Dr Paige Williams

Episode 8

Why managing mindset is an essential skill for leaders

with special guest

Sue Langley

Shownotes

In this episode Sue Langley, keynote speaker, global consultant, and positive leadership expert, shares how leaders can challenge their own thinking and flip the way they look at adversity to respond more productively. She uses evidence-based thinking and her knowledge of neuroscience and positive psychology to provide leaders with the tools to be more effective. We chat about how viewing life as an experiment can help disrupt our thinking and how Sue uses this in her everyday life to challenge her own thinking and increase her wellbeing. We discuss how stress is not a dirty word, why the micro-moments matter for leaders, why organisations should change performance reviews to strengths-based conversations and the evidence behind why strengths-based approaches deliver results for organisations, and how often the best thing we can do for ourselves is get out of our own way. And Sue also wants to know…. what do you do outside work? 

Cultivate is also the title of Cynthia Mahoney’s first book, it’s about how neuroscience and well-being can support leaders to build happier, healthier teams who are ready to thrive.

 

Guest Links:

Website: https://learnwithsue.com.au/

Email: sue@langleygroup.com.au

 

www.langleygroup.com.au

www.langleygroupinstitute.com.au

www.learnwithsue.com.au

www.workonwellbeing.com

 

 

Transcript

Cynthia

Hello everyone and welcome to the Cultivate podcast, the podcast for leaders who want to cultivate healthier, happier, and more human workplaces and lives. I’d like to acknowledge that I’m recording on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the kulin nation, and I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. And I extend my respect to any First Nations people we might have listening today. This is our eighth episode of the podcast in our first season of 10, and I’m very excited to be interviewing the fabulous Sue Langley, who was recommended when I first was exploring this podcast and put it out to my network as to who I should interview. One of Sue’s students put her name forward as an awesome person to interview, and that was actually backed up by a lot of, yes, yes, Sue would be great. So really thrilled to have her on board today.

So Sue is a keynote speaker, global consultant and positive leadership expert, and we love a bit of positive psychology on this podcast. Sue specializes in the practical applications of neuroscience, emotional intelligence and positive psychology, synthesizing the science and research into simple, practical tools that anyone can use. And that’s what I love as well. It’s no use if it’s not practical and able to be applied back in your life. So I love people who are able to cut through the complicated and explain it and give people the resources to be able to put into practice back in their lives and in their workplace. Sue is the CEO and founder of the Langley Group and she’s taught thousands of business leaders, coaches and consultants how to create positive work cultures and harness the brain’s potential. She’s academic director of the Langley Group Institute and she created the world’s first nationally recognized diploma of positive psychology and wellbeing. She has a master’s in Neuroscience of leadership and was a featured expert in the ABC hit TV series Redesign My Brain and in the award-winning documentary Make Me a Leader. So welcome Sue. It’s wonderful to have you on the podcast today.

Sue Langley

Thank you, Cynthia. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Cynthia

Sue, I just wondered if we could start by hearing a bit more about the Langley Group and what it is that you do there. You are the founder of that group and what it is that you love working with the Langley Group and your clients.

Sue Langley

Yeah, so we started the Langley Group about 20 years ago, just over 20 years ago now, to basically bring to life the practical application of positive psychology, neuroscience, and emotional intelligence. That’s always been our foundation. It’s what we stand for. We also then started the Langley Group Institute where we run the diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing. So we’ve got that registered training organization and I think the key thing for me is whether I’m working with individuals on the diploma or whether I’m working with corporates, leaders, groups, teams in through the Langley group, it’s about how do we help people show up as the best version of themselves more frequently? We don’t have to be perfect, but how do we put things in place to be the best version of ourselves more frequently? And that’s really what we do and I love what we do, what we’ve created.

We are a global organization now we’re leaders in this space, sort of recognized by a lot of the researchers around the world. And the academics we’re recognized as being that expert. And the thing that lights me up is the difference it makes to people, the ripple effect around the world. The one person who comes on the diploma, the ripple effect they’ll have with thousands of people around them, and a leader that will learn something new that will perhaps show up a little bit better as a, as a leader that has an impact on their organization. So it’s really that ripple effect of yeah, helping people be the best they can be.

Cynthia

So it really sounds like one of your core values is that is making a difference.

Sue Langley

That would be correct. It’s on my wall right up there.

Cynthia

And so can you just tell us a little bit more, so 20 years of the Langley Institute, what happened to get you to that point of founding your own business, which is an amazing achievement and what led you there?

Sue Langley

Yeah, that’s interesting. Back in 1991, I did a personal professional development program in London that  identified my own personal purpose, vision and values. And ever since then I wanted to deliver on those my own personal purpose, vision and values. So that was it for me. So when I came to Australia, I had been in the travel industry for years. I wanted to start my own business, but I was a bit nervous. Uh, so I took a couple of jobs that none of them sort of fulfilled me and then I found one that I loved and then it was where travel land, uh, and travel land was owned by Ansett and if you are around then you know what happened to Ansett. So we all lost our jobs. So I’d been talking about it for years and when I finally found a job that I loved and then I got made redundant from, I figured that it was the universe giving me a sign to uh, get out there and do what I’ve been talking about doing for a while.

I think what was really interesting though is most people I knew and I met at the time that started their own consulting business, had worked within a consulting business and usually they were consulting back. So their original employer often I used to think it was a deficit or a downside that I had never done that. And I used to think, oh, I don’t know what I’m doing. Everybody else seems to what they’re doing. I’ve never done this before. And then somebody said to me, maybe that’s a good thing. And I realized, yeah, I could do it my way, which wasn’t the way other people would do it. And thankfully we’ve carved out a niche with a very strong reputation and yeah, have we always done it the easy way? Have we done it the right way? Whatever that might be. I don’t know. I’m just very grateful for where we are now.

