S4E3: Breaking Projection

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your workplace. I'm Cy Wakeman. Hey, Cy Wakeman here, and welcome to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. This season, I am talking to you about competencies, skill sets that modern leaders need to develop. It's not soft skills. It's beyond soft skills. It is facilitation skills, holding space skills, breaking projection skills. And they're a skill set that's unique because you cannot develop these to practice externally if you haven't evolved internally. These come from noticing our feelings and making sense of our world and contemplating and accepting the invitations for growth, evolving and forging what we have into wisdom, not knowing, not, oh my gosh, I get it, here's how the rest of the world should live, but a sort of wisdom that allows us to move through the world peacefully, not trying to forge other people's wisdom, But to be able to facilitate, teach, and create space for other people to do the same. So it's a bit counterintuitive from all the leadership skill sets and competencies that we've been teaching. So I'm so excited in this episode to talk to you about breaking projection. It's a core skill that people Everywhere need to have. There are so many times we get drawn into conversations and continue conversations until we are exhausted with them. And what we're involved in without realizing it is projection— us onto someone else and them onto us. And it's trying to solve a problem in a false world. David Whyte, who's one of my favorite poets, talks a lot about when the conversation is exhausting you, the Most courageous, peaceful, great act of leadership that you can commit is to simply stop the conversation. And he has a wonderful poem about stopping the conversation and turning sideways and disappearing into the light. It's time to stop the conversation, go within, and come out when you can begin a whole new conversation. So I want all of you to be thinking about what are some conversations that you're tired of having that are not energy building but they're energy depleting. It's a source, I think, of burnout for many of us, many of us who come to Reality-Based Leadership, and we're just exhausted from not being able to get people to answer the call to greatness. And I'm starting to really focus in on the fine lines, the sophistication, the next level of consciousness as leaders. And what I'm finding in many of the discussions right now is that leaders, if they could develop some competency in doing what I call breaking projection and managing energy to really hopeful, positive possibilities that we haven't even imagined yet It would lift not only spirits, but it would lift and transcend, take our conversations to a level that's really transcending and really satisfying and fulfilling for all. So what the heck do I mean by all of this? Well, as a counselor, we're taught a lot about watching out for and noticing projection, when someone is doing what we call outsourcing their emotional experience. to you directly. And this happens for leaders often. As we start to talk about how we will work together going forward in a world with some people vaccinated and where some people have really enjoyed work from home, and as the business is thinking, you know, what's the right answer? Do we bring people back? Do we let people choose? Like, as the conversation is— has been taking place about how will we work together going forward, there are so many times where I see the conversation really deteriorate into employees getting reality and leaders so confused. Now, I'll say that again. Many times we get Reality and our leaders so confused. Let's say that the reality of the business is that there are some things that are best done collectively, in person, in a group, of course while safe. And we say, my preference is I want to stay at home. I really like it. And there's a war on talent out there. And I will leave if I'm not able to work from home. And I— put that preference out there. And leaders say, you know what? We're not going to answer that right now. Let's all come back together and get intentional about our work. Many employees are so angry at the organization, are so angry at the leader when it's not the leader, hopefully, that just is a control freak and needs everybody in the chair. It is the leader represents reality in that moment. And so in that moment when someone's getting you as a leader and reality so confused, that's the perfect time to break projection. And you can see where they're taking their frustration at our new world and pointing it towards you or the organization who won't make our new world easy for them. The best way to motivate people is to give them a more direct relationship with their reality. A lot of us try and bend reality or buffer it from our people, and they get bad information and really think that they're the innocent victims here. So when people ask me, how do I motivate my team members, I let them know that a majority of motivation is an inside job. Although in Drive, Daniel Pink talks a lot about meaningful work and purpose and how we can facilitate motivation. But true motivation is an inside job. It is both the willingness and the choice to put energy towards something, and then in that moment, allowing ourselves, if we can't get out of it, to get into it and to really get on that flywheel of getting in the zone, even about things we don't like. That's a personal skill set to be content in any work while noticing the work we like and building a life where we have more work we prefer. That's all the path, but that's internal motivation. Most people, their motivation wanes when people protect them from the best information they could have, which is a direct relationship from reality. If we're not enabling and interfering, they can see what works and what doesn't work. They can notice when I do this that has better results and over time feels better than something else. So as a leader, we need this new skill set of breaking projection. And in reality-based leadership, that's why I give you so many tools. But I would tell you my