Speaker 1: This is the Rebel HR Podcast.
If you're a professional looking for innovative,
thought-provoking information in the world of human resources,
this is the right podcast for you.
Rebel on HR Rebels.
Super excited for our guests.
This week.
We've got a couple of wonderful guests.
I have been tearing through their new book.
It's called Unfair Transform your Organization to Create
Breakthrough Performance and crossed off or employee
well-being.
With us today we've got Mark Manoukas and Gaurav Bhatnagar
and we are also joined by Molly Berdess, so super excited for
the conversation today.
Mark and Gaurav are the co-founders of Co-Creation
Partners.
Gaurav has dedicated more than two decades to helping companies
thrive and achieve breakthrough performance.
Since founding Co-Creation Partners in 2010, he has
designed and led programs and workshops for a number of
different clients across multiple sectors names such as
Procter Gamble, pepsi-cola and so on and so forth.
Mark is an engineer by training .
We're going to get along just fine.
I work with a lot of engineers and began his career as a Navy
officer and a member of the US Naval Construction Battalion,
also known as the Seabees, and he brought his experience and
insights into the performance of engineered systems to McKinsey,
where he was a consultant and has also worked with a number of
different industries and wonderful companies.
Welcome to the show this week guys.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Well, super excited for the
conversation and, before we hit record here, I was just
commenting that I've got a copy of this book Unfear and I get a
lot of books in my role as a podcaster but this is one of
those that I started reading through it and it was just like,
oh, that's good stuff.
Oh, that's good stuff.
So thank you for writing the book and I encourage our
listeners to check it out.
But why don't we just start with what prompted you to write
a book about fear?
Speaker 3: We wanted to convey to the world what we saw as a
primary source of waste and dysfunction in organizations.
So our company co-creation partners, we help organizations
improve their performance and employee well-being.
And fear always sat at the heart of what we worked on with
clients, and it's often, you know, it's an element in an
organization that people you know don't fully acknowledge or
don't really see, and so we wanted to create a book that
helped people see what was really going on in their
organization with respect to fear and what they could do
about it.
What would you say, Gaurav?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all of that.
But the other thing I would say is that I'm a recovering fear
addict, and so writing a book about the stuff that I'm
recovering from made sense.
I think I've written this book in my head about 20 times before
I actually got down to writing it with Mark during the pandemic
, so it's been a long time coming it with.
Speaker 4: Mark during the pandemic, so it's been a long
time coming.
Elaborate on that a little bit more.
So you've found that fear holds people back.
Fear of what?
Is there one or two things, or what does that look like?
Speaker 2: Sure.
Well, so then you know it's interesting, because the one
thing I'll tell you is that I haven't met a single human being
who doesn't have fear.
Now, there's some common patterns.
The top three or four that I often run across in
organizations is fear of failure .
The second one, which is especially true for senior
people in organizations and CEOs , is fear of being an imposter
and fear of being found out.
The third one is the fear of not being appreciated or
validated, and the last one is the fear of being disliked.
Those are often the four which I find to be the most common.
Speaker 4: There are many, many more, but those are the ones
that are quite typical.
Well, I was just going to say I was at a seminar yesterday
actually, and one of the speakers was talking about
imposter syndrome and I learned that that coin or that was that
phrase, I guess really came out in the 70s, 1970s.
It's been around for that long and I think it's a real thing.
And you know the speaker's like why are we still talking about
this?
And it is, it's because of fear , it's real.
So I just found that really interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the important idea we want to get
across in the book as well is that fear itself is not the
problem, and we all have these fears and it's more about
changing the story we hold about the fears that we have.
So we'll still experience fear as human beings, that's just,
that's a natural thing.
But if we can shift how we relate to those fears, that's
where, you know, people have those breakthroughs and can be
more effective.
And I think that's important for HR professionals as well,
because I think there's a tendency to say look, fear is
bad, let's figure out how we almost eliminate it or, you know
, suppress it, and so that creates its own dysfunction.
And you know, we think there's a false dichotomy between using
fear and suppressing fear.
It's really doing something completely different.
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Thanks for listening.
One of the things that I think is so powerful in this content
is the fact that we can all relate to this.
So, gaurav, I really appreciated throughout the book.
You used personal examples and you were you were really kind of
you know, honestly pretty vulnerable and I and I, as I
reflect on that and the comment that you called yourself a fear
addict.
