Why Your Brain is Blocking Your Business Goals with Mitch Weisburgh

When things go wrong at work, deadlines get missed, tempers start flaring, team morale goes into the dumpsters, most managers look around for someone to blame. But what if the real saboteur is actually inside your own skull? And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast That challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine. Hello, Marc.

Welcome to this episode of Experience Leadership, the Small Business Podcast. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I want to thank you so much for joining me today. My guest today is author, speaker, and mind-shifting educator Mitch Weisberg. And today, we're going to be digging into how our brains, yes, even Yours and mine can sabotage our success and what leaders can do to shift from things like reactive habits to intentional responses that actually move the needle. My one ask is that if you know somebody who could use this information, please go ahead and share a link to this episode. I'm sure you have somebody in your circle, somebody who might just lose their minds over little things or be emotional about all sorts of things that just drive them crazy. We won't mention any names, but, you know, maybe you could go to Steve and— oh, darn it, no names. Maybe you could go to this person and say, hey, I came across this brilliant episode with Mitch Weisberg and Marc Haine. Why don't you have a listen? I'd appreciate it, and it will help them. Look, I don't know if you're anything like me, but I know that we all have our theories, our philosophies around leadership. We talk a big game about things like resilience and grit right up until the moment things get tough. One rude email, one delay, one really awkward meeting, and suddenly, we're ready to give up or lash out or binge-watch cat videos until our problems disappear. The truth is most of us aren't dealing with Problems. We're dealing with brain problems. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So are your instincts, you know, the, the one thing that's followed you around since the dawn of time, since your very birth, are they helping you succeed? Or are they quietly sabotaging Your leadership and your leadership ability within your business. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. If this resonates with you at all, go ahead, share a link to this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and be part of this conversation. You know what's fascinating is how often smart, capable people fall into the same traps, reacting instead of responding, shutting down under pressure, or spinning their wheels. In the same old story. I know I've done it time and time again. But here today, my guest is Mitch Weisberg, author, speaker, and educator on what he calls mind shifting. Mitch has spent decades helping people, leaders, educators, and teams get unstuck from limiting mindsets. And this is more than just the negative self-talk. Mitch goes much, much deeper because Mitch has created the mind shifting framework based on his book, by the same name to help people really move past those survival mode habits and show up with clarity, intention, and very real impact. He's taught everyone from anxious public speakers to reluctant marathon runners on how to take back control of their mindset. And now, he's here to do the same thing for us. Mitch, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

Well, thank you, Marc. And I hope I help your listeners.

Oh, I have no doubt. But before we get too deep into today's topic, Could you just tell us a little bit about who your clients are and how you serve them?

So, the interesting thing about me is that I don't have clients. So, this is a mission of mine. And I write, you know, I speak. I'll speak to a school. I'll speak to a district. I'll speak to a state. I'll speak to an organization. But basically, my mission is that, you know, we face so many issues in society and companies personally. And we aren't trained in how to overcome those issues with kind of a growth mindset. And so my thought is, out of what, 8 billion people on the planet? If we could get 5 million, some critical mass of people who could learn how to harness their resourceful, resilient, collaborative parts of their brain and be able to move forward with those projects, they would be living happier and we would start solving all these issues that we face. That's my mission, is to Figure out how these concepts can get into the heads of 5 million people. And hopefully, your listeners can help me do that. Either connect me with schools, or buy the book, or pass the book along.

Yeah. And if anybody's tapping into, that is our mission then. We want to get to 4.5 million people. So, make sure you share this darn episode. So Mitch, we talked extensively about leadership and leadership's role within an organization. What's going on in our brains that makes things like quitting, or blaming, or lashing out such a commonplace reaction in our workplaces?

