Episode 81: Emotional Safety Is the Leadership Skill No One Teaches

Episode Summary 

High-achieving leaders don’t struggle because they lack discipline. They struggle because their nervous system is hijacked.

In this episode of Let’s Think About It Podcast, Coach Mo sits down with therapist-turned-coach Diane McDowell to break down what really happens when fear takes over decision-making. They unpack the concept of brain hijack, why emotional safety is the missing foundation in leadership, and how even the best strategies fail when leaders are operating in survival mode.

Diane shares practical tools leaders can use in real time—not just theory—to regain self-regulation, separate facts from drama, and lead themselves before leading others. If pressure makes you freeze, avoid conflict, or second-guess yourself, this conversation will hit home.

This episode is about reclaiming control, restoring S.W.A.G.™, and leading from grounded intention—not reaction.

Key Takeaways

• Brain Hijack Is Not Weakness
  It’s your survival brain doing its job—just at the wrong time.
• Emotional Safety Comes Before Strategy
  If you don’t feel safe internally, no leadership skill will stick.
• Facts vs. Drama Is a Game-Changer
  If it’s not a fact, it’s a story—and stories derail leaders fast.
• Pause Is a Power Move
  The ability to pause under pressure is trained, not innate.
• Reps Rewire the Brain
  Self-regulation is built through repetition, not motivation.

Transcript

Welcome And SWAG Framework

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Welcome to the Let's Think About It podcast, where high achievers stop performing and start transforming. I'm Coach Moe, certified core energy leadership coach, founder of the Inner Arena, and creator of the Swag Framework. Self-awareness, my power, aligned action, and grip. Around here, we train your mindset, challenge your limits, and turn pressure into purpose. Subscribe now and join me on YouTube at Swag Coaching. So let's get your reps in. Don't trip, gotta get it how you welcome to another episode of the Let's Think About It podcast. I'm your host, Coach Mo, and I'm here with another amazing guest. Her name is Diane McDowell. Diane, what's good?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Everything is good. It is all good. Even though I am in snowy weather, it is all good.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Since you bring that up, where are you checking in from?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I am in Indiana. So I know Carolina's got snow and lots of places got snow with this storm, but I am in Indiana. We actually do get snow most winters.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

So yeah, I think the Midwest, East is are experiencing some snowstorms. You guys escaped that?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

We didn't do too bad. So yeah, for Indiana, yeah, we didn't do too bad. Even though kids were canceled school a couple days, e-learning, and then snow days, two-hour delays. So it did get the roads pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Well, also, really quick before we get into our conversation, there's some exciting times happening in Indiana because you guys won your first national championship, the college team. I'm a big sports guy, so that's why I got to bring that up.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, I am not that into sports, but yes, it has been a big commotion around here. So definitely.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Okay. Okay. Tell my audience who you are, what you do, and the type of value that you bring.

Therapy Versus Coaching

SPEAKER_01 2:22

All right. So I'm Diane. I have been a therapist for over 25 years and I'm moving into the coaching arena. And my focus is really on emotional stability and emotional safety. I actually was raised in a religious cult until I was 14. I didn't grow up with a lot of emotional safety. I actually grew up with very little to none. And what I started to realize is so many of us are missing the ability to create emotional safety for ourselves. We look outside for someone else, something else to make us feel safe. And so I do a lot of work with people on from the inside out. And I see that you do with your swag, you do a lot of inside out work.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Really looking at from the inside out, creating the life you want and stop looking for something or someone else to give you that sense of safety. So that because without a sense of safety, most of the skills we learn aren't useful because we don't, when we're not feeling safe, we can't actually implement them.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Okay. So you mentioned therapy and you're transitioning into more of coaching. Tell my audience, how do you differentiate the two of therapy versus coaching?

unknown 3:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

That is so everybody has, I think, a different idea of what that means. I think in the past, people would have said therapy is more focused on the past and what happened to you and healing that past and coaching is more future oriented. I would say that's not necessarily true anymore. That therapy is also very much future-oriented. However, for me, the difference is I don't spend a lot of time on why I am the way I am. I look at more and the in coaching, it's much more, what are we going to do about it? Who are you now? Who do you want to be? And how do we get you there? Versus healing the past traumas or the past things. So it's such a 10, it's such a hard thing to discern the difference between the two, I would say. But for me, it's really focusing more on who do you want to be and let's get you there.

