Get ready to embark on a journey of personal and professional growth, guided by the enigmatic Mike Foster. The best-selling author, speaker, and executive coach will take us on a unique exploration of self-leadership, using his new book The Seven Primal Questions: Take Control of the Hidden Forces that Drive You, as our compass. This deep dive into self-awareness is driven by Mike’s unique experiences with bivocational work in ministry and business, and his relentless mission to empower people to live their best lives by understanding their unique gifts and vulnerabilities.
Mike believes that the relationship we forge with ourselves sets the tone for every other relationship in our lives. His enlightening discussion on the importance of self-reflection, emotional awareness, and understanding our primal questions promises to be a game-changer for your leadership skills.
We'll explore how our subconsciously asked questions shape our choices and how we engage with others. By uncovering our primal questions, we're placed in the right positions and improve our interactions with those around us. Get ready to unlock a new level of self-awareness and leadership, courtesy of Mike Foster's transformative approach.
About Mike
Mike Foster is a best-selling author, speaker, and executive coach. His new book, The Seven Primal Questions, is a revolutionary new framework for accelerating personal and professional growth. Mike’s work has been featured in the NY Times, GQ Magazine and on GMA.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Get ready to embark on a journey of personal and professional growth, guided by the enigmatic Mike Foster. The best-selling author, speaker, and executive coach will take us on a unique exploration of self-leadership, using his new book The Seven Primal Questions: Take Control of the Hidden Forces that Drive You, as our compass. This deep dive into self-awareness is driven by Mike’s unique experiences with bivocational work in ministry and business, and his relentless mission to empower people to live their best lives by understanding their unique gifts and vulnerabilities.
Mike believes that the relationship we forge with ourselves sets the tone for every other relationship in our lives. His enlightening discussion on the importance of self-reflection, emotional awareness, and understanding our primal questions promises to be a game-changer for your leadership skills.
We'll explore how our subconsciously asked questions shape our choices and how we engage with others. By uncovering our primal questions, we're placed in the right positions and improve our interactions with those around us. Get ready to unlock a new level of self-awareness and leadership, courtesy of Mike Foster's transformative approach.
About Mike
Mike Foster is a best-selling author, speaker, and executive coach. His new book, The Seven Primal Questions, is a revolutionary new framework for accelerating personal and professional growth. Mike’s work has been featured in the NY Times, GQ Magazine and on GMA.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenni Catron. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. We'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's get started on this leadership journey together, friends. Today my guest is Mike Foster.
Speaker 2:Mike Foster is a best-selling author, speaker and executive coach. His new book, the Seven Primal Questions, is a revolutionary new framework for accelerating personal and professional growth. Mike's work has been featured in the New York Times, GQ Magazine and on GMA. Mike is one of those leaders who I have admired and respected and been acquainted with for a number of years, and I deeply respect his thoughtfulness, his intentionality. And as we dive into the primal question topic today, you are going to see why we resonate so much and share so much just shared passion around the importance of self-leadership. You hear me say all the time lead yourself well to lead others better, and that is what Mike's work does. Is he really equips us with these primal questions that help us really dig into what are those gifts, what are those vulnerabilities, how to get clearer about how we've been wired and how we're gifted so we better understand how we show up.
Speaker 2:So here's my conversation with Mike Foster. Mike, I am so thrilled that you're joining us for the podcast today. This is so overdue we said that before we started recording but I'm like you're one of those leaders that I'm like I. We have so much in common in the things we value from a leadership perspective and we have so many mutual friends, and yet I think we've connected in a few green rooms pre-COVID, and that's the extent of it, fair enough.
Speaker 1:And that is such a I mean shame on us for just our lack of time together over the years. But I'm so glad we get to do this now, and it's way overdue.
Speaker 2:It's way overdue. You know I was thinking as we were gearing up for this episode and I thought you know what I think about Mike Foster, and because we again we have so many mutual friends and when I talk to people who have connected with you, what I hear from them all the time is just what a true friend you are and also just how thoughtful, engaged and a good listener you are to people. So I don't know if that feels accurate, but that's what I hear from people. Is that just their deep respect for you and how much they feel seen and heard by you and I bet that's probably a thread that runs through your work over time. Is that fair?
