Tonya Crombie, Ph.D

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:09

Welcome to another episode of Drop and Knowledge. We're grateful for your support. Please remember to like this episode, and again, thank you for joining our village today. We're privileged to have a leadership development fanatic, executive coach, professor at Southeastern Louisiana University School of Business, a dedicated wife to Bill, and a mother of two adult children. She holds an MBA in marketing and a doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology. Today we welcome Dr. Tanya Crombie.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Thank you all so much. I love I'm so excited to be here.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Well, thanks. So we're going to jump right in. You uh obviously have um some significant academic credentials. And um, but as we all know, you don't just kind of wake up one day and get those. Um so we'd like to kind of start in on you kind of telling us a little bit about your your career path and journey. Um, and if there's anything from your youth that you felt kind of ended up playing a role, share that with us as well. Um and wherever you want to kind of jump in.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Okay. Um, so I'm gonna go back to when I was back in the 80s when I was a teenager. Um, my aspiration, my life aspiration was to be an attorney.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Um, so my dad is an attorney, my grandfather's an attorney. There was a law firm in Lake Charles where I grew up, Collings and Collins attorney at law. I was Tony Collins at the time. So it was sort of like just going into the family business made a lot of sense. And you guys may be both too young to remember this, but in the 80s there was a show called LA Law. I remember. And LA Law, Susan Day played Grace Van Owen. I don't know if you remember. Grace Van Owen was she was an assistant DA. She had like awesome clothes. She was dating Harry Hamlin, who was really hot. And she would put bad guys in jail every single week. Every week she put somebody, a terrible person away. And so I was like, there, that's the dream right there. I will be Susan Day. I'm going to be an assistant DA someday. I'm going to put bad guys in jail. I'm going to have a hot boyfriend and wear awesome clothes. And it just seemed like such a great job. So dreaming. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 2:26

They do a great job of making the practice of law look so sexy on TV.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yes, it did. And and like that whole, you know, you're going to put somebody away every single week. And then you never lose, you know, it was all the things. So the best thing that happened to me at that age was I was in this class, a class of, and I went to Louisiana Public Schools just so you know, but I was in a class of six students.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah. Me, Katherine Shelley, um, Rajiv Singh, Drew Claudell, and JD.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Gaspar. So the six of us were in this class, and we, our senior year, all got to say, hey, I really think I want to be whatever. And they got us a job in that field. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, like my friend Shelley wanted to be an architect, so she went and worked in an architect field. I got a job working at the Calcus Street Parish District Attorney's Office. How cool is that? Super cool. Richard Ayub, who later went on to be uh lieutenant or the AG, right? Yeah, yes, Attorney General of the state of Louisiana, but he was the district attorney at the time. So I worked in that office from the time I was senior in high school until I graduated from college. Um, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life because I learned that it was nothing like LA Law. It was a shocking revelation that working, that it was, I mean, it was really nothing like it. And I learned a lot of other stuff. I worked in the Traffic Violations Bureau. So um I spent five years where nobody comes there because they're happy. You know, nobody comes into the Traffic Violations Bureau, like, hey, good to see you. And nobody was feeding either. Nobody's nobody's guilty of anything at the DA's office, just so you know. Um, but but it was it was such a good experience. I did it for five years, and about junior year of college, I had the hard, hard revelation that this is not what I want to do. I'm about to have a bachelor's degree in psychology. There is not a whole lot you can do with bachelor's degree of psychology. Um, so I got to come up with plan B pretty quickly. Um, and I had I was good friends because I went to a small enough university, a lot like Southeastern, when you get into junior and senior year, you're taking the same classes with all the same people. So I was on all the same classes with a bunch of girls, and one of my sorority sisters was one of them, and she worked for a clinical psychologist at the time. That was her college job, and we were studying, and I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And she's like, Well, let me tell you, you don't want to be a clinical psychologist either. And I was like, Okay, and so then she said, But I've done some research. Industrial organizational psychologists make the most money. She said, So I think we both should just do that, and so literally that was how the decision was made. I knew nothing about industrial organizational psychology. Yeah, truly. I was like, Yeah, it's psychology. I'm sure I'll like it. I knew nothing about it. I went to I got accepted into a PhD program, went to graduate school, was probably again, probably a good couple of years into it. Because my my master's degree at that program was just psychology. They put all of the different disciplines into one program and we all got the same master's degree. And then uh we started specializing after our master's in the in the field. And so that's when I figured out what IO psychology was.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

Why do you think your friend said, do you recall that conversation? Maybe some of the details of why she thought she didn't want to, and also could also vouch for you not to be a clinical psychologist.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Um I do remember, and she is still my friend today, and we both have a very um dark sense of humor. That is one of our things. We share memes and jokes that are like darkly funny. And so she like was using very appropriate clinical terms of like, girl, we do not want to work with crazy people for the rest of our lives, you know. It was that sort of really mature, deep, thoughtful conversation. But she was, you know, working with this clinical psychologist, and she was just saying, like, let me tell you the type of people that are coming in and it'll suck your soul. And I was like, I think you're probably right.

SPEAKER_04 6:48

And so you're hearing this coming off of working with the DA's office. And even though you were in traffic, I'm sure you were exposed to other areas that's tough to handle.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Crazy. Lots of crazies. Yes, people who probably should lots of people who should be getting mental health support are in the criminal justice system. So I was dealing with the same population to a large extent. And uh I I knew she was right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:14

It's hard to um, you know, I have some friends who have been in law enforcement, it's very similar. Yes. Um, who've been DAs for a long time, um, or met people who've been psychologists or psychiatrists, and it is a special calling. It really, really because you have to be able to silo your work from your professional life. And when you're dealing with things that are that highly charged and highly emotional and you're dealing with people's lives, you know, it's not like you're a banker and dealing with money. That affects people's lives, right? But but this is a whole different game.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

It is.

SPEAKER_04 7:49

Um, it's interesting at a young age you were exposed to two areas that were very different in many ways, but at the top of the funnel, so to speak, were quite similar.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

So can you tell our villagers um what an industrial psychologist does?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

So, again, I learned this late in my journey of becoming one, but um they basically take the principles of psychology and apply it to work situations. So instead of, and this is such a better fit for me. I've since learned a lot, done my strengths profile and all this, and this is really who I am as a person. I like taking something that is good and making it great. And there are people who love taking something that's struggling and making it good, and that's a like you said, special calling, it's wonderful. It just isn't me. And so this was like the perfect fit for me that we are in working with healthy people in the world of work and trying to help select the best people, understanding who's gonna be the best fit for jobs, um, evaluating performance, motivating people, understanding all the triggers, teaching people how to lead better, teaching people how to work as teams better, um, looking at things like organizational surveys and knowing what to do with that information. Um so it was a it was really completely by sheer dumb luck, but it was like the perfect I I have zero regrets about getting a a PhD in industrial psychology because I I just feel like it was like such the perfect thing for me. That's good.