Obviously you overcame that in some way because you were able
to be vulnerable in a book that's going to go out to
thousands and thousands of readers around the world.
So what tactics did you use to, first of all, to just kind of
identify oh you know I've got an issue with this and then figure
out how do I actually overcome some of these challenges?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a brilliant question, because I
thought fear was a good thing, that the fact that I felt fear
was a great thing, because it galvanized me into doing things.
And this is a long time ago.
So this was 2002 and, uh, I was sitting in a workshop which I
did not want to be in.
Um, it was.
It was being run by this british woman who had called it,
called herself gita bellen, and gita is an indian name, and I
used to tell everyone she's a fraud and because her real name
is margaret and she's just taken an Indian name to convince us.
And I'm Indian, so I'm allowed to say that.
And as I was in that workshop, what I realized was that I was
in a pattern where I was so caught up with success that I
had lost my connection to joy.
And this lady helped me understand that.
And when she opened that gap, it forced me to really, really
reflect on all the things, all the stories that I had created
in my head about success and the fear of failure that was
holding me in a very, very dysfunctional pattern, and the
fact that I was able to then reframe all of that through the
help of many, many people.
After that, it just felt that it would be intellectually
dishonest not to share that journey and to make it about
everyone else when ultimately, you know, I am just like anyone
else.
Speaker 4: And so, admitting to that fear and you have that
self-realization, how we have a lot of people walk into our
office in HR and a lot of people don't have, how do we help them
get to that moment that you got to?
How do we help them realize that, hey, fear is the issue or
this is a fear?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
So this is a great question.
So I think for most people who are not ready to engage in a
conversation about fear, you don't start with a conversation
about fear.
You start with a conversation about behavior, and what you do
is you help them understand that behavior is not something that
just happens, because most of the time people think, oh, I
have a behavior, someone will tell me another behavior and
I'll go to that new behavior.
But my experience is that you know you do that and then stress
happens and you ping right back to your old behavior.
So the conversation that we lead people through to help them
understand the fear is we actually have them understand a
whole process of what are the stories, what are the thoughts
and feelings, what are the belief systems that are driving
that behavior.
And as you go through that, it always leads to our inherent
unmet needs and our fears.
So you get people to that point through them understanding
themselves rather than starting with fear, because fear is a
taboo topic in organizations, right, I mean, it's amazing how
everyone talks about how there's fear, but when you go into the
corporate boardroom, oh, no, no, no, our organization is no fear
and I never had fear To be fearful or to have fears is to
be a weak leader is often what happens, so you can't directly
engage in that conversation.
Speaker 4: You know I'm thinking through my own organization and
I'm in sales, so I see this all the time.
Right, and people have heard me say this before.
But it drives me crazy when a leader comes to me and says all
of our people just suck, they're low performers, they don't want
to do the job, they just won't do.
It says all of our people just suck, they're low performers,
they don't want to do the job, they just won't do it.
And as I was hearing, you know you guys talk about this, I do.
I think that most of the people it comes back to they are
fearful of something.
So if we change that conversation, I think it could
be so impactful.
Speaker 2: That's so true and, Mark, I'm sure you have a
perspective on that.
But what I?
What I believe is most people don't come to work with an
intention to underperform Right.
They don't come to work to say I'm just going to collect my
paycheck and screw everything else.
Most people have good intentions, but they have
stories which hold them back, and then they get reinforced in
the organization through these archetypes which are either
aggressive, defensive or passive , defensive.
That then makes them become suboptimal and then it becomes
completely embedded and then people say there's no way out
and they start asserting it as if it's the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just to build on that there's you know
Gaurav mentioned the aggressive, defensive, passive defensive
sort of patterns.
There are some people who, driven by fear, actually work
themselves to burnout.
You know, those are people who are super competitive, perhaps
they're perfectionistic, you know.
So that's one general pattern.
The other are maybe those people who just don't really
show up.
They just keep their head down and they're just trying really
hard to not make any mistakes.
So that's sort of the other pattern.
So you see both, but they're both signs that there's some
underlying fear that's driving that dysfunction.
Speaker 1: You know it's really interesting because you know and
I'm reflecting on, you know, my organization's we're a
manufacturing organization Definitely some machismo in the
leadership ranks Admitting that you're afraid or that fear is
interacting with your decision-making process.
It would be very surprising if that were to occur.
I think now we have a great leadership team and I think we
have some very intellectually and emotionally intellectual
people, but they're not going to come out and be like, oh yeah,
I'm really terrified of this.
