071 - The Science of Leadership with Margaret Moore

In this episode of The Present Professional, John Marshall interviews Margaret Moore, a pioneer in health and leadership coaching. They discuss the importance of nourishing leadership, the nine aspects of effective leadership, and the significance of consciousness and compassion in leading others. Margaret shares insights from her book, 'The Science of Leadership,' emphasizing the need for leaders to engage their teams and create an environment of ownership and accountability. The conversation also touches on practical practices for conscious leadership and the challenges leaders face in a competitive environment.

Buy the Book: The Science of Leadership: Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact

Connect with Margaret Moore: LinkedIn

Takeaways

• Nourishing leadership involves taking care of oneself to better support others.
• Leadership is about creating conditions for growth and prosperity.
• The nine aspects of leadership are interconnected and essential for effective leadership.
• Consciousness is the foundation of effective leadership.
• Engagement in setting direction is crucial for team ownership.
• Compassion is vital, especially under pressure, and starts with self-compassion.
• Sharing leadership is essential for achieving collective goals.
• Leaders must be aware of their surroundings and the needs of their teams.
• Creating a culture of accountability requires strategic thinking and engagement.
• Practical practices for conscious leadership can enhance presence and effectiveness.

Visit The Present Professional webpage on humessence.com and learn more about how we support leadership development and culture enablement at growth-stage organizations.

Thank you for listening.

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Transcript

John Marshall (00:32)
Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional, where we explore the best ways to lead ourselves to lead others. Today, I'm honored to welcome Margaret Moore, also known as Coach Meg to the show. She's a pioneer in the field of coaching with a remarkable journey that began in the biotech industry before she became one of the world's leading voices in health and leadership coaching.

In 2000, she founded Well Coaches Corporation, which has since trained over 16,000 coaches across 50 countries. One of those is me. She went on to co-found the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, helping to integrate science across coaching disciplines and funding vital research.

Coach Meg also co-founded the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching, setting national standards and pathways for certification and reimbursement of coaching services and healthcare. Beyond her leadership in building institutions, she's the co-author of over 30 scientific articles, 10 book chapters and several influential books, including Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life, and Organize Your Emotions, Optimize Your Life.

Her latest book, the science of leadership, nine ways to expand your impact is out now. Margaret's work has shaped not only a field of health and wellness coaching, but also how we think about leadership, wellbeing, and the science of change. I am so thrilled to have you on the podcast for this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Our listeners are going to be so.

excited and so nourished by what you have to share, even just from getting the prompt to buy this book from what I said was what feels like a handbook for human centered leadership. So thank you for being with us, Coach Meg. I want to just hand it over to you to tell us anything that I missed in the introduction and welcome yourself to the audience.

Margaret Moore (02:44)
Well, thank you, John. It's just a complete joy to be here. And I just want to riff off the word nourish, because we were talking about Taoism before. one of the Tao readings, there are 64 of them, is on nourishment, nourishing mind, nourishing body, nourishing your soul. And I think that's a really good way to describe.

the best kind of leadership that you both, you know, we live in a capitalist world. So we are in need of creating more more prosperity for the system to be stable. I mean, you know, the economy is built on it. So we can't, we just don't want to destroy what is creating livelihoods for, you know, supporting 8 billion people on this planet. So we need to respect that, but

The message of the science and the scientists that have been working for 40 years, the science of leadership is new in history, historical terms, but basically the message is that as a leader your role is to nourish while you produce prosperity.

that we grow wealth and well-being together. We don't consume well-being to grow wealth. So nourish is a really, I've not put, used that word in this for this book, but I think that is it. We are nourishing ourselves because we can't nourish others in a system if we're not well-nourished. And so I think that's a really good place to start.

John Marshall (04:09)
Hmm.

Beautiful. And with that, when it comes to, would almost say that it's, you know, producing through nourishing, not even just beforehand that it's, you know, what I've noticed even in my own coaching practice and even my own company is that the more that I focus on, right. Nourishing the vision myself, my people.

the more that I see clients focus on that, feel like the more the organization, the team themselves become more productive and integrated. Yeah.

Margaret Moore (04:57)
Right, so it's not just a resource, you're saying, it's

actually the process.

John Marshall (05:02)
Exactly.

