The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Leading Becomes You: How to Lead from Your Own Skin By Dr. Natalie Pickering

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

Leading Becomes You: How to Lead from Your Own Skin By Dr. Natalie Pickering Drnataliepickering.com About the Guest(s): Dr. Natalie Pickering is a distinguished work psychologist and board-certified executive coach with over 20 years of global experience in leadership and team transformation. She is dedicated to helping leaders discover their personal leadership superpowers and transform organizational cultures to fit people rather than the other way around. Previously, Dr. Pickering served as a trauma psychologist at a veterans hospital and later transitioned to the role of an internal employee assistance professional, which influenced her shift to leadership coaching. Her multifaceted approach includes psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and team development, drawing from her extensive clinical background to fortify leader identity. Episode Summary: Welcome to another enlightening episode of The Chris Voss Show, where host Chris Voss converses with the esteemed Dr. Natalie Pickering about the intricacies of leadership and identity. Natalie introduces her upcoming book, "Leading Becomes You: How to Lead From Your Own Skin," and shares groundbreaking insights into discovering leader identity and composting personal and professional experiences for growth. As a work psychologist with a storied career, Natalie highlights the importance of a personalized leadership field guide and the common pitfalls leaders face, such as imposter syndrome and burnout. Throughout the episode, Natalie elaborates on her comprehensive approach to leadership development, emphasizing the necessity of personal reflection and connecting with one's true leadership identity. She discusses the challenges many leaders encounter, including unclear leadership identities and misplaced connection with colleagues' agendas. Using engaging analogies like "The Petrified Forest," Natalie vividly illustrates the traps of overconfidence and disconnection that leaders can fall into. Additionally, she explains her unique coaching methodologies that focus on clearing life debris, enabling leaders to unlock their highest potential and foster flourishing organizational environments. Key Takeaways: Individualized Leadership Development: Dr. Pickering emphasizes developing a personal leadership field guide to enhance effectiveness and prevent burnout. Leader Identity Clarity: Understanding one's true leadership identity is crucial for motivation, decision-making, and personal alignment within a team. Overconfidence vs. Competence: Confidence can often be mistaken for competence; leaders should strive for a balance that encourages ongoing growth and development. The Role of Past Experiences: Past personal and professional incidents shape current leadership abilities, and addressing unresolved issues is essential for growth. Supporting Women's Leadership: Dr. Pickering highlights the prevalence of imposter syndrome among women leaders, stressing the need for tailored support and development. Notable Quotes: "Leadership identity is the most underutilized performance strategy for leaders." "The real question here is being differently." "Confidence gets mistranslated as competence." "People leave managers, people leave supervisors, people leave leaders—not necessarily the company." "In the book I call that 'The Petrified Forest.'"

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Chris Voss here from thechrisvoshshow.com. Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen there at least, thanks for the welcome the 16 years, 24 hour episodes of the Chris Voss show, bringing all the latest, greatest minds, stories, lessons of life, things that you can use to improve the quality of your life.

And if you're not learning anything for the Chris Voss show, we'll go back and listen to all 24 hour episodes again, cause you clearly missed something or I don't know, maybe check the wax in your ears or something. You could have some pill up or maybe a small rodent. Go to Goodreads.com for Chess Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com for Chess Chris Voss. Chris Voss wanted to tick tockety. And is that still a thing? Who knows? It's 2025. We'll find out. And also Facebook.com for Chess Chris Voss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement

or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young lady on the show where we're talking about her new book that will be coming out soon called Leading Becomes You, How to Lead from Your Own Skin. Dr. Natalie Pickering joins us on the show. She is a work psychologist and board certified executive coach with 20 plus years of global experience leveraging her multidisciplinary approach to leader and team transformation. She loves helping leaders discover their self as leader superpowers and watching them transform cultures that fit work to people. Welcome to the show. Natalie, how are you? Thank you. I'm great. I'm excellent as well. Thank you

for coming. Give us a dot coms anywhere people can find you on the interwebs. Dr. Natalie Pickering dot com. LinkedIn forward slash Dr. Natalie Pickering and Instagram Dr. Natalie Pickering. So, Dr. Natalie Pickering. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you're putting in this book that will be coming out soon. Sure. You know, leadership identity is the most underutilized performance strategy for leaders. This is a how to guide to build your leadership approach.

You know, there's lots of books out there, lots of great resources and those work because they've that leader. I'm showing leaders how to create their own leadership field guide. Ah, and why is it important to have a field guide? Yeah, so many times, you know, leaders come, I don't know how to motivate my team, I don't

know how to have this crucial conversation, decision making, all these performance elements. And they've never done this deeper level reflection of who they are as a leader. And that's constructed over time. I mean, that's how we see ourselves. That's how other people perceive us. And it's connected to beating burnout. It's connected to feeling more fulfilled as a leader, effectiveness, performance, all the things. Pete Why would you want to alleviate burnout? Burnout's so fun, man.

Kristin I know, right? Pete Crash and burn and I'm just like, I'm gonna just fake my death and go someplace else and start anew. Yeah. A lot of it, you know, a lot of the burnout recommendations are about doing things differently, but the real question here is being differently. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I'm pretty different. That's what most people tell me when they reject me on Tinder. So they go, you're really... Nice. Is that your identity? I, probably, yeah. My lack of, because it's been severely crushed and whatever by rejection. So maybe that's my identity, just being crushed. Chapter four, we're going to do your identity story timeline. We could do that right here, Chris.