But I think what was so interesting in that and I'm just
reflecting on myself is, I think you know what, what was so
interesting in that and I'm just reflecting on on myself is,
you know I can, but I can absolutely uh, relate to the, to
the fear of failure or the fear of looking like an idiot, you
know, or or the, you know, the fear of of losing my job Cause I
just completely screwed up a project.
And you know the moments that you know I, I remember distinct
moments in my career where I've just I've I've been driven to
inaction because I, and you know and it really is kind of now
that I think about it in this context it's almost like being
petrified because of that fear response as opposed to, you know
, working, working through that.
And, molly, it was funny when you mentioned the people coming
into my office.
It's, you know, I don't know if it's as much for me about
somebody else working through their fear.
A lot of it comes back to me and, you know, you get that pit,
you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach when someone
comes walking in that door and it really is.
It's a fear of what's coming in next, right, and you don't know
, especially in HR sometimes.
Sometimes this stuff is you can't, you couldn't write a book
about it.
So, so as as we cope through that kind of personally, I kind
of reflect on that and in our, in our world, you know how, how,
as an individual, uh, can I, can I be aware of that and kind
of work through that when I get those feelings, the kind of like
the cortisol coursing through my veins, and then how do I find
mechanisms to cope with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
I mean we kind of describe a learning process that starts
with awareness and then moves to choice and practice, that
starts with awareness and then moves to choice and practice.
So step one is just helping people become aware of where and
how they feel fear.
You know even just the somatic, you know markers of where that
fear shows up in your body, so just noticing it and not
necessarily judging it.
And it's also getting people to become more aware of how their
current responses to fear are serving them and helping them,
and also where it's not helping them be effective.
Most of the responses that we have have served us in some way
at some point in life, but we've kind of forgotten to question
those patterns and that conditioning and so we bring
those patterns into the present moment and it may not actually
allow us to be effective.
So, kyle, you were mentioning a situation where maybe you're
holding back and not sharing something.
Maybe that served you well in the past but maybe it's not
particularly effective at this point.
And so getting people to just realize that go through that
thought process so they can make more active choices to be more
effective, through that thought process, so they can make more
active choices to be more effective.
And then practicing that.
You know it takes practice.
It's not.
You know there's no quick fix there.
Necessarily awareness and choice are the start of it, but
you really have to practice stepping out of your comfort
zone and working into these new patterns of behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we talk about in the book that fear.
So you know, in our brain, a lot of our decisions are
emotional decisions that we post-rationalize.
Right, and the emotional brain has two parts the pain complex
and the pleasure complex.
And the pain complex is like Velcro, so it sticks to us,
while the pleasure complex is like Teflon, so you get a high
and you forget it.
That's why my wife still remembers the one time I forgot
her birthday, even though I tell her I love you every day.
Right, but, but it's but, but, but that's.
That's the interesting thing, right?
So?
So how do you get conscious of knowing that that thing is about
to happen?
And the other problem is we live in our heads, and this is
about the first step is to get to learn to live in our body.
Speaker 1: Where in our?
Speaker 2: body, do we feel it, and then deliberately create a
point of choice.
But that's just a short term thing, because the next time it
happens it'll happen again.
So the other thing we talk about and people think it's
pretty woo-woo, but it isn't is we also recommend meditation as
a practice.
And the reason why we recommend meditation as a practice is
because, over time, what meditation allows us to do is it
allows us to clean up those Velcro things that are reference
points for our fear.
Velcro things that are reference points for our fear,
and if you don't clean up those reference points, there's
nothing transformational that happens in terms of your
relationship to fear.
So there's a short-term thing, which is in the moment what do
you do?
But there's a longer-term thing as well, which is how do you
engage in practices that allow you to cleanse your system of
your patterns of connections that you have built over many
years?
Speaker 4: I know a lot of people who think meditation is
great for the mind, body, soul, all of that stuff.
And when I first started, you know hearing these things in my
head, I just pictured, okay, I'm going to lay on the floor for
an hour quiet, like who has time for that, but I don't think
that's what meditation is or has to be.
Am I right?
Am I wrong?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
So I don't know if meditation is lying on the floor for half
an hour, but the fundamentals of meditation are twofold.
Fundamentals of meditation are the ability to observe while
you're in the act of doing something Right.
So the most simplest form of meditation is to notice your
breathing when you have your thoughts, notice your thoughts.
So why is that so important.
