The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 070: Dr. Sharon Melnick – Success Under Stress: Breathing Exercises & Other Tips To Improve Your 50%

Episode Date: November 9, 2015

Episode 070: Dr. Sharon Melnick – Success Under Stress: Breathing Exercises & Other Tips To Improve Your 50% Sharon Melnick is an incredibly interesting person.  She truly understands the importance of physiology, psychology, and your response.  We are extremely fortunate to have Sharon share her knowledge with us, the loyal listeners of The Learning Leader Show.  Sharon Melnick, PhD is a leading authority on business psychology, stress resilience, and women’s leadership. Her methods are informed by 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School and field tested by over 15,000 clients and training participants. As CEO of her firm Horizon Point Inc, Sharon Melnick, PhD is an internationally renowned speaker and sought after trainer.  Her presentations on Resilience during Change and Success under Stress receive highest ratings and multiple repeat invites from organizations such as Procter and Gamble, MeLife, Novartis, NYLife, GE, Sodexo, Merck, Moody’s, OmniCom, AIG, Morgan Stanley, and many others. Episode 070: Dr. Sharon Melnick – Success Under Stress: Breathing Exercises & Other Techniques To Improve Your 50% Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “The average human being has 60,000 thoughts a day.” Some Questions I Ask: What are some common characteristics all high achievers share? What is the confidence revolution? What specific moments are most stressful in a person’s life? How can we control our own psychology? What can a regular person do in order to become a thought leader? How can we deal with difficult colleagues? Tough people to work with… What are specific ways to handle these situations? What does being a learning leader mean to you? In This Episode, You Will Learn: How to successfully control your 50% A breathing exercise that you can implement immediately that will improve your well-being and state of mind Cooling Breath How studying at Harvard for 10 years helped accelerate learning Analyzing thought processes… How to do it Goal setting practices Great books to read: “Essentialism.” “The Power of Full Engagement.” How to create 50% cultures “A Leader Creates The Weather On Their Team.” Continue Learning: Go To Sharon’s website: com   Read Sharon’s Book: Success Under Stress Follow Sharon on Twitter: @DrSharonMelnick You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 034: Jimmy Hatch – Shot While Searching For Bowe Bergdahl And Sky Diving With Gabby Giffords Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Sharon Melnick is a leader who is constantly learning in order to help us all live a better life. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Bio From SharonMelnick.com   Sharon Melnick, PhD is a leading authority on business psychology, stress resilience, and women’s leadership. Her methods are informed by 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School and field tested by over 15,000 clients and training participants. As CEO of her firm Horizon Point Inc, Sharon Melnick, PhD is an internationally renowned speaker and sought after trainer.  Her presentations on Resilience during Change and Success under Stress receive highest ratings and multiple repeat invites from organizations such as Procter and Gamble, MeLife, Novartis, NYLife, GE, Sodexo, Merck, Moody’s, OmniCom, AIG, Morgan Stanley, and many others.

Be impeccable for your 50%. Be impeccable for your 50%. So no matter what the challenging situation, focus on what it is that you can control and learn to be really effective at that. I welcome you to throw situations at me, Ryan, try to stump the professor here. Try to give me a situation

where a person is finding that it is stressful and they feel like there's nothing that you can control because there's always always. three things that you can control. You can control your own physiology, your own psychology, and your own problem solving around your performance or your productivity. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made

through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk and I'm absolutely thrilled with tonight's episode. It's with business psychologist Dr. Sharon Melnick. She is a leading authority in helping business professionals move to the next level and have success under stress. Her methods are informed by 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Melnick is the author of the

newly released book Success Under Stress. Powerful. tools for staying calm, confident, and productive when the pressure's on. A couple of the topics we got into tonight. The average human has 60,000 thoughts a day. Sharon describes how we can better organize those thoughts to be more productive. And then a really cool part, a tactical breathing exercise that will help you immediately lower your stress level. We actually did this together during our conversation.

I would encourage you to do it along with us. and I promise you will feel different and you'll feel better. And then what can a regular person do, you or I, to become known as a thought leader? Again, Sharon shares tactical, practical ways for us to do this. Again, I was fascinated by Sharon in this conversation. I know you guys are going to like it. It's with Sharon Melnick. Okay, Sharon, extremely excited to have you here on The Learning Leader Show.

I got a quick question to get us rolling. And that's around high achievable. people who have done big things and their lives. And you've been fortunate to spend a good amount of time around a lot of those achievers, and you obviously are one yourself. And I'm curious, what are some of the common characteristics that those high achievers all seem to share? Well, I'll start us off with one, and I'm going to start us off with a question right back at you. Do you know how many thoughts a human being has a day?

