Perform Podcast #3: Owen Eastwood

I'm Alex Auerbach and I'm a performance psychologist with experience working in the NBA, NFL with elite military units and Fortune 5 executives. I'm excited to bring you the Perform podcast where we unlock and uncover the principles and practices of health and high performance for teams, individuals and organizations so that you can be your best when it matters most. Owen, how are you?

I'm very good, my friend. Looking forward to this conversation.

I'm only teasing because I love, I mean, your work has had a massive impact on me. You know, the thing that I resonate most with from the first book that sticks with me a lot is this idea of the sun sort of setting on you and you're in the sun for some time and then eventually it sort of moves on. And it's your responsibility to move on to think about that a lot in the context of my own life and sport generally. But we're not here to really talk about your book today. We're here to talk about some of the concepts from your book and I think fry some bigger fish. So before we jumped on, we were talking a little bit about this report around mental health that you've been reading. We were talking a little bit about the manager's impact on employee mental health. Like where do you want to begin?

It's interesting. When I wrote Belonging, I actually, you know, was coming at it as a performance coach. I was thinking like, you know, that's really friggin important, the environment. And people really underestimate that and how people are feeling, where they feel a sense of belonging, where they feel included, whether they feel trust around them. Why do people not focus on it? So from a performance point of view, I was trying to shake people up a bit, but since the books come out, you get a lot of people who reach out to you. And what I've realized, and I didn't appreciate this, was that actually as a species, you really want to take it wide out. This is like a massive wellbeing issue. And there's a pretty awesome group of people based in the US called Sapien Labs, a team of neuroscientists and they write the Global Mental Health Report and it's done annually. And they reached out and they said, you know, we read your book and we enjoyed it and we would love to just have a conversation. Because in our last report, the age group of the most mental well Wellbeing deterioration was 16 to 24 year olds and 40% of people across 188 countries and 300,000 people surveyed, 40% of those people reported being in a state of mental trauma during the course of that year. And when they went in for the deeper questioning, the main thing that came back was that people are losing, or particularly the young people, losing a sense of their social self. It's not such an individualistic thing. It's that they feel less connected, less belonging, more isolated and lonely. So this is like a big, big deal. I spoke at a sports conference last week, and I was pleading with them, please don't think about team sports as just about winning and bringing prestige to the school. Please, please, please create an environment for our young people to know what it feels like to be part of a really healthy environment, because it's something that they need to take into their lives. I was a kid, we had our school, our neighborhood, we hung out all the time with the church, all of these things. We're just in community the whole time. Just some groups we belong to. It's really, really changed hugely. So that's where I'm coming from. I've got a little bit of urgency in my voice.

I love the urgency in your voice. And I think I. I mean, look, my mind's racing with a million possible explanations for this. Maybe that's the psychologist to me, like, oh, is it social media or is it something different? And I think social media is sort of like the natural place people are going to jump to with this is, you know, we sort of spend more time on our phones and less time connected with the world around us. But I have a hard time imagining that that's the answer because very infrequently is the first thing we think of the actual answer to the problem. Where are you at in your thinking with what might be causing this distress and loneliness?

