Start With A Win - Dr. Laura Gallaher: Why Embracing Stress as a Choice CHANGES Everything

Starting point is 00:00:00 Stress is a choice. And that's often, you know, I'm happy we're on a podcast, nobody can throw anything at me when I say that. I was, I don't know, Adam, I was so frustrated when I was first taught that I was very resistant because they immediately think if they accept themselves, it's going to mean they become complacent. They assume that means they're going to stop learning, stop growing. And that's a fundamental misunderstanding because self-acceptance and self-improvement aren't opposites. Welcome to Start With a Win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development,

Starting point is 00:00:30 and how to build a better business. Let's go. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With a Win headquarters, it's Adam Kontos with Start With a Win. Today we're diving deep in how to transform the chaos of leadership into a high-performing workplace with an expert who knows a thing or two about it.

Starting point is 00:00:46 I'm all about setting you up for success in your leadership. So I've brought in Dr. Laura Gallagher, a global thought leader trusted by companies like Yahoo and ADP to motivate, engage, and inspire teams. Dr. Laura and her company, Gallagher Edge, apply the science of human behavior to drive organizational performance. She's just not a theorist.

Starting point is 00:01:08 She's helped organizations build and evolve their values and improve their effectiveness. Get ready to learn how to create a workplace where self-awareness, accountability, and trust solve your detox problems of your leadership overwhelm. Dr. Laura, welcome to Start with a Win. Thank you. I'm happy to be here, Adam.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Yeah, I love this topic, and I love what you've been working on. We talk a lot about chaos in leadership. It seems like every day is chaos in leadership, and we need this overwhelmed detox and things like that. First of all, I think you're really interesting in how you're teaching leaders and how you're adjusting organizational culture.

Starting point is 00:01:49 How did you get into that to begin with? So I loved psychology in college. I just was fascinated by the science of human behavior. And I really felt like a social psychologist at heart, but I didn't know what to do with that. And so I studied organizational psychology instead because somebody said, I can study anything I want. As long as I say at work at the end of it. So I came into organizational psychology. I live in Orlando, Florida, because

Starting point is 00:02:17 I came to University of Central Florida was two years in to my PhD program. And I found out that NASA was hiring, Oh, wow. Organizational psychologists, which I was very confused. I said the NASA, but I came to find out that, you know, NASA had two shuttle disasters in their history. The second was Columbia in 2003. And when the investigation came out, they said that NASA's culture was as much to blame for the accident as the technical pieces of what happened. And so NASA was actually hiring organizational psychologists to come in and help to transform and manage the culture.

Starting point is 00:02:58 So I was working at Kennedy Space Center for about eight years to positively transform that we were looking a lot at psychological safety and helping the leaders grow their self-awareness so that they could understand when they were unintentionally sending signals that shut down communication. That's fascinating because it seems like everything starts with a leader having to hold up the mirror and take a look at themselves. You've also gotten into this radical self-acceptance also. Is that parallel to that self-awareness piece? It's completely at the core of it. Yeah. Because Adam, I had been working for NASA for

Starting point is 00:03:36 maybe three years or so. I got promoted really quickly into leadership and I was taking one of many 360 degree assessments at this leadership training. And I remember sitting in the cafeteria during a lunch break, reading my 30 page report. And I turned to this page and my respondents were asked, does Laura ever use any of these negative influence tactics? I've gotten pretty good feedback up to that point. But then I saw that there were at least a couple of people on my own team who felt that I would sometimes bully them intellectually. What does that look like?

Starting point is 00:04:10 Oh, I mean, so first of all, I was just horrified because I, I didn't know what that looked like. I can promise you it was never my intention to bully somebody intellectually. And so it was a really like eye opening moment for me where I could reflect and figure out like, what am I doing? It's leading anybody to feel this way. And what it took me a while to figure this out. I wasn't just like popping in the cafeteria with all these health insights, but I came to realize that as a person in my maybe late twenties at that point, I still felt very eager to prove myself. My ego had insecurities around being young and not wanting to be wrong. So when I would advocate for my ideas, especially if I felt like I was struggling to get buy-in, I think that I would become a little bit more forceful in my opinion sharing. I would probably

Starting point is 00:05:00 start to throw out research to back me up. Like, well, hey, if you don't believe me, like it's coming from this. And so these little things in my mind at the time, I think I'm just proving my point so that they can support me in making a really great decision. But in hindsight, I could see it was actually my own insecurity and my self judgment that was leading me to send these signals around, you know, ego insecurity that felt like bullying to them. Is that? And so is...

