Foundations of Leadership: Change, Vulnerability, Trust with Mike Robbins

Join Sam Jayanti in this episode of ideamix Coaching as she welcomes Mike Robbins, an author, speaker, coach, and podcast host. Mike shares his unique journey from professional baseball to leadership coaching, emphasizing the evolving landscape of leadership challenges. They discuss the multidimensional role of leaders, exploring topics like change, vulnerability, and trust in the workplace. Gain valuable insights into the essential skills needed to thrive as a leader in today's dynamic work environment.

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
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(00:24):
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(00:46):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Hello, and welcome to Coaching,
Performance and Wellness by IDEMS Coaching.Today, I'm excited to introduce you
to Mike Robbins, author, speaker, coach, and podcast host. Mike
regularly shares his insights with companies likeGoogle, Wells, Fargo, and eBay
on accelerating talent performance, a topicthat obviously lies at the heart of what

(01:32):
we do at Idemics. In thisepisode, we're excited to dive into three
of Mike's books and topics that dealwith three areas we see lots of individuals
struggle with at some point in theirpersonal and professional lives. Change, vulnerability,
and trust. Mike, Welcome tothe show. Thanks for having me.

(01:55):
Sam. Nice to be here.So Mike tell us what made you
because HOMA coach and your focus onleadership and teams well. My story to
coaching and ultimately speaking and writing andnow podcasting is kind of an interesting one
in that I started out as anathlete. I grew up here in the

(02:15):
San Francisco Bay area where I stilllive, and I was a baseball player
all growing up. I actually gotdrafted right out of high school by the
New York Yankees. Didn't end upsigning a contract with the Yankees at that
time because I got an opportunity toplay baseball in college at Stanford. Went
to Stanford, played baseball there,and then I got drafted out of Stanford
by the Kansas City Royals, andI did sign a pro contract at that

(02:36):
point, and you have to gointo the minor leagues even when you get
drafted by a major league team andsign a contract, So I try to
work my way through the minor leaguesystem. Unfortunately, Sam I got injured.
I was a pitcher and I toreligaments in my elbow and I was
twenty three when I got hurt andhad a series of surgeries and then was
forced to retire at the age oftwenty five. And I was, you

(02:57):
know, really bummed as you couldimagine. But one of the rushing right
when you set your sights on agoal that's so right that you've worked so
hard towards. And you know,I started at seven years old playing t
ball and you know, single mom, we didn't have any money growing up
in Oakland. I figured this wasmy shot to you know, be someone
to make it, and it doesn'thappen. So I'm devastated personally, but

(03:22):
one of the things, well acouple of things that I had found fascinating
as an athlete, particularly by thetime I got to college and was playing
professionally. On the individual level,what I noticed was it wasn't always the
most talented people that were the mostsuccessful, and it wasn't always the most
successful people that seemed the happiest andthe most fulfilled. So I was curious
about that. And then on theteam level, I noticed it wasn't always

(03:46):
the teams that I was on thathad the best players that were necessarily the
best teams. Like, talent wasclearly important, but I was on some
teams with really good talent, butwe would underperform because I don't know,
the coach was weird, or theegos were off, or something didn't work.
And then I was on other teamswhere it was like the talent was
decent, but the team was fantastic. We like made each other better,

(04:06):
we wanted to win together, werooted for each other, and so I
thought these things were just sports related. I get my first job in the
late nineties. I come home,I'm sort of licking my wounds personally figuring
out who the heck am I whatam I going to do? I get
a job working for an internet companyin nineteen ninety eight in San Francisco,
basically every days. Yeah yeah,it was dot com boom time, and

(04:28):
I'm like, I'm a fish outof water, right, I'm this twenty
five year old kid, who's youknow? I went to Stanford. I
It wasn't like I wasn't intelligent,but I'd never really thought of anything professionally
besides baseball. But now I'm sellinginternet advertising and I'm like, you know,
and really interested in my own personalgrowth and development, also going down
the path of trying to kind ofheal from my whole experience and figure out

(04:51):
what am I going to do next? And the world of coaching was kind
of new at that time in thelate nineties, Like people there was you
know, I'm taking workshops and I'mmeeting people on there. I'm a life
coach. What the heck is that? I'm a business coach? What's that?
And so I was benefiting from coachingand reading a lot of books on
personal development and taking a lot ofworkshops. And the more I did that,

(05:13):
the more I was like, Ithink I want to do that,
Like like I would I would goto the workshop and I would pull the
workshop leader aside and I'd be like, how did you get to do this?
Like how do you get that job? You know? Or I would
I would read the book and belike this person's really interesting. How did
they get qualified to write this book? Like what does that take? So
that started me on the just curiositypath of like what would it take for

(05:35):
me to do that? And thenthe universe intervened, as often happens.
I get a job in two thousandworking for another, you know, a
startup and we're all going to getrich because it's going to go public,
and then the dot com bubble burstand I lose my job and I'm like,
oh God, what am I goingto do now? But I had
just met my wife, Michelle's we'vebeen together for a little over twenty three

(05:59):
years now, and she had startedher own business. She had a staff
and company, and she was alsointerested in coaching, and she and I
decided to get some training at theCoach's Training Institute and she really encouraged me,
like, hey, you have apassion for speaking and for coaching and
write, like you should do this. And I was like, Okay,

(06:20):
I'm twenty six, about to turntwenty seven, Like, I have no
idea how to make any money doingthis. But influencer wasn't a job at
the time. No, it wasn'ta thing. There was. Yeah,
there was no social media, therewere no blogs, there were no podcasts.
You had to like write a bookor write articles or I don't know,
somehow become you know, or startingto get coaching clients. Anyway,

(06:40):
that's how I started. In theyear two thousand and one. I decided
people were like, go back tocollege, or go back get an advanced
degree in psychology or in you know, organizational development. And the thing is,
I love to learn, sam butI hated school even though I did
decently well, I just didn't likethe structure give and me both. Yeah.
So here's what I decided. Thiswas my whole plan was like I
decided I was going to design myown curriculum is what I called it,