SPEAKER_04 9:38

Sounds like somebody upstairs knew where they were sending you.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, totally, totally. I do believe that there are several things in my journey that are like that that like you never would have predicted it. It doesn't make sense, and yet it was the perfect thing.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

Was anyone in your family disappointed that you weren't gonna go down the law school path at any point?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I'm just oh my gosh, my dad sat me down, and you're an attorney, so you probably can figure this uh or understand it. Um my dad sat me down when I was saying, I'm gonna take the L side, I'm gonna go to law school, and he was like, Do not do it. He he said, There are so many unhappy lawyers, everybody, not everybody, but a large, large number of people, and I've seen this too, because my brother did end up going to law school, and I've just known so many attorneys over my life, and there are so many who are unhappy. And even as somebody who has now been in education and working with students, I hear students say things all the time, which was exactly what I thought. It that idea of, well, I'm kind of smart, I'm kind of good, I'm a good student, I'm not really great at math, so I'll be an attorney, which is like a 17 leaps between I'm not good at math, therefore attorney. That's there's a lot, there's a lot of other things that you need to think about, such as, would you like to do the job that attorneys do? Would you like this type of work? And I for me, I think the answer would have been no. I don't think my dad loved it, even though he was a really great attorney, super smart.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Um Well, it's interesting because Prex and Law often ends up in maybe two notches below the DA's office in clinical psychology. But oftentimes, day in, day out, you're dealing with you know complex complicated issues where people's livelihoods or um their maybe their lives if you're doing family law, you know, and you're doing maybe that's custody work or divorce, things like that. And it's it starts to weigh weigh on people, and and I think a lot of people probably aren't cut out for it. And then I think this is across the board an issue in in America. I don't know if this happens in other countries, but it's like we you were talking about LA law. Yeah and it's like we sensationalize these careers. Yes. And I feel it happens with nurses a lot as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yes. Um, where and forensics became it became like every high school kid I knew for a while was watching CSI and was like, I think that's what I want to do. Right. I was like, it was I was like, oh, it's the LA law of this generation.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

And ultimately, I think I don't know how it would ever happen, but allowing high school students and encouraging college students, which now a lot of them have to work, so we have that other problem, but to to do internships and externships really is an opportunity I always say for people to almost learn what they don't like. Yes. If you if you go to one and you find something you like, that's great. But typically, if you're bouncing around because you're not sure what you want to do, um, I think it's a good way to go. Well, I know I'm glad I did this, and I'm gonna leave in the right way. But Anna, this is the last time I'll be seeing you. I will not be applying for a job here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah, Owen Crombie had that exact experience this summer, and and he was kind of a little shell-shocked about how much he hated it. And I was like, baby, it is a this was a great experience because you need to know. It's just as important to know what you don't want to do as what you do.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

Yeah, I agree. I mean, and for me, I thought I wanted to be an attorney too. Then I worked with Chris and quickly realized no, I do not want to be an attorney. I knew I never wanted to be in a courtroom. Just and while I enjoyed learning, you know, the stuff that that Chris and I did, um it instantly showed me that I want to do more business stuff. I wanted to interact with people. So then I do have a little bit of a background in HR too. So I got the best of both worlds, really. Yeah. Yeah. But definitely important to learn what you do not want to do.

SPEAKER_04 13:48

Yes. So you get your PhD.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So I get my PhD.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

And you think, and I think I like this, yeah, which is good.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah, I while I was getting my PhD, the um a lot of PhD programs in a lot of law schools, so you might have had this experience, are very like competitive, and people almost will sabotage other people because they they see everybody's competition. That was not my experience at all. I had an awesome, awesome group of friends in grad school. I attribute a lot of things that I was able to do to students who were a little bit ahead of me who like I I worked, I think from my maybe my first, at least my second, but maybe it might have been my first year of grad school. I started working for um the only licensed IO psychologist in the state of Mississippi at that time. There was one that I worked for him, Max McDaniel. And I did project work with him. Also amazing, because just like you said, I don't know if I would have known if I liked it or not, but Max, and he was just a great mentor and he taught and was just a kind, kind guy. He would say all the time, I'll give you some free advice that's worth every penny. So I always remember that from Max. And then uh another one of my friends did an internship at a uh consulting firm in Houston. And after he did it, I talked to him and he was like, You should apply, go do the same one, which I did. And so that kind of opened some doors that I don't know if would have been opened. So right when I graduated, I had already had two different consulting experiences, so I got a job at a consulting, a big consulting firm. Um, and was started in Houston. In their Houston office, moved to an Atlanta office. Um super fun. It was super um, it was like the perfect thing to do at that age. It's like being a young associate. We had billable hours, they would post our billable hours in the break room every single month. You knew where you ranked, and um you had to the the senior people had to like you and want to work with you, or you were gonna just die on the line. And so again, great learning experience. Um flew all over the place, got to a point where it was like I just didn't even think about getting on a plane. I would, I one time they said, you know, okay, you gotta go to Mexico City. I got all the way to Mexico City and was like, I don't have any money to, you know, because I'm so used to just jumping on planes and going. And I was like, ooh, this is a little bit more different. It's not like it is today when we had cell phones and any of that stuff. I was like, uh, I gotta figure this out now. Um, but it it just kind of built some resilience and some belief in myself that I can always figure stuff out. Um, and that's I think a really important belief to have. I want my kids to have that belief that you will always be able to figure it out. You don't have to know, just trust that you'll be able to figure it out if if things happen. Um, so I did that for a while. Um, a guy that one of the more senior people that I worked with went into corporate. He wanted, he offered me a job to go work for him if somebody already knew and I wanted that experience. So I went and worked in corporate for several years. Uh he left. I ended up taking his job, ended up getting to hire some people, um, had a team, did did the exact corporate um progression that so many people do, which is like find your perfect job and then get promoted beyond that and realize, well, this stinks. I really liked what I was doing before this.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Um I like, can we pause there? This is interesting. Why do you think I'm gonna put you to work here? Because Anna and I have both certainly had our fair share um of promoting people probably to a place that was more than what they they could take, whether that is from an academic skill set, maybe it's just personality, it could be a variety of things. And it happens all the time, and I have friends in business, and and they'll tell me a story, and I start to think to myself, uh-oh. Sounds like the Peter principle. Right. Why do you think that happens so often in from a psychological standpoint?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Oh, I have lots of theory. I mean, I I talk about it from a leadership development perspective because that is my world. As you said, I'm a leadership development fanatic. Um one of the biggest reasons is we leaders look at our people and we're like, Chris is a great attorney. He is out there killing it. So I'm gonna put him in a job where he manages other attorneys. Well, that is a entirely different skill set than when you were a great attorney. Um and I was good at when I what I where I went wrong in mine was I was good as an individual contributor. When they promoted me, I got to hire my team. So I hired a bunch of people who were exactly like me. And remember, I came from consulting world. Consulting world, consultants eat their children. You know, this is a it is not a loving, friendly environment, at least it wasn't back then. So I hired a bunch of people who are just like me, who are all like drivers. And I I didn't really lead them, I didn't have to. I thought I was when I said, Hey guys, we're gonna do this, and they go out and do it and do it really well. I was like, see, I'm a great leader. And then they said, Oh, you're doing so well, your team is doing so well. I'm gonna put you over all these other people that you didn't choose who are not necessarily just like you. And I had one tool in my toolbox, which is tell people and and do it, you know, show them, set a good example. It's called pace setting leadership style. I was a pace setter. I work really hard and I set really high goals and have really high standards. And by and I assumed because it had always worked before, that surely this will work now. Well, I needed it's like a this the analogy I use when I teach it is you you got a a whole bag of golf pups. I had one. I had a putter and nothing else, and you know, I needed a driver, I needed a seminar, and you know, I needed a lot of other stuff that I just did not have at that time, and nobody had ever taught me.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

And did you have a mentor in the in the business at this time?

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Like in that, not really at that time. My mentor would have been the guy who hired me, who left the company, probably. And uh and it and the only reason I got promoted into the role I was in is because there had been a lot of leadership changes, so I wasn't necessarily super close to the leadership um at that time.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

So I was taking some notes. So on the reasons why people promote people maybe beyond where they should be, I have three things here. One, need.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

Oh, we got a vacancy to fill. Who's up?

SPEAKER_00 20:56

And that person looks they're doing a good job.

SPEAKER_04 20:59

They're another reason, and it could be all of these, by the way, I think. Um a person has demonstrated a high level of skill in a particular area, and therefore they become the candidate for other areas. Totally. Um people tend to maybe think, like you were saying, hire like me.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

Or think that they can maybe groom someone or quickly coach them to be something they're not.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 21:28

We've both seen that a lot. Um, any other thing comes to mind?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

There's just so many, I mean, 50% of people who get promoted fail or underperform. That's a that's a statistic out there. So, and the big reason in my mind, and of course, if you're a hammer, you think everything's a nail. I'm a leadership development person. So I do believe people don't get leadership training. The average age when people get their first bit of leadership training is in their forties. I try and teach it in college. Because truly, you need to understand how to motivate people and how to work with people and how to appreciate the differences in people. Because that's another thing we often do is I was just teaching on this yesterday. I was like, you know, we assume when people do things that annoy us, it's because they're annoying or they're trying to annoy us or whatever. When often it's because their skill set or their strength area is almost the complete opposite of mine. And so they just approach the world so differently that it's frustrating, but it's also good. And if you can appreciate what's good about it instead of thinking of them as being annoying, teams are going to work so much better.