Cynthia

And so that ability to turn a setback or something that could have been quite a negative thing, that being made redundant, you were able to turn that around and use it to take you in a direction that was really positive. So in the work that you do with neuroscience, positive psychology, can you just tell us a little bit more about that mindset that enables some people to turn a, you know, what could be a really challenging situation into uh, a real positive and to grow from that? Is that something that can be learned and developed?

Sue Langley

Well, I’m a firm believer it’s absolutely something can be learned otherwise I wouldn’t have been in business for the last 20 years and I’ve practiced on myself. So when you talk about taking a challenge, when covid hit all of our business by one client was face-to-face. We had one that was virtual, we turned both businesses around, both the diploma that had only ever been face-to-face through the Langley Institute and the corporate side. We turned it around in less than four weeks and it’s probably been the most successful two years of our business. But I think to your point, it’s practicing what we preach. You know, I’ve taught myself learned optimism, I’ve taught myself around how to be more grateful. I’ve managed to challenge my mindset around things and learn new skills. And that’s what we do. We inspire and equip people to be the best they can be.

And I think often we don’t get taught this, we get taught about emotions, maybe where we’re in little school, whatever that might be, whatever age. And then it’s kind of gets much more academic and we never really come back to it. Whereas for me, I use the science all the time, you know, I’m having an emotional moment, something’s happened, uh, challenges, adversity, difficulty experiencing grief, anxiety, anger, whatever it is, I draw on the science and I get myself turned around quite quickly. And I think that happens from a leadership perspective as well. People who are able to use the tools to turn things around. And even if you look at all the research during Covid, only 1% of the research during Covid has been on the positives, which is interesting. But uh, those studies that have some of the things that are really interesting, they found one study across 22 countries looked at what are people doing that have flourished during covid? And there were some key themes. So surely if we want to learn how to flourish, we figure out what these themes are and do more of them. And who knows, maybe all of us can do these things. And it’s not to say we don’t get hit by adversity, of course we do. It’s life difficult, things are going to happen yet if I’ve got the tools in my toolkit, I can handle them when they come up.

Cynthia

So you just mentioned right at the beginning of that about learned optimism. What is it? How do we do it?

Sue Langley

Well, learned optimism is one tool in the toolkit, but learned optimism, Martin Seligman and Steven May many years ago talked about learned helplessness versus learned optimism. And you can find it in many forms. You can talk about learned optimism, cognitive reappraisal, reconstruction, whatever it is, C B T, where you flip your thinking. So rather than looking at covid is never going to end, it’s always going to be this way. We’re never going to be able to travel again. It’s awful. Go, well okay, is it going to end well? I probably will be able to travel again, but it might not be for another whatever. So it’s basically flipping your thinking. I’ve been made redundant, I’m never going to get another job. Nobody’s hiring now at my age. Okay, well is that true? Let’s challenge it. And it’s really about challenging and thinking. It’s never about trying to pretend everything’s awesome. It’s about using the tools.

 

And when I first learned about learned optimism, it’s got three Ps involved in it, permanence, pervasive, and personalization. Again, this is the way I do things. I practice what I preach. I stuck a piece of paper on the ceiling above my bed with the number three and the letter P on it. So when I woke up at three o’clock in the morning thinking everything’s awful, oh my god, it’s all terrible. And laying awake for two hours, I would look up at my little sign on my ceiling and go, alright Susan, is your whole life really ruined? Is it really all your fault? Is it really going to last forever? And I would just practice challenging my thinking. Now people might think that’s silly, but my rule is treat yourself as a scientific experiment. Test the research, test the science. And positive psychology is not a spectator sport, you just learn it. You actually have to do stuff if you want your wellbeing to increase.

Cynthia

So, and just for those of whom may, may not be, I’m sure many listeners will know what positive psychology is, but just what’s the go with positive psychology? What is it?

Sue Langley

Positive psychology is the scientific study of human flourishing. And I think that’s what’s really important. Whether you’re talking about individuals, teams, organizations, communities, it’s scientifically studying what makes an individual flourish, what makes a team flourish, what makes a community flourish. It is not about being happy all the time, it’s about having tools in our toolkit. So when adversity happens, I can still flourish. When grief occurs, I can handle it. And that’s what I love about positive psychology. It’s not soft and fluffy, it’s not pop psychology, it’s the scientific study of human flourishing.

Cynthia

Hmm. Yeah, that’s terrific because I’m an agricultural scientist, Sue and I work a lot with rural people, often people, scientists, people who’ve been trained technically. And I love that there’s real evidence based data thinking studies behind this area of work because it just makes it a lot easier to connect. I don’t know about you, but do you find a lot of leaders more that they love the facts, they love the figures, they to get promoted in the organization? Or do you see a, you know, the p the people, people also get promoted up?

Sue Langley

Yeah, look, I mean it’ll be different in different industries, different organizations, but I think for me, I know it’s one of the reasons that as our business we have done well is because we put the science behind it. Like it’s very easy for somebody to go and talk about, go and do gratitude. But if I, you understand the neuroscience of what happens when you experience positive emotions, then you understand why. Um, if you think about strengths, people get to do what they love all day, blah, blah blah. Well, strength isn’t about that. If you understand the science, it helps people. So I think from a leadership perspective, I’m one of those people who wants the, the science, the evidence, et cetera. I’m not somebody who’s likes the soft and fluffy, not there’s anything wrong with that necessarily. But I like to know the science. And I find that when we’re running leadership programs and we’re working with leaders, whether they’re academics, intellectuals, economists, whether they’re in marketing, sales, whatever they might be, agriculture, we’ve got an organization, one of our clients in agriculture right now, you put the science with the experience, they experience it and you give them the science behind it.

