156. Guiding Teams Beyond the Ego for United Success with Christie Garcia

💭 Does ego get in the way of your leadership?

Christie Garcia is a leadership coach, a facilitator and a speaker, and the founder of Mindful Choice Leadership Academy. She specializes in helping leaders with their self-awareness and management of ego.

If you've ever struggled with the shift from a superstar individual contributor to a team leader, this episode promises not only insights but also practical strategies for navigating that change. We're dissecting the often-overlooked human element in leadership development, focusing on the necessity to transition from an 'I' mentality to a collaborative 'we' perspective.

Christie shares how our decisions are subtly shaped by our ego, and the conversation steers towards the vital journey of self-awareness for leaders aiming to inspire and guide their teams effectively. This candid dialogue underscores the role of intentional communication in managing not only oneself but also understanding your team members' egos.

Download this episode to know how you can foster an environment where every voice can contribute to united success without the overshadowing presence of individual ego.

Timecode:
0:01 Introduction and Navigating Ego in Leadership Transition
11:09 Navigating Leadership and Ego Dynamics
17:55 Identifying and Managing Different Ego Types
20:45 Understanding Ego Dynamics in Leadership
31:09 Understanding and Managing Ego in Communication
32:09 Managing Egos in Team Conversations
38:57 Aligning Egos for Effective Leadership

🌐 Connect with Christie:
• Website: https://www.mindfulchoiceacademy.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiegarcia/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christiegarcia_
• Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulchoice_

Books Mentioned:
• Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment book by Eckhart Tolle
• Power of Vulnerability book by Brene Brown

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:26

Hey everyone and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Christie Garcia. Christie is a leadership coach, a facilitator and a speaker, and she's the founder of Mindful Choice Leadership Academy, and this Mindful Choice thing is gonna be something that will definitely come up. She specializes in helping leaders with their self-awareness and management of ego, and that's going to be our key topic today. What is this thing called ego? Why does it get in our road, how do we struggle with it and how can we best manage our ego to become a better leader? So, I'm really interested to see where this conversation goes today. So, without any further ado, Christie, I'd love it if you would please say hello to our audience, and I'd love to know a little bit about your background and what led you to be focused specifically on this concept of mindfulness, of self-awareness and ego.

Christie Garcia: 1:21

Thanks for having me, Mick, and hello to everybody that's listening. I hope that I can add some value to your day and bring some wisdom to your own leadership. Ah, the ego. Yes, ego management. What brought me here? You know it's a long story, as we all have our own ego and I think I learned about mine before I felt I could create something and actually help others manage theirs. So, I think where the interest of ego management came into place?

Christie Garcia: 1:43

I was in sales and recruiting for about 10 years in my career and I started to realize the patterns of leadership. You know, really great people get promoted because of their individual contributions to the organization and then, once they get to leadership, they fail for 2, 3, 4 years because it's hard. It's a big mindset transition. As you know, we go from I win, I got to be the best, I got to get run, I got to do this, I got to do that and my way must be the best way. To now, it doesn't matter what your way is and it doesn't matter if you win, because if your team's not the finish line with you, there's no winning.

Christie Garcia: 2:14

And so really shifting that mindset to the we mindset, and I was trying to figure out what, where's the gap in the old leadership, you know, development model? And it was just there were no humans involved. Right, it was very task oriented, very skill oriented, competency oriented, and you never just talk about the people. So it was kind of this cookie cutter training world. This was 13 years ago. So, leadership and development has changed dramatically in the last decade, and I think we've talked more to start focusing about the people, the human that is behind the leadership title, and realizing that if we don't support them as an individual and we just keep giving them these old school tactics or classic tactics and say, hey, you're a leader, you should do X, Y and Z.

Christie Garcia: 2:55

It just doesn't work, and so the Leadership Academy came from a place of looking at it, as every individual has their own need of becoming a better leader. What is it that they need? Where do we meet them? Where they're at now, without necessarily individual coaching, but having a model that allows people to recognize. This is where I'm at. These are my you know the current gifts, this is my current impact, and this is where I want to go, and so that's really where ego management became an interest to me, and I started building out a program that allowed people to recognize you know which ego is driving me.

Christie Garcia: 3:24

What is that? Unconscious mindset, beliefs and behaviors, which is what I refer to as the ego, something that lives in every single one of us. 99% of the time, we're unconsciously going through emotions, which means the ego is unconsciously making your decisions 99% of the time. So being able to just identify those, learn what it is and be more intentional as a leader allows you to show up and be more successful, communicate more effectively, maximize your impact, align your team members, get everybody to the finish line quicker and easier.

Mick Spiers: 3:55

Really interesting, Christie, and there's already a lot to unpack there. I would like to talk about that tricky transition that you spoke about. That's exactly why we set up this podcast in the first place was the rollercoaster, the rollercoaster of emotions that a first-time leader goes through, that they have been usually an individual contributor that has been at the top of their craft. They've been a great software engineer, great nurse, great accountant, whatever the case may be. They get that tap on the shoulder and say congratulations, you're a leader. But then it's the now. What am I going to do with that? So they have the euphoric eyes of being recognized and then the thought of anxiety when they realize that no one has shown them what it takes to be a leader. So there is that tricky period and you said two to three years, sometimes it can be longer that awareness period of realizing that what got them to where they are is not going to serve them and get them to where they want to go now. Why do you think that transition is so tricky?

Christie Garcia: 4:44

I think there's a few things, but I think the biggest reality check is one the ego is what drives us typically to get that promotion right. It drives us to win, it drives us to be the best. It drives us for success our whole life. I mean, whether we're trying to get an A on a test, whether we're trying to be the superstar on the sports field, whether we're trying to be the top of our class in college, like whatever it is, that ego is what's driving us to succeed.

