Start With A Win - Rewire Your Success: Transformative Leadership & Neuroscience with Steve Scanlon

Starting point is 00:00:00 We can be much better leaders if we understand poise and calm and resilience. I've noticed that sets leaders apart is they're not trying to be the most interesting person in the world. They're trying to be the most interested person in the world. You want to inspire people, be interested in them. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Are you ready to unlock the secrets to radical improvement in your business and personal life? I am. Today on Start With A Win,

Starting point is 00:00:41 we're joined by Steve Scanlon, a true visionary in coaching and development. With over 30,000 hours of one-on-one coaching with top executives under his belt, Steve is no stranger to catalyzing transformative change. Certified by the ICF and armed with expertise in interpersonal neurobiology, he's a trusted leader dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations alike. Oh, and did I mention he's the dynamic founder and CEO of Rewire? Join us on a journey of growth and discovery with Steve Scanlon. Steve, welcome to Start With A Win. Adam, great to be here with you. Awesome. Hey, I got to tell you, on your website, I love better mindset, better outcomes. And obviously, that's what we're going to talk about today. But ultimately, it comes down to, what do you mean by better mindset, better outcomes?

Starting point is 00:01:38 Wow, you do jump into the deep end. I am going all the way in, buddy. We only have 20 minutes with each other. Let's go into the deep end. Well, look, mindset, I think, is a buzzword these days. A lot of people speak about it. You hear a lot about it. I've dedicated my life to it. And yet, when you say that, I step back for a second and go, you know, I guess it's a pretty esoteric concept. And when you think about outcomes, whether it's in business or athletics or like any other part, you know, of life, I suppose, above the surface for us might be outcomes, results, maybe even actions we take. That's above the surface. Below the surface are

Starting point is 00:02:25 things like your thoughts, your feelings, mental activities, as Dr. Daniel Siegel calls them. So that might be mindset. All right. And so, you know, what do I mean by that? I, you know, go ask any pro athlete, ask a golfer, ask a baseball player what percentage of their results or outcomes have to do with their mindset? And I'd be curious how they might answer. I love that. It's you're right. I mean, this is, this is funny. I saw that. I'm like, I gotta, I just gotta ask Steve about that. Um, the, the reality is you're, you're 100% right. And we can't achieve it until we believe we can achieve it. And we, we set our standards in our mind. So it's amazing. And I, you know, I've got a lot of friends in Navy SEALs and I was in the Marines and SWAT team commander

Starting point is 00:03:09 and stuff like that. And it all started with the mindset, you know, get, get past yourself before you can get past that obstacle. So, Hey, um, let's get into the, actually the questions I did prepare. Uh, and, um, Steve, uh, all right. You you've been coaching top executives for quite some time. I mean, over 30,000 hours of coaching top executives. You have heard and seen it all. Any basis, foundation you can share with our listeners of what is coaching? Why should they get a coach? And then maybe an example of a great coaching experience

Starting point is 00:03:46 you've had with somebody who's shown transformation. Yeah, again, just with the succinctness with which you ask the questions, I'll try to be as succinct in my answer. Although I suspect you're gonna ask me pretty deep questions. And so you challenge my ability to synthesize them. Coaching is a very, I think, a very distinct field.

Starting point is 00:04:14 And it is distinguished in the world that we have. You know, Adam, you wake up one day and go, I love people. I want to help people. I want to serve people. Well, my team and I have identified primarily five ways that you can do that. You can teach. You can mentor. You can counsel, you can consult, or you can coach. So teaching, mentoring, counseling, consulting, and coaching.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Now, there's subcategories of all of those fields, right? Under counseling, you have therapy and psychotherapy and what does it mean to be a consultant? But in our world, we think it's really important that we distinguish what those are. So teaching is bringing an agenda to the table. You go to college. Hey, I don't know anything about biology. Well, sit down, shut up. We're gonna teach you, right?

Starting point is 00:04:56 You take in knowledge, right? Mentoring, Adam is bringing a past experience, right? I mean, I noticed that you were a CEO of a fairly large real estate organization. And so somebody that's getting into real estate, you might use mentorship as a platform. Consulting is actually, this is the one that gets the most, I think, confused with coaching is consulting is giving advice. Oh, yeah. Right. I'm going to tell you what to do and give you advice. And so I think coaching personally is distinct from that and where it gets maybe a little intertwined with consulting is coaching is not actually giving people advice.