And it means then I understand why this is important to lead people, why this is important to develop the culture of my team. As I say, maybe it’s my own need for that, as in I want to be able to use the science to improve my life. It’s helped make us successful because we are giving people the science behind it.

Cynthia

So one thing I’m wondering is that with leaders, they need so many tools in their toolkit, don’t they? And you’ve got to be able to let go of that, of your technical expertise that got you there. And as Marshall Goldsmith, one of my favorite quotes, what got us here won’t get us there. So often leaders have to leave behind what’s been part of their identity and their technical expertise and take on actually now I’m a leader, I need a different set of skills. Do people get a bit overwhelmed with, oh no, now I’ve got to know also about positive psychology and neuroscience. How do they go with being able to digest that and add those new tools to their toolkit?

Sue Langley

Yeah, well I suppose I, I can only answer that from our perspective. When we come in and do leadership programs, we only do that side of things. So I don’t teach a four step decision making process or a cultivate steps of change and stuff. Everything I teach comes from the neuroscience space or the emotional space. But one of the things that I will say is for many leaders, you’re absolutely right, technical skills have got them to a certain point we need to consider are our organizations and our progressions set up well, as in, if I’m technically good, would I prefer to really develop as a technical expert rather than suddenly be thrust into something that actually is not my strengths or how do I use my strengths and develop myself that I can be the best leader I can be? And to your point, I think the key thing is recognizing if you are in a leadership role, your job is to lead.

 

Managing tasks is one thing, but leading people is another. And when I’ve been rewarded for being technically good, it’s actually hard sometimes to shift myself into, hang on, I’m really good at this and I know this and it’s comfortable and easy, et cetera, into stretching myself. And some people will really embrace that and they’ll leverage their strengths to be a brilliant leader. And some people may find it much more challenging. But I think from a leadership perspective, everything we teach is the psychology of human behavior. So you kind of have to have it as a leader. And if you don’t, you’re not coaching well, you’re probably not paying attention to people’s wellbeing. You are not enabling people or building their self-confidence and esteem and skills, et cetera. So everything we do is based on that people side of leadership. We don’t even teach the technical side. You can figure that one out yourself.

Cynthia

That’s the work, isn’t it? That’s the work of leadership, the people stuff. And yet I just see a lot of leaders, like they’re in meetings all day, they’re in meetings all day or they’re diaries chocolate block with doing stuff and doing that. The people work is sort of, sometimes there’s a bit of an eye roll of oh people or I don’t have time to do that. And there still seems to be in some organizations, you’ve got to be busy and the people’s side of it is, is an extra added extra to your role.

Sue Langley

Yeah, and I think sometimes people want to, it’s just figuring out how to put the boundaries in place. What are the little things Sometimes people think it has to be the big things. And actually sometimes it’s the little things, it’s the five minutes, the micro moments that help you. And you know, I was working with a group of very intelligent academic leaders and when I asked who cares about their team, they all do. Most leaders care. It’s just sometimes they haven’t been taught that side of things. As I say, they’ve been rewarded for being technically brilliant and sometimes we need help, we need support. I mean however much you know this stuff, the more you talk about it and embrace it, the more each time you’re like, oh yeah, need to get better at that. Oh yeah, oh I need to leverage that. But that’s not what we’re being taught day-to-day and we need to be reminded. But I find most leaders when they come on our programs actually want to be a better leader. They do care about their people, they’re just not sure how to do it.

Cynthia

Hmm, that’s a really interesting point. It brings to mind self-awareness and the research that showed that 95% of us sink were self-aware, but only 10 to 15% of us actually are. That was by Tasha Urich, organizational psychologist. And I’m just wondering, a key piece of leadership is self-awareness in order to be able to do all that stuff that you’re talking about, disrupting your own patterns of behavior and

Sue Langley

Yeah, there is an element of that certainly, although I’m going to challenge the statistic on that because self-awareness is a very interesting concept because who are you to say that I’m not self-aware Who am, am I to say you are not self-aware? Because I might not be able to identify certain things, but actually I’m still me, I’m in me if you like. So I think we have to be a little bit careful about the judgments that we make. And, and, and this is in psychology, we see this all the time of you know, um, you cut me up in traffic and I think you’re a bad driver. I cut you up in traffic but I know, oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just have to zip across because I’ve got to turn right and I dunno where I’m going. We’ve known that for years.

So what right is it for me to say you are not self-aware? You might be, but I’m not in your head. So I think we do have to be a little bit careful about that. And it’s one of the things that comes out of positive psychology that I think is quite fascinating is a lot of the inventories surveys work on wellbeing survey or you do the panas or the flourishing scale or whatever it happens to be. They will be self-report and there’s been a challenge about that self-report. Well how happy are you? How satisfied are you with your life? Is your life, do you feel your life is better than others? Et cetera. Well what’s really interesting is as you imagine I ask you on a scale of one to 10, how happy are you? And you go, I’m an eight, I can’t go no way. You’re barely a four. Do you see what I mean? So it’s really hard to say that people aren’t self-aware because that’s me. On the outside you might actually be self-aware, you’re just not comfortable sharing it because you don’t want to feel vulnerable or you don’t feel psychologically safe. Well surely if we can put some of those things in place, self-awareness will naturally increase in a more visible way perhaps maybe I’m just testing the boundaries there.

