Living A Life In Full: Drs. Randy Brazie and Geoffrey VanderPal on the New Science of Decision Making

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partner is in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links. In this episode's show, notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host Dr. Chris Stout. I suspect there are times you may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number and complexity of non stop decisions you need to make. To further complicate matters, you may believe that some decisions require more rational brain decision making, while others call for you to go with your gut. But what if you could integrate the two, your brain and your gut in a way to help you become the calm stead and steadfast person and leader you would like to be? What if you could combine both logical thought with your more instinctual feelings? With their combined expertise in both business and medicine, Drs. Jeffrey van der Pal and Randy Brazee have developed an approach to do just that by taking the latest scientific understanding of the human nervous system, drawing upon the polyvagal theory to understand how the brain and the gut make decisions together. In their new book, the Steadfast Control Anxiety, make confident decisions and focus your team using the new science of leadership. They provide an approach that shifts away from the tensions caused by either or to using both and and how that works better in every situation. Their work provides fascinating research findings along with real world case studies and relatable examples that demonstrate practical, cutting edge neuroscientific concepts that can help you stay focused and make better decisions for yourself, your team and your organization. Jeffrey and Randy are co founders of the Neuro Consulting Group LLC specializing in leadership and business decision making, consulting and training. A licensed psychiatrist, Randy is a graduate of the University of Arizona College of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency at the University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals. He's a board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and General Psychiatry with extensive expertise in multiple sectors including both clinic and hospital based services, as well as emergency and urgent care settings and he specializes in trauma, depression and stress treatments. He currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer for Resilient Health, an Arizona nonprofit health care provider of innovative multimodal services for both public and and private sectors, and as a Medical Director with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. Additionally, he's also co authored peer reviewed professional business journal articles intersecting neuroscience with various aspects of organizational thought and leadership. Randy also enjoys teaching and has experience in both undergraduate and graduate adjunct faculty positions. Jeffrey is a certified Financial planner and project management professional. His doctorate is in finance and business and completed a postdoc in Global Leadership. He has taught for various universities on four continents, which is amazing in the areas of finance and business. He's published in various research journals and is currently a professor in the Master of Science in Finance program at Purdue University. Global welcome to the show gentlemen. It's great to have you both on.

Thank you, thank you.

It's great to be here.

So maybe we could just start off with a little bit of origin story. How did the two of you come across each other? How did you get connected?

Well, Randy and I have been friends for years and three or so years ago we were having dinner one night and we're just having a general conversation. I've always found psychology and psychiatry very interesting and he was talking about Somatic Experiencing and Somatic Psychology and I was asking more and more questions about it and what that means and how do you apply it and how does it help people. And as he was digging deeper and telling me more about it, I came up the idea. I said, you know, this could actually be very useful in business and leadership in other areas of business. And from there it started a collaboration.

That's great. So it like to then start with the developing the company or how did that tell us the origin story around that too? With Neuro Consulting Group?

Yeah, I can jump in on that one. So, you know, as we were talking about this, one of the things that I had noticed in my travels is that in the mental health world, it's pretty well known these concepts, although, you know, there's still some controversy in some circles. However, when I was talking with Jeffrey, really, I learned that in organizational psychology, behavioral finance, and in these other related fields in the business world, that there was still a lot of great and useful information in what we call cognitive psychology models. This is, how do you work with your thinking brain? How do you work with your thoughts? But really, there had been no uptake with this sort of newer stuff, which isn't entirely newer. You know, these theories were developed several years ago, but I noticed there was this lack. And this is really what we begin to talk about, is how can we add this additional piece of the puzzle that really more fully explains how the brain. How the human nervous system works when we're dealing with people or stress, for example. So it was. It's not meant to criticize or disparage cognitive psychology. Really, it's quite the opposite. It's simply to complement and add to the existing knowledge base.

I like that. I like the integrative approach of those kinds of things and then also bringing it into maybe a larger audience and, you know, practical applications in business and leadership. And I have to tell you guys, I don't know if you would necessarily know this, but it's a small world because I know Dr. Stephen Porges from the time that he was at the College of Medicine at University of Illinois. He and I were both kind of very short periods of time in the Department of Psychiatry. We overlapped for a little bit. And the chair of the department, Joe Flaherty, who then later became dean of the college, introduced us and just really was fascinated with his work back then. So it makes sense, you know, with what you were saying, Randy, that it's kind of been around, but it's nice to see it having greater, you know, applicability and scalability to other kinds of things. So people that maybe aren't yet familiar with the book. It's really predicated on a lot of Stephen's work. How did the two of you come across his research? I know you weren't at. You've been in a variety of places, but not. Not you of. I. But how did Stephen show up on your radar?

Sure. That really started with. I think I first heard about polyvagal theory when I went to one of Bessel Van der Kolk's trauma research foundation seminars in Boston. That was in 2019, so the year before the COVID pandemic. And there was a presentation that was led by Deb Dana, who is a therapist and is quite famous for translating Stephen's work into practical tips on how a psychotherapist could use polyvagal theory in their work. And she was doing a presentation around one of the tools that they're developing that might help therapists that are looking at working with clients using the theory. And that led to my striking up a conversation and reaching out to her. And we actually, at Resilient Health, in working with Larry Vilano, who's the CEO there, who's very enthusiastic about these approaches and is very interested in bringing, you know, these concepts to the community. We actually had a conversation with Deb, and she introduced us to Stephen. And then the next thing you know, Deb came out and did a full training at Resilient Health. And this organization is actually using polyvagal theory as the foundation for what they do clinically. And so they really were the first mental health provider who was sort of stamped by the Polyvagal Institute as being sort of faithful to polyvagal principles.

Wow.