Building Emotional Safety From Within

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Okay. And then one of the things that you also mentioned and through your introduction was more so around helping clients and people get a hold of that psychological safety component. How do you do that? How does one show up to gain control over that? I have my strategy, but tell me what you do.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

So what I do is I help, I have three main pillars that I help people with. And the first one is wise watcher. And it goes with your swag with the whole become aware of things, your first step. It's you have to become aware. You have to understand what you're currently doing, have insight before you can really change it. So what I teach people is start to become the wise watcher and visualize standing outside yourself and watching what you're doing, watching what you're saying, watching the thoughts you have. And when you learn to become the wise watcher, then you can start changing things. But a lot of times people want to just start changing things. And we need to understand what's actually happening. What does my body feel like when I feel triggered or when I call I call it brain hijacked? When our brain gets hijacked, what's happening in our body? And so we've got to learn to get present with the body.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

The brain hijack. I love that because it really does tie the swag framework and what I talk about self-awareness, why power, aligned action, and grit, right? Yeah. And we live in this environment where so much change is happening, so much turmoil. You look at the politics, you look at our social environment, energy, all of these different things is consistently changing and it's throwing people off. And there's uncertainty that comes with that. And people just feel like I have no control. I don't know what to do. And we're naturally conditioned to lead through our emotions, right? And in those moments, leading through your emotions, that typically generates a lot of fear, a lot of guilt, a lot of worry. And I frame that as you're off of your swag, right? Because in those moments, in that particular moment, when you're feeling so afraid, you're feeling so worried about the possibilities of the future that you can't really understand what's going to happen. One, you lose sight of your self-awareness in that moment and what that inner critic might be transcribing in your mindset that may be flawed, and you're listening to it, and it's triggering a certain emotion, which ultimately distracts you away from your core purpose in that moment, which makes you feel a little bit stuck because there's no action taking place in that moment. And when there's no action, it's easier to quit oneself. So I frame that as you don't have swag, right? In the moment that you can really gain, just like you said, regain from your brain being hijacked, self-awareness is present. It has to be present. Because if your brain is being, and this is just my concept, my understanding, just listening to what you said about the brain hijacked, and you can go a little deeper into that for me. But I'm thinking if my brain is getting hijacked, I'm not aware that it's getting hijacked. And I'm in a state of just reacting. Typically, if I'm just reacting, I'm following through on the feelings that I have in that moment. And that means I have no choice but to accept these feelings. But that's not true. That's not true. And what the work that we do, we create power of choice and remind people that you know what, you can control us. You don't have to react to this, you just have to learn how to set some intentions. And that's where swag comes in for me. If you could have the presence to say, damn, my swag is off right now. Okay, let me get back. Boom, that's it. And now you have this consciousness to move forward. So I'm interested to take a deeper dive into how you frame the brain hijack and coach your clients on how to utilize that concept.

Brain Hijack Explained

SPEAKER_01 9:13

All right. The brain hijacked, the way I describe it, and I want to too go to what you were saying, like what you're talking about is really being self-led, not emotion-led. A lot of times we let emotions lead. When we're talking about not getting hijacked or learning how to, if I get hijacked, how to unhijack, it's really not letting our emotions lead us or our what happens is our brain is designed for survival. So we have our reptile brain, which most people have heard about and talked about on our brainstem, that is designed for fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and it is designed for survival. So what happens is our brain will think that the person we care about or the person in front of us is dangerous. Our brain will literally say, danger, danger. And so we will treat them as dangerous. We will say horrible things, we will think like we will see them as a threat and start attacking. And so that's what happens when we're hijacked. And we are led by the emotions, by our fear, because it's essentially a fear reflex. Our brain is designed with the fear reflex that says, my job is to protect you. So I use the analogy of a dog. If a dog, if you have a dog, I have a black lab, if someone comes to our door, our dog barks, but our dog is not dangerous. It's not sabotaging us. Its job is to bark when somebody comes to the door. That is our reptile brain's job, is to look for danger. So it's not like our brain is broken. It's not like something's gone wrong. It's our brain is doing what our brain's job is to do, is to protect us and keep us safe. It's just that there's not a real danger. So it's misled and thinking danger, danger when there's not. So we have to be able to lead it and recognize this isn't really a danger. So a big part of what I teach people is how to get back into their body and realize I'm safe, I'm okay, I'm not really in danger. My brain is just trying to protect me. And when we can come back into our body and ground in there is really no danger here, then we can come from a different place of compassion and understanding and curiosity.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