(07:03):
and I was going to spend thatfirst year. And I figured I it
might be lean, which it was. I figured I might go in debt,
which I actually did. But ifI went to school, I was
going to go into debt anyway,which other and at the end of it,
I knew I wouldn't have a degree, but I figured aout the end
of the year. If I couldn'tget any coaching clients, or I couldn't
figure out how to speak and actuallyget into anyone to pay me, or

(07:23):
I couldn't write anything that anybody wouldactually publish or read, then I should
probably go find a job. Andyou know, that first year was pretty
lean, but ultimately what I wasable to do and what my real passion
was speaking is I started speaking anda bunch of more traditional companies, the
Kaisers and Wells, Fargo's and Chevronsof the world that are based here in

(07:44):
the Bay Area, they had abunch of gen xers like me who had
gotten laid off from their dot coms, and they were having some cultural issues
at the time of baby boomers andgen xers trying to work together. And
I started coming in to talk aboutteamwork and culture from my perspective as gen
xer but someone who'd played baseball andbeen in some diverse environments. And then
I started to develop some material aroundhow do we find common ground and how

(08:09):
do we work well together? Andthat's really what kind of started my coaching
and my speaking business. Twenty threeyears ago and all these years later,
you know, I've had a chanceto write five books and work with a
lot of amazing companies all over theworld. But you know, and I've
learned a lot in the last twentythree years, for sure, But the
foundation of a lot of my worksort of started in my early life and

(08:30):
from what I learned as an athleteand what I kind of started off doing
all those years ago. Yeah,and you gave yourself the runway, right,
like a limited runway, where yougave yourself a year to sort of
explore this, knowing it would behard, but you also took the risk
and went into something that wasn't sucha well developed profession the way it is

(08:50):
today. We're coaching now as amuch more developed profession, right for sure.
And I say to people all thetime, I mean, I'm sure
people listening. There's lots of differentfolks listening for different reasons. But the
thing about getting into coaching or speakingor writing or podcasting or influencing in whatever
way, is like, there's somany more opportunities to do it now,
which is awesome. It's also verycrowded and it's harder to stand out so

(09:11):
in those days it was tricky becauseit was like there were very few points
of entry and I was really youngand naive starting, which again, in
hindsight, was a blessing because ifI had been a bit older and had
a family and kids and a mortgageand the whole thing, like, I
don't know if I would have doneit, would to take the risk,
Yeah, yeah, I would have, you know. And at the same
time, there are a lot ofopportunities today for people, you know,

(09:33):
a company like yours, for peopleto come in. I was looking for,
actually what I wanted to get hiredby was like a small boutique consulting
company or coaching company where I couldbe mentored and sort of be an apprentice,
if you will, and they hadsome clients. But I couldn't find
that, and I started my businesswhen the economy was down, the dot
com bubble had burst, and itactually ended up being a blessing in disguise.

(09:56):
But it was actually pretty hard,to be honest, I'm sure,
yeah that at all. I thinkgetting anything off the ground, you know,
partly because of the uncertainty, partlybecause you're so resource and time constrained,
and the pressure to get it rightwhile you're having to basically do everything
on your own, is you know, certainly not to Minimus. So Mike,

(10:18):
you've had a ton of experience doingthis. Now you're sort of twenty
five to thirty years in here.What are some of the most common challenges
that you observe in leadership development andwhat are the topics that you specifically like
to tackle and work on through yourcoaching. Oh wow, I look,

(10:39):
I mean, I actually think thelast couple of years have been super challenging
for all of us for a wholebunch of reasons. And look, even
pre pandemic, most leaders that I'mworking with, even super senior leaders all
the way down to kind of youknow, new managers inside of some of
the big companies that we work with. You know, just the struggle around

(11:03):
how do I show up, howdo I manage my time? What do
I focus on? What's most important? It's kind of like the balance between
you know, skills and results andthen developing emotional intelligence and you know,
human and sort of people capacity.I think that's ratcheted up to a whole
other level over the last few yearsbecause so much of what leaders are dealing

(11:26):
with, whether again you're working ina very small company, you know,
a nonprofit, a government agency,or a big, huge fortune five hundred
company that the people issues, thehuman issues that we're all grappling with,
you know, conversations around mental health, conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion,
conversations around well being. You know, again, not that these things

(11:48):
didn't exist a decade ago, butlike the way that they exist now,
there's so much being put upon leaders. It's hard, and so mentions of
the problems have really amplified right totally. And I also think one of the
things I was at a conference.I spoke at the Work Human Conference in
San Diego earlier this year, andEsther Perel was one of the other speakers,

(12:11):
and she said something really simple butprofound to me. She was talking
about sort of American culture, Westernculture, and basically saying that over the
last number of generations, for awhole bunch of reasons that we could go
deeper into, but like things likeinstitutions like the church, say, or
like spiritual institutions that many societies weresort of based around, doesn't really exist
in our modern society for a andtherefore work has become everything for everyone that

(12:37):
your workplace is supposed to be meaningfuland you're supposed to be passionate about it,
and your manager turns into your therapistand spiritual advisor and all these things.
And she was talking to all theseHR professionals and basically saying that,
like, your job has gotten wayharder in the last couple generations because the
expectation now that's put upon you.And again, I think in some ways
there's a blessing to that that peoplelike me and you can do what we

(13:00):
do and bring a more holistic approachinto work. That's really important. But
the dark side of it is there'sso much pressure in the system and there's
so much put upon leaders and everybodythat I think most people I know and
work with, even the really effective, successful leaders, are struggling with just
the amount that's expected of them.No, I totally agree with that.

(13:22):
I think the lack of institutions,the kind of dimensionalities that have really shifted
in terms of the problems individuals aredealing with, and then those consequently come
into the workplace are just so manymore And in many ways, the role

(13:43):
of a leader is equal parts coach, psychologists and sort of professional skills leader,
right, And I think it's thosefirst two that are relatively new in
a work case context. There's certainlynot skills that are developed in those earlier

(14:05):
rungs of professional development because they're kindof not necessary then, and they're absolutely
essential the minute you begin to leada small or a large team. Well,
and you know, I know wewant to talk a bit about change,
but you think about how much changethere's been over the last couple decades.
I just think of my own lifeand my own career, right,

(14:26):
I'm about to turn fifty in acouple months. I started doing this at
twenty six and in the last twentythree twenty four years, just my own
work. Like the topic that Istarted to speak about initially and then I
still talk a lot about this foundationalwork is appreciation. And I remember twenty
five years ago, as I'm startingthis, people saying to me, appreciation.

