Why Leaders Should be Selfish with Anna Eliatamby | Episode 175

So it's better if you can learn more about emotional regulation and who you are as a person at the emotional level, because that's going to connect you to yourself as a leader and to people. The best leaders I've ever worked with are people who really were understood who they were willing to be emotional and people sensed that and they responded to that.

That was Anna Eliatamb Ben I'm Ben Morton and this is your podcast. The Ben Morton Leadership Podcast is the weekly show that brings you inspiring interviews with global thought leaders, MDs and CEOs. Sometimes they'll be from huge international organizations and other times there'll be small companies that you've likely never heard of. Whatever the case, I guarantee that in any every episode there will be something that you can take away and apply straight away to make you an even better leader. As you have just heard. In this episode I'm talking with Anna Elliot Amby, a clinical psychologist and workplace well being expert who has helped the UN and a host of global organizations develop mental health and well being strategies and help them to tackle toxic behaviors in the workplace. In this episode you're going to hear Anna and myself talking about some of the practical tools and strategies that she lays out in her new book and that I've learned over the years. Her new book, Healing Self Care for Leaders and Their Teams is an incredibly practical and accessible guide for for leaders and managers at all levels. One of the things I'll say straight off the bat having had the opportunity to read her book recently, there is one thing that I'm sure will really pique your interest in the book and it's that very early on she says that we US Leaders should be selfish. So listen on to lead on first folks. More specifically, some of the things we are going to be talking about. Some of the highlights from this episode is around understanding and managing your stress response. We're looking at the difference between emotional regulation, control and suppression. Do you fully understand the difference between those three areas and do you understand how it's affecting you as a leader at work and you in your home life? And there's also a a fascinating conversation around feedback and we're going to challenge you to think about when you are about to share some feedback or when you are sharing some feedback to maybe someone in your team. Is it really about them or is it about you? The deliverer of the feedback? There's some of the highlights plus there is lots lots more. As always. And just one thing I'll say before we dive into the episode, do make sure you listen to episode 176 when it drops next week. If you are listening live, it's the final episode in season 11 and I've got a very big announcement coming up. That's it. By way of an introduction, though, let's dive right in to my conversation with Anna Aliatambi. Anna, welcome to the show. And first of all, let me ask you, what is it that those listening to this episode need to know about you and your work in order to really understand why you wrote your latest book, Self Care for Leaders and Their Teams?

In terms of that book, which is actually a summary of perhaps what my work has been about, is that I wrote it with Grazia because we wanted to help people to look after themselves. And if you look at my background, that's been a theme throughout. And I think that comes from my family going back to my great grandfather, because that. That was what he did, that's what my father did. And I think without realizing it, I've carried on in that way.

Yeah, that's great. And would you mind just giving us like, the brief summary of your background? Because it's quite different to most of the guests that appear on the show. And I think it does give real context to the questions kind of. I'm going to ask you and we're going to discuss, I think.

Sure. By training, I'm a clinical psychologist and I did work in the NHS in England, but I was always involved in institutional change, hospital closures for people with disabilities and mental health. And then by chance, I moved into the humanitarian sector, initially working in the Asian tsunami response for the Red Cross and Red Crescent, first as a field person, and then I moved into strategic work, trying to get the Asian Red Cross Red Crescent strategy, function and operation in the three most affected countries. And then I moved into peacekeeping again. As a psychologist, I worked in two hard stations, conflict stations, and then I moved into a global role. But throughout all of that, I kept my interest in leadership. And so I think that's all of those experiences led me to writing that book.

Amazing. One of the very first things in the book, Anna, that jumped out at me that I wanted to ask you about. Cause it really resonates with some of my own thinking around certainly leadership and resilience and managing stress. And I wanted to ask you about it because it's something that perhaps might surprise some people. And it's the line where it says, ensuring that you practice proper selfishness. Now, for many of us growing up, our parents have taught us perhaps even society has. Has taught us, or strongly suggested at least, that being selfish is a, is a bad thing. But there it is in your book in black and white, saying be selfish. Like, tell us more about that.

Well, it's actually comes from Charles Handy's work.

Okay.

What it means is that there are times when you, especially if you're a leader, you need to be selfish and look after yourself and build your identity. Because through doing that, building your identity, safeguarding identity, looking after yourself, or yes, selfishly, that allows you to look after other people. Because very often we forget us when we're leading.

Yeah, absolutely. And what do you mean there when you say building our identity? And there's another phrase you said with identity. What do you mean by that exactly, for people listening at home?