I had a fascinating chat with my son. We drive to sports practice together. He's 15. That seems to be when we're not staring at each other, when we're in a car, both looking ahead. Seems we have our best conversations. You're the psychologist. You can teach me what that's all about. But anyway, we were having a chat and I actually said to him, there's so much sort of narrative out there about how tough times are and how tough it is on your generation. And I said, do you think that. And he said, we didn't. He didn't hesitate. He said, I don't. I don't think life is tougher for my generation than it's ever been for anyone before us. But I actually do think we're less resilient. That was his Answer. So I said, what do you mean by less resilient? He just said it was quite impressed by actually the way he communicated. He said, I feel like if we face a problem or something's not going right, we are encouraged to blame somebody, to walk away from the problem. And that's where social media can kick in a little bit. If there's sort of conflict or whatever, then rather than the skills of being in a team where you sort of got to figure it out, you can block people or cancel people or do whatever. So I thought that was a really amazing comment. And I thought, okay. And then I actually went home that night and looked up when I was his exact age, what the hell was going on in my life when I was 15, because I've forgotten. And so I went back and looked at it and it was actually 1984, when I was 15. And what I read, which I'd actually forgotten because I went into the archive of my local paper, was we had a massive floods in the part of New Zealand I grew up in. And then I remember we got evacuated from our house and lived with friends for a week. I'd actually forgotten that. That was pretty frigging traumatic. I also, in that same period of time, we were forced in New Zealand, at the very bottom of the world, to watch a film called the Day after, which was made in the United States, and it was literally the day after a nuclear attack. And it was based in, I think, Missouri, somewhere like that. And it was absolutely horrific. And I had nightmares about it for absolute weeks. There was Ronald Reagan and the Russians were, like, really at each other, too. It was a very tense time. And so anyway, won't go on about it, but what it reminded me of is actually, you know, I sort of think back of when I was a kid and think it was pretty sweet, but actually there's a lot of stress there. I mean, we were scared of a nuclear war, petrified about it. We got evacuated from our house with floods. But, you know, we were encouraged to kick on with it. And we didn't have these sort of movable communities or people we were belonging to or not belonging to. So I think my son maybe have a good point there.

So do you think that lack of resilience, like, are you buying that as a result of not having a community? How do you see the link between the two of them? I guess.

Well, this is my view. I'm actually definitely more interested in hearing from you than what I'm going to say. But I come from an old world Culture. I'm part Polynesian, as you know. And my take on this actually is that we've become so individualistic that if you're resilient or not, a lot of people sort of seem to frame that around whether you are a strong individual character. And all the self help books basically seem to imply we need to be some sort of superhero to get through daily life. I just never buy into that at all. I feel that resilience is directly correlated to feeling that you belong, are included and part of a group of people that you can navigate the suffering and the joy of life with. And when you don't have those things, I know for me you can put me in a certain situation where I know the people, they look me in the eye, I can tell that they care about me, I can trust them. Like I feel I can anticipate forecast their behaviors. And I think that they may not always be in my interest, but they'll at least consider that. And if things go bad, I don't think they're going to reject me or turn it on me. And when I'm in that situation, I am a resilient dude. I actually am. And I've been in that situation many times. And in fact, when my father died When I was five, my mother, who was 39, brought up these four children. That was a good example actually of just really, really having each other's backs in all circumstances and also a wider family. My mother was part of one of eight children. So there's uncles and aunties and cousins and everything. Everyone was around us. And so we got through life quite well actually, which that could have really, really turned us off.

So.

But if you put me in a situation where, you know, literally drop me in a team, for example, the professional sports team, and I don't really know the people. I feel like an outsider, don't really feel that people trust me, know me, I think they're judging me. I think they may actually reject me at some point. If things don't go well around my domain, I'm actually pretty worried that that could be the end of me. Then I am actually not a very resilient person. I'm just not. So I know those things from my life experience. My culture taught me those things as well, that everything is about having each other's backs and being in communities where you feel you belong are included. And so that's what I took to my son's comment. It wasn't so much as the idea of feeling isolated and you've got to navigate Life by yourself. And it's a test of whether you're a strong character or not. That's never been the way that my ancestors thought.

That's fascinating. As I'm listening to you talk, I mean, certainly we know, like, empirically, we've got some data from my world that shows that people are more resilient when they have better social support. So it may makes some sense. And I've been trying to. I really resonate. Just to back up for a minute, I really resonate with what you're saying about resilience being thought of as this kind of like, superhuman individual trait. And I've actually been on a bit of a quest to figure out, like, what is resilience really? And what is it? What does it even mean? Like, we talk about it so much. We talk about responding effectively to adversity or bouncing back or overcoming all the obstacles. I was like, yeah, maybe, like, maybe that's resilience, maybe not. I'm not sure because we've got like a million death definitions working of it. But what your conceptualization of it points to me is like the idea of demands versus resources. And ultimately social support is resources, right? The people around us are resources to help us solve a problem. And of course, the more resources we have, the better able we are to manage the demands in our life. And so that makes a ton of sense to me. And actually, I'd be curious what you think about this. The definition of resilience that I've most resonated with is this idea of seeking growth even when conditions don't support it. And so you don't need this index trauma or adversity or obstacle. You just need to be in a tough situation. And you personally are figuring out how can you grow and evolve through this difficulty. I think for that to happen, a lot of times we need other people, right? We need a coach, we need a mentor, we need a family member. We need someone who can sort of suggest, like, hey, this might be an alternative path, or have you thought about that much? Or what you're trying right now isn't working. Maybe we should try something different. What do you think about that?

