Leading with Soul: Embracing True Leadership and Humanity

In this episode of the Soulfully You Podcast, Coach Chris Rodriguez explores the deeper aspects of leadership and humanity. Simon Sinek argues for a leadership model that prioritizes self-sacrifice and the well-being of others, advocating for a more empathetic and connected approach to work and life.

Listen to Simon Sinek's full talk here.

For all episodes and info about my coaching program, visit me at www.coachchrisrodriguez.com.

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Transcript

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Hey friend. Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. I'm a movement and mindset coach, and I believe in a deeper way of living, a more soulful way of being. Join me each week for conversations about how to put a little more soul. Into our work, our relationships in our everyday lives. This past weekend I had the opportunity to get off the grid and go camping with my family and take my son down to Big Sur, There was no cell phone reception, no internet, and if you listen to my episode on how to create a soulful environment, I encourage folks to get into places every once in a while where you're disconnected from what's going on. Wilderness environments are great places to visit, but if you don't have to live there, at some point, you have to come back and you have to face what's going on, what I came back to was ICE agents in masks. Hiding their identities going into communities and rounding up people who they believe to be undocumented citizens. I also came back to seeing the people of LA and the people where I live in the Bay Area, in Oakland and San Francisco, standing up to oppose what will all look back in history and say was criminal acts from government. In the same breath, our governor is having a argument back and forth with the president and withholding funds for US and California withholding funds for the government. But also the National Guard being deployed to LA to counter the protests. As I'm coming back into the reality of my life, I am reminded of a lesson that I learned. Very young being the son of a preacher and language that we use all the time, but don't really know where it comes from. This idea of a scapegoat it comes from the Jewish law, the book of Leviticus, where somebody commits a sin against God. Then the priest takes two goats sacrifices, one to absorb the sins and lets another one go. That one is called the scapegoat. A lot of times when we use that term specifically here in the United States, it usually involves a person or group of people in power absolving their selves or their allies from wrongdoing. And blaming either a subordinate who doesn't have power and influence an opposition. Or groups from marginalized or vulnerable communities. We've seen it through history. We've seen it as justification for Nazis, to Roundup Jews. We've seen it in the United States as justification for Jim Crow. We've seen it in corporations like Enron or Big Pharma Where all the millionaires and billionaires who caused the problem get no punishment. When I think about all this stuff, something that speaks to me is where are our leaders and why are the people in power who are supposed to lead acting more like children? So in today's episode, I wanna share the mic with somebody who I look up to as a leader, Simon Sinek. He's the same author of the book, the Power of Why. And you can go back and listen to my episode on How to Find Your Why, but he wrote another book called Leaders Eat Last. I'll link the full conversation in the show notes, but listen to what he has to say. Check it out. August 16th, 2002, and flying over a valley. In Afghanistan are two a 10 warthogs, and a 10 is a heavily armored, low flying slow aircraft designed to provide ground cover for troops on the ground. And on this night, it's a very, very cloudy night. Those storms in the area and these two planes hanging up above, just waiting in case anybody down below needs help up there. It's gorgeous. The moon is, is bright. There's thousands of stars in the sky. The clouds look like the snow had just fallen down below in the valley. However, there were 22 Special forces, special operations forces, troops trying to make their way through the country, and they could feel that something was wrong. They could feel they felt uneasy. One of the pilots up above Call Sign Johnny Bravo, he could feel their unease listening to'em over the radio. So he decides he was gonna go down below the cloud and just have a look. He tells his wingman, hang out up here. I'll go see what there is. And he points his plane down into the clouds, and as he's going through the clouds, the call comes over the radio. Troops in contact, troops in contact is what they say. When they come under effective fire, it means they're in trouble. So now Johnny Bravo points his plane straight down. The plane's getting thrashed about. In the turbulence and when he comes out below the clouds, he's less than a thousand feet off the ground and