Speaker 1:Very much so. I mean, I think I find people to be incredibly fascinating and interesting and their stories, especially their stories of overcoming challenges and setbacks and struggles, and so I think I'm a person who's deeply curious about the human condition, so that I think that primes me to be a good listener and to take good notes as I'm going along and just pay attention to what people are navigating, and I actually do believe in the possibility of people, and so I'm interested in figuring out how to help people thrive more than just survive, but really thrive and flourish in their lives.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I think I want to be a good listener.
Speaker 1:I think that's all part of kind of what I believe is possible for people.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. So, just to give our listeners a little backstory, tell us a little. We're going to talk today about your new book, which I'm really excited about, but I'd love for you to give everybody a little bit of your backstory, some of your career, history or journey. What's that looked like for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've kind of, in terms of my history, have been bivocational for a lot of my life where I've kind of done ministry stuff but then also business stuff. Usually the business stuff was paying for the ministry stuff, right, and but at the core I have just always been trying to improve things around me. Whether it's a client's condition, I spend a lot of my week as an executive coach, working with leaders and pastors and nonprofit leaders and people are just trying to make a dent in the universe. Working with folks like that I write books, I do workshops, I speak, but all of it's kind of the same thing is just helping people get clear on what they want for their life, understanding their gifts, understanding their vulnerabilities and really, hopefully, empowering people to live their best life. And I think I've been doing that for 20 plus years in all different contexts and all different ways, but that's at the core of what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. One of the things that I have quotes that I've heard from you that I just really love and appreciate is you say the relationship you have with yourself sets the standard for every other relationship you will have, and so I'd love for you to just talk about that a little bit. Why is that, and how have you seen it play out in your own life and in the leaders you coach?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think I know this is true for my own life and it is true for my clients and the people that I coach. Is that what I believe about myself sets the tone and the pace for everything? So I can see myself through a lens of my brokenness, my failures, my mistakes, my weaknesses, my limitations. I certainly could see Mike Foster through that lens and then I'm going to choose things, choose opportunities, relationships, what I do with my time, based on that perception, through the lens of my weaknesses or my negatives. But then I also believe that if I actually understood my strengths and my gifts and actually my superpowers in the world, those are going to create different outcomes and different choices and a different way of engaging in my marriage with my team, with people in my neighborhood, and so we can never get beyond fundamentally that, the identity that we have and how we see that identity.
Speaker 1:And so much of my work, Jenni, is just helping people see clearly who they are, because what has happened for most of us is trauma, pain. Sometimes our family of origin messaging has put a certain label or put us in a certain context around who we are. That fundamentally is not true, and so I do a lot of work of like. Let's move from this island of shame and weakness and all the things that you've done wrong and all your limitations and all those things that your parents said you couldn't do and why you were a bad person whatever, and we're just going to move you to a different location. And what's interesting is I'm the same person. I am I'm the same person, but how I see myself has changed and it just gives me a whole new set of opportunities, a whole new way of engaging life.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, mike, I'd be curious Do you find with leaders so a lot of our listeners will be pretty accomplished leaders who have been given a lot of responsibility and so and I'm probably projecting a little bit myself and that I was so focused on the things I wanted to accomplish and the things I wanted to do and, just, you know, the goals in mind that I had, I was kind of blind or ignoring some of the self awareness work, the self leadership work. Do you find that with a lot of leaders, or is it kind of varied? How many people are willing to do the work? I think it's probably the better question.
Speaker 1:Well, there's great resistance to the work.
Speaker 2:It's hard work, isn't it? It's hard work.
Speaker 1:And that's the that's reality of this. It's like do I want to go, you know, lay out by the pool, or do I want to go to therapy? Well, I'd probably rather lay out by the pool. But right, and you know, for a lot of us, we have become so gifted and skilled of compartmentalizing our pain.
Speaker 1:We're compartmentalizing things that we don't want to look at and have set them over here off to the side. And you know my whole work with people is saying, hey, you're carrying stuff, Okay, it is there, and it comes out in some form or another.
Speaker 1:That's right, and if you want to be a good leader, you better be emotionally aware. You better be emotionally smart. You know one of the things when I'm working with leaders, I tell them the most important project that you will lead this year at your company is yourself, yes, yeah. And if you're not self aware, if you're not doing the hard work of looking under the hood in terms of your inner world and your triggers and your pain and how certain beliefs and labels from your past are impacting your leadership, then you're going to struggle as a leader. But if you can bring that into kind of the openness, put it on a table and understand and be able to talk about it, put it in a healthier place, you're going to be winning as a leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's powerful. Okay, so you, your new book is called the Seven Primal Questions Take Control of the Hidden Forces that Drive you. I'm assuming much of what you've already shared has probably informed these questions, but I'd love for you to tell us how you arrived at the questions and then we're not going to be able to get to all seven of them because we're all going to go get the book so we can get to all seven of them. But but I'll have you, I'll have you kind of share a few of those, but I'd love to know the backstory of getting to those seven questions and that being you know kind of the substance of the book.
