The One You Feed - Michael Brody-Waite on Leading in Life

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Michael Brody-Waite is a recovering addict, acclaimed speaker, entrepreneur, award-winning three-time CEO, and leadership coach.  Eric and Michael discuss his book,  Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts: How to Lead Like Your Life Depends on It,. This interesting discussion dives deep into the principles used to recover from drug addiction and how they can be applied to lead successfully in both our personal and professional livesBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Michael Brody-Waite and I Discuss Leading in Life and…His book, Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts: How to Lead Like Your Life Depends on It How everyone is a leader, even if it’s just leading ourselvesThe parallels between active addiction and behavior in the corporate environment.How the problem is often being addicted to hiding yourselfLearning to practice the principles from recovery in real lifeThe importance of surrendering the outcomeLearning to practice rigorous authenticityChallenging yourself on doing the uncomfortable workLearning to remove the “masks” we wear to avoid showing our true selves Helpful tools for when you’re avoiding difficult conversationsLearning how to be comfortable with the discomfortThe value of being in community with others who are working on the same thingsMichael Brody-Waite Links:Michael’s WebsiteInstagramFacebookTwitterAwara Mattresses are made with only natural and organic materials, including 100% organic wool from happy New Zealand sheep! For every mattress sold, 10 fruit trees will be planted. To get $350 off your mattress, plus free shipping, a Forever warranty, AND free accessories (including 2 pillows, sheets, and a waterproof mattress protector (value $399)), visit awarasleep.com/wolfCare/of helps you create a customized health plan for vitamins and supplements. These products are made from the best ingredients and conveniently shipped to you each month.  For 50% of your first order, visit Takecareof.com and enter code: WOLF50.Feals: Premium CBD delivered to your doorstep to help you manage stress, anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. Feals CBD is food-grade and every batch is tested so you know you are getting a truly premium grade product. Get 50% off your first order with free shipping by becoming a member at www.feals.com/wolfIf you enjoyed this conversation with Michael Brody-Waite, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Lewis Howes on the Masks of MasculinityMaia Szalavitz on AddictionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A teacher is a leader. A mother is a leader. A child is a leader because they're leading themselves. And so how do you teach people how to be a great leader of themselves so that they can lead other people? Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers

to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Michael Brody Waite. Michael is a recovering addict, acclaimed speaker, entrepreneur, award-winning three-time CEO, leadership coach, and author. Today, Michael and Eric discuss his book, Great Leaders Think Like Drug Addicts. How to lead like your Life Depends on It.

Hi, Michael. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, man. It's a pleasure to have you on. We're going to discuss your book, Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts, How to Lead Like Your Life Depends on It. And I'm excited to talk about that because you and I's background and stories, there's a lot in common between us. But before we get into the book, we'll start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops, she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

So first of all, what it means to me is that me being on here right now is meant to be because I use that parable in my first keynote that I ever delivered as a paid gig to carry my message before I ever wrote the book. And I always think about, when I think about that parable, as a recovering addict, the difference between the disease of addiction and recovery from addiction.

Every day I have the opportunity to feed my disease, the thing that kept me using, and every day I get the opportunity to feed my recovery. And that may not be totally new to folks that are familiar with recovery and addiction, but it also reminds me of the environment that I found in the corporate world and in the startup world, where my observation was people were almost addicted to hiding their true selves, and they were addicted to managing other people's perceptions. And so when I ended up in the working world, I was being told that I had to literally stop feeding my addiction. And so it became meaningful to me, both in my personal life

and in my professional life, where I was being told in a 12-step meeting, take your masks off, be your true self or whatever. And then I'm going to a corporate world and it almost wants to reinforce what the disease of addiction did. And so even though I would go to my meeting and I would feed the good wolf for one hour out of a day, I would go to work and I would spend eight to 10 hours in an environment that wanted to feed the bad wolf. And so every day I had to be really intentional on which one that I fed because I did not want the bad wolf to live. Yeah, I love that. I figured the parable would be one that you know well, because that's of course where I heard it in recovery. I can't

pinpoint the meeting or the time, but I know when I heard it, I was like, oh my God. Right. Cause I heard it in my first year, I'm sure in my first, probably six months of, of recovery. And as I often jokingly say on this show, like I wasn't even feeding the bad wolf anymore. He was eating me. Yeah. That's a great way of saying it. It was just a very clear message to me about what you just said. Either I'm getting better or I'm getting worse, you know, and the choices that I make about what I do with my time, my energy, my thoughts are going to dictate, you know, do I recover or not? There was a clarity to that that I found really helpful. I think there's also an interesting element where we always think,

at least I do, about all these decisions and moments in our lives as these big movie moments. And so when I thought about calling my sponsor, for example, I thought of the desperate moment where I'm about to use and suddenly I call him and he saves the day. And the thing that he explained to me was the only way that call happens is if I call him every single day when nothing's happening for like three weeks, because I have to have the muscle memory. So that way, when the crap does hit the fan and I don't know what to do, it's a default behavior. And that gives me the ability, right, to surprise myself in the really big moment. But it's all these little moments. And same thing, actually, if you really want to geek out around nutrition, right? Like, you know, that people think about working out, the physical fitness, you know, lifting a lot of weight, a lot of physical