Christie Garcia: 5:10

Then we start getting into our career and we're building, and we're growing and again that ego is pushing us to be successful, and so the ego is driven by I. I take care of me first, not saying that we're not kind and we can't be loving and we can't be thoughtful in that arena, but I take care of me first is where that ego makes us successful in our younger years.

Christie Garcia: 5:29

Unfortunately, what happens is, as we become more successful, we start getting into partnerships, into leadership roles, into relationships, personally and professionally. That, I, really is no longer as dominant, right? You now have to shift into that way, and so when leaders get pushed into their leadership role for the first time, or even just a higher level, I think the ego follows us no matter what. But in that first line of leadership, there is that euphoric like wow, I did it, I'm awesome. But now imposter kicks in, right. Like okay, I did it, but am I do? I deserve this? And now I have to prove myself.

Christie Garcia: 6:03

So they start driving themselves even harder, typically, and they start becoming even more over-controlling or more dominant or more aggressive, or they do the opposite. They shut down and they start to be more passive, like just, I just got to get my team to like me, I can't hold them accountable. It hurts their feelings, right. And so, depending on which their ego type is, they fall into those ego traps that start to then hold them back. They might've been the tools and the skills that got them to the success of this leadership role, but once they get to that role, those tools truly were designed for individual success.

Christie Garcia: 6:34

And until they start to shift and become aware of their tone of voice, their body language, their mindsets, their beliefs around delegation and developing others, a lot of times the ego doesn't want to give away our skills and our success gifts, because then we have competition and I no longer have value or worth.

Christie Garcia: 6:51

So as an individual computer or contributor who is successful, who now is a leader, who has to make a lot of successful individuals, you have to be willing to forfeit a lot of the things that your ego has once told you was your safety net. This is what made you valuable, this is what made you important. And so until you can kind of become aware of one, the belief systems. But to recognize the fears of the imposter and that ghost you're chasing, to prove yourself that you're worth it, you have to learn to manage up and down, and a lot of times that first line manager only manages up. They just want to get the boss to notice them, which typically means they struggle with their team members. And the only way your boss is going to notice you if you get those team members elevated right.

Mick Spiers: 7:36

And so it's that battle, that internal battle they face. Yeah, all right. So lots there to go through. I want to unpack it almost one at a time, so I'm going to feel like part of it is about celebrating reward, right? So when they're an individual contributor, they were applauded and it felt really good. Probably dopamine releases in the brain of, oh, I'm on stage, I'm getting an award, it's all about me.

Mick Spiers: 7:51

And then there's a discovery one day that it's not about you anymore, it's not about you anymore, and that can be really challenging. So the things that you used to get celebrated and rewarded for now are the same things that are going to hold you back. They're going to become limiting beliefs or challenges in your ability as a leader and to inspire those around you. In fact, you're going to leave the team behind you and you're not going to reach the levels that you went. And then I'm hearing a spiral. In fact I'd love to play this past year, Christie, because then you spoke about imposter syndrome, starting to second guess themselves. And once they start second guessing themselves, needing, to use your words, prove themselves and, depending on whether they go with a mindset shift to it's not about me anymore or they stick in the it's all about me mindset. That could be a spiral that actually goes down and down and down, because they're trying to prove themselves every day and everything they're doing to prove themselves is digging themselves deeper into that hole. How does that sit with you?

Christie Garcia: 8:52

Absolutely. I think that's the sabotaging tactic of the ego. You know, those unconscious behaviors are absolutely a downward spiral and typically when we get into that spiral, unless we're conscious enough to catch ourselves, you just keep going down and you spin faster and faster and faster and it either becomes, you know, the paralysis of. So there's three egos that I refer to and depending on which ego type you are, it could be the you know, the controller ego over controls to filling control. So that downward spiral can be over micromanagement, over controlling, over aggressive, higher expectations that are unrealistic, right, and so it goes into that place. The complier ego could go into a place of you know what, I'm just going to let everybody do what they want because the controlling wasn't working. So I'm just going to let go of all control and say you know what it's on, you guys and you know, forfeit any kind of boundary, any expectation, any accountability, and so they kind of just shut off that way. But they have all the friends, their team loves them because my boss is cool, yeah, this is fun, but there's no real success attached to it. And then you've got the protector. Depending if they have a secondary of a controller or complier, they can come across as very intense, very direct, very black and white, very high stress, non-emotional, unrelatable, and so knowing who you're dealing with in these roles can really help these managers succeed quicker and find the strength in their ego.

Christie Garcia: 10:11

You know, I was just talking to a client. The goal is not to get rid of the ego. The goal is to manage the ego, because the ego is part of us. It's both our strengths and our weaknesses. It got us the success we have. Now we have to learn to use it in this new season of life, in this new chapter, to actually help us get to the next level, and with that it just becomes managed. So it's about ego management, not killing the ego and making the ego disappear. So really using it in our power, using it in our favor, so we can be our best self and lead from a place of balance.

Mick Spiers: 10:43

So I'm hearing this balance there in between deep micromanagement through to almost abandonment. Maybe that's not the right word, but it's certainly abdication, like abdicating and going, oh you know, backing right off, and it might take a while to fix that pendulum between command and control, micromanagement et cetera, all the way through over. There's at least two questions that I want to ask there, but I'll start one at a time. I'm going to put it to you. Least two questions that I want to ask there, but I'll start one at a time, I'm going to put it to you. Do you think it's even more difficult for that leader to make that transition the better they were at their job? So if they were amazing, the best. I'll use that software engineer analogy again the best software engineer that the company's ever seen right, so incredibly talented. Do you think it's even more difficult for them to make the transition than someone that was good at their job but not superstar?

