Speaker 1: 0:01

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 Fulfilled Leader. It's my pleasure today to welcome Dr Jonathan Marshall to the podcast. Welcome, Jonathan.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Let me tell you a little bit about Jonathan before we dive into our conversation. He helps leaders and teams develop performance, authentic well-being and clearer purpose. He is a psychologist and executive coach with over 30 years' experience supporting people who are thriving on paper but stretched underneath. I love this. This is so true for so many of us. His work blends leadership development, psychological depth and meaningful change. Leaders, teams and organizations come to him when they're navigating complexity, burnout or the quiet cost of constant effectiveness. He trained at Stanford and did a BA and PhD there, and then completed his postdoctoral work at Harvard. He began integrating psychology and leadershipaching at Harvard Business School, where he discovered that the same principles that help high performers in therapy also drive leadership effectiveness.

Speaker 1: 2:33

He is a third-generation Singaporean who has lived across the US, europe and Asia. Earlier chapters of his career included serving as a naval officer, helping build the startup that became Yahoo Mail and being on faculty at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS. He's also a professional certified coach and a certified integral coach. Certified integral coach. Jonathan is a mindfulness practitioner, an avid traveler and finds inspiration at the potter's wheel, where failure is a natural part of creation. It reminds him that growth, whether in leadership, life or ceramics, comes when we dare to experiment, risk failure and develop resilience. Oh, I love that, jonathan, welcome to them.

Speaker 2: 3:29

So really is that me?

Speaker 1: 3:31

it really is you. So as we come into this conversation, let me ask you just to start how's work at the moment?

Speaker 2: 3:40

good, it's been good. I took my foot off the pedal when my mom was very sick and after she died I sort of took more time traveling a bit, and so groups that I was working with, uh, teaching, I kind of let that slip for a while, because when she was sick, if I had a workshop in bangkok, you can't cancel a group of people, but with with an individual you can reschedule, and so now I'm coming back into working with groups and back on that stage again and it's been lovely. It's been a little bit of teething because something has to give to make room for that, and so the last few months has been a bit of how to juggle the inbox, but it feels pretty good, thanks good, good.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Yeah, that juggling of our lives and our work and kind of holding those two, it's really important, and I think that making space for what matters to us is something that we're often not very good at in our working lives, I think.

Speaker 2: 4:42

So taking care of your mum, for example, it's really important or you know, I decided a few days ago, right, I'm gonna head off to this lovely thai monastery that I occasionally go to in in the jungle, about five hours outside of bangkok, and like, yeah, I'm out, I'm out of touch for a few days. It just seemed like important a little break to have, do a bit of meditation, spend time with some lovely monks and come back.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Making time for your inner world yeah, brilliant. We're going to spend time today talking about this link between psychology and performance and before we do that, it would be great if you could just share a little bit about how you came to be doing the work that you're doing. What was your journey to here? I've kind of shared your bio, but it's always good to hear from you how you came to be doing this work.

Speaker 2: 5:38

You know, I've often wondered how did I get there, particularly because I'm into the mind-body connection and my earliest memories of it are pretty self-centered. I was the fourth child of four and so my sisters would always tell me what to do. My three older sisters and sister number three, was always like you know, get me an Apple. Do this change the channel on the TV? Because we didn't have a remote. And I remember as a little kid because I was four or five years younger than her thinking why is it always me who has to change the channel on the TV? Why do I have to get her an apple? Why would she never get me an apple from the fridge if I'd wanted one? And sometimes I'm sure she asked me simply so that she could be a bit sadistic and powerful. And I remember in a comic seeing something about hypnosis and I thought one day I'll be able to hypnotize my sister. So she gets an apple from the fridge for me.

Speaker 2: 6:28

I have no idea if that's where it began, but I always had an interest in the mind body connection and doctoral work was on using clinical hypnosis for the treatment of a chronic depression, um, but you know stories of the magic of the mind and people walking on hot coals, and I was raised in singapore, so you know, at ta, at Thai Pusam, where people like hook, put hooks into their bodies as they carry these strange altars walking down the street. So all of that. There was a magic in the culture in which I grew up. In my father, though, an atheist Jew, clearly there are forces that we don't know about, and his stories were amazing and captivating.