Cynthia

And so Sue, coming back to that psychological safety then, is that a key part of your work as well with teams and leaders?

Sue Langley

Yeah, look, it’s interesting psychological safety, it’s become a bit of a buzzword because it’s been built into the laws now of the organizations have to create a psychologically safe workplace. And to be honest, it’s part of positive psychology. We’ve been, this is the stuff we teach and have been for 20 years, it’s just now we’ve got a new word. And psychological safety is one aspect of positive psychology. Is it important? Absolutely. It’s about how does the leader create a open, trusting positive climate where I feel comfortable being myself. It’s about diversity, inclusion, belonging, it’s about being able to speak up without fear, which is a whole emotion perspective. I feel scared, but if I’m good at managing my emotions then I’m still gonna speak up anyway. If I’m not then I might not. So it’s about everything we’ve been teaching for 20 years. It’s just probably the the new word on the scale. But I mean Amy Edmondson’s work has been around for years. I’ve been teaching it for years before it’s become the new, the new thing.

Cynthia

Sue, what is your take on these new changes to the oh and s legislation around employers being really accountable in law for the psychosocial environment that they create? What’s your take on operationalizing that?

Sue Langley

Yeah, it’s a good question and I think it’s an interesting one. So in positive psychology we often use the analogy of apples in the barrel. So imagine a barrel filled with apples. I think there’s a responsibility of each little apple, as in each one of us, putting as many tools in our toolkit as possible so that we can be the best bright, new, shiny, lovely apple that we can possibly be. Even when we get battered by life. We’ve got the skills and the tools in our toolkit to get ourselves back to where we were. And I think organizations have started to also embrace that they have a responsibility to help somebody put some tools in their toolkit and be the best bright, shiny apple they can, which I think is really important. Because  once upon a time, it literally was a fruit bowl and yoga on a Friday that was wellbeing initiatives.

 

So I think organizations are taking that seriously and they should. And the individual needs to take responsibility for learning some skills and tools to be the best shiny apple they can be. Then we’ve got to think about the team. So each little shiny apple bumping up against another shiny little apple of how are we influencing each other, which is part of that psychological safety. Do I feel comfortable? Do I get bruised and battered by my team members, my manager, et cetera? So that’s where the positive leadership comes in, creating that positive culture where a team can work well, bringing in strengths that you can leverage my strengths, I can leverage yours and respecting each other’s strengths. Respecting the fact that you are not good at everything. I’m not good at everything, but actually when we come together we can be awesome at everything. So I think that’s the next step is then how as we as little individual apples bump up against each other, if you like, within the organization.

 

And then the third thing we often talk about is the barrel that the apples sit in. So if you think about that, there are certain cultures within an organization where however bright, new, shiny apple you might be however many tools in your toolkit. If the environment that you are in the barrel that you’re sitting in has got toxic practices or negativity et cetera, it’s really hard for you to stay bright and shiny and be the best you can be. If you take the legal profession as an example, occasionally we’ve been asked, will you do a one hour resilience session? Because a lot of our legal people are falling apart, we’ve got issues of mental health and depression, et cetera. And I’m like, I could do a one hour resilience session and it’s going to make very little difference because as soon as they come out of that one hour, you’re going to throw them back into the barrel.

 

That means you have to invoice for every six minutes that you deliver on. And so that’s the thing that we have to think about is how do we create a barrel that’s also allowing, and that’s where some of this psychosocial and the responsibility of the organization comes in. I was just in Jakarta last week working with a school and we were talking about how do they rewrite their policies and procedures around positive language? How do we look at their employee life cycle from the minute they recruit to the minute somebody leaves of making sure positive psychology is built into that? And we created our positive HR toolkit that literally people can embed a positive psychology lens so that the, the barrel that people are sitting in, all the policies, procedures, the rules, have that positive psychology lens. That means I can remain hopefully a bright shiny app for as long as possible. Possible rather than rotting away in a dodgy barrel.

Cynthia

Hmm. I’m a facilitator as well. And one of the things that I continually struggle with is the thought of you go and work with an organization and people, you take them out of their environment, they have great conversations, they come up with terrific ideas and you can still work with them hopefully on a longer term basis. So it’s not a one off, but there are a number of clients who just want the one off. But how then do you, again take it from the, we’re having these great conversations, but how do you then take it so that they put it into practice? What’s your advice so that the culture actually starts to change?

Sue Langley

Yeah, and again I, I agree it can be a difficult one because some people will run with it and some people won’t. And you sometimes have to accept that. The key thing for me is, again, I always come back to the science of the why. I remember years ago before it I, I was consulting for somebody else as an associate while I was starting my own business cause I needed to learn some money and I was in Singapore teaching a four step decision making process and somebody actually said in the group, oh which one is it this year? Because they’d had so much around the functional side and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s important stuff that we probably need to learn as we get more senior and move up that leader leadership pipeline. But I think when you get to the psychology side of things, when people have a moment of insight, when they understand why things work, then they can run with it or they don’t.

 

I find the strengths-based approach is huge. When we put leaders through the strengths profile, some of them again the girl that’s interesting, that’s nice, have a good chat and some will go, oh my god, this is so helpful. I need my team to go through this. I’m going to use it in performance conversations. We’re going to build goals around it and they’ll run with it. And I think from my perspective as a facilitator, I really want to inspire people to try and use what they’ve learned. I know I’m not going to get everybody, but I’m going to give you an example. In New Zealand, many years ago I did a one day flourish program for a client. We were rolling it out across their 3000 colleagues and team members across Australia, New Zealand. And one gentleman, he walked in, he sat at the back, six foot six big bearded chap X rugby player in a fluro vest.

