Why Leaders Need Neuro-Fitness: Building Regulation and Real Impact w/ Mallory Meyer

What does it mean to be a neuro-fit leader? 

In this episode of Relationships at Work, host Russel Lolacher is joined by trauma-sensitive, polyvagal-informed leadership and neuro coach Mallory Meyer to unpack the real power of nervous system regulation in leadership. Together, they explore why leaders can’t think their way to better leadership — they have to feel it. Mallory shares how neuro-fitness supports emotional agility, improves decision-making, and helps leaders show up with authenticity and calm in high-stress environments.

 They also discuss:
 – Why resilience gets misused in the workplace
 – What co-regulation looks like in teams
 – Tangible tools to reset your nervous system in real-time
 – The connection between diversity, performance, and embodied leadership
 – How modeling neuro-fitness can shift organizational culture from the inside out

 If you're tired of performative leadership advice and ready for something rooted in humanity, science, and practical tools, this episode delivers.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Mallory Meyer, and here is why she is awesome. She's a speaker, trauma sensitive, polyvagal informed leadership and neuro coach.

She's nodding and smiling. So pro, my pronunciation was good. And fractional HR through her consultancy White Wolf reiki. Reiki. Always get that wrong. Reiki, she's the host of the Keep It Human Podcast, which I've had the absolute pleasure of being a guest on. She also brings over a decade of experience in corporate HR, partnering with senior leaders and leadership teams to foster peak wellbeing and culture productivity.

Hello, Mallory.

Mallory Meyer: What an introduction. Thank you.

Russel Lolacher: Topic today, neuro fit. We're getting into the brain. Before we jump into all of that though, I have to ask the guests question I ask all of my guests, which is Mallory, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Mallory Meyer: Well, just the way that the brain loves to work, holding onto the negativity bias of things, I'm probably gonna share with you the worst experience just because it's so embedded. And honestly, the one that really stands out in my mind, whenever I'm asked a question similar to this of thinking about something that really has stung, is kind of just being told that you are taking responsibility for something without any forewarning, without any conversation.

It's literally just plopped in your lap and expected upon. And when we're looking about keeping it human while also relationships at work. There's this element of course, where from a supervisor, from a mentor, from your leader in themselves having some context versus just being like, here it is. The expectation is go do it, but we can't even check in with your capacity and with your ability to actually do so.

So that was one of my worst experiences. High level. Keeping it a little bit vague, of course here, but I think it can be relatable in the sense of if you ever have opened up your inbox to an email that says, oh hey. This is now the new expectation in your work scope and responsibilities, and you don't have a say in it.

It can be very alarming and you kind of just feel almost in this freeze because when I think about being in a freeze state, it's so overwhelming that you don't even know how to address that conversation and how to approach an individual just to even say, but do you care to know if I even have this space to do this?

And that's really what left a really sour taste in my mouth.

Russel Lolacher: It removes the humanity of it, because you're not a person, you are a cog. You are, we don't need you here, we're gonna move you here. Almost like one of those claws they have in the arcades or something where you're picking up a thing and moving it somewhere else. But yeah. How did you, how did that influence. Your, the rest of your career seeing that going. Oh, okay. So that's what I mean to you, or that's what I don't mean to you.

Mallory Meyer: It really just kind of pinned you as that number. It took away that human element and like truly the empathy through it all. And really, for me, it kind of threw two different threads into it. One, it really kind of was a catalyst to a decision for me to choose to leave that environment just because once you've lost my trust, once you've lost even like my respect, it's really hard personally to build that back up.

That to me was really just kind of the nail in the coffin to build the respect back up no matter what you were going to try to do. So there was already kind of leading factors up to that. And then on top of that, it was just really a beautiful mirror in a sense, just to recognize this is the last place that I would ever want to be with someone that I was leading in the way that I would want to truly show my colors, have my communication style portrayed and really just kind of echo, this is what I do not want. So how do I wanna shape what I do want as a leader?

Russel Lolacher: And I love that you sort of mentioned in there that it was, without lack of a better term, the last straw. These things don't happen generally out of the blue without little breadcrumbs being, laid out going, and it might be a surprise, don't get me wrong. It might be a surprise, but if you're looking for them, it won't be a complete surprise based on your interactions, your relationships, everything.

