High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 375: How to Master Your Mindset as an Entrepreneur with Dr. Lauren Tashman, Performance Coach

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

Dr. Lauren S. Tashman, CMPC is a Performance Coach based in New York City. Through her private practice, Align Performance, LLC, she works with clients on mindset, leadership, and team/organization culture. She is also a Master Coach with Valor Performance, providing leadership and performance coaching to ignite and sustain peak performance. Lauren received her PhD in Educational Psychology with a major in Sport Psychology from Florida State University while also researching expert performance in SWAT police officers and critical care nurses under the direction of Drs. K. Anders Ericsson, David Eccles, and Paul Ward. She has almost 20 years experience performance coaching, with diverse clients in sport including 6 years at the international/Olympic level as well as clients outside of sport in various sectors of business, tech, law, healthcare, and the performing arts.  Lauren was a professor in Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology at Barry University for almost 8 years and continues to teach and mentor graduate students for John F. Kennedy University and Holy Names University. She has co-edited three books and has delivered workshops, webinars, seminars, lectures, and panels both nationally and internationally to a wide variety of audiences. She is also the co-host of The Path Distilled podcast which aims to explore diverse stories of success, failure, and greatness as well as examine the development of and science behind high performance. In this podcast, Lauren and Cindra talk: How to manage the emotional rollercoaster of 2020 and as an entrepreneur Ways to “play bigger” when we feel like we are “playing it safe” 3 pillars of developing culture How leaders can craft their own identity The power of values based leadership vs. emotional based leadership HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/Lauren HOW TO ENTER THE PODCAST GIVEAWAY TO WIN $500 CASH: www.drcindra.com/giveaway FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2599776723457390/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901          

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Welcome to episode 375 with Dr. Lauren Tashman. This is your host, Dr. Cinder Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm excited today that you are here ready to learn about mindset. And before I introduce Lauren, I'd like to tell you about a Facebook group that we started to connect with you where we share behind the scenes of the high performance mindset and more tangible strategies and inspiration for you to be your best self. You can head over to Facebook and search High Performance Mindset Podcast Community and I look forward to meeting you over there. Again, that's High Performance Mindset Podcast

Community over on Facebook. And today I've interviewed Dr. Lauren Tashman, who is a performance coach based in New York City. And through her private practice, Align Performance, she works with clients on mindset, leadership, and team organization culture. She is also a master coach with Valor Performance, providing leadership and performance coaching to ignite and sustain peak performance. Lauren received her PhD in educational psychology with a major in sports psychology from Florida State University, and she has almost 20 years of experience in performance coaching. With a diverse clients in sport, including six years working with international and Olympic level, as well as clients outside of sport and various sectors of business, tech, law, healthcare, and the performing arts.

As you'll hear in this podcast, she was a professor at Berry University in sport exercise and performance psychology, and she continues to teach graduate students at JFK University and Holy Names University. She has co-edited three books and has delivered lots of workshops, webinars, and seminars internationally and nationally. And she is also the co-host of the Path Distilled podcast, where they explore stories of success, failure, and greatness,

as well as examine the development and science behind high performance. Now, I know Lauren personally. I last saw her a couple years ago when I went to a regional sports psychology conference in Florida to present, and I'm excited to have her on the podcast. In this episode, we talk about how to manage the emotional rollercoaster of 2020, especially as an entrepreneur. We talk about ways to play

bigger when we feel like we're playing it safe and share our own personal experiences with playing bigger. We talk about three pillars of developing culture as a business leader and a leader in general, how leaders can craft their own identity and the power of values-based leadership instead of emotional-based leadership. We can't wait to hear from you related to this podcast. Head over to Instagram and go over to your stories. Take a screenshot of the podcast. Post it over on your stories and tag myself at cindracampoff and Lauren at tstashman.

We look forward to hearing from you and what stood out to you about this podcast. And if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you take a screenshot, share it with a friend, post it on social media, share it with somebody who needs this message today. And without further ado, let's bring on Lauren. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast, Dr. Tashman. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really stoked and looking forward to our conversation today. Thanks so much for having me on the show. It's great to be here and I'm really looking forward to the conversation also. I'm looking forward to still talking to you more about your work and what specifically you do. And so let's kind of just get us started.