So, there's so many different parts to the mind shifting framework. But I'm going to start with the brain part of it because that's specifically what you asked for. And our brains started developing with the first animals that could move. And those parts of the brains are mostly concerned with survival. They can react to very limited amounts of information and they can react really fast. As a matter of fact, those parts of the brain wake up in like 2/100ths of a second from some stimulus, like somebody yelling or somebody throwing a ball at us, or all of a sudden we realize that we have to speak in front of an audience. Because they're concerned with survival, those parts of the brain are first looking for threats. And if they find a threat, which is basically what they do 3/4, 4/5 of the time, they then react very quickly with fight or flight or freeze or something that we already know how to do really well that we can do without thinking because they have habits. Or they look around and they say, what's everybody else doing in this? And they copy what everybody else is doing. And once those parts of the brain— and it's called the limbic system— once those parts of the brain have come up with what they're going to be doing, Their job is to defend that and to justify it. What we think about that makes us human is the, say, our resourceful parts of the brain, and those reside primarily in our prefrontal cortex. And when we're being creative, when we're doing critical thinking, when we have executive function, collaborating or empathetic with other people, those are the parts of the brain that are activating. But Once our limbic parts of the brain, again, reacting in say 200th of a second, decide that we're in danger, they start emitting these stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, and those hormones shut down the ability of our prefrontal cortex to do anything else but justify that one action and focus all of our attention on whatever it is that we've decided. So if you're a leader of a company or if you're an employee of a company, And all of a sudden something happens and your limbic parts of the brain says, I'm being threatened. Oh, you know, I'm at risk here. You're going to come up with something really quickly. You're going to— your system is going to start flooding your brain with cortisol and adrenaline. Your prefrontal cortex is going to shut off and you're going to be stuck in this fight, flight, freeze mode. And you can't get out of it by logic. You can't get out of it by wishing it. There's just— You're gonna have to figure out, and there are ways of doing this, but you're gonna have to figure out how to tamp down those parts of the brain so that you can access your ability to be empathetic or to explore things or to innovate or to understand what your higher order needs are.

Yeah, it's so interesting because I do coach professional speakers and we talk about this brain all the time and how this brain kicks in and you can't think logically. Like we've all had that experience where you've been like in a high conflict scenario where you're up against somebody and you just, You're arguing back and forth and you're so angry. And then you walk away 20 minutes later and you go, oh, the next time I see him, I'm going to tell him this and I'm going to tell him this. And it's like, I don't know why I didn't think of this while I was face to face with him. Now I have to wait till the next—

right?

And so that logic brain, the logic brain just completely shuts down.

Well, and the other thing that happens is that, you know, once you start understanding that your limbic brain is doing things that are not necessarily in your best interest, You start understanding that, well, wait a minute, that was my limbic brain telling me that this person is threatening me. But let me take a look at what they said or they did. And that's— they didn't really threaten me. You know, they're just— they just voiced an opinion. And you know something, when I really think about it, there's parts of that that I could— that I can agree with. And so we lose the ability to collaborate because we're so locked into this fight or flight. Even if we thought of something a half an hour later that, you know something, I could have nailed them if I just said this. It's like, no. It was your limbic brain all the time. You didn't even have to nail them because you probably could have figured out how to work with them if, if, if you had been in full control of your prefrontal cortex.

It's so funny that you say that because one of the things I tell people is that we stopped as adults, we stopped recognizing that our feelings get hurt. And isn't that emotion of our feelings getting hurt or our feelings, or we are feeling like we're getting attacked, doesn't that kick us into that, into that mindset?

The feel that we're getting attacked, the feeling of anxiety. And just thinking about anxiety, and this is also part of mind shifting, is a little bit of anxiety or feeling that there's a little bit of anxiety is actually a good thing. That's what motivates us. If everything were easy and we could just relax, we wouldn't invent things, we wouldn't excel, we wouldn't get better, we wouldn't learn. It's that feeling like, oh my gosh, here's something that I don't know how to do, but I can learn it. And, you know, that's what drives us forward. So to be able to then reframe situations like that and think, well, yeah, I'm not feeling easy about this. I'm feeling a little bit of anxiety. But you know something? I felt this before. And when I felt this before, I felt like quitting or I felt like striking out or I felt like blaming. But the times that I didn't, and I know there are times that I didn't, and I focused on accomplishing this task, those are the things that I'm proudest of. And so, you know, I've done it before. I can do it again. Here, this is just another challenge. I'm going to learn something. I'm going to get better and I'm going to move forward.