concern is that so many people aren't using the tools as the way to to do the work. And what the tools do is they break projection by getting things conscious and visible so that you can make intentional choices. Now let's talk about times in which projection happens and a couple ways that you can do something differently. And then I want to talk about how you might want to have a different conversation about what you're curating as a new work model for your organization. So projection is when in the moment I'm attributing my current feelings to an external source, usually the one in front of me that seems to represent all the blocks in my way, all the things I need to succeed in spite of. The ego is really good at taking experiences and feelings and bundling them up and really intellectualizing those and outsourcing the responsibility for our emotional state to someone else. And during this really tough year, we all have had just a lot of emotions. Like our nervous system has been continually triggered and Just really assaulted in many ways. And I'll talk more about that in the next podcast. But while people are in these states of anxiety, not knowing how to self-regulate and self-calm, not having those skill sets that are bigger than personal accountability, but the ability to regulate our own nervous system, the ability to understand our own responses and to know what to trust and what not to trust. that our mind and body is telling us, right? So that ability in an individual is lacking. And what happens is they— we take a feeling like anxiety, and rather than just feel the feeling and notice that it's there and do some self-regulation and create a container big enough to walk with that feeling as we contemplate and better understand and forge some wisdom From it, let it reveal to us the good information it has on how we need to move through the world differently. We feel that feeling and we intellectualize it into a grievance, and then we find a place to take our grievance that it's the organization that doesn't care. So here's an example. We're thinking about returning back to work, for some of us, in an office setting. That causes me anxiety. I intellectualize that as my organization doesn't care. care about my safety. Now, if your organization doesn't care about your safety, that's another deal. You need to take charge of your own safety. But many of us are intellectualizing that. And then we come at the leader and we confuse the leader with reality. So you're forcing me to come back to work. The leader's like, I'm letting you know that the disruption we encountered has been mitigated in many ways, and we're looking at safely returning back to work. So you're forcing me to come back to work. You're getting reality and me very confused. I'm your ally and want to talk to you about how we can come back to work intentionally and safely. So as leaders, we constantly need to take the energy coming at us that are feelings bundled. And the average adult, over 50% of those feelings they're bringing into any current situation has nothing to do with the current situation. It has to do with their childhood, their state of emotional regulation, a lot of things. So when they bring all of that forward, they intellectualize their grievance, and then we get busy trying to bend reality and change their circumstances to help them fix the feelings they're having because it's bundled up in the form of a grievance. Now, this doesn't mean you go to the other side and suspect every need your employees have. This means we get sophisticated in our ability to help people unbundle grievances into the feelings. We'll talk about that next week. And we get skilled in breaking what I call projection. And the best way to break projection is to change the energy of it coming towards you. Mm-hmm. So that you can move out of that, partner with the individual, and put the energy towards how can we as a team create a great reality given this issue. It's a way of using transmutation of energy. Like, Aikido is a form of martial arts that you use the energy that's coming at you In a way to disperse the conflict. So somebody's coming at me, going to push me. Instead of pushing back, I actually move with their energy and use their motion to almost effortlessly, you know, flip them away from me, breaking up the conflict, creating space, and moving hopefully into a different direction. So Let me give you some examples because this is a really new concept for a lot of people. One example is when I was working in healthcare, in one of our patient satisfaction surveys, we were given some feedback by our patients that the units that we were working on didn't appear to them to be clean, that they rated the cleanliness of our unit below what our benchmark was and what our competitors were and what we had set for ourselves. Now, when that information first came in, people were so human, they blamed the patient. They're like, well, this isn't a hotel and they can't expect perfect amenities. I'm like, no, actually it needs to be cleaner than a hotel. We need cleaner environments than a hotel because we're dealing with infectious disease here. And then you know, people were interested in kind of that victim stance, like, well, what do they expect? And I have so much to do, and how can it even be possible? And I just called kind of a timeout, and I went in and I said, you know, let's think outside the box. What are some ways— if our goal is to have a cleaner unit, what are some ways— let's get really creative, let's get innovative, let's think outside the box. And this invited More projection. Now you would think thinking outside the box is a great thing to do, and actually I would go around and people would give a solution, usually something that cost money we didn't have or something somebody else could do that we had no influence over. And then when I would say no, they would confuse me and reality. Here's how it went. They said, "I have an idea." Environmental services. can clean our unit 4 times a day rather than 2 times a day. And I'm like, hey, thanks for that idea. Just to let you know, they're short on staff