111: Leading with Joy and Compassion, with Amanda Gore

What if you could transform your leadership style by embracing joy and compassion? 

Join us as we sit down with Amanda Gore, who shares her inspiring personal journey to discover joy. At 68, driven by an unexpected calling, Amanda left her comfort zone behind to pursue a larger role in life.

Modern leadership demands a delicate balance between strategic prowess and the nurturing of so-called soft skills. We discussed the pros and cons of remote work and the essential role of in-person connections for mental health; strategies to minimize fear and build trust within workplace cultures; and the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, or "Real AI," for leaders striving to create inclusive and supportive environments. 

Tune in to discover how these insights can revolutionize your approach to leadership.

Amanda Gore is a speaker, writer, and communications and performance expert, who uses the latest research in neuroscience, positive psychology, epigenetics, and emotional intelligence, to help business leaders achieve the results they need - by getting people engaged in, enthusiastic about and aligned with, corporate goals and vision. And by creating joyful workplaces that lead to better performance, productivity and creativity. Amanda creates experiences that change events, cultures and people. And is the author of the Joy Is an Inside Job.

You can learn more about Amanda on her website, or Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Or email her at: amanda@mandagore.com

Watch Amanda Gore TV on YouTube.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 1:14 The Power of Compassion and Joy
• 15:26 Building Trust and Connection in Leadership
• 22:14 Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence Importance

Transcript

Amanda Gore: 1:15

Who are we leading? Humans, and all humans want to be part of. Virtually all humans want to be part of a community, want to be seen, cared for, valued, blah, blah, blah. All the stuff I said earlier, including the leaders.

Manya Chylinski: 1:32

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Amanda Gore. She's a communications and performance expert, and she uses the latest research in neuroscience, positive psychology, epigenetics and emotional intelligence to help business leaders achieve the results they need. She's also the author of the book Joy is an Inside Job. Today, we talked about joy and its role in our lives and in our organizations. We talked about compassion and we talked about what does it take to lead with compassion and empathy. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode, amanda. I'm so glad we found a time to talk today. Me too. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, thank you for being here. Before we get started on the main topic, the question I'm starting with for everyone this year is what is one thing that you've done that you never thought you would do in any realm of your life?

Amanda Gore: 2:42

Wow, tricky. You should have warned me. You're asking me this question, probably moving country when I was 68 and moving to a place I had never lived before and starting again and reinventing myself Wow.

Manya Chylinski: 2:59

How far did you move? What kind of move was this we're talking about?

Amanda Gore: 3:02

Well, that was from Australia to America, so it was a fair distance. Mind you, I had lived in America before for 10 years, but I hadn't lived in America for 10 years up till that time in between, so it wasn't just across the street.

Manya Chylinski: 3:22

Yes, that's a huge move. Can I ask what brought you to America?

Amanda Gore: 3:24

Well, I would love to say it's some romance story, but it's not. It was a complicated prompting by a friend and sitting on my balcony shouting at the sky. Sitting on my balcony shouting at the sky, saying what am I going to do? And then hearing in inverted commas do you want to play big or small? Having no idea what that meant, and then knowing in that moment I had to move. I didn't have to move, but I knew yeah, I did. Actually I had to move. So I sold my beautiful homes, left paradise, did all the stuff I had to do, got a visa and moved over, none of which I'd anticipated.

Manya Chylinski: 4:05

Absolutely. Well, that is a big move and I love hearing that something helped you understand it was time to move. So many of us have been in those positions of big change and not necessarily knowing what prompted it. But well, I for one am glad that you made the change. Welcome to the US with all our foibles and interesting tales. Else let's dive into talking about compassion and joy.

Amanda Gore: 4:46

I know that joy is a topic that you have written much about. I have and again, that's a weirdo story. I started off as a physical therapist, but in Australia physical therapists a blend of respiratory therapists, physical therapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, naturopaths we're a whole blend of things and I morphed into speaking by chance. But I originally started off speaking on wellness and how to keep the body physically in great shape, because I treated so many people who were in pain, who didn't actually have to be in pain, and then that morphed into stress, and then the things that caused stress, which was communication and connection or disconnection and lack of communication, and the stories we tell ourselves, and then that morphed into joy and I can't tell you exactly when that happened, but it was just a knowing I had that I had to write a book on joy, but I couldn't do it. I hadn't had any trouble writing books, I'd written a couple of books prior to that and it was easy for me. But this book on joy, I was stumped. I tried, couldn't do it, tried, couldn't do it and eventually my mother died and I was devastated and we moved from Dallas to Vermont just for a change. And I woke up one morning with a bizarre kind of dream vision and my mother said to me she was going to put a spiritual writing committee together and I was to meditate and they would download the book to me. I just need to say that this does not often happen to me. In fact, it had never happened to me and I thought perhaps I was going crazy, but I thought nothing else was working, so I'd try it. Well, I sat down and I meditated for about 20 minutes and I went and I wrote 30 pages of the book and the book was done in about six weeks. Wow, and it's a big book. So that's kind of how I got onto Joy.

