The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 204: Dr. Tasha Eurich - How To Become More Self-Aware

Episode Date: May 14, 2017

Episode 204: Dr. Tasha Eurich - How To Become More Self-Aware Common themes of leaders who sustain excellence: Self Awareness - "I scientifically studied this." "People who work on their Self-Awareness are happier, get more promotions, and lead better lives" It's become a national sport to point out that someone is self-aware -- "I wanted to do the research behind this to truly learn about it" 95% of people think they're self aware -- But only 10%-15% are actually self aware It's vitally important to regularly question your assumptions to become more aware Don't wait for a life event or someone else to tell you to do this. You must work on it daily.  The gains will be incremental (The Compound Effect) "We cannot own other people's journeys, we must own ours." You will work with people who lack awareness. Don't put it on yourself to fix it. Tasha previously worked within a company in the "Wendy Rhoades" role from Billions The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- Her boss -- Picture a "laugh track" behind what someone says to help deal with their lack of awareness Practical ways leaders build self-aware teams and organizations Alan Mulally story of how he gained self-awareness despite starting with very little of it "It shows that anyone can become self-aware" A great leader goes out of their way to build a culture where people can tell the truth." It's vital that the leader is vulnerable -- shares weaknesses and mistakes made Implementing a Business Process Review on a weekly basis Doing this at home with family as well -- Every Sunday, each family member provides updates The Speed of Trust -- Why everything is much faster when built upon the foundation of trust Pixar is the model of Trust.  Ed Catmull shares how they built this.  No leaks to the press. The "Selfie Syndrome" -- "There is a direct impact on social media & narcissism" "Resist the pull of the cult of self" How to promote your own work you're proud of without becoming a self-promoter? -- It's about the work and positively impacting people. Mindfulness practice = Doesn't always have to involve meditation. "Actively noticing the present" Continue Learning: Follow Tasha on Twitter: @tashaeurich Read: Insight Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12  

It shows that anyone can become remarkably self-aware. So Alan Malali was kind enough to let me spend some time with him and get to know him and interview him for the book. And he told me that story about Mike. And one of the things that he credits his success to is self-awareness. And he said that something like the biggest opportunity for improvement at work and life and anywhere else is self, team, and organizational awareness. awareness. Proud to say that this episode of The Learning Leader Show is brought to you by Roan. R-H-O-N-E. Rone.com, premium activeware engineered with principal, performance, and progress for the modern man. They build clothing around three main tenants, cutting-edge performance, premium comfort and simplistic

style from rapid moisture wicking to four-way stretch, their clothing offers unrivaled durability and flexibility. Remember episode number 194 with Roan CEO, Nate Chekitts. I love his process for building this business. And even more, I love their product. So we're happy to partner together to help you the loyal listeners of the Learning Leaders Show. Go to roan.com. Choose whatever you'd like. And as you're checking out, type in the code Hawk. Simply Hawk, H-A-W-K to get 15% off. Now, Roan does not tip do discount codes. So this is a special one. It will expire within a few months. But type in Hawk, H-A-W-K at Rhone.com. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. Absolutely love doing this. And I love the conversation I had with

my featured leader, Dr. Tasha Eurek, an organizational psychologist. Been featured everywhere. Forbes, Top 100 Thought Leader, Trust Across. America, leader to watch gave an incredible TED talk in 2014. And most recently, her book is titled Insight. It delves into the connection between our self-awareness, what she calls the meta skill of the 21st century. During our conversation, we discuss how we can all become more self-aware. And then the direct impact of social media and narcissism, followed by how to deal with others who have no self-awareness.

Unfortunately, we all know a few of those. And then a mindfulness practice we can implement to help us immediately. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, this one's so good with Dr. Tasha Eurek. All right, Tasha, I'm excited to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thanks, Ryan. Great to be here.

