Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Fulfilled Leader Podcast, the podcast to strengthen your emotional resilience and find fulfillment at work. I'm your host, Jean Balfour, Master Certified Coach, with over 5,000 hours one-to-one and tens of thousands of hours in groups. I've coached incredible leaders like you to overcome their biggest work challenges and go on to lead resiliently, finding the type of fulfillment they never knew possible. They are leaders people want to work for and organizations want to hire. In this podcast, we have conversations about the psychological and emotional struggles of leadership. You're going to hear neuroscience, psychology, leadership models and evidence-based approaches that all have an impact in helping you be a resilient and fulfilled leader. Every week, you learn ideas and tools that will shift the way you lead and live your life, making change possible. Let's start the show. Hi everyone and welcome to the podcast. I'm thrilled to be having a conversation today with Margie Worrell. Welcome to the podcast, Margie. It's great to be with you. Jane oh, great, Margie and I first met here in Singapore. I was thinking, Margie, it must have been about 2017 or 2018.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Yes, it was exactly that, because I moved to Singapore from Melbourne in August 2017.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Okay, and we met soon after you'd moved, didn't we? Your feet were barely on the ground.

Speaker 2: 1:40

I had 5,000 networking coffees, because I wasn't planning to move, I didn't know anyone and it was just a case of like, okay, who knows someone that they can introduce me to? And you were one of the many people that I could see. Someone said you must meet, jean. You two have got lots in common.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Right, we do. Let me introduce Margie. Margie spent her entire childhood in the Australian bush, yet she spent most of her adult life working beyond Australia's shores. In her early 30s, she did a career pivot and has been working in personal and leadership development ever since, as a coach, facilitator, author, speaker and media contributor, often seen, in fact, on television as well as other media forms. While Margie has a master's in leadership and organizational change and a PhD in human development, so perhaps we should be calling you Dr Margie. She describes herself as more of a pracademic, energized by helping people connect head and heart to take braver action, to pursue a bolder vision and to live into their fullest potential, and we're going to talk about that today.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Margie is the author of six books. Her latest book, the Courage Gap, is inspired by her belief that living bravely is indispensable for living well, and I love that. And amid the dangers and challenges of this time, within us lays the courage to meet them and together to create a future even better than the past, which we surely need to do. Margie is also the brave mother of four, a women's leadership advocate, an amateur barista, and has a big love of adventure. So welcome again, margie.

Speaker 2: 3:35

Oh, jean, it's lovely. It's lovely to see you again, great.

Speaker 1: 3:38

It's been a while. It has been a long while. Yeah, there's been a bit of something called COVID in between. Now, markie, all of your writing is about this relationship between bravery and fear and courage, and I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about your story and how that brought you to this topic, which is so important for all of us.

Speaker 2: 4:01

Well, it's funny they say we teach best what we most needed to teach the younger version of ourselves and I would say still the present version of myself like I still have to practice what I preach and it's so much nicer just to preach it versus having to practice it. But, as you know, I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Victoria, australia. I was the second of seven kids. My dad milked cows for many years and you know, life was pretty simple and I know a lot of I'm sure you have Australians who are listening to this but I was like a country kid. You know, once a year we'd go to Melbourne. It was super exciting, four hours drive away. We didn't ever go to restaurants, I mean, it was just pretty simple childhood in many ways, and I didn't have any sense of what was possible in the world because, you know, we didn't travel a lot, we didn't kind of get even exposed to a lot of media and things. And so at 18, I left home to go to university in Melbourne and that was honestly hugely outside my comfort zone. But I just remember thinking, well, I can't, I don't want to stay in the country, because I just was like I just want to get out and explore something new. And then after that went backpacking around the world for a year, as many Aussies do, and that expanded my horizons again. And then got back and they're like, okay, now I want to do Africa and the Middle East, and that expanded them again and then and on it went and I feel like life has been continually just doing more things that are expanding my world, though one could argue my most recent move back to the United States isn't necessarily to a new place, it's more just returning to somewhere I've been before. But my husband and I were both kind of committed on, you know, when we started going out, I said I don't want to stay living in Melbourne, australia, I want to, you know, live in different places. But I started and I also should just add, I started my career in corporate, in KPMG, and I had a business degree, but then in my late 20s went back and studied psychology and then later coaching, and then got a master's and then got a PhD actually, which I finished while living in Singapore, so more recently really.

