#60 Jim Dethmer: Leading Above the Line | The Knowledge Project

When we first started working with leaders years ago, we did a little bit of measurement around this and we saw that most people in organizations keep somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of their agreements.

Hello and welcome. I'm Shane Parrish and this is The Knowledge Project, a podcast exploring the ideas, methods, and mental models that help you learn from the best of what other people have already figured out.

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On the show today is Jim Douthmer.

Jim is the founding partner at the Conscious Leadership Group and has worked as coach and advisor to over 150 CEOs and their teams on Conscious Leadership.

He's also the co -author of the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.

I was first introduced to Jim at the recommendation of my friend Graham Duncan and I was hooked right away.

As you'll discover, Jim is full of practical advice on what you can do to be better versions of yourself.

Better partners to the ones you love, better colleagues to those you work with, and better parents to your kids.

We're gonna deep dive on cultivating self -awareness through pausing and reflecting as well as understanding the role of feedback.

We discuss how awareness needs to lead to acceptance and not self -criticism in order to change behavior.

We talked about the victim mindset and how to get out of it.

Getting out of fear -driven motivations like anger, guilt, and shame, and moving to more powerful and sustainable motivations like love and play.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Time to listen and learn.

Jim, I'm so excited to talk with you today about leadership.

Me too, Shane. It's my favorite subject and I love to have conversation about it.

When I was looking for a place to start, I think the best place to start is about the line.

A single black line and why that's the most important model for leadership.

Can you explain that to us?

Sure, so when we work with individuals and teams and organizations, we're looking to start the conversation with a simple model, kind of a simple on -ramp that can be immediately applicable like within 15 minutes of the conversation.

So like any simple model or simple on -ramp, it's open to being oversimplified and I totally get that.

But the model itself is just this.

There's a line and at any moment in time, and we can talk about that, but at any moment in time, you're either above the line or below the line.

So when you're above the line, you're open, curious, and committed to learning.

You're actually in a sense of trust.

Able to trust yourself, able to trust the environment, able to trust who you're ever in relationship with, able to trust the universe, wherever you're placing your trust.

And when you're below the line, you're contracted, you're in a state of threat.

So now you're closed, could be closed -minded, your literal body posture could be closed.

Very often your heart is closed.

You're defensive and the big idea is you're attached to proving your right.

So what we're simply saying is that the first key skill of conscious leaders is self -awareness that leads the pack.

And the first act of self -awareness is, can I locate myself in this now moment?

Am I open or closed?

Am I in a state of trust or a state of threat?

Because we believe that ability to locate yourself really does start a powerful conversation inside of yourself and with anybody else you're doing this work with.

Let's dive into that for a second.

When you were talking about above the line, being open and curious and below being defensive, the natural translation in my head was sort of like outcome over ego.

Great, yes. Beautiful translation.

What does it mean to be self -aware?

Well, in its most simpler terms, it's the ability to accurately, and that needs to be in air quotes, accurately or as accurately as possible, see yourself.

Now, of course, this has been in the parlance of leadership for a long time, the Center for Creative Leadership.

When they first brought out their 67 core competency self -awareness around along with learning agility and communication and influence were the top four competencies that trumped all others.

So in the world of leadership, we've been talking about self -awareness, the ability to see oneself.

So we're making it specific in not just can I see my strengths?

Can I see my weaknesses?

Can I see my style?

Can I see my thinking patterns?

But in this moment, can I see the state of my consciousness?

Can I see whether to your I like your word?

Can I see whether I'm totally in service of outcomes?

Or am I contracted in egoic defensiveness?

Can I see that? And growing in self -awareness in our experience, you know, there are three ways you can grow in self -awareness.

One is to become more self reflected, actually pause and bring almost like the lens of attention back at yourself as though there was something outside of you looking back at you and their practices around how to do that.

The other way to grow in self -awareness is to use some instrument.

You know, you could use a technical instrument like the MMP or a personality instrument.

We love a tool called the Enneagram, because it's like a CAT scan in terms of self -awareness.

And the third way to grow in self -awareness is to create an incredibly feedback rich environment, where the people around you the most direct form of feedback are giving you feedback.

So we talked to leaders all the time about are they creating a feedback rich environment?

And of course, once you get that feedback is not just what people are saying to you that you decide you're going to live in an open system mentality, where you're constantly getting feedback.

Now you're on a rocket ship ride of self -awareness.

Those things work in concert as well as individually, I would imagine.

Absolutely. Yeah, very much so.

So can you walk me through a little bit about I think I'm most interested in one and three.

So like one being because those are things you can sort of do without a tool or sort of like somebody else.

You need feedback. You need people to give you feedback.

But I mean, in terms of pause and reflection, what does it mean to actually pause and reflect?

So in my experience, most people live most of the time in kind of an automatic pilot.

They're just in a trance, sleepwalking through life at the effect of their personality and at the effect of their ego structure.

We could talk about what ego is, is there really such a thing?

How does it show up?

So let's just keep it simple at the effect of their personality.

So the ability to become self -reflective is the cultivated skill to pause, quiet the mind a bit and then turn attention back on itself.

And this can be done.

So the quieting part, let's get there first.

So all the leaders that I work with, I don't work with anybody who won't have some sort of mindfulness practice.

I think the research is pretty compelling about the efficacy of it at multiple levels.

But to our point right now, the ability to still mind just slow it down a little bit so that I can create a bit of empty space.

The mind's not going to get totally quiet unless you do your practice six hours a day for 20 years.

But at least I can slow it down to where I can get quiet enough to ask a question.

Like here'd be a self -reflective question I might ask a leader to ponder over the course of a week as she's or he is in there, self -reflective time.

Get still and then ask yourself this question, what do I want?

And then just notice what comes up, notice what comes up.

And then as that begins to populate your consciousness, ask the question, what do I really want?

So this is getting still, noticing and populating the moment with a question or an inquiry.

There are other ways to do it other than a question.

But when people start, I like to start with something like that.

That makes a lot of sense.

I'm curious as to other examples of sort of self -reflective questions you give people and also are there like context -specific ones like I made a decision or I had an interaction with a person?

What sort of prompts would you offer to reflect on?

Sure, let's go with I had an interaction with a person.

So I have an interaction with a person.

You and I can do this.

We finish our interaction and before we run off to our next thing, just get still for a minute.

And then a question I might ask would be something like this.

In Stillness I might ask, was there any place where I got reactive in that conversation?

Was there any place where I got self -protective?

Was there any place where I got more interested in control and approval and survival, the three core wants of any ego structure?

So is there any place where I got more interested in control and approval and safety and security than I was in learning?

If we have a deep authentic conversation and you go wherever you want to go and you ask questions, there might be moments where fear will come up.

It'd be the natural normal response.

And so in reflection I might go back and say, where did fear come up?

So I worked with an investment team outside of London last week and they've checked most of the great boxes.

They're really clear about their vision and their values and they've got a very clear investment philosophy and even an investment process.

We were working on how to have world -class conversations.

So in the midst of conversations we would just pause at times, just literally pause.

Too much sound, too much fury in most conversations.

Pause, get still. I'm just talking about one breath.

Ask the question, in this moment am I genuinely open to creating a win -for -all outcome in this conversation?

Or have I literally constricted such that the most important thing right now for me is defending my ego?

And in my experience Shane, this, if you're willing to just practice, cultivate some self -awareness, this information becomes obvious fairly quickly.

It shows up first in your body.

You'll know in your body, there'll be certain somatic signatures and then it shows up in your thinking structures and it shows up in your emotional state.

So that would be you brought up the bucket of, you know, in relationships or in conversations, what would be some of the questions?

Those would be some, there'd be many others that I might ask to help people grow in self -awareness.

Okay, what about, I want to actually, before we go into the next sort of question on decision making, what sort of prompts you could reflect on?

What do you do with that information when you find it?

Like before we hopped on this call, I was, you know, I was just reflecting as you were talking about my interaction with somebody over email and how it was more curt than I would have liked.

And do I reach out and apologize now?

Or do I just let it go and acknowledge that it happened and sort of like move on and do something differently next time?

Like what do I do with that information once I have it?

Okay, great question.

So we say that the first act of consciousness is awareness.

So we're in that big bucket right now.

The second act of consciousness, the first question is where am I?

Am I above or below the line?

The second question is an odd one that needs a little bit of exploration.

The second question is can I accept myself for being where I am?

So you finish that email, you pause and you say where am I?

And in our language you might notice, wow, I'm a little curt, I'm probably a little contracted a little below the line and you could explore what that's about for you.

Now the second question we'd ask you to pause and consider for just a moment is can I accept myself for being reactive?

So what we've discovered is that awareness needs to be followed by acceptance.

Most of the most of the people that I work with, most of the people that you talk to, and you and me, tend to be really driven people who want to optimize for success, who want to be the best we can possibly be.

So when we start to really grow in self -awareness, what often follows a burst of insight, a burst of awareness is self -criticism, kind of oh crap, I shouldn't have contracted, I should be above that, I said you know, I was a little too curt, I shouldn't be curt.

And in our experience when you're already contracted, curteness comes from contraction as opposed to openness.

And then you pile on with self -criticism or self -judgment, you actually contract further.

Now here's the deal, if in a more contracted space you wrote an email talking about your curt response, the probability is very high that the outcome that you want wouldn't be And then there's words in the email, there's a context you're speaking from which is still somewhat contracted or fear -based.

