Boundary Setting and the Inner Critic | with Debbie Danon

Foreign. Welcome to episode 130 of the Shortlist. My name is Johnny Campbell. I'm the host of the Shortlist and the CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And today we're going to be talking about boundary setting and the inner critic. What are boundary setting and the Inner Critic? Well, have you ever found yourself in a situation where a colleague, or it might have been a friend, asked you to do something to help them out? You're so busy, you're up to your eyeballs with all your own stuff, but you've either said, yes, no problem at all, I'll do that for you, or you've gone, no, come on, do it yourself. What kind of a person are you when it comes to boundaries? Are you a people pleaser who just does it for everybody else and ends up not getting your own stuff done? Are you somebody who just pushes everyone away and refuses to help because you're so focused on your own stuff? Are you somewhere in the middle and where should you be? Where's the best place to be? And that's to bring us on to not just boundary setting, but let's talk about the inner Critic. Every time you have a challenge ahead of you that you have to face, do you always launch into it with, yes, I can do this, no problem, you got this. Or do you have that little voice in your head that's constantly saying, you don't got this. This is going to be too hard. Like, when have you ever done something like this before? We all have that inner critic. Some of our inner critics are louder than others, but this is a thing that faces every one of us every day, and particularly faces leaders. And over the next few weeks and months, as I mentioned last week, we're going to be exploring leadership topics with some of the new authors we'll be bringing onto the Social Talent platform later this year. But we're giving you a chance on this podcast broadcast to preview them and if you're listening live, to ask questions of these fantastic authors. And today, I'm really delighted to welcome to the show leadership coach, facilitator, and inclusion consultant, Debbie Dunan. Debbie has created her own leadership framework, Rebel Leadership, which I'm dying to discuss, where she builds moral leadership grounded in authenticity, balance and courage. Her Rebel Leadership framework encourages to rebel against cultural norms and expectations, to flip the script, and to understand our need and desire to survive. Debbie, it's a pleasure having you. Welcome to the Shortlist.

Thank you so much, Shoni. It's a huge pleasure to be here with Social Talent.

Debbie for any of our listeners who don't know you, they should. But if they don't, tell us a little bit about your journey to where you are today, where you run a business called rebel leadership, where you coach folks leaders in particular on rebel leadership. And we'll get into exactly what that means in a second. But how did you find yourself in these shoes here today?

