Jolie is a director and co-founder of Hummingly - supporting people and organizations to do well through pressure and uncertainty. Over the years, we have gathered the wisdom and insights from over 100 crisis leaders and thousands of people affected by disaster and disruption to create products and masterclasses that equip people and organizations to do well in tough times. Jolie has a Masters in Cognitive Psychology and is a leading psychosocial expert in disaster and disruption. Jolie has studied how the mind works under prolonged pressure, how we make decisions and how our reactions and behaviors are impacted by stress. Jolie is a survivor of the Christ church earthquake and has lived disaster recovery with her family first-hand. She developed services and training to help her fellow citizens for the Red Cross, local government and academia. Jolie is a Winston Churchill fellowship recipient, a Leadership New Zealand alumni, an Edmund Hillary Fellow and the co-author of Leading in Disaster Recovery: A Companion through the Chaos.
Today, we are joined by Jolie Wills, one of the brains behind the Doing Well and Pandemic Pack deck cards, as well as other helpful tools and resources that aim to help people undergoing crisis and extreme stress. She shares several stories from crisis leaders and experts whose insights helped create the card decks and even shares with us her personal experience brush with disaster, which ultimately shaped her ideals and thoughts about how people react and cope when they're taken out of their comfort zones for a particularly long period of time.
3:34 - Jolie recalls the disaster that changed her life
10:42 - Resilience doesn't always mean bouncing back - it can mean crawling and clawing your forward.
21:29 - Teams that raised their standards because of the pandemic are finding that they're capable of so much more.
27:37 - The learning zone is the sweet spot just outside your comfort zone where you are most productive
38:22 - As a leader, are you leading your team to burnout and poor performance?
49:43 - How Jolie came up with her card decks for well-being
55:35 - How the different card decks work
1:04:12 - Use the cards to reflect on your actions, or as a tool to come up with goals
1:12:31 - The cards can be used to manage strong emotions caused by stress or keep them in check.
1:13:39 - People have a default defense mechanism when they're out of their comfort zone for a long time.
1:26:27 - Jolie's passionate plea to entrepreneurs right now.
"Think about a plan to sustain the leadership - you just can't get there without a plan in place because it drops off. So get really intentional. And be okay with asking for that support and help and having a plan in place for yourself."
If you want to know more, please download a copy of "Why invest in Wellbeing?" and "A Plug and Play Wellbeing Activity Guide for Leaders" for free.
GET IN TOUCH:
MARK LEARY:
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc
JOLIE WILLS:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolie-wills-91423695/
https://hummingly.co/
Production credit:
Engineering / Post-Production: Jim McCarthy
Art / Design: Immanuel Ahiable
You're Doing It Wrong - Jolie Wills
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
cards, leaders, people, understand, pressure, team, questions, thinking, stress, feel, great, bricks, energy, helpful, emotion, decisions, point, put, create, performance
SPEAKERS
VO, Jolie, Mark
Mark 00:00
So we're rolling, cool. We are live. This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson, Leary and my name is Mark, passion that you should feel in control of your life. So what I do is I help you get control of your business. And as you know by now part of how I do that is by letting you listen in on a conversation between two people who have a passion for excellence in the entrepreneurial world, talking about a subject that you already know something about, but this time, we're digging down into the details and really unlocking those things that are confusing, misunderstood, and allowing you to unlock those secrets and break through your ceilings and get that control of your business and ultimately, of your life. Always reminder, please don't forget to subscribe, share it, make sure your friends are getting access to this information if you think it's valuable to them. If you think it's not valuable, please leave some feedback. So we can get that on the radar as well. We'd love all of your feedback. And so please don't forget to do that. today. Very pleased to have this the subject and this guest who is such an expert. Julie wills has a master's in cognitive psychology is a leading psychosocial expert in disaster and disruption. Not that that topic is relevant right now. She's studied how the mind works under prolonged pressure, which prolonged pressure, I can't imagine why that would be irrelevant nine months, 10 months into a pandemic, how we make decisions and how our reactions and behaviors are impacted by stress. Not that I've been feeling any stress. She is actually a survivor of the Christchurch earthquake, which if you're not familiar with was a serious event. I want to hear some details on that. Because when I was made aware of the details, I was quite shocked about how dramatic that situation was. And to some extent still is lived with disaster recovery in her family firsthand. She has done work for the Red Cross. She is a Winston Churchill fellowship recipient, Edmund Hillary fellow and co author of leading and disaster recovery, a companion through chaos, and the developer of some tools and things we're going to talk about today. I want to kind of end the intro because I just want to get into this topic. Welcome, Julie.
Jolie 02:18
Thanks, Mark. So excited to connect from New Zealand all the way to Texas.
Mark 02:24
Yeah, so that's I, before we dive into the subject, I one of the things that's been so fun for the podcast, is the sort of plugging into the globe. It's just really been amazing and kind of awe striking to have so many amazing conversation people all over the world, and the Philippines, to New Zealand, to London, all over the United States of Canada. And it's just like, I love this new challenge of figuring out like, do you know what holiday I'm talking about? What season? Is it? It's freezing for me? Is it like freezing for you, too? Is it hot for you, too? And so it's a very, it's a very cool world to be plugging into like these different universes?
Jolie 03:01
Absolutely. I'm likely to use Kiwi lingo today. So New Zealand, slang or expression. So please call me out on that when I do.
Mark 03:09
Well, yeah, please do because I it adds color to the conversation. Maybe I can maybe I can learn some new words to sound more interesting with them. Well, so what are you been up to? Let's let's talk about how does it well actually know, we know we're talking about this concept of how to manage resilience and feel better in a time when it's difficult. But I do want to kind of start at the beginning. How did you get here?
Jolie 03:34
Great question. And it's like anything, it's a it's a long journey, long story and not one that was expected. You know, it's often the case. So my background is in cognitive psychology. I'm a cognitive scientist. So I really love to study how we perform, and especially how we perform under pressure. But in 2010, you know, at the time, I was working with Red Cross, I was numb to a couple of kids, I had my own storytelling business I was studying, it was just kind of a whole lot going on in life, as you'd expect. And it was 435 in the morning, so in the pitch black of night, one morning and September in 2018. And we were jolted awake with a really huge earthquake. So you know, a 7.1 magnitude, which was really large, but it was also very close to our home and very shallow. 7.17 Yeah. And at the time, you know, a lot of people living in our town, which is just on the outskirts of Christchurch, and believed with it, the war of it in the violence of the shaking, but what had happened was a plane had come down was coming in through someone's backyard or a train had come off the railway lines. So I grew up with lots of small earthquakes. It's part of living in New Zealand, and I always got excited about them as kind of like a good thunderstorm, you know,
Mark 04:54
yeah, California and United States and California kind of has that same kind of thing. Earthquakes are like you No, kind of a surprise. It was like an event like cool. That was that was kind of our coaster in my day. Yeah,
Jolie 05:06
exactly. But this morning was just something completely different and that the fear of it was quite, quite primal, you know, so, you know, my husband and I were jolted out of bed there was no communicating, you couldn't hear each other even if you tried over the war, kind of the Earth was coming unzipped, you know, underneath us. Wow. So
Mark 05:23
this is not just like a couple of moments. This is a very measurable period of time.
Jolie 05:30
Yeah. And we were out of bed, you know, across the floor. That was this was moving and just imagine the challenge of, of moving down the hallway one to each child, you know, we had doors that were flapping and furniture that was jumping and you know, it was like a our ordinary furniture and Homer tune into this obstacle course. And we went one to each child without really thinking about it or communicating and yeah, interesting for me, that was that was the beginning of a lot of things being turned upside down. We had 16,000 aftershocks. So that's had around 18,000 aftershocks. So the period of the next five years, so that changes the way you do everything. Like how you said market shock with your children, you know, nothing ever.
Mark 06:14
Absolutely. blew my mind when you told me that because I thought well, it's one thing to go to the trauma, like what is no relation between an earthquake and a pandemic? You know, no 16,000 aftershocks for you know the foreseeable future. You don't know when they're gonna end? You know, if they're gonna get worse. Oh, wow. Yeah, that mess with your expectations.
Jolie 06:33
Yeah, so that prolonged uncertainty. And one of those aftershocks was the earthquake we had in the following February, which claimed so many lives. Because it happened at lunchtime, you know, and we had a couple of buildings fail. We had landslides, we had France a building come down on buses and on pedestrians. And so there was no loss of life and our September initial earthquake, and we were feeling a little bit smug, you know, after, after Haiti and things were thinking, you know, thank goodness, we had these amazing building codes. And but really, we were lucky because it was the middle of the night. And yeah, the worst was yet to come. So that was part of the bumps and challenges that we had in the many years of rebuilding and we're 10 years coming up for the February earthquake, we've had 10 years since the September one, and still a city and rebuild mode a long way down the track now but a long way still to go.
Mark 07:25
Way of Life. But yeah, it is it is so past the new new it is it is the it is a new way of life, there are people who don't know any other way.
Jolie 07:33
Exactly, yeah, my children have spent more than half their life and you know, in a recovering city, but I think it's just become very, very normal. And that's had challenges, but also set them up well for the bumps and challenges they will have in life, you know, so there's pros and cons to all of us, our worlds hitting more and more into this disruptive state, you know, and there's a lot that we can learn through these kind of environments, that will set us up well as leaders and as people in his family members to do well through this stuff.