That's how we got to know him.

Yeah, I love that. So maybe for starters, for our audience, we talked off Mike before that. It's kind of a heterogeneous mix of people and expertise and things like that. I think it might be helpful to maybe unpack some of the concepts that you base your work on. In particular, you know, the components of polyvagal theory. And maybe if you could also start off with a little bit of a 101 on the autonomic nervous system's ventral and dorsal vagal complex and the sympathetic nervous system. I am super rusty on my neuroanatomy and physiology, but maybe for a 101 for our listeners and myself to kind of bring us up to speed on those concepts.

Sure. And I can start with that, of course. And Jeffrey is the expert in how this gets integrated into the business world. So really, if you sort of sum it up is the polyvagal theory basically states that our nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for signs of safety or danger. It's part of that survival. Right. That's the first priority, because if you're dead, the rest doesn't quite matter.

Right.

And so what happens is this is a really automated process. And this is one of the things that Steve and Porges really discovered is that it doesn't go through your thinking brain. So our nervous system probably is scanning through our senses, but that input goes directly to deeper brain structures that are not directly connected to your thinking brain. And that more primitive part of your brain does a kind of an assessment. And if it determines that there may be potential danger, it then sends a signal to the body, into your thinking brain. Hey, Houston, we have problem here. We need to address this. And this is probably why people will notice that they may have anxiety symptoms, even if there's not necessarily anything going on in that moment. For example, panic attacks are a classic example where somebody will say, oh, I was just minding my own business, and all of a sudden I felt like I was about to die and got anxious. And so this process Stephen Porges calls neuroception, which is just the nervous system's perception, perceiving of what's going on. And lo and behold, what he found is that a lot of this is mediated as far as how we respond when our brain thinks there's maybe danger through the vagus nerve, because it has a lot of connections with a lot of different areas of the body. And of course, vagus is the Latin word for wanderer, because if you look at a diagram, you'll see that sucker is going everywhere in your body, right? Yeah. And so the vagus nerve really helps us to promote the best state of survival, Whether that is everything is fine and we're relaxed and socially engaged to oops. We need to turn on the sympathetic nervous system for fight or flight because there's some danger. Or perhaps our brain decides through this automatic process that there is no getting out of this danger, and so we're going to play possum. And so this is where we might freeze Sometimes. We will call that dissociation, but it's kind of like the deer in the headlights response. And the theory is, is that that's probably an old, old primitive reflex that says, if I just lay still and play possum, then the predator is going to lose interest, like if a cat loses interest in a mouse, you know, collapses. And so our system is constantly navigating between these different states, depending on its assessment at the moment. And therefore, if you know about that, you can start to get some ideas of how to work with it in ways to help you if you want to shift yourself to a different state and get out of a certain state, say, if you don't want to be in fight or flight and anxious all the time. So that's kind of a nutshell about the theory.

Got it. That's great. Good. Thank you. That's very much level setting for, I think, what we'll spend the rest of our conversation about. So. And it also teases up nicely for the book. But before we get into it, I want to first share what Stephen had to say about it. So quote the steadfast leader. Brazee and van der Poel brilliantly introduced polyvagal theory into the pragmatic world of leadership. Their book focuses on resolving the historic problem that leaders have faced in making decisions. The conflict between intuitions and empirical metrics of performance. So again, I very much enjoyed it from both the kind of the scientific, psychiatric, neurological, as well as the practical applications in terms of living and leadership aspects. So you two work together. You've had known each other for a long time. What was it that then triggered to say, hey, it's time to, to write this deadpass leader?

Well, Randy and I were working on several peer reviewed research articles for publication combining polyvagal theory and elements of neuroception interoception, along with different business concepts. We've had, I think five papers now published. But the first couple papers after we published those, we decided maybe it'd be a good idea to write a book and focus on leadership and business decision making, integrating these concepts together. And that's really the genesis of how this started. And so we started approaching publishers once we had a fairly developed manuscript. After all the research we've done, I believe we have over 160 citations in our book. We spent a lot of time working on developing and integrating the concepts and supporting them and we went to multiple publishers. But McGraw Hill reached out to us and expressed a very strong interest. We were very fortunate because the senior editor there, she was fantastic and she worked in the behavioral health area. McGraw Hill then transferred over to the business area and she, she understood what polyvagal theory was and was so excited over it that when they reached out to us, she already had an idea of what it was. We didn't have to explain concept to her.

Nice. Yeah. I have to say, just at the tail end of our conversation, I'll kind of get into being a book nerd, more so than what I'm going to say right now. But when I see books like this that kind of, you know, come across my desk, one of the first things is to look actually, you know, at the references or at the notes. And I'm just thumbing to it right now. On page 205 it starts and I was just blown away. And it makes good sense to me to say, you know, here you guys are working. It's, I Don't know. Oftentimes I think it's more difficult to get something published in a good peer reviewed journal than it is a book contract. Both are very, very difficult. But you take that research and you take the scientific method and you take the vetting aspect of all those kinds of things that, you know, has to be bulletproof before you offer any kind of idea, any kind of, you know, the scientific methodology to anything. And that's, you know, to me so foundational. And what I feel like you just, you know, tip of the hat what you did with your book. So I'm glad you guys did that and I'm glad it's now more available to people that aren't necessarily like the three of us with our noses in journals a lot of the time, but also then to be able to be publicly available to a much wider audience. So you canvass a wide variety of leadership styles and approaches in the book too, and you contextualize them in the context with the polyvagal theory. So maybe you could start off, and hence the title of the book, how do you define a steadfast leader and what are the key qualities that would be different in a steadfast leadership leader than other leadership styles?