Well, that still sounds a little bit to me on the individualistic side. Like, if you ask me, Owen, are you a resilient person? I would have to answer with it depends. Which is probably a horrendous answer, but that is the truth of it. So it's not a quality that I just have like a halo above my head. I'm resilient or not. Resilient. It really does depend on the circumstances. And I've seen situations in professional sport where we have really, really good performance psychologists. Not as good as you, but we've got really good ones as well over here. And they do an amazing job and have a great relationship with the really important athlete in our team. And they will tell you their mental skills are as sharp as they could possibly be. They're resilient, they're this, the focus, the ability to concentrate, all of these things are in great order. And then they get put into an environment where the coach doesn't talk to them. They don't really know where they stand. There isn't a relationship between the two of them. The coach actually doesn't know anything about their family life. They don't know that their children are sick or a parent is dying. They don't know that because they don't have a relationship. And all of a sudden this athlete is not performing at a high level. And then the coach, in a very ironic twist then is asking the psychologist like, what is going on here? Why aren't you doing a job? It was a poor performance, really poor concentration. Da da da da da. And this is where this thing keeps going round and around. And I just hope we're going to get to a point of maturation soon. I'm not just talking about sport, I'm talking about work. I'm talking about all organizations where we sort of understand here that we can't sit back and judge our people as to whether they're resilient and whether they're this and whether they're that. We've got to understand that 70% of human behavior is determined by the environment and friggin take a bit of ownership of it and we're still not there. And actually we were talking about it before as well, weren't we? That survey that came out in the uk, I think a couple of weeks ago, or maybe that's just when I saw it, which showed that someone's Manager has a 69% impact on their mental well being, which is exactly the same score as someone's spouse or partner whilst their doctor was down at 40% or something and the therapist. But more than that. So, you know, I think there's enough evidence there. I still can't quite understand why we're standing back and judging our kids and judging our athletes and judging our employees about whether they've got all these superhero qualities or not and rather creating an environment which is going to bring all those to the fore.

It's a really important question. And I think, you know, the talent development, talent selection research actually supports a lot of what you're. You're saying, right. There's a guy we had on the podcast a few weeks ago, Christopher Henriksen, who talked about his holistic ecological approach, and what he's basically found was like, you know, to your point, finding these magical people or imagining that people are just individually successful is wrong, basically.

Right.

Like, what ends up really making a big difference is creating conditions that facilitate peak performance excellence. These other things emerging, right? Like these are emergent properties of a really healthy ecosystem. And in the same way, I guess some of what you're saying is mental health issues are emergent properties of dysfunctional systems. Right. And I. I can buy into that. I agree with that. So it's a very interesting way of sort of thinking about it. And I completely agree, like, we still place way, way, way too much emphasis on the heroic individual and not enough emphasis on the conditions that are going on to sort of bring that performance about. Let's double down on the manager talk for a minute here, because I think this is also something we're pretty passionate about, both in the sports sense in terms of, you know, coach, manager, and athlete relationship, but also in the work sense, whether that's the actual work environment of a sport club or just work broadly. Right. Like, how do we make work healthier for people and more interesting for people? When you saw that headline, like, what. What was your immediate reaction? Right. What comes to mind for you? Like, why is this the case?

