SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hi there, everyone, and welcome to the Presence Podcast. I'm John Miller, Executive Director of the Institute for Optimal Leadership Presence, and I'm joined as always by Allie Carson, the founder and CEO of Mouveyre Coaching. Allie, good to see you. How are things going?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Doing really well, John. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I'm good. And I'm really excited about today's conversation.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

I am so excited for this. So today we are continuing our exploration of what it means to build a strong, paste-based leadership presence. In our first three episodes of the Presence Podcast, we laid the groundwork for a new understanding of what leadership presence is all about. And we have been making a clear connection between a strong presence and the concept of leadership maturity. In the past, leadership presence has mostly been tied to concepts like personal charm or charisma, or the way that one presents themselves with power and authority, often for personal gain or advancement. But we are defining presence as how leaders present themselves to the people around them in their actions, their words, even their body language, that whole picture, and how those people around them process and experience those leadership behaviors. That's really what our presence is. And as we look at the realities of the 21st century workplace and the 21st century workforce, it makes far more sense to align presence with the concepts of maturity and wisdom than charm or charisma.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah, I agree. And that's exactly how the ancient Greeks understood pastis: the ability and skill to lead with faithfulness, loyalty, stewardship, and a deep commitment to doing what is right and best for the community or the organization. And when leaders commit to establishing that kind of presence, everyone around them can benefit. Teams get better and more cohesive, relationships with partners and colleagues get stronger and more productive, and organizations become more effective and successful.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

They absolutely do. And for those joining us for the first time on the Presence Podcast, I would strongly encourage you to go back and listen to the first three episodes of the podcast to get a full picture of how we laid the case for Paste Space Leadership Presence and how that culminated in episode three with the five commitments of a pastisted leader. And over the next several episodes, we are going to begin to dive deeper and have a deeper focus on those five commitments and how they play out in a leader's journey to maturity, starting with the second of those commitments, which is the commitment to show up in every situation as your best self and to be committed to the growth and maturity that continually leads to your better self.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

That's right. But you might say, hey, what do you mean we're going to start with a discussion of the second commitment? What happened to a discussion of the first commitment? Well, if you recall, the first commitment is all about being a value creator. And I can promise you that it's going to be a constant theme throughout the podcast series. And we will be reminding you about it often. So as Ali said, we're going to focus on commitment number two over the next several episodes of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah. And this commitment connects directly to Aristotle's concept of ethos, which we've spoken about already. What Aristotle found in his research was that leaders who demonstrate a strong ethos, logos, and pathos were far and away more effective in changing the hearts and minds of those around them and in gaining their followership. So the second commitment of a leader, the commitment to becoming your best self as a leader, is all about that first quality of ethos.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, it's true. And I think we have to understand that when Aristotle was talking about ethos, he was calling out the fact that before people can really believe in you and follow you as their leader, they first must have a high level of respect for you as a person. So the real question of ethos is this as I show up every day in the organization, am I effectively building the case for myself as a trusted, credible, and mature leader whom other people will follow to create the greatest level of value for the organization? That's what ethos is all about. It's your unique, inner-driven set of values, strengths, and behaviors that define who you are and how you authentically present yourself to the world. Our ethos guides decisions, actions, and character, transforming our personal identity into a lived, observable, and consistent manner of interaction.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

