Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Welcome to teaming up conversations, the podcast. I'm your host Simon better. I believe that one of the most satisfying and rewarding moments in life is belonging to a trusted team and achieving something unique together. Thank you for joining our dialogue, how to build lead and be part of an inspired team and community.
Speaker 1 00:00:40 I am delighted to speak with George caller. We talk about secure based leadership and building trust in times of change and uncertainty. George received a degree in psychology and philosophy from the university of Dayton and a doctorate from Ohio state university, where he wrote his dissertation on the cardiovascular recovery of law enforcement officers. Following high stress situations while directing a center for group and family therapy in Ohio. He also worked as a hostage negotiator and police psychologist, delivering programs to police officers who were experiencing hostage or high stress situations since 1998. George is a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at I M D in Lawson, Switzerland. One of the leading business schools in Europe, he's the author of the award winning book hostage at the table and care to dare. He draws on various scientific disciplines, such as attachment theory, brain and cognitive science, social neuroscience, and performance studies. Please enjoy this conversation with George called reer on building trust through secure based leadership in times of change and uncertainty. It's a great pleasure to have you on my podcast. I'm really excited. Uh, we met the first time in Geneva during a conference where we both spoke and you just released your new book.
Speaker 2 00:02:21 Oh, how at the table?
Speaker 1 00:02:23 Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 00:02:24 That goes back quite a while.
Speaker 1 00:02:26 And I read it. I loved it. And in that book, you talk about secure based leadership.
Speaker 2 00:02:32 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:02:33 What is secure based leadership?
Speaker 2 00:02:36 Secure based leadership is where the leader becomes a kind of anchor, a kind of lighthouse that is there to both care and to dare. So it comes out of attachment theory. We all need these connections and there's some special connections we form bonds to. And we use them as a way to shut down the brains approach, to look for danger and pain that takes us outta defensiveness. So we need secure bases, which are people, places, goals, things that gives this sense of protection gives us sense of comfort in order to take risks, seek change, be curious. So it's the way the brain needs security trust to be able to really enjoy life, seek adventure, do special things. Security is not the goal. The goal is to explore life with its full adventure and beauty.
Speaker 1 00:03:39 So what happens when we have that secure base and what happens when we don't have a secure base, let's say in a team environment,
Speaker 2 00:03:47 Well, let's start with don't because that's a very good question. What happens is you become defensive, your mind's eye. The deepest part of your brain is connecting to the survival. Need to look for danger. So you become defensive when you can't trust life doesn't work well. When you have secure basis that shuts the brain's orientation to look for danger. So you, then you build trust. You then build safety and that becomes the goal then to dare therefore, the idea that we need these caring, secure bases, which are people, places, things, goals, there are many, many targets of secure base that give that sense of protection and comfort. But then you can expand and leaders have to be secure bases. Even if you don't necessarily like the person, you only need to find a bond with them through some common goal. And you end up learning how to trust.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 Do you have a, an example or even a personal example from a working with a client or even in your own life where you had, well,
Speaker 2 00:04:57 I can take a hostage negotiation situation. The first time I was held hostage, I've been held hostage four times myself and I was asked after a short time of working on domestic violence with the police to go into a hospital room, to talk a very psychotic man down who was holding a nurse hostage with the scissors. When I first started, he was screaming and yelling. He was in a psychotic state and threatening to kill her threatening, to kill everybody that he could. Within a short time, he cut her throat. Then she fell to the ground. He comes across towards me with the scissors. Now, what would you say when you see a scissors coming to you and the person holding it is saying, I'm gonna kill you, everybody. I can
Speaker 1 00:05:45 Danger
Speaker 2 00:05:46 Danger. Yeah. So I had to focus on Sam, the person. And within a short time, I've asked him a question. I put my hands up on, on his arm, cuz he put the scissors to my throat and I asked him, how do you want your children to remember you? And he screamed, I'll kill you and kill everybody else. Don't talk about my kids. Don't ever talk about my kids. I dared myself, came back in and said, Sam, we have to, we have to be able to understand what you're doing here. How do you want them to remember? I'm just gonna kill myself. And then I don't have to. Now I've slowly became a secure base, a caring. And within 10 minutes he agreed to let Sheila go. That was the first concession. And within a half hour, he was out of that emergency room. I became a secure base and I was there feeling the secure base of Lieutenant outside. Now I didn't know him very well. I'd only been on the police with the police force for about six weeks, but he trusted me. I trusted him. So he was a secure base to me. I was a secure base to Sam and Sam gave ultimately the scissors to me and walked outta that room peacefully.