We just as leaders have to be a little bit more situationally aware to, to be able to see them coming so that we can manage it easier.

Mallory Meyer: Absolutely right. Like you were saying, the breadcrumbs that can lead up and then it's almost just like when something's already festering and you haven't even had that outlet to have the ability to express it because that communication channel isn't open, then it definitely leads to an eruption there, like a volcano of, okay, I'm out.

Russel Lolacher: And then we take it out on our partner at home. Yeah, totally understand. Totally hear that. Today we're talking, we're going into the brain, we're going into the, noggin. I'm gonna get really sciencey.

And defining... Define for me actually, this is one of the key things that's always been a piece of the show which is defining things. We throw out terms all the time, leadership, diversity, all these things. But there are some that really just need to be defined, like neurofit.

Could you define it as it pertains to leadership in the workplace?

Mallory Meyer: Absolutely. It's a little bit of a spin that I've taken to the word, like mental fitness. We talk about mental health a lot, but think about if we were to kind of lift weights for our brain, what does that look like? And that's really when we're talking about leadership, especially in the workplace, the focus that I've held neuro fitness around, it's about how to have greater levels of agility.

I don't love this word, but I'm gonna put it out there. Resilience. The cringe. But truly to have the fluidity and the range in your day to have the spectrum of emotions. The intelligence and the degree and the social aptitude as well as we strengthen the fortitude of your mental muscles to kind of recognize, oh, okay, like maybe I could have had more situational awareness around this, or social awareness, emotional awareness.

How is my recovery through these experiences as well? Because for many from a certain experience, it could really take them out. And then it's really again, like talking about how you're showing up, how you're continuing to lead. So coming back still with a lot more versatility and just like a heightened degree almost of, ah, aha.

I now am going to learn from this and actually apply it. So that's when I talk about neuro fitness, how we can look at it through different modalities and techniques in the lens of, you don't need to necessarily hold onto stress in the same way that you may have in the past to get, to bring you to a point where you kind of have your weekends.

Really aligned to be, I'll call it like restore and regenerative, but it's actually a weekend that you get to pour back in, in a way that doesn't feel like an escapism from work.

Russel Lolacher: Okay, so we can't go much further without us jumping all over that one word that both of us kind of cringed at. Resilience. And I want you sort of explain of why that is a troublesome word for you and what you, we may need to look at it and how we might need to look at it differently?

Mallory Meyer: To be honest, there's various different lenses. For me, the big cringe factor is oftentimes we throw it around, so. So nonchalantly in the sense of oh, someone can build resilience in a day. Let's kind of bring our leaders into this cohort around resilience. And I think its meaning has been taken outta context as to what that actually means.

Because for me, when I define resilience, I'm looking at each individual and honoring their past experiences and really a threshold of tolerance in their ability against risk, in their ability against discomfort. And when we look at resilience in the lens of the nervous system too, it's coming back into that rest and digest, like your homeostasis, where you can be able to bring yourself into this place without getting so caught in your fight or flight. And I think that necessarily is a lens that isn't necessarily taken. It's can you be resilient to have a tough conversation at work or to take on more workload without looking at the humanity side to it? And then again, the training around it to me is a little bit superficial and high level where it's not getting into these barriers of the human essence of what it actually means from a tolerance and range standpoint. Does that help to clarify it?

Russel Lolacher: It does. It does. I, my thing with resilience is, and I get it, adaptability is probably my better phrasing for that. It's the, I always challenge it going, but why do you need to be resilient? Why? What is something you need to be so strong against? To be honest, I use it. I see it as possibly an excuse for bad leadership going if you're stronger. And more resilient. You can weather these bad toxic cultures or bad leadership decisions. I'm like, why are we not addressing the bad leadership and the toxic culture? Why are we needing to be resilient? It's context is what I'm kind of trying to stress is, I get it, but why? It just feels like it needs a deeper conversation than just going, you need to be resilient. Really? Do I though? Or do you just need to be softer or more understanding?

Mallory Meyer: Exactly, and I feel like it was something that came about during the Covid time where people were going through so much change and that change management piece, and we just kind of witnessed, again, people's ability to have to deal with some adversity and to have to deal again with that agility side of themselves too. And now it's almost like that context of it can get lost because it was just so apparent in that timeframe.