 

We went round the group and a quick intro, um, before we got started and he just sat in the back with his arms folded and he went, I’ve been voluntold to be here. Didn’t gimme his name or anything anyway, bye morning tea. He was on board, we’d done a few things that I know always gets people. So we’d done some of the neuroscience and he was like, okay, paying attention. He thanked me before he left. I didn’t think anything of it, it was one day I thought, will he make a difference, will he not? I don’t know. Anyway, the following year he put his hand up and he applied for a position on what we called the Ignite program, which was a six day positive leadership program rolled out to the next level of leaders and he applied and he was on it. He was attentive for the whole six days, three days, then a gap to apply and then another three days, et cetera.

And he was taking everything on board again, said goodbye, thought he was lovely, he was great but didn’t think much more of it. The following year there was another gentleman on the same program and uh, he said, I’m so excited to start this program. He said, I’ve just taken over the most high performing, high-functioning team I’ve ever had the pleasure of getting to know. And I said, oh, what happened to previously? He said, oh, he is been promoted, blah blah blah. And my team, I what he’s done is amazing. Everything’s strengths based, everything’s this. Listen, they gave me a whole list. I said, oh, who’s your previous leader? Mr. Voluntold, big beefy ex rugby player did an amazing job. He ran with it. Now you never know whether somebody is going to or not. All you can do is inspire and equip them to give them that opportunity. And some people will take it, some people may not and that’s fine. That’s okay.

Cynthia

I loved what you said right at the beginning of treating life as an experiment. That’s just such a great philosophy of what can I learn in this moment and let’s give this a go. So if you are a leader who is really open to this but you, your barrel is, you are not in a great barrel <laugh>, how does one, as a leader, can you flourish in an environment like that? What would you do if, if you feel like changing the culture is kind of a bit beyond you, how do you navigate that?

Sue Langley

Look, it’s an interesting one because I think there are options. You’ve got an option of getting out of the barrel and just jumping out, quitting, whatever. And a lot of people will do that. Probably the more common one is stay in the barrel and complain about it. The third option might be a bit of both. So any role, there will be bits of it. You don’t like any organization, even when you work for yourself, you probably love what you do, but there’ll be 10% of the time that you’re like, ah, you probably don’t want to do that bit. So sometimes we do just have to suck it up. If you’re in a leadership role, my advice is you figure out what fights you want to pick if you like, as in where do you want to influence, you can control a lot of what’s in your team. You can control the how you create the climate of your team, what you do.

 

And depending how senior you are, may depend on how wide or how big that influence is. Then you think about, well if I can’t handle it and control it myself, what can I influence? Which battles do I wanna fight? And if you really decide, you don’t then get out and stop whinging about it. If I use an example outside of the workplace and we take covid for instance, many of us found ourselves in a covid barrel that we probably didn’t like at some point, depending where you lived, those in Melbourne, I uh, totally appreciate. They probably had it a lot tougher than other people.

Cynthia

No one will ever understand Sue

Sue Langley

<laugh>. Exactly. So when you think about that, the barrel that we’d been shoved in many of us unwittingly and unwillingly was not overly helpful. Some people decided, okay, what am I going to do within this barrel while I’m here? How am I going to make the most of it? How am I going to flip my life around? How am I going to put boundaries in place so that I don’t get my work overwhelming me now I’m working from home. How do I look after my kids if they’re being homeschooled? How do I still carve out an hour of my lunch break that I am going to go and exercise because that’s really important to me for my wellbeing. And to be a good parent. Many people were able to do what they could within the barrel, but they were still in it. Other people complained a lot about the barrel and didn’t take accountability for what they could do within it.

 

So I suppose from a leadership perspective, I’d asked you to look at two things is one, if you genuinely can’t control it and you really can’t stand it, get out or what can you do within it? Because often we blame other people in organizations. My boss does this, these people do this, the leadership team do this, this isn’t right. It’s really easy to complain. But if you are in a leadership role, maybe it’s time to step up and see what you can influence. And actually, I’m going to give you a real life example. So this happened the first year of Covid. I was working with a C E O and their exec team for about a four month period, all virtual obviously. And one gentleman said about boundaries, they were struggling and a lot of people did. The first year of covid, a lot of people struggled with boundaries, especially if they’re working across time zones and they weren’t working across time zones, actually this group.

 

But he said to the CEO and everybody else, he said, what we need is for it to turn off our emails at four o’clock on a Friday and not turn them on again till nine o’clock. We just need to put those boundaries in place. And I said, yes, or you could be an adult and shut your laptop. And I’d bill up rapport with him. So it was a little bit cheeky on me, but he stopped and he went, that’s so true. I have the ability to close my laptop down. It will still be there on Monday. Whether you turn it off or whether you don’t, it’s still going to come in. So it was just a realization that there are some things we can control and we can influence. And if they wanted to put that in they in place, they could. And I have the opportunity to take control over things that sometimes I think I don’t and yet I do.

Cynthia

Hmm, yeah. Because we can get into a particularly I think when we are stressed or overwhelmed that our brains don’t work as well and we can be in that get stuck and get, so if we are in an overwhelmed state zoo and we are stressed, how do we take that control of ourselves and get ourselves out of that when our brains aren’t in a great stage at the time?