Speaker 1 00:07:01 Now talking from a neuroscience perspective, what happens in the brain when he was screaming at the first time, what happened in the brain? And then when he became trusted and slowed down, what happened in the brain,
Speaker 2 00:07:17 Grief, pain, pain, pain, Simon, we have to remember that, you know this and it came from his early childhood experiences. He was in foster home after foster home, sexually abused. He had so much trauma that his pain was totally on survival, but his only secure basis where his kids, he came to the hospital because he went against a court order. He kicked in the door, his wife stabbed him. He was there because of a serious wound. You see children should never be a secure base with a parent. He was in this deep emotional trauma and he allowed me to connect to that pain in a very special way, allowing him to calm down and look for the fact. And he thanked me afterwards as he was being walked away. Help. Thank you, George, for helping me remember how much I love my kids. Now you see this was all got distorted in his brain, into the survival, the Olympic activities. And I was able to through my presence, help him calm down enough to see a way out of the situation.
Speaker 1 00:08:26 You mentioned the attachment theory. Yeah. Can you briefly summarize what it is?
Speaker 2 00:08:32 Wow. This is John Bobbi's work coming out after in, in the late, uh, forties, early fifties, where he was studying, uh, children who were dying in hospitals and children who were surviving on a battlefield or from, from very traumatic situations, he identified that the core element was attachment. Did they have a caretaker, a mother, a father, a, a nurse, someone. So attachment theory is the whole idea of how we connect and then how we bond. So we need that bonding Simon, you are very aware of that. And the problem is if it is not there, the brain suffers Trump because the brain is organized by the environment more than genetics and grief or the loss is the most powerful process that happens in this disruptive bonding. So any loss becomes the key factor in motivation. So attachment theory helps us understand the bonding process and the grief process, how we let go of an attachment. Any loss is the key to understanding motivation and behavioral economics prove this with the research, that loss is more powerful than benefit in determining the decisions that we make. Even if you think you are the most rational person in the world, the fact is emotions are guiding you at a very, very deep level.
Speaker 1 00:09:59 Yeah. When I got into sales, one of the lines I heard is people buy emotionally and justify rationally.
Speaker 2 00:10:08 <laugh> you got it. And talking about sales, one of the big mistakes sales people make is they try to sell the benefit before they hear the pain, listen to the pain points. This is what we're teaching leaders all the time in secure based leadership, understand the pain points of what you are asking them to change or what you're asking them to buy or whatever the change process might be. And most people are not comfortable in dealing with pain points. They'd like to go to the positive.
Speaker 1 00:10:43 Yeah. Yeah. How does it apply in leadership? If you, if you are a leader, you have a team, how do you get to the pain point? How do you understand the people from that perspective?
Speaker 2 00:10:58 That's brilliant dialogue talking, asking questions. The biggest mistake leaders make is they don't inquire and inquiry means asking a question, not as an interrogation, but as curiosity. And so empathy becomes part of it. And you know how there are certain type a personalities who are resistant to the whole idea of, of empathy. It's too soft. It's too wishy washy. I'm here for hard results. Give me the facts, let's get a result. And they missed the whole point. So they have to learn how to be curious about what is inside the internal world of another person. It doesn't take that much time Simon, but we have to be able to do that. And in the research that I did for the second book care to dare, we looked at the characteristics sub secure based leadership after interviewing over a thousand executives around the world, by, by direct interviews or by surveys.
