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Heart First Leadership
Welcome to Heart First Leadership, the podcast that explores a revolutionary approach to leadership. In a world that often prioritizes success above all else, it's easy to find ourselves leading from a space of fear, doubt, and unworthiness. There is a new way!
Join me, your host Ryan Sawyer, and my co-host and wife, Heidi Sawyer, on a transformative journey as we seek to inspire and guide leaders, parents, and athletes to unlock the secrets to a truly fulfilling life—one that resonates from the heart. In Heart First, we challenge the conventional norms and embark on a voyage together, where heart-driven leadership becomes the compass for a life well lived.
Are you ready to redefine where you lead from? Let's dive into meaningful conversations, insights, and practical tips that will empower you to embrace a new paradigm of leadership.
Heart First Leadership
Building Champions Through Heart First Leadership
Heidi and I invite you to discover the transformative potential of leading with heart, not just in sports but in all areas of life. Together, we unravel over ten years of research connecting emotional well-being and peak performance, proving that champions are not just born—they're shaped through heart-first leadership. This isn't about scores and victories; it's about cultivating self-worth and embracing challenges with open arms.
Dive deep into the cultural shift that's put an external focus at the forefront, often at the expense of our inner voice and psychological safety. We lay bare the human essentials for sustaining a healthy psyche and delve into how leaders can foster environments where vulnerability isn't a weakness but a stepping stone to growth. Amidst the rapid tech advances, it's more important than ever to lead from the heart, and Heidi's insights shine a light on the unwavering integrity required to do so.
Wrap up the journey with us as we share the real-world application of these principles. From coaching young athletes to nurturing resilience in children, we affirm the power of positive reinforcement and the significance of acknowledging incremental growth. It's about more than just the game; it's about setting the foundation for a lifetime of intrinsic motivation and success, guided by the compassionate touch of heart-first leadership.
Learn more about our Building Champions Course
>>> Get our FREE Heary First Guide to Helping Teens Thrive Beyond Performance
What's inside the guide?
- How to better help your student stay engaged, motivated, and resilient by focusing on learning, improving, and expanding their capacity.
- How to avoid common behaviors and messages that cause students to "duck their heads" or adopt avoidant strategies.
- Get practical exercises and conversation starters that you can use with your teens or students at school, sports and home.
Website: www.ihpcoaching.com
Follow Us on IG: @mentalstrengthcoach
Welcome back to the show. Heidi's going to join me again today. Thank you, Heidi, for joining me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excited to be here.
Speaker 1:It's almost every single episode now, and I appreciate you. So today we're going to unpack this idea that we are talking about here when it comes to heart first, but how we can build champions through heart first leadership. So I'm going to do a little bit of an introduction here and then, like always, heidi, I'm going to ask you little bit of an introduction here and then, like always, heidi, I'm going to ask you to. You know, cut me off or pause me anytime that you have something you want to share, but I want to just do a little bit of an introduction into why this is we have found this to be so incredibly important. First of all, this information comes from a you know little over a decade worth of study and reflection and practice really I should say relentless study and pursuit of understanding how to develop environments where ones are mentally and emotionally well as well as able to perform at a high level, and how to integrate those two. And what we have found is those two things are 100% linked Mental, emotional well-being and performance are 100% linked. And so when we talk about heart first, this is something I want to unpack a little bit.
Speaker 1:We did a book series that was called the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership a while back here on this podcast it was, I don't know, 40 episodes ago or something like that and they talk about being above the line or below the line. And this is something I want to relate to heart first leadership. And so if we illustrate what is heart first leadership, if we illustrate what is heart first leadership, a heart first leader is somebody who knows first of all their own self-worth, regardless of an outcome. So this individual does not put their sense of worth or identity in outcomes, in achievements, in material possessions and even in their own flesh right. And even in their own flesh right, like they know that there is a sense of worth and enough, regardless of how they perform, they take full responsibility for their performance. But also knowing their self-worth is not wrapped up in those external things. They're always looking to learn, to grow from whatever is showing up in front of them. So they face adversity with this sense of openness and curiosity and willingness and acceptance. So they never look at as losing as failure, for example. It's losing in failure would be just stepping stones towards who it is that they want to become and that they're able to truly learn from everything that's in front of them, right, they are able to celebrate others, teammates and even opponents. If you're above the line, they're able to actually say thank you to the opponent who asks them to show up as a better version of themselves. Right, that truly tests themselves, right, it's a very process oriented rather than results driven. So if you're below a line, it's the opposite of that, right.
Speaker 1:If you're not coming from heart first leadership, then that means that your sense of worth, worthiness or enough, is conditional. It's conditional in external things, it's conditional in the role that you're playing. It's conditional whether or not you win or you lose, and this individual is going to be more apt to blame others or the world for failures. They're going to. They're going to potentially have to build almost even a hatred and a desire, or this, this need to win, uh, rather than a willingness to do what it takes to compete, like at a very high level, this willingness to, to compete rather than just win, like there's a difference between competition and winning, right, and? And so I'm going to have to keep myself from going down too many different rabbit holes here, but I want to just try to make sure that I'm illustrating and I want you to help me like.