Speaker 2: 7:09

And I think, although I had other ambitions too, like I wanted to be an engineer creating structures and third world environments that psychology was a love from very early on, and when I to university, I discovered not that many women studying engineering and I had just done two and a half years military service, so I was very interested in spending time with women and the engineering classes went the way. I loved anthropology more than psychology, but I thought a BA in psychology is pretty useless, but an anthropology is surely more useless. So I chose psychology and it's been a love. Actually, I've been very lucky to have found something that worked for me. I couldn't have imagined then that I would do what I do now, but if I had known this job existed, I think I would have wanted it.

Speaker 1: 8:02

I love that. I imagine that you and I are at a similar age. Actually I'm probably a bit older, but certainly when I was leaving school, psychology wasn't on everybody's radar as a field of study, as it is now, but it really wasn't. It was like a sort of side thing that very few people knew about and specifically had to choose to go into. So I love that you sort of fell into it and then it became your world and your working life really.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Yeah, I think psychiatry has always been a thing, but psychology? I remember a relative of mine kind of looking down on me and saying, knowing it was sexist. He was saying isn't that a girl's subject? And my family like when my father died, my 10 immediate relatives are all women, so there's a strong sense of no mess with that sort of sexism. Part of me is like, well, yeah, I get what you mean and I still know I want this. This is what I want for now.

Speaker 2: 9:03

But I spent a long time trying to work out what I want to do when I grow up. But psychology kept coming back into the path. And, yeah, during graduate school, at one point I literally wanted to quit after my first year and flip burgers. My fantasy was flipping burgers in Las Vegas and that's actually. I was done with the ivory tower. I wanted my friends to be, you know, gangsters and prostitutes and people from the underworld and and a variety of life that I wasn't getting in the very beautiful and lovely comfortable world stanford which was great. But it felt unreal and my supervisor played a brilliant trick on me for which I will always appreciate him much as I hated him for it at the time and I went on and became a psychologist.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Brilliant. There's a bit of your career when you worked at Yahoo Mail, and I read a story on your LinkedIn profile recently, which was a role that you played in something that affects all of us every day, so I wonder if you would mind sharing that story.

Speaker 2: 10:06

Yeah, it's kind of interesting one. The company was called 411, and we created what was then called Rocket Mail. Hotmail had just come out and we were like hot on the tails of it with this word based email and we had all kinds of cool things. So we started to have attachments. You know, like you can attach a document to an email, and attachments were called two of two or the long version is part two of two.

Speaker 2: 10:31

And I said to the engineers one day, what's one of two? And they were playing foosball at the time, it was just 20 of us in the company and they laughed at me and I said no, I'm really serious, what is one of two? And they said, well, obviously, part one of two is the body of the email. Part two of two is the thing you attach to it. And I was like, well, that's a dumb name, no one knows what it means.

Speaker 2: 10:54

And we had a competition. They said you're being pedantic or silly. It was just like the non-engineers. They understand nothing. And they looked at me like you are such a newbie to the internet I'm thinking I'm working in an internet firm. If I'm a newbie, how about the rest of the world?

Speaker 2: 11:11

And so I said to them if we ask Kimmy who was the temp, everybody had a crush on who was at the front desk if she knows what one of two means, then you win, but if she has no clue, then you guys change the name, because two of two means nothing to nobody. And so we all went to Kimmy the whole foosball table of engineers and went to Kimmy and I said what's one of two? She's like I have no idea, but I know two of two is the thing you can click, the icon you can click at the end of an email. And it was done. And now the word attachment is the one chosen. We didn't choose, we didn't come up, I think, with the word attachment at that time, but it was clear two of two was not going to be the right word for everybody to use so you were leading into how we now call attachment, and the right thing.

Speaker 2: 11:58

How exciting to be part of something at that time there was a guy who was in charge of graphics, one person, so it was a firm of 20 people and suddenly there was a little stampede, as everybody from HR and customer service like we're going that way, which is like five people, and they're like come, come. So I ran over, we all crowded around Chang's Cube as we saw, line by line, an image appearing in an email. It was the first time any of us had ever seen an image in an email and we're watching it come across line by line because the slow internet connections, whatever, I don't know. And I'm looking at this going, I know I have witnessed something enormous, but I don't have a clue the ramifications of this. I'm like this is big, this is a big moment, but it was like, and now, yes, wow, you know like everything is so graphical, everything is so visual you can't imagine an email without images alone.