Mark 08:06
So where did you go from there? You? If so you so yeah. How did that flow into you? You've done some research. I mean, I did a great job painting the picture of of how significant that was. So you did not this sort of go back about your life, you say, I need to know something about
Jolie 08:20
this. Yeah. So the next step was leading a really large team with my now business partner, Elizabeth McNaughton. So we led the Red Cross recovery. So for us that was overseeing all the national grants, you know, and different programming to support communities impacted by the earthquakes here in Christchurch. And what we had was a really large team of people who a lot of them were impacted themselves, and they're out there supporting people in the community that are impacted. So you know, you had this whole overwhelmed system. So you had me as a leader who's impacted by the event that I'm supporting my teams to then support others with, you know, so you had the sort of flow on effect of everybody being in this prolonged stress space. And one of the things we knew was that actually, when you come to the sort of mess disruption and disasters from all over the world, we knew that this wasn't going to sort itself out anytime soon, you know, and we often have this romantic, idealized notion that things will come right quickly. And you'll see the same thing with COVID. Right? We often I don't think any of us realized quite how long it was going to play out. That's really normal. But we knew through being part of the Red Cross movement, and Elizabeth often says her career has been a series of disasters, you know, so we come with some disaster knowledge. And that meant we knew that the stress was going to be prolonged. And so we had a team of people that were impacted, supporting others that were impacted. And we knew that if they were going to be able to sustain this support and a performance, we were really going to have to look after them. Well. Yeah. So
Mark 09:50
that's, that's that we'll make sure that's clear. So you're describing that it's not. There's there's three layers. So like you're observing this and there's people who are In the support mode, the first responders, the people who are whose job it is to care for people who are affected by the disaster. And then there's the people who are being cared for. And you but your mindset is like, we got to look at those caretakers that essentially the leaders, leaders in the community and the first responders and the service people who serve the needs of those of you Okay, so that's, that's an interesting layer. Yeah. And you saw that these people did not snap back, that there was no snap at all, but it was one problem was created, it was a, once you kick over the anthill it, you there's no snapping the anthill back, it's like, a lot of work to put all of those, all those little grains of sand back to where they were, and these people do this work for a long, long time.
Jolie 10:42
Yeah, and I think we think about resilience as bouncing back, but there's not a lot of bouncing goes on, you know, trust me, no bounce. And you can't really bounce back, you can't go back to what was, you know, your move forward to something different. And sometimes it's about crawling and clawing your way there, you know, there's not a lot of bounce off and goes on in these situations. So there was amazing energy, we see this, you know, typical journey, and maybe I'll talk through that a little bit later. But, you know, we could see these typical patterns playing out. And we could just see people getting so tired. There's a real cumulative nature to that to what they're dealing with. And we knew that we had to look after them. So we put everything in place that we could think of all the typical well, bang strategies you would put in place, then some, you know, we had coaching, we had professional supervision, we had education sessions with them about resilience and well being we had walking at lunchtime, we had yoga, shared lunches, you name it, we through you know, every possible strategy, we possibly could it, this team has large team of people, and we still burn people out, you know, at a rate that was shocking and really uncomfortable and not acceptable in our mind. And that
Mark 11:51
you said, Get your accent burns people out. So you were helping them with ever like and people were just like, just bursting into flames before your very eyes, despite all of the stuff you were,
Jolie 12:03
we were just weren't heading the Mac. And that means I started looking around at other teams and organizations. And whether it was in government, whether it was in business, whether it was in community, and we were seeing the same thing. You know, there was burnout, exhaustion, the cumulative nature of what people have gone through is really taking its toll. And if anything, we were a little bit behind, because we've been so productive. But it leads me to think, well, this isn't the first disaster the world's ever had. Right. Other people must have had this problem. That's what instigated the research was. The point
Mark 12:37
is because we are a pandemic, yeah, it does feel kind of unique. It was way outside of our imagination. And and it's in that when we read about the store, when I read about the stories of like, the Spanish flu and things like that, I you know, it's in black and white. It's like it's it seemed it's otherworldly, they didn't have modern medicine, they didn't have other things. They didn't have their flow of information communication couldn't couldn't do the things we can do. It's, it seems like what could we possibly, But to your point, like, no, there's disasters like literally every day, yeah. And there's and they're very relevant.
Jolie 13:12
Yeah, when we're talking about Miss collective disruption, where everything gets turned upside on its head, all the systems that you normally rely on get turned upside down, or your ways of normally doing things get turned upside down. That happens, you know, quite regularly. And we often hear the word unprecedented, right? And every event is in some more unprecedented than others. But really, the reality is that our reality, you know, is the norm is that we're hitting into more and more unprecedented type events. That's where we're, that's where we're headed as a world and you know, but I think with each of these events, there are people who have dedicated their careers to really learning about mass disruption, and the common patterns and the strategies that we could put in place. So that was part of the learning. We couldn't find the research at the time, we couldn't find the learnings, all these different disasters had gone on, but we couldn't find the links and the learnings from them. So the Winston Churchill research was about visiting different disaster places at various times after the disaster. So we're not talking about just how to get through the first days and weeks, we're talking about that mess disruption, long term prolonged cumulative stress, right? So looking at these different locations, and talking to crisis leaders and people who had lead teams and organizations through these prolonged stress environments, and really understanding what was the impact of a prolonged stress if you're not intentional about looking after people's well being and performance? And what are the strategies and things that we can put in place to really look after people because the things that we were doing weren't weren't hitting the Mac. So what can we do? And what are people wish they had in place in terms of supports? So that was some of the you know, what were some of the learnings and for those leaders, if they could go back in time? They could go back and say yep, was one thing I do differently or one thing I I could tell my younger self heating out in this unit, what would it be? No?
Mark 15:05
Yeah, so Okay, so would you find?
Jolie 15:07
Yeah. So we found that the, the first thing that people found really helpful is understanding the journey, understanding that there are common patterns and some typical things that you can expect to play out. That was the first things understanding that and there's very good reasons for why that's helpful. Is it helpful to talk that through that, do you think, for people to get a bit of a sense?
Mark 15:29
Well, I want to get a sense of, in some sense of summary, because I'm sure there's like mountains of data out, but like, the contrast of what people thought would work, yeah. And what we found to work like, yeah, throw this away, and do this. That's, that's what I think would be most interesting to know.
Jolie 15:48
So one was understanding that context and the typical patterns in DNA, because once you understand the psychology involved, and the typical challenges that are coming your way, then you're better set up and you can prepare for some of those challenges and pitfalls that you know are coming. The second thing was we heard a lot of people say that. So one story, maybe as a helpful place to stand was a lady in Kinglake Victoria. So someone who had quite a significant leadership role, and community that had been impacted by the Black Saturday bushfires. And she said, to me, what people often don't understand is the cumulative nature of being in this prolonged stress environment. And she said, it kind of goes like this, you know, you've given a set of bricks that are life bricks anyway, and you're carrying this load of bricks, and it's things like, you know, I'm a mum, I have family logistics going on. So I have quite a significant role where I'm responsible for people and services, you know, that weighs heavily on my mind, I have parents with health concerns, I have financial obligations, you know, I have this, this load of bricks that I carry as part of life. And then along came this huge event, you know, for them, it was the bushfires. And that loaded loaded a huge amount onto her, like, her job became more complicated the needs that she was saying, the systems I would normally put in place just didn't fit the new scenario and the new reality. And suddenly, she had all of these bricks, and she said, but what people didn't understand is that those bricks don't just go away after a week or two, right, they just seem to keep accumulating is that innovations and systems and things that you're having to put in place to deal with this new reality? Don't necessarily, they're always going to have holes in them, right? So these more bricks Come on, and Jill, over the years is under this stress and pressure and really needs to help with her breaks, you know, and, and you're usually the go to person, you're the capable one, can you take some of Jill's breaks. And she said, and just over time, you just think the needs are going to reduce, but they don't, they just keep coming. And you've under this great big pressure of bricks, and she said in the leadership that she saw in her organization looked a little bit like this, you know, like, and I can see that you've got this huge weight and pressure going on, you know, and I know that it's really important that you look after yourself. So how about, you really focus on your self care? I think it's critically important. And then standing the under all those bricks thinking, how am I going to do that, you know, and in the next next breakthrough managers say, but can you do three more things for me by the end of the week, really important, you know. And so I think that is one thing is understanding the the core of the curative nature for people and the load that people are carrying. Because if we don't get to the core of it, we can do a lot of work around self care, we can do a lot of work about understanding well being and resilience. But without really getting to the core of what are the loads that people are carrying? A lot of that stuff comes from organizational stressors and pressures, or leadership styles or, you know, there's all sorts of reasons people carry bricks. Some of them can't change, right? Some of them will this right.
Mark 18:52
Yeah. So let's unpack that a little bit. Because yes, there's a bit of a transition that is worth I think discussing, and that is, in the initial initial weeks, months after the pandemic hit so much variation was out there, people change their meaning pulses to meet faster, and we were focused much more on critical things and things that seemed important suddenly, way to the backburner. And we and we went to the sprint pace. And it was very effective. And but what I observed very quickly is that every team depending on how much they sprinted, some didn't at all, some some were kind of just managed to pace and it was okay for them. Other organizations needed to just pick up the pace. But if they did pick up the pace, there was a very distinct needed to be a distinct transition back to endurance pace. Yes. Yeah. And what you saw, what we saw was, those amazing hyper focused decisions gave way to just like, phoning it in, like, I don't have the energy is like, I don't know, do whatever this week. So I was like, wait, wait, that's not gonna work. We got to slow it down. And so so I think we're largely talking about once we get back into the marathon or, you know, endurance pace. What do we really have to do to maintain this concept of It's a slightly new world, there are some more variables. If you're working at home, your workforce has moved back in some sense of new norm where the hours are a little different, the interruptions are a little bit different. And so you're 20% less effective, and you're expected to operate this way ongoing. And the stakes are higher your business might be feeling a need to pivot, innovate, be at the top of its game for customer service, not waste a dime. And because if you do that, it's too The stakes are too high. So everything's just even at marathon pace for the championship level competition. And there's no game date.
Jolie 20:40
Yeah. This this is a great point, because there were five different characters or features to while leading, and these kind of times it's a really different. Yeah, and a lot of what you learn through these, these characters and features around leadership being really different is helpful and leadership, a normal times, but there are things about this mess disruption, that is different, right. And there's things like the uncertainty at play, like you're suddenly having to make decisions, and balance things out when you don't know quite how things are going to play out. So the uncertainty factor is really challenging. There's the scale of stuff, it's like, you've just gone through McDonald's drive thru, and everything has been super sized, right? Not just one aspect of you know, but the needs and the challenges everything supersized these the time factor, because you are under pressure to root this out and sorted out and build the plane and fly it all at once. Right? The time pressure of all of that, because it's quite Yeah.