Speaker 2: 6:10

But yeah, I think why do I write and talk a lot about courage? Because I've wrestled with self-doubt my whole life and I know a lot of people do. I think maybe that's something women experience even more so than men, but clearly it's not confined to women. I've also met people all over the world, and so often I've met these people who are so capable and creative and they've got these gifts and yet they aren't living, they're not flourishing and thriving, because they buy into their doubts and they let their fear of not being good enough, or fear of making a fool of themselves or failing, keep them from taking action. And so, one, it's something I've had to practice.

Speaker 2: 6:56

But two, I guess I just feel so strongly because I get, I've got to work over the years and know so many really smart people, like just exceptionally, like well, they could run rings around me in terms of their IQ and yet self sabotaging, holding themselves back, they're unwilling to be vulnerable, unwilling to sometimes even challenge themselves, so attached to their rightness that they just make themselves miserable. And so you know, I just all of those things kind of the confluence of them is is that I just feel really called. Honestly, I couldn't say this is like a job. It's certainly not a job, it's certainly not a career For me. Is what I do is more a vocation, like there's just a calling. I like I can't not do it.

Speaker 1: 7:47

Well, I I love that and thank you for doing that, because I think that I completely believe you're right that all of us have to constantly battle the internal fear in order to step into being our best selves, and it can for some of us certainly for me, who's also really, really grappled with terrible self-doubt is still a daily struggle. In fact, I was thinking last night about something that I was really frightened about, thinking oh my goodness, I've got to walk into this and I'm talking to Margie tomorrow, so I better walk into it, but that's perfect.

Speaker 2: 8:16

But that's perfect. I mean, I'm so glad you had that yesterday and you're talking to me today or you might've had it 20 minutes ago because it's such a universal thing that we struggle with and we treat our doubts as though they're true, like I'm not good enough, versus challenging our doubts. Who says doubting our doubts? Who says that's true? And yes, it's true, you might fail, you mightn't be as smart as some people think, blah, blah, blah, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do the very thing you're doing, or that you're not worthy of where you are right. And so that's what I've learned too. And it's not that there's an absence of the misgivings or the fear or the doubts, but something is more important that we move forward despite them.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Yeah, yeah, we have to. We have to Just so that we can kind of position this. It would be great if we could have a bit of a discussion about your definitions around fear and courage. So how do you see it? And I guess I always think it's helpful to talk a little bit about the neuroscience as well, and I know you write about this because I think the neuroscience helps us normalize what's going on for us and helps us put us in there.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Let's just simplify this in terms of just our brains and how they're wired, and of course we all have different personalities and we have different preferences. Some people are naturally more risk tolerant than others, so there's a trait aspect to when it comes to courage, right, some people are just more comfortable going out on a limb, taking risks, putting themselves in situations where they're winging it and figuring it out, than other people. But our brains are and there's a lot of neuroscience that just has proven this out are pre-programmed to be more sensitive to potential losses, to what could go wrong, than to potential gains, to discount future time. So we care more about how we'll feel this afternoon than how we might feel a year from now. How we might feel a year from now to rationalize inaction or cautiousness or indecision, to procrastinate.

Speaker 2: 10:29

We also love certainty. Our brains are wired for certainty and for control, and so often that preference to have certainty in our lives keeps us from doing the very things that would serve us most but which require creating more uncertainty in our lives, keeps us from doing the very things that would serve us most but which require creating more uncertainty in our lives, like making a change, going into a new situation, leaving a relationship where suddenly the future looks a whole lot unknown. Just recognizing that is how our brains are wired, and the world, of course, has changed a lot, even in the last 20 years, but our brains are still wired pretty much the same way as they were 60,000 years ago. So we get overwhelmed and we get anxious, even though it's actually a safer time to be alive than ever before.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Yeah, we forget that so much, don't we? Yeah, and how do you define courage then, so we can see that fear is such a human part of the human condition? How does courage stand alongside that?