Starting point is 00:05:31 I'm sorry to interrupt you there. Well, it's just that's, it's self acceptance that's the antidote for that. Because it was my own self judgment that was driving those negative behaviors. And so that's how it all actually links back to radical self-acceptance. Is this, I mean, you talk about that particular piece on your 360. That seems like a common leadership foul that we see people encounter quite frequently.

Starting point is 00:06:01 Do you see this a lot? I mean, there's self-deception in all of us as human beings. And because leaders are in positions of authority and power, they are observed and watched much more. They have a disproportionate impact, as you know, on the organization. And so even slight signs of defensiveness, defense mechanisms, have a disproportionate impact

Starting point is 00:06:23 then on the team. And so that's actually what detracts from psychological safety. So yeah, it can be common, but defenses are really creative. They show up in all kinds of ways, but they all detract from our effectiveness. Ultimately. That's fascinating. Does this happen more when leaders are under pressure, like in a chaotic environment or something like that?

Starting point is 00:06:42 Big time. Yeah, of course. Right. Because, and there's a really strong link too, between stress and, and self-acceptance. So the first piece of that is that stress is a choice. And that's often, you know, I'm, I'm happy we're on a podcast. Nobody can throw anything at me. When I say that I was, I don't know, Adam, I was so frustrated when I was first taught that I was very resistant. I didn't want to think that was true. Cause I thought that I was, I don't know, Adam, I was so frustrated when I was first taught that I was very resistant. I didn't want to think that was true because I thought that I was being blamed then for being stressed. But if you think about it, it's true on so many levels. So on the surface level, what choices are you making about how you've designed your life and your role that

Starting point is 00:07:19 are creating stressors around you? Right? Are you taking on too much? Do you have too many roles in the organization? Are you trying to be everything to everybody? But a lot of high achievers and leaders don't want to give up that piece of themselves. And I would argue that you don't have to just peel the onion back a little bit more because there are no inherent stressors. There are no universal stressors. There's literally not a single situation in life that everybody would agree. Yes, I would be stressed out. Literally even the apocalypse.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Some people are going to be completely at peace with that and not be stressed. So stress is a subjective response that we're having to the situation. So the first choice that you're making when you're choosing stress is what story are you choosing to tell yourself about what this situation means? That's the first level down. So if it's, I'm stressed about my workload. Well, what is it that you think this means? You have too much to do. Maybe it means I'm going to let somebody down. Maybe the story in my head is I'm going to deliver subpar work. Okay, so we're getting a little bit deeper into understanding that's closer to the source of stress, but peel it back one more layer because what does that

Starting point is 00:08:36 story say about you? And I get like a little theatrical with this part because I'll say like, who are you if you let somebody down? That's that inner judgment. Who are you if you deliver work that's less than perfect? That's kind of what the inner critic is saying. And it's actually that self judgment that is the true source of our stress. It's never the actual situation. Interesting.

Starting point is 00:09:05 So once again, when we can lean into a self acceptance practice, when we can practice acceptance around, sometimes people miss deadlines and it doesn't mean that they're a failure as a person. Yes, I might let somebody down in this instant. It doesn't mean that I'm a failure as a friend or as a coworker. It doesn't mean that I can't take accountability, repair things, learn from it. And so approaching yourself with acceptance rather than judgment dramatically reduces your stress. I love that. It's interesting. I always look at controlling these things with boundaries and priorities as a leader.

Starting point is 00:09:45 I mean, tell me, from your perspective, how do those things play into controlling this stress and our ability to, with emotional intelligence, work with our teams from a leadership perspective? They're hugely important. Even the ability to set boundaries, I would argue, is a self-acceptance practice. Because, Adam, I'm

Starting point is 00:10:05 sure that you know people who would identify as people pleasers. Oh yeah. Yeah. We all know some and, and if we're honest with ourselves, we all probably have that tendency from time to time with certain people in certain situations. That is also an area of self judgment. So if I'm engaging in people pleasing, which means I'm not holding effective boundaries for myself, that is because I am not holding myself in high enough esteem to honor myself. I am placing other people's perceptions of me above what I actually think is good for me. And so the ability to set boundaries is a way for you to reinforce a self acceptance level within you. So you can go, okay, I am not going to be a failure as a person. If I set a boundary with this coworker and say, you asked me to get this to you