Margaret Moore (05:03)
the work to create prosperity and wellbeing is to nourish. It's like, you know, if we think of ourselves as farmers or gardeners, you know, tending to growing things, and in our case, people are more complicated than carrots. So it's not that simple to grow, but it is the sense of creating the conditions for growth.

John Marshall (05:20)
Certainly.

Mm.

Margaret Moore (05:27)
you know, and being an active part of that. So yeah, very nice.

John Marshall (05:33)
Creating and creating the conditions. I think that takes us into a whole other, a whole other space as well. Cause it's, it's not even a focus on what I need to do per se for this particular person, but it's, how do, how am I and focusing on myself, nourishing myself, influencing the conditions that I'm creating for my team, my organization.

So I think that even a big part of this podcast and really starting with ourselves, right? To then lead others and looking at the book and I'm assuming that there is some hierarchy to the nine ways. So just for, just for the listeners that haven't picked up the book just yet, the nine, the nine headings are conscious.

Authentic, agile, relational, positive, compassionate, shared, servant, and transformational. And with that, I'm assuming that there is an intentionality behind conscious being the first one.

Margaret Moore (06:46)
Right, and transformational being the last one. I mean, this nine is by having mapped all the main personality models to this.

can be sorted in a lot of different ways. So I don't want people to get the sense that there is one that is better than the others, because I think they're nine numbers. The body is made up of largely a finite number of you group a few things together, you get to nine. It's almost like a natural order that it takes this diversity to create a whole. So you can't single one out. They work together.

John Marshall (07:05)
Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (07:19)
And in that sense, they're probably in terms of humans function and human society. And if you look at different countries have different personality types, different, if you balance it all out, we're kind of balanced as a world in terms of the, you know, the wholeness. so, but in leadership, so when you're leading yourself or others, or you're in a, you know, if you're in a...

John Marshall (07:31)
Hmm.

Margaret Moore (07:42)
playful moment with kids, they're not that conscious. They're largely subconscious. So you might as well just forget about being conscious and flow with the play, right? So I just want to point out that there is no magic to this. But I think in terms of leading, leading is the most complex human activity. Leaving aside...

John Marshall (07:52)
Yes.

Margaret Moore (08:02)
complex intellectual activities. But I mean, in terms of mobilizing people and moving forward to some greater place of prosperity and nourishment, it's really complicated because you have to manage yourself. You have to interact with just like we are individual others or teams all day long. And then through that, you're impacting the system that's beyond those, the others. And you have to be awake to all those three levels across nine different ways of operating all the time.

John Marshall (08:24)
Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (08:30)
So I just want to point out this isn't easy. And that's why people get, they get attached to, I'm a servant leader or I'm an agile leader or I'm a, you know, blah, blah, blah leader. And the point of, you know, one point of the book is that that's not enough. The old idea that you just work to your strengths and forget about your weaknesses isn't the answer.

John Marshall (08:47)
Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (08:54)
That might have been the answer when we weren't strong enough. But once you know your strengths and you've built on them, then you need to diversify and you need to broaden out and you need to do more of other things. It's like I play piano and I love jazz. And so it's like you need the whole keyboard. You need the whole set of instruments. need the whole, know, so, so the reason that consciousness first in leadership is because you do have to be awake.

I mean awake, not thinking, not feeling, just awake. You know, that state of being present, which isn't mindfulness, because we're not observing anything. And we're not in flow, we're simply awake to the moment. Like, just all here. And it's an old ability, mean, animals have it, just being.

So you got to start there because if you're not awake you're not going to pick up the signals that you need in order to know what to do next because every moment is new and you never know until you're there. You might have a theory and you got a plan you got an agenda you've got all mapped out but then you get there and you've got whatever is there there and so then you have to be awake. And then the last one is transformation because there's no point

I mean, I get servant leadership, I love it, but I think the purpose of work is to transform and make things better. It's not, everything else is in service of transformation and transformation goes better and faster and smoother with less friction and strain if you have all the nine that come before. So that's why we staged it so that transformation was last.

John Marshall (10:34)
I there was an art to that. There's... Yep.

Margaret Moore (10:39)
Well, that is the art. Translation

is the art.