How many thoughts a human being has? Because scientists have actually done this research. Not prepared. I think I'm concerned that my guests will be off by a lot. Oh, everyone usually just says, oh my gosh, you know, so many because their head feels so over-coded. But scientists have actually done this research and they found that the average human being has about 60,000 thoughts a day, 60,000.

It's about a thought every two-thirds of a second. And so every one of those thoughts is either in the service of the results that you want to create and the quality of the experience that you want to have or takes you further away from. Like, would you agree with that? Yeah. So when it comes to high achievers, if I ask them, you know, how many of your 60,000 thoughts a day are in the service of the results that you want? Usually it will be a relatively high number, right? That they are about the work or their mission or who they want to be and less is about the churn and the distraction and the derailment. And actually, I've had the

real privilege of being in front of, you know, tens of thousands of people over the last a few years. And sometimes when I ask that question, I'll say, you know, and the response that I routinely get is either, you know, well, 50, 50 or, you know, 20, 80. And I say, okay, so, you know, 80 percent of your thoughts are towards the work. And they say, oh, no, you know what I mean? It's the opposite. It's only 20 percent. So that's one thing that I would say right away is you have 60,000 opportunities every day to really be effective. Are you making that choice? Wow, interesting. Do people come to mind when you think of that?

Who are the first people that pop in your head when you think of high achievers, people who think that way? Well, it's anyone who we want to follow, right? Yeah. So, you know, whether it's somebody who's innovating in their industry or whether it's someone who's leading a company, their energy is really going into being inspiring and to having a clear vision. And so we want to be a part of what it is that they're doing. You know, we're not listening to them sort of whether it's complaining or being worried or being reactive and blaming someone else.

You know, those aren't the kind of people that we're wanting to kind of put ourselves behind. Yeah, I find that one of the other characteristics that I love and some great leaders and high achievers I've been around is just just an immense sense of optimism. And it made me think of that characteristic by what you're saying. Like we don't, we don't want to follow or we're not inspired by people who don't have this. And we want them to have this underlying belief that the day is going to go great. And whatever their vision or what they're working to achieve is going to happen at some point, hopefully in the time frame that they wanted to happen. And so I think that's another one that I would add on to what you're saying is because it's all around how they think and envisioning

success and then believing that it's going to happen. Yeah, absolutely. And I have an example of this. Actually, just two days ago, I was giving a training at McDonald's Corporation, which is kind of interesting for me because, you know, I don't eat too much meat and I'm gluten and dairy-free and all that kind of stuff. But there I was at McDonald's. And they have all these sides around, you know, the breakfast all day.

This is their new marketing campaign, which has actually driven their stock up, interestingly enough. So I was giving a training to a number of women leaders who are talented and ready to advance within their organization. And a senior leader in the organization got up and said, look, we've been going through a lot of change in our industry, in our company. And here's why I think that I'm optimistic about the future. And then he gave some examples of, you know, what's going on in the company, indicators, et cetera. And what the research shows for a leader, especially during times of change, is that kind of an attitude of realistic optimism is like the best balance. And he got up there and he did that.

He talked out loud about, you know, here's why I'm optimistic for the future. And I thought, that's like right out of the textbooks what you just said. And hopefully it worked. Interesting. So, Sharon, let's dive in a little bit to you and how you've gotten to this point. So if you could, could you share a little bit of your personal? personal journey. I know you don't have to go into all of it, but the few minute version of what you currently do and then how you've gotten to this point.

Sure. Well, I'm a psychologist by training, and what I do now is quite a bit of speaking and training and coaching around resilience and how people can have success under stress. right? And the way that I got here, interestingly enough, is that in 2009, when it was the recession in the United States and a buddy of mine from college who worked in the real estate industry, he called me up and he said, look, I'm hosting a conference for all these people in the real estate industry. And I want you to come and speak about success under stress. And I said, you know, look, I really appreciate this opportunity. But, you know, the only thing that I know about stress is, how to cause myself a lot of it because I'm always doing a million things and trying to be helpful to a lot of people. And he said, well, you know, you know how to help people be confident when the chips are down, you know, how to help people like, you know, get what they need from other people who are overwhelmed or resistance and you have all these secret ninja weapon techniques to, you know, sort of instantly calm down, which hopefully will have a chance to talk about.