Yeah. And so, before we get into kind of all the solutions and the strategies to make that happen, I think it's really important for the audience to recognize when this is happening. And what are some subtle signs that a leader is reacting instead of responding? What's their litmus test for that?

Well, I'll tell you one test is being sure. So, if you are absolutely sure that something is right, You have shut down your ability to be creative, to be analytical, and to take in information. So that's one thing is like, am I absolutely positive? Wait a minute. And then, you know, you know, asking yourselves, well, could there be another side of this? Or do people disagree with me? Am I being too dismissive? Is, is there more information that I could gather? So that, that I would say is number one.

You know, as I was thinking about that, it's like, well, that means at some point we have to park our ego.

Oh yes, right.

Like in order for us to understand that, we have to get out of the, oh, I am the boss, or I'm the owner. This is my business. I'm the manager. You have to listen to me kind of mindset, isn't it?

Well, you know something? Somehow or other, I think that that folds into— there's this brilliant thinker. Maybe you've heard of him named Marc Haine. Have you ever heard of him? He's got these 4 values that much relate to that. You know, humility, humor, of being of service and staying uncomfortable. Okay? If you're in the— if you're in that frame of mind, then chances are you're not locked into your limbic system. You really are tapped into your— what I call this, this, the sage brain.

I love that. And, and so for people who might not know that, I mean, obviously we've been brought up, we've been reacting our whole life to certain scenarios. And this is, you know, we've— I like to tell people that we're surrounded by our own little bubble and our bubbles are certain different colors. And sometimes those colors will meld nicely with other colors. Sometimes they'll clash. We know that we have hot buttons. And so, we know certain personality types will set us off. So, how do we pre-program and be intentional with this kind of tug-of-war between reaction and intention in team settings?

The most important skill to have, the superpower, is self-awareness. Or some people might call it metacognition. The ability to be able to understand Are we sure? Are we angry? Are we anxious? And if— do we feel that we have to do something, that we have no choice, that there's only one good choice and one bad choice? And as soon as we're feeling things like that, then there's really 3 things that we can do internally and a 4th thing that we could do with others in order to get out of that. In the first sense is sometimes just understanding that we're locked in. is enough to return us to this sage, resourceful mind. It's like, oh my gosh, I was angry, but I didn't have to be angry, or I was afraid, I didn't have to be afraid. And so that's positive self-talk is one. A second thing is the self-awareness itself, just being self-aware. So you can very quickly change. And then the third thing is distracting. And we can distract our minds through things like meditation or mindfulness or going for a walk or doing exercise or listening to music or art, but something that brings our attention to something else. We are focused on that. Our limbic brain starts to calm down, and then we can start accessing our prefrontal cortex. So those are the 3 things that we can do is self-awareness, positive self-talk, or distraction and mindfulness. But it Sometimes that's not enough. And I was in a situation a couple weeks ago where I was just really, really angry at somebody. And I did all the things that I'm supposed to do and I just couldn't walk myself down. So my kids are all adults. So I called my son and I said, I'm just really angry and I can't calm down. And he's like, Daddy, you wrote the book. I'll tell you what. And he gets out his copy of the book. He says, I'm just going to walk you through one of the techniques. And he walked me through. And just having somebody else who can do that for us, that's really the 4th step, is to find people. It could be a therapist, it could be a spouse, it could be a kid, it could be a friend who can walk us down when we're in that limbic mindset.

I love that because all too often we tend to suffer alone. And for us to turn around and admit to somebody that we're having a hard time is not necessarily in our realm. So I think that's great advice that being able to reach out to somebody that you trust to say, hey, help talk me off the edge here, I think is brilliant.

Exactly.

Yeah. Hey, I'd like to get into some more strategies about how we can deal with this because I know as a human being, we've all had this as a shared experience. We've all gone off the deep end. We've all behaved in a way afterwards when we calm down, you realize, oh my goodness, I should never have done that. And so, I'd like to get into some more strategies and we'll get to that. Right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights!