he's flying in a valley cliffs on both sides. Now this is only 2002 and the planes were not yet equipped with ground hu radar. And worse, they were using old Russian maps. That's all they had at the time. And the site that greets him is something like he's never seen before, not in training. And not in the movies. He sees tracer fire, fire coming from all sides of the valley, pointed right in the middle where the American forces are. And so he picks a point and starts to lay down suppressing fire. And he's flying and he's in danger of hitting the cliff, of course, and he knows his speed, he knows his distance from the map, and he literally counts out loud while he lays down the suppressing fire. One 1002, 1003, 1000, four, 1000, five, 1000. Pulls hard on the stick. Pulls back up into the cloud. Comes down around again. One 1000, two 1000, three 1000, four, 1000. Good hits. Good hits. It says over his radio, and again, he comes around one 1000, two 1000, three, 1000, four, 1005, 1000. He runs out of ammunition, fuel is fine. Flies back up to the top of the cloud, tells his wingman you need to get down there. His wingman isn't sure about the condition, so the two of them fly back down together. His wingman lays down the suppressing fire and Johnny Bravo counts as they fly three feet apart from each other. Wing to wing. One, 1000, two, 1000, three, 1000, four, 1000, five, 1000. Up and around again, one 1000, two 1000, three 1000, four, 1000, five, 1000. That night, 22 Americans went home alive with zero casualties. My question is, is where do people like Johnny Bravo come from? Who are they who would risk their lives for others, so that may, they may survive? I asked Johnny Bravo. I asked him. Why, why would you do it? Why would you risk your life so that others may survive? And he gave me the same answer that everybody in his position gives because they would've done it for me. Now if you think about it, in the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain in business. We give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain, we have it backwards. So where do people like Johnny Bravo come from? Well, it's an age old question. They're not born, they're actually made. If you look at the human animal, the human animal is like a machine. There are systems inside our bodies that are trying to get us to do things that are in the interest of the survival of the human animal, right? Um, just like in an indu, in a business, in a company, if you want people to do something, you offer them some sort of positive or negative incentive to direct the behavior, right? So if you want people to achieve a certain goal, you offer them a bonus if they achieve that goal, and they'll work towards that goal because they want the bonus. It's a very simple system. The human body works exactly the same way. It works exactly the same way inside our bodies, our chemicals that are trying to get us to do things that are in the best interest of us. If you've ever, ever had a feeling of happiness. Pride, joy, love, fulfillment. All of these feelings that we have are chemically produced feelings, and they're produced by four chemicals predominantly. These are basically responsible for all of the feelings that I would generically call happiness. They are endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. These two chemicals, endorphins, and dopamine. I like to call these the selfish chemicals because you don't really need anybody's help to get them right. Endorphins. Endorphins are designed to do one thing and one thing are only mask physical pain. That's it. If you're a runner, if you've ever gone and done a heavy exercise, you've heard of an endorphin rush or a runner's high, basically what's happening is when that runner's out there pushing their bodies harder than they've ever pushed before, they feel good. And when they're done with their run, they feel fantastic, and then an hour later they're in pain for damage. They caused their muscles an hour before, right? This is what endorphins are designed to do. They're designed to mass. Physical pain. I'm sure everybody here has laughed so much that the endorphins eventually run out and you go, stop, stop. It hurts endorphins. They feel good. Dopamine. Dopamine is the feeling, uh, that you found something you're looking for or that you accomplish, something you set out to accomplish. So you know that feeling you get when you cross something off your to-do list. That's dopamine. It feels awesome. You know, when you, when you have a goal to, to hit and you achieve that goal, you're like, yes, you feel like you've won something. Right? That's dopamine. The whole purpose of dopamine is to make sure that we get stuff done right. The historical reason for dopamine, we would never eat if we only waited to get until we got hungry because there's no guarantee that we would find food. So dopamine exists to help us go looking for food. We get dopamine when we eat, which is one of the reasons we like eating. And so when you see something that reminds you of something