Well, I can start with a couple concepts and then, you know, Jeffrey, of course, can add to that. I think ultimately we like the term steadfast because it just shows that a person who is not necessarily never responds to their environment, but that no matter what occurs, that they have resilience, that they can recover. And really the idea is, is that to become a steadfast leader first. You know, the first important critical aspect of this is that you have to know thyself. So this is really one of the things that we talk about in the book is first, as you understand polyvagal theory, just enough of it. You know, we're not asking people to become neuroscientists and. But if you can at least grasp those concepts, the person can then identify, the reader can identify, where do I tend to be? Am I somebody that goes to fight and flight a lot? Do I get irritable or anxious, or am I somebody who freezes and shuts down a lot? Do I kind of blank out or am I somebody who doesn't do either? But I tend to be mostly in social engagement. I usually can roll with it and really stay connected and present with other people, because once the person knows where they tend to go to and can identify the state that they're in at any moment, then they can start to look at well, what are the tools that will help me shift to the state that I want to be in? And, you know, this is where Jeffrey had a lot of input and work about, for example, advising financial advisors on how critical this is when you're dealing with customers who are freaked out about their investments or their finances.

The idea is for taking these concepts and for. If you're leading people to understand not only yourself, how you respond to the environment around you and to have a better control over that for yourself, but also how other people are responding to you and how they respond to their environment, how you respond, respond to them. So understand dynamics, both individually and from a group and team perspective is critically important. And Randy's absolutely right. We talked about, in the book, we get into behavioral finance, we talk about, you know, as financial advisors, an example, the stress that clients may come into the office with regarding, say, their portfolio dropping in value because of the market volatility. You know, how do you address something like that, both as an individual, as the financial advisor, as an example, and dealing with that stress, but also with the client as well and how they respond to you?

Yeah, I think that's really. And I love some of the examples that you give in the book around those kinds of things as well. And it's also, I mean, you know, thinking about it sort of therapeutically is also having an appreciation and an empathy for, you know, for the other in terms of, you know, what you're dealing with. And you guys do a really nice job, too, of kind of stepping through the different leadership styles and kind of. And the pros and the cons of them, too. I mean, a million years ago is kind of the classic question was, well, is it nature or nurture when it comes to leadership? Are people born leaders? Did General Patton take a class on leadership or how much is able to be taught? And I think with using the crucible of the polyvagal theory and just how our neurology, how we're all of us are hardwired, regardless of situation or background or upbringing or specialty, gives us this opportunity to understand it, but then also to have actionable kinds of methods of assessing ourselves, like you were just pointing out, I think is really critical and very helpful to be able to deal with that. And I think maybe it was you, Randy, you talked about, like, with cognitive behavioral therapy, that this wasn't something that was in conflict with it, but something that could be more integrative and synthetic with it. Could either of you talk about the difference, the tension actually, or the difference between cognitive decision Making versus the more intuitive and then shift into the conjoint use of integrating the analytical and the intuitive.

Yeah, I mean, I could start with a description of sort of where the mechanisms of that and then Jeffrey can lead into the application part, you know, for the business professional. So really the idea is, is that there used to be a theory called the triune brain, which means that the brain has three different levels. But for our purposes, we talk about in the book two levels, what we call the cognitive brain. And if you were to look at a picture of the brain or look at a brain, it's what I like to call the wrinkly bits on the palm. You know, this is what we call our neocortex, the new evolutionary cortex, where we developed the ability as creatures to think, to reason, to philosophize. So this is where abstract reasoning, for example, largely lays. If you go deeper into the brain though, you can see what we call the more primitive areas because these were areas that were present in mammals that don't have as much wrinkly bits as we do. And so this would be things like what we call the limbic system, which is where a lot of your emotional responses come from. And those are tied into again our screening the environment for danger. And also they have to do with things like am I hungry, am I sleepy? These kind of things. And so cognitive psychology models have really focused and done amazing work on the thinking part, but we really hadn't done as much with how do you work with the limbic system, the other parts, the more primitive parts. And the reason why there's a difference is because that part of your brain does not understand language, it doesn't understand what the heck you're saying, but it does understand some more primitive impulses and inputs. So a good example I like to use is that if you have a mother holding her infant, she's not, you know, helping the infant with a philosophic discussion, she's holding the baby, touch, keeping the baby the right temperature, not too hot, not too cold, singing to the baby, soothing voice, you know, things like this. And we get into, in our book, you know, just simple things like your physical environment can actually send what we call signals of safety to that part of the brain. So you have to learn how to talk to the non verbal part of your brain in addition to working with

the verbal part of your brain.

And that's what's really important about tying these together. And this is how we, we start to figure out how do we apply this into the business world.

What would you say, Jeffrey, well that's a fantastic explanation. And I'll just give an example where, where this can occur. So imagine a situation, say an HR situation. And we talk about some of these illustrations in the book as well, but this is just one, one of many examples. And you have an interview with this HR professional and the interview is going really well and this person that's being interviewed has all the right credentials. The interview is going well, things are great, but the person who's interviewing for some reason just not very comfortable with that individual. Something's off for that, for that interviewer, the person doing the interviewing. And come to find out there's a deep seated issue that's really happening in the, in the subconscious. And that is they had a, a poor experience or negative experience with someone in the past that reminds them of the person sitting in the chair in front of them that they're interviewing. And that creates kind of an unconscious bias that basically is occurring. And so with having a better understanding of polyvagal theory and how you apply that, it allows you the element of understanding yourself better so you can identify those types of circumstances.

Gotcha. So to have a recognition of that in the context of it and say something else must be going on here. This isn't, you know, the, I've got a, an intuitive gut level feeling that isn't based on what's going on from the cognitive of situation of what I'm dealing with, with this person. Is that right?