Christie Garcia: 11:36

That's an interesting question. I think, personally, that it doesn't matter how good they were at their job. I think it's the ego and motivator that made them good at their job. That's going to depend on how they're able to shift Controllers and protectors. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses right, and if they're on the controller protector side, they typically have a stronger sense of worth and value. As far as, like, I'm great at my job, I do it best, do it my way, do it you know, or the highway. So that mindset is just as hard to change as the mindset of I don't want to hold my team accountable because it's really uncomfortable and I don't want anybody to get upset at me. Right, it's the same energy, it's the same tactic. They just look different and one's more aggressive and one's a little softer. But personally it takes just as much effort and energy to change that mindset.

Mick Spiers: 12:24

Yeah, nice answer and you're touching on exactly what I was thinking.

Mick Spiers: 12:27

It's the my way or the highway kind of thing that if they were particularly talented at their craft, that it may be more difficult to let go because they know how to do that task that they're giving you to, that they're kind of empowering you to get on with or not empowering maybe micromanaging you to get on with, for them to let go and to realize that no, this person's going to do it their own way and different is not wrong as long as they get the job done.

Mick Spiers: 12:52

But I love what you're saying there. It's more about what was the motivation in the first place, what was motivating them to be good at that, and how can they then channel that same motivation, I'm going to say, in a positive way instead of a negative way, because if it's given to a negative way, they might avoid challenging conversations. They might like if the glory of everyone liking them let's pick on that one for a second If they loved being an individual contributor and their fuel was the applause and oh that Christie, she's amazing, we all love Christie, she's cool. And now Christie's in a leadership role and she has to have a challenging conversation about performance with an individual. Christie may shirk that conversation because she wants everyone to still like her. How does that sit with you?

Christie Garcia: 13:35

Yes, absolutely. And a lot of times what happens with those complier leaders is a lot of them do have complier controller in them, and so their motivator was to win and be the best. But the dominant was be the best and win to be liked. And so when they get into these leadership roles, a lot of times what happens is they don't want to hold people accountable, so they'll just work themselves ragged. They'll work long hours, they'll do all the extra work, they'll make sure everything is done to meet a certain standard. So their boss still likes them, but they're not managing down at all, and so they're just, they're burned out, they're exhausted and then eventually they get resentful towards our team members. Now everybody's lazy, no one's accountable, and it becomes all of their fault. So I think the biggest thing for you know the question you're asking is recognizing self-awareness around their leadership tactics and their belief systems. You know what happens is no matter how successful you are as an individual contributor, if you get into a leadership role and these behaviors start to surface.

Christie Garcia: 14:33

These are unconscious behaviors. You know so whenever we're talking to an executive or an HR director and they're telling me about their leadership qualities and the behaviors they're dealing with and how frustrating they are. I always remind them these are unconscious ego tactics. These are not conscious behaviors. No one is walking in the room and saying you know what I really want to be liked today? I'm going to make sure everybody in the room does X, y and Z to make sure I'm liked right. That's unconscious and so. Or vice versa, I'm going to go in here and I'm going to manage everybody. I'm going to control this situation. So it's done exactly how I want it. No one will outrightly say I micromanage, right, it hurts people. When that truth comes out it's like a hard sting, like, oh, I didn't know, I did that, I thought everybody liked me. And so you know, recognizing that, helping someone understand their ego and these unconscious behaviors really can change behavior drastically.

Christie Garcia: 15:20

I always tell you, within three to six weeks you start to see a shift when you start to point out someone's ego, because once you know something it's a lot harder to turn it off and say, oh, that doesn't really happen. But most of the times we don't address people that way. We either give them feedback that's too aggressive and it's coming from our own ego, so people don't hear it, or we give it in a way, that's too sugar-coated and again, they don't hear the severity of it or it's not making sense or they can't see it in real time. When you go from the ego standpoint and you just normalize these behaviors, everybody does it. If you fall into these categories, this is what it looks like. It is normal, it's okay. You're not a bad person. Now we know you do it. Let's change it, let's figure out what the motivator is and let's figure out how to manage it so you can thrive sooner.

Mick Spiers: 16:00

Yeah, excellent. So I'm hearing a lot about intrinsic motivation and that quite often it's subconscious and unless you do, either hold the mirror up to yourself or someone else helps you to see it, it may not surface itself. You may not be aware of the behaviors that are now extrinsic behaviors, but they are intrinsically driven. You may not even be aware be liked by their boss, right? So I'm going to throw something out there.

Mick Spiers: 16:24

As a leader myself, I know that when, let's say, a junior leader, a team leader, whatever the case might be, when they come to me and they're so proud of their team and they say, oh boss, my team have done this, they've knocked it out of the park. I'm so proud of them, they're brilliant. I'm sitting there privately applauding them, whether they know it or not, and I do try to bring it to their attention. Thank you for your leadership. So thank you for bringing to my attention your team's success, but thank you for your leadership. You created the environment where they were able to do that.

Mick Spiers: 17:06

But one of the I'm going to say one of the challenges, one of the limiting beliefs that prevents them from doing that, is they think that if they come to their boss and say, hey, boss, my team were amazing, they did this, but there's no credit for them in there. Now I'm trying to say that senior leaders do not look at it that way. They instantly see that it was you that created the environment for the success, right? So they know it's about you, that in your leadership style, you don't need to go and say, boss, I am amazing, I did this. I did that Because your team are going to hate you first of all, and your boss is going to cringe, right? So how do we get people past that limiting belief of, when they go to senior management, that they should be talking about their team and not themselves?