SPEAKER_04 22:46

It took me a long, long time. I can now recognize it very quickly. It took me 51%. Because we did me a long time.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

We didn't nobody taught us that in college. Nobody taught us that in, you know, even in our early career. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 22:58

So we had a consultant that I had met, um, Harold Swarr, who recently passed away, um, who had a a group called Emergenetics. And it had this theory of it was like a like a test you would take, similar to an IQ test, but it wasn't IQ. And it basically was designed to show you where your own brain preferences were. Where were you most comfortable? It was not an academic thing. And it actually wasn't a skill. Someone could perform very well, but but it could be wearing them out. And the example I gave is some people go to conferences because they have to, and they do an outstanding job. But when they get home, they are wiped out. Their brain is just tired. They don't actually, their brain prefers not to do it, even though to all of us they're a high performer in it. Right. But going through that um myself, and then we engaged them for the firm several times, it really taught me to how important it was to not see people as frustrating when they think differently. Yes. It put some science behind it for me. Yes. And it's definitely made a difference in the way I approach people.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Same. Same. And it so it makes a difference in like on a practical side and on an interpersonal side. Right. Because if I go walk into an interaction with you thinking, oh, Chris is so annoying, I'm gonna have to go deal with annoying Chris again, I have a totally different vibe and energy than if I'm like, Chris is good at this stuff that I am not good at. I'm so lucky I get to go work with and talk to Chris about it because he's gonna say something totally different than anything I would think of. And that's good. That's helpful. And I my energy is totally different because I thought that way. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Which kind of emergenetics kind of helped us in our leadership roles to understand how other people preferred um, I guess, to be dealt with and to communicate with in certain and to communicate in certain meetings. So we would know who we're like our visual persons or analytical people. And so you kind of learned how to properly communicate with them because if the analytical person, if you're going in there and you're not prepared, you're gonna lose them. Um yeah, the best partnerships.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I'm sure you guys have this. I I would do a I do a leadership program that I teach with an economist. So he's got his PhD in economics, which is about as different from psychology as it gets, and also very related, but but he sees the world from a very kind of analytical perspective. I see it from much more of an interpersonal perspective. Um, he also grew up on a farm, and so he has a farm analogy for everything that happens to that, and I did not grow up on a farm or know anything about farm, so he's constantly like saying things like, well, that hay is already in the barn. And I'm like, okay, you're gonna have to examine. What does that mean exactly? But it's just I love working with him because he's so different than me. And I just think we both are better because we have such different strengths. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

Um, okay, we diverge then for a minute, but that was good because I was curious as to what your thoughts are. Because I think a lot of people running businesses or managing people struggle with that issue.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

They do, and I I will say put your people in leadership development training.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

And that was going to be my question. What would you recommend to, you know, business owners or leaders that are, you know, mentoring people on stepping up or being promoted?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

I mean, leadership training, there's good leadership training, and there's not good leadership training. And there's what people like fun education, I've heard it called, where it's like, oh, we got to go spend two days having fun and nothing changes. Do your due diligence, find somebody who knows what they're doing, who has a background in it, who understands adult learning theory and that sort of thing. And and know that to make change, it's not a day. Um, like the program that I do is 10 days with people, and it could be more than that. Um, but we spend 10 days of a lot of different things, and there's you know, a lot of interaction and discussion and role-playing exercises and all kinds of stuff like that to make the learning stick, to give people chances to practice. Um, that's good leadership training. But you know, half day, I'm gonna teach you a technique tends not to work as well because um, like the program, just like you guys were just talking about your um starting with self-awareness. That's that's what you want. I start with some tools about this is who you are, and so I can teach you all these techniques, but you have to know what you do best and which techniques will work for you, and how you can tweak this for who you are, because that's that's something else I think leader with leadership training tends to be is like go do performance appraisals this way, and it's not gonna work for everybody, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:10

Do you do you think everyone is capable of being a leader?

SPEAKER_00 28:15

No, and I don't well, I guess capable probably I don't think everybody wants it. I don't think everybody has the motivation, I don't think everybody has the um the drive because to be good, you really have to care about other people's success. And some people are very, very motivated to be individual, great individual contributors, and we need them, and that is okay. Some people went to school, became an engineer, and their entire dream is to be a great engineer. And I don't think we should have to put them as the head of all the engineers so that they can feel like they have grown in their career. I feel like there should always be a way to grow in your career in a way that makes sense for you. Because some people just don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Well, and this goes back to what I see as another problem in our I'm just gonna say corporate world in America, is that we misassign and mislabel success. Absolutely. All over the place. Absolutely. Um and one of the big places is there has been this hierarchy inside of organizations for you know organizational purposes. Yeah, makes sense. But then this what's the word I'm looking for? Um we then we started to tie success to where you are in the org chart.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 29:44

And it it makes a lot of people feel, take that engineer as an example, feel like they're not as successful as Anna, because Anna is the manager of the engineers, and if I'm not in management, then um I'm not successful.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Yeah, and the other tricky thing is we have so we have five engineers, and Anna is not the best engineer, but she's the best leader of people. And therefore, we promote Anna to be the head of engineering, and the people below her are like, well, Angela, she wasn't even that good as an engineer, you know, but that's not the criteria. Right. She's the best one to lead, therefore, she is better than the greatest engineer who has very little motivation, very little interpersonal skills, all those things that we really need in our leaders. So sometimes we make that mistake of you're the best one at accounting, so we're gonna put you at the top of the accounting, and it's a disaster.

SPEAKER_04 30:49

We see it in sports too, where some of the greatest athletes then try to coach. Yeah, and they don't have as much success. I'm not gonna say they failed, but they're just not as good.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Who never played or played at a lower level who are amazing coaches?

SPEAKER_04 31:03

Yes. That's probably the vast majority if you think about it.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, because that's their drive. That's they've been studying how do I get players to be great, not studying how do I be a great player. Two entirely different things.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

Right. So do you believe that there are natural leaders? And what I mean by that are, you know, sometimes I see certain kids and I'm like, he's a leader, not a follower.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

I think there are certain skills, uh, well, I'm a big uh Clifton strengths. The the there's that's it's 34 strengths. I use it all the time. Uh I use them on my classes, so it's a good um assessment that boils it down to 34 different strengths. One of the strengths, for example, is command. And these strengths are things that tend to be natural recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior. That's how we define them. And then if you use them a lot, they start off as talents, they become strengths when you've practiced and really honed them. Um, so people tend to come into the world or at an early age demonstrating these things. Command is one that we see that kid who's on the playground saying, All right, we're playing kickball today, you're a team captain, you're a team captain, you know, just start. And they are so comfortable in that role. And I would say that's probably a command talent. Um, and if they keep have opportunities to practice it, they will have that talent. Now, does that mean that someone who doesn't have command can't be a good leader? No, because there are a thousand different ways that we're gonna lead and do it successfully. Some of them, it just is more obvious to the naked eye, I guess. And sometimes it's uh they just, you know, it's that quiet, supportive leader, or there's just so many different ways that people are really good leaders.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

Do you ever go do some consulting with a group, this 10-day program? And while you're in there, you're on like day three, and this is the leadership team, and you know, you drive it home and you're thinking to yourself, five of them need to go. That guy Chris is nice to have a beer with. He has he may be talented, he has not put in the work, you know, to get the strength. And I've got some concerns with this group because some of the people they've designated as current leaders or maybe even future leaders, just in your mind, based on all of your experience. Not that you scarlet letter anybody, but you just get concerned, you're like, uh-oh.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

I often think I I notice people who I think to myself, I don't know if this person aspires to what the company aspires to for them. And and I think it's okay for people to opt out. I think it's totally okay. And I think providing an opportunity to learn this stuff and then to let them say, you know what, that was great, thank you, but that's not who I am. That's not one. I want to be a great salespeople are notorious for this. If you are a great salesperson and it gets you going to go out and make the deal, and you know, you're a hunter, you don't necessarily get a lot of um that you know rush that you get from from m sealing a deal when you tell Chris how to go sell. I think again, that's often a head of sales is the same example, is a good head of sales is often not your top salesperson.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

Uh man, my mind's going. How do you how do you work with someone who uh aspires, and I'll use the air quote, aspires, to be whatever it is, a senior manager, the CEO one day. But it becomes very clear that they're a little more talk than action. They're not a love, this talent to strength takes the practice. Yeah. I've never thought about that before.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

That's pretty much a diamond in the rough versus a polished diamond.