The first thing I thought of actually was before I became a performance coach, as you know, I was a lawyer. I was a partner in a firm in London. And one of the things I advocated for, and actually they did, was to bring in a psychologist once a month. And everybody, all the lawyers in our team had an opportunity to sit with. It was completely confidential. They could talk about a personal issue, they could talk about a client issue. They could do anything they wanted.

And.

And I thought that was a really good idea because I felt like our lawyers needed some support and needed some professional expertise to help them perform and be well. But also, he's often in the area of law. I was in litigation. A lot of psychology involved in that, in terms of how you manage your own client, how you deal with the other side. So I just thought it'd be useful. Now, when I think back about it, I think it still probably was a good thing to do. But, you know, the crazy thing is, you know, and this sort of encompasses that Bit of research is that you can have an. Our environment actually is a very nice law firm. So I'm not going to criticize it all, but there are a lot of law firms are very, very harsh and pretty brutal environments. So this is the madness from my experience is that you can have an environment where they work in which is actually not that healthy and not necessarily leading to their best performance at all. You know, shutting them down through chronic stress, for example, exhausting them and not feeling safe or psychologically safe or to be vulnerable, which is really important as a lawyer, to be honest about things if you don't understand them or whatever. So you can have an environment where that's operating and then bring in a psychologist once a month to deal with it. I mean it's a bit mad. But professional sports hasn't been dissimilar to that. The idea of there's a disconnect here. So what I would like to see is someone like you, your amazing experiences, but the psychology to be integrated into the friggin leadership in a much more impactful way. Rather than you being asked to go and deal with these individuals one on one. Actually having a strong voice from the, from the world of psychology into the leadership team about this is how we need to lead our people and create an environment. And you know, there are some really nice examples. Pippa Grange did a really good job of that with England football team and Ian Mitchell's doing that now. So they have a big voice with the manager, Gareth Southgate about what is the social psychology of the situation, not just individuals. Gilbert Anoka is the mental skills coach for the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team who have been very successful for a very long period of time. He also has a massive voice when it comes to the environment. He doesn't just have one on ones with the players, he is sitting in all the leadership meetings and he is constantly giving them feedback. So that's what I'd love to see is performance psychologists like you be a coach, you have coaching in your title and you have an equal standing around that table with all the other coaches and a voice about this is the social psychology we need to get ahead around here. But also in the workplace having somebody with that sort of expertise helping managers understand what the hell is going on in their environment and how we can continue to improve it and get a better performance and have healthier people.

I'm fortunate because I, I am a bit in that position. I am a part of our leadership team. I do get to have some of that voice and it's been amazing to see how that's evolved and how people have used that. Right? From understanding the general like, quote unquote vibe of the team during a particular time to managing challenges with other employees. Like, there's a lot of ways that psychologists and people just trained in understanding human behavior can also help people understand social dynamics and how that's playing out and how that's impacting people. And I think what I love about this idea and why it feels really important to me too is so many of the kind of like lay theories that we have about human performance are either completely wrong or way more nuanced than we think. So I just finished reading this paper, for example, which I think like speaks directly to this research and article you're talking about, which was about the idea of performance pressure. And people have just sort of thought that like, oh yeah, when we just turn up the heat a little bit, people will rise to the occasion and they'll all be better. And it turns out like, no, right, that's not unilaterally or universally true. But there are actually times when that can work and there are times when that can be really, really harmful and oh, please, cut me off. Jump in.

No, no, no, I'm definitely going to do that. I just reaffirm what you're saying there, that there's actually another side of an edgier side to what you just said there. I've been in environments from Olympic sports and professional ballet where actually it's a little bit sharper than that. It is. We want to create a hostile environment so the mentally weak can be filtered out and we are left with those people who can withstand the ultimate pressures of an Olympic Games or whatever. And that's a great example of this myth based on no research or anything, but it is actually pervaded for decades and it still friggin sits there and also sits here in these law firms and other sort of professional environments. And it absolutely kills me because I know that what you really are doing is destroying talent. You are weeding out in your language, you know, not your language, but what they. Their language they use perfectly. And then potentially amazing talent because for some reason others are better at adapting to hostility and aggression and bullying while they're young people, maybe because they've already had trauma in their life and they're sort of used to it versus people who come from other environments and what the hell is going on here? So, like, that is a good. You know, to me, that's an example which keeps me up at night to be honest, such a misinformed and dangerous approach to how we find the best talent by putting them under chronic stress, forgetting, and not really even keeping any data on what that will do for the rest of their lives, by the way. But in this moment in time, putting them under all this heat, we're still there, aren't we? In certain places. And friggin you and I and others in this community have got a hell of a lot of work to do.