Russel Lolacher: So how do we understand our own neuro fitness? Self-awareness is such a big piece of this, but if we don't know what we don't know, how do we go to the mind gym, I guess, metaphors here?

Mallory Meyer: It's a great metaphor for it. Like how do we take ourselves and understand, should I be picking up the five pound weight or should I be picking up the 50 pound?

Russel Lolacher: Exactly.

Mallory Meyer: Yeah. I always love to bring in a practice called mapping your nervous system, but at the end of the day, what mapping your nervous system at a very kind of baseline way to look at it and how we can kind of self-reflect even deeper is kind of recognizing what is my coping mechanism, my behaviors, my physiology, and back to that word about self-awareness. I think it's really kind of taking that lens back towards ourselves and shining the spotlight within to recognize, okay. Here's a situation that happened today. And it really made me feel whether it was depleted, whether I felt like I was unheard, whether I just felt like I didn't even wanna engage anymore because our metabolic resources were becoming shut down through anger and through just kind of like defeat. Then what did I choose to do?

And if I can remember and recall my physiology, like my bodily kind of situation in that experience, did I feel like my heart rate was racing? Did I feel really flushed and heated? Did I feel like I was clenching my jaw? And kind of just, those are the bodily kind of awareness pieces I want someone to bring in. But then also recognizing where was I looking in my situational awareness as a coping mechanism for regulation to calm me down from there. Was it a pet, which I have laying next to me right here as a nice soothing element? Or was it a plant? Was it a person? Did I actually have to get outside and move my body to kind of shake that energy off, put on a song? So these are all elements, maybe unconscious and conscious to some people, that can really help to support within, when I think about the proverbial ladder that we move upon in our nervous system is we're kind of constantly going up and down this ladder, and the middle of the ladder is your fight or flight. So when you're kind of feeling like your metabolic resources are so expended and exhausted to be like, I just can't anymore, that's because you're going down your ladder into freeze. You're depleted. So then what did you do to bring yourself back up? Maybe you wanted to indulge in chocolate. Maybe it was ice cream.

So it's kind of picking up these cues little by little so you can start to have a resource library. Not only for yourself to, hey, I see you, acknowledge it, identify it, but now I'm beginning to change it. So instead of going for the ice cream, this time, I am gonna choose to go do a yoga practice and gently start to shift the energy in my body to guide myself back up to the area of regulation. Of my ventral vagal kind of area of my nervous system. So that would be kind of like a tip in when we're talking about that word, self-awareness. Can you recognize these cues, bodily, environmental, in your relationships? All of that.

Russel Lolacher: So I'm trying to think of this from a neuro fit versus not neuro fit perspective. It's like I'm looking at the back of an old comic book where they have that before and after images of what does a neuro fit person look, act and show up as versus a not neuro fit will show up, act. Can you give like a comparison that would explain this a little better?

Mallory Meyer: So they would have a lot, let's say like a neuro fit, like looking at it in that lens. They would have resources and in their toolkit to kind of just acknowledge and have a lot more like self-compassion. That's a huge word of like have the ability to notice. And have that situational awareness, but more so than anything with their toolkit, they're able to kind of bring in compassion for their responses and they're able to have that like opportunity. Let's say the word co-regulation for me is all about making someone, you're not gonna get heightened and activated by someone else's anxiety or anger or stress like you're the calm anchor in the room to calm someone else down. So that's part of the noticing of someone that's neuro fit is because when you're in that branch of your nervous system, you're kind of, essentially the nonverbal cues are how your facial expression is. The gaze of your eyes, the tempo of your breath. Again, bodily physiology, just this unconsciousness that's happening between us, without us even consciously being aware of it be so, can be so... what's the word I'm really looking for? There's so much magnitude to it without even recognizing it. But when you do start to recognize it, it really kind of changes the lens of that.

When we're talking about the comic book color, I think about what's the lens of the glasses that you have on today? Is it like a purple hue or is it a green hue? And that's all because of someone's neuro fit ability.

Russel Lolacher: And if they don't have that, is the, is it a lack of confidence? Is it they're overcompensating? Is it like, what are we, if I see somebody visibly in a meeting and I'm like they're just, their neuro fitness is a bit lacking. They need to pick up the 10 pounders.