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today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back! I am speaking with the mind shifting expert, Mitch Weisberg. Mitch, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book, Mind Shifting?

Well, so this is actually the first volume. I teach 3 different courses and this volume is based on the first course. So, this is really on mastering your resourceful brain. And so, this book is about how to recognize when we're in limbic mode. How to then quiet our limbic minds so that we can let go of that cortisol and adrenaline, and then how to tap into our resourceful mind, our sage mind, and tap into the abilities of, say, empathy, exploration, innovation, acting despite things going wrong, and acting in a way based on our higher-level values. So that's really the first book. There's actually 2 more elements of mind shifting. And the second element is instead of focusing on resourcefulness, which is about how we access our brain, the second element is on resilience, which is how we react to situations. And people think, you know, like, oh, you know something, I need more perseverance, I need more grit. And that's true. But a lot of that is the way we approach situations. So the first part of resilience is to understand That our natural inclinations are to think that there's a problem and there's a right answer and everything else is wrong. And we're going to do this, that's the right thing and it's going to solve the problem. And then anybody who disagrees with us is wrong and we just have to convince them that they're wrong. And I call those simple problems because there are situations like that. Like if I'm thirsty, like, oh, you know something? I'll just take a drink, right? That's a simple problem. But there's a lot more problems where that's just not going to be enough, where maybe we need some expertise to either look at it or to execute it. Maybe we need more information. Maybe we need to analyze the information. And usually for those types of problems, there isn't one right answer. There's many answers that could work, and there may be trade-offs between them, but any one of those answers could really solve the problem for us. And then I call those— and that's just me, but we call those— Complicated issues. And the way you solve complicated issues is very different from simple issues. You're not looking for the one right answer because there isn't one. The most important thing for complicated situations is that everybody on the team is walking in the same direction. So it's less important that you're going with this solution or that solution. What's more important is that everybody is committed for this one solution. And you work together. And if you're running meetings and you're thinking, you know, we're going to come up with the one right answer, then everybody is thinking like, well, it's my answer. They're wrong. No, it's my answer. They're wrong. If you're going to the meeting and saying, you know something, there's probably 5 or 6 different things that we could do and it's less important which one we want to do. Let's just pick one and let's concentrate on just making that the best that we can. And so, so there's more complicated issues than there are simple issues. But then there are issues where nobody knows the answer.

Hmm.

And in fact, in those types of situations, experts are some of the worst people to be driving the decision-making, because an expert is like the person with the hammer. You know, every problem is a nail. They have their way. You know, they have more and more information about less and less. That's the way to do it. But in fact, nobody really knows what's going to emerge as a solution. Actually, look at COVID as a prime example of that. You know, we had experts who were telling us you have to wear masks, or you can't wear masks, or you have to have a shot. Oh, maybe, you know, you have to keep your kids from school. Oh, maybe that isn't such a good idea. And we're going back and forth with these experts telling us exactly what to do. But the fact of the matter is nobody really knew. And so in those types of situations, you have to be prepared to try things, take the information from what you're trying, and use that to adjust for your next steps. Well, if you're going into situations and you're thinking that there's one right answer, you're thinking that you have an answer and you're just going to solve the problem, and the first couple of things that you do don't work, that's where grit comes in because you think, oh, I just have to do it harder, or I just have to do it better, or I have to do more of it. But if you're going into a situation and you're saying, you know something, we don't really know what's going to work, but I don't want to do something that's stupid. I don't want to do something that's going to really hurt me, but I want to try a couple different things and I want to see what information comes back and figure out what to do. This whole issue of grit and persistence just melts away. And I think, you know, most business problems end up not being simple problems, although there are, and they're not being complicated problems, although there are complicated parts to complex problems. Most of the issues that we face, you know, how do we sell best? How do we market best? How do we produce best? Those are— how do we work together in teams? Those are complex issues. Yeah. And as leaders and as our team, we have to be prepared to do things so that we can look at the information that comes back and then figure out the next thing to do. And in this stage of mind shifting, which is about flexibility, the model that I use for that is drawn from military strategy, and it's called Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, or OODA loops, which is created by an Air Force pilot named John Boyd. And in OODA loops, what you're trying to do is you're trying to figure out what could go wrong. You're trying to figure out how you might react to it. And then you're trying to get those skills so they become second nature so that when you're in the moment, you have a wide variety of things that you can draw on. And so, being able to be flexible and adapt to situations, I mean, it's so important for business. It's so important for life because when we're dealing with teenagers, or we're dealing with spouses, those are all complex situations, right? And then the third tier of mind shifting is around the fact that whatever we're going to be doing, we're probably not doing it by ourselves. We're probably doing it with other people. And some of those people are going to disagree with us. Some of those people are going to try to harm us. Some of those people are going to get in our way. Some of those people we're not going to like. And our standard ways, our quick ways of dealing with those types of situations, at best they work in the short term. Very often they don't work at all. And very often they actually make the situation worse.