Speaker 1:Yes, I've written a few books in my lifetime and this is the first book where I did, over four years, almost five years of research, 6,000 hours of one-on-one interviews, 22 group labs to formulate the model of the seven primal questions.
Speaker 1:And basically, it is a question that gets imprinted in our early childhood, that comes from either pain or confusion or trauma that we then carry into our adult lives and we keep asking this question over and over again, Subconsciously. And we're not aware of this question, but we ask it and when we get a yes to the question our life is good and grounded. But when we get a no to the question, we go into what I write about in the book. I call the scramble. The scramble is like all the ways that we try to force the answer back to a yes Codependency, people pleasing, overworking, performance addiction, all kinds of hyper control, hyper vigilance all these things that we try to do to take control of the situation, to get our primal question answered with a yes. And really what the primal question is at its core is it's our highest emotional need as an individual.
Speaker 1:And when our highest emotional need is not met. We get that. No to that primal question. We're not our best selves. We are. It's like somebody comes and shakes our snow globe and so like if we want to be healthy leaders, we have to be healthy parents. We want to be in healthy relationships and our marriages. We have to understand what we have to be able to name it, understand that emotional need, what triggers that emotional need, how that emotional need drives almost everything in your life. And that's what I'm hoping to do with the book and the assessment that we have online is have a clarity around that, begin to work with it and not have it sort of control your life because it's sitting on the surface and you have no idea how it's basically the command center of your life.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, will you give us an example of one of those and kind of play that out for us, you know of like how to wrestle through that question and the triggers and things? I'd love, I'd love for you just to deep dive on one of the questions that you probably hear the most from leader, or one of the ones maybe leaders need to wrestle with the most. We probably need to wrestle with all seven, but I'll have you pick one.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, they're all seven are definitely all seven represent human beings highest emotional needs. But there's one question, which is the primal question, which is gonna drive our life. So let me give you an example like question number one, and this is my question. My question is am I safe? That's my primal question and that got imprinted in my early childhood because of abuse that happened and trauma that happened in my life. I didn't feel protected, I didn't feel safe. And so as a child, basically I am, I'm wondering, I'm asking the question am I safe? And the answer was no, and so I then figured out all the ways for Mike Foster to secure his safety. Okay, sure. And then I grew up to be an adult and I'm subconsciously asking this question am I safe, am I safe? So, naturally, this is going to inform the type of risks I take. I'll give you an example of how this played out in my leadership For many years almost like 10, 15 years I did everything in partnership.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay, now why did I do that? And when I was in part of a partnership, I'd always put the other partner out in front, like he was more dominant, he was the real leader. Even though it could have been my idea, I brought everything to the table, but I'm putting this other person out in front of me. Well, what I came to understand is this was a safety mechanism for me. Yeah, I was protected because there was this other individual that could take the criticism or handle the problems and I just had to sort of sit behind him. But what I came to realize is this wasn't a good model for me, like for my own safety, like it didn't guarantee safety. It actually created more problems, to be honest, because partnerships are hard, right, partnerships are hard.
Speaker 2:yes, for sure, For sure.
Speaker 1:But to be aware of that is very helpful. So when I'm choosing structures for my leadership now, I don't have to ask the question am I safe? What I talk about in the book is that the prescription for our primal question is living in our primal truth, where we take the question and turn it into a statement. So for me it's showed as the best leader now and make the best choices. I don't live, I don't ask the question am I safe anymore. I live from the primal truth. I am safe and then I make my choices.
Speaker 1:So the other way this plays out is the research shows that we take our question. So take my question am I safe? And I place that question over everybody else that I interact with, and this is what we call our primal gift. So as a leader, you wanna be aware of your primal gift. So my ability, my supernatural ability, is helping people feel safe. Why? Because I'm assuming, Jenni, you're asking that question right now am I safe, even though you might have a totally different primal question, but my interaction with you is going to be. I wanna make sure I answer it with a yes, that you're safe. And this is why, over my entire life, people have, after knowing me for five minutes, tell me everything.