Mallory Meyer: Yeah, there, there's different degrees depending on the individual's experience. More often than not, like what I hear from individuals that I work with is from like the confidence. Yes. Like imposter syndrome can be a huge piece of the pie, but more so than anything, it's almost like they're finding themselves so depleted as well. So let's say their energies in the day if at 5:00 PM comes around and they just feel like they need to almost kind of go into isolation and go into a place where they can't even engage with anyone else. That's a huge cue to me from hearing from someone that's been able to self-identify that they need support, because again their ability of neuro fitness is, they're moving into that freeze zone.

So they're moving into a place of dissociation, and it's almost as if they've been masking a version of themselves the workplace that isn't true to their using that word, I know you and I talked about this on my podcast, but authentic self. So they haven't been true to who they are. So it's been essentially wearing that mask. So that's a big teller for one around neuro fitness as well, because you're comfortable with all parts of your yourself because you have that compassion within too, to recognize myself about this. I accept myself within this. But yes, stress and anger can also be a very varying degree to witness in someone's lack of, I'll just kind of say like the empathetic side of even just kind of picking up on the cues and the environment that they're within of their team and the essence of that to be able to explore it in a deeper sense and just kind of really be short, be, unwilling to open up dialogue that can have more culminative and collaborative efforts within it.

Russel Lolacher: We're talking about how the cognitive process, we're talking about your ability to make decisions and just sort of, you're coming from a more fit place. Now I see this and I don't, I keep getting the metaphor of the fitness thing, right. How do you stretch? There's, how do you prepare yourself, whether it's emotionally, whether it's cognitively to be fit, because it's not like it's not a light switch, I'm assuming. It is a progression over time or tested in scenarios.

So what are we doing to be more neuro fit?

Mallory Meyer: Also regards to, for one, like the element just with, there's something that came to mind and it left so quickly as you were speaking, but ultimately when I look at like the neuro fitness lens of it, there's a term called, and I'll share this with the audience, like it's called your window of tolerance. You may be familiar with it in the work, in the studies, the window of tolerance is essentially, again, unique to each individual. We all have this window, and within this window is our range of comfort ultimately, and that thought just came back to me, so I'm gonna bring it in as I talk about this right now.

But ultimately when we're in this window, like you were saying, like the decision making element to it, it's because when we're talking about neuro fitt, the language, how I've used it is because you're in a more fluid regulated state. It's not that you're intended to be regulated and taking that word regulated in your nervous system a hundred percent of the time. It's how quickly you can get yourself back into regulation once a situation arises that puts you outside of your window or puts you into fight or flight. And the value of being within your window, this window again, of your tolerance or within kind of ultimately regulation is, that's when we are engaged with our prefrontal cortex. So this is of course, like you said, decision making. This is where we have the ability to problem solve, to be more creative, to be more intuitive. Like the list can go on and on, but that's where executive functioning lives. But most of the time we're living in fight or flight, which is not part of our executive functioning.

So it's really kind of that emphasis of yes. I see it, that magic and that power is there when I'm in that place of regulation and I wanna be there more because I'm so connected. And the way, going back to your initial question here around, okay, how can I expand myself when I look at someone's window, and that's actually once we've mapped someone's nervous system and they've been able to kind of identify, I kind of live in this zone. 80% of the time, perhaps, and now it's really kind of, it's staring me in the eye about how I see the world when I'm in this zone. So then I know when I go into my place of regulation, the lens I take and how I see the world, but little things that I can do to start to jump out of that window. Do something like stretch myself. And a very tangible example for me this year has been public speaking.

I know you have heard my story a little bit around just like doing Disrupt HR, but I would never see myself public speaking, to be honest. And I had to first take the step of doing it in a small group. Okay. I've had that experience in my body. And visualization can be a good cue because our body kind of assimilates with our nervous system. Only good or bad, it has to know and feel an experience. So even if you haven't ever public spoken before or had that experience, if you can't feel it in your body first, your nervous system is just gonna say, this is bad, it's danger. You don't know what this is. So of course it's gonna feel scary. So there's elements like that we look at to see what's the ambitious goal, what's your next step that you wanna take? Because I work with a lot of, again, this word high performers, but individuals that are already kind of ambitious and motivated, have an internal driver, but they kind of feel like they have a glass ceiling at the same time.