fitness is around what you eat. And so the little things that you eat, it's not like the big fast. And so there's just so many applications for this parable that I just, I love, and I just love this platform as a result of it. Yeah. I can't remember why or where I was telling this story, but I was talking about that. If you looked at the movie version of my life, you'd see these big moments, like the moment that I was in, in detox and they said, you need to go to long-term treatment. And I said, no. And then I went back to my room and I had a moment of clarity and I thought, I'm going to die if I go out there. And so I changed my mind. That would show up in the movie, right? But that moment is not really any more important than the thousands of other completely unremarkable

moments where I made the small decisions that kept me on my road to recovery. It's just we pull out these certain moments. We go, this moment's really important. This moment's really special. But all those moments together are what equal recovery. It's the we pull out these certain moments. We go, this moment's really important. This moment's really special. But all those moments together are what equal recovery. It's the really boring, ordinary moments. I think they have that saying in show business too, right? Like an overnight sensation only took 10 years to build. Yeah, yep. Same thing.

Yep, same thing in the startup world, right? Yes, very much so. Yep. So before we get too much further in the book, the book is titled, as I said, Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. I love the parallel you've made there. But what I want to do first is not everybody listening to this show thinks of themselves as a leader. So I want to bring leadership to everybody's level before we go further so that everybody can kind of relate

with this conversation, whether they're in corporate America or not. So let's talk about the ways in which we're all leaders. So I think everybody is responsible for leading somebody, even if it's just leading yourself. And I think we're almost always wrong in the level of importance that we have. We either always assume that we're too important or not important enough. But when you look at it through the lens of who's watching, there's always somebody in your world that's watching you looking for a cue on how to behave and how to do the right thing and not do the wrong thing and so on and so forth. And so for me, I think early on, the best example of a leader that I was ever given was a sponsor in the 12-step program. And as I became a leadership coach and

all these things, I started to really appreciate the difference. Because when we think of leaders, I think we think of these command and control style leaders, the general on the battlefield, the corporate CEO that knows everything and doesn't do anything wrong. Or we just think about somebody that's responsible for leading other people, period. But a teacher is a leader, a mother is a leader, a child is a leader because they're leading themselves. And so how do you teach people how to be a great leader of themselves so that they can lead other people? And what I love about a sponsor is unlike a coach or an expert or even a mentor, the way that they lead you is by showing you how they lead themselves. They don't tell you, I have it all figured out. They literally share their experience and they share their vulnerability and they share their challenges. And they just say, this is what I did. And they do not try to manage your

perception in any way. And by talking about how they led themselves through X situation, like I'll never forget my sponsor telling me about the first six months he had in recovery, he had a sponsor that at month six killed himself and he was rudderless. And so I thought immediately in my head, I would relapse and I would go back out because my sponsor was trying to help keep me clean. And then he killed himself and it turned out he'd been drinking the whole time. I'd say this whole thing is screwed. But what Chuck did was he said, I went back into the meeting and I found another sponsor. And so he's not telling me a pretty scenario, right? He's telling me an ugly scenario. But in that, I take a cue for what do I do? And then

believe it or not, six years later, he's no longer my sponsor and I'm sponsorless and I need to get a sponsor and I don't go out. I don't do all this other stuff. I go into a meeting and I ask for one because he shared his experience. He showed me how he led himself so that I can more effectively lead myself. And I think in that vein, every parent, every teacher, every volunteer, whether you're in the boardroom, the mailroom, the classroom, or the living room, you are leading someone, even if it's just the person in the mirror. In the book, you say the problem is we've become so focused on leading others, we've fundamentally lost the ability to lead ourselves. Yeah, I forgot that line.

You just said it better. So is it weird or awkward that I'm complimenting you for reciting my line? Well, it just is. So we all have a role to lead people or lead ourselves. So let's talk about this fundamental thing that you see here, that you're in recovery and you see some of the things we do in recovery, and then you go into your corporate world, and you see people doing that thing. And you refer to that as what you're seeing that all these other people are doing is they're wearing masks. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah. So when I was in rehab, one of the first things they did, and this is well before a pandemic and anything else, they slapped two cardboard masks down on the table. And they said,

we want you to doctor one up to look like the person that you portray to the world. And we want you to make the other one look like the person that you think you are. And so of course, the one I show the world has George Clooney. I'm probably dating myself by saying George Clooney, but it has celebrities and BMWs and all this great stuff and toned abs and whatever it is that you want. And then the bad mask is me trying to reimagine that advertisement where it shows someone running and it says, no one ever says I want to be a junkie when I grow up. And that's who I actually think I am. And so that really helped me because it gave me a very physical context where I could think about when I'm hiding my true self and how addiction to drugs is a way of hiding my true self.