We do. And I think, you know, you're to your point. And I know Steve Magnus wrote about this in his new book too. My thing is like, when you're doing that, you're answering a different question. You're not really answering who's going to be a good performer, who's going to contribute most to the team. You're just answering who can best tolerate this shit. And that is not an informative question to be asking. It's not really all that helpful, especially because these conditions are not likely to persist forever unless you keep them that way.

Right?

Very rarely does a game somehow mimic the random crap that we do in our organizations to manufacture pressure for people. That's just not the way that games actually unfold. And there's tons of data supporting this. I mean, even now we know that like in the first, say 30 minutes of a basketball game, teams are just kind of trading points. They're just going back and forth and what happened before doesn't really matter all that much. You know, they're just kind of going through it. And yeah, maybe the other team goes on a little bit of a run, but we know the hot hands of myth and the other team's going to come back and they'll have a little bit of a run. And then all of a sudden with like 10 minutes to go, things change. And the single thing that changes most is that the goal of the game becomes salient. It has nothing to do with new pressure. There's nothing mythical happening here. It's just now we know that the outcome's around the corner, and so we might want to like, try a little bit harder, right? And this drives coaches and everyone sort of nuts, right? Like, why do we always start slow? And what's this about? It's just like normal human psychology. But if you understood that, you would know that somehow creating a situation where the losing team has to run until they throw up and then roll across the field if they don't perform in the first 10 minutes of practice has literally no representation of what we're going to go through. In a game, it just, it baffles me and it drives me absolutely mad to think about this. And then we make character evaluations about it, which I think is like the most harming part.

Right.

We now say, you don't belong here. You're not good enough to be here. You don't have what it takes to make it. When in reality that's, that's not even what we're assessing. There's nowhere close, we're not even in the same ballpark to actually answering those questions. For real?

Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. I remember, you know, you and I get to visit different programs, you know, throughout the year. We, we might have that opportunity. And I remember going to one, which I'm definitely not going to name, but I asked them at the end of it, I said, do you have any data on your. The well being of the people who come through this program after they leave? And not only did they say no, they said no, and we don't want to know that. I said, why is that? And they said, because we would fear the answer it would reveal. Well, that says it all, doesn't it?

That's a very scary place.

There's such a focus on winning and obviously youth sport. It's. But yeah, it kills me. I don't, I don't know your approach to this, but for me, I don't allow myself to, allow myself to be excited by a vision. I buy into the purpose and the mission the team will set for itself. I want them to compete like hell. But I am very interested in other markers of success beyond whether we come home with a trophy or not. You know, I am very interested on what type of life experience that was. You know, if it's an NFL season or NBA season or anything else. Like at the end of it all, was that a good year of my life? Did I grow as a person? Did I make friendships? Did I learn a lot? Like I. Yeah, hopefully that doesn't sound corny. I think with your community it won't. But I truly really believe that. And I think these statistics, these global health reports, this stuff is screaming at us that the answer to wellbeing is learning some of these skills which team sports actually provide. But so why should an office provide that? Why should an office provide a great, healthy environment and also allow people to experience that and take it into other.