Thank you, Johnny. Well, great question. How do any of us end up on these amazing paths and end up where we are? It will make sense backwards, right? So I at school I was always a good girl. I was never a rebel. Right. People who knew me at school would probably be like what Debbie is like, the person who has voted most likely to stay in touch with her teachers. She is not a rebel. But where I think my rebellion has come from is really wanting humanity to do better, basically. And that's. That started as an interest in philosophy and religion. So I studied theology and philosophy at Cambridge University and I was completely fascinated by what has people act in the interest of something bigger than themselves, whether that's a divine being or whether that's a community, whether that's a sub community, what has people be generous in ways that evolution can't really account for. Right. What has people actually do terrible things as well in the name of so called values. Right. How does that cognitive dissonance operate? So I was fascinated by that and I ended up, I had already been a facilitator of sorts for many years. Since I was 15, I had been leading youth workshops that I think my whole career kind of started in those, you know, living rooms making things up with Maltesers and cardboard and marker pens because we were creating these democratized learning spaces where everyone had the chance to participate, where, you know, there was no failing, there was only learning those kind of radical principles. I thought it was pretty basic. We even learned things like don't interrupt your co leader when they're introducing an activity. You know, don't undermine your fellow leaders. So when I entered the workplace and I saw people like cutting each other up or interrupting each other, I was like, huh, like no one ever maybe taught you that. Like you've never learned that. I just realized that I had the privilege of learning that quite young, quite a lot of like management principles, storming, normally conforming, that kind of stuff. I was learning age 15, 16 really. So when I came out of university with this history and facilitation, ended up working for an interfaith charity, so kind of continued down the faith route, really enjoyed kind of bringing people together around controversial issues. So actually making it safe to speak about faith, which is something that's very, you know, people think is touchy. Ooh, do we want to go there? Maybe it's something that can stay behind closed doors. But of course, faith doesn't stay behind closed doors. People, you know, come to work and they need to pray or they can only eat certain foods or they have to take days out of their holiday in order to, in order to celebrate religious holidays. So I was, I got super interested in inclusion through that went from there into the corporate space where I was working for a boutique consultancy designing end to end recruitment development experiences for early talent in some of the biggest firms in the world. A lot of them you will have heard of. And that was fascinating from the point of view of going from a charity to the corporate world of like, whoa, so, so what did you say the budget was? Okay, great. Woo. But also that kind of sense of the scope of what was possible. And I realized that I've been thinking about inclusion 24 7, you know, for six and a half years. And I was like, huh, this is really like an afterthought. Like people are not, they don't have time and space to think about these things or they only have time and space to think about it when it actually becomes a problem. They don't have time to diagnose the risk before it becomes an issue. So that was fascinating to me and also it was interesting to see how risk know company values. You know, people say we want to design a program that's based on our organizational values. But then, you know, when, when push comes to start to shove, values come into conflict with each other and it really lives or dies by managers and leaders taking responsibility for those values. So I really saw that, you know, played out in lots of organizations and I learned a lot. But I ended up getting quite burnt out. So I ended up leaving. And this was a great boundary recognition for me. We're going to talk about boundaries today. I decided I took two weeks off for I was for stress leave. Basically I was signed off by my doctor and I set three red lines that I wanted to communicate to my managers. And I said this is what needs to happen for me to, you know, be able to thrive and kind of recover. And I set the lines on the Monday and by the Thursday, all three of them had been completely crossed. So I knew that the following Monday I was going to attend at my resignation. But I am deeply grateful for the experiences I, I had there. It just was like a parting of the ways. So then I worked in leadership development more widely in a couple of companies and then finally started my own. My own practice facilitating and delivering culture programs. I had a business with the amazing Yasmin Akhtar. Look her up. She's amazing. She and I founded a company called Trust Lab, which we run for about three or four years, doing diversity and inclusion work. In fact, there's some of our content together on the social talent platform. You can check out about collaboration. So she was Pakistani Kashmiri Muslim working class woman, brown woman, and I was kind of ethnically ambiguous, but generally white passing, middle class, Turkish, British, Jewish woman. So we had this really interesting dynamic and people were very curious about the Jew and the Muslim working together. But for us it was just like, yeah, obviously that felt very rebel too. I trained as an integral coach while kind of Trust Lab was still going. I decided to do that partly out of wanting to get sort of that. That training, that rigor in being able to develop human beings in a holistic way. I really like the way integral coaching centers the body, which we're going to talk a lot about today, and centers purpose and being of service to the world and not just kind of goal setting. And let's just crack through this and bam, bam, bam. And I also, to be honest, Johnny, I got into integral coaching because I really needed a space to develop myself and take care of myself. I was going through quite intensive therapy for ptsd, medical ptsd, after two incidents of baby loss. So a miscarriage and then a termination for medical reasons, which I've been very open about because I think, you know, it's crazy that we try to keep something so cataclysmic behind closed doors. It's just so, so important that we speak about these things. But I really felt like I needed tools and a new worldview to be able to integrate this experience into who I was, you know, and also kind of figuring out if I'm going to be childless, if I'm not going to have a child, and that's not going to be by choice. I don't want to be miserable for the rest of my life. I really want to be someone who can be happy and who can be of service and be a contribution to the world. And as it happened, a couple of months into the program, I was pregnant. My daughter Essie was born just before the pandemic. So yeah, my, my rebel leadership practice of coaching and culture development. Leadership. Culture development came out of that really at that time of going, do you know what? There's a Whole lot of norms, be they organizational norms, societal norms, norms sustained by outdated but very present and materially real systems of disadvantage, of oppression that are, they're here, that are operating, that we can all take responsibility for dismantling. And that's what I do with my clients, is I help them to tease out these, we'll talk about them, the hisses, the harmful internalized standards and stories that we all carry with us and instead to embrace something else, something more empowered, something more balanced, something more life giving. And yeah, so that's kind of how I got here. And maybe the last thing I'll say is, you know, having said that, I, I wasn't a rebel in school. I always have been passionate about holding, I guess holding myself to account and being the best person I can be. And it's just a joy every day to work with many of my clients in purpose driven organizations disrupting industries or disrupting injustice or inequality and, and yeah, I guess I've just really found my groove. Even if I wasn't, I wasn't a rebel in the beginning, I definitely am one now.

You used a word I loved earlier on, which was thrive. And sometimes when, when individuals jump into a conversation about inclusion or diversity, they might go, oh no, this topic and oh, I'm not comfortable, I don't like it or why are we even talking about this? But actually when you just frame it from the perspective of don't we all want colleagues and teams that thrive? Like, how do you just build a team that every one of those team members is set up for success, that is set up to thrive and you look at all the things required for that. And yes, they have to have the right skills, they have to I'm sure, be incentivized and motivated, but they have to be purpose driven. They have to kind of have a common purpose. They have to have autonomy and they have to feel safe, they have to have that psychological safety. So to me, you know, for folks who aren't interested necessarily having an inclusion conversation, if you say, well, are you interested in productivity and really great teams doing amazing stuff, okay, well then let's set a team up for success and to do so, by the way, to allow them to thrive, we're going to have to deal with these issues and boundary setting certainly to me can be one of those. I had an issue last week with a colleague who probably wasn't setting boundaries correctly. They were coming from a space where they were trying to do the best by everybody, trying to help others, trying to therefore do what's Right. For the business, but in trying to do so, in not having clear boundaries, weren't necessarily getting their own work done, weren't necessarily contributing what they could have been to everyone else, or setting expectations that they had things that they just couldn't do, and the other person therefore was leaving it to them. It created this message where nobody was happy, but it came from a place of intent to do good. Does that sound familiar to you? How often does this happen? How can we get ourselves out of these situations?