And maybe just tell us a little bit about your passion right now and what you're doing right now. I mean, my passion always, ever since I became aware of this field, or even actually before that, is I just am a nerd. Honestly, I love the science of human psychology. I have loved and continue to love exploring the role it plays in performance. And I'm passionate about helping people leverage that to their advantage, whether that's for themselves as performers, as a leader, or in a team or organization kind of standpoint. That's great. So tell us maybe just how'd you get to where you

are now in your career? I'm sure everybody that comes on, right, we all have these long, nuanced histories. But long story short, I actually grew up doing equestrian show jumping at a pretty high level. And that was going to be life. And that did not work out. I had a summer of really bad falls that I just never recovered from. And it was really quite challenging because obviously I had this identity of, you know, this was my life, but also I had been, I didn't know anything about the idea of the mental game prior to going to grad school for it. But as I look back, I realized I had a really strong one, but when that happened, I didn't have any tools to be able to get past that experience. So even then I didn't know that sports psychology existed,

but I had started to explore psychology. So I was actually really interested in going into maybe behavioral analysis. So I actually did my senior year internship experience in a prison and it was my job to interview people for their bail hearings. And then was told about this field and that was it. I was like, okay, this sounds great. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into, but it sounds like it aligns. And so that's how I got there. Yeah. I think you and I are similar, you know, like I got into the field because of my own struggles as an athlete. And now I'm doing more work outside of athletics. But you know, it's like, I was I got into it just to try to explain to students things that I didn't have explained, but I didn't even honestly, I don't even know that I knew what I was getting myself into. I actually know that I didn't. I just was kind of like, all right, this sounds interesting. Let me follow that along. And yeah, it's turned out to be a wonderful, very fulfilling and also challenging space of work,

but always very fulfilling when you get to help someone the way that you didn't have that help. Absolutely. So Lauren, one of the things I always ask people is to describe what failure means to you and to tell us about a time that you failed. So let's dive into that. What do you think failure is? So I work with a lot of clients on perfectionism, and I am a perfectionist myself in some ways, not in others. But to me, I think I fail every day. You know, there are small failures, you know, just little mistakes you made or things you didn't think through. And then, of course, there are the bigger failures of whether that's something that

was in your control and you could have done better or different or wasn't. And now you have to learn from. And for me, a time that I failed is actually why I'm now here in New York City. It's funny to maybe call it a failure, but the way I look at it is one way I kind of failed myself was getting to a place of what felt like inertia in my career. Like I felt like I'd plateaued and I felt like I was kind of playing it small. I had gotten into this field at a time when people didn't think applied practice was an actual job pursuit, right? Like I clearly remember being in my first grad class and asking the question of, you know, why haven't all the career

tracks that you just mentioned, why isn't working with people one of them? Oh, that's not a real job. So, but I had gone into it for that, right? And so I was teaching and I love teaching. That's why I still do it. And I was consulting while teaching, but I felt, I felt like I was being inauthentic because I was talking to all these clients and my graduate students about being bold and you know being courageous and and leveling up and all these things and I'm like wait a minute I'm not doing that right now like I feel like I'm I'm not actually I'm playing it safe I'm keeping myself safe and so I took the leap I gave myself basically a semester to get some stuff in order. And then I jumped ship, you know, to New York City, which yes, granted, I grew up in the Northeast. So it was like coming

home, but I didn't have any ties here anymore. So I literally just, it was like coming to a new city, trying to chart a course, obviously having a little bit of career background, you know, to stand upon at this point, but it was completely new and completely outside of my comfort zone, but exactly what I had wanted to do at that point. Yeah. I appreciate the vulnerability there, Lauren. And for people who are listening, you were in Miami in a faculty position and then, you know, just that took so much courage to actually just say, I'm done. I'm going to New York City. I'm trying something different. And I have felt like that. That's actually kind of how I got into a lot

of the work I do right now is I was teaching about performance psychology and mentoring students. And I thought, you know, I'm talking about how to do this, but I don't really do this. So, you know, I felt inauthentic and that kind of what I said didn't equal what I was doing. So, so that's great that like that allowed you to get to where you are now. And I know you do a lot of work with entrepreneurs. So I want to talk about that. I want to talk about startups and just kind of the mindset that it takes. And I think as an entrepreneur, you must choose courage every day. Every minute, it feels like. Every minute.

And it is really easy to kind of like play small. So I want to talk a little bit about that. And when you and I were chatting earlier a few days ago, we were talking about how entrepreneurship can feel like an emotional rollercoaster, as we both know. So kind of just tell us, what are you seeing in your clients about this emotional rollercoaster? And how do you think it's best to manage that? I mean, I think any entrepreneur, solopreneur, whatever version of person you want to call them that I've talked to experiences this because

if we borrow a concept from the military of VUCA, right, that acronym of, you know, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, that is the world of an entrepreneur. You know, you have this idea and for a business or for something you want to pursue and you decide to go do that. Now, some people do it as a side hustle and that's kind of common these days and other people take the leap and decide to kind of put all their eggs in one basket and that can be really challenging and it can be really scary. And so you're constantly experiencing these kind of wins, some small, some big, and then some valleys where you can get into a pretty negative mindset. I have one personal example, you know, when I first moved here,

