Mastering the Art of Adaptability: A Discussion with Dr. Carrie Johansson Episode 1

Ever found yourself trapped in the waterfall of traditional team dynamics, yearning for the agility of mountain goats? Dr. Carrie Johansson, a seasoned psychologist, guides us on a transformative hike from these rigid systems to the peak of adaptability. Drawing from her own experiences trekking through the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, she opens up about the pivotal role of psychological flexibility in making this transition. Be ready for an insightful journey into the mindscape of your team, where the terrain changes from predictable to agile.

Open your minds as we dissect the psychological flexibility formula and the wonders it can achieve. With Dr. Carrie, we explore the importance of being grounded in the present, critically assessing our situation, and making the optimal next move. This isn't just about making a leap; it's about understanding the ledge you're standing on. We delve into the depths of clear communication, unmasking its potential to navigate tricky talks and foster healthy team dynamics.

And that's not all. Dr. Carrie takes us on a tour of our own brains - explaining the roles of the prefrontal cortex, the mammal brain, and the back brain, and their collective power in helping us reach our full potential. We delve into metacognition and how understanding our thought processes can lead to better decision-making. We also tackle the challenges of agile implementation, moving beyond the victim mentality, and creating a psychologically safe environment. So, pack your gear and tune in as we unravel the path to psychological agility with Dr. Carrie Johansson.

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https://www.amazon.com/Self-Help-Go-Because-Broken-Sometimes/dp/1952233860/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31XLCI8267I44&keywords=carrie+johansson&qid=1690057263&sprefix=carrie+johnson%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-1

Don't miss Scrum Day, scheduled for Sep 14, 2023, in Madison, WI, at the Alliant Energy Center. Morning keynote using Liberating Structures by Keith McCandless followed by break-out rooms including speakers from Stanford University and the authors of "Fixing your Scrum".  Afternoon keynote by Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org. Scrum is a team sport, so bring your team and get your tickets at www.ScrumDay.org. Hosted by Rebel Scrum.  Find the training you've been looking for at www.RebelScrum.site.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Welcome, be more and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, greg Miller.

Speaker 2: 0:34

We are thrilled to announce that the Agile Within podcast is a good gold sponsor of Scrum Day. Join us on September 14, 2023 at Align Energy in Madison, wisconsin, for this one day conference. Prepare to be inspired by remarkable speakers, including the author of A Pocket Guide for Scrum, as well as the authors of Fixing your Scrum. Get insights from afternoon keynote Dave West, the CEO of Scrumorg. Learn invaluable strategies from industry leaders on implementing Scrum in human resources, technology teams and beyond. Don't forget to visit us at our booth at Scrum Day. Mark and I will be there and get your tickets at wwwscrumdayorg for this incredible event. Look forward to seeing you. Stop by the booth, mark, and I will say hi. We'll see you then and I and today.

Speaker 2: 1:28

We have a very special guest today with us. She is a psychologist. She's been in private practice in Denver, colorado, for 20 years. She's a doctorate in psychology from the University of Northern Colorado, masters from the University of Denver and a bachelor's from the University of Virginia. She is a psychologist turned speaker and author. Her name is Dr Carrie Johansson. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 1:56

Thanks, guys, it's nice to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Yes, so obviously you're in Denver. You said it's very nice weather out there and I wanted to ask you you are a hiker, right?

Speaker 3: 2:06

I am.

Speaker 2: 2:08

I saw that you hiked 50 times when you turned 50. And my wife and I are avid hikers too, so you said you hiked over 200 miles. I'm sure a lot of it's in the Rocky Mountains, right.

Speaker 3: 2:25

Yeah, this year the goal is to hike 275 miles and most of it will be in Colorado. But I did get a tiny offshoot of the Appalachian Trail to Virginia, which was really fun, and next week I get to have a tiny hike in Africa. So that is going to be the hiking with my wife and bringing it for us.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Yeah, Now, real quick. You were telling me before we started recording that you got a sudden offer real quickly to go over there, right?

Speaker 4: 3:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:02

So you had to make a decision within a few hours, I believe.

Speaker 3: 3:05

I did. I had five hours to make a choice about whether or not I wanted to take an international trip six days later.