The reason why that's so important is because meditation
actually gives you the practice of understanding that you're not
just an actor in your life story, in your organizational
story.
You're also the director of your life story, because you can
observe yourself in that moment .
And when you're a director, you can shift things.
If you're just an actor, then you are.
You know, when I started my life , my career, my journey, it was
I used to say I'm an angry kind of person.
That's just the way I am.
And if you don't want to get into a bad situation with me,
just don't hang out with me when I'm angry, because that's who I
am.
And what this work has taught me meditation has taught me is
is that I'm bigger than my anger , because I can observe it and
from there I can shift it.
And to be both the director and actor is such an important idea
and that is the core of meditation, if you really think
about it.
To be meditative in everything you do is the intention, rather
than to meditate and just lie down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know a lot of people.
I know a lot of people, myself included for a period of time
are very skeptical of meditation .
It seems like one of those woo-woo things like I don't need
to do that stuff, like I'm effective enough already and
that's just kind of a soft, touchy-feely thing to do.
I personally, over time, have come to appreciate that it
doesn't have to be this weird woo-woo thing.
It really is this process of becoming more aware of
everything that's happening, whether it's changing body
sensations and your emotions and your thought processes and just
not being so lost in thought, and it just gives you a lot more
flexibility about how you can show up in any given moment to
be effective.
You're not so fused with your emotion and your thoughts.
You can step back, like Laura mentioned, and be more of that
observer.
It's just.
It's a more powerful way to live life.
You know, if you're nervous in a meeting, like a podcast
meeting, you can sort of notice that and how it's showing up in
your body and you know just shift your breath a little bit
and how you're um, how you're sitting, and it just allows you
to to shift in the moment.
So that's something I've discovered over time.
Speaker 1: It's.
It's it's really interesting and and I am, I probably should
be, but I I'm not a meditation practicer Um, and I think part
of it's just because, yeah, I just I don't know enough about
it.
But it's interesting that you know you'll consistently hear
that feedback from experts who have studied.
You know the brain and emotional responses and you know
a great example of an unhealthy approach to this.
And now, as I, you know, after I read the book and as I'm
reflecting on the conversation here, it was really a fear
response.
But you know, earlier in my career, I used to, as opposed to
, approach conflict or, you know , my fear of what might be
walking through my door in a healthy way.
I would flip a switch in my brain and become like an
emotionless jerk, because then I wouldn't have to deal with it,
right, I wouldn't have to take on the emotional burden of
somebody else's problems or having to terminate somebody's
employment or something along those lines.
You know the unfun part of human resources.
But eventually I did have to figure out okay, how do I cope
with this and retain my humanity through the course of my, you
know, essential job functions, otherwise I'm going to have a
mental break, right?
And so I think that goes to you know the burnout and it wasn't
meditation, but it was, I would say it was community and it was
getting connected with wonderful professionals like Molly and
like-minded folks.
That helped me understand I wasn't alone and kind of,
building that community for me was the antidote for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Kyle, that's meditation too.
When you engage in deep reflective conversations with
other people with intentionality , that is being meditative as
well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that story resonates with my life
experience as well, kyle, because you know, growing up,
you know, and being trained as an engineer and being in the
Navy, you know I was sort of taught that to be a man in the
world you have to suppress your emotions.
You know, anger is an okay emotion, but pretty much any
other emotion is suspect, it means you're not effective.
But there's a, there's a cost to that and you know, carrying
all the stress, you know, and the Velcro that Gaurav mentioned
, you know that's still there but it just it sort of sits
inside and that it sort of eats you from the inside out.
And so I've learned over time that I can actually, you know,
be okay with my emotions and share those emotions and be
vulnerable, and it doesn't mean I'm not effective and I can
still, you know, be who I am, but just be it in a way that's
more open.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sometimes, I think, with fear, you just have
to do it to overcome it, otherwise you have so much
buildup in your head.
For me it used to be like hard conversation.
I just had this internal fear of oh my gosh, what if I don't
do this right?
What if it doesn't go well?
What if I don't do this right?
What if it doesn't go well?
What if I don't say the right things?
What if I offend this person?
What if I make it worse?
And it was just creating more conflict.
And then you know, once you start having those hard
conversations, it's like an instant weight off your shoulder
and it's like, ok, that wasn't so bad, I can do this, sure.
Speaker 2: And it's like, okay, that wasn't so bad, I can do
this.
Something bad is going to happen.