John Marshall (10:43)
And you brought up nature

as well. There's, there's a quote from the, the author of cathedral of the wild. I'm probably going to butcher it, but it's something that stuck with me that

Nature always is where it is, right? Lions will rest for hours in perfect stillness and then awake to hunt with this intense ferocity. But they're never hunting, wishing they were resting or resting, thinking about hunting that they are where they are. So I would say that not even just nature has that, but I think nature is a great.

I mean, a great example of what being awake really is to the moment. So that just, just something that really stuck with me there.

Margaret Moore (11:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think,

mean, when I train on this, I use a picture of actually a tiger just looking at you. You look at it and say, is this tiger here? I think so. I might not be, but I think it's here and it knows it's And, you know, it's in the organize your mind work, you know, the...

John Marshall (11:44)
Yep.

certain.

Margaret Moore (11:57)
sensory. I mean, all we're talking about is experiencing versus thinking. Awakeness is being in an experiencing mode, which means you're in a receiving mode. You're receiving the stimuli, you know, you're not sending. So it's just experiencing not so in that's where Myers Briggs has this nice, you know, perceiving versus judging. ⁓

John Marshall (12:21)
Hmm.

Margaret Moore (12:22)
our human mind in order to, you we've just evolved to have this, and I don't mean judgmental in terms of being critical. I mean, we're just having to evaluate. The brain is constantly evaluating. I mean, it's designed to evaluate the moment. And do you have the resources to meet the demands of the moment? That's its purpose. And so we're...

is our internal activity. So the opposite of that is not to be in that activity is to be awake and experiencing. And so they're mutually exclusive. In terms of regions of the brain, they're exactly the opposite from the frontal to the back. Experiencing's all about care. So it's not a natural place, especially if your frontal thinking is overwhelmed by the amount of...

John Marshall (12:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (13:09)
activity that we have in today's world. conscious is that. I mean, in the literature, there's not a lot of literature on conscious leadership, but we reorganize the literature considerably. So the conscious leadership is actually more about values and virtues and using business back to

John Marshall (13:18)
Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (13:29)
John's, what's the guy that founded Whole Foods, you know, his book on conscious capitalism is all about, you know, doing business to do good. We put that in authentic leadership because that's where the values and virtues live in the research. So we used conscious to use the first half of emotional intelligence, which is self-awareness and self-regulation, because self-awareness and awareness are consciousness. And then regulation is to regulate the part of you that's not the subconscious.

John Marshall (13:40)
Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (13:56)
that's active, you want to regulate that, you want to set it aside so that you can perceive. And it takes it beyond mindfulness. Because again, mindfulness is paying attention and observing. But that's not the same as pure receiving.

John Marshall (13:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Yes, yes.

Margaret Moore (14:16)
In fact,

there is a form of mindfulness called open experiencing, open awareness. But then there's other kinds. There's focused awareness, there's other things. So we need to be little more discerning about where our brains are at in these different activities. And I think we're just trying to get people to realize that being awake is being aware.

John Marshall (14:20)
Mm-hmm.

And then, you know, moving into the regulation part of it, it's, feel like I spend a lot of time with my leaders, with my clients on regulation. And it's a lot of, a lot of things that they're not aware of. I would often, I would often pause and ask my clients if they noticed a certain way they were delivered, they were.

telling me about something a certain way they were telling me a story. Did you notice the movement of your hands how much you were leaning forward how and they start becoming aware of things right that were subconscious and

Margaret Moore (15:05)
guys.

John Marshall (15:17)
A lot of the time we spend on what are the ways that they can help regulate the mind with the body. So sometimes I'll ask them to, would you be open to repeating that story to me, but keeping your hands on the table the whole time. ⁓

Margaret Moore (15:31)
Yeah, yeah, coming from this. So the body does have the stillness. The body is,

you know, the mean the body is basically just operating, doing its thing. Cells are doing their cycles and the blood's doing its thing and the breathing's doing its thing. And it's just got this natural rhythm. It's a real system that's in tune or not. And it

John Marshall (15:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Margaret Moore (15:54)
when we can breathe, then we can tap into it. It's already there. We just have to tap into it.

John Marshall (15:59)
Yep.

Exactly. And vice versa. Help it tap into, you know, supporting the mind in certain ways and changing the mind. I know this is, we could dive so much deep. We could do a whole episode on consciousness. Right.