Speaker 4: 3:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

And it was yes. The answer was yes, of course. Of course I will go. And yes, who wouldn't resist that hiking in Africa? So you did the Appalachian Trail and I saw you were going to University of Virginia. My wife and I are going in October for the first time to the Blue Ridge Mountains and we're staying in a yurt and we want to see the yeah, it overlooks an Airbnb. We got a yurt. It looks like a deck that's on like a hill and it looks kind of cool. She wants to see the leaves turn. We've never been to Blue Ridge Mountains so I wonder if you've ever hiked there.

Speaker 3: 3:53

I did when I was in college and it's stunning and the vistas that you can get if you're up on. You know, if you're up on a hill, that's overlooking. They call it the Blue Ridge because the trees somehow it has this blue sheen to it as you look over the woods in front of you. It's really fantastic.

Speaker 2: 4:16

And the hiking is lovely.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Yeah, yeah, we can't wait. So, yeah, I wanted to ask you that because I knew you'd probably done that. So, yeah, hiking is a lot of fun. So all of that to say. We have Dr Carey here because we want to talk about how it relates to agile and psychological flexibility and how teams need to have that Teams coming out of waterfall If you've been on a waterfall team, you're moving over to agile. We talk a lot about psychological safety, but this is a bit about psychological flexibility. So, dr Carey, can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Speaker 3: 5:01

Absolutely so. Psychological flexibility is kind of a fancy term, but it's a bit of a formula which is really nice. And one of the things that's important to know about psychological flexibility is it crosses over different personality types. So whether or not you are an introvert or an extrovert, whether or not you're shy or you're really outgoing, whether or not you are really highly autonomous versus very much enjoy being a part of a team, psychological flexibility will be a foundational principle under those personality characteristics. And the formula goes a little something like this being in the present moment, working with the reality, you actually have not the reality that you wish for. We'll talk more about that part and then doing an assessment of what's going well, what's going poorly, what emotions are coming up, how are people behaving, and then from there, the primary question is what's my next best move? So that's the overarching formula.

Speaker 2: 6:20

Yeah, got it. Did you have something, Mark?

Speaker 4: 6:27

Yeah. So, Dr Kerry, I hear so many times thanks for giving us that definition. You talked about reality, not the reality that we want, but the reality that is. Yeah, and I hear the phrase so many times perception is reality. What is? Your take on that.

Speaker 3: 6:51

Well, I think it's interesting because I think people get hung up on on perception and get into conflicts about what reality is.

Speaker 3: 7:02

So if you and I are in a conversation and I'm I'm feeling like you're being aggressive, right, or I'm feeling like you're being distant or something, right, and I forget to ask what's going on with you, then my perception, I think, is super important.

Speaker 3: 7:25

Except, I've forgotten to actually check it out. I've forgotten to do the assessment portion of the psychological flexibility formula and oftentimes we're missing the very first part of the formula, which is be in the present moment. So, instead of thinking through like, oh my gosh, mark's upset with me and now I need to do this, and then you know, then this terrible thing is going to happen, right, all of a sudden I'm not in the present moment anymore, so I've missed that part of the formula and I've also forgotten to do the assessment piece, which is hey, mark, you okay, and you might say, oh my gosh, my dog is sick and I'm, you know, and I'm a little distracted. All of a sudden, that perception of a problem that you're then letting your brain gallop off on, you know, into the future, of some terrible thing happening, is totally, it totally dissolves right.

Speaker 3: 8:27

So that notion of, yes, it's important to check perception, but a piece of doing a proper assessment about what's going on is actually understanding what is going on.

Speaker 4: 8:40

That's so helpful.

Speaker 3: 8:41

And there's a second piece to it, which is that we primarily know ourselves based on information that is actually covert to other people, and I don't mean covert like we're hiding it on purpose, like we're spies although that would be fun to be a spy In the way. Way back time machine, I was like, oh, should I join the CIA or the FBI? And I was like yeah, that's really hard and I'm a terrible liar, so it wouldn't have been a good fit, but you know that was like oh, for some time.

Speaker 3: 9:16

I lose all the time.

Speaker 3: 9:19

But the covert nature of our thoughts is just that it means that if I had a video camera on you, I wouldn't be able to see on the video camera what your intention is. Now there's some micro expressions that we communicate with and there's tone of voice, so there's nonverbal communication, but that we can pick up on a video camera, but we can't actually pick up. What is Mark's intention, what's Greg's intention, what's Dr Terry thinking? Right now, you have to actually get that to be overt, to be on the table right, and so this is a great thing to think about. When you're in relationship, whether it's with a teammate member or with your spouse, you have an intention and then the impact doesn't land in line with your intention and someone's like I can't believe you did that and you're like no, that wasn't what I meant.