Christie Garcia: 17:48

Well, so that's an ego tactic I love that you brought this one up and there is two sides of it, right. There's the ego that takes no credit, and then there's the ego that takes all the credit. And so where we're leading from our best self is when we use all three egos and we balance it out, and so you know how to be confident in the value you're bringing to the table, so you don't have that imposter syndrome, so you're not always chasing the ghost, you don't have to always prove yourself and you just know your worth. Like, yeah, I was really good at motivating my team. I held them accountable. We aligned, communicated, effectively, everybody was on the same page right, that is leadership.

Christie Garcia: 18:21

Now, with that being said, being able to recognize that you can't do what you do without everybody on your team doing it too right, and so making sure that there's a balance there, that's really the value, when you can see both sides of that model having confidence in yourself while also being able to have confidence and brag about your team because they're doing a kick-ass job, and so that's what's really fun.

Christie Garcia: 18:42

When you start to manage the egos, you start to manage back that need to prove yourself or that other opposite one, that's just like I ain't gonna take the credit because I don't believe that I was good enough. I could have done better. And so recognizing where is that ego holding someone back and really the easiest way to do that again, you know, whether you do the ego training itself or really just helping people recognize, you know what is your value and worth and having that conversation, what are the skills you bring to the table. You know reflecting after big projects. You know reflecting after big projects. You know great questions for the executive or the higher level leader to ask in that moment is what did you do to get your team to the pitch, like how did you support them?

Christie Garcia: 19:16

You know so you're not telling them you did a great job and your leadership was awesome. You're letting them tell you and then you get to praise them Right. And so a lot of times, when we just tell someone you know how great they're doing, they can shut off and they can push it aside. Now some people really struggle with what they did. They don't really know because, again, that's a conscious action and a lot of us are just unconsciously going through the motions and so if they're like I think I just, you know, I just let them do their thing and they did a really great job, that's when the leader can come and say well, this is what I noticed you did, and to help point it out so that they can do more of it.

Mick Spiers: 19:46

Yeah, I love that and I love that. It's going to turn into a learning moment right there and a growth moment as well, positive or negative, whichever way it goes. So, by asking the question oh so, what was it that you did that got this great result from your team and it might surprise them the first time they hear it, but they have to stop and reflect and think, yeah, what did I do? Oh, yeah, I did. I did empower them, I did create the environment where they could do this work and all of this kind of stuff, and it might even be and what did you learn about yourself? And what did you learn about your team? And what would you do differently next time? It's just to get those juices going and if they don't do that reflection, they won't get the full benefit of the lesson. So that next time the same project comes up, will they do it the same way or will they do a little tweak, right? So, yeah, really good, love that question.

Mick Spiers: 20:29

Okay, so we've danced around this a little bit through at different times, but you've spoken about three types of ego. I'd like to codify that right now, so it's a good, clean takeaway for people in the audience. What do you mean by three types of ego?

Christie Garcia: 20:43

Yeah. So at Mindful Choice we talk ego management. So the first thing we do is we identify which egos are in the room. We all have one to two dominant egos and we've bucketed them into three categories. There is the complier ego, controller ego and then the protector ego.

Christie Garcia: 21:03

The complier ego is motivated by being liked and so its value is, you know, taking care of people. It's super caring and thoughtful and a good team player. Anything that's associated with people People first, tasks second. Unfortunately, the downside of the complier ego is that it can overgive, it can avoid conflict. It struggles to speak truth in a difficult situation. They go along, to get along, so they don't want to rock the boat, so there can be some passiveness in there. Unfortunately, what happens with the complier is they'll give, give, give, give, give until they can't anymore. Then they explode and they've got resentment and all this buildup could be three, four, five, six months where they've taken, taken, take, and now they just can't take anymore and so they explode. All the stuff that's happened and everybody's like, uh whoa, what just happened? And you lost everybody. They just think you're the crazy person now yelling because they're not sure what you're yelling about. So that's typically the pattern of the complier ego Good intentions, people driven the protector is the one in the center of the chart, and when we look at the protector, it is where our values live, it's where our authentic confidence, our courageous truth, where we have the ability to speak up even when it's difficult, and do what's right for others, even if it's not what everybody is wanting to happen, and so making sure that it's balanced.

Christie Garcia: 22:16

They love facts, they love logic, they love reasoning, and then they make choices and decisions based on what is right for everybody involved. Unfortunately, what happens? Because we're dealing with values and strong ethics and integrity that can tend to be given into the black and white zone, and so worth and value comes from being right, and so if they're not right, they have no worth, which means a lot of times they can come across as confrontational. If they're questioning if they did the right thing, if they messed up, they might, you know, be more combative versus you know, listening and hearing what went wrong, and so there could be a lot of confrontation. In this communication style, they can be very aggressive or very passive, so they can be very loud and in your face, around what is their opinion, or they can be very passive and come across as just arrogant, but the silent arrogant at the room, looking down on people, and so again, knowing the balance there, because that is where, again, our authentic confidence and our integrity live.

Christie Garcia: 23:08

And then you've got the controller. The controller is motivated by being the best and winning, and so lots of drive, lots of ambition, high standards, always learning, wants to grow, wants to be better. Unfortunately, with that motivation it comes with a lot of. They're quick thinkers and so my way, or the highway, freight train energy, get on the bus or get off. Lots of motivation and inspiration lives in the controller ego, so people want to follow that energy. Unfortunately, sometimes that energy moves too fast, so we leave people behind, and that's typically what happens is we either start to micromanage or we just give up on people too soon, and so we end up at the finish line by ourselves.