Hmm.

But it turns out there's 70 years' worth of research on the things that we can do to work with other people, even when we disagree with them, even if we don't like them. And that 3rd tier brings in those things so that we turn destructive conflicts into still opportunities of working together by first understanding that there's 5 different styles of working through when you're conflicting with people. And we each have our own style. But by understanding the 5 different styles, we become more flexible and we become more attuned to how other people are working. Then It's like rewards, punishments, walking over people. Those are sometimes ways that we can get our way. But really, if you want to work with somebody long-term, you have to understand how to connect with them. So it's the different techniques that have been developed over the last 50, 60 years where we've learned how to connect with people, again, even if we disagree with them or even if they're angry at us, but establishing that connection. And then third, is those connections aren't just to have a connection. We're not having a conversation just to talk to another person. Those connections are so that we can move forward and meet joint values, or we can meet— each of us meet our own values. And so how do you then take those connections and move them forward? And that's the third part of the conflict and collaboration tier. So that's mind shifting kind of in a box.

So much of what you've just said, Mitch, kind of resonates at so many different levels. For the people who are tuning in that this really resonated for, how can people get in touch with you if they wanna work with you?

Well, the best place is at mindshiftingwithmitch.com. That's my website. And it talks about the book and, and the upcoming books. It, I have a newsletter that's accessible from there. I teach courses. The courses are available from there, and there's a link there that people can just reach out to me if they wanna schedule something.

Terrific. And your link is in the show notes. It's really interesting because as you were talking, you mentioned COVID, which was a, a highly kind of It was a triggering event, I think, for, for people. We look at—

And that's the only triggering event that we've ever had, right? I mean, there's no other triggering event that we have in society, right?

No, of course not. Never. Never.

Okay.

Not in our day-to-day, not in our political systems. But it brings up an interesting question about the role that beliefs play in how we're wired in our mindset, because I think Part of the challenge that we have, especially now when you look at political systems and all that, belief systems, I think, really come into defining who we feel we are. And I was just— I was watching— it was interesting. I was watching the hockey game with my wife. We, of course, I live in Alberta, and it was— we were kind of the forefront of the Freedom Convoy that happened a couple of years ago.

Sure.

And so we had kind of this Conservative side, we had more of the Liberal side, and all these belief systems were clashing. And we were watching the Oilers game and watching all these people, regardless of their differences, rooting for the same team.

The New York Rangers, right?

Very close. Very close. Yeah. I think both teams have an O in their name. So the interesting thing was, is like, in spite of the fact that we have belief differences and we might have political viewpoint differences, that there are still some aspects of our lives that we find commonality and we actually do connect on.

There's the commonality. And, you know, and I maintain— and this book will be out in October on conflict and collaboration— you can work with somebody that you violently disagree. You just have to figure out what are the things that you can connect on and what are the things that You can— that you all can work on that meet your needs and that meet this other person's needs. And you can— it can be done. And there's a lot of research on how to do it. And, you know, a lot of that research is based in the book. A lot of the things that propel us is we have this tremendous urge as human beings. We are social animals and we tend to copy the people that we're around. And so, you know, related to that is to, first of all, to be available, to be aware ourselves. You know something? Acting this way, probably because I'm in this group and I have this fear of the group ostracizing me. That's one of our and or being humiliated, and that's that's one of our biggest fears. And to to be able to be self aware of that, to be able to be aware that somebody else is acting in those in those situations, and when we're acting that way again, we're incapable of taking in new information. We're incapable. of listening to something that disagrees with the decisions that we've already come up with. And so again, it's still those 3 techniques of being aware, of positive self-talk, and distraction that then walk our brains down so that we can access our ability to be resourceful, resilient, to empathize with other people.