Speaker 2: 12:59

It was exciting. We had beds in the offices at around 6 or 6.30. The chief engineer he wasn't the chief, but he was the brains would walk by and you'd shout a number and I didn't know what I was shouting, so I had to say 34 or 25. And he'd call his girlfriend with all the numbers and she'd go to Subway Sandwich and buy the Subway Sandwiches associated with that number. So I always got like spam or bologna or something I didn't really want. I was like want whatever, it's gonna be exciting and um. So it was an intense environment where your main concerns were making sure you walk in clean clothes, because you had to go home to get a clothes that were clean wow, the start of the internet really is an amazing, amazing experience to have.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Yeah, it was exciting yeah, so you've worked in this kind of connection between psychology, leadership and elite performers, and I know I've looked at some of the work that you've done around this and seen that you've made some really strong connections between elite performers and leaders, and I'd love it if we could talk a bit about that and particularly about how we can then help, because you and I are both curious about helping leaders to be themselves, to be their best. If we could talk a bit about that. That would be great.

Speaker 2: 14:20

I think of four things in particular that stand out to me, but I don't think they're of equal value. So one is the energy, like wanting to get somewhere and it could be I want to help my community, or I want to get rich, or I want to be a good tennis player or the best tennis player like simply having the energy and the striving, the effort. Another is having the vision, what it is you want, because if you don't know what you want, you're less likely to get there, and so if you have a sense of what you want, a lot fits into place and a lot of people you know very capable. All the rest of it it's they kind of go I don't really know what I want and I think they can tailspin. The third thing would be the ability to handle failure, because if you know what you want, you're going to probably fail a bunch of times to get there. I don't remember how many times. Like the experiments on the light bulb took place before they found an incandescent light bulb. Like you've got to be prepared to fail.

Speaker 2: 15:18

I think it was roger federer who has won wimbledon tennis eight times, which is a record like no one's ever done it before, and he said at a graduation at Dartmouth how, in fact, he only won 54% of his points. So, debatably, the world's greatest tennis player fails 46% of the time, and so amazing. 46% of the time and so amazing, right? So I think his point in that is you have to let go of failure. You fail, you move on, you fail, you move on. And I think that's why entrepreneurs you know, I was talking to a senior leader at P&G who told me she'd just come from a talk of some entrepreneur who had failed seven times and gone bankrupt and maxed the credit cards and she said my colleagues and I just cringe and want to vomit. We feel nauseous at such stories because they're a very conservative kind of leadership. Uh, you want to trailblaze, you have to face failure and and um.

Speaker 2: 16:19

So I think that's an important component and if there were a fourth one that I would put in, it would be agreeability. If you are someone who people like they're going to help you along the way, more it's going to make a difference. So you don't have to. You can be a grumpy scientist and be a trailblazer in science to be leading people. And if you need other people to help you get a leg up, then being mentorable or likable or just someone people incline towards is important. I think of one leader I know who is um, when the nuts and the bolts of it is not really strong, but people love her. She evokes that in people and they will cover for her, which makes her a great leader. Now some of her colleagues resent her because they go well, she's not good at the math and the strategy and all the rest of it. The thought is she compensates for all those weaknesses by the fact people out of the woodwork will appear to help her. She just got that, and so I think agreeability makes a lot of difference.

Speaker 1: 17:28

That's a particularly interesting one. That one because I often hear from leaders. I have to learn to do things and not worry about whether people like me, and there's quite a strong rhetoric against likability, so I'm really curious about this. I agree with you. I think being a person people want to be around really has a big impact for leaders and leaders who people don't want to be around, and we met enough of those in our journeys do also cause some challenges.

Speaker 1: 17:56

But I'm really yeah, I guess I'm really curious to unpack this a bit this piece about likability.

Speaker 2: 18:02

That's really intriguing. I like the way you kind of made that juxtaposition. I suppose leaders need to be able to taste bitter to make decisions for which they will be hated, because I think as a leader you create change and by almost by definition, change upsets someone. Even good change, someone's somewhere, is going to be irritated because we don't like change, and so you've got to be able to taste bitter.

Speaker 1: 18:28

At the same time, if you're someone, people naturally inclined to helping, it's just going to be less bitter, it's going to be easier so there's that tension of making decisions that are uncomfortable for people and somehow managing that in a way that still holds the respect of the people you're making those decisions with, I guess so someone who's had a great influence on me, ron Heifetz at Harvard.