That's correct. And take it a step further. So imagine that, that the hiring manager or the HR professional does not hire that individual based on that feeling, but that feeling is based on something that really isn't relevant to the person sitting in front of them. But now they made a poor business decision not to hire that individual because of that negative feeling that really they could hire that person. That person would be a perfect fit for the position.

Yeah, I, it's such a good point. I mean it's, it's, I think maybe on the forefront a lot more these last two, three, four years with diversity and inclusion aspects, you know, in hiring. And sometimes it's very obvious, but I think to your point, sometimes there are the other things that are, you know, triggering for the interviewer in this HR kind of situation that maybe are less obvious to the eye, but more so to the, you know, past experiences or what have you. I guess maybe I'm probably going to ping pong back and forth between business and clinical, but in the context of just living in leadership, of making optimal decisions, how Do. How do leaders, how do any of us get past like the negativity that may come along with if we've had a past trauma or some kind of past stress or something that insinuates itself into our decision making? Like you were just noting, Jeffrey, that, you know, like to identify it. But what are some ways to, you know, to deal with that? Tool wise, technique wise?

Yeah, and that's a great question, Chris. So that really ties into another aspect that's really important for people to understand is that when we are triggered into fight or flight, or especially when we're triggered into shutdown to the external world, we look like we're thinking and functioning and interacting quite normally. However, when the brain is activated like this, it's basically saying we're in danger. And so survival instinct takes over and our ability to actually really pay attention to what's going on around us, to actively listen, to take in information and to reason through things actually gets kind of shut off. So we look like we're functioning normally, but we're really not. And anybody who's listening may recall a time when they were like really stressed out or scared and they may notice that their memory gets pretty fuzzy around this time. And this is because your brain resources are being prioritized for survival. Again, the rest of the matter, if you're dead, right.

Wow.

The thing is, it's a very strong reaction, but that's because our brain also this non verbal part, doesn't understand context. So it acts as if literally a lion's attacking you and you're literally about to die, even though maybe it's just somebody cut you off on the freeway and they didn't put you in danger, but they really upset you.

Gotcha.

So the other aspect is, okay, you know, you asked what do we do about it? How do people try to navigate their nervous system? You know, and as we mentioned, the first step is know thyself. Where do you tend to go to as a person? Because then it's a matter of, okay, I need to learn some tools so that I can shift myself into a state of social engagement where I'm now able to pay more attention, to focus, engage, communicate and interact with other people. So we talk about these in the book, some skills that people can use. And in addition, this is what we're hoping to do, is through consulting and training, we can actually provide experiential, very simple exercises that people can learn to practice skills to become a more steadfast leader, to become more centered and grounded. And it doesn't Require you. You don't need to sit in the room and tell everybody your darkest secrets. You don't need to necessarily do formal psychotherapy. It's not about trying to remember everything that stressed you out or that was bad that happened to you. But it's more like, where am I right now? And what are some tools I can use to regulate myself?

Got it. So from that, you also note in the book that in the context of being a manager, being in a leadership kind of position, that the tools that you have that you talk about in the book and kind of that you're referencing here can also be adapted to their team. Can you give us some examples of that about what do those tools look like? And how does someone even go about introducing that to their team in an accepting kind of way?

Well, I was going to add what Randy was saying earlier, that in today's modern society we have a lot of, I call micro dangers that are happening on a continual basis. Things where our brain, we talk about neuroception, scanning the environment for cues of safety or danger. And you know, this is done on a really unconscious level. And so with the amount, or the, I call it the assault on the brain, so to speak, from these cues of danger from modern society. You know, our brains are very active. And so with microaggressions or these micro dangers that our brains may perceive, it creates a lot of stress for people. You know, in the professional workplace, we've seen this over and over again where you see companies that have high levels of turnover, and part of the reason for those high levels of turnover is obviously employee dissatisfaction. But why is there employee dissatisfaction? And when you dig deeper into the reasons for that, you find out that a lot of times you find toxicity and issues in the workplace that cause a great amount of cues of danger for the individuals and that's why they leave the workplace. And so part of the work that we're doing is try to eliminate or remove or at least alleviate to a degree those cues of danger in the workplace so that you create less toxicity in the workplace. And the cost of turnover today in corporate America is tremendous. If there is a line item on the income statement to show what the annual expenses were for turnover, I assure you that managers would look at turnover differently. Unfortunately, in the accounting world, it doesn't happen that way. But I mean, the research shows that just on low level white collar jobs alone, the cost of each individual turning over in the workplace is over 30,000 a year. Now multiply that by thousands of people in a larger organization you're in the multiple hundreds of millions, possibly billions of of dollars a year in annual turnover costs. So these are very important issues to address. That's part of the reason also we have so much stress in society. A lot of it's also emanating from the workplace, and that's carried over into our personal lives as well, for our professional lives.

Sure.

So these are all important issues that, that we do address in the book at a certain level.

You know, it reminds me of Amy Edmondson from Harvard, you know, talking about and writing about what she kind of has coined the psychological safety aspect of it. So in the book, you talk about cues of safety in the workplace. Could you maybe share what those might look like or some examples?

