The Security Circle

EP 149 Saboteurs in the Boardroom: The Hidden Forces Behind Your Decisions and The Future of Human-Centric Leadership with Jennifer Selby-Long Founder & CEO Selby LLC

• Yoyo Hamblen • Season 1 • Episode 149

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“Predictability doesn’t make you weak — it’s what frees your brain to lead with strength. The more predictability you build, the more resilient your people become.” JSL.

🎙️ Podcast Summary: “Rewiring Resilience: From Surviving to Thriving”

In this powerful episode of The Security Circle, Yolanda “YoYo” Hamblen sits down with Jennifer Selby Long, an executive coach and transformation leadership expert who has guided over 300 leaders through the toughest moments of their professional and personal evolution. Together, they unpack the real meaning of resilience — and why it’s not about “soldiering on,” but learning to surf the waves of change.

Jennifer explains how our early life experiences shape the neural networks that influence how we lead, react, and recover under pressure. She introduces the concept of inner saboteurs — those self-defeating mental patterns like the Judge or the Hyper-Rational — and shows how leaders can quiet those voices to unlock empathy, creativity, and calm under chaos.

The conversation flows from neuroscience to leadership psychology, touching on predictability as a secret weapon for resilience, the importance of silence and self-reflection, and how leaders can turn stress into strength by mastering their inner game first.

From personal insights to professional breakthroughs, this episode is a roadmap for anyone ready to rewire resilience, build emotional intelligence, and move from surviving to truly thriving — both in leadership and in life.

BIO

Jennifer Selby Long is the founder and CEO of Selby Group, LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to helping leaders win at transformation and change. 

The firm has been in business since 1997, when she founded Selby Group as a sole proprietorship. Today Jennifer and a small team of executive coaches partner with technical leaders as well as business leaders who find themselves leading and responding to large-scale change and transformation.

Selby Group’s services include:
1. For Leaders: Optimize leadership performance through coaching and advisory services
2. For Leadership Teams: Build and support well-aligned high-performing leadership teams through team assessments, strategic off-sites, and leadership team-building
3. For Organizations: Strengthen management and workforce ability to thrive in continuously-changing times through our tightly-focused workshop curriculum

Key Competencies
• 30+ years in the global technology sector
• 300+ leaders coached
• Influenced over 3000 executives, leaders, managers, individuals, and teams through large and small group work
• Focus on organizational transformation, leadership, teamwork, self-awareness, strategic thinking, communication, and influence
• Veteran of multiple large-scale changes and organizational transformations, often driven by new developments in technology

Client experience includes: Airbnb, LinkedIn, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Nestlé, News Corp, Dow Jones, US Data Security, and many others.


https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferselbylong/

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

If you enjoy the security circle podcast, please like share and comment or even better. Leave us a fab review We can be found on all podcast platforms. Be sure to subscribe. The security circle every Thursday. We love Thursdays. Hi, I'm Yolanda And welcome to the Security Circle Podcast, produced in association with IFPO, the International Foundation for Protection Officers. This podcast is all about connection, bringing you closer to the greatest minds, boldest thinkers, trailblazers, and change makers across the security industry. Whether you are here to grow your network, spark new ideas, or simply feel more connected to the world of protection and risk, you are in the right place wherever you are listening from. Thank you for being a part of the Security Circle journey..

Yoyo:

Okay, here she is, Jennifer Selby Long. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. How you doing? How are you, yoyo? I'm really good, but actually I'm noticing your skin looks great. Are you using a particular skincare regime right now? Why? Thank you.

Jenn:

I guess I moisturized pretty regularly and I'm religious about sunscreen.

Yoyo:

Well, living in San Francisco, that's a very good thing to say.'cause I think you are in the sunshine State, aren't you down there? Is that what they call it? The sunshine state?

Jenn:

It's the sunshine State. And we get fog right here in San Francisco, but we also have glorious, sunny afternoons. And so it's one of the reasons I came to California. I love my California sunshine.

Yoyo:

I think I hate you right now. It is like it's autumn where I am and it's, I was just having a tidy up of my, what you guys in America would call my backyard, my front yard. Yes. The leaves. The leaves everywhere. It's like, ugh. So yeah, it's that time of year.

Jenn:

Yes. Yes indeed.

Yoyo:

And, what a great segue from the transformation between seasons to talk about you as a transformation expert. Look, I'm just gonna basically read this from LinkedIn. You are a transformation leadership, organizational change executive coach, advisor. I have got lots of great questions for you, but I'd like to first of all talk about resilience because sometimes when you look at the cross sector of humanity. It's quite clear that some people have a high tolerance for resiliency and some. Do not. So why is it that some adopt it really naturally and it's a gift and then the others just massively feel underequipped when it comes to personal resilience?