Yes, yes, very familiar indeed. So, yeah, I completely see this with my clients all the time. I see it in my own life. We really have to ask ourselves, you know, when you. There's a great book by Lisa Leahy and Robert Keegan that talks about immunity to change. When there's an community to change, I. E. Saying, yes, yes, yes, I'll say no to more things, but someone is still saying yes to things or they're still taking things on. It's because there's still something keeping it going, right? There's some belief, there's some commitment or hidden priority that they have that is keeping that going. So in the case of your colleague who meant so well by saying, yeah, of course I'm going to help you, and by the way, power is. Plays a big part in this. I speak about this in the course, you know, Johnny's asked me to do something. Wow. I've got to say yes to Johnny because he is the CEO and I'm going to please him, right? That could be one hidden commitment and that might have a bunch of hidden commitments around. I want to be promoted or I want to be. I'm not saying this is the case for this client, this, this colleague, but I want to be respected. I want people to think that I can do it all. There might also be fears. So sometimes those hidden commitments are. If I don't say yes, what's going to happen? Am I going to be overlooked? Am I going to be thought to be difficult? Am I going to be thought to be incompetent? Right? So I think the interesting thing about boundaries is there is almost always a hidden collection of harmful internalized standards and stories that we are holding ourselves to that are keeping us either saying yes to things that we don't mean to and then going, how did I end up here again with a million things to do and not enough time or energy, or as you said right at the beginning, snapping at people. You know, it's like the rubber band. It's like, no, I'm not going to do that, you know, brick wall. So it's, it's really interesting to start to ask ourselves, what are my beliefs about boundaries? How do I feel when other people set boundaries with me? Do I judge them or do I actually respect them more because they are doing what boundaries. Boundaries do protect your time, your energy, and your attention to serve your priorities. That's what a boundary is. It's a no or a counter. Counter offer for a bigger yes for a priority or a purpose. And it's recognizing that we just none of us have unlimited time, energy and attention. I'm sure lots of us would like to. We'd like to believe that, but we don't. So how can we be cognizant in ourselves, but also in the people we manage? How can we get curious with them and say, hey, I've noticed that you're taking on a lot right now. What are you afraid will happen if you don't? And in the safety of this conversation, let's chat about it and we can share our own experiences about that. But I think the first step is always to start acknowledging, well, what's the belief that's driving this? Because then we can start to address the behavior.

Do you think that we are all a type of person when it comes to boundaries? And if so, even if we just have a default, can one change? Can you be conscious of your default behavior, but then with true deliberate action, perhaps augment that to become a very different person when it comes to boundaries, even if it's not instinctive, but to kind of shape yourself so that you are better set up to say yes or no or have the right balance between the two?

A hundred percent. So I'm a coach. I see it every day in my work that developmentally speaking, people who are willing to change are able to change. Right. I'm not talking about people who are like, I'm happy as I am, thanks very much, bye. But I'm talking about people who are coachable and who are open to being self reflective. For sure, we can change. I don't think it's necessarily a case, Jonny, of us being a particular kind of person, but I think exactly as you said, it's a default thing. It's like we're all products of our upbringing, our experience. We had role models when we were young who maybe set boundaries effectively or didn't and didn't have those healthy boundaries. So in the course we get into this, which I absolutely love, this model by the fabulous Nedra Glover Tawab. Look her up. She's amazing. It's a spectrum, right, of what makes a healthy boundary. On the one hand, we have porous boundaries right at the end, which is like, yes, give it to me, so I'll take care of it. And a lot of us who were brought up in settings where, in cultures even where that was encouraged, particularly women are socialized into that kind of porousness because until very recently, and in fact in ongoing ways today, women were supposed to set aside their own needs in favor of the household, the children, the husband, that, you know, in the heterosexual partnerships, so, and kind of traditional households. So women's leads were always in the back and, you know, they weren't entitled, they didn't feel entitled to those boundaries. And that still persists today in the back in the workplace also, when women are treated differently when they set boundaries, it's kind of like, wait, you're not going to help me. You're supposed to be helpful. So that's the poorest side of things. And that's not to say that men aren't also tending to porousness, but that's the way that we're sort of socialized. Then there is, on the other hand, there is, there is rigid boundaries. So that's the kind of, what do we call it? The rubber band snap? The brick wall? That's the. No, I'm not doing that. And that's where we kind of go from 1 to 100 of. Someone's asking one thing from me, they're going to ask a million things from me and I'm running a mile. So that might be upbringings where we experienced that people were not reliable, where actually people took and took from us and we are not going to stand for that anymore. Both of these result in fractious relationships, ultimately in resentment, and ultimately don't necessarily build that interdependence that you want in a high functioning team. Like you were saying about thriving, we need that kind of cooperation and interdependence. So for that we need honest assessments of like, how much capacity we really have to share around. So how do we get to this healthy place in the middle? First of all, as you said, Jonny, we've got to start, start bringing those, the ends of the spectrum into view. We're like, cool. In what situations do I tend towards having porous boundaries and saying, yes, in what situations and with whom do I tend to go, no, right, I'm guilty of that with my mum sometimes put my hands up, you know, but like, no, I'm not doing that. And I'm like, wait, she just asked something really reasonable. Why did I do that? So recognizing our defaults, and that's when we can start to practice doing it differently. So we can have some stock phrases that we can use. So we can actually start saying, like, instead of saying no, you can say, can I take that away and think about it and get back to you. Or like, can you write that down for me so that I can figure out whether I have capacity for it? Buy yourself some time or in the poorest zone. I would love to take this on and help you. I'm currently maxed. Would it work for you if I did it next week? Right. It's like a counteroffer. Oh, that doesn't work for you? Okay, then it's a no from me. So there's these different ways that we can. And it's all covered in the course too, this idea that before we can start to generate those things ourselves, we can have these little handles that can help us to start setting healthier boundaries and not. Not kind of defaulting to those unhealthy ends.