(14:50):
First of all, what is that? Why is that important? Why
would you talk about that at work? Who cares? No one will pay
you for that, you know,And I would show up in my suit
and tie to these events, andI'm trying to make the case for like
why appreciation is important? And halfthe rooms if not more of the rooms
I was in, people look atme sideways, like what are you talking
about? Right? You know,fast forward to today, and it's like,

(15:11):
you know, recognition and appreciation andengagement and all these things. I
mean, we're talking about millions andbillions of dollars that is put forth by
companies to make sure that people feelvalued and appreciated so they don't lead.
So you know, all this stuff, and it's amazing to me because I
look at that and just think about, oh my gosh, like the ground
beneath my feet personally has shifted somuch in the time that I've been doing

(15:33):
this, and I'm not inside ofan organization managing you know, a big
p and l and lots of peoplenecessarily. So again, for anybody,
whether someone's twenty five years old orsixty five years old, you know,
again, the younger someone is,the less they've had to deal with the
massive amount of change. But that'sanother thing that I do notice is that
people who've been around a bit,while they have a lot of wisdom and

(15:54):
a lot of experience, which isbeautiful, it's been a massive amount of
change for anybody who's and older that'sstill work in these days when the rate
of change is sped up right right, Yeah, yeah, it's and it's
important I think to just understand acknowledgethat. And me I think sometimes too,
even when you think about the pandemicand kind of where we are in
the cycle, it's like, thankgoodness, the pandemics behind us. And

(16:18):
I don't think we any of ushave fully comprehended what we've just been through
and what we're still navigating through becausewe can't, like we have to keep
going. We can't just stop andcontemble. And that was crazy and what
you know, but there's been somuch change in the system, and again
not just in places like Silicon Valleywhere I do a lot of work,
but just in everyday business, likehow we do work, how we show

(16:41):
up to work, even you andI having this conversation on Zoom and people
listening to this podcast. Again,it's so ubiquitous to how we operate now.
But like, this wasn't happening tenyears ago. No, it wasn't
even happening five years ago, right, And again we just kind of keep
rolling with it because we sort ofhave to, and we focus a lot.

(17:02):
We got to pivot, you gotto be resilient, you got to
adjust, you got all those thingsare true, but they do take a
toll. And sometimes, like I'lllook at a post or a photo or
something from ten years ago, ormy wife and I reflect on something,
we'll be like, geez, it'sreally different today than it was. You
know. That so true? Youknow, Facebook memory from twenty ten or
whatever. Totally true. What's aperfect segue into I want to talk a

(17:26):
little bit about your book, Mike, Nothing changes until you do, which
is a very apt title, andin it you note that most of us
really struggle with our relationships with ourselves. Yeah, even the most successful people,
leaders, at the tops of organizations, celebrities, whoever it may be.

(17:48):
And that struggle has sort of birthed, in my view, and epidemic
of you know, pretty pithy butsuperficials right about how to help oneself and
how to diminish self criticism and selfdoubt. And at the same time,
we really continue, at an individualand societal level to perceive our own value

(18:15):
as very directly connected to our jobs, our finances, our appearance, our
children, you know, And whyis it that changing ourselves is perhaps the
most difficult thing and how do youcoach people in the first instance, become

(18:36):
aware of what they need to change, and then actually to make that change.
Look, it's I mean, it'sa great question. It's a hard
one because I think I know forme, and I think this is true
for just about every other human thatI work with. You know, we're
all different and unique, and wehave our different backgrounds and personalities and ways
we enter the world. But like, the relationship that we have with ourselves

(18:59):
is probably the most important human relationshipthat we have. We get almost no
training on how to manage our relationshipwith ourselves, and it's not even really
a thing that gets talked about thatmuch because it's either either completely ignored or
if we do start to talk aboutit, it seems somehow selfish or self
absorbed, or like, what areyou talking about? But I think back

(19:22):
as an athlete, it's like howI felt about myself, the level of
confidence or lack thereof that I hadin myself had everything to do with how
well I was able to perform onthe field personally and for my team.
I think about this in you know, twenty plus years of being with my
wife, Like when I feel badabout myself, I'm not as good of

(19:44):
a husband, right, right,It's like she can tell me how much
she loves me and how wonderful Iam. But if I'm feeling bad about
myself, I'm going to see theworld the way I see myself. And
so again, the first part Ithink is for us to kind of reconcile
at some level. How do wefocus on ourselves and take care of ourselves
and manage ourselves and work our relationshipwith ourselves and not think that there's something

(20:08):
wrong with that or weird about it? And look, you can be self
absorbed and completely obsessed with yourself ina way that's detrimental to you and everyone
around you. So that's a thing. But then once we get past even
though, okay, I understand thatit's important for me to have a healthy
relationship with myself, then the questionis how the heck do I do that?
What does that even mean? Whatdoes that look like? You know?

(20:30):
And again, sometimes when I'm coachingsomeone, we'll talk about, you
know, kind of getting a littlebit into their self talk, like what
do you say to yourself about yourself? And most of us, even relatively
successful people, our self talk isnot that positive it's not that empowering.
Like and I will say to otherpeople and this is true for me,
Like, if you talked to someoneelse the way you talk to yourself,

(20:53):
how do you think they would feelabout you? Yeah, and you know,
for the most part, it's likean eh. There's a story that
I often share about this from manyyears ago and Michelle, my wife,
when I first met. Actually itwas in the early days of me starting
my business and all that, Likeit was hard and I was scared.
I and I just had this aboutsix months into dating Michelle, about the
same amount of time of starting mybusiness, and I felt so bad about

(21:17):
myself and was so defeated and Idon't what am I doing and I'm an
idiot and I should never started thisand I need to go get a job
and this is the stupid right.And I was on the phone with her,
just telling and she says to me, after I rant for three or
four minutes about myself, Okay,my, you know, first of all,
thank you for being real. Iappreciate you sharing how you're feeling.
I totally get it. But thenshe said, I have something really important