Speaker 1:Tell me if that makes sense to you. What does that make you think of before I keep going that? What is a heart first leader? Somebody who's coming from enough, who desires growth and change, who wants to impact and serve others. Change who wants to impact and serve others. And this can be cultivated right Through how we relate to ourselves, to each other, to our children, to our athletes, to our employees. What does that ring for you, heidi?
Speaker 2:It makes me think of the way that this person, who we're talking about, a heart first leader, the way a heart first leader sees failure, and how they see everything as an opportunity for growth. And it makes me think also of when we were doing the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. One of the one of the commitments was to not gossip and to not talk poorly about other people, and that could include your, your competitors or other teams, or you know the other side of whatever you're doing. And so when I think of a heart first leader, I think of someone who's really integrative with their word and they're really showing up as the highest version of themselves, the most honest and sincere version of themselves, in all situations. So they really are not just thanking their opponent because they're trying to be polite.
Speaker 1:They're thanking their opponent because they sincerely see the value and the growth, uh, through having someone to compete against yeah, and so everything's very heartfelt and sincere yeah, I truly like thank you for being someone who's asking me to raise my level right, to pull myself even further up, right to have to operate even further from a pure sense of worthiness, enough and love. And so it's easy to say, but we'll go into it a little bit deeper.
Speaker 2:I want to add one more thing. Yeah, please.
Speaker 1:Sorry.
Speaker 2:Also, I think the reason why I thought about the gossip piece when it came to the 15 commitments that we studied and talked about here is that gossip is often something that we're doing behind other people's back. It's the way that we're showing up when somebody's not looking. And when I think of a heart first leader, I think of someone who shows up the same way. Whether they're being watched or not, whether someone can hear their comments or not, they're going to be saying the same thing, and to me, I think that's really important because it just shows tremendous integrity throughout everything that that person is doing. And I think that's what we all strive to be more heart first, in that sense that we're showing up the same way everywhere in our life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I think of how you do. Anything is how you do everything. Yeah, Awesome.
Speaker 1:So to allow for this conversation to unfold, naturally I do want to say first of all, why is this important? Okay, Well, numbers do not lie. Numbers do not lie and if you look at the mental and emotional wellbeing crisis is what I would call it in our culture the numbers don't lie and I'm just going to read off a couple here just to kind of illustrate my point and say that if these obviously continue to increase, that means that something that we're doing is not working. Some approach, an orientation that we have to the world and how we're doing things, not saying that all things aren't working. There's some things that are tried and true, but there's something here that is in need of a shift, of a drastic reorientation. Right, we have to take a look at something and say, hey, there's something here not working.
Speaker 1:Anxiety increasing and depression numbers increasing by 10% amongst diagnosed in the last eight years. So this is a little bit of an older study, but think of it in terms of how many people actually go get diagnosed. Right, so that's a 10% increase. So it's, it's much higher than that.
Speaker 2:Depression and anxiety is what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh. 2021 study, over 73% out of 33,000 college students reported feeling moderate to severe psychological stress. And you might say, okay, well, they're in college, they should. But severe psychological stress is severe, right, that word is nothing to play around with. And then these numbers continue to be scarier. 40% of students said they were non-functional for at least one week To be non-functional. That is something we need to bring our awareness to.
Speaker 1:Here's one that is the scariest, in my opinion 88% of students believe that there was a mental health crisis on college campuses across the United States, and I have even some of my own studies where we did a poll within a collegiate locker room. Obviously, I'm not going to say where, but eight out of 10 raised their hand willingly and said that they needed some form of mental and emotional support Right now. Obviously, it was anonymous and we're keeping it anonymous, but the point is these numbers are not getting better. They're not turning around, right, and we can point to all kinds of different things, but at the fundamental belief, to all kinds of different things, but at the fundamental belief, my fundamental belief. What is driving this is an integrated approach, but one of the main things is that we have a culture that is continuously being externally conditioned, meaning that we are externally focused. Another way of putting that is that we put our sense of worth in things that are outside of us or conditional. A lot of the things that create this is the extra sense of information that we're getting. Another really interesting study here that I'm going to pull up real quick In 1993, the average 18-year-old was exposed to 18,000 acts of violence in movies, tvs, news, etc. In 2009, the average 18-year-old who graduated high school was exposed to 200,000 acts of violence. Okay, so that was 15 years ago. I don't even want to know how many images or pictures or impressions on our children's minds are being absorbed by them that are acts of violence, right? So that's just an illustration. Is it the violence? Is the problem?