I think that's a common theme. Don't react immediately. It's. It's. Take the time to think about it. Right. I think that's one of the challenges, is we too often just react and our default mode, which could be a bias, for example, just kicks in. Whereas if you take time to reflect, you know, engage that cognitive mind that can actually process and not just rely on your instinct, you're more likely to make a better decision, a better judgment on whether you do have the time. Don't have the time if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Is it a high priority, low priority, have that discussion. I think a lot of it just comes from slowing things down. Not, you know, not just giving your instinctive. Whatever where you, wherever you are on that spectrum, it's like to resist that instinct of whatever that might be, yes, I can do that. No, I can't do that. And just slow it down. Give yourself some time and space to consider it against your other needs. Is there an organizational, though, perhaps, requirement? Or maybe it's just a priority to build a culture whereby there are visibility of priorities and there are visibility of tasks, Visibility of tasks and workloads. Like, how much does that help and influence effective boundary setting at an individual level? To have support from the culture and the way we do work around here, to be much more transparent about the priorities, much more transparent about what work people are working on and having that culture whereby we can quickly identify it because A lot of folks probably find it difficult to figure out is it a priority or not a priority, because maybe they don't work in that kind of an organizational culture.

Oh, totally. The language of priority is one that's overused and underused. It's overused in a kind of general way. But we don't necessarily drill down to what we really mean by priorities. And some ways that I help my clients to visibilize or as you say, kind of bring to light what are priorities and what is worth spending my time on and what isn't is to. A great way is to. In team meetings, everybody comes ready with their time percentages. So if a week is 10, is, you know, 10 half days, that's 10 per half day. You do a percentage check on, like, what you're working on and you go, right, I'm working 80 on this project. I've got 10 on this other thing. And then someone's just asked me to do something. So I am maxed. So can anybody help me? And what, you go around the table and you go, actually, first of all, if, you know, we need to shuffle things around or maybe actually we. Something I assumed was a priority actually isn't a priority for this week, it can actually wait. And that's where things like seniority comes in. So sometimes it will be. But the CEO asked me to do this and it's like, oh, but does he need that right now? Or is this like an ongoing thing? Oh, okay. Actually, that's okay. So. So there's that. And then there's also, if we notice that we are constantly maxed for 100, everyone's at 100 all the time. Then that's not a team working at its optimum. Right? There needs to be slack in the system. So then we think, do we need more resource or do we need to actually descope? So I've actually helped some of my clients, controversial as it is, rebel leadership, to de. Scope some of their work because they've lost, they've had to lay off people, or they're rethinking the way they do their work. It's like you just can't do as much as you did before because you have fewer people and you have less time and less resource. So that's one way. Another way, and I'm sure you know, this is. This is something that listeners will do, is to. Is to check with each other, is go, how much of a priority is this? Like, what's the deadline? And also what's the importance? What's the significance of this piece of work and checking with your manager, like, I've got a bunch of priorities. Can you help me sort this through? Because I cannot, I don't know what's important and what's not right now. And just to have that open dialogue, like it's a jar that we can take off the shelf rather than it being like this big deal to like question. I think sometimes people get defensive about priorities because it's like, or you know, are you saying your priorities are more important than my priorities? We need to get more fluent with what we mean by priorities because then we can set boundaries in order to safeguard the time, energy and attention that needs to go into fulfilling them.