Like maybe they kind of stretch themselves and then they come back to their comfort zone and it's really hard to stretch themselves again because they almost kind of take that rubber band too far and it snaps. So we want the rubber band to just be a little bit more fluid and flexible through different situational experiences and ones that they can hold in their body through visualization, because that's such a powerful element to train the brain. I dropped a lot there.

Russel Lolacher: No. It's good. It's meaty. And I'm in the, I won't pretend that I was pronouncing anything right, but in your bio we were talking about your polyvagal informed and that has to do with the nervous system, and you keep bringing up the nervous system. So how is that interconnected when it comes to neuro fitness?

Mallory Meyer: So that's pretty much the element truly of it all, to be honest, like the way that I, to stand, not even to stand out wouldn't be the right word, but to kind of uniquely carve an edge in the industry and the way that I've been sharing the work. Mental fitness is a big, like we were saying, mental health, but take it as mental fitness. Neuro fitness. when I stumbled upon this work, all I kept on kind of hearing in my own mind was this needs to go back into corporate because individuals need to know the science behind how their body is... I've done so much from the subconscious lens, but you can only take the brain so far without not necessarily having the body on board with you. So that was a huge element for me of when we're talking about the body, it's our nervous system. So it really became the foundations of everything I do to then build upon the other necessary techniques, whether it's hypnotherapy, whether it is kind of like timeline techniques. So like taking someone back in the subconscious lens to let go of decisions and beliefs that they've held onto, but it kind of compounds from that point forward.

Russel Lolacher: Stress keeps coming up a lot too in this conversation. How, what tools are we getting here? Because, I mean, we've talked a lot about the neural, neuro fitness of this and the strength we can have.

Looking at it from a, okay, you're at work and you're getting some of the most intense last minute fire drill kind of conversations. How is fitness showing up in those moments that you're like, no, I have the tools to deal with this. How do you know?

Mallory Meyer: So there is a, essentially, there's so many various ways that we can kind of quickly, in 30 seconds connect in to signal to our brain and to our body that I am safe, that I'm connected through neuro techniques that signal that. So, the only downside with being on podcasts at times and trying to explain it is that they are very somatic based. And so to try to describe them, it can be challenging. I'll just kind of put it like that, but there is one that I'll try to like ever so briefly describe.

So ultimately a neuro fitt exercise, something so simple just to describe on the podcast would be if you were to take the tip of your tongue and press it against the back of your front teeth, and then you're going to essentially raise your tongue to the top of your mouth and just press on the top of your mouth with your tongue.

So it's subtle, it's discreet, but the nerves on the top of your mouth are like part of your vagus nerve. So you're signaling without anyone knowing that you are connected, that you are starting to calm down and feel safe, so you can let your body know that without kind of going and doing something wild and crazy.

There's also another one that is very kind of tangible that I personally always go to, and it essentially just is about keeping your head straight and then you're going to look to the side without moving your head, just with your eyes as far as you can. Hold that gaze for about 30 seconds until you yawn.

You sigh or you swallow, and then you're gonna shift your eyes back center. And then you're gonna go to the left and you're still going to, again, I'm probably about to yawn right now, but you'll yawn, you'll sigh, or you'll swallow. And just through that exercise took me 15 seconds maybe there. I've already kind of just been able to signal to my vagus nerve, our branch of the nervous system, that I am safe, calm, and connected, and I even just feel the shift myself.

So it's really powerful in the subtlety of the repetition of these tools when you're provided them and you have the resources and the awareness to bring them into connection with your day.

Russel Lolacher: When you work through with leaders these exercises, I kind of know the answer 'cause it feels so human and universal, but I have to ask the question. Does diversity come into this at all? Because there are people of other generations that might, and I don't... first off, I think selling it to different generations might be different depending on who the generation is.

I see that serve from buy-in, but also how they approach these things. So how have you seen and generations, maybe it's culturally, is there any additional information when it comes to diversity that we should be aware of when approaching neuro fitness?