SPEAKER_04 35:14

So I've seen lots of talented people, people I perceive to be talented, who aspire and talk a good game. But unfortunately, they never demonstrated the willingness to practice to use that. Right. To to close the gap between their natural talent and what it's gonna take to polish it to be able to utilize it in a in a corporate setting, right? Right. And I find it very hard, I found it very hard for a long time to have to cook to have those conversations um with those people. I'm curious as to um because you have to see that, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Oh yeah. I mean I'll tell you, going back to my personal journey, so when I um went into the corporate world um and I had this PhD in psychology, um, and my boss was somebody, I was in the hotel business, and so my boss was someone who had come up through the hotel business into being the head of HR for an international organization. Wow. Um, and so we didn't have the same depth and background in HR, and he would, if when there was that person, and I distinctly remember I'm thinking of a specific person, but they would do that, they did this several times where they'd be like, So, Tanya, you know, Bob, Bob's a great franchise salesperson. Um, he thinks he needs to be the head of franchise, but Bob is never going to be a head of franchise. We need you to talk to him and let him know. I think that's a conversation Bob's boss should probably be having with him or should have had with him probably 10 years ago. Um and so I would I would sit down and I would not, just for the record, I would never say, so I I brought you in today to tell you you will never be that's not, but I would just ask them a lot of questions about like, what do you love? What do you, what gets you going? And and a lot of times people know, people at that level. Um, when I kind of what's what's your favorite thing, and what do you what do you see in the future, and what do you want your lifestyle to be like? Like a lot of times in that one conversation, he it was clear he loved sales, he was a great salesperson, he loved sales in the future. He wanted to, you know, have a lot of time with his family, he wanted had these, you know, this other side of his life that he wants to spend time with. So I was kind of like, so does this path that you think you want make sense really? And he kind of came to the conclusion himself that no, that that path isn't. So that was the way I handled that tricky one. But um I think sometimes, yeah, it's we have to be comfortable. One, just in organizations in general, we just have to normalize giving feedback to people because right now it's so like, Chris, I need you to come in and talk to me, and you're like, oh no, oh no. If we did it all the time, when I said, Hey, Chris, I gotta just say the way that meeting went the other day, I think we need to talk about how we can make it better. And that's just a normal conversation. You're not freaking out. It's not like I'm about to get fired or anything. And um, we're not good at that. And if we're having those kind of conversations all the time, then people aren't having this, like, I think I'm the next CEO. They're they're kind of realizing, well, I'm probably not the next CEO because I can't even get the presentation quite right. Yeah, I gotta work on this.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

That ongoing communication. Yeah. And I agree, I I think as leaders, we do struggle sometimes to keep those conversations going because we get busy, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:59

We get busy, we avoid it, we don't, they they are gone. I mean, I teach this and I am not good at it. I have like times that I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got to tell that student this thing. And then two weeks will go by and I'll be like, well, at this point, might as well just let it go, you know, and I never told them that thing, you need to do this. Right.

SPEAKER_04 39:19

Well, and I think inside of businesses, HR has become commoditized. Yeah. Um, it it's it's not what it should be in small to midsized businesses or what I think it was intended to be.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

It ends up becoming more of payroll benefit planning, well, disciplinary, exit, you know, onboarding and exit and all very the that uh that managers don't want to do and they just want to shut up and let HR take care of this.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

And then HR ends up wearing multiple hats when they shouldn't be wearing all of these multiple hats. That's what I always found. Like, if you want me to focus on HR, let me focus on HR. But then you could owe in payroll and budgets and all this stuff, and it's like, okay.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

Well, there was this one business owner one time that said that um HR was a luxury. We won't we won't give his name. Um and what I was trying to say was that it was me. Was that in leaner times where you had to make some tough decisions around the economics of the business, that sometimes HR is a place if it's gotten a little heavy to to trim back.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

That's always the case. I always knew when I was in corporate I was overhead. I was not bringing in business, therefore.

SPEAKER_04 40:45

And the but the reality of it is because we're not, and I and I wasn't either in leading the business, treating HR the way it should be. Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Because if we were a strategic advantage if you use it right, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 41:00

And if it we were reinforcing 360-degree feedback, reinforcing uh morale, what is our culture, those warm and fuzzy things, then um then I think more people would would realize the the true value of it. But it's just hard to get there in small and mid-sized businesses.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

It is. It is. I um so I as I mentioned, I use the Clifton Strengths a lot, and um it's Gallup, the Gallup organization that puts it out. And they have this very cool um research-based path that they have created, start kind of starting with you know, shareholder value and returns and and working its way from that to you know, energized customers, which delivers those things, and from energized customers, the thing that delivers energized customers, and I'm gonna skip some because I don't remember them all, but it's you know, leadership. Um and um actually goes before that um engaged employees, engaged employees, employees who have a good fit-to-role tend to be more engaged, and good managers are good at putting the right employee in the right roles, which then delivers all of the other pieces, these engaged employees which are deliver, you know, engaged customers, which deliver all the returns and the revenue, and and they actually have done the research to prove that they like a manager is responsible for like 70% of employee engagement, which is kind of huge. Yeah, I mean there's other stuff, obviously, but that's a big number.

SPEAKER_04 42:45

And to go back to maybe what we're talking about earlier, if you put the wrong person to pick on the engineer for a moment, yeah, the great engineer now is put on a management role.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

You can already predict turnover's gonna go up, dissatisfaction, customer engagement's gonna go down because the people who are working with those customers are mad and unhappy and grumpy, and they're not putting in the extra mile, all the stuff.

SPEAKER_04 43:13

You know, and and I think you would agree conceptually, all these things make a lot of sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:18

Um, and it's the execution of them.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

That is just it's just so hard.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

It is. Culture is hard, and culture also another research study. 30% of returns can be predicted by culture.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Organization. So it's obviously 30% is enough that you care. Because if I said I'm gonna take 30% of your revenue away, you would care. Um so it's it's a big chunk.

SPEAKER_04 43:46

But when you tell that to people who are running businesses, I think the reason they don't it's not that they don't believe the statistic, but they don't know what to do. Well, it's not tangible. Yeah. Culture's an intangible, right? At least In my opinion. So when you look at other components of the PL, they're tangible. We've got rent and we've got variable expenses and we can go adjust these. When you're like, yeah, but you know, there's turn turnover is a great example in my mind. If you look at the statistics on turnover and what it costs the business. But when you go look at the PL, it's hard to pluck that cost out.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