Margaret Moore (16:12)
Yeah, so where

do want to go next?

John Marshall (16:14)
It easily easily. So

whenever whenever it comes to the science of leadership, like the moment that you knew that this could be an operating system, right? I'm sure that you had exposure to right and a lot of experience with all of the models. Like you mentioned this, the different personality models integrating all of the research you had been reviewing. So what was that moment that you knew that this could all come together to be?

an operating system for leadership and how has that realization changed or shifted your own leadership?

Margaret Moore (16:51)
Well, I appreciate you reflecting that this is an operating system, because I've not used that term and it's actually a great one. You know, I was stuck on one of the models and when I find this actually the same one I was stuck on, which is my own Enneagram tape.

I was stuck on one of the models and where it fit. And when I realized what it was, then I realized, I've got the whole thing down. And I mean, I have to call out the WellCoaches community because we did a survey on book titles and the science of leadership was actually just thrown in there by our editor. It wasn't a serious idea that we would

in attempt to capture the entirety of leadership science. But that was what everybody wanted. 67 % of people put that first. art was going to be self-transforming leadership. So the first thing was the push to do that. And I still didn't agree to do that. And then the editor told us three months later.

that we've done it. And that's because, so it was a calling to do it. I didn't go looking to do that. I wanted it to be about self-transformation, which is very important. But what happened by having the request...

do the entirety of the science of leadership, that pushed me. And so it pushed me hard. It meant that I had to read hundreds of papers and I had to sit basically one every week and a half or so. So I would sit with.

30 papers, like I did a lot of searching or sorting, and I would sit with them and I would pull out pieces of the scientific papers and I would put them on, you know, I had a big screen and I would look at it and say, okay, where do I start and where does this take me? And I let the science take me from where, you know, in its natural beginning. And that's not the way most leadership experts work. They usually have their own sense of what they think it

is their frameworks. that's by observation too. And then they bring the research in to support that. And they often have, lots of fabulous frameworks out there, but this was not meant to be that. We were not imposing our own framework. I basically, other than putting it into these nine, which was a way of supporting them. But the research then fell into place.

John Marshall (19:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (19:15)
as we went through it. And the one I was stuck on was shared leadership because I didn't know where that, you know, that one is new. And it's all it's about, you know, there's lots of different terms for relational leadership. we didn't use we use relational leadership to describe relationships, not that leadership system is a system of relationships. So there's a collective relation or leadership, distributed leadership. So there's this.

John Marshall (19:41)
Mm-hmm.

Margaret Moore (19:41)
shared and when I finally realized that that was the achiever, the wind, that was actually how leaders make things happen is through sharing leadership. Then I got, oh, okay, that was the missing. For me, that was the thing I didn't quite understand, that in order to achieve, you have to share, which means other people have to learn how to lead.

And then your role as a leader is in fact understanding the gap between what you know about where to go and what they know and closing that gap so that they can see it more of what you can see and others can see. Because you don't get to be a leader if you don't see further ahead and have a better sense of where to go. That's why you're a leader.

because you have a vision of what you think needs to happen that doesn't exist today. That's why leaders are leaders and followers are followers. Leaders see it and others don't.

And they just don't. They have often the same access to the same facts or they just haven't sat in a place where they got access to everything that they needed. But leaders position themselves to get access to everything they need in order to see where to go forward. But then you have all these people who don't get it, don't agree with it, don't understand it, are not sure that's the right way to go, have 10 reasons why it won't work, which is why you have a system, because all those people are showing you all the problems

that you have to solve in order to get there and maybe the vision changes. So sharing leadership is the hardest by far because it's easy to see what you see but how you get others to see it and then own it and make it their own. That I think is the hardest one. And it's the one that is the newest and it requires a subtlety.

that's not just about being in charge and being smarter than everybody else and being authoritative, it's actually understanding how everybody can learn to move forward. And we've written an article on this. I've written it for three different publications and it's been turned down three times because I framed it around sharing leadership with AI. And I really think that there's an allergy around sharing leadership, around how to...

AI because

because there's a sense that we don't know what's gonna happen to the humans that are a part of our organization and whether they'll still have jobs. And so we're not really sharing the process as well as we should be. And so I think it's the real deal. And then you realize everything else is about sharing everything else, right? Now you have the other eight and how do you share those? So yeah, I think that was when I realized, this is...

system.