Speaker 2: 18:56

he describes he's a leadership professor how you need to put pressure into a system to create change. You've got to raise the heat, is his phrase, and and I think he's right. But at the same time you also need to increase people's tolerance for that distress. And if you are a leader who is liked, if you're someone who, like you, know what I don't agree with his policy, but I really do think he's a good bloke. It increases people's capacity to handle the heat that you're raising. So it's got the macho side of you've got to push, but it's also got for want of a better term, if we're just going to dichotomize the feminine side of creating warmth in a positive way.

Speaker 1: 19:37

Oh, I really love this. This is really, really important and maybe something that we're not bringing to the surface enough. And I think it's an even more important at the moment because people are under the most enormous pressure at work with all the stuff that I don't need to mention, that everybody knows about, and so having warmth at work and having some sense of security around relationships, even if you don't feel security around the work, seems really really important.

Speaker 2: 20:11

I think so. I think we are social animals. We kind of are evolved to be in tribes of whatever it is 100 to 140 people. We spend more time at work than doing anything else except sleep, and that. Even that I'm not sure about for some people.

Speaker 2: 20:28

So if we can create an atmosphere of agreeability and warmth, it's just going to fit better with who we are fantastic yeah, molly rogers, the general manager of longchamp singapore, published a book called Emotional Inclusion and she's pushing this agenda of creating environments at work where people are emotionally literate and welcoming of where people are at, so that we don't have to show a corporate fake face. I think it's important. Like it creates, it's ultimately making a return on investment. It's an important financial decision to create that much as I think the real value in it is because it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Yeah me too Me too so important, perhaps linked to that, then, one of the things that I'm curious about is I fundamentally believe that we lead from ourselves, so I'm a leader from who I am is my main leadership tool, if you could argue. And the whole of our experience impacts that, including our early years. And I'm curious from a psychologist perspective and you're a psychologist who's worked in leadership how do our early years impact us as leaders?

Speaker 2: 21:46

probably quite a lot. Um, there's one study on identical twins, separated at birth, I think, at university, minnesota, and that tried to work out were these identical twins, how were they in terms of leadership? And if they're exactly the same, you can say it's nature, and if it's not, then it's nurture. And they came out with the unfortunate, convenient statistic of it's 50-50. So you know, I think it's got a long way to go on that stuff in the biological basis of leadership, but there's probably something in it.

Speaker 2: 22:18

But I think childhood does make a difference, the culture we're raised in. If you're raised in an environment where achievements were important, you know, oh, you're a lovable son because you did well, then maybe some kind of praising for achievement. Whereas if, let's say, I grew up in a highly conflictual family, I might be more naturally inclined towards mediation and conflict resolution. I might be the kind of leader that brings people together who are in conflict with each other, but I personally might avoid being in conflict and saying no and asserting boundaries. So I think the environments we grew up in do make a big difference.

Speaker 2: 23:09

The work on attachment theory has come into business school programs and been very, very successful. So understanding how do you attach to people. So as a little child you learn to attach to the primary figures in your life in a particular way. That seems to carry on through adulthood and even into how you are as a leader. So if there were one chapter I would say to your listeners to consider reading about would be what is attachment theory in leadership? If I'm insecurely attached, how does my anxiety affect the way I relate? If I'm avoidantly attached, how does my anxiety affect the way I relate if I'm avoidantly attached.

Speaker 1: 23:44

Sorry, can I just? Can I pause you there Can? You say a bit about that, that attachments Just explain it a bit more about attachment.

Speaker 2: 23:50

Yes, it's a vast topic.

Speaker 2: 23:54

Hence I kind of like, kind of skirt you. So in an early experiment they got mothers and their little babies in a room and then the mother briefly left the room and one of baby would go, oh, where's mommy? And then mommy would come back a few moments later and they'd be oh, mommy's there. And they're like man, there's a securely attached baby, you know, well done. Plus another group of babies, like your money would leave the room and they're like beside themselves with anxiety and their mommy comes out and they hang on and they won't let go and they they won't explore the rest of the room and the rest of the toys because mummy's abandoned them and it feels terrible. Now they're the anxiously attached. Now fast forward 30 years. That's the same kind of relationship.

Speaker 2: 24:37

The relation they had with mummy's leg that they were holding on to is the relationship they're having with their spouse and their colleagues, where they become overly like am I okay? Tell me. You know, it's the classic, you know, uh, sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart, do you still love me? It's like yes, I loved you before you last woke me up 20 minutes ago. But we all fit into that to some level. The avoidantly attached is the one who, uh, you know, mummy leaves the room and they might pretend not to notice. But you know they noticed and mom comes back and they're like pretending that it doesn't make a difference. But it makes a difference. And then the poor, unfortunate ones who are called the ambivalent or the disorganized are the ones where they get anxious and avoid, so they might hold on to mommy and then beat mommy's leg at the same time.