(21:40):
to say to you. And Isaid, what's that? She said stop
talking about my boyfriend like that,and I was like, what she said,
You just said some really mean thingsabout yourself. And look, I
know you're struggling, and I knowyou're being vulnerable with me, But if
someone else said those things about you, I would be pissed and I would
defend you, and I would basicallytell them to knock it off. I

(22:02):
love you and I believe in you, and just because you're you doesn't give
you the right to talk about yourselflike that. And I remember being on
the phone that day, Sam.In the first I was thinking, Man,
I like this woman. She isawesome. But I was like,
it never had occurred to me.Oh, when I'm mean to myself,
when I'm disrespectful to myself, whenI talk negatively about myself, even in
my own head. Yeah, ofcourse it's detrimental to me at some level.
I know that it's actually disrespectful tomy wife, to our daughters,

(22:26):
to everybody who knows me and actuallyloves me and cares about me. And
so I will often say to peoplelike again, if for no other reason,
if it's hard to just do itfor yourself, do it for the
people that you love. Yeah,And Again, it's tricky, right,
and I'm not trying to say thisin some holier than that way, Like
I have my moments every day whereI'll think something or say something negative about
myself. Of course I do,I'm human. But I think the more

(22:48):
we can bring that into the lightand the truth is that, the better
and the stronger that we feel aboutourselves authentically, not like I'm the greatest.
I'm not talking about ego or arrogance. That actually then allows us to
be kind, to be loving,to be present, to be engaged with
other people in a genuine way,And the more diminished that is within ourselves,

(23:11):
the more diminished it is with everybodyelse. So again, leaders,
like again, it's the cliche ofall cliches, but it's like you got
to put your own oxygen mask onfirst. We all know that, we
all say that, and most humansI know, most leaders I know struggle
with that. Yeah, I mean, it really is. It's self awareness,
right, and it brings to mind. Actually, a really close friend

(23:33):
of mine said this to me.Someone had said this to her in a
very different context, but this statementhas really stuck with me, which is
we tend to judge others by theiractions and ourselves by our intentions. Yeah,
and I think if we apply thesame lens of judging ourselves by our
actions, our actions in fact changeour level of self awareness shifts yep,

(24:00):
and we become healthier, more productivehuman beings ultimately totally. And then the
other side of that, I lovethat saying too, because the other side
of that, the whole assume positiveintent. If you then are judging other
people, not that we're giving thema pass if they do things that we
don't like, but just assuming,I bet that wasn't malicious. I bet
they weren't trying to do what,you know, because again, most people,

(24:22):
most of the time, in myexperience, their intentions are good.
The actions the execution isn't always great. Yeah, you know, I was
just listening to a podcast interview thismorning with doctor Becky whose name my last
name I can't remember. She's aparenting expert. She was on with Deck
Shepherd, but she was talking about, you know, she wrote this book
called Good Inside, and the basicpremise, right, she talks about it
in the parenting context that our kidsand us were good inside and sometimes we

(24:44):
do bad things. Right, ourkids, whether they're three years old,
or we've got teenagers at my houseseventeen and fifteen, so like they're really
good humans and sometimes they do thingsthat drive us crazy. Right, And
so it's like same thing with employees. It's like you have an employee that
they do something, or someone whoworks with you, a coworker. But
it's like, can we come fromthat place of assuming positive intent about ourselves
about others and then yeah, wehave to have some hard conversations with people

(25:08):
or give feedback or talk about thingsor let someone know that didn't work or
that wasn't what we wanted, Butit doesn't have to be from that deeply
kind of shame based place that we'rebad or wrong. And I think the
place that we do that the worstsam is with ourselves. Yeah you know
what I mean. And in someways it's like one of the blessings of
my life actually was that I playedbaseball all those years, because baseball,

(25:32):
even if you're listening and you don'tcare about baseball or don't know much about
baseball, there is a ton offailure in baseball. Like even when you're
really good, you fail all thetime. Even when the team's really good,
you lose a lot well, Thisis why team sports are so important,
right, Like, there is areason that when you talk to a
lot of older generation managers or executives, the in fact look for people who

(25:56):
have played a team sport, rightbecause the learning that from having to work
with a group of people to geteveryone pulling in the same direction, to
get everyone to show up with theirbest foot forward each time, and the
self awareness that builds from that ismassive, totally. And I think all
my years of playing sports, andI say, the reason why I'm grateful

(26:18):
for baseball is like the losing,the failing. I never liked to lose
and fail. I still don't liketo lose and fail, but I've lost
and I've failed a lot. Yeah, And what you learn when you fail,
as painful as it can be,is like you're not a bad person
because you failed. It just didn'twork or you didn't execute or whatever.
I mean, sometimes it's luck,it's crazy. I mean, it's all

(26:40):
kinds of things. And then youhave to realize, like winning is fun
usually, losing is not as funusually, but it's all kind of part
of this cyclical process. And Ithink we live in this world now today.
I get concerned sometimes because it's likeeverybody gets a trophy, right,
we don't want the kids to feelbad. So you can take the test
seven times until you get an Aand it's like, Okay, I think

(27:02):
I understand where that impulse comes frombecause a few generations ago, like we
shamed people and said you're dumb andyou're no good and you sit over there,
which wasn't healthy either. But youand I were talking before we hit
record on the podcast. Sometimes likewe swing the pendul in the other way
and we swing it too far.And one of the ways that I talk
about this with leaders is understanding thedifference between recognition and appreciation. Recognition is
about performance, about outcome, soyou want to recognize people when they deserve

(27:26):
it, so they have to meetor exceed the standard. Appreciation is about
valuing people and caring about people,something that we can do all the time
and is actually essential. So youappreciate people all the time, you recognize
people when they deserve it. Soit's not an either or. It's like,
oh, I can value and careabout everyone all the time, and
that's an essential thing to do,especially in the crazy stressful world we live

(27:48):
in today. But I'm only goingto recognize people when they actually deserve it,
because if I say good job orway to go all the time,
and there's no difference between great andgood and mediocre and poor, that's actually
detrimental to everybody's development and performance.Yeah. Absolutely, I'm glad you brought
up appreciation because in a way,the flip side of never perceiving ourselves is