Parts of their lives? 100%. I mean, I think about it like, I think it's okay to focus on winning if you're also focused on creating an environment. That improves the odds of that happening. Right. And chances are those things are really highly related. It's very hard to sustain excellence over time in crappy conditions. And so if you can build a culture that is healthy, that does promote well being, the only thing that you're doing is improving your chances of success for the other stuff that you also want to achieve. No one is going to be a worse performer because they feel better. So to me, it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. You can just pursue both with the same level of intention, attention, intensity, passion, and know that they're working synergistically. Like you're not undermining your chances of winning by also trying to make sure that people have what they need to feel good and perform well. And we sort of like intuitively understand it a bit with athletes, but we tend to not understand it in work. We tend to not understand it for coaches or other people in the sports system. Right. Athletes have strength and conditioning, nutritionists, access to people like me, individual coaches. They often have people outside of the organization to support them to. Like, athletes are pretty good at actually creating the conditions that will facilitate them feeling well and performing well. Assuming that coaches or other significant others in the actual sport environment don't tear that down. And then we hope that that leads to peak performance, we hope that leads to winning. But for the rest of us, we often undermine that. Right. We don't believe that we're deserving of the same or that we should create those same conditions. And it's just ultimately very, very harmful. And part of the reason I think you're seeing such a massive exodus from the sport community generally is people are realizing this is not a good way to live. And a lot of people get to the end year and answer that question like, was this a good year of my life? With no. And that's pretty unfortunate for such a high performing space. But let's. I want to turn our attention because we could wax poetic about this as a, as a problem for forever, probably for several episodes. What's the next step in working toward a solution? Where should we begin if we want to start to resolve this epidemic of disconnection?

Well, this is becoming more obvious to me is that you and I can talk about this. A lot of people will nod and then go, you know what? I don't honestly think I've got the toolkit to build the type of environment you're speaking about. And over here, and I'm sure in the States, everywhere, you can go through level one, level two, level three, Level four in any sport, coaching qualification and never actually discuss any of this stuff. It's so much orientated to the technical and the tactical and, you know, so I do various talks and like, people come back to me afterwards and say, like, we haven't been taught this stuff. How the hell do I create an environment like that? Like, if I got somebody who's not performing well or I don't like their attitude, you know, how can I address that in a way which sort of is still psychologically safe environment and those type of things. So also, and I was a partner in a law firm. Literally not one hour of training about how to manage human beings. You know, you're just good at your job and you're promoting and promoting, become a partner and then you're responsible for a team. And you know, some people would have a compassionate sort of partner who would be quite good to work with and others would have a complete bully. You know, there's no consistency around it. So I think for a start, if we're going to recognize this, then we need a much better education on all aspects of leading human beings around. How do we, what does that type of environment look like? And also what I don't like is that a lot of organizations, you know, in all parts of society, they sort of delegate how people are cared about or looked after or managed to individuals, they don't really stand for anything as an organization. They say they have values and purpose and all that, but basically they will tolerate some people giving their team a very rough experience which is not bringing the best out of them, and then other people are doing it in a much more progressive, informed way. So that is another thing. Organizations, this idea of coaches, king, coaches queen, you know, just basically appoint people to managing their own view of the world. I think that's silly. I went to an Olympic sport and they had 12 of the national coaches in the gym at the same time coaching. And they were so different in what they experienced. They were giving their people. And then when we went into the boardroom to have a chat about it, like they were saying, what do you think of our culture? And like, well, I wouldn't have a clue. Depends what end of the gym you're in. So from an organizational point of view, I think you really step up and say, this is what we believe is the best environment for our people from a performance and wellbeing point of view. And if you're going to manage here or coach here or whatever, need to buy into this and if your belief system around this is Diametrically opposed to us. And this isn't going to be a.

Good place for you.

So I think the organization needs to stand up for it. But I think in all levels we need to friggin educate people and help people visualize and understand what would a healthy high performing environment look like. Because I really think you can become an elite coach, so called like your wafer level coaching and all that, without ever really having to think about this stuff.

100 true in North America, right? I mean you can become a head coach by virtue of having played for some time and certainly that lived experience is, is valuable. But there's nothing directly instructive about creating a good culture. Right. You're usually a lot of coaches are just operating based on the way that they were coached.

Right.