So one of the parallels that I draw is when I was in active addiction, there were three things that I did on a regular basis. The first thing was I said yes when I should say no. I said yes to the drugs. The second thing I did was I hid my weakness, my addiction. And as a result, I starved myself with the solutions to help me get better. And then the third thing that I did was I hid my weakness, my addiction. And as a result, I starved myself of the solutions to help me get better. And then the third thing that I did was I avoided difficult conversations. Anything that was going to lead to a reconciliation of my addiction, I was going to avoid. And so when I went into the corporate world, being armed with a 12-step program, a sponsor, and trying to unlearn these behaviors, my observation was, and I've since confirmed

it with a lot of research, is that all the people around me were doing the exact same things that I did in active addiction. So I said yes to drugs. They were saying yes to meetings. They were saying yes to emails. They were saying yes to projects that they all thought was unnecessary. Like 31 hours a month right now are spent by employees on what they believe are unnecessary meetings. If the definition of addiction is doing something over and over again, despite a negative consequence, that to me is the picture of addiction. And so another example is hiding a weakness. So I was hiding my addiction. Well, I remember once when I was working at a Fortune 50 company, I spent 22 hours trying to figure out how to use a Microsoft Excel pivot table when I could have spent 10 minutes asking someone and admitting that I didn't know how to do it. And that's

leading yourself, right? I could have upped my skill level to be more productive. And I was wasting so much time trying to save face in a corporate environment. And at night, I'm going to a 12-step meeting where the coolest kid in the room is the person that shares their biggest challenge. And then they get a ton of help. And so it just didn't jive. And so then the third thing is avoiding difficult conversations. Man, you want to talk about learning how to do that, work some 12 steps, like learn how to do amends, right?

Like those types of things are really hard. And for people that don't understand that, that's like when we go and we actually own all of our bad stuff that we did. And so when I was in corporate America, they would talk around issues in a team meeting. Everybody would be just managing politics. And I found a stat that 70% of employees right now are avoiding a difficult conversation

with their boss, coworker, or a direct report. And that's before you start talking about customers or whatever. So at night, I'm going to a 12-step meeting. They're saying, basically, you have to be your true self or you're going to die. I'm going into the corporate world where everybody's teaching me, hide your true self in order to be successful. And I felt very, very alone. And it was not because I was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I had long hair and said dude a lot and was from California and had flip flops and hoop earrings in my ear. It was because I was saying no to things. I was having the difficult conversations and I aggressively shared my weaknesses and it scared people and I aggressively shared my weaknesses and it scared people and it made me feel alone and it made me feel different and also got me promoted

like eight times in eight years. Yeah. It's interesting because I have some similar experiences. When I got sober, I got sort of into the corporate slash startup world. I'd always worked in restaurants before and I think I got some of the opportunities and had some of the successes I had for some of the very reasons you're describing. You know, I just was kind of who I was. I just showed up and I just would say, I don't have any idea how to do this. Which you have to do to survive, right? But so many people, that's like the hardest thing for them to do, period. Totally. Yeah. So I think as you name those three things, I'm like, yeah, I think I kind of did those things. You know, I noticed over the years, I've talked about this on the show many times. I

don't think I've talked about it recently, but I talked about how authenticity is sort of a buzzword these days. But the more I was myself at work, and I went through periods of being very radically who I was, and then I would sort of go through periods of like, well, I'm going to try and cover it up. And I'm, you know, sort of like you said, I'm getting a lot of reinforcement to not be that way. But I think even through it all, I managed to remain somewhat who I was. And what I realized was the more I did that, the more I took those chances to be who I was actually at work, the better I always was at my job. And the thing is, is that these are like what people would call soft skills, but they have hard outcomes and impacts. So Harvard Business Review says that

the number one resource that's poorly managed inside of organizations today is time. And I've assessed over 2000 leaders at companies like Google and Dell and startups and nonprofits. And 90% of them report wasting 10 hours a week saying yes, when they could say no hiding a weakness or avoiding difficult conversations. And so you can sit there and say, I need an MBA to be more successful. But my experience was, I don't have a college degree and I'm not diminishing the value of one. But you could also go into a 12-step meeting and for a crappy cup of coffee and a one hour of your time, you could actually learn a skill that wins you back 25% of your time that can make you a lot more productive. But the problem is, and this is just like what I say in my book, is I think we've misdiagnosed the problem. I think it's not hard

to bump into books on how to say no and how to be vulnerable and how to have difficult conversations, but we keep treating the symptoms. The real problem is that professionals and leaders are addicted to these behaviors. And the reason I'm so passionate about the professional space

is what I found in recovery was we talked about how this will help you personally. I think learning how to not do these three things, learning how to overcome addiction becomes a professional superpower that is not well advertised to the addict community. And so most people go, oh, well, you've got to overcome addiction in order to be successful. And I'm like, well, I'm successful because of my addiction. I'm successful because of my recovery. And it's because it actually treated the problem.

I'm addicted to hiding my true self, first with the drugs and then my saying yes and all the other kind of stuff. By leveraging my recovery in the professional setting, I was able to be more successful because I was more efficient, all that kind of stuff. And so now what I do is I literally help leaders get to the source of the problem. And I say, the reason that you took that workshop on how to say no and you're still saying yes, the reason you saw that TED talk got all inspired and you're still avoiding difficult conversations is because your actual problem is you're addicted to wearing a mask. You are addicted to hiding yourself. And what I know about addicts is you can tell us all the information in the world.