Amanda Gore: 6:39

And one of the interesting things about the book is the last chapter I initially called Equanimity, but nobody knew what equanimity was, so I had to change it to Inner Peace and it was interesting because it's double the length of every other chapter and it turns out that it encompasses all the other chapters and it pretty much touches on every aspect of life and corporate world and leadership Compassion is one of the chapters, but all of them tie into leadership as well, because if you think about leadership or corporations, or sales or customer service or anything anywhere with another human. We're all interacting with humans and we forget that humans haven't changed much in the last gazillion years and we all want to be seen, heard, valued, acknowledged, cared for. And you know there's a couple of extremely good organisations. One is Barry Waymiller still a privately owned company where they focus completely really on their credo, which is we are developing great people to do extraordinary things, and they have a true culture of care and within that care, of course, compassion's a component of it, Right?

Manya Chylinski: 8:05

Thank you for sharing that about your book and kind of this whole world as we think about. I really love that. A couple of the big things that have happened in your life have been you being open to kind of listening to what you needed to do.

Amanda Gore: 8:25

I agree with you. I would love to say that I was sitting there willing and open, but no, the first time I was probably shouting at the sky, going, well, how am I going to write this book? I don't know how to write this book. And then the second time was sitting on the veranda, again shouting, going well, what am I going to do? Do I go or stay? And whether I was shouting at myself or not. But I seemed to get an answer. And it's interesting because in that moment I knew and I'm at 70, discovering now and learning more about the difference between knowing and thinking.

Manya Chylinski: 9:05

And you described such a human response. I think so many of us can see ourselves or moments in our lives to the. You're getting the input that this is a thing to do, but it's not what you want to do, it's not where you saw yourself going, and we fight back no, this isn't what I want to do. No, I don't want to listen to you. And it feels like when we let go and let ourselves listen. Sometimes those are the biggest learning experiences.

Amanda Gore: 9:37

Yeah. Well, that certainly was for me, I wouldn't say the most fun learning experience, the second one, but certainly one of the biggest. And I'm sure that in another year or so I will reflect on this and appreciate the value of the learnings that I've had. Yes, now you encapsulated them, aren't you? The things that I? I didn't jump off the chair and go, fabulous, I'm going to sell my house and get a visa and move country and pack everything up. And I did it reluctantly, but knowing, I guess, my soul, my higher self, god some people would say spirit, others would say universe there was just some inner knowing from somewhere that I knew I couldn't say no to. But you're right, a lot of people would say no. They would have said yeah, no.

Manya Chylinski: 10:34

How many of us can look back in our past and think about the times we did just say, no, I'm not going to. That's not what I'm going to do, Because it's scary.

Amanda Gore: 10:43

We always have free will, so we can. No matter what we do, we'll learn. It's just. I suppose what I'm discovering now, as I learn more about this whole arena and myself, is that it's more, some of the lessons are more challenging and therefore you evolve more rapidly. And, whether other people agree with me or not, I think that's the main purpose of our lives to learn and experience all the things that we came to experience and grow, develop, integrate and, somewhere, try to have some joy along the way.

Manya Chylinski: 11:23

Yes, Well, and as we're thinking about that topic of joy and growth and living that full life, I know you speak and you work with corporations and you talk about joy and kind of aligning vision and goals and from your work are we seeing integration of these kind of values in our workplaces, in our corporations?

Amanda Gore: 11:54

That's a great question. It depends on the corporation and it depends on the leader. So, as I said before, barry Waymiller has this fabulous culture and they have. They've even created a university. Bob Chapman wrote a book called Everybody Matters and that's a guiding philosophy throughout the organisation. So it's a very human-centric place.

Amanda Gore: 12:16

And so many workplaces, especially since COVID and where people have had to go hybrid or they choose hybrid, it's not good for the human soul. We're so disconnected, we're so poorly communicating that we're losing the essence of that critical community factor. And especially when we don't go to work, to a workplace every day and I know lots of people would scream at that because now they don't have horrible commutes and they can stay in their pajamas all day and they can have their cat's bottom staring at the Zoom thing, you know, or walking across Zoom. But it's not necessarily good for your soul and the connection with others. And so Barry Waymill is one company.