But if you pause and you say, okay you know today's Friday, and when I fired off that email I was a little contracted, a little below the line.

So you could just, we just say, there's some fear running in your system, you could explore that, and then you just say, could I just accept myself for being scared right now?

Scared of natural, normal human response.

And we teach all of our clients to actually pause and take one conscious breath, the deep breath down into the belly, which begins the process of changing your blood and brain chemistry because when you're below the line there's a certain chemical cocktail that's working you, that has upside but also has real

downside, and when I take a conscious breath that starts to change.

So you realize you're curt, you take a breath of acceptance, and by the way, self -awareness is easier to train in world -class leaders than self -acceptance.

Most of them have a superstitious belief that if they granted themselves a moment of self -acceptance they'd lose their edge.

That absent being constantly self -critical, self -evaluatory with a slightly negative spin, absent that I'll lose my edge.

And we find the opposite to be true, that the more I can do whatever it is I'm doing from presence rather than reactivity.

So send that email from presence rather than reactivity.

The more is available to me to be my highest and best self in the moment.

So first question where am I, second question can I accept myself for being where I am?

Now, excuse me, you come back into presence and now you ask yourself what do I really want to communicate when I respond to this email?

Am I willing to be with this email from above the line?

Now what that might look like is being authentically vulnerable, transparent.

It might look like revealing what it was you were contracted about in the first place.

You know, we say that candor is one of the key indicators that I'm above the line.

When I'm above the line I reveal and I don't conceal.

Which so you write this email and you say I noticed that the last email I sent I was curt.

And when I tune into what that's about I think it's because I was attached to an outcome and I didn't think we were getting the outcome.

So I just want to tell you that and I want to see if we could have another conversation and see if we can create something that might be more of a win for all of us.

You don't know yet how you're gonna communicate from above the line.

You're just willing to shift the context of the conversation before you start dealing with the content.

I like that a lot and I think that's a powerful sort of means to walk through it.

I want to come to one thing where like four layers deep we're gonna come back I promise.

You keep track. I want to talk about acceptance and one of the comments that you made that was interesting to me is that a lot of world -class leaders have problems with self -acceptance because somehow they feel like they're driven by this.

Is it a chip on their shoulder?

Am I understanding that correctly?

Like what is what is sort of driving what do they feel or perceive as driving them and then what's actually driving them when you change the self -acceptance lens?

Okay great question.

So what's driving so many of them is down deep way down deep.

There is a belief that says it's not okay just the way it is.

I'm not okay just the way I am.

Now there can be many variations of how that shows up in a leader based on their personality structure but down deep there's this sense that I'm not okay it's not okay.

Something needs to be different.

Now with some people the age -old story might be something needs to be different in order for me to get the approval that I want from fill in the blank.

You know a primary caregiver, you know my siblings, my family of origin, my original community, my first coach, whoever it is or myself.

Something has to be different.

Just the way I am isn't okay.

That would be one form of this.

Another would be it's not okay just the way it is and I'm not okay just the way I am because I've got to even the score.

Something was done to me, something happened and there's a fuel in my belly that says I am going to overcome this and if I pause for a moment and take a break I'll lose that fire in the belly that is driving me to overcome and we could just keep exploring and keep exploring and finding these core beliefs

that set I believe that were developed before we were six years old.

That have driven us and by the way I say to all the leaders that we work with they've produced wonderful upsides you know that they produced fantastic capacities for achievement and accomplishment and mastery but whenever we've been driven primarily by the belief in the experience that something at the core

is missing that belief leaves a toxic residue and when you get close to these leaders and they talk openly and honestly when you're in a circle with six or eight or ten of them which is where I spend most of my time and we create an environment where people can feel safe and they start talking.

They might say you know this fire in my belly has driven me to this incredible sense of accomplishment which has been wonderful but that same fire keeps me from being intimate and close with my significant other or with my children or I can't sleep at night or what I would give you know when people

get late later in their development what I would give I would give all of my fame and all of my money to have peace.

So this is what I mean that the very thing that has created the consciousness that has made this great contribution to themselves to the world is the very thing that keeps them from saying could I give myself a moment of acceptance.

Now you ask a question that I talk about people all the time which is if that doesn't motivate me what's gonna motivate me?

You know is if that goes away then what?

That is fire. Fire that I feel like is driving me.

Exactly this have -to energy this core fire and I say I'll really do it simply I say there are five things that can motivate us.

The first thing that can motivate us is fear guilt and shame and by the way fitting in there as well as anger and rage and the question is does fear guilt shame anger and rage motivate?

Absolutely. You don't have to look very far to see that it motivates.

The deal is that if you're self -aware at all you know that eventually fear guilt and shame and anger and rage leave a toxic residue.

Many of us have motivated our children with fear guilt and shame.

I thought I would have thought better of you or something to be scared of I'll give you something to be scared of.

I'm disappointed in you.

I'm disappointed in you and you know as a parent you pause and you say does it work?

Well yeah sure especially depending on your kids personality and temperament it's gonna work a little bit you'll get a short -term return but eventually that's gonna leave a toxic residue which is gonna look like broken trust between you and your child.

So once I start to move to another level of motivation the next level is extrinsic reward.

So does money, fame, perks, does it reward?

Does it motivate? Sure absolutely.

Does it leave a toxic residue?

Yeah you know if you're motivating your team solely by extrinsic reward one of the things you know is you've got to keep increasing the capacity to keep feeding the consciousness that you've created and it also creates people playing a zero -sum game which creates tremendous win -lose consciousness and all

this kind of stuff.

Then the next level up is intrinsic reward.

Now this is when I start to live from a sense of purpose or calling when all of a sudden I start to discover what we call our zone of genius or what it is that lights me up to do in the world and this is when I start motivating people in my world with authentic appreciation.

So these are intrinsic rewards and they actually are the first level of motivation that doesn't leave a toxic residue and then the next level above that this is fascinating the next one above that is play.

All mammals are motivated by food, play and learning.

So I say to leaders all the time when you can when work can start to feel like play and you know this was misunderstood because there was a period you know when people would look at some of the classic startups of old like Google you know they'd go to their office in New York and they'd see a slide

or they'd see foosball or whatever you know and people would go they misunderstand they go okay I need to have play in the workplace right play means at all it's it's a million miles from that what it means is that when I'm coding it's like a child at play.

I love it when I'm deal making I'm a child at play which means there's a low level of self -consciousness there's a high level of learning there's sustainable rechargeable energy you know with my children and I have seven grandchildren when they're playing you don't have to reinforce motivate they're

in the game. So when we can start to live life as play which I think we started playing children then we got really serious someplace along the line largely because of that fire in the belly and then we're going to return to play at some point and I say the leaders the sooner you return to play the better

and then the highest form of motivation is love and I don't mean by that some touchy -feely thing I mean the love of the thing the love of the thing I love landscaping I love playing chess I love I love you know doing analysis before investing I love the thing itself so here's the deal as you decrease

you'll never take it all away but as you decrease being motivated by fear guilt shame anger rage and by extrinsic reward people need to find a new motivation source whether it's I'm motivating myself or you and I are a team but the organizations the teams of the future they are motivated by intrinsic

reward play and love you know you love you watch great professional sports teams it looks to me now what comes first winning or what I'm about ready to say but there seems to be a deep profound alignment of purpose that's intrinsic a commitment to have everybody on the team play in their zone of genius

what are they best at we're gonna figure that out and release and empower you to do that then we're having fun this is fun you hear great contributors athletes all the time say it's not fun anymore well then what's gonna motivate you if it's not fun and they love the thing itself and they love each

other now again not in a touchy -feely way but in the way that Marines love each other I think when people start to get motivated by that an entire different sustainability and impact starts to occur does that make sense yeah I think it makes a lot of sense how do we how do we shift like is it an awareness

issue to shift from something like fear or guilt maybe you're staying in a friendship or a relationship out of fear or guilt like is it an awareness alone or is it replacement with sort of something higher up on the list that you mentioned like even extrinsic or intrinsic and then play and love is are we

shifting it are we just acknowledging it like how do you walk me through that thinking a little yeah great so again it's always gonna start with awareness so one of the things I'd ask a leader is I'd give him like just these five options as a starting point and I would say this get still practice stillness

and then take whatever it is you're doing you know and what are you doing right now and just get curious what's motivating you right now is it this fear guilt and shame is it extrinsic intrinsic play love so a lot of us are so motivated by wanting approval to be like love value to steam we're motivated

by wanting control we want control of our world and we're motivated by wanting safety and security those all weave in in those first two fear guilt shame and extrinsic reward so what's motivating you get aware self -awareness now on those early two motivations the most extrinsic and fear guilt shame

anger rage those are coming from a core of fear now again when I work with leaders and I say can you feel the fear underneath it all when I started coaching people 25 -30 years ago that was a totally inane question you know I might be able to feel my passion or I could feel my anger that was acceptable

once in a while I could feel happiness or joy but fear and sadness why in the world would I want to feel those they're a complete waste of time but underneath these incredibly driven successful people this is a funny way to say it is a scared little five -year -old kid or a nine -year -old little girl in there

who is terrified so this is why I come back to after awareness can you give acceptance the antidote to fear is not courage the antidote to fear is acceptance you know I have these little grandchildren you know and it's so fun having a second bite of the apple around caring for little ones you know I