Mallory Meyer: Yeah, like blessing in disguise in some sense has been the conversations that have been held in the workplace around neurodiversity. Neuro fitness can be a huge contributor to neurodiversity in the sense of working with the neurodiverse population and extending resources like this for them. So there is a level of buy-in at the same time that I'm noticing, especially when we're talking about like that diversity question more so from different generations, because it's almost well, I've done it so like I've done it to this point and I've survived. Right? Like that kind of like notion about there's nothing wrong here. It's almost just again, back to the mask. But are you really okay because you almost don't even know what that flip side of the coin is. And so for me, myself, that's an audience that I'm not necessarily looking at speaking with.

It's more of the younger audience, the more adaptive like kind of startup kind of businesses that already know and have a little bit of an appetite of we are progressive to see change here. Which battle do you wanna win? Because there's definitely kind of eyebrows that can raise.

But I will say, because there's so much science behind it, that's what I love about it because it bridges science, spirituality, and even just like other elements of the mind that kind of go overlooked. So it's really kind of looking at less about high performance. But when I think about the word high impact. How can we kind of couple that into an organization and for a leader versus the performance side, which has been so kind of, not detrimental, but at the same time a pressure cooker to be within.

Russel Lolacher: And that makes me start thinking about hiring and promotions within an organization because we reward the high performers.

Should neuro fitness be a factor when it comes to hiring and it comes to promoting within an organization? Because the only thing we can see is, well, you produced, you created a widget, you fixed a problem, but you don't see questions like, so how do you handle stress tied to neuro strength, it's more of like, how did you handle stress to deliver the thing I need you to deliver? It's so process based, not humanity based. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah.

Mallory Meyer: I love it because it's such a key element, right? Because when we're looking at truly back to a hiring perspective too with a KPI where you don't wanna necessarily have someone come in, you've spent so much money, and then you're back into looking at the retention numbers, like the industry in itself of what it costs, or even back to that word around stress and looking at attrition. And like even elements like this, like it really does bring an element of uniqueness to a hiring process to embed questions like that, especially again, when we're thinking about neurodiversity and we wanna be able to kind of have more humanity and harmony and healing in the workplace in itself. I think they would so foundational to also bring that and start to explore that for individuals just to see the long-term gain, not only for a person, but from a financial side of course, as well.

Russel Lolacher: What gets in the way of people being neuro fit?

Mallory Meyer: One, sometimes it, it truly is, I'll call the elephant in the room. Sometimes it's just skepticism, like we're talking about diversity. It's well, I, why can't I just meditate? Why can't I go for a run? Why would I wanna kind of explore an avenue like this? Sometimes it's also not just skepticism, but even fear.

So it's a very vulnerable place to put yourself in. Because it's almost again, like putting a spotlight on these blind spots, on these spots that maybe you haven't even addressed within yourself. We look at root issues, and that's what I love about it. It's not about a bandaid here. It's actually about when we untangle and we take the layers of ourselves off, it starts to open up and breathe space for other elements, and that in itself can be really confronting for some people. I also think too, time is sometimes the biggest kind of factor in currency in our day and age, and it's not even that there's a lot of time that's required to actually, like you, I shared two exercises in a minute, but that's not even, that's just like the starter, so that's scratching the surface. I think that time is the investment that someone needs to make into themselves and how again, that isn't necessarily always the priority until sadly enough... Everything's hits the fan, and everything's toppled. So the proactiveness through it is part of it too, and that's just kind of cultural communication, everything that kind of embeds itself. But I'm just a... I can't be more passionate about it because I truly am a testament and I've seen it work for myself and for my clients.

Russel Lolacher: And you brought up one of my biggest roadblocks to good leadership, which is being too busy and that's, and that's the thing, right? If you want the tools, if you want to be the better human, the better leader, you have to prioritize neurological fitness because it's not just producing a thing or fixing a widget or putting out a fire.

You're not a leader, you're a manager at that point. So if you're not investing in yourself to be better for the people around you, then what are we talking about?

Mallory Meyer: Exactly, and it just kind of ripples forward, which is like the beauty of it. Back to that co-regulation piece, it's like when you are feeling calm, connected, confident, and at ease, it's just going to extend to the others within your space to feel that way too. And reciprocate.

Russel Lolacher: So a leader gets it. We're gonna be all rainbows and unicorns here. So a leader gets it. They are neuro fit, and yet they're in an organization that doesn't get it.