Speaker 2 00:11:55 And we found these nine characteristics, including being positive, being calm, being able to be emotionally available, et cetera. So secure based leadership is the way a leader connects to people around them and inspires them. Even if they have to deliver pain. Because as a leader, you have to sometimes make tough decisions and you have to be able to deliver pain. Whether that's dismissing someone, giving tough feedback, denying someone on promotion pain is part of leadership, but most leaders are too nice and not kind. We teach kindness opposed as opposed to niceness. And out of that comes that whole idea of how you create an empathetic relationship to be able to enhance the goals that you're trying to achieve. Many leaders, forget that the way to get high performance, high goals, high results is through people, not by command and control. And you know, the pandemic has taught us all that the command and control type leadership does not work. It's dead. It's over. We need cooperation. We need collaboration. We don't surrender the role of authority, but we use our relationship with the followers to partner in solving problems.
Speaker 1 00:13:18 I do a lot of coaching of very successful, driven, ambitious people. And what you mentioned, like type a, and they're very driven. They create great results. And the best way to get them to talk is ask questions. And half of the people I coach in organizations, it's about listening.
Speaker 2 00:13:39 Yeah. Comes back to listening,
Speaker 1 00:13:41 Listening, paying attention, understand where the other person is coming from. Thinking about their frame of reference instead of my frame of reference. And it's, it's a skill it's very basic. It's not rocket science and it's so much lack in organizations.
Speaker 2 00:14:01 Yeah. And why do the leaders lack that skill or that talent?
Speaker 1 00:14:06 Good question. Can you answer it for
Speaker 2 00:14:08 Me? Yeah. It goes back to their own childhood. It goes back to their relationship to their mother, their father, their grandparents, the secure basis, the attachment figures that they grew up with, it can be changed at any time, but most never go through the experience of learning that skill of really listening. They're feeling defensive or they're pushing over overly competitive or they're too passive, or they sugarcoat, they seek too much harmony and they don't deal with conflicts in a constructive way. So they have to go back and look at that inner world of where were the foundations of their leadership built. It can be taught, but teaching empathy requires certain experiences to make the person be able to stand in other people's shoes. You know, the high number of our St leaders who cannot stand in another person's shoes.
Speaker 1 00:15:05 Now I remember when I read your book about cure base leadership and the secure base is with the parents. Even I think you talk about for young men, it's their father. And so the father figure and the mother figure has a very strong impact on secure base. Can you elaborate that dynamic to little?
Speaker 2 00:15:26 Yeah, this that's very, very good. It it's an emerging body of research that is still developing the daughters. The girls have to learn how to be assertive. And that comes from basically having a mother model to do that. And in conjunction with the father who encourages the daughter to fight back to push, to negotiate, and women are really excelling. They're learning that skill. I mean, it's dramatic. What's happening now. Boys have to learn how to care because they often do not learn how to care. And that's learned from the father. So the mother teaches that foundation of affection and bonding. The father also teaches that, but the father is involved more Inex, helping the child be able to deal with the external world. So if a boy has never learned caring from a father figure, they're gonna struggle. And it's even worse if they didn't have that caring from a mother.
Speaker 2 00:16:24 So many boys, they have the caring for the mother, but they don't connect it to masculinity. So being tough, hard, unavailable, not showing vulnerability. It seems like it's not being masculine. So they have to learn this from some male figure that they meet or they read about, or that they go through some transformation in understanding that is a fundamental part of themselves. It's a dying part of themselves that many leaders suffer internally because they're in isolation or in pain. And that can even be loneliness because they don't bond or connect emotional availability. Vulnerability is a key part of leadership.