And because our ethos is the very foundation of Pastispace presence, it needs to show up every day in both the small and the big moments. So when we're talking about becoming the best version of ourselves in the context of ethos, we are really talking about being on the journey to actively demonstrating a high level of maturity in our words, our actions, and behaviors. So what we have to understand is that there are some fundamental steps that the leader needs to learn to be able to make that journey. And frankly, this commitment can seem a little bit dreamy or aspirational and without a concrete plan or process to get there. In my experience, I've always looked at that first step of the process being self-awareness. In other words, we need to first discover our strengths and challenges as a leader before we can begin to think about even being a better leader. But, John, I know you would assert that there's actually something that comes even before self-awareness on this journey to leadership maturity. And I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on this.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah, well, first of all, let me see, Allie, that I'm not against self-awareness. I think self-awareness is extremely important for leaders. So I'm I'm certainly not trying to downplay the importance of becoming self-aware. But I do believe that in order to gain a fully informed self-awareness, a leader first needs to develop a sense of human awareness. So what do I mean by that? The underlying truth of leadership is that we are humans dealing with humans. In fact, you could say that leadership is always about dealing with other humans in some form or fashion. And I'm convinced that a basic understanding of what it means to be human, how we decide to behave, and sometimes even how we are compelled to behave, especially in today's world, that can be an incredibly powerful tool. So we're going to spend some time in this episode and in episode five talking about four dynamics of the human experience that leaders really should be familiar with. First, in this episode, we'll visit the function of our brain called the psyche, which generates all of our behaviors, including our leadership behaviors, and ultimately drives our personality and presence. Second, we will explore a very interesting dynamic called neurowiring that speaks to how our brain puts its own unique stamp on our lives and that brings both strengths and some very real issues to our leadership. Third, we'll discuss the very intriguing relationship between three parts of the brain that can, in certain situations, cause some significant challenges to our leadership effectiveness. And then finally, we will close out episode five by introducing an area of the brain that recent research and science have just begun to examine, but that offers us a solid hope that we can really achieve the best version of ourselves. And then in episode six, we will finally be ready to talk about self-awareness because at that point we'll have the human awareness to understand what we need to be self-aware about. So you might be saying, that's a pretty significant chunk of time to be talking about the brain. And you'd be absolutely right, because literally everything that drives both our common bonds as human beings and the subtleties that make us all unique, all of those start in the brain. And while we don't need to become a psychologist or a neuroscientist to have human awareness, we do need to understand some underlying concepts about this amazing, powerful, and enigmatic phenomenon that we all share as part of the human experience. And that's our brain. First of all, we have to start off by saying that the human brain is incredible. It's incredible in its intricacy, in its capacity, and its intensity. Neuroscientists tell us that the brain is organized into a vast complex network of specialized regions that include an astounding 86 billion neurons that work together to control body functions as well as thinking and feeling functions. And I can tell you, Allie, I have a problem processing anything over 85 billion. So this is truly out of my capacity. But with that kind of complexity going on, it's no wonder that the brain empowers us to do some absolutely amazing things. The intellectual power of the brain is second to none. It can think, it can reason, it can imagine, it can dream, it can conceive, and it can create. And dare I say, we have all experienced and sometimes even been the cause of all that trouble. But even though our brains can be somewhat difficult to figure out, because it drives every single decision we make, every feeling and emotion that we display, and every characteristic that makes up our personality, it really is vital that we reach some level of understanding about how this thing works and what it does for and sometimes to our leadership. So let's put a few of those 86 billion neurons to work to find out what we got going inside this head of ours. First, let's talk a little terminology. We often use the terms brain, mind, and psyche interchangeably to describe the same things. And that technically is not correct. The brain is the actual physical organ and structure that lives inside our heads. It's about three pounds in weight and takes up roughly about 2% of our total body weight. While the mind refers to the functional processes of the brain, the mind is all about thoughts and memories and emotions. It's the process piece of the brain that keeps all the functions of life well functioning. The psyche is a broad package of thoughts, feelings, tendencies, and motives that come out of our minds and result in our behaviors. So because with ethos, we're talking about a leader's demonstrative behaviors, we're actually going to focus on the psyche. Now, we could literally spend an entire academic semester talking about the human psyche and probably just reach the tip of the iceberg. But for the purposes of how the psyche drives our leadership behaviors, we're going to simplify our conversation by focusing on what we're going to refer to as the six behavioral triggers of the psyche that all work together to reach an outcome. Those triggers are values and beliefs, our emotional blueprint, our intellect, our communication style, our view of people and relationships, and our motives and motivation. And the outcome of those six behavioral triggers is what we call our personality, which is how people see us move and behave in the world.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