Sue Langley

One of the first things is really, if you understand the neuroscience, you kind of understand it. So I, when I feel that way, I’m like, oh look low and dopamine. Yep. Not thinking clearly, not making good decisions. Okay, what are we going to do? And then what you do could be different for many, many people. So basics, eat, sleep and exercise. That is absolutely foundational. Your brain needs you to do, eat, sleep and exercise, whether people like it or not. It’s the basic element. But then the other thing is taking control of just a few minutes to refuel your brain. Now that can be different for different people. Somebody might do five minutes of mindfulness and it might work for them. I have a jigsaw puzzle in the next room. If I need five minutes, I just go and put some jigsaw puzzle pieces in somebody else.

 

And sometimes I do this, I’ll just go out, I’ve got a beach not far from me, so I’ll just go and walk, put my feet in the sand. Somebody will go and snug their husband. I’ve done that one many times myself or hug their kids or the, the key thing is doing something. It’s actually less about what you do, it’s more about that what you are doing is generating positive emotions. Whether you’re going for a walk around the block or just standing, staring at the sunshine or looking at a tree or reminiscing about photos of your loved ones. Whatever it happens to be. I often do this on virtual sessions. I’ve had like over a thousand people on a virtual session where I’ll time them and I say, okay, you’ve got two minutes to do something that brings you positive emotion. And funnily enough, everybody knows what to do.

 

So I think to your point, the first thing is actually recognizing that you might be in that space. So being aware of the emotion you are feeling and, and let’s face it, stress is basically a strong emotion. Sadness, anxiety, anger, whatever that you feel. You are not able to cope with the situation. That’s what stress is. But if we think about that and I identify that actually I’m feeling anxious or angry or frustrated or whatever it happens to be, then I accept it. Awesome. Yeah, okay, I’m feeling anxious. Great, I’ve identified it. And that’s fine because all emotions are data. They’re there for a reason. So then you go, well what am I doing about it? Is it serving me right now? If the answer is no, what am I going to do? If it is serving me, sit in it for a while. And I have a saying of get comfortable with the uncomfortable emotions.

 

And I think it’s really important sometimes to sit, you know, somebody you love has passed away and you’re feeling grief. Fabulous. That’s a perfect emotion to feel. You’ve got to do something that you are not looking forward to, you’re uncomfortable with and you’re feeling anxious, great. You should be feeling anxious. It’s a perfectly normal emotion. But then your job is, is it’s serving you. If it is, sit with it, wallow in it for a little bit. If it’s not serving you because of what you’ve got to do, then you need to make an adjustment. You need to do something. And as I say, sometimes one of my go-tos is 25 star jumps A few weeks ago I had some particular information happen and I was feeling pretty distressed for that moment. I had to replace my makeup three times after a quick burst into tears. And then I literally did, okay, journal, get out, what’s happening, get it down on paper.

 

I only had about 20 minutes before I had to be online. I did 25 star jumps, grin at myself in the mirror right back ready to go. And that’s important because if it’s not serving you, what tools and strategies have you got? The other thing that I will just mention is stress is a really interesting word because we used to have distress and eustress, but we seem to have missed the eustress, which is the good stress and turned distress into stress. And we automatically often use stress as a bad thing. And yet stress can be a good thing, it can be a useful thing. And there is some brilliant work by Aaliyah Crum who talks about your view of stress can actually shape outcomes. So for instance, if you view stress as being helpful to be embraced and utilized and learnt from, you will actually have a much more positive experience where you’ll learn and grow.

 

If you view stress as being harmful and should be avoided, you will actually have a much stronger stress response. And she actually followed people aft after asking them those questions of how they view stress and categorizing them into positive view of stress, negative view of stress. She followed them for a year. Those that had a negative view of stress had a higher death rate, higher accident rate, and higher illness rate. So it’s sometimes useful to actually embrace the discomfort to sit with it. And again, if you think about muscles, you stress a muscle, you create little tears in it, but it actually makes the muscle stronger. So maybe we need to watch how we use the word stress perhaps.

Cynthia

That’s such a great point. I gave a little lecture at Melbourne Uni earlier this year on some of the neuroscience stuff and one of the lecturers said that what she noticed with students is that the minute, the minute they feel uncomfortable, they tap out that they have to get an extension, they’ve got to take leave, they’ve got, they can’t submit the, and it was like the minute they felt remotely uncomfortable, it just was all too much. And their only strategy was to, was to flee. And we talked a little bit about that being in the comfort zone, being in the stretch zone and being in the overwhelmed zone. And one of the students at the end said, oh, that was so useful. So I now realize that if I feel a bit stressed or a bit stretched, that that’s not a bad thing. That was just so interesting. And I’ve talked to a few people since and they, they’ve said that their experience with, and I, I don’t want to put generalizations out there about generations or anything, but that, that some of younger people in our world are find it very hard to sit with stress.

Sue Langley

Yeah. I have to admit, I don’t do categories. I just think people in general, some people handle it better than others. To your point though, if you think about many people, particularly in a lot of western society, we are very used to comfort. You know, your car has air conditioning and your car has a button you push so you don’t have to actually wind down your window. I mean, my goodness, that would be terrible. So we’ve got used to comfort and actually some of the, your best moments will happen through discomfort. If I ask people to share a story of something they’re really, really proud of that they’ve achieved, I can guarantee it’s had stressful moments, obstacles in the way, difficulties, et cetera. And I can guarantee they’ve used their strengths to overcome them, which makes ’em proud of it. Now if you, everything came easily, we wouldn’t have achieved those things we are proud of.