Starting point is 00:05:39 And I'm coming at that from a perspective of whether it's the Institute of Coaching, which is, you know, I'm a fellow at the Institute of Coaching. We're tied to the McLean School at Harvard, whether it's the International Coaching Federation. A lot of these governing bodies will define coaching as helping another person find their own insights. Oh, wow. So just really briefly, if I give you good advice, hey, Adam, I think you should do this. And you come back, oh, Steve, that was great advice.

Starting point is 00:06:07 Well, two things happen. And we now understand this neurobiologically. One, I get a dopamine hit. Look at me and my great advice. And two, I rob you of a needed neural pathway that when you create your own thinking, the connection that you make with that thinking allows for a much more sustained ability to take action over time. That's why people that go around going, I think you should do this and you should do that and listen to me do this and do that. Again, not that we

Starting point is 00:06:37 don't need good consultants from time to time. I think it's a fine field. I just don't confuse it with coaching. Coaching is more about like what you're doing. You're asking me questions. Certainly I'm giving you some thoughts and ideas and answers, but I think coaching is the art of, um, deliberately and intentionally and very creatively asking people questions in order for them to discover for themselves a path. I love that. I was, I was just thinking, so the two words, or actually the word in my head was co-discovery is what I was thinking when you were talking about that. So what does coachable mean though? Because I've heard some people with massive egos or something like that. And I've actually, I've had six coaches myself. I have, I've coached CEOs, but I've also had a lot of my executives go to different coaches. And I've actually had coaches

Starting point is 00:07:33 come back to me and say, that person is not coachable. What, what, how do, I mean, you're one of the top experts in this space. Give me some of your insight on is, is there such thing and how can we overcome that if it, if it occurs or what should we be looking for? experts in this space. Give me some of your insight on, um, is, is there such thing and how can we overcome that if it, if it occurs or what should we be looking for? Well, I, again, I appreciate the nature of your question. You know, I don't, I hope to not have so much hubris, hubris is to think I have the answer. Let me give you my answer to that. I, I think when I hear somebody is or isn't coachable, I have as many questions as you do. I'm always trying to understand what it is that people mean by that.

Starting point is 00:08:09 Right. So I guess, and again, I wasn't prepared to answer these questions, which kind of makes it organic and fun, doesn't it now, Adam? Oh, yeah. We're going to dig deep. I suspect if you look at how academia, if we want to go there, defines coaching and coaching is the art and skill of drawing somebody else out. Right. I want to ask you some questions about that. I'm going to have you think about that, which, by the way, again, all those other disciplines like teaching, like if no one's ever been in real estate, you were in the real estate game. They've never, they don't know anything about it. You can't technically coach them. You have to teach them. You can't draw

Starting point is 00:08:52 something out in somebody that they don't have. And so teaching is a wonderful skill and discipline for some people that do that. But if we're going back to coaching and you're asking about coachability, if coaching is drawing some people out, I suspect that you're going to encounter people who being drawn out creates, again, what neuroscientists might call cognitive dissonance. That doesn't make them feel good. I don't, maybe it makes some people feel called out. And so to the degree to which people sort of have a resistance to coming in and going, OK't co-create with you as you said. And so when you see a huge resistance to that, and I certainly have had people that I've encountered like that, they wanna tell you about their successes.

Starting point is 00:09:53 And when you press them or lean in and go, hey, let's explore where you could go to them, you begin to feel this resistance to that. And they don't wanna talk about that. Somehow that's a shame for them or I don't know what it might be. But if you don't want to talk about that, somehow that's a shame for them or I don't know what it might be. But if you can't get someone to do that, yeah, I would begin to doubt whether or not from a pure coaching perspective that they could enter that space. It doesn't mean we couldn't, we could do some counseling or consulting. I can tell you what I

Starting point is 00:10:20 think. I love it. I love it. There's always another angle for how to approach it there. That's great. You know, the, and I love great coaching outcomes. It's fascinating when you take a look at, you know, anything from professional sports to, I love these business coaching outcomes where somebody is, you know, business, they stagnate or they start to slide and then they bring in a coach and then you see this company just explode with results. Tell us, how does coaching create those outcomes? What do you look for? And maybe give us an example of something you've seen where it shows that point. Well, yeah, I, um, oh, I love that you love that. Uh, you know, for me, when one of my clients has an outcome like that and they come back and they'll use

Starting point is 00:11:13 particular language, I'll say, you know, it dawned on me. I had an epiphany. I, I, I particularly like that imagery and the metaphor of dawning. Think about that from dark to light, something went from dark to light, you know, and so when a leader in an organization goes from dark to light, and something dawns on them, they come back and they're talking about, they, they encountered something, we did something in coaching, I asked a question, I didn't tell them what to do. But they were like, wait a minute, let me think about that. And they come back and after consideration, whatever, they have a dawning. Well, again, that neural pathway is going to create a tentacled organizational shift. And especially when you can create that with multiple people. And so, yeah, I mean, that's one of the most poignant examples of that is when people, Adam, want to change culture.

