High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 512: How to be an Inclusive Leader with Dr. Rob Owens, Leadership & Mindset Performance Coach

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Dr. Rob Elliott Owens, CMPC, CSCS, BCC is a leadership and mindset performance coach trained in the mental and physical aspects of human performance. He currently consults with healthcare and business executives.  He is the former chair of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) Diversity Committee, and co-facilitated AASP’s Diversity in Sport and Culture course from 2017 until 2021. He currently serves on the certification council for the Certified Mental Performance Consultant credential. In addition to his coaching work, Dr. Owens has taught workshops and college-level courses on leadership development; diversity and inclusion; positive coaching; health and wellness; and group, team, and organizational dynamics. He is a board-certified coach and a nationally certified counselor.    In this interview, Rob and Cindra discuss:  Mindset practices needed to thrive  What is means to be a humble leader  How to be cultural inclusive  What we should consider about culture when working with people  HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/511  FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/  FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong  TO REACH DR. ROB: http://resolute-counseling.org   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 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 Miss Pac-Man. Yes, the 1980s game Miss Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Welcome to episode 511 with Dr. Rob Owens. This is your host, Cyndra Campoff, and thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you're having an awesome week, and I'm grateful that you're here. Now, this is a good one with Dr. Rob Owens, all about how to be an inclusive leader. And Rob and I graduated from the same

doctoral school, so I'm excited to have him join us on the podcast today. I've been looking forward to this for some time now, and let me introduce you to Dr. Rob Owens. He's a leadership and mindset performance coach trained in the mental and physical aspects of human performance. He currently works with healthcare and business executives. He is the former chair of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology's Diversity Committee and serves on their certification council right now. In addition to his coaching work, Dr. Owens has taught workshops and college classes on leadership development, diversity and inclusion, positive coaching, health and wellness, and organizational dynamics. He's also a board-certified coach and a nationally certified counselor.

Dr. Rob and I, in this episode, talk about the mindset practices and the leadership practices that you need to thrive. He talks about what it means to be a humble leader and an inclusive leader and how to be culturally inclusive, which I think is incredibly relevant today. He also talks about what and why we should consider culture when working with people. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this interview and if you'd like to see the full show notes and description, you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 511 for episode 511. All right, let's get going with Dr. Owens. I'm excited that Rob Owens is joining us here on the podcast today. How are you doing, Rob? I am doing great. It's a nice sunny day here in Greensboro,

North Carolina. It's been raining a lot lately, so I'm glad just to have no rain and some sun. Greensboro, North Carolina has this special place in my heart. You and I both got our doctorate degree there, and my husband and I lived there for seven years. And I love Greensboro. I love North Carolina. Yes, it can be a really nice place. You know, it's one of those places where I like moved down here back in 1994 and have never left. So, yeah, my favorite part about North Carolina was the winters. And, you know, we grew up in Iowa and then we moved to North Carolina and we didn't ever wear a winter jacket. We thought that was just the best.

Exactly. Like with students on campus, you'll see people walking around, students walking around in shorts in December. So yeah, that's a unique thing. I grew up in New York myself. And so during the winters, it's like, no, you're wearing watches and dealing with snow and ice and all that stuff. Oddly, my kids still want to wear shorts in December to school, and I live in Minnesota, so you know. Who knows? Well, Rob, I'm really excited to talk with you today and for all of us to learn from you and your expertise, and maybe just to get us started, how about you share a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now? Well, you know, my passion at this point is

really focusing on executive and leadership coaching, particularly from the standpoint of diversity, inclusion, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, as well as working with various populations, primarily with public safety. So I've kind of switched careers. I retired from the state of North Carolina, August 1st. So I'm kind of done with that 25 year career and I've moved into like private practice and doing my coaching work. And so a lot of what I'm doing now, it seems like it's like the kind of, it's like my third career, I would say. And so it's really a culmination of things that I have done in the past.