How does one make that shift, though? Because in what you're saying, you're 100% right. The problem with that, though, is a person has this narrative in their head, and that punk ass inner critic is chirping, you shouldn't do this or this and this. How does one learn as they get back into the body and leading self? How do they separate the narrative piece of it that sounds like their voice that's giving them advice in their head to protect themselves? How do they overcome that aspect of the brain hijack?

From Emotion-Led To Self-Led

SPEAKER_01 12:05

So, what I teach people is essentially like a safety switch. That's what I describe it as. If you think about with a safety switch, when it's on, you feel safe. When it's off, you don't. We learn ways of turning your safety switch on. And one of them, everybody could be a little different, but the general idea is practicing a new neuropath. So you have a neuropath that says danger and it's fear-based, which we don't have danger in our lives like we used to. We don't have bears chasing us, we don't have to kill things to live anymore. And so we don't have the neuropath, we don't need the neuropath that says danger so much. So we have to create a new neuropath. So we what I teach is power sentences. So I have my clients find power sentences that help them soothe when their brain says danger. And so they practice those. So I actually teach people practice some five, the more you practice it, the more you create the neuropath.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Yeah, you got to get direct in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yeah. So I suggest five times a day, breakfast, lunch. So when you wake up, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bed. Those are natural transitions in our life, which we can have it stack that with. And so we practice those not just saying them. They're not just, you're stepping into them. You're owning them, you're becoming them. So I use the example of a dressing room. And I'm like, when you go into a dressing room, you put on an outfit and you're like, do I like how it feels? Is it me? Does it feel comfortable? And you're doing that with your power sentence. You're stepping into your power sentence in a dressing room. And you're like, how does it feel to think this? How does it feel to experience this? What am the sensations in my body when I experience this? So you start stepping into the person who believes the thought you're practicing.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Okay. So then help me understand this in real time. Okay, I'm a leader, I'm working under pressure. There's a critical decision that I have to make, and I'm expected to make this decision, and I know it won't go well with my team. And I'm carrying all of this fear, and I have to provide this update, and I know I'm gonna get pushback, and I know I'm gonna be viewed as a bad leader, and this is the narrative that I'm naturally carrying, and I have this deep fear that's never really been addressed, and my typical pattern is to avoid these conflicting, difficult conversations type scenarios in real time. What would you tell someone to do and how to respond when that fear is so loud? And I get the strategy of what you were saying in those five points throughout the day, but I'm saying, like, in real time, like shit is hitting the fan, and I gotta make a decision. And my default is to avoid it and go into hiding or something. But what do you tell someone or how do you coach someone in real time to navigate something like that?

Safety Switch And Power Sentences

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Okay. So I teach three little ways to take a pause and then scan your body. So I tell people get a drink of water, go to the restroom, or excuse yourself and just go to your car or something, if you can to check in with your body for one minute, to remove yourself. Because what happens is it you can't read a piece of paper that's on your nose because it's too close. Right. When we are in that space, we can't see it clearly. So we have to create a disc distance so we can look at it clearly. So when you take a pause and scan your body, what's happening? And really just going through your body, like what's fear, what's fact, what do I need to do with this? Because what we do is we get stuck in our head and we spin a narrative that's not useful. So we've got to get out of that. So the other thing I teach is listing facts. What I teach is there's two things in our brain facts and drama. If it's not a fact, it's a drama. So I have people list out what are the facts here. So if you can take a second and just list out what are the facts, and the rest is drama and not give it attention. Don't feed it, don't give it attention, just let it be there. Don't try to make it go away, but don't feed it either.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