right now, and that's not something that's going to be possible. So what else do you have? They're like, well, that was a great idea and you just shot it down, is the feeling they were having. So then somebody said, you know what, then my uncle has a cleaning business. If we can hire them to come in to supplement environmental services. Another great idea. Do you see how I put them in a position to give great ideas and me in a position opposite of them to represent reality and say no? I'm like, actually, we also are in a budget freeze, so we won't have money for that. Then somebody brought up, Well, our unit needs to be updated. Can we get it remodeled? I thought that was on the docket for this year. And I said, actually, it's going to be next year. It's in the capital budget. Since the merger, we have to fit into the corporate kind of schedule, and we're grateful that we got in so quickly now that we're part of a larger system, and we get that next year. And immediately the thought went to, oh my gosh, before the merger, we could do what we wanted when we wanted. And now I'm representing all they kind of hate about the world's reality, the corporation that bought us, and the energy is horrendous. My staff is sitting like this, feeling victimized, and they're seeing me as the ringleader for all they don't prefer. And they're feeling very proud of themselves that they're coming up with great ideas. And I can't be the victim here. I set that up by the way in which I used a tool that fuels drama and feeds the ego. The tool was, you give me an idea, no matter how out there it is, no matter what our reality is, if I say no to you, I'm somehow failing you and further fueling your victimhood. So I had to really learn to facilitate new tools. And the tools I love in this case is called Thinking Inside the Box. And many of you know about this tool, but I would tell you, in the link below, there's a landing page that you can go to and get the tool that I'm talking about. And by the way, if you haven't signed up for our newsletter, you have to do it. We've changed the format and it is like pure content coming your way each and every other week. It's amazing. And so I really hope you go to that landing page. You'll get this tool. But the tool is called Thinking Inside the Box. And instead of just putting something out there and allowing the projection, I managed the projection, the energy. I led and managed the energy of the people by the setup. I said, We have a goal. That's the top of the box. We need to increase cleanliness on this unit. We also have some constraints, the side of the box. Let's just call them reality for now. Now, my constraints that I can see is that budget is frozen. Environmental Services cannot be part of the solution. They're understaffed. Given Our reality, what ideas do you have on how to increase the cleanliness of our unit? Well, we could remodel. Let's add that to the constraints, what we know about the remodeling. The reality is that will happen next year. And what I'm doing, well, I'm putting this up visually, whether it's virtually— we happen to be in person— is I'm changing the energy instead of you against me, by breaking it with a third piece, I'm putting reality out there, and then you and I now are partnered working to succeed in spite of reality. Now, we can't partner in collusion, look at reality, how do they expect us— we have to partner in impact. And so it was like, given this, what are some ideas that you have? And the ideas instantly got Very accountable. I can, when I go down to get supplies, only bring enough up for the day. I don't like going in the basement. To meet my preference, I bring things up for the whole week and boxes sit in the hallway and it looks a little, you know, scattered. Wow. Instant impact, accountability, something you can do that's within in our reality, given our reality— my favorite word lately is given— given our reality, how could you? How could we? And by capturing the energy of that and just consistently taking a piece of reality, presenting it, acknowledging it just neutrally, and saying, now given that, how can we? I'm continuing to manage the energy away from why we can't to how we could. But I'm doing it in a way that I am your leader, not the representation of your reality. You need to adult now. You and I are going to be able to look at reality, and you're not going to blame me for it, and you're not going to chastise it. It just is. The sooner you learn to love what is, the more content and happy you're going to be. So one of the things we need to do is to get things That we're talking about visible and sorted out on paper or on a visual screen so that we can get it out beyond the ego. It's why we call them the ego bypass tools. Once we can get something conscious and visible and we can really see how our ego's been playing us and how we've been outsourcing our emotional experience, only then can we be intentional. Now, many of us, as I said before, are outsourcing our emotional experience. We're intellectualizing our feelings. When I was counseling, I would have people come to me so often and they're like, why does he or she treat me this way in my relationship? Outsource and be shocked, chronically shocked by another person's consistent behavior. The profound change happened When we stopped that conversation and began a new one, and the new conversation is why do I stay in a relationship where someone treats me like this? Now, it's be careful. It's not blaming the other person. It's just a whole different question that gets you closer to your part in this situation. But so many times we outsource our emotional state to how somebody else made me feel or. How this situation is predetermining our outcome as if I have nothing to do with that. When our patient-staff ratio would be less than desired, right, less than our favorite, people would just automatically go, well, that predetermines our patients will be unsafe. We just outsource the safety of our patients to a ratio on a sheet of paper. And I'm like, heck no. If this is our reality, given that, and safety is our number one goal, how do we, given our