Speaker 2: 25:24

So, it's that push-pull that you see later on in life, of saying to your colleague oh, this is great work, if only you'd done it. Da-da-da-da-da-da way. It's like that praise and I need you, and I need you to like me and let me spew my hostility at you for the fact that it could have been better, or there's some other mistake, or it's that that push and pull, and that's a very distressing one. Now, attachment styles can change, but, gosh, are they robust? They are robust, they can change, but it's not trivial.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Um, yeah, yeah, so I think this is such an important thing. A personal disclosure I've done a lot of work on my own attachments I won't share the whole story, but I have shifted it.

Speaker 1: 26:10

But I agree with you really fundamentally hard work, but even knowing it, even if we can't shift, it makes a big difference as a leader. So my natural star would be the needy leader. So I think. So my natural star would be the needy clinging to mommy's leg. Yes, so that as a leader, means that I'm then checking in with people all the time. Am I doing all right, do you like me? You know all of those things which just then becomes needy for the people who are?

Speaker 2: 26:35

leading me and annoying actually, because they're like we're just here to do a job, gene, leave us alone yes, do we have to have another monday morning check-in about how is everybody feeling, which in some groups is great, but if you have an avoiding person, they'll be like, oh, is she going to ask us to do mindfulness now?

Speaker 1: 26:52

I'm laughing so much because that's my team style, so okay yeah, yeah, we're always checking in um. Mostly I work with people who are okay about it. Thank goodness for them um.

Speaker 2: 27:05

But yeah, it can be beautiful and then it can be great, not necessarily because everyone's anxious, but because it it resonates. But if there's somebody who is very, uh, disinterested in emotional connection, well then they feel isolated so it's really important.

Speaker 1: 27:22

It's just a really beautiful example of how knowing ourselves as a leader and knowing our styles is really fundamentally important. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2: 27:32

Yeah, it makes a big difference, and birth order can have a little bit of an effect. Again, not to make too big a deal of it, like all of these things, like the extent to which they have an effect, is very weak. So what you can do is you can take these other famous leaders and let's work backwards and see. You know, conservative leaders tend to be first born sons, but if you just look at the males and risk taking leaders tend to be the last. And then with females it's a bit different. But you can go backwards, but you can't predict going forwards. It's statistically significant, they say, but not clinically significant. You can't say because you had a bad relationship with your father, you're going to be a good leader. But you can say a remarkable number of men in leadership had good relationships with their mom and bad relationships with their dad. With women it's different.

Speaker 2: 28:24

Now again, most of this research is done in places like the United States. In Western culture it's changing a lot. But so if first born children as a girl, as fathers tend to care less about gender stereotypes, so they're more likely to encourage the girl to comfortably take what are stereotypically masculine roles, to be assertive, to be goal-directed, and so there's a disproportionate number of firstborn women in positions of leadership. It's kind of interesting to look at. Okay, so the girl's got on well with dad. At. Okay, so the girls got on well with dad and the boys got on badly with dad.

Speaker 2: 29:05

But again, you can't make too much of it. There's something that I remember being taught that the first study on birth order, um, which I think is kind of fascinating was done, I think, by the royal air force of the uk, where they trained a bunch of pilots and then asked the pilots do you want to be a fighter pilot, so you're operating kind of on your own, or do you want to be a bomber pilot, where you've got, I think, seven other colleagues with you in the plane? And lo and behold, the firstborns chose to be bombers and the lastborn chose to be fighter pilots in general. And I think that was the first research finding to go whoa, birth order has an impact here. You know why and how and what's going on, but again, only a little bit of impact.

Speaker 2: 29:52

I wouldn't get bent out of shape about it.

Speaker 1: 29:55

But both of these examples attachment theory and birth order are small examples of the whole story of our childhood journey and how that's impacting us. You know our education, where we grew up, our socioeconomic situation Worth inquiry, I think, for us as leaders, because every part of that will be playing out in how we're leading, because every part of that will be playing out in how we're leading, and I think for all of us we can just be curious about it and say you know how much did growing up in a family that was well off versus a family that was struggling for money? How is that impacting my relationship to money at work and how is that impacting how I'm leading in relation to money at work and all of those things? I think is something for us to be really curious about as leaders.