And he said, that's success under stress. And I thought, well, that's fantastic. You just gave me the name of my book and my branding. That was, you know, how many five or six or seven years ago at this point. And then I'd just been doing, you know, tons of training at organizations that are going through change or just where they, you know, people want to be high performing despite these conditions of the new normal. And also it's very helpful working with business owners who are really trying to distinguish themselves as well so they can be successful in these times where There's just, you know, people are just up to here and there's so much challenge. As a psychologist, my training came from 10 years of research at Harvard Medical School

where I was really studying kind of how talented and successful people get in their own way, if you will, like what you bring with you from your own experiences in childhood and how you bring those into your career interactions, how you might pass those along to your children in the next generation and then really helping people not only get out of your own way, get other people out of your way, so you can really make the contribution that you've been put here to make. So a lot of those skills around resilience and confidence and being influential, so that there's less of that churn that I was referring to and more like you just feel like you can finally get the results that you're here for. So you spend 10 years, and when people say you did research for 10 years at Harvard Medical School,

Yeah. And I've read here that you field tested by over 7,500 clients and training participants. What does that mean? Like, what would a day or a couple days look like for you as you're doing that research? Yeah. So I'm not currently doing the research anymore now. I'm just, you know, kind of trying to apply it for people. You know, a day in the life is, whether in front of the room training people or whether

in the intimacy of the consulting room, you know, working one-on-one with a client or writing an online program or my next book. My next book is creating a confidence revolution, particularly for women, but I think we need everyone to be at their best in order to move us forward at these times. And so for me, you know, when I'm talking with someone who is facing a challenge where they feel like, you know, they're not able to best express their talents because whether it's a boss is thwarting them or they just feel overwhelmed and unfocused and there's a million things going on or whether it's like a self-imposed stress, you know, where it's their own perfectionism, their own, you know, kind of anxieties that are keeping them or procrastination, et cetera,

then it makes me tense personally when I am in the presence of someone like that. So I'm just completely motivated to equip people with the ability to have more control so that they can then kind of finally make that contribution that they've been

here to make. So it could be in a variety of those different forms and I travel a lot to people, but I'm personally motivated to just help you have more control because that's going to lower your stress. In fact, it is, we only experience stress

and challenge when there are aspects of a situation that feel out of our control. It is that out of controlness. So the more we have a sense of control and we know how to get the best out of ourselves and we know how to kind of get people out of our own way, then it's a green light and it reduces our stress. How do we do that? Well, no matter what the challenge is that we are facing, the best thing that you could do is to immediately sort out whatever that situation.

is, what are the aspects of the situation that I can control? I call this kind of your 50%, right? And distinguish that from the aspects of the situation that you can't control, kind of the other 50%, if you will. And you will only activate a stress reaction when you're focusing on the aspects of a situation that feel out of your control. And it literally will activate a stress reaction in your body. So what you want to do is focus rigorously, proactively, on all the aspects of the situation that you can control.

And most people, we overlook this, you know, but there's your 60,000 thoughts a day, there's your kind of nervous system, there's your communications, there's your reactions, there's so many things that you can control that what I try to offer people is to boil it down, that there's really only one simple thing that you need to remember. I call this the 50% rule. And the 50% rule is be impeccable for your 50%. Be impeccable for your 50%. So no matter what the challenging situation, focus on what it is that you can control and learn to be really effective at that. I welcome you to throw situations at me, Ryan,

try to stump the professor here. Try to give me a situation where a person is finding that it is stressful and they feel like there's nothing that you can control because there's always always three things that you can control. You can control your own physiology, your own psychology, and your own problem solving around your performance or your productivity. And happy to go over many examples there. And I propose that when you do that, you can almost always get the result that you want in the situation and for sure preserve your well-being. So you want to role play it now?

Like you want me to throw some things at you? sure okay well i didn't know if you if you meant like let's do it right now because i'm happy to i think that would be kind of cool because i think there are real life things that people are going through that you know i talk to whether it's friends or colleagues or people all over the country that i'm friends with that might bring up issues and sometimes you're not certain how to respond to them so let me let me throw one at you then so let's say you work at a small business with 15 people and the owner of the business comes to you and says, things are not working out.

And unfortunately, we are, as of next Friday, our business is no longer. It's done. And that means all of us, all 15 of us, are out of a job. Thank you so much for your service. You've done a great job. But unfortunately, all of us, you know, we failed. It's not enough. If I'm one of those 15 people, I'm crushed, right?

Let's say I put in three or four hard years of work to make this small business work and it didn't. How do you respond? Sure. And that may be happening to a lot of people in one form or another. So let's go through the three categories how you can control your own physiology, your own psychology, and your own problem solving around it. So the first thing that I might do is I imagine if you're that person that you might be quite ticked off at that owner, right? You know what I mean? So like, why didn't you do more or why did you tell me?

And you might feel reactive around it and maybe be burning up and not able to sleep. So one thing that will be important for you is to stay cool, calm, and collected and, you know, kind of maintain your demeanor. So you're not like wasting all that energy but all being angry. So you can use cooling breath. Cooling breath is a reverse breathing technique. And you can try it along with me now, Ryan. Wait. Well, you're going to open your mouth ever so slightly, and you're going to breathe in as if you are sipping through a straw.