So if you want to follow more closely with our discussion of the psyche, I would invite you to put the podcast on hold for just a second and head on over to the Institute for Optimal Leadership Presence website at Iolp.net. When you get there, click on the Presence Podcast page and then click on Resources. There you can take a look at and download our map of the Psyche. You might find that this map might help you as we walk through a description of the six behavioral triggers that John mentioned. For now, we're going to touch on these six behavioral triggers of the psyche with a relatively brief description, and then we'll get into the topic of self-awareness in our next episode. And when we do that, we'll dive a bit more into the specifics. But by focusing on these six broader aspects of the human psyche right now, we're highlighting how leadership isn't just a set of skills, but it is in fact an outward expression of a leader's inner world.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah, that's right, Allie. So first, let's begin with values and beliefs, which represent our moral compass. Values are those principles of our lives that should be non-negotiable. Values are not passing fads or drifting thoughts in our lives. They are what we deem to be those life principles that stick and have meaning about who we are and who we want to be. Values might include concepts such as courage, humility, perseverance, and integrity. They are different for different people depending on what individuals deem important to them. But values should become a part of who we are and how we define the behaviors we want to portray to the world. Similarly, beliefs represent the trust and confidence we hold in what we perceive to be the truth, usually concerning the larger themes of life and faith, that those truths will result in the best outcomes and success for those who hold those beliefs. These can be rational beliefs, scientific beliefs, or religious slash philosophical beliefs. Beliefs include such concepts as I believe in God and in the love of God, or I believe most people can be trusted, or I believe in the vision and mission of my organization, or I believe that the St. Louis Cardinals are going to win the World Series this year. Actually, that might be a shaky one. Values and beliefs are similar, but not exactly the same. Values are those principles that show up in our behaviors. Beliefs are those principles that we consider to be larger than our own life and deserve our commitment. The challenge is that many of our values and beliefs were formed long before we ever stepped into leadership, shaped by family, culture, and early experiences. And if we've never examined them or challenged them, those early belief systems will subconsciously become our default go-to without us taking stock of them or validating them.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah. And if we had time, we could go into a whole conversation around limiting beliefs and some of these other things that contribute to that. But we don't have time for that right now. So instead, let's dive into the second behavioral trigger of the psyche, which is what we refer to as our emotional blueprint. Now, this blueprint represents the patterns of how we take in and react to the scope of human experiences, ranging from those experiences that are uplifting, positive, and welcoming to those that are sad, dark, and disappointing, sometimes even devastating, and everything in between. Our emotional blueprint moves us to react to that full scope of experiences in certain ways that are deeply patterned or ingrained in our life from our earliest situational learning up until, well, yesterday. For example, we all have certain go-to emotional tendencies when we are reacting to the threats, stress, and drama, what we call the TSDs, that we encounter in the workplace, which for some of us is quite frequently. Some people shut down in the face of TSDs. Others get defensive. Some push harder, talk faster, or try to control the room. But it's important for us to realize that these emotional patterns aren't random. They were learned over time, often as a protection mechanism that once made sense, right? I think that's critical to know. These are things that were created because they made sense in the context at the time. Yep. The problem is that what protected us early on can actually limit us later as leaders. So our goal should really be around emotional maturity, what Daniel Goleman and other sociologists call emotional intelligence. But we need to remember that emotional maturity doesn't mean canceling out or eliminating emotions or even ignoring them, right? I think sometimes people try to like push them aside or pretend they aren't real. And that's not helpful either. Emotional maturity means recognizing our emotional patterns before they take over our thought processes. When leaders understand their emotional blueprint and the situations that can bring on certain unhealthy reactions, they gain the ability to hit the pause button, choose a better or more helpful response, and lead with intention instead of with impulse. And that shift alone can really change the tendencies of our lives and the tone of an entire team. And we'll have much more to say about our emotions in our next episode. For now, the third behavioral trigger of our psyche is our intellect. Intellect is about the processes of how you think. It's how you process information, how you evaluate risk, solve problems, and make decisions. It's not necessarily about how smart you are, but rather how you take in information and knowledge and what you do with it. Now, every leader has a default intellectual style. Some people are really big picture thinkers. Others tend to focus on the details. Some move quickly and intuitively, while others need more time and data. And none of these are right, wrong, or otherwise. Every one of them, though, does have blind spots and are better in certain situations. Leadership maturity requires understanding not only how you think, but where your thinking breaks down under pressure. Do you rush to conclusions? Do you get stuck in that analysis paralysis that we hear about? Do you tend to ignore perspectives that challenge you? Those are all things to consider. Because when leaders become aware of their intellectual habits, they can intentionally slow down, invite other viewpoints, and make wiser decisions, especially when the stakes are high. We can, in fact, become better thinkers as we move through our life.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Yeah, absolutely. The fourth behavioral trigger is our communication style. Communication style indicates how we translate our inner thoughts into messages that others can understand. It's not just about what we say, but how we say it and when we say it, and sometimes what we don't say at all. Much of our communication style has to do with our default preferences toward two dimensions: direct versus indirect communication, and open versus closed communication. When our go-to preference is being direct, we say what we want to say in fewer words and more specific terms. While being indirect means we tend to beat around the bush and use all kinds of words and body language when we're trying to make our point. An open communication style means we provide all the information we know at the time, sometimes even more than people would rather know. Closed communication means we tend to restrict information to what we think seems fit. Understanding whether you are a direct or indirect or an open or closed communicator can be extremely helpful for self-awareness purposes. And when leaders intentionally align their communication with their values and emotional awareness, trust seems to increase, misunderstandings decrease, and people feel both informed and respected. So the interplay between communication and the other aspects of the psyche is extremely important. Just remember that the way we communicate has a huge impact on what kind of presence we build with those around us. A big lesson for leaders is to learn to build intentional communication rather than to be subject to one default communication style.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Yeah. And that makes me think of something we've talked about before, John, which is this idea of intent versus impact, which absolutely comes into play with this communication piece.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