Yeah, I can jump in on that one. And that kind of leads to your previous question, Chris, about, well, what do managers do with their team? And really it's a very simple concept, is that you provide cues of safety. You actually become the sort of the emitter of cues of safety to your team. And also by trying to set up, as Jeffrey alluded to, how do you set up your organization to also provide basically more safety cues for your staff? So some of the concrete examples would be like a leader who knows thyself and is able to regulate oneself. If you're in a social engagement staff state, which is the everything's fine, green lights all around, the other people's neuroception will pick up on that and will respond. If you as a leader walk in and you're all fight or flight or you're shut down, their nervous systems are going to pick that up and say, ah, there's danger. And then they will start to go into similar states. So a leader, the most potent thing they can do is to regulate their own state. And if they can't, in the moment, get out, away from your team, get yourself regulated, and then come back. And these are very simple tools that one can use. We also talk about, you know, how do you set up just your processes, your workflows, you know, are they set up and think about that, how you can innovate as a leader. How can you provide basically the work environment to be more accused of safety? Is it your physical plant, the lighting, the colors, the furniture, windows? Is it how you handle things like employee, you know, performance improvement? There's so many different ways, areas where you can kind of think about how can I provide more cues of safety as opposed to terrorizing or stressing out, you know, the people that I'm working with. And yes, if you are General patented, to use that example you mentioned, Chris. You know, if you're in the military, you have to have a pretty firm, you know, grip the chain of commands, otherwise soldiers could end up dying. But for an IT firm, you know, normally IT companies don't have, you know, hand to hand combat with automatic weapons. So you don't necessarily need to be a general. So think about what's appropriate for your organization. You know, how can you foster people to feel safe enough so that they can communicate, cooperate and innovate with each other, get them into ventral vagal social engagement and then you watch them take off and really grow.

That's great. I really appreciate the points you make in what you said in the book as well around just, you know, physical space and environment because it also seems like that kind of tacitly communicates, you know, I care about the situation. I mean, it's almost like the bad example is, is, you know, the more educational of just something that's, you know, a workplace that's kind of decrepit or a little long in the tooth or even worse, you know, dangerous. If it's, you know, something that might have some manufacturing or laboratory or something like that that goes along with it. It all kind of presents and in another, from a business perspective, really sort of represents the brand. And oftentimes, you know, if it's a founder, you know, that if they're wanting to recruit, if they're wanting to retain, if they're wanting to, you know, go back and get more VC funding or sell to private equity, all of those kinds of things really make it incumbent upon that leader to be managing all those, you know, spinning plates and to be able to do that. And then I can also see how that would relate to, you know, back to your relationships. I mean, I think it was you, Randy, that said something along the lines of, you know, like if you need to kind of give yourself a little bit of a timeout, if you're spooling up and you don't want to, you know, bark at an employee or your staff, that you need to recognize that. And you know, obviously same thing with relationships, if it's a romantic relationship or a parenting relationship or whatever, to kind of take that breather, you know, reconcile yourself, get yourself under control and then go back to, you know, becoming more of a, you know, then using the logical side and trying to solve what, whatever that problem is.

I would add too that one of the best leadership models that we found that really supports the ideas behind polyvagal theory is servant leadership model the servant leadership model, the whole idea is that the manager or leader of that team is there to support the team. Not top down, but more of kind of a bottom up approach, provide resources and support for the team. And we found that that structure tends to work best and is supported best with polyvagal theory.

You know, and personally myself, that's how I always kind of categorized myself in terms of being in those kinds of positions, of wanting to, you know, provide tools and provide structure and you know, empathic leadership, so to speak as well too. But you also talk about, you know, there's, there's, there's two sides to every leadership coin. There's the good part and the bad part. Are there ways then that polyvagal theory can act as a bad backstop for the weaknesses that come along with servant leadership styles?

That's a really interesting question. I suppose when you look at the criticisms of the different leadership theories out there, usually the criticism around servant leadership revolves around, it's kind of vague, it's not as clear, it might be confusing for team members that are not quite sure what they're supposed to do or you know, classically people were worried that the servant leader would be seen as someone not to take seriously or even to take advantage of. Yeah, but I think ultimately, you know, what's nice about polyvagal theory is, is that if something's going awry in that interaction, then the leader, the manager, or even the team member, if they know what their state's in, it's kind of like their nervous system and their body starts to tell them whether it thinks there's a problem afoot, whether that's correct or not. So I think ultimately polyvagal theory would tell you to always check what state you're in and then re, adapt, re change, shift your state if you need to. Some of the criticisms that have come out was some people would say, well, there is an over, over focus on the vagus nerve. And everybody's saying that, you know, if you can hum enough, your vagus nerve will get you to, I don't know, grow more hair and become younger.

Right.

But see, that's, I think somewhat misleading because that's not at all what the claim is in polyvagal theory. It's, it's that it's being able to understand where you're at, where others are at. And this is another thing that we talk about in the book is that a good leader, a good manager will also really be aware of what's going on in the team. And this is where Jeffrey's corrects. A servant leader is somebody who really cares about and keeps track of where their team members are at and tries to encourage growth, innovation, a sense of safety and communication.

I like that. And you actually, I've got a script of questions and that's kind of segues nicely into the next one. Could you maybe give some examples of either of you about how steadfast leadership could positively impact teams during challenging times or facing crises of whatever sort that might be.

Sure. You know, a very stressful time. For example, maybe a merger acquisition between two. Trying to combine different cultures and the uncertainty of knowing whether you're going to have a job or not in the future. How the workplace is going to change.

Right.

Job description might change in general and what the new duties might be and how that's going to work. And that creates a lot of anxiety for people. I've been through that myself. A lot of people have been through that in corporate America. And so using polyvagal theory and more of a kind of a servant leadership, not that it's the only model to use, but I think that's probably the better model to use in circumstances like that where the team, team feels supported by their leader, by management, resources as much as possible are being provided to them. Being honest and saying, look, I don't know what the future has in store. I can't tell you what's going to happen in 12 months. All I can do is support you now, provide all the resources you need and be here for you when you need something. And we're in this together. And so creating that kind of unity is really important now. It doesn't mean that people aren't going to quit or leave or be dissatisfied, but reduces anxiety, reduces some of the toxicity that occurs with those types of circumstances.