Speaker 1 00:17:07 Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah, I really like the work by BNE brown part and she, I like her.
Speaker 2 00:17:14 Uh, you nailed it
Speaker 1 00:17:15 Research. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:17:16 Good. And it's not weakness,
Speaker 1 00:17:18 Right? Exactly. It's strength. It's courage. Yep. Now let's go back to, um, hostage negotiation. How did you get into that? And what did it takes to, to be a hostage negotiator?
Speaker 2 00:17:30 Well, now you have to go through, uh, police department. So the police and the FBI in the United States at least are the major trainings. I think here in Europe too, I've worked with a number of organizations. So I did my, uh, PhD, uh, around mediation. I was a psychologist focused on mediation. So I was interested in conflict resolution. And one of the first jobs I had after finishing, uh, my, uh, studies was to be offered a job with the local police department and a mental health unit, this event going on the street, going with police into homes where domestic violence was active. And the idea was to reduce homicides. We knew about 35% of all homicides were committed by family members. So the police often knew who they were because they'd been to the house many times. So the idea was take a psychologist, a mediator in if they agreed deal with them.
Speaker 2 00:18:26 It was through that. After a short time that I was with the police who did not necessarily trust psychologists. And then I was involved in this incident that I described earlier with Sam, when the police asked me to go in and talk him down. So that's how I got into it. I was never originally trained as a hostage negotiator and I liked it. Interestingly enough, I found it a very learning experience. I learned so much and I followed Sam for over two years, once he got outta prison. And then I became involved, uh, in the early seventies with, uh, the FBI New York, Los Angeles in helping develop host negotiation teams. So by then we were learning by the seat of our pants, so to speak. Now it's a much more sophisticated training.
Speaker 1 00:19:15 What were some of the, can you give a story, an example of, of some other typical conflict situations, where, where you got into a hostage incident?
Speaker 2 00:19:29 Well, one was in my office with a man who came to my office, unannounced with a gun, broke into the, the consulting room I was in and I was with a patient. So I had to ask this person to leave. And he wanted me to, uh, convince his wife, not to divorce him. His wife was a client of mine and, uh, he had a gun and he pointed the gun at me and said, you're not listening, which is probably true. He shot the bullet, went right by my ear. And within a short time, cuz I had to calm the police down. They had arrived by then let me handle this. And within a half hour, within an hour, he was sitting on the couch crying. He couldn't live without his wife and you can understand why she wanted to divorce him. He was quite a disturbed person, but he ended up surrendering that gun. So that again was another extreme situation, all the way to physical abuse, violence, all of these things, uh, you intervene and understand how to deal with the effects. But we tried to get to the origin, the foundations, the original trauma. And it was always some trauma from youth.
Speaker 1 00:20:46 One of the things in those hostage negotiation situations is about calmness. How do you get the person to calm down? Yeah. Which is also one of the nine characteristics of, uh, yeah. Secure based leadership. What are some tips? Uh, if someone gets angry or frustrated and, and how do you get that person to calm down? What are some of the techniques
Speaker 2 00:21:10 We call it? The person effect it's from Pavlo. <laugh> way back to the original physiology studies. It's the individual impact each person has in connecting with another person. So you have to create a positive impact, be able to calm their sense of emotional arousal. And you can do this by the words, by the tone of voice, all these nonverbals, as well as the words you use, mostly by questions. It comes back to questions. All hostage negotiations are ultimately solved by asking questions and all are solved by the hostage taker, making a decision to come out a choice. You give people a choice where they feel like a hostage psychologically, and then you help them feel connected, feel bonded. And it's through that connection, empathy, compassion that you reach, the goal that you wanna achieve. It means starting with the mind's eye, not seeing the person as a person.
