Finding Brave 76: Narcissistic Leaders and the Damaging Lies They Tell, with Dov Baron

We go, hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. How is it going this week? Are you having a brave one? We would love to hear and you know, part of the brave journey as we've been talking about and what episode are we on? Maybe something like 80 something is that sometimes we fall down, sometimes we get crushed, sometimes there's failure. That is all part of the brave journey. It doesn't look like one thing. It doesn't just look like something success. It looks like all of it. So I hope you're getting that in the show. And I'm so excited to have as our guest Dov Baron today from Vancouver. Dov, thank you so much for joining me and taking time. I'm so appreciative. And we are here, we are here talking about a topic that is already going a little viral in the Forbes interview we just published a few days ago on narcissistically leaders. And we are touching on the destructive lies they tell themselves and others. But as we were just sharing, you know, we feel, I think, don't let me put words in your mouth, dog, but that attacking people and pushing them down and ostracizing them and alienating them, that's not where we're going here. Where, where we are going is having our eyes opened about behaviors in ourselves. And I know you have something to share about that. So do I. That we know narcissistic behaviors pretty darn well not only from seeing it out here, but from working through them and overcoming them. So this is not about blame. This is not about trashing and attacking. It's about compassionately looking at what we're facing and giving strategies to help.

Yeah, absolutely.

And everyone. Let me share. Dog, I can't believe your bio. I'm like my eyes were popping out of my head. This is an impressive individual, dog. Baron, twice cited as one of Inc. Magazine's top 100 leadership speakers to hire. Also cited in the Meeting and Event Professionals guide to the top 100 motivational speakers and named as one of the top 30 global leadership gurus. Later, I want to ask, how does all that happen? How do you get named? But you're gonna. What you share is gonna reveal how that happens. Dov is a man with a finger on the pulse of the evolving world of next gen leadership. He's a best selling author of several books. His latest book, Fiercely How High Performing Companies Develop and Retain Top Talent. He is the host of the national US TV show pursuing deep greatness with Daw Barron on Roku TV and a host of the number one podcast for Fortune 500 listeners globally. Dov Barron's leadership and loyalty show on itunes. I guess we're calling that Apple podcast now, right? And it's carried on FM and AM radio across the US and that's not even the half of your incredible bio. So it's amazing how busy you are, my friend.

Thank you.

So let's jump in.

Sure.

Where do we begin? What you were just sharing before. There are narcissistic behaviors and then there's narcissistic personality disorder. Two different things. Can you jump in and tell us what do we need to know here?

Yeah, I think that that's where. What's important here. So there are people who behave like narcissists, and there are people who are narcissists. So let me just shift the context for a minute so I allow people to get it. Have you ever told a lie? Of course you have. People said to you, how are you? You said, fine. When you're feeling like crap. And you said, fine, that's a lie. Right. So we all lie. That doesn't make you a pathological liar. It makes you somebody who tells lies occasionally. Right. We all do. So we all. So using that as a context, we've all behaved in a narcissistic manner, in a very selfish manner. That doesn't make us narcissists. There are narcissists. There's no doubt about it. And if you've ever worked for one, you've known that you know exactly what it is. But there are narcissistic behaviors. And as I talked about in the interview we did for Forbes, oftentimes when we do that, we're not even aware that we're doing those things. We're not even aware. So what's actually happening is what we're calling narcissistic behavior is actually the behavior that comes out of massive insecurity. And guess what? If you have skin and you're a human, you have felt insecure at some point in time, and then you've probably behaved in a way that was narcissistic as a result of that insecurity. So there's a difference between the two.

I love it. So most of you know, I was trained as a marriage and family therapist after my corporate life, and I swear to you, I needed it after my corporate life. Absolutely. So I'd like to give a little context on what I believe are some hallmark traits of true narcissistic personality disorder, just so we can differentiate.

Absolutely.

There are different kinds. There are narcissists that punish you. And you know, when you're chat, they're challenged. But here's the hallmarks that I see almost daily in clients coming to me talking about bosses and management. That hurts them. Number one, they cannot be challenged. They it challenges and push back. If you don't see what I see here, you know, they basically. And they might not act like they can't be challenged, but often they'll drum you out with a murderous rage later because you've challenged them. Number two, there's a sense of entitlement. Like they don't have to follow the rules. Like they are above other people. Like, have you ever been at Disney and there's a line of 4,000 people? And a true narcissist might say, I don't, I don't deserve to need to stand in this line. I'm better than that. Right. Number three is there is an absolute absence of empathy which can make a person a monster. Right. They really cannot be able to sit in your shoes and understand what you feel. Okay, what would you say? Would you agree with those three first?

I would agree with all of them, but I would take each one of them separately and say, listen, if you're feeling insecure and somebody challenges you, you're going to behave like a narcissist because you can't be challenged. You get enraged when somebody challenges you. Doesn't mean you're narcissist. It means you're massively insecure. It's the stack of all these things that causes the weather challenges.