Speaker 1:The reality is this is that technology overstimulates the nervous system and it impacts our ability to be aware of how we're feeling, or interception. Interception is this ability to recognize and acknowledge what's happening internally emotionally, sensations and be able to make sense of what's happening internally. So this tells us that because our attention or our awareness or our focus is externally focused, so much that we are losing the ability to know how it is that we're doing internally right. So it's hard to make sense of emotions. Does that make sense? And so it's natural then that we end up creating this over externally focused culture that's over focused on outcome, on results, on our bodies, on our roles, and putting our sense of worth and identity in all those things in competition. And competition in itself is not the problem. I love competition, I believe in competition, but when we're trying to compete to win, to try to be good enough, that is the problem.
Speaker 1:And what ends up happening is that, because of this external focus culture, we continue to seek and in a way that gives us this low sense of control. It gives you a low sense of control because your sense of worth is in all these things outside of you that are conditional, what other people think right and whether or not it turned out the way that you wanted it to or that expected it to, or whatever that may be, which, if you have a low sense of control which we know is a basic human need we're not going to go into basic human needs here it gives you a decreased sense of self, which, or who you are. Who am I? What's my place in the world, where do I fit, what's my role within the hierarchy of my community or family or team, right? When this happens, when we have a decreased sense of self, which is another basic human need, so these human needs are playing off of each other it creates this negative inner voice, right? So negativity creeps in.
Speaker 1:And then what we're having is this dilemma where, because again we're so externally focused and we're so do do do all the time that our batteries of our system are so depleted, I now no longer have the ability to inhibit those negative thoughts. So then I over-attach and I over-identify to the natural, normal internal dialogue. That's negative, plus the increased negativity because of my low sense of control, low sense of self. If my energy is depleted, I legitimately do not have the resources to inhibit those negative thoughts and to be able to shift them towards something that's more serving or supportive. Right In that process of, in that cycle of external focus, low sense of control, decreased sense of self, negative inner voice, a depleted system, a depleted energy battery system, right is a strengthened fear-based ego, so further dropping below the line which then turns out to be this culture of anxiety and eventually depression, because depression is a lot of times thought of as as a late stage of anxiety.
Speaker 1:So the numbers don't lie. So we're in need. We're in need of a shift. We're in need of a shift where we're able to understand how to restore right and reorient ourselves to the world, and this is what we call art first. So all of this information there's more to it than this. I'm just trying to scratch the surface here in a way that allows for you and I to have this conversation. But this is why we're in such a dire need to be more process oriented and to learn how to lead from a different place, above the line rather than below the line, and to learn how to come from our heart. And so how do we create these environments?
Speaker 1:So another study done that we've talked about a couple of different times is Google did a study that that they're trying to unpack and uncover what made the highest performing teams. The number one factor that came back was psychological safety. Psychological safety meaning that the their brain, their system, their nervous system felt safe to make mistakes, to, to grow, to be transparent, vulnerable, to take risks. So if our sense of worth and identity is wrapped up in all these things that are conditional and external, like legitimately does not create psychological safety. Psychological safety comes from within and that has to be modeled and created within our environments. Our environment meaning ourselves, our families, our teams and communities. So, therefore, these individuals that we are surrounded around and influencing and working with, if they feel psychologically safe, then they're going to be able to come from this heart first leadership. Otherwise, right, they are operating out of fear. So, yeah, that's anything within that, heidi, that that that sparks or you want to add, or does it make sense to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that it's pretty obvious to it should be to those listening without even hearing those statistics that things are changing, that technology and the access to an abundance of information has changed the way that we process the world around us, and I think that we're just at the beginning of seeing the effects of how quickly things have advanced, while our biology has not advanced as quickly, it's not caught up with it, and so it's really important. You know, what we're talking about here is really important now more than ever, and I think that even without those numbers you said, the numbers don't lie. Even without the numbers, we all see what's going on. We can all see that there's a lot of young people who are not okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that you know you can blame whatever, but COVID was a definitely a catalyst to recognize what happens when another level of control, or the illusion of control, is stripped away, that all of a sudden now I don't even get to go play my sport, go to school, I'm isolated, right, and all these other things begin to be stripped away where, oh, I'm not okay. And so we're going to talk about some of these, and this conversation of psychological safety is going to be a series of podcasts that we're going to continue to explore from a lot of different angles. If that's true that psychological safety is the number one component for mental and emotional wellbeing and performance and performing teams, then like wow, let's make that really a focus point of what we're talking about. But how do we start this conversation right here? Then, like, wow, let's make that really a focus point of what we're talking about. But how do we start this conversation right here, right now, when it comes to building champions, there's three key principles that we flushed out that we felt like were not only relatable but applicable right, right out of the gate. This is the lowest hanging fruit that we can work with without there being a deeper conversation, right? This is like, hey, let's go scratch the surface. What kind of a shift can we make right here, right now, that I think everybody and anybody can continue can begin to explore, right?
Speaker 1:So the first one, the three of them are, and then we'll go by them one by one. The first one is modeling, and we'll want to identify exactly what that means and making sure that we understand that. But again, this is we could do and maybe we will in the future. We could do multiple episodes just on modeling itself and all the different components with that. We probably will with the psychological safety piece. The second one is reward, so to know how you are rewarding or what you are rewarding in particular. And the third one is what we call highlighting growth, and we'll talk about some neuroscience with that. But again, we're not going to unpack all of it within each of these. We're just here to introduce the idea. So hopefully you're prompted to explore more.
Speaker 1:So, the first one being modeling we know that this is how humans learn, right? Humans learn through modeling. Right. That they learn through imagery, that you've heard the terminology that a picture is worth a thousand words. Right, you know, you think about how children learn. They learn by watching right. This is why one of our phrases that we like to use is don't tell them, show them. So you can say all you want verbally, but if your actions are not backing that up, it's going to fall short, and we actually want to make sure that there is an alignment between what we are speaking and what we are modeling. Otherwise it creates a level of confusion.
Speaker 1:So modeling in itself, you might think of it in terms of, you know, nutrition and hydration and exercise and those things, and yes, those are important. But more than that, what's important is how we handle adversity or rugged environments or rugged situations, right? So, thinking in terms of it being broken down, what we like to break it down to is in three different categories. So preparation, right, and then during adversity or struggle, and then post-reflection. So those are our three categories, right? So how is it that you are modeling when you're preparing for a big moment? Let's say you're preparing for something within business life, or even preparation to have an emotionally charged conversation with a loved one, with a kid or a spouse, like preparing for that can be modeled, and this is all about building what we call a repertoire of tools and skills and being able to adjust within those.
Speaker 1:The second one. And then, heidi, I want you to just to give me some feedback on these and give me some context to help where your mind goes. The second one is to overcome struggle. So dips are a part of life, of any sort of growth curve. It's how we handle the dips and how we model ourselves handling them. So, basically, there's three different ways that we can handle any struggle in any moment. And there is if we're able to show that we have a perceived ability to cope, which means that our system knows that we can cope with stress. So those three ways that we can cope with stress are basically showing ourselves compassion, or kind of sitting with the emotions. To be able to flip the script is what we call it. Or to be able to, you know, shift a negative thought into a positive one, and or to take our eyes off of the struggle for a moment, take it towards something greater, whether that be you know the future, god, others, teammates, and then bring it back when we're able to, but using these and there's a whole lot of different strategies underneath those three but using those three in and to be flexible within how we handle stress, which means that maybe I'm in a moment of adversity or moment of stress and these are happening all the time in our home and business and life and relationship, everywhere constantly happening. I'm trying one of my tools or strategies it's not working my ability to even shift to a different strategy and being able to talk through.
Speaker 1:Then. Here's the piece that I think, when it comes to modeling, that is the absolute most important. So if you took one thing away from modeling is if I'm having a bad day and I'm in the car with the kids driving them to school, or whatever that may be, they know. First of all, they know what your state is. They know that you're not okay. If you're not okay, all right. So if you're anxious, depressed, frustrated, irritable, whatever it is, they know, they absolutely know.
Speaker 1:So if you try to buffer that by saying no, no, I'm good, don't worry about it, like and you have this mentality like I'll get through it, I'll grind through it, I don't want them to think that I'm not okay because that's going to make them worry.
Speaker 1:Like, no, the dissonance between how you're actually feeling internally and what you're projecting externally, that's going to make them feel unsafe more than you having the ability to recognize, to notice and to verbalize what you're experiencing internally, and then navigating through that by actually saying, well, I'm not doing great right now, but this is how I'm working through that. I know I'm allowing myself to sit with it, I'm connecting to my breath, I'm trying to focus on something positive, I'm doing one of these strategies and and or a like of the kind. And so then now our environment is witnessing, observing us navigate through a dip or adversity, right, and they're learning how to do that. Anything within that, before I go on, heidi, within those first couple or that piece there that makes you think of it. Yeah, I just think it's powerful that go on, heidi, within those first couple, or that piece there that makes you think of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think it's powerful that you know kids at a young, young age we learn to be able to read our caregivers, because our caregivers are the only way that we know to get our needs met, because in the beginning we have to have all of our needs met by our caretakers.
Speaker 2:So it's really important skill as human beings to be able to read the energy of the caretaker, to to determine whether we're safe or unsafe, whether our needs are going to be met or not, and so to think that we can hide things from our kids and that they don't know what's going on is it's just not the way that things work.
Speaker 2:And so to be able to model actually being honest with them with what's going on doesn't mean you tell them all the details of whatever situation you're navigating, but just that right now I'm having a tough time and these are the strategies that I'm trying and you know I'm confident I'm going to be able to get through this. Thanks for your, you know, just listening or support or whatever it is. Just be honest with them, because then you're showing them how they can deal with situations rather than just suppressing or repressing what's whatever is going on inside when we don't show our cards when we don't show that we're human and what's actually going on. We're just teaching them that it's not okay to have those types of feelings and experiences.
Speaker 1:Thank you for saying that, because that's exactly where my mind was like hanging on as you were talking was, if we try, if there's a dissonance between what we're actually experiencing internally and our ability to verbalize that with a level of objectivity or non-judgment, right, then what we are teaching our children is not okay to feel. So when they have a moment of adversity, they repress it, right, and so they smash it down and they think they're bad for having those feelings, right, and then. So then they create a belief. And then now here we go, we're down the rabbit hole of creating an ego that's based out of fear, right, because, oh, I'm having my dad. No, he's Superman, he doesn't have these feelings. Well, no, he has moments too, and so I want to give I'm not going to give all the detail, but I'm going to give an example of how this played out in our own home.
Speaker 1:As we're learning this content. It plays out in our lives, and it played out in a way where we received a notice, and the notice was one right before Christmas. You know, christmas could be a time of year where you spend a few extra dollars, right, and we had just booked a trip for the family and these things and we got a notice that we owed some money back to the IRS and we're kind of surprised by it. It came unexpectedly right. So in that moment it was kind of like, oh oh, no right, this moment of a little bit of worry, a little bit of fear happening right and this gave us an incredible fertile opportunity to be able for you and I to kind of sit with that, have a four or five minute, 10 minute conversation, talk through it. The kids sensed it. They said is everything okay? You know, we kind of talked through it in front of them for a few minutes and then we stepped off to the side and we had a little bit of a deeper like conversation around how we would handle certain things, if, if it played out in different scenarios a, b or C scenarios and came back and discussed with the kids like how we traversed that, what our process was of navigating through that, that everything absolutely will be okay, that we'll figure it out. This is how we're going to figure it out and within I would say, what 15 or 20 minutes we're back around the dinner table playing a family game and that could have easily have destroyed that night. It could have been oh, don't worry about it, things are fine. They could tell it's not fine. And I'm just going to tell you, in their side, their little heads, they're going to create all kinds of story that's probably worse than it actually is, because they're going to be like that dissonance is going to create some form of resistance.
Speaker 1:So, being able to navigate, even as a couple, through conversations and what this is about is resiliency Can you show the rupture Cause? Life is about rupture and repair. That's what reason, that's the. That's basically the definition of resiliency for there to be a rupture and then need to figure out how to repair back stronger than before. And can you model that? That not just do it, but actually verbalize it in a way that makes sense to the other, to the environment, right? So, yeah, anything else with that modeling, heidi?
Speaker 2:yeah I think it's just being able to verbalize it and show, show our kids the raw ingredients that go into creating a result, because it's one thing to just you know, for example, you're baking some bread. Okay, well, mom just does it, and then, and then the bread's done. That's not giving them any idea of what the steps are that go into the process and how. Sometimes you need to try doing things differently or you need to approach something differently. Okay, that didn't work. Maybe we need to change the temperature. Okay, that didn't work. Maybe we need to change the amount of this ingredient. It's the same way when we're talking about strategies for for life and for being able to deal with adversity and cope with difficult circumstances. We want to prepare our kids well for difficult and challenging circumstances, because inevitably they will come, and we want them to be equipped with the right tools and strategies to be able to navigate those things and to not have every situation turn into a crisis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I love that. So what we're talking about is navigating dips and when you know that dips are going to happen in any growth curve, whether it be your kid's performance in athletics or school or whatever, there's going to be moments where there's going to be a dip. It's absolutely expected, natural, it's going to happen. You can't avoid it. So, expecting the dips, knowing how you're going to handle the dips and then modeling how you handle those dips, those ruptures and repairs so important the other piece that I do want to reflect on for just a moment is modeling, doing two different things. We call it spectrum training. Spectrum training is the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to the nervous system. A safe, feeling nervous system knows it can engage and disengage in any moment. It knows it can do something hard and it knows that it can disengage and restore. And so spending time and being able to model, whether that be through physical activity of doing hard things, not just exercising to be in shape, but actually doing something hard, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually as well as doing something that is considered to be maybe hard for others, which is like time in silence or stillness, or what we call alpha time. Alpha time is time where you're not doing anything that's task oriented or problem solving, you're letting your mind wander. So this spectrum training is also really important to model because and I see it with athletes that I work with they just legitimately cannot turn off, they cannot unplug right, they cannot allow for their bodies to restore or recoup and therefore their energy is completely depleted. They get in their head, they overthink, they're self-critical, they judge themselves and if it was, if it was modeled to them to be able to take this time to completely restore, they would do that. They would do if it was, if it was being modeled, they would do it and it would change brainwave activity, it would allow for the brain to connect dots and restore, the nervous system would store and reset and they'd be able to have the energy of the battery power to inhibit negative thoughts. So that's another facet within modeling is understanding the importance of training your nervous system to be able to understand how to engage, do hard things, to disengage, to recover. And again, this is a conversation that's going to be a whole podcast. That in itself in the future will be a whole podcast.
Speaker 1:But let's let's move on to post-reflection. So post-stress reflection is where you're able to actually access the ability to learn from whatever it is you just faced, and you know, we believe that there's a learning opportunity in everything that we encounter, and it's our job and our responsibility. This is above the line. It's your responsibility to try to learn the lesson or receive the gift so that you know even something in the terms of sports or competition like failing in the sense of losing, like no. What can we learn from that experience?