And I would imagine too it's not like one of those things. It's just, you know, you put on the polyvagal theory, the steadfast leadership cloak that day. It's built up over time, you know, and it's you as the leader showing up every day, you know, during the thick and the thick within of the crisis in the blue sky times. That that's your approach. And I would imagine that then provides staff to feel trustworthy, feel like that leader is trustworthy, feel like they can. Even if, like you just said, to speak truth, to say we're not sure, this may not. It's a foggy time. We don't know exactly what's on going, going to be happening specifically. And I think people then trust That a bit more. And then hopefully, you know, that the it makes the leaders work like that. There's one less problem to say, oh, gosh, I wish people would have trusted me. I wish I would have been more trustworthy. I wish I would have done these other things early on. I think especially I work with a lot of founders and startups and I think for founders to kind of come right off the bat to do that. And I find too now a lot of private equity buying companies or venture capitalists helping fund and precede. Want to see what you guys describe as a steadfast leader, as a highly likely successful founder.

Yeah. And building trust is so critically important with the people you're working with, the people you surround yourself with. And part of building that trust is being honest with people and doing what you say you're going to do, that they can depend on you.

On maybe the more positive side, how does a steadfast leader create a culture of continuous learning? I mean, that's one of the things that's also kind of a corporate mantra these days. And people having good personal growth within their organization, as well as being a good tool, or I'm trying to think of nice words for it, as being a contributing individual in the organization, but also feeling growth and proud of what their work is in a company. What are the kinds of things that steadfast leadership can do to help cultivate that and create a situation for that?

Yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, as we kind of have talked about, it's the idea that you want to create a sense of safety. Basically what that does is once people are not so much focused on survival, then they can naturally become curious. Right. And so, and studies that show this, when they've even looked at, you know, research in different leadership models, the idea is, is that if you want to foster innovation, growth, you know, companies that actually encourage their employees to learn new skills, to grow in their jobs, and even to get promoted within the company, they tend to do better, as opposed to companies that actively avoid that. And so the leader really, by giving that sense of, hey, you know, things are fine. And I did want to make one point along this line, is that we are not saying that everybody should just walk around all Zen all the time. Right. Because you've got work to do. There are deadlines, there's competitors out there, there's maybe regulatory stuff to deal with. There are real stresses in the world. And so it's not that we're saying that people should never be in fight or flight or shut down those States have their uses when we need them, but it's like, how do we continue to roll with, you know, respond when it's necessary. If a car cuts you off, to use that example, you need to be able to react pretty quickly as opposed to just like, whoa, man, that's cool that the car hit.

That's good.

Yeah. So people need to be able, but they also then if they have tools in helping them to settle back once the threat is over. So if there's work stresses going on, understanding that's a real thing. But do people feel optimistic? Do they feel safe enough? Do they feel like they're listened to and respected enough so that they're actually engaged, they're enthusiastic, they're contributing and actually coming up with ideas? To me that's, you know, some of the main concept points.

Yeah, I like that. It makes me, as you were saying that too early on or makes me think of sort of like a, a Maslovian perspective. You know, you're not going to be creative and at your best if you're feeling like you're in survival mode, you know. So I mean sort of the being self actualized in a, in a variation on the self actualization theme at work of being able to, to feel like, you know, I'm not always going to have to be defending myself or whatever, but I, it gives me this opportunity to, you know, think, you know, creatively and, and come up with new ideas and new solutions. Probably not necessarily in every single kind of job position, but I would think, you know, the majority of kinds of things that that could be applicable for as well too. So one of the things we, you mentioned earlier on a little bit like about, like in a financial circumstance, if someone, you know, the market goes down and a client, you know, freaks out and then you know, a person needing to help hear that and appreciate that and understand that in context. Could you maybe talk about that? You also talk about the financial benefits of the polyvagal theory that could lead to cost savings in an organization. What are, how does that work?

Well, let me talk from a personal finance perspective. We'll start there and kind of move our way into the corporate area.

Okay.

So,

you know, if a client comes into the office, to a financial advisor's office and they're stressed out, obviously they're cues of danger being the market's very volatile, the market's down. The first step is the advisor

needs

to understand what, where they're at in terms of the polyvagal ladder. Are they in a socialized circumstance? Are they in a fight or flight circumstance, or really a shutdown or immobilization circumstance. And to understand where the client's position is, which at that point is probably their fight or flight or possibly immobilization. And then how do you transition that client into a more socialized, engaging circumstance so that they will actually listen to what you're saying to them? Randy brought up a very important point earlier about having individuals, whether it be team members, managers, in this case a client being in a socially engaged frame of mind. Because then they're accept accepting ideas, they're listening, they're better understanding what you're saying to them. Once that individual, in this case a client has shut themselves down or in a fight or flight mode, they're really not listening to what the advisor or the individual is saying to them. You can make as many logical arguments or points as you want, but that individual, that client is really not listening to you. Yeah, the same thing can happen in the workplace with, with individual team environments as well.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I get that.

Now, from a financial perspective, there's various financial biases. You know, kind of getting the whole behavioral finance area. One of those areas is something we call the gambler's fallacy. And this happens in investing. This can actually happen, hence the name, in a gambling type circumstance too. Imagine being in Las Vegas and you're gambling your money. So if a client is losing money, they're actively trading their account as an example, and they keep losing money. They get into this mindset with the gambler's fallacy. Well, if I keep gambling or keep investing, I'm going to try to make that money back. They tend to take more and more risk in doing that to try to compensate for the loss that they've had. They basically have shut themselves down to reasoning the fact that they're actually creating more risk and creating more losses for themselves because they're in a state of panic trying to recover the losses that they've had. So instead of taking a step back and realizing, wow, I, you know, I'm putting myself in a worse position, they're actually continuing down that path of creating a worse position for themselves. This happened actually of Nick Leeson with Barings Bank a number of years ago in Singapore.