How do we trigger the idea of Being open to new ideas. Because I think— or different ideas or different viewpoints. Because I think all too often our egos do get in the way. And, you know, and I've just the other day, I was walking through Costco with my wife and there was a floor manager for one of the sampling stations. He's like the floor manager.

Hmm.

He's talking to— an employee was talking to him and he stops in the middle of the conversation and says, you have to listen to me. I'm your boss. And I thought, there you have somebody who's felt like whatever was being said to him, he's felt like he's lost all control and he needed to reestablish his authority. And so what's going on there?

Well, so that's your limbic reaction. And so if it's the boss who's doing that, the boss hopefully has some amount of self-awareness, even if they come back later on and say and realize, you know something, in this interaction I was in fight mode. And that's not my best side. And now what do I do about it with this other employee so that I continue to make that employee engaged and motivated?

Mm-hmm.

But another, just a couple other tricks, because generally what we're trying to do is we're trying to trick our brain to be more resourceful. Another trick is if you're in this situation yourself and you're getting angrier or you're so sure that this other person is wrong, is to then ask yourself, you know something, how could I be— how could this person be 10% right? And so understanding that the per— thinking about the person being 10% right and looking for that 10% actually is one of the things that gets us out of being 100% certain.

Mm-hmm.

So that's, you know, that's another way. Or thinking about, you know, how could I be— how might I be 10% wrong? Or another way is saying, you know something, I'm just gonna forget about my thoughts about What's right and what's wrong here. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to ask this person questions and just try to understand them. And that's another trick, because when you're asking the questions just for the purpose of establishing a connection, and they're empathetic questions, you can't help but go into your resourceful mind. And that person's mirror neurons are picking up, this person isn't threatening me. This person is being nice to me. And their mirror neurons are just kind of getting them to say, well, you know something? I should be nice in turn. And so the whole conflict then becomes de-escalated. So those are 2 tricks. How can this person be 10% right? And the second is, if I just wanted to talk to this person to have a connection and I didn't care the specifics about what they were saying, but I'm just going to ask them questions so that we can get a connection. Those empathetic questions are a second way to trick our brains to connect with another person.

I think it's so fascinating because we've just gone into now the whole power of curiosity.

Yes.

If we put on this hat of, I'm getting myself really upset. Hold on a second. Let me just put on this hat of curiosity. It would kind of change the whole way that we go back into that transaction or into that interaction to be able to then figure out what it is. What can we connect with?

I mean, if you're in a curious mode, if you're in a playful mode, I know you had somebody recently who was talking, I guess, Chris Marshall, I think, was talking about playful leadership. Yes.

Yeah.

If we're in a playful mode, we're not in limbic. And actually, it's interesting. When we're learning, every time we learn something, we get this boost of serotonin and dopamine in our brain that makes us happy. So, being in curious mode, being in playful mode, Consciously tapping into that, that's another way to reset our brains.

I love that. For the people tuning in, my fear, if you've ever watched the show, my fear at the very end is people will take this information and create like a band-aid kind of policy of the week based on what they're learning in this episode. And so, I'd like to go into some cautionaries and some pitfalls. And we'll get to that right after this.

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As you can tell, Mitch and I just absolutely love this idea of being able to support you in your business and in your leadership journey. My call out to you is if you are thinking about doing a leadership retreat or you know somebody who's hosting a conference and they're looking for really great speakers to help shake the tree, please feel free to reach out to us. Our contact information is in the show notes. We are here to serve you. So, if any of this resonates and you think you could use high-quality speakers for your event, please do go ahead and reach out. Mitch, you have a technique called SCORE.

Right.