And it's a degree. It's a spectrum disorder.

Exactly.

And that's the thing that's important to know. Many of us are on a 1 or 2 of the scale, a frightening individual who's going to do incredible damage.

And that's the thing is to look. And again, I'd say this in work that I do with private individuals is nobody is objective in their subjective reality. So you need objective reality. You need somebody like you need a dove, you need a Cathy. You need somebody who can say to you, hold on a second, let's look at this. What's the root of this? Where is this coming from? And now there's a whole range of things that are showing up inside of this spectrum that are pushing us towards this. So. So I'll give you an example. Empathy. There's a lot of talk about empathy and I think empathy is a wonderful subject and we need to have a heck of a lot more of it. But here's the thing. Maybe in your Childhood, it wasn't safe to be empathetic. Maybe you learned to disguise your empathy so well that you've now disguised it from yourself that when those feelings come up, you actually repress them. Because you used to get beaten, whether that's verbally or physically or emotionally. Whatever it was for being empathetic, you were told, you know, if you're a guy, particularly, maybe you were told you're being a wimp, you know, because. Because you were being empathetic, you're being a wuss, whatever it was. So you repress your empathy. Doesn't mean you don't have it. I remember working with a leader who seemed to be very unempathetic, who I sat with, who started talking about something and talked about themselves and started getting a bit teary and was like, okay, that still could be narcissism, because it's all about you. But then they talk about somebody else and they got way more emotional. And it was because I was safe. I created a safe space for them to feel for others. So I'm always nervous about labeling somebody as a narcissist. I much rather say these are narcissistic behaviors on the spectrum. And if we stack them all up, yeah, maybe we do have somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder. That's different than somebody who may be completely unconscious of how repressed they've become through a situation, through their environment. So this. Let's just let everybody get to that before we start. And also understand, and as a proviso, let's put this in place, is if you're working with somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder, or for that matter, if you're working with somebody who's showing all the traits of it, that. But isn't it because they're massively insecure and they got older, all kinds of issues, it is not your job to fix them, and it is not your job to tolerate them. You don't have to put up with them. So even if they're a really lovely, kind person, but have gone through such crap in their lives that they're behaving like this, you don't have to tolerate it. You don't have to go, well, it must have been a rotten childhood for them. No, no, you have to go, you know what? I don't need to be in this. This is destructive and unhealthy, and you need to leave and you need to walk away. You need to take care of yourself.

I love it. There's so much. I just want to highlight two Things if I could. You know how you said sometimes it's not safe to develop these traits that are actually advantageous as being on the receiving end of narcissists. Narcissists in childhood. Sometimes I think that we become more empathic than we ever would. And that can be great, except it can be challenging if you don't have boundaries. So it's even the flip side that I hear a lot of people going, I'm so compassionate, I'm so empathic. No, you're getting walked on. You know, And I interviewed a therapist, Terry Real, who is amazing. Oh, turn that off. And he said he's amazed at how many women who've been abused by narcissists and other spouses and they still protect that behavior. And it's to your point. I think sometimes when we're overly empathic, we feel so badly for the individual who's troubled or who's broken inside that we allow ourselves to continue to be mistreated. Oh, I swear.

Can I take that a little bit, Can I take that a little bit deeper, please? Okay, so I get what you're saying and I agree with it. And I want to take it a step deeper into that and say this. So here's the thing. You know, you grew up. You as in not you, Kathy, whoever it is, a person grows up with a narcissistic parent who makes it all about them. Maybe the child develops, you know, is living with a parent who has Munchausen syndrome or whatever it might be, right? So you're dealing with all this craziness and what happens is you, as you, as you said, the person might develop an over. An over blown sense of compassion and empathy. That's actually not what's going on. What's actually going on is now that person is going out into the world and this is what the work that I do, we go out into the world. This is for everybody. Aggressor. I want you to just think about this. Because my work, I say in my work is what I do in my private work is I'm looking to bring home the disenfranchised parts of your soul. The leaders I work with are very successful, but there's something missing. And what's missing is fulfillment. And that doesn't take place until we bring home the part, the disenfranchised parts of the soul. What they've disenfranchised is allowed them to be successful. Now we want to get them to fulfillment. That's the next part. Here's the thing. You, I We unconsciously go out into the world unconsciously and try to heal people who damaged us. So you go looking for your mom or your dad or your sister or your brother or whoever it was in other people. And to do that, you have to magnify. So it's not good enough to be empathetic. You have to be super empathetic. And who are you going to be super empathetic to? Narcissists. And you go, well, why do I keep attracting these people? Because that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to heal somebody that is not your job to heal. So we start looking out instead of looking in. So that's why boundaries, as you so well put, are so vitally important. And I think that I've written tons of stuff on this. I think that boundaries are probably one of the weakest parts of our psyche. We don't understand boundaries. We understand rules, but we don't understand boundaries. And rules are the black holes of joy and boundaries. Boundaries magnify joy. Because, see, my boundaries. I remember seeing with my mother, little bit of, you know, she has some tendencies. I sit with my mother and we're. We're having dinner and I'm having a conversation with her, trying to let her in onto what was going on. And I said, do you know, mom, this is many years ago, almost 20 years ago. So, you know, when I was a kid, I was terrified. And she goes, all children are terrified. No, great, my head explodes. And I go, no, they're not. You don't get to tell me how all children feel. And what's more is you don't get. Tell me how I feel. That's not how it works. And so I start laying out some boundaries with her and she says, you don't need boundaries with me. I'm your mother. And I said, oh, I need more boundaries with you because your mother. But here's the point, mom, and this is the point for everybody else to get. My boundaries were not about my mother. My boundaries are about me. And that's where most people fail because they don't understand that. They think it's rules. So I've got to keep this person at this distance. No, no, this is my boundary. My boundary is very simple. It's got nothing to do with you. My boundary with my mom is the same boundary I have with my wife or with my best friends. It doesn't matter. This is my boundaries about my health.