I've worked with many leaders, both senior and junior, and yes, they, especially the more senior ones, have a sense of who they are and their identity. But what can also happen is you adopt somebody else's identity. You adopt what the literature says you should be as a leader as opposed to being who you are and your own version of it. That's what I meant by identity.

I'd love to hear your perspective on this then, from a sort of, I guess, human psychology perspective. So I'm interested to know, like, what's the risk of not sort of being our true self as a leader? Because it's something that I talk about quite a lot on, on my leadership programs. One of the first things I like to do before looking at any tools or models or frameworks is to spend a lot of time, and arguably at the start, some people might think it's too much time really exploring, like, what are your values? What do you really stand for? Sort of what are you going to take a stand on? And from then I say, look, from this point forward, you can pick and choose and tailor the tools and frameworks that are going to be authentic to you. Because I do think there seems to be a real danger when we try and sort of look at a great leader from history, deconstruct what they did, and then try and be that person. So what are. Yeah, why is that so important from a psychology perspective?

If I look at it both from the work I've done in organizations as a clinic and as a clinical psychologist where I've done therapy with people, if you really don't belong, if your identity doesn't belong to you and isn't your own, there's a risk that you may deconstruct further along the line because there will be a point at which you don't connect with who you are. And the other thing I think, especially as a leader, is people will know when you're being real and authentic. And they know they get. When you're not being authentic. And they generally. In my experience, people prefer someone they feel they can touch and sense. As an honest person.

From some of the study I've done around neuroscience as well, I think one of the things I learned was that if we're trying to be somebody who we're not as a leader, that starts to activate sort of the amygdala. Right. And puts us in a mild sense of that fight, flight or panic. Because there's always the thinking like, what if I get found out? And then we're diverting precious resource, aren't we? Away from showing up, doing the work to sort of regulate our emotions?

Right, yes, very true. You spend. I think there's much more effort in maintaining the actual. Because you're acting, you're not being. Also, there isn't the flow between what you say, what you think and what you do.

Yeah, interesting. And I guess a lot of your work, Anna, has been sort of in the world of the impact of stress and trauma on people. I saw in the book you mentioned sort of three different types of stress reaction. Can you talk to us a little bit about those, please? And how sort of they might show up in the workplace for leaders, sure.

The three are cognitive, emotional and physical. So the cognitive stress reactions. This refers to memory, for example. So memory, when you're stressed, memory literally takes up space. Sorry, Stress literally takes up space in your memory system, so you have less memory to function with. So you're not as good at recalling. You're not as good as storing information. Working out information to keep your attention goes all over the place. You get less good at the focusing, coming out, coming out and focusing again. And you may spread your attention too widely or you may focus down on the wrong thing, your thinking gets very skewed, and your biases are more likely to come into play there.

Oh, that's fascinating. A bit about bias.

Yes. And your decision making, which is usually a balance between emotions and logic, get skewed. So you either make decisions more from your emotions or from your logic. Not a balance between the two. Emotionally, you could just be all over the place, or you could be aggressive, or you're not in. You're not handling your emotions well. And physically it's. You'll get sort of. Your being short of breath is a very common one. There may be longer physical Effects like blood pressure, heart problems and things like that, sleeplessness, all these, those are the three most common sets of stress reactions that people experience.

Well, the bias bit is slightly blown my mind. I assume then that is because some of our bias, unconscious bias, I guess that's programmed into us as some of our mental, mental shortcuts. Right. So is it the case that when we're stressed, we've got less processing power available to us so we can't, we can't sort of check some of those.

Thinking patterns or we're not sort of thinking openly and freely so that we're. Because we're closed down, we may not notice when a bias kicks in. I have seen people make bad decisions because they're stressed and they're following their biases as opposed to trying to be as objective and as open as possible.

And I think you've probably just explained a lot of what goes on in my household. Maybe when I'm stressed or my wife is stressed as well. Like the bit around sort of reduced memory. I don't know if you said short term memory or not. Like there are times actually, particularly lately because I've been under a bit of pressure in my work, as has my wife. And I swear I've told my wife things and she says, you didn't say that at all. And there's like been a mild argument in the house. Like I did say that. And equally she's telling me, she said things like, you never told me that.

Exactly, that's exactly the point. That's exactly. I do it myself. That's exactly what happens.