How did the DARE program work out? It didn't work out real well for me. They told me not to use drugs. They told me drugs are bad. And I still ended up in an addict. Knowledge is not power. Action is power. And recovery from addiction teaches you how to turn that knowledge into action. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's start with a story that you have that is very similar to a story I have. And you describe you're relatively newly sober. Yeah. You go into a halfway house and they're like, you have to go get a job. So you get an interview for a job. But the problem is, like anybody who's been in covery for a while, you got some big gaps in your resume. Or anybody who's been in recovery for a while, you got some big gaps in your resume or anybody who's been in active addiction, your resume doesn't look real good. So you walk into

the meeting, you got a choice about what you're going to say. Tell us a little more about that. Yeah. So when I got into the halfway house, you know, they're really serious about making sure you're serious about recovery. So they gave you five business days to get a job or you get kicked out. I didn't even know what a business day was. Someone had to let me know because I'm an addict. I did not understand business culture. And if you had asked me what a P&L is, I would have no idea what that is. So they said five business days to get a job. I've got this huge gap on my resume. And I'm not being honest because what I would say is for the last three years, all I did was get high. And I don't think that that's going to get me a job.

Because what I would say is for the last three years, all I did was get high. And I don't think that that's going to get me a job. So I call around, I interview all these places, and I get no job interviews. And then one place calls me for an interview on day four. And it's this place called Sam Goody. And I always say, if you're older than me, you know that as a record store. If you're my age, you know it's as a CD store. If you're less than 30 years old, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Yep.

Spotify, right? So I call my sponsor before the interview. And I'm like, okay, so what do I tell them when they ask me about my job history? Because I have a huge gap. It's not going to qualify me for the job. And I expect him to tell me a way to dance around it and be able to convince them that I'm worthy of the job. And he says, Mike, just tell them the truth. And one of the things I've done is I've distilled down what I learned in recovering to three principles. And so the first one is practice rigorous authenticity,

not just be authentic in a buzzy way all the time. So he was like, no matter how big the stakes, no matter how small the stakes, you tell them the truth. And I was like, okay, well, Chuck, if I tell them the truth, I'm not going to get the job. This job manages the cash register. I'm pretty sure saying that I used all day and I just got out of rehab isn't going to qualify me for that. And then I'm going to be out on the street and I'm going to end up using again and I'm going to die. What do I actually say? And he said, well, so then you have to learn how to surrender the outcome.

What do I actually say? And he said well, so then you have to learn how to surrender the outcome So it's like principle two Surrendering the outcome. He literally he said this isn't about the job. This isn't about the halfway house This is about whether you're willing to practice these principles in all your affairs And so i'm like well, so then what do I actually do? And so it's the third principle that I teach do uncomfortable work do what nobody else would do go in there and tell them the truth I was scared to death. And the only reason that I followed his suggestion was because the only thing I was scared of more than not getting that job was relapse. And so I walked in, we're in the

job interview. I'm starting to sweat. My heart's racing because I'm scared we're going to get to the work history thing. I'm still got like the devils on my shoulder and the angel on the other side. What do you say? And I start doing what addicts do. And I start thinking about how I can con him. Oh, I can tell him that I was like, you know, writing a book. I could tell him that I was helping needy children, right? I could tell him all these things about this work history.

And then I just think about those three principles, practice, rigorous authenticity, surrender the outcome, do uncomfortable work. And I did something that I've never done before. And I did the uncomfortable work. And I told them exactly the truth. I said, I just got out of rehab. I've been using for the last three years and I'm in a halfway house. And if I don't get this job, I'll be out on the street. And at the end of the job interview, he looked at me and he smiled and he said, when can you start? And I still get emotional when I think about that story, because I really think my whole life would have been different if he had said, you don't get the job and you're out on the street. Because it would have given me a conflict that I had to reconcile.

But I feel like it was just so perfect because not only did I see that my recovery could be prioritized and I could surrender an outcome and still be successful. But for my luck, it was the first battleground for my program and as a professional setting, which I think really set the tone for everything I've been doing since. I never would have known that interviewing for a job at Sam Goody would have meant so much to me. I'd still be telling this story at a time when nobody knows who Sam Goody is. But I was fortunate enough to have a sponsor that said, what's true in God's world, anywhere is true everywhere. And regardless of your definition of God, it was something that really helped me. And I was an atheist at the time and I learned to surrender the outcome and it really, it changed my life.

Yeah. That's an amazing story. I have one that's almost identical. I was just out of a halfway house as in I had gotten out of one. It was one that you didn't work in. So it was maybe some like a three quarter house or something. I don't know. But I had identified this job I wanted with a company called CompuServe. CompuServe was one of the first online companies. I had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew like they paid really well and there was a gym I could do and it wasn't a restaurant. And I was desperate to not go back into the restaurant business just because that was

so tied to my partying. And same thing, get in there and they're like, well, what's with your job history? And why are you qualified for this job? And I just was like, well, I just got out of a halfway house. I'm a, I'm a heroin addict, but I'm working this program of recovery and I'm willing to work really, really hard for you. You know, I just told him the truth and got hired and that launched my entire technology career. You and I, we know tons of people that have a story like this, right? I've got a friend that applied to four different graduate programs. And in the first application, he lied about his

recovery story and his gap and why he got kicked out of college when he was younger. And then he talked to his sponsor and he was honest on the other three. Guess which one he didn't get into. And guess which ones he got into. He got into all the ones where he was honest about it. So the reason I'm so passionate about like the message in my book, the message I carry in general is not everybody's an addict, but everybody can relate to being in that job interview and not wanting to volunteer the worst thing about them.