Speaker 3: 10:17

Yes, oh yeah, but it wasn't what I meant. And so getting clarity, so becoming more clear, communicating more quickly about what is covert in your mind, making it clearly overt, and then having a conversation with the other person about what is in their mind, helping them make it overt Very helpful for communication.

Speaker 2: 10:53

Yeah, one thing I'm thinking as you're saying this is that you said a little bit ago about Dr Terry, about taking the time to step through that, I believe. But do people? People don't actually take the time to do that. In my experience, like when you're in the middle of, like you said, oh, you know, you said something and I didn't you know, that's not how I meant it. Like, especially in work environment, if people on agile teams and working on and they have conflict, they don't actually think you know, you got to think quickly, right, you know, think, you know, think this through, you got to have these skills like kind of almost at your fingertips and say, oh wait, I'm not going to react this way, I'm going to. Maybe you know how are you doing Mark, right, instead of you know, I just I've never seen that happen in the real world, right, it sounds great. I'm just saying why do people not, you think, take the time or have the time to use this?

Speaker 3: 11:56

There's several different reasons why. The first is that people assume number one they assume that you understand better what they're thinking, right? So because my intentions are so darn clear inside my own head, I can't believe you don't understand what's inside my own head. So there's a faulty assumption to begin with, which is that I'm, my thoughts are so obvious that you must know what they are. And we've forgotten to take that step in the middle, which is my thoughts are so obvious and now I need to actually communicate them and then check and make sure that they were understood. And the interesting thing as well. So that's the assumption number one is my thoughts are so obvious that you must know what they are. Assumption number two is that any hard conversation, any conversation in that clarifying mode, is a going to be hard and B it's going to take a long time. But the interesting thing about it is clear communication takes way less time than unclear communication.

Speaker 3: 13:06

Yeah, and so building, I'm sorry, building in that pause to see how something landed and to check how it was interpreted. Building in that pause gives you a tremendous amount of power.

Speaker 2: 13:27

Yeah, I was taught that I went to. It wasn't a psychologist, but kind of like similar. What you're saying is that I guess maybe you're talking about like someone taught me, like something happens and like you said, okay, you can either choose to like react immediately, or, like you said, he used like I'm using my fingers and pulling them apart. He's like, okay, something happens, and then your right hand is going away from your left hand, like you either choose to do nothing, let it go, or, if you react but leave some time. Is that kind of what you're thinking? What you're saying there?

Speaker 3: 14:03

Okay, yeah, and general, and this is a you know, this is a piece of why mindfulness, you know, is now such a hot topic. If we are more mindful, it means that we're slowing down and we have more choices, because we have a space between feel something and respond. And it's interesting too, I mean. I think people think like well, I'm feeling really strongly, therefore my response is immediately valid, and that's actually a that. That's. That's another faulty loop. I'm feeling something very strongly good for you. That's lovely Right Now. Yeah, actually assess what do you want to do about that strong feeling, instead of just snapping, you know, lashing out.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Right and most of the time I can speak for myself maybe 10 times out of 10. If I react, I'm going to react in the wrong way and I'm going to have to go back and apologize later to the person.

Speaker 3: 15:14

Yeah, we want to be building in enough space so that you're responding instead of reacting, and that means that you're attending to what's coming up for yourself. And just because you have either a thought or an emotion doesn't necessarily mean and this is a piece, this is a big, central piece of psychological flexibility just because you have a strong thought or a strong emotion does not necessarily mean you do anything with it.

Speaker 2: 15:42

Yeah, Right, that's true.

Speaker 3: 15:48

It's just information. Emotions give us information. Thoughts can be interesting. Thoughts also can lie to us. We can tell ourselves stories, and oftentimes the stories are pretty limiting, and then you don't have as many choices.

Speaker 2: 16:07

Right.

Speaker 3: 16:10

If I've decided that my boss is a jerk and maybe my boss is a jerk, right, that's a true story. But if I've decided that my boss is a jerk and every interaction I walk into with my boss is under the assumption of they're going to be a jerk in some ways, that can actually be very freeing, Like, oh, my boss is a jerk and you can be in acceptance of that, and then you can figure out a way to work around it. But lots of times the story that we tell might not be true all the time, and so instead let's walk in and see is my boss in that jerk mode today? Okay, this is how I respond when he's in jerk mode, but if he's not in jerk mode, maybe I'm going to respond differently.