Mick Spiers: 23:46

All right, so really interesting, Christie, I'm going to throw something to the audience here. All right, so really interesting, Christie, I'm going to throw something to the audience here. This is your first kind of call to action here, so I'm sure that you're listening to this. You're listening to Christie, I'm going to put it out there and say that you're listening to this thing. You're listening to complier, protector and controller, and I'm going to hazard a guess that at least part of your mind jumped to. I know someone like that. Ah, I know Christie's talking about Jim, or Christie's talking about Sukjit or whoever it is that in your team you probably just externalized what Christie was saying.

Mick Spiers: 24:17

Here's my challenge. I want you to look in the mirror, not outwards. I want you to look in the mirror and go and you heard Christie say there's probably one to two of those egos that are dominant with you Complier, protector, controller. I want you to look in the mirror and go. I wonder where I fit on that spectrum. Which are my dominant egos, not just externalize it. Now, help us out here, Christie. We mentioned that a lot of this is intrinsic motivation. It's subconscious. How do we bring the subconscious to the conscious?

Christie Garcia: 24:45

Yeah, and that's the hard part, a lot of times I'll have people say, oh, we don't need to do the assessment, we'll just, you know, do it on our own.

Christie Garcia: 24:52

Well, the reality is this is very unconscious behaviors you know.

Christie Garcia: 24:55

Most likely your listeners are at least in their late twenties in this leadership role Every now and you might have a younger leader, but you've lived some life, which means this ego has been with you for a very long time. It gets very smart and it knows how to outsmart you so that it sticks around. And so when you can start to ask people around you, how do I make you feel in this situation? Or you start to pay attention, do I get on my soapbox during meetings? Am I one to let other people talk? Am I one that tells people exactly what to do, or do I listen and help? You know, offer more insight? A lot of times we buy our own press, though, so it doesn't matter how much you sit there and say, well, do I do this or not do this? If someone doesn't point it out, very rarely will you ever recognize somebody's ego tactics, because most of the time until we come conscious, we don't even know that that happened, and a lot of times we black this stuff out.

Christie Garcia: 25:42

So when someone does bring it to our attention like, oh, you were a real jerk last week. Sometimes we'll know, but sometimes you will write it off. Well, they were a jerk first and we justify it Right. And so, being able to really be honest with yourself, where are? Where are you consistently running into problems? Are you finding that there's a lot of drama around you? You know, one of the number one things I hear is, oh, I hate drama. Well, drama is the ego's best friend. It thrives in drama, and whether you think of drama as gossiping in the break room, that's one type of drama and whether you think of drama as gossiping in the break room.

Christie Garcia: 26:13

that's one type of drama. Another type of drama is ignoring the gossip in the break room and you overlooking it or not addressing it as a leader right, that's another type of drama, because you're letting drama now surround you and you're ignoring it.

Christie Garcia: 26:24

Then there's another type of drama where we just act like it's not happening and we completely diminish it and we act like whatever. There's no humans. We got tasks to keep moving forward. We don't need to have emotions around this, so those are all ego tactics all around drama, but your approach to it can create more drama on the team. My boss doesn't care about me, he's aloof, they don't really matter, or he's right in the mix of it and he's now a culprit of the drama, right? Does that make sense?

Mick Spiers: 26:51

Yeah, it does, and there's two interesting things that came up for me there. The first one was that your ego learns to outsmart even yourself. So even if you are self-aware of it, unless you're careful here, it just outsmarts you anyway. That's really interesting because it's been with you for a very long time. And then when you started talking about this drama I mentioned the word dopamine earlier but I started thinking about that, that about dopamine releases in the brain, that part of you saying I don't like that drama. But in other respects your ego is getting fueled in there because you might be the person that fixes the problem and then that feels good, right. So there is a drama. The drama might then become fueled, it gets kind of dramatized, but then if you're the hero that fixes it now, your ego feels good about itself. Again. I fix dramas. Now I'm hearing a pattern. Sorry, Cristy, my mind.

Christie Garcia: 27:44

Yeah, you just went down.

Mick Spiers: 27:46

My mind just went to this part where your subconscious ego is now purposely starting fires so you can be the one that puts the fire out and get the credit. Sorry, that's where I went, but that may not be the same for everyone. But these behaviors, are they almost a perpetual motion machine where your ego takes over? Tell me what you think of that.

Christie Garcia: 28:07

Absolutely, and I think that's what happens 95% of the time in human interactions, right? What you're talking about is as simple as someone writes an email. If a protector writes an email, it's going to be short and sweet. May not be sweet, just short, short to the point. It's going to have maybe one or two sentences. Hey, I need this by this date. Have a good day. I probably wouldn't have a good day.

Mick Spiers: 28:25

Be like John, I need this.

Christie Garcia: 28:27

Get it to me when it's done. Sally and John, if he's a complier, he'd be like, wow, sally's a real jerk. She's so bossy, she doesn't tell me anything and all she wants is she just demands stuff all the time, right? So that's how she perceived that. That was not the intention at all. But it goes back to perception, and intention is really. What happens here is when we, when an ego delivers on their perception, creates an impact based on someone else's perception, and now you've got this cycle of drama that happens. So now Sally's kind of rolling around the office, or John's rolling around the office, super annoyed at Sally because Sally's short and doesn't have any respect for his time or whatever. Right, whatever story one tells when their boss bosses them around.

Mick Spiers: 29:04

Or maybe that's not even his boss.