Right. Everybody can relate to that struggle. And I don't mean just like, Hey, you're not that great at Microsoft Excel. I mean, the worst thing about you, I'm a freaking drug addict, dude. That's the worst thing. And so if everybody can relate to that pit in their stomach of that gap in their resume, that the weakness, whatever the personal limitations they have, I want them to know that we, you and I and others like us are collecting thousands, if not millions of stories of people that go in there and prove that you can take the mask off, that you can be yourself and you can still be successful. Because if a drug addict can own their story in a job interview

and be successful, there's nothing that anyone else that has something that's holding them back can't do. We just happen to have a more catchy story and more dramatic example, but everybody can relate to that pit in the stomach that I had in that interview. But most people don't have the same incentive that I had. I, like you, I was walking around with a loaded gun pointed at my head that said, you have to practice these principles in all your affairs or you die. And like I heard on one of your other podcasts and the things that you talk about, I had other people that believed in these principles. You talk in your Ted talk about if you have six people that are committed to the same thing, you have 40% greater chance of success. When you go into a 12-step meeting and you hang out with a bunch of other recovering addicts that

value living by surrendering the outcome, suddenly you can be the different person that goes into a job interview and you're really real. And I will tell you, since I've become an employer, since I became a CEO and run multiple companies, in my job interviews, I have developed tactics to try to get to a place where I can find out if you have the capacity to do what I did, because I'm more likely to want an employee that can be honest about their weaknesses and their challenges and their failures, because then I trust that they'll be able to grow the same way that I did. And if they try to like front and wear that mask in the interview, I don't trust them no matter how good they are. Yeah. Yep. So let's talk about the program in a little bit more

detail. You've sort of mentioned the three, I don't know if you'd call them pillars or steps, but practice rigorous authenticity, surrender the outcome and do the uncomfortable work. But first, before we go into each of those in a little more detail, let's talk about the different types of masks that people wear. You've identified four common ones, and you've sort of touched on them here a little bit, but let's sort of call them out. These are the four common masks that people wear. Yeah, when I developed the mask assessment, I started off with like 50 of them with my hypothesis. True addict, I was a backer of white. I was going to be none or a lot. And as I administered it and I started to get feedback and see the trends in the data, I started to see that they all had a common trend. And so the four masks

are saying yes when you could say no, hiding a weakness, avoiding difficult conversations, and holding back your unique perspective. And so all four of these masks have a different cost for you as an individual and different costs for an organization. But they're all driven by essentially the fear of what other people think. And it's all driven by the inability to surrender the outcome. So when you want to say no to the meeting or the project or the task or whatever, you're worried what your boss will think, your team will think. It's hard to surrender the outcome,

how to overcome that fear. And that's what an addict is taught to do working in a 12-step program. When you think just like I did, that if you get found out for not knowing how to do something, you say, I don't know, people are going to think less of you.

They'll trust you less, all that kind of stuff. So you hide weaknesses. I think difficult conversations are really hard because they mean you can get kicked out of the tribe. And so as a result, the two most common forms of this that we see is performance management, people not giving people constructive criticism that can help them grow, and then customer negotiations. And then holding back your unique perspective is kind of like the cherry on top because that's where all innovation happens and all blind spots get checked. And we see with organizations that you'll have like 50 people in the room and the executive assistant might be able to identify a blind spot

or identify an opportunity for innovation, but you don't get access to it because they only want to hear the CEO and they're scared of what they're going to say. So they hide their mask. In my company, I had 50 people. We had this thing called the idea graveyard and all the bad ideas that lived in that graveyard were mine. And that was a way to be symbolic, to create psychological safety for all my team. Be like, I want your ideas. Truly. I want your unique perspective. Truly. I want 50 unique perspectives, not one or two or three. And I think that right now professionals, not only only, I mean, we see people that are wearing these masks in their personal life, in their professional life,

as managers, as CEOs, as direct reports. And like I said, it costs them about 500 hours a year. It's more pervasive than addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, and gambling combined. Yeah. And I certainly think even years of recovery, these things are really hard. I think I ended up finding them harder in certain personal situations than in work situations. But even within work situations, as I'm hearing you talk and I'm reviewing my history, I'd like to think, well, yeah, I always had my mask off. No, I didn't. Yeah. You know? No.

I mean, there were plenty of times that I did this. Like, I think about, like, avoiding difficult conversations. Like, my hardest difficult conversations were with people I managed. Yeah. And having the courage to tell them they weren't doing well. Yeah. That was my Achilles heel. And it took me a while because for a while I thought, well, I just don't want to do it because I don't want to be mean.