John Marshall (22:32)
We could also do another episode on everything that you just shared this. And the first thing, the first part of that, that really interests me is how the, you mentioned part of your own type and the achiever energy led to the kind of the polarity of sharing that of actually achieving through sharing.

As opposed to I achieve, so I'm the leader. Now I can share. It's actually reframing the whole type three energy as I achieve through others versus differentiating myself looking different. Right. Exactly.

Margaret Moore (23:10)
We all achieve together. That's the human way.

John Marshall (23:17)
And

the other thing you said that comes up a lot in my coaching sessions is creating ownership is like the, the actual, so the act of sharing is not just sharing your vision, but it's help, but it's how do you get your people? How do you get your organization, your peers to not just buy into your vision, but

take ownership over their part of it and even the the whole. I feel like I spend a lot of time working with, working with leaders on this notion of how to create ownership, create, have a culture of accountability and how people buy into that vision.

Margaret Moore (23:59)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Marshall (24:05)
And then it leads me to this kind of leader as a coach mentality because right as a coach through the intrinsic motivation and creating autonomy, like we help clients take ownership over their vision, their lives. So it, makes me end up helping leaders take on a coach mentality.

to help them create that ownership. But I just wanna pause there and ask you the question, how do leaders create the environment to help their people take ownership?

Margaret Moore (24:47)
Yeah. Well, mean, I think when we, you know, when we talk about, so let's, let's talk about engagement because I think that's word that everybody understands and we know it's a problem. And, and, then engagement in setting direction, because if you're part of an organization and you weren't engaged in the direct, in setting the direction it's going in and you're disengaged.

John Marshall (24:54)
Mm.

Margaret Moore (25:12)
Right? You're disengaged because you're not part of it. And there's vision, there's purpose, there's strategy, there's implementation. There's lots of parts to the direction. And not everybody will participate in all of the parts. You know Richard Rumelt writes about strategic leadership as something that is done by a small group of people who.

because it's so complex and so messy that most people won't get it. And so there are times when you can't engage everybody because you barely are hanging onto your fingernails, let alone trying to bring everybody along. I like...

to use the word strategy because strategy is, okay, you sort of decide where you're going to go, but how are you going to get there? That's where you can engage a lot of people. And the main thing then, and not everybody is strategic thinker, fact, a lot of people are not strategic thinkers. So I think if we think about helping people become more strategic, and I think coaching is strategic, we don't name that as coaches, but we're very strategic.

We're very thoughtful about what we're doing now, what we're going to do next and why we're doing it and where it's going to take things, take people. And so there's this, this idea of being strategic in every moment, which requires being conscious because strategy has to be, you have to have a strategy. You have to be awake to the fact that the one you came in with may not be the one that works and you have to be adjusting your strategy. So that requires a lot of intellect and a lot of awareness at the same moment. So I think the, the,

John Marshall (26:23)
Hmm.

Margaret Moore (26:40)
Engagement is about engaging people in the setting of the direction and the strategy to get there. And if we do that, then you're not asking the question, do people own it? Because they do, that you engage them part of it. If they didn't engage, they barely understand it, then they're just taking a paycheck and they don't really like what you're doing, or they disagree with it, or they throw stones at it. So you really have to actually intentionally engage people.

in the setting of direction. You might know 90 % of it, but you need to give them a chance to bring, you know, a good amount, as much as they can. And then they're engaged and now they're thinking, now they're thinking better, they're planning their street. So you're basically, teaching people how to think strategically. That's, I think, real engagement, yeah. And I don't think we're there yet.

John Marshall (27:23)
Mm-hmm.

Beautiful so there's not this good. Sorry

Margaret Moore (27:34)
I'm finding that that's the one like the two workshops I've done where I've actually had people rate the rank the nine. This is the one that's the lowest.

John Marshall (27:42)
Mmm. Wow.

Margaret Moore (27:43)
It's hard. It's hard to teach, train, because you don't, you mentoring? Are you teaching? Are training? Are you coaching? Are you leading? You know, you have a lot of options. How do you bring people along? And it's not about them following you, because then they're not engaged. Maybe they love you for now and they follow you because they want to, but they have to actually feel engaged. And that's why coaching, maybe that's why we both.

