I need to help them remove?

And if I can remove that, will they show up as a better employee?

Right.

The inward mindset leader has a tendency to kind of move away from this employee.

And the outward mindset leader has a tendency to approach this employee and better provide support and assistance to help them to grow and to thrive.

Which is a very, very different work environment.

Now let's talk about your upcoming book, Becoming Better.

What was the motivation behind writing it?

It was this, right?

Everything that we're talking about.

Part of it is my own personal story of recognizing that how I was trying to develop myself was almost solely focused on my doing side.

And I just didn't feel like I got very far.

And it was only until I started to work on my being side that I actually feel like I was becoming transformationally better.

And so I wanted to tell that story, but I also wanted to bring in what we've talked about today, the neuroscience and the research behind this idea.

There is something deep and profound about understanding and connecting with our being side.

And when we can do that and when we can evaluate our being side altitude, then we could work on elevating along our being side.

And what I've learned, and I'll just kind of summarize what I just said, what I've learned is that when people focus on their doing side, it's only incrementally helpful at best.

But when people focus on their being side, it's transformational.

I want people to experience that transformation themselves, and I want them to know that the key to that transformation is elevating along their being side.

And we always talk about transformation and that we want to be better.

But we always being in the same cycle.

And hopefully anybody listening today, we will take these nuggets that you've shared with us and apply them as you have suggested.

Thank you, Ryan.

Well, I appreciate you're creating the platform and allowing me to chat about it.

And of course, to the listeners, thanks for listening in.

Absolute pleasure.

And before you go, would you like our listeners to reach out to you and where?

Yeah, if they would like to, would love to hear from any listeners.

My website, ryangotfredson.com is probably the best place to reach me.

In fact, I have two free personal assessments on there.

What's called a Vertical Development Assessment and as well as a Mindset Assessment.

And both are designed to help us evaluate our altitude along our being side.

So those are a couple of tools.

And then, of course, if anybody wants to connect on social media, happy to connect there.

And I'm most active on LinkedIn.

And so would love to connect with anybody there.

ryangotfredson.com and on LinkedIn, RyanGotfredson.

Thank you very much for being on the show.

Thank you so much, Roberta.

My absolute pleasure.

Bestselling author of the World Street Journal, leadership and personal development, professor and consultant who helps us not only do but become better.

Thank you very much.

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