And it's cool. Like I mentioned you before, I love having guests who are in New York. You got that distinct audio background being somebody who's in New York City. hear some of the honking, maybe a siren. So it's pretty cool. I actually have grown to really enjoy it. So it's good to have you. Thanks. Yeah, it calms me for some reason. So happy to be here. Happy to be here with you. Good. So I was thinking your topic one is so important. And you hear the phrase self-awareness, becoming more self-aware, understanding yourself, whatever phraseology people use constantly. And I want to think about that in relation to studying people who have been able to

to sustain excellence over an extended period of time. And I have some thoughts on what you might say, but I want to ask it to you is when you look at people who have sustained excellence, what are the common themes you've been able to see within them? So there are a couple of common themes, but I really want to dig into one. And that's the topic of my new book, which is self-awareness. But let me give a little dimension and a little bit of color to that. So basically, the reason I have spent the last three years of my career as an organizational psychologist scientifically digging into this topic is that in my executive coaching practice, I have worked with so many leaders who start out, you know, in some cases very, very unselfaware. And in other cases,

they have some work to do. And I've seen them make these dramatic transformations in understanding who they are, what they value, what they're passionate about, what they want to accomplish. as well as how other people see them and the impact they have on others. And I've seen firsthand so many dramatic examples of people who have put in the energy and sort of mustered the bravery that it takes to get there, and they've reaped the rewards. And the research on this is also very clear. People who work on their self-awareness and who make progress are happier. They make better decisions.

they have better relationships at work and at home. For your listeners, it might be helpful to know that they're more effective performers at work. They get more promotions and they're more effective leaders. And so it's very interesting because the topic of self-awareness is something that it's sort of become a national sport to point out, you know, this person is self-aware or this person isn't self-aware. But the reason I wanted to dig into this was I felt like there was not a lot of substance behind those comments. You would read, you know, an article in, I don't know, Forbes that would say, hey, be more self-aware, get more feedback. But my question was always, well, what exactly do we need to do? And so that's what my research program has been looking at is what are the myths

around self-awareness and what can people actually do to become more self-aware. So that's, that's the bottom line, I think of one of the most important, most discussed, yet least well-understood traits of successful people. That part least understand. is so accurate. I think of Gary Vaynerchuk, another guy over in New York City, probably close to you now, who talks about this constantly. I've had him on the show. It's becoming more well known. He says the number one reason for a success is self-awareness. But whenever you say it to somebody, there's a lot of questions come up in my mind. And so one of the first ones is, how do, how does somebody know if they are self-aware, followed up by how do you, how do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you become more self-aware? Oh, gosh. We're really digging on. Here we go.

Here we go. So let me start with the data point. Okay. My research has shown that 95% of people think that they're self-aware. Okay. But only 10 to 15% of people actually are. 10 to 15%? Wow.

Okay. So the joke I always make is on a good day, 80% of us are lying to ourselves about whether we're lying to ourselves, which is pretty scared. And again, we spend so much time pointing out self-awareness or a lack of self-awareness in other people that most people, in my experience, don't actually turn that question on themselves. Now, what I'll say is it's not as simple as checking the box. It's not I am self-aware or I am not self-aware. What I encourage people to think about is, first of all, questioning that assumption. Most of us say, you know, if I was doing something that really irritated other people,

or if I had a really big blind spot, surely someone would tell me. Or, you know, if I see myself this way, I'm sure other people see me this way too, you've got to start questioning those assumptions. And I know we'll dig more into this, but the bottom line about how to improve your self-awareness is not to wait for a lightning bolt to strike. It's not to wait for a huge life event where everything becomes crystal clear. What I learned from studying people who have made these really dramatic improvements and transformations and their level of self-knowledge is that they work at it every day. And it's sort of a daily incremental commitment, which in my mind takes the fear out of it.

You don't have to sort of wait for this life-changing insight. It's about collecting and gathering those daily insights so that you can sort of tie it up together and see the progress you've made over time. So it's funny, Tasha, I think a lot of people listening to this show are ambitious. They're learners. They're curious by nature. They want to improve. They're the type of people who really will intentionally look at themselves, question their own assumptions. They won't wait for a lightning bolt type event.

They won't wait for somebody else to tell them. But they're also going to say, yeah, but so and so who I work. with or like emails I get my boss says this and this and they definitely are not taking time to question their assumptions to self-assess to become more aware. So it seems like, and this might be like meta here, but the people who need it the most are the ones who won't read your book, who won't listen to this podcast, who won't try to get better. And so how do you get that across to those people who are not the self-starters or the people who are looking to learn? Maybe they think they have it all figured out.