Starting point is 00:12:06 That's such a common thing. Like, we have this culture. We want to make it different. How do you actually do that without people having a different? You won't change the culture unless you get enough people having insights that the culture needs to change. And so what are the questions that we can ask? How do we help people explore something that they didn't want to explore? There's all kinds of really cool things. And when that happens, it's great. It's, it's, it really is. It's truly

Starting point is 00:12:36 magic. So anybody who's listening to this, who's either stuck in maybe stuck in their career, they feel like they're, they're not getting to where they want to get to, or, you know, they're there's, you can clearly feel that there's something missing in your heart, in your head, in that connection, uh, or in their business, you know, it might be sales results might be like what Steve just said. Uh, you know, the culture is just awkward or uncomfortable or tense or whatever it might be. And, you know, don't get me wrong. Tension's great. Tension's great if we use it for the great things. So, um, but Steve, you keep talking about, uh, neurobiology and you're, you have a background in interpersonal neurobiology. Um, can you explain to us what that is? Because we're talking about some connection here, you know, in the brain, obviously. But, you know, and I would love directly from Dr. Daniel Siegel. Dr. Siegel is

Starting point is 00:13:46 a Harvard trained guy who actually ran a neuroscience department in neurobiology at UCLA for many, many years. He ended up publishing a book called Mindsight. And out of mind sight, he created this concept of interpersonal neurobiology. And so I went through a ton of the coursework and got his certifications in interpersonal neurobiology. And basically, he calls it, it's very, it's an interdisciplinary approach where he takes anthropology and sociology. And ultimately, I think what Dr. Siegel is trying to do, Adam, is he tried to create an understanding of what it means to have a healthy mind. And he goes out of great lengths to try to describe the in your skull, whereas the mind, as we all probably can intuit, might be more than just the biology of your brain. It has to do with things like you and I interacting with one another. And so there's like this interpersonal bit more about neurobiology or how that plays out in people's lives.

Starting point is 00:15:11 He has these things called the eight integrations. And they've, again, I talk about epiphanies. It took me actually four readings to fully understand that book, but it's been super helpful to me. But interpersonal neurobiology is how do we understand neurobiology in a way and apply it? Because you talk a lot about leadership. Well, leadership exists because of organizations, but people, right? I think it was John Maxwell said, if you think you're a leader, but nobody's following, you're just going on a walk, right? There's no there. And so because of that, I think Siegel's work in interpersonal neurobiology ends up being super fascinating with regard to how does biology of our brain and mind interplay with how we are as leaders. So how does that affect our ability to be coached or our development of, you know, emotional intelligence or resilience or

Starting point is 00:16:05 anything like that? Is that, does that play together in that connection? Yeah. Like anything with the mind or the brain, you know, we live in this wonderful age of technology. God knows where we're going to be in 50 years, but, um, we get to, we get to see a lot of this now, right? So where does it play? So for example, people come to us a lot and they're like, I've got this habit or I want to establish a new habit. Well, if you go back to like, even like the nineties, largely what neuroscientists were talking about back then was conjecture. We, we observed a lot of really cool things, but today we get to actually see it. So we, that's, what's so cool about the biology using fMRI or some of the other modalities that they can use to see the brain.

Starting point is 00:16:52 We don't have to guess as much about what a neural connection between your limbic system and your prefrontal cortex, where you think and where you feel, what that is and what that looks like. And so as a result of that, like even in our work with people, when somebody's coming up and going, hey, I've got this habit that I either wish I didn't, or I'd like to start a new one that I do, having a different understanding of the biology of that, it can be pretty helpful because we're not guessing anymore about what really people might have to do. I love it. And I guess, you know, you, you start to see the brain