I love your mentioning of descoping because when we rely too much on prioritization, it's saying, yes, there are some things more important than others, but it's still has to all get done. Whereas your point about descoping is. Hang on a second. You know, in a world where, you know, I think post pandemic in particular, and maybe more as Europeans, we recognize that it is a work life harmony rather than a work life balance. A work life balance means I need more hours, I gotta take from my life, from my work. Whereas work life harmony says, hang on a second, I gotta, I gotta have both here. So there is a limit of the amount of hours in the day that you're going to or should devote to work. Right? Again, culturally, maybe. The U.S. for example, has a history of being much more rewarding of long hours than perhaps Europe, which is much more rewarding of having a more fulfilling life and reducing the hours. But let's say you, you are in a situation where you recognize that the hours are limited to your point, you prioritize for sure. But that descoping, I've used that as well to go. You got to just choose the stuff that isn't going to get done. And you have to be accepting of that and let it just go. Because the important stuff, back to prioritisation. If you rank everything 1 to 10, what 1 to 6 or 7 gets done? 8, 9, 10. Yeah, we know they're not getting done, but you know what, we got one to six done and most importantly, the top three priorities got done. So we're making progress, right? And that's why you have to balance those two. But, but I want to bring you on to our second topic because let's say you have navigated your way through your boundary setting. You're feeling more comfortable using some of those techniques, those stock phrases you say to help you take some time back, think about it, push back, or, you know, push out different things. But then you're actually doing work and you have this voice on your shoulder that is your worst enemy sometimes around the potential of you doing work. Right. You know, the. The inner critic, as it's often often called. And people talk about other kind of challenges that manifest themselves that essentially are the same thing, which is, you know, your self talk. And I know I've, you know, I've never been a believer of, you know, what some people talk about, which is it's going to be positive, you know, your positive mental attitude.

Pma.

Go for it. Because I read the research that says it doesn't work. But there is a version of it that does work, which is acceptance of reality to go, hang on. Some things are hard. Okay, what makes them hard? Let's break it down. How would we make them not hard? I don't have this experience. It's the truth. So therefore, how would I gain more experience? Or how would I set myself to be more successful? And actually, you know, rather than just being positive, which I don't think helps anyone, hey, be positive. You can do this. No, I can't.

Right?

Actually breaking it down and saying, no, let's break it into its parts and say, well, what parts are scaring me and why and how can I. How can I then help myself in those areas? Or just recognize that they're probably like, what's your experience with managing that inner critic? Is it also a spectrum of, you know, this crazy loud voice, this quiet voice in some people? Or does it. Is there not one consistent volume? It depends on your situation.

Yeah. I just want to say how refreshing I found it when you were like, you can't just, like, bash your way through with positivity because it is a. It's a big myth. And I think, you know, Instagram is definitely a LinkedIn too. Can. Can really feed that sense of, like, oh, everyone else is just like, bashing through it with, I don't know, like, mindset manifestation stuff. And it's like, actually, hold up. Let's break this down exactly as you said. So. Yes. So, yeah, the volume varies, the tone of voice varies. But really the inner critic, the first thing we have to do with the inner critic is recognize its function. So it's a part of us, right? It's a part of us that like the hisses. You know, there's a. There's a hidden commitment there. Our inner critic is the part of us that wants us to be Safe that wants us not to experience exposure or vulnerability or anything that's gonna in any way harm us, even if it's short term, for a long term gain. Not interested. Right. And depending on our upbringing and our experiences were usually internalized voices that gave us this message from when we were very, very young. So I know that part of my inner critic, sometimes its voice comes out as my ballet teacher from when I was very little because I was always messing about in ballet class. Okay, maybe I was a bit in ballet class, but, you know, I just have this memory of her shouting my name, and it felt like the whole building shook with her voice. And sometimes my inner critic adopts that sense of, like, trying to shock me. My whole body, like, freezes into, you know, do what I say, like, you are in trouble, Debbie Denon. You know, and for some people, it's like more of a Voldemort whisper. You know, it's like, you're useless and you'll never amount to anything. You know, it can be all these different things, but really, it's a shapeshifter that just wants us to. To choose the safe option. And, of course, that is the enemy of, you know, doing great things in the world, disrupting, becoming the best version of ourselves. Like committing to somebody in a relationship. Like, I know so many people whose inner critic kind of gets in the way of them having healthy relationships because they can't. They don't know if they can trust. You don't know. You don't know. Relationships involve risk, right? So what that's to say is once we actually distinguish the inner critic. And the way I do this sometimes for my clients is to say, and it's in the course, too, is to imagine, okay, you've got the shapeshifter. It keeps shape shifting. It's a troll. It's a, you know, it's a nasty teacher. It's, you know, Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. It's. Whoever it is, then as you look at it, it gets smaller. And it gets smaller, and what you see is little you. Like little Johnny. Johnny, age 4, Johnny, age 6, wearing this big pair of boxing gloves. And it's just like it's doing anything it can to just keep you from those experiences that are going to hurt, that it thinks are going to hurt and harm you. So then it's a question of, can I get into conversation with little me? Can I reassure me? And sometimes it's like, I'm 38 now. It's like, let me speak to 32 year old me who is losing her mind over something, you know, and like really is. I can feel her pulling me back, going, no, no, no, no, no. We, you know that we can't do that. So it's sitting ourselves down and having. Sometimes it really helps to have a coach to go through that with or a manager to go through with that with. How, how brilliant would it be, Johnny, if in our working cultures we had a language around this such that when someone in a, in a feedback, one to one, like is defensive and says, well, no, actually I didn't do that. That's their inner critic jumping to their defense. Because if they have to take the feedback that's vulnerable, that's painful. If they like dissolve into tears when you give them positive feedback, it's because the inner critic is not allowing them to receive that positive feedback. Or if they are underperforming for some reason, it could be because they are crippled by this self doubt. So what if as managers we could develop this language to start to, as you said, break it down and to say it's okay. We all have this. This is incredibly human. And maybe there's a way to. Maybe we'll get into this in a little minute, but it's a sort of listen to other parts of ourselves and bring in other sources of wisdom. Like you said, like, how do I, my inner adventurer. That's like, I can, I can try stuff out. I've tried stuff out before. You know, I traveled across the world that was quite scary, but I did it or whatever, or I, I trusted someone before and it didn't kill me. So it's. So yeah. I think that having managers in your organization who can, who are literate in the inner critic is a massive asset to be able to enable your team to perform, number one. And number two, get rid of a lot of the defensiveness and nonsense that can happen around vulnerable things like feedback.