Mark 21:29
And I think that it took those teams to perform super well in this first couple of weeks. So a couple couple months even, they're like, wow, we're awesome. Why don't we perform like this all the time? You know, in fact, let's do that. Write that down as the new standard. And I'm like, Well, okay. Some of that is true, like, you should have fired those people. But you should have done that. Those people who's who needed to be fired for two years did you fire last week that's on you, but expecting your people to give 100% for 50 hours a week? And and say, Honey, you got to understand this is so this is life and death? You know, I'm not I can't spend time with you. I gotta work right now. Yeah, that's not sustainable. Yeah. How do you tell? How do you tell people to sort of think of those things?
Jolie 22:12
Yeah. So that's the next two features, right spot on is the fact that you've got the psychology of it, right. So you've got all your routines have been turned upside down. By all the things, the ways that you normally do, things often get turned upside down, and disruption having to work from home instead of at work, there's a whole lot of stuff that is different. And those routines normally save us energy and brain space and give us spirit, you know, space for attention. So all of that takes energy, changing those routines, like holding tolerance and optimism, that takes a huge amount of energy, you know, managing your anxiety and your motions takes energy, and supporting others takes energy, right. So there's all of this, it's like an energy depletion exercise is a whole lot of energy going one way, which leads to tightness over time, and that tiredness because we can't sustain that energy and really impacts our psychology individually and collectively, right? It impacts our ability to be able to relate constructively to each other, it impacts our cognitive performance, it impacts our ability to keep a sense of perspective. So that's the fourth aspect. And then the fifth aspect of why it's different is the endurance, which you've picked up on already, and was just so spot on. Because everything takes longer, and is harder than what is expected. And it is like you've signed up for the sprint, right? And you because that's what the situation demands at the time. And suddenly you find yourself in this marathon, you've set off at this cracking pace. But you can only maintain it for a little while, you can only put on hold for a bit. And you can put on hold for a little bit things like your energy rejuvenation, things like your relationships, you know, the time you spent with your significant others or your family members, things like your health basics, like your sleep, your exercise, you know, eating healthy, that stuff we can put on hold for a bit. But if we put it on hold for that prolonged period, period, which is what this always is, right, then we have very real impacts. And that will impact our performance, but also a whole lot of other things as well. So really, it's about their sustaining leadership, and we can't sustain that cracking pace. Yeah.
Mark 24:15
That's the ultimate pragmatic way to break this down. I think for any business leader, any entrepreneur, I love to bring it down to it's not just because you're nice, it's because it makes a very positive impact on those around you in the world and your business profitability. It's, you know, you this this skill, this calculates out as better performance. Not not like you can get better performance out of that sprint. And you don't have to go at your pace before this was slow. Like say on a one out of 10 scale. Say you were at a three and then you went to a nine or a 10 out of 10 for a month. That's fine. If you if you bring it back down to like an eight That might still burn your people out. If you don't want to go back to a three, that's fair, but you might, and you might be able to get really great results for a long, long time at five. So figuring out your five, or what are six, or whatever the right long term sustainable paces is, I would say an art that you got to figure out. And it'd be really, really plugged into as a leader.
Jolie 25:22
I think professional athletes go hard, right, they go really hard, but they can only go hard and perform well, if they have risk periods. So
Mark 25:29
to say that, I'm hearing very much this, like, if we upped the ante on performance, then we got to up the ante on renewal, we have to do both that I've seen that I feel I've experienced that, like, the harder you play, the better you got to rest and all the top performing athletes will say the same guy things sleep and rest and renewal and, and therapy and, and, you know, rehab and those kind of things are all about the right ingredients to get the best result. And it's not just try harder, like nobody that doesn't work, we've got that
Jolie 26:03
basic right, um, you know, relationship between stress hormones and performance that I think is helpful for people to understand, right. And this is the nerdy side of me as a cognitive scientist. But what we can do Mac is put you in the lab, and we can artificially alter your cortisol levels, which is one of your stress hormones, and then look to see how you perform on memory tests and problem solving tests and how creative you can be, and whether you can think strategically, all of those vital things that we need, especially under pressure, right? And what we find is if your cortisol, your stress levels are really low, then you perform really poorly, which seems counterintuitive, because we're always taught stress is bad, right? Yeah, yeah. But actually, we think we think this, you know, and trying to work out why this is the case, we think it's because the world is constantly throwing so many demands at us, that we really have to have enough skin in the game or something, to really care about enough something and something enough to give it out all and to really put our attention and focus there. Right. So if we increase your cortisol level, your stress levels just a little bit more, we hit this beautiful sweet spot where you just perform out of the park, you know, you do amazing things with your clarity of mind, you know, and, and purpose and performance. And you can do incredible things on all of those cognitive tasks, right, your brain is operating at this phenomenal best state. And that's not always a comfortable place, because you're often doing things that are new or uncertain, that it's a place of growth and stretch. And you look back and go, gosh, how do we do that? That's amazing.
Mark 27:37
I learned I learned in sales training many years ago, one of the sales trainers whose name I don't recall, drew on the board, that would look like a target. He's like, there's a little little dead center. And he said, Well, this little dead center spot, this is your comfort zone. This is where this is where you're not stressed, you don't care about anything, everything seems easy. outside this and your circle around that is like this is what called the learning zone. And this is when you're a little more attentive, you're a little nervous, but you're paying attention. And as it turns out, you're doing better work because your attention is higher, your ability to retain information is higher. And this is where I want it, we want to get you just outside your comfort zone. And then any jewelry outside that said, This is what we call the panic zone. This is when you're too far out of that. And and you're overwhelmed and you don't know you're not doing your best work, you're overwhelmed. And what I've discovered that a lot of times the problem with the panic zone is that you don't notice getting into you slip out of the out of the learning zone into the panic zone, totally unaware. And yet people out people outside of you can look at you go Hey, man, I don't think you're at your best.
Jolie 28:39
Absolutely. So that's exactly what happens, right? If we then increase your cortisol levels that little bit further, we suddenly get to this point, we are performance crashes, I mean totally crashes, we can't prioritize the simplest of things, we can't see the obvious with decision making or problem solving. And at that point, it's no longer like if it does not translate to performance, like people often running even faster and harder at this point, but don't understand why it is that we're not performing, you know, and it just makes us run even harder and even faster. And we hit into that burnout zone. And it's that insidious nature of the cumulative stress, when you hit that point where the cortisol levels go down. It's because the stress levels have gotten too high. Yeah, I've gone on for too long of cumulated. And they sneak up on people. And it's that point where you've lost perspective. And you may throw one of those metaphorical bricks at the wrong person for the wrong thing. You know, it's not it's not really about that break. It's just that you're carrying this huge load and you've done it for way too long. And you've just, you know, gone over that beautiful green sweet spot and to that place where it doesn't matter how intelligent and capable or professional you are. We all end up in that space at some point and it's being aware of it and learning how to manage stress well for performance.
Mark 29:54
So I'm going to talk to the stuff we actually need to do to counteract this what else you want to add in the learning section. Before we turn the page to that,
Jolie 30:03
I think probably that the other thing that was important to understand what that journey is that you know, you do start off at that cracking pace, and with a huge amount of energy and you, you know, hit or kick all sorts of goals. And then you hit net tired, really exhausted space. And that's a space where often people there's blame in Division, all of that stuff, if you're experiencing that or experiencing, you know, a whole lot of emotions or not reacting the way that you'd hoped or thought you would. And you're saying that, you know, they're sort of emotional tetanus and your teams, or in your customers, that's all really normal, right? So if it feels like a tough gig, it's because it is, yeah. And that's not a reflection necessarily on your leadership. But the good news is that over time, and it always takes longer than what we think. And it's, and it's really hard getting there. But over time, most people will grow as a result of this experience. And it's hard talking about growth, when people are at the bottom of things, you know, it can feel like too far of a reach. But actually, we know and it's more than 50%, it's more like 70%. Some studies say as high as 89% of people will grow in ways that you know, for your leadership, you know, give you skills and strength for what's coming in heat and life. So there is good news. And I think it's helpful for people to know that when they're feeling a little bit crap at the bottom of the the bottom of what we call the curve, you know, when you've sitting down there, it feels like you're just on this downward trajectory, it doesn't mean that good things are ahead for you, or that you're off track. No, I think that's really helpful.
Mark 31:32
I'm glad you said that. Because I want to make sure this is all very well framed around. This is not this whole conversation is not about this world being in a desperately bad place is this is about how to be honest with hard things. And when, and be at your best and absolutely kick ass with a sense of reality, and empathy and compassion for everybody not necessarily being in the same place. I believe you can do that. I believe that there are people right now who are kind of at the top of their game, and they're sort of ignoring things, I think there think that's real. I do believe there are people who are dealing with the most difficult challenges in their entire life with almost none of it in their control. And that's real, too. And there's most people somewhere in between, there's good stuff happening and hard things happen. And tons of uncertainty in which family do I hang out with the part of my family? That's so freaked out about COVID? near the front of my family? Who thinks it's all a hoax still? So then that's real, right? There's so that's not easy. Yeah. And so I really do think that I think this whole conversation is about how to get access to the formula for kicking ass and winning. And many I do believe that this conversation is absolutely that. And it I don't want anybody feeling sorry for themselves in this conversation. I want people being able to be honest and say like, today is a great day, honestly, or Today's a shitty day really shitty, honestly. And how do you address that and kick ass in both cases?
Jolie 33:00
Absolutely. Yeah. And to know that that's totally normal, and doesn't mean that you're off track is the first thing really, really helpful. The other thing I would say, is that one of your biggest challenges as a leader, and is really to think about how do you hold pain and possibility? That's a question that I think is really helpful. How do you hold that hope and reality at the same time? And that way, you're not alienating people who are having a difficult time? Yeah. By talking about growth and all the rainbows at the end? Yeah. But at the same time, you are encouraging people towards growth, because most people will get there. Not everyone will. But most people will. And there's a very fine balance between growth and damage. And as leaders, there's a lot we can do to tilt the balance and in favor of growth, both for our organization, and for the people in it.