Amanda Gore: 13:05

There's another wonderful organisation, the name of which I forget right now, but I talked to the CEO the other day, who wrote a couple of great books One is called Joy Inc. And his whole philosophy, when I was talking with him, is similar to Bob Chapman's and one of the things he was talking with him is similar to Bob Chapman's and one of the things he was talking about was that since the inception of their company which is something like, I think, 20 years ago, a company that starts with M they've allowed people who have babies to bring the babies to work and it has done the most amazing thing for the connection and community created with everybody in the open plan workplace. Now most places would go well no, we can't do that, that'll be disruptive, blah, blah, blah. But in fact it's been a wonderfully connecting experience for everyone and there are many leaders understand the nature of genuine caring for their people and my ex-husband, in fact, is a guy called Ken Wright who wrote a book called the People Pill which is still one of the best leadership books I've ever read.

Amanda Gore: 14:15

It's only small but he's one of the best leaders I've ever met and he would do things like well. He would certainly let everybody know he cared for them, but when he was in charge of Australia's biggest banks entire Salesforce, which at the time was 20,000 people years ago he would spend hours every I think quarter when they would check KPIs and he would write handwritten notes to all the people who met their KPIs and he didn't just say well done Ken, he wrote well done and then he would find out some personal aspect of their lives and comment on that. So he went to a great deal of trouble to acknowledge people as individuals that actually cared about and they felt that and, as a consequence, wherever he went, his results would go through the roof and people would follow him wherever he went and they would just shine. And they've gone on to be. Many of them have gone on to be CEOs in other organizations and they still go to him for guidance and advice.

Manya Chylinski: 15:27

Yes, you've said a couple of things I want to dig into. So, one thing you just mentioned Ken's amazing management style. That takes time and I think leaders today, I think, are feeling overwhelmed. They've got the bottom line they need to be paying attention to the stakeholders, whether public or private, that they need to be paying attention to, as well as employees, as well as XYZ. How can they find the time, or make the time, to have this compassion and have this personal attention? I think that's one of the things. It just feels like you're piling one more thing on the CEO or the executive leadership team's plate.

Amanda Gore: 16:14

Well, for starters, remember that if you're in that executive role, it's your direct reports, that we're talking about a decision of priorities really, and I understand that they're pulled in a gazillion different directions and overwhelm's easy and everybody's doing more with less now. But all the significant leadership magazines Forbes, inc, hbr, name it, fast Company they're all talking about the soft skills of leadership the communication, the connection. Truly. That's really what they're talking about. And it's almost a paradox.

Amanda Gore: 16:55

By not focusing on that and by not allocating time to or prioritizing that heart-to-heart connection, you actually create more dramas.

Amanda Gore: 17:04

So, of course, the strategic aspects have to be looked at and I read something the other day that said one of the most disruptive elements in corporate life now is the number of Zoom meetings people are having and they're back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back, which is crazy.

Amanda Gore: 17:20

It's just crazy to make because because it's in real life, when we're in together as humans, you would finish one meeting, you would at least have time to walk from one spot to the next meeting, but you weren't likely to say to people well, I'm just going to schedule another meeting, the second, this one finishes, because you know it might go over, might take you a bit longer to get there.

Amanda Gore: 17:45

You'd give yourself 10 or 15 minutes between the meetings. But for some obscure reason that I can't fathom, people seem to book a Zoom call and then instantly book another Zoom call. And then, of course, if you've got a bit of time, you get on a Zoom call early but the other person doesn't come in until the actual nanosecond of the Zoom call and then you've got to hang up on the nanosecond of the Zoom call because there's another Zoom call coming in. The interacting digitally is exhausting. It's well documented now that the end of a day of looking at digital stuff all day and doing Zoom meetings is far more exhausting than actually interacting with another human in a physical capacity where you can at least pick up energy from them, unless they're an energy sucker, of course.

Manya Chylinski: 18:37

And that's. I want to get back to the second thing you said a little while ago that I found really intriguing. You were talking about hybrid and, I'm sure, remote work as problematic because of that lack of connection. Remote or hybrid work is more compassionate. It's more inclusive because it enables people who might find it difficult to come into a physical office. So I'm curious what you think of that.

Amanda Gore: 19:10

Well, people who are passionate about staying at home. Let's look at why they're passionate about staying at home, and I totally understand it. You know some people. If you've had an hour and a half commute either way to work, it's a no brainer, isn't? It Gives you an extra three hours a day and you can apply that to work. But there's quite a lot of studies coming out showing that people who work from home actually work more because they're there. And, yes, you might go and put the washing on whilst you're having three Zoom meetings and then hang the washing out in between, and so you get some other chores done, but you end up working more.