I want to be nice. Until I finally realized, like, I'm not being kind. I'm being scared. It's not helping them. It's hurting them in the long run. I mean, that was one that took me a lot of my career to really get better at. And I still feel like it was probably the area I was weakest. So what we do with the mastery program is we take the power of the 12 steps and how it helps you address addiction. And we turn it into these really simple things that we call an action card that allows anyone, addict or not, to really apply the power of the 12 steps to specific practical situations like what you just talked about. So, for example, we have in our program a dude that is going to be a new father and he wanted to take three months of paternity leave in a company that doesn't necessarily respect that. And so he knows he's going to be tempted

to say yes when he could say no on paternity leave, right? He knows people are going to ask him for help. They're going to want to check in on the plan. They're going to want to do all these kinds of things. It's already happened. And so he had to apply these principles. Practicing rigorous authenticity means identifying the mask that he wants to wear. He wants to say yes when he could say no, but what he really wants to be is present with his new daughter and his wife. That's what he really wants to be. So surrender the outcome. He has to surrender the fear of what everybody's going to think and what's going to happen to his job if he prioritizes his family. And then the uncomfortable work is he had to actually create a paternity plan that declared, I will be zero

available. Not, I might be available a little bit here or there. I'll be zero available and then go over it with his manager, fearful of what his manager would say, right? And so we've got stories of this, like what you just said, a CEO that was good at giving performance feedback to his direct reports, but terrible at their direct reports because it was awkward because they weren't directly managed by him, but he wanted to give them constructive criticism. And so he said that literally his stress level was at an eight and he was carrying their work. And it would be at a three if he could just get over that fear. And this is a CEO of a $65 million company, right? We have a new employee that started a job and didn't want to say, I don't know. And they're

inhibiting their ramp. So they use one of these action cards on the mask of hiding a weakness. And they were able to declare, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. And they were able to be more successful. We got someone that was a corporate executive that quit to become an entrepreneur. And she had to work the mask of my unique perspective because she was on the corporate track to be successful. And she decided to do her own thing. But then we also had an entrepreneur that quit their business venture and joined a corporate job because they were hiding a weakness that they were not a successful entrepreneur. The point is that everybody's like hiding themselves behind one of these masks on a

regular basis. And what we try to do is take kind of the self-help, personal help, even professional development that's fuzzy and apply it to these really concrete situations that everybody can relate to where you have this tremendous fear and empower them to overcome that fear and do the uncomfortable work as if their life depended on it the same way that we learn in recovery. let's just take difficult conversations so i'm avoiding a difficult conversation whether it be with an employee works for me that is not doing a great job, or, boy, I was in a marriage for years where I avoided nearly every conversation. I avoided a lot of difficult conversations, you know?

And what I was doing by that was, as you've eloquently laid out, I was trying to control the outcome completely. Yep. I work with a lot of people in a coaching program. I'm sure that 60% of the hands in the audience are shooting up right now going, that's me. I'm avoiding difficult conversations. So what are some practical ways we can work through that? The first thing is, is getting really clear on who you're avoiding them with. A lot of times people will generalize, but it's the fear of what another person thinks that puts the mask on our face. That fear is the glue. And so you have to be really clear

on who you're scared of. We're avoiding different conversations everywhere. But the one that really gives you the zing in the stomach, the one that gives you the most cost is, let's just say, for example, it is the wife. Let's just say, since you brought that up, right? I actually had a CEO of a company that was avoiding different conversations with his wife. And they were estranged. And it was costing him his marriage, right? And so the first thing that we do is we say, okay, so the way that you practice rigorous authenticity is you get really real about, Hey, I'm avoiding a difficult conversation. Here's who it with, and here's what it's costing me. So traditional, just like inventory stuff. So surrendering the outcome is where everybody gets messed up. And so this is the pivotal principle. So really practical tool for anyone

listening right now is take out a piece of paper and just literally draw a line down the middle and put can't control in the top left and can't control in the top right. And so when we surrender the outcome, most people intellectually understand, yeah, I need to let that go. I can't control if the customer buys. I can't control if the wife loves me. I can't control if she stays. We intellectually get this. Up until 25 years ago, knowledge was power. We're in information. Up until 25 years ago, knowledge was power. We're in information overload. Knowledge is no longer power. Action is. In recovery, we say action over insight. And so the problem is, how do you take that knowing and actually turn it into

action? And so the way that we teach people is really simple. And you have to engage literally your body in doing this work. You take that piece of paper and on the can't control column, you write down three things that you can't control related to this person. I can't control the wife, how she responds to what I say. I can't control what she does next. And I can't control that. I feel a way that she may not like, right? You write those things down. I can't control these things. Then in the can't control column, you say, what can I control? And here's a tip. The can't control column is all about the other person. The can't control column is all about you. So I can control whether or not

I'm honest with my wife. I can control how I communicate with her. So there are ways that I can communicate that are going to be more effective. And I can control when I communicate with her so there are ways that i can communicate that are going to be more effective and i can control when i communicate with her like if she's really pissed off about something maybe that's not the right time to bring up a difficult conversation right so there are all these things you can't control and so people when they start going this exercise i go wait a second i've just like a pair of binoculars gotten a little bit more clear on what the variables are here but then we're not done i say go through that of paper. And now what I want you to do is I want you to stare at each can't control and then exit out. And literally with a pen, you have to engage your body to do it, exit out. And you do that for all three can't controls. And as you do that, you will start to all of a sudden

release the outcome a little bit. And then you go down the can control column and you circle each one. And as you do that, you're literally engaging your body and getting your brain to unclench on the outcome, redirect all that energy on the things that you can't control and double down on the things that you can. And when they're done with this piece of paper and they step back, I say, look at all the can't controls. If you let one of these go, which one would give you the most emotional freedom? And it's usually not the one they think is their brain will answer, but I'm like, no, which one will give you the most emotional freedom? So maybe it's like, oh, I can't control what she thinks is like the intellectual answer. The emotional answers. I can't control how she responds because I'm scared of her response.