had two two girls of my own and then five step four steps on who I was in their life when they were very young and you know I parented the best I could just like everybody who's listening this doing the best we can but you know to do it again 30 -40 years later is such a treat so you know like when my

kids would get trapped in their egoic structure you know I parented a certain way and now when I have these grandkids it's so different because I'm not invested my identity isn't tied to how they turn out you know if they have a tantrum in the frozen peas section of the supermarket I don't take it as

a reflection on me if they're standing on the soccer field you know looking at daisies and not kicking the ball I don't have to yell kick them all because I'm afraid that people are gonna think I'm a bad parent or I'm not gonna get him a scholarship to play d1 soccer you know I'm just a guy standing

there loving my grandchildren so when they get triggered I'm in such a different place when they get scared I can say to them oh god you're scared grandfather get scared too let's just sit together for a minute and just be scared, just be as scared as we are which of course is what Dan Siegel who I

think is fabulous about brain research and children and parenting and the whole brainchild and all of his work that's of course what he is saying children most need in those moments now I say all that to say inside of each of us is a scared little kid I get these leaders in circles Shane and after you

know a day day and a half of trusting each other they're willing to start talking about that kid and then the question is can they give that one a little bit of acceptance and that is not easy to do so until I can give a little bit of loving kindness a little bit of acceptance to the scared terrified

parts of me then it's not gonna stop because my mind is gonna believe the only way to succeed is to keep scaring the shit out of myself unconsciously this is mostly unconscious keep scaring the shit out of myself keep believing that I don't have enough approval yet even though I have got any of the following

things including adulation adoration number of followers on Twitter you know trophies I still don't have enough approval I don't have enough control over my world and I'm still not safe and secure enough so until that little one who's driving the show can experience some acceptance they won't calm down

by the way this true of my grandchildren when they're throwing temper tantrums in my experience I can all you know the big adults can always overpower them your ego structure can always overpower the scared part of you but I can get the kids to sit down but they don't get still on the inside and until

they do that they can't let go of their belief that they need to be motivated by that so that's why awareness comes first what's motivating me acceptance comes second and we just do tons of work on how to cultivate a little bit of acceptance this is not ours I'm talking about a couple of breaths and then

from there I can start to shift this is one of our words I can start to shift the starting to motivate myself with intrinsic reward play in love but until I can cultivate awareness and acceptance the shift moves required to be motivated by intrinsic rewards play and love aren't there I won't trust them

enough I'll go back to what's made me successful up to this point that's really insightful I do want to come back to kids I just don't want to lose track of the thread and where we're at so we're talking about sort of self -awareness and we had three sort of concepts one of which was pause and reflect

to his instruments through his feedback just want to go back to pause and reflect for one second because we we went down a rabbit hole in terms of talking about a conversation with a person and how to reflect on that I want to also super important to our audience is how do we reflect on a decision that we

made within an organization and maybe that decision worked out well and maybe it didn't but what are the the prompts that we can sort of do for almost a guided reflection to go back and get better at making decisions yeah great question so I've listened to a couple of your podcasts where I my story

was I love the podcast and you had people who are expert at asking that question in a way that I think most of your listeners are going to be served by it I'm not expert at that so I want to be clear my expertise is how to become self -aware around the state of your consciousness mm -hmm so again I listened

a couple of podcasts where people had fabulous input about that I was here are the kinds of questions I want to ask you from where did I make the decision did I make it from below the line or above the line okay another question did I make the decision from I'm going to introduce a new model here from victim

villain or hero victim is did I make the decision from feeling like I was at the effect of a person circumstance or condition was I in a victim consciousness did I make it from villain where I was making the decision from blame judgment criticism did I make the decision from hero which is did I make

it to rescue people did I make it to relieve temporarily their difficulty their upset this is the famous Cartman triangle it's not new to us that almost all life is lived from the drama triangle of victim villain and hero so in a when we're thinking about our decisions did I make it from above or below

did I make it from a consciousness of victimhood villain or hero another question we would ask is did I allow all of my emotional intelligence to totally inform this decision so we do a lot with leaders around the difference between IQ EQ and BQ IQ being the gray matter the thinking capacities all that EQ

being emotional intelligence and BQ this new field I think that's coming online around body intelligence the wisdom of the body so one of the things we see when people make decisions or have broadcast conversations is of course most of the people we're working with have a bias towards IQ data analysis which is fabulous

we're not in any way diminishing that that needs to be developed honed beautiful but we've discovered that unless people are equally valuing EQ the best decisions don't get made and there's tremendous wisdom that comes from emotional intelligence we teach that there are five core emotions that are healthy

life -giving natural and those are anger fear sadness joy and creative energy by the way that creative energy is actually sexual energy we don't call it that because of all the obvious reasons all these all these emotions actually occur in and on the body emotions are not thoughts they are literally

sensations in and on the body now that doesn't mean I don't have a thought so I'm you know I'm living Chicago I'm driving down the Kennedy Expressway somebody cuts me off I have a thought you shouldn't do that that thought charges an emotion anger but that emotion doesn't show up in my thinking pattern

it shows up as a set of sensations on my body heat in my face you know tension in the back of my neck radiating on my shoulders down to my fists pulsing in my that's anger sadness is in the chest and the neck in the face fears in the belly all these things locate in the body and creative energy which is an incredibly

powerful tool actually started out as sexual energy that starts in the body in the erogenous zones and then circulates all throughout the body and quite frankly it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex a lot of people have sex without sexual energy they have sex with anger they have sex with fear

they have sex with sadness but sexual energy is part of the key to being creative it flows through the same pipe so one of the questions we would ask going back to your original question is were all of the emotions welcomed in the decision process and did we get the wisdom of them the wisdom of anger

is that something isn't of service and it's a boundary energy you need to be able to say stop the wisdom of sadness is that there's a loss here and we're not fully facing and feeling the loss the wisdom of fear is that something's not being paid attention to so I'm going a little deep on emotional intelligence

but that would be a category another question I would ask is did we reveal everything we had to say about this so we have these 15 commitments and the fourth commitment is about candor and we find horrible decisions get made when people don't reveal their thoughts their judgments their opinions relevant

data facts information their feelings their deepest wants and desires so what we find is that when trust is low in relationships teams and organizations people start withholding and when people withhold decisions become far less effective and they get muddied up we call them sludge and so they get slower

and wrong decisions get made so that be another one did I say everything I had to say we call it blurting when we're teaching people how to have world -class conversations and make decisions we want to get all the relevant facts out on the table and then we want to create a few minutes depends on the depth

of this decision how long we have to make the decision for everybody in the room to blurt and to say everything they have to say and there's a particular way we teach people to do that's that be another question another question we would ask is are there any integrity breaches that are touching or affecting

this decision so in that mean yeah great so integrity is many things but one of it is its integrity is about my agreements am I impeccable around my agreements so an agreement is anything I've said I will do or anything I've said I won't do being impeccable is being clear about my agreements keeping

my agreements and we see that people who really have high states of integrity keep about 90 % of their agreements renegotiating agreements I've made before they get broken and when I break agreements cleaning them up so here's what we discover a lot of decisions get made where people don't acknowledge

that they're making this decision on top of a broken agreement wait a minute if we if we go back under here we actually have an agreement here that we didn't keep or somebody made an agreement with us they didn't keep so if I don't get back into integrity around my broken agreements or my my unclear

agreements this investment team I work with one of the things we worked on was how to make clear agreements teams waste so much time not making clear agreements you know it's like we make an agreement then you and I have a conversation well I thought we're gonna talk at 8 in the morning so I thought

we're talking to 745 I thought you were calling me I thought I was calling you I thought it was supposed to get you that report by five o 'clock no it was two o 'clock I thought the scope was this and absent these incredibly clear what we call impeccable agreements teams waste unbelievable amounts of time

so I'd want to bring that question up and then I would just keep going with these kinds of questions that are about the state of consciousness in which the decision was made though there'd be a whole set of questions here I I don't know whether that's useful to you and what you're thinking around this compared

to the other people I listen to on your podcast but that's the way we'd teach teams to oh yeah this is like so happy to geek out on this stuff there's a couple of rabbit holes here before we like go back up to the top I want to talk about how do we make clear commitments to each other like what is it

you you encourage people to do beyond sort of like basics and specifics like what does it mean to make a clear commitment how what are examples of ways that we unconsciously make unclear commitments and what is the clear commitment look like in those situations okay great so first I want to use a different

word because commitment is a technical term for us I want to use with you the term agreement and yes an agreement is between two or more people although by the way you can make agreements with yourself when we start working with leaders we discovered they're not making clear agreements with themselves

and they're out of integrity with themselves right so you know one of the agreements that I have with myself in the month of March is that I'm gonna do a certain number of high -intensity interval trainings you know per week and I'm gonna do a certain amount of strength and balance and training and I'm

gonna meditate a certain amount each day and so on and so forth these are all agreements that I've made with myself so we can make agreements with ourselves we can make them with each other you and I had an agreement we're gonna have a conversation at 8 a .m.