I love it. Oh, what did I want to ask? Oh, I want to ask this because I know you're going to tell me the truth as you see it, where a lot of men won't, especially in the me too world. Let me ask this. I really want. I know you've got something to say about that. I'm working with women around boundaries because, Dov, I really believe this. In our patriarchal culture, women are societally trained not to be assertive, not to be confident, not to say, not to assert boundaries in a forceful, assertive way. But I know you work probably more with men. Is that right?

It's interesting. It's about now. It's about 70, 30. But it actually was the other way around when I. Even 10 years ago.

70, 30 men. 70% men.

70% men now. 60 to 70% men now. And it used to be the other way around. It was 60, 70% women.

How wonderful. And you're so needed in the male world. But here's my question to you, and I think that it might be hard for you to answer this because you're not a woman. I'm going to be honest. But do you believe that men in our patriarchal society struggle as much in asserting their boundaries assertively than as women do?

See, I think that that's a great question, and I'll tell you why it's a great question. Because it has a ton of presumption in it. And what I mean by that is it's societal presumption, not yours. It's societal. So, you know, you and I talked about in a previous conversation that some of the most assertive people I've ever met are women. Some of the most nurturing people I've ever met are men. So that gender bias goes out of the window right there. But what I will tell you is this, that it is not acceptable for women to be assertive about their boundaries, and it is acceptable about men. But with the. And again, you know, I'm a feminist. I'm a great believer in the power of women. I think that men are now terrified of asserting their boundaries because they're afraid it's going to come across as aggression or whatever it might be. And I think women are afraid of asserting their boundaries because they're afraid of looking like a bitch. Well, guess what? That's not what you are. You're an empowered human being. You need to own that empowerment. But I think that men are afraid of it. But the difference for men is that men are afraid of not looking strong. See, women are afraid of looking like a bitch, but men are afraid of not looking strong. And that strong is a false strong. It's got nothing to do with strength. I cry at commercials. Nobody looks at me and thinks this guy's a big softie. Nobody thinks that about me, but I'm a big softy. So what is it? It's the yin and the yang. I have both. I have a deep sense of empathy, a deep sense of compassion. I'm incredibly loving. I upset my son on the weekend because I said something to him and he was pissed off at me. And thank you for two days. I was carrying the weight of that because I don't like hurting the people I love. Even though it was non intentional. That weighed on me and made me feel deeply, deeply sad at the same time. Cross my boundary and you will know it and I will not hold back on that. So this is the thing. We've got to understand that it's both and it's the yin and yang. And yin is not better than Yang. Yang is not better than yin. So in women there's a yin. But guess what? In the middle of the yin square, yin sign is the Yang. And the same with the Yang. There's a yin inside. We've got to embrace both in ourselves because women are magnificent. We need way more women leaders in the world. Way more, if only to create maybe a little more than we need to create a little more balance because that's how we need to move a little bit more. And yeah, men are terrified of the Me Too movement. Some of that is appropriate and some of it isn't. And we've got to kind of work that out a little bit. But that's really 100%.

But let me ask you this, I wonder if this is similar in your work in mine. We can have this conversation with the sphere of people that we work with. And I don't want to, I don't want to sound not humble, but it's an evolved way of thinking because it's. I think it's outside of what we're taught. So it's evolved in that it takes bravery to think and say this stuff. And I think you're brave and you're dealing. Oh, that's what I wanted to share this in. Please check out our Forbes interview, folks, and it's linked to below. But you mentioned a guy who was stealing the light and we're going to talk about that in a minute from his team and from your team that was helping his team and you finally had a walk and called him out on it. What I love about this guy, he was quiet, but then he Said, how can I do that if I'm not aware of it? Which, you know, anyone who studied therapy laughs at that comment in a loving way. We're all doing everything. We don't. We're not aware of so much of it. Huge percentages are unconscious. But the fact that that guy could hear what you said and listen, I mean, that is one difference between narcissistic personality disorder. It's usually so entrenched, they won't get therapy unless they're going to lose everything because it's just too much for them. So that's one sign that you're working with someone who has, you know, capacity to change. But here is my question. When you say what you say on, do you. Oh, I got so many questions. I'm assuming that you say some of this on stage in front of a hundred or a thousand leaders. How many people go, bull, Dove. What a bunch of bull. Are they all receiving it well? Or like, in the world I work in, these leaders would not listen to this. They would say, what are these people talking about? Deep, you know, boundaries. What the hell, right? Are you understanding my question?