What is an identity story, Trimelin? Trimelin So, I walk leaders through, basically, their life professionally and personally. And we're looking for, you know, not just the strengths and the good stuff. And when I realized, you know, this leadership thing was a fit for me, but it's the hard stuff too. So, when I made a decision that didn't work, when a plan failed, I show them how to repurpose those, I call it composting, that's the chapter. And so we're doing both, right? Using the strengths, leveraging the stuff that is often hard to look at. Pete Slauson Ah, leveraging the stuff that's hard to look at. When is the book coming out? KS So it will launch early September.

The cover is being built right now, edits are done, it's in formatting. So early September. Pete Eiseke Early September. And I noticed on the website, people can get access to the first chapter and sign up to be notified when that book comes out or the news of it. Nicole S. Noonan That's right. And they also get behind the scenes updates and I also send out some goodies in advance. So like that leader story timeline,

some of the tools that are in the book, if they sign up and download that chapter, you get to read ahead and you also get some bonus feature materials. Pete Slauson Ah, so the bonus materials are always fun. Give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it. You do, I mean, what are some of the other offerings you offer on your website? Consulting, team building, etc. Sarah? Sarah Boudreau So, I have a clinical background. Actually I started out as a trauma psychologist, worked at a Veterans Hospital

and a PTSD clinic. And then I pivoted into the leadership space. I was an internal employee assistance program. So helping my colleagues, doing a lot of team things, leader things. And I realized, you know what, a lot of the stuff that people are coming to talk about is related to how a supervisor talked to them or things they were asked to do. So I pivoted, went upstream and decided I wanted to help leaders get healthy because they gain, frontline employees gain. So all of my work now is executive coaching. I do team development, corporate off-sites, corporate training around psychological safety, emotional intelligence, resilience.

Is there a certain organization or minimum size of organization spend or, you know, there's like only certain companies you work with. Some people will be like, I only work with Fortune 500 companies or I only work with the Fortune 1000 company, you know, there's like only certain companies you work with. Some people will be like, I only work with Fortune 500 companies or I only work with the Fortune 1000 company, you know, whatever. Is there a certain, you know, if somebody's listening to this out there on LinkedIn or other places, who qualifies to work with you? I made it sound like you're a king. It was a great setup.

And you're just like, I don't know, let me check with my Oracle. No, you didn't. Yeah, exactly. My, my team of me. My team of I, I, I work with not for profits. I'm headed to Charlotte in a couple of weeks to work with an executive team for not for profit. I've worked with a lots of different industries. Small businesses are probably my sweet spot. And I would say the, the best fit are companies

that haven't lost sight that people are the most important asset for their business. What? I know. I know. That seems so counterintuitive to everything that goes on at Wall Street and major corporations now, but since the 1980s, greed is good. Yes.

I grew up in that era. I was 18 and grew up in that era of Ivanvioski and Michael Milken and all that noise. So yeah, in fact, it was at Chomsky, there was somebody who wrote a piece that flipped the script on going to work for companies for long periods of time and how it was more of interest instead of being focused on employees, benefits to focus on investor returns. Exactly. And that's when we started doing that, then let's dump 10 or 20,000 employees to make the stock go bump.

The turn and burn model would not be a fit for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought that we kind of gone away with that, but it seems like this year and some of the behavior in Silicon Valley has been really interesting to where we seem to be, you know, moving away from DEI and moving away from, I don't know, it seems like we're moving away from a lot of that stuff that tried to create equality and a balance in a healthy environment where, you know, people felt like they were either contributing or heard. Seems like we're kind of moving away from that. Is you-

Exactly. Your studies, research? Yeah, I mean, that all lines up in the research, right? Even around burnout. So, you know, when people feel like a widget, when people feel like they're a checkbox and that they're that easily replaceable, then we see low engagement, increased turnover,

difficulty with retention. The thing is we can put dollars and cents to all of these people-centered factors and metrics. It's costly. Pete Slauson It is. And a lot of people leave, you can, yeah, I'm kind of setting this up as a pseudo question for you. But my understanding is a lot of people leave, when they leave a company, a lot of times, I think the majority of the time, it's over poor

leadership, lack of leadership. I guess that would all fall in the same category. Basically, over leadership qualities. They don't feel like, you know, they have good leadership and they don't feel like that leadership is helping them make a contribution that matters to them. Nicole Soule-Norton Exactly. And so so I started doing research when I was an internal employee assistance program asking, why are people coming? And the data just started stacking up for exactly what you're saying and what Gallup studies have also illustrated that people leave managers, people leave supervisors, people leave leaders, not necessarily the company. And so that was the whole pivot in my career was trying to figure out, okay, what's not working? How can I come in at the leadership level,

bring some health, bring some leader identity clarity, so that everybody, right, from that level below doesn't feel like they're going to throw up on Sunday before they come to work. I throw up when I come home from work. Is that the same thing? Or that? The same thing or different? I don't know.