Jenn:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a great question and. I would say there's not sort of a snappy tagline, kind of answer to that one. But let's start with some of the major factors that impact that and more importantly, what you can do about it. So. You know, if as a listener you're saying, yeah, I don't really feel like I am as resilient as I need to be. I feel like I'm kind of beaten down by things like the changes that come at me all the time or by setbacks and I, I no longer like to get my hope up. Um, let's look at what, what can cause that, and then what are some of the things that you can do to improve your resilience. So, the, your observation that yes, some people. Are quite fortunate, through nothing having whatsoever to do with anything they did. They were born with certain traits that made them more resilient. And so literally sheer dumb luck, sheer dumb luck for some folks, gave them a lot of this at birth. Um, there are certainly some people who, um, become resilient through things like having challenges in their childhood. So more to the. The nurture side of it and getting a lot of support from any supportive adult, whether it's a parent, a teacher, or a coach, um, who helped them learn resilience at an early age. So it got wired into their neural networks as kids, right. As grade schoolers, as teenagers. And so, yeah, to those of you doing anything with children and teens. That helps them develop their resilience. Carry on please. This is a very important thing that you're doing for the next generation, and it may not seem like it in the moment. But it really does make a big difference. And so then looking at those folks who are struggling more with resilience and adulthood, we find several things can contribute to that. O one is you may have had some trauma in your earlier life and that trauma plays out in other ways. So as one of my colleagues said, you know, he was. Called up to the third floor to deal with a, a, what had become just a raging, you know, simmering hostility between coworkers over a blind. Yes. The window blind and. It's not about the blind. Right? And, and so, you know, part of the things that can make us, less resilient do have to do with trauma that you had before, that you are then bringing forward into the current setting that you're in. And so it makes the situation that you're in seem worse than it actually is if you're able to step outside objectively. Likewise, at different times in our lives, we can be more or less resilient. So interestingly, you talked about needle movers on change, one of the most paradoxical needle movers on change get This is predictability. Whoa. It does not sound right at all. But it's true. We all need, as humans, a certain amount of predictability, certain amount of habit in our lives. These are not things that we should be making fun of or saying, oh, well, that's what makes us less resilient. Actually, that frees up brain power because you don't have to decide every single day that you're gonna have toast for breakfast. It's already decided for you. It's a habit. It's a routine. It's predictable. And so when you've had. A lot of things happen that have kind of blown the predictability in your life out of the water. We can reasonably expect you're gonna have some challenges with resilience and feeling like you have that resilience because some of that predictability and that structure in your life that helped you deal with the changes that came along, it's gone. And in particular when that goes away, not by your choice. But because something happened, perhaps a parent becomes ill and passes away, younger than you expected. Perhaps you have a child who has special needs and now your whole schedule is upended. And the way that you live your life has changed. Perhaps you finally land the job you love more than anything, and the company goes belly up. Not only do you not have a job, but you didn't get paid your last two weeks, and Some things come along that are out of our control. And this is where I do kind of transition to some of the things that you might do to increase your personal resilience for change. And I'm speaking at the individual level now, not so much the leadership level. At the leadership level. There are lots of things that leaders can do to help people become more change resilient. We can get to that later, but let's say you are an individual. And you're finding that your resilience isn't where you want it to be. I think one of the first things that you can do is find that predictable center. Find something that can be consistent for you and stick with it for some people, is that they have a friend and they get together with that friend, every Monday night for. A drink and a little meal at a local pub. Doesn't matter what it is for some people, it's a community of faith where they know, you know, like every Friday they're gonna be there, or every Sunday or whatever it may be. Um, something that's steady Eddie, um, preferably that involves other people. Find another, something that's steady Eddie, that you do yourself. Um, I've given people homework like, um, you used to really enjoy playing the piano as a kid and it faded away. Go play the piano for 10 minutes after work every day. So find your predictable thing. Pick anything. Don't overthink it if it's not the right thing. Within a couple weeks, you'll know. Heck, within a few days you'll know and you can pick something else. So get that steady grounding, right? Know that that resilience actually does come from community as well. And so find that community of people. Again, it's a community of faith. Maybe it's other people who are in a similar boat to you. Um, it, it, it, but, but find some people that can, can. Be in your shoes and go through this with you. And the second thing I'll say, which again, it's gonna sound a little paradoxical, I just said, go find some people you can hang out and talk with. The next thing I'm gonna say is gonna sound again, like, what are you saying? That doesn't make any sense. You just told me. Go talk to people, especially going through the same thing. What I don't want you to do for your own resilience is make it the wine and moan session. Complain, complain, complain, complain. Why? When you decide you're just gonna vent, and you vent and vent, and vent and vent, it's a brief respite, but you're feeding the neural networks that block your ability to empathize, explore, get creative. See in a broader perspective. And interestingly, you block your own ability to make really sound decisions because your decisions are then more from what we call a reactive or sabotaged state, and we just don't have as good a judgment when we're in that state. We tend to make decisions we regret. Someone asked me a few weeks ago about, Like they, they went to one place and it was so political and so they quit and they went to another place and it was so political, so they quit and they went to another one. Now that one's so political, and I said, what's the common denominator? It's you, right? So there's, there is something you're not dealing with here, right? There's something you're not dealing with here, and I think maybe you're in a complaint and wine cycle where you are finding places that give you the same things to complain about and you're not doing it on purpose.