I do. I think it's a great question. So there's, you know, again, we're back to these social norms, right? So if you're watching this on YouTube and you can see us, you can see that I look like I've been punched in the face. Or I might punch you in the face, because I used to be a boxer. I was a martial artist. I've been a bodybuilder since I was 19 years old, and I'm not 19 anymore. I was born in a ghetto. I look really. I look tough, but I look tough. So. And I am very assertive in what I speak about, and I'm very knowledgeable, and I've got a good background, and I've done a lot of work on myself and on my learning. I've spent more than 40 years in my own development not even working with other people. So I can speak with a level of certainty. And so the, you know, one of the things that happens with me is that people will say to their friends, you need to talk to Dove, because they know that that person will listen to me because they are credibility with them, right? Because they're alpha dogs and I'm an alpha wolf, right? And that. And I'm an alpha wolf, and there's no aggression.

You mean you're a level above the alpha dog.

It means that I don't buy your barking. You can bark at me all you like. I don't care. I really don't care because I care about your soul, not about your ego. So I will call you out on that nonsense and I'll just say to you, listen, I mean, I said this to one of the leaders I was working with last week. I just leaned in, I went, you know, so he's telling me stuff and I said, you do know you're full of shit, right? And he just looks me goes, what do you mean? And I said, you're full of shit. I said, so do you think you're fooling me? Because you're not, but maybe you're fooling yourself. So let's just check that. And he, you know, and I've said this before, and he said, nobody speaks to me like that. And I go, that's the frickin problem. That's the problem. So here's the deal. Are you paying me to blow smoke up your skirt? Because if you are, we'll go and buy a smoke machine. And if you're paying me to help you, let's stop with the bullshit. And he went, okay, great, that's it. So do I do that on stage? Yes, to a lesser degree of course, because I'm speaking to a generalized audience. But part of what I say on stage is this, listen, I've got 40 years of work here in this area, I've got 35 years of working with other people in this area. And you don't have to agree me and I don't expect you to agree with me. And a lot of my stuff, I come back up with science and psychology and all kinds of neurosciences, all those things that I'm fascinated with, just my interest. But I don't have time to give you all the research, I'm not here for that. I'm just going to tell you how I see it. And if you think I'm full of it, you can walk out, you can tell your mate this guy was a knob and I have nothing to do with him. Great. My job is this is either to wake you up or to plant a seed. And sometimes that seed will sit there for 10 years and one day you'll wake up and you won't even know it was the seed I planted. And you'll go, you know what? Maybe I'm a douchebag, I need to look at that. Maybe I need to book an appointment with a therapist because. Because guess what? My kids stopped talking to me. Guess what? My wife, who I really love, left me and I thought the marriage was good. Or my Husband. Because I do work with women. I see that all the time. So I do say those things on stage to a lesser degree, but I back up a lot of the stuff I'm going to say. But as you said, we can't deliver all the research. I just like, listen, my bottom line is this. Are you successful? Yes. You're in this room. Of course you're successful. So let's take that as a foregone conclusion. You'd have to show me your taxes. Now, let me ask you this. And you don't have to tell me. You have to tell yourself, are you fulfilled? Because at the end of success is misery. If you don't have fulfillment, the process is success, significance, fulfillment, legacy. Where are you on that scale? If you have success, fantastic. If you think legacy is about the money you're leaving for your kids, it's not. So the process is success, significance, fulfillment, legacy. That's it.

You know what's so awesome about this podcast and this work? I just interviewed Marissa Orr, who came out with a book today, Lean Out. It's the antithesis of Lean In. And at the bottom line, she's saying, we've got success all effed up.

Absolutely.

It isn't the compensation package you have. I mean, if you're killing yourself and you did eek it as a woman to the corner office and you're all alone in it, and you're not fulfilled, what good is it? Oh, I love it. So I have to make a little detour, Dov, and ask you this. You've mentioned soul, I think, three times. I love to talk about. I call it your spirit. Your soul. I feel, you know, I'm talking about the same thing you are. Can you tell me how you. When you're working with Fortune 100 mostly male CEOs, how do you talk about soul? How do you. What do you say?