Put a star by that one. And then in the can't control, which one of these is going to objectively make you more successful? And it's like how I communicate with her will make me more successful. Put a star next to that one. And then I have them write down again, can't control this, can't control this. So just the ones they picked and I tell them to read it one minute a day. And after 20 days, they've rewired their fight or flight response. They've rewired their natural inclination to focus on what they can't control and redirect

that energy to what they can control. And it actually allows them to go do this thing called uncomfortable work. And so in that scenario, would you say, wait 20 days to have that conversation or would that depend? It would be arrogant for me to offer absolute advice because I'm not God. But, and you know that, but I have to do that disclaimer to feel better about myself. People, when they start doing this work, they get a sense of urgency and they feel like, oh, I got to do this right now. I got to do this right now. Depending on how important it is, I would wait.

Yeah, I would wait. Now, at the same time, reading this little statement every day, it's not to say this isn't black and white, right? So it's not to say that on day 15, if a difficult conversation comes up that you don't like lean into it and have it. But what we're really trying to do is when those things come up, when fight or flight gets triggered, adrenaline pumps through our body, our field of vision narrows, and we become our lesser selves. And so if you can reprogram yourself to start to have that reflex of, okay, I can't control that. I can't control this.

My wife always tells me, you underestimate everything that you learn as an addict. Literally everything is that. You learn how to go from what you can't control to what you can faster than everybody else. And so if 15 days of reading that card would be enough, I think. But the more the better. We say after 28 days, we want you to do a new card with a new thing that you're working on. But it depends on the situation.

But generally speaking, I would say you'd want to wait 15 to 20 days if you could. And I guess the risk or the thing to watch for there is waiting until we're not afraid to do it because that day may never come. Oh, yeah. So that's why you lead into the next step, which is you're doing this uncomfortable work. You know, I know what I used to get into is sort of a variation on your exercise. I couldn't have put it into those terms exactly, but I would have had the gist of it in my mind. Control can't control. I think it would have been really helpful to walk through that process. But then there's a sense that like, I need to figure out how to not be afraid of this in order to do it. And my experience is, yes, managing the fear.

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It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts is good. And then there still is a time that I'm uncomfortable and I need to move forward. Yeah. That's why we don't call it comfortable work. Right. And so like people would be like, well, how do I get to a place where I'm fearless? I'm like, dude, I'm a public speaker for a living and I'm scared every time. The key is not to be fearless. The key is to know how to walk through the fear. And one of the things that helps is this can and can't control the surrendering and the outcome.

And you're absolutely right. It's not waiting for when you don't have the fear of the pain. It's learning how to be comfortable with the discomfort. In my experience, though, going back to the thing that you said in your TED Talk, the reason that my book calls out building this whole mastery program that has a bunch of other people that are doing the same thing is because if you have other people that value doing uncomfortable work, demonstrating how they're doing it, and you all share on a monthly basis, hey, here's where I did my uncomfortable work. You literally inverse the stigma that you have around the mask in the first place. You inverse the reward center where like, so like one of the things I told people when they're scared of like public speaking is I say, collect detractors. Your job is to get five or 10 detractors. Like I was doing social media posting and someone on one of my videos called me a sociopath.

And I normally would have been like wanting to argue with him and be like, and then at the same time be like, well, I guess I'm a sociopath. I probably wouldn't think that I am one. So I don't really know if this is true. But I literally went back to my group that values doing uncomfortable work. And I said, hey, I got my hater. And so if you're around other people that are doing this process, which is the real magic of recovery, it's not just a process that you do by learning through a book or

through a course or whatever. It's by doing it with other people in the exact same process and journey. Suddenly, you get people that prize doing uncomfortable work. And then when you go into those moments, like chapter six of my book, I talk about how I went into a bar. I had a year and a half clean. And it was an offsite for my team and everybody was drinking. And I wanted to drink. If I hadn't had a society full of people that team and everybody was drinking and I wanted to drink. If I hadn't had a society full of people that were committed to not drinking, that I'd called before, that I was texting during,

that I knew I would be able to call after and go to a meeting and see them later and be able to share this story, I would have wanted to be part of that group and I would have taken their value system. So your ability to do this uncomfortable work is not conditioned on you not having the fear, it's on using both this process and other people engaged in this process to be able

to walk through that fear. And what we do in our mastery program is every month professionals meet, they build a little card on the biggest challenge in their life or the biggest growth opportunity, whatever mask is holding them back. They identify specific uncomfortable work. They go read the card. They go do the uncomfortable work. They come back, report, and do it again.