Speaker 2: 11:30

So courage is obviously not the absence of fear, because we are wired to feel fear and thank goodness we have fear, or we would have all done more stupid things in our teenage years than we already did. It is there to keep us safe. So courage is taking action, choosing to take action despite the fact that there are risks. It's not always about there not being risks. There are sometimes risks, sometimes there's not risks, but it's taking action in the presence of risk and fear. So I have a little formula that courage is action over risk plus fear, but it's also there's two dimensions to it.

Speaker 2: 12:12

We often think of courage, as you know, feel the fear and do it anyway. Right, it's. Think of courage, as you know, feel the fear and do it anyway, right, it's like John Wayne's. You know, courage is feeling scared to death, but settling up anyway. It is this decision to move forward amid the fear. The reason I wrote the Courage Gap is because I came to realize in 2020 in Singapore, literally five years ago, that courage isn't only taking action amid the fear and the risk. It's also the management of our fear.

Speaker 1: 12:43

And.

Speaker 2: 12:44

I recall in 2020, march 20th 2020, my husband, andrew, had flown in from seeing our kids in the USA. It had actually been in New York. Covid, obviously, was already underway. Singapore had already had incredible measures. I said you know, you better get back, I'm worried they're going to close the borders, which they did literally a couple of days later. And he brought with him you know this runny nose and red eyes, and I remember kind of saying, yeah, maybe you should go get tested for this, the COVID virus. He goes I don't have COVID, I'm just jet lagged. I was like I don't know. Well, yeah, maybe you should get tested. I actually regret that because he went off to the Singapore University Hospital and as he walked in, the like heat detectors started going off and these men came out in sort of hazmat suits and dragged him off to a room and I did not see him for 30 days. You will remember that crazy time where people got locked up.

Speaker 2: 13:37

I remember you being really locked up, and I got locked up too obviously in a quarantine for 15 days with my son Ben and helper Debbie and the government calling three times a day with video to make sure we were in the apartment and we weren't leaving. And I had three kids in the US that were homeless because their school dorms had closed and they didn't know where to go and they couldn't come to Singapore. And Andrew had an IV. They thought it was in his lungs and he was the first person I knew. But most people knew who got COVID and of course it became sort of ubiquitous. Everyone had COVID in the end.

Speaker 2: 14:10

But at the time it was like and I remember just feeling overwhelmed with anxiety, jean, and it wasn't about what should I do? I couldn't go anywhere. There was not like, oh yeah, feel the fear and go do it anyway and go and apply for the job and go and go to the networking thing. There was nowhere to go For me in that moment. Courage was reigning in my extremely anxious thoughts and sitting still being the calmest version of myself that I could be in the moment, which meant honestly and that wasn't something I had to do like once a day, like doing an alley, doing it every few minutes, like I got this and my previous book, ironically called You've Got this, came out at exactly the same time, so I was sort of practicing what I'd written about in that too. But so often we don't realize that we make ourselves more afraid through our thinking than we need to be, and I think right now there's a lot of people who are more afraid than they need to be.

Speaker 2: 15:18

That's not to say that there isn't some validity to why they're feeling afraid. There's massive uncertainty and all of these things, but they're more afraid than they need to be and I think we also live in a culture, regardless of who's in the White House and tariffs and all of this stuff. I think we live in a culture and in a digital age where we are, the environment that we live in, that we swim in, that we exist in, makes us feel more afraid and less brave.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Yeah, that's so interesting. I've seen some research that Martha Beck was talking about she would be referring to it as anxiety, but talking about this relationship between our increased fear and anxiety, and I love the idea that maybe the courage that we need at the moment is to take charge of ourselves and, like you were having to do during that period and to see that so much of the fear that we're experiencing is actually being self-generated in response to what's going on in the world. But the media and social media is whipping us up to make it bigger and if we have the courage to calm ourselves, because that's what gets clicks right.

Speaker 2: 16:36

Absolutely, it's totally. And so I mean I would say, you know, maybe you need to just turn off the media for a bit just to recalibrate and reset your nervous system. And, jean, it's called a nervous system for a reason. It is a nervous system. We sometimes forget the word nervous system.

Speaker 2: 16:55

We are wired for nervousness and so the default is often to be nervous, to be a little uptight, a little wound up, and we can go through the world in this tangled ball of anxiety, sort of on alert to everything, like constantly waiting for the ball to drop and the sky to fall in. And that doesn't serve us. And we also know from studies that the more anxious we feel, the more we are operating when that stress response and that generalized anxiety like nothing in particular. Sometimes it's something in particular, but sometimes it's just this generalized anxiety. I'm just anxious about everything, everything that it actually constricts our thinking. It constricts, it shuts down the creative parts of our brain that could come up with more novel solutions.