Speaker 2:So, as you say, this is why, when I opened the conversation with how our mutual friends talk about you, they're communicating that you make them feel safe, exactly.
Speaker 1:Wow, and that's a really important thing to understand. Like the primal question is not a problem to fix, it's something to understand Because within it is this really powerful understanding of yourself but also a really powerful understanding of your gift. And so, like, when I think about my leadership, when I think about me being a participant in my team, my role here is to bring safety and protection to my team. Yeah, yeah, Now there's other primal questions that have different primal gifts. Yeah, and they bring that to the team and so we can look at people's primal question and go, okay, like one of the primal questions is am I loved? These are people who again, taking their primal question, putting it over everybody else am I loved? And they're gonna answer yes, yes, yes. These are the love experts, they're the empathy experts.
Speaker 1:There are caretakers that are so like, if I have somebody like that working in my organization, I wanna make sure they're interacting with the public right, I wanna make sure that the person at the front door I want them on, like you know, like first impressions teams, whatever it is it's like using that primal question gift as a way to place them in the right place in my organization Brilliant, and so it just opens up a lot of clarity and so often like assessments or tools like this are well, here's what I gotta fix about myself. No, this is what you need to understand about yourself, so you can just deploy that into the world in its most maximum way.
Speaker 2:That is powerful, and so all of us are likely to have my primal question is probably different from yours, right? If I'm understanding that correctly, like you know, of the seven different questions, one of those is gonna be more of the primal question, the primal question for me. Yes, correct, yes. So how do you identify your unique primal question?
Speaker 1:Well, quick plug for the assessment. The best way is just to go to primalquestion. com. There's about a five to six minute assessment, about 20 questions, and after you answer those questions, the assessment will let you know what your primal question is. And again, the primal question imprint and the reason why we have the question is based on our early childhood experiences, and so I'll give you one.
Speaker 1:One of the primal questions is question seven do I have a purpose? And this is where people's kind of highest emotional need is to have impact in the world, to make a difference in the world, to do meaningful work. This is, and when they get a yes to that, they're alive, they're thriving. But when they're sitting in a job where they feel like they're doing meaningless work or work that's not important, that's a problem for them and they're gonna go into their scramble. Okay, but that person on my team, I wanna invite that person to all of my vision meetings. Right, because they're gonna be. These are our visionaries, these are our world changers. These are people that probably struggle with process and the details, but they're like great big picture thinkers.
Speaker 1:But the imprint in the early childhood for most question sevens was they tend to grow up in religious homes Interesting, yeah, because you're sitting at the dinner table and mom and dad are talking about God's gonna use you in a great way. You're gonna have a lot of impact, god's got a great plan and there's sort of this. You're swimming in the water of purpose, but that can often be confusing for a child because you're like, well, how much impact is enough? Impact that would make God happy, right, right, wow, so these folks will struggle a lot with my purpose. Am I doing enough? Am I in the right place?
Speaker 1:There's sort of this calling angst that they are always wrestling with. Okay and so, like for a person with this question, we'd say, hey, stop asking the question, do I have purpose? And start living your primal truth. I have purpose. Doesn't matter what you're doing. You could be a stay at home mom, you could be leading a compassion international. Your life is inherently infused with incredible purpose and once we sort of stop asking the question, do I have a?
Speaker 2:purpose. Do I have a purpose?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and living in the truth. I have purpose. The whole dynamic changes. Our choices changes. We're no longer living in that scramble just like. I've got to stop asking the question am I safe? And realize I am safe? Yeah, and so that's. The key to all of this is understanding what's underneath the water. The question is what's underneath? It's the thing underneath thing that drives everything. Yeah, once you understand it, you'll understand your triggers, but you'll also understand your superpower.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, okay, Can you give us one more?
Speaker 1:I want to hear one more question and a little like overview of it, like that yeah Well, I'll give you one from Bob Goff, and a lot of you probably know Bob. Bob's primal question is am I wanted? And Bob has shared openly about this question where face a lot of rejection and abandonment. In his early childhood His parents just didn't understand him. He's too quirky or weird or I don't know, whatever this. But there was a lot of rejection in Bob's life. And so now Bob grows up and he's got this question that he's carrying am I wanted? And one of the ways that Bob figured out how to be wanted was to be the fun guy, the life of the party guy right, that was a coping mechanism that he created to get his question answered with a yes, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, if I'm the fun guy, then I'm gonna be wanted, I'm gonna be invited in. But Bob's also the guy who put his phone number in the back of his book. Okay, yep, you think Bob did that. Well, let me tell you, because every time somebody calls Bob's cell phone number, his primal question am I wanted? Is answered with a yes, yeah, wow. And then Bob's primal gift he takes his question, am I wanted? Puts it on everybody else and he wants to answer with yes.