So I started out my career working at a college, Guilford College, and I was working in multicultural affairs and events planning. So I worked a lot with the students there on leadership and governance, as well as their events and doing all the different types of work

related to diversity and inclusion. But then I kind of, after a couple of years, I switched careers. I ended up going into the academic side and really working more in professional development. So I've worked at the University of North Carolina for almost 25 years. I spent most of my time there. I also worked at another university, Winston-Salem State. But at UNC Greensboro, I really spent a lot of my time with professional

development, professional development for faculty, and how to, you know, inspire them to teach better, whether that was teaching online or teaching face to face. And so a lot of my, a lot of my current coaching practices, I think, are informed by my earlier careers in diversity and inclusion, as well as in professional development. And how do we get people to become their best selves? Yeah, I love it. And congratulations on your retirement. That's just, as we're recording this, just 11 days since you've retired. So congratulations.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about inclusive leadership. We're going to talk about cultural humility. And let's just get started with inclusive leadership. What does this mean to you? Well, inclusive leadership is really, I think, an important way for us to think about who we are as leaders and the people that we lead and not only being aware of ourselves and aware of who our quote unquote followers are, but also being aware of how do we create that sense of belonging with people that we are leading? Because a lot of times we, you know, or at least in my experience, when I'm talking to some other leaders, it's like, you know, your followers will tell you exactly what they in your best interest you know leaders will say i'm going to do that but they're really not listening to what their followers want so as a quick example

you know i've worked with like human resource folks and human resources i've like consulted where they might have me come in to do some type of diversity equity and inclusion and training and i'll ask questions about well why do you want me to come in to do some type of diversity, equity, and inclusion training. And I'll ask questions about, well, why do you want me to come in to do this? Or why do you want me to train you on this? Because sometimes they want to deliver it themselves instead of having an external person come in. And I can certainly understand that, that type of indirect intervention. But when I ask that question, oftentimes they'll tell me exactly what they've been told by their folks at the company, but then they'll also will qualify by saying, well, this is what they said, but we really think they mean this.

This is what we think they mean. This is what we think they need. leadership is like to stop that filtering out and really begin to listen to understand what the folks the people that you're leading what they actually do need and kind of engage in the authentic leadership and trying to create that sense of belonging where your quote-unquote followers again feel like they're being heard. Yeah, I think so powerful. And I think there's different, a lot of different ways that we can apply what you're saying, Rob. I'm curious about this idea of belonging and how would you define belonging and how do we grow, you know, our followers sense of belonging?

That's a really good question. A really good couple of questions. When I'm thinking about belonging, particularly from a diversity, equity, and inclusion standpoint, I'm thinking about creating an environment where people feel that their values and their identities are honored.

So it's a thing where it's like, so really a way for me to kind of explain it is to differentiate between inclusion and belonging. I can invite you to a party, for example. So you might be included in that, but you get to the party and everything at the party, for example. So you might be included in that, but you get to the party and everything at the party, they just seem so different than you are. Then that doesn't create a sense of belonging. You might have been invited, but it's like basically being invited to sit at a table to

eat other people's food where you don't have a sense of that you have contributed to what's on that table. Yeah, absolutely. And so what are some ways that you think that we can continue to grow in our belonging of others or as leaders, what can we do to make people feel that they belong? Well, one, we have to invite them. You do have to include them. But then the next thing after you include them is asking, what do you want?

Right? And try not to filter it through our own worldviews, as I mentioned earlier, through our own interpretations. And it's one of those things that's easier. I know it's easier said than done. Because I know there's a lot of experienced leaders out there who say, I've been doing this the way I've been doing it. And it seems to work for me, but then I would, you know, question that to say, is it really working or it's only working for certain groups of people, you know, so who is it working for?

So it's important for us to ask in terms of my leadership style, in terms of inclusion and belonging, who, who has that worked for in my style, in terms of inclusion and belonging, who has that worked for in my company, in my group, and who hasn't it worked for and why? Powerful. And I'm thinking about the clients that you work with that are leaders and executives, and I'm curious about what have you learned from your work with people one-on-one in terms of helping them build inclusive leadership? Depends because every person is different, but that's a really good question. And so I'm thinking about one particular person that I worked with who felt

like that he was trying to manage up a little bit because he was feeling a lot of pressure from some of the members of the C-suite of the organization. And he was trying to kind of filter some of that down to his team, but not in a way that he felt like it would disenfranchise them or would stress them out or burn them out where they would feel like they would seek other seek other employment and so one of the things that he and I talked about was how much do you need to shield them from from that and how much do you need to kind of shield yourself from that how much like I like to use the term protect your energy yes I like it I like it yeah so it's like how can you