Mark 33:50
Yeah, absolutely. No, man, I love it. So what else we would talk about these cards yet?
Jolie 33:56
Yeah, maybe if we frame it, because one of the other learnings that came from that research was understanding that, as we talked about an under her bricks, right, we can encourage and look after her well being and does have a responsibility and a huge amount of power. She's not powerless, right? There's a lot she can do to look after herself. But unless we look at the the source of some of those bricks and the organizational pieces, there'll be some that you can't influence an address that these others and organizations that you can. So we started to look at it and that you get organizations pointing the finger at the individual saying Actually, it's an individual responsibility to look after their well being and their resilience. At the end of it. You're saying but how can I do that when the organization keeps piling me up? Because even the most capable people will be injured if the loads too great, right? So you get these organized, you know, people pointing fingers at each other. And so we found it really helpful to frame it as a triple responsibility. Drive. Yeah. So if you think about it, if you've got individuals in an organization, you know, they have a responsibility to do what they can to manage their own. wellbeing and resilience, right? So it's helpful to give them the tools and knowledge so that they can really be productive and that they have the responsibility to think about the energy and actions being contagious. You know, COVID is not the only thing that's contagious at the minute. So there's a lot that they can do to contribute, you know, really helpful energy and eggs. And if we know that exhaustion and divisions really normal, being one of those individuals can can bring something to the table to really stick the dig in favor of, I've got to be careful how I say there is the New Zealand accent, I find that the struggle to deal with really positive energy and x is really helpful. And so that's at an individual level, people can do a lot, they're not powerless, right? Then at a team level, when you think about people being really tired, and they've been running really hard, and they've been under prolonged stress, we can expect the teams to get quite emotionally, Teddy, right start rubbing up against each other in ways where they get quite racy with each other. So what you can do is ask your teams to really step up and support each other, because they do have a huge power to make a difference in that. So some of the things we did was we defined with our teams, what success looked like, you know, when everyone's feeling the boon, and people, your customers, or the people that you're working with are also frustrated and cranky, and they're biting at you, which is a really normal state of affairs, when everyone's in that tight space, then our measure of success was that we weren't going to bite at each other. And it's not a huge, like, it's not setting the bar super high. But it's thinking about what's realistic, given that we're in the slump at the minute that, you know, we're all really tired. This is what we're going to do in terms of what success looks like. And it means then we could be really explicit in our behaviors. Now we set kindness as a default now and like be really generous with your assumptions when someone's thrown a brick at you, you know, maybe it's not that they're an angry, nasty person, but it's a reflection of the load, they're under, you know, so there's that kind of team responsibility for looking out for each other. And then there was the organizational piece, right? Understanding the load that we can break, even the best people, providing your people with the tools and the knowledge to manage that stress for that beautiful green zone that we talked about, you know, holding both pain and possibility for people. And the bit that I think is a really useful introduction into the cards that we're going to talk about is that the role modeling piece, you know, so a lot of people in our research talked about, it's all well and good to tell us to look after our well being and resilience to help our performance, but our leaders were sending us emails at 3am in the morning, or, you know, like, it just did not feel culturally, like it was acceptable, because our leaders couldn't role model it themselves. And yeah, I
Mark 37:51
see that a lot. I see, I definitely try to reflect back to those visionary entrepreneurs who are saying to their staff, don't kill yourself, take care of yourself. And they don't really create the space either. Exactly. Like you said, you know, it takes take some time, and I'll ignore my email to you at three in the morning. Right? When you respond to it at three in the morning, you don't take the break, and you do those sort of things. You burn it really, really hot, and you're not taking time for yourself. It's really, really difficult.
Jolie 38:22
So our biggest mistake was really around. And there was one lady that we met her an absolutely phenomenal leader, she had done incredible things over a prolonged period of time and recovery space. But she was off on medical leave with burnout. And and speaking with her around how she ended up in that place. She said, you know, that's not the scary thing. The scary thing is that my team, when I look around was three weeks behind me, you know, and she said to so I realized that I was leading others to where I was at, you know? So that's a great question for leaders to think about, where are you at? And where are you leading others to? Are you learning leading people to a place of calm and balance and having your brain in the most amazing space for thinking creatively? Or are you leading your people to burnout and cynicism and short term thinking and no poor performance? So
Mark 39:14
that's, that's an essence of this question of what I call sort of healthy in place of balance. And healthy is, you know, understanding the recipe. That's my metaphor. People talk about balance, you got to balance it out, like bullshit and imbalances is a very non helpful word for most people. Yeah, I love the recipe, like what are you trying to create and you can so if you're going to create a cake, you got to have a certain amount of sugar, flour, butter, whatever the ingredients are for the recipe you're looking for too much butter does not make it better. st too much sugar does not make it better. Eventually you get a hard candy and so healthy is, you know, if you've got the drive great, deep but if you're motivated to this point of self destruction, that's not healthy. How do you meter? And how do you take a step back to say, what is the very best outcome as opposed to this infinite? You know, I'm chasing, I'm either being chased by something, or I'm chasing something that can't be caught,
Jolie 40:14
that's not healthy, or balanced. And we just saw it again. And again, the most amazing leaders fall over in their endurance phase of things, you know, which was so unnecessary, and the implications for them and their teams and organizations were really huge. So for us, it's about really thinking that you can intervene to look after your well being your resilience to help you performance you can attend to. And it's what we saw with the people that we were, you know, our teams, one of the gaps for us was that we could educate people about what they needed to do, that we know to eat our fruit and veggies, right. And all of those things we know to drink water, we know that exercise, we know to get good sleep, there's a whole lot of things that we often know. So knowing is the first step. But there's a huge gap between knowing and doing when the pressures on when the pressures on all of that stuff often flies out the window. And so we think hopes, not a method with the stuff, you know, being attending to is not a method. So for us, it's about getting really intentional and making a plan to sustain your leadership, because you're going to need to make a plan and you will lose perspective at some point. So unless you have some methods in place to really sustain yourself, that's really what is it, the key events, and the methods that will work for you, Mark, are really different to the methods that will work for me.
Mark 41:31
Well, so strategically, but when we started doing long term planning, in the early stages of a pandemic, against kind of the instinct of a lot of people, and, and even I was a little skeptical, I was like, I got a process to follow. And it's been, and I'm going to follow it purely to make sure I don't skip any steps. And I had a little bit of active faith The first time I did it. And what we discovered is that when we look at the long term objectives, in the context of the short term situation, almost nothing changes. In most cases, like we really still want to make a positive dent in the world, we want to live our core values, we all these things are still not only admirable but possible. And but what does change is the tactics to get there. And so we might have to move some things around. And so it's an interesting kind of balance, like if you say, you know, we know how to be healthy, but we don't, what I'm finding is that if we can kind of go back to like, you know, there's a lot of things we aspire towards, and a lot of things that people and businesses can aspire towards. And when we looked at our recipe and made our recipe when we first came together, in actuality, not much changed. And if we focus and we focus now, we can still do that, it just, it just feels like we just, it's the classic thing. They say like, Hey, we did all this work planning, and now that a crisis is hit, we throw the planning out the window is like, no, that's what they do the planning for. So we got to stick to the plan, we got to stick to the process. And, and that's just exactly what I'm seeing is the case. And I think what I hear you describe is that even great leaders can can, in that moment of uncertainty, lose sight of like, Yeah, no, still healthy, still healthy, that's still a thing, it is just as important now as ever, yes, you're gonna have to prioritize, yes, you're gonna have to say no to some things, and you're gonna have to unload a few bricks, and it's not gonna be easy. But, but the formula is almost exactly the same.
Jolie 43:22
We're a product of AP Biology, right? We are all human, whether we are leaders or not, you know, it doesn't matter how amazing we are, at our job, or at our profession, or vocation. If we end up in that, over the hill storage space at the bottom layer, where we often lose perspective, because of our biology, and lose access to the prefrontal cortex, which we need to make great decisions, then actually, we see people hid. And some of the research really painted a very sobering picture as to where leaders where their teams and where their organizations actually end up. If we're not intentional about looking after wellbeing, resilience to support performance through time, you know, and so it's not just about stopping to hit your goals, it's actually about avoiding a whole lot of stuff, the pain points for people, you know, if you're on scaffolding, you in your head, it's not that much of a get to join the dots between something, you know, being on scaffolding safely and something going wrong and what will happen to someone, right, yeah, you can see in your head with it's going the challenge with this cumulative stress and this prolonged stress is that it's really hard for us to imagine and visualize what that crash looks like. Until you see it play out. And we've seen it play out so many times. And then people say I wished I had that, you know, it's, it's so avoidable, but because it's not so connected in our minds, and I really want to join those dots for people you know around why you just can't afford not to really look after well being was an answer if you want to perform and to keep people safe and productive. You know, it's just too big a risk.
Mark 44:59
Yeah. I see what it looks like on both sides of the curb some of the teams I work with when they're fired up, and they're looking after each other, and there's permission to be real, they built a positive feedback loop of performance and reward. And there is all of those the spoils of winning do come to them. And there's teams where they're like, they feel a little under the under the under the surf under the water a little bit and, and they're just pushing harder and harder, and there's in there gasping for air a little bit. And, and there's lots of reasons like that's the case, it's either they're pushing too hard, or they're not setting their goals realistic enough. And they're not feeding themselves winds that they're maybe not making personnel changes, maybe not cutting people back and certain areas that they're unwilling to see sort of their, their reality to get themselves back to a place of confidence. I think that's, it's very, very good point to think that you can't just endure your way through, it's almost like that joke about profit, like, you know, we lose, we lose money on every transaction, but we make it up in volumes like, Well, you know, it's, it's a positive feedback loop. You know, if you're making money on every transaction, it'll get better the more you do it, you're losing money on every transaction. So if you're losing morale on every transaction, if you're losing on every and every milestone, you are not going to make it up in volume, it's gonna it's gonna crush you eventually.