 

To your point though, we often give up, we go for a run, we get out of breath and things are a bit sore. So we stop, we study and it gets a bit hard. Um, I’m trying to learn Italian at the moment and I noticed a few times I’ve plateaued. It’s like I don’t seem to be getting any better. It would be so easy to give up, but actually you push through and then you suddenly make another breakthrough. It’s again, get comfortable with the uncomfortable emotions. If we don’t, we’ll probably not grow as a person. And I think that could be whether you are 16 or 60.

Cynthia

Yeah, true. And so why are we so afraid of our of discomfort? Why, why, what is that about? Is it learnt? Is it a learnt thing or?

Sue Langley

Well, if you think about it from a neuroscience perspective, it makes complete sense. If your brain keeps you nice and comfortable and safe, then you’re not going to get hurt. So it kind of makes sense that we are, and yet it doesn’t actually help us in the long run, um, because we stay in a job because it’s easy rather than stretching ourselves and then we end up becoming bitter and resentful or we put up with certain things because that’s the way we’ve always done it. Or as I say, we don’t stretch ourselves physically, so therefore we end up feeling uncomfortable and then we want to pop a pill to make us feel better because that’s easier than going and exercising every day. So, and again, I’m not saying prescription drugs for some things aren’t important, but if we’ve put ourselves in a position where we’re needing certain things to keep ourselves alive, could we have looked after ourselves and stretched ourselves better to order do that?

 

So it, it’s an interesting one. As I say, I’m not suggesting across the board, but we often find ourselves going for the easy route, even with what we eat, you know, it’s much more difficult to spend the time to whip up some healthy thing than it is to go and order pizza. Um, and I’m not perfect. I’ll often order pizza. Um, it sometimes we need to be uncomfortable as leaders. I mean, I asked a group of very senior leaders, very intelligent people, I asked them to do an activity that the minute I asked them to do it, they looked mortified and I knew they would, they would be anxious. Nobody wanted to do it. And I just carried on and said, okay, you’ve got five minutes off, you go back in here, five minutes, get it done. When they came back, they’re all grinning, they’re all going, wow, that wasn’t as difficult as I thought. But I forced them almost into a very uncomfortable position. And then when they got to the end of it, they’re like, oh, that’s really good. I’ll do that again. But if I hadn’t have kind of put them there, they would never have chosen to do that themselves. So again, it, it highlights that sometimes the best things can come out of the, the stress, the pressure, the difficulty, the, the challenge if we’ve got the tools to, in our toolkit to actually handle those things.

Cynthia

Yeah, that’s such a good point. I, that’s been a real light bulb for me, Sue, about the, the, that stress isn’t a dirty word.

Sue Langley

No, it’s great. I love it. It’s, it’s important to, and, and even when Covid hit, I’m like, I felt like vomiting at certain points in time. It was like, oh my goodness. But it was like, okay, what can I learn from this? How am I going to use the tools at my disposal and how do I manage to move quicker than other people? And it’s been great for us.

Cynthia

Now Sue, just speaking of Covid, um, have you noticed anything different that since covid that leaders a difference in the leadership required to navigate the world as it is now compared to what, what it was pre covid?

Sue Langley

Well, lucky for me the skills that we teach are more needed <laugh>. Um, so I think as a leader, that positive leadership showing compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, understanding, looking after the wellbeing of your people has become more respected. That actually it’s really important not just because you’re trying to get more out of them, but actually because it’s, it’s a duty, it’s a, it’s important. And why wouldn’t you want high flourishing people in your team? I think that’s changed. You know, there’s lots of people that are looking for making sure they’ve got meaning in what they do, that they feel they’re contributing. But again, that’s been a standard thing that we’ve known from the research for many years, that people want to feel that they’re making a difference, that I’m needed, that I’m contributing, that I matter. You know, we’ve been teaching this stuff for many years now from a sense of meaning perspective.

 

And I think organizations perhaps are starting to be a bit more serious on that. I would love to see the leaders have a more global mindset and some organizations are now, which is really good. I did a keynote in Iceland at the European post site conference on uh, the futurist human. We’ve created this mess if we’ve got them. So how do we bring together the best of what is, whether it’s media or politics or environment or uh, healthcare or whatever you to actually shape a world that we know is good for the planet, good for us with a lot more humanity. And I wonder if leaders are probably expected to do that a little bit more, whether they’ll take up the mantle of it. I don’t know.

Cynthia

Yeah. And so for those organizations that are very outcomes driven and performance targets and that kind of thing, what is the worth of them investing in the more human workplace?

Sue Langley

Okay, well I’ll give you my favorite piece of research around, um, strengths. Uh, so flipping your performance review process, whatever you want to call it, performance conversations to strengths-based. This is an experiment. The, the organizations that focused on the traditional method of Cynthia, this is what you’re good at, these are your development opportunities, let’s set some goals around your development opportunities led to a 26.8% drop in performance over 12 months. Organizations that flipped it and basically said, hi Cynthia, these are your strengths, these are your weaknesses. If you need these to be competent, then we are going to get you to you. You’ve got to come up to a level of competence. But what we want to do is set some goals specifically around your strengths for the next 12 months. That led to an increase of 36.4% in performance. And this was an experiment deliberately set up with 20,000 people involved. So it wasn’t a small thing. If you want proof that this stuff works and you are of after productivity, why wouldn’t you want that? And if you really understand this stuff and you do strengths-based conversations, if you do job crafting around strengths, if you work with um, strengths cross teams, the performance increases you can have are significant. Uh, one of our clients, by embedding all the things we taught around positive leadership, including the strengths-based approach, changed her engagement scores as a global ops leader from 46% to 94% over an 18 month period.