protect protect your energy as well as help to kind of shield your team but also keep it realistic because there's there's also sometimes in certain leaderships like I see this sometimes in sales where you have a leader who at one point in their career was an individual contributor you know so they kind of had that on the ground experience and then they get into a leadership role and then they feel like that whenever their subordinates are not you know picking up the ball and running with it to you know just use a sports metaphor there that they have to do with themselves and so getting them to think differently about how can you empower your employees to kind of pick up that ball and run with it for themselves it does a couple things when it like first it empowers them you know where you help to grow them as a leader and then number two it helps to protect your energy so like if

you're like I used used to play club rugby, you know, rugby, you know, you can't, it's just not one person out there. Like, you know, the type five, there's five of us in the scrum. There's just not one person pushing against the other team. So we have to be able to work together. We have to be able to empower each other

and we have to protect our own energy in ways that, you know, doesn't leave the stress of burnout. Yeah, absolutely. I think of when I think about protecting your energy and I think that's such an important point, Rob, is I think about trying to have like a little shield around me, you know, that the energy might just bounce off because there can be a lot of disempowering energy that doesn't allow us to thrive. When I think about this idea of inclusive leadership, I'm curious about what do you think gets in the way of us being an inclusive leader? What gets in the way of us being an inclusive leader? One, I would say the first thing that comes to mind is our ego. For example, for me, having worked 25 years in higher education and professional development,

I feel that oftentimes when we become, we thought that we'd become the expert of something, then we begin to judge other people people who yeah live up to our standards right and i see this too in their clients that i coach they're very good people but if they see a member of their team who they feel like doesn't have the level of knowledge or skills that they should have, you know, they begin to, you know, we begin to get a little judgy about that. And there's a difference, right? There's a difference between a person who doesn't have skills or doesn't have the knowledge and a person who doesn't want to gain the skills or knowledge, right? Because that person that doesn't have the skills or knowledge, they may

not have it yet. But how can we help them instead of judge them? How can we help them to become a better member of our team instead of judge them? And it's easy for us to go there because there's times when I, when I'm around others, where I'm thinking like, well, why doesn't this person know that? You know, but then I have to check myself and say, you know what, you're at that point too. And you maybe someone has a different opinion than us or thinks of things different than us, right? It can be really easy to judge. I've been on this, I guess about a year and a half journey to reduce my own internal judge. I do think it actually has worked, but I still judge myself or others, but I try to quiet that inner voice. I'm curious, Rob, when we're talking about inclusive leadership

and cultural humility, tell us about what you mean by cultural humility and how that connects to inclusive leadership. Okay, I knew that question was coming. So I want to give a formal definition of inclusive leadership. And maybe we can talk through that here. So I mean, like a formal definition of cultural humility, that is. And so there's a some scholars hooks and her colleges came up with this definition of cultural humility. And basically it means the person's ability to assume or maintain an interpersonal stance where they are open to the other with respect to aspects related to cultural identities the other holds as important. So again, it's like our ability as individuals to not only assume an interpersonal stance where we're listening to the other person, but being able to hold that interpersonal stance and respect to another person's cultural identity and the cultural identities that they see as most

important. So we don't have to attend to everyone's specific aspect of their cultural identity, but the areas where they feel that are most important to them. And so we're kind of, in the way that I like to think about it, it's like, you know, as a coach, you know, as coaches, we're taught to use active listening, right? We're supposed to be listening for our clients in order to either reflect back to them require not only for us to listen, actively listen, but also it requires us to kind of sit in their place for a minute, to put ourselves in their shoes, to try to suspend our own cultural values and judgments and, you know, really engage with our clients in order to create resonance with them. It's like that create that kind of interpersonal resonance. And it's just one of those things where I think, again, it's easier said than done, you know, because it's hard for us to suspend our judgments as you said like either because we're judging others and most oftentimes because we we've learned to judge ourselves

right yes yeah so how do we suspend all that and really um listen in a way that we can put ourselves and the other person's shoes to understand what really matters to them, what is really, you know, what's really important to them. Yeah, thank you, Rob. I'm thinking about how do we put this into place? And let's say I'm leading someone in my company and I have a quest to be culturally, to grow my cultural humility. And what you said about, we need to respect the cultural identities that are important to them.