So in an exaggerated aversion, it might sound like this. And then out through your nose long, still a deep breath. So in through your mouth as if you're kind of creating, like, are you feeling almost like a wind tunnel over the top of your tongue? Yeah. Okay, very good. Everybody listening to do this right now. Yeah, absolutely. So cooling breath.

Very, very healthy. for you. What it does is that it detoxifies your liver, which will be very helpful as you're going through kind of a shocking news or a big transition where you might be upset about it. Then this is going to help to kind of clear your liver and not allow the negative emotions to build up and start disease processes to form. Also, what cooling breath does is that it takes you out of the part of your brain that is in hijack and is just like pissed off. and you really, you know, aren't making your best choices. And it puts you back in the part of your brain that can think clearly, that can take a long-term perspective,

and will help you make good relationships with the people around you and not maybe take it out on the people who you need as important supports in that situation. So cooling breath is actually like the poster child of Be Impeccable for your 50%, because what do we usually do in situations if it's tense or there's an argument? or you're mad at the other person, we're usually either trying to get them to change or telling them to calm down when the best thing to do really is to calm yourself down. And in so doing, you can actually be the one to lead other people, you know, with calm and steady thinking through that situation.

And before I go on and give a couple more tips about this situation, I just want to share it with you that there is a secret ninja weapon aspect to, cooling breath, which is that not only will it calm you down, it will calm the other person down. And so I kid you not, I stop fights on the New York City subways all the time from across the car just by going right into my cooling breath. You can just do a very kind of subtle version of that. You don't have to be, you know, like breathing in people's faces. So cooling breath, you want to make that your first resort.

How does that calm the other person down? You mean they see you doing it? Or like, how does it work? Well, it creates a very powerful energetic effect. Really? Yeah. By them seeing it or they can just feel it or how to know. No, no, no.

It just is sort of a, it changes the energy in the field between all of you. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I've, you know, one thing that's kind of funny is, you know, I do a lot of training for people and companies around success under stress. And when I do follow up with them, you know, what are you trying out, you know, what's working, what are you applying? And one of the first things I always hear is, oh, we just do cooling breath all day long

preemptively because people are just frustrating as it pissing us all day long. So that's kind of a huge. I thought it was humorous until I heard it too many times. So back to our hypothetical situation. So the first thing that you could do is you can calm down your own physiology so that you don't cause even greater upset with your

anger. The next thing that you could do is you can control your own psychology, right? So how you think about and frame the situation and there's just so many things that you could do here even if, you know, where you're working is going to have a massive change right now. The first thing that you could do is you might want to kind of have a different perspective and tell a different story about what happened because your initial response might be to blame the owner or blame other people or feel like, you know, what is it about me? Why does this keep happening to me? Or just something like that, again, that would be

unconstructive. And so a better thing to do would be to be more objective in the way that you frame and understand the situation and to really figure out, okay, what worked about being in this company, what didn't work about being in this company, and how could I apply those learnings to whatever I'm going to do next. And again, that's going to keep you much more neutral and kind of keep your head in a good place. Another thing that you could do is anytime that you're dealing with a change situation, there is a mindset that will keep you resumptuble. resilient or not. And when it comes to this mindset, we say that you either have like a fixed mindset, which is, well, look, I have the skills I have. I know what I know. And if I can't do the

exact job that I'm doing now, then I feel threatened. And then I'm going to feel very scared for my future. Or have a growth mindset? Versus a growth mindset. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. And right. So you, you know about this. And a growth mindset is more like, you know, I can learn what I need to learn or I can, it's like a muscle, you know, and I can develop new skills and I can transfer the skills that I have, but I can also, you know, this opens up opportunity. Maybe I've been wanting to, you know, move to a different area or expand my skills so I feel more marketable, et cetera. And, you know, this thing about mindset is so powerful that Carol Dweck, who's the author of a book on this,

reports a study with kids around math, you know, kids of a nolinkton math, and that even without teaching kids who are getting Cs and math, like more math skills, even without teaching them actual skills, if they just develop their mindset that math is a muscle that you can learn, they, over the period of just a couple months, you know, started getting like way better grades, you know, like A's and A minuses and stuff, just by thinking that they could. So mindset. That's so huge, not to interrupt, but because I love Carol Dweck's work. It's a book I recommend to so many people.

and especially people like I found and I'm not trying to stereotype, but this is just from my personal experience. People who have more experience who, I don't want to say the word older, but people who have just simply been around longer and done more things, in my experience seem to have more of a fixed mindset. And that's why sometimes like if you're making a hiring decision, it's not always about the person with the most experience or, always about the person depending on what school they want to. Like I want to really dive into how they think. What's their mindset towards problems? Share examples of how you'd handled a tough situation. You know, so I think the mindset is so huge because if you have the right growth mindset, you can truly learn anything. You really can. But if you don't or you think, oh, well, we've always, you know, you've probably heard the phrase sharing a phrase that's, I would imagine

a pet pee for you as well is when someone says, you know, oh, we already tried that. Doesn't work. Oh, oh, well, why are you doing it? Well, this is because it's how we do it. We've always done it this way. This is what we do here. And I think that's a really frustrating thing for me to hear when I speak with anyone because there's always new and better ways to at least think about a problem or an issue.