that feels good, we want to do the behavior that helps us get that feeling right. So let's say you're out there going for a walk and you see an apple tree in the distance. You get a small hit of dopamine. And then what it does is it focuses us on our goals. And now we start walking towards the apple tree. And as the apple tree starts to get a little bigger, we feel like we're making progress. You get another little shot of dopamine and another little shot of dopamine until you get to the tree and you're like, yes. Okay. This is why we are told you must write down your goals. Your goals must be tangible. There's a, there's a biological reason for that. We we're very, very visually oriented animals. You have to be able to see the goal for it to biologically stay focused, dopamine comes with a warning. Dopamine is highly, highly, highly addictive. Here's some other things that release dopamine, alcohol, nicotine, gambling. Your cell phone. We can also get addicted to performance in our companies when all they do is give us numbers to hit. Numbers to hit numbers to hit, and a bonus you get and a bonus you get and a bonus you get. All they're doing is feeding us with dopamine and we can't help ourselves. All we do is want more, more, more. It's no surprise that the banks destroy the economy because one of the things we know about dopamine addict is they will do anything to get another hit sometimes at the sacrifice of their own resources and their relationships. Ask any alcoholic gambling addict or, or drug addict. Ask. Ask them how their relationships are doing and if they've squandered any of their resources. It's an addiction. Dopamine is dangerous if it is unbalanced. It is hugely helpful when in a comfortable and balanced system, but when unbalanced, it's dangerous and it's destructive. You don't need anybody's help to get these. Go for a run, achieve your goals. You'll get dopamine, you'll get endorphin. It's, but you won't have any feeling of fulfillment or love or trust. In caveman times that danger may have been. You know, a saber tooth tiger. It may have been the weather, it may have been a lack of resources. It may have been, who knows, any number of things. Things that with no conscience are trying to kill you. They want to end your life. And so how do we survive? We work together and together we come together in our groups, in our companies and our tribes to feel like we belong, to be around people who believe what we believe, so that we may feel safe. When we are surrounded by people who have our best interest in mind and we feel safe, we will organize ourselves and cooperate to face the dangers externally. Don't forget the outside dangers are a constant. In a modern world, the outside dangers may be your competition that's trying to put you out of business, or at least steal your business. It might be the ebbs and flows of the economy. It might be terrorism. All of these unknowns, all trying to put you out of business. Take away your job, take away your livelihood, end it for you. Nothing personal. It's a constant. Inside our organizations, the dangers we face are not a constant. They are a variable, and they are the decisions of leadership as to how safe they make us feel when we go to work. This is the job of leaders. Asop said it better than I can as an asop fable, about four oxen that stand tail to tail, and whenever the lion tries to eat them, no matter what angle from which he attacks. He will always be met with horns. However, due to infighting and disagreements, they separate and they go and graze in different parts of the field, and one by one the lion picks them off and kills them all. When we stand together, we can more easily face the dangers outside when we break up inside our companies. If our leaders don't allow us a space to feel safe inside our own companies to feel like we belong. Then we have to, we're forced to exert our own energy to protect ourselves from each other, and by the way, expose ourselves to greater danger from the outside. If you have to w worry about politics, if you have to worry about someone stealing your credit, if you have to worry about your boss not having your back, think about the energy you invest. Not in your business, not in the products you're trying to develop, not in your work, not in how great you're producing, not in your creativity, but in just keeping yourself feeling safe. This is destructive. The responsibility of leadership is two things. One, to determine who gets in and who doesn't get in. This is what it means to start with why. What are our values? What are our beliefs? Who can we allow in? Second thing is to decide how big this is. How big do we make the circle of safety? How big do we make the circle of belonging? Do we keep it around just our C-level executives and call it an inner circle and allow others to try and fend for themselves? And maybe if we try and get into our inner circle. Or do we extend it to the outermost edges of the organization? Great leaders extend the circle of safety, the circle of belonging, out