Speaker 2 00:22:18 When I was with Sam, he was not, uh, a criminal to me. He was a person. And I learned that from Carl Rogers, you know your neighbor there in LA JOA or, or was your neighbor and with Richard with, with a gun, he wasn't trying to kill me. Uh, Sam, wasn't trying to stab me. They were actually wanting something. So when you connect and find out what they want, then it works in about 5% of the cases. It doesn't work because they don't want anything. They wanna commit suicide and suicide by police. That's one of the first things to identify
Speaker 1 00:22:53 What are some good questions to engage and calm the other person down and create that connection.
Speaker 2 00:23:02 Yeah. So for Sam, it was the question. How do you want your children to remember you? So he somehow went to that home, kicked in the door against the court order. Why would he go there? He cared about his kids. They were his only secure basis. How do you want them to remember you now? That was me connecting the dots of what, of, why he went to that house other times, it's about what do you want to accomplish by this? What do you really want? And you use voice and tone of voice and words that communicate compassion. You don't do it as a prosecuting attorney. Why did you do this? Why you have to make it soft. You have to be able to match the other person's energy. And then you bring it down. Eye contact. If you can appropriate touch often, that is very risky. Also being able to use your hands. So you put your hands up, you communicate interest, you don't stand there, unavailable, emotionally detached. You show that you care.
Speaker 1 00:24:14 Now hostage situations are high stress, conflict situations. And now, so you're dealing with a lot of conflict here. Now, a lot of people, especially also in, in businesses. And, and I see that in working with teams, there are many leaders who tend to avoid conflict. Yeah. Can you elaborate on, do they wanna avoid pain or what is the psychological explanation for conflict avoidance?
Speaker 2 00:24:43 Well, there are many possible reasons, but the fundamental is the, the fear of breaking the bond, fear of breaking the relationship, fear of delivering pain so that they end up being too nice. And they don't engage in honest relationships, which involve disagreements. Conflict. We have to remember conflict is basically positive because it's based on a difference and there's more truth in disagreement than in harmony so that we have to be able to understand how have we learned as a child to express our needs. And in what way can we express our needs? And as a leader, we have to be able to say what we need, but we have to listen to the follower. The people we're leading, what they need. And the pandemic has brought this out more than ever with the great resignation process happening followers have more power than they did before the pandemic.
Speaker 2 00:25:41 So this conflict resolution, as you have to manage your own aggression, which is a big problem for many, you have to be able to engage conflict, not be afraid of it because out of the conflict, good can come. And the goal of conflict management is to turn someone who is an enemy, an adversary into an ally, and be able to partnership in solving a problem. But you have to engage it. You have to go towards it. So how did you deal with conflict with your mother, with your father, with your grandparents, with teachers, with your siblings? One of the best trainings in conflict management is sibling training. Uh, how did you as a sibling deal, uh, with each other and then in school, and as you go throughout life and some people become bullies, some people allow themselves to be bullies. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 2 00:26:34 Uh, Simon, you can be a physical hostage with a weapon to your head, or you can be a psychological hostage where you are a hostage of someone externally or to a situation or even to yourself. So if you are filled with fear, anger, rage, all these internal negative states, you are a hostage to yourself, or you can be a hostage to someone else, a bully, a passive employee, someone who's not performing well as a leader, you have to stand up to that and engage it, embrace your role as leader to work with people, to build high performing teams
Speaker 1 00:27:14 Now in the book. And, and you also previously talked about the minds eye. Yeah. How do we use the minds eye to influence and then the inner in outer state. And can you give an example to describe that mind?
Speaker 2 00:27:27 Well, if you are not invited to a meeting and you feel rejected and some people are oversensitive to rejection as a leader, you have to learn to love rejection, humiliation, embarrassment it's gonna happen. And so the minds, I starts interpreting that it says, oh, I'm not good enough. Or they don't want me or what, whatever the mind's eye starts looking for pain and danger. And we have to know what it means to play, to win play, not to lose when your mind's eye starts focusing on the negative. You're probably gonna go to the playing to lose side. And that's about 80% of people. When you're looking to play