Central time we had an agreement an agreement first and foremost to be clear about your agreements it's between people and it's anything I say I will do or anything I say I won't do so an agreement could be we're going to talk at 8 in the morning you asked me at the beginning of this are there anything

good off -limits and I said no but let's imagine I'd said yeah you know me as a grandfather's off -limits we would have made an agreement and we've been clear you couldn't ask me about that so an agreement between two or more people anything I've said I will do or won't do now I'll give you one big idea one

of the keys to agreements is they need to be incredibly clear every agreement needs to have a who is gonna do what by when and agreements that don't have a who and a what and a when are sloppy and we all have a million of these you know it can be as simple as you know you walk in the door and you know

your partner your significant other says hey I thought we made an agreement to leave for that party at seven o 'clock and you go oh golly I didn't think we're gonna leave for the party at seven o 'clock I thought we're gonna meet here at the house and get ready for the party at seven o 'clock or or you

know I don't think it really matters whether we leave at seven o 'clock you know they don't care about that and all of a sudden you're in drama with your intimate partner because you don't have a clear agreement about who's gonna do what by when I think and yeah another good example that we've all probably

experienced is the meeting we've been at where something is decided but nobody knows who's doing what we just sort of like leave the room it's so true so when we watch world -class teams not only do they make clear agreements who's gonna do what by when they capture all their agreements you know we're

huge fans of a technology like Asana you know I love the Asana group because first of all they built their entire technology I think in a commitment to a certain kind of consciousness and then they in my experience develop an elegant simple way for individuals teams and organizations to track all their

agreements so if it's done masterfully drama minimizes we're not wasting time on these agreements so now so clear agreements who's gonna do what by when now here's the next one and I'll give you this one this one is huge in organizations we say only make agreements that you have a whole body yes to

that's a funny term it basically means check throughout your whole body check your head check your heart check your gut check check your whole system do you really have a yes to making this agreement so what happens in most organizations is we don't create an environment where when people are asked

to make an agreement they get to really check or and instead of checking people don't go I didn't really check I just kind of gave the corporate not like somebody asked so I said okay and then they actually think underneath they think don't worry they don't write down they're gonna check anyway I just

want to get out of the damn meeting go do something so now I'm making agreements I don't really want to make well when you make agreements you don't really want to make a couple of things are gonna happen one you won't do it or you'll really struggle to do it because you didn't want to do it in the first

place or you'll do a crummy job you'll be passive -aggressive it'll show up late it'll be done a half -assed so in our world we want to teach teams to make agreements where everybody gets to check and see do I really have a yes to this now if I don't have a yes to it then I might say to you Shane I don't

have a yes to have an arc all at 8 o 'clock in the morning I might want to renegotiate the who the what or the when I might say you know wow you know if we could do it at 730 that would be a lot better for me instead of just nodding my head or I might say I don't like the what you know we're recording

this on zoom zoom sketchy for me who just a phone call you know it's I get clear so you trust you can trust that if I make an agreement with you I'm in I'm in now we teach leaders that they also need to know how to you know use command and control as a viable style they need to know when to issue edicts

instead of agreements that's true but when you're really asking for a bilateral agreement you want people to totally buy in and the next write it down just write down your agreements and then keep your agreements we say to people all the time it's unbelievable how many leaders I work with and I say

show me the agreement you're currently working with in life and then I say are you lined up are you in integrity with yourself to keep the agreements and when we first start working with leaders years ago we did a little bit of measurement around this and we saw that most people in organizations keep

somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of their agreements well can you see where that would be oh yeah that's gonna cause a whole bunch of like you're gonna be problem -solving all day there's a lot of friction involved in that a lot of trauma I would imagine yes so I get really serious with myself around

you know Tom Peter said a long time ago there's no such thing as a small breach of integrity to me broken agreements are breach of integrity by the way it doesn't matter if I say to Debbie my partner I say I'll pick up a gallon of milk on the way home and if I don't pick up a gallon of milk on the way

home that's an integrity breach whoops which leads me to the next piece which is whenever I break agreements I go to the person with whom I broke the agreement and I say let's imagine that you know I was late for this call I show up 15 minutes late I would begin by saying Shane before we get going I

want to cover that I'm out of integrity with you I made an agreement to be on the call at 8 o 'clock and I wasn't there so I want to take responsibility for that and I want to see if I need to do anything to clean that up with you by the way notice in doing that I'm not making excuses or justifying I'm

not explaining I'm just taking responsibility because that act of taking responsibility is the commodity of trust so that'll be some of the stuff I'd say about agreements by the way I want to speak just for a minute my mentor in this was gay Hendricks doctor gay Hendricks and his wife partner and co

-facilitator of life Katie Hendricks and he's the one who taught me about being impeccable around agreements and it transformed my life what what sort of agreements do people have that are maybe unstated in their direct personal relationships with their partner or spouse that that cause friction in that relationship

that are maybe like unsurfaced and you're unaware of yeah great well here's the deal most people in their intimate relationship they haven't gotten conscious around this have all kinds of unstated agreements so you know you're coming home from a party that you went to and all of a sudden it gets icy

cold in the car right and then one partner turns the on said what's wrong well you talked a long time to so -and -so and it looked like you were flirting and it looked like you were touching the person inappropriately on their arm boom now we're off to the races right well we say all the time that all

drama in relationships personal or professional is caused by unaligned commitments that's that word commitment we're not headed in the same direction or unclear and unkept agreements so like in couple this one of the things we say is you know you ought to get really clear about what your agreements

are about how you're going to be involved with people outside if you have compliments it could be as simple as are we going to be monogamous are we going to be polyamorous are we going to have an open relationship or are we going to have a close relationship is it okay for me to have you know to flirt

it's flirting okay or is flirting not okay unless we get clear about all these agreements they're just going to keep recirculating in drama we say that unless you get aligned on your commitments a commitment would be I commit to be candid in our relationship so that notice that doesn't have a who what and a by when a commitment

is more a moon launch my North Star is that I'm gonna reveal and not conceal in this relationship I'm not gonna hide and manipulate information my thoughts feelings or judgments I'm gonna be transparent authentic and revealed well can you see that in an intimate relationship if one partner holds that view

and the other partner goes now not so much I'm gonna reveal as much as I need to be ordered to maintain what I want to maintain well we say that that unaligned commitment will cause constant recurring drama because it'll show up around money it'll show up around sex it'll show up around the in -laws

it'll show up around the children it'll show up around free time it'll show up around the credit cards it'll show up every place and people will think that the issue is the in -laws you didn't tell me that your parents were coming but the issue is not the in -laws the issue is that we are not aligned

in how transparent and candid we want to be with each other so unaligned commitments and then unclear and unkept agreements are the source of most drama in most intimate relationships so and by the way this is you brought it up in the first life it's absolutely true in the workplace as well people aren't

aligned in what their commitments are what are we really up to here and how are we going to be behave believe with each other and then we have sloppy agreements so sometimes people say what do I do what is our company the conscious leadership group group do in the most simplest terms we help leaders

teams and organizations minimize drama because drama is deeply entertaining by the way it's addictive but it's a massive waste of time just one question that came up as we were talking about relationships since you deal with a number of people that are sort of like learning to become self -aware I would imagine

my hypothesis would be like part of that would be I'm in an unhealthy relationship with my partner or spouse absolutely so what do you what do you do if you realize that okay so again I'm gonna say let's say I conclude that I'm in an unhealthy relationship again after awareness comes acceptance a breath

of like the Buddha say that's just the suchness of it today is Friday and my experience of my relationship it's unhealthy okay so now I'm present to that reality and I say that because most people are unwilling to fully face what's going on in much of their life fully face it they turn away from it

they partially glance at it and one thing they're not willing to fully face is the condition of their intimate relationship and they don't fully face it for lots of reasons one they think if I fully face it that's gonna create a ton of mess and right now my prioritization is my work or my prioritization is you

know my friends or my prioritization is taking care of my sick mother I do not want to open up Pandora's box about the health of our relationship or I don't want to hurt the other person oh that was gonna be the next one I don't want to fully face what's going on because I don't want to hurt my partner

now I'll just pause there for a second if we were really talking honestly here I would say let's just say that that's true you really do care about this person you don't want to hurt them so I'll grant that let's be with that for a minute but for many many people especially who are in what you said

is a unhealthy relationship what they really don't want to do is live with the effect and the consequences of when their partner gets hurt hmm so a typical thing would be you know some person in the relationship is unfaithful and let's say they broke an agreement not all relationships have fidelity

as part of an agreement or but let's say they did so somebody's unfaithful and now they realize oh this is a problem because now I've got a secret and you know like they say in the recovery groups you only as sick as your secrets and that's true about a relationship as well if I'm really committed to

closeness and now I've got a major secret it's probably gonna be a barrier to closeness so then when we start coaching and you know I say you've got any secrets in your intimate relationship yeah I got this one and then we start talking about what do you want to do with that and start laying out the options

and one option is to become authentic and reveal I don't necessarily always say that's the solution that I'd want to have a whole lot of conversation but when we get down to having that very short conversation it's not a long conversation it's pretty short hey I made an agreement with you to you know

only be intimate with you and I broke that agreement and I take responsibility for that most people don't want to see the look on the other person's face because if they don't care about them at all if they haven't hardened their heart which by the way often they've already hardened their heart so they've

actually don't care that much but if they still care they don't want to see that hurt that pain they don't want to see that anguish but they even more don't want to live with what's coming back their way how dare you you know I knew you weren't trustworthy this explains everything so oftentimes when we