Tell us about.

Some may recall that where he lost the bank billions and billions of dollars, he was trying to trade back all the losses that he had and made the losses substantially worse and actually bankrupted the 300 year old bank because of that.

Wow. Oh gosh. Wow. It just, it's sort of mind boggling. I mean, in some sense you could sort of, you know, empathize and understand that situation. But talk about the combination of emotion and brain. It's certainly not logic, but you know, trying to suss out a solution that way is just, you know, it can be obviously lead to tragic consequences. And maybe speaking about that, maybe this is just kind of recency effect. But I had Daniel Goleman on the show recently and I'm just wondering too, in the context of all this, we've talked about cognitive, behavioral, we talked about bonding and whatnot. What role does emotional intelligence play in the conceptualization or the application of becoming a steadfast leader?

Yeah, that's an area that Jeffrey has done some work even previously on his own in some publications. But emotional intelligence really ties in nicely to our concept of a steadfast leader is one that has a high degree of emotional intelligence, a high eq and that really has to do again with self awareness, but also awareness of what's going on around you. And so how this can help organizations is that if you have people, teams that are functioning better, that are happier, you're going to get less turnover. Which ties back into Jeffrey's point about the cost of turnover. Might be able to get the right people in the right position. We talk about this in our book about maybe look at the job descriptions you have and can you match the right nervous system, you know, to the right job in addition to their skills and their training and experience. So if you get less turnover and if you can get teams that are more productive, this is going to save organizations a lot of money and also really help them to succeed in their goals. And that's why we're really so passionate about this program project.

I like that. I have to ask too, like when I think about kind of shifting gears in the concept of nutrition and mental health and whatnot, there seems to be a growing literature on the role of serotonin vis a vis the gut. Does that overlap with any of the research that you guys have done with either emotional well being and cortisol levels or something along those lines and you know, the, the metaphor of thinking about, you know, our gut instinct, our gut feeling, etc. As the non rational intuitive? Where, where what's the overlap or the crossroad of those kinds of things that, that you found?

Yeah, it's a great question. So there's really not as much right now in the literature and the research world about looking at polyvagal theory and applying it into like neurotransmitters but we do know that there is a pretty significant amount of work, anecdotal evidence, and also people that are looking in studies at how nutrition affects the brain. Because if you think about it, the gut is actually got the second largest amount of serotonin, nerves and receptors, second only to the brain. We often in medicine talk about the gut has its own little second brain.

Right, Right.

Yeah. And so, of course, the vagus nerve, with all of its fibers that go to the gut, that's part of your most primitive freeze system. And so as the gut goes, the brain responds, because a lot of times if the gut is signaling issues, the brain starts to think there's a problem, and so I better get anxious and try to solve this. So they do interplay with each other. And you see more and more of this in the field of mental health about how diet, even looking at what we call the microbiome, the bacteria and organisms you have in your gut, can have a pretty significant impact on how people feel and how they respond. So there's something to it. Serotonin, if you have too much or too little, can be a bad thing. So we want to have the right levels. And you'll see this in the field of psychiatry, that when it comes to things like depression and mood, yeah, maybe sometimes serotonin is playing a role. But as Andrew Weil famously states, antidepressants that focus on serotonin work about 36 to 38% of the time. So there's within just that. But there's a lot of fascinating things that we still have to really figure out and learn.

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting as the science and even just, you know, the detection and measurements and things like that, you know, progress. And again, I just love the whole overlap and intersection of these kinds of issues, from the emotional and biological neurological to leadership and working with others. Can I shift gears a little bit? And I don't know if I said this off mic or on, but to put on my book nerd hat and talk to you guys about the book itself.

Great.

Sure.

Good. So you very nicely teed up talking about how you got to to be with McGraw Hill in the fortunate situation of having a person who is conversant with mental health kinds of issues and now working in the business area. So that's going to be hard for listeners to kind of have happen for them unless they have books that they want to, you know, that would fit in this and they can reach out to McGraw Hill. But I have to say I really Liked the bulleted summaries at the end of each chapter. And as I said earlier, and it was starting on page 205, I mean, the references were just awesome to be able to go in and see the notes and you know, just again, for a person like me, that's, that's just, that's great. It just, it reinforces the points, it gives me direction if I want to go down a rabbit hole myself and, you know, look up more and learn more, that kind of a thing. But also, you know, I have to shout out for people need to grab the book. The illustrations and the lists and the tables are super helpful for what could be a very complex, maybe even kind of intimidating. Like if a, you know, a person that's in leadership, you know, probably didn't take a whole lot of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology classes and whatnot. So it really kind of allows a person to feel comfortable with that kind of new and perhaps alien material, unfamiliar material. How did you come up with the design for that and putting it together in such a. An engaging kind of. Of way? I guess I would say.

Yeah, it's a good question. I think we just really first, the first thing we did was just sit down and, and do an outline. Right. As you do when you're writing a book. And it's kind of nice when you have two brains because then you have someone to talk to as you're thinking,

what do you think about this? How about that?

There's a good point, and I think, Chris, that really kind of highlights that point that we had made, is that we're not asking people to go and become super familiar with neuroscience because that would make your average business person probably glaze over.

Right.

Just like I glaze over when I see the finance and accounting stuff that Jeffrey has to tangle with. That's also a totally different foreign language. But so we understand that, you know, some people are good visual learners. And so if we had some visual aids in there to break it down and make it easy to grab. And that was our thought, was to also not just have never ending pages of small text. Right. Which can be daunting.