Starting point is 00:11:02 by Friday, that's not realistic for me, but I can get it to you by Wednesday of next week. As an example, some people are so afraid to do that because they're afraid of what's that interaction going to be, what's this person gonna think about me? And if I'm afraid of them judging me, it's because I'm judging me. Our fear of judgment from other people is always rooted in our own fear,

Starting point is 00:11:24 our own judgment of ourselves. Interesting. So let me, let me ask you this. If I mean, it sounds like judgment is a huge part of this problem or this challenge or this opportunity, frankly, and it seems like the opposite of judgment is just witnessing a situation and being aware of the circumstances around that. How do we disconnect this emotional piece

Starting point is 00:11:50 so that we're not judging, we're just witnessing as a leader? I mean, it's obviously witnessing. You're like, yeah, the number is five. OK, what was the goal number? Oh, it was nine. You can either say, oh, you suck. You barely made half of that. Boy, I'm really disappointed in that.

Starting point is 00:12:09 This is all judgment, obviously, judgment talk. Or you can say, all right, is there a way that we can get this five to a seven or eight and progressively make it to the nine? I mean, how can we as leaders trigger our brains to not functionally judge things and look at things realistically for what they are and how do we improve upon them? Several things. One is practicing self-compassion. And so whatever was happening for you that

Starting point is 00:12:40 the goal was a nine or is that what the goal was? Yeah, that's nine. Let's call it 10. We'll call it 10. Goal's a 10. Goal was 10. Yeah. Only got to five. And so in a reflection of, you know, okay, so if I take a look at what happened,

Starting point is 00:12:54 do I have any compassion for myself in that process? Do I have compassion for whatever I was going through that made it difficult for me to actually hit that goal? Was it the fact that I was lacking some knowledge? Or I've got some room to grow some skills? Was it that I was missing information from other people? Was it that I over committed? You know, what were the things that actually contributed to this happening? And then can I have compassion for myself? And most people

Starting point is 00:13:21 think that it's easier to find compassion for other people than themselves. And there's this struggle of saying, I don't want to offer myself compassion if I feel like I have not been okay, if I wasn't good enough. And so I'll invite them to think about this hypothetical story, although I know this happens every day. Imagine that you have a child, let's say he's a teenager and he's abused at home. He's physically abused at

Starting point is 00:13:49 home. Now this child goes to school one day and he starts a fight and he hurts another child. So we can look at that behavior of him starting the fight and say, do we think that that is acceptable behavior? No, of course not. Nobody thinks that's okay. Can you also look at this child and have compassion for his experience? And everybody that I asked this question to says, yes, absolutely, I can have compassion for his experience. And so these things coexist, the ability to have compassion for somebody's

Starting point is 00:14:24 experience and situation while also saying I want to hold And so these things coexist, the ability to have compassion for somebody's experience and situation while also saying, I want to hold myself to a higher standard. And so it's really about helping people get out of black and white thinking and recognize that so many of these things coexist. Paradox theory is vital to understanding this, the coexistence, for example, of self-acceptance and self- and self improvement. Okay. You know, you were talking about witnessing. I tend to talk about the opposite of judgment as acceptance. So instead of judging yourself, how can you accept yourself? And most of the

Starting point is 00:14:57 high achieving clients that I work with are terrified of that because they immediately think if they accept themselves, it's going to mean they become complacent. They assume that means they're going to stop learning, stop growing. And that's a fundamental misunderstanding because self-acceptance and self-improvement aren't opposites. The opposite of self-acceptance is self-judgment. So self-improvement exists on both planes. So my question then is always to these high achievers, do you wanna focus on self-improvement

Starting point is 00:15:29 from a self-judging lens? Or do you wanna focus on self-improvement from a self-accepting lens? And once they recognize that both are possible, they start to see that they are their best selves when they are in that, like we call it the upper right quadrant, right? Where you're high on self-acceptance and you're high on self-improvement, both. And research is super clear that when that's

Starting point is 00:15:49 where you sit, you actually learn and grow faster. So it's the opposite of what a lot of what a lot of people believe to be true about a self-acceptance practice. Well, I love to hear that because I, I think a lot of leaders focus on both of those things to continuously grow their business and grow themselves. I love this piece about self-improvement because if you're not getting better, theoretically you're getting worse. There's no staying the same in life. Let's face it.

