083: Elizabeth Crook - Build Self-Awareness and Destroy Those Limiting Beliefs

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Today we've all got limiting beliefs. We've got beliefs about who we are and about how the world works around us. And if you don't know what those limiting beliefs are, then they'll get in the way and they'll limit your ability to scale, make your life harder and scaling the business much harder. Not only that, they leave us trapped in an UN either or kind of a world where we see the world in a much more narrow fashion and we find ourselves responding in typical ways. So the key is self awareness and today's show is all about gaining the self awareness of your leadership style and the way that you run your business and giving you access to a new future and a new year. So I hope you get a lot. Listen in foreign. Welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and Gazelle's business growth coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Elizabeth Crook who's a she's also a Gazelle's coach and a strategist. She's a best selling author and an all around awesome woman. And I'm really excited to have you on the show today, Elizabeth.

Thanks Bill. I'm glad to be here.

Awesome. So welcome and let's talk about let's start off with kind of a little background on you so our listeners get to know you and how you got into this area like that. So tell us your story.

Well, I had done many things by the time I moved to South Latin America when I was 30 years old and I had started a small consulting company working with the American Embassy helping with developing a cross cultural orientation program. And then I joined an organization development consulting firm and helped them grow and expand. And then finally I joined another computer and systems development company and we were just humming along and one day I got a call from A headhunter. And the headhunter said, we're looking for people to start a chain of donut franchises here. And I laughed. I said, I don't know why you call me. I don't have food experience, donut experience, or franchise experience. And in fact, I hate donuts. And he gave me a great gift because he said, well, we're actually looking for people who have a record of success doing things that have never been done before. And it was the first time I realized how all of the various pieces of my career fit together at that point, because they had never seemed to be connected in any way but the second story. So I had grown several businesses there. And the last company that hired me was, again, it was a computer company. And I said, I don't know anything about computers. They said, but you know how to help a business grow. And indeed I did, but not nearly as well as I know how. Now. Then I went on and I was part of a really a reading and learning group that was hosted by a local psychotherapist. And she would invite speakers from the US to come down and speak. And after one of those times, she said to me, you know, Elizabeth, you made some very insightful comments, but you proceeded every comment with I'm probably wrong, but. And then I would say whatever it was. And that was when I discovered my own limiting belief. I thought either everyone saw what I saw or, or I was probably wrong. And so she helped me break through that belief that was limiting my ability to be not only useful, but to be powerful and to be of extraordinary value to my clients as well as just great pleasure for myself.

Yeah, there's a self deprecation, a modesty that we all have in different ways. And that's one of the many kinds of limiting beliefs. Right. That you have. And sometimes it's family, sometimes it's cultural, regional. It shows up in different forms.

Absolutely. And we all have it. But it may be about different things, it will be about different things. And it depends on the generation to which you were born. As you said, your culture, your gender. We're certainly breaking away from a lot of those. I see so many things in my 12 year old granddaughter. And she said, well, why couldn't you just do that? And of course she's right. But we had a belief when I was her age that no girls couldn't do those things.

Yeah. Yeah. Really?

Yeah.

And awfully tragic in that case for those of us with daughters and wives and mothers.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Which is like all of us, right?

Yes. We all have mothers for sure.

For sure. And now you work as a strategist and a coach today and you work with leaders who struggle with the self awareness of what they're good at and what their limiting beliefs are. Yeah.

Yes. That is certainly part because before we can, as your listeners know, in scaling up, we really focus on scaling a company and we can't scale a company without scaling its leaders as well. And an important part of my work is helping increase that self awareness for every leader I work with so that she or he can, can step into that role of that ever evolving company.

Yeah, I think this is really important. There is a scaling of the business and a lot of our work involves dealing with the habits. They were originally called the Rockefeller habits, the routines, the metrics, the habits of setting priorities and tracking them and working towards them and the right meeting cadences and well run and all of that. And yet in the middle of all that, if we've got a leader or a group of leaders who aren't evolving their leadership, there's a problem. And I had one client that really didn't go very well last year and it's because the leader was simply uninterested in evolving their style, was not interested in that self awareness, just wanted somebody to work on the team for them.