What was the question? What do you find when you have business or leaders that are coming to you, they're struggling, what do you find is, for example, maybe their number one or number top issues that you really dig in and help them resolve? What are they, what's the big thing people are struggling with? A lot of imposter syndrome. Some of this depends on, you know, the level of experience. So if I've got an emerging leader, a new leader, they really struggle with imposter syndrome, some confidence issues. I just coached an executive this week who's considering a role transition and we were walking through an assessment. He's been at this for 25 years, but not sure if what I've got here is better than the

next level. You know, it kind of depends on where they are on their leadership journey as to what comes up for them. Do you find that a lot of them end up in this, that imposter syndrome because maybe they've been over promoted, like they've been put sometimes in maybe a position they weren't very skilled for. For example, we found that it really went bad when we would promote a top salesman to a management position. Those two mentalities just never really meshed well. Yeah.

Nicole Soule-Nicholson Yes. And I think what happens there is confidence gets mistranslated as competence. So we have this, you know, high charisma, highly confident individual, and the research supports this. That gets translated as competence. So we've got two challenges there. Sometimes we're overlooking maybe a more quiet, you know, the personality is a little bit different for this leader, but they've got this incredible skill set we're missing, right? Or we're promoting someone with heaps of confidence and they don't have the skills for the task.

Ah, yeah. And it's interesting how many people look at that. You know, they never say, Hey, do you need training for this promotion? They're just like, Hey, we're going to give you more money and a job title and you're promoted. And everyone's like, yeah. And they're like, Oh, how do I do whatever this is? Do you find there's more imposter syndrome in women that you work with over men? Yes. And I love supporting women in leadership specifically for that reason, even in how if we do a 360 assessment, which is where we you know, we ask someone to rate their own skills,

their boss, boss's boss, their peers and direct reports, everybody answers the questions. Women are always rating themselves lower on those kinds of assessments versus men. Pete Oh, that's very interesting. And it clarifies kind of some of the data I've been collecting. The, so, do people, Do you find that when you're working with leaders, because you develop them and stuff, they might have the skills for the job, but they don't have the leadership qualities? A lot of times you're in the group, you have a leader, and then you become that manager, that leader, but maybe you know how to do the job because you've worked at that job, but you don't have the leadership skills per se.

And it seems like maybe a lot of people don't train for that. I mean, like a lot of companies don't offer that training. It's true. And some of that is there was this theory called the great man theory, right? Or the great woman theory. And the assumption a hundred years ago, there's a type of leader, right, or the great woman theory. And the assumption 100 years ago, there's a type of leader, right? So we look back over history, and we've got these great leaders and, you know, men and women. And the research has caught up. It depends. It depends on the role. It depends on

the organization. There's no cookie cutter best leader, right? There are some competencies that I want for this position. There are some competencies I want in another position. And that's really what my book is about. Leaders, it's hard for you to know where your best role is going to be if you don't know who you are as a leader. Pete Oh, yeah. It's, if you don't understand leadership, you know, what it's about, how it's perceived, you know, I used to keep a sign on my desk that said, and it's somewhere in my storage unit, I don't know why, it doesn't need to be on my desk anymore, I know this by heart. But it basically said that something, the effect that just because you have the title doesn't

mean you're good at it and you need to daily work for that title. You need to work to embody that title. So just because you get a title of leader or manager, CEO, or pick your title, that doesn't mean that I must have been good at leadership because they gave me the job and now I'm the boss. You know, you've seen people that they go off on that sort of narcissistic sort of Macameleon tangent where they're like, I'm, oh, knowing and all, whatever, now that I, how did you learn all this knowledge, sir? They gave me the title. I went from dumb to smart overnight just by a title. And you're like, no, that's not the way it works. Nicole S. No. And in the book, I call that the petrified forest.

Pete Slauson The petrified forest, I love it. Now, how does that apply? Give me the spin on that. Nicole S. Sure. So, I've got two dimensions. So, one dimension is your leader identity clarity, and the other dimension is connection. And that creates these four liter terrains. There's the swamp, where you don't have clarity and you don't have connection. There's the wasteland, where you don't have clarity, but you've got connection to everybody else's agenda. And then there's the petrified forest that I was talking about, where you really think you know who you are, you're not connected to any of the needs or the mission or the values, et cetera.

And then the other one is flourishing. And so the book, you know, lays out the path from each of those leadership terrains, I was going to say, you know, your point about getting the position and getting the title, the research indicates that as leaders go, right, higher up the ladder and get more advanced positions, their openness to being developed decreases. Pete Slauson Really? That's an interesting stat. Kirsten Crensh, MS, CRO, PhD Now, why is that? Or do you talk about it in the book? I don't want to give the whole book away. We want people to order it. Yeah, no, and that isn't to say, you know, because I do have senior leaders who are still,

you know, working on themselves and realize they have growth areas. But there's this sense that I've gotten to this point and I've really learned everything I need to know and I've got it in the bag. And again, that's the petrified forest. We don't want to lose growth mindset. We don't want to lose, even from a modeling perspective, if I'm not willing to step into how to lead from my own skin, there's no way I can expect my team or my colleagues to want to do the same. But it has the title of the book because that's a great analogy.

You can't get other people to lead and do the things. You're just like, I'll just sit here in the chair and kick my feet up and I'm sure it all will work out. Leadership is a challenging thing and a lot of people do it wrong. I've seen lots of different versions like some of the ones you aspire to. In fact, usually the one I always see is the petrified brain. I usually see that a lot on Twitter and X where someone's brain has gone fully petrified. What does that look like?