Speaker 2: 16:54

Right.

Speaker 3: 16:55

Or maybe I'm going to ask differently, or maybe I'm going to figure out how does Greg really prefers email but Mark really prefers IMs? I'm going to change my conversational style based on doing an assessment of what works best, instead of just what I want to do every time.

Speaker 2: 17:15

Exactly.

Speaker 4: 17:19

So, dr Carey, so question for you when you talk about these emotions and I like what you say about emotions it's just more information about what we're thinking. So Greg and I are scrum masters. You know we have a role a scrum master, an agile coach and so where part of our accountability is just to make sure that the team is performing effectively. And so many times we're in the middle of team dynamics and somebody does get emotionally charged in the team, yeah, and then the rest of the team really just kind of shuts down after that because it's uncomfortable.

Speaker 3: 18:08

Yes.

Speaker 4: 18:09

And so everything just kind of breaks down from there and it's like everybody walks on eggshells because they don't want to upset. I'm just going to say, Jim, because Jim might explode, and we don't want.

Speaker 3: 18:20

Jim to explode. That's been so fucking.

Speaker 4: 18:26

Yeah, so with relation to psychological flexibility, what are some tips for, or how might somebody in the role that Greg and I have as far as being a team leader, how might we use psychological flexibility to ensure that the team communication doesn't just absolutely come to a halt?

Speaker 3: 18:47

Yeah. So there's a couple of different pieces. So the first is that psychological flexibility is a concept that you can teach your team. It is sort of an aspirational concept of like, hey, let's make sure that psychological flexibility is a piece of how we approach things, but then we're actually going to need to deal with how do individuals then show up when they're uncomfortable? Because, at the end of the day, psychological rigidity which is the opposite, obviously, of psychological flexibility psychological rigidity is what happens when people are under stress or when they feel threatened.

Speaker 3: 19:30

So if we go back to evolutionary biology and, yes, if we have neuroscientists listening to this podcast, I am missing significant nuance, but bear with me here. This is actually helpful in part because it's visual. So we have essentially a three part brain and the three parts are operations. This is not actual parts, but if you put your hand on the front part of our heads, this is our prefrontal cortex, right, and that prefrontal cortex is where our human brain resides. We don't share this brain with very many other creatures. Elephants and dolphins have some aspects to this. There might actually be an argument that dolphins have even more nuanced and complex communication than we do, but for the purposes of this exercise.

Speaker 3: 20:30

We're going to call this our human brain. And our human brain is where we have our logic and reasoning centers, it's where we store verbal, verbal processing and it's where we have nifty human unique characteristics like metacognition. Metacognition is our ability to think about our thinking. I want to have the Smith's over for dinner this weekend. I'm going to make a pot roast, just to go as old school as possible. Oh dear, the Smiths are vegetarians. I can't make pot roast. Thinking about our thinking, metacognition then gets linked into actions, right. So now I'm thinking through my weekend, I'm planning, then I'm changing my thinking because I've thought about it and then I changed my behavior because I've changed my thinking Makes sense. That's our human brain. And then if you put your hand kind of on the like back major portion of our head, we're going to call that our mammal brain. So if anybody's ever had a pet mammal, they are playful, they're reward speaking, they will do things with you just for the fun of it.

Speaker 3: 21:48

When I was growing up, we had a golden retriever it was really my brother's dog and I would play referee between my brother and Sandy. The dog and I'd stand in the middle of the backyard with a tennis ball and Mark would go on one end of the backyard and Sandy would go on the other end of the backyard and I'd go one, two, three and I dropped the ball, at which point both the boy and the dog would rush towards the ball and I would move out of the way and most of the time Sandy was faster than Mark and she would grab the ball. She would actually bypass the ball lots of times. Trip my brother, go get the ball on his chest. Now, sandy.