And so I think that's one of the big struggles for business owners or managers. It's like, well, I don't disbelieve what Dr. Crombie has told us about the 30 percent or the turnover of an employee is going to cost the organization forty-six thousand dollars. I believe her, but I got the PL, and it's really hard to track it back to this. And I think that gap between the intangible things that I think are real important. I think we would all agree in running a business and and having a well-performing business, it's hard to move from that intangible to the tangible.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think people underestimate how much turnover cost all every single day. I uh I did a pro team project with a bunch of students, and that was the project. We we had a client basically come in and say, we've got this thing happening, and um we want you guys to go and talk to some people and come back with some recommendations. And it was low risk, you know. The the students get a really good experience of working with the rope problem, and and maybe the company gets something good out of it. If they don't, they didn't spend any money. So it was kind of a win-win for everybody. Um, and I remember one student who works in his family-owned business, so he he had a really good understanding of business, the PL, all of that sort of thing. Um, and he said, There's no way we can recommend them spending money. Um, because you know, the problem is turnover. And I was like, Okay, if you learn nothing else, remember turnover is expensive. You you actually can spend money and come out ahead if you can fix this problem. Now there's an end game to that, but there is an amount of money you can spend that is cheaper than what you are losing right now with this turnover. Right. Uh and that that kind of mindset is hard to get people over. Like they don't like you said, I don't see it on the PL. Therefore, spending money feels like when I go hire Tanya, I see it. Right.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

Whether I think it's a good spend or not, I see it. Or yeah, or when Anna leaves and I have to replace her, yeah, I know it's gonna I'm gonna feel it in the organization, but I don't see it in the PL except for actually got a reduction in the in my expense line until we replace her. And um I just think that's a big push-pull.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

It is. It is. And in sales organizations easier because you have a direct line to what they're producing. And you s and you often see, or even um people who are servicing accounts, I've seen it too in that kind of business where we just lost a customer because they're mad because we don't have the service people that we need. Right.

SPEAKER_04 47:12

Right. Yeah. Oh well, yeah, definitely there's clearer examples.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

Yeah. Um but you're right, when you lose an HR person, when you lose a you know, an account accountant, you're like, okay, well, things are still going.

SPEAKER_03 47:27

Or when you get sued for not having a good handbook. Or I mean that that's an actual true story for me. I worked for an organization where our CEO, he he didn't want a handbook, he didn't want policies and procedures. And sure enough, what happened? He got sued. And then he was like, oh, wait a second. And that's what led him to finally go, we need an HR department.

SPEAKER_04 47:54

And why? Because he saw a legal expense and a risk of a bigger expense.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

And so and I think I know who you're referring to, who is a an awesome visionary and and got a tremendous business background. But even there, it's like he it's because you don't see it. And we went to we had you know a lot of turnover in in our business for a long time. Um I'd read all these books and articles and I would I would know that it wasn't good. You know, then I would come back to well, would I rehire the person? No. So I was like, well, okay, well, it was the right decision. We just have to deal with the with whatever the cost is. But that wasn't always right on that.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Well, and the other thing I would say, um there's good turnover and bad turnover. I always say that when I teach HR classes. I also say sometimes your turnover problem is a selection problem. You're not hiring the right people. And that that actually was part of what that that student project was finding. Like the people who are coming in don't have realistic expectations of what they're gonna do, so then they're very dissatisfied and leave quickly. So it was a there's often selection aspects that are impacting turnover.

SPEAKER_04 49:17

Well, I want to bounce back now to your journey.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

All right. Well, I'm gonna, I I I've actually got a great segue from what we were just talking about to my journey, uh, and answering a question you said before we started, which was why do you have an MBA in marketing? So um, while I was in corporate um and kind of had been uh promoted to a level that uh I I really wasn't great in, but more importantly, I didn't love what I was doing anymore. I had loved what it was, and that also makes you great, right? When you love what you're doing, you tend to be better at your job. And I didn't love it so much anymore. Um and one of the head of at that time Holiday and Express Marketing, it was, I think we were still, I can't remember, he was originally head of marketing, and then we restructure and he became head of the Holiday and Express brand. Um, and he said to me, and I'm paraphrasing this wasn't the exact conversation, but it was something like, you know, you're really smart, you do good work, you should not be in HR. You don't belong in H. And that was pretty much the a lot of the feeling of a lot of the executives at that time. That was like, HR is where we send the people who can't cut it elsewhere. You could cut it somewhere else. Come work for me. And I wasn't super happy with where I was, and um, and so I went and worked in marketing with my IO psychology degree. It was great, it was amazing. I learned a ton of stuff. I was working with like real brand marketers, people who had worked at Coca-Cola and Procter and Gamble and those those kind of places, and and I got the opportunity to get my MBA through a leadership development program that the company had.

SPEAKER_04 51:06

So you have two MBAs?

SPEAKER_00 51:07

So, no, that was the one and only. I have a master's in psychology and an MBA.

SPEAKER_04 51:11

Oh, yeah, mas I'm sorry, two master's degrees.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Yeah, two master's degrees. Um, so yeah, I I went and worked in marketing for a while, which was awesome. I was traveling internationally quite a bit. Bill and I got married around this time. Um and he was working for Hewitt at that time, which is another consulting firm. He was traveling all the time. I was traveling internationally enough, and um, we decided to have a baby, and so life changed dramatically at that point, and I knew something was gonna have to give. I um when Owen was born, the the night Owen I went into labor, he I went into labor, he was in Chicago, and he came home like at midnight, had just come in the door, was cracking open a beer, and I was like, put down the beer, we're going to the hospital. And I just told him, I was like, you need to stop traveling. And he's like, Well, he's not due for a while, you know, and he was our first child, we didn't know. So that was uh that was kind of one of those like this is not gonna work. So I made the decision to be a stay-at-home mom. And that was a huge uh huge adjustment for a lot of reasons, but the main thing that I learned from that was how much my identity was tied up in what I did. And it I struggled. I struggled every time we went somewhere, like I'd go to a cocktail party with Bill, and you're just chatting with people. And my entire experience up until that point would be Chris comes up and says, Hey, I'm Chris, I'd say, hi, I'm Tony. So what do you do? And I'd say, Well, I'm the blah blah blah. I'm the director of this, and we'd have a great conversation. And the minute you say, I'm a stay-at-home mom, Chris starts looking around the room for somebody else to talk to. And I felt like the least interesting person in the world. It was awful. And I was like, you know, I I find myself, I told I can remember like.

SPEAKER_04 53:12

And how old were you?

SPEAKER_00 53:14

I was 33, 34, somewhere in that, you know, in my mid mid, early mid-30s.

SPEAKER_03 53:22

And I'm feeling everything you are saying. Like I've been exactly in that moment where I'm like, God, I feel like I'm living in someone's shadow. Yeah. That's that's what I've felt. And and you want to like pull out your resume. Right. Like, wait, like, I'm actually, I've had a successful, successful career. I chose to be a stay-at-home mom.

SPEAKER_00 53:44

But it's such a kick in the pants at how little we value that and how we discount it, and how the assumptions we made. And I will say, I'm sure I was as guilty when I was working. 100%. If I would have been out there and someone was like, Oh, I'm a stay-at-home mom, there's a million things you check off in your head about who that person is. Oh, well, they probably never went to college, or they just got married and wanted to have kids, and I have nothing in common with this person and all the stuff. And so it was that was such a kick in the pants. But such, you know, again, the kick in the pants things in life are often something you need to go through to like get comfortable in your own skin, and it's, you know, realize you have worth in your own inside of you that other people do does not determine your worth as a human being. But it was, it was not a fun journey through that, I would say. Yeah, I'm glad that you've experienced it because it was, it was. I remember telling my sister-in-law who also has a PhD, um, and she was like, I know. She's like, you don't know how many times I find myself like trying to work into the conversation. Well, when I got my PhD, right? Because you just want to have some way of not seeming like a loser. And you just feel like kind of a loser when you say, Oh, I just raised the future of the world. You know, I just am trying to bring decent humans into this world.

SPEAKER_04 55:09

And what's interesting in that dynamic is Bill during that period probably had this positive feeling, a sense of pride around the family y'all were making, the decision that you've made to pause your career to be with the kids. And so the the dichotomy of where you were mentally, and probably at the same cocktail party, he's having a drink across the room. He's like, Oh yeah, that's my wife a day. Oh, what does she do? Oh, well, she's staying home with our children. She's gonna raise our children. You know, she left a career to do that, and and he's probably like feeling so good about it. And there you were kind of struggling with it, like you said.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

Thank God he is he is the person he is, because he was never anything but supportive. He is to this day, he has never treated me like I was a burden or like well, I'm the one making the money. Because that would have pushed me right over the edge if he had. I don't think I could have gone on. But he was always like, we have done all this together. We, you know, look at what we've accomplished.