Speaker 2: 30:45

Yes, for me, I think the big thing to be curious about as leaders is narcissism. Oh, say a bit more about that.

Speaker 2: 30:52

That's my favorite topic in a way, I think, as leaders, our narcissism is our occupational hazard. Like if you are an air traffic controller, your occupational hazard, I guess, is your hearing gets blown out. But if you're a leader, people will look up to you, people will find you more attractive, people will laugh at your jokes longer, and it makes one feel important and inflated and good. And we can be stupid and do dumb things, thinking we are entitled. But I think as we go into leadership, that's the one we have to be most careful of, because we will be encouraged to believe others nonsense. So I think that's the big one to look out for. I noticed it myself the other day.

Speaker 2: 31:39

I was running a workshop around grief. A member of a team had died and there were some folk who were laughing and avoiding me and their backs were facing away from me and I'd said only come if you want to. And I could feel in myself feeling, oh, they're going to ruin it, like I've worked so hard to try and prepare this sensitive workshop. And then they are, you know, putting a bomb in the work that I've tried to do for all these people and my narcissism was being affected like I'm, like they shouldn't do that. I want to criticize them and say don't. And I'm like, yep, that's my insecurity arising, you know, will I have failed at doing a workshop and so trying to be mindful of it and just you know, take a step back and go whatever. It's their workshop. If it doesn't work, it's their problem, not mine.

Speaker 1: 32:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean the way I kind of work with this in myself is often, as regularly as I remember, in a way asking myself about decisions or about the way I'm seeing something. Is this about my ego and about me, or is this about the greater good for the organization and the team? And in fact, in the work I've done in teaching coaches and they ask me about sharing stuff and coaching and I just bring it back to this filter all the time. If it's about you, don't share it. If it's about something that you think is worth sharing in the interest of the client, that's a whole different story and if we can hold that question, I think it can be really powerful for us in a leadership position to stop it being about us in that narcissistic way.

Speaker 1: 33:19

What about the role that fear plays for leaders? You know we're living in times where a lot of the leaders I work with are actually fearful themselves for their jobs, or they're fearful that they'll drop balls because they've got too much work to do, or they're fearful of the responsibility that they're being given. How can we work with leaders around fear, particularly because we know that drive is a really important part of leadership, and yet there's a kind of fear, I think, pulling against it sometimes.

Speaker 2: 33:51

I'd venture that the primary drive for leadership is fear and, in fact, maybe foremost achievement, that, fundamentally, we strive so hard to compensate for something. Someone I know has a profound fear of quote dying cold, poor and under a bridge. That's a very deep fear. Who is this person today? A whiz kid, financial guru? The politicians I've worked with and I haven't worked with a lot uh, core fear. Like in core fear.

Speaker 2: 34:30

I think that most of us have a one single core fear and their core fear. Number of them has been I'm marginal, I'm not noticed, and so what do they do? They're in front of the cameras, you know they become a politician. Uh, working with mma fighters. Uh, kind of boxing.

Speaker 2: 34:49

Uh, a number of those champions core fear. One in particular I'm thinking of was I'm weak and pathetic. So we're compensating, like these extraordinary performers are often compensating for a deep insecurity which they may not know they have until they meet someone like you or me and and start looking at what is my real motivation. It's not everybody, but I would say the vast majority, and so I think fear plays a huge part, and it's quite common when people see gosh. I am doing this because I feel unworthy and I'm trying to compensate for it, and I want to save my community from this terrible thing that's happening and be their leader to protect them. Because of some fear I have inside that maybe I'm unsafe and so I have to create safety for others, or maybe I'm insignificant so I have to create significance for others. They'll fear if I tinker with this deeply held anxiety, this neurosis. Well, maybe I'll just become like a blancmange and have no energy to do anything. I'll just be a blob.

Speaker 1: 35:53

I'll just sit on the couch and never move and I hear that a lot, that kind of concern that if you tinker with my fundamental drive, this deeply held fear which may go back to very far away childhood or maybe more recent, that this deep energy that I have to achieve and change things will go away. And I'm curious about your experience of that. I mean, I can speak for myself on that. I've had a lot of therapy. It's a secret the more work I've done on myself, the more my drive has felt clean. It hasn't gone away. I'm no less driven now than I was when I was a young girl. I was laughing about it with my family recently because we found our old Monopoly set and it's got Jean written on the front of it.