I don't know. The bottom line, and I'll sort of come back to this in a second, but the bottom line is we cannot own other people's self-awareness journeys. That said, I recently, excuse me, I heard from a former client of mine who actually sent me an email on our book release day, which was yesterday, and said, I'm happy to report that I have ordered my copy. And I have also ordered an extra copy that I am going to put anonymously on my boss's desk. which I thought was pretty great. Well, the boss read it, though. That's what we say. Well, they read it.

And you ask a good one. And there's an inherent paradox, isn't there? At the end of the day, we are going to work with unselfaware people. I personally, when I was in the Fortune 500 world, I had a couple of really, you know, unselfaware, almost delusional bosses. And what I would sort of recommend to people who are in that boat is, first of all, don't put it on yourself that it's your responsibility in any way to make them see themselves more clearly. Every once in a while you get an opportunity.

They might ask you for your feedback. But a lot of times it's their journey and their journey alone. And what I learned from, again, these very sort of self-aware people is that they worked more on managing their own reactions. So I'll give you one example. And this is one of many that I talk about. One is called the laugh track. And this is something that I personally developed when I worked for a really delusional boss, again, in my old corporate days. And I don't know if any of your listeners, gosh, I might.

What did you do in your old corporate days? So I was, I've been an organizational psychologist for 15 years. And I started my career in academia. And then I spent about five years working as an internal organizational psychologist for a couple big Fortune 500 companies. And then I went out on my own and have my own company. But I don't know if you've watched the TV show Billions. Oh, yes. One of my favorite shows.

And I love Brian Copperman, the writer. Yeah. Yeah, it's a wonderful show. And what I love about it is it's the first show that I've seen where an organizational psychologist is a main character. She's great. Wendy Rose, yeah. Yeah.

So Wendy is, she's a little more sort of tell me about your mother clinical psychology. And I'm a little more research-based business person first. But that was essentially what I did in the corporate world. I would consult with leaders. I worked for the CEO for a couple of years of a company. And I would go in and I would help them essentially fix their people problems. Do a lot of companies have those roles? I have never worked at a place that has a role like that.

The smart companies that are very financially successful and get it. That plays a long game too. Yeah, they do. And, you know, it's, right. Because a lot of times they'll hire consultants and the consultants come in and, you know, that's definitely one way to do it. And that can be very effective. but other companies have chosen to employ people that are basically their full-time.

And there's sort of pros and cons of each. But it's becoming more and more pervasive in the best possible way. Okay. All right. Sorry. I didn't want to derail you, but just popped in my mind. I was curious. Oh, gosh.

No, no worries. Okay, go ahead. So that actually leads to a way that we can cope with many of the unself-aware people in the Fortune 500 world. So your readers might not be quite old enough to watch the show. But if it's on Netflix, I would recommend it. the Mary Tyler Moore show. And it was very popular, you know, in the 70s. And I really loved it when I was younger. And Mary, who's the main character, has this boss named Lou Grant, who was just

horrible. He would yell and scream. And he was, he was really downright abusive on most days. But what I noticed was that since he had a laugh track behind all of the mean things he said, they became sort of instantly more tolerable and sometimes kind of endearing. And, And so I thought of that just randomly one day after I was coming out of a meeting where my boss was just being horrible. It almost seems like he was being mean just to be mean. So I made the vow that day. I wonder if I try this, the next time I have a meeting with him, if I imagine a laugh track behind all of the ridiculous, unselfaware things he says. And I'll see what happens.

And lo and behold, you know, obviously that one action isn't going to completely transform things. but it was something that helped me deal with him a little bit more successfully. And I think the point there is we have to focus on managing our own self-awareness journey and then managing our own reactions because most of the time these people are not going to reach out to us and say, help me see myself more clearly. Oh, thank you. Oh, I see this book about self-awareness on your desk. Can I borrow it?

So I think it's important to be as practical as you can. Hmm. I really like that. It's interesting. I never thought of it that way. Is there a specific phrase or something he would say to you where you would imagine a laugh track behind it and it would cause probably a little wry smile, I would imagine. Oh, gosh. How long do you have? Let's do one for a minute. You would, you know, it's the classic sort of, I call it in my first book, Bankable Leadership. I call it the Trail of Dead Bodies boss, right? So metaphorically, usually not literally, but he would say things like, you know, my team and I would work, you know, around the clock for months and months and months to get ready for, you know, executive retreat for all of our senior leaders. And we would have it and people would say, oh, it's the best thing ever. And then he would sort of look at me and say, next year, it needs to be even better. What a motivator, huh? You were so pumped after that.