Speaker 2: 17:48

So we just see this really narrow band of behavior. We're like, okay, I just have to. And we can't even see all the different things that we could do that might improve the situation. We become less creative, way more tunnel visioned, which keeps us from sometimes taking the very actions that would set us up, maybe even find a great opportunity in the midst of all of the chaos and the disruption, but because we're so stressed, we can't see it, and so, in the midst of times like this, like that day for me I'll never forget March 20th 2020, like the number one thing for me to do was to simply just sit and literally breathe and just calm the frick down.

Speaker 2: 18:32

Because in that moment I was fine, but it was easy to go. What if he does? What if the kids, like you know, like, just like I? I talking like that because that was sort of like the alternate state was to be in this, where you're not even breathing properly.

Speaker 1: 18:47

And so well amazing that in that moment, you were able to think about how do I courageously experience this, rather than living in acute anxiety. Which were able to think about how do I courageously experience this, rather than living in acute anxiety which I imagine you had to manage really hard.

Speaker 2: 19:01

I did Now as you probably know, I have my own Live Brave podcast and obviously shameless plug to listen to my podcast, but my previous episode I share that story and go into sort of the science of that, my previous episode. I share that story and go into sort of the science of that, the science of simply stopping to take a breath. And because it brings us into the present, when you are breathing in courage, breathe out fear, just noticing the breath, your thoughts aren't two days from now, your thoughts are on your breath and in the moment, right now, I'm safe, I am safe right now, on your breath and in the moment, right now, I'm safe, I am safe right now. And so to kind of reset ourselves at the ground level, just simply through that mindful breathing can be sometimes the most crucial and important and valuable thing for us to do when it comes to being brave.

Speaker 1: 19:52

Excellent Thanks, and I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes as well, so people can go and have a listen to that really practical advice. In your book, margie, you've outlined five steps to help us with this, to help us close our courage gap, intention, belief, connection, action and learning. I wonder if you could just bring these to life a bit. How can we use these five steps to help us in this time of fear and anxiety?

Speaker 2: 20:24

Before. I kind of just touch on them at a sort of a higher level and then we can deep dive wherever you'd like. Let me just say that if you think about behavioral change, one aspect of behavioral changes is at the emotional level, because emotions drive behavior. Another lot is at the cognitive level, like what we're telling ourselves is true, and the third is at the behavioral level, sometimes shifting even our posture and what we do actually can work in reverse to shift how we think and how we feel.

Speaker 2: 20:53

So I tap into all of those levers through this framework and I wanted to. Obviously I've written other books before, but I wanted to just break it down, distill it to the simplest essence of someone like knows they need to do something. And I'm guessing, jean, that you, like me, have had moments where you're like I know I need to do this and yet you're not doing it. And that fear is what's creating that gap between knowing and doing Like. It's not that you can't do it, it's not like you're not capable of doing it, it's just like, but you're not doing it. And it takes courage to close it.

Speaker 2: 21:27

And so I wanted to create five very tangible, actionable steps to close that gap between what it is we know we should do what we're capable of doing, what we have an insight that we absolutely know we should act on and then actually doing it, which is in that space is where our potential lives and our biggest future lives.

Speaker 2: 21:49

And so how do we close that gap? And so the first of those steps, yes, is intention, um, and underneath, that is really focusing on what it is you most want and not on what you are afraid of, not on what you fear, because often our attention goes to what it is we don't want, to the negative spaces oh, my God I hope I don't make a fool of myself it's often in the negative the economy, my money, my finances. You know we go to that. And unless we are clear about what we most want and really committed to a future positive state, our actions will be governed by avoiding what we fear a future negative state and so we can live our lives in a reactive mode, always moving away from what we don't want, versus proactively, deliberately, intentionally moving toward what it is we do want.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Great, I love that. I love that because there's so much energy in thinking about what we want. Great, I love that. I love that because there's so much energy in thinking about what we want. It inspires us at a deeper level and can create that energy to move.