Starting point is 00:17:27 fire differently when people are under pressure. So how, how do we utilize this, um, this science in order to function better under pressure? Well, that'd be, you know, again, I don't know how many people get to come back onto your podcast, but, you know, we should have one called, we would have one called Under Pressure, you know, and then we'll play that song, you know, from the 80s. Is that David Bowie and Queen, right? Under Pressure. We'll play that song. I probably spent a better part of, I don't know, eight years studying one neurochemical and it's cortisol, right? The stress hormone. And so I don't want to say I'm an expert because I get around the experts and then I feel like a neophyte, but I have studied it quite a bit. And if there would be one thing

Starting point is 00:18:22 I could do to change the world, it would be help the world understand how to mitigate or minimize excessive cortisol. We are a stressed out, pressure-filled culture. And again, we probably don't have enough time today. But if it were me, I would, you want to be a better leader, learn how to mitigate cortisol. Because under stress, I don't care what anyone says, over time, we're not good performers. We can be much better leaders if we understand poise and calm and resilience and some of the things that Dr. Susan David and Angela Duckworth talk about. And that's learning how to reduce the cortisol in our mind.

Starting point is 00:19:02 I mean, that is such a powerful point. Because when you look at when a leader gets frustrated, let's say you're in a meeting and just things are not going your direction. And you start to lose your bearing and get upset and raise your voice and pound on the table and start cussing and attacking people or whatever it might be. It's clearly going the wrong direction. And I've seen it happen before. I've been in meetings where people stand up and yell at each other. And I'm thinking to myself, I got out of law enforcement, so I didn't have to be in that anymore. But people don't understand how to control those things sometimes. So everybody, please make sure you

Starting point is 00:19:43 take a look at that concept. Well, and it's largely ineffective, right? It doesn't just that it bugs you or upsets you. What the neuroscience of that is, is it's largely ineffective. Ask any athlete. Yeah, you just- If you get up to the plate and you're batting or if, pick a sport, it doesn't matter. You could be bowling. I don't know. If you're stressed out and freaked out, ask the athlete how that stress and anxiety is helping them in that moment. Totally. You just lost the game right there. In your opinion, what sets apart effective leaders from those who struggle to inspire and motivate their teams just in general? Well, let me make sure I understand

Starting point is 00:20:21 your question. What sets them apart? Right. Let've got a, let's say we have a, you know, just a complete top tier leader. And then you've got somebody who's, you know, transforming from management into leadership, you inspire how, you know, you're, you're a coach. Is there, is there something that, um, you know, a piece of advice you can give to people that want to continue towards that light and, and work towards being more inspiration? I love it. You're, you're, you're, uh, and I'm on your podcast, but you're inviting me for, to give advice and then ask me. As a coach, I'll be a consultant. Gosh, there's so much there. See, I want to ask you that because I look into your background. You have such a great background with all the work that you've done, Adam.

Starting point is 00:21:20 You probably know more about it even than I do. Believe it or not, the one thing that comes to my mind, I don't know, maybe this falls into the category of advice. You ready? Go for it. We've all, maybe many of us have seen that Dos Equis commercial where it was the most interesting man in the world. Remember those?

Starting point is 00:21:37 Yes. I think one thing that I've noticed that sets leaders apart is they're not trying to be the most interesting person in the world. They're trying to be the most interested person in the world. I love it. So the practice and actually application of genuine curiosity to want to invite other people out, you want to inspire people, be interested in them. But I think all too often in our culture, you got a lot of people doing their best to be the most interesting person in the world and not the most interested person in the world. And I think

Starting point is 00:22:17 when you get someone who genuinely, we all talk about that too, like you meet a woman and she's talking to you and she's a leader. And you, when you talk to her, someone will go, gosh, I kind of felt like I was the only person in the world. That is a quality and a trait of a leader that I think it absolutely distinguishes people and sets people apart. You just hit the nail on the head there. That was such a great piece of advice. Consultant or coach, I don't care which. I think it really gets people to hold up the mirror. That's coaching. To inspire, be interested, not interesting. I love that so much. So this is a fascinating talk thus far. I want to ask you about Rewire,

Starting point is 00:22:59 though. Tell us, you have an amazing organization helping a lot of people. What is Rewire and what do you seek to achieve with that? Yeah, I look, I like you said, a 30 some odd thousand hours of one on one coaching. I've been doing this work for two and a half decades, 13 years ago, largely because of my work with interpersonal neurobiology. I chose to kind of leave maybe more of the traditional coaching world and start an organization that focused a little bit more on that bottom part of the iceberg, right? How do we affect mindset? My business partner and I, he lives in Maryland and we have many coaches around the country. All of, or at least most of them are certified now through the Neuro Leadership Institute. And so we all take this focus on how do we help people in their mindset?