Amanda Gore: 19:49

And it's already very different from how it used to be, even 10 years ago, where the phone means you are constantly in contact and with work and with colleagues and with dramas at work, and if it isn't that, it's your laptop.

Amanda Gore: 20:06

And I was just speaking with someone yesterday as a very busy executive had recognized that she wouldn't even go on holidays without her laptop, just in case. And I think a lot of us have lost a sense of balance around that and it's driven by fear, I think, fear of if I'm not there, I'll be redundant, or if I've not seen this critical to this or something terrible will happen if I'm not controlling it. So a lot of the work that I do stems around talking about the core fears that drive people, because until we understand those, it's very challenging to understand other people's behaviour. But if we continue on that virtual hybrid story, there are arguments for and against and I think a balance is probably the very best thing. So I would err on three days at work in an office and two, if you have to, at home, because the connection with other humans really matters, yes, for our psyche.

Manya Chylinski: 21:13

It does.

Manya Chylinski: 21:14

Now you mentioned an interesting, you said an interesting word. You talked about fear, and when I think about organizations, and workplaces in particular perhaps are lacking in compassion or are organizations where wellness of any kind is a challenge, I find those to be very fearful places. People are afraid of being judged, they're afraid of speaking out, they're afraid of you know saying no, this is the wrong direction. And how do you work with organizations to kind of address that and help leaders build an environment where people trust and there isn't that level of fear? Do you know?

Amanda Gore: 22:03

sometimes I think, manya, that I'm just, I simplify things too much, but really, if we look at it, like I said earlier, who are we leading? Humans and all humans want to be. Virtually all humans want to be part of a community, want to be seen, heard, cared for, valued, blah, blah, blah all the stuff I said earlier, including the leaders and all humans, almost all humans, are driven by these core fears that epigenetics teaches us are embedded by the time we're seven and, just briefly there, I'm not worth loving or I'm not good enough. The second is I'm unsafe in some way. And the third is I'm separate, I don't belong, I don't fit in. And if you understand and we can educate leaders because, really, who teaches people this? You can do an MBA.

Amanda Gore: 22:54

And the most important thing in life, without exception, the most important thing in life is how you feel about yourself. Because when you feel great about yourself, or at least happy with yourself, or neutral about yourself, and you're not beating yourself up and you're not saying what an ass you are, then everything goes better in life. In fact, I would say the last 12 months I lost an enormous amount of my confidence and that has really had a significant impact on every aspect of my life, including work. What I don't think we appreciate is that the essence of who we are is always pure. It's this astonishing being of light, and we are worth loving. We are good enough. We can always grow, develop, but we are good enough. We are safe generally, unless we're in some unsafe physical environment or we perceive environments at work to be psychologically unsafe and often they are, and we can also change that with our own responses to it. And we do belong, we do fit in most places, even though I've been in a.

Amanda Gore: 24:04

I moved to a place where I knew no one except the realtor. I don't really feel like I fit in yet, but I've been working on creating a bit of a community and slowly I'm starting to meet people. But I was the biggest stumbling block and I feel that until we all have this kind of self-awareness. In fact, I created a new keynote called the Real AI and everybody was promoting AI and everybody wanted speakers on AI. So I thought, well, I'm going to do one on the real AI and it stands for awareness inside and that level of awareness will outstrip any kind of technological AI ever. Sure, chatgpt could write you a blog in 35 seconds or write an e-book for you or do something like that, but it's never going to have the insight and the intuitive capacities that, as humans, we have If we feel good about ourselves. It means we can shine our true essence out, and we can then be aware of how other people are feeling, and, as leaders, that's critical.

Manya Chylinski: 25:24

Right, and, as you mentioned earlier, this is not a class in the MBA program. This is not a class in most of our formal education systems, whatever level you think of. We don't tend to teach these skills. We somehow think that people are just going to know them or absorb them. So you know, when we look to leaders to say this culture isn't compassionate, there isn't joy, you're not teaching people, not treating people as humans. They might just be coming from a place where they've just never thought of that.