Speaker 1: 22:57

I know that. The second is about belief, and you write in the book about the way we can work with our story and our narratives. And I really love this idea because I think we get caught in our story so much and from our upbringing, from experiences we've had in life, from what society is telling us we should and shouldn't be doing, how do we recraft that so we can write our own story, our own sense of what we believe is good for us?

Speaker 2: 23:27

story, our own sense of what we believe is good for us I think it's just starting at the base 101 level here is just simply recognizing that not everything you tell yourself is true. Yeah, that inner talk, that self-talk that goes on all of the time, that monkey mind, which is I don't know if you know who Richard Rory is he talks like often stinking thinking. We're often engaged in stinking thinking. We're talking down about ourselves, we're fear casting our future and we get stuck in those negative spaces and that negative narrative. So just recognizing not everything you tell yourself is true, and yet you are programmed, we're biased, to think what everything you tell yourself is true, and yet you are programmed, we're biased, to think what we're telling ourselves is true, and so we get stuck in our own thinking. It holds us captive, and so it is so important one to recognize.

Speaker 2: 24:23

The story I'm telling myself isn't necessarily true, but our stories aren't just descriptive, they're generative, they create our reality. They create sometimes those self-fulfilling prophecies and can keep us stuck and can make us stressed and can shortchange our future and keep us living too safely and when I say too safely, really deliberately we often live safer lives than serves us, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't be sensible about you know things that could put your life in harm, but often we're living emotionally like, oh, I don't want to risk failing and getting rejected. And so in this step of the book, I help people identify the stories that are limiting who they are and their experience of life and limiting their future. I help them identify what we call the vital lies that we may have bought into that make us feel better about ourselves. And I'm using this kind of 3P litmus test asking you is your story one making you feel more empowered?

Speaker 2: 25:27

Is it making you feel more purposeful in your life? Is it aligned with your values and is it expanding what's possible for you in the future? Or is it shrinking it Like? Is it just keeping you in the same stuck place you know, angry in blame, stuck in your own doubts, et cetera? And if not, what's another story Like? What is it you would need to believe that would enable you to move toward that vision, that positive outcome that you just identified in step one? What mindset would you need to be operating from? Because all behavior is belief driven and often we're telling ourselves a belief in something that's actually keeping us from taking the very actions that would actually move us toward what we want in our lives, and often, literally, I see so many people stuck in their own thinking and they're so attached to their rightness that they don't even realize how much they're making themselves an accomplice as well as a victim of the story that they're buying into.

Speaker 1: 26:28

Yeah, I think that's it's so powerful. I mean, I'm somebody who's spent many years in therapy, you know, done a lot of work on my own stories, and still I'm surprised by a story that shows up sometimes and thinking, wow, I can see that that is holding me back. And so there's something about almost mining for the stories that are holding us back and really kind of digging deep to find them.

Speaker 2: 26:53

But to your credit, and more power to you, and the fact that you do what you do and you're so impactful with so many people is because you've done the inner digging, you've done that mining and you've peeled back the layers of stories and then the stories and the stories underneath the stories, and then getting down to those deep iceberg stories that I wrote about, the ones that are not obvious. It's not me saying, oh, I'm not good with technology, it's like, no, they're way. At a more kind of core level, some deep story about our own worthiness. About our own worthiness, I am just deeply not lovable. Or I am inadequate on some measure that can keep us stuck on this treadmill of always striving, never arriving, always trying to prove but we can never prove enough or for long enough, et cetera. Or, you know, sabotaging ourselves. Even though we're working hard to succeed, we keep then sabotaging ourselves and we're like what the hell? Why did I do that? Why did I blow it in that meeting? And there's something underneath all of that and I think obviously therapy can be immensely helpful.

Speaker 2: 27:56

But just simply being reflective, I journal as one of my many practices and journaling I have found, and I've done it for years. Often I'm like what is it I'm telling myself and I'll write it down, like, ah, I can see it, I put it on paper. Like you are just spinning yourself a story here. What's another story that I could tell that would help me feel more positive, purposeful and powerful for those three Ps? And how do I feel when I tell myself that story? Well, and ah, how do I feel when I tell myself that story? Well, I feel a little more hopeful, I feel a little bit less like a failure or whatever it is, and I think that can just be incredibly liberating.