Well, I talk very directly about soul, but I usually start off by saying, is there a part? Yeah. I'll actually do this series of questions with everybody, right? So I'll say, who are you? So it's very plain. Who are you? And the person will say their name. And I'll go, no, that's your name. And I go, who are you? And they go, well, I'm the CEO of xyz. And I go, no, that's your title. And they go, I don't know what you mean. And I just don't give an explanation. I say, who are you? And they go, oh, okay. So we're going a bit deeper. Yeah, Well, I Guess I'm a Christian, I'm a Jew, I'm a Muslim. I'm a whatever it is, right? I go, no, that's your religion. Who are you? Oh, okay, I'm a human. I'm a male. No, that's your gender. That's your species, right? No, who are you? And the answer is, for most people, I don't know. And I say, I'm here to get in touch with the part of you that does.

So how would you answer that question? I'm thinking, what does he want? I'm a mom, I'm a sister, I'm a friend. No, those are your roles. All right? I'm loving, I'm kind, I'm smart. No, those are your descriptions. What would. How would. How would you rightly answer that? If I ask you, Dov, I don't.

Want to say because I don't want somebody to get it. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because they glom onto it and it becomes what I call spiritual ego. And I'm spiritually going. People drive me insane, you know, it's this, you know. Well, you don't understand because I did Dove's courses. You don't understand. I've been in 10 years of therapy. You don't understand. I read Eckhart Tolle's books. You're full of shit. Sorry. All that is nonsense. It's spiritual ego. You're no better than anybody else. I'm not better than anybody I've ever worked with. In fact, I will tell you, I was asked in an interview many years ago in a very high level interview, and I was asked, why are you so good at what you do? It's a fair question. Why are you so good? Big people come and talk to you. Why are you so good at what you do? And I said, it's real simple. Because no one has ever sat in front of me who isn't me. Everybody is me. It's a reflection of me. My crap is going to show up in them, and I can see that in them. And maybe it's stuff that I've worked through. Maybe it's something I'm working on and maybe it's something I still got to work on. But nobody sits in front of me who isn't me. And so I don't want your spiritual ego. If you want to tell me, well, I did this and I did that. That's nice. I'm not taking it away from you, and I respect that you did it. And I even honor that you did it, but that's not a statement of who you are. So I won't give that answer for somebody to glom on and say ah. Because I've had people try and do that with me. They try and give me my answer back. Like, are you crazy? Do you think I don't know that? You think I haven't worked that out?

I want to do this exercise with you because I want the people listening to do this exercise. So I want to answer that question. And the truth is I think we're all evolving. And what I would give as an answer today is not the answer I'm going to give. And I don't want it to be the answer I'm going to give in 10 years. But I do feel finally very fulfilled in the work I'm doing. And I feel like there are disenfranchised parts of me that I'm glimpsing and bringing back. It's not all perfect. But what would be an answer that you would say that person gets themselves?

Well, you just gave it.

I did, yeah. I didn't say who I am, I said what the journey was and what I think and that's okay. Did I pass?

Well, you see, this is the thing, is that we live in a goal oriented world and so we try answering the question with our intellect. Doesn't work. That's how I know that person hasn't got the answer because they intellectualize it. It doesn't work. So here's the thing, is that, you know, as you know, I talk a lot about purpose and I work with leaders on finding their purpose, which is actually the soulful connection to themselves, but finding their purpose and building the purpose of the organization that magnetizes the great people to them and they build great organizations out of that and it makes them about 1,200% more profitable than a non purpose driven company. So it's got a lot of great practicality to it. But here's the thing about it, that purpose has never gone away. My purpose was there right at the beginning, but it's evolved and it's deepened. It's evolved and deepened. And that's what happens with the soulful, purposeful part of us is it evolves and it deepens. It doesn't change, it evolves and deepens. So the statement, if you would have asked me if I'd have been able to get in touch with that, what is my purpose when I was 10, it would have been a shallower version of the same thing I would say today, now after all the work and the depth, I can say in a different way now. And the other thing about knowing your purpose is that there are two forms of your purpose. And I talk a lot about this in the work that we do privately is that you have what we call an external purpose and an internal purpose. The external purpose is what you can say to the world that the world will likely understand. It can even become part of your marketing. And then you have an internal purpose. And your internal purpose is something you know about yourself. And your internal purpose, by the way, should scare the crap out of you because it should be so big that it frightens you when I say my purpose. To me, every time I say it, I've been saying it for years. I still go, oh, I can't really say that because Too big.

I get tears in my eyes thinking it's. And it's one word. It's one word.

There you go. It's so big. It's like, oh, my God. Oh. And I feel like, oh, I can't really say that. So, okay, so there's a palatable worst because an interesting. Because we started talking about narcissism. Narcissism. But when you actually own your purpose, the statement of it to those who don't understand it will sound narcissistic, sound egoic, because, oh, you egomaniac. You really think you're that? See, we've already lost because it's not where I was coming from.