patient ratio, ensure the safety of our patients? We can't just outsource. If a ratio is this, the safety of our patients is that. It's so important that we see all the 100 choices we have in between those two. And so many times we give up our own agency, our own ability to have impact to— Do meaningful work in the world, and then we feel like life is not meaningful and we burn out from lack of meaningful work. But we're the ones that stepped away by outsourcing not only our emotional experience, but what follows that is outsourcing your agency. So many people talk to me about, you know, Sai, you don't understand, I work in a matrix organization. And I'm like, what if the matrix organization was just your reality for the past 8 years and doesn't everyone? What if instead of outsourcing whether or not you can get something done based on whether it's a matrix or not. You insourced and said, where do I need to grow next to be more skilled at moving through a matrix organization successfully? How can I build relationships that can get things done when I don't have power over another department? And this is really important stuff because when it comes to coming back to work. A lot of people are looking for the policy or the answer. They're like, well, are we all going to be forced back, or is there going to be a hybrid, or do we get to choose to stay from home? And I would like to call a timeout on that conversation and have a different conversation. The one we're having is about preference and power and threats of leaving and fear, you know, the war on talent. And A lot of people are over-rotating again on engagement. Well, I need to let people work from where they're comfortable or we're going to lose people. But I'm here to tell you that fear-based decisions lead immediately to emotional blackmail, and engagement without accountability creates entitlement. And we have discovered in this pandemic that a lot of work can be done in very different venues, that not everything needs to be a meeting and not every day needs to be in person, and that there is some work that is best Done or can be done well based on the preference of the person, remotely or in the office. We're asking all of the wrong questions. We're having the wrong conversation. I want us to discontinue the conversation about should people have to go back to work, or does it make sense, or does it save real estate costs, or what will happen. I just want people to stop the conversation and have a different one. My hope is that for an interim amount of time, as it's safe, you all collect back together in person. And instead of having a disruption of a pandemic determine your next preferred working model, come back and have intentional, conscious conversations so that you can intentionally decide and curate and design from a different space. My answer to people in my workplace, if they were asking me that, I would say, I don't know the answer yet about what your work situation will end up being over time. What I do want to guarantee you is that we need to have conscious and intentional work done on this and conversations about this. The invitation is to come and look at the needs of the business, Through the eyes of our patients and customers, look at the functions and the work to be done, the jobs to be done, and intentionally, consciously look at what venues, what setups can best facilitate that work. And let's come upon something we intentionally design, not something we accept as better than before based on this disruption of a pandemic. Let's come together safely and intentionally and consciously look at our work. And what that will mean in an organization is some people's work is not doable from work from home. Some people— depends on the day— some people can completely work from home if that's their preference. But I want you to look at the function of what needs to be done in service to the patient or the customer and how that can best be done. And instead of coming up with the policies and the laws, by the way, have more intentional conversation about it. This is a time to move away from policies and a time to grow kind of our adulting skills to really be able to say, what's the organization need and what's my preference? And is there an and there? And if so, let's make that happen. But let's understand that sometimes there isn't an and there and that the work is best done collectively. So my staff has been having this conversation and we've decided a lot of our work can be done work from anywhere. However, collectively, there's a lot of work that's only powerful done together. So while we're giving up some of our office space, we are intentionally putting on the calendar weeks where we will come together in wonderful places and do amazing kind of binge work where then each of us can go on— because our work's more project and event work— go on and support that from a very different place. Now, that's not the right answer for everybody, but I want your answer to come out of intentional design, not this got disrupted and I kind of like yoga pants at home. That will lead us to another world that we've chose unconsciously. And the better part of this is let's take what's been revealed to us and intentionally choose without polarity. Let's transcend that and intentionally choose what could be better. Now, I would tell you, because I'm an introvert and I would love to never ever return to work or to like a public event— I've had my first in-person event— I would also want to tell some of you that are focused on like, I just want to like not have to go back to groups of people or the office I want to tell you that your information about what that was like for you is 18 months old. It's 18 months old. And those of you that are working on the front line or lead teams on the front line, even their information is 18 months old about what it feels like to work with people whose breath, their very breath, isn't threatening to them. So I don't think we have good, new, relevant information. And there's just a lot of research coming out about What some of the skills we're losing in this informal Zoom world. It's like the