This conversation is reminding me of the Pixar movie Inside Out.

Yes.

Like joy and anger. And you see them in their brain and you see when anger gets in there or joy and sadness is. Joy is the kind of, oh, be positive and sadness is just seeping in and it's being a, you know, you do need them all. It's not that one is bad. You know, sometimes, you know, there's a part of you that says maybe you shouldn't do this and that's risk aversion, because maybe you shouldn't do it. You're going to fall off that cliff. Don't stand on that really high wall. Because you might fall off. And it's, you know, recognizing that that's why that voice is there for those situations. But that's, that was situate. That little voice didn't evolve in the world of office politics are getting, you know, knowledge work done, which is a very modern concept and it's used to only situations such as will I die or will I have pain? And it's trying to apply that knowledge to this modern world that it's just not built for. I guess. So yes, talk to me about the other things you can bring in to help oneself to kind of work around some of these issues.

Yeah, well one of the things, Jonny, goes back to something you were saying before about having that ability not to react. So just to clock it. First of all, all in my rebel leadership framework there's three pathways to change. One is self awareness, two is practice and three is co conspirators. So in the first instance we have to clock with self awareness what is going on? Oh wow, I just had this rush of like guilt, shame response. What is going on here? Like that I need to, I need to either name it or I need to take a break or I need to do something with it other than just throw it in someone's face. So there's that awareness piece that we have to kind of get in between ourselves and our response. And then there's also kind of using the body as a source of data. So I think this is my prediction, Johnny, you can call me on it in a couple of years, let's see. But I think that the revolution that's going on now in EQ in emotional intelligence is actually about emotional regulation and the body and the vagus nerve and understanding how our body has been overridden in this industry. You know, the world of work that's been, you know, products of the industrial revolution. We are not trained to read the language of our bodies, but our bodies are telling us stuff all the time about boundaries when our boundaries are crossed. Like that wave that you feel of like hot and pressed and whatever it is, that's, that's body data that we are not reading that we're pushing through that we're sweeping aside like some kind of inconvenience. And it's like we're just leaving all those messages unread. Just imagine that your whole body is like a phone with just millions of messages on read because you just haven't answered them. So in the same way with the inner critic, can we get a sense of what actually happens in our body when we have an inner critic attack. So for me, I get super croaky. It's like, it's not that I have a sore throat. It just sounds like I have a sore throat because I just can't speak. It's bizarre. My voice constricts or I get real, like, tummy butterflies big time. For some people, it's sweating. For some people, it's feeling very hot or cold. So it's knowing what? Knowing. Oh, you're like, oh, that's. That's what's happening right now. So. So there's that. Then there's kind of, I don't know, like, what we said before about distinguishing ourselves, like, inside out, going, oh, this isn't me, Riley. This is. This is joy, or this is anger, or this is sadness. And it's. It's going, okay, this is my little kid with boxing gloves. It's not me. That's the mistake that we make. We think that that voice is me telling myself something. It's not. It's a part of myself saying something. And sometimes we've got to take the mic really gently. We've got to be what I call in the course, umbrella self. So this is the kind of. You can kind of sit at the head of your ball in a boardroom table. I sometimes get clients to do this, to draw their inner boardroom and be like, you are sitting at the head. Your inner critic is not. It keeps trying to grab the mic. Badly behaved meeting room participant. But they are not in the chair. You are. So who else do you want to pass the mic to? Your experience? You know, what would one of some of your greatest champions say? You know, what would your. Your sister or your, like your. Your manager or one of your colleagues who thinks you're great? You know, what would they say? So really bring in those other sources of knowledge and. And experience. Experience. And also, this is super important. We haven't spoken, really, about how the inner critic affects people from minoritized identities, I. E. People who are marginalized by systems of oppression. So the ways in which someone experiences racism day to day is contributing to that inner critic. Don't be too loud as a. As a black woman, or don't be too loud as a black man, because you will be construed in this way. And it's kind of like the. The constraints of that really, really wear a person down. So how can we help? How can we have sensitivity to the ways in which the particularities of people's identities living in an unjust world that is not yet Liberated. How can we approach those conversations about the inner critic with sensitivity? With our female colleagues, with, you know, where the standards will be slightly different, et cetera, or where with our black colleagues, with our Muslim colleagues, with our queer colleagues, disabled colleagues. You know, how is that inner critic playing out for them? That might be very different. And if it's different to our experience, we have to believe them because that's not our experience. We can't say, well, that sounds unlikely because I've never experienced it. Well, guess what? That's because I'm not black and I haven't experienced that. But I can very well believe someone when they say, well, I feel constrained in these ways. And then we can start to remove barriers, not just improving that person's performance, but also dealing with problematic behaviors that might be enforcing that inner critic in the wider team?