Jolie 46:13
Yeah, absolutely. And just having picked up after so many teams and organizations and individuals who have ended up in that space, you know, it's unnecessary. Yeah, and it's the opposite is really exciting. It just takes getting intentional about in terms of setting us up to develop these skills to deal with the things that life and our world will throw our businesses. Yeah. And now, as in our lives as well, like, I think there's so much to be gained if we get this right.
Mark 46:43
So one of things I've discovered is that high performing teams that are they're not focused, you get them focused, man, it's just lights on, it's great, it's great. But there are a lot of a lot of companies who have an awful lot of bad habits, and to try to create some form of transformation. And what I found about transformation is this in the form of talking about is it It usually starts either with sweeping changes that that can do it, but the sweeping changes aren't on the table, then it's little things that actually create the big momentum. And I think some of the things that are in the cards are kind of those like very manageable, bite sized pieces that can start that momentum, they can create little wins, that can create this, this window to believe that bigger changes could happen down the line is that fair to say?
Jolie 47:26
salutely. And it's about giving people the tools and that sense of not feeling powerless, there's a huge amount that can be done. And for us, the bit that was missing was how do we take that knowledge and get really practical, practical with things that work even when the pressures on asking people to completely change their diet or, you know, run a marathon, that's not feasible in these kind of times, you know, we're leaders who have been in the trenches, we kind of understand you don't have a lot of cognitive space, right? You don't have a huge amount of time, it can't be more work. So
Mark 47:58
easy. Comparison doesn't help either. So if you're a physicist is killing it great. I'm working with some that do that really are in a great spot, and they're pushing themselves. And it's great. If your business is not in that position, and you are obsessed with that first business, it's so easy to feel like man, I suck my leader, my team sucks, or our product sucks, whatever, something like that. And those are the ones where I say like, Look, you if there's a big sweeping change on the table, let's talk through, like how does it fit into who you are your identity, your vision? And if and if it's there, let's do it. Yeah. But if it's not there, it we got to be honest with that. And maybe we're taking small, small bites in the right direction. And this is long game for you not short game. You know, if you're if you were the vodka company, and you started making hand sanitizer, good for you. If you're the marketing company, who is you know, that that was not on your options list, to suddenly start making hand sanitizer? So,
Jolie 48:56
and I think, yeah, leadership is really challenging and these kind of environments, so just to, to give yourself permission to find it hard, because even the best leaders to Yeah, yeah,
Mark 49:07
well, yeah, permission to find it hard and take a step. Anyway. The one that's right for you, that feels right, it's not somebody else's step, it's yours. And and then do that again. And again, and then do it again,
Jolie 49:19
in xiety, around thinking, you know, you're not coping the way you should and put it to positive constructive use, you know, which is really useful.
Mark 49:26
So let's talk about the card first of all the cards. How did the cards come about you? So this is you just explained to me that you didn't just set out to create a card deck for well being? Now this was the result of thinking about some other things first, how did you how did you arrive at cards and how does it fit in?
Jolie 49:43
Yeah, so we had, you know, we hit this team of people, and there was this gap between the knowing what to do and being able to do it under pressure. So I thought, Well, how do we, you know, how do we bridge that gap? And just a couple of examples, you know, the research in our experience tells us that it's not you Usually psychologists or counselors that will see people through the tough times in life. And it's not to say there's not a place for that. And we should encourage people to seek help. But it's actually your friends, family colleagues, those that are close around you, that are your greatest resource through tough times, right? So we know that to be true. But under pressure, what we do is we pull away from those very resources, we too busy, Mack, when you tapped me on the shoulder and say, Look, I really need to take a break, and I can't see for the the stress hormones running, I'm going to tell you, I can't do that right now. You know, it's not possible, not just when, you know, when I've sorted this, this and this, and this, then I might think about taking a break, right? So we've got this amazing support crew that we withdraw from them, we're too busy, we snap at their loved ones, we don't take on the advice of people who can see things that we can't. And so for us, it's like,
Mark 50:53
bridging Okay, so yeah, the house part of it. But I think even for, especially for entrepreneurs, you know, any any listen to this, this hear the wisdom that I heard in that was, it's not the pros that have the biggest port of support. And then there there is, like you said, there's the place, our coaches, our you know, our mentors, our professional providers, expertise, and therapists, and all the good visionaries that I know have therapists that are too. There's nothing in the world wrong with that. Yeah. But the I do believe through life experience, and to hear you say the science supports it, that what matters most is our actual friends and family. Yeah. And in terms of our resilience, and this is not just like some imposed value system. What matters most is your friends. Nobody's like, no, no. The science is clear. Yeah, your life is better. Yeah, the fact that it's the support, the help comes from them. There are your actual asset, not some aspirational, biblical pursuit, it's scientifically your best resource.
Jolie 51:57
And you want to be able to build that crew, right, you might want to add in a coach, you might want to add some but rather than retract from it, which is what we tend to do under pressure, right? Same with all our physical stuff, we know that our body is really connected to our brain and our performance. And yet we often it's the time when we most need our brain under pressure that we don't eat well, we don't exercise well. So that was the first thing is like, how do we bridge what we know we need to do and what we can't seem to be able to do under pressure. And the second thing is like, Elizabeth and I started writing a book. So we first came back with our Winston Churchill fellowship reports, right? And of course, the reports were 60 pages long, anyone in the trenches is never going to read and absorb that, right. I'm a cognitive scientist, I know what our brains are like, and what we can absorb under pressure.
Mark 52:43
60 page report that no one's ever gonna read this report.
Jolie 52:48
And I took the first step and made it really approachable and language and had lots of people and I thought, This is ridiculous. What am I doing? I know better than this. So then we started writing a book and making it as accessible with lots of stories and questions, and we were sitting in cartoons. information back, you know, we're working in different countries in different disasters. And then what's it messaging in the middle of night, all the things that we know that people find really helpful and all the science and we started writing this book and this kind of situation, right? So when we think about the cognitive load in the cognitive science, what it is, we're able to absorb in these kind of moments of pressure, it had to be broken down into, like, designing for the end user in mind with our cognitive space, doesn't matter how brilliant we are. We all have our limits and this kind of space. And that's how we got
Mark 53:34
you as a cognitive scientist. So we got to get creative, getting people where they are. Absolutely, they're not finding us. They're not. For us. They're busy. They're working on something else.
Jolie 53:43
And we totally understand that we've been here. So you know, we just had to imagine so how's my own social experiment for many years? You know, so yeah, yeah. So that's, well, that's
Mark 53:54
a good point. Because I really cut the companies I work with who come from a with a very strong perspective on the buyer, either they were the buyer, or they found some way to really walk in the shoes of the buyer of their product or service. And they kind of know how to put on that uniform in those clothes. They really do well, they really can create products and cultures that blend really well with the needs of their of their clients and create a tremendous amount of unity. And so that's a very important observation. So you come from this
54:26
myself?
Mark 54:29
Yeah, I have the scars, sir, for sure. Yeah. Okay. So continue.
Jolie 54:34
Yes. So that's how we got to the cards. And we really it was about creating the tool that was practical and accessible, the tool that we wished we'd had for our team. And then we realized actually, others had the same challenges. Yeah. And this was pre COVID. So we had people working in sectors that were changing, know that were really realizing that they needed to be able to equip their leaders and their teams to be able to deal with that change. You know, and the stress and prolonged nature of that. And then when COVID happens, it's like, you know, this is our jam, really, you know that that's the, we're heading into a world that is going to have more and more of these challenges we have been picking up from, you know, climate change disasters for years. Now, we know we're heading into a more uncertain world. You know, and it's, it's said that that is the case, but there are opportunities there as well. And for us, it's like, how can we equip people to understand and build the skills to do well on these kind of environments?
Mark 55:32
Okay, so the cars how the cards work.
Jolie 55:35
Okay, so this is it, I'll get mine out, too. So there's a few different things. And they really speak to solving some of the challenges that we were seeing in our own team so that the first set of cans of Connect cans, and this is very much we talked about, you know, how we need the support of, you know, greatest predictor factor is the support of our friends, family and colleagues. And yet, when we're in that space, we we retract, right. And so how do we address that? How do we help people mobilize their support crews, and this is really important as a leader, because as a leader, we can expect to lose perspective over time. And that's when we've seen the most incredible leaders fall over, right and make poor decisions, or burnout. And often, it's because they find it really difficult to reach out, they don't see reaching out for advice, or for why surrounding themselves by wires heads or asking for support, they don't see that as as professionalism, they see it as weakness, you know. And that's where we see things fall over. So this is about setting up, you know, your own personal board, we often think of it. So you know, you have a board for an organization to help you see things ahead that you might not see and to help see you through no set of wires heads to see you through challenges. And that's really what these cards are for individuals. So you're sitting at your own personal Board of whiteheads that can challenge you, and let you know, when they see things that you can't, when you've lost perspective, and to really help you through those bumps of life. So the idea is, and these cans, they've got a whole lot of different messages, because we are all different. So you look through and you pull out a cat or two that you think is helpful to you under stress and pressure. And you choose a couple of people in your life that you really know, interest, the people that you know, really have your back, and you know that they have your best interests at heart. So I might say to you, hey, Matt, I have known you for a really, really long time, you should just not in particular here. But you know, I want I want to give you a card and you can give you know a person more than one card or you can distribute them over a couple of people. And just say I want you to give me back this card when you see that I need it. And on there is a message that you know, you need to hear under pressure. And the social contract you're setting up is that you will listen and do the action on the card when you've given it back. Right. And you're not going to want to write Yeah, yeah, right. And it's it's incredibly powerful. To be candid, you know, I think added myself, it's hugely powerful to have that card back and go, okay, they're seeing something right now that I need to listen to.