Oh, I love this work, doc. I feel like it's a big therapy session. All right, now what do we need? Can I go in this direction?

You can go in any direction you.

Want to talk about. You'll love this, because I think I mentioned this before to you, but one of my most viral posts was on LinkedIn four years ago, and it was on 6. 5 years ago. 6 toxic behaviors that push people away. How to recognize them in yourself and change them. And I thought, I'm gonna get massacred here. Like, how dare you? But all I got was, oh, my God, I'm toxic. That's what readers got. And I thought, what a beautiful world that we can read something and say, oh, no. Like you said, I hurt my. I said something hurtful to my kid, and that weighed with me heavily. That's how I know you're not an arson. Don't have a narcissistic personality disorder. But can we talk about ways you can recognize what has to heal in yourself? Can we make it that.

I think that again? I do want to come back to saying, though, none of us is fully objective in our subjective realities. So you need somebody who. And by the way, I highly recommend somebody you pay to be objective. Sally, your Aunt Sally. Not. Not your best friend, not your mom, not your dad. Because they've all got smoke machines. They all love you. Right. And they're gonna blow smoke up your skin.

Or they have an agenda about you. Right, Exactly.

Yeah. I mean, not neutral. Oh. So I'll give you an example of that. So when I do work with clients, they fly in to work with me initially. We're on a one year contract. They spend one full day, 24 hours straight with me.

Good.

Go anywhere else. That's a lot. Right. And. And part of the house. Yep. In my home, we feed them, take care of them, they're here for a day, there's no sleep, and we do the work. Longest we've gone is 23 and a half hours, shortest we've gone is 13. But it's very deep work. We get past all and all the junk, all the nonsense, and we start reprogramming crappy beliefs and get them really in touch with that soulful purpose that they have. And then we spend the next year integrating it. However, this is what's important part of the contract is they cannot talk to anybody they know for 48 hours after. So they go, can I talk to anybody? I go, of course you can talk to anybody you want as long as you don't know them.

Because you don't want the whole work to be tainted by, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. You're wonderful. That kind of thing.

That kind of thing, certainly. But here's the way I put it, is by our very nature, we sell people who we are. So we meet people. Yeah, we sell them. We say, I'm not very good at that. I'm not good at communication. I'm not good at dealing with conflict. I'm not this, I'm not that. We sell them all this stuff, and the problem with that is they will then sell it back to us. And if you've come in and done the work with me and we've undone and dismantled a lot of the crap, and we've really built on the strengths and the powers and brought those up. And then you go out into the world and you say, well, you know, here's what I've realized, is that this is. Oh, come on, you're not like that. Well, the problem is that person has a lot of influence and a lot of impact, and your psyche is a Bit mushy for a couple of days after we've done that work together. So I don't want you talking to those people. And people go, oh, well, isn't that brainwashing? Yeah, it is. We're washing out the crap. We're actually taking some Tide and washing out the nonsense so we can get some good stuff in there, plant some fabulous seeds and then spend a year nurturing them. And that's what happens. That's what's transformative. That's transformative leadership that we do. It's conscious leadership development. That's what it says about me. Dov Baron. Conscious leadership development. It's not unconscious leadership development. It's not strategic leadership development.

It's not leadership with other people development. It's me. The other thing I love is, you know, there are retreats where you go and you're to be quiet for a week.

Mm.

Breakdowns over it. It's also let the person sit with themselves. Let themselves be the highest guide. Right. Oh, I love it. How did we bring that up? Where were we going with that? Oh, talking about. Oh, I think you're. That was a response to how do we help people right now identify what their soul wants? Healing the disenfranchised parts. What tips can you give Dov?