And what a lot of my work with leaders is about is being right
is not the same thing as being effective, and when we get into
the right mode, then we get into a right and wrong mode and we
make other people wrong, and the job of leadership is actually
to inspire and build followership, and the more you
you make people wrong by being right, you actually end up being
more ineffective rather than effective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I imagine that just creates like this
defensive, toxic culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's such a good conversation and I've taken away
so much.
One thing I do want to talk about.
That that was was a definitely a light bulb moment for me as I
was reading through the book was the fear archetypes.
And you know there's I mean this is scientifically backed,
you know I I love the fact that.
You know it ties back to validated, peer reviewed studies
and and you know this isn't a, this isn't like, hey, let's
throw, let's throw some darts at a board and see what names
sound good that we can put in here.
So, so, and and what.
What really resonated with me was the difference between the
fear archetypes and the, and they're separated by the fight
club and the nice club.
And as I was reading through it , I'm like, oh, yep, I know one
of those, I know one of those, I got one of those.
Yep, we got one of those too.
And it was just so funny that it allowed me to kind of put
that all into context.
And then, in my seat, one of the biggest challenges is
working through organizational change and trying to get people
aligned and, you know, trying to manage through COVID when 50%
of the United States feels one way and the other 50% feels
another, and you could go down the list.
Over the last 18 months, some of the turmoil that's been
brought in the workplace.
But can we just maybe take a step back and walk us through
what some of those archetypes are and how fear plays into them
?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should first acknowledge that the archetypes
are based on the work from an organization called Human
Synergistics International and the work of Dr Robert Cook book,
so the archetypes very closely align to some of the survey
tools that they use and that we use in a lot of our client work.
But there's two primary camps here to the fear archetypes.
One is the fight club and the basic response there is people
see threats and they try to stay safe by standing out and being
special, and we can go through the four archetypes there.
The second is the nice club and the way in which this group
stays safe in the presence of threats is they keep their head
down and they sort of hide.
And so I can list these off real quick and we can jump in as
needed.
But within the Fight Club you've got perfectionists.
These are people that need to get everything right, dot all
the I's, cross all the T's.
There's the competitors, so people who are ultra competitive
and need to win at all costs.
There's the controllers these are people that need to be
controlled and they tend to be very hierarchical.
And the fault finders.
These are people that need to be controlled and they tend to
be very hierarchical.
And the fault finders.
These are the consultants of the world.
They're constantly finding faults and seeing problems
everywhere, including with themselves and with other people
, and so you can see that there's benefits and those
archetypes or those patterns help people be effective in some
ways, but they also have their downsides.
Then, on the nice club side, you've got the likables.
These are people who just try to be nice and minimize conflict
.
You've got the sticklers.
These are people who throw the rule book at you anytime
something's going on.
That happens a little bit in the HR world, from what we've
seen.
You've got the minions.
These are people who you know their only customer is their
boss and they're constantly trying to serve the hierarchy
upwards.
And then you have the avoiders.
These are people who, just you know, shy away from conflict,
and so you know we're often, you know, a mix of these archetypes
at any given time, and it changes by context and we can
ship these.
These aren't like personality traits that are immutable.
These are just patterns of behavior that we've come to
adapt over time, based on values that are actually quite
important, but they've just become dysfunctional in some
ways, and so we try to shine a light on that and help people
understand how these patterns serve them, but how they don't
serve them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another really interesting thing is that
when you engage with the people who have the fight club
archetypes, often they would say the reason why we are in the
fight club is because if we don't use any one of those
archetypes, all those nice club people are just going to just
not do anything and they are the reason why we are in the fight
club.
And then you talk to the people in the nice club and the nice
club people say the reason why we just hide is because those
guys are always fighting and screaming at us.
So these two categories actually mutually
dysfunctionally reinforce each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you bring up a really important point,
gorvin.
There's a question about well, how do these relate to fear?
There's just a certain story.
The fears are essentially all the same fear of being an
imposter, fear of not belonging, fear of failure.
The same fears sit beneath all these archetypes, it's just
different stories that we tell ourselves about the threats that
we're experiencing lead to different, you know, patterns of
behavior, and so the the intervention point here isn't to
get rid of your fear.
That's not realistic.
Speaker 4: it's just to shift the story that we have about
this threat so, kyle, if I ever find that that book on my desk,
that must be an intervention.
I'll know I gotta.
I gotta change some of my behavior.