Mark 58:17
I want to go back to that. So when I realized looking at the cards, is this, it was easy for me to think well, is it a game? Is it some forget I play it? And it's and I don't think it is, I think after looking at it pulling apart? It's a toolbox.
Jolie 58:31
Yeah, it's a
Mark 58:32
tool. And it's it's a very simplified, easy bite size, small as the bites is you want to be as complicated as you have patience for. So you can really take all the potential complex concepts, and you can break it down into five types of cards, six separate cards, six type of cards. Yeah, so six, two types of tools, starting with the first tool that you can pull one or two or three or more than that out of and stop even there potentially. And this first one is how to connect with people by getting this very simple tool. So in you gave how many cards out when he first did this?
Jolie 59:08
So I did three?
Mark 59:10
Yeah, you pick three people, and you had things and these were specific things that were like, wow, I might be I might do that I might be somebody who was should be exercising but doesn't. And I know and I know that it helps me and as soon as I don't take care of myself. And if I need a reminder or I'm just looking through the cards here, I get locked into the mindset of thinking that this is catastrophic, and I'm not going to pass through so this one that says the situation is temporary might be a good reminder on a day when I've totally lost my bearings. Or I love this one because I'm a big sleep person asleep advocate sleep is the answer right now. And like enough for people who don't do that you didn't so you gave these two people to say when you see me a little bit late in spite of myself. I'm giving you permission to it with the wording pre done. Yeah, you don't have to have the hard conversation. I did that part for you. Yeah. And I can't get mad at you. Yes, I've seen that play out, because I asked you to do.
Jolie 1:00:10
And if I'm very industrious, you can just take it to me. And I might slip it on my desk, you know, like, yeah, yeah. And I'm and I will take a gulp and I'll realize that actually, yeah, there is something that someone can see in me right now. It's sitting up
Mark 1:00:23
support crew. So when you get carded, what happened?
Jolie 1:00:26
I took a deep breath and wanted to argue back. And then we
Mark 1:00:30
were like you said, the mousetrap up and you in the mousetrap went off on your finger.
Jolie 1:00:39
And then it's like I and I design things. Right. And then I had to think about it. Yeah, absolutely. Then that right there saying something. So I really had to take a moment to stop, pause, reflect. And yeah, put in put in place the thing that I had said I would, and that was the person that would bang on right. Yeah, absolutely. So so you do in person and
Mark 1:00:59
you ended was it? Was it hard for them? Do they give you any feedback? Like, you know, yeah,
Jolie 1:01:05
I think they took a little bit of joy in giving it to me.
Mark 1:01:08
Okay, so that's wisdom right there, right? If you're gonna choose two or three people, it might be helpful to give it to people who got the guts. That's part of the system. And
Jolie 1:01:17
it's a way to make it easy to you know, they'd literally could text it to me or Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. And it is. Yeah, it's humbling. It makes you take a breath and go, okay. Yeah. All right. And you know, it's coming from a good place, you know, that people have your best interests at heart. And you know, that actually, we're a product of our biology. So stress really makes us lose perspective. And it's the stress of that speaking, not our capability or our professionalism. At any point. No,
Mark 1:01:43
I'm assuming there's lots of science that helps you get to this, this sort of panorama cards, because they're very different. Some of them sometimes it's, it's, like, take a break for some people who looked at themselves, like I don't break I don't give myself the right renewal. Other other people might just need some encouragement, you know, you're really actually kicking ass right here. And this one is asks you to reach down and, you know, dig down for some courage. You know, Pete, there are plenty of people who probably need a little push, and might not be willing to admit that and could bring that to somebody. I actually picked my cards out, I actually left them another room, so I don't look at some of the other really good ones in there. Yeah, about being too edgy. I think there was something in there about I might be being a jerk right now.
Jolie 1:02:28
That went out for you. It's one of our favorites. And for us, you know, I'm married to an engineer. So I know that we almost need to operate sometimes communicate and flow chats, you know, so it's very, very different. And, you know, the the joy of this is designing something that will work for, you know, IT specialists through to dump truck drivers, like we train and work with all sorts of people. And for us, it's got to work so long as you're human, it's got to work, you know. So they're not kind of meditate kind of cards where some people will want to do that. And others are just like, that's not for me, we've got to find something for everybody in these cards. So this one's a favorite often with Kiwi blokes, you know, so, yeah, and it's the you being a jerk card. So it says, Are you being a jerk? Yes. Don't be a jerk. and expect that I have been introduced as a flowchart. No, as you were, you know, and yeah. Description around different ways that it may be that you're being a jerk, but pretty subtle,
Mark 1:03:23
subtle as the psychology and that's pretty subtle. It's like, I don't know, are you being a jerk? Ask yourself? I don't know. Yeah. And if no, then fine. And it's sort of like gives you the right to sort of say no, yeah, kind of have the seed planted like, Oh, no, it's a good question. Yes. Yeah. Being a jerk. Why did you give me that card?
Jolie 1:03:41
We were really intentional about this seminar that I really reflective, and some that are really practical, and some that bring humor, because we are all different, there'll be some people who are like, do not be telling me what to do under stress and pressure, right, the last thing you can do is tell me what to do. So I'm gonna want some inspiration or some questions to ask myself, other people are like, when I'm overwhelmed, I just want to be told what to do. Don't give me a whole lot of thinking to do just, you know, yeah. So we are all so different. And it's about there's 100 cards in the deck. And the idea is that you just pick out the ones that work for you.
Mark 1:04:12
Yeah, that's actually a simple, simple concept that I struggled with is like, Okay, how do I use this? However, take the first card off, and if it's useful to use it, you're done. Or take a minute and read every card? Yeah, that's not a minute. That's like 15 or 20 minutes and then read every card and sort of discard the stuff that doesn't resonate, will probably you want to put into the pile because it may resonate on a different day. Yeah. Yeah.
Jolie 1:04:36
So one of the first ways for people to use them is to spend sort of 1520 minutes creating their own plan. You know, we talk about hopes, not a myth and you got to get in teach don't have a plan in place, you know, so you can just go through and pick out so 10 to 12 out of a whole deck. lay them out on like a placemat type style in front of you and take a photograph. Yeah. And there's a plan on
Mark 1:04:57
download. There's a downloadable thing that you can print out.
Jolie 1:05:00
Absolutely. And you can take countable. Yeah, they
Mark 1:05:04
don't they don't think the exact size of the card though. Based on this eight and a half by 11. Yeah, I don't know if the paper sizes in New Zealand are different, but
Jolie 1:05:13
could they but even with the without the template, you can just lay them on the table in front of you and send it to someone and keep yourself accountable. So, yeah.
Mark 1:05:22
So talk to tool number two, the second type of cards.
Jolie 1:05:25
So these are tips for turbulence, which is, you know, so onpoint this year has been plenty of turbulence. And basically, it's from you know, a lot of that research, we talked to people the world over and ask them, What are the things that really saw them through these tough times? Or what are the things that they wish they had done or no, and, and again, you'll find some really practical things in here, you'll find some reflective inspirational things, you will find some questions, and some you know, so a huge range and the set in it's the things that other people have found helpful from all over the globe. And it's just going through and picking out the ones that really will see you through whatever you're dealing with at the minute. So sort of tips tales and tricks for turbulence around it. That's it.
Mark 1:06:03
Yeah, so it's reading through this. And these are a little bit word here. Right. So it's almost like a book page summaries almost. Yeah. And and so a little more patients to read through this and asking yourself, is this relevant to me? You know, like, like this one, a superhero curse talking about being is your personal brand, the rescuer. I'm kind of paraphrasing, and yeah, understanding when you know, this idea that I could be a superhero in a lane that was manageable. Another lane is 10 times wider and I can't be a superhero. You know, you might need to reckon with your limits and your mortality and your humaneness.
Jolie 1:06:39
Yeah, and just the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and identity at work, you know, that if the more capable we prove ourselves to be, the more we attract, and so on, which becomes the superhero curse. And there's a limit for everybody. But yeah, how do we manage that limit?
Mark 1:06:57
Yeah, so I would probably sort of advise that if you if you got these cards, you went through them, most of them wouldn't apply to you, they totally just aren't you might be helpful to you.
Jolie 1:07:07
Yeah. And what applies to you will be really different, a lot applies to someone else. Yeah. Another way they can be used, and it's fun, but you got to be up for the conversation. And you could do this with maybe a co founder, or a teammate or a significant other in your life is to go through and say, Look, Mark, I want you to choose five cards that you think I really need in times of stress and pressure. And then I will do the same. And then look, let's look to see for me, you know, not for you. But for me, we'll both choose cards for me. And then we'll look and see. Okay, like often we're most blind to ourselves. So what do you see that? I don't? Yeah, it's a real learning opportunity, and really interesting way to start a deep conversation around that stuff.
Mark 1:07:48
That's interesting. So that can that can flow into two ways. So like, this is a great conversation starters with either that first group of sort of that personal advisors where you want to have a deeper conversation, or like you said, work, work group work team, your team at work, let's let's get into his trusted trusted levels. Okay, let's let's, let's bring this team a little closer and talk about you know, because I do that work in different capacities with leadership teams, if at least once a year in the annual, we do a feedback exercise to make sure that the leadership team are open and honest. And reflecting back to them some things that maybe they don't see both strengths and challenges to the team that if they were able to, you know, do something a bit different, we might be operating at a higher level team. And it's a really powerful exercise for people to kind of get that reflection, and then voluntarily opt in to say, you know, what, I'm up for the challenge. And this is one area, I want to I want to change for the better of the of the organization.