They're just dumb shits. Oh yeah. They're just stupid as F. Yeah, there we go. As the kids call it. Tell us about your journey through life. How did you develop? What got you interested in learning these sort of techniques that you teach other people? And then also you did a Ted talk and I noticed you were working with some puppets and different things like that to tell your story. Give us that whole journey, if you would. And we got about five hours to do it. Lauren Ruffin Excellent. Excellent. Let me get some more

caffeination out of here. And we got about five hours to do it. Excellent. Excellent. Let me, let me, uh, it's more caffeinated. What date and time were you born? Don't say that because that's, that's a, when I was two, I had an epiphany at the same time. That's right. That's right. And a psychologist was born. Yeah.

Happened to me at 50, but you know, it's funny how you wear diapers at the end. Anyway, I'm kidding folks. It's a joke. It's an old-age joke I'm not that old. I also hope I'm not I don't know. I'm pooping now. Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt you with our little jokes there We're good I'll let you I'll let you tell your life story. Yeah, okay, so a Lot of my you know I did my own leader story timeline because I wanted to test out everything in the book before I asked other people to do it. I grew up on a farm, you

know, work ethic, Protestant work ethic, Northwest Ohio, Midwest. So I think all of that, you know, is part of my own identity. I went to the Air Force Academy briefly, then transferred to Wheaton College. I was a teacher for a few years, moved to West Africa and was doing some not for profit work there, HIV counseling. That's really where I learned how to support people in trauma. And yeah, came back to get more training and then went to a veteran's hospital. But along the way, living in West Africa, my mom was dying of breast cancer, I was seeing levels of trauma that I had never been exposed to before and really met my own burnout at that time. There's so much need and here I am in my 20s trying to fix it all, no can do.

Shocking revelation. So yeah, initially I thought, well, I don't really have to deal with it. I'm just gonna get my PhD and figure out all the answers. And that was not a good strategy. So part of what I walk leaders through is, frankly, life debris that is sneaking up on them in ways they don't realize it. Faceplant season of my life, did my own work with my own psychologist, and that's infused, so to speak, in the book, and really kind of bringing

my experience with that plus my clinical experience, honestly, and translating all of that into leader identity. Pete Slauson Hmm. There you go, leader identity. And tell us about what that means, leader identity. Yeah, it's the story that I'm telling myself about, can I do this leader thing? Am I a leader? What does that look like? So there's the story I'm telling myself as a leader, and then others' perception, right? So both of those create our identity, generally speaking, and then we add the leader element to that. Pete And is some of that, is that an ego issue? Where, you know, we talk about there's the, there's the kind of the ego mind that we have that kind of has its own little narcissistic

capabilities. And sometimes it deludes us in different things. I noticed, I remember in the TEDx talk, you were using puppets and it seemed to me you were using them for different portions of an addend to you, or correct me on that. Nicole S. Noonan Sure. So, the puppet, her name is Edna, and she's me. And she's my inner critic., right. So I'm illustrating how you know, these parts of us, you talked about ego, we can also talk about different parts of us, they show up in different ways. And, you know, the inner critic, Edna can get a little mouthy sometimes. And so I've got to say to Edna, take a seat on the couch and get some popcorn and pass the microphone because there are other parts of me that need to show up right here, right? Maybe a more vulnerable side of me or maybe a more confident side of me. Pete Slauson No, it's, and so would you call that the ego or what would you frame that as? Just to voice this out?

Lauren Larkin The inner critic, it's more, so, I, there's a personality tool that I really like. It's called the Enneagram and it looks at your deep sort of motivations. So, for me, my deep motivation is, I really want to be right. I really want to be good. I really want to be good. I really want to follow the rules. And so what happens for all of us, depending on what that motivation is, I want to see myself in this way. And I really want to make sure you see me in this way.

So then we're shutting down other parts of us, right? So for myself, if I have to be good, if I have to be right, if I've got to, you know, fix the whole world, you know, one day at a time, then, you can't see my mistakes. You can't see when I drop the ball. You can't see when I lose my patience. And we all have a different version of that. Pete Slauson Yeah. And we talked to, you mentioned a little

bit before about cleaning up the past and issues of the past. One of, you know, there's a lot of things that kind of interfere with the self, trauma, unresolved trauma, big T, little t, you name it, behavioral biases, maybe things you're taught by your parents that inhibited your personality growth or your development, or maybe thoughts that you had that inner critic beat you up. Well, the kids at school told me I was fat, or I'll never be successful. And so I'll never be successful. You know, they have these belief systems, these blind spots, tomas that kind of hold them back. Do you find that's part of that mess? Do you have to clean out to get it out of the way for people?

Nicole Soule-Northam Yes. So I am using some of that clinical experience, even when I'm supporting leaders and helping them do some of that debris clearing composting that I was talking about. And those traumatic experiences take up a lot of real estate in the brain. They take up a lot of real estate emotionally in our thinking space. And often that's what's holding people back. I think even for people to take permission to acknowledge that that's there. Sometimes I think too people are following rules and they don't realize they're following rules whether that's from family of origin, whether that's from someone, you know, that they're emulating as a leader, but those rules don't fit

for me. We've got to chuck some of those. And that's where writing your own field guide comes in. So I address a lot of that in the book when I look at mindset awareness, emotional awareness, and walking people through, generally speaking, how to do what I call inner business with some of that debris. The inner business of debris. That's right. I got a whole freaking junkyard of debris. It's like a landfill actually from... We got five hours.