say it's because we care and by the way that's totally legitimate often what's really true is we want to keep controlling the other person and we don't want them to see us for who we are because we don't trust that we're gonna be okay if they have their reaction I've sat with countless couples for example

when they've had that conversation I've been the third party in the room and I say to the person who broke the agreement who's who wants to return to a genuinely close relationship that they believe they cannot get to as long as they have a secret I've sat there when they've said that 30 -second thing

it's never longer than that there might be more details that come out later and then what I say to him is now you have to stay here in presence and be with your partner while they feel all their feelings while they express all that they have to express while they experience their hurt their betrayal

their mistrust because there's no possibility for rebuilding a relationship unless you can be authentic and you can be present to your partner while they have their experience so I mean I went kind of deep with here that's not true of everybody but that's the kind of thing that needs to happen in an intimate

relationship when agreements have been broken a really difficult conversation for both obviously both people to have it's incredibly difficult painful messy it's why people avoid it but what's true is if I really want to have an authentic relationship where we practice being revealed and candid by the way

in my judgment you can't have a truly intimate relationship and I don't just mean sexually intimate close relationship without being authentic you just can't it's not possible you can have a buddy you can have some fun you can have a playmate you can have somebody you know who to co -parent with you

can have somebody to have a social representation in your community with but if what you really want is closeness candor and closeness go hand in hand so I can only be as close as I'm willing to be revealed the whole thing here is unless you really really know me and I have the guts to reveal myself

I can never trust that you really love me because if you knew I in my mind I'm thinking if you knew this about me then you wouldn't love me so how can I ever experience full love and acceptance unless I'm fully revealed it's always going to be in question now this is the mess you know that's why when I

start working with couples at the very beginning and they're thinking about coupling even getting together in relationship one of the things I do is I just go through what are you really committed to what do you want let's make sure you're aligned and committed on that again this is a lot of the stuff

that I learned from Gay and Katie Anderson we apprenticed with them they wrote a fabulous book called conscious loving that is all about this stuff that transformed my relationship with Debbie and it's transformed countless relationships by the way the same stuff is true and you know on a team or in the business

environment what are we committed to how real and authentic do we want to be I'm gonna have to check out that book I want to go one level up in the rabbit hole that we had gone down here you talked about victim victim villain and hero and I want to explore the victim mindset just a little bit is that akin to

like a passive mindset where like you feel like life is happening to you and you're out of control of it and these things keep you know you don't take responsibility for anything you sort of don't see your role in things that's exactly what it is it is living from the belief it's not always a conscious

belief that life is happening to me so I'm at the effect of people circumstances and conditions so you know I'm in Chicago it's sunny today but it's 35 degrees or so in March so there are people you know when I walk around the city and talk to people who say you know can't the weather is so cold when is spring

coming I know it's officially spring but when it's really gonna be spring well in that moment they're reflecting victim consciousness they're at the effect of the weather what I'm saying is my happiness my effectiveness my joy is contingent upon people circumstances or conditions so if the weather is nice

I'm happy if the weather is bad I'm unhappy if my intimate partner treats me kindly remembers that it's my birthday gives me a gift kisses me appropriately appreciates me deeply I'm happy if they don't I'm unhappy if the deal goes through if the investment pans out if we win the game I'm happy so now

in psychological terms we've moved the locus of control outside of ourselves and we're living in victim consciousness by the way we say that this is where the vast majority of people live the vast majority of time because I want to say something chain when I'm living in victim consciousness it doesn't

necessarily mean that I'm having a bad day in other words imagine that it's 80 degrees and sunny in Chicago in late March now you walk around town and people go I am having a fantastic day it's gorgeous it's sunny and I played 18 holes of golf and shot two over parts the best score I've had in the springtime

in my lifetime and my kid got into an Ivy League school well they're happy but causation is still outside of them right so now it's just gonna be I'm a victim of people circumstances and conditions when I move from victim consciousness which happens below the line to above the line I move into what we

call creator consciousness and creator consciousness is basically this I choose and it's an active conscious choice I choose to be responsible for my experience in other words the weather doesn't upset me I upset myself because I'm attached to beliefs about the weather like I believe it should be sunny

and 80 not 34 and cloudy I'm the source of my belief I'm attached to being right about my belief and when the world doesn't cooperate with my constructs about how it ought to be I upset myself so you know when this really gets going you start to see that nobody upsets you you upset yourself nobody angers

you saddens you, hapies you, you do that to yourself because it's literally because of the cognitive mental and emotive emotional structure your thoughts about the world are creating your experience of the world so when people move from victim to creator they start taking a hundred percent responsibility

for having their experience how we do that like intellectually I think I understand everything you just said and if you ask me like a question I could sort of like repeat that but putting that into a day to day practice where you're you're giving up this sort of desire for an outcome or you're you're

letting these things sort of dictate your happiness is much harder it requires a ton of consciousness maybe more energy than what we have yeah I actually don't my experience it doesn't take more energy because I think living in a victim consciousness requires massive amounts of energy okay when we start

to live in creator consciousness it actually is energy replenishing because in cooperation with life I'm no longer resisting what life is bringing it takes an unbelievable amount of energy to resist reality the energy I guess in the context I was bringing it up is like you need the energy in the moment

sort of like within that split site it might save you a ton of energy later but you need to find it in that moment to like be conscious of your thinking yes that's your thinking and then to shift your thinking yes I agree with you actually when you're in victim consciousness we now know that there's

a chemical cocktail adrenaline and norepinephrine and cortisol which is running through your body and that cocktail gives an energy surge so many people are unwilling to move from victim consciousness to creator consciousness because they're addicted to the chemical cocktail and its results so at that level

of energy I totally agree with you if I start to live as creator I'm gonna give up my attachment to living in a constantly adrenaline state that's a big deal so in my experience it's not that people even don't know how to change from victim to creator it's usually that they're unwilling but having said

that let's say that you and I are talking it we're out you know we're buddies we're out having a beer together you know you're telling me about some issue in your life you're talking about something that you're complaining about in life and let's stay in the personal light you're complaining about a personal

relationship you know something that's happening in your personal relationship you're not getting the amount of appreciation and respect that you want okay so I'd say great super tell me about you'd tell me about it and at the end I would say to you well let me just ask you are you in victim consciousness

do you feel like this is happening to you or are you in creator do you feel like this is happening by you and if you're like most of us you know you take a sip of your beer and you'd say this is happening to me my intimate partner doesn't get it they don't get what a great job I'm doing how hard I'm

trying all the contribution I'm making all the things I gave up to be in this relationship all the thing they don't get it so it's happening to me right then you start keeping score and now you're in the downward death spiral of a relationship it's two people below the line in victim villain and hero

by the way they move all over that triangle one day you're the victim and your partners the villain in the next day you're trying to rescue your partner from their bad feelings you're on hero and we're just running around on the victim triangle and we're keeping score okay now if I were talking to just

you and me it's not your partner but I'm talking to you and I say I get it man you make sense to me you're triggered and reactive makes total sense to me are you willing to shift are you willing to stop blaming your partner for being the cause of your experience and are you willing to start taking responsibility

for being the creator of your experience now that is not a small question that is a radical question and many people will say well I'll shift if she'll shift like that or or what a what if I shifted you know it gets messy all that kind of stuff but let's say we're having that beer and you're willing

to shift okay then here's what we'd say we would ask you to create a recipe and we do this with teams organizations individuals all the time we would say create a recipe for us and I would say to you Shane if I wanted to have the exact same relationship with my intimate partner that you do with yours

like where you're underappreciated undervalued not respected how would I need to show up to create that what would I need to do what would I need to not do what would I need to say and not say what I would act what I have to believe and not believe how would I have to see them how would I have to see

me and in a matter of moments if you're willing to start taking responsibility and seeing that you're the creator of your experience you would be able to write out the recipe for me for how to create that experience I was working with a team in a company the other day and like so many teams they were in complete

overwhelm and they were you know in the victim villain hero triangle and they were overwhelmed because a scarcity of resources they were overwhelmed because of the competitive advantage they were losing they were overwhelmed because they had some product design flaws bubble up above they were an overwhelming

and of course they've been doing this work for a while so I said are you above or below the line they said we're below the line great would you be willing to take responsibility for overwhelming yourselves notice the change in language we're not being overwhelmed by something out there we are overwhelming

ourselves so it's great we're in a room with big whiteboards and I said teach it imagine there's a new startup that's coming in the world may come to you and they say we want to live in constant overwhelm too if you could teach us what do you have to do to live in overwhelm and they laughed they got

up and they started writing all over the walls how you'd have to see reality to live in constant overwhelm because in my experience being overwhelmed is actually optional and it's useful in the short run but very destructive in the long run it gives initial energy burst but not long -term sustainability

so they were starting to take responsibility for being the creator of their experience so you ask practically what do you do well first you locate yourself as in victimhood then you take responsibility for putting yourself there then you check and see am I willing to shift then you create the recipe

for how you've created the situation just the way it is and lastly in the very creation of the recipe you've given the prescription for how to change it let's go back to my illustration with an intimate relationship you're complaining about not being appreciated and respected enough and you know it

when you're I say teach the recipe teach me the class how to do this one of the questions I'd ask you is I'd say let me ask you this do you give a lot of articulated appreciation to your significant other are you giving as much appreciated as you'd like to get back and you look at me and you go no I'm

not gonna appreciate her till she appreciates me okay then you write that down you go here's a formula for having a relationship where we don't have enough appreciation and respect don't give appreciation to my partner so I'd say great you're really willing to change this just go home and do the opposite

next I'd say to you you're still committed to thinking that you're valuable if your partner likes you I want you to move the locus of control inside yourself and generate your own sense of value from the inside here are three things to do that so now you start to change and I guarantee you as you start

to change you create a totally different context in your intimate relationship with a much greater possibility of having appreciation and respect be a cornerstone of your relationship because you chose to shift from victim consciousness to creator consciousness that makes sense oh it totally makes sense