Well, and what's interesting is I really liked that. guy. And I knew that he had the best of intentions. I knew that he could be a very kind person, but I also knew that he wasn't always aware of the impact of his behavior. And so that was where it was just a big epiphany for me to say, wait a minute, I can't change what he's doing, but I can definitely change the way I'm perceiving him. Oh, exactly. So I want to dive into a few of the notes I took when reading your book, if you're cool with that. Yeah, definitely. So I was looking at Chapter 9, how leaders build self-aware teams and organizations. So there's a story about, and I like that you write with stories. That's how people remember things. It's good writing. Obviously,

you're great writer. So story of Mike, who's this brilliant, brilliant and talented aeronautical engineer, who was, his boss loved him. And so Mike finishes this report or this project, whatever it was, and he said, here it is, boss, I'm quitting. And his boss was like, what? You know, I love you. You're great. Why would you quit? And Mike, the brilliant, talented aeronautical engineer said, because you drive me nuts. This is the 14th round of revisions. And I think people listening can,

and anybody can probably relate to some version of this story where the boss loves the guy. And the guy said, sorry, I'm done here. I can't take it anymore. And so this is when discussing how leaders build self, aware teams and organizations. Can you dive a little bit deeper there? Yeah, I'll do the big reveal. So this is a story of Mike's boss was named Alan. And Alan was 25-year-old Alan Malali, Alan Malali who turned around not one but two of the world's biggest companies. Boeing

commercial. He was credited for, under his leadership, the Triple Seven was designed and built. And he basically single-handedly rescued their commercial division after 9-11. And then secondly, he turned forward around in literally five years. He came in as the CEO to $17 billion of yearly losses. And when he retired, it was his last job. They were at $20 billion of profit. Five years later, right? Yeah.

And what I love about this story is it shows that anyone, can become remarkably self-aware. So Alan Malali was kind enough to let me spend some time with him and get to know him and interview him for the book. And he told me that story about Mike. And one of the things that he credits his success to is self-awareness. And he said that something like the biggest opportunity for improvement at work and life and anywhere else is self, team, and organizational awareness.

And he's just one of the best examples, I think, the best living examples that prioritizes this on a daily basis. And here's something, here's another data point. So after I flew to Scottsdale to interview him, he spent some time there. And at the end of our interview, he asked me, hey, how did this go? Do you have any feedback for me? We go start laughing. And again, I think it's just such a great example of seeing him start with his very first employee, Mike, quitting abruptly to really saving two American icons is just about as inspirational and just

about as good of a business case for self-awareness as I think you can get. So it's a great story because it shows that people can grow, learn, develop, change, understand weaknesses, turn them into strengths, obviously. We heard the beginning of the story and we heard the end of the story. and we heard what was important along the way, right? Is this becoming aware? What are some of the in-between parts of that story? What did Alan do specifically that helped him become more self-aware

to become this incredible leader-manager boss? Oh, gosh, I love that question. Let me give you a couple of actions, and it's sort of impossible to boil down, but I do want to be specific in my answer. So the first is he went out of his way, to create a culture and a team where people could tell the truth. And that sounds easy and it sounds like, well, why wouldn't I do that as a boss?

But for those of your listeners that are either current or aspiring leaders, if they haven't found that already, they'll see that it's absolutely everything. So for you as a leader, whether you're a frontline manager or you're the CEO of Ford, if you create an environment where people feel penalized for their mistakes or they get in trouble for telling you that the honest truth when you need to hear it, you're never going to be more self-aware. And I think it's such a great opportunity to create that culture of safety. And one of the ways you do that, and this is empirically supported, is to be vulnerable yourself. And when I'm coaching early career leaders, this is one of the things that typically tends to blow people's mind. They say, wait a minute.