I was walking out of a meeting, you know, you're just trying to network, trying to meet all these people, right? And I met this guy and he was perfectly nice, but it wasn't going to kind of turn into any sort of business opportunity. And I walked out the door and I remember I was on the phone with my mom, just being, she was my informal performance coach during all this. And I was on the phone with her just being like completely like worried and negative and anxious. And literally I'm on Park Avenue and this guy passes by me and he's got a backpack. And on the back of the backpack is a printed, laminated white piece of paper that basically said his wife, you know, needed, I think it was a lung transplant,

something like that. If you are willing to do this, here's this number. And I just remember seeing that and being like, right. Okay. So that's all the mindset shift I need for today. Like, you know, it really prompted me out into that space of gratitude and purpose and, you know, being able to reframe where I was. And I think that's a huge piece of what I see in entrepreneurs and what I try to work with them on is, first of all, you know, building

self-awareness and the skills to be emotionally agile, because that's so important. And then being able to regulate themselves and have, you know, this toolbox that they can make use of. You know, a lot of people obviously want to feel confident and develop that, but a kind of side of confidence or a type of confidence that people forget is this idea of self-regulatory confidence, you know, our confidence and our ability to, to, to shift ourselves, to, to manage ourselves. And I, and particularly, you know, to motivate yourself and do the things that are difficult or hard. So I think that that's a huge piece of, of being an entrepreneur and navigating that emotional rollercoaster. The other thing I work a lot with

entrepreneurs on, and that actually is where the name of my company Align Performance comes from, is values alignment and getting really clear on values and trying to reorient yourself in times where things are tough towards aligning with your values versus our natural human response which is to come from a more emotion driven reactive place and so I think that they you know those skills can serve them well and then last but not least I think is obviously a very hot topic right now for good reason is resilience you know having the ability to use intentionally every single thing that happens to you for the better, which is why I love that question that you start with of, you know, how do you define failure and talking about a time that you failed? Because we know that there's this idea of adversarial growth, that if we can look at

anything that happens to us as a way that we can become better for having experienced it, then that's going to serve us, you know, really well. Oh, Lauren, I could go so many different places. I'm sorry. Be careful what you wish for when you talk to the nerd who loves the science behind performance. I love it. I love it. So, okay, two questions I want to ask you as a follow up there. I really think it's important that people are hearing coming from a place of your values versus like this emotionally driven place. So let's start there. Talk about how you might help somebody identify their values. And as people are listening, I'm hopeful they're thinking about what are their values. You know, if you haven't done a values exercise, like, you know, that maybe you could help us to scale more clarity on how you might do that and how you could help people listening. Yeah.

And so we know that people oftentimes think about personal values, but what I like to work with people on is their performance values or their leadership values. And there's a number of ways that you can do this. You know, there's values card sorts out there and all sorts of things, but I like to start usually, now there's a, the, one of the things I love about what we do is the creativity, you know, that this can look 7 million different ways with clients. But one of the ways I try and get people to start thinking about this is I literally, I give them a list of words that I've come up with. It's probably like a hundred to 200 words. It's so overwhelming. But I asked them to scan through the words thinking with two questions in mind, what's most important to me, not as a person, but in my professional kind of career space and role. And number two, who do I want to be?

Because when I think about values, certainly we can think about what the word signals, which is what's important, but really actually what values are, if we're going to use them as a performer, as a leader, you know, for a team or organizational culture, it's actually really more getting at who we are, who we want to be. And so I asked them to start kind of looking through the words through that lens. And then we start to narrow down and try to get them to a place of choosing just a couple values. And it's funny, because a lot of times people will push back on that. And they maybe have a list of 10 words that they're like, No, these are all important to me. I want to be all of these things. And I tell them, you know, it's not that you can't be all of those things, but we've got to orient ourselves around some prioritized kind of key themes to make sure

that we have some clear kind of go-to places or a good foundation. And that might be choosing, you know, three or four of the words from the list, or that could be in combining them and coming up with their own phrasing or their own kind of word that makes sense across the board. But that's usually where we start. And then we might do things like thinking about kind of like an ideal performer, ideal leader exercise. So we start to think about what this looks like in action, because whether you're doing this for yourself as a entrepreneur or as a leader, whether you're doing this, you know, to work on team and organizational culture, it's not just that old adage is true. Words don't necessarily matter. It's the actions that do. So you've got to start thinking about what this looks

like in action, what it could look like in action, so that you start thinking about how you live out these values and align with them. Excellent. So the two questions that you ask people to consider is what's important to you and who do you want to be? Just those two questions are really powerful. And when you, maybe let's take a step back and tell us like, what are you seeing with the people that you work with in terms of like why identifying our values is even important? Yeah. And like, what good do you see coming from that so that we can really kind of act from more of this like valued base action versus this emotionally driven place that you just mentioned? I think what you just mentioned there is probably number one, which is we're built to be emotionally reactive. It's an extremely important way that we are built. But sometimes I use this analogy