I think that's great advice shifting gears just a little bit here going back to you had brought up EQ and BQ and I'm curious as to how we develop hone augment accelerate our sort of EQ and like tell me a little bit of a PQ but more in terms of like EQ what is it that we can do to consciously improve

or be aware of where we're at and what is it we can do to develop in a way that's gonna bring us closer to other people to have more meaningful relationships to be more empathetic towards them and more sensitive to maybe the context in which they're operating okay beautiful so I'll just give you some

steps step number one decide if you're willing to develop your emotional intelligence that's not a trick question most people that you know we're interfacing with and you're interfacing with have a serious question about the validity of feelings and emotions and let's for now say there's the same thing

so the first question I asked is do you want to let's say you've lived enough life that you go or you've read enough of the research that says that EQ trumps IQ long term so you go yes I'm really willing great then the first thing I'd say is before you can become emotionally intelligent you have to

be emotionally literate and emotionally literate is just the ability to know what you're feeling in any moment and name it which sounds so simple it's something we should be teaching our kids it you know when they're three four five six years old because actually our kids come hard wired to know how

to do this and then we have to teach them not to do it they come with tremendous emotional intelligence and then in order to socialize them we teach them not to do that but the first thing is can in any moment can I just pause and ask myself what am I feeling right now right okay good so if I pause

right now and I go what feeling is here right now okay I go there's joy and excitement there's peace and there's fear that's what I'm feeling and if I say to you what are you feeling I'm not sure you want to play this game with me here but is there feeling here right now for you and what is it overwhelmed

happy and sad do those even go together I don't know they're beautiful well here's what you find out about feelings is it's never a question of whether they go together they just have feelings now if I were coaching I'd say overwhelm is actually not an emotional state it's an intellectual state or it's

an energetic state happy and was the other one sad happy and sad I learned this years ago when I first got in marital therapy many many many years ago in marital therapy and the therapist said Jim what are you feeling and I said something like I feel that she's wrong you know I've said this to people

in the business room what are you feeling well I feel like he's an asshole yeah that's not a feeling anytime I feel isn't followed by an emotional state like the five we use sad angry scared joy or creative energy if it's feeling if it's followed by a thought it's not a feeling that's why I say the first

thing you have to learn is emotional literacy so can I pause at any moment take a breath and name my feelings right then next can I feel my feelings naming a feeling is different than feeling your feelings feelings are actually energy that's all they are they're a set of sensations that are occurring

on and in the body and research I first read this from jim bolte Taylor in stroke of insight great Ted talking to the follow -on book the Harvard brain researcher who said that feelings last less than 90 seconds and that's true in my experience they actually often less last far less than that if I don't

feed the feeling with more thoughts if I just tune into the body the energy will go out of the body in less than 90 seconds is that is that why you sort of advise to just take a deep breath and feel like in that moment just be there with that feeling that's exactly right so am I willing to just feel

the feeling even big feelings like my older brother just died just transitioned out of this reality a couple of weeks ago and so as I'm letting grief move through my body there'll be times when I'll be sitting and a wave of sadness will show up and what that feels like is kind of a weight in the center

of my chest a weight in the center of my chest and I can feel pressure coming to the front of my face and it's not long before some wetness starts to fall out of my eyes some tears now I could deny that shove it down real men don't feel sad I could do any of that but all I do is I just first of all

I have gratitude for that because to me that just is my love for my brother it's just our connection so if I don't do anything with it if I just let my heart feel heavy if I just let tears fall out of my eyes it goes through in less than 90 seconds now in a big case like that where you're grieving the loss

of a loved one there might be waves of feelings that will come through but each of those waves if you learn to do this will last less than 90 seconds then there there'll be a trough where there's peace equanimity and then the next wave will come through and that's true with anger and it's true with fear

so emotional intelligence is the ability to know what I'm feeling in any moment and have a receptive relationship with the feeling so it goes through my body it doesn't get sexy because if the feeling gets stuck which is what happens with most people it ultimately calcifies and turns into a mood so anger

that isn't felt and released in less than 90 seconds that calcifies in the body and turns into bitterness and resentment and hatred so over the years I've coached a few professional athletes and golfers are great place to experience this so let's say that the golfer hits a shot and it doesn't go where he

had visualized it going and one of the first things I teach them if they want to play conscious golf and I'm not arguing that this is the best way to create peak performance but it's something to be considered if they want to do this the first thing they would do is they would notice the flight of the ball

you know it's headed out of bounds and then they would notice that a feeling comes into their body let's say anger and it comes like a white -hot flash into their body now there are many views in this in sports psychology one of the things that I see as a possibility is I don't resist the anger I let

it come into my body now I learn to express it to let it flow out of my body in ways that are friendly to me and friendly to the environment by my national TV and I won't let that anger move out of my body in one way if it's me and my buddies playing you know I might let it move out another way but I

don't resist it right so the first thing I do is let it all flow out of my body again in less than 10 seconds then I come back to presence and what I teach is having done that I begin to walk and part of my walking is to come back into presence it's my pre shot routine begins the move it I put my club

in the bag and start walking to the next shot my pre shot routine begins then because I'm coming back into presence I'm centering myself by the way this equally needs to be done if I stick at 18 inches from the hole I need to let that joy that excitement go through my body because I don't learn how

to let those vibrations of energy move through my body with breath movement and sound they'll affect my next shot by the way the same thing is true if I'm investing if I get too high if I get too low if I don't let the emotions flow then I will be open to all sorts of cognitive biases so emotional intelligence

can I know what I'm feeling and I move it through my body and then last can I pause and get the wisdom of the emotion in other words we're mammals we have these limbic brains these emotions have incredible intelligence so once the emotion has moved through my body one of the things we teach people to

do is pause and ask what is that emotion here to show me to teach invite me to face to become aware of to learn from now that whole process is individual emotional intelligence greatly skinnied down emotional empathy which you brought up is I can only be as empathic or compassionate with another as

I can be with myself I say this to parents all the time if you're not comfortable feeling your sadness your broken -heartedness you're not going to allow your children to feel theirs so when they don't get invited to the dance when they miss the game -winning field goal when they get shunned by their

peer group and they come home and they're sad instead of being with them in their sadness which again all the best work on conscious parenting says being with them first in their sadness instead of doing that you're gonna say stuff like this oh honey that happens to everybody you'll get over you'll

make the next shot there's a better group of friends anyway and because you're not comfortable just being with your sadness you have no capacity to be with your child sadness or their anger or their sexual energy a lot of people are uncomfortable their sexual energy so they start denying and repressing

and suppressing their sexual energy and when it starts to show up in their kids they shut it down in a heartbeat so it's the same in the workplace I can only experience emotional empathy and emotional compassion and emotion being emotionally connected to people to the degree that I can be with my own

emotion now once I can do that then the next part of emotional intelligence is I can feel what you're feeling I tune into it and emotions are just another data set this is what I tell you know like hard -edged investors who are interested in datasets it's just another data set and if you want to make

the best decisions you want all of the data available so when you're with your analyst you want to know what they're feeling and one of the big problems I think that's existing so many times in the investment world we want people to have conviction but so much of this conviction is occurring at an egoic

state from below the line now what I mean by that is in order to get the PM to believe that my research is viable and to pull the trigger I've been told I have to have conviction but what I end up doing is denying contrary opinions I deny my instinct my gut I don't bring forward all relevant information I

think that conviction below the line looks very different than conviction above the line conviction above the line says wow you know I say to people I ought to be tell you all the reasons I want to make this investment and I ought to be able to tell you all the reasons I think it's a bad idea I had

to be tell you all the reasons I'm excited I'll be able to tell you all the things I get a little nervous apprehensive steer about and given all of that and by the way we haven't talked about the you I'd want to bring my body intelligence as well after we've talked about all that I want to be able to

look you in the eye and say I want to make the investment now that is not some stopping my feet pounding my hand conviction it is a quiet grounded conviction that comes because I faced felt and dealt with all the data sets that's what I want so that's what emotional intelligence is to me a basic primer

on does that give you what you want around that yeah that's amazing I really appreciate you going into such detail on that I want to come back to self -awareness and get into but we're talking about the three things pause reflect instrument I want to talk about feedback a little bit and then I want to

get into parenting a little bit in terms of what we can do as parents so walk me through feedback in terms of self -awareness how can I use feedback how can I set feedback up how can I get people to give me feedback so I can become more self -aware yeah great question so one of the questions I work with leaders

on we work with teams on all the time is how feedback reaches the environment and again a lot of times I'll talk to leaders you know the higher up they go in their trajectory it's not uncommon all that they tell me they're getting less and less feedback makes sense based on power dynamics and structures