Christie Garcia: 29:05

Maybe it's his colleague, and so now you've got resentment there. Sally has no idea this is even happening, because she's just going through her to-do list, just making that stuff happen, checking her emails, doing her thing right. Well, really all we needed to do if Sally would have said hey, John, I need this done by X day, Can you get it back to me? Have a good day. Just those two intros could have made such a difference for that complier to receive it and not either respond to it.

Mick Spiers: 29:30

Does that make sense?

Christie Garcia: 29:31

And so that's where that sabotaging drama happens. Most of it is very unconscious, most of it's very unintentional, but it happens. And that goes back to that self-awareness component. If we're not aware, if someone externally doesn't tell us our impact, it's really hard to change that impact because we don't even know that's how it's coming across. And so that's where third party or the higher up in leadership you go having a coach, having someone that will just be honest with you, because the higher in leadership you go, the less people are willing to tell you the truth. And working with people whether it's a coach, whether it's a mentor, whether it's a colleague that will sit down and say hey, you know, mick, these are some of the tactics you're using on the team and it's not working. And you might want to get defensive, you might want to be a jerk about it, but recognizing that's your ego and having someone that's conscious enough to say I get it, it hurts, that stings, but wouldn't you rather know, because this is the impact you're creating and this is the impact it's going to have on your team's success? Now you have interest and you have motivation to change that thing and you can now silence the ego. So your best self hears it.

Christie Garcia: 30:28

When we give feedback and it's coming from one ego to another, there's no responding to that. You just start to pick and be like, oh whatever, he just is using that because he got mad at me because I did this one thing. You know, and that's an ego's response to feedback, or well, it was just that one time. I don't normally do it like that and we start to make excuses to justify our behavior, versus saying, wow, that wasn't my intention. This is how you know what my intention was. And now someone say, oh well, if that was your intention, just do X, y, d, and that would have landed Right. And so it becomes an informative discussion versus a accusation of. You know, my ego thinks your ego is bad and we're just going to have a tip over it.

Mick Spiers: 31:02

The words that are coming into my mind right now, Christie, and this is going to take a little while, so bear with me for a bit. It's clash of egos, and I'm hearing a clash of egos that could be subsurface, or a clash of egos that could be on the surface, and bear with me for a second. So I do fit into the category of writing emails of you know. Hi, Christie, how are you doing today? How was your weekend? I hope the kids are great. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'd love to have a meeting with you this week about topic X. What time can we fit it in? Have a great day. Cheers, mick. Now that's me. Now, the way that I rationalize that is that it's from a place of genuine care, but, listening to you, it could be my complier ego taking over right, potentially.

Christie Garcia: 31:46

Yes, and I want to make sure we justify our ego. Is both our strengths and our weakness right? So there is 33% value in that human genuine care right?

Mick Spiers: 31:56

Yes, but where I come with the clash of egos or the, and here, where I come with the clash of egos, there's going to be some people that receive that email and go oh Mick, that's lovely and yeah, I had a great day, and others are going to be going. Just get to the point.

Christie Garcia: 32:11

Right, but they won't read it at all because it's too long.

Mick Spiers: 32:13

Yeah right, it's too long.

Mick Spiers: 32:15

Absolutely and all this kind of stuff and same in reverse. Now, if there's a protector ego or a controller ego that is writing the email, there's going to be people that receive that and go, whoa, this person doesn't value me, they don't see me, they don't listen to me, they don't care about me, all of this kind of stuff. So I'm hearing this kind of clash of egos. So what I'm curious about here, Christie, is about subsurface clash of egos. So let's say that someone has said some throwaway sentence in a meeting and the person on the receiving end then thinks about that for three days, for five days, for seven days. They can't let go of it. And the person that said that sentence that offended them. Their next thought is oh, what are we having for lunch today? And the conversation is immediately forgotten for them. And yet the other person's hanging on to it for days or even a week. How dangerous is that and how do we address that kind of subconscious or subsurface clash of egos?

Christie Garcia: 33:12

That's such a good question because I think that's what's happening 95% of the time in our conversations. We don't realize that we're triggering someone else because again, there's other egos in the room. And one thing we have to be, careful of. We're not responsible for other people's ego, right, and so a lot of times we want to take ownership and take blame of a situation, and the reality is is we can only take ownership of our part. One of the things that I talk about ego management, the three ways to manage it.

Christie Garcia: 33:37

One you have to be self-aware Now there's self-awareness, to know your perception, like when I'm talking in a room of people, or even just one-on-one, recognizing the other person's body language, understanding when someone shuts down, maybe noticing when they back up and it's like that's not what you intended or you thought would happen, but not calling that out right and just ignoring it.

Christie Garcia: 33:57

Most likely there was some visual sign or visceral feeling that shifted in the room when someone got triggered. When that individual got triggered, the speaker didn't recognize it right Because they weren't conscious enough to even pay attention to that. So that's their ego's problem. With that being said, I think this is why it's really important to make sure that we are recognizing not only our own ego but also the egos in the room, because you can tailor language to fit the different egos in the room. You can tailor language to recognize. You know this topic is most likely going to affect these three people that are in the room, because they're people first and this is a task oriented topic, and so, again, there's that component. The other component is being able to call out those little elephants as they show up and knowing you know if something doesn't feel good, it's not just the speaker's responsibility to say, wow, I just noticed, I triggered the room.

Christie Garcia: 34:46

It's making sure that everybody in the room is empowered to recognize when they're triggered, because you know it goes back to if we don't know what someone else is thinking, we can't possibly change what we've said or what we've done because we don't even know that it was wrong. And so it's that external approach that we all have to take, and if you're sitting in a room with people one being approachable enough for someone to feel that they can trust you to say, hey, that doesn't sit well.