the other day on a webinar that I gave, it's like the fire alarm that keeps going off. And sometimes it just keeps going off more and more and more. And now you don't even know why you're reacting, but you are. And you've gotten into this habit, right? This habit of reacting, which may not be getting you down the road that you want to be going down. I think number two, it serves for clarity and intentionality, particularly when you're in a leadership position. If you are really clear on what your values are and what that means about how you're going to lead, then that's number one, day one, right? And a lot of people talk about like, what's your long-term leadership plan? No, it's the day one plan. How do I share with the people I'm leading day one? This is who I am. This is what that means. And then you

can always leverage back to those values so that there's always that clarity and consistency. Excellent. So the second question I wanted to ask you when we are talking about, you know, how do we best manage this emotional roller coaster? And I was thinking about entrepreneurs, but really what we're talking about relates to anybody. And you said just this idea of resilience and you said using everything intentionally for the better. Tell us how we might do that. Because I think that's so important right now. I think it's easy to kind of get in this victim mindset, you know, like that your business is terrible or your life is terrible because you maybe aren't able to do what you could do, you know, six months or a year

ago. So, but I just like this idea of like intentionally seeing that, you know, everything for the better. Tell us a little bit about how, from your perspective, we can do that. I think that's, you know, that's actually a core piece of resilience because people get resilience wrong. They think it's this idea of bouncing back, you know, like a rubber band that has been pulled and it just goes back to the way it was. But what we see about resilience is that it's not actually that, it's about bouncing forward, right? And so simple way to do that is to do an after action review after a failure. It's actually an exercise. I have one of my grad classes due to practice that this idea of resilience is let's take

a failure and let's do a little after action review of it. You know, what were we intending going into that scenario or that situation? What happened, right? And how did we feel and what did we think? And, you know, was that typical to us in our tendencies or not? And then, you know, what are the lessons and the takeaways from that, right? How can I become better? How can I find meaning in that experience? How can I find benefit? And I know that might sound hard, right, to hear like that idea of benefit. But there's always, you know, a way that we can shift our lens a little bit.

I'm really big on this idea of kind of vantage points that we're always sitting in a particular vantage point and we have this habit of the way that we see things. And it's useful to us to switch into a different vantage point, uh, sometimes to try and think about what's a different lens I could take on this experience, um, to try and, and, and find a way that I can use this. You might not be able to take that failure back, and that's often the case, but you might have something invaluable in there about how you can approach things better or different in the future.

Absolutely. I like that. After action review, after a failure or a difficulty and bouncing forward. So I like this quote by Byron Katie, and she says, things don't happen to us, they happen for us. So that kind of I heard you say that before. Yeah. I've actually, I remember you saying that before, and I've used that with some clients. And, you know, it's funny because in the podcast that I do with my, my longtime friend and colleague, Kevin Harris, the, the path distilled, that's one of the things that we've heard quite a bit actually from the people that we have on there is that they have this, even though they have worked hard and they've gone through difficult

experiences and they've all done that number of stories, a lot of them point to this idea of seeing opportunity or feeling like, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, the stars just aligned in that moment, but recognize that and were able to use that to their advantage. So I definitely agree that that's an important lens to take on it. But, you know, I really love exploring the notion of optimism. And I think some people get it wrong and think that you have to expect everything's going to be amazing. But when you really look actually at optimism, it's really more about understanding that things can be amazing, that there can be a positive lens, but that you have to prepare for reality, right? So I can hope that I'm going to be

successful as an entrepreneur, but I also have to prepare for challenges because I know that it's not going to be an easy road. Absolutely. And so we were talking earlier about how entrepreneurs can feel like, you know, we want to play it safe and that can hold us back from kind of thinking bigger or moving towards a bigger vision. What do you think it takes from a mental standpoint or what are some mental practices that you think we can all use, I think, to play a little bit bigger with our lives and really move forward towards our potential? I think one of the things is, it's actually twofold. So I think on the one hand, it is getting a better understanding of the voices in your head and trying to, I dare say, be in control of that voice because we can't

control it, but to have an understanding of those voices and how you're going to leverage that voice that's going to serve you. But at the same time, kind of pulling from the recent interest in mindfulness is being able to deal with whatever voice is in your head, whatever's in front of you without getting caught up in it. And so I think the best performers, the best entrepreneurs work on both of those skill sets. They work on understanding their mind and their voice, the kind of self-talk and thoughts that pop up in their head and navigating that. But they also work on being able to just say, that's not what's important right now. Let me focus myself on what is important and developing that skill as well. So, you know, I think one of the, I've been asked this quite a bit, you know, recently because there's so many thought leaders out there and books and all these things. And I so I've kind of been asked, like, what's the value

of a coach? And I think it's really that, you know, things sound really simple. Everything we're talking about today sounds really simple. Right. But doing it is really hard work. And so, you know, doing those intentionally, you know, daily, like mental reps, getting that in and having a coach who's helping you to figure out which things you really need to use and how that applies to you. I think I see that, you know, the entrepreneurs who kind of go after big things, they are willing to explore that. They're willing to do what it takes.