Speaker 1: You know that's funny , molly, you know I'd be happy
to give you the copy of the book .
But you know, I think, for me, as I was reading on this and
reflecting on this, you know, the context for me was thinking
about it and relating it to workplace interactions.
And you know, I think that you know, personally, I can see a
little bit of all those in me.
But I've also, you know, reflected on my upbringing and
as well as my kind of where I started my career and where I am
now upbringing, and as well as my kind of where I started my
career and where I am now, and, and you know, it was interesting
to read through those and reflect and think.
You know, a lot of these archetypes, you know, were
helpful in the moment, like you said, mark, where you know it
worked for a period of time but then I had to adapt and I had to
change and it got uncomfortable .
But had I not, I would have just been kind of stuck.
And one of those for me is like it's the it's, it's it's
wanting to be liked by others, you know, and I was raised,
raised in a small town in Iowa, you know, you're, you know, when
there's only 5,000 people in town.
You gotta be nice because everybody knows everybody, and
so being liked is really really important.
But obviously if you overuse that, especially in a strategic
human resources role, eventually the drive to be liked could
actually set you up for some pretty serious failures and if
you're not balancing that, you know, that desire appropriately
could be a really big pitfall.
So I think just having that awareness and then, Molly,
almost to your question earlier you know, when someone comes in
your office and they're interacting with you in a
certain way, if you can tie that back to the archetype and kind
of understand okay, this is the perspective they're coming from.
Now, how do I help them work through that in a way that
doesn't, you know, jack up their cortisol anymore, but helps us
channel that into something that's actually productive For
me, that was kind of one of the insights that I think you know
it's like a playbook, right, like okay, how do I play this
one?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just your reflection is kind of what we're
hoping people get from the book is, you know, to see themselves
and the archetype, not beat themselves over it, you know up
about it, but just you know seeing how wow.
This may have served me for a period of time, but it may be
limiting me in this particular moment.
So that's a great insight, kyle , and we can share some of ours
as well, from our own lives.
But I think if somebody does walk into your office and
they're displaying some of these behaviors, I think it's
important to note that behind these behaviors are really good
intentions, so likables.
They value harmony and strong relationships and having people
get along that's actually really good stuff.
It's just maybe the way in which they're expressing those
values just isn't effective right now, and so just helping
people see that may be enough to create a breakthrough.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that was really
interesting and I was reading this book.
The context here is I had a really rough day.
I was, you know, and it was a lot of conflict in the workplace
and I tend to kind of soak that up.
I tend to, you know, that's just kind of part of, I think, a
lot of us in HR kind of.
We kind of get those emotions stuck on us a little bit right,
kind of like we were talking earlier, um, but thinking about
that in the context of that person coming from a different
uh perspective than myself and and thinking that they had to
come from the fight club and and be uh.
In this case they were, they were being fault finders and, um
, you know, that was a really good mindset shift.
And then the other insight was, you know, in that nice club, a
lot of these likables or minions , or avoiders, they're probably
really top talent.
That's not tapped because they're just kind of, they're
just in this mode and we haven't drawn that out of them
intentionally either, right, and so you know, it was just kind
of an interesting, it was an interesting read.
I was very emotional when I was reading this, if you can tell,
and so it was.
It was, it was a timely book to read.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that you found it useful.
Speaker 1: So so I think you know one of the things that, um,
you know that we we've talked about is is.
You know the book and, um, you know, I think one thing that
that, uh, I'd like to understand , um is is a little bit about
kind of your personal journeys.
Um, you know, and and there's a lot, of, a lot of examples in
the book, but you know um lot of examples in the book, but to go
from the McKinsey, the gold standard, and confront your fear
and go and do something different and go through that
journey, I'd just like to understand that path a little
bit more, because I think that'd be really valuable for our
listeners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my path.
I mean I guess I've taken an interesting path.
I mean I'm not the typical sort of person to be talking about
fear and culture and organizations.
You know I've got an engineering background and so I
was quite steeped in, you know, the technical aspects of
creating stuff in the world and in making it work.
But I'd say earlier in my career I did study human factors
in engineering.
So I was, you know, early on, taken in by this idea that it's.
You know, it's not enough to just have your mathematical
equations be right.
You have to get the human and organizational factors that led
to that failure, not poor engineering.
So that was an idea that sat with me From the Navy I went to
McKinsey Company.
I was really deep into, you know , the technical aspect of
transforming organizations, but I was, you know, constantly
feeling like we're missing something on the mindsets part.