to the outermost edges. So the most junior person feels like they belong, feels safe, feels like they have top cover from somebody like Johnny Brava. That's what these other two chemicals are trying to do. Serotonin is the leadership chemical is the responsible for feelings of pride. And status when you, this is why public recognition is very important. We are social animals and we need the recognition of others. This is why we have the Oscars, and this is why we have public awards, uh, events. This is why we have commencement for graduation. It's a formula. You could get an email that says, congratulations, you fulfilled all the requirements for graduation. Enclosed, please print out the PDF of your diploma. PS magna cum lada. Right? Wouldn't feel so good, right? So instead, we have a big ceremony to recognize the accomplishment and in the audience, we put our family and our friends, and our teachers, all of those in our tribe who've supported us and watched our backs as we've made it through. It. And then we show up on that day and we go up on that stage and we take our diploma. It feels great. We feel our status rise. We feel our pride go up. And by the way, when you have serotonin in your veins, your confidence goes up also. And here's the best part about serotonin. At the exact moment that you took your diploma and you felt that surge of serotonin go through your body at the exact moment, your parents sitting in the audience also got a surge of serotonin and also felt an intense pride. Watching you graduate, and this is what Serotonin is trying to do. It is trying to reinforce the relationship between parent and child boss and employee coach, and player. The caregiver. And the one who is, is GRA is grateful for the support they're given. Great teams don't wanna win the trophy. Great teams wanna win one for the coach. They wanna make the coach proud. We wanna make our parents proud, and it raises our status and it raises our confidence and it feels good. And we in turn will look after others so that they may accomplish the same. This is what Serotonin is trying desperately to do. The problem is you can trick serotonin. We live in a materialist society, so we judge status very often in our country based on how much money you make, right? So any conspicuous display of wealth raises your status. This is why they put the logos on the outside. No good on the inside. Nobody can see them. We want the red line of our of our Prada glasses. How good you, you own a pair of designer shoes. How good does it feel to put on your Gucci shoes? Oh my God, it feels so good. You walk out and you feel a million bucks, you can actually feel your confidence rise when you put on, you put on the stuff, right? Because it's showing this display of status. It feels great. The problem is there was no re relationship that was reinforced because of it. You tricked the system. That's why we keep trying to accomplish things and accumulate more and more material goods, and yet we never feel successful because there was no relationship. We tricked it. We gamed it. Serotonin is the leadership chemical. We're constantly assessing and judging each other, constantly arranging ourselves, who's the alpha, who's the dominant, who's the one who, who sort of is the, is the, is the more dominant personality or dominant, uh, uh, talent in the room? In caveman times, it might have been physical muscle. In a creative industry, it might be talent in, you know, in the military it might be courage. There's no standard by which we, uh, judge Alphas. It's relative to the industries we're in. And it's relative to us as well. If you've ever met someone and you were nervous while you were meeting them, you're not the alpha. We've all had the experience where we're meeting somebody and we can sense that they're nervous meeting us. You're the alpha. So we're constantly judging and assessing each other. Who's alpha, right? And what we do is when we assess that someone else is the alpha, we voluntarily take a step back and allow them to eat first alphas, get first choice of meat, and first choice of mate. Good system. Good system. The alpha gets to eat first. The rest of us may not get the best cut of meat, but we will get to eat eventually and we won't get an elbow in the face. Good system, we'll happily alert them to danger later. Good system. This is why we're constantly trying to raise our status is because there are benefits to being the alpha. People will do things for us and step back and offer us favors. Right? We we're, and we to this day, we're perfectly comfortable giving special treatment to our alphas. No one. Has a problem that your boss makes more money than you. You might think he's an ass, but you don't have a problem that he makes more money. Nobody has a problem that somebody outrank who outranks us at work, has a bigger office than us, doesn't offend us. It's deeply ingrained in us. We happily step aside and allow our alphas first choice of meat and first choice of mate. It's good to be the king. There are advantages that come