Let's go. Let's figure it out right here. I wish we had more time. And God knows I'm just procrastinating, putting it off. So I'll just keep doing that. That seems to work for me so far. Anyway, as we go out to Natalie, give us a final pitch out to people. Tell them how they can onboard with you, they can reach out to you.com so they can find

out more as the book launches, et cetera, et cetera. Natalie Pichering-Yeah, please download that chapter on the website, drnatalipickering.com under books. There's also a contact form if people are interested in team development, interested in their own coaching. I offer coaching intensives. People come and hang out with me here in East Tennessee for three or four days and we clear out the debris. Pete Slauson The debris, the debris there. So give us the.coms. We go out one last time.

I think you gave it, but let's just do it as we round out. Drnataliepickering.com. Thank you, Natalie, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, Your Honor, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Christphos, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Christphos.

Get tuned in so you can get aware of the book when it comes out. Leading Becomes You, How to Lead from Your Own Skin by Dr. Natalie Pickering PhD. And to stop using other people's skin. It's illegal people to do that if you saw Silence of the Lambs. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my audience. Speak to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. serious brain bleed, the CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in, keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss.

Chris Voss here from the Chris Voss. This is Voss here from The Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen, there are things that make a special welcome to over 16 years and 24 hours of episodes of The Chris Voss Show. Bringing you all the latest, greatest minds, stories, lessons of life, things that you can use to improve the quality of your life. And if you're not learning anything from The Chris Voss Show, go back and listen to all 2400 episodes again, because you clearly missed something or I don't know, maybe check the wax in your ears or something. You could have some pill up or maybe a small rodent. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Chris

Voss wanted to take talkity. And is that still a thing? Who knows? It's 2025. We'll find out. And also Facebook.com thing? Who knows? It's 2025. We'll find out. And also Facebook.com for says Chris Voss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we have an amazing young lady on the show. We're talking about her new book that will be coming out soon called Leading Becomes

You, How to Lead from Your Own Skin. Dr. Natalie Pickering joins us on the show. She is a work psychologist and board certified executive coach with 20 plus years of global experience leveraging her multidisciplinary approach to leader and team transformation. She loves helping leaders discover their self as leader superpowers and watching them transform cultures that fit work to people. Welcome to the show. Natalie, how are you? Thank you. I'm great. I'm excellent as well. Thank you for coming. Give us a dot coms anywhere people can find you on the interwebs. Drnataliepickering.com, LinkedIn forward slash Dr. Natalie Pickering and Instagram,

Dr. Natalie Pickering. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you're putting in this book that will be coming out soon. Sure. You know, leadership identity is the most underutilized performance strategy for leaders. This is a how to guide to build your leadership approach. There's lots of books out there, lots of great resources, and those work because they've that leader. I'm showing leaders how to create their own leadership field guide.

Why is it important to have a field guide? Yeah. So many times, you know, leaders come, I don't know how to motivate my team. I don't know how to have this crucial conversation, decision-making, all of these performance elements. And they've never done this deeper level reflection of who they are as a leader. And that's constructed over time. I mean, that's how we see ourselves. That's how other people perceive us. And it's connected to beating burnout.

It's connected to feeling more fulfilled as a leader. Effectiveness, performance, all the things. Why would you wanna alleviate burnout? Burnout's so fun, man. I know, right? I love it, I know, right? Crash and burn. Crash and burn and I'm just like, I'm gonna just fake my death and go someplace else and

start anew. Yeah. A lot of the burnout recommendations are about doing things differently, but the real question here is being differently. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty different. That's what most people tell me when they reject me on Tinder. So, they go, you're… Katie Nice. Is that your identity?

Pete I probably, yeah, my lack of, because it's been severely crushed and whatever by rejection. So, maybe that's my identity, just being crushed. Katie Chapter four, we're going to do your identity story timeline. We can do that right here, Chris. Pete What is an identity story timeline? Kristin So, I walk leaders through, basically their life professionally and personally, and we're looking for, you know, not just the strengths and the good stuff. And when I realized, you know, this leadership thing was a fit for me, but it's the hard stuff too. So, when I made a decision that didn't work, when a plan failed, I show them how to repurpose

those, I call it composting, that's the chapter. And so, we're doing both, right? Using the strengths, leveraging the stuff that is often hard to look at. Pete Slauson Ah, leveraging the stuff that's hard to look at. When is the book coming out? 7 Anna So, it will launch early September. The cover is being built right now, edits are done, it's in formatting. So, early September. Pete Early September. And I noticed on the website, people can get access to the first chapter and sign up to be notified when that book comes out or the news of it.

Lauren Henry That's right. And they also get behind the scenes updates and I also send out some goodies in advance. So, like that leader story timeline, some of the tools that are in the book, if they sign up and download that chapter, you get to read ahead and you also get some bonus feature materials. Pete Slauson Ah! So, the bonus materials are always fun. Give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it. You do, I mean, what are some of the other offerings you offer on your website?