Is this all part of what we've been talking about? Can you walk us through that a little bit?

So, SCORE I'll move back a little bit and just say none of the techniques I use are my techniques. So what I've done is I've pulled techniques from, you know, that happens to be a neurolinguistic programming technique, but I pull techniques from military strategy, from cognitive science, from neuroscience, from psychology. But the score technique is, is an ability to tap into our feelings of success in doing one thing When we're doing something else. And so in the SCORE technique, if you know something that you repetitively get afraid of or that you, that you are constantly fearful of, then it's to think about that and then to think about, see, what is something else? What is something that I have a feeling of accomplishment or I have a feeling that I can do? And to think about that and to think about that feeling. And then it's to say, well, gee, can I take that feeling from whatever it is that I'm already competent in and can I then attach it to this thing that I'm about to do? And you do that by first thinking of the thing that you're confident of. You anchor it through something. The anchoring could be holding your shoulder. The anchor could be taking a deep breath. The anchor could be— Thinking about your dog. Moving your toes. But think about what that thing that you can do well, feel that feeling of accomplishment and certitude that you can do it, anchor it with, say, moving your toes or touching your shoulder, and then start thinking about the thing that you're a little bit afraid of and see if you can move that feeling over to that new task. And more times than not, you'll be able to then dispense your fears. I was able to use that with a friend of mine who was from rural the US, and he was coming into the US, and he had to rent a car from LaGuardia Airport in New York and drive to New Jersey. And he's like, Mitch, there is no way I'm going to drive in New York City. And I was like, well, okay, well, what's something that you feel comfortable doing? And he started thinking about that. And it's like, well, how do you feel when you're doing that? I said, well, you know, why don't you— how would you anchor that? Would you close your eyes and think about it? Would you take a deep breath? And for him, it was taking a deep breath. I said, okay, now think about the car and now move that feeling of confidence that you have about speaking to driving the car. Can you do that? And I can't do that yet. Okay, then go back to the speaking and feel that again. Now go back to driving the car. And after practicing 2 or 3 times, he was able to move that feeling of confidence that he felt in public speaking and move it to driving. And he says, okay, And you could just tell the whole expression on his face changed because we're Zooming, we're doing a Zoom call. It was like his face relaxed and it's like, okay, I got it. And sure enough, he flew across the country. He thought about how confident he is public speaking. He gets into the car. He just drives through the streets of New York and ends up in New Jersey and he was fine. It's a great technique and it's not mine. It was created by somebody named Robert Dilts and it comes from—

I get a sense that everything that we're talking about today, this is not just a pill that you take and it fixes everything. I get a sense that there's a lot of intentionality in our mindset when we're into difficult situations. That really at the end of this whole thing, that mind shifting really isn't like a permanent thing. It's something that needs to be constantly honed and fed and practiced. Am I on the right track? Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Yeah, because we all have these saboteur brains. And as soon as we learn one technique, our saboteur brains come up with something else. But on the other hand, that when we do defeat those limbic, those saboteur parts of the brain, we feel pretty good about it. So it's kind of nice to have these challenges and to go back. I was really reticent about writing a book on this because I've been teaching courses on this for 10 or 12 years. And it's like, you can't learn how to ride a bike by reading a book. You can't learn this stuff by reading a book. But everybody kept on saying, Mitch, you have to put this into a book. Mitch, you have to put this into a book. So, okay. All right. All right. So I wrote the book and I've heard from 30, 40 people who've said, you know something, I read the book and then I read the book again. And the way I use the book now is that when I get into a situation where I'm not sure, I just go right to one of the techniques in the book and I use the book to walk me through it. So I will say, whether you're listening to this podcast or you buy the book and you read it, the first time you hear about these, you're not going to just have them. But by the third time or fourth time, they're gonna be yours and they're gonna become part of your habits and your fluencies that you don't even have to think about. And then your brain is gonna come up with something else more difficult and you'll go back to the book and you say, oh, okay, oh, here's how I can handle that. And you'll get better at handling that. But it's something that you work on for the rest of your life.