and fear and all that makes total sense but when they first are talking to me they want to talk from victim they want to say that they're at the effect of the environment that's giving them less feedback and I say would you be willing to take responsibility for being the creator of your reality in other

words you're getting as much feedback as you're committed to getting so stop anybody around you and then I say would you be willing to create a feedback rich body and that's a real serious exploration we really want to play with that let's say the person says yes I want to create a feedback rich environment

good then the next thing I would say to him is let's identify your feedback filters so a feedback filter is anything that completes this sentence in order for me to value your feedback I would need you to blank so when I ask these just they might say well in order for me to value your feedback I'd need

you to be a subject matter expert in order for me to value your feedback I need you to give it to me in a certain way at a certain time I'd need factual data supporting it I'd like feedback early in the mornings before noon in order for me to be open to your feedback I'd know that you have my best interest

in mind in order for me to be open to your feedback and they just start identifying all their feedback filters hmm and making them conscious and basically I always want to make sure they have one in there that they often skip over or wait till the last it's this I would be open to your feedback if I

agreed with it because all those others are really a cover for that and the deal is the more feedback filters unconscious ones that we have in life the less feedback were open to so what I want to work with leaders in around is becoming conscious of their feedback filters and deciding thoughtfully which ones

they want to have now this is a deep and meaningful conversation it creates a very very powerful sense of self -awareness so I'll stop there on that let me keep moving so let's say I decide okay what do I really want my commitment to be now we're back to that word around commitment well I've worked with leaders

especially some young people at the beginning of their career who've gotten to the point where they say this I want feedback given any way anytime by anybody I want feedback rich environment now I always help them differentiate between receiving feedback and agreeing with feedback I just want to get

a feedback rich environment now for most people that's too open of an aperture but I want them to clarify what is their aperture about how much feedback they want in life okay so I want to get clear about that then a real simple thing is ask for feedback right so you know a real simple thing is you

get a presentation to the Investment Committee at the end of it just if you have time to meet great if not go to everybody afterwards and say I just gave a presentation would you give me a number between one and ten ten being I absolutely killed it hit it on the park it was exquisite one being it was torturous

a complete bust you know with most investment professionals you're gonna not gonna get any tens a rare nine hardly ever do you get a one or two right so you might say take seven out of the mixture just for now give me a number any number less than ten I don't just say give me a number I say tell me

one thing I could do to improve and here's a real key to creating a feedback rich environment I would say this Shane give me a number between one and ten anything less than a ten so let's say you give me an eight I say anything less than a ten tell me one thing I could do to improve and Shane don't

worry about being right about your feedback don't worry about being constructive don't worry even about it being actionable in fact I say this at the beginning of creative feedback rich environment if you don't have anything make something up because I want to get the pipeline flowing and anything greater

than a one tell me one thing I did well I should keep doing well golly if I want feedback there you go go home to your intimate partner and say hey when we have a glass of wine tonight could you tell me three things I could do better as a father and one thing you think I'm doing well send an email to

your siblings or get your siblings on a phone call and say hey this is gonna sound really funny and I'd like you to think about it maybe see if you give me feedback what's one thing I could do to be a better brother so create a feedback rich environment and I'll give you one more thing I have loads

on this one but I'll give you one more thing when you get feedback now this is advanced okay but people who really want to be high -speed transformational learners right when they get feedback they do not ask the question is it true okay they ask the question how is it true like what what has to exist

in that person's mind for this feedback to be true nope how is their feedback about me true about me hmm okay right right obviously we could talk about their projections because all feedback is projection this is what we teach teens which parentheses any time I give you feedback let's say I say to you

you know I find you quite self -absorbed and self -centered in the world of psychology that's projection and the one thing we can know is that I probably am self -centered self -absorbed it's you know 12 steps they have such a great way of saying the stuff they just say if you spot it you got it right which is a fabulous

learning tool if everything you're complaining about really complaining about and people in your world if you were willing to eat the projection and see how the things you're complaining about about other people are true about you you would increase your learning agility exponentially but most people

want to keep making it about the other person so pause for a second so you give me feedback and you say Jim I don't think throughout the podcast you really got present enough let's say that was your feedback and I go first of all I say thank you and then I go how is it true about me that I wasn't present

and I go well one thing I can see is I noticed this the rate of my speech it was very fast I noticed that I've been sitting forward almost the whole time I noticed that I've been excited and playful I like doing this with you and so throughout this time I haven't gotten still very often and backed up

in taking a breath and dropped in thank you your wife says to you you know I don't think you're spending enough time with the kids instead of going well you don't spend enough time in them or you don't know how busy I am or you don't appreciate me what are you gonna learn from that zero right yeah you

might say thank you you also by the way might say ouch and then you say I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee with myself and I'm gonna look at how it's true about me well what you'll often discover is you can't find a way that it how it's true about you by the way if you want to be a really high -speed learner

you can either go back to that person or you can go to three other people and you can you know my feedback that I wasn't spending quality time with my kids that every time I was with them I was looking at my device or I was distracted and I got defensive and told her all the reasons that wasn't true

so you go to two of your buddies and you say you've been with me with my kids can you tell me how it's true that I'm not spending quality time with my kids I'm not looking for you to defend me and tell me why my life's wrong I'm asking you to tell me how it's true right well can you just see if you

wanted to create so much more powerful rich learning environment goodness gracious let alone this gets this gets supercharged when we do it in a relationship in your intimate relationship if you decide we're both going to be open to feedback and we're both going to ask how it's true not is it true and we're

both going to be curious from above the line we hold the possibility of creating an unbelievable relationship and in the organizational world I say to people all the time if you create feedback rich environments like we're talking about here you can let go of most formal feedback tools you don't need

to do a semi -annual or annual feedback things which you know still gets rated as one of the things most people hate the most because you've created such a feedback rich environment right so that's you know that's something I really want to stand for in this world of becoming a high speed curious learner

is what does it look like to create a feedback rich environment yeah I think that's super important and I think it's something we don't consciously think about a lot right like how do we get better feedback how do we acquire better information about ourselves and our impact on other people and our our

knowledge of ourselves yes absolutely so get more incoming feedback and then I would come back to if you want to really really grow in self -awareness eat your projections which means anything you're complaining about out there take it in and see how it's true about you now that's graduate school stuff

but when people do that their whole life changes yeah okay I don't think we have enough time to dive into that part of it we'll have to do a part two maybe next year to to get that for sure because I definitely do want to have that conversation with you I want to get to parenting before we sort of like

wrap up here I know you have a time stop soon tell me how we can use this stuff we talked about today to be better parents you had six kids that must have been crazy well it actually wasn't that crazy because I have two daughters they're ten years apart so think about that and then I ended a marriage

and started a new relationship and Debbie my wife had four sons so if she were here you could talk to her about the craziness of raising four boys all within five years of each other but when I joined that constellation the youngest of the kids was probably 10 or 11 or 12 now you could still say it's

a little crazy because we're blending a family which is a master skill in consciousness or not talk about drama and you know I'm deeply committed to my loving them so yes but not as crazy as it sounds okay so all of this every bit of this applies to parenting so just go back to where we started the line

so one of the questions I ask parents all the time you know that interchange you just had with your 16 year old were you above the line or below the line because if you're below the line the possibility of having a meaningful conversation that produces tangible lasting results is very slim furthermore

if you're below the line when you're interacting with your 16 year old because they just got a traffic ticket or got busted for marijuana or whatever there's a real probability your kid is gonna go below the line too so now it's got two reactive contracted scared people trying to prove their right right

well that's where most parenting occurs from when we're triggered and by the way it's the same thing are you you know you're when you're working with your 18 month old who only eats two dietary things and you're not willing to give them that in the restaurant and they're throwing a temper tantrum are you

interacting with your child from below the line or above the line and again I'll circle back to it let's say I'm in a restaurant and my kids throwing a temper tantrum and I'm interacting with my kid most parents this is natural and normal are not really interacting with their child with their child

at the center of their consciousness they're interacting with their child with themselves at the center of their consciousness and their embarrassment so my anger at my child is largely fueled by my embarrassment that I'm outsourcing my sense of approval and okayness to strangers surrounding me at Chuck

E. Cheese probably wouldn't have a Chuck E.

Cheese but you know what at a restaurant this goes back to your grandparent comment earlier where it's almost easier to be a grandparent than it is to be a parent absolutely so you know if you think about conscious parenting one of the primers that I give parents is you know most parents think that their

children came here to learn for the parent to teach them how to be a human well there's a lot of truth to that and that's a lot of what our job is but I'd say it's equally if not more true that our children came here to teach us so for example these little children in my life all of them are under seven

years old and some babies and stuff whenever they show up in the world I have a talk with them when a little infants right in the dome that says thank you for coming here to teach me thank you for coming here to remind me who I am that I've forgotten and I believe that if we make that contract with our

children they will teach us all the way along so these kids come hardwired to know emotional intelligence they feel feelings they're in their bodies they express the feelings their anger comes out of their diapers wet their anger comes out of their tummies if you if they start to feel the falling sensation their

fear comes out their sadness comes out and every time they did that if you said would you teach me again how to reconnect with my body and have an authentic experience of the life force of emotion would you teach me that or let's go back you know you're sitting with your 16 year old who just got busted

for marijuana and you say you know before I get over there in your business which I'm gonna do because that's part of what I think my responsibility is I just want you to know that this whole situation is a gift for me because I really stake my reputation on being a good parent and having you be an A

student a star athlete not do anything and you've cooperated fantastically for these first 16 years and now you're giving me a test you're giving me a test of whether or not I'm gonna see you as an extension of me and whether I'm gonna get my validation from how you perform or whether I'm gonna source

that inside myself so thank you.