How do we have that conversation? What are some best practices there? And how do we learn what cultural identities are really important to them. And I think by cultural identities, you mean maybe a person's race or sexual orientation or sexual identity or their ethnicity, things like that. Yeah, exactly. So when I'm talking about race, sex, gender, age, you know, all ability, all of those types of things when I'm talking about their cultural identities. And oftentimes it's, for me, it's, again, it's really difficult, but I try to place the emphasis on humility or being humble is where we have to start from. Even though we use the term culture, if you're not, or if I'm not, or whoever, if the leader is not a humble person,

or, you know, we need to leverage that humbleness in order for us to engage with cultural humility, right? So when I'm thinking about being a humble leader, I'm thinking about, again, being able to listen, being able to, and not just listen, but listen with discomfort. Listen when people are saying things that kind of go against our own cultural values. You know, that's really when it's really hard to listen, because that's when you begin to maybe react, because the person's going against the things that we have learned, the things that we have internalized, the things that we might hold dear. And so it's one of those things where it's really hard to listen at that point or to be humble. And particularly, I think, in leadership positions, it's like we want to

often and I don't say not all leaders but when we are put in that situation sometimes we um how should I say we tend to become defensive right so if you're ever in a situation with someone you have a conversation with someone, you're having a conversation with someone, they start saying things, you can start feeling it in your body and then you start becoming defensive. That's when we want to engage our cultural humility, because that's when it's the most difficult to do. Like we're having a conversation with people who are just like us, who have some of the same values and belief systems that we have, it's easy to be culturally humble in that type of situation, because we're all coming

from kind of the same worldview. But when it's people that we're interacting with, people that we're coaching, for example, people that we are leading, for example, and they're coming at us with things that go against our values, then it's really hard to, you know, exercise that humility. Absolutely. And there's two follow-up questions I have on kind of what you said. What are the ways that you think that we can work to suspend our judgment so that we can be open to hearing what other people's, you know, different worldviews from us? I think the first thing is just being conscious of it because as people are talking, you know, it's hard to like kind of stop that narrative that we have in our heads, right? So part of

is being mindful of that and knowing that, okay, I might have this internal narrative going on, but recognizing that this is an internal narrative, this is not what the person is saying. So it's like in the sports psych, we used to talk about thought stopping. We know that that's not really as accurate anymore, right? Because we can't really stop ourselves from thinking,

but we can be very mindful of our our thoughts and you know kind of separate our thoughts from um yeah so so we can separate our ways of thinking from our ways of being and knowing and when we're interacting with other people and then try to again put ourselves in their shoes by being curious right and so a big part of it when I'm talking about the culture of humility another aspect of not it's just not being humble also you also want to be curious because if we're not curious then we're not likely to ask the right questions. Yeah, either leading or when we're coaching. Powerful. So be curious, be humble. And when you're, let's say, working with the client for the first time, do you ask them what cultural identities that are important to them? As I'm

kind of thinking about people who are listening and how do we put this into place so we can learn more about maybe the clients we work with and, or the people that we lead and better understanding them and what's important to them so that we can be, be humble. Well, in the very beginning, I usually don't because I want to establish that rapport. So what I try to do, and I think there's different ways of approaching it depending on one's personality or individual attributes. But one of the things I try to do is just listen to their story. Because if I listen

enough, they're going to tell me the things that they value. If I ask the right questions, they're going to tell me without me asking them directly about it. And as we begin to establish that rapport, and I feel like that as the creating that coaching relationship, then I might explore that more directly. But I usually don't at the very beginning. I just let them tell me their story. Yeah, I think that's a really strong approach. And then you start learning what's important to them and the ways that they identify. Absolutely. So what other sort of tools or strategies could we use to continue to be an inclusive leader and grow in our cultural humility? Is there anything else you're thinking about? I think part of it, and just as a caveat,

I think that oftentimes our training, and I see this, again, with companies that I've consulted with, that we have to move beyond. When I'm talking about cultural humility, one of the things I should have prefaced it with is that cultural humility is different than cultural competency. because oftentimes people will confuse the two. And so people will think like, well, you know, I'm culturally competent. I took the course that

Bob and Dr. Ty and Pruitt White taught for ASK, right, the Association for Black Sports Psychology, the culture and diversity course well you know that might course might give you some knowledge about cultural diversity and it might lead more to cultural competency but the problem with cultural competency it infers that you know that you know something or you or you know what's best. So let me probably give a better example of that. So the competency is like a destination. So it's like, okay, I took this training, I did this. And so now I'm competent in order to work with these types of clients

who are different than I am. Well, that may be the case, but the reality is that, you know, oftentimes, but basically, cultural competency is about the destination. Cultural humility is about the journey. We have to constantly learn. So it's like, we want to go back to like being curious, because you may learn something in a training course on cultural diversity you may learn something through that you know you know I've taught courses as you know for us on cultural diversity or have done workshops on that but that doesn't mean that that's the the all-in be-all about a particular group of people. Because not everyone ascribes,