SPEAKER_04 56:17

Um how long have you been married?

SPEAKER_00 56:19

25 years in April. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 56:21

Nice. Congrats.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Thank you. Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

And look, it's not to take away from stay-at-home moms either, because that's a very, very, very difficult job.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

The hardest job I've done. I was gonna say it might be the hardest job. The hardest job. And not not everybody is fit for that one either, in all honesty. I often wondered, am I a good fit for this? Because it was so much, I felt it was so much easier, corporate. Yeah. It was so much easier to me then.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

Because you can get rid of people that are working out, right?

SPEAKER_00 56:51

But you can't get rid of your kids. I know. I mean, nobody cried that I bought the wrong brand of orange juice when I was at work. Right.

unknown 56:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

But it did happen on the regular when I was at home. True.

SPEAKER_02 57:02

So true.

SPEAKER_04 57:03

Yeah. And I'm I'm hoping that there's a one of the maybe the awakenings that's occurring right now is that um people are starting to I think COVID helped with this. I mean, obviously COVID was a terrible thing, but you have some unintended consequences, and sometimes they're good. They're good. Um and I think that that experience has really changed a lot of mindsets, and I feel like it's starting to impact the younger group that's in college. Um, and I know to me, I I encourage young females to, you know, to value having a family as much as they would a career. And um I I think I'm probably still in a minority of that. Um ultimately that person has to decide. You just made a great point. You know, it's what are you truly fit for, right? And what is going to make you allow you to build your own identity. And when you're younger, you don't really know what that is, and then whatever your first job is, that's kind of what it becomes. Or if you're, let's say you're a great tennis player in high school and you might have a 4.0 and you might be getting, but you're you're the great tennis player. That's your identity. Exactly. And if you were to have an injury and couldn't play tennis, which happens a lot, all of a sudden there's like, whoa, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_00 58:21

Who am I?

SPEAKER_04 58:22

Who am I? Even though you know you're like this beautiful person, you got tons of friends, you're working hard, you got good graph, you have the and so you, you know, the parents are like, what are you talking about? You just can't play tennis and it's important, but you have the rest of you. Right. And um, and I think that you know, setting that identity on the right things is another thing that we brought. That we don't talk to people.

SPEAKER_03 58:44

You can have the career, you can become the stay-at-home mom, and then later on in life you have time to go back to a career. So I definitely think that you know it you can have it all. Yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_00 58:55

Yeah, you can have it all, just not all at the same time. Not all at the same time. Not all at the same time. That's exactly it. And and like I really I felt like when I was a stay-at-home mom too, and I think this has also gotten better, but it did often feel like stay-at-home moms and working moms were pitted against each other. Like the, you know, I'm better because I'm staying at home, or but look at me, I am better because I'm doing these great things. And I I feel like it's getting better that we I truly do believe I have friends who never quit their job. I have one friend who is like killing it in her profession. She has kids, her daughter, we were pregnant with our daughter, our daughters at the same time, and she kept on working. She raised amazing kids, successful kids. She has an amazing career, and I think she made the perfect choice for her. I don't judge her in any way. Her kids are great, they did a great job raising their kids. It just was a different choice, and I think that's the way everybody really should look at it, as opposed to there's one right choice for the way to have a family or have have your kids or raise your kids. So, really a lot of ways you can do it successfully. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:12

I agree. So, this might be a good transition point to talk about your book, Stop Worrying About Your Anxious Child, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And I felt like I would read certain things in a chapter and then I'd write a question and then you'd answer the question. I was like, oh my God, this is so crazy. It's like she knows what what I was gonna think. So um, tell us a little bit about your book and why you decided to write it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

So, as you know, because you read it, um, I am the parent of an anxious child, and uh that was another one of those really transformational things in my life. Um because let me think about so I had the way I like to describe my child, both my children have their own struggles with anxiety, in all honesty, but one of them kind of really sparked that book because there was a period of time where it was really um it was kind of debilitating and it was affecting everybody in the family. Um, and it was a perfect storm for that child. This is a child who I believe in hindsight has always had anxiety. Um, and it just it looked like tantrums when she was little. It looked like fingernail biting always, it looked like being afraid to go into new situations, it looked like um the you know, the peeling off my leg to go to everything, everything. Um always I I and I just kind of was managing the way I parented her around it because I just knew who she was, and like if I wanted when I wanted her to play soccer, I found a friend because I knew if she could go in with a friend, she would be okay. But if I tried to send her in to go play soccer at four or five years old by herself, it was never gonna happen. Right. She also is the second, so she always had a brother who was a year older. So having a brother a year older also kind of helped her manage a lot of it because her entire um coping mechanism forever was Owen, ask them this. Owen, go get that for me. Owen, tell them this thing. And Owen would do it because Owen was like, okay. So she she had a lot of good coping skills, and we had lived for the life that she really remembers. We were in Houston, we were in a great little neighborhood. It was we walked to her elementary school, she knew everybody, you know, it was that kind of little idyllic little life. When she was going to sixth grade, we moved. And sixth grade is a rough time anyway. But sixth grade, you got puberty, you got boys, you got girl drama, you got a lot of stuff that starts happening about that time. So we moved, it was a new school, there was just it kind of just, and I think all of the developmental things that are happening also were part of it, not just the move, but the move definitely didn't make it any better. And it it just kind of so sixth grade, I it wasn't it wasn't too bad. Seventh grade started getting bad, eighth grade was a dumpster fire, eighth grade was terrible.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:23

Um and I did not recognize this child anymore. I was like, I just don't even know who this person is. That like, and and because I am who I am, I have a background in psychology, I felt like I, you know, I'm I can and I'm a fixer. I'm a person who's like, okay, well, great, well, let's do some research, you know, we'll find an answer. This is what I did for a living. I can project plan the crap out of this right now. Uh so that does not work, but then there's the execution side. Yes, that did not work. So I nothing was really working. I was trying to get her into therapy. She hated her therapist. She would come out of her therapy sessions and say, Well, she obviously doesn't know anything because she's told me exactly what you always say. I was like, maybe it's because I'm right. But you know, she it was just bad. And um I wanted a book, I wanted something like that book when I was going through it. That's one reason I wrote it. The other reason I wrote it is this huge aha of my personal journey with this was the awareness that the only person I can control in this situation is me. And I need, I it didn't, it was sort of I learned that on the back end. What I realized in the moment was I am not coping well, I am not doing well, I am my emotions are way too tight. I am getting, you know, all into it. Her, her, every bit of her energy I was absorbing and just magnifying and making her worse, making me worse. It was just a hot mess. And so I said, you know, I have been teaching people for probably 10 years. I've been teaching to younger people, to adults that I've coached, meditation. Meditation is such a everybody should meditate. You should meditate. I, on the other hand, did not meditate, had never meditated, had tried, never could do it. And I was like, I'm just gonna. It was kind of a desperation move of like, I am going to just sit here in silence and I don't, whatever happens, happens. And I'm gonna commit to just keep I'll keep doing it, even though I'm not good at it. I think my I had so much built up around this idea of like meditation, just like everything. I think of this about everything. There's an outcome, there's a goal. Everything I do has to have a goal. So I was like, so the goal is that I will be this calm yoga person that. I will never be. And so I out of desperation, I was like, I'm giving it. There's no goal. I'm gonna do it as long as I can. I'm gonna do it every day, and we're just gonna see what happens. And when I stopped trying to achieve something, is when I got the benefits of what you actually the goal. It was by letting go that I started figuring it out. And I started getting myself calmed down. And when I started getting myself calmed down, actually she got better. Because I I was a lot of the problem. And is often the case because we're so I mean, it's such an emotional thing to parent. And when your child is struggling, you can't help but take all that in. Yes. And then you're just not at your best.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

True.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:45

And so the I tell people all the time the best way to help somebody who's struggling with anxiety is to manage your own anxiety.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:52