The other thing that I think we've already kind of hit at the perspective piece, which I think is a big part of it. And the other thing I think about is this idea of grit that Angela Duckworth kind of put out there. I know that some people aren't huge fans of that, but the one time I heard her talk about this treadmill analogy she used, it resonated so much with me when it comes to entrepreneurs.

She talked about this idea of grit isn't about getting on the treadmill and staying on it. It's about choosing the treadmill you want to be on, getting on it and staying on it when it's hard that day, coming back with energy and excitement to get on it the next day, the next day and the next day. And I think that that's really resonant for entrepreneurs. And I think it requires, like we were just saying, investment in some mental training, but also having a sense of developing that toolbox, but also having a sense of your go-tos and what really works for you and what you're going to use in those times when you kind of get in those valleys on that rollercoaster. I think what you said is really important that it's valleys on that, that rollercoaster. I think what you said is

really important that it's, you know, understanding your own voice. What does that sound like? Um, but doing the work on yourself and I, you know, we're both coaches. I've had a coach for 10 years. There's no way that my business would be where it's at without her. And I think that's important to say is because we know these practices. Yeah. But it's hard. But hold us accountable and say, Sindra, you know, that doesn't sound like you. Or Sindra, what did you say that you were going to do two weeks ago

when I talked to you, right? So it's so important that you're like intentionally practicing this mindset training. Yeah. And that, you know, you can't, we just talked about the voices, but you can't always be that person that you need to yourself. Right? Like when I think about what is my role as a, as a performance coach, I kind of put it in this idea of like, I'm a mirror and a guide, right? Like I get to put the mirror in front of someone and help them see the things that they maybe couldn't see themselves and guide them along in that process. Certainly I'm a teacher. There's all this cool stuff we know about psychology and performance that we don't get taught. And so I get to help people explore

that and how it applies to them. I'm a dot connector, right? Like, especially, you know, getting, when I was at Florida State for my PhD, I got to study expert performance under Anders Eriksson and just learning so much about expertise and how our memory kind of develops and what makes an expert. I, since then, my brain is like this big flow of dots and like flashing lights. So a client is talking to me, it's like, oh, that study I read several years ago or that theory or that exercise I did with someone or that story. And, you know, and even within themselves, the more I hear them talk, the more I can connect things. You just can't do that for yourself. Right. And then certainly that last piece you

were talking about, I don't think about it as, as holding someone accountable. I think about it more like emotional challenge, right? Like certainly I can be that person that provides emotional support sometimes, but sometimes my job is to be the person that they actually don't like in that moment. Like the one that's kind of calling you out or asking you the tough questions because this stuff is hard and it's important and it takes a lot to be able to look at yourself in this way and to make those changes. One of the things that I know that you do that I really want to learn more about, and I'm sure as, you know, people who are listening, they're leaders themselves. And I think about, right, we can't lead others until we lead ourselves first.

So tell us about, first maybe, just tell us about, like, what do you see kind of the best leaders do? This is my favorite question, but also a question I can't really answer because one of the things that we've learned from exploring leadership over the years is that there is not one thing that best leaders do or who they are, but there are these principles to leadership that we have learned and that we continue to learn. And so the best leaders take those principles and turn them into intentional practices that they're going to use for themselves

and the people that they lead, right? Because there's no direct tie from leadership to other people's performance. The mediator in there is the perceptions of the leader. So a leader has to know who they are. They have to know the principles underlying performance and team culture and all these things. And then they've got to say like, these are who my people are. And okay, now I've got to figure out

how to connect to all this, to be able to figure out how I take this and translate this into how I'm going to lead and be authentic to myself and be considerate of all these number of factors that I have to take in. So that's why it's an easy question, but a hard question to answer. Can you give us some examples of like one or two leadership principles that you see, you know, great leaders move into intention? Yeah, I think one of the things that they do,

which is an extremely difficult thing to do, is they figure out how to prioritize both performance and results and relationships. And a lot of that, as I said, comes back to the values piece, right? If you have clarified your values and you have clarified them to others, it allows you to develop the ability to create the relationships with people that are going to serve you, they're performing well and serve people performing together. So I think that's one thing I see. The other thing that I see that comes out of what's been called the new psychology of leadership is that instead of positioning themselves, obviously in front of the group, like, hey, here, follow me, or behind the group. There's that notion of leaders eat last, which certainly there's something to be taken from that. I'm not saying that that doesn't apply, but this new psychology of leadership is about implanting yourself within the group and being the best model for the group and creating that shared collective, this is who we are within that.