You know, this fact that it does take intentionality. I can believe that visualization probably plays a key role in this. Being able to, as you consume your book and as you learn new skills, is being able to apply it. Like, I remember once having to go through— I had to drive to work. I had to deal with a very difficult employee, very difficult. And I didn't particularly like the person, but I knew that I wanted to be fair at all costs. And I wanted to make absolutely sure that I parked whatever feelings or disdain I had for this employee.

Right.

I wanted to make absolutely sure that when I walked away from the transaction or the interaction at the end, that I knew full well I treated her fairly, I treated her with respect, and we moved on. And I remember driving to work thinking to myself, how I relate with this one particular person is going to define the kind of leader I want to be. This visualization component of it, how important is it to understand our hot buttons and being able to Kind of role-play in our brains on how we're going to deal with those kinds of interactions?

Well, role-playing and simulation are key to learning any person-to-person practice, right? Or internal practice. I'm sure that most of the people here at some point have sold, right? You know, if you're working for a company or you're running a company, you know, you have to be able to sell. Well, when you go into a sales situation, you don't just walk in cold. You think about, you know, what is it that I'm offering? What is it that That this person needs? How am I going to approach them? How are we going to end up? And when you visualize that sales call and you think, you know something, I'm going to be able to walk out of there and they're going to be really happy that they have this problem solved and they're going to sign this contract or this agreement and they're going to make this purchase and I'm going to be happy that I helped them solve the problem and at the same time made some money. That then becomes how you, how you conduct that whole conversation. And that's what, that's what you did with the employees. your difficult person that you had is you visualized how you were going to feel and visualize how that conversation was going to end. And you went internal and pretty much said, and who do I want to be? How do I want to be in this? And you came back as, I want to be a fair person and I'm going to interact with this person as a fair person. And yes, I'm sure, you know, you knew that there were going to be parts of the conversation where they were going to get angry. But you also knew that when they got angry, that was just going to be their limbic system, even if you didn't phrase it limbic system. And I'm going to be able to maintain myself in sage because I know in the end, the end result is this is how the meeting is going to end. And you were able to stay centered throughout that meeting, right?

For people consuming this, are there any pitfalls or cautionaries they should be aware of as they try to tap into this new way, this new mind shift of how to become a better leader?

Rather than where they might trip over, I would say the thing to understand is that your brain is a lot more powerful and a lot more resourceful and a lot more resilient than you give it credit for. And so are the brains of others. And when you can tap— when you're determined that you're going to stay resourceful, That demeanor then translates to the people that you're going to be working with, and they can see that, and they will— they may not start off that way, they may not— they may drift off, but they're always going to return to that same demeanor. So understand that you are resourceful and resilient, you're grounded, you're determined to be of service to others, and you're determined to find win-win situations. And even though people might get upset, you can stay grounded. And you can, you can stay in connection with them and, and work together with them, and, and you're going to be happier and more productive at the same time.

I love it. This has been so valuable, Mitch. Uh, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today? Anything that we missed?

Well, I will say I've been extremely impressed with the way you've been asking these questions. So, so I just want to say thank you to you, Marc. And I can just tell by the way that you speak that, uh, that you You're such a dynamic speaker.

Thanks for that.

People are lucky to have you as a speaker.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So Mitch, could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Sure. mindshiftingwithmitch.com.

Terrific.

And all my material is there.

Thank you very much. Hey, thanks so much. I really appreciate you sharing your passion, your expertise with us today. You said your next book is coming out in October?

In October, right. That's on conflict and collaboration.

Nice. And so, maybe you need to get it in our schedule. We need to have you back to talk about that aspect. Oh, I'd love to. That would be fun. Thank you so much, Mitch. I appreciate having you on the show.

Thank you, Marc.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your session with you and your team, feel free to book time on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you leave a comment or review about this episode? I would really love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Did you take anything away that you can apply to make you a better leader, a better manager, even a better performer? Thanks again for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Leadership. Make sure you visit marchaine.com for a full directory of available episodes. While you're at it, if you found today's content invaluable, please share it. And tell your friends about the show. As Marc says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode. Please stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.

Thank you.