flat Stanley world, and we have forgotten the energy and the connection and the information we as animals get with all of our senses. Our eyes are the least trustworthy senses that we have. Our sight is. And yet that is what we're like overcompensating with. Zoom is all about the intellectual rather than the experiential, and we all know in the learning environment that experiential is really how we learn and the richness of experience. And so we're running on some fumes. And I would tell you, it's interesting, I've talked to some people recently. Just last night I was talking to a couple of people who have been trying to date during the COVID world, and they're entering this phenomenon where they're like, oh my gosh, we have these Zoom calls and we text Every single day, and it's just this warm, wonderful relationship. And now that we're vaccinated, we get together and everything just falls apart. And I feel so betrayed. Like, when did they know that? Like, why did they lead me on for months? And we talked about it. I'm like, time out. When you think about dating and coming together as a couple, there is so much that happens in the excitement of some of those early dates and the heightened anxiety of coming together. And they have a whole Studies that show that people find each other more attractive in, like, scary situations. And— but what's happening with Zoom is people enter virtual relationships that get very intimate very quickly emotionally. And by the time you meet, it's very comfortable and familiar, and you don't have the boost of all of the experiential— hormones and excitement, and it's bound to be a huge letdown. Like, people who are Zoom dating in a way are setting themselves up for getting almost a false relationship, far too intimate before they actually meet one another. And this isn't a dating show, but that conversation had me kind of think about How our relationships are almost falsely intimate because we haven't been in the physical vicinity of one another. And we're seeing in our engagement surveys, the onboarding process has been very difficult for some over the last year. We're seeing people who are coming on year 1 in their employment who normally— that's kind of a honeymoon period. Normally, their engagement is usually higher than most in an in-person work environment. Their engagement, too many times, I'm seeing it as lower than most. And people are saying, yeah, maybe our onboarding needs to change. And I'm saying, I think there is something like— I think Krista Tippett says civilization was built on humans being in the same vicinity. And I'm not saying we have to go back there. I'm not someone who has ever really— been tied to an office because I'm— pre-COVID, I was in a different place every single day. I'm just trying to elevate your conversations about the topic. And if you're somebody who is absolutely certain that you like work from home, I want you to check yourself and ask yourself, how would you know? Your information is 18 months old. What if instead of getting into polarity and duality, do we all come back or do we work from home, or like, what if we just transcended that and said, you know what, let's talk about on a regular basis what I have going on this week and what I think merits some in-person work and what merits some private work and what merits some just touch-base online work. I know in my company we're certainly looking forward to being back in person With some of our work. But we also know that some of our opportunity has been that we get to touch people more often in smaller chunks because it's virtual. We don't have to bring everybody together. And there's some profound sustainable change happening when people are getting to spend time with us in 2-hour increments over 3 months, once a week, and really use the tools and do workout sessions and that type of stuff isn't affordable in person but can be done virtually. I don't know where it will all end up. I want it to be designed, not determined by disruption. I want the disruption to have opened our minds up to more possibilities, but I want us to curate the work going forward. And as a leader, the way you're going to be able to stop the conversation we're having And have a bigger, different conversation is to break projection where they have you and reality so confused and turn sideways, right? And disappear from that projection and instead join them as allies and say, given our current reality, what is our highest insight? How do we toggle up? And instead of just fighting for our preference, which is the work of the ego, how do we toggle up? And talk about what we're willing to give to create a different world and a different workplace. What if we moved out of what's best for me and talked about what could we create and how do I get my needs met in that new reality? It's such a better conversation. I will be talking to you a lot about hosting different conversations with our people. I've come out and talked to you about Stop venting. A lot of you are like, okay, I've disallowed venting. I need to teach you how to allow feeling without it being intellectualized into venting. There's just some bigger work we have to do, and I'm so excited in season 4 to do that work. Your assignment: notice this week the conversations you're having that are exhausting and that aren't bringing out the best of us and that are fear-based. And that seem unsolvable. All the situations you're in that you're intellectually trying to solve and can't because you're being asked to play the part of reality. And reality isn't bendable. It just is. So separate yourself out of reality. Notice those conversations. Notice how you're playing 2 roles, leader and reality, and invite people into a different conversation. And that's why I love that word given. But just notice those exhausting conversations, go within and imagine what an elevated conversation might look like. And I look forward to hearing your insights. Be safe and well and take good care of each other. More love. Be kind. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama and entitlement and transform your world place. I'm Cy Wakeman.