And if you have the proper mindset, it gives yourself a much better opportunity to tackle that challenge. and overcome it. Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is, is that there is some truth to that we all have a fundamental wiring, whether we are wired more towards sameness, like preferring routine and how things are now, versus wired for difference. And we love things to be new and different and changing.

And there's some research on this that up to about 55% of the population has more of a kind of a sameness orientation and fewer people have more of a difference orientation. But even if you're someone who is kind of wired for that preference, you can still focus on, okay, even if I'm going to be working in a different situation, what is going to be the same? You know, what skills am I still going to be applying or what, you know, morning or home routines are still going to be the same? You know, you can kind of focus on what's still going to be the same and then say, and these things are going to be different. So you can kind of have like a qualified sameness orientation. And that can be a very helpful way of messaging it to yourself if you're about to undergo a real big change in your life.

I love it. It makes so much sense. And so what was it? There was three, three. Yeah. So that was how you can kind of optimize your psychology, right? And then the third, optimize your physiology, your psychology, and then your problem solving around any situation. Here's where there's just so much that you could do when you're trying to figure out how you might want to be applying your talents next.

So obviously you're going to want to go out and reconnect and figure out ways that you could be valuable to people in your network. One of the things that I think is so important, again, being impeccable for your 50%, is to bring a sense. sense of clarity to someone that you want to make an ask of, you know, for an introduction or to help you find another position, et cetera, and not kind of leave it up to them to try to give you words or, you know, help you figure out what it is that you want to do, like try to, try to do as much of that homework yourself and bring that clarity. I think another thing is to really be noticing the trends and things that are hot now or industries that are going to be, you know, really viable and growing in the future and anything that you could do to really distinguish yourself

from all the other people who are doing what it is that you're doing. And I'm happy to talk with you about that more in depth if you want you to sort of how to kind of create a sense of being an expert or a go-to person or a must-have person. But these are just all the kinds of things that people can do. And I think if you do all of those three things, if you keep yourself in a good place physically and if you keep your head in a good place and if you're really strategic, then you're going to be a person who thrives even during that shocking change and you're going to be a high achiever. Yeah, so let's go there.

So let's talk about how you could differentiate yourself or maybe become known as, you know, the really popular phrase now was a thought leader or subject matter expert. Like how can the regular person who doesn't have a book, who's not a coach, who doesn't have really a personal brand yet, what are some of things they could do to be labeled as somebody who's a thought leader in a specific niche or area that they love to do? Yeah. Well, I love that you said that this is something that is open to everyone. I think that's right. And, you know, so one thing that you could do is if you can use data to help establish yourself as someone who has a point of view and a point of view that is worth listening to, right? So just as an example, I was talking, I was giving a speech at a business owner conference yesterday and someone came up to me afterwards and she has like a little marketing company.

and she was telling me that what they do is they create experiences for other business owners and to help them grow their business. And she was like, well, how can I get more business? And so she was applying some of the things that I was talking about. And she found these studies that said, you know, people spend X on social media trying to, you know, get all these likes and all these people following them and stuff like that. But it doesn't necessarily translate into people growing their business. And what she's found is that you only need.

30, you know, quality interactions or discussions with people a month in order to get the number of clients that you want and have a thriving business. So if she's out there and all she has to do is, you know, speak about or write about or have networking discussions with people in order for prospects to have the belief that, hmm, I don't have to spend all this money in time on social media or doing all these other things that I was doing if it's not bringing me the results that I want. All I need to do is put my time into getting 30 qualified weeds, which of course is what she does. You know what I mean? And so she could just give a speech. And as long as she can provide data or tell stories and get experiences for people to just have that belief, then, and I was

talking with her and some of the things she said, I was like, you know, you're absolutely right. All I need to have is these, you know, 30 conversations a month. And she gave me some ideas for how she could. And I was like, you know, let's talk. I want to hire you. So that was just an example who, you know, she isn't someone who's kind of like a thought leader, but she introduced to me a new idea. She became an expert in my mind just because she said, you know, unlike all these other, you know, traditional marketing strategies, you know, this is what I do. And she supported it with some data and some stories. And I was like, you know, I'm there. So that's just an example of something that people can do. And that's just using available market data. And I think if you take that and there's

many things that you can add on. For example, if you can make some sort of a prediction, if you see, if you're sort of educated and informed about what's going on, you can make a prediction. I think that people who continue to put their X amount of dollars into social media and don't see this kind of return are going to have this kind of bad results or whatever. And people who put their money into this are going to have this kind of result. And if you can make a prediction like that and people see that it's becoming true, you immediately become like, you know, like Noreal Rubini, who was the guy who's, you know, predicted the crash.