Right, right. And it doesn't work. It's one of the reasons that one of the things I do before I will take on a new client is the CEO and I will spend a day together. And in that day I call it personal strategic planning. But it is first a de interview. And out of that interview, their characteristics and the things that, the strengths that they've used over and over again emerge in that conversation and out of those strengths. And then we do a lifeline and we do some other things. But out of that emerge those kind of go to characteristics. If you're always the strong one in your family or you're always the one who's on time, or you're always the, you know, the class clown or whatever it is, you are still using that strength. And when we have a strength, you know, unfortunately we always say if a little bit is good, then more is better. And that's not always true.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of times. So can you give some examples or personal examples or client examples of a strength overplayed?

Sure. I worked with a man, he actually was not head of the company, this was years ago, but he had been promoted. Very, very bright fellow engineer. And he had grown up in a poor family and his Father had left the family when he was probably 10 years old. And this young man, when he told me his story, because he had gone on and finished high school and college and had a graduate degree and was traveling internationally and I said, what's the thing that you're proudest of? What's the strength that has helped you get where you are? And he said, oh, no doubt about it, it's being self reliant. He said, I just don't believe in relying on other people. If there's a problem, I fix it. And he said, frankly, I think to ask for help is a sign of weakness. Now when he was on the plant floor, that was one thing, just grabbing a problem and fixing it. But now he was on the leadership team and he can't get along with people. And because if, as I think we all know, it takes collaboration to be on a leadership team, it takes not only, it takes interdependence and it takes conversations. And if, if based on his experience he can only be self reliant and only be independent, then he's going to be a failure. There's nothing wrong with being independent and self reliant. But if it's the only way we can be, then we will overuse that. And so that's why I call that the always and never trap.

The always and never trap. Say more about that.

Well, if I'm always independent and can never be dependent, there will be times when I simply am too. When I take charge, when I need to let others have some responsibility, I may tend to other people, may not leap in and may not take responsibility for things that they should be taking responsibility for because they'll probably be saying, oh well, she'll just do it all. Why should I do anything? So it can also create a vicious cycle. I think we, you know, when you see somebody who always has to do more, more, more than anybody else, then almost everybody else does less, less, less, instead of saying, do I need to do it all now or can I do it some of it now and let somebody else do some of it? So that's how those things play.

Totally. I can think of two, I can think of two CEOs in the last five years alone that really struggled with this. They were trying to be Superman. What had gotten them there wasn't going to get them to the next place. And they, so they were doing things like sending people emails at 3 and saying, could you get this ready by 10? And you know, then people weren't even seeing that until they Woke up at 6 and then they were floored with huge projects before they'd even cleared their brain for a minute. And I wonder, in speaking that, do you. Do you ever use Strengths Finder, which I use with all our teams?

I have used it. I haven't used it as much, and it's probably something I should consider doing. I think I haven't used it because I think it's a great tool to use with teams and it's something I should incorporate certainly in 2018.

Well, you can for sure uncover it in conversation, right? We think about the ways that people succeed, the things they do, and in probing conversation, if you're listening keenly with the perspective of a coach, you'll hear those little clues over time. I find it helpful and fast to get a quick picture of it, but I also, as you were sharing that, I realized one. So my number five in the strengths is command. And command is really about taking charge. Right. But command can be very disempowering to a team at times because you've got to let people do it. Now, if the building's on fire, if whatever, there's a time and a place for command. But with a team, it can really crush the soul of the team. If you're always barking orders.

Yes, it can. And that's why it's about breaking out of always and never. It's about saying, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Maybe a little bit now, maybe not so much later.

Yeah, now. So you've worked with some people to uncover their strengths and then not be limited to always that and never the other thing. And what do you notice? Can you tell a story or two about somebody you've taken through this?

Yes. And I think that we all have sort of deep talents, and one of mine is I see themes and patterns, and I didn't realize that for a long time because it was so easy for me. That's the thing about talent as opposed to your strength. You know, my husband had gustatory memory. He could read any recipe. He knew what it was going to taste like, and he could remember any meal he had. Now, he wouldn't remember your name, Bill, but he could remember what he had when he was eating with you. So it was easy for him. And the way I help people discover that is we look at sort of the activities that they do and which are the things that are energizing for them and which are depleting for them. And that's very much based on Marcus Buckingham, sort of strengths finders. But on top of that, we look at the processes that they know how to do. And when you overlay the processes. And so when I think about the processes, those are the know hows. We know a lot of stuff, and I call those the know what's. But the know hows are I know how to be persuasive, I know how to bring together a group, I know how to manage a project. There are processes that you could do in lots of different situations. And when you look at those processes that you know how to do and combine them with those kinds of things that are energizing for you to do, your deep talents are somewhere there. So as, as a company grows, one of the challenges that we face with CEOs is they may have fallen in love with a particular content. Boy, I really love going out and selling those customers, but at some point, they need to pull away from selling the customers and running the business. So how do we take their deep talent? What is it about the selling that they love? Is it discovering the problem? Is it meeting new people? Is it synthesizing information so that we can reformulate how we're going to use their core talent to help them give the best value not only to their, to their company, but to have the most fun, the most satisfaction for themselves? Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally makes sense. And I wonder, so where does that show up? Can you tell us an example of a client that you have done that with and what did they see and how did it change?