And so I think that really good leaders do that. They know how to maneuver themselves around that. Hey, sometimes I have to be out in front charting the vision saying, hey, follow me. Sometimes I have to be behind allowing my people to shine and to chart the course. And overall though, I have to be implanted within my group so that we have this sense of we, that we're doing this together. Yeah, that's good. And I know you also help leaders kind of craft their identity and their approach. And I just think this, this is a really interesting phrase to say, like craft your identity. And I'm like, how can I craft my identity? Tell us a little

bit about that process and what you're thinking there. I think they're really, I always get the question of, you know, from a leader, let's say that maybe is not having success right now with leading their people for whatever reason. The inevitable question I get is, do I have to change? And the challenge with that is that there may be some ways you have to change or do things better or different, but if you become someone not yourself, so if you shift out of being authentic to yourself, then that's going to breed more challenges than it is going to create success. And so I think that's what I try to work with a lot of people on is helping them understand who

they are who they want to be as we've talked about with the values and then trying to think about how how that can be brought to bear aligned with these principles that we understand about performance teams leadership and all that it's not easy work, right? Because, and we see in sports, sport has great examples of this, right? Of like that really brash, like hard leader who just yells a lot. Well, that person can be successful. And now we could argue if we kind of look underneath the surface, they're like, are they really being successful in that? But then we also see like the nice kind leader who is successful. So I think it's more about figuring out how that person is and how they align with what we know to

be true about creating those, those good relationships with their people and really trying to drive success in the people that they're in and the industry that they're in, which, you know, brings in challenges of figuring that piece out. For sure. Well, and I think right now, culture is a really interesting topic that a lot of people really talk about. And at least the leaders that I've been working with, you know, they're, they're things that are impacting the culture, like their people, their people are working from home, or maybe they're not getting raises and they, you know, because of, you know, the finances and the economy right now and, you know, intentionally building culture the way that you want to as a leader.

So how do you think, do you have any best practices or any thoughts on how leaders can intentionally create the culture that they want? Yeah, this has been pretty much, I love working on mindset. Is there any thoughts on how leaders can intentionally create the culture that they want? Yeah, this has been pretty much, I love working on mindset and all that stuff, but this has been the majority of what my career has focused on is really helping people to design intentional cultures, enact them, evolve them when needed, change them when needed. And I think we see a couple of things here. Again, it's about principles. We understand that there are certain principles to optimal team cultures, having trust on your team, having psychological safety where people feel like they are able to

be themselves, to say things, even the difficult things, having a sense of belonging. When it comes to what that looks like, though, again, it's taking that and being intentional about it, right? So it's not that idea of, well, because Google has a great culture, supposedly, and has written about culture, now we're going to have ping pong tables, too, or open office spaces, too, right? It's not about taking what other people are doing. It's about understanding the principles behind that or underneath that and saying, all right, what is that going to look like for us? And then to your point about, you know, where we're at now, it's not about always doubling down on those, but thinking about how do I have to adapt those, right? And so if we have these kind of values and we've made our values kind of real by understanding what they look like, and we maybe have some non-negotiables around that. Okay. So how do we make sure that we have a sense of belonging

when we're all across the country or the world? How do we make sure that we're continuing to develop trust? How do we make sure if connection is really important to our people? How do we make sure that we are delivering on that? If creativity is really important to our work or to our people, how do we make sure that for us, it makes sense for us? And so I think great leaders who develop strong cultures intentionally think about what it's going to look like in action and work really hard to both promote and protect that culture. They hire for culture. They look and try to find ways to make sure that everybody who's in the culture is contributing to that culture.

I remember years ago when I started this work, I used to go into teams and say that on a team, everybody has to feel valued and feel like they have a place and a role on the team. And I realized actually after several years that I was kind of only telling half the story. So yes, it's true that everybody has to feel valued and feel like they have a place and they're making an impact and have meaning. But it's also important that everybody create that. I have to be a value add to my team. I have to think about how I'm going to make an impact on the team. And so it's really working at things from, from multiple directions and making sure that we're all working for the team together. And how everyone contributes to this culture, right? Like maybe people might think, well, I think on a sporting team, it might be like, well,