I am a perfectionist. I've gotten where I am because I'm awesome at what I do. I'm very professional. You know, I try to do everything perfectly. And you're telling me that I should admit my weaknesses and mistakes and I should be open about that. And usually, you know, if I'm coaching them and if I've established a little bit of trust, I'll say, why don't you try it for a week? And we'll come back and talk about how it goes. And they sort of humor me and say, oh, this is going to be horrible.

but they come back and they say, you know, I just had the first honest conversation with my team that I think I've ever had. And it was because I started by admitting a mistake I made. And so that in and of itself, creating a culture of safety by being vulnerable is really huge. And that's something that Alan sort of showed us. Another thing he did, and this is more on the result side, if anyone feels like the vulnerability part is too squishy on its own. He, as a scientist, right, I have to give you both sides of the argument, he instituted something called a business process review at Ford when he took over and he, he, the BPR was the acronym. Every single Thursday at 7 a.m., he and his, I think, you know, 10 or so executive, you know, team members, his direct reports would gather in a room and they would each have 10 minutes to provide a succinct but detailed presentation. of the status of what their team was doing.

And what Alan would say is, so, you know, if you come and I ask you a question and you don't know the answer, or if you come to the meeting and a metric isn't where, you know, it needs to be, that's okay, because I know we'll be here next week. And I know that next week you'll have started to address it. And what I love about that is not only did it give him an opportunity to check his own leadership, but it gave him the chance to give his team feedback as well, right? So, you know, we don't, at least in organizations, we don't work on self-awareness just because it's fun. It is, it can be fun and it can be really gratifying, but ultimately you're doing it to support your success

as a leader and the success of the business. And so I think any, anytime you can do that, you can, you can put in this idea of constant accountability, but if, you know, if you make a mistake or if something isn't where you want it to be, that's okay. but we need to get together and fix it. Those are all the things that he did, I think, to create a culture of self-awareness. Now, here's what's interesting. So, you know, if somebody listening to your show

maybe isn't working right now, and I'll say, well, how can I use this BPR in my life? I was pretty shocked and pretty amazed to learn that Alan also did BPRs with his family. So every Sunday, they would get together and he has a bunch of kids and his wife, And they would literally have a family BPR. They would give each other updates.

They would give each other feedback. And so what's really beautiful about that concept is you can pretty much use it anywhere. I agree. I love that thought of bringing that work home. It'll make you better at work and vice versa. There's not this on-off switch when it comes to some of the processes you put in place. For example, some of the things that we do at home is to show gratitude about. what you have is that you go around the dinner table and have each child.

And obviously this starts with the parents, but share two different things. One, something you're grateful for or two, have the siblings compliment each other. So, for example, Ella, I love the fact. I think you have, you're great when it comes to flipping on the trampoline or something. It doesn't have to be a big deal. But you know what I mean? And it gets them in the mode of complimenting people, of finding the good in people, of being grateful for their sibling. And it's the same thing.

You can do the same thing at work. And it also provides feedback for those, for people. And I think I guess the reason I share that story is to say I agree with having some same processes at both work and at home. And you could see that you'll make some improvement. So it's a great story that Allen implemented and then use it at home as well. There's so much here, Tasha, I want to get to. you talked about truth and building that foundation. And I think another party book where you talk about that, that's so important.

And there's some great work on trust and truth and be able to be honest because things can go so much faster. I think there's a book called The Speed of Trust. Great book. I highly recommend. Yeah, by one of the covies. And Ed Catmall at Pixar talks about the fact that when you're honest, when you're truthful, you don't have to worry about leaks. within the company. And I think that's where it starts with that culture of trust that is built by the leaders.

You're absolutely right. And again, I think it goes to that, it goes back to that idea that if your team and particularly your employees, if they don't feel safe, making mistakes and being who they are, and also if they don't feel trusted going to your point about at Catmull, they're not going to show up in a way that is going to help you as the leader and your team be successful. And a lot of times, you know, it's funny. When I interviewed Ed Catmell for the book, one of the things we talked about was this idea that even when they were being acquired by Disney, they would basically tell their employees

everything. You know, we're not going to hide this from you. Here's the status on where things are. They knew they were taking a risk. But what was so amazing and so gratifying was they didn't have a single leak to the press. The press would literally be in their Emeryville campus. They would be camped out outside and employees would walk by them on the way to the parking lot and nobody said anything. And even to this day, that's continued. And I think that's such a powerful example of what happens when leaders trust