Well, there you go. Just got some marriage counseling as well. So in terms of some strategies then that leaders or busy professionals could use to try and help manage the impact of the stress that naturally comes upon us in the workplace. Like, I'm sure everybody listening will have some strategies they use themselves, I would hope. But in your experience, are there any sort of stress management strategies that sort of, you see, people tend to overlook? Is there anything really simple that we could be doing that people miss?

Perhaps, Ben, the easiest one is to check your breathing because when people become stressed, they forget to breathe properly. So from the nose all the way down to the bottom of your lungs and come back up again. And what people tend to do is they shallow breathe or they take a deep breath, hold it, hold it, hold it, and then release it. Because that the failure to breathe properly keeps you in a state of stress and state of tension, which adds to your stress. So a very simple thing is just to remember to breathe properly and to check yourself during the day. Am I breathing properly? That's a very simple one to do. The second one is run a body check to see where you're holding stress at regular points in the day and just relax those body parts that are stressed and that will open you up to more. But that's a very simple exercise that anybody can do.

And for those that have not heard the term body check before, what is that?

It's just stop for a moment and think about where you hold tension in your body, what happens to your body when you become stressed. So in my case, I know my two points in my body where I hold stress the most is in my shoulders and actually in my voice. So I often check my shoulders to see whether they're up or whether they're down. If they're up, that means I'm stressed.

So I'm just trying to relax my shoulders now as I'm talking to you and take a few, few deep breaths.

Same here.

How does it affect people's voice?

Because you're not breathing properly? Your, your voice may not be as deep or as relaxed and your flow may not be as. The flow just isn't there. The flow just isn't there as in.

Sort of you're tripping over your words slightly or there's pauses or.

Yes, yes, yes. There has to be a synchrony between how you use your vocal cords and your breathing for you to speak properly. So if you don't have that synchrony because you're not breathing properly, you're not going to be using your vocal cords properly.

Fascinating. Really, really fascinating. And then the other one I was really interested to ask you about because it sort of reflects my personal journey, I was going to say over the past few years, but actually it's probably since a seven year old boy. Actually you talk a lot in the book about emotional regulation and I wanted to ask you about that because it strikes me that emotional regulation actually is quite different to emotional control. I mean, that's been significant for me. So I remember since I started secondary school, I was consistently told, Ben's got great leadership skills, he's calm under pressure. And I guess because I was what, 11, 12 years old at that stage, that started to shape my identity. Back to our conversation earlier. And then I applied to join the army, went to the army sixth form and then Sandhurst. And being calm under pressure and able to control your emotions is a hugely sought after trait. So it was almost rewarded. It was strengthened as a trait in me and Then fast forward several years, I actually started to realize I was quite poor at regulating emotions because all I was doing was pushing them down and not allowing myself to process them, even to the point where there's a. For people listening in the uk, there's the TV show sort of diysos, where a team of builders go in and try and like, fix up the home of somebody of a family fallen on hard times or a charity. And I'd be watching that, just my wife and I at home. I'd feel sort of a tear come to my eye and I would like, consciously, like, fight that back. Like, no, can't, can't cry. And then I remember I was doing a particular profiling tour and a friend of mine was sort of doing some feedback and she said, ben, I've never seen anybody who has got such high emotional control because that's one of the strengths, the strength, scope, tool measures. I was like, okay, that's interesting. We had a conversation and she's like, as well as I know you, she said, a lot of the time, I've not got a clue what's going on for you. And she said, if you really want to sort of connect with people and have the impact I know you want to have, she said, you need to start dropping the mask a little bit and sort of letting people in. And that set off a real sort of journey of exploration for me. So. And this isn't designed just to be sort of counseling and therapy for me, but sort of with that as the context. Like, can you talk to us a little bit about, like, the difference between emotional control and regulation and then why regulation is so important, particularly for leaders?