Yoyo:

I've done that before and I stopped doing it. And I realized I was in a pretty bad way at the time. It was many, many, many years ago. And I was constantly seeking the validation'cause I was being gaslighted basically. And I was constantly seeking the validation, can you believe this is happening and you blah, blah, blah, and this is how I'm feeling and can you understand? I don't understand why this is happening to me. So I was doing a lot of the moaning and the whinging and stuff, and all of my people who are close to me, my tribe, as we say, my tribe, they were all gonna agree with me. Of course they were. They were gonna agree with me because they love me, because they support me, because they can see what's happening because they've had experience themselves. There are so many reasons why they were gonna support me. So I stopped talking about it because I realized that I already had their support. They didn't need to keep knowing about the latest scenario, the latest thing that's happened. I already knew I had the support and then I learned a new type of resilience.'cause I've always had a very, very high level of resilience. But I learned that. I already had their love and support. It didn't matter what had happened, so I didn't have to share so much, and that was a new era of coming into a new era of strength. But I was moving from one career into another, and so it was a really interesting stage in how I was coping and how I learned to form the new me. Yeah.

Jenn:

I love that. That is such a great insight that you got. Into yourself, which then allowed you to move forward. Mm-hmm. And I think, you know, it's easy to think of resilience as, oh, soldiering on, but it is not, it's not soldiering on. It's that ability to look at the change that you are in or that is coming at you or that is around you. And to surf that change.

Yoyo:

Yeah. That's very,

Jenn:

very different.

Yoyo:

You said, let's go back to that window blind, shall we? Oh, yes. Before COVID. Oh, boy. Uh, uh, BC before COVID, BC we all know those officey things. Like, it's, it's, the room's too cold, it's too hot. That's the dragons and the lizards.'Cause obviously dragons are hot blooded, um, and many men, um. And we all run at different temperatures. And then there's the window blind. I've seen arguments break out because someone wants it down.'cause they, they can't see anything on their screen. The other one person wants, well, I want it up because, oh, I, you know, it's, it's autumn. There's less daylight. I need to get the sun rays and window seats and other things. There's a lot of things that you said it's not about the window blind. No. So take me through, what is it about.

Jenn:

So in the case of the Blind,, it can be about, believe it or not, memories that go way, way back so far back that you don't exactly remember them. An awful lot of our neuro networks get formed before we're five years old, and if you've ever seen now, I find it charming. A brain scan of an infant. Okay. You know what I do for a living? When I say a brain scan is charming, but it really is charming. It's so cute. It's, there's all this white space. It's real. First of all, it's really little, which is adorable. And then there's all this white space and there are these neuro networks and you can see the wiring, but oh. It's so open, like it's ready to be filled in and experience fills in the neuro networks. And then when you look at the brain scan of the adult, of course, packed. Packed and complicated and complex, and even the top neuroscientists in the world don't totally understand what's going on inside all of those tightly packed neural networks. And so these early childhood experiences do, shape a lot of those neuro networks and they shape which ones get stronger. And which ones don't get a chance to get real strong. And by strong I literally mean thickness like a muscle. And on a brain scan, those thicker neural networks who they actually are literally thicker. It's not a metaphor. And what happens when we're really little is, you know, you're helpless, right? When you're too, you are completely dependent on your parents and caregivers, and you won't survive without them. And if you recognized that they were imperfect people. What would happen? Like that's anxiety beyond anything that you could bear. And so our brains start to, to fill in explanations, right? So, if for example, my parents never seemed to be really very happy with. With what I'm doing, it must be because I need to achieve a little more. I need to be better. Right. And that's called the hyper achiever saboteur. In the language of, Dr. Zad Shain, who's done some really great accessible work in this space. And so that hyper achiever comes in, or perhaps the child's just looking at, at mom and how, and registering how rational mom is. And, but from the little kid's point of view, now I, I need to overdo that. And so I'm gonna become hyper-rational. And hyper-rational isn't helpful. Being able to be rational is helpful, but being able to be hyper-rational isn't, um, and oh, by the way, yeah, when people analyze their saboteurs and then they take a guess as to the Paris, they go, oh, how about that? My saboteur plays off of, you know, my dad or my mom, or my grandparents, or my caregivers. And so a lot of times it's this stuff from way back that's coming in there. And so, you know, to, to, to do the, the blind situation, you know, I can't see, nobody cares about me, nobody loves me. That is the no surprise victim. Saboteur. If that blind doesn't get closed, it means nobody loves me, nobody cares about me. I need to see, because obviously my work is very important and I need to think rationally about it. And that with that blind in the way, it's blocking me from being completely rational. Hyper rational. So there are actually nine of these neuro networks that have been identified. Each of them, again, I eternally grateful to Dr. Shain. He didn't discover the neuro networks. What he did was he gave us easy language, like hyper achiever, victim pleaser, to describe them. So I don't have to show you nine. Technically 10 brain scans and say, there you are. We've been able to run with it, with our clients there. So what do you do about it? To weaken these neuro networks, in the simplest of terms, first and foremost, you gotta recognize it. You gotta recognize it. Hey, wait a minute. Does this sound like an adult talking or do I sound like. Little me stamping my foot. Right. Or I'm gonna hold my breath until, you know, and so starting to recognize and accept, like, we all have these kind of childish voices in our heads because they were formed in early childhood. And to just recognize it, by the way, don't judge it. Do not judge it. You're only gonna set yourself backwards. Hoo hoo. It's hard not to judge it.'cause the ultimate saboteur, the one we all have is called the judge. And the judge is the one that gets in there when you know you should be more resilient and instead of saying, Hey, you know what? You can build more resilience. You've got this. The judge says, loser, I can't believe you're not more resilient. Look at that guy over there. Right? So the judge actually gets in the way, well telling you that you know it's there to help you be better, which is nonsense, right? It's really the saboteurs are there for survival only, but. Resilience is not really about survival. As I said, it's not about soldiering on, it's actually about thriving, right? It's about happiness. It's about success. And so, um, that's why you don't wanna judge it. When you recognize that silly, childish, immature voice, that's a little embarrassing. You just notice it.

Yoyo:

I'm kind of imagining the city, uh, that you've never driven in before. Yes. So you haven't used any of the roads. And then as you go through your journey of life, those neuro networks are building up trans you like, like a shadow of all the roots that you've taken. Yes. Imagine, yes. You know how that gets layered up and layered up and layered up and layered up until, you know, this is a city that you know off the back of your hand and it's spraying. It's phenomenal, isn't it? Yes,

Jenn:

yes. And certainly, you know, when I think about with the CISOs that I worked with and the cyber VPs that I work with that crew, you know, I'm slowly accumulating are there subs, saboteurs that are more common than others? And interestingly I'm not seeing a lot of super clear patterns, but we do notice a little more hyper rational. A little more hyper-rational. I'm just gonna be rational through this whole thing. And you know what, what hyper-rational tells you is people's feelings are so inconvenient. So inconvenient. Ugh. There I have the solution. I've put a lot of thought into it. I've figured it out. Come on. People get, get over your feelings, right? They're so inconvenient and so, you know, I love it. Like resilience is so much about facing these things within ourselves that are paradoxical. And yet when you really step back to look at the big picture, they're not paradoxical at all. You get hyper rational at a very young age. You know, you, you, you probably heading down a technical path, right, where maybe that hyper-rational gets rewarded by teachers who have the same saboteur. They kinda like your hyper-rational'cause it reinforces theirs. And then pretty soon you're worked your way on up the food chain and now all of a sudden no one's told you, but somehow you changed careers. You're no longer actually a cyber expert. It's a hundred percent about people. Yes, it's a hundred percent about people in your org. It's a thousand percent about all these stakeholders in the business who aren't even aligned with each other. And you gotta get'em aligned with you and with each other. It's a hundred percent about people and they all have feelings, they all have opinions, which often are actually feelings, and they just call them opinions.'cause we don't call them feelings. In business and tech, do we? We call it all an opinion. It can be such a shock to the system and it's often where I come in and start working with clients is at that level where it's like your entire job is now about people and they all have feelings. And so what we have to do is weaken that hyper-rational neuro network, really thin it down, and we have to strengthen, first and foremost the empathy neural network. We gotta take that judge neural network and we gotta smack that thing into submission. We have gotta weaken that so much that you almost never walk into a room and judge yourself or anyone in it, or my personal favorite. This situation, all of us who are in anything technical, we fall into this judge habit of blaming the process. If only we were more agile in our process, we wouldn't have these problems. No, we would still have problems. I'm not saying more agile would not improve the situation greatly, but when you hear that voice going, if only in your head. Yeah. Yeah. That's a saboteur neuro network and you gotta smack that thing and just say, Hey, I got this buzz off. Do not need your help. You wanna hear the second step? Yes. Weirdly, again, not intuitive. You need to break that little tape that's running over and over in your head by focusing completely for a couple of minutes on something tactile. Something tactile, like stroking a pet. Sure, you gotta pet around, but with total focus, not problem solving in your head. While you're stroking the pet, but total focus on that. Mm, yeah. Yeah.