(28:10):
enough is gratitude, right, Yeah, and also the subject of many supericialophorisms.
But yes, I have my owntheory about this, but I'm really
curious to hear yours on why itis that we struggle to appreciate the positive
aspects of our life and instead we'reconstantly focused on the negative, the thing

(28:33):
we don't have right right. Imean, look, some of it I
believe is biological and some of itis cultural. So the biological part of
it is, like you and Iand everybody listening, we all have a
negativity bias in our nervous system forsurvival. Yeah. So even if you
consider yourself an extreme optimist, ournervous system is designed in a way to

(28:55):
store negative memories in our amignalist sowe don't have those things happen again,
which is great. It's like otherwisewe'd get hit by cars and fall downstairs
and burn our hands on stoves allthe time because we wouldn't remember, Oh
that's a bad thing. Oh that'sa dangerous thing. And we walk into
a room and we immediately look forthreats. Most of this is unconscious,
right, but we look for threats. And again, depending on our age

(29:17):
and our race, and our gender, and our background and where we came
from and our traumas and all thethings, like some of us are even
more heightened to the potential threats.All of that is to keep us safe,
quote unquote and for survival. Sowe have to go against our biological
wiring in a lot of cases toeven look for and find the good things.
And then culturally what happens. Andagain, you think about the world

(29:38):
that we live in. You livein New York City, I live in
San Francisco. We're all on socialmedia and everyone listening to this podcast.
Part of the reason you're listening islike, you want to be successful.
You want to be effective, whetheryou're a manager or a leader, you
have your own business, you're anemployee early in your career, trying to
move along whatever it is. Weare looking out at the world and seeing

(29:59):
all these things, especially now becausewe can scroll on Instagram and everything else
that everybody else seems to have,and it points to things we don't have
or that we may want, andso therefore there becomes this sort of obsession
as a culture with more and betteror different. And again there's a healthy

(30:19):
part of wanting that ambition or thenwanting something new, wanting something different,
wanting something more, but there's alsoa real dark side to it. And
for the most part, like we'renot really trained on how to have relationships
with ourselves, We're not really trainedon ways to have healthy desire and healthy
ambition. It's kind of an eitheror all or nothing kind of dynamic.

(30:42):
And look, I've struggled with ita lot of my life. I mean,
I'm a three on the Enneagram,which also means I'm an achiever performer
personality type, which you know,we were with some friends over Thanksgiving and
our good friend as a therapist andstudies the anagram, she's also a three,
and she was saying American culture,Western culture is like a toxic thing
culturally that we're obsessed with performance,appearance, you know, outcome, and

(31:06):
we think that that, and look, everyone listening has had this experience in
either a small or significant way.We go for some goal, whatever the
heck it is. I'm going tograduate from COG. We lawed and applaud
the extremes. Right, we dowhen someone says, I remember listening to
an listening to an interview with someentrepreneur at some point, tech tech guy,
and and he talked about how toincrease his productivity. He listens to

(31:30):
podcasts at three times the normal speed, and I just kind of want I
don't even understand that, you know, right, It's just and somehow like
the journalist sort of you know,goes, oh, that's amazing, I've
got to try that, and it'slike, no, you don't actually,
because it's sort of absurd. Andyou know, rather than approaching a goal

(31:55):
or something that we want and desirethrough a lens of what's the learning and
development path that can get me therepotentially, rather than just sort of the
envy and the negativity of why don'tI have this right? Right, is
a much more productive way to go. But as you said, we're not
taught that in a way because particularlyin the US, and it is really

(32:19):
different, I think from Europe inthis regard, Yes, we are taught
to our cultural value system only rewardssuccess, right, right, It does
not recognize kind of anything other thanthat totally, And it's always about the
result, not the journey totally.And you know, I'm glad you brought

(32:42):
that up because I think it's somethingI know I've struggled with. It's been
a big part of my work forall these years. But at some level,
right, And I'm thinking about thistoo in the context, like again,
we have two teenagers in our house. Our older daughter is literally in
the other room right now, finishingup college applications all the U sees here
out in California, the college.They're due on the thirtieth of November,
right, So this is a bigthing. And as the more I've been

(33:06):
paying attention to this and supporting her, the more I'm like, oh my
god, this whole system is soscrewed up, Like there's such a different
way. I don't know, Idon't have the answer to how it could
be different, But there's so muchpressure on these kids, and it's so
much harder to get into college thesedays, and degrees are less valuable than
ever, and it's more expensive thanever to go to college. But I'm
like watching myself and my cohort offellow parents at this age and stage.

(33:31):
And on the one hand, whatI say to my daughter and I mean
this in my heart. Listen,honey, we don't care where you go
to college, like we love you. We want you to be somewhere that
you feel good about, that you'reproud of, and that where you can
thrive personally, emotionally, socially,academically, all of that. And at
the end of the day, whenI see someone post my kid got into

(33:52):
Yale, right, there's a partof me that's like, well, damn
good for you, you know whatI mean. Like, because we live
in the world where it's like that'slike one of the ultimate things that we
start out in the world. Herein America and in the Western world,
it's like, where do you goto college? Seems to matter a lot.
And I then sometimes struggle with thisnotion of like, Okay, does

(34:14):
it really matter and why does itmatter? And why do I care?
And why do we all care?And yeah, in the scheme of things,
you put that on your resume andit's going to differentiate you from someone
else. But what are we talkingabout. Like when I was in college,
I remember this one of my firstrealizations. I got to Stanford,
which is this great school, andI was super proud of being there.
But even back in the early tomid nineties when I was there, everyone

(34:36):
was asking each other what are youup to or what are you doing or
what classes are you taking? AndI was a kid my junior year in
college got suicidally depressed and it comefrom a family with a lot of mental
health issues, and was like,no one's asking me how I'm doing.
And it wasn't their fault that Iwas depressed, but I was like,
we're not even talking about And Iappreciate that. In today's world, whether

(35:00):
it's young people or those of uswho are not so young anymore, we
talk more about mental health. Butat the end of the day, to
your point, we're still back toWe're obsessed with outcomes and results and success,
and we don't even often ask peoplehow they feel about the success or
what was the journey to get there. It's all about the story and ultimately
the achievement. But every single oneof us has had an experience where we

(35:22):
achieved something that we thought was goingto be the thing that was going to
make us feel good about ourselves,and not only did it not, in
a weird way, it made usfeel worse because it's like, oh damn,
that wasn't the thing. That's whyall the way circling back to our
relationship with ourselves, when I'm coachingsomeone and I ask them, what's the
goal, what's the thing you wantto achieve that you think would be like

(35:42):
the beyond the beyond, right,and they tell me the thing, whatever
it is. I start this companyand we grow it and it goes public,
or I write this book or whateverthe heck it is. It's like,
Okay, I fall in love withthis person and we build this amazing
family. And Okay, if youhad that, how do you think you
would feel in general? And howwould you feel about yourself? Yeah?