with being the alpha. You get special treatment, you get to eat first. People show you love and respect. It boosts the serotonin. You walk around like this, it boosts your confidence. It's awesome, but comes at a cost. You see, the group is not stupid. We're not giving all of that stuff away for free. Leadership. Alpha comes at a cost. You see, we expect that when danger threatens us from the outside. Right, that the person who's actually stronger, the person who's better fed, and the person who is actually teaming with, uh, serotonin and actually has higher confidence than the rest of us, we expect them to run towards the danger to protect us. This is what it means to be a leader. The cost of leadership is self-interest. If you're not willing to give up your perks when it matters, then you probably shouldn't get promoted. It. You might be an authority, but you will not be a leader. Leadership comes at a cost. You don't get to do less work when you get more senior. You have to do more work, and the more work you have to do is put yourself at risk to look after others. That is the anthropological definition of what a leader is. This is why we're so offended by these banker boys who pay themselves astronomical salaries. It has nothing to do with the number. It has to do with the fact that they have violated a deep seated social contract. It's not the number, it's not the amount of money they make. It's that we are deeply and viscerally offended that we know that we allowed them to have this alpha position, and they did not fulfill their responsibility of the alpha. They're supposed to sacrifice themselves for us, never sacrifice us for themselves. This is why we're angry and offended and don't trust them. They fail. Oxytocin. This is the best chemical of all. Oxytocin is the feeling of love and trust and friendship. It's all the warm and fuzzies. It's all the unicorns and rainbows. It's the reason we like to spend time with our friends. Even if we don't do anything with them, we just sit and watch tv. We love their company. I promise you, nearly every single person sitting in this room today chose the person they're sitting next to. You're not sitting next to a stranger, you're sitting next to somebody you met, came with or, or kind of know a little bit. Why?'cause it makes you feel safer, doesn't it? If you got up and went and sat next to strangers, wouldn't feel so good. That's the feeling of oxytocin. Oxytocin is that intense feeling of safety, that someone's got your back. There are multiple ways you can get oxytocin. One way to get it is physical contact. Hugging feels wonderful, right? This when women, uh, give birth to children, huge surge of oxytocin in their body, this is what's responsible for the mother, parent, the the mother child bond, right? It's all that oxytocin in the system. Um, this is why shaking hands matters. Imagine you're doing a deal with someone and you're ready to sign the contract and you say, I'm so excited to do business with you. And they go, I don't need to shake. Let's sign the contract. I'm also excited to do business with you. You and you go, great. Well let's shake on it. Then they go, no, no, no, no. I agree to all the terms. Let's get this this deal done. I can't wait to work with you there. You might get everything you want in the contract, but business relationships are not rational. They're about feeling safe. They're about feeling we belong. It's human. And one of the ways we wanna know that that relationship is solidified is with physical touch. Their simple refusal to touch you. To exchange that oxytocin means one of two things will happen. You'll either completely scuttle the deal or you will go into it. Nervous human bonds matter. Another way you can get oxytocin is through acts of human generosity and act of human generosity is defined as giving of your time and energy and expecting nothing in return. Money doesn't work. Sorry. If I told you that this morning I gave a thousand dollars to charity, what would you think of me? You'd be like, good for you. What do you want? A medal? But if I told you that last Saturday, I gave up my day and I went and painted schools in the inner city, then what would you think you'd be like, nice. Cool. I should do more. Right? The, the value of my labor, much less than a thousand dollars, could have hired many more people for a thousand dollars to go paint schools in the inner city. I. But you see, as human beings, we put a premium on time because it is an equal commodity and it is a unredeemable commodity. You spend money, you make money, you spend time, you'll never get it back. Some of you're sitting in this room right now saying, I will never get this time back. I got nothing for you. So we put a premium on people who give us their time and energy. A leader who says to you, I'll pay for something for you, is not a leader. A leader who comes and sits down next to you and says. How can I help you as a leader? I was talking to some, um, oil executives and they were trying to convince me that they really care