Yeah, I had a client and they were actually in the home health care business. And she loved to explain to people how, what their options were. And so one day we hadn't been working together too long, and I said, tell me, why is it that you're paying somebody $150,000 a year to do this 40,000 a year job? And she said, what? And I said, well, you're doing call intake, and that's a $40,000 a year job and you're taking 150 out of the company. Help me understand how that works. And she said, well, but I just love doing it. And I said, well, let's talk about what parts of it you love. And so when we broke it down into its component pieces, what she loved was explaining to people the different components of home care, the different things that had to be considered. And we realized that she could be a very powerful spokeswoman out in the community for this, given the stage where they were and that she didn't, and that it was not a good use of her talent to be doing it one on one with potential Clients as they called in. So we replaced that $40,000 job that she was doing for 150 with somebody who earned $40,000. And then she went on to really grow the community, understanding of what they did and adding much greater value to the company. But she still got to hold onto that piece of it that she found very fulfilling.

That's a great illustration of a transference of something and learning something that scales then. Right. So we can see that. I find a lot of times people can't see for themselves what it is, so we can listen it out of them, but sometimes we need to send them out to go interview other people. I had somebody recently who. He was a little bit upset about the feedback he got. Actually, I get versions of this all the time. So I told him to go interview the people he worked with that would have this criticism of him in his 360review and just ask them, like, what's it like? Tell me some examples of when I do this and what's it like for you? And my coaching for him and always is really listen from the other person's perspective. Really try to imagine and hear. Not be defensive or anything else, but imagine in here what it's like for them over there that you're not noticing so that when it comes up again, you can begin to see yourself from another perspective. Right. So there are things that are really, really easy for me and for you and for each of us. And I don't always appreciate that they're easy. Like, one of my things is articulation, like putting ideas into words. It's really easy for me to come up with words. Right. But. And I don't know, I'm like, infrequently with other people. I'm like, why doesn't she just say it already?

Right.

Jesus Christ. Sorry to swear. Why don't they just spit it out? Because for me, the notion that you couldn't have a word for something and you'd be is just, like, unimaginable. But I have to remember, it's hard for people, so you can give them other ways to do things. Right. And that that's a particular talent that you have. And then that awareness then brings the compassion for the struggle that somebody else has.

Yes. And I think in many ways, we have to start with compassion for ourselves. I'll tell you a story that kind of illustrates a second trap, which I call the either or trap.

Yeah.

A very successful woman CEO who just exited her company but several years ago, and we had worked together, she called and she said, I've got to talk. She said, I've got this employee and he's been good. But she said, recently, I feel like he's going around me. I feel like he's, you know, not acting in ways that we have agreed to. And I don't want to be a hard ass about it, but. But I feel like he's taking advantage of me and I don't know what to do about it. And so I said to her, I said, did you ever. Was there any hard ass in your life? And she said, oh, my father, he was an absolute dictator. Pay attention closely. The next words she said were, I would rather be anything than be like him. So what she's telling me is that she will do anything rather than be a hard ass. And what she is allowing is someone to step on her, in effect, to walk on her. Because what we do is we believe that we have an either or, that I'm either a hard ass or I'm a softie. Instead of realizing that we have a whole continuum of choices from being a really, really, really hard ass to being a really, really, really softy. And we have every place in between. But when we have this emotional connection, I would rather be able to anything but be a hard ass. We're afraid to even heavy up a little bit because we don't want to fall into that trap of feeling bad about ourselves. So we can stay very, very stuck. And both positions feel terrible. We don't want to be a hard ass and we don't like being stepped on, but we get stuck.

So it is. It's a trap, right? There's an either or because we look at the world through a lens of something that we're very much trying to avoid or embrace like. And then that creates a trap.