(36:04):
Okay, I would feel accomplished.I would feel grateful, I would feel
proud of myself. I would feelwhatever, you know, awesome. And
again, I know it sounds almosttoo corny, but it's like, okay,
but why aren't we feeling that rightnow? Because that's just something that
we can access. Yeah, likeyou could have a million, it's a
it's a you're on a path,and you can't be unhappy at every point

(36:25):
on that path other than when youget to the end of it. Right,
Like, it's just a very stressfulway to live your life totally and
at some level again without getting tooyou know, we're all headed to the
same place ultimately. I heard someonesay this years ago and it really resonated
with me. They were talking aboutlife, and they were like, look,
we all know the destination of thisthing. We're gonna die. We

(36:46):
don't know when, we don't knowhow. But it's like we're all on
a train, and that train everyone'son the train, and everyone gets off
at a different point, but theend point is the same for everyone.
And what he was saying was likethe weather changes outside of the train all
the time. Sometimes it's sunny andit's beautiful, sometimes it's like a blizzard,
and it's everywhere in between. Andhe said he was saying this,

(37:08):
and I just found it so inspiring, Like I've decided that I'm going to
Yes, I'm interested in where I'mgoing and where I'm headed, and those
things matter to me, but Iwant to get better at learning how to
appreciate the weather as it changes.Because it's always changing, right, And
just because it's sunny doesn't mean it'sgoing to be sunny the whole time.
Like sometimes it's going to be stormy, and sometimes it's going to be overcast.

(37:30):
And and for me, again athree and achiever type and someone who's
coaching lots of people and leaders andteams who are trying to accomplish great things,
it's like, oh my gosh,that's so important. And how do
we not in a cliche kind ofcorny thing that we post on Instagram,
but in a real way that weactually live, Like how do we remember
that when like things are hard,or we get scared, or I don't

(37:53):
know, a global pandemic happens,or you know, we lose our job
or someone close to us passes awayor whatever. Because those are the things
where it's like, you know,another cliche, but so many cliches are
cliches because they're true. It's like, circumstances don't define us, they reveal
us absolutely. Our inspections. Yeah, really hard. It's like I would
define us totally. Yeah. SoI want to quote to our reader something

(38:17):
that you've written in the past,which I thought was very well expressed about
vulnerability. All too often we relateto vulnerability, especially in certain environments,
relationships, and situations, as somethingwe should avoid at all costs. However,
it's vulnerability that liberates us from ourerroneous and insatiable obsession with trying to

(38:38):
do everything right. Yeah, giveus an example of how you've seen this
manifest with a leader and how you'vecoached them to accept and express their vulnerability.
You know, the one that justpopped in my head is not one
hundred percent answering your question, butI think it's related. I was I
was delivering a workshop at Google.This was about ten twelve years ago,

(39:00):
and you know, mid level managers, and the workshop was on building authentic
relationships and embracing vulnerability. And thiswoman raised her hand in the group and
she said, you know, somethingjust hit me that I don't think i'd
ever quite connected the dots. Shesaid, there's another woman who works here
at Google who I grew up with. We went to high school together,

(39:21):
and we weren't super close, butwe knew each other, and we come
from the same town and we're theexact same age. We went off to
different colleges, we've had different careers, but we're both here. She is
now way farther along in her careerthan I am, just in the matrix
of the company, right. Andshe said, And as I'm reflecting on
this whole notion of vulnerability, whatI realize I've always admired about her is

(39:43):
that she seemed to not I don'tknow if she didn't care, or she
just had more courage or whatever,but she would raise her hand and put
herself out there and just go forit. Oh yeah, And she said,
I think that's probably why she's beenso much more successful than I've been,
if I'm really being honest about it, you know. And I appreciated
the openness of her saying that.And then we all as a group,

(40:04):
we're kind of having a discussion aboutthat. That again, vulnerability is scary,
it's hard, it's uncomfortable. Right, What does Brene Brown says?
It's risk, emotional exposure and uncertainty. And if we can lean into those
things, if we can embrace thosethings, if we can move towards those
things, not against the not awayfrom those things, even though they're scary

(40:25):
and uncomfortable, and you know what, we might lose, we might fail,
we might fall flat on our face. We might ask the person you
know for the job and they sayno, or for the sale and they
say no, or for the dateand they say no or whatever. But
again it's like again another cliche,but it's like the answers always know if

(40:45):
you don't ask, right, andthe difference between the person who's willing to
ask and the person who's not willingto ask, and I'm both of those
people, depending on the mood andthe situation. Quite frankly, if I
ask, I might get the thing. If I raised my hand and I
stepped forward, it might happen.But if I don't because I'm scared,

(41:06):
it's a default no. Yeah,yeah, it's you know. And again
and I don't say this in someway like this isn't about like just suck
it up and like no, it'slike no fear to me, that's ridiculous.
And again, what I wish Iwould have known all those years ago.
Sam as an athlete, Like Iwas really good at baseball and I
would get really really nervous and Ithought something was wrong with me. I

(41:27):
thought that was like just weird orweak or insecure or bad like something like
that was my internal dialogue was like, you're not very good and you don't
have enough confidence, and and I'mlooking around everybody else and they all seemed
way more confident than I felt.I did not know at the time,
and I wish I did. Theywere all feeling some version of the same
thing toooil. Yeah right, Imean again, Look, some people are