Furthermore you give me a chance to face what I went through when I was 16 years old cuz you know I was breaking all kinds of rules and I didn't have a parent who loved me enough to step in so I'm gonna face that and I'm gonna step in with you or you know I had a parent who was so damn controlling they

smothered me so I'm gonna face all that and be with you so premise number one your kids have come here to teach you as much as you're supposed to teach them and by the way if you buy into that that changes the whole game and then ask yourself am I parenting from above the line am I am I treating my

kids as victims this happens all the time I can't tell you how many parents see their kids as victims the villain is the coach who isn't giving their kid enough playing time oh yeah parents steps into the role of hero or the kid is a victim at the effect of their teacher who doesn't understand their

learning differences so the parents steps into the role of hero and every time we do that treating kids as disempowered victims and they'll learn that so again you can parent from that victim villain hero triangle and it creates all kinds of backlash so all of this applies to parenting how candid are you

with your parent with your kids how much do you reveal how authentic are you or do you just put up a shield there's all kinds of stuff here do you live in a state of appreciation with your children do you give them you know that old coaching thing you give them five -to -one appreciation to constructive

criticism there's so much here about that that's one of the next books we're gonna write is conscious parenting and conscious partnering yeah I think there's a whole world I mean this applies outside it applies to all aspects of your life right and it's so important to those are the most important things

often we don't realize they're the most important until it's too late right we're 70 or 80 and all of a sudden we want more time with our kids we wanted to invest more in our relationship and letting that hindsight of other people be your foresight is super powerful but then it's a matter of like what do

we do with that information how can it be a better spouse like what inspires me to do that how can I be a better spouse in a way that or partner in a way that my partner recognizes and appreciates not necessarily in a way that I necessarily want to give so that we're communicating in sort of the same

language and it's the same for kids right if you have multiple kids the way that you communicate with each kid might be different and the way that they receive that information has to be sort of optimal for them in order to to get the message across or to learn from them or to sort of like have that dynamic

with them and I think that we're just we're so busy in day -to -day lives that we rarely step outside of ourselves and understand that no now is the time that we need to be investing in this because there's no like metaphorical window when we're you know 80 that we can just go up to and like solve these

relationship problems that we're creating right now I'm saying yes to everything you say just before we get off you you mentioned sort of the blended family thing and we have quite a few listeners out there with blended families what are some of the lessons that you learned as a parent in a blended

family situation yeah great a couple a couple simple ones that helped us we've got a fabulous blended family and I really is it's fabulous a couple things number one we made the decision to prioritize our relationship over our relationship with our children what does that mean well the deal in a blended

family is you know Debbie has a biological connection with her boys that is her offspring that is her life force and when the shit hits the fan when it gets conflictual when her kids are in conflict with my kids when I'm in conflict with her kids the natural tendency and I totally get this and by the way

it's a legitimate choice I'm just telling you what we did the natural tendency is to prioritize the the parents connection with the child right in our experience that creates long -term problems because those kids in a blended family are gonna want to know my daughters are gonna want to know that Debbie

hasn't taken primacy over them they're gonna be terrified of that but if I give them primacy over her it's gonna create a whole downstream set of consequences so we decided we were going to prioritize our closeness first and we did all kinds of things around that around the amount of time we spent together

and being each other's allies and and things like that and that was a game -changer and I've seen lots of other couples do this and they didn't do that and it might be one of the reasons that the statistics on marriage divorces are so much higher than first marriage divorces because now there's not the primacy

of that relationship and all the stress of blended families blows the marriage apart or blows the intimate relationship apart so that was one thing we did and then the other thing we did and this is fairly common but we we really were good about this is Debbie has primary relationship and decision -making

rights with her children I serve as support to that system now if there's something that kids are doing that's affecting me I'm gonna talk to Debbie about that first doesn't mean I'm not gonna talk to the kids her kids but I'm gonna talk to Debbie first to make sure we're aligned and then we'll talk

to the kids together now there's a whole lot more around this but that's another one she has primary decision -making responsibility with her children my job is to support her how does that not end up in a situation where different kids have different rules different kids have different rules yeah well

I wish we had time because I would say what's wrong with that oh no okay that's a great sort of question okay like if your daughter came up and said you know one of her kids did the same thing as I did and the punishments were completely different or the consequences I don't want to use the word punishments

but the consequences were different this would be a whole conversation on parenting one of my views would be that part of being a conscious parent is to be so present and so tuned in that you know that your six year old needs an earlier bedtime than his five -year -old sister right now the and you can react

to that from below the line or you can come from above the line you can say listen I know that pisses you off I know you hate that so if you want to beat a bag for a minute let your anger out that's great I'll just sit here and witness and be with you that's perfect and at the end of the day when I

tune in to you I think your sleep needs are different so we're gonna have different bedtimes and by the way that's just one tiny illustration I think that can be illustrated over and over and over again and by the way that doesn't mean that there aren't family rules and others we could have a family

rule that you can have your room be a pigsty if you want but everybody cleans up the common space right you know so I would question the belief that we need to have the same consequences and expected agreements by the way parenting is all about making clean agreements with your children most parents

don't make agreements with their kids they give them edicts and that creates a rebellion I talked about how to make clean agreements with your kids around things like room cleaning bedtime and homework and stuff like that we're going to make clear agreements with our children and those agreements can be

different keep going with the the other sort of lessons from blended families and we'll follow up in part two of this so lesson number one we prioritize our relationship lesson number two the primary parent had decision rights and the secondary parent was an advisor consultant and stood as a unified

field in the decision making that went on and another one I would say is have a long time horizon because when families blend depending on how you blend there's so many different ways to blend out there's almost always a tumultuous adjustment period I tell parents count on it here's what's gonna happen

here you can just your kids job and your stepchildren's job is to test you it's gonna get messy so have a long time horizon and understand that when you decide to end your first marriage and take your kids into a second marriage or a second intimate relationship part of what you're choosing is a tumultuous

period of time so that's known and then another big one which again we could go into intensely is how we as me as an individual me and Debbie and me as a system choose to relate to the former spouses and the co -parents out there is critically important because there's a whole energy field here and they're

all part of the energy field and the degree to which we can and it's not totally up to us because there are other people involved the degree to which we can relate to the co -parents and the former partners from above the line which is not easy to do because usually we're ending the relationship for a reason which usually

carries some toxic residue but the degree to which we can relate to them from above the line is a great great enhancement to our blended family you know what's her name it'll come to me who did conscious uncoupling Gwyneth Paltrow and goop and all that you know it came back up because I just saw something

I think is New York Times Esther Parel wasn't it was it Esther Parel who came up with the idea of conscious uncoupling I don't know I know she's talked about it before and like I remember reading an article a few weeks ago that she wrote online yeah sort of a couple that was breaking up and one of them

was feeling guilty because he had had an affair but he didn't want to be in the marriage anymore and he had moved on but he was really feeling guilty about his spouse and so part of the conscious uncoupling was like he was acknowledging that he was feeling guilty and then that was okay that's fabulous

yeah I love Esther's work it's unbelievable and Gwyneth came up with this idea of conscious uncoupling I think she got it from somebody back in the 70s game Katie Edwards and she got a ton of crap for it and this was years ago and that's because but I want to say you fast forward to this weird thing

that you know in social media I don't really do but I hear she gets a lot of crap for you know that her ex -husband comes on honeymoon with her and her new husband and the kids now we can all see why that if we can make a story why that's absurd but it's the ultimate experience of if you want to minimize

the drama in the lives of those children be conscious about your relationship with your ex -partner and their parent and right next day about that is prioritize your kids well -being so prioritize your relationship with your spouse prioritize your kids well -being so it's so easy to want to you know trash

the other person so on and so forth and all it does is leave a destructive you know wasteland in your kids consciousness and soul so those are some of the lessons we learned I think there are lots more Jim that was amazing this whole conversation was mind -blowing so we will follow up for part two I

really appreciate you taking the time today and I think we covered a lot of around and there's a lot of detail I'm so pleased with how this turned it so welcome it's great fun for me Shane I really enjoyed the collaboration of playing together great fun hey guys this is Shane again just a few more things

before we wrap up you can find show notes at fernamstreetblog .com slash podcast that's f -a -r -n -a -m -s -t -r -e -e -t blog .com slash podcast you can also find information there on how to get a transcript and if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food go to fernamstreetblog

.com slash newsletter this is all the good stuff I found on the web that week that I've read and shared with close friends books I'm reading and so much more thank you for listening you

[Conscious Leadership: Cultivating Self-Awareness and Sustainable Motivation]-[#60 Jim Dethmer: Leading Above the Line]

📋 Summary

Conscious Leadership: The Path to Self-Awareness and Authentic Motivation

The Fundamental Model: Above vs. Below the Line

Growing Self-Awareness

The Role of Acceptance

Shifting Motivations: From Fear to Play and Love

Decision-Making and Impeccable Agreements

Conscious Parenting and Blended Families

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript