From Fear to Flourishing: Beck Sydow on the Future of Leadership
3 Mar 2026 · 59 min
In this episode of the Flourishing Edge podcast, host Ashish Kothari interviews Beck Sydow, a former CEO, operator, and mental‑health trained coach, to explore how leaders can move organizations from a state of fear to one of flourishing. They begin by defining flourishing as the integration of high performance and employee health, outlining five essential elements: meaningful work, continuous learning, an abundance mindset, deep relational trust, and a stress‑free environment. The conversation pivots to the concept of human dignity as a birthright that underpins all healthy leadership. Beck introduces a people‑hearted versus business‑minded quadrant model, showing how over‑indexing on either side creates fear‑driven, dysregulated zones (the “L‑shaped” nervous‑system zones). They discuss how personal core wounds, perfectionism, and the need for external validation fuel fear, which then masquerades as performance. By learning to hold the tension between opposing demands, leaders can shift into a “possibility” zone, using inquiry and cognitive dissonance to regulate their nervous system. Practical tools are offered: a self‑check question (“Where am I?”) to break the amygdala’s grip, making active, small choices throughout the day to rebuild agency, and applying self‑compassion practices (Kristin Neff’s model) when delivering hard feedback. The episode also cites research (McKinsey, Oxford, Alex Edmonds) and concepts like Kim Cameron’s “positive deviant” to make a business case for flourishing, noting that organizations that prioritize health and performance achieve higher shareholder returns. Throughout, Beck and Ashish stress the importance of love, authenticity, and shared human dignity in leadership, concluding with three actionable steps for stretched leaders: return to self, ask probing questions to move out of fear, and commit to small, active choices that build agency.
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Welcome to the Flourishing Edge, the podcast where we share weekly tips on making flourishing your competitive edge. I'm Ashish Kothari, your host, and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, change makers and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science based interventions. Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live work and lead with more joy, health, love and meaning. Welcome to the Flourishing Edge podcast.
Thank you, Ashish. So great to be here with you, my friend.
I want to start by asking you, look, you've walked in so many shoes, right? You've been an operator, you've been a CEO, you're a coach, you've studied mental health. What are the top three impediments to flourishing you see in the world right now?
Yeah.
Especially in workplaces.
Let's first define will you define flourishing? So you know, if people are listening to this for a first time, the way you define flourishing, so we know we're talking about the same thing.
Well, I think for me, flourishing, I talk about flourishing in the context of both performance and health. Right. When businesses flourish, they flourish because their people flourish. Flourishing business means they're growing, they're profitable, they're serving their customers who love them.
Yeah.
And it comes from people in the business finding meaning at work. It's not just a job. Right. They are connected to the bigger why of the business and their bigger why for showing up. They find the work energizing. They're excited to show up Monday mornings, they're not drained. At the end of the day, they want to go home and tell stories about what they accomplished that day, what they achieved today. You know, they are created workplaces which allowing them to continuously learn and grow. They're operating from a mindset of abundance, not scarcity. They feel a deep relational trust and belonging. You know, I know many people will say, well, work is work, work is not family. But no, they feel part of that family. There's a belonging and what it means is there is. They're not afraid of saying their mind and their heart. Yeah, right. People talk about psychological safety, but that's what it is. You know, I feel safe to say, even if I'm wrong or even if it is contentious. And then the last is the business is working in a way that allows us to be at our best. That means we are not stressed all the time. Some level of stress is okay. But if we are perennially operating in stress, we are in back to back meetings, so we don't even have time to breathe or think clearly. We're not making enough money, so we are having to work two jobs. To me, if those five elements are in place, that creates an environment where employees can flourish at work versus outside of it.
Yeah.
And if they do that, businesses flourish, performance goes up. That's how I describe flourishing. But how does that land with you?
That sounds like a really amazing company to work for, is what I would say. And one of the things I care deeply about, like, can we create workplaces where people want to work there?
Right.
And that is a fundamental thing that I hold working with my clients and that I hold on a grander scale. So the fundamental way I think we've lost our way around flourishing is our own sense of what I call human dignity. So we're talking about, like, it's just so beautiful. I love listening to you talk about flourishing because it feels like this emblematic thing to. That we all desire deeply. Many of us. Right. There are many of us that desire deeply to create workplaces like this. But if we aren't able to understand that our own human dignity as leaders is what sets up the whole conditions for what's happening in our organizations, then we do all sorts of things externally to try to create those conditions.
Yes.
Which are. Which are good and very well intended. But yet we've not done the deep inner work that we need to do as leaders. So that it is emanating and radiating from a place that's true and honest and real. And that's what I call human dignity. And I think as leaders, when we can grasp that, we'll talk a lot about it. When we can grasp that, we get into an environment where we have a ability to have a sense of shared human dignity. Where we don't see it just makes me so emotional to talk about where we don't understand just our own human dignity. We understand the dignity that is everyone's birthright.
Yes.
And then we're in an environment relationally at a much deeper level where we start to understand the natural ways these flourishing things start to take hold. And then we bring what you're talking about and the wonderful system you have to support this. But it has a bedrock of does the leader actually understand the entrepreneur, the CEO, the founder, the executive team? Do they understand what it is like for them to know their own human dignity? That's what I love to talk about.
Beck Sato Everyone Founder of Humankind Business Leaders Former CEO of Sticker Giant, Director of Operations of Entrado and you also had several roles at ups. I did in your early days. You're also. You have two degrees in mental health and well being and counseling. So talk about business and heart.
Yeah.
It's so great to have you.
Oh, it's wonderful to be here.
So my friend, you know, you talked about dignity. You talked about connecting with our own dignity, our own worthiness and the dignity and worthiness of others as a birthright. I couldn't agree more. I think that disconnect from that as one of the biggest drivers. Right. We all want to do this. We all want these workplaces. But yet somehow, even though we want them, we can't make them happen. That's why in a lot of our work we start with both the individual and the organization. Because without that individual growth and a rewiring away from fear. Right. Of fear of not being enough. Not having enough. Whether it is explicit or implicit.
Yeah.
Right. Till we learn to shift out of fear, we become free from fear. All of those things are just nice words.
Exactly. Right. Exactly.
We can't act that way. Acting that way requires us to become, grow individually, shed these armors we create, shed these beliefs and really open our hearts to the truth we've always known.
That's right. The truth that's always been there. Right. Yeah. So we talk about leadership in common terms around. Leadership is the responsibility to create the conditions for other people to flourish. Right. For the organization to flourish. Emanating from people, flourishing. So what I'm focused on is how leaders understand their responsibility in that.
Yeah.
And that it's a responsibility that we often don't spend enough time exploring. Right. And we do put programmatic things in place that are good, but they never last and they never have the impact that we hope. It's true. They are temporal. And the reason that people often struggle to invest in these things is because the data will often show that there is an uptick but without a leader. Actually, I recently told a client and said, I want you to work with my executive team and the whole company. It's a 40 person company, which is my sweet spot. And I said I won't do it. I won't work with the rest of the company and I won't even work with the rest of your executive team, the co CEO, group and coo until the three of you start to really understand and they really do care and they're really starting to see like what this human dignity thing even means. And then we can start bringing other people into that conversation so we can go faster and we can have better outcomes when we actually are really Clear. Where are we coming from? And how do leaders start to understand that they have this birthright?
Yeah. Well, and I think people often think about my responsibility is to give you a paycheck. It's really hard. I'm running this business, I'm paying you. The rest is up to you. I'm not your parent, I'm not your therapist. I mean there's a lot of these stories that people tell, you know. And you know, I've been thinking a lot about that, right? Is you talk about responsibility. You know, responsibility is an ability to respond, ability to respond to human suffering.
That's right.
Right. It's an ability. You might not do it, but it's your ability to respond like it's. And, and I, and I think many business leaders have their kids and you know, for those who are listening, I want you to think about it for a moment. Think about the places you work. Would you want your child to work there?
Great question.
Would you want your child to work for you? And if your answer is no, maybe because yeah, the work is not meaningless, or maybe there's too much stress or maybe there is, whatever it is, if the answer is no, or maybe know this, that every person who's working for you or working with you is somebody's child. They are spending more of their waking hours with you than they do with their families, with their spouses. How is it not our responsibility to make sure that in addition to financial well being, we are also the guardians of emotional social. Right. Like we're really taking a holistic view of making sure that we are creating conditions for them to flourish.
Right? So let's talk about the conditions that you're pointing to, right? As privileged people, people that own businesses by nature have some level of privilege. And as we go up in the business chain of leaders, right. More and more privilege emerges. Owning your own business is its own thing, right? And then working on behalf of a board or some venture backed money or private equity or some way that you, you gained assets, right. To for capital all the way up through corporate. It is so easy to abdicate your responsibility, right. And say so this is why I talk a lot about people hearted and business minded. This framework, I love it. That really talks about what that person is saying of like well yeah, my kids probably wouldn't work for me, right. In my business is saying I am more business minded. I have leaned toward the business components, right? The revenue, the P and L, the opex, right. Whatever it is. And we have goals and the goals must be met. And Certainly they need to be met. But that's a one sided equation where someone can abdicate the fact that well, there's also a people hearted aspect that belongs in business and I'm not talking about over indexing on that either. So you spoke about fear in the model. What it says is if you over index on business minded now you're in a very rigid relationship to the business and you've lost sort of this orientation of the other. Right. I talk about holding two things a
lot with my clients.
Right. You're holding primarily one thing and you've lost this sense of being able to have cognitive dissonance that says well, what else is true? Right. I mean this is a very basic question that permeates and penetrates so much of where we lose our way.
Yeah.
So okay, great. That's great. You really care about your business and the function of the structure, the financial profile, all those things, your marketing. But there's this other piece of you have these people in your business that are in service to being the business running well.
Yeah. And I don't think it's a. And. And it's so beautiful. Right. I think you talk about in humankind, business leaders, people hearted and business minded. I'm going to say that again for the listeners if they missed that. And I think it's beautiful. I don't think it is about just doing it because it's the right thing to do. Let me tell you clear business case. You can look this up. McKinsey search for performance and health and there's extensive research that shows companies that focus on both performance and health, organizational health and performance outcompete others. All the research at Oxford shows flourishing organizations drive much higher shareholder returns. Alex Edmonds's work highlighted 2 to 3.5% alpha. So there is a real performance unlock that can happen. And I loved the way you have them in a quadrant and I'm going to have you walk through all of those elements in just a minute which I think is a really powerful two by two framework. You can also think about this. I'm thinking about Bob Anderson's work around business and people as being two wings of a bird. You know, you focus too much on one, you're going to fly this way. You go focus too much on this side, you're going to fly this way. And it's not easy. Right. You always are trying to balance. Right. I can think myself on a balancing. It is hard because business is hard.
Well, and we also each have our own orientation. Right. So the first thing I say when I start talking about this model is, hey, look, let's just be honest with each other. Some people on your executive team and in your organization are by nature business minded. That is not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. And by nature, others are focused more in orientation toward being people hearted. Right. That's not a bad thing. Where we really get into trouble is when we peg on those things. And I see it happen all the time where the business minded people are over indexing on the business and the people hearted people are starting to say, what about the people? And what is happening here is we get in arguments and we get in a fight. Right. We even use war terms when we're talking about going to the budget meeting. And I fought for my resources. It's like, well, how is fighting for anything in your company actually creating the
conditions for success, for flourishing? Yeah, absolutely.
How is that? So, so now we are in opposition to one another. How many times have I heard, even at times my teams would come and say, I'm here to really represent my team well, so we can get what we need. Yeah, okay, great. And that can't be at the cost of something else.
Right.
So when we talk about all that, whether I'm talking about the human condition that we all have, where we lose our understanding of our human birthright of dignity, or we're talking about business aspects, how can we hold both knowing they're both true? Yeah, right. They are both true. We do need to be business minded. We have to be. It's harder to be in business now than it has ever been. It will never get easier.
It is not going to get easier. Yeah.
So yes, we have to be business minded. Yes, we have to set stretch goals. Yes, we have to attain budget. Yes to all of that. And yes, it has to be in relationship to the humans that are enabling all of that and the condition of our staff now who have very different perspectives on work. I mean, you can read about how the perspectives of people, individual contributors and leaders at work are changing. They are burned out. The quiet quit is the quiet stay. Now, I mean, all of these psychological components that are alive and well with the people at work, they don't. People are trying to get contractor jobs now. Right. So people don't want to work inside anymore. So they're trying to work on their own. They're trying to be solopreneurs. And I'm hearing more and more, not just my clients, but leaders. I spend lots of time with all kinds of leaders saying we want people Back in the office. So here you're seeing like this divide happen because of the fact that we have over indexed on business over and over again and we don't know how to bring people into the conversation about how to help the business not just survive but thrive.
Yeah.
Right. And so these people are like, I don't want to go to work anymore. I'm going to do my own thing. I'll do a fractional deal. Right, Right.
So let's talk about that. Your framework. Business hearted, business minded, people hearted.
Yeah.
Right. We are stuck in this polarity. There's some this way, there's some this way. Even individuals might shift. I mean I can tell you there are many times I think about what we are building and I really think about performance and where we need to go. And at the same time I'll over rotate on the relational side and feel sorry for somebody or like what can I do? And then there's always this back and forth. So not only can individuals be predominantly one or the other, but you yourself can vacillate from one or the other. So how do you, what are some moves that individually leaders can make to learn to actually not be stretched in polarity but to really integrate.
Yeah.
And lead with both.
Let's talk about the polarity first and then we'll talk about some ways to work with it. So when you're in a polarity, whether you, I call it over indexed and business minded, you're, you're operating too tight. You have this sense as soon as I say it, people usually understand. Yeah. Like there's this sense of constriction and we must. Right.
Yeah. There's this goal. I have to headache.
We have to, there's no other way. It has to be hit or right. We hang around with a lot of founders. Founders go through periods of complete collapse where it's too loose. Right. And they, they're just like, I don't even want, I don't even, I can't even be in this business anymore. And they vacillate. Right. That's fear. That's fear. Anytime we over index or we collapse and we're, we're just. I can't even do this anymore. We're in fear. It's the same on people hearted, people over index on people hearted and they get into rigid framework thinking around taking care of people. Right. We get some codependent kind of things happening where we're not going to be okay. I'm not okay if this isn't okay. Right. That's fear. Or we totally collapse and we're like, okay, whatever about the people. I guess this is what we're doing. Too loose. We're in fear. So in the four quadrant model, there are two shapes that are sort of L shaped. That zone is a nervous system zone of fear. Fear.
Yes.
And it is dysregulated. We are dysregulated. And by being dysregulated, I say we are undignified. So if there is human dignity, that's our birthright. When we forget it, we become undignified. And I say to folks all the time that work with me and we laugh about it, boy, that's some undignified shit right there. Right. Like that's human, that's real. And the reality is most of us in our human condition know what I'm talking about. Oh, absolutely dignified. To the undignified shit we've all done in our life that we'd be embarrassed for anybody to know the details of. To the little undignified of. I said I was going to work out today and do X, Y and Z and I didn't do it.
Yep.
So just the slightest bit of undignified. The way we get into shame, whether it's small every day or the big stuff, we would prefer people not know or we would do anything for people not to know. That's all fear. That's where we lose our human dignity. Dignity. That's how it gets lost is we're in fear when we're born. We don't know about any of these things. And so what happens is we start having experiences in our life and they don't need to be big traumas. I have a client recently, said Beck. I don't think I've had any big traumas. Like, get it, they're big T and little T traumas, as we know from trauma work. Right. And we all have little T's. Things that happened to us when we were kids that we couldn't understand, we couldn't quite explain. And so we figured them out on our own and we were too young to have to do it. It wasn't like a horrible thing happened to us. Right. And we started thinking we weren't good enough. We weren't lovable. Right. And we know it from a lot of work that's done with founders is. Founders often have a core wound. We all have one or two.
I discovered mine at 12:51. Seven years ago. Right. Didn't even know it. Drove a big chunk of my success, but also created the shadow side of it. Was. It also drove anxiety. It drove anxiety for me. It drove, you know, it made along the journey many people miserable.
Yeah. So what you're talking about then is coming to an understanding of what that deep wound is. And that's where we lose that sense of dignity. And we operate in fear. We start operating in fear. Coping mechanisms. We have limiting beliefs, all these things we know, and we're operating in fear. But we're smart as humans, and we start allowing fear to masquerade as these things that look more good in other people's view.
Absolutely.
We overwork, we overachieve. I see people right now in leadership roles getting careful. They're really trying. That's fear.
Like, I don't know, you want to be perfect. You want to. You want to drive. Right? For me, that was it. I, you know, for me, it was very simple. Perfection is the price I need to pay for love.
So it's a big, big piece here. So fear masquerades. Yeah, It's a shapeshifter.
I love that. Fear is a shapeshifter. Yes.
And then we make it adaptable. And the reality of fear isn't as known as. And we're same as you. I've been well recognized for operating in fear with the ability to shape shift it and make it look like achieving. Yeah.
And, you know, for me, at least, I think it's interesting. Right. When I look at the frame, I think it's. There are those two which are almost interwoven for me. So I had a deep, you know, if you ask me, what is your deepest fear? Right. One of the deepest fears is of not being loved.
Yes.
Massive. Right. But that creates a second fear. There's a story of what will make you. Why are you not loved? Why do you think, first of all, why do you want everybody to love you?
That's another podcast, by the way, right? Yeah, that's a whole other podcast.
What do you mean? Why do you want everybody to love you? Because maybe you don't love yourself enough.
That's right.
And you want. You're looking for validation that you're good enough. Because if others don't love you, then I'm holding on to something that's not true, is it?
So now we're talking about where the breakdown comes in, organizations where people can look at the data that you've referenced. There's plenty of it out there. There's all this data that doesn't just say it's a good idea. It says there is data proving that putting the people in your Business plan as part of how you succeed. There's plenty of data. Yes, but yet if we're the person that is over indexed on business minded, we can override all the data that gets put in front of us. Because we don't have the basics of our own human dignity to know that we know how to thrive, that we know how to flourish, that we know how to create the conditions for psychological safety. So we're being asked as leaders to do something fundamentally different inside of ourselves. So we can take programs like you have and others and put them in the organizations. And I love how you say so that you can help companies win. Yeah, right. The data's there, but the leader can't rectify.
You have to strive with that leader. Right. And the leader, by the way, doesn't need to be the CEO. It can be a head of a function, head of a business, head of a team. But you have to start with you. You can't say go do this for my team.
That's right.
No, you have to start with you and you have to be a part of it. Right. You have to be a journey person on that journey.
So if we look at the. So I have a really unique way of looking at things, informed from my training as a contemplative psychotherapist. And I'm always looking for the wisdom in the resistance or the no.
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So if we take what we're talking about. Right. And it's difficult to get leaders to get leaders to help leaders understand the need for Happiness Squad to come in and put your program in the wisdom. That they're saying that they're resistant about it is because they know they can't support it. They inherently know that's right. Intellectually they know the data says it. Your program is well aligned with the data. I don't have a yes because the wisdom is I'm not flourishing. I don't know how to actually support that.
Yeah. And it's a practice trait. Right. So my practice trait of I didn't go around asking people to love me.
Yes.
Right.
Right.
Like that would be like a very odd thing to do. Right.
We share this love me.
Yes. What? Right. In fact, love is not talked about in Corporate worlds, right? In fact, we were at this conscious capitalism dinner and somebody said, why not search for love? Or why not look for love as a marker for people who are willing to do the conscious capitalism work? And everybody was like, whoa, love. Like, hello, where's hr? Like, we don't talk about love. Love.
That's why love is in this model.
That's why love is in this model, right? The way I filled my need for love was by saying, if I'm perfect, everybody would love me. So I am going to go for perfection. And by the way, as I'm perfect, everybody appreciates, they move you, they pull you in, and it just feeds that cycle. But really what you're solving for is here and you're looking externally, through performance to show, like, rather than connect to your dignity. Which is what I love, what you do, right? Start with your dignity. Not you are worthy, just as you are not because of what you are doing out there.
That's there, it's outside. It's outside. Outside.
You don't look for worthiness out there, right? I achieved my business result. I, you know, made my investors rich. I served my customers like, no, start with connecting with. Do you love yourself? Do you feel you're worthy? And really from that place, then now do you see the worthiness of others? So I loved your notion of dignity. You have to start there.
And it's hard because people like you and I, I mean, the world is full of people like you and I, right? That had a core wound. We probably didn't understand it until later in life. We've done personal work, but there are lots of folks that know that subtly within their own experience. And business is the place where people like us go to get accolades and build that external response that says you're good at something. And, you know, the long version of my story is I've achieved several times what I thought was unachievable, that was external to me, that was a representation of that must mean I'm good enough. I got there. I got there a couple of times, several times, and yet it was still. It was hollow. Like when I found my first meditation teacher, I showed up to her office and Ashish, I couldn't speak because I had achieved everything I thought a kid that was dyslexic and queer couldn't achieve. And I had it. I achieved that at ups. So I showed up in her office and I couldn't speak. Like, literally. I had no language to say something's not right and I don't know what it is. Because I thought that was it. Like I did the thing when I was a kid that I thought I would never be able to do and now I have it and I it
it and I'm feeling this emptiness, I'm
feeling this tension that set me on a journey.
Yeah.
And that was 35 years ago.
Wow. And what walk me through a little bit of that. You show up, you can't speak.
Yeah.
You don't have words.
So the backdrop is my family was evangelical fundamental Christians. And my wife has lovingly given my dad the nickname the Jesus entrepreneur, which I love so honoring of him. He started his own church. This was in the late 60s, early 70s. He'd gone to seminary. He'd had a religious experience and went to seminary and started a church. Like he had a startup. I watched my dad in a start an early stage startup as a kid and there were lots of struggles. The backdrop when I was even younger was my mom's dad, my grandfather. My parents grew up a mile apart from each other in West Virginia, a small little town. And my grandfather had a country store in between where my parents lived. I mean this quintessential Americana stuff. And nobody knew what an entrepreneur was back then. But my grandfather was an entrepreneur. He was a guy that he bought and sold property and livestock. He was an auctioneer. He had this general store. He died a millionaire in the 90s, like it was a thing. But what I learned being exposed to that, which I didn't really have language for was, wow, like my grandfather's store represents something of value right in that, in that Americana setting. And what that, what I know now, the language and what I help small business owners understand is if you can create commerce and community in the same business model, you have something unique. So I also see like what's happening in business is people are migrating more toward the unique things that are handmade, American made, all those things. So we're leaving the Amazons and the Walmarts? Sure, we probably I'm guilty. Like I'm on my couch and need something and Amazon shows up. But I also care where I buy things. So I buy more and more things from. I know where it was made. It has a crafted sense to it. And so that's part of what's also informing how I think. But I didn't understand any. I thought because of the religious upbringing I had, I hid a lot of things. I knew to hide when I was and when I tell people that, look, you don't need to have my experience, my unique experience. But when I Say I learned to hide. Cisgender, white, heteronormative men look at me and say, I did too. I learned to hide.
Everybody hides.
Everybody hides.
Everybody does.
So that's the connect point on this model. We get in fear when we are activating this sense of, I can hide shit that I don't want anybody else to know, then I can actually get accolades by getting really good at something. For you and I, that was business. Right. People do it in other ways. And so here is this perfect way that we can hang out in fear and then allow fear to masquerade as something that it's not. And we achieve. Like, you and I have great things, the things we were either after or thought we could never do. And then we get there and we're like, wait a second. I don't feel like I should after I've had this big achievement. So that's fear. So if the next move on this model is moving into possibility. Right. So when we're in fear, we're holding only one thing. We're double down on the thing or we're completely collapsed.
Yeah.
So when we hold two things, we start to move in this state of inquiry, awareness and inquiry. So I call that possibility. That's when the nervous system starts to regulate a little bit. There's still a little of uncertainty and a little bit of fear there, but we're actually able to hold in cognitive dissonance to things that are seemingly very different. Or maybe not so much.
Yeah. We start to see the connections.
We see the connections. And so we start to see, wait, this one way. I've been doubled down on things or collapsed in. There's actually more to the story. And what I'm noticing with clients is people actually with a little bit of support can figure that out pretty quickly. Oh, yeah. It's like this. It's also like this. So I'm not trying to say this isn't true, is what I say to clients. This is true. We're not trying to make that untrue. A lot of folks are like, if I could just get rid of it. It's like, well, we got to hang on to it. Cause it's here. That's true. But what else is true?
Yes.
And so if we can hold the tension is holding. Both is holding tension. I teach leaders how to do that in their organizations. I want to know, where's the tension in your organization? They're like, well, what do you mean? I give some examples. Oh, yeah, I know where tension is. Okay. Where's the tension well, this team wants this and this wants this. Okay, well let's hold that together. Like if both of them are, have a wisdom insight about what they're coming from, if you as the leader can hold it and know that between those two things, if you can hold this with a true inquiry, a deeper inquiry, you will have an insight, a discernment, a wisdom that you would not otherwise have. So we believe we have to do the thing extra that we are good at, but by doing it we're actually blocking our own wisdom.
Yeah.
So we hold the other thing and we hold it in a practice. Now we're in possibility.
Beautiful. And you know what's interesting for me back in that is so you talk about this in terms of A and B. Right. I mean one of my opening conversations with leaders often is, are your targets this year higher than last year? Talk about a different way, right?
Yeah.
Are your targets higher than last year? Most people will say yes. Are your operating conditions harder than the year before? Even if your targets aren't higher, nobody will argue. Actually it's easier right now. Right, right. Even if the first is not like it's not easier right now. And if one or both of these are true, my challenge to leaders is what option do you have other than just work your people hard, who by the way are highly disengaged, stressed and burnt out than working longer hours, which most people are working pretty long hours and they're not going to work more than that. You're not going to want to work more than that. So what other option do you have? Like think about the madness in which we're living. Higher targets, harder conditions, we are maxed out on the performance gear, on the doing gear.
So what you're actually saying is so beautifully crafted to what I'm saying. Right. So business minded, right, is the targets are higher. Right. They are the people hearted says what are the conditions?
Yeah, exactly. That's what's so beautiful about this.
Right. And so yes, that's the business. Yes. Grow maybe, maybe you're not growing, maybe you know you're going to decline. What are the conditions now? Right. So it doesn't matter, but the goals, the strategies, all of those things are here. And then the conditions, like consider the conditions now just simply in a deeper inquiry, hold both of those together.
Yeah. And that's where I offer this science based approach which is make flourishing your fifth gear. That's your fifth year. These four gears, you'll grind away, you won't get there. Right. But great strategy, great ideas. But if you really individually shift away from fear and as organizationally put those ingredients in place. Now you're activating the middle. Now all of a sudden you're not only getting 30% of the potential of your people and yourself, you're actually finding 30, 40, 50, 60% more. And oh, by the way, you're not getting that by spending more because you don't have that choice. Right. And so it's. So that's how we can actually find. So this notion of this is true and this is true. You know it, you know it, you might. You know it here, you don't know it here. Right. You know it, you don't know how to do it because you're like so convinced this. I fight for survival and I've learned this way of operating and everybody operates this way and so I have to do this way. But this is where Kim Cameron invites leaders. Michigan Ross I love his work. He coined this word called positive deviant. He says be positively deviant. It's not easy, but be positively deviant. The norm is to operate here, but you can choose to actually operate in this way. Hold this, but also hold this deeply and see what becomes possible.
Yeah. And I think it's challenging for leaders to do that. Right? Of course it is. Because if you express interest in the conditions that your teams are working in, then you get labeled as the woke leader. Right. Then you get labeled as the soft. All of these disparaging ways that we try to polarize these things. And leaders, they're vexed by trying to figure out how to do it without then also feeling like they've compromised something inside of themselves.
Yeah, no, for sure. So you talk a lot about holding people accountable and holding people with compassion. Right? We have to hold people accountable and we have to hold them with compassion. Unpack that a little bit for us.
Yeah. Well, it's the both again, right?
Yes.
We haven't talked in the. I'll see if we can connect this to the other part of the model here. Right. So it's people hearted and business minded. The subtext for the model is a path for leaders towards shared human dignity.
A path for leaders to shared human dignity.
Yes, toward shared human dignity. When I first started, I've been working on the model for a couple years and I couldn't figure out how to name it. I knew people hard and business minded, but the subtext on it around the idea that leaders can actually have this is a map essentially. And it helps leaders see that there is a shared sense of human dignity. So your Question is around how do we hold people accountable and also do that in a compassionate way. And it's really difficult to do that if you can't hold two things at once and you don't have a practice around that.
Right.
And I see it all the time. I don't know how many times in my experience and now that I work with other leaders that we say the timing when we came to an understanding that it wasn't working out was just perfect. Right. The timing when we came to the we're going to have to separate ways was perfect. We usually wait too long and that would be the, the critic of everyone, I think that would say yes, people
wait for too long. We don't address it right away. We let it till it becomes a crisis.
And we don't because we're in fear.
Yeah.
And we don't think that we're good at doing it and we want to. We over index on people hearted even if we're very business minded, trying to give people another shot at it, another try. And all the while we're doing that. I think it's cruel. It's literally, I mean it's a strong word but it's really cruel. Probably 90% of the times I've been involved in situations like that, people know they're in misery. They know that things aren't right. They know that they aren't achieving and they have to go to all these performance improvement things and they need the job. Right. It's really hard to take someone's life, their ability to live a good life right from a pay standpoint. And I've also seen people and done it myself where it was in integrity. But when we allow ourselves to really connect with that, those are the moments for us as leaders where our heart breaks. We're trying to avoid a broken heart. And so we pull away from the truth of something and we over try to help or we wait longer thinking some magic thing is going to happen in this person's capabilities. Meanwhile we're trying to defer the broken heart we have. I mean I don't know about other leaders but when I spend a lot of time around other people, I just fall in love with people.
Yeah.
And when it comes time to say it's not working out, it has always broken my heart. And if I've delayed often it's while I'm trying to allow my heart to break and knowing that my heart will be broken. We've all had to do hardship.
And how do you handle that?
In what way? Tell me what you mean?
So when you say you know your heart will be broken.
Yeah, I'm avoiding the other side of the moment when the person is emotional or having to tell the rest of the organization or all that it didn't work out. It didn't work out. Right. And then having to go home that night and for the weeks after of knowing.
So that's what I'm asking, how do you do it? What are the practices that support you in one, not delaying it, but two, having your heart broken, mended back and not build up an armor that says never again. I'm never going to let that happen to me because it's painful.
Yeah, it is. Well, I'm going to say not never again because it's going to happen. And now I'm on the other side of supporting people around it, happening and doing it the best we can. We're always the aim is to do the best we can.
Well no, what I mean by that Becca, is not it's never going to happen. A lot of times what I see people do is I've had my heart broken so I'm going to not let anybody come close. More fear. Yeah, more fear, more armor.
Right, right, right.
So I'm not going to get close. I got close, I leaned into this. It really hurt.
Yeah.
I'm just not going to love anymore.
Right, right.
You are here, I'm paying you, you do your job. You don't do your job.
We get in fear, we over index on.
Right. I'm just not good. But what allows you, what are things that you have done that allow you, even when your heart is broken, to still keep your heart open?
Yeah.
Lean into possibilities. Right. Rather than protection.
So I go back to that practice. Right. So I go back into what we learn. If we don't learn it, we'll repeat it. Right. And so after things like that happen, I use my own practices that I teach others to just hold the fact that oof, this was hard and it was right. And there were signals, I saw the signals and I delayed and I was protecting my heart. Right. So I'm going back. I don't ever have a true answer until I'm in that inquiry. And each time unique situation. And so now I do holding this for and with my clients in my own deep inquiry when I'm involved in these situations. So we go back again and again to can we begin the process with the end in mind. Right. Agile team. I love agile methods. Agile teams prepare often for when they can't agree what are we going to do when we don't agree, right? So if we have an experience of having to come to an ending with someone that breaks our heart, then we start at the beginning again and say, how could we have been more clear? Right? What were the early signs? Right. Were we trying to get someone to perform in a role or a seat that they weren't equipped for? Did we try to move them somewhere else? How many honest efforts did we put forth to try to make this work? And then I've seen when that's the case, when it comes to that really hard conversation, the person is in agreement and everybody's heart is broken, but there's an alignment around. It just didn't work. It just didn't work. And I've told people my heart is broken. I'm not trying to put my feelings on you, but I want you to know this is heartbreaking for me, too. And it's not my livelihood I'm taking away. I have a responsibility here.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
So that's an example of being able to use these practices. So the up and to the right part of the model is wonderful, Right? That is where we actually see our own human dignity. It's where our nervous system is regulated. And so that's where we have this. This. The things we all say we want. Joy, love, discernment, truth, insight, wisdom, curiosity, creativity. And so this idea of being able to hold these two things at once takes us on this path. So that even in the hardest things we have to do, we can trust that if we have done our best to hold them.
It is so beautiful, Beck. And you remind me, as I hear you speak about how you go through that journey. You know, it reminds me of this beautiful work by Kristin Neff and the self compassion model. Right?
She's the hallmark of self compassion, which
is step number one in that moment when you're going to have the conversation, Recognize and don't beat yourself up, that you screwed up, they screwed up. Don't beat yourself up like you're such a terrible leader. You're letting somebody go, you're going to rob their livelihood.
That's fear.
That's fear, right? Do not, like, just treat yourself like a friend. You did your best, you tried everything. This is not working out. Even if you didn't, even if you did a misstep, you can learn from it. So number one, right? Like, talk to yourself as a friend because it is hard. This is a hard conversation. It's not going to be easy. You can't beat yourself up. Second ground in Common humanity.
Yeah.
You're not the first person who's letting somebody go. They're not the. It's not like they haven't faced hardship in their life. Everybody does. It's. It's a common situation. Right. So, like common humanity. So even if you messed up, you're not the first, you won't be the last. Common humanity. And third, what you're saying is mindfulness and be present and just say, look, it is really hard right now. It will be really hard. It'll take a little bit of time to heal. Don't accentuate it and don't wallow in it.
Right? That's right.
Right. Don't accentuate the suffering and don't numb the suffering. Just try and be. And it's not easy. But I think that's where practices like meditation, practices, like recovery. Right. Things that can renew you, you've got to lean into those. Right. You have to lean into those.
And the best we can hope for is that we can create conditions in situations that are that hard. Like, we're talking about one of the hardest situations for leaders and people that are in the company. Right. Though that is one of the hardest moments. But if we can create the conditions, even in those really challenging moments, to be human with people, to be real. Right. Not to avoid as much as we do avoid a lot, but to in a moment, just be as honest and real as possible. I believe we're setting that person up for a shorter cycle of recovery because there is a recovery path. I've been there. I've been the person that got laid off. Right. I've been the person that's decided, either on my own or not on my own, to leave things. To leave things I love. I've been in those recoveries, and the more they're dealt with in lacking truth, honesty, wisdom, the more time it takes to recover.
So as somebody in you, I see somebody who. These practices are so embodied.
Thank you, Ashish. Yeah.
I feel that it's not just a red. I read a book, right. It's. I've done the work. I've walked in the shoes. I've been on both sides. And it's.
I actually say I'm doing the work.
Right. Always are.
I say to clients, like, look, this is how it goes. When you work with me, your work is mine and mine is yours. And how could it not be? We are two humans sitting, talking about difficult things and wonderful things. Things.
Yeah.
And so the work is. I. I'm doing the work. I take my own medicine is What I say? Yeah, because it's, it's truly never done.
Yeah. Reminded of this beautiful three lines. Right. I think it's by Albert Camus. Don't follow me, I might not lead.
Yes, right, yeah.
Don't lead me, I may not follow. Walk with me.
That's right.
Be my friend.
That's right.
And I think it is a shared experience and I think we all come into this work really as constant, you know, learners of each other's and really leveraging each other's insights and journeys to walk each other home.
Yeah.
So my friend, as somebody who is so deeply embodied, I'm so grateful for what you're doing. Really beautifully integrating business minded and people hearted. As we wrap up, what might be three actions you would recommend for leaders who feel themselves stretched in this? This is like, I mean this is 100% of the people. Right. What would be your three tips for them? Where do they start to start to integrate rather than be quartered or stretched?
Great question. I love that you chose three because it aligns with. And this will be in the show notes on the model here. There's a little indicator like you see on a map that says you are here. Right. So the three are the three that are listed. There is. Can you get back to yourself? Can you come back and do you have methods to check in with yourself? I call it being your own best friend. Right. And can you ask yourself, where am I? The simple question, and it's a longer explanation, but the amygdala is what is controlling, keeping us in fear. Right. And I describe it as a fist grip tightly and as soon as we ask ourself a really good question that the amygdala cannot answer, it has to soften. So what's happening here? When we ask ourselves, where am I? With this genuine return to ourselves with an inquiry, Am I in fear? Am I in possibility? Where am I? Right now I'm in anxiety, I'm just tired. Right. So asking yourself, where am I? What's going on for me, another question that the amygdala can't answer. So it continues to soften and then we get ourselves into that zone of possibility pretty quickly and then we can say, what is one thing I can do? What's a small active choice?
Smallest choice I can make.
Yeah, active, but it's an active choice. We're making choices all day long when we're in fear and they become habituated, we get in a trance of fear. And as soon as we're able to get into an active choice relationship with ourself multiple times a day, oscillating back and back out, back and back out. And we can make that active choice. I tell clients, it doesn't matter if you just say yes. I say to myself, I'm going to drink this. I sent it back down. I'm going to look back at you now. That's an active choice. So we begin to build agency where there isn't agency when we're in fear. And we actually begin throughout the day to have these experiences of being able to come back to know where you are, to know what's happening. And then as I think it's Suzuki Roshi says, and begin again.
Yeah. And begin again. Thank you, Beck, for such a generative, heartfelt and business minded conversation.
Thank you, my friend. Appreciate you so much.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you for joining me on the flourishing edge. If today's conversation inspired you, share it with someone who's ready to flourish too. Subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected for more tools to achieve breakthrough performance through flourishing. Until next time, keep learning, practicing, and growing into your fullest potential.