John Marshall (27:51)
Mm-hmm.

It's.

Margaret Moore (28:11)
came from leadership into coaching and probably back into leadership because somehow we knew that this was the way we needed to help people. the world needs more of this. My concern is that engagement gets tied into HR policies and a bunch of stuff that's not that important. Let's have a wellness committee and engage people in wellness. You know a committee on what else.

John Marshall (28:32)
Exactly.

Margaret Moore (28:39)
you know, something that is not central to the direction. But let's engage people in this. That it's not really our top five strategic priorities, but then they'll be engaged. think we just need to admit that we're all trying to figure out the right direction. We all have to stick in it. And let's engage people in that.

John Marshall (28:54)
Mm.

Yes. Yes. There's, there's so much, there's so much that we could talk about on this. And I think just right there, the advice I'm hearing is bring people along in, in the best way, the earliest that you can, and the most involved way that you can without, without really breaking your strategic process.

Like you said, it can start with a small group, then when, when can we bring them in?

Margaret Moore (29:25)
Yeah, we have to kind of step back and step. have to come. Yeah. You slow down to speed

up. You slow down to speed up. Yeah. Because you have to pick up if you don't do that. The great thing about involving people, I've learned this the hard way because I'm perfectly happy to run things. You know, up with a strategy and run. But when you get all the naysayers and you think, can't believe you're, you know, really, you're really.

John Marshall (29:33)
Yes.

Ha

Margaret Moore (29:50)
You know, you know your your intellectual reaction, so I can't believe I have to slow down to deal with this But I learned over and over and over again when someone says this is not going to work because blah blah blah Really pay attention to that because it is a barrier And if you don't Integrate it into a strat into the strategy Then your strategy will incomplete be incomplete and it'll bite you later

John Marshall (30:06)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Margaret Moore (30:16)
So the slowing down to pick

up and to respect all of the naysayers, realizing that the ship isn't balanced if they haven't settled and you haven't settled their concerns. Because there's usually some kernel of something you need to know. I guess that's the other benefit of sharing is that it slows you down and you can't believe the stuff that comes up. it's really...

It's really an uphill climb to get through it. But if you welcome it and you open to it and you say, I'm going to... This is the nine, is the compassion in the book.

John Marshall (30:59)
Hmm.

Margaret Moore (30:59)
The ability to integrate and respect the needs and everybody and weave that in, that's the basis of strategy. It's diversity creates strategy. It's not just a tagline. It really does.

John Marshall (31:12)
Hmm.

Margaret Moore (31:13)
And the best strategy has been pressure tested by all the naysayers. And then you have a strategy that, you know, is it going to satisfy every single person all the time? No, but people will recognize that you did everything possible to consider all the downsides and all the issues and challenges. And then it's baked into the thing. And then people can see their fingerprints on it. so, yeah, so the sharing brings them along and engages them, but it also produces better direction.

John Marshall (31:14)
I agree.

Yep.

Margaret Moore (31:43)
And I guess that's a good place to pull those two things together for leadership.

John Marshall (31:48)
Yes. Then, you know, the naysayers don't exist in a vacuum. If there's one, there's that there's, there's multiple. And, but, you bring up one really last important area I wanted to get your take on was the, the, this area of compassion, right? Sir, being a servant leader, right? Being a relational leader, like having this

Margaret Moore (31:53)
No, they're picking up that something's not quite right. Yeah. They're sensing something. You're not.

John Marshall (32:13)
compassionate resonance and in, in an environment where leaders are being constantly pressured, right? The market's getting constantly more competitive. Deadlines are getting cut shorter. Resources are being cut back. And I have a lot of time where it's, this is all nice to have. It's nice to

It's nice to bring everybody along, be compassionate and be a servant leader, but ultimately I have to deliver results.

Margaret Moore (32:46)
we have to deliver results.

John Marshall (32:48)
Exactly.

Exactly. So it's, that's the first thing that I see, you know, get put to the side is like the relationship because we have to focus on delivering results. You know, what do you have to say to the leader that is feels like their backs against the wall when it comes to pressure from pressure from the board pressure from up top.

pressure from the markets, you're just trying to get ahead. It almost feels like a, if you've read the hard thing about hard things before Ben Horowitz, he refers to it as peacetime CEO and wartime CEO. So it's like, what do you have to say to the wartime leader that,

Margaret Moore (33:30)
No, I have not just put it.