Consulting? Team building? Et cetera, et cetera. Sarah? Sarah Larson So, I have a clinical background. Actually, I started out as a trauma psychologist. I worked at a veteran's hospital in a PTSD clinic. And then I pivoted into the leadership space.

I was an internal employee assistance program, so helping my colleagues, doing a lot of team things, leader things. And I realized, you know what? a lot of the stuff that people are coming to talk about is related to how a supervisor talked to them or things they were asked to do. So I pivoted, went upstream and decided I wanted to help leaders get healthy because they gain, frontline employees gain. So all of my work now is executive coaching. I do team development, corporate off sites, corporate training around psychological safety, emotional intelligence, resilience.

Is there, is there a certain organization or minimum size of organization spend or, or, you know, there's like only certain companies you work with. Some people will be like, I only work with fortune 500 companies or I don't work with the fortune 1000 company or whatever. Is there a certain, you know, somebody's listening to this out there on LinkedIn or other places. Sure. Who qualifies to work with you? I made it sound like you're a king. It was a great setup.

And you're just like, I don't know, let me check with my Oracle. No, you didn't do it. Yeah, exactly. My team of me. My team of I? I work with not-for-profits. I'm headed to Charlotte in a couple of weeks to work with an executive team for not-for-profit. I've worked with lots of different industries. Small businesses are probably my sweet spot. And I would say the best fit are companies that haven't lost sight that people are the most important asset for their business.

What? I know. I know. That seems so counterintuitive to everything that goes on at Wall Street and major corporations now, but since the 1980s, greed is good. Yes. I grew up in that era. I can't believe I was 18 and grew up in that era of Ivan Bioski and Michael Milken and all that noise. So yeah, where I, in fact, so was it Chomsky or there was somebody who wrote a piece that

flipped the script on going to work for companies for long periods of time and how it was more of interest instead of being focused on employees, benefits to focus on investor returns. Exactly. And that's when we started doing that, then just dumped 10 or 20,000 employees to make the stock go bump. The turn and burn model would not be a fit for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought that we kind of gone away with that, but it seems like

this year and some of the behavior in Silicon Valley has been really interesting to where we seem to be, you know, moving away from DEI and moving away from, I don't know, it seems like we're moving away from a lot of that stuff that tried to create equality and a balance and a healthy environment where, you know, people felt like they were either contributing or heard. It seems like we're kind of moving away from that. Is that your studies research? Yeah.

I mean, that all lines up in the research, right? Even around burnout. So, you know, when people feel like a widget, when people feel like they're a checkbox and that they're that easily replaceable, then we see low engagement, increased turnover, difficulty with retention. The thing is we can put dollars and cents to all of these people-centered factors and metrics. It's costly.

It is. And a lot of people leave, you can, yeah, I'm kind of setting this up as a pseudo question for you. But my understanding is a lot of people leave, when they leave a company, a lot of times, I think the majority of the time it's over poor leadership, lack of leadership, I guess that would all fall in the same category. Basically, over leadership qualities. They don't feel like, you know, they're, they have good leadership and they don't feel like that leadership is helping them make a contribution that matters to them. Exactly. And so I started doing research when I was in internal employee assistance program,

asking, why are people coming? And the data just started stacking up for exactly what you're saying and what Gallup studies have also illustrated that people leave managers, people leave supervisors, people leave supervisors, people leave leaders, not necessarily the company. And so that was the whole pivot in my career was trying to figure out, okay, what's not working? How can I come in at the leadership level, bring some health, bring some leader identity clarity so that Everybody right from from that level below

Doesn't feel like they're gonna throw up on Sunday before they come to work. I Throw up when I come home from work What was the question what do you find when you when you have business or leaders that are coming to you, they're struggling, what do you find is, for example, maybe their number one or number top issues that you really have to dig in and help them resolve? What's the big thing people are struggling with? Anna? A lot of imposter syndrome. Some of this depends on, you know, the level of experience. So if I've got an emerging leader, a new leader,

they really struggle with imposter syndrome, some confidence issues. I just coached an executive this week who's considering a role transition and we were walking through an assessment. He's been at this for 25 years, but not sure if what I've got here is better than the next level.

It kind of depends on where they are on their leadership journey as to what comes up for them. Pete Slauson Do you find that a lot of them end up in this, that imposter syndrome because maybe they've been over promoted, like they've been put sometimes in maybe a position they weren't very skilled for. For example, we found that it really went bad when we would promote a top salesman to a management position. Those two mentalities just never really meshed well. Yeah. Yes. And I think what happens there is confidence gets mistranslated as competence. So we have this, you know, high charisma,

highly confident individual, and the research supports this. That gets translated as competence. So we've got two challenges there. Sometimes we're overlooking maybe a more quiet, you know, the personality is a little bit different for this leader, but they've got this incredible skillset we're missing, right? Or we're promoting someone with heaps of confidence and they don't have the skills for the task. Ah, yeah. And it's interesting how many people look at that. You know, they never say, Hey, do you need training for this promotion? They're just like, Hey, we're going to give you more money and a job title and you're promoted. And everyone's like, yeah. And they're like, Oh, how do I do whatever this is? Do you find there's more imposter syndrome in women that