I love that point around not, you know, having to take perspective of others and understand perhaps the different intersectional, intersectionality that leads them to who they are and how they're dealing with this. Right now. You and I might have an inner critic that maybe is similar and has a similar tone and voice in a certain situation. And we would make the mistake of assuming others have a similar inner critic because we don't understand their background, their upbringing, their circumstances, their home life, you know, their. Their abilities, their whatever it might be that might affect their understanding of this reality to them, because there isn't one reality. It's all about how it's perceived from different people. And one thing I've learned from many others who are much wiser than me over the years is to always take the time to stop and ask folks, how are you feeling, you know, right now? How are you perceiving this? And to be really open to how that person might be seeing it and accept that it could be very different from you. And to try and therefore see it from their perspective and help them see it, you know, work their way around it, I guess, because back to that point around, we are trying to build organizations and teams that can thrive. And, you know, if somebody through their upbringing, background, race, sexuality, neurodiversity, has a different perspective that is not allowing them to thrive because of this inner critic or whatever it might be, or because they set boundaries in a different way. Because again, of their upbringing, a background, it may not be. Be visible to you. You may go, that person looks like me. They talk like me. I really don't understand. I think that's often where it's most dangerous because we. We don't see an obvious Difference. And therefore we're more likely to assume they're exactly like us and seeing it exactly like us. It's a challenge. Like you mentioned before we went on air, you've spoken to leaders who really unfortunately have dismissed and gone a second. This is not. These conversations aren't for the workplace. This is about business and making money. Talk to me about, you know, some of the reactions you come across to, to this kind of a focus where you are really, you're not, you're not trying to psychoanalyze everybody. You're not trying to be a counselor to everyone. Your objective is still the same. Build great teams that do great work. But why do you think others don't see it from that perspective? Why do they think this is a different topic and not related to getting work done and being a profitable growing company?