Speaker 3: 22:34

Sandy was doing this, my brother was doing this. No one's getting paid, no one's getting fed. There's no, you know, there's no obvious reward to this other than the joy of. I wasn't even you know that involved and I still felt all of the joy of the two of them being total knuckleheads with each other. Right, it's playful, mammals are also attached. So, for example, if Sandy was home and she could choose between me and my brother, she would always choose my brother. If it was me and several of my friends, she would choose me over my friends. Right, there's an attachment hierarchy. I was holding a baby the other day and the grandparent walked by and all of a sudden I was chopped liver because I was in a particular higher up on the attachment ladder, was in front of the baby's attention, and the grandma literally went whoops, sorry, and like left so the baby could um exactly attachment.

Speaker 3: 23:43

But it's. You know you don't come home. Sandy didn't ever say Mark, I'd really like to play catch today. Can we please go out in the backyard?

Speaker 3: 23:50

She used verbalization, she had to use nonverbal communication and then in the it's I call it the back brain. But if you feel up your spine and you see where that little dip is and you continue thinking of imaginary, you know, following up that little dip it goes to our migtula, which is where our fight flight or freeze center is housed. And this is like our inner alligator. So if you've ever seen alligators, they tend to be still either on land or in water. Unless they're fighting or eating or mating, they don't particularly attach. In college I had a friend who had a baby pet alligator in a fraternity house.

Speaker 3: 24:33

It's so many different reasons that this was not a good idea. He left. He left on vacation and wanted me to take care of baby pet alligator and he said you know he loves me. How do I know he loves me? Because he doesn't bite me but he'll bite anyone else.

Speaker 3: 24:55

Well, baby pet alligator did not love him. He just understood that you don't bite the hand that feeds you. And so by the time that my friend got back from his vacation, guess what he did the first time? He stuck his hand in the cage. Baby pet alligator bit him right, because there's no attachment. Alligators are all about survival. So the problem is when you are, and the reason I'm explaining all of this is we want to see is someone in their full human potential brain, where they are having all three brains collaborating and communicating and working together? Are we in a panic mode, where we're in a spun out mammal? Or are we in pure threat mode, where we don't care about attachment and we're just going to do whatever we need to to survive, which means that you bite someone's head off and then later you're like, oh snap.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Sorry about that. Right.

Speaker 3: 26:02

So to go back, mark, to your example, does Jim get into his inner alligator too fast?

Speaker 4: 26:10

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 26:13

Right, does he get into survival mode and he's snapping before he's even understood that he's uncomfortable. So when people are uncomfortable, we have to help them figure out a way to number one, identify what makes them uncomfortable. Number two, identify when they're uncomfortable. And then, number three, give them some options to feel that.

Speaker 4: 26:43

So I'm going to throw you a curveball? Yeah, so let's say you do have that conversation with Jim, and Jim gives the response of well, I purposefully made the decision to make that emotionally charged argument because I wanted to make a point.

Speaker 3: 27:10

Well, and that then means that Jim's slipping into bully mode, which is our part two podcast. Okay, so, that's different than evolutionary biology. That's Jim being a jerk on purpose and that's probably not, you know. And that's where Jim's welcome to make a point, but he's not welcome to make a point at the expense of other people. So that's a behavioral issue that runs into a values issue on your team. This isn't how we speak to one another.

Speaker 2: 27:43

Right. Right, and that's one of the strong values is respect. Yeah, yes, that we can disagree, that's not a problem, but we are respectful, we don't bully one another like that, and that's. There's issues where times where I've had to address people on teams for that behavior as well. So what was Mark? Do you have any more? Sorry, do you have any more?

Speaker 4: 28:15

No, I'm going to get up off the couch now and let you have a shot.

Speaker 2: 28:17

You're off the couch, it's my turn, buddy. No, no, I didn't want to enter. So, yeah, kind of there's a lot going through my head here. Kind of we're talking about teaming and so, if you're listening, you're an Agilis Scrum Master, like Mark and I. You're on a team. This is all.

Speaker 2: 28:42

This is the tough part of being in Agil. It's always been my stance is that. That's why this show is not about the process, scrum or anything like that. This is the in understanding. We have a psychologist here and Dr Kerry understanding emotions and behaviors mindset. This is all that side of it, which is, if you're listening, you need to understand how people work so that you can address them. It's a lot, but we need to understand all of this. So we were talking about earlier about, like communication, breaking down on teams and perceived threats. So whenever we move from waterfall to Agil, we call it resistance. It's a big. You know, people are resistors. We call them right to change because we're changing, and so help us talk a little bit about that. Like Agil comes to your on a team, your developer, or maybe you're an executive. We deal with Mark and I have to deal with executives too. You're dealing with this change and immediately you're like nope, no, this isn't good. You know why are we doing this? Help us maybe unpack some of that, the threats they feel.