Yoyo:

Silence has become a big thing for me. Mm-hmm. I've never really enjoyed silence. I've always really hated it actually. Like I think I described in the past that if anyone wanted to torture me, to put me in a room with absolute silence and nothing to do, IEA pen, pencil, not even a piece of paper I think I would find that really challenging.

Jenn:

Mm-hmm.

Yoyo:

Interestingly, and I've never done this before. I saw a medium, and it was for a gal, pals you know, big celebratory birthday. We got a medium in and we all had a session. Yeah. And the medium, talked to me about silence, and I was told to embrace silence. Wow. And so I Sure. Now

Jenn:

mm-hmm.

Yoyo:

I've always had the radio on in the background. It's my connectivity to the outside world. There's times of the day where I turn it off. Uh, and then also there's times in the evening where I will turn the TV off and literally just put a, get my book out, read a chapter or so of my book, and then my cat will be next to me and I will stroke the cat. There's the tactile sort of thing. And there'll be just silence. I think many people can do different things, but I've just found recently that that's a really nice circuit breaker.

Jenn:

Yes, right. Circuit breaker.

Yoyo:

I love that idea of just, it's almost like, you know, it's like when you switch the engine of the car off, you step out, put the alarm on. It's a break from what you were doing. It's such a good circuit breaker. But look, if we are going to try and encourage parents to look at their children around. Resilience like you, you talked in the very beginning about, I mean, my goodness, that seems like a long time ago now, but you talked about how parents should really encourage as much resilience as possible. I guess really when you were talking about that, I was imagining getting the most ugliest of news channels on tv. Mm. Taking an hour segment out of that day. Mm. Looking, looking at the state of play of the world today. Yeah. And then. Saying to parent, you need to reverse engineer now from here to the child because that's what you have to give your child resilience for and this is just what's happening now. Yeah. So I was thinking about this reverse engineering to now, and I think, I think we can encourage more resilience through. SPR muscle. Right. Because Absolutely. It's like someone says to you, yeah, new job, you're gonna have to come in, you're gonna have to commute. And so, you know, when you've commuted, uh, to work, for example, commuting to London mm-hmm. Uh, it's, it's pretty painful. You've gotta get in the car park near the train station. Walk to the train station, wait for the train. Get on the train, get to the other end. Navigate your way through thousands of people to a tube line. Use that tube line, get onto a tube with thousands of other people to a destination, and then from that destination you'd walk to your workplace. Now that's all before you started work.

Jenn:

Yep.

Yoyo:

And when you haven't done that for a long period of time, it's exhausting the things that you have to think about. The, the mapping, each part of the journey, your safety, whether it's dark out, whether you should take extra measures to look after yourself.'cause you know, women, we have to do that. And then before you know it, it's two weeks in. You are no longer even thinking about it because that resilience has stepped in. Your safety is built into your plan. Your timing is built into your plan. You have a plan if the plan doesn't work, and then all of a sudden you are super resilient about your commute. And I think that life can be like that, can't it?

Jenn:

Absolutely. It's a great example there of. Building a habit. You made all of decisions early on and now you're far enough into it that it's become habit. You don't have to think about it anymore. This actually ties in some ways to the third step in developing resilience, which parents can do with their children and what you can do with yourself as an adult, and that is firing up what again, Dr. Shain calls the sage powers. And those are those neural networks that tend to be a little underdeveloped in us, and that are the ones that actually help us to be more resilient. And the first of those is recognizing the gift in a quote unquote bad situation. And do you remember the old five why's technique to diagnose, say a root cause of a problem?

Yoyo:

I mean, I remember the, I remember the W's and the why's at who, what, where, by when, why, but not the five why's. The

Jenn:

five why's, um, uh, are, are a wayed to dig. And so if we think about, say, let's take the example of this commute early on, um, as you're adjusting, well, what's the gift in this long commute? What might be the gift in it? I

Yoyo:

be very honest with you. I never, I never thought of that commute as a fricking gift at all. Suffice, suffice to say I did it on and off for 10 years. Okay. The only thing I could do is make something that I think if I was very honest with myself, I resented having to do,'cause it took two and a half hours, uh, three hours a day. Um, and I think I, I used to use that time to study, so I used it to improve my skills and, and learn new skills. And so I had this beautiful library after years of all these new skills I end up now using in my current career. But there's independence, there's, you know. Smelling the roses in the morning at 5:00 AM you know, there's just all those sorts of things, but I didn't, there, there weren't a lot of gifts. It wasn't giving

Jenn:

really. Yes. So you did find the gift though, one around skills learning development. Mm-hmm. Your library of skills, your skillset. And so why was that a gift?