I love that. I love that facts versus drama because the inner critic is always fueling the drama, the space to react in real time. And it creates this scenario in our head that, oh my God, fire, we need to do something. We got to put this out. We can't, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I love what you said because I teach my clients to simular. I say, pause, just like basketball professionals, right? The game is on the line, less than a minute in the game, you're down to, you're at the free throw line, and you're there to tie the game and take the lead, right? And you're a professional athlete. And I'm talking about basketball. And in that moment, the crowd is going crazy. It's high tense. The game's on the line. The team is relying on you to make these free throws. And what do you see professional athletes do? They pause.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Oh, yeah, they want to.

Real-Time Pause: Facts Versus Drama

SPEAKER_02 17:21

They visualize the ball going in, they use their form before they shoot. The ref throws them the ball, they do it again, they pause, breeze, shoot, swish, and then they do it again. And they condition their mind to do that. So then when they go to the free throw line, it's automatic. And see, I teach my leaders that because we don't, they don't have a locker room to really coach on certain habitual situations like this. Like, we don't want to up and come up as leaders, there's no school that's teaching us this. When you go to college, they don't talk about this. You everything is theory-based until you actually get into leadership situations and things is just coming at you, and we're not taught to pause. We're not we're conditioned through society to just react based on our emotions. And you don't know what you don't know. Your parents did it, the people around you do it, everything like that. So now you're in these high-tense situations, and it just becomes a repetitive sequence that's hard to get out of. As our clients meet professionals like us and we show them the light that there's a different way. Just pause, breathe, reground yourself. But the key about it is the reps, and that's what you said too, is the repetition of doing this consistently. Because when you talk about the athletes, that's what they do. They get their reps in so that it becomes a natural habit. Free throw line, pause, breathe, visualize, shoot.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

I want to pick up on what you said about visualizing. That is so critical. So we do it in sports, we don't do it in most of the other areas of our life. And we need to be like picturing, visualizing, seeing yourself doing it. There's so many studies about visualizing, being able to play piano, and the person who actually plays piano, and the person visualizing learns just as much or more. You don't actually have to do the action for your brain to see it and experience the neurotransmitters, the results of it. So, what I teach my clients is bed and waking up and going to sleep, alpha to beta and beta alpha, we are very easily influenced. Our brain is it's easy to brainwash ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

So, using that time when you're between sleep and awake to really visualize and picture and step into that person, being that person, how does it feel? And we can really influence our brain and speed up the neuropaths being created by doing that.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

You're just right on this. You're so right. And I'm gonna take a level deeper though, and I want your take on this. Okay, as individuals who may not have ever been trained on this, we have certain experiences and some good but some bad. Particularly, like you said, our brains is trained to be in survival mode, right? And so when we have bad experiences, it's easier to remember that. And through that remember, there's a picture, okay? But then on the flip side, the subconscious doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's not, it just formulates whatever you can form an image to. And I personally feel it's more difficult for a person who's been in a habit in survival mode that naturally creates those memories of things that went wrong, right? And so now here we are is like you gotta visualize something very important and with what you want in your life, but it's hard for people when you've never been taught how to visualize and project out specifically what that vision is, right? So the default in key situations is to default to the picture of your past that wasn't such a good idea. And you have that inner critic that validates the picture, which creates A scenario where you don't feel hopeful about the future or about that particular situation. So my question becomes how do we really start to teach people how to create that imagery when the imagery that you naturally see is on the past of things that you don't necessarily like?