So next we'll take a look at the fifth behavioral trigger, which is our view of people and relationships. Every leader, and indeed every person, carries a core view of people and relationships, often without even realizing it. Do you believe the people around you have an inherent value and are deserving of your respect and your best responses and behaviors? Do you believe that people are generally trustworthy or do you feel that they're self-serving? Do you feel that people are generally capable or incompetent, collaborative or competitive? The answers to those and other key questions about people, generally and specifically, will determine in the long run how you treat people, how you tend to default, do you treat them with genuine respect, or do you err on the side of disregard or even disdain? Many of our assumptions about people are shaped very early on. We've alluded to this already, based on our experiences or even what our parents have taught us. These assumptions shape everything. How we communicate, how we delegate, how we give feedback, how we respond to mistakes, and how safe we make the people around us feel. If a leader assumes people can't be trusted, they will err on the side of controlling things. If they assume that people aren't capable, they will tend to micromanage. But when leaders believe that people want to contribute and grow, their behavior invites ownership and engagement. So in this context, leadership maturity means examining these assumptions about people and asking yourself, are my beliefs about people creating value or are they actually limiting it? Does my view of people engage them or push them away? Is the way I communicate with people moving people toward embracing me as a leader or preventing them from following me? Questions like these are difficult. Honestly, it's really hard to hold that mirror up sometimes, but they're so extremely important because how you view the people you work with ultimately determines how well you'll lead them.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Well, it's so true. And our last of the six behavioral triggers of the psyche is motives and motivation. Motives are what ultimately drive our behaviors in the moment. They include the internal reasons, desires, and needs behind what we really want to do or accomplish. Quite often we have several different and sometimes even competing motives going on in our lives at the same time. That's where motivation comes in. Motivation is the force or the degree to which we want to accomplish our individual motives. When we have several motive choices, whichever of those choices has greatest force of motivation is the one that will ultimately win out in our actual behavior. Certain motives in certain situations can be good or bad, self-serving or altruistic, and carry with them potential impact on us and those around us. Other motives are more mundane and less impactful. Like, do I want green beans or ice cream with my dinner? My motivation is much stronger for the latter, even though my body really needs the green stuff. That's the that's the conflict going on. Yes, so much. Notice that we framed these six behavioral triggers by starting off with our values and beliefs and ending with our motives and motivations. This is by design. When we lead our conscious thought about behaviors with our values and beliefs, we put them in the role of the guiding function in our lives, the gateway to a healthy set of behaviors. And by ending with an examination of our motives and motivation, we recognize the importance of filtering and examining the rest of our behaviors through the lens of the right motives that align with what is truly important to us as a leader. Remembering that as a leader, we are called not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of those around us and the organization, that greatest level of value. One measure of maturity is whether or not our motives align with our values and beliefs. That's what psychologists call value congruence, which speaks to our authenticity in behaviors. However, in any one given moment, we can yield our behaviors to an incongruent motive if the motivation to satisfy that motive is higher than the motivation to live a value or belief. And I think we've all experienced that. When a clock sounds the alarm that it's time to get up in the morning, but the motive and motivation say to stay in bed, you know, what wins out is whether or not we're on time or late for work. And of course, this can happen with other congruent motives where the stakes are actually higher than oversleeping. The trouble is that unexamined or spur-of-the-moment motives can invade our thinking and quietly distort leadership behavior, leading us to do things that we can eventually regret. For example, we play solitaire on our phone rather than work on that report that's due in an hour. Those incongruent motives can satisfy a craving in the moment, but they can also lead to unhealthy behaviors like overwork, people pleasing, avoidance, the need to always be right, and even unplanned emotional outbursts. We'll have much more to say about motives and motivations when we talk about self-discipline in a coming episode. Hopefully, in this brief discussion of the six behavioral triggers, you can see not only the importance of each one on its own merit, but also that in many situations, these triggers interconnect in powerful ways. So, Ali, the first step in human awareness is recognizing the existence and the importance of these six behavioral triggers of the psyche and how they work and interact in all of us. Then self-awareness is understanding how they work inside of each of us as individuals and specifically each of us as leaders. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 28:17