their team. Every once in a while, you're going to have a bad apple, although I think it's pretty profound in terms of a result that, you know, out of their thousands of employees that they never had a leak. It's just incredible. Shifting gears a little bit to what I think is a common thing we all see if we're on social media and that's selfie syndrome. So this is an intense self-focused on people's themselves, right? And some of the evidence suggests that narcissism is on the rise, which is not enjoyable here. But there's this intense self-focused. It not only obscures our vision of those around us, but it distorts our ability to see ourselves for what we really are based on, I don't know if it's likes or engagement online. And so you also talk about the fact that the

people who post the most selfies on Facebook have the least self-awareness for how annoying that behavior is. And this is a big thing right now, especially with not just kids. I was going to say kids, but the more I think about it, it's not just our kids. It's everybody. And I'm curious as what does the data suggest in regards to narcissism on the rise, this selfie syndrome, social media, fake feedback from likes, really everything. Oh my gosh, such a rich topic. Let me start this answer as a, I always call myself the oldest millennial. I want to tell everyone that this is a phenomenon that is not just affecting young people.

And it's so easy and everybody who's, listening to this, who's a millennial has probably had, you know, this narcissism pinned on their generation. Yes, it's true scientifically that people who are younger, in general, tend to be a little bit more self-focused. But that's kind of not what I'm talking about when I talk about selfie syndrome. It's this societal push that we're experiencing towards becoming more self-absorbed and less self-aware. There's a ton of evidence that. shows, and this is where it gets really crazy, there is a direct and immediate impact of our social media use on our levels of narcissism. So this is not for the science geeks that are listening.

It's not correlation, it's causation. There was one study where they had students either spend time plotting their route to school on Google Maps or spent time on their social media profile. And there was a significant difference afterwards in the level of narcissism, that people who spent more time on social media were immediately more narcissistic. And so if you think about that, it really is, it's a pull away from the idea of self-awareness. Every day we wake up, we're being tempted to join, I call it the cult of self, where we're all special and we're all amazing just because we want to be amazing. And just for showing up, you know, we deserve a promotion and a ribbon and, you know, everything.

And so the way that relates to self-awareness is the more we get sucked into that, the less we see ourselves as we really are. Now, here's what's really interesting. When I studied these highly self-aware people, these people that made these remarkable transformations, I looked at the amount of time they spent on social media compared to the amount of time that the average person spends. And what I found was they spent, I think it was 30% more time on social media than everybody else. And the first thing I said was, wait a minute, I've coded the data wrong. Like clearly I just messed this up. And I checked it four times. And I said, okay, this is actually what's happening in my data.

Why is this happening? So I started talking in our interviews to them. And what I learned was they actually use social media very differently than people who are not as self-aware. So, you know, somebody who has fallen prey to selfie syndrome might log on and post a selfie or their latest professional accomplishment or the fact that their baby just turned, you know, eight weeks old. Or they could post something that is helpful to other people. And so the first category researchers have called me formers, right? So I'm going to inform you about me. But the other category is called informers.

and to a person, the dramatic improvement self-awareness people were informers. So when I asked them, so what do you do on social media? They said, oh, well, you know, I like to go in and post an article I think people will enjoy. Or I try to share the beautiful photographs that I take with other people so it can make their day better. And so one really simple way, you know, right now that everybody can start to resist the pull of the cult of self is to just ask. Ask yourself in your personal interactions and when you're online, how much time are you spending focused on you? And how much time are you spending focused on other people? And I did that experiment as part of the work for the book.

I felt like I had to practice what I preached. And I was pretty surprised by the answer. So it's a hard thing to resist, but it absolutely is possible. Really interesting. So especially now, you're in the middle of heavy. self-promotion, right? You want to sell books and you got to promote your work. And this is virtually online in-person interviews, talking about your work, yourself. Like how do you, how do you balance that out with? Because right now it's like you're almost forced to, because you have a publisher. You

need to sell books. I'm sure you got a nice advance. Like all these things you want to deliver, right, for those people. And you want your information out there because it's going to help people. but at the end of the day, it is yours or that you gathered. And so how do you balance this self-promotion of I want to sell books and get my book in as many hands as possible, versus I don't want to be the cult of me? Oh, my gosh. That is such an astute question. So the first thing I'll say is my publisher, Penguin Random House, is they are the best people and the best partners I could possibly imagine. And what we have sort of done is we've come together as a team in a lot of the ways that I was talking about the high performing teams, you know, from earlier in our conversation.