Reps, Visualization, And Habit Stacking

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Okay. That is a great question. I teach a couple different things. And one simple one is just to know that your past is going to keep tapping you on the shoulder and saying, you can't do that. You failed. You're not good enough. And just learning to be able to go, that's just the critic in me, whatever you want to call it, and not give it a lot of attention. Just know it's going to keep doing that. And your job is to not feed into it. The other thing that I teach people, and I took Rick Hansen's neuroplasticity training. And so I learned a lot about this here, where he talks about our brain is designed to take in the negative instantly, like right away for our safety. But we have to learn to focus on the good. And it's the same thing we know with inner when we do reviews on our employees. When we do employee reviews, people will hear both and forget all the good and only remember what they were told that they should improve on. And it is our brain, that's how our brain is designed. So one of the things we have to learn to do is actually focus for 20 seconds to a minute on the good. Our brain does not remember the good. It is not designed to remember the good. We need to remember the bad to live. If a bear chases us, we need to be able to go bear danger instantly. But we don't need to know, oh, Barry's good. We didn't, we our brain didn't have to remember this. So our brain does not is not trained to remember the good. So what I teach people is to take episodes throughout the day that are good and write them down in their phone and rehearse them, rememorize them, picture them, relive them, because our brain will not automatically do that.

Overwriting Negative Bias And Remembering Good

SPEAKER_02 24:09

That's great. I love that. The repetition that you're teaching your mind to create balance. Yeah. And that's what I tell people as well, my clients. There's so much energy that's coming in just through society in itself of negative. I can't. And on the other aspect, I say, what are you doing to reinforce the good into your mindset, into your consciousness? And a lot of times people they really pause to that. I don't know. And one of the other things that I help teach is putting consciousness on gratitude, just having gratitude thoughts throughout the day and just creating certain little habits. Every time you go to the bathroom, just have a gratitude thought, right? And then what really starts to happen is we do the exercise, right? And they come back and say, Well, I forgot to go into the gratitude when I go into the restroom or the kitchen to have a gratitude thought. And I said, okay, what did you do when you realized you forgot? I had a gratitude thought to make up for when I missed. I said, exactly, that's the growth that you want. The fact that you remember that you forgot, that's awareness. And you continue to build on that. And you don't beat yourself up because a lot of times, just like you said, this little survivor mode and stuff like that, we do this activity and they forget, and then they start beating themselves up. I forgot, I'm never gonna follow through on this. Why am I even doing this? And I'm like, don't do that. It's okay. This is your process, and no one's judging you. You don't get a grade on this process if you forget, but you remember that you forgot, and then you just do it. And then when you do it, that's the growth. That's the growth. And how consistent can you be with the growth? That's when things just start to shift. And so I I love that frame and what you said around the good because that is so critical. And I encourage clients not to do it Mo's way. You know, what's good in your life? Is it petting your pet? Is it going for walks? Is it listening to podcasts? Whatever it is, be strategic and intentional in how you incorporate more of that throughout the day. And when you're triggered throughout the day, tap into one of those experiences to help create the balance. That's what I try to teach. And then that's where the swag framework comes in because the swag is the reminder that I'm off. That I'm off. When you feel this, I don't know, I'm worried. Uh when you feel that stuff, you have no swag just in that moment, and that's the reminder. Oh, how do I get back on my swag? Let me, is there an action I need to take? Maybe I just need to remember my purpose right now. Maybe you know what it's tough, and I'm not gonna let these emotions guide me, and I'm not gonna quit in this situation. And that's the grid aspect of it. But whatever it is, it's just a word as the reminder, as the signal that I need to bring good in right now so I I can feel better. So I love that concept of what you said.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

I like to teach my clients and people that I talk to about this stuff about checking in with yourself. What do I need right now? Sometimes we know we're off, but we just can't figure out what it is. And so what I say is do more of what's working and less of what's not, which we've all probably heard. But then checking in with yourself and going, like asking yourself, what am I needing right now? And literally, if you can, say it out loud. Because when we do it in our head, we use less of our senses. So when we are creating new neuropaths, the more of our five senses we use, the quicker we will create it. So the when for me to think it in my head, I'm not saying it out loud and I'm not hearing it again. So the more we see it, hear it, think it, we create it. So if you can, what I tell people is when you're driving in your car, record yourself saying your power sentences, saying what you want to create. Listen back to it. Make sure you sound like you're speaking, not in a high-pitched voice up in your chest, but from your gut. Make sure you like how you sound, practice again, listen to it again. The more you rehearse it, the more you create it in your brain. And then when you need it, it rolls off your tongue. You're like, it just comes to me.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