So here's the thing. I want you as you're listening to this and, you know, I know we listen to podcasts passively, but I'm actually going to ask you to take a moment and not be passive. I'm just going to take a pen and paper and just ask yourself. I'm going to give you a couple of questions that are going to help you. Number one, is this what pisses you off in the world? I mean that quite literally. And I don't mean what pisses you off in the world today. So you go, well, I'm sick of the Republican Party, or I'm sick of the Democratic Party. You know, those are things that bother you now. So what I'm asking you to think about the things that have bothered you for as long as you can remember. In fact, if you could wave a magic wand, you. You would get rid of it. You go, how come we haven't fixed this problem? I've been bothered by this since I was a child. I still don't understand why we haven't fixed this. Why is it something that's bothered you for as long as you can remember? Write down what that is, and you probably got five or six things that you'll write down initially, but you'll as you just keep going back over it and you'll go, if I can only have a magic one that can only fix one, what would it be when you get to that? You're already on the path to your purpose. Now you say, okay, okay. So here's what it comes down to, right? So for me, when I did that work, there was all kinds of things, and there still is all kinds of things on my list. But if I have to really boil it down, as a kid, I was fascinated and irritated by smart people doing dumb shit. That was it for me, right? It's like I would look at my aunt, who was a very attractive woman who was very well dressed, who would constantly date men who were treated like garbage. And I. And I, as a kid could see, you're dating the same guy with a new face. I could see that. I could see my mother doing it. I could see my uncle doing. I could see people repeating. I could see my friend family members gonna start a job. And it was like the same nonsense. Like. So I was fascinated by that. And it was like, if I could wave a one, I would wake people up to see that they're repeating a cycle. Intelligent people who can't see that they're doing dumb things. I was fascinated by that. I wanted to change that because that, for me was the root of racism. Because I grew up around, yes, I know I'm a white guy, but I got racial bigotry because I was a Jew. I was the only Jew in a. In a secular school. The only Jewish. Not true. The headmaster was too, but nobody knew that because he hit it. So I got. Where was that ghetto in northern England in. In a place called Salford. And so, you know, I got beat up every day for being a Jew. I got this. And if you. If you're not watching this on video and you're listening, I'm holding up my hands and my five fingers, and the five fingers stood for. I didn't know. I thought people were like, you know, it was before high five. So I'm like, why are you doing that? You like waving to me? I don't want this. They put up their hand and show me their five fingers. And I was like. So I do this thank to them. And I didn't know because I was in a new school. And I got. And then they start hitting me and saying things to me. And it stood for, the Jews killed our Lord. That was the five, right? And I said, number one, I'm 10, and I think your Lord is gone a lot Longer than that. So it certainly wasn't me. And by the way, because I was a weird kid and I studied all kinds of weird things, I go, it wasn't the Jews, it was the Romans who put him on a piece of wood. So, you know, you might want to check your facts a little bit. Which, of course, got me punched in the head a little bit more. So I was fascinated by why people did things that were, you know, that followed a pattern. I was fascinated by patterns. Why people followed a pattern that got them to an outcome they didn't want. I was fascinated by that. They complained about the pattern that they were walking down. So that was something that bothered me. It took a big range in things I could look at, but it always came down to that same thing. Fascinated by psychological patterns. I want to know why people, smart people, did dumb things. So think about what it is that's bothered you were always bothering. Maybe it's poverty, maybe it's crime, maybe it's gun violence. Maybe it's something like racism. I don't know. It could be something like, you know, nutrition. Something that's bothered you for as long as you can possibly remember. That's what you have to go after. And then you say, okay, if I can wave a magic wand and fix that in the world we know, okay, so then you write, well, what would that do for the world? And you write that out. Then when you've done that, and you say, okay, now we're going to imagine the other end, which is, you've done it, see, wave the magic wand and that doesn't take place anymore. What does it do for you? What disenfranchised part of yourself does it bring home?

Oh, it's so good. Can I answer that as an example for people? And, you know, I'm asked a million questions. In fact, I want us to link to Martin Root's wonderful Heaven on Earth questions about what is heaven on earth to you, which has a similar feeling. When you said, what is the thing that has bothered you for all time? You know what came to me? That people are forced to be what they aren't very good. And obviously, that was me. And so you're sitting with that and, boy, that informs what the purpose of my work is to help women be who they really are, to help men be who they really are, which is so similar to yours, but different. But then when you asked, what would that do in the world, people would be less rageful, less murderous, less violent, less confused, less stupid about dumb things. Life would change so dramatically and then what would that do for me? I realized I still in many ways have to be who I am. Not right now. That is where I would want to go to start healing.

Right. See, but you know what's wonderful, Kathy? I just want everybody to get this for a minute. You know, it's wonderful is that you are an enlightened, astute, conscious leader and woman who just got. I still got work to do. Now I know you know that.

Now I know what work exactly?

Now you know what work and you openly admit it in front of others. Vulnerability is power. You know this. Brene Brown's talked a lot about it. I've been talking about for 30 odd years. Vulnerability is power. You don't get any power in your life until you speak about you, actually. And people say, well, why do I have to say it? Because when you say it out loud, you have to hear it.

Oh, dog, you crate. It's so helpful.

So what you just said, what are.

You going to do when you say it? You can't slurp it back in. You set it. You put the stake in the ground. I said it on a podcast, right?

When you say inside your own head, you can defuse it. You can.

I didn't hear that.

It didn't really happen. But you said it out loud. You've said it in front of witnesses. Here it is. This is what I've got to do. I still feel like I can't be fully who I am. And I'm still trying to be something that I'm not. I just did a video I released yesterday. It was called the Cost of Being Normal. The Cost of Being normal. We are so busy in our world trying to be normal, looking at what normal is and comparing ourselves to it. And here's the thing. I want you to think about who you're attracted to. It ain't normal. Everything you're attracted to. The eye is pulled to that which is not normal. If you walk into an elevator and somebody has a big ass zit on their nose, you can't look anywhere else. That's how the mind works. We are attracted to that which is not normal. We actually look for things. We look for patterns and breaks in patterns. That's the psychology of human beings. So we're not normal. And so we're so busy trying to fit in that we give away our soul. We try to fit into our family. So about the disenfranchised parts of who we are. We're so busy trying to fit into our family that we stop being ourselves. We start trying to be normal in the context of that. Well, if you grew up with narcissistic parents, what are you going to do? Because normal is narcissism. I actually know I worked with a client who behaved entirely like a narcissist, who was not a narcissist, who was actually the flip side and incredibly deeply empathetic in so much so that I was like, I actually had to question myself. It was so polarized that I actually go, is this person maneuvering me? And they're actually are a narcissist because some narcissists are sociopathic and they can maneuver very well. And I'm like, is that what's going on here? But it was. It was just like the person had to normalize narcissism.