Speaker 1: 36:44

My sister complained about how competitively I used to play. But as I've become more whole in myself, more integrated, I guess my drive hasn't disappeared, but it's become more less tinged with the fear, I guess, or the things that I'm trying to prove. It's become more about what I want to do, which is to help people make a difference in the world, those things. So I wonder whether your experience of working with leaders is the same. When we face into our deepest fears, it doesn't stop us wanting to make an impact, be in the world.

Speaker 2: 37:20

I think that describes it beautifully. I think in the initial part of the process, for some people there may be a dip. It's like I'm pushing so hard so I can be the financial wizard, and then, when they're like I don't need to, I have more than enough money, the $6 million I got in last year's bonus is probably enough to mean I can take a two-week holiday this year. So they may indeed have a dip in terms of that tremendous efforting. But it seems to me that as the fear declines, another force starts to arise, which is a more intrinsic motivation, something that feels churro, I think when you said cleaner, a more intrinsic motivation, something that feels stronger, I think when you said cleaner. I suspect it's the same thing of I'm doing this as a natural extension of who I am, as opposed to compensate for a deep insecurity.

Speaker 1: 38:11

That's great. So we're beginning to come to the end of our time together, but I wonder if there's anything else about this connection, particularly between ourselves and how we show up as leaders, that you'd like to make?

Speaker 2: 38:24

yeah maybe um, I think that's on cowardice. I think those who've had the courage to step forward, to lead may do a bad job. A good job may do something. In between. They have their own fears and all the rest of it. Uh, it's going to be a mixed bag, but the fact they've stepped forward is something pretty cool.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Those who don't step forward and I kind of look at myself in the mirror and go is that me? And I taught leadership for years, but was I leading? Uh, that we don't change much, and that part of that may be wise and part of that might be fear. I've twice been asked to been involved in senior parts of political parties and I said no because I like that's not who I want to be or that's not who I am, but part of me wonders is that out of fear? Was that I was afraid of the narcissism that I might be tempted to indulge in? Was it that I didn't want to face these tough questions?

Speaker 2: 39:28

I can have a nice, clean, simple, pure life of being virtuous on faculty or doing my job, as opposed to get into the muddy ugly, stinky life of politics, and I think we have to examine ourselves if we don't step forward and become aware of what needs to be done and to try and create change. Is this actually cowardice? And so, yeah, I think that's important. I think it's important to acknowledge the bravery of those who step forward to lead and the fact that they're going to be imperfect, because I guess, unless you're Jesus or the Buddha, you are imperfect. Bravery of those who step forward to lead and the fact that they're going to be imperfect because I guess, unless you're jesus or the buddha, you are imperfect, and that those of us who don't step forward to create change, we're just being perhaps sometimes backstreet drivers who are cowards wow, that's powerful.

Speaker 1: 40:15

There's two things that come up for me there. One is about how we support those who need some support in order to find the courage and that's important, I think, and you and I can both play a role in that and the other is about how we honour those who found the courage and don't be backseat drivers, and we honour how hard the leadership journey is and what a cost it is for people. It comes sometimes with privilege and rewards, but it also comes at a big cost, and it's up to us to honour that and be grateful to people who are willing to step up and lead. I think.

Speaker 2: 40:49

I remember a student of mine who's a mid-level politician in this country and he had such a firm resolve to no longer be involved in corruption. And I saw him a couple of years later and he was more senior now because he'd done this degree and whatever I said. So how he said it's not as easy as I want it to be, and I think what he was saying is no, you want to create change. And I'm like thank God that's not me, I would have such a hard time with that. But if somebody is going to be in a position of leadership where there's going to be the ugliness of corruption, I'm so glad it's him, because fundamentally I trust the guy. But you know how, how brave like I, I'm taking the easy option.

Speaker 1: 41:41

Yeah, I get to be a doctor who does nice things to help people and he does the ugly things, which I'm glad he does yeah, yeah, I'm grateful to our leaders too, so, on that note, I will share in the show notes information about how people can find you, jonathan, if they would like to work with you, and I know that you're working with teams, with organizations and with individuals, so certainly share that. I've loved our conversation.

Speaker 1: 42:13

I love your considered energy, your considered thoughtfulness around the work that you're doing, and I look forward to continuing to have conversations with you, and I know that there's some beautiful gems here for the people who are listening, so thank you.

Speaker 2: 42:30

It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much, really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 42:36

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.