And so we all are just, it's not about, I mean, obviously it's about selling books, but it's about we're so passionate about this message and we want to bring this message to as many people as possible. So that's sort of where it starts. And I think that it's so important to have a good partner. And honestly, most people don't have a lot of great. things to say about their publishers. So I feel like that was important to mention. But the other side of that is, you know, I don't see any of this as self-promotion. I see it as, again, feeling so passionate about this topic and having seen what an impact it can have on people that what I try to do, especially during launch week this week, right, where I'm doing a lot of interviews and doing a lot of talking,

is I remember that I'm not here to talk about me. I'm here to share this message and to get get as many people excited about it, to get as many people brave and committed to that process, and to help them see why it's worth it. And so for me, that's how I balance it. I mean, gosh, if I had to wake up every day and talk about myself, I don't know what I would do. So I sort of keep it about the work and the thing that I'm so passionate about. And then I'm excited about it. I got it.

Yeah, I just thought of it because it's a really a peculiar balance when it comes to understanding the work that you put out and wanting to share your work, because you're proud of it and it can help people, but it is your work. But it's, but it's the work that you've developed. Another word that popped into my mind, Atasha, is mindfulness because I, I like to take a step back and even send out a weekly email every Monday to people on my list. The listeners know it's called Mindful Monday. It's been called that now for 51 straight weeks that I've sent this email out. And you talk about, you know, some internal self-awareness tools.

I believe this is in chapter six where mindfulness is simply noticing what we're thinking, feeling, and doing without judgment or reaction. And given that I'm big into being mindful about things, what can you share more about this, this mindfulness practice? A lot of people, when they hear the word mindfulness, they automatically associate it with meditation. And as part of the research for this book, I as a, you know, hard-nosed scientist was a little annoyed that there was all of this evidence that showed that mindfulness meditation helped us be more self-aware. And, you know, I joke in the book, to be perfectly honest, the idea of relaxing into the present moment has always kind of stressed me out.

And so as part of the research for the book, I took my sister, who is a really kind of kind of, passionate devotee of meditation. And we went to a meditation retreat where I learned how to mindfully meditate. And at first, I was sort of kicking and screaming. And then eventually, I really enjoyed the experience. And I got why, not just why people do it, but why there's such a powerful link to our own self-awareness. But here's what's interesting.

So after the retreat, I came home and I had all these grand plans that I was going to turn half of my office into a meditation retreat and I was going to get the cushion and everything. And then what I realized was, yes, that had been helpful for me, but there are also so many other ways of being mindful that don't involve meditation. And so, and I'll talk about those in a second, but I think the bottom line is for all of us, if we want to be mindful, it's important to remember that it's not just about meditation. That's one way. It's one way that works for so many people. But let me just give you an example of a non-meditative mindfulness technique. It's called comparing and contrasting.

And so the idea, remember, mindfulness means actively noticing the present and also drawing distinctions between the present and the past. So let's give an example. So if somebody is just miserable with their job this week, and they go in every day and they say, wow, I'm miserable, if you use the compare and contrast tool, if you use the compare and contrast tool, what you might ask is, what's different about this week than last week? And you might say, well, this week, I've had to do two or three client presentations every day. And last week, I spent the whole week, you know, working quietly in my office and I really had a better time there.

And so drawing that distinction between the present and the past might start to help you figure out the types of things that you enjoy doing. And so, you know, I might say, well, you know, maybe I'm not as interested in a client-facing role. Maybe I'm more interested in being behind the scenes. And so there's a lot there, but I think the topic of mindfulness is always, it's often misunderstood because people see it just as meditation and there's so much more to it. I like that a lot. That's really good.

Tasha, another thing that you do that I think is quite helpful because for me, it's very important for people, not only to listen and to take notes and to think, wow, Tasha is really smart. This is great stuff. But to also have something that they can implement into their lives that will make their life better. So it's something, meaning I really like to be able to execute on these ideas, put them into practice. And so you have a self-awareness quiz. Could you talk more about that and what we can do, how we can all potentially take this to to improve our levels of self-awareness? This is a really fun one. So as part of the launch of the book, we developed a a very short 14 item assessment of self-awareness.