Right.

Anybody who, you know, may have to break it up because they don't have the time to sit down and read for big chunks of time. I think we really just tried to make it sort of accessible and easy to grab for people.

Yeah. And again, just for people to recommend the book, I really highlight that. I mean, again, I've probably spoken too much about the science and the whatnot and the references. But the point being is that people can pick it up and see it as a trusted source, that it is very engaging, regardless of what your, you know, your background or specialty or anything like that is. And you make it. You. You have this wonderful balance of being engaging. I mean, I found myself just feeling so sorry for poor Oliver Green. And that was a great device. I want to talk about that, too, in a minute. But to have someone pick up a book, because honestly, there's stuff that gets out there that someone has sort of like what sounds like a great idea. It's. It's, you know, it's packaged well, it presents well, et cetera, and it has zero scientific background to it. It has zero testing. It might be more of a memoir about what someone thinks will work for everybody else just because it worked for them and that your book, you know, is not that way whatsoever. So, I mean, I'm just saying that people, in the context of wanting to become a better leader, with actionable kinds of tips and a very accessible, engaging kind of reading style you can trust. It's not like reading the New England Journal of Medicine. It's like, you know, reading an engaging, enjoyable kind of work. And one of the ways you did that was through Oliver Green. So share with folks. I would like to know how you came up with Oliver Green and then share with folks who Oliver Green is and how he relates to your book.

Yeah, we wanted to. And this is one thing Jeffrey and I were both clear on is we wanted to use the example of a person's story because that makes it much more accessible, easier for people to kind of grab onto and then follow through. Yeah. You know, putting this, like you said, this poor person through multiple different scenarios.

Oh, man.

Yeah. And we, yeah, just went back and forth. We even got outside, you know, opinions and advice. We talked to not only our senior editor at McGraw Hill, but she. She had put us in contact with an amazing book editor who went through and polished up the manuscript and really challenged us. So we were joking that at times we were thanking her and then crying and begging for mercy.

That's how that goes.

Yes. But I think that we just sort of came up with, after several iterations with this particular character, and interestingly so, after the book became published, we actually have a series of kind of like narrated video, not live action video, but stills, you know, that are like a live training videos that are based on the book. So if anybody goes to neuroconsultinggroup.com they can actually. We have links to that where they can learn more about Oliver and then learn a little bit more about the practical applications.

Brilliant.

Yeah, we just found it kind of nice. And it's really important, I think, to tell a story, you know, as you go through and try to explain and teach people a new concept.

Yeah, it's kind of a variation on the case study theme. You know, it's sort of like each. But it's the same character in different scenarios and cases, so to speak. So I really like that. I thought that was very. A fresh way to go about doing that. And again, just really, you know, helped communicate the messages in very clear, actionable, practical kinds of ways. So I know we're running short on time, but a year from now, what. What do you want this book to have done? What would have to happen for you guys to consider your book to have been a success? You look back on it and say, bingo. Here's. Here's what we. We did. What we. It. It did what we hoped it would.

Well, we'd like to obviously sell a lot of books. That would be nice. But really, really, our ultimate goal is really to help people and if we can have a profound effect on some people and how they deal with their everyday lives, business, professional lives, make better decisions, both personally and professionally. I think we've done our job. And that, I think, was really the goal that Randy and I had was to help people along the way. And if we happen to make money doing it, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But we really do want to help people, and we're hoping that this book will allow people or give them the tools to allow them to make better decisions and make improvements in their personal and professional lives.

Yeah. And tying on to that, you know, we actually at Neuro Consulting Group have brought on board Dr. Abby Blakesley, who is a somatic psychologist and very well known in the mental health world, who teaches and lectures internationally, and just an amazing person. And she is our director of training and education. And so we are really working on, you know, whether organizations or even an individual business owner might want either online or in person, live trainings where they can actually get into the theory a little bit more. But more so to say, practically, how do I apply this? What are some exercises or things that I can try to really build the muscle memory and the skill around, how to incorporate polyvagal theory into what you do?

I would. I would also add that, and I'm not saying this is as a, you know, a marketing plea, but our Website, Neural Consulting Group.com we have a lot of free and available information for people. We have video information people can watch. There's links to various peer reviewed journal articles and other relatable articles that we've included. So there's a lot of free information available on the website that people can peruse as well. If you want to learn more about what we're doing and about polyvagal theory and how it applies to business, that's great.

And I'll make sure that'll appear in the show notes. If folks are in their car, out on a run or something, those will be available to click right through. So that's great. And that's perfectly fine because I mean, the fact that you make these kinds of things available to people is, you know, is a benefit that you're, you know, contributing and giving to the world, which I very much appreciate. Appreciate as well too. So we're bearing down on an hour. We've covered a lot of territory, but is there anything that we've missed that either of you would like to add before we wrap up?

Not from my perspective. I think we kind of covered the most important points, you know, about the goal of our book and what we'd like to do as an organization. And we do really appreciate the opportunity to potentially be of service.

And Chris, and thank you, Chris, for having us on your show. We really appreciate it. And the engaging questions you asked, a lot of very intelligent and thoughtful questions and we appreciate that very much.

Well, thanks. It certainly comes from a place of being an enthusiastic reader and supporter of your work and it was an honor to be able to then have the the fun thing for me of being able to talk to the authors whose words I had been reading. So thank you both for for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our pleasure. Appreciate it.

As a reminder, listeners can read a summary of this episode and access the links to the show notes via my LinkedIn Top Voice Companion article, along with past guests as well. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I have and I hope it will help you in your journey to living your life in full. Until next time, Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant Producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien Executive Producer and Host, Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information, uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time.