I don't start, you know, I'm not important in the culture or I'm, you know, I'm not the vice president or CEO. I don't contribute to the culture, but how everyone plays a role in that. Yeah. It's like puzzle pieces, right? That everybody's a piece of the puzzle and a valuable one, even if it's just a perspective or to be there, if a backup is needed, everybody has a role to play and, you know, they have to be given that role. And there's got to be clarity on that, that, that everybody's seen as important, but they also have to contribute to that too. I think that's a kind of important piece of this, of making sure that that's what happens on a day-to-day basis and over time. And what that often means, particularly in a time

like we're experiencing now where everybody's kind of, it's this, what I've heard being called not work from home, but live at work. We're seeing a lot of actual productivity right now, but everybody's starting to get worried about burnout, right? Because we're overworking. I know myself included. So I often use the term of everybody on a team has to figure out a way that they can be unselfishly selfish. I got to do what I have to do to put myself in the best position to be impactful and to show up with my A game for my team day in and day out. And sometimes that antithetical to what we think or what we think is going to be preferred and to our you know culture and what we ascribe as kind of valuable right like I'm the one that works late I work until all hours of the

night that's always been seen as a positive quality but that's not necessary and actually one of my colleagues Dave Eccles who's back at Florida State now has been starting to study this idea of psychological rest and recovery to contribute to that, at least in kind of the sport realm of making sure that we're trying to shift that culture. Yeah, excellent. We're going to have him on the podcast. Oh, awesome. I just teed him up then. He'll be happy about that. Lawrence, as we're talking about this idea of culture, and I think, first of all, I kind of want to summarize what you said in the three terms that you used was like set their culture or decide on the culture that they want? And what role do you think this culture in general plays with startups?

It plays the same role it plays in every other group, which is a really important one. And I think the challenge with startups or small businesses, new businesses businesses is that they don't often think about this stuff, right? Especially in the startup world, it's about the idea. It's about getting the capital to back your idea. It's about being fast paced and trying to show that you have a viable and sustainable business idea and can grow it. And so I think culture is not often thought about at the start because it's not seen as a priority. But inevitably, at some point, if the startup does succeed past even year one, then it becomes important to think about, particularly as the startup starts expanding and you're bringing new people on board and you're now hiring and now having to look at, wait, these people who were just as energized about the idea as I was when we came in, do they continue to kind of belong here in the culture? Do they feel that? Do we feel that? And so it continues to be this very important part at some point that they really can't discount.

And so I get the opportunity to sometimes come in kind of early on, which is nice. A lot of times also I'll be brought in when there may be a few years under their belt and now they feel like, wait a minute, like, yep, we now actually have to really think about this, you know, moving forward. And I actually have a background from Florida State in program evaluation. So a lot of times I'll start there. Let's get a sense of what your culture is, because there's no such thing as we don't have a culture. It's just that we haven't set maybe an intentional one. There's always a culture. So we want to get a sense, right, of what is it, what's working, what's not working, how does it align with kind of your

original mission and purpose for what you were trying to do? How does that align with kind of the leaders, the leaders values, the people you've had on board? So there's usually a lot of stuff we can get into there to try and help them think about, I'm, I'm, I don't know if it's because I'm a Libra that I'm this way, but I tend to look at things through a balanced lens, right? Like I always want to look at like what's working, what are the wins and what are the things that need to be kind of changed or done better or different?

Well, I think on all of these, this conversation today, Lauren, like one, one takeaway, I just want to reiterate for people is, you know, that these traits of entrepreneurs or in startups or companies, those are very similar to the traits or the practices that are used in high level sport and how we can really apply the same concepts in both areas, which I think is important for people just to recognize. And you might, even if you're a business leader, look at some examples in sport to learn from. Yeah. And we've talked about that notion of like the corporate athlete, right? But I think we can say like the dancer athlete, the entrepreneur athlete. And when it comes from a team standpoint, I think they experience a lot of the same things. Year to year, things change.

If you're working with an Olympic team for the quadrennial cycle, year one has different goals and a different feel to it than year two, than year three and year four. And I think you see that in startups. Other analogy I often use is that I had the opportunity once to work with a team for several years. And the first year that I was working with them, they were pursuing the first ever national championship title for that program. And it was so fascinating because they, they had, you know, some challenges with dynamics and all these things, right? They ended up having a perfect season and won the championship.

Wow. The next year, oh my goodness, all the things that hadn't really been, you know, kind of working for their dynamic and all that and all the stress and all that of pursuing this big lofty goal were met with excitement and kind of like a positive tinge and then that next year it was a completely different vantage point on it and it had turned from this kind of challenge perspective to more of a threat perspective which we know makes a lot of sense but I see that in startups too right like they're they're have so much they're have so much, they're trying to gain, right? They're in that gain mentality in the beginning, right? Like I have, I have to gain, I get these wins, wins, wins. Then it turns into more of a loss mentality at some point where it's like, well, now I got to do even better. And I have these

investors that I have their money that I have to show some gains on. I also have my now, now maybe some employees and some people who I'm responsible for. I have maybe a family that I've got to contribute to. And so this shift of the perspective that we take on on, you know, what's happening and what we're doing is very similar, I think, to high level sport and to why high level sport really values, you know, this idea of working on mindset and culture and why it can be really beneficial for startups to get that same experience and those same kind of assistance with those things. Excellent, excellent. Super great, Lauren. I really love all of our, you know, the points that we've talked about so far and the questions and your answers. Two questions as we wrap up. You said that resilience was all about like using every day

intentionally for the better or everything. I don't know if you said every day or everything, but how have you found this, like during this time of COVID, how have you found the opportunity? How have you kind of focused on being resilient and kind of looking at everything intentionally for the better? It's a day-to-day thing, as I'm sure it's for you and for everybody listening to us, right? And I've actually, for me, it's been a lot about curiosity, which I know sounds really wrong in a time of such stress and challenge, but, you know, that's part of what I do for a living is I have to be curious, right?