And that worked for them. And so, you know, let's, let's duplicate that. I love starting with education. Obviously there's just a ton we could unpack back there. But you know, my mind goes to teaching people good social skills all the way to like, how do you form healthy relationships and what does it mean to be in a healthy relationship? For people who wanted to just get started on making their culture healthier, where would you recommend that they begin? Because education is a pretty big undertaking to sort of get everyone at all levels through some course or, you know, set of milestones to make sure everyone has the same foundation. Like where can we just begin if we want to make one small step today?

Well, it's a good question because one of the reasons I wrote Belonging was I actually wasn't too sure when I became a performance coach of where to go. And one of the things that's really influenced me a lot is the psychology obviously is a big part of all of it. But the biology actually interests me a lot. And what I find is that some of the more technical type of coaches and managers, people from tech companies, people from, you know, oil, the oil industry, people like that. When I explained to them that an environment and the way you lead it has this biological impact on people in terms of, you know, really, really creating very different hormonal states and that you can measure it and like teams like the New Zealand Worldblocks rugby team have done, then I actually think this is a breakthrough area where people can start to get this. The idea that if you are giving feedback to somebody or you are standing in front of a group, your team and delivering a message or reviewing a performance, that you can do that in a certain way, which leads to incredibly elevated levels of cortisol and probably adrenaline in the system. And that leads to some very foreseeable behaviors. People communicating less, people trusting the environment less, people not willing to be vulnerable. Because why would you be vulnerable when you've. There's an aggression around you like that. But if we actually give feedback or we conduct a meeting in a different way where we connect to our purpose, we make people reaffirm that you belong here and that together we are trying to do something maybe difficult, but would be pretty cool if we could do this and then explain some of the challenges we've got. What you can do is literally measure that their cortisol levels, their stress hormone levels are actually in a reasonably balanced state. But dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin levels are in a positive space just by the way that you are communicating and your body language and your thoughtfulness. And I have had that because I probably work more in the corporate space now than doing sport. And that seems to be where people's eyes start to open. Okay, now that actually does make sense. And the fact that you can measure that if you want to, that is what I sort of need to get me to buy into it, rather than. No disrespect, but psychology models based on interesting studies and things doesn't quite, I don't think for a lot of people have the same impact as the idea that this is stuff that you can measure and have a number beside it. So that's where I think, certainly with the audiences that I speak to sit up where the really digestible publications are taking that point of view on it. Not 100% sure, but I think that in the next 10 years, I really do think we're going to think about culture through the lens of biology a lot more. And look, a lot of us have experienced parenting and you know, you know how true it is either whatever end of the parenting relationship you're at, that certain comments can be made around a point which lead to a calm, rational, sort of positive experience. And the exact same point can be made in a way that leads to a complete stressful, panicky state where the relationship is damaged, takes time to repair. You leak energy, you're exhausted by all of this. Thinking about all of this, it's just profound. So, yeah, you know my very long answer, but I do find that through the lens of biology, it might be a useful way to move this conversation forward.