Yes, emotional control, which is also linked to emotional suppression, can be part of emotional regulation. And if I start with emotional regulation, it's that it's also. Emotional regulation is actually part of one of the five qualities of emotional intelligence. So emotional regulation means that you are in touch with your emotions, you're thinking about your emotions, you're handling them, you're reflecting on them, and you're very connected to them. And therefore that allows you to function at the emotional level as well as the thinking level. That's easier, more easily said than done because, you know, being able to emotionally regulate depends on who you are, what your upbringing is, et cetera, et cetera. Emotional control is actually necessary and can be necessary. For example, in a crisis situation, you need that emotional control to cope. If you're a leader in the business sector and coping in the middle of a crisis, you need to have that emotional control. But the research is now showing that rather than having complete control, as you walk into an emergency, you just name the emotions. You can go, oh, horrible. And then you move into the control. And people who are in the armed forces or were in the armed forces or in the humanitarian sector dealing with major emergencies and crises, are very good at emotional control. What they're not so good at is the release afterwards, and that I didn't use to happen 72 hours before. Emotional suppression is linked to emotional control. And where the problem with emotional suppression is, especially if you're in the armed forces or humanitarian sector or a crisis leader in business, part of your ability to emotionally control is because you can suppress. But if you keep suppressing, it doesn't work. Sooner or later that's going to come out in some shape or form and unfortunately, usually in an unhealthy way, or you carry on suppressing by moving into addictions and things. So it's better if you can learn more about emotional regulation and who you are as a person at the emotional level, because that's going to connect you to yourself as a leader and to people. The best leaders I've ever worked with are people who really were understood who they were willing to be emotional and people sensed that and they responded to that.

I think I know the answer to this, but it's always good to check yourself. Right. I assume there's no time frame on when sort of suppressed emotions might. Might come out, Right? There could be any. Could it be any time in the future where for whatever reason, for no reason, another triggering event that suddenly causes kind of perhaps deeply suppressed emotions to. To burst out?

Yes, it can happen at any time. And usually it's when the person starts decompressing or just releasing or something in the person says, I can't do this anymore. And then, you know, that's what happens anyway. If they've been through a big emotional experience, then there will be triggers in the environment that lead to them. But generally, if there hasn't been a big experience, it can happen at any time.

And could that be like another stressful period? Like, if you use the analogy, the, the straw that breaks the camel's back. If you've got a number of suppressed emotions from a particular event, and then Fast forward, maybe 35 years later, you experience some other really emotionally challenging events coupled with a lot of stress and pressure. Again, maybe from work. Could those sort of events cause sort of suppressed sort of emotions and trauma to all show up at once?

It can, and it can be Very confusing for the person if and when that happens, and that's when they need the professional help. It's not a failure, it's just that they're saying enough. And we all have moments when we say enough. And that's especially if somebody's had a lot of things happen in the past, or not so much big things, but just that they've had enough, then that's when they need the help to recover, release, heal, grow.

Yeah, that's interesting and I guess linked to this as well. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, there's another section of the book that I found really interesting where you said something along the lines of, even if someone hasn't experienced anything particularly traumatic, many of us will still be sort of carrying sort of unresolved matters that can at some stage, like pop out, burst out into our life that perhaps triggers or causes an inappropriate kind of reaction on the person. I'd love to get some examples of that from you and perhaps some advice on what people can do when. When they find that happening. And again, like a bit of context that really got me thinking about this question. Just 10 days ago, I was running a leadership program and was having a particular conversation around giving feedback to people in our team. And we started talking about. And I was sharing with the group. I think it's important to actually sometimes stop and think with feedback. Like, why am I sharing this feedback? Like, is it actually about the person or is it that something that they've done or said has triggered something in us? So actually, the feedback we're giving, honestly, it's nothing to do with the other person. It's all about us. And it strikes me that that probably happens quite a lot in the workplace.

Yes, yes. There's a lot in what you've just said. I think if I start with the last thing, is one thing I was taught when I was to be a therapist, to be a clinical psychologist, is you've got to put yourself on the back burner when you're talking to somebody. It can't be your stuff coming through. And I think to a lesser extent, that happens when you're facilitating in leadership programs. I mean, I do that a little bit and also definitely in therapy. So the thing to do is recognize, as you were doing yourself, is recognize which voice you're speaking from. Are you speaking from an open voice, which is about the other person, and are you really listening openly, or are you speaking from your own voice? So there's that. The other thing is, and this is something that actually A lecturer when I was doing my first degree taught me and I've never forgotten. And he said, if you have a reaction to somebody else and this is a person you haven't met at all, it probably is that that person is triggering something in you that you're uncomfortable with that you haven't resolved. And so it's not that person's problem, it's yours. I'll give you an example from my work life is I was facilitating a group, a focus group in a council. There were about seven or eight people. I had a set of questions to ask and everybody is perfectly well behaved. Everybody was very professional. But I kept reacting to this one person and it wasn't what she said because she was being fine. And I really just started. I could sense a dislike in me building up to her. I hope I didn't show it in how I responded to her, but I just thought, I don't like you. But we finished the focus group and then I. And there was no, I didn't. I remained professional as well. But then I realized afterwards the reason why I was building a dislike to her was because she reminded me of somebody who bullied me at school. So that's not a huge. Bullying is something a lot of people experience, but that's what the trigger for me was, which is I hadn't resolved the fact that this person used to bully me at school.