you work with over men? Yes. And, and I love supporting women in leadership specifically for that reason, even in how if we do a 360 assessment, which is where, you know, we ask someone to rate their own skills, their boss, boss's boss, their peers and direct reports, everybody answers the questions. Women are always rating themselves lower on those kinds of assessments versus men. Pete Oh, that's very interesting. And it clarifies kind of some of the data I've been collecting. The, and so, do people, do you find that when you're working with leaders, because you develop them and stuff, they might have the skills for the job,

but they don't have the leadership qualities? You know, like a lot of times you're, you know, you're in the group, you know, you have a leader and then you become that manager, that leader, but, you know, maybe you know how to do the job because you've worked at that job, but you don't have the leadership skills per se. And it seems like maybe a lot of people don't train for that. I mean, like a lot of companies don't offer that training. It's true. And, you know, some of that is there is this theory called the great man theory, right, or the great woman theory. And, and the assumption 100 years ago, there's a type of leader, right. So we look back over history, and we've got

these great leaders and, you know, men and women. And the research has caught up. It depends. It depends on the role. It depends on the organization. There's no cookie cutter best leader, right? There are some competencies that I want for this position. There are some competencies I want in another position. And that's really what my book is about. Leaders, it's hard for you to know where your best

role is going to be if you don't know who you are as a leader. Pete Oh, yeah. It's, if you don't understand leadership, you know, what it's about, how it's perceived, you know, I used to keep a sign on my desk that said, and it's somewhere in my storage unit, I don't know why, it doesn't need to be on my desk anymore. I know this by heart. But it basically said that something, the fact that just because you have the title doesn't mean you're good at it and you need to daily work for that title.

You need to work to embody that title. So just because you get a title of leader or manager, CEO or pick your title, that doesn't mean that I must have been good at leadership because they gave me the job and now I'm the boss. You've seen people that they go off on that sort of narcissistic sort of Macameleon tangent where they're like, I'm knowing and all whatever. How did you learn all this knowledge, sir? They gave me the title. I went from dumb to smart overnight just by a title. And you're like, no, that's not the way it works.

Nicole S. No. And in the book, I call that the petrified forest. Pete Slauson The petrified forest. I love it. Now, how does that apply? Give me the spin on that. Nicole S. Sure. So, I've got two dimensions. So, one dimension is your leader identity clarity, and the other dimension is connection. And that creates these four leader terrains. There's the swamp, where you don't have clarity and you don't have connection. There's the wasteland, where you don't have clarity, but you've got connection to everybody else's agenda. And then there's the petrified forest that I was talking about where you really think you know who you are.

You're not connected to any of the needs or the mission or the values, et cetera. And then the other one is flourishing. And so the book, you know, lays out the path from each of those leadership terrains, I was going to say, you know, lays out the path from each of those leadership terrains. I was going to say, you know, your point about getting the position and getting the title, the research indicates that as leaders go, right, higher up the ladder and get more advanced positions, their openness to being developed decreases. Pete Slauson Really?

That's an interesting stat. Now, why is that? Or do you, I mean, do you talk about it in the book? openness to being developed decreases. Pete Slauson Really? That's an interesting stat. Peteine B working on themselves and realize they have growth areas. But there's this sense that I've gotten to this point and I've really learned everything I need to know and I've got it in the bag. And again, that's the petrified forest. We don't wanna lose growth mindset. We don't wanna lose, even from a modeling perspective, if I'm not willing to step into how to lead

from my own skin, there's no way I can expect my team or my colleagues to want to do the same. And hence the title of the book, because that's a great analogy. You can't get other people to lead and do the things. You're just like, I'll just sit here in the chair and kick my feet up and I'm sure it'll all work out. Leadership is a challenging thing and a lot of people do it wrong. You know, I've seen lots of different versions like some of the ones you aspire to. In fact, usually the one I always see is the petrified brain. I usually see that a lot on Twitter and X where someone's brain has gone fully petrified. Nicole Soule What does that look like?

Pete Slauson They're just dumb shits. Nicole Soule Oh, yeah. Pete Slauson They're just stupid as if, yeah, there you go, as the kids call it. Tell us about your journey through life. How did you develop, what got you interested in learning these sort of techniques that you teach other people? And then also, you did a TED talk and I noticed you were working with some puppets and different things like that to tell your story.

Give us that whole journey, if you would. And we got about five hours to do it. Lauren Ruffin Excellent. Excellent. Let me get some more caffeination out of here. Pete Slauson Real life story, you know. What date and time were you born? Don't say that because that's a really weird question. Lauren Ruffin So, when I was two, I… Pete Slauson I had a poop and an epiphany at the same time.

Lauren Ruffin That's right. That's right. And a psychologist was born. Pete Slauson Yeah. Happened to me at 50, but you know, it's funny how you wear diapers at the end. Anyway, I'm kidding folks. It's a joke. It's an old age joke. I'm not that old. I also hope I'm not. I don't know. I'm pooping now. Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt you with our little jokes there. We're good. I'll let you tell your life story.

Okay. So a lot of my, you know, I did my own leader story timeline because I wanted to test out everything in the book before I asked other people to do it. I grew up on a farm, you know, work ethic, Protestant work ethic, Northwest Ohio, Midwest. So I think all of that, you know, is, is part of my own identity. I went to the Air Force Academy briefly, then transferred to Wheaton College. I was a teacher for a few years, moved to West Africa and was doing some not-for-profit work there, HIV counseling. That's really where I learned how to support people in trauma. And yeah, came back to get more training and then went to a veteran's hospital.