Speaker 1:Even just recently, my 11-year-old son playing soccer. He loves the team, he loves the game, sort of, and he's not overly serious about it. But his role that he played in the last game was not what he desired, and what was interesting is that the intention going into it his pre-competition intention or preparation was to be a good teammate. Well, during it he didn't do well handling his role mentally and emotionally. I could see it from across the field, and post-reflection was that this gave him the opportunity to say, well, I didn't love my role, I played it, but I could have done better at how I played it and how I stayed positive in these things.
Speaker 1:So what is it that that role that he played in that moment and that loss and how that played out like how does it lead to growth, how does it lead to where I can learn a lesson, receive the gift which is the growth, and be able to recognize that. So post-reflection is so incredibly important, because then you take that information with you into the next moment and being able to model that for people as well, like, hey, what'd you learn? And so again, you're asking those types of questions Did you have fun, what'd you learn? Rather than how'd you do and did you win Right, which, again, I'm not going to go into the meaning of winning and losing, but but yeah, anything within that, heidi, before we move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's important just to model, model receiving the lesson or the gift, because a lot of times our kids think that everything just is working out for us and sometimes it's that we have had to learn that lesson over and over so that we do have a strategy that works today. And so just being able to reflect even some of those past experiences and that that post evaluation, you know, so that they can understand that we too have to go through a process constantly of trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't, learning from those quote unquote failures, and actually that's how we make progress. It's not anyone had just inherently has it figured out. We've all have to go through a learning process. So it's about being able to model deriving that lesson and gift from what happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that that piece there is part of the orientation shift from putting our worth and identity and things that are outside of our control, or outcomes that are conditional, and shifting it towards an unconditional aspect of ourselves that's able to receive the gift or the blessing from the adversity that we faced right, which goes in line where we're going next. So the second key was to reward appropriately, so to know what you're rewarding. Was to reward appropriately, so to know what you rewarded. So an interesting little study done with a group of children where there was group A that was rewarded. They did a challenge, they were given a challenge, two different groups. Group A was rewarded for their talent You're so smart, wow, you're so talented they were praised for that.
Speaker 1:Group B was rewarded or encouraged for their effort and resiliency and their stick-to-it-edness right. They gave these two groups another challenge. Group A that was rewarded and praised for their talent, their performance dropped or declined. And group B that was encouraged and rewarded for their effort and their resilience, their performance increased, right, and it's so easy. It's so easy to say, oh, wow, you're so good, my son's a really good artist, right, and my daughter's a good athlete and everything's like happening. They're doing it so easily. Oh, wow, you're so talented, or wow, you're so creative, or wow, you're so this and that's okay. That's part of the extrinsic motivation that we have, and so really rewarding is about coupling together extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1:Something for us to be able to understand as we move into the third key as well is that children do not have access to their intrinsic motivation. It's going to come from you being able to point it out. So when you reward their effort and they feel good about their effort, guess what then now they're relying on in the future is that effort, determination, resiliency. This is what leads towards success, not my talent or my looks or my creativity, things that are more. You know, even the creativity was a little different, but my talent and those things so important to know that when you re what you reward, what you focus on increases. So if you want someone to be more resilient, you have to focus on their resilience. You have to focus on that piece of reward them for that by pointing out how that felt internally when they're doing the thing. So wow, good job, you won, or that's really cool what you did, but you must've worked really hard on that. How did that feel Right? Does that make sense? So anything to add with reward Heidi.
Speaker 2:I think, just getting helping them find those details by being really curious about their experience. So, yeah, you're, you know what. I can see that you're getting better at running and it seems like you're really putting the effort in to stick with it. And so what does that feel like when you're running? What do you like about it?
Speaker 2:Oh, I like how the wind feels when I'm running, how I can feel the wind in my hair, and I like how I feel afterwards I have a lot of energy afterwards and I like how it feels when I think I can't go any further and I push just a little bit harder and I find that gas in my tank, right, like. So you're able to help them to find the language within themselves by just asking a lot of questions Well, that gas in your tank, like, what does that feel like when you get that like? Is it like a surge of energy that goes through your whole body? Or tell me more about that. And so you're getting them to have a connection to what's happening inside and that's that intrinsic motivation. And what's really cool about that process is you're teaching them a skill that they can use as they go forward in life to find the things about the process that they enjoy, instead of just focusing on the end result or the outcome.
Speaker 1:So thank you for pointing that out. So again, we bring help me bring all this back to all of these pieces help to give an orientation shift towards the process, towards what's unconditional and rather than the outcome or what is outside their control or conditional. It's even in a sporting event like winning, there's so many factors that go into that right that it's really truly out of their control, but they can control as the process. And so making sure that we also understand motivation, that external motivation or extrinsic motivation is fleeting, it comes and it goes versus intrinsic motivation, is something that sticks with us much longer and that we can play into. The next thing that we do potentially want to create or experience in life that we remember how it felt to give X amount of effort, to work hard and we got X result versus. I remember how it felt when I didn't really go all in, I didn't put my best foot forward, and that's clearly the outcome that I had. So what is my no matter what goal is what we call when we identify specific goal orientation stuff that we do is that we want to identify the no matter what goal is an intrinsic way of feeling and thinking and behaving within ourselves that we are in control of. I want to be X kind of teammate. I want to give my all, I want to leave it all the table right, All these things in the sense of my resiliency, my hard work and my effort and being able then for us to notice that again and verbalize.