And so for me, it's having been curious about my own response. You know, I was kind of, I was, I will say in a, to me, it felt like a bit of a, like I was fine at the first part of it. Like, oh, okay, well now I have time to work on some business things. You know, a lot of people said this, now I have time to work on some business things that I don't normally have time for. Right. And then you got into this little place. And so I've just

honestly been really focusing on being curious and kind of looking at my stress response and on thinking about, I use this idea of like thinking about what we are doubling down on. And so just trying to remember that whatever habits I'm getting myself into are the ones that I'm strengthening, right? And so let me make sure that I'm strengthening the good habits, that I'm picking my kind of non-negotiables of things that I need to be unselfishly unselfish, you know, to make sure that I show up every day for the clients and the students and everybody. And so those have been, I think, a lot of things. The other opportunity is honestly a podcast. Kevin and I started the podcast in May, and it was a great way to get through some of those challenging months here in New York City when we were on lockdown, because people wanted to talk,

and we got to talk to some fabulous people. And so that was a really good time for that. And I'll say probably last thing I'm like, I'm like you, I'm a lifelong learner. You have to be in this field and I love doing it. And so for me, it's been a lot about creativity. I love, one of the things I've always loved about working on team culture and working with groups is the creativity you get to bring into those sessions. And so I've been trying to really work on that a bit with my individual sessions of how can I just, you know, spark some creativity and some different ways I'm doing things and different ways I approach different things so that they can be a benefit to my clients. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for sharing your perspective there. And, and, uh, just the

personal stuff I think is really important. So Lauren, uh, Paths Distilled is your podcast. Tell us where we can find that, where we can find information about your coaching and, uh, tell us a bit more about like how people can connect with you either on social or whatever means you'd like us to. So you can find me at alignperform.com. That's the website. It also has information on my website about our podcast. I am on LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter. Our podcast is on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And we're also just now launching our YouTube channel. So head over to find that. And in terms of listening to the podcast, we are on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher. I think those are most of the more common ones that people find them.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Lauren, here is what I took from the episode today. I liked when we talked about values versus emotionally driven action. And just to you helped us think about how can we identify our values and more of these like performance and leadership values, I thought were really helpful for us to consider. You gave us two questions to do that. What is important to me and who do I want to be? I thought those questions are really powerful. I appreciate what we talked about related to culture and the kind of three pillars idea of that, like you're, you're, you always have a culture, right? Like people might not realize that, you know, maybe you're not intentionally creating it, but, but this idea that you always have it. And then when we were talking about how leaders and entrepreneurs really understand their own voice, what does their voice sound like? And just kind of this idea of listening to that voice,

working with a coach potentially to help you understand that voice, but how you see that the best really like really are understanding their own self-talk and what's important to them. And then everything else we talked about, at least those are a few things I can summarize with. What kind of final advice or thoughts would you have for us, Lauren? I think, you know, as I said for myself, I really believe in the idea of curiosity. I think that we can be really tough on ourselves. You know, a lot of people talk about this idea of compassion. And for me, it's not necessarily about being nice to myself.

It's more about being curious and, you know not necessarily about being nice to myself. It's more about being curious and think, you know, looking at things through that lens. So I would say, you know, definitely that is one of the big pieces and ties into that, you know, kind of need for self-care and thinking about how you put yourself in the best position to show up at your best or to navigate the challenges faced with you. And I, of course, I'm going to say this because I am a coach. I, I obviously have my own business. I also work with a company called Valor Performance as a master coach,

but I really do advocate for coaching. I mean, you said you've had a coach, you know, for years, I I've made use of coaches as well. I think they're invaluable. There's so much good information out there. But having someone who helps you think about, you know, how to get, how to apply that to yourself and how to understand yourself is really, really invaluable and is worth the investment. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. It's definitely worth every penny that I have spent. And I, you know, literally my coaching, my business would not be where it's at today. And I wouldn't like mentally be where I'm at today. Definitely. Well, thank you so much, Lauren. I'm so grateful to have this time with you. And thank

you so much for just providing so much wisdom to the listeners today. Thank you, Sandra. I really enjoyed the conversation. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.