Yoyo:

Because I real at the time, even though I hated the commute, getting up early, going to bed at 9:00 PM every night, I realized that I was working towards a goal, that I would make that time count and that I was working, I was studying my way out of that situation. Yeah.

Jenn:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the gift of, of, of lifting yourself. Out of that situation and why was far away that important to you?

Yoyo:

Because I didn't wanna keep doing it. I, you know, I needed to. I need to, and I think a lot of people change their mindset, certainly around wellbeing. Yeah. And work life balance after COVID, because they realized that they, they could do the same thing and be more productive, less tired, and mm-hmm. And, and not spend all that time. I, I would say to an employer, I'd rather give you that three hours a day than spend it wasting time, because all of a sudden now to a very logically driven person, the wasting of the time is the bit that you think is just, you know,

Jenn:

yes. Yeah. Doesn't make

Yoyo:

sense.

Jenn:

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if we continue down the the why, why, why path, uh, we might uncover things like, um, I bet you have developed a greater empathy for people who have significant stresses or strains outside of work. Possibly a better ability to help them problem solve around that, or develop a broader perspective, so that they might feel more resilient in the moment and we could continue down that path. The way to develop those powerful neural networks like empathy, exploration, clearheaded decision making, creativity, and clarity on values, right? These are powerful neural networks is to zero in first on the gift and spend an awful lot of time focused on, oh, I have a gift. Oh, I have a gift here. Look, there is a gift. Oh, here it is. And it's actually a gift that I want because I'm choosing it. I'm not choosing to sit there like reading the paper. I'm choosing to do this thing. And so that continued focus on it is what A allows you. You're using that neuro network and that's what strengthens it identical to a muscle, even though it's a nerve, using it. Makes it stronger. And so I love

Yoyo:

that. I love that you call it a

Jenn:

gift

Yoyo:

because all I could have in my head was this mantra of make it count. Make it count. You have to do it. It's where you are at right now. It's acceptable. It's me accepting that I am where I am right now. You can't go through every day resenting what you're doing, so make it count. Make it count something. Yeah. And I feel super frustrated really about colleagues who I know are still doing the same thing. We've had conversations a year ago, two years ago, and I've said, listen, you can make that change. You know, you don't have to keep doing this, you don't have to keep doing that. And yet they're still doing what I was doing and I'm thinking, I find it frustrating that especially when you've shown someone there's a better way.

Jenn:

Yeah. You know, you're further down the path than they are further down the path of resilience. They're not quite ready to. To go there with you. And it's an indication that you are further down the path. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Hmm. So that zeroing in on the gift, it is key, opening up your empathy particularly for, people who you wouldn't naturally empathize toward. So where I see a lot of leaders. Kinda get in their own way a little bit in terms of change and even leading change and facilitating change is they reserve all their empathy for their team, their poor, poor team, their poor beleaguered team. Right? Um, and, and they allow none of it for their peers and certainly none of it for the higher ups, right? Oh, that ELT, no, they're not gonna get any of my empathy and yet. Who's actually going to have the greatest odds of influencing your ELT, your executive level team to go in the direction you want them to go. The person who can put themselves in each of those person's shoes, who can make that stretch to say, Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to be responsible for sales for the whole globe. And what would, what would I be thinking about all the time and what would worry me? Um, and so, so, um, you know, a lot of times cyber and sales don't get along real well. Right? And that's a, it's a tough pairing because you're looking for enterprise wide solutions and you're looking for enterprise RI wide risk mitigation, and they're looking to move fast. Um, but one way to think about that from a place of empathy is, you know, if, if you're in sales, your number one job is to keep gas in the car, so the car keeps moving. You gotta put gas in the car probably every week. Hence weekly goals. Right? You, you got it. It's a personality that is gonna be on top of tactical things day in and day out, and very focused on that.'cause if they don't keep the gas in the car, we got big problems for keeping it running. They're not the people who are thinking about the car's design. Or how to optimize the fuel efficiency. Those folks tend to be a little easier for the cyber crowd to get along with because you're also thinking about things like that. How do we manufacture and design these cars so that they are safe, so that risk is mitigated? And so it's a little easier to empathize with those folks. So my, my stretch for, for those who are in those roles where you're working cross-functionally, you're at that management or leadership level. Is who, who is that person who really gets on your nerves, um, because of how they approach their work, right? Um, and see, can you put yourself in their shoes? That is a huge stretch assignment and see if that changes how you might communicate with them.