So that's just highlighted what seems to be a real catch 22 challenge for many of us, perhaps, right. If we link everything we've spoken about in this conversation. So if it's true that the things that perhaps trigger us often isn't about the other person, but it's something in us, to your point, maybe experience of bullying when we're at school, it takes a certain amount of sort of emotional intelligence and we need to have a certain amount of, I guess, cognitive bandwidth available to us to be able to spot that and process it. Yet if we are particularly busy and stressed and under pressure at work, we're unlikely to have full access to our brain power. Right. So that presents a. Can present a real challenge, right. For busy individuals who are under pressure.

Yes, very true. But I think the thing to do is to stay open to questioning yourself and to realize that sooner or later something or someone is going to make you feel uncomfortable and to be okay to with that discomfort and to be willing to learn. And a very simple. I was running a session for some professionals on policy and their work and I had made certain assumptions about this group of trainees. That they were upper middle class, fairly wealthy. And that was my assumption. And I didn't realize how much that would probably influence me as I was delivering. And then at the break, one of them came and said to me that she was interested in policy and could she do policy as part of her. One of her placements. And I said that might be a bit difficult because that would mean she'd have to go above her supervisors to work with the chief executive, but, you know, talk to the course people about it. And I said, well, another route would be to do research and research as part of their course. I said, what topic have you chosen? And I was expecting her to come up with a very upper middle class, safe topic. And she said to me, I want to study how people who are homeless experience chronic pain and what help they get and don't get. And that shocked me. Right. Because it wasn't my. It didn't fit my stereotype. So that there's a learning point for me about why I'd made that assumption about that group. It was a wrong assumption. Some, you know, some, yes. But it wasn't a blanket assumption, which is what I'd done.

Yeah. And I guess partly answering my own question here, I think something that can probably help all of us with that, and many people are talking a lot about it these days, but some process of like formalizing our reflection, be that journaling or whatever can. Can be really powerful, can't it, to just sort of deconstruct some of those things that have triggered us, some of our experiences in a particular day or whatever.

Yes. And being willing to be reflected, not sort of do sort of massive meditations at the end of the day or so deep dives, but just be willing to be open to things you know about yourself and things you may not know about yourself.

Yeah. Yeah, love that. Anna, one final question. I think to wrap up our conversation today. It strikes me that through your work you must have come across many, many great leaders who are really sort of coming from a real place of service. I guess so from all of your experiences, if you could maybe give just one piece of advice to someone who is aspiring to a senior leadership role in any sector. From all of your experience, what would.

That be, I wonder, to be honest with yourself as to why you want to become a leader and to build from that base. Everybody has a base, but build from that base of you and do it with people, understand those that you'll be working for as opposed to instructing.

That in itself is a great example of what We've just been talking about, like, that wasn't what I was. I don't know what I was expecting you to say, but that surprised me. The piece around being really honest, around why you want to be a leader. Love that. Anna, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a fascinating conversation. Just diving into a little bit more psychology, I guess, around why so many of us kind of react and respond, respond to the world and people around us as we do. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights. And we'll also make sure we pop a link to the book in the show notes because I think it's a great sort of little companion guide for all of us that's super accessible and full of lots of really useful tips that we can very easily use. So I'll make sure we put a link to that in the show notes. Sorry. So thank you very much indeed. Hey, quick one for you just before you go. Early on in that episode, you heard Anna and myself talking about identity in leadership and you heard me touch on the fact that whenever I'm delivering a leadership training program, one of the things that I put a huge amount of emphasis on is helping those on my programs to really understand their core values, what they believe in, what they stand for, and the things that they will take a stand on. This really does mean that the people on my programs start to get really clear about their leadership identity. And what that really does is it allows them to choose the leadership tools, models and frameworks that are going to resonate with them and and allow them to be that truly authentic leader that people follow because they want to, not because they have to. If this is of interest to you, if you are looking for some leadership training for the people in your organization, then please do check out the leadership training pages on my website. The link is in the show notes. And then drop me a line@chatn morton.com to start a conversation. I'd love to help. I'd love to be of service. That's it for this episode, folks. See you again soon. And until next time, lead on.