And we're seeing massive breakthroughs. We're just modeling the same thing that addicts do in 12-step recovery. Right. And I love that idea of, yeah, we need to find people to do this work with. Whatever that challenge is, you know, it's one of the most valuable things about recovery is learning to ask for help. It is. And, you know, one thing though that I learned is the entrepreneur, I found an organization called EO entrepreneurs organization for entrepreneurs running a business of million dollars in revenue or more. And I thought it would be 12 step for CEOs. And so I went in there and then we were all in the same challenge. We were all committed to meeting and sharing stuff. But what I found was everybody was using a different system for how they led themselves. Everybody had a different framework. Some were using the Enneagram personally. Others were using, you know, the entrepreneur operating system professionally. Everybody was using a different system for how they led themselves. Everybody had a different framework. Some were using the Enneagram personally. Others were using the entrepreneur operating system

professionally. Everybody was using a slightly different language. And it's like going to a restaurant industry guy at the beginning. And it's like trying to order something and everybody in the supply chain speaking a different language. It's extremely inefficient. But I could go to downtown Columbus, actually, true story, and be the only white guy in a meeting in the middle of the projects and feel different and be able to feel loved and the same and go into that meeting and say, I'm Mike, I'm an addict, and I'm struggling with step two. And 50 people know exactly, not generally, they know exactly what I'm struggling with. Their experience is tuned exactly to what

I need to hear. I felt more loved in that meeting than I did in corporate America, right? And so there's the efficiency of if you're with other people that are working the same system for how you lead yourself, there's an efficiency that is the same efficiency when we're all speaking English or we're all speaking a different language. I don't want to be just prejudiced to English, but there's an efficiency there that just allows us to be so much more successful and realize our potential. Yeah, I agree. And I think that's a really interesting idea. I've got this program called Spiritual Habits. We ran a group course last, I don't know, maybe last summer, spring. I don't know when it was. I think it was summer. And what we did is we took the big group and the big group separated into small groups. So we'd meet once a week as a big group,

and I'd sort of give the teachings. And then the small groups would meet once a week. And those groups are still meeting. And what's so interesting about it is kind of what you just said. There's this framework for talking about, all right, we're talking about this spiritual habit. We all know what we mean by it. You know, I found that I had that experience in recovery, and I also have had it, I've been a pretty serious Zen practitioner for several years. And it's been really interesting because it's just, you keep coming back to the same stories, the same language. Now, what I find interesting about that is that, at least for me, urinary path diverged

a little bit in that I'm not real active in 12-step recovery anymore. I've sort of moved away from it. And I have mixed feelings about that. I have moments I think, well, that's a mistake. But at a certain point, there were certain limitations to the language I felt that felt like I kept getting sort of slotted into the same thing. So while I think there's a real benefit in that commonality, there's also the question of does that at a certain point perhaps become limiting? I don't know. But I think it's an

interesting question. I think in order to have something of value, you need to give something up. Yeah. So there are trade-offs in everything. I love that. And so the more framework creates clarity, you're going to sacrifice application and value in other ways that is worth it. And so I'm still really active in 12-step, but I also perceived a limitation, right? I had enough sponsees that would call me and be like, hey man, what do I do with this work situation? I'd be like, just practice those principles in all your affairs, dude. Did you not read the 12-step? And they'd be like, Hey man, what do I do with this work situation? I'd be like, just practices, principles, and all your affairs, dude. Did you not read the 12 step? And they'd be like, okay, Mike, that's great. But this is like a job and my boss doesn't work the program. So like, I can't be honest about my vulnerability or my challenge with them. Like actually you can, and it'll make

you more successful, but you have to trust that. And what I learned was, at least for me, I was ignoring the fact that the 12-step language and framework wasn't exactly very professionally fluent. And so as much as I tried to apply the 12-step to professional situations, I lost a lot in the translation without being really intentional about making a real translation. I kept using a blunt tool for something that was very nuanced, right? Like, I mean, you know, talking about a PowerPoint presentation, the 12 steps does not contemplate a PowerPoint presentation or Microsoft Excel pivot tables for that matter. It doesn't contemplate

negotiating arrays with your boss. It doesn't contemplate the same goodie story that I told. So what I learned was, hey, there is a limitation here. And I'm going to take how I took this relatively blunt tool for this particular area. And I'm going to make a very direct translation. And it's a supplement that enhances someone's ability. 50% of people in my program are recovering addicts, 50% are not. I love the fact that you saw a limitation and you decided not only to pursue higher levels of spiritual enlightenment for yourself, but also turn around and help others. And you and I both know that sometimes an addict can get lost doing that. And as long as you don't get lost, which I can already tell just talking

to you, you are not, as long as you're not one of the people that get untethered, it is arrogance to think that, for example, that 12-step is the only way that someone can get clean and stay clean. Like I learned that early on when I had a sponsee that left our program for another spiritual program. I called my sponsor. I said, he's going to relapse. It's the end of the world. What am I going to do? Oh my God, he's an idiot. And he's like, do you know this thing called humility? I'm like, what? It's like, it's pretty arrogant for you to think that you know what he needs in order to keep his program going. There's a lot more to what we do that works for other people. So you're just going to have to humble yourself and trust that there's a bigger plan. There's more than one way. And maybe he's going to get exactly what he needs. And I got humbled and I learned. And so

unfortunately, as a human, as an addict, I want the world to be binary and clean and neat. And it's very, very gray. It is very, very gray. Well, you and I are out of time, but we're going to continue talking about this. I'd like to explore this idea of working in or out of a 12-step program and some of the pros and cons. And I also want to talk about a couple other ideas that you bring up in the book. And one of them is really about how hard it is to spot our own self-deception, how hard it is to see ourselves. So we're going to talk about that and a couple of other things. We'll do that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show

conversation, to other great things like ad-free episodes, a special episode I do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem, and you want the pleasure of supporting the show, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join and become a member. So thank you so much, Michael. I have really enjoyed to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would

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