Yeah.

John Marshall (33:39)
that the relational part of it is still important and how they can integrate that into delivering results now.

Margaret Moore (33:43)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. you know, first compassion is chapter six because it integrates the first five. So it becomes easy if you're conscious, agile, you care, you're strengthening people. And so and you're helping people. So it's a composite. It isn't sort of stand by itself.

But when there's a lot of stress on you, your ability to show compassion, if you think about compassion in rings, we all only go out so far. Do we go all the way out to the whales in the Pacific? Maybe not, but we might go to our town or our neighbors, right? So the more stress you have, your compassion circle gets smaller.

You just don't have any more to give. So you have to start with self-compassion. You really have to go back to nourishing. So this kind of brings us back to where we started. You've got to nourish yourself because you realize if I'm saying I don't have time for this, it's because I don't have the bandwidth. I have nothing to give. Everything's been taken. I don't have enough to give. So you've got to come back and resource and nourish yourself. You must first.

And so you have to come back to supporting yourself so that you can then help others. Because you're not gonna win if you don't have compassion for yourself, because you're not gonna have compassion. Compassion isn't empathy. There's a piece of empathy. Empathy is hard because it's all about actually feeling what other people are feeling. And that is a downward spiral.

to empathy, fatigue. Compassion is understanding, not feeling it and doing something about it. So it's a different energy. And if you understand it, then you can pull it into your strategy. So you nourish yourself, feel self-compassion, and then you can come back in and feel the compassion for others.

John Marshall (35:27)
Mm.

Margaret Moore (35:33)
And you don't have to feel, you don't have to cry with them, you don't have to feel their anger, you can't go there. You'll be completely exhausted if you feel all the emotions. You have to separate yourself from the emotion to go to the understanding.

the intellectual, the full understanding of this stakeholder really needs this and this one needs this and this needs this and we need to get here. And this will come to you. Your brain, compassion's integrative. It takes all nine and it integrates it into strategy. That's the beauty of it. It's understanding, it's real understanding. So you have it, but when you're depleted, it goes away. So you've got to renew your own resources and then it will come back.

be there when you need it. It really will. You will understand and you will come back with a strategy that works. Trust that once you've nourished yourself.

John Marshall (36:21)
Beautiful.

Yes. Yes. Full circle back to nourishment. Now, as we start to wrap up this conversation here, you know, I just, again, wanted to thank you so much for taking the time out to speak to me and to speak to all of our listeners. It, there are so many little tidbits in here that I want to timestamp and send out to everyone. So I appreciate that, but

One more thing for the audience. What's a, call it 10 minute or less practice that they could start trying this week that would start to align them with this operating system and impact their lives and leadership positively?

Margaret Moore (37:11)
Well, I'm to come back to the bookends again, the conscious and the transformation. So whatever it takes to get you to your true nature of just being here, being present, being all in present, not presence, not radiating out presence. I mean, just being here and experiencing whatever takes you there.

You know, go down in your body, debrief. Everybody has their own way. Touch a stone, look at a picture, look outside, go for a walk, whatever. Get yourself into, forget your worries, forget your to-do list. Just be here. Be the, you know, I like the picture of the tiger's face looking at you. Be present. And then ask yourself, what's the potential in this moment for something good to happen?

because you can't detect it if you're not present. Just do just that. And then you can step into the moment being awake and being present to what might be good that can happen. And the rest will take care of itself. You get into your conversation, you get into your agenda. But just be awake to the moment, be present, and detect what might shift right now that would be good.

John Marshall (38:02)
Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Yep.

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing that again. Thank you for joining me here listeners we will have links to

the science of leadership.com in the show notes and go get the book right now. The science of leadership, nine ways to expand your impact. It will take you into a full on journey to the operating system that we discussed today. And you can be nourished by the full expanse of the words because we could have talked here for the whole day and probably still not covered everything that you can get from that book. So

Take your time. Get out there. The science of leadership.com. Get your copy today. So again, thank you so much for being listeners. I appreciate you all. I will see you next time on another episode of the present professional. Thank you again, Coach Meg.

Margaret Moore (39:18)
Thank you, John. It's great.