Starting point is 00:23:50 Because, you know, our little saying, Adam, is you can't really help people change in their actions and get better results until you help them think differently. If you don't help someone think differently, there's no reason to believe they're ever going to act differently. And if they do, it'll primarily be short-term action. And that was some of the problem. Again, I could hold you accountable and make you do something by Friday, but the only way that I know of to get the action to sustain over time is to actually work on mindset and actually go back to what we originally talked about as finding that epiphany. How do we get that insight? Because when you get that, then you can create a long-term sustainable, genuine effect in people. And so rewire is dedicated to the processes. Again, I'd love to come back and talk about how we coach people

Starting point is 00:24:42 through metacognition, which is a practice of awareness. There are certain things like that, that, that we actually get into with people. And, uh, when we're coaching them and, and again, coaching, I still think coaching comes back to getting good results and actions. It does how we get those, um, at least at rewire is focusing on back to mind. And how do we do that so that we can get a longer term sustainable result? Awesome. I love that. And Steve, you've written two books, Reality and Hope, Reflections from a Coach's Chair. And this one's interesting. I want to ask you, how did you name this one?

Starting point is 00:25:21 Because I see you do have lizards on your wall back there. Still the Lizard. There they are. Still the the lizard. Transformation is closer than you think. Tell us about the lizard. How does that play into this? And again, super sensitive to the time. The lizard brain is not something that I certainly create. A lot of people that will be listening to this have heard of the lizard brain. In fact, when I started Rewire, I remember approaching our attorney firm and asking, well, wait a minute, I have two questions. One, because I had started to understand through some of the schoolwork that I was doing about the lizard brain. I had one professor that spoke about it. I got so fascinated

Starting point is 00:25:58 by it. I had to go to the attorneys and say, number one, if I use the concept of lizard brain, am I infringing upon somebody's copyrights? And if not, can I copyright it? And they, after spending a bunch of money, as you probably know with attorneys, that's all you do is you spend a bunch of money with them. They came back and called it public domain. It is too utilized throughout neuroscience in the field of psychology for you to either. But the good news is I could certainly speak about it and write a book about it.

Starting point is 00:26:26 The lizard brain is basically a construct in our mind that in the quickest summary is that it protects our survival. Right. It protects our survival, which again, why I got fascinated in that is because, you know, Adam, you and I didn't wake up today and go,

Starting point is 00:26:47 hey, I wonder if I'm going to find shelter or food or clothing. No one listening to this probably is under any sort of survivalistic existential threat. And yet this part of our brain still exists. So how does our survival still impact how we think. And so just very briefly, and you can get the book or whatever, but four characteristics that the lizard brain loves are familiarity, being right, habituation, and control. The brain is constantly looking for familiarity. We always think we're right. We want to be right, making habits and control. And so the book was a very simple little, I tried to just write a little story about a person who was trying to learn how to still their lizard brain. Seth Godin, as an example, if you can go and find his TED talk, he does a TED

Starting point is 00:27:38 talk called Quiet the Lizard Brain, because when our lizard brain gets really loud, we go into survival mode that as leaders, we're screaming and yelling at meetings because we think it's about survival. And so learning how to still your lizard brain, which is why I wrote the book called Still the Lizard. And by the way, it was a big play on words that nobody got except me, which was once you still the lizard, guess what? Because it's neurobiology, it'll still be there. You can't kill your lizard. You can only learn to steal your lizard. Awesome. This has been an incredible dive into coaching and neurobiology and just some great leadership perspective from Steve Scanlon, the founder and CEO of Rewire. You can check him out at rewireinc.com. Steve, I have one final question I ask all the great leaders on the

Starting point is 00:28:26 program, and that's how do you start your day with a win? I guess I'll say, how about one word? Early. I love it. I usually start fairly early. I personally, Adam, I find mornings to be very quiet. A win for me is actually learning how to be still and quiet. Prayer and meditation. You know, look, I live in a pretty loud world. And so do you, right? I got kids.

Starting point is 00:29:01 I got grandkids. I do a lot of stuff and it can be loud. And so I just think early in the morning is a precious time for me. And starting with the lizard's not, you got a problem. So awesome. Well, Steve, thanks a lot for being on Start With The Wind. We appreciate all you do and, you know, let's keep changing lives. Yeah. Grateful for you and all the work that you've done as well. Thank you.

Start With A Win - Rewire Your Success: Transformative Leadership & Neuroscience with Steve Scanlon

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