even though it might be, for example, let me give a concrete example. I know I took a gender and communication class once. And one of the things that I learned in that class is that it said that women sometimes will qualify their statements first. So they might say something of, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is the best way for us to go. So that kind of qualifier, maybe this, maybe, maybe that. Well, we know not all women do that, right? And so if you take this, if you take these things as absolute truths, that's when, when it can become a problem. So,

you know, competency is something that, that we need to have that, check that box off because that's the culture that we live in right now. You know, if I, you know, but, but we're, we're, it's important for us to move beyond that and move to cultural humility where we are open and we're actually treating people as individuals and seeing what cultural identities or even personal identities or social identities are the most important to them, if that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, I appreciate what you said about cultural humility is about the journey, whereas cultural competence is the destination. So, yeah, we've talked about this idea of inclusive leadership today and being culturally humble. I'm curious about other trends you see when you're coaching people. And I know one of the things that we talked about before we hit record is this idea of that. Sometimes we can allow the stress or anxiety or pressure of people that lead us to impact us.

And maybe that's actually related to culture, perhaps. But I'm curious about what you've seen in terms of that happening and maybe ways that we can combat that. Well, that's a really good question. experience from talking to others and coaching leaders is part of it any type of stress that we that we feel that and this is whole notion of like how do I manage up like when I'm feeling that way when I'm feeling a lot of pressure from my supervisor from other leaders in the company you know how do I how do I manage that how do I manage their? How do I manage their expectations? I think the first thing that I tell folks is that, you know, you want to protect your energy. You want to as much as possible. And you need to find, you need to determine how best you can do that for yourself. Like, I know how I try to protect my energy when I'm feeling that pressure.

So it's going to be different for different people. So for some people, it might be finding different ways of communicating with people who lead them or who manage them. With some people, it might be finding, it might be just alternative ways of thinking, right? And being mindful of that my current situation, I'm not always going to be in this particular situation, and then learning to control the controllables. I got that from you, by the way, Sandra. So not internalizing everything, too, because I think that sometimes the pressure that we feel is is also internalized that we're putting that pressure on our ourselves right uh I'll give the example of one of my when I one of my first jobs when I mentioned I worked in multicultural affairs

I had a supervisor who would get in the office at you know eight o'clock in the morning and would leave at five but then would come back for events at night on campus from like six to nine o'clock and so I felt that oh if she's doing that then I need to do that too yeah you know and I did that for two years I burnt myself out yeah I could imagine. you know, delegate some of that to other people. And so I use that oftentimes with clients to protect your energy and also cultivate your energy by including others in the process. Yeah, I appreciate your response, because I'm thinking about how we can't control our leader, or we can't control our colleagues that work with us. So just recognizing they're out of your control and we're not necessarily going to be able to change them and change their response or their reaction. But you provided us two ideas. You know, could you enhance your communication in some way?

And then maybe what's a different alternate way of thinking about the situation to help you protect your energy and to help you cope with what's going on at work or in your family. Exactly, exactly. Well, Rob, I'm so grateful you have been on the podcast today. You gave us a lot of gems to think about. We started talking about inclusive leadership and we talked about how our ego and our judge gets in the way of being an inclusive leader, but really helping people, understanding people's values and the identities that are important to them and being curious and humble in our conversation so we can better understand the people that we work with and the people that we lead. And at the end, we talked about protecting our energy by controlling what we can control and communicating and perhaps thinking of alternate ways of thinking about situations.

How can people reach out to you to learn more about your work and to follow along with what you're doing, Rob? Well, right now, I don't have a website, but folks can contact me, one via email at robresolute-counseling.org. They can also reach out to me on Psychology Today. I have a profile there. If you just search for Rob Owens, it will come up. Or you can, folks can reach out to me via LinkedIn.

I have a profile there too. Okay, excellent. And do you have any final thoughts or advice for the high performers who are listening that are working to be the best that they can be? My final thoughts is, I always like this particular phrase, it's like, keep it moving, you know, it's like, you know, staying still is not, it's not an option for me. And I don't, and I don't think it's an option for other high performers. So, you know, keep it moving and remember that it is the journey, not the destination. Excellent. Thank you, Rob. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you.

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 cindra 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 cindra that's d-r-c-i-n-d-r-a.com see you next week to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week!