It does. And I love this idea of the having that foundational understanding of human awareness before we even step into the self-awareness piece. That makes total sense now. So you might ask, what do all of these behavioral triggers actually mean to what people see in us in our life over time? In other words, how do these triggers work together to produce our personality and our presence? So let's start breaking that down by defining personality. Personality is the observable outcome of the six behavioral triggers working together, often automatically. Think of these six triggers as gears that are working inside of us. When these six interact moment by moment, the result is what people experience as our personality. And contrary to how we often talk about it, personality is not something that is fixed or set permanently in our lives. But it's not purely random either. What we've learned in recent research is that our personality is a dynamic blend of genetic predispositions and environmental influences that can be proactively shaped over time. While core traits are relatively stable, research confirms that personality is malleable, inviting individuals to intentionally change behaviors, habits, and mindsets to foster long-term self-directed change.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Yeah, and that's really the key thought, Ellie. If you really want to alter your personality, you need to first alter some portion of the behavioral triggers. For example, if you want the people around you to see you as being more approachable, then you're probably going to need to make adjustments in the basic ways you view people and perhaps in your communication style. And then consistently follow that new behavioral pathway. In other words, changing some aspect of your personality means changing some aspect of your behaviors. What you can't do is change your behaviors with people without changing your view of them. That's not authentic and usually not sustainable because personality isn't necessarily who you intend to be, it's how you behave to be. It's the consistent pattern people experience with you over time. When the six behavioral triggers are aligned, clear values, regulated emotions, flexible thinking, intentional communication, healthy motivation, and a constructive view of people, your personality shows up as steady, credible, trustworthy, and likable. But when the six triggers are misaligned, personality becomes reactive. Biases grow stronger, emotions drive behavior, communication deteriorates, and leadership presence suffers. That's why leadership isn't just about skill development, it's about inner alignment. Because how these six work together doesn't just shape what you do as a leader, it shapes who you are experienced to be by others, which is what pastiste-based presence is all about. And we'll have much more to say about personality, especially personality traits, as we move into our discussion about self-awareness.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Absolutely. But the existence and functions of those six behavioral triggers is really just the beginning of our discussion on human awareness. In order to gain a full understanding of human behavior, we also need to understand how we as human beings are wired. In fact, nearly every function of the brain, including those behavioral triggers, is impacted and shaped by two wiring processes in the brain, hardwiring and soft wiring. And I'm super excited that we are going to explore what exactly that means and how that impacts leadership specifically in our next episode of the Presence Podcast. I'm super excited to geek out on the neuroscience a little bit more here.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yeah, that will be a great discussion that will turn on a few more light bulbs regarding human awareness and help us answer the essential ethos question that we posed at the beginning of the episode. Am I effectively building the case for myself as a trusted, credible, and mature leader whom other people will follow to create the greatest level of value for the organization? And as we'll see even more clearly in our next episode, the answer to that question to a large degree is dependent on how our brains dictate our behaviors. So once again, Allie, thanks so much for your insights and contributions to this episode. I look forward to seeing you in episode five. And again, one more time, if people want to reach out to you and find out more about Move Air Coaching, where do they go?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

They can find me at www.moveaircoaching.com or on Instagram and LinkedIn at MoveAirCoing.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

And thanks to all of you for listening to episode four. And remember, for more information about what we're doing at the Institute for Optimal Leadership Presence and how we can connect to discuss presence in your organization, or if you just want to chat, please feel free to log on to the Institute for Optimal Leadership Presence at Iolp.net. Reach out to us through the contact link and we can set up some time to talk. And we hope you will join us for our next episode of the Presence Podcast. Until then, take care of yourself and eat well.