We would talk about it.
I think there was good intention there but I would come
back to clients six to 12 months later and just see all of
the brilliant ideas that these gold standard consultants came
up with and they just didn't stick.
And at some point in my career I crossed paths with gora.
If he had started co-creation partners.
I was still at mckinsey and he was running some you know
woo-woo workshops with meditation.
At one of the clients I was doing the hardcore you know sort
of lean transformation at and I was like who's this joker, you
know couldn't hack it at mckinsey and um, I need to go,
you know drop into this workshop to check in on him.
But but I saw in that workshop you know just the impact you
know that the ideas had on me and I was like wow, this was a
missing piece.
You know it's not enough just to have the technical piece.
You really need to have the human dimension and the you know
the way in which Gorg was working with culture really
really stuck with me, really stuck with me.
So when I left McKinsey seven years ago, we partnered up and
we try to bring both the human and technical dimensions
together.
So that's kind of been my journey.
I think it's been kind of a steady progression of getting
deeper and deeper into this stuff, which may be a little bit
different than Gaurav's story, which was this burst of insight
I sort of have little insights along the way and I think both
are quite valid.
How about you, gaurav?
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, I'm the son of a physicist and I was a
proud card-carrying member of the fight club and for me it was
all about.
Life is difficult and you kick ass by overcoming that
difficulty.
Yeah, and I was a nightmare to be with and I ended up and I did
market research, right, so that's what my.
I was statistics guy and I ended up just by chance in South
Africa with my, because because the US had just had its first
dot-com bust in 2001 and I was looking for work.
And with Mickey I was still in McKinsey and I moved to McKinsey
, Johannesburg, and I walked into my mentor's office and he
said hey, Goddard, I didn't tell you our office is doing, not
doing too.
And I said dude, why did you call me?
Are you crazy?
And he said no, no, no, that doesn't matter.
You know.
All that means is you need to be a generalist.
But the other thing is there's this newfangled thing coming in
from Australia around mindset and we're going to try it on
ourselves because nothing has worked.
I said, great, do it?
Why are you telling me?
He said no, no, because we want you to lead this effort.
And I looked at him and, like he was crazy, I said I don't do
touchy-feely stuff, that's for HR people to do.
And we had a long argument, long argument, and finally I gave
him my killer argument.
I told him dude, I'm from India .
And he said what does that mean ?
I said I know people who do this kind of stuff.
They sit on top of mountains, they go, not going to do it.
And, as Mark said, I went creaking and screaming into this
workshop and I realized that there was so much I didn't know
about things and, being the son of a physicist, I said, okay,
I'm going to crack it in four months and that's it.
And the more I engaged with it, the more I realized I didn't
know.
And it became my life's passion , and I was lucky enough that
helping people unlock their human potential, their true,
true potential, their angel, is something that not only did I
love, but it allowed me to help people connect with something so
essential that I could make a career out of it.
And so the last 22 years of my life has just been committed and
dedicated to helping individuals, teams and
organizations realize their potential and realize that
well-being and performance are so interrelated, because it all
ultimately comes down to meaning and being authentic with
yourself.
Speaker 4: Your passion is inspiring and I've only known
you for about what an hour.
You seem like the nicest guy, one of the nicest guys I've ever
met, so that right there we should get into meditating, kyle
.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sold, I'm sold.
Speaker 4: Me too.
Hey, I have one more topic, or question Kyle, before you cut me
off.
I know that's what you're trying to do and Kyle didn't
share the book with me.
He was keeping it for himself, so I don't know if you talked
about this or not, but one big issue in the workplace right now
is individual people's anxiety.
It's just a real hot topic, especially in HR.
We're trying to help, you know these individuals who come into
our offices and help these teams .
Do you feel like there's a correlation between fear and
anxiety?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in fact, I think they're oftentimes one in
the same or they're very, very closely linked.
So you know, the story you have about your fear is you're
perceiving some threat and that threat is sustained and it
continually gets reinforced through your thought processes.
Then, yeah, it becomes a mood of anxiety, low level fear that
just sits around all the time and that, under just about every
single circumstance, will degrade a person's wellbeing,
their health and well-being, and so I think it's a tremendously
important topic that needs to be addressed in organizations.
We can talk about some ideas on how to do that, but I think it
is tough, and I do think just the general state of the world
is intersecting with just a general stressful state in most
organizations to begin with, and it's just making it worse.