Cynthia

How, what did she do?

Sue Langley

Oh, I can’t get that into five minutes. It was like her embedding all the things we learned, all the things we teach around the positive leadership model, the strengths-based approach, building neuroscience of coaching and all those sorts of things. It was all the things we taught. She ran with it, she embedded it. She literally was in Singapore, headed up this organization and completely transformed the engagement by using all of the stuff that we know from the research, what the science tells us.

Cynthia

Oh that is so fabulous. What do you think gets in the way of organizations and leaders creating ways for people to be the best versions of themselves and what’s your one piece of advice for how they could do this better?

Sue Langley

I think we often get in our own way. Um, and I’ll give you an example from my own self. So when we first went into lockdown, so at the time I was living in Bondi in a pretty ordinary apartment but not far from the beach. And so I would walk on the beach most mornings as my excise walk, bit of a run, et cetera. And when we first went into lockdown, I laid in bed for several mornings running because they closed the beach. I was like, I can’t go to my beach, it’s ridiculous. I can’t exercise. So I laid in bed, which was stupid because I could still walk or run on the streets, but I didn’t like it. So I got in my own way. I basically went, it’s not fair, they’re not letting me on my beach. Rather than taking accountability and going, okay, get your butt out of bed, you can walk around the streets, it’s fine.

And I think sometimes we do get in our own way, often not because we realize it, but because we don’t have the tools in our toolkit. Things that I find now I’ve been teaching for many years seem very easy to me and yet I’ve learnt them, I’ve practiced them every day. Nobody wants to hear it. They want the bolt of lightning or the lottery win. Ooh, I’m going to be happy and all this sort of stuff. But actually you have to do stuff every day. So often we do get in our own way, we blame other people. It’s very easy to look at the outside of what we can’t do. And I’m not saying that’s all because again, that comes from, you know, potentially a place of privilege, et cetera. So I think that’s one thing we do get in our own way. The other thing is, again, sometimes underestimating how amazing we are with the little things and the ripple effect that we have.

 

Sometimes we might think we want to change a whole organization and we’ve got to throw everything out and we’ve got to cure well piece or whatever it happens to be. And yet actually it’ll be the tiny things you do every day. It will be those micro moments of having a conversation with somebody in the lift that you don’t know, that you’ve maybe made a difference to them and made them walk outta that lift in a more positive way. Don’t underestimate the moments of connection, the, the moments of making eye contact, smiling, um, saying hello, connecting with people, asking if people are okay. So I think those moments of connection and people say you can’t do it virtually, I disagree. We just have to put in different ways of doing it.

Cynthia

And so just to finish off, is there a question that I should have asked you today and I didn’t, Nora, something that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t covered that you think’s important?

Sue Langley

Well, one of the questions I always ask, so I’m going to ask you is what do you do when you’re not working?

Cynthia

What do I do when I’m not working? I spend time with my dog, I spend time with my family, I spend time with my plants and I love my flowers. So they make me very, very happy. You love spending time with my family and friends and catching up. And I do watch quite a bit of Netflix as well because I really need my brain. I do a lot of thinking during the day and, and I just sometimes need my brain to shut down. So if they’re the things that I do, nice cup of tea,

Sue Langley

<laugh>, I think you can find out a lot about people of what do you do when you’re not working? Because often, you know, we ask what do you do? But that’s not who you are. It’s what do you do to look after your wellbeing? What do you do when you’re not working? For me, it’s, I go down the beach, I try and exercise every day. I try and eat well, I spend time with the people I love. I make time for little things, random acts of kindness, gratitude, savoring curiosity. I practice what I preach most days. I have my moments where I don’t get it right. Uh, I love doing jigsaw puzzles, I foster kittens, I travel even now after Covid incessantly and yeah, hopefully make a difference in the world.

 

Cynthia

What a great question. I love that. I love that. What do you do outside of work? Love it. Love it, love it. That is such a perfect note to end on, Sue. And I would like to say a huge thank you for being so generous with your time today and everything that you said, I just love it. So everyone go and check out Sue’s website. We’ll we’ve got the details here on the Cultivate podcast and if you want to enroll in one of her fabulous courses or get her along to help you and your organization, I think you can understand why that would be a really good thing to do.

Sue Langley

Thank you, Cynthia. I really appreciate it. It’s been good, fun having a conversation.

Cynthia

Pleasure. So that is it for today’s episode, episode eight. If you’d like to keep the conversation going and connect with other like-minded people, please hop on over to the Cultivate podcast Facebook group. Just search for the Cultivate podcast and you can ask questions, catch up on the latest views, share information, and keep on chatting. You can go to my website, cynthiamahoney.com.au to listen to other episodes of the Cultivate podcast. You can subscribe to my blog, check out my leadership team and coaching programs, and you can even buy my book, cultivate How Neuroscience and Wellbeing Support Rural Leaders to Thrive. So thank You so much everyone for tuning in. Remember to stay happy, healthy, and human, and I’ll look forward to our next conversation on the Cultivate podcast.

 Share this episode:

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

Subscribe
The Cultivate Podcast on Spotify
The Cultivate Podcast on Apple Podcasts
The Cultivate Podcast on Google Podcasts
The Cultivate Podcast on Stitcher
The Cultivate Podcast on iheart
Cynthia Mahoney

Keep in Touch

 

You're bound to learn something fantastic in this free fortnightly newsletter from Cynthia.

Thank you for subscribing. Cynthia will be in touch very soon.