They had to normally internalize it to live.

Exactly. Just to cope and save themselves.

Oh, my gosh. I want to talk another hour, but I want to just say this dog, and not as a way to blow smoke. There are so many people that are experts on something and the way they teach is do it like me. And I can't stand that because we know why. Because that's what you did to be successful or happy or fulfilled. That has nothing to do with me and what I want to do. I know a true leader and a true teacher when in one minute you can give an exercise to someone like me who spends every waking minute thinking about these things. And I have a revelation. So everybody, I mean, that is very rare. That is very rare that I think. So everyone run to the links. We're going to post below and you're going to tell us to where can people get these exercises? What books should they come see? Where do they watch your. Watch your podcast? Listen to tell us and we'll link to it all down below.

Well, the simple place to go is fullmontyleadership.com that's my main website. There you'll find access to the Matrix, which is a leadership test you can put yourself through. There's links to my podcast. There's over 500 episodes of my podcast. There's links to my YouTube channel. There's over 650 videos in there. As I said, the one we just did on Normal is in there and a bunch of others that range from 1 minute to 45 minutes. So some of them are quite intense. There's links to my courses, my books. The latest book, as you said, is Fiercely Loyal. How high performing companies develop and train top and retain top talent. There's also links to one Red thread, which is to help you find your purpose. And you can also go on Amazon and all that, and you can find. One of my books is called don't read this. Your ego won't like it. And if you're really looking at the work that Kathy and I have been talking about here, I would highly recommend that you go take a look at that. That's going to give you some of the questions I've given you here and take you a little bit deeper. There are all kinds of resources for me. You can find them all. But here's the thing I want. I want you. May I just speak for a moment here about this, please? Here's the thing. You listen to this. I love that you're listening to this. And it's about being brave. Action is the currency of the brave, right? It's not passivity.

It's not either.

Is it not insight. Listen, you get bragging rights with your aha moments. Nobody gives a crap about your aha moments, including you. They're just bragging rights. Oh, look, I learned this. Who cares? Who cares? Nobody cares about aha moments. What you really care about is transformational moments. The moments you take action. Action is the currency of the brave. Information is worth the hole in the donut. Transformation comes from application. So here's what I want you to do. Kathy spends this time, and I don't know if you know this, but I have a podcast. I know it takes a lot of time to find great guests who come and give you their time. And every time a guest gives their time, guess what? Kathy has to give her time. And she is not cheap. You can't get her for a couple of bucks. She's doing great work, making massive difference in the world, and she's giving you her time, and she's bringing guests to give their time to you. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go subscribe to this channel. I want you to share this podcast with other people. I want you to write reviews on whether it's itunes or Spotify or wherever it is that you listen to, write a review, share it, subscribe to it, all those things. And here's what I want you to do. And Kathy can decide what she wants to do with it. But here's what I want you to do. I want to have you write to Kathy and write to me and tell me what you got out of this. Because we don't want to just know what you. What you. We want to know what you're going to do with it. What are you going to do with this? My private email, I'm going to give it to you is dovd o v at d o v b a r o n dot com dovbaron.com you can personally write to me. I want to know what you got out of this CC Cathy on it. Tell us what you got out of the show. Tell us what you're going to do with it and if I can help you. That's why I'm on the planet. If there's some way I can serve you, your organization, your company or you yourself in doing this work, that this high level work, write to me. I'm here to help. But please subscribe to the show. Please let other people know about it.

Ah, that's just amazing. Thank you so much. I couldn't agree more. We share so much and yet your language is powerfully different and I love it and I'm so grateful for your time. A whole hour almost. Thank you so much. I hope you will come back again. And folks, I don't know if this didn't give you a dose of brave and if you don't feel do this exercise that Dove gave gave us, I can tell you look what it did. I am going to write a whole chapter of my book on this, I have a feeling. So please let us know. This is what we're doing here. This is what we love to help in any way we can. Thank you so much for listening and thank you, Dov. I just can't thank you. Thank you enough. Can't wait to talk to you again soon.

Thank you. All right, everybody have a opportunity to serve.

Oh my gosh. My pleasure and my honor and everyone. We're looking forward to hearing from you. We're hoping for it. No, we're expecting it. And we will see you next time. Thank you so much.