What about writing? I love part of my growth process. Personally, I have notebooks just filled with uh affirmations about myself. And just, I am a great dad. I am an amazing person. I love myself, I love my family, I love my wife. Like 10 to 15 little tablets of just affirmations because I remember 10, 15, maybe about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that. I was going through some really hard times. And I was consciously trying to make a shift in my life. And I was carrying a lot of that imposter syndrome and that victim mode mindset. Why does this keep happening to me? When I was introduced to coaching, that was part of my process, like to start getting out of my own way, to start leveraging my true value and my worth, because I spent a lot of time listening to that punk ass inner critic and believing it. What helped me was the journaling aspect of just writing out affirmations day in and day out until I actually believed it. This shift happened for me. So I love what you said. So let me ask you this. Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Real quick on that, this is where I say it becomes more individual. Because for me, it's talking it and hearing it. For you, it's writing it. My best friend, it's writing it for her. She's had journals since she was like 12. So everybody's a little different. Journals are because of my dyslexia, maybe I don't know. It's harder for me and it feels like work versus connecting to myself. Yeah. So find what works for you. And if it's journaling, do it. If it's speaking it out loud and recording it and listening back, do it. But everybody's a little different with where it really feels like you step into yourself. Pick the one that feels like you're stepping into yourself.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

Yeah. I forgot to ask you this when we jumped on, but how did you get into this work?

Check-Ins, Multisensory Practice, And Voice

SPEAKER_01 30:53

So my theory is that partly because I have dyslexia. And so I didn't learn to read till after I was 14. And so I was when we were raised in the religious cult, I everybody else was homeschooled. They gave up on me and another kid because we had dyslexia and we couldn't read. And so when I was when we left, I was placed in seventh grade, but I still couldn't read. So I had always been good at people. My theory is my good being good at people is a big part because I didn't do books. So I became everybody's social therapist, fixer, listener, people pleasing. And so that was just the natural core. That's what I had done for so long is befriend everybody, listen to their problems, and help them get through them. So it was just the natural step, next step, I think. And I had vocational rehabilitation helping, and they did some tests and sent because of my learning disability. And so they did some tests and helped me with getting into college and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Man, today was a fabulous, phenomenal conversation. And just talking about the brain hijack and helping people understand their value and their worth and how it starts from the inside out is just great. And I love bringing, you know, people on, professionals on, just like you, to share their wisdom with the audience here. So thank you for that. Thank you. But before we close out, any last thoughts that you would like to share with the audience and then also share how people can get a hold of you.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Okay. My last thought would be what you were talking about earlier about what do you do in management when you have pressure and you feel like you have to make a decision and there's a sense of urgency, is really getting grounded in yourself. And what I teach is don't make any decisions in haste. When we make things in haste, it's this sense of we're not grounded. We're not in, we're not in nervous system safety. And so really it's like learning to teach yourself to not do anything in that space of haste. Because generally, if we do, we regret it because it's not coming from a place of grounded love. It's coming from escaping pain.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

And how can my audience get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Emotional safety. My website is emotional safetyco.com. Emotional safetyco.com. And under free, there's free resources and there's a quiz you can take about emotional safety. There is a mini course under there. And then the truth and lies about relationship and emotional safety.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Awesome. Thank you so much, Diane. It just sounds like your work is amazing, helping people get out of their own way, overcoming the brain hijack. Thank you so much for your wisdom and your insights that you brought today. That's another rep in the inner arena. You didn't just listen, you leveled up your swag. Self-awareness, why power, aligned action, and grit. If this hit home, share it, subscribe to the Let's Think About It podcast, and log in with me on YouTube at Swag Coaching. Until next time, stay aware, lead with your why, act in alignment, and keep your grit strong.