And and that that when I as I was reading your book, I'm like, oh my God, so true. But starting off with the anxiety being like a normal thing, I would have never associated my child's what I call heat behavior issues as anxiety. But the way you describe it, it is anxiety. It's trying to get him every day, same thing, to do something, and he doesn't want to do it. Something as simple as getting dressed, to go to school, eating breakfast. It's like the same routine and the same things we struggle with. And then sometimes I get frustrated and it causes him to get frustrated. And now everybody's having a meltdown, and it's like, oh. So as I as I read that, I was like, okay, this is good. It's in a book. I'm not out there by myself and alone. So I appreciated that you said it was it was normal. Yeah. And by the way, I'm Og. I'm always thinking 10 steps ahead. Yeah. And I've been like that forever. And I'm like, it was so good to read. Like, you you don't know the future. You can't control the future. So just don't worry about it. Yeah. And I have to now remind myself, don't worry about it. Control what I can control and let everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

I mean, that was the great lesson of COVID, is none of us thought, well, tomorrow everything's shutting down and you're gonna stay home for a year. So I was like, if nothing else that we've all learned, you got to give up control and just accept something could happen tomorrow that we aren't planning on. So all this energy we spend, like, well, what if and I mean with our kids, we constantly are like, what if they never get into college? What if they never, you know, can get a job? What if they live in my basement and they're like five years old? Right. Right. You just let's just get to kindergarten today and worry about the rest could pass today.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:49

Um I wonder what my mom was thinking as she had to drag me to school in kindergarten in first grade, to the point that she stopped doing it, made my grandfather take me, and then he stopped doing it, made the guy that worked for him do it. And then I guess I stopped. Maybe he had maybe the maybe his name was Vance. Maybe Vance had the magic because I stopped shortly thereafter. But maybe it was because of the reaction I was getting from my mom.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:15

Oh, totally.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:16

And then from my grandfather.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:18

And then Vance was just it was just a task for him. He's like, get in the damn car, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:22

So true. There were they had no emotion in it. It was just like I I gotta get him, and then I have to do this other job. It's just one more thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:30

So would you suggest to do anything different? Let's use the example of a kid crying to go to school every single day because they have anxiety, right? It's an anxiety thing. I mean, is there a point where you're like, well, maybe that setting isn't good for my child?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:47

It's so hard because, yes, sometimes that is true. And what I tell my students all the time, because all my students of this generation is the anxious generation, they all talk about it and they all claim they have social anxiety. Um, and maybe they do, or there are two things can be true at the same time. Maybe they have social anxiety, and I think that they missed out on some socialization because of COVID, because they use technology to socialize. I think there's a lot of reasons why doing it the way we expect them to do it is hard for them. Um, and what I know about the brain is that there is nothing more reinforcing to an anxious brain than to take away the thing that's making them anxious. It feels amazing. So if right now you're sitting there and you're like, I can't go to school, I'm so anxious and I want to go to school, and I say, you know what, you don't have to go to school. Oh, it feels amazing. So reinforcing. What it teaches the brain is that was great. Let's do that every single day. I will never go to school again. It feels amazing. And what we have to teach the brain is, and I would try and explain this to my daughter, and she was not a big fan of it at the time, but I think she's come to realize I was right, um, is an anxious brain at its core is saying there is really it's survival. It's all about survival. And whatever is making it anxious, it is blowing up and saying, if you do this thing, you might die. That is that is what true anxiety is. If you do whatever, if you go talk to that girl, you might die. If you walk into that class, you might die. If you do the presentation, you might die. And your brain is that's what real anxiety is, is a reaction to, I might die. And it when we do the thing we're most scared of, our brain then makes a connection, huh? I didn't die. I went, I made that, did that presentation and I didn't die. It's not going to be like, oh, well, so next time you're have no anxiety. But little by little, when you do the thing, your brain eventually will accept, I can do this thing and I won't die. And that is how I think we all learn to talk to people and learn to ask a girl to prom and you know, all the things we had to do that were terrifying.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:13

Right. That's a good way to look at it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:16

But I think as the kids get older into teenage years, and anxiety has really become I don't know if it's more prevalent, more diagnosed.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:34

Um I think it's both.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:38

So both. And then I do think there's an aspect of um I'm using a bad word when I say this, but a fad for lack of a way of uh a self-imposed label that it puts you into a more comfortable group.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:57

I don't know if I'm I know I'm not using clinical words here.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

I think, yeah, we've got Dr. Google, we're self-diagnosing, you know, uh everything.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:06

Well, the social media.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

Exactly. Social media, there's a a post about uh because Amanda has come to me with, you know, narcolepsy, like all kinds of things. Like, I think I've got narcoleps. I'm like, I don't think you have narcolepsy, but they see it on a social media post and they're like, you know, that's what I have. Now I know. Um so yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:28

So as they get older, the hard it to me it gets very difficult to, you know, when you have a an eight-year-old who I did, and both of my daughters have had anxiety. And my younger one would exhibit it in crowds. Just as a younger child, just did not like crowds. And um it makes me feel better that hear what you said from a clinical standpoint because I was just doing it like old school, which is, well, crowds are part of life.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:05

And this is where I think I struggled, and I think lots of parents struggle, right? You know, it's like, okay, well, crowds are part of life. And while you could avoid concerts and things like that if you know that that's not your deal as you get older, there's still gonna be situations at an airport or wherever it might be that you're gonna have to be in a crowd.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:22

Got across a busy street.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:24

So the old school kind of mentality of, you know, forget treatment, forget drugs, forget all that. We're just gonna do it old school, like probably like my great-grandfather would have done. We're just gonna go to some things with crowds. And not regularly, but exposure.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

Yeah, exposure is a type of therapy.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:44

I think over time I got lucky in that um now she is totally fine and loves concerts and has really, I'm like, is this the same same kid? Right. Um but I do think that parents, and I think I got lucky on that one because I didn't, like I say, I wasn't getting that from the help of someone who's trained in this. But I think for parents it becomes a real challenge that where you see some anxiety in your child, especially as they get older, your inability to control everything and then to make certain decisions, kind of in the old school approach, which now you feel like, well, wait a minute, but what if I'm jeopardizing my child? Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:21

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:22

What if I'm causing it to get worse by forcing her to go to a concert or to stay at the same school, which is a much bigger problem. Yes. Or to not let her do this or to do this, uh, it becomes really scary.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:38

It's so hard. And I I wish I could say, here's the one right answer. There really isn't. And I wouldn't even say, as a parent, like with everything I just said, were there days that I told my daughter, fine, just stay home? Yes. I did. Because sometimes it would just get so ratcheted up that I felt like you need a mental health day. Take a mental, your your grades are fine. Take the mental health day from what we're gonna start fresh tomorrow. And it and that actually kind of worked too. So it is there is not like this, you should always be a hard ass. You would always make them do the thing, or you should give in. You definitely, I definitely don't believe in just give in to everything because then you will you will damage them. Bigger issue. Yeah.

unknown 1:16:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:24

So I don't, it's it is tough. I will bring it kind of full circle to what we talked about earlier with the you know, being able to see people to kind of reframe the way we see people, because I think that is one of the things that that I like to use with that issue that you just talked about about everybody's a diagnosis. And I rem I remember with my daughter being like, that we are not gonna go down this road. You are not your diagnosis. You are all these wonderful things. You are funny, you're creative, you are, you know, you are kind, you are not anxious. You are someone who is very sensitive to the world around you. You're I called her reactive. She is my reactive baby, and she was she is a reactive adult. She was always like, and I mean in every sense of the word, that child, if I put something on her skin, she got a rash. If I like, if she needed it to, if she was tired, she would scream bloody murder when she was, and I'd be like, What is wrong with this baby? And then she falls asleep. I'm like, oh, okay. Or I'd feed her, and she'd be like, you know, fine. Oh, she was hungry. But like it would just come out of nowhere, and I was like, what is it up with this? She was super, super reactive, and she continued to be in it. And that, and I just now the way that I tried to teach her as she got older was know who you are, know what you need, know who you have been this way since you were a baby. When you're hungry, you're not at your best. When you're tired, you're not at your best. When you are overwhelmed with stimuli, you you have to find ways to manage this. And it's not because you're anxious, it's because this is just how you are built. I and I I even remember having a conversation because she's like, well, Owen's not like that. I was like, baby, this is how you are, and Owen is like this. And there's pros and cons either way, because Owen doesn't have this up here that you have either. He doesn't have the low lows, but he doesn't have the same high highs as a general rule either. He's just kind of no drama. You have super high highs. When she's happy, she's the happiest kid ever.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:38