How do you perpetuate, plant the seeds, get some consistency going, help mend a culture modeling this behavior, like what do you do to, again, relationships at work? How do you perpetuate a relationship with your teams that promotes something like this?

Mallory Meyer: I'm very accustomed to that. I always say especially in the beginning of my journey, I was kind of in the spiritual closet because it was so hard to kind of have that relationship at work that brought that spiritual lens into conversations and kind of showcase what I had to offer as well. But you had said the word modeling and the word that I always like to choose is like being in true embodiment of it. Because when you are kind of so embodied in the elements of it, it's almost like a call to action without saying a call to action. Like I, it's like you're rising and people just want to innately follow you, and it's just that kind of like executive presence that you hold. So it's kind of without the words being said that in that, in that context, I'll just kind of say it as it can really kind of lean into opening up conversations about oh, something's different or what have you been focusing on, where it doesn't have to feel like you need to be the one to open up the space. It's just kind of extended to you. But at the same time, I think it's also kind of like a degree of understanding where can I start to bridge some of this into perhaps like dialogue when we're talking about whether it's factors around costs when we're looking back at wellbeing and wellness, equally like the health of the employees or individuals. Maybe it's bringing in a new lens because you've tried that same way over and over for the past couple years. The old industrial area era, I should say, of like just corporate in itself. What can we do to shift things and that could be part of that momentum to kind of help to support.

Russel Lolacher: I think if you wanna look at employee retention, if you wanna look at people that don't work for you, going up to your leadership going, are you hiring? Because nobody seems to leave. But I'd love to work for your team like you are exemplifying the kind of leadership that they want and they wanna work for.

I think that screams volumes about neuro fitness is that they see you as a beacon of, oh, that's how it should be. As opposed to that's how it is.

Mallory Meyer: Yeah, for sure. And I know like you yourself can be a testament to that too, right? Like the time of the retention that you've held within your team and like just that ability, like I was saying too, like you don't need to say much because you embodiment your modeling of it is part of the work and it shines through in that element.

But it is a lot of the times, like sometimes it can be like someone approaching you about your calmness. I feel like that's always something that individuals doing public speaking, they're like, well, how were you so calm? And as part of that, when we were going back to that word, co-regulation, when I go into a new space, there's social regulation, so I wanna be able to scan my environment and be able to kind of make mental notes about what I can see that I can go back into anchor against when I feel like I'm dissociating from myself, how can I bring myself back into my body? So that's a huge piece of it. But, yes, neuro fitness there's a key of self-awareness there, of course, there's also a key of a commitment, like we were talking about, wanting to be better, but a commitment to the tools because just like the gym, you're not gonna be able to just kind of show up one day, lift five pounds, to then go ahead and lift 50 pounds the next day. You need to continuously train, you need to continuously have repetition within these resources. And that, going back even to that word resilience, but that's really how you build it to be able to have a stronger sense of like even understanding and compassion in that lens as well.

Russel Lolacher: Sorry, nobody's getting neuro jacked in a day. They're gonna have to build a little bit of muscle first. Thank you so much for this, Mallory. Yeah, I could keep talking to you. There's so many sides to this that I'd like to explore, but you know, we're giving everybody a taste and my brain's a little bit bigger for it, so I appreciate it.

Last question. The last question. What's one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?

Mallory Meyer: Honestly, this is gonna sound so simple, but a question that I personally love. then this kind of one simple thing could be just asking someone how are you was gonna really be it? But, one really key question that I find to be really valuable, especially just thinking about if you're in a leadership capacity, is what worked for you today and what didn't work for you today? And I wanna put the emphasis on today because can kind of just get very high level with it. But when you really drill it down and seed it into today. It kind of opens up exploration and some really genuine feedback and that it comes back into being curious to tell me more, and I think it can't be stressed enough about asking questions like that to build relationships at work.

Russel Lolacher: Oh, she finished up with the name of the podcast. That's Mallory Meyer. She is a speaker, trauma sensitive, polyvagal informed leadership and neuro coach and fractional HR. And if you haven't listened to her podcast yet, please check it out. It's called Keep It Human. Thank you so much for being here, Mallory.

Mallory Meyer: Thank you, Russel.