Speaker 3: 30:04

Absolutely so. Change is inherently threatening to a human brain because, again going back to that concept of evolutionary biology, we are actually much more set up for survival than we are for enlightenment. Enlightenment takes a lot of work Survival we often have automatic responses and anything that is deemed new or different is or novel right is considered actually a threat in the beginning. And so helping people understand that we are changing and that it's going to be something that we're going to work through so it's softening some of the impact of that threat is pretty helpful. And then it's also figuring out what are people's tendencies Like who is more naturally flexible?

Speaker 3: 31:02

Who is more naturally curious? Who's the person who doesn't mind things being novel or gets excited by novel things? Who's the person who really values security? And this is where taking a look at individual values and then overlaying it with the group or the team values, so that you can demonstrate why you're moving into agile right, like why would you make a shift from waterfall to agile, what are the benefits of it? And then also not being afraid to talk about the cons of it, right? So a lot of times we're trying to sort of upsell something by pretending that it's all positive, but that's not true. Really everything in the entire universe has pros, cons and neutrals.

Speaker 3: 31:53

And almost all the time we're getting positive, negative and neutral input and so refocusing on what are again realistic assessment that's one of the foundational pieces of the formula of psychological flexibility is realistic assessment what's working, what's not working so well, and there doesn't have to be a ton of judgment about it. It can really be assessment instead of judgment. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 32:23

Yeah, yeah. What I found a lot of time is kind of you had a good point there. It's always the positive. So what typically happens sometimes is actually a lot of times. So maybe some executive oh yeah, we need to go agile, okay, I've been in a situation where I've asked why, and sometimes you get an answer that maybe they don't know or it's because it's what everybody's doing.

Speaker 3: 32:57

Right, it's new, it must be better.

Speaker 2: 33:00

Yeah. Or what happens is some consulting companies come in and sold them and of course, you're a salesperson, you're going to say all the positive things oh, agile is going to do this for you and it's going to be great and everyone's doing it right and we can get you in for this much money. That happens a lot, right? Yeah, A lot of these consulting companies want to get the, especially big companies. They want to get it in there and they want to do well. So some executives are sold yeah, They've heard all the benefits. And then people like myself, once it actually comes in, people like me and Mark are more like realists. We hear them say this and then we're like, yeah, Well, and you can tell right away if they've been sold something. It's pretty easy to tell, right?

Speaker 3: 33:48

Well, they're working for the pot of gold, right?

Speaker 2: 33:51

Yes, yes, and it usually is literally a pot of gold, like a pile of money, is what they're thinking. Oh, we're going to be able to go faster, we can deliver more, right, our customers are going to be happier. And when I hear faster, my first thing is not real. Yeah, not real. I mean I haven't saw a thing on LinkedIn. I was reading a thing on LinkedIn this morning, you know, about agile coaches, and they were like, nope, we're going to go faster, right. And the caption was like nope. And the guy was like next agile coach. So they just want someone to tell them we can deliver faster. Now, we can deliver Not the whole thing faster, we can deliver a small piece faster. That's the main difference. We can't deliver everything.

Speaker 2: 34:36

We'll deliver a small slice quicker and get feedback. It might won't be everything. So, yeah, that's typically what I hear. And and Then when? When we come up and say no, it's it start talking about the. Well, you know it's gonna solve all of our problems, right? Well, it's gonna expose your problems and things actually get worse.

Speaker 3: 34:58

Right.

Speaker 2: 34:58

Yeah, things will actually get worse. Right, they'll get worse before they're gonna get better. Because they're like well, we thought agile was gonna fix all our problems. Well, somebody told you that it's not really gonna fix all your problem.

Speaker 4: 35:10

I'm gonna date myself. I think we're all in probably the same stage of life stage of life like it's like the bionic man Steve Austin right, faster, stronger.

Speaker 3: 35:23

Mm-hmm right, that's right and of course, didn't have any flaws. No, but but just about everything else does, and this this is one of the most interesting parts to psychological flexibility that people resist is Accepting the reality you have in this moment. Right and Accepting does not mean Approval up, so I'm using the word accepting in a very specific definition, which is that you are accepting the reality you have. It does not mean that you are then in judgment about whether or not it is good and Approved or bad and therefore disapproved of you know.