Absolutely. And it is. So what I. The story I told her that day was when I make. When I have leftovers and I have to pick out a plastic container to put them in, I'm never quite sure what size. Anyone else have this problem? And so one day my mother was watching me and she said, dear, that's way too big. I said, well, it may be, but I have trouble. She said, here's what you do. You compensate. You pick a container that's half as large as you think you need, and it will fit every time. Guess what? She was right. Here's how it connects back to the story. Every time I pick that container that's half as big, it still feels too small to me in my gut. But I have to override that automatic pilot and say, okay, I know it feels too small, but it's really going to be just right. And so for the CEO I told you about, she's going to have to recognize that when she sets limits with employees, she may feel uncomfortable because of that ingrained sense of, oh, my goodness, am I being a hard ass? But she's going to go up to Automat to manual control and say, no, of course I'm feeling uncomfortable because I'm pushing against what I thought was a limit, but I really have plenty of options here.

Yeah. So getting that greater world. Well, I think you also point to something that I notice a lot. If we totally rely on our strengths, right, and we're completely focused on our strengths, we can get limited by them. And that also robs us of the feeling of satisfaction and aliveness. So for a long time, I really just thought that I had two strengths. Being smart and articulate. I thought was like how I would get by in life. And sometimes articulate would show up being jokey and fun. And I didn't notice lots of other aspects of that. But think, though, that there's a satisfaction, then that and a fulfillment that's missing. If we're just like leveraging strengths all the time, there's no growth, there's no expansion, and there's no ultimate contribution. Right. It's all strengths sort of arrive at dealing with problems, problems and surviving things, but they don't necessarily leave us feeling fulfilled and like that.

Well, I think that, I think that if we just use our strengths, but it's. And that's why I sometimes use the word characteristic instead of strength, what we're doing is we're stretching our ability to choose different measures, different actions. So I, you know, I would guess the story I would make up is that in school you were, you know, you could respond quickly, you could use humor, you were articulate. And that, that took you a long way. Plus being very smart. And that there could be times when you could use that humor in a way that might not be appropriate or the most effective thing. And what you've learned over the years is to say, boy, I could sure make a funny joke here, because I can see it. But I'm going to choose not to.

Any day now. I'll learn that lesson. I still make that right. That's a maturity. And I'm 53. Yeah, there's so many moments where I made a joke that was inappropriate that people didn't quite get that wasn't, well, like, and was preoccupation with the thoughts in my mind and inability to speak clearly. But I think it also shows up differently and probably will for a lot of our listeners too. So I'm a verbally dominant person. I'm dominant and verbal and a lot of CEO types are, and a lot of people at the leadership table are like that. But then you can sometimes walk all over people and you don't always get the best work. So as as coaches, in most of our strategy sessions, we have people do a little private thinking and then they write things down and then we submit ideas and then we find the commonality and then we work through the discussion and the final selection. And in the process of doing that, we give visibility and voice to the ideas that come from the quiet people.

Yes.

And that's a very powerful thing compared with just the loudest, most dominant folks, which is more common in more companies. And people like me would do that. But then I also found out where I really upset people and insulted them without even thinking about it. And I know a lot of our listeners have done something. So that's a strength that's overplayed without a lot of self awareness to where that strength can become a weakness.

Yeah. And here's the thing, that strength has served you well. And the things that we do made absolute sense when they arose. I worked with the CEO, probably one of the smartest men I've ever worked with, and he had a death grip on everything in the company. And as I interviewed him, it turns out that his mother was seriously mentally ill. And sometimes when I see people where they are just in control of everything, it's not infrequent to find either a mentally ill or an alcoholic parent somewhere there because as a child growing up in that family, everything is out of control and really, really scary. So the way a young person in that situation compensates is they control as much as they can. And what happens is clearly the situation's changed. He's CEO of a company, he controls a whole lot for a whole lot of people. But that over control comes from that deep feeling of if I let go, all hell is going to break loose.

Loose.

And so that's why I think of it not just as a strength, but as a characteristic so that that controllingness equals safety when he was growing up. But now that controllingness can lead to gridlock in his company. And so again, the more insight he has, the more he can say, oh yeah, no wonder I feel anxious when I'm letting go of control. That's not about now. This is about Something way back when. And so it gives people, people feel so liberated and it's like, oh yeah, now I get it.