Christie Garcia: 35:10

But two, also knowing, as a leader, to give people permission. Hey, does that not sit well with anybody. How can we have this conversation? Because there are two different ego types. One is going to fester on that for months at a time, and they and ego types One is going to fester on that for months at a time and they're just never going to talk about it.

Christie Garcia: 35:23

The other one's like oh, we said it, we had a cash out about it, I thought we moved on from it. Right, like the protector loves confrontation, that's how they thrive. And like debating things and having intense conversations, controllers they didn't even know they're being intense because that's just how they communicate, because there's a lot of passion and drive behind their communication and so you know, if you hear something that's triggering, most likely it's unintentional. And that's where we can start to put ego language into a space of a team. You can really start to diffuse some of those miscommunications that are just natural human behaviors, that are really really unintentional, but they can make wounds, they can build resentment and then ultimately leave to people leaving a job because they thought someone was intentionally trying to hurt their feelings and really that wasn't the case.

Mick Spiers: 36:04

All right. So we're hearing elements of awareness, we're hearing elements of speak up and, I'm hoping, the psychological safety that will allow people to do so. The interesting thing you said was ego language. Can you give us some examples of what you mean by ego language?

Christie Garcia: 36:18

Yeah. So when we're talking to a room, making sure you know compliers, they're people driven. So making sure whatever you're talking about, the topic takes care of the people. It's considering the people involved. Why does this matter to the people? How is this going to impact the people?

Christie Garcia: 36:31

Typically, that's where your compliers are going to perk up. They want to hear that. Now they might not like it and you still might trigger an ego, but at least they're hearing like okay, that first question is answered. Second for the protectors is they want to know the facts. Give me the facts, the logic, the reasoning behind this. Why are we doing this and why does it make sense? And it's not just an opinion.

Christie Garcia: 36:50

And so giving them more of the, you know, ultimate logic that goes with the decision. And then you've got the controllers. Tell me how we're going to all win and be the best. How are we getting to the finish line, why does this make sense and how are we going to do it the fastest? And so if you can touch on those three components when you're talking to a group of people or know what you go is in front of you and make sure you talk on that point, then you can typically start to diffuse some of the initial confrontation or judgments or you know things that typically arise when someone says something about a new plan or a new project or whatever. The thing may be right and I think that's where just having a conscious enough intention around the words you use will have you be more ego managed in that moment than if you didn't go in with that conscious thought.

Mick Spiers: 37:33

Yeah, really loving it, christy, it sounds like a very intentional act and if you think about almost I'm going to talk about a presentation now, but we can juxtapose this over into any type of meeting. It can be a workshop or anything. And it's know your audience. And now, beyond knowing your audience, it's knowing what egos are in the room. What egos do we have in room? Do we have compliers, do we have protectors, do we have controllers? And in our agenda, in our message, in our meeting, are we covering what those three egos need? And you might have a mixed bag of them in the room. And as long as you touch on those characteristics that you just spoke about, Christie, everyone's going to walk away, going. Yeah, I get it. I get it, I'm on board here. How does that sit with you?

Christie Garcia: 38:18

Be aligned for sure. You may not have everybody on board. That might be an over promise but you can at least have better alignment or awareness of where everyone stands, and I think that's at least allowed new conversation to be had. A lot of times we just assume people are on the same page and we're good, let's move on. And no one's on the same page.

Mick Spiers: 38:37

Yeah, cool, all right, so that's our second call to action today, team, think about meetings that you run, presentations that you give, et cetera. Think about your audience, think about the egos in the room and have we covered the bases for our three different egos, our compliers, our protectors and our controllers? Really love it, Christie. Come back to clash of egos. Then there's going to be times where there is a surfaced clash of egos in the room, and let's give a different scenario now. Let's say so. You might be the senior leader in the room, and you've got a room full of junior leaders and you've got a protector and a controller that are going at each other, or a controller and a complier that are not seeing eye to eye. What do you do in overt clash of egos when it's on the surface, in front of everyone to see?

Christie Garcia: 39:23

That's actually the easiest one to manage. One, because if we see it, we can call it out right. It's usually the unspoken ones that are a lot harder to acknowledge. So when you start seeing that one, your message didn't land. Or two, a verbal or physical, like obvious confrontation going on, that's when you just pause. We need a timeout and let's talk about this right.

Christie Garcia: 39:44

I mean, you just have to stop. Someone has to be courageous enough to say we're not aligned, we're on the same team and right now we're not acting like it. Let's talk and let's create the outcome. You know the easiest way in those situations. Most of the time, people want the same thing. They're arguing about how to make that happen right, especially when you think about team members looking at how we're gonna accomplish a project or achieve the next sales goal. Most likely, the outcome is the same. We all want to win this outcome and the problem is is everybody has a different way of doing that right, and so you get stuck and you get. The arguments start to happen when we say, well, let's do it this way and it usually is my way.

Christie Garcia: 40:25

And so when you can start to put a pause on that and say, okay, what's the outcome we want to get, and realign everybody around the outcome and then from there, when it's solid alignment, now you can go back to the house.

Mick Spiers: 40:32

Okay, well, how do we do that?

Christie Garcia: 40:33

And what really matters. Does it matter if we all do it this way or does it matter if we just get to this finish line? And these are the three expectations that need to be met during that process, right, and so again, I think a lot of times the ego kicks in. We get confrontation because someone's feeling like, oh, you judge my opinion or you're telling me I'm not worthy, and we're now fighting over it in front of everybody. Being able to have someone courageous enough to say stop, let's realign, focus on outcome, get back on the same team.