Speaker 3: 36:15

Um simple easy example, to use my, to use my small mammal. I have a, I have a small jack Russell and the last few weeks it's been Raining and 60s. It's been an extremely unusual start to summer here in Denver and it's been cool, and so we've been taking long walks, you know, in between when it's raining and sometimes even when it's raining. In the past several days it's been in the high, mid to high 90s and my dog is like I'm ready for my walk. There is, I'm glad you're ready for your walk, sweetheart, and Literally it's gonna burn your paws like now we have to go for a walk on a different time schedule and we can decide that that's good or bad.

Speaker 3: 37:03

Oh, how nice to get up and take an early walk. Or my husband and I took a walk last night at like 1030 at night, it was gorgeous out, wow. But In the judgment of, it's bad, because I want this now, right, you can see the judgment on my dog's face, like, yeah, but I'm ready for a walk now, and it's 4 pm and the answer is no, sweetie, there's no option for that. But it's interesting, you know, and I use that example sort of purposely, because we are essentially just we, you know, you know, less hairy, hopefully, and you know, by modal mammals instead of, you know, instead of walking around, like, like our pet dog. But but we have the same tantrum when reality isn't going the way we want it to.

Speaker 3: 37:56

And so, again, this is where that like Slowing down, taking a breath, getting grounded into the moment of like okay, and maybe even Ah, this isn't working. That's an assessment, a judgment is this isn't working and this is bad and this terrible thing is gonna happen. That's a judgment paired with eating way out of the present moment into the future, and then you're forecasting and doom casting right instead of Slowing down, noticing, I'm feeling really frustrated. I want this to happen right now and it isn't going to happen. That's where psychological flexibility comes in the noticing, then doing the assessment, then figuring out and this is the fun part of psychological flexibility what's my next best move. And occasionally, your next best move is to wait.

Speaker 3: 38:58

Right occasionally, your next best move is to phone a friend and get some help. Occasionally, your next best move is to keep Pushing. Occasionally, your next best move is to say we've come to a fatal error in this project. We have to go back right.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Yeah, that happens a lot too. Pivoting, we pivot, yeah, it's, it's, and I've, I've seen that too. I get, I have to, I've I've gotten frustrated. Well, but it's a good thing, because Once we've sold this idea of pivoting and you can, we talked to him about. But that actually to see it happen For me can be frustrating because you're like you know, we try to say, we try to teach Okay, it's, focus on one thing and let's do it to the end.

Speaker 2: 39:43

Yep, and then they start down that path and at some point sometimes they decide, you know what? We're not going any further, we're wasting money, we're going to pivot and I'm like what do you mean? We said we were gonna go all the way till we let us finish. But what I'm really trying to say is let's not, let's not have that. This. There's a concept called Stop starting, start finishing Meaning, and we don't want to like, if they bring work to us, we don't want to Do something halfway and then pivot again and then pivot and keep doing that. But pivoting isn't bad if you're, if you're wasting money and hey, we've wasted eight million dollars and and you have data, that's a big thing. Now, like my company, we're trying to get data, make data driven decisions, instead of saying yes because some executive says I don't want to do that anymore, you know, like that type thing.

Speaker 3: 40:36

So Well, we want to get away from impulsive decision-making, which is typically a thinking error, right, and we want to get away from emotional decision-making. Both. You know, both impulsive and emotional decisions don't tend to be based in good assessment of reality.

Speaker 2: 40:58

Yeah, exactly like that knee jerk, knee jerk reaction. I mean, there's something to be said for gut feeling, though, right, I mean you have a following intuition is critical.

Speaker 3: 41:07

Yeah, and you want to slow down and again back to that notion of overt versus covert, and you want to communicate clearly when your intuition is. You know what, what you think the outcome of following your intuition would be.

Speaker 2: 41:23

Right.

Speaker 4: 41:24

Right. What about when you have a situation with the elephants in the room and nobody wants to address it?

Speaker 3: 41:30

Well, this is where that covert thing is really important, the elephants in the room. Everybody is hiding from the elephant, except for everyone can see it, and so this is where talking about the process is really helpful, and not necessarily talking about content, but talking about process. So maybe the elephant in the room is that everybody is afraid of Jim, right, or everybody is afraid of Timper, and so at some point it's going to be useful. And maybe you do this privately and maybe you do this in the group, depending on your group.