So I want to point to something that you say that's very, very powerful here for all of our listeners and that is that all of our ways of interacting with the world, the notions, the ideas that we have, the ideas that we have about ourself, about other people, all have origins in our childhood. Right. And the way that you interact with your mom and your dad and your sibling, your parents and your teachers and the key figures in your life early on, all of those gave you a pattern of things about yourself and the world. And we find ourselves playing those out in different situations as adults and as leaders of the company. If you want to figure out what your limiting beliefs are, what your strengths are, and how you see other people, you can really go back and consider your life. Absolutely. What were your parents like? What was the family like? Tell me about your siblings, tell me about your mom, your dad. Tell me about the teachers that you loved and the teachers that you hated or any other clergy or other kinds of important figures in your childhood. And we'll see an awful lot of things. And if you'll share those with anyone, it doesn't have to be with a coach necessarily and start to listen and notice some of that parallel in today's world, you'll gain some of this self awareness that can help you then move beyond that limited either or kind of reality.

Well, you have teed me up perfectly to say the whole process of this discovery is what my book is about. Live the Achiever's Guide to what's Next. And because I knew that the work I was doing with CEOs was so powerful, but I also had lots of people just come and say, can you help me figure out what's next? And so over the years I developed this process and I thought, how can I get this out to more people? And a mentor of mine finally said, you gotta write a book. And I said, write a book. She said, write the damn book, please. And so I wrote it. And I've just had huge responses from people saying it gave me such clarity because it has so many explorations. So you can do this quote in the privacy of your own home. Although this, there's one group of women executives who are doing it as a group, and I even created a free download for them to have a discussion guide so that you have some structure that will help you get to some of these answers in a way that's practical, that won't take, you know, 15 years on a couch or anything else.

Right. Well, I hope our folks are listening keenly to this and considering themselves what are their limiting beliefs. I find an awful lot of of our business leaders are really focused on the next action, the next task, the next goal and a lot of the busyness and the doing of the work and they're not doing enough of that reflection and personal growth. And then they're surprised why things are so hard. And I think it's so hard because they're trying to do new things at new scale and new levels in the same old ways.

Exactly.

And if you don't evolve your approach to things, it gets awfully hard. You end up doing this working million hour days and that kind of thing instead of having your leadership style evolve and your life change as you mature. So there's a real invitation here for people. And I love that you're giving us a chapter from the book because I think the book's very powerful. The ideas as you can hear from the conversation, if this resonates with you, I'll put that piece in the show notes and in the wrap up I'll give people a link to that free chapter for the book.

Good. And I just find that it's one of the reasons that with all my CEOs we have monthly calls just check ins because we all have this stuff. We all have limiting beliefs and other things that trip us up and the more we can be aware of them.

Yeah, but if you've got a monthly call with the CEO and the CEO is not bring or any leader in the business and they're not bringing themselves, if they're just reporting on some actions and they're not looking and talking about how they're being and interacting with the world in those calls, if there's no inquiry and reflection in that, then they won't have the power that you probably have on your calls.

That's right. Because people change organizational structures, they change personnel, they change software tools, they change all kinds of things. How can you not change yourself? How can you not be growing yourself as a leader if you're going to keep up with what your company and what your team is doing?

Absolutely. Well, this has been super helpful. I'll give people a link in just a minute. And thank you so much for getting on the show with us today. I want to remind you. So the big things, right, is that we've all got these limiting beliefs and then the thing that we believe about the world and ourselves keep us from being all that we can be if you can identify these strengths that could really help you to keep those strengths from becoming a weakness and get you out of this either or kind of a trap that I can't be this way. So then I'm left with only that other option give you a whole world of infinite choices and places to grow your leadership.

Nicely summarized Bill. Thank you.

All right, if you'd like more information and you'd like a free chapter from Elizabeth's book Living the Achiever's Guide to what's Next, you'll go to Elizabeth crook.com scaling-up podcast Elizabeth crook.com scaling up podcast and she's got an offer there and you can directly download a free chapter from the book Living Large or Live the Achiever's Guide to what's Next. It's really powerful. I so appreciated having her her on the show. And as always, if you'd like our guide to scaling up, the introduction to the framework, a really healthy assortment of the tools and worksheets that we use, agendas for running your own team meetings, and a description for how to begin to get your team scaling up and scaling up your leadership and the growth of your company. You'll go to scalingupbusiness.com and go there. As always, we bring you a new episode, a new new thought leader, coach, author or CEO every week. Something to do with the world of Scaling up. Hopefully we'll see you in the next show. Our show producer is Nio Bade, Audio production by Podfly Productions. The show is edited by Albert Burge and our show notes are written by Ayn Kodina and proofreading by Tim McGowan. Thanks for listening and keep scaling up.

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