Christie Garcia: 41:00

Typically, you can stop an ego's action like that and pretty efficiently, pretty quickly, as long as someone stays ground and it doesn't become personal. It's not a personal attack. You're not going in and taking sides. It's purely neutral, saying we're on the same side. Both of you clearly are upset about this. Let's talk about one. Why are we upset? And, without accusing, what's your ownership of your part and why are you set up through this? What would you like to happen? And then giving people the permission to then say okay, how do we make it happen as a team? Going back to that we versus I.

Mick Spiers: 41:31

Yeah, I love it, Christie, and really good. You got to bring the conversation to the surface and then you can talk about it. I love that term that you use. Okay, pause, hang on a second. We're not aligned here. What just happened? What are we trying to achieve? How can we get there and what are the different methods? Really love it, and it was very respectful. It wasn't one's right, one's wrong. It's like how do we get this back on track team? So yeah, really good, Christie.

Christie Garcia: 41:53

Absolutely, and I'll clarify for your listeners. Because if someone you know this happens every day, in every single conversation we have there's some level of ego getting triggered. And if someone is just conscious enough to say, hey, it looks like this got, you know, this is upsetting you, or it looks like this might have hit you the wrong way, or maybe my message got lost. This wasn't my intention, but I feel like something's not aligned Right. And just someone calling that energy change out.

Christie Garcia: 42:20

When we're having a conversation with a team member or a family member and we see the energy shift instead of ignoring that, which is what 95% of the time we do stopping and just saying something happened and that wasn't my expectation of this conversation Can we back up and figure out what just happened here? And just that calls out egos. That gets everybody back to their best self. You might get someone you know whose ego responds to you, but if you're conscious enough to say, oh, that wasn't my intention, I'm really sorry that it came across that way Again, now you've managed their ego and they say, oh, okay, well, this is what it did to me and this is where we need to go with it.

Mick Spiers: 42:53

Yeah, and I'm loving this word trigger. It's recognized that someone has been triggered, their ego has been triggered. And then what we do about it? All right, Christie, there's been some amazing takeaways today. I'm going to bookend it a little bit.

Mick Spiers: 43:04

I'm going to say that there's two key things for me. So the first thing is the recognition of the three egos complier, protector and controller. And my first challenge put the mirror up to yourself first and think about which of your egos are dominant, and, as Christie said, there might be one to two of them that are more dominant than the others. Okay, Then the second one is you live in a world where there's lots of other people, and those people also have dominant egos, and being aware of the different egos in the room is going to raise your leadership. So start with self-awareness. Then start with having your antenna up and looking around you and understanding that those egos are there and those egos are going to drive behavior, whether you like it or not, whether they like it or not, it's their ego that is subconsciously influencing the way that they show up, the way that they act and the way that they interact with other human beings. So if you think about that as your takeaway for today comply, protect a controller. Where do I fit, where do others around me fit and how do we best manage that in our leadership situations? You'll walk away from today's conversation with some really interesting things to go away and dig into and see how it can show up in your own leadership style and also the leadership styles of those that you might be coaching or helping around you. So, thank you so much, Christie. Really love today's conversation.

Mick Spiers: 44:23

I feel richer for having it. I know the audience would as well. I would love to go now to our rapid round. So these are the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. All right, so first of all, what's the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Christie Garcia: 44:36

Oh man, one thing I knew now that I wish nothing's personal. Yeah, I think that's personal. Yeah, I think. Uh, you know, that's the number one thing that triggers ego is we make things personal. Nothing is personal as we make it personal.

Mick Spiers: 44:47

Love it All right. What's your favorite book?

Christie Garcia: 44:49

There's so many, let's see, I think the most common books that I recommend to my clients are Eckhart Tolle's power of now how to stay present under pressure and stress. And then the other one is anything that's written by Brynn Brown but I really love her the Power of Vulnerability. I think that is a book that is life-changing, especially for anybody that's a controller ego or emotionally unavailable. It really helps strengthen what vulnerability is and it doesn't make it the weak emotion that sometimes the controller, protector ego can create. Here's our power.

Mick Spiers: 45:22

Brilliant. What's your favorite quote?

Christie Garcia: 45:23

Oh, there's so many quotes. This one caught me off guard. I'm not going to lie, let's see. I would say the one that is coming out. I can't even remember who says it, but never be afraid to ask questions. You can only learn from the answers. So I think again ego hates new information. It hates truth. So the more curious you can be, the more powerful your leadership can be.

Mick Spiers: 45:48

Yeah, very good, that's a really good one. Curiosity is what can park your ego. Stay curious, stay curious for longer and you might learn something. You might learn something about yourself, you might learn something about others, you might learn something about your craft. Yeah, so stay curious longer, love it. And finally, I'm sure people are going to be blown away by this concept today, christy, and they'd love to know more. How do people find you if they'd like to either engage your surfaces or study more, or whatever the case may be?

Christie Garcia: 46:10

They can find me on LinkedIn, Christie Garcia, or the Mindful Choice Leadership Academy. They can go to my website, mindfulchoiceacademy(dot)com. And, yeah, reach out. I'd love to hear from you. I'm on Instagram, facebook, all the good things, but yeah, I would say LinkedIn or my website is going to be your go-tos.

Mick Spiers: 46:25

Outstanding, and we'll put the links in the show notes as well. Makes it easier for people to find that. So thank you so much, Christie. I really loved today's conversation. Thank you for your time and the value that you've brought to our audience today.

Christie Garcia: 46:36

Thank you, Mick, for having me. It was a pleasure.