Speaker 2: 28:38

But it's a process we have to keep going through to your point. Some of our stories are deeply etched into us from our childhoods and we have to continually do it. And I don't think I don't think any of us ever get to a point where we are not vulnerable to some old story pulling us back upstream, even though we might feel like we've done so much work. I'm like God, here I am again. I can't believe I just did that again. I thought I dealt with that crap when I was 25. And here I am again, at 55, you know, doing the same silly thing. I'm like uh-huh, okay, okay. And then being kind to ourselves. But we'll get to that in a moment.

Speaker 1: 29:16

Yeah, really really good. Can you take us through the other three connection action learning? I'm slightly aware of time and what I will do is send all the links to your book so people really go and dig deep into these, and in your podcast as well. But it'd be great to hear you bring each of those to life as well.

Speaker 2: 29:34

Yes, Well, the third one, which is around embodying courage and connecting to the power of our own presence, but also to the power and the courage in others as well. And so I really dive deep into that one on how do we reset our nervous system at that ground level, our defensive self, when we are feeling wound up, tapping into how we hold ourselves, our posture, our body language, how we're breathing, how we're walking and talking and moving through the world, but also in tapping into our connection with others and setting courage rails up with those people who siphon our courage and stoke our doubt and fear. And so that's one I practice all the time, like all the time, just in terms of how do I hold myself, because sometimes I might be feeling a little flat and maybe that little self-talk is down. I'm like I'm going to hold myself like I've totally got this, and you know it sends a signal to our brain and going, hey, she's acting like she's got this, maybe I've got this. And so it's not a one-way street. What we think and feel isn't the only way to shift what we do. We can actually shift our behavior and our posture to impact how we think and how we feel. So our physiology and our psychology are very interlinked.

Speaker 2: 30:52

The fourth is stepping into discomfort. I know that Our willingness to feel uncomfortable is a huge unlock to what's possible for us. If you give yourself permission to feel uncomfortable, to do uncomfortable things, to embrace discomfort as the ticket price for what it is you most want, like whoa, it expands your future exponentially. Because when we give ourselves permission to feel anything, to feel rejected, to feel like a failure, to feel like a freaking idiot in front of people and I share a story in the book where I did exactly that, where I literally did something where I felt incredibly self-conscious and I like, honestly, I was really, really self-conscious. I thought I know what everyone's thinking, I'm a stalker and I know I look like a stalker, I'm feeling like a stalker, but I've got to go and do this thing to open up the door to an opportunity and sure enough it paid off. But I had to risk feeling really stupid and I don't even know what people were thinking, but I know that's how I was. Like I bet you they're thinking this, but just pushing through and risking one awkward, brave, uncomfortable minute. And so you know, to anyone listening right now, I would just say to you, like if you were going to do something that you knew was going to be really uncomfortable, but you gave yourself permission to feel uncomfortable, knowing that that is your cue to move forward. That's what you have to do to get to where you want to go. And that could be in a personal relationship. It could be just sharing something that's really vulnerable for you with someone. Or it could be in your career and putting your hand up and saying I want this bigger role and asking for support from your boss. It could be having a difficult conversation with a colleague and it's really awkward and uncomfortable, but heck, it can open the door to resolving an issue, to avoiding a whole lot of bad festering and all sorts of stuff down the track. So there's a huge power to embracing what's uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 32:58

And finally, the fifth step, which is to find the treasure when we trip, and that is the one around learning and growth. And as hard as it is for us to fail, it's even harder for us to learn from our failures. But unless we know how to pick ourselves up and to learn the lessons that every setback and struggle holds for us, then we can find ourselves living. Living the same year 20 times, because there's a difference between living the same year 20 times and 20 years of experience, and a lot of people get stuck repeating the same mistakes in different clothes because they haven't learned the lessons. And so that step is really about making peace with our own fallibility, extending grace inwards when we mess up, because we will, and mining the lessons, the nuggets of gold that exist within every failure and unwanted outcome that we find for ourselves, and not over-personalizing it, but also not deflecting it and blaming it, because often we do one or the other.

Speaker 1: 34:05

I think so important because when we fail, that kind of blame, that kind of internal dialogue actually can stop us then from taking risks in the future.

Speaker 1: 34:16

So if we're willing to kind of not go into that self-blame situation there, then I think that is really important.