And it's part of a much, much longer, larger assessment that I've been developing for the last couple of years. But what this is is kind of a quick and dirty assessment of how self-aware are you? And what you do is you fill out the 14 items and you're kind of talking about yourself. And then you're... Where can we do this real quick? Oh, okay. So we'll start there. Good place to start.

It's www. insight dash quiz dot com so you'll go in you fill out the questions and then this is the kicker

you send it to someone who knows you well who will then provide their opinion and once we have your survey and their survey

it spits out a report to you that shows you where you put you and where they put you and what that means and so and we didn't

necessarily have time to get into this but there are different facets of self-rework awareness. One of them is how we see ourselves and another is how other people see us. And so it's just a great way. You know, again, it's part of the passion that I have about getting this out to as many people as possible. That's a good way to start. You know, if going back to your first question,

how do I know I'm self-aware? A resource like this, it's not going to be the end-all, be-all, but it might give you some really good data. And I've been talking to folks that have been taking it over the past couple months since it's been live. And sometimes people are pissed off. They say, well, I had no idea. Sometimes people are surprised. They say, wow, I'm a lot more self-aware than I think I am. But no matter what they learn, they have the data. And that when we have our arms around sort of what's happening, that gives us the power to improve.

So I really encourage people to take it. It's a fun enlightening exercise. And it only takes about five minutes. Oh, so the person that you send it to, one follow up on that. Do you advise that being a friend, a colleague at work that you're, friendly with a spouse or who would you advise we send that as I'm already thinking of people when I'm about to take this quiz and I want to figure out who's the best person to send this to that's it that's it so so since it's the quick and dirty version it's only one person you know in an

ideal world we'd have you send it to 10 and we average it but what I would what I'd encourage you to do is think about what's the area of my life where I either is most important to me right now or is something that I want to really make sure I'm doing everything I can to be successful at And maybe for a workaholic, they're saying, wait a minute, I got to focus on my marriage. So they send it to their spouse. Or maybe somebody who has been recently promoted into a new role, it might be a good idea to send it to one of your employees. And the good news is it's totally confidential. So you don't see their responses.

You just see sort of the average of all of their responses. So I'd recommend that people think about, you know, what area of my life do I want to learn the most about in terms of how people see me? Perfect. Well, Tasha, thank you so much for being here. I know you're right in the middle of one of the busiest, craziest, craziest weeks of your year, book launch week. So I really appreciate your book is incredible. I'd encourage people to get it called Insight. Where would you send people? What do you say? Go to insight dash quiz.com or is there somewhere else you like to send my listeners to learn more about you online? Yeah. If you want to read more about the book, it also links to the quiz. You can go to Insight dash book.com. Perfect. Perfect. Well, Tasha, thanks. again, I absolutely want to continue our dialogue as we both progress. This is really great stuff and very important. Thank you for your questions, Ryan. It was really a pleasure. Great. Thank you. 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. Proud to say that this episode of The Learning Leader Show is brought to you by Roan. R-H-O-N-E. Rone.com. Premium activeware engineered with principal, performance, and progress for the modern man. They build clothing around three main tenants, cutting-edge performance, premium comfort and simplistic style from rapid moisture wicking to four-way stretch. their clothing offers unrivaled durability and flexibility. Remember episode number 194 with

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I am. Great. Thank you so much. You bet. That was the flu by. It was really good. I mean, really, you obviously know. It's amazing.

Sometimes I talk to authors and they know their stuff like 60%. You really know your stuff. And that's, that makes for such really, really, really, good audio and a good good a conversation so thank you I appreciate yeah no same to you you are so prepared and I loved your questions you asked me a couple that I was like wow I've never thought about that so I appreciate the self-awareness opportunity oh perfect well good well I'll let you and your team know when it's coming I'll try to rush this one out since your book just came out but we'll try to turn it around and get it out quickly and then I'll be sure to send you a note

when it's out sounds like a plan and we'll promote the heck out of it too on our end great thanks Tasha all right thanks Ryan take care you too bye bye