But along the way, living in West Africa, my mom was dying of breast cancer, I was seeing levels of trauma that I had never been exposed to before and really met my own burnout at that time. There's so much need and here I am in my 20s trying to fix it all. No can do. Shocking revelation. So yeah, initially I thought, well, I don't really have to deal with it. I'm just going to get my PhD and figure out all the answers. And that was not a good strategy. So part of what I walk leaders through is, frankly, life debris that is sneaking up on them in ways they don't realize it. Faceplant season of my life, did my own work with my own psychologist. And that's infused, so to speak, in the book, and really kind of

bringing my experience with that plus my clinical experience, honestly, and translating all of that into leader identity. Pete Slauson Hmm. There you go. Leader identity. And tell us about what that means, leader identity. Nicole Slauson Yeah, it's the story that I'm telling myself about, can I do this leader thing? Am I a leader? What does that look like? So there's the story I'm telling myself as a leader, and then others' perception, right? So both of those create our identity, generally speaking, and then we add the leader element to that.

Pete And is some of that, is that an ego issue? Where, you know, we talk about there's the kind of the ego mind that we have that kind of has its own little narcissistic capabilities. And sometimes it deludes us in different things. I noticed, I remember in the TEDx talk, you were using puppets and it seemed to me you were using them for different portions of an addendary or correct me on that. Sure. So, the puppet, her name is Edna and she's me. And she's my inner critic. Right. So I'm illustrating how, you know, these parts of us, you talked about ego. We can also talk about different parts of us. They show up in different ways. And the inner critic, Edna can get a little mouthy sometimes. And so I've got to say to Edna, take a seat on the couch and get some popcorn and pass the microphone

because there are other parts of me that need to show up right here, right? Maybe a more vulnerable side of me or maybe a more confident side of me. Pete Slauson Oh, it's, and so, would you call that the ego or what would you frame that as? Just the voice inside? Lauren Ruffin The inner critic? It's more, so, there's a personality tool that I really like. It's called the Enneagram and it looks at your deep sort of motivations. So, for me, my my deep motivation is I really want to be right. I really want to be good. I really want to follow the rules.

And so what happens for all of us, depending on what that motivation is, I want to see myself in this way. And I really want to make sure you see me in this way. And I really want to make sure you see me in this way. So then we're shutting down other parts of us, right? So for myself, if I have to be good, if I have to be right, if I've got to, you know, fix the whole world, you know, one day at a time, then you can't see my mistakes. You can't see when I drop the ball, you can't see when I lose my patience. And we all have a different version of that. Pete Slauson

Yeah. And, yeah, we talked a little, you mentioned a little bit before about cleaning up the past and issues of the past. One of, you know, there's a lot of things that kind of interfere with the self, trauma, unresolved trauma, big T, little t, you name it, behavioral biases, maybe things you're taught by your parents that inhibited your personality growth or your development, or maybe thoughts that you had that inner critic beat you up is because well, the kids at school told me I was fat or I'll never be successful. So I'll never be successful. They have these belief systems, these blind spots, Tomas that kind of hold them back.

Do you find that's part of that mess you have to clean out to get it out of the way for people? Yes. So I am using some of that clinical experience, even when I'm supporting leaders and helping them do some of that debris clearing, composting that I was talking about. And those traumatic experiences take up a lot of real estate in the brain. They take up a lot of real estate emotionally in our thinking space. And often that's what's holding people back. I think even for people to take permission to acknowledge that that's there. Sometimes I think two people are following rules and they don't realize they're following rules, whether that's from family of origin, whether that's from someone, you know, that they're emulating as a leader, but

those rules don't fit for me. We've got to chuck some of those. And that's where writing your own field guide comes in. So I address a lot of that in the book, when I look at mindset awareness, emotional awareness, and walking people through, generally speaking, how to do what I call inner business with some of that debris. Pete Slauson The inner business of debris! Lauren Ruffin That's right. Pete Slauson I got a whole freaking junkyard of debris. It's like a landfill actually from… Lauren Ruffin We got five hours. Let's go. Let's figure it out right here. Pete Slauson I wish we had more time. And God knows I'm just progressing, putting it off. So, I'll just keep

doing that. That seems to work for me so far. Anyway, as we go out to Natalie, give us a final pitch out to people. Tell them how they can onboard with you. They can reach out to you at dot com so they can find out more as the book launches, etc., etc. Natali Pichering out to you.com so they can find out more as the book launches, et cetera, et cetera. Nicole Soule Yeah, please download that chapter on the website, drnataliepickering.com under books. There's also a contact form if people are interested in team development, interested in their own coaching. I offer coaching intensives. People come and hang out with me here in East Tennessee for three or four days, and we clear out the debris.

The debris, the debris there. So give us the dot coms. We go out one last time. I think you gave it, but let's just do it as we round out. Dr. Natalie Pickering dot com. Thank you Natalie for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, Ron, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. Get tuned in so you can get aware of the book when it comes out. Leading Becomes You. How to Lead from Your Own Skin by Natalie, Dr. Natalie Pickering, PhD. And stop using other people's skin. It's illegal people to do that if you saw Silence of the Lambs. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. My honor is speaking to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys

next time I hope you don't