Speaker 1: 34:23

So, learning from failure I'm noticing as you're talking, maggie, that there's lots coming up for me about situations in my own life, in my working life, where I'm thinking, oh, you know what I'm holding back there, or because that failed in the past, I'm not willing to have another go, or I'm not willing to do something different. I'm beginning to think, oh, my goodness, there's lots of things that are going on there, we're drawing to a close and there's so much richness in what you're sharing. So I will, as I said, link people to your book and encourage them to go and read it and kind of have that sense of how can I be more courageous in my own life? But in this time that we're living now, where there's a lot of fear we've talked a bit about that I wonder if you could say a little bit about how we can support each other so that we don't end up in a fear spiral at the moment, and how we move and close that courage gap and move forward into bravery.

Speaker 2: 35:22

Well, let me just ask you a question have you ever thought to yourself oh, I just feel too encouraged. No, have you ever had a client or anyone say oh my gosh, people just keep encouraging me.

Speaker 1: 35:39

No, that's so true, I'm so done with all the encouragement.

Speaker 2: 35:43

You know, encouragement is like verbal sunshine and I know this myself that a few words of encouragement can make someone's day. But I've also heard so many anecdotes and I've experienced this myself where in some moments where we're like do I, don't, I Do, I have what it takes or not? Have I got this or not? Should I put my hand up? Should I put myself forward? Should I lean in and have that tough conversation or advocate for myself or push back on something, or not? Someone saying to us I believe in you, you've totally got this, yes, you can do it. Yes, give yourself permission, go for it. What the heck you know, if not now, when? Can literally change the trajectory of people's careers?

Speaker 2: 36:34

And when I remember doing my PhD dissertation, I did it focused on women's leadership and what distinguishes women who make it to C-suite roles in multinational corporations. That was my data sample and every single one of those women looked back and could identify specific times in their careers when someone had said to them oh, you should do this role, and they were like that role I mean me or they'd said you could totally be CEO or you could be, and they hadn't even seen that as a possibility for themselves. They didn't kind of set out with an agenda Like I want to get to this point that they didn't even realize that, what would be possible for them, until others pointed it out and said you've got this totally, you could do that, you can learn what you need to learn and so. But I also think it's true in the workplaces or in, you know, take out gender.

Speaker 2: 37:25

If courage is two levers, two dimensions one is the management of fear and two it is action in the presence of it then each of us can help to one, lessen other people's fears and two, to help them be a little bit braver in the face of what they're dealing with. So don't stoke people's doubts, but stoke their belief, stoke their own self-trust, stoke their aspirations and go yeah, you can totally do that, I totally believe in it. And you have no idea how that. There's a ripple effect to that and you know change happens in circles, not rows. And when you put yourself in places where you're encouraging people one, it comes back to you in the moments you mightn't even realize it's going to, but you need it. And two, those people can become sources of encouragement for others too.

Speaker 1: 38:12

That's fantastic. So our encouragement today is to, wherever you're listening, at whatever time you're listening, to think who can I go and encourage today or tomorrow? Who can I help build up? Because in doing each of that, we help each of us overcome our fear and move forward and be courageous. Oh, margie, I'm feeling really energised. We've recorded this early my time 7am Singapore time so the sun has risen while I've been talking to you. It's probably setting where you are, and I love certainly is. We can have this conversation about this really important topic and I'm so grateful that you are writing about this, that you're speaking about it, that you're stepping through your own courage to encourage each of us to be courageous. Thank you so much. As I've said, I'll put the links to how you can find Margie. She's some wonderful resources. There's also a great online courage gap assessment tool which you can take from the website, and I'll put a link to that as well.

Speaker 2: 39:19

Thank you. Look, jean, it's been wonderful seeing you again and talking and, yes, I've started your day and you've kept out my day, so you're living in my future. So thank you again and I appreciate you just giving me the opportunity to share what I feel so passionate about in my own insights with your many, many fans and followers. So thank you. Thank you, arke.

Speaker 1: 39:47

Thanks for listening to the fulfilled leader. If this episode resonated, share it with another leader or friend, and don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can even rate and review. You can find more support and resources at jeanbalfourcom, or come and say hello on LinkedIn. Take care and keep leading with heart.