Speaker 1:So the final piece within that we have you know again, just trying to keep this conversation, you know, somewhat on the surface, but relatable and applicable is what we call highlighting growth. Highlighting growth comes from a neuroscience terminology called intentional bias and this is basically the understanding that we are creating what's considered to be supportive, reinforcing feedback loops that is going to create incremental growth in adequacy rather than highlighting or getting someone to operate out of trying to overcome inadequacy. So what happens with this is within this loop of the supportive feedback loop. But again, supportive just means that it builds upon itself, that you're building a foundation which you can build growth upon right. And so when you notice and you verbalize growth to the individual, this is highlighting growth. You notice what you've heard me say a few times already. You notice it, you're aware of it, no matter how micro it may be and I'm gonna give you a story here in a moment and you verbalize that growth.
Speaker 1:It creates an inner voice and an inner belief, so legitimately. When we do this, we can help them form their inner dialogue, which they do not have natural access to form on their own. Not only do they have a hard time accessing intrinsic motivation, they also have a hard time developing their own inner voice, but we as caregivers, as coaches, as part of the environment, can help to form that inner voice. This inner voice gets created.
Speaker 1:It feels good to be noticed and verbalized for how I am growing and the effort that I am giving, which creates a habit and or pattern. Right. That helps us to form a sense of adequacy. Because now I'm seeking this. I'm seeking growth because I enjoy what it feels like to be acknowledged for my growth. It actually releases, you know, different neurotransmitters that increase the probability, or your attentional mechanisms is what neuroscience would say means that you begin to look for how else am I growing and what other ways can I engage or approach adversity or moments or opportunities for further growth right, Rather than either trying to overcome a sense of not enough. That's what creates a heart. First leader is these supportive feedback loops where they are being acknowledged for their growth, no matter how micro it may be.
Speaker 1:So what we're doing is we are exploring future potentials rather than the past, and I want to verbalize this a little bit more before we unpack this deeper is that we tend to see people how they were yesterday and we tend to treat people how they were yesterday, and we tend to treat them how they operated yesterday, rather than seeing the best in them and actually intentionally creating an expectation or an assumption that they're going to continue to grow into a better version of themselves. To not see them as they are, but see them as they could be, that they're going to continue to grow into a better version of themselves. To not see them as they are, but see them as they could be. You treat man as they is. This is an old saying. I can't remember who said it, but a philosopher said you treat man as he is, he gets worse. You treat him as what he could be. He grows into what he's meant to be right, Something of the sorts.
Speaker 1:I think I missed a couple of words in there. But you get the idea we're exploring future potentials by not only highlighting how we're seeing them grow, but actually potentially even helping ourselves to picture or image them or see them in a way that we know who they could become right. And this all primes what we then naturally see. We naturally see what we're looking for, and if we're looking for what they're not doing well and how they aren't performing and how they aren't this and how they aren't, that we're going to see it, we're going to probably get to unconsciously bring attention to it, we're going to judge them for it, we're going to judge ourselves for it and it's going to create again that ego based out of fear. So, before I go any deeper on that, I had anything that pops up within that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it comes down to that principle of what we focus on, we find. If we continue to focus on shortcomings, faults that goes for any human being, any relationship, including yourself then you're going to find more of that. And when you highlight the good, when you highlight the growth, you continue to seek out more opportunities. An example recently you know we're getting to be more and more minimalist in our home and every time I go through a round of kind of cleaning things up and decluttering my the reward is so great that then I seek more of that experience because I'm noticing how that feels to have more spaciousness than I want to create more spaciousness. So it works that way with anything. You can experiment with this with yourself, but then also making sure that you're highlighting growth for those around you your kids, your athletes, if you're a coach, your employees, if you're an employer, co-workers anyone.
Speaker 1:So Stephanie Fay, our neuroscience specialist, who obviously a lot of this content. Thank you, stephanie, for all the work that you've done with us that a lot of this content comes from. She talks about it being micro or incremental. So I want to highlight that for a minute. I want to give an example. So growth mindset, which is all of this, is a part of growth mindset. The original term for growth mindset was incremental theory, right, and which means that growth happens in these tiny little micro adjustments or incremental shifts, and so our ability to notice those and to verbalize those is the point right.