Yeah, I mean, this is it, isn't it? It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how systemically our inner critics kind of work together in that way. So this is why it's so important as teams to start to build this language. So if you think about it, the inner critic is the one who's internalizing all these harmful, internalized standards and stories, these hisses which come from society at large that is, you know, disadvantaging women, black people, or the, you know, people who are queer, people who, neurodivergent people for whom society wasn't designed in one way or another. And, you know, some people find that very threatening as an idea because they, they have something to, they have a hidden commitment. They have something to gain by things being the way they think they are. That is, it's all fair. I got here by my own merit. You know, if you talk about privilege, it means that, you know, you think my life is easy. That's not what I said. I didn't say your life was easy. What I said was there's things, as you said, Johnny, that just weren't in your perspective, weren't in your awareness. And now we have an unprecedented opportunity to learn. There is so much lived experience being lived out loud for the benefit of those who do not have that experience. And also bringing fellowship to those of us who do. You know, when anti Semitic stuff goes down like it gives me, it's always feels like very loud to me. But at least I have people who I can share it with. And there's people who are, when I don't have the strength to express it, there's people who are very articulately expressing how anti Semitism is evolving in the 21st century. And it gives me, it gives me comfort to know that someone's doing that. But also there's this kind of, we've got this framing coming from government and coming from, from kind of global forces of culture wars and framing this as if it's a war that has to be won, rather than a, as you said, a question of thriving, a question of, of what's fair, and a question really of do we want to be the kind of businesses that are irresistible to work for, or do we want to have to go through expensive recruitment procedures and very expensive lawsuits all the time? I mean, that's also the cost of it. And just to say, you know, I mentioned this before we went on air, you know, I had a situation where I noticed my male manager kind of making some comments about masculinity around quite a femme young man in our team. It wasn't, I wasn't aware of his sexuality per se, but I knew that, you know, my manager was making, you know, in the pub, just going, oh, yeah, you know, I'll make a real man of you, take you to the football one day, you see, you know, and I, in a one to one, just kind of made him aware of this. I said, you know, I've got some feedback. And he got super, super defensive because his inner critic was hearing that as you think I'm a bad person, you think I'm, I'm insensitive, you think these things. So how do we then just disarm that? Some people that I've worked with genuinely have been able to recognize that that's a reaction and come down from it and to learn with it. And then there are some people who you're never going to convince, including members of my own family. And I've had to live with that. But, you know, this person turned around two months later, way after the event and called me the diversity police was like, do you know what, Debbie? The diversity police, I can see you're just watching me, waiting for me to mess up in your own, like, little messed up mind. And I was like, wow, okay, that's what you've been thinking about this whole time, is me judging you versus actually making it right with someone that you've hurt. Like, I could see that it made this young man really uncomfortable. He told me that it made him very uncomfortable. So, you know, I think there's ways in which we don't want to start getting into circular arguments, trying to convince people of the value of this work. I think different people have different entry points to It. But for my part, and for your part, Johnny, I know you're doing your bit, is to keep speaking about it and inviting people to the table. This isn't about chucking people out and canceling people. This is about going. Do you know, what's at stake is actually people's safety and people's thriving and not just people who are affected by these, these injustices, but actually all of us, because those, their perspectives, their goods are not being brought to the table because of things that we are doing unconsciously. And if I can do something to avoid doing harm that I didn't realize I was doing, but now someone's bringing me that much to my attention, how can I calm my guilt, shame? How can I help my inner critic just chill out over here so that I can rise to the occasion and do the right thing?

I love that. You know, it's seeing it from the perspective not of policing the world, but of unleashing potential. You know, rather than saying, I'm here to spot all the people who are doing it wrong in air quotes, it's saying, no, no, I want to walk away and know that I left the world full of happier people, more successful, more productive, thriving people. Not that I caught all the people who are doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing. It's absolutely not that. It's got to be about bringing the potential out of people, which is an exciting task. It's not a. It's not something people should feel. Oh, no, here they come, the diversity police. It's, like, brilliant. This, this person is going to help me find ways to make my team thrive, make me thrive, to remove those things that are holding us all back. That's the opportunity of this work, I think, and that's where. That's how the perspective should be seen. But, Debbie, I've kept you so long, long enough. And I'm going to ask you to stay on for just two more minutes, as I'm keen for you before we close out, to share with our audience one more piece of advice. Perhaps a piece of advice you've held back that has been passed down from you, from others, throughout your career, or perhaps has just come to you over your experience as a piece of wisdom you think would help our audience today.

Totally. So I think when I. When I developed my rebel leadership curriculum around rebel authenticity, rebel balance, rebel courage, I really realized that in each of these categories, you can't do it without the body. You just can't. You can't do it on brain alone. So when I work with clients, we really spend a lot of time unlearning that platonic dualism thing of like, head bad, head good, sorry, body bad, you know, body shameful, body animal, head human, all that, all that junk, all those harmful internalized sanitizations stories. So I guess the piece of advice really is learn to listen to your body. Your body has a ton of things it wants to tell you, has a ton of data about when you're reacting, when you're responding. It's a ton of potential to help you be powerful as a leader that your brain alone can't do. So my advice to people is to get really, really interested and curious in what messages does your body have for you as a leader that you've been ignoring or pushing away or have found inconvenient? And what could you do with that data? How might that inform your leadership in more authentic, more balanced and more courageous ways? That is my one piece of advice. Learn to listen to your body.

David, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate you sharing that advice and I'm so excited to see the rest of Your content, the SocialTown platform over the next few months and having you back on the show in a future episode. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, Jonny. Thank you so much.

And thank you for joining us this week and listening to our our show on boundaries on Inner Critic. I hope that's helped you think a little bit about your boundaries and your inner critic and how to deal with it. Come back next week. We're going to be back with another great show. I've got a great guest joining us next week. That's live on the 22nd of February. If you want to join in on LinkedIn and YouTube. Right. Going to be joined to talk about the topic on a TA topic actually this week of balancing global talent acquisition, sourcing and mentoring with the fantastic Guy de Suva Neves, who's the global talent acquisition, sourcing and solutions manager at Nestle and Guy is going to be joining me at 4pm UK Irish time. That's 11am on the east coast of the US, 8am on the west coast. You want to join us on YouTube or LinkedIn live art drops wherever you get your podcasts on Wednesday night. Until then, take care. We'll see you next week.