So I think there is a trend to see increased anxiety in
organizations these days.
Speaker 2: And Molly, I was shocked to read the statistic
that in America today, 50% of adults have experienced some
kind of childhood trauma.
Today, 50% of adults have experienced some kind of
childhood trauma.
And trauma is entrenched deeply , deeply entrenched.
And working with that kind of entrenched fear and anxiety is
real hard work and you can't just tell people don't be
anxious or don't have fear, right, you have to take people
through a deeply experiential process for them to be able to
unlock it.
You know choice is deeply personal and therefore the
process cannot be just.
It's not a mathematical equation .
Often people come to us and say just give me the formula, just
give me, just give me the right Mark likes that.
But you know, but it's so deeply embedded in you that you
have to experience your way out of it.
And that's what I would advise HR professionals is that it's
not a system process solution, it is a experiential solution.
And as much as you guys are amazing at your craft, you need
to also become amazing facilitators of human beings,
because that is what is needed to address anxiety and fear.
Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more , and I think so often we just,
you know, oh, you have an issue, let's send you to our EAP, and
it just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So I think we definitely need to dive more
into this 100%, and I think you know, maybe to put a punctuation
mark on it.
You know, I think that that is it.
And who else is going to do that in an organization if not
human resources?
Right, we need to take ownership of that.
We need to become experts in that, become educated and
reflect that inwardly and make sure that we can help our
organizations overcome that as well.
So just great stuff.
We are readily coming up on the end of our time together, but
I've got.
I could talk for another three hours, but we're just getting
warmed up.
Yeah, I know Right, it's like.
It's like uh, one of the examples was uh, you talked
about a jazz band and you were talking about improv, um, and I
used to play jazz back in the day, so, like that one was like
cool, but but it's like.
It's like the jazz band just got warmed up and we're like now
we're just starting to hit the right rhythm and the solo
starting, and now we got to finish.
Speaker 4: So but better put part two on the books?
Speaker 1: yeah, absolutely so.
Shifting gears.
We're going to go into something we do with all of our
guests called the rebel hr flash round.
So three questions that we ask our listeners.
So because we have two guests today, I'm going to ask each of
you one question and then I'll have you both answer the last
question.
How does that sound?
Speaker 2: I think we should give them all to Mark.
Speaker 1: Give them all to Mark .
Okay, well, I'm finding out.
Mark probably already had them written down and documented in a
workflow before we started.
Just take a while, guys take a while, all right.
All right, I'll start with Mark .
Speaker 3: How's that All right?
Question number one what are you reading?
Right now I am reading the Overstory.
It's a fiction book about just trees and nature.
It's really, really fascinating .
One thing I haven't done as much as read fiction because
I've been so entrenched in reading, writing a business book
.
So the Overstory, by Richard Powers, I believe, is the author
Very, very deep reflection on just the interconnectedness of
everything.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
All right, Gaurav.
Who should we be listening to?
Speaker 2: Who should we be listening to?
You should be listening to me.
No, I think this is a crazy answer, but I would strongly
encourage.
If people really want to get some deep reflection going, is
this gentleman called Swami Bodhananda and he is based out
of Kalamazoo, michigan, and he has some great videos on YouTube
about the essence of life and about what does it mean to live
a wholehearted life.
Speaker 1: Swami, how do you say that?
Speaker 2: Bodha Nanda, which is B-O-D-H-A-N-A-D-A.
Speaker 3: And I have heard him speak as well and he is pretty
amazing and very thought provoking.
Speaker 1: That is probably a first that we've had somebody
like that recommend it, so thank you for expanding our thought
process a little bit.
All right, last question, I'll pitch this to both of you how
can our listeners connect with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, really easy.
Cocreationpartnerscom.
No dashes, Just one word CoCreationPartnerscom.
And if you're interested in the book and some of these ideas,
you can go to unfearbookcom as well to learn some more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I am really happy if people want to reach
out to me on LinkedIn as well.
I will respond because I do believe that conversation is the
way to move forward.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and we will have all that information
in the show notes.
So open up your podcast player, click in.
Check out the book.
Like I've said a couple of times, highly recommended
reading.
Just want to thank you both again for being so generous with
your time and for putting the book together.
Really great work and, I think, really helpful for me and Molly
.
So thank you so much thanks for having us take care alright,
that does it for the Rebel HR podcast.
Big thank you to our guests.
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Speaker 4: Baby.