Starting point is 00:16:18 Everything else around you is changing or becoming more difficult or evolving, growing, whatever. Absolutely. And I always say leaders learn and learners lead. So let's deconstruct this. How do we transform our leaders from a judgmental piece into this curiosity of growth and this desire to get better. I love to talk about the Team Sky, Sir David Brailsford,

Starting point is 00:16:51 who ran the British cycling team. And he went in and he helped his people grow by marginal gains, 1% improvement, the whole Kaizen theory, things of that nature. We've heard it over and over again in leadership. Yeah, compound effects in there, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, compound effect.

Starting point is 00:17:05 Darren Hardy wrote a great book about that. So ultimately, what are your thoughts on how do we kind of break free from this cloud of judgment and really being hard on ourselves, therefore we're just spreading that discontent around amongst our teams, to let's all grow together. Is there something that a breakthrough that leaders need to have in order to go, whoa,

Starting point is 00:17:35 if we're trying to get better, then we don't have to worry about judgment. Right. There's usually a few. And in my experience, the first one is the recognition that they don't need the self-judgment to improve. We get very attached to the things that we think have helped us be successful so far.

Starting point is 00:17:52 The brain loves what's familiar. And so we will cling to our inner critic and be determined like this, I need this. If I am not hard on myself, I will never grow. So that's the first breakthrough for them to have is the recognition that the absence of that fear does not lead to an absence of improvement and growth. Love is always going to step in as your motivator. The second level of breakthrough is usually figuring out what is the source of this judgment because it doesn't actually come just directly from us.

Starting point is 00:18:21 It's typically something that has been adopted and becomes our inner monologue, but we heard it elsewhere first. And where was that? So I invite a lot of introspection, you know, roll the tape back. When do you first remember feeling really critical of yourself around a situation like this? And this is the part that often terrifies my parents, not my parents, but my clients who are parents, because I'll give a really simple example of you could have a three or four year old kid who makes their bed and they call in their mom, mommy, mommy, come look, made my bed. And mom comes in and she says, Oh, Adam, that's wonderful. Great job. And then what's the next thing that she does?

Starting point is 00:19:07 Fixes it. She fixes it. And everybody knows the answer to that question, Adam. Everybody knows the answer to that because that's, it's just, it's kind of like human nature. And I think so many of us, at least the people that I work with probably did have an experience like that. And so the mom, I mean, she's not doing anything quote unquote wrong, but she goes and she fixes it because it wasn't done very well. He's three or four. Like it does, you know, it's lumpy. It's terrible. But a tiny moment like that can get encoded in a child's mind as I'm not good enough. And it's distortion. That's not true. But that kind of, especially in repetitive pattern, we start

Starting point is 00:19:46 to just build in this inner critic, this inner judgment. And so looking at a situation like that, that's going to encode in your memory with the maturity of a four year old, if that's how old you were when it happened. If you don't let yourself go back and re-perceive some of these experiences, then you're going to be stuck with that inner monologue. But if you can look back at it and go, all right, yeah, my mom fixing the bed isn't because I'm fundamentally incompetent as a human, right? Like it was a cute thing. I tried and you know, she was doing her best. She wasn't trying to make me feel bad for it. So even having compassion for that person. So it's a simple example.

Starting point is 00:20:23 But when we're able to roll the tape back and figure out like, where did I first begin to adopt judgment of myself as a practice? And then you can re-perceive that and you can start to change your patterns now in adulthood. Gotcha. Okay. Now let's turn this into learning. Where does, where do we go from here? So once you've, you've been able to figure out, okay, this is the source of my judgment. And so I want to change the narrative. I want to disrupt the pattern. I want to break free

Starting point is 00:20:57 of the self judgment pattern. Then it becomes about giving the microphone over to a different voice in your head, if you will. Hopefully, this doesn't sound too weird to you. One of my mentors described it as like a boardroom that we all have in our heads. Different voices, sort of different personas, different characters, they have different approaches, different ways of speaking to us. They're all a part of us. But sometimes there's a voice in the boardroom that is just a little bit rough around the edges trying to help, but actually a little bit rough. And so we want to change the pattern.

Starting point is 00:21:29 A couple ways to do that. One is hand the microphone over to an inner champion instead of an inner critic. And most of us know that voice too. It's the one that kind of rarely gets to speak up when we really have done something well. And for a lot of us, it's not long before the inner critic listens to the champion and then goes, yeah, but, and immediately finds like, well, but this wasn't good enough for this could have been better. When you get those two voices working together, that changes the game and it turns more into learning.