Speaker 2: 42:05

But that notion of talking about managing emotional reactions, Right, and usually we're the ones, mark and I, are in the position that we typically in my experience we're the ones that typically, if no one else is going to do it, we have to bring it up. We're the good of the team. I've done that before. It's painful. I don't want to do it. As you know, my body screams don't do it.

Speaker 3: 42:29

but it's like you know the soldier, your job is to turn up the house lights, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 42:35

right, yes, and I can tell you every time I've done that I've had at the end result has been good. Yeah For. The team.

Speaker 4: 42:46

Greg, I'm sure you've never heard this before. Hey, greg, mary really is being disrespectful to me. Can you do something about that? Oh my gosh, that's the worst, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:58

Yeah, why are you coming to me? My first question is have you talked to Mary?

Speaker 3: 43:02

I've talked to Mary.

Speaker 2: 43:03

Yeah, yeah. Well, we're supposed to be servant leaders. And if the answer is no, I haven't talked to Mary, or like I don't want to. I don't want to be confrontational, I don't like conflict. I hear that a lot. I don't like conflict, yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:22

And that's. You know, people don't like conflict, and you know you and me both right Like I don't love conflict either, and part of that is based on the faulty assumption that every time you say something that isn't the same as someone else that you're in conflict. That's not necessarily true. Two people can have very divergent opinions to get along with. That's fine.

Speaker 2: 43:44

Correct.

Speaker 3: 43:46

You know tough conversations if they're taking more than 10 or 15 minutes, you're probably looping and that means that the process of the conversation has gone off the rails partially, often because someone the content isn't getting agreed to, and so that's where you again slow down, do an assessment, like this conversation doesn't seem to be going very far. What do we actually want to do here?

Speaker 2: 44:13

Exactly yes. So, Mark, do you have anything else for Dr Carey on this?

Speaker 4: 44:23

I guess, just to wrap this up, in some of the coaching realms that Greg and I deal with, it's a difference between listening to understand versus listening to respond, I would imagine.

Speaker 3: 44:41

Absolutely, and it's simultaneously paying attention to how is the conversation going, as well as what am I saying? What are they saying? That third piece of the process is critical to notice. Have you ever had a conversation with somebody and you look at them and they're clearly not listening to you.

Speaker 3: 45:03

Yes, absolutely You've lost their attention, they're blown out of their human brain in that portion of the conversation. Either they're in their inner dog or they're in their inner alligator, and it's great to get the process of the conversation back online, and that can be as simple as saying you look really far away.

Speaker 2: 45:24

Something else is on my. Usually multitasking has been my experience. Someone's trying to like if you're talking to your manager, they got too much going on and they're trying to answer an email while they're talking to you in their office and it's frustrating.

Speaker 3: 45:37

Yes, yes, and that's that focus in the present moment.

Speaker 2: 45:42

Right, well, we got too much going on nowadays. Right, it's hard, for I preach against multitasking, but I have to tell you I don't always follow my own advice because, right, sometimes I'm sure we all do right, we're all guilty of that. It's just you have so much coming at you all day long and we preach prioritization. It's just having to say no to things and people. I'm finding that right now in my company, people have a hard time saying no because, especially in work, you want to be people, want to be everything. Oh, you're the go-to person. They think that's going to get them the promotion, they're going to look good, right, and they never say no. They can take on more and more and more, and then they're the ones that they're sending emails at 10, 11 PM at night. And it's like yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:34

Yeah, exactly no, thank you. And again, that's where we try to talk against. You know, we want to do what's called a sustainable pace, not working nights and weekends and burning each other out. So well, dr Carey, this has been great. This is going to be part one for the listeners. With Dr Carey, we're going to have a part two coming up. Yay for us. Dr Carey's agreed to stick around a little bit longer. We twisted our arm. So Mark wrote her a big check so she decided to stay. So big, so big. Yes, so this is. We've been talking about psychological safety, perceived threats, all that good stuff. Part two is going to be coming up here. We're going to be talking about how to get out of victim mode. Have an example. Dr Carey is going to walk me through an example here. I'm going to be on the couch some more. So with that, this is the end of part one. This has been Mark, greg and Dr Carey. We'll see you in part two.