And then all of a sudden he was, you know, a total player and a world pundit. So that's something that also can, you know, if you've been working and you just lost your job, like you were just giving an example of, but you know something from being in the industry or being inside your company or you know some dirty laundry, you know, you know, some secret that's coming down the pipeline or just anything like that and you can start making a prediction and writing about it, people are going to pay attention. They're going to be like, wow, this is someone who's thoughtful, you know, and is kind of plugged in and I want to be around him or her.

It's just an example of things that you can do. Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned earlier that you have weapons to you, so some tactical takeaways and people, the regular listeners know that this is something that I love. I want people when they listen to an episode to watch. walk away or move on with a couple of things. One, to hopefully be entertained, that it was enjoyable for them. But two, it's educational.

There's takeaways. So, like, you could take notes and say, I could implement this immediately. And you've already shared a number of those things that I've already done. I've been taking notes. But another common thing from emails that I receive from listeners are people who work at a company. And let's just, again, I'm going to use an example and ask your advice here. So people who work at a company, regardless of the size.

and nowadays a lot of times you work or you'll work on projects and groups with people maybe from different departments or whatever, their colleagues of yours in some way, shape, or form. And Adam Grant calls these people takers, difficult people. In chapter nine of your book, you say you write how to stay rational when someone is driving you nuts. So we all can picture who these people may be. Maybe they don't work as often as you do or they don't, they're just, they simply don't show up. or they frustrate you when they do. How do you deal with these people?

You're not the boss. These are colleagues, so you can't just fire them. You know, you've got to work with them. What are some tactics or weapons that you can use? I don't mean that literally. That you can use to better, I guess, you don't want that to stress you out. I know that's part of what you talk about. So these are in the recipes for relationship stress.

So what do you do in those? situations. Yeah. Oh, and too many people are in that situation. I know. I'm sure. You know, so one thing that the thing that you always want to keep in mind in that situation is to be impeccable for your 50% because you're going to want to try to control that person or make them do things that they are not currently doing, et cetera. So here are some things that you can do. one thing that I've found to be very, very effective is to lead what I call an ideal day discussion with your team. So an ideal day discussion, I often facilitate these in companies, is where each person on the team contributes to a discussion of like, okay, really, what would an

ideal day look like? You know, like, what would we get done? What wouldn't we get done? And, you know, just from doing dozens and dozens of these, I could. tell you that most people, we all want the same thing. We want to get the most important work done, cut through the clutter, feel valued, not have to chase after people, have more uninterrupted time, uninterrupted time to think and reflect, et cetera, and like have good work-life balance. Everybody wants. So rather than you feeling like you don't have a voice and how are you going to get other people to do things, you could introduce this idea of an ideal day discussion. And then everybody forms a collective vision. And everybody buys into this.

idea of I am responsible. Like, I'm impeccable, you know, have to be impeccable for my 50%. I am now responsible for contributing, as is everyone else, to this ideal day. And it's, and as part of that discussion, you know, you could have the team leader and everyone could sort out, who does what, you know what I mean? And then you could have that kind of publicly appreciated or documented, right? So this slacker person, it's not like if you can't get them to do it, but maybe with some accountability like for everyone on the team.

You know, and if it's documented and then when you have staff meetings again, it's kind of like, okay, well, let's just check in with everyone about, you know, these things that have been assigned. And then it kind of takes it off you versus them and it kind of makes it like the team absorbs the responsibility for it. And so that's something that has been shown to really, I mean, people get literally up to an hour more productivity a day and it can really keep people accountable. So that's one thing. And I think as part of that, you could also appeal to someone who has authority over that person.

So maybe you're influencing, kind of talking to them directly isn't helping. But who does have authority over them? Could you ask the leader of that team to speak to them or to hold them accountable? Another thing that I might do is, you know, this is the first thing that I would ask is, have I done everything that I could do in order to be effective? So is this person slacking because that's who they are or is there a way that I haven't been effective in influencing them? So the first thing I would ask is what motivates them? What's in it for them?