Jolie 1:08:39
Yeah, so they, so it's great for that stretching your boundaries, learning, and self awareness, stuff that, you know, I think leadership under difficult times really takes you to some great places, and comfortable places, but great places. And the third set is prototype your body. So this again, is like I think the connection between our body and our performance is huge. And I think often we treat our body like it's just there to carry our brains around without really thinking about how well connected they are. And it's often the first stuff that goes out the window under pressure, you know, exercise or healthy eating, all of those things often disappear when we're under pressure. So it's not the time to ask people to make radical life changes and overhaul their physical health. And again, it's like we've been there. We know how crazy the demands are, and how little time and energy you have. So they've all got to be little things that you can put in place. And one of the things that our stress hormones do is they disconnect our feedback loop with our body. If you think about being in a famine, it's not all that helpful for our body to be telling us how we're hungry and tired all the time. Right our body and setting us up to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep going and we stop really being able to connect with our body on what it is our body needs and hearing what it is it needs. We can get a long way through life without knowing what really helps us Perform body wise. So it's about helping us to get curious again, around some of the things that will really help us perform. If we look after our bodies, so tiny little experiments to try, you know,
Mark 1:10:10
I love it, because I didn't know what to expect from prototype your body and looking through it, it really was about awareness, observation. And I think that I've picked up a pattern in all the discussions I've had about inner work and improving oneself. And there is this realization that most of what we do in life is a habit. And and it's very programmed, and especially under stress, especially under stress. And this, this idea of observation, becomes a required ingredient. In one scenario, and that is, if you want something different than you're already getting, and so if you were getting everything you want in your life, then you don't need observe, just follow along, you're on the road, you're solid. But if you don't know if that might be a reason to observe, and if you feel like you're going in the wrong direction, you have no choice, you are on autopilot most of the time and for you to intake control, you're going to have to observe what patterns are serving you and which ones are not. Yeah, and I love how you describe like, by the way, you know, if you're under stress, the biology says you probably are going to be on autopilot in a way that you're not going to have any awareness of what's up. And you're gonna have to do some real, intentional observation to ask yourself, Am I taking care of my body in the ways that I need to do it. And that's a real powerful part of being a human being.
Jolie 1:11:29
And you can pause it for a little bit right for that initial sprint, but you can't pause the stuff long term. So it's just little stuff that you can get curious about try things for 30 days, how did that make a difference? Or did it not? Is there another one I want to try and speed, you know, it's just about getting curious and reconnecting that feedback loop, trying a few different habits, seeing how it plays out for you.
Mark 1:11:50
Number four,
Jolie 1:11:52
so, you know, this is this is all about high emotion. And there's all sorts of science and reason around why you can expect high emotion, when you're dealing with prolonged stress, there's a whole lot of reasons for it, that's probably a whole nother podcast. But you know, when it comes down to it, we can expect you know, high emotion, whether it's distress, whether it's anger, whether it's you know, like being short, there's, that's something that can be expected. And the problem is that we can unravel all our hard work in a moment of high emotion quite easily, you know, it's natural, and we're really human. So these kinds of just kind of go tools to really help you with whatever your thing is. Yeah. So I like
Mark 1:12:31
that was a big message to me that like there's six tools here. And one of them is explicitly about managing, not just anger, but mostly anger, all those, those intense outward emotion, something that's either at either anger or very, very close relative. So anger management, and outward, outward aggression and reckless, strong emotion is a discipline in of itself.
Jolie 1:12:59
Yeah, and I think so, you know, you've got all this energy that's been generated by your stress hormones, it's generating energy to deal with whatever threat and when you can't deal to the threat directly. Because you know, the things like COVID that you just can't solve or fix, then all their energy has been deployed and needs to go somewhere, and it gets blocked and comes out as emotion and state. No. And for some people, it's anger. For some people, it's t as it comes from the same frustrated energy, you know, so some people it's panic, you know, so it's just kind of understanding that we all have our different reactions to those kind of situations, and then having a go to so some people put these behind the lanyards or, you know, underneath the visors on their car, they kind of go to places sometimes.
Mark 1:13:39
Yeah, okay, so you've told me a couple times, the idea of like, the one card or one or two cards that probably the go to, and I've learned it, people do have kind of a default defense strategy, that when they're way outside their comfort zone, and they need to create some sense of safety, or ward off an attack, there's a pattern that goes with that. And you're saying, like, especially when times are higher, be aware of your triggers lower? Yeah, and you might be going into protect myself mode a lot easier than you think, to create a little bit of awareness around maybe if I did that 20% less or if I had to react to it better, I could get 20% more positive conversations out of my day or week
Jolie 1:14:18
and that sort of fits of this next lot. You know, like when it comes to this the stress and you know, the high emotion we have tendencies we can tend towards panic or escape, you know, so that means that when it comes to decision making, which was what the next ones that were banned, we can often go into paralysis mode with decisions right and there's no
Mark 1:14:36
damn damn good this damn decisions we need to make damn good decisions. I love that because Yeah, I think that's especially around leadership. Let's that's our job is to make the damn good decisions and live with the consequences even if they're not as bad as we were hoping.
Jolie 1:14:51
For times when you're in this uncertain mess disruption environment because you're often having to make decisions under pressure without all the information you would ideally love to have, you know, So how do
Mark 1:15:01
you how do you use the damn good decision cards to make better decisions?
Jolie 1:15:04
Yeah, so there's a range of questions here. And it's all about the fact that actually under pressure, when you've got these difficult decisions, it's when you need your brain online, right, you need the most incredible tool that we have at our disposal to make these really important decisions, because you get it wrong, and then you've got more stress, because you got to, you know, tidy up the mess that you've made. But the challenges with stress, we often can access that part of our brain that helps us make the best decisions that we need to make. And so it's like, you know, our brain that we need is, is offline. So the very tool that we need is difficult to access. So these, these are a set of questions that you can run your decisions by, and at least feel a lot more confident in your decision making process. And you can use them in teams. So you can ask team members to each have cards and, you know, reflect the questions back to you to really think about the decision from those different perspectives. And so you can feel a whole lot more confident, at least in the process and asking the right questions is really powerful.
Mark 1:16:04
So I like this. So what I what I think about this is jakka willing, and I know a little bit about this be familiar with Jocko know, so Jocko Willink, his SEAL Team guy, you know, very combat seasoned, runs a kick ass podcast in the United States. But it's very, very tough minded about discipline and execution. And it's it's archetypal toughness, but he talks about detaching from your emotions. And one of the things that I think it's interesting about it is is I don't think he's saying, dismiss your emotions. He's saying, like, Just don't let your emotions make your decisions for you. And the detach mindset is like, okay, you're going to take away, you're gonna, you're gonna recognize an emotional reaction. I'm fearful, I'm frustrated, I'm angry, whatever, I'm going to put that aside, you say, that's a thing, that's real. And I know that that's not going to get me the best outcome, I'm going to have to make a decision. In another compartment. It's this detached compartment. What I've come to believe about that, is that that detached decision making only works when there's training. That is your ability to access a lexicon of information, organize it and react with sort of formulaic responses that you did, you can know it's intellectually motivated, because you're intentionally sort of side lining your emotional response. So what's difficult is that if you don't have the training, if you don't have a language, and you detach into this intellectual space, it's crickets, there's nobody there to help you.
Jolie 1:17:34
At that point, it's operating on the emotional part of our limbic system, right?
Mark 1:17:38
So what these cards are doing is like, Okay, what are the what are the top three to 10 scenarios that I'm going to be in where I detach the emotional, I'm going to need a little formula, a little instruction set, like what am I going to do to, you know, let's say we would like, you know, asking the questions of consider what's negotiable, what's preferable, what's tolerable? what's acceptable, those are questions that if you've rehearsed, you can ask yourself that in a moment of extreme frustration, and you can make a rational decision on that, if you don't have those in your mind, and you get to this, all I can think of is how much I hate this person and how stupid they are. And that and what they just said to me, and how much I just want to punch them. And so this, this is to fill that gap, so you can detach and make better decisions.
Jolie 1:18:19
Yeah, and it's interesting, because, you know, some of the, again, the cognitive science really interests me. So we've got these two different parts of our brain, the emotional system, and in the very logical, rational system, right. And actually, to make good decisions, it's not about the rational and the logical part of our brain, without the pull of emotion, we actually need a balance of both. Which is counterintuitive again, because what we actually know is the emotional part of our brain, which you know, is the seat of that is in the amygdala. And if we have that damaged for any reason, we can't make rational decisions. So you know, like, yeah, so we actually do need some of the emotional, it's a dance between these two, the emotional part of our brain is like a highlighter, that highlights of things that our rational brain needs to pay attention to. But the problem is, if we hit high emotion, and high stress, our rational brain turns off, and it's, we've just got this over. Yeah. So it's like getting the balance, right between the two, like flooding is the terminology
Mark 1:19:15
or the amygdala hijack, you know, that, you know, whatever.
Jolie 1:19:19
I think emotion is a bad rep, you know, like, for sure. It's only when it overtakes the rational brain at some point, but we do actually need both. I don't think it's this old notion of the rational brain without the pull of emotion. It's about the head had everything lining up the gut, you know,
Mark 1:19:35
you're exactly right. So that's how I experienced it as well. It's when the two are have the same story. Because I've been told that and I don't know how the science is on this, but the the decisions are actually made in the emotional side. That's actually where that's the input and output is actually there. The language like the amygdala is non lingual. It has no ability to use language, your rational brain has all of that but we have the ability to kind of let them run independently. And when they run independently, we that's our state of stress, if we can, if we can kind of understand rational thinking and not let it be totally overwhelmed by the emotional and you can keep the separate, we go on the hunt for an alignment between the two. And making sure that that the intellectual lingual story feels right. Yeah,
Jolie 1:20:23
the emotional brain is often highlighting things that we need to pay attention to. So we have to be careful not to shut it down altogether. Yeah,
Mark 1:20:29
we don't have any words, it can't take can't rationalize it, you have to sort of do this sort of back and forth.
Jolie 1:20:35
Right, the rational brain can veto at any time. So it's about the two of them playing together and, and you know, playing nicely. And not the amygdala taking over.
Mark 1:20:44
Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so so then there's your homie, great decisions. Okay. Number six, what's the sixth tool,
Jolie 1:20:50
and the sixth one is not so much at all. So it's more the five tools, the six wins a whole lot of ideas for how to use the cans. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So that's called your next move. So there's lots of different ways that they can be used both for individuals. So we talked about how important it is for your team members, and for you, as leaders to lead others to when you you suffer it, so to have your plan. So you can use them individually. Or you can use them in organizations, and teams or in groups, to really start conversations around this kind of stuff and develop the language and put some team plans in place.