So it's just having to, I do think that reframing the diagnosis and and helping, even I do it with my college students, helping them say one, that it's normal, it's this is the way our brain is designed to work. That if we were in, if you were actually in a situation where you were in danger, you you would be glad. I also try and tell them everybody's on a continuum.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:02

But you're combating another one of my struggles with where we are in America. And I love this country. Um, but I see our struggles um, or what I perceive to be, is you're battling with with what you just said. The world that says, nope, you have a diagnosis, you have an issue, and because of that, this is what you must do. And a lot of times that includes medicine, right? Prescription drugs or or maybe it's therapy. And obviously, at least how I feel, there is a time and place, and as very therapy can be life-saving and has and does for many. Yes. Um prescription drugs to to manage brain, whatever we want to call it, you know, abnormalities, whatever we may want to say, there's there is definitely time and place. And then unfortunately, I feel like there's the other side of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

Yeah, we can over medicate over.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:00

And I feel like society has, especially the last 10 to 15 years, it's like it just amplified the opposite message of what of what you're saying. And in most cases, the people, the messengers there are not, you know, with a PhD and two master's degrees in a life, you know, body of personal experiences and work, right? And so it's a real challenge. And I think, and I talk to a lot of parents who have young children, you know, teenage children, adult children, and it's a it's a real, it's a big issue that they all struggle with.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:35

It is. And again, it's it's very much the same as what I said before. There's everybody really has to make a case by case. I there is no one size fits all answer to these things. Um with so I mean, we could talk about ADHD, we could talk about a lot of things, the same issues. Like sometimes do we over-medicate people who didn't need the medication? Yes. Are there times when people find realize as adults I should have been medicated this whole time, and now that I'm on this medication, it is life-changing? Yes. So it is, you know, every person is unique, um, but I still, regardless of any of it, I just think we we are so much better when we don't identify with the diagnosis. When we consider, and though, and here's the example when I said the continuum, I tell my students all the time, I said, um we are on human beings are on the everything's on a continuum. Everything. I said, I have asthma. That means on the continuum of breathing, I am at the low end. I don't breathe as well as most people. I said, but here's what I don't do. I don't walk around saying I'm broken, I'm flawed, something is wrong with me, I'm not as good as everybody else. And anxiety, attention, a lot of these other things that we are diagnoses, we just need to look at is that I don't have as good an attention span. I'm not able to focus as long as you are. I might even need medication to manage it. But I'm not broken, I'm not flawed, I'm not less than because of that. And I think that's like if I had one message, I would probably be what I would say about it. Because it's so important. You know, there we all are really, and and ADHD is another example of like there's some real gifts of ADHD that we miss. Right. A people with ADHD tend to be super creative, they're very adaptable, they are very, they're easy to kind of get them to like some people. I'm one of those, like when I'm focused, I don't like you messing with me. And ADHD, you're like, oh, okay, I'll go do that now, you know. Like it's right. So there's some gifts in that. There's some strong.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:58

But do you feel there's gifts in it when someone is medicated? And now you're kind of controlling that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:05

I think it depends on the extent of the problem and this the really that is the extent of the problem. Is it impacting their day-to-day ability to function and and live? And if so, and if medication can help that, I'm not I'm definitely not against it. Um, but if it's just kind of inconvenient and they're focusing just fine, and actually they found there are lots of people who do kind of find the place where they can be ADHD and it works for them and they don't need medication, that's great too.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:36

Do you feel like, generally speaking, the the professionals who are doing the majority of the diagnosis are putting the time in with the patient to truly understand what it is they need? Or do you feel like we've just found ourselves in this place where that's the minority, and unfortunately the majority is it's kind of check the box. Here's the here's the here's the elements of whatever this diagnosis is. We've got five of the ten present, therefore, this is what I do, as opposed to really trying to do a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:11

I think, I think there's good and bad in every single profession. And I think to try and use a broad brush, I mean, my one of my dearest, dearest friends is a prescriber. And I would send anybody to her because she I know how much care and time she spends. Um have I been to a primary care physician who has offered me things when I was so like, you know, I'm just kind of feeling like I'm off. And they're like, Well, would you like this? Would you like this? Yes, that is happening to me as well. When I've kind of been like, okay, I know a little bit more about this than the average person, and I am a little astounded that you're throwing this out there so glibly, you know. So it's like, whoa. But so there's there's good and bad in every profession. And I think, you know, we could have a whole podcast on that, you know, when we try and say all cops are bad, all cops are good. There's good and bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:06

Well, that wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:07

Yeah, but you know what I mean. There's but there are some really, really, really dedicated professionals who are trying so hard. I mean, my other one of my dearest, dearest friends is a pediatrician, and I know she would never just pull up this prescription pad for a kid. She will do all sorts of tests, she will send them to specialists before she's gonna just start medicating as a first option.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:33

You gotta advocate for yourself.

unknown 1:25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:35

Yeah, and parents have to understand. It's it's hard being a parent though, because the the emotion makes you not um clear-headed enough.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:44

Well, and in these categories, the the fear of the other side is very, very scary.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:49

It is. Um there's danger to not medicating because what happens with um some of these, some of these anxiety and and ADHD is the risk is a child who really is struggling, who stumbles across a substance that manages it alcohol, weed, and they are like, oh my god, this is the greatest thing I've ever discovered. I'm just gonna smoke weed every single day for the rest of my life. You're right. And that's a danger too.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:17

You're right. I've never thought about it like that because one of my biggest fears with my child who's a little boy and they're just hyper, they're just different. And at six years old, you know, I kind of feel like if he's misbehaving, is it gonna get to a point where they're, you know, the school's like, oh, he needs to be tested for this, and then he ends up on medication when I'm like, maybe he just needed more playtime. Right. Right. So that's one of my biggest fear. But you're right, you know, I need to be open-minded about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:47

And be an advocate.

unknown 1:26:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:49

And when it to me, when it doesn't feel right, someone has to prove to me I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:53

Trust your gut. The other thing that if you want to drive me insane is take recess away from a kid who's misbehaving. Because you're right. If that kid, the reason he's misbehaving is because he's been sitting in a it's not natural for a child to be forced to sit for that many hours at six years old. At six, right. And when they they used to do that in my elementary school and it would just burn me up. Like, well, that's a great solution. Right. Take his recess away. They need more places. Exactly. Send him out and go make him run like that. Yes, as a punishment. That's a better punishment. That's true.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:28

That is well, I know I can say for myself, I've learned a lot today.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:32

Awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:33

This has been very good. And we like to conclude with a very one particular question.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:39

And so I'll pass it on to Anna to ask it.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:41

I get I get the fun question. If you could have dinner with anyone, um, who would it be and why?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:52

Okay. So I'm just gonna go with my there's probably a million answers that I could give. I'm sure everybody says that. Um my top of my Is there is a British author who has written several books that I love. I love British people anyway because they just have a different sensibility and just a funny sense of humor. And so Nick Hornby is the person who I would say he's his books are amazing, they're hilarious, they're insightful, and um I just think sitting around talking to him about people would be fascinating. Awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:23

There you go. Now I gotta look up Nick Hornby.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:25

Oh uh About a Boy, the movie with Hugh Grant, or um High Fidelity with John Kyesak. Those are some of his books that get made in the movies. Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:36

Well, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:37

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:38

We appreciate it. I know you're busy and we appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:41

Yeah, I loved it. Thank you guys. This was so fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:43

Awesome.