Have I kind of pressed those levers? Have I appreciated them enough? Have I been clear enough? Have I helped them understand their goals enough so that they are motivated to do the things that I'm asking them, et cetera? So I'd always start there. And if I've been impeccable for my 50% and still, the person isn't changing, which helps me know that it's really more about them than it is about me, then I might proceed to some of those other strategies.

Gotcha. Love it. Hey, how do you bouncing around? How do you network without handing out a card? Sorry, I bounced around, but I just popped in my head. When I was doing my pre-show research, that was one of the notes I took. Yeah, it's all good. And that's a little bit going back to some of the things that I was just talking about a few minutes ago,

but how do you distinguish yourself from all the other people out there who do what you do? And why should either hiring managers or prospects know that, like, you're the only choice for me? So what that comes from is really positioning yourself as an expert and the go-to authority. I mean, if you just think about this for a minute, you know, if you are not feeling well, you might go to your general practitioner, right? And it's usually not that hard to get an appointment with your general practitioner. Usually insurance pays for it. But if we kind of like go up the scale of making it even harder and people you're willing to pay more or search out to find, you know, maybe a specialist.

So a specialist you might be willing to pay a little bit more or wait a little bit longer for an appointment. and then if you keep going kind of up for someone who you'd seek out and even pay more for, it would be someone who's more of like an expert or authority, like maybe a person who is the head of that department at the hospital, or they wrote a book or did the study, you know, on this topic. Like you might even be on a waiting list for them. You might be willing to pay out of pocket. You know, I mean, it's sort of like you'd search for them on the internet.

And you want to be that person who people like absolutely will do anything. you know what I mean in order to see rather than just like the person who they can you know walk into their office and any time so in order to do that it's some of the strategies that I was talking about before like I was saying you know you could use data or you could make predictions or you can do things like you can understand what your competitive advantages over other people like those things that are unique to you and when you have something that's unique to you and absolutely solves a problem in a way that nobody else can solve it, then that is going to make you, you know, that sought after person. And one of the things, and this is just sort of

tried and true from marketing, but I think, you know, the more you can get into your prospect's head and describe their problem to them better than they can describe it to themselves, the more they implicitly see you as the person having the answer. So I think, you know, rather than just go out and just sort of say, hi, you know, I'm a financial wealth advisor or I sell insurance, which is sort of like, yeah, you and a thousand of my closest friends, you know, rather than that, talk to people about this is my understanding of what you're going through. And, you know, people say to me sometimes when I talk like, you're in my mind.

Like, do you follow me around with a video camera? You're scary. You know what I mean? Because, like, you know, I'm just like, do you do this? this? Do you do this? Is this what you're saying to yourself in the middle of the meeting? And they're like, oh my God, that's exactly what's going on for me. And then they're like, if she knows that, she must, she obviously must have seen a thousand people like me and help them. So I need to seek her out. So that's what I would be doing in my marketing is I'd be getting even better at describing your

prospect's challenges. And then they're like, you just own them. I love it. I know, sorry for bouncing around, but I just have a lot of questions, and I know we're on a limited number of time. I got a couple quick questions, and then one last one before we go. Do you meditate? I do like a yogic and like a chanting kind of meditation practice. And I don't do just deep breathing, like kind of meditation regularly, but I do it irregularly. Like I try to do it as often as possible.

But I do have like a practice that centers me and helps me be excited for my day and really like, you know, sets an intention and connects me with the people that I'm going to interact with and kind of sends out a lot of love. And so I definitely do that. And research has proven that there is a certain number of breaths that we can take a minute that keep you kind of in the zone and make you, you know, not reactive to stress. And so whenever possible, I try to check in with my breathing and try to see if I'm breathing, you know, or try to slow down my breathing and make it a little deeper so that I can be, you know, in my best mind. Gotcha. Books, other than your own, what books have had the most influence on your life that you would probably recommend others? You probably, like me, get emails saying, hey, what books do you recommend I read?

and usually they're broad questions. So I'm curious, I'll ask you in a broad way. What books do you recommend to others that have had a huge impact on your life? Yeah. I'm completely stressed out trying to think of only a few to answer your question. I had a guy yesterday actually, send me a note, said, hey, he saw me speak. And after one of my speeches, I mentioned a few books. He goes, what were those two books you mentioned?

And I wrote back, and I couldn't help, but I sent like 20. I was like, sorry, like I got gone and I just couldn't stop. But go ahead. I totally got it. Well, one that I just read recently is this recent book called Essentialism. Ah, yeah. And it's about how to really, you know, focus and do one thing really deep and really well as opposed to have your energy scattered.

And we all know this as kind of conventional wisdom, but he really broke it down. And I definitely saw myself on a number of those pages, even though I'm so desperately trying to really focus. So I think that's... Greg McKeon, correct? Excuse me? by Greg McKeon, correct? Yeah, that's right.