Yoyo:

I think personally I do that. I, I, it's one of the only things that keeps me sane because otherwise, you know, yes you can, I have this kind of brain once I formed an opinion and I'm usually right. Mm-hmm. You trust your gut instinct. Gut instinct was, was another thing actually that the medium talked to me about was to trust my gut instinct more. And I think I've learned now that when my gut instinct is talking to me. To listen to it rather than have it sounding like a cling brass repetitively and just ignore, just acknowledge it. It's a gut instinct for a reason. It's telling you stuff. Yes. Listen to it and and I think. And then the other thing, interestingly, this medium was very good. You said, you know, change the way you do things., Stop doing everything the same way. And it made me think, very strategically around how I've always done things. And so these are three, there were two others, but these are the three that I've really resonated so, so well, yes.

Jenn:

I love that. I really love that. I would add one other thing to be aware of from a resilience point of view. So first of all, if you're feeling a negative emotion, I could tell you 100% of the time you have a saboteur in play. You have a saboteur in play. So recognize a negative unless it's grief. Grief actually is a healthy, nons, saboteur driven emotion.

Yoyo:

Let's talk about that because I think people hold onto grief far too long and don't accept that it's there for a while. It's there to stay for a while. Yeah. But sometimes people forget to say goodbye to it because I think they realize once their grief goes, that they feel that their love. That person is gonna go as well as they hold onto the grief. They hold onto the pain, I think. I think that's the only thing I can think of that would massively contradict that what you said, it's,

Jenn:

One thing for which I think we really have no timeline. It happens. When it happens. People move on when they move on. So grief is very, very real. It's part of the human experience. You could, by the way, if you thought you were holding on, you had this sense like, I'm afraid of who I'll be when I let go of this, that you could use these techniques to help move yourself a little bit more through the grief. Recognizing that the grief is there, that you feel like you would like to move further through it. Doing some very focused on something tactile, which is here and now, and in the moment looking for what is the gift in the future for me? What might be the gift in the future for me? What might be out there? How can I take this grief out into the world and do something that is a gift? Doesn't have to be a gift to you, by the way, the gift. No, it might be a gift you can give others as you move through it and help them. Be a gift for yourself.

Yoyo:

We've seen in the UK in particular, a woman called Figan Murray, and she used her grief incredibly positively. She changed the whole industry.

Jenn:

Yeah,

Yoyo:

she lobbied the government and got exactly what she wanted. And I think that's a classic example that a lot of listeners will be able to resonate with. Look, you've worked with some amazing, amazing, amazing companies, right? You name it. Really have. Wonderful. And on your LinkedIn profile, wonderful. It says, Jennifer, that you have your coach, like 300 leaders. You didn't know I was gonna ask you this question, but I want you to describe for me a case study, somebody that you've worked with, where they've made such a lasting impression on you. They are always the thing that the person that you think about, they always the, maybe the one that went through the biggest amount of change or was able to make the most change or just helped you in your learning journey. Can you tell us about that person?

Jenn:

Oh my gosh, there are so many and it's one of the great, wonderful gifts of the profession that I am in because I get to get right in there and get joined at the hip with a leader. And take them through this process and journey with them through this process of significant personal change and transformation. And the cool thing about working with leaders is in that roles outward and downward. And so hundreds, thousands of people benefit and also go through a positive change journey. I will choose, a CISO that I worked with because I think his story is a great example of how it doesn't have to take forever. You don't have to go into therapy for 10 years, in order to have a significant transformation in how you approach things. And not saying therapy for 10 years is a bad idea. It's often a good idea, but it's amazing how quickly some of these things can happen. And then last, so when he first reached out to me, it was because he was in, a CISO circle it. And one of my clients was in the circle and they were chatting and the client said, you know. You need to talk to Jennifer. You're a first time ciso. You changed industries. That's exactly the situation I was in two years ago and she can help you. So he calls me up and we chat and we started out with, he had, we really was very, very new in the role. Couple months in. We started out with a sense of the scope. What are we gonna be focusing on? What is it you wanna get better at? What do you want your org to be better at? You know, how is this? How is, how, how? What is your situation? So two months go by, it's summer. By the time we get the contract together, he's learned a lot more about his situation. Well, here was his actual situation. Mind you, first time CISO changed industries from highly regulated to lightly regulated. Well, they reported up to the CTO. The company was underway in technology with a 33 0% cost reduction initiative driven by an external consulting firm that had done a study before. My client, of course, had been there to size up the cyber situation. He had walked into 44 0% attrition in his organization. He had exactly one senior leader on the team that could go forward. We're talking complete and total train wreck here he can see clearly he actually needs more money, not less in order to do the turnaround that's going to be needed. So we agreed drop everything else. We are not gonna work on your team, we're not gonna work on your org. Yeah. The culture's a train wreck. All these things are problematic, but if you can't get the money. Nothing else matters. And so for two months, every session we focused on. How do you influence this situation without letting, in this case, your saboteurs get in the way? And in terms of looking at it through personality type lens, he was a fast moving sort of person who could size it up, figure it out quickly, know what needs to happen and is right, like 99% of the time. So how do you manage this? Because as the new kid on the block, that ain't gonna fly, that ain't gonna fly. People aren't gonna say, oh, I'm so glad you're here. You're our hero. We couldn't figure anything out until you showed up on the scene. Right? They're gonna hate your guts and they're not giving you any money. So how do we do this in a way that is going to work here? And we laser focused on how do you leverage what you do well, but counter it where it's not helpful. We focused on who are those saboteur voices for you? And squelching those and working every single day on weakening those as quickly as possible. We focused on empathy, believe it or not, for the guy who'd been hired in from the consulting firm who was driving the whole thing, but in this very mechanistic sort of way, sort of drunk with his own power. And how do you go in with empathy in your conversations with him?'cause otherwise he's gonna trigger you as you can tell, not at all. Laser focused on what feels good right now.'cause every single part of this was a colossal stretch for him. And so he did it though every single day he practiced it. Every time we talked, I brought him something new. We did a visualization into the future, into yourself. 30 years from now, when you look back, what are you gonna say mattered. What are you gonna say was most important? What are you gonna say? You know what? You were so hung up about that, but it wasn't worth worrying about. And boy did he laser in and he went back to that visualization again and again and again. Fast forward three months, he gets all the funding he needs. They set aside other projects to make it happen. Other peers cut more of their budgets to make room for his and kind of the icing on the cake. The guy who was drunk with his own power, got fired for not adding much value, and this new CISO became the one who's joined at the hip with the CTO. Doesn't have to take a long time, but this has stuck with me, for two reasons. One is. He showed up ready to work, like he recognized that he's probably gonna have voices in him that resist what I'm telling him, but he needs to do it. So he showed up ready to go. Like he wasn't gonna sit around going, oh, let me spend three months figuring out if I really trust you as a coach or like you, or it was just like, let's go. I got a problem on my hands. And he was willing to laser focus and set aside these other things, which were. Everything was on fire. Yo-yo, everything was on fire, but it was very clear. If we can't get the money, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You have to let this burn for another two months, at least. Just let it burn. From there, he went on to, turn that situation around, to recruit a killer team. Very strong, very, very strong. So many people wanted to work for him. Changed the culture. People showed up with pride in their work. Even when they got frustrated, they showed up with pride, got strong relationships going. He got on a quarterly cadence, boom, boom, boom with all of the stakeholders. Now let me tell you, very few of my cyber clients or cadence people. You're more like, whoa. Respond, respond, respond. Right? You're fast on your feet, you're not cadence people with a steady beat, but guess what? Almost all your business leaders are cadence people. So that's what reassures them. So he got right into their cadence. He said, Hey, when do you have your quarterly ops review? I'd like to attend and I'd actually like to present, sign present at my qbr. Yes, every quarter. And so they went, come on in. Like nobody from cyber has ever said they want to be part of it. And so because he met them where they were not where he wanted them to be. Yeah, I love it. He knew. So there was less of this, you know, 11th hour, oh hey, we got this thing that we're doing and we're going live in three weeks. And we just realized there's like a cyber element.'cause the auditors told us we can't do it without you. Oh my gosh. Way less of that with more, again, this circles all the way back to predictability. Can you create more predictability for your people in your org? Yeah, because what he did by doing this thing that was not his natural thing, was create more predictability, could get more advanced notice, and then that created more predictability for the people in his org. So they had less to react to in the moment. True outside threats. And fewer internal things that were 11th hour that they had to react to. And so this, I was super, super proud of him, and what he accomplished in such a short time. He's moved on to another or we continue to work together and I hope to keep working with him for the rest of his career.

Yoyo:

You got me at predictability there.'cause I think, uh, I think there's a lot of things I could do with predictability and I think if in the same way that he made himself available to his peers. That created more predictability. Predictability for business is so good in terms of applying the right resources, not, you know, running by the seat of your pants all the time. Look how much more efficient, how much money we can all save if we embed more predictability into what we're doing. So, that's a. Big. I mean, Jennifer Selby Long. What can I say? What a lesson. I mean, we only touched the tip of the iceberg, really. I know, but I'm sure just like me getting massively, positively triggered there with lots of ideas.

Jenn:

Oh,

Yoyo:

I hope someone reaches out to you and says, Jennifer, I heard your podcast lady. I think I need to work with you, so,, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me on the Security Circle podcast. You more than welcome. Thank you for having me.