about, um, how fulfilled and how happy their employees are at work. To which I said, no, you don't. And they said, no, we do. And I said, no, you don't. And they said, yeah, we do. You see how this win? And I said, I bet you hired some high price consultancy to come and do a web survey about whether people like their jobs or not. And they said, well, we didn't hire a consultancy. I said, okay, so it's kind of like sending your son an email, right? Dear son, your mother and I care that you feel like a valuable part of this family. Please tell us candidly what we can do better so that you feel like you belong here because we really love you, love dad. Or you go into his room, you sit on his bed and you say, Hey, son, your mom and I really care that you feel like a valuable member of this family. Please tell us candidly what we can do better because we want you to feel like you belong and we really love you. Same words, same intention, same desire. The difference is one, you gave time and energy, and the other one you didn't. This is the problem with email. It's too easy. It's too easy. There's no time and energy expended. It's too easy. Don't feel anything. If I come to your house for dinner and you make me a lovely dinner the next day, I send you a very nice thank you email. What a wonderful host you are. Or three days later, you receive a handwritten note from me with the exact same words that were written in the email. Which one makes you feel better? Handwritten note. The sentiment was the same. The words were the same. The differences, one took a little more time and a little more energy. Leaders are the ones who give us their time and give us their energy, not the ones who give us their money. It doesn't count, doesn't work. Lots of oxytocin in your body inhibits addiction. It makes it very difficult to get addicted to something when you have lots of oxytocin in your body. It actually inhibits addiction. It boosts your immune system. It makes you healthier. That's why happy people live longer. It's why couples live longer. Oxytocin. It actually is good for us. It increases our ability to solve problems. It increases our creativity. It's really good for us, and it's not addictive. It just feels great. It takes time to build up though. Leadership is not a rank. Leadership is not a position. Leadership is a decision. Leadership is a choice. It has nothing to do with your position in the organization. If you decide to look after the person to the left of you and look after the person to the right of you, you have become a leader. You've seen the movie 300, right? The Spartans, the greatest fighting force of all time. You wanna know one of the things that made the Spartans great wasn't their muscles, wasn't their spears, it was their shields. They stood. Shield to shield, and the phalanx was strong because they, all, those shields were big and they were told when they were young children, you either bring your shield home or you come home on your shield. The punishment for, for losing your shield was tremendous in battle, because if you lost your shield, that means you cannot protect the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you, and you have destroyed the failings. It's the shield that matters, not the spear. Not the spear. It's your willingness to sacrifice yourself, not your life. Maybe your credit, maybe your little time, maybe a little energy, maybe your time. You know, maybe getting up from your desk and talking to somebody for 30 minutes instead of sending a three minute email. It's your willingness to sacrifice for someone to hold that shield up so that they feel safe that makes you a leader, and you wanna know how you beat a dopamine addiction if you're worried that you're addicted to performance and all those dopamine things. Alcoholics Anonymous has been highly effective for decades, 80 something years. We all know the first step of the 12th steps. We joke about it, right? Admit you have a problem. Do you know the 12th step? Don't say it's supposed to be anonymous. I'll tell you what the 12th step is. Alcoholics Anonymous knows that if you muster all 11 steps, but not the 12th, you will drink again. If you master the 12th step, you will beat the disease. What's the 12th step? The 12th step is the commitment to help another alcoholic service, service to another. Oxytocin wins serotonin. Serotonin wins. The more we look after each other, the safer we feel, the more we feel like we belong, and the more we will work together to confront the dangers outside. Do this for others and others will become Johnny Brava. Thank you for listening to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. If you like the show, help others find me by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at Coach underscore Chris Rodriguez. For more episodes along with all of my coaching programs, visit me@www.coach chris rodriguez.com. Special thanks to my team behind the scenes music by Dan Smith. And remember, whatever you do, wherever you find yourself today, make sure you put some soul in it.