I think that's one of the single best things that you can do for yourself. And, you know, there's been a number of books out recently about women and confidence. And I think that this is a big topic in companies around trying to have more diversity. I think it's like one of the just the big pushes in order to make companies and people's experiences within them more effective. So I think it's helpful for people to be knowledgeable there. I think Tony Schwartz's book on The Power of Full Engagement, where he talks about the power of taking breaks, is something that I definitely try to get out there

because, you know, when you go through your day with a sprint, a period of intense focus concentration, followed by a brief period of recovery, let's say 90 minutes on and even just, you know, three minutes of deep breathing, like you're saying, to kind of recover and replenish with high-optane physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy and clear away the stress hormones that have come from an intense period of concentration or doing or working or meetings or running from thing to thing. What the research shows there is that if you go through your day with that kind of sprint and then brief recovery pattern, that you'll have up to 30% more energy at 5 p.m.

and many of us are making important decisions at 5 p.m. And it's the halfway mark for the day for many of us. Nice. Cool. I love hearing the text that have had influence on your life that have shaped you. I got one last question, Sharon. So again, the title of this podcast is The Learning Leaders Show. It's all about the fact that I'm fascinated by the art and science that goes into leadership

and the fact that I believe it's absolutely a learned skill. Some people certainly are born with a little bit more ability, probably. However, I'm a believer that anybody can, if they're dedicated and focused on it, they can learn to become a great leader. Whether they're outgoing or they're an introvert, I don't believe it matters. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts when you hear the phrase learning leader. What's the very first thing that pops into your mind when you hear that phrase? Yeah. Well, I think that anyone can be a leader regardless of your title. And that a leader is someone who thinks of themselves as a leader, right?

And they see it as they see themselves as impeccable for their 50%, that it's their responsibility to be the one to kind of solve problems. They are aware that a, leader creates the weather on his or her team that everyone else around them is, you know, going to be kind of like looking to them. I love that. Sorry. That's awesome. Yeah.

A leader creates the weather on their team. And so you want to be aware of that and intentional about how you're showing up and kind of what your mood is, what your reaction is, what your mindset and your announcements are regarding change or regarding where we're going from here. I think also that a leader is only as effective as how far out into the future a leader can see. And the reason that I say that is because so many of us were just caught up in our to-do list for today. And we're just ticking off tactics so we can get that little dopamine squirt in our brains and feel like, oh my gosh, at least I got something done today.

And we're caught up in our day-to-day fire drills and we're worried about, well, what are other people going to think or how are we going to be judged. And so much of what we do is just kind of trying to get through the day. And we need to do that. But I think a leader is someone who sees past today and imagines the future. So that means that you, and that's the way that I talk about it. It's not about stress management. It's about self-management. And I think a leader has a self-management toolkit. That's what I try to give people a workshop for in my book, you know, a success under stress, a self-management toolkit so that you can be self-managed to be kind of calm and steady and clear thinking as you go through your day so that you can envision that future and then help lead people toward it.

Man, that is awesome. I love it. You know, my dad says he's led thousands of people throughout his life and he says, as, you know, he teaches people too when they are promoted into a leadership role. It is the duty, it is your duty as a leader to show up to where. work every day in a great mood because that your mood is going to affect all of your people even if you don't realize it or don't think that so it is your duty to find a way to show up in a good mood every single day and i've i've been fortunate to see him a lead by example on that so

sharon this has been fantastic i've got pages of notes and i really appreciate everything you've shared where can everyone go to find you online yeah so um there's my website shan melnick dot com s h a A-R-O-N-M-E-L-N-I-C-K, Sharon Melnick.com. And for anyone who wants some of the tools that I referred to, like the cooling breath and the sprint recovery and how to stay rational when dealing with difficult people and all of those kinds of things, success under stress is the name of the book, and success under stressbook.com. And you can download a free chapter there, helping you really carry out that idea of

be impeccable for your 50% success under stress book. And then there's a whole number of other resources and videos to teach you the tools. Really, my mission, and I'm asking you to join me in it, Ryan, is to create 50% cultures where everyone in your family, on your team, in your community is impeccable for their 50% because won't the world be a better place when we're all doing that? I love it. absolutely i i appreciate that and love that you've shared so much but i think that's a great mission so happy to join you on that uh sharon so again thank you so much for being here

i look forward to our continued conversations as we both progress on our journeys and uh i know you got you got to run to the airport uh for your next talk so excited to hear about that as well and uh i'll i'll be sure i think we might have to do this again here maybe in a few months or your next book comes out to talk even more. So thanks again, Sharon. Thank you, Ryan. All right. Talk soon.

Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning

leader show.