Amanda Gore: 25:59

I mean I can guarantee there's a very small number of adults who are not toddlers, walking around in grown-up bodies and, as a leader, if you're a toddler, who is running on the stories that I just mentioned the core fears I mentioned before then there are all sorts of behaviors that are as a consequence. That's, controlling behaviors, micromanaging, ignoring other people, creating factions, focusing only on KPIs. One of the other big things is that's not taught is that not only are we run by these core fears that once we're aware of we can start to make changes, but we're often not aware that we're being driven by these unconscious core fears, but the other is focusing on how people feel and how you feel. Again, lao Tzu said we teach best what we most need to learn, and, goodness knows, I certainly needed to learn all of these and really I couldn't start feeling. But I didn't know. I wasn't feeling until I was about 60 when I had this aha moment working with somebody.

Amanda Gore: 27:13

Oh, what you can remember your child. Oh, you feel stuff. Wow, what sort of stuff do you feel? How does that feel when you feel? And I'm still working on it now, but a lot of people would think I'm a moron saying that. What do you mean? You can't feel? But there's an awful lot of grownups who actually got severed at the neck as children and their brains took over and said no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to have a feeling here. No, no, no, no, no, that's too dangerous. Nope, nope, I've got this. We're just going to stay in our heads and we're going to understand this and work it all out and calculate it, and I'm certainly not having a feeling. And so I've had to teach myself that I'm safe enough to have these feelings, unpleasant as they are at times, and allow them to process through my physiology, by by not rejecting them or accepting them, but just observing them. And just by observing them, these feelings, we have a lot more emotional intelligence and control over ourselves.

Amanda Gore: 28:25

Because emotional intelligence in essence is three things know yourself, manage yourself and manage relationships. So the knowing of yourself I mean how many times does the Bible say know thyself? And ancient scripts maybe it's not the Bible, I'm not a scholar, and how many times have we read that, seen that? Well, knowing ourselves, having that AI, that awareness inside, really matters, particularly in leadership, but for everybody. And then managing yourselves the next core thing. That's rarely taught, so normally we have to go have therapy or go study self-help classes, or sometimes we'll get a conflict resolution workshop at work and that's supposed to be the stuff that'll teach us how to manage relationships. Well, maybe it's some skills, but managing ourself is a real key in every relationship we have Absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: 29:20

Amanda, I could talk to you for hours on end, but we are getting to the end of the episode. Before we wrap up, tell me what is giving you hope these days.

Amanda Gore: 29:33

Oh, that's worse than the first question, gosh, I suppose that the sun comes up every day and that nature continues no matter what we do, and the fact that I can.

Amanda Gore: 29:49

Well, one of the things I was going to say before is about working to understand ourselves better and manage ourselves better.

Amanda Gore: 29:57

I suppose what gives me hope is that, if our mission should, we choose to accept it, and once we have the skills and the understanding, we can manage our state and how we feel and how we interact with everyone else in the world, and what impact we can have, by consciously, first of all, becoming conscious and then consciously choosing for ease of simplicity, joy. And by consciously choosing joy, you're making a decision to not slide into the doldrums, to consciously find something good on which to focus, to be full of gratitude for anything that you can find. So I guess it gives me hope that we have those simple strategies that we can tap into anytime we like, so that, no matter how horrible things might look around us, there's contribution that we can make, there's something that we can do to improve ourselves and be of more service, because I think that's a driving force for 95% of the population. It gives us a sense of purpose and meaning if we can be of service. That was a really long answer.

Manya Chylinski: 31:21

That was, but it was a really good answer. So thank you for sharing that and before we wrap up and say goodbye, can you let our listeners know how to reach you and learn more about you and your work?

Amanda Gore: 31:32

Well, thank you, I would love that. It's amandagorecom and on my website you can contact us at amandagorecom and if you want to learn more about my speaking or the workshops that I do or the coaching that I do, it's all on there, or feel free to directly email me.

Manya Chylinski: 31:54

Wonderful Amanda. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and being my guest today. I really appreciate it.

Amanda Gore: 32:03

Oh, you're very sweet, thank you. Oh, I did forget one thing If people want to actually see me in action and get, because I put tons of stuff on my YouTube channel more content, it's Amanda Gore TV. So just and get, because I put tons of stuff on my YouTube channel, more content, it's Amanda Gore TV. So just go to YouTube and type in.

Manya Chylinski: 32:17

Amanda Gore TV. We will put those links in the show notes to make it easy for people to find you, and thank you so much for joining me today.

Amanda Gore: 32:25

You're welcome, thank you.

Manya Chylinski: 32:29

Thank you for listening. I'm Manya Chylinski. I help organizations analyze their culture, focusing on building environments where well-being and resilience can thrive. Through this process, we identify areas for growth, develop strategies and create the necessary changes to build healthier, more supportive organizations. If you're ready to make a change, I'd love to connect. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.