Speaker 1:So you might notice how an individual responds to stress just a little bit different than they did yesterday, especially for something like, you know, my daughter's 10 years old. Once in a while she will overreact to something that maybe has happened or that we have said no to. You know, I can continuously tell her well, you know, don't react that way and you know, and that's not how you do things. Or I can model how to respond to adversity and I can then highlight to her know, and that's not how you do things. Or I can model how to respond to adversity and I can then highlight to her like, wow, look at how you. You had a shorter what we call refractory period, or the period of time that you spent in your frustration. You came back online sooner or maybe it was less intense in some way. How you? I noticed that you kind of connected to your breath there a little bit and and you took your eyes off yourself and you focused on your brother or you focused on your mother and, hey, that that was really good, that was better. It wasn't perfect, but it was better. You see how you did that, how you connected to your breath, and that helped you right. So those little micro adjustments and micro improvements, how an individual responds to adversity in a new and different way, that is showing or highlighting growth.
Speaker 1:Another one that it was really incredible working with a specific athlete where there was clearly some frustration from different parts of the environment of how this individual was playing. How this individual was playing, and I could see very clearly that their body language was playing into their performance, which means the moment they didn't execute a certain technique or skill, that their body language then would follow suit, which means their shoulders dropped forward, their head dropped and so on and so forth. And so you know, within the sport. I didn't focus on the skill development, I focused on the mental and emotional development in the sport. I didn't focus on the skill development, I focused on the mental and emotional development. And we did that through through her body language.
Speaker 1:And so I said, hey, then you know, let's handle, let's take control of our mental and emotional wellbeing when things aren't going our way or we're not performing the level of our expectations or others expectations, if something isn't happening the way we want it to happen. We got to experience that dip in a new and different way. Let's maintain a level of of positive body posture, no matter what's happening internally, no matter what the narrative is internally. That's going to give us the ability to to control our physiology, control our breath, control our posture, which then we're going to be able to control what's happening internally or what you're focusing on right. This is what we call the hero's triad, but I'm not going to go down that aspect right now. We're able to truly change what your physiology is, change your spoken word or what you're speaking to yourself or to others, and then therefore change what you're focusing on, how you're focusing on it.
Speaker 1:So I was teaching her how to use that to navigate through the dip right and I had had a conversation with somebody in her environment and they were having a hard time observing or noticing how this individual was growing. I said I've seen incredible growth. And they asked for an example and I said well, the last game that we played, in the first game that we played today, did you notice how there was three or four plays in a row where physically things weren't working out? She wasn't executing this or that or the other, but yet her body language maintained, she didn't slump her shoulder, she didn't, you know, look down at the floor. She kept her shoulders back and her head up and was able to, you know, come back in the game. Second game or even the third game was playing much better because she managed her body language. So something as small as that.
Speaker 1:When I verbalized that, I noticed it, I verbalized it to the environment, they're like oh well, I did notice, I did see that right, like, oh, that's a good thing. So that sometimes it's not incredibly obvious. You have to get good at noticing and verbalizing your own growth, your own change in how you respond to adversity, your own change of internal dialogue and or body language. So then now you're able to see that more, because anything you're getting better at seeing within yourself, no matter what that is, whether it's compassion or confidence or anywhere in between the more you're going to be able to verbalize that or others. So that was a really powerful example where I came back and I was able to notice and verbalize that to the athlete and their growth from that kind of example forward and being supported by the environment, the whole environment, was an accelerated growth because that gave them this experience where they got acknowledged for their body language, which then they focused on that mental, emotional part even more, which is the part they can't control, more than whether or not you know how they executed the exact play, which there is some control within that, but there is more variables.
Speaker 1:And so it led towards more growth, right, and it led towards a stronger mindset. It led towards a more resilient system and it led towards them being coming someone who's competing above the line or from a heart first leadership right, where they know that they are in control. It gives them they truly knowing what you can control and focusing relentlessly on that. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, gives an individual a greater sense of psychological safety because now they know, oh, I can control how I respond, I can control what I make things mean, I can control this, me, my mindset, right, which will then, in turn, if I focus on the process which I can't control, not the outcome, then that's going to give me a greater sense of self. Within that Now I'm recharging my system to be able to inhibit those negative thoughts and you see how the conversation comes full circle. So, anyway, I think that's a beautiful illustration on how that can play out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just to just to highlight and recap those three keys. We talked about modeling. We talked about rewarding so rewarding intentionally rewarding effort over just end results. And then highlighting growth so highlighting growth growth, no matter how micro, no matter how small. And I think that those three powerful keys are the combination that helps to unlock a whole different experience. When we practice those on ourselves and when we practice them within our environment with our kids, with our partners and other people that we interact with on a daily basis, it's going to be a huge, huge game changer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. So we're going to put in the show notes here in this show that there is a mini course available where this content is laid out and something that you can revisit. It's called building champions through heart first leadership, and so I highly encourage whether you have a teenager who's an athlete or you're just a parent who wants to know how to nurture a growth mindset in your environment like this content is invaluable. So I just thank you for your time and attention and and any last parting thoughts, heidi oh, this is a great conversation.
Speaker 2:Appreciate everyone being here and, yeah, definitely go check out the building champions course. There's a lot of great. If you like this conversation, you can go deeper into the content with with that mini course.