Mark 1:21:25
I love it, I think it's just such a cool way to break down all the things that are moving forward and simplify it because I think that's, I guess, one of the most essential ingredients right now. Because every time I hear somebody say, you know, gotta check this book, I gotta check that book out, I can only get to like 10%. I'm gonna read a fair amount of books, actually in a year. And I think I'm reading too many books even in that. And there's still 10 times that they're still sitting on the list. And so this is a great sort of unintimidating way to warm, okay, just take a little bitty bite. And so I'll be using this with my teams. And for myself as well. I've already done some other work with this. And I think it's really cool. What we've covered a lot today. And so before we wrap up, I want to say or I want to ask, what else would you like to add to sort of round this out to leave people with a sense of how to how to find well being right,
Jolie 1:22:16
just thinking about the things that leaders really shared in terms of the things that were helpful to guide them in their organizations through these tough times. And one of the things was when times are so uncertain, you know, you don't have all the answers. And so in those times, asking the right questions become really critically important. So just be thinking about what are your guiding questions for you, as leaders, they become a bit of your compass, we tend to grow in the direction of the questions we ask. And those questions determine what we see and what we value. And some of the questions that we found most helpful. You know, the things that we've talked about some of them, how do you define success? And these difficult situations? You know, how can I hold both pain and possibility, you know, hope in reality, if I lead others, to where others where I'm at myself, then where am I at? And where am I leading others to? is a go to question that I use a lot. Do I view seeking others opinions in support as a sign of strength or weakness? You know, who am I trusted, wise heads going to be from my support crew, one of those questions, I think, are really, really important. And these uncertain times when it comes to leadership. Yeah, and he just get really intentional about it, put a plan in place, and be like, go to takeaway. Yeah,
Mark 1:23:32
so I love that because it is frequently boiled down a visionary entrepreneurs job to one thing, and that is to be able to enroll other people in your vision. Because you can't get there by yourself, and you're gonna make an impact, you need a team of diverse talents and perspectives. And that ultimately manifests in the form of creating great leadership team. And so when I say strategically, what are we doing, we're going to enroll as many people as possible into your vision. That's lots of customers, lots of employees, lots of what's the first step in that build a kick ass leadership team. And that's very, that's the tactical piece. There's a lot of moving pieces that have to be in place for that to happen. But that's, that's the essence of sort of the first most powerful step. But what I heard you say in the beginning was that just don't be Don't be a Nazi. Don't be surprised or be aware of the fact that under stress are for many people, maybe not for everybody, for many people, our natural instinct is to pull away from other people to come become more self sufficient to communicate a little less to rely on our network a little less. And that's the exact wrong way to do it. We we need more people helping Yeah, and I guess it's the uncertainty that goes with that is that trans people could cuz that's what I that was the biggest, shocking, shocking but most powerful realization or a piece of data that came to me the early stages of the pandemic, somebody whose name I should remember them, but I don't was talking about Oh, The majority of the costs that come from a disaster have nothing to do with the disaster, like the vast majority come from people being stalled and stuck from the paralysis of the uncertainty that's that's beset them. And so they stop acting, when the brain doesn't know what to do. So it doesn't do anything. Which is logical, like if you don't know what the outcome is going to be. But this general sense of collective uncertainty is over compensated in our brain. And we have to go back to some sense of intentionality and say like, all right, we don't know everything we lost, we lost an awful lot of answers. But we know something. And we can, we can take some certain certain action, and we can, if we can find certainty and bad news, that was my first piece of advice for everybody, like, get as much bad news out there as you can at certain because what certainty is what you need, people can plan around bad news, they can't plan around unknown things. And so get the certainty out there as soon as possible enroll people in the in the version or in the in the revision, make sure you are creating that, that that close family, friends network and caring for it. If you are not be aware, if you aren't great. do more of it, possibly. But if you're not doing it, it's a problem. Yeah. The last what, you may have already answered this question, but I'll ask it just in case you this changes your answer. What's your passionate plea to entrepreneurs right now?
Jolie 1:26:27
I think it would be to think about a plan to sustain the leadership, you know, you just can't get there without a plan in place because it drops off. So get really intentional. And be okay with asking for that support and help and having a plan in place for yourself. So maybe if I could finish with a story, that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's one of the people that we interviewed, and she's a phenomenal leader in herself. She's Australian, and works in disaster recovery. But her story was came from when she was being interviewed for a job. And the interviewing manager had gone through all of the questions answered everything, you know, it was all going really, really swimmingly well, and then she had a question that she had never encountered and didn't expect, and the manager was asking him, so Okay, this is being her name, you know, Kate, just let me know, are you a matter? Or are you a professional? Okay, when Pam? Like, what is that about? Now? What's that question? She said, the hiring manager said, Look, it's no problem. Either way, I just I just need to know because it will determine how I manage you. You know, if you're a matter, you'll be the first to turn up the last leave, you'll always say yes, you know, you'll go above and beyond, you know, and you're just give everything of yourself, just huge amount of energy flowing. And we will achieve incredible things you know, and we will do phenomenal things in a short period of time. But I also know not to profish a to invest in new proficiently, because you won't stay around for a long period of time you'll burn out. If you're a professional, you'll know that how important it is to put plans into look after yourself so that you can manage your energy for others. Yeah, you'll be able to sustain yourself and your performance and the work that you do. And you'll be here for the long haul to to hit the kicker goals that we really need in place long term. Doesn't matter what you are, but which is it on Manage you accordingly and quite differently. So are you mad at why you're professional? And that's always stuck with me, you know, and I can admit I'm a recovery matter, recovering matter, you know, and the matter program. So, you know, it's been a question I asked myself of regularly in a pattern that's easy to fall into under stress. So, yeah, do you see seeking support as a sign of professionalism or weakness? No matter how you professional as a as a good question,
Mark 1:28:47
that is very evocative. And I think that, that that actually, I'll be thinking about that for a while. Because I first I heard it is kind of like a Razor's Edge of like, which one do you like? least because professional sounds distant. It sounds like, you know, hey, I'm gonna turn the phone off or turn the phone off. You're like, well, but I need somebody who's emotionally connected. I, you know, I need to have no no boundaries. And I think you could probably cast it that way. You could say like, you know, you're more likely to put up a barrier, or you're more likely to let your boundaries go away. And you probably want if I were to ask that question interview, I'd probably polarize it. Yeah, make somebody pick a least least positive one. Because in the end, as I heard you describe it. It's like, what I really need is somebody who is effective for the greater good. And really, some it's really some combinations like I can give to a point and I know what that point that's really what you want. You want someone who understands exactly what their limits are, and understand exactly what the organization is trying to do. And you can have clear open conversations about what what, what is too high a price for that and so people can take care of themselves and be at their best forever. I like it. You say professional, I think of somebody wearing a sock. I'm a pro means like, you can count on me, I'm a pro, like, I'm a pro football but like I gave everything like every, you know, I took to be the very best and there's nothing you're going to ask me to do that I'm going to do if I don't think it's going to take care of the the winning ability, yeah, I'm not gonna sacrifice myself to you, I'm going to, I'm going to train to win the game.
Jolie 1:30:24
And my biggest learning is that your time and energy is finite, right? So we really have to protect it and look after it and intentionally put it in the right places, you know, so we don't burn ourselves out.
Mark 1:30:35
I'm still I'll leave with sort of this, I'm still struggling with this realization is that a human being a lots of things that I think I need to do to be a good human feel, at first blush as a waste of time, they feel fruitless. And it has been a journey for me to unpack, which are actual time wasters, which there are many, and which ones are feel like time wasters in the moment, but but create a sense of renewal or a new perspective, or some higher contribution that this is a little indirect, and maybe even just delayed gratification, that helps me play at a higher level down the line, we're in the moment feels like I can't right now shouldn't right now. I can't, you know. And so sorting those out is not been easy. But I do think there's a real importance to recognize we, you know, some people are different than others. But in the end, we're all human. And, and there's a lot of inefficiency built into human beings. And that sucks for people who don't want to acknowledge that, but it's true. And so if if you understand the inefficiencies, you and you get into the idea of how do I optimize for that. So I can get the best outcome, you're working with reality, and you're going to get the outcome that that reality allows you to have as opposed to denying your humanity. Like, if I just want to work, I don't want to have a network of friends. Okay, fine. That's going to produce work for a while. And then when you need some real support, and some real strength in your toughest times, is not going to be there. Yeah. And so you're you have to recognize your humanity and say, like, well, do I want to be tough and strong, under the most difficult of circumstances, okay, then that means You'd better take care of those important relationships. And you probably want to give some thought to how to curate them, because you can't take care of all of them,
Jolie 1:32:18
and had a fun energy rejuvenation, and whatever form that takes you. Yeah.
Mark 1:32:24
Well, Julie, I am so grateful for all the recovered. It's been wonderful. I've learned a lot on this guy, we could go through the cards, it helped me and I'll be using them. And you know, people will get to learn about that. And so how if somebody wants to learn more about you, or about the cards continued conversation some way, how do people find you?
Jolie 1:32:42
Sure this, as we talked about before, there's so many Nolan's and what feels and no one. So we're curating as many of those as we can, and so many different forms. But the way to find them is to look on our website probably is the first step and it's Hamming li.co so.co.co, yakko not.co.
Mark 1:33:04
Great, so I'm so grateful for what you shared, we'll have all that stuff and any information that you want to share well, further, we'll add those in the show notes. But that's it for today. That's our time. Like I said, I'm so grateful. So if you've listened to this, and you found it valuable, please share it with friends and, and maybe family even in this case, you might find it useful. leave feedback. We love that feedback. It's so helpful. And I'm grateful for everybody who's listening to this as well as the time which we will see you next time on you're doing it wrong with me.
VO 1:33:37
This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe, go to leary.cc