(41:50):
genuinely more confident than other people.Some situations were genuinely more comfortable than others.
But in general, we compare ourinsides to other people's outsides and they
don't match, and then we thinkI'm crazy or I'm flawfush. Yeah,
But in reality, like everybody isfeeling that, And a big part of
my work is not to be weirdabout it or force people to share stuff
they don't want to share, butto try to take some of that inner

(42:14):
dialogue and put it out so thatA it's not just roaming around in our
head and making us crazy, andB when you say it out loud,
what you find is that other peopleare like, oh, you feel like
that. I feel like that,And all of a sudden, like the
big secret is now out on thetable. That like, everybody's feeling some
version of their own insecurity or doubtor fear, and if we can talk

(42:37):
a little bit about it, wedon't have to spend so much time and
energy hiding it. And what Ifind when I work with teams and we
can do that, or when Iwork with leaders and they can express some
of that, even to me,it's like, okay, putting it out
on the table. Now, whatare we going to do now? If
we're not wasting all that time andenergy performing for each other and actually connecting

(42:58):
with each other, now we cando some great things. Yeah. Absolutely,
it brings to mind. You knowLisa Demore. I read a bunch
of her books as the Mother ofTeenagers, and particularly two teenager Girls,
and she talks about this idea ofyou know, so many adults, when

(43:19):
young adults come to them and saythey're nervous or anxious or stressed about something,
the reaction is, don't be anxiousor don't be nervous, don't be
stressed, And in fact, thatseeks to obviate what they're feeling and sends
this message of oh, you mustn'tfeel that somehow, when really what we

(43:42):
should be saying to them is it'sreasonable that you're feeling this way. Let's
talk a little bit about why you'refeeling this and what you might do to
address that totally and to normalize it. And you know, it's interesting you
say that. So our older daughter, Samantha was with me a couple months
ago. I had a speaking engagementin Las Vegas and she wanted to come,

(44:06):
which was kind of a big deal. You know, Dad is mostly
cringey to both girls these days.But she wanted to come, and she
was interested. And I mean wewere going to go do some fun things
in Vegas, which interesting place totake your seventeen year old daughter. But
she came to my speaking engagement andshe wanted to come. I mean she's
seen me speak a bunch when shewas little, but the last few years
not so much. And I purposefullysaid to her and I wasn't. I

(44:28):
meant it, and I felt it, but I wanted her to know.
Right before I went up on stage, I leaned over and I said to
her, Samantha, I'm so gladyou're here, and I'm feeling really nervous.
And she looked at me kind offunny, and she's like why,
And I was like, well,two reasons. First of all, I'm
speaking to a group of dentists,and I don't usually talk to dentists,
so I'm a little nervous, likeI don't know what exactly how this is
going to resonate. This is adifferent audience than I'm used to speaking.

(44:51):
It was a dental conference i'd gotteninvited to, and I said, and
secondly, you're here, and youknow, I'm just like, I'm aware
of you being here. So I'mjust feeling nervous and I'm wanting to do
well and I'm wanting not to screwup, right, And she looks at
me kind of surprised, like,dad, what, and then she immediately
goes in it was very sweet,dad, So you're gonna do great,
and she starts to like kind ofcoach me and sort of pump me up.

(45:12):
But the reason why I did it, though, is I wanted her
because she was gonna see me getup on stage. And look, I've
been speaking for twenty plus years.I'm pretty good at it. When you
see me on stage, it doesnot look like I'm nervous at all.
It looks like I'm totally comfortable andI'm telling jokes and I'm going get right.
I wanted her to know this isactually what's genuinely happening inside right now.
And I'm gonna go up there andyou're gonna watch me do this thing,

(45:36):
and there's no way for you tobe able to feel what I'm feeling.
But I wanted to normalize to herthat, like, even at fifty
years old, like I still getnervous and it's okay, it doesn't freak
me out, and I'm I godo it anyway, and you know what
I mean, Like totally, Ithink we don't do enough of that as
leaders, as parents, as humanbeings to say to each other like,
yeah, I'm kind of worried aboutthis thing or nervous. Yeah, and
I'm gonna go do it anyway.And I might still do a great job,

(46:00):
but like I still have some doubtor some fear or some insecurity or
whatever. That to your point,it's not a bad thing. In fact,
what we know about emotions is likewe can't selectively mute emotions. So
if we say I'm not going tofeel scared, I'm not going to feel
angry, I'm not going to feeljealous or whatever emotion, we don't like
what that does is it mutes allthe other ones we want to feel.

(46:20):
That mutes the gratitude and the joyand the love and the excitement. So
it's like my work also focuses alot on can we again bring our whole
selves to work? Can we bevulnerable enough to be real? You know,
one of the most the most vulnerableemotions in life is joy. Yeah,
because it's love is appreciational, rightyeah, Right? If I tell

(46:42):
you that I love you, ifI express my joy and how happy I
am about something, it could goaway. And you know what, in
life, it will because emotions ebband flow and the thing that we're so
joyful about. Right, You fallin love, you get married, it's
wonderful, and then it's not somuch, and then you get your heart
broken and your marriage ends, andit's like, well, what am I
going to do? Never love anyoneelse again because it didn't work out,

(47:06):
you know. Never try to gofor the promotion because I got fired from
the job. Never try to startthe company because the last time I tried
it didn't work again. Those arereal experiences in life that we have to
work through. But like that ispart of what ultimately success and fulfillment is
about. Is like failing picking ourselvesup, learning from it, licking our

(47:27):
wounds and going I'm going to tryagain, and trusting in that process.
Right, And it's super vulnerable,right, because it's like I've already you
know. I think about this sometimesin my own life, and I realize
there are some things that like Ihave failed that so much that sometimes I
don't want to try again, andI have to reckon with that, like
well what is that about? Yeah? And then oh, can I pick

(47:49):
myself up and go for it?And sometimes even in life, when we've
lived a bit and we've had somewisdom and experience, we also have some
trauma and some disappointment and some frustrationin there, and we start to say
to ourselves consciously, well I can'tdo that, well, I don't do
that. Well I tried that beforeand it didn't work. And it's like,
yeah, okay, so true.So I want to bring us to

(48:10):
our last topic. Trust. Yes. So culture is a word that we
hear over and over and over,and a lot of the research on trusted
organizations really sort of focuses on twoideas, right. One is how important
trust is in shaping individuals' perceptions offairness and justice within an organization. And

(48:40):
then the second is that trust isn'tjust about anticipating others' behaviors, but it's
also about the perception of sort ofmorality within the organization. We're living in
a time when, as we weresaying earlier, trust and institutions it feels

(49:01):
like has never been lower, rightwith the collapse of organized religion, with
media, what it is, socialmedia, et cetera. Tell us if
and why you feel trust is ata low and how do you work to
build trust in for individuals, inteams and then ultimately in their organizations.