Starting point is 00:22:03 And so that sounds like actually offering appreciation for your critic. Like one of the most meta things about a self-acceptance practice is how can I practice acceptance of my critic herself? Mine's female. Okay. Right? Just like if you had a person who would come to you and they're constantly criticizing, but theoretically offering useful

Starting point is 00:22:28 information, helpful feedback if you can hear it through the critical nature. If you thank them for that and you appreciate them for that, they're not going to get louder and more critical. They're actually going to take some of the wind out of their sails. They're going to feel heard. And some of that fear starts to drop down. So I will coach my clients as an example to when the inner critic is starting to rage at you, just listen and say, what else do you want me to know? Okay, thank you. What else do you want me to know? When you give it that airtime, then it stops just bombarding you all the time. And so this is some of that pattern disruption where now I'm not always going to self judgment. I can hear the voice as more helpful feedback.

Starting point is 00:23:13 Like you were talking about Adam, like, okay, the goal was 10, we got to five. Well, what are some things that we think we could have done differently? That voice is great. We still wanna hear those things. But now it's not what the air of, and you're fundamentally incompetent because you didn't hit the goal. Cause that's like that subconscious story. That's what we're really reacting to from a more self accepting

Starting point is 00:23:35 place. It's so much easier to learn. Wow. So when you're able to say, Hey, you know what? There's a lot of things that I did well here. Um, and I can absolutely see some places where I either dropped the ball or I could have did well here. And I can absolutely see some places where I either dropped the ball or I could have done this differently. And yeah, that's a useful learning. The learning accelerates. Research shows how much we can actually learn faster when we're coming at a place of kindness toward ourselves. That's fascinating. I mean, it really breaks down those barriers that stop us from learning, that stop us from performing, and encourage us to get better. So this has been really interesting,

Starting point is 00:24:10 going from this situation of judgment to radical self-acceptance to getting better. I mean, it's a great cycle for us to go through as leaders and explore, how are we helping our employees this way as well? Or how are we hurting our employees in their growth and their performance. So Dr. Laura, where can we find you online

Starting point is 00:24:32 if we want to learn more about these principles, or maybe have you speak for our organization or something like that? Well, a couple options. One is that if you're curious about the whole concept of self-acceptance, we have this free quiz people can take, which is just self acceptance quiz.com. It'll help you see where are you on the spectrum of self acceptance and self improvement. You'll get your report right away. It's quick, quick, right? Like three to five minutes. And then you'll get a series

Starting point is 00:24:59 of coaching emails based on your results. And then we'll be connected via email. So that's a great option. The other one would be on LinkedIn. I love to post there quite a bit. And then it'll be connected via email. So that's a great option. The other one would be on LinkedIn. I love to post there quite a bit. And if you want to connect with me, just tell me that you heard me here on Adam's podcast. Awesome. Dr. Laura, this has been some amazing information.

Starting point is 00:25:15 It's really helped me hold up the mirror and really re-explore my leadership and how I treat myself, frankly. And I love how it just helps you break out of chaos and all of the whirlwind of craziness going on every single day. Everybody's like, when's this cycle going to end? The reality is it's consistent. So you have to do things to make yourself better in order to deal with whatever situations

Starting point is 00:25:39 you're dealing with as a leader, as a business owner, or even as a solopreneur, because you're leading yourself in this. So Dr. Laura, I have a question I ask all the amazing people on Start with a Wind, and that's, how do you start your day with a win? I have a few different ways that I cycle through, but I think my favorite is probably dance. So if I can start my day with some music, and I'm moving my body in a way that's

Starting point is 00:26:07 fairly unstructured, but just joyful, then I feel like I've just started the day with a win. That sounds like a lot of fun. I'll have to try that one of these days. So yeah, I get into the gym, but my wife's going to look at me and go, why are you dancing? But hey, don't judge, right? Okay. You know, I do mine at home, so I don't have an audience for it. But it brings me joy. This is awesome. Dr. Laura Gallagher, check her out at gallagheredge.com or on LinkedIn, as she says.

Starting point is 00:26:35 There's a lot of great information around this concept. It's been tested and proven time and time again through her work. Dr. Laura, thanks for all you do, and thanks for being on Start with a Wind. Thank you, Adam.

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Start With A Win - Dr. Laura Gallaher: Why Embracing Stress as a Choice CHANGES Everything

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