I like that idea. And I think, you know, psychologists operate, most of us from this biopsychosocial model, right? Which is we do consider biology, but we also consider Psychology and social dynamics. And I think that approach can work well here. And I want to offer a couple things that might affirm some of what you're sharing, which is I read at one point a pretty interesting study that was around the review of game film, and it showed that when the feedback was a bit more constructive, when it was framed well, when people were kind of brought in to the conversation like you're describing, players learned more. And when they were brought into a more hostile situation, learning decreased because they were just so busy monitoring for the threat and their own internal status that they couldn't. They couldn't really take advantage of that time. But, you know, I'll go. I love, obviously measuring things. I think that does make it a bit more tangible. But I think we can also give people the real experience of what you're describing. You use parenting as an example. My favorite example in this world is from the romantic relationship space, which is if you're not sure if you impact someone else or your social environment impacts you, like, send your partner or ask your partner to send you a text message that says, we need to talk. There is not a single person that has ever gotten or sent that message that didn't in some way know they were impacting the other people. Right. I've been on the receiving end of that message. Doesn't feel very good. Right. But humans have evolved this remarkable capacity to regulate each other's energy efficiency through language. Like that may in fact be one of the reasons we have language at all, is to help each other survive, to help each other thrive, promote better, more adaptive behavior. And so it makes a ton of sense to me. So if you need to quantify it, to sort of believe it, fine. But also for, like, the managers, coaches, leaders that are listening to this, I mean, you've also been in a position where you experienced the other end of that. I've never met a single person who's gotten to this phase of their career that can't think of a time where they were spoken down to or weren't activated by something someone said. Well, what makes you think that the way that you're interacting doesn't do that to other people? I mean, so of course it makes a ton of sense to. To quantify. I love that approach, and I think it's. It's tremendously valuable. I want to end here. I'm mindful of time, like, you're talking about the future, where you kind of hope that this evolves to. For people who wanted to just, like, dig more into this stuff. For people who leave this conversation or like, I'm going to become a steward of the culture and make this really come to life, what would you advise for them to do or change and how they show up on a daily basis? What would be different for people who are ready to make that leap and now promote that healthy, high performing culture?

Well, you've asked me the question. I find it difficult not to refer back to the Polynesian spiritual idea of wakapapa, which, you know, I talk about in belonging, because that is where I start with everything. And that is this idea that you mentioned earlier, that we are all part of a line of whatever community we're part of, whatever team, family, any group of human beings part of this line of people, to go back to our origin story and into the future, the end of time, and we're all have our arms locked with each other and the sun first shone on the origin story moves down this line of people and it's on us right now. What it with in terms of our family, whatever teams or organizations we're part of. And that is literally being in the moment. But we also know that the sun won't be on us forever. And you know, the way only really why I understand leadership is that when the sun is on you, that you have to understand that you're a guardian of something. You're a guardian of this line of people, and that includes honoring the people who came before you by understanding that you have to take care of the things that are passed down to you, not blindly. If there's certain things in your culture, for example, which are damaging and harmful, then you should be strong and not take them forward on the journey with you. But you are a guardian of whatever the story is and the values and the purpose, etc. That the sun's shining on us. So you have an obligation to meet the moment and whatever needs to be done in that moment and that unique context is your responsibility. But you have to do things in a way that will make the environment healthy for those who follow. I find now that is a very spiritual way maybe to think about it, but I would encourage everybody listening that leading is a spiritual exercise because it is inherently about something bigger than yourself. So don't be shy or embarrassed about thinking about it in that term. Get away from you having to be this hero leader and just start focusing on this line of people you're part of. So have a mindset about being a guardian and have a mindset that your first role actually is to make the environment safe for people and start from there and then we'll start to sharpen up our mission and the skills and learning and everything that goes with being successful. So, you know, I've been in what people would call elite environments, but that's where we come from and I don't think it matters. And I have exactly the same philosophy with my own family that the sun's shining on us and I'm trying to make and I pass on the stories and the values of our family, which I'm proud of, trying to meet all the different crazy moment that we're in right now. But I'm also really doing my best to create the conditions for not only my children, but theirs to thrive. I'm not trying to make the most of this for myself and so that is a spiritual responsibility. So that's where I would start. I'd encourage people to think of it in those terms and I hope that people talk about it in those ways more. This is an old thinking. This is who we are.

Owen Eastwood, brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me. Before we sign off, where can people find you or follow you or learn more about about your work?

I'm on LinkedIn. That's the main place that I sort.

Of.

Put a bit of content from time to time. Not very much, obviously. My book Belonging people welcome to dip into that if they want to. And yeah, I think what I like is that, you know, you and I and others are part of this community and actually the sun is shining on us, my friend. And so I think it's for us to be but more proactive and maybe a bit more urgent in what we spoke about today. That's what I feel. So again, it's not about me, it's about us. And I think we've got work to do.

Couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, my friend.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Perform podcast where we unlock and uncover the principles and practices of health and high performance for individuals, teams and organizations. Until next time, thanks for joining.