(49:25):
Well, there's a lot there.I mean, I look at trust on
three different levels. There's inner personaltrust. So like again, let's say
you and I work together, orwe're friends, or we're in a family
together. Do we trust each other? And that process, as we all
know, is tricky. Trust canbe built, it can be broken,
but it really is a one toone phenomenon. It has a lot to
do with, by the way,our willingness to be real with each other,

(49:47):
our willingness to be vulnerable with eachother, our willingness to take ownership
to repair when something gets broken.And again, we don't get a lot
of training and trust, And it'sa really tricky thing. Everyone says trust
is fundamental to relationships, it's fundamentalto teams. It's all leadership. We
all know that. But it's like, so there's that, Then there's group
trust, like team trust, whichanother way to think of that, we

(50:09):
talk about psychological safety. Psychological safetymeans what the group, the team is
safe enough for what risk taking,speaking up, challenging one another, you
know, debating in a healthy,productive way, taking risks, failing.
Not that we want to, butwe know any of those things can happen
within a team. And I'm notgoing to be shamed, ridiculed, kicked

(50:30):
out of the group simply because Imade a mistake or I had a different
opinion. Then there's more organizational trust, and that one to what you're speaking
to. That one's tricky because it'slike, well, how do I trust
the company or the institution. Youknow, I'm employee X over here and
the company has thirty thousand employees.Like what I often will say when I'm

(50:52):
talking to the CEO or the seniorleaders and they're wanting we want there to
be more trust in the organization,I would say, we got to go
down to first, interpersonal one onone trust and group trust, team trust,
because that's how people actually interact withtheir world, like their experience there.
You know, most people's experience ofthe company they work for is the

(51:12):
experience they have with the manager thatthey report to and the teammates that they
have. So if we do reallydevelop and work on and focus on interpersonal
trust and group trust psychological safety,that can have an impact. However,
the institutions as a whole, toyour point, there's a lot of things
happening in our society these days,government institutions, corporate institutions. It's not

(51:36):
that people weren't skeptical or even cynicalabout them, you know, five years
ago, ten years ago, butthere does seem to be a really heightened
sense of a lack of trust ininstitutions. And some of that I think
is warranted and justified because you know, companies and government organizations and others like
don't always do great things, andyou know, it's hard when that happened,

(52:00):
you know, in the nature ofhow work is. We were talking
about this earlier, but again,a couple of generations ago, you went
to school, you got a job, and you worked for the company for
fourty years and then you retired.Yeah, that's not the way it works
anymore. Well, and it wasn'tan individual's success was in a zero sum
game, right. I think increasinglythere's this sense in our society. And

(52:21):
it was interesting in a conversation AdamGrant and Malcolm Gladwell we're having, they
were talking about how this idea ofsuccess being more zero sum, you know,
isn't that recent. It sort ofbegan in the in the seventies and
eighties really, right, And youknow, with a societal value increasingly that

(52:44):
one success implies the failure of someoneelse, Right, That just creates a
lot of insecurity and negativity and alack of trust in those institutions. Where
As you said, you know,for many of our parents, Parrence generation,
they had won maybe two jobs,right, and that was their life,

(53:06):
right, And the expectation wasn't thatI'm going to go here and leverage
that, and go there and leveragethat and then get in early here and
it was going to go public andwe're all going to get rich or whatever
that I mean Again, it's adifferent paradigm. Like one of our clients
is Lawrence Livermore, National Lab outhere in California where I live, and
people that work at the lab,and I've been partnering with them for about

(53:28):
ten years. I mean people workthere for thirty forty years. I was
on a Zoom call with a seniorleader there who's been there and saw yesterday,
and I was asking, how,remind me how long have you been
at the lab? And she saidonly five and a half years. And
I said, you know what's amazing, And I said, if you were
in Silicon Valley five and a halfyears, in most you're like an old
timer. You've been around forever.Right, And again, it's all relative.

(53:50):
And again I'm not necessarily arguing thatone's better than the other. It's
just a different paradigm. And soin terms of trusting the institution, and
again I'm an optimist, but Idon't think that people have as much stake
in the institution anymore. And again, think of COVID and hybrid working and
virtual working. Let's just say Igot a job working at Company X in

(54:10):
late twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, and I'm working from home and I
interact with everybody on Zoom and likeI've literally I mean maybe I've been into
the office a couple times. Idon't even know people. I don't even
have any physical connection to the place, So again it's tricky. But I
mean, even if you're the CEOor you're the chairman of chairperson of the

(54:31):
board, there's only so much youcan do that's going to inspire trust in
the people inside the organization or institutionto trust it. And the more you
can do to make good decisions andbe transparent with things sort of organizationally,
the better. But at the endof the day, it is going to

(54:52):
come down to the individuals and theirindividual relationships with each other, one on
one trust and that psychological safety ofthe time, like that's where you can
really move the needle the most froma cultural standpoint. Wonderful, Mike,
Thank you so much. We'll pausethere. I have a feeling we're going
to need to have another conversation abouta whole list of topics we did not

(55:14):
cover today. Yes, I probablyshould have warned you upfront that I'm not
short, short winded, so wewill do that. We will do that
another time. Thank you so muchfor joining us, Thanks for having me,
Thanks for listening. Please subscribe whereveryou listen and leave us a review.
Find your ideal coach at www dotviidmix dot com. Special thanks to

(55:37):
our producer Martin Maluski and singer songwriterDoug Allen.