Speaker 1:So Bob's best friends with everybody in the world. Bob invites everybody over to his house. He's an inclusionary master, everybody, always. It's like all this is about you're my friend, you're wanted, I want you, I want to be connected to you. And so you can see that wound from his childhood creates this primal question. But it forms everything about who he is, both his weaknesses, like maybe, bob, you don't always have to be the funny guy, right, you can just be you and you'll be wanted. So letting Bob kind of rest into the fact that he doesn't have to entertain everybody all the time, he doesn't have to be funny all the time. And also, bob, this gift that you have. It's amazing and you should double down and lean into that, because I don't have that gift, jenny. Sure, I have a safety gift. Bob has a belonging gift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's brilliant. Oh, thank you for sharing just a couple of those examples because I think it's sparking the curiosity questions for the rest of us of like, okay, what is that question for me? And so that's going to instruct all of us to go check out the assessment. Will you tell us again where we can find the assessment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just primalquestioncom and you'll see it. Right there there's a big old button that says take the free assessment and you'll take the assessment. It takes again about five minutes and there'll be a little video afterwards for me that will explain the results of your question and some next steps. So it's really easy and simple and a really great place to start.
Speaker 2:Mike, this is so fantastic. Thank you for your diligent work to just mine for these questions and bring the clarity to them. That I know is a gift to the leaders that have already connected with these questions and I know for all of us. As we go, take the assessment and dig into the work, pick up the book. It's just helping us all be better leaders, leading ourselves well to lead others better. So thank you for your intentionality and doing the hard work to help lead the rest of us in it. How else could leaders connect with you Anything else that we should know how to follow you on Instagram? I was poking around on Instagram and all the video like you've got little video vignettes of a ton of these questions and so tell us where else to find you so we make sure we stay connected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, instagram is my social media platform of choice, and so not on Twitter too much, not on Facebook too much, but Instagram. Mike Foster 2000,. The number 2000,. Because there's 1,999 other Mike.
Speaker 2:Foster on.
Speaker 1:Instagram, but Mike Foster 2000. Perfect, yeah. And then at the website, at primalquestion. com, there's lots of great videos and you can do a deep dive into each question. You hear people talking about their question. There's a whole thing about business, how this applies to business teams and how you can bring that into your organization, your leadership, and so PrimalQuestion. com and then Mike Foster 2000 on Instagram are probably the best places to connect.
Speaker 2:That's perfect, Mike. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your time with us. I'm so glad you and I got to reconnect.
Speaker 1:I know we'll have to figure out how to do a non podcast connection Like catch up. Yes, yeah, exactly I tell people a lot.
Speaker 2:I actually enjoy podcasting because I get to catch up with all the people that I would love to have a call with, but we just do it so everybody else can can join along, so it's perfect, totally Awesome. Thank you so much, mike. Appreciate your leadership.
Speaker 2:Friends, was I right? Like gosh, I'm so excited to go dive into the questions, to take my assessment, to really figure out what that PrimalQuestion is for me, and I know you're going to be eager to do that too. So make sure you go to PrimalQuestion. com, check that out, connect more with Mike and I want to encourage you to bravely do this self awareness work, to be emotionally aware, to be emotionally smart as a leader. It's going to serve you and it's going to serve your team. So go, do that work, check out the assessment and keep leading yourself well.
Speaker 2:Now, if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, let us know. Connect with us on Instagram at getforsight, on LinkedIn at the 4sight Group. I'd love it if you would share it and if you would rate it. All of that is super helpful in continuing to do the work that we do here through the podcast. And if you're looking for more leadership resources to help you and your team thrive, go to get4sight. com. You can sign up for our weekly Insights newsletter where, again, I'm just sharing the latest that I'm thinking and processing on all things leadership and culture. That's G-E-T, the number four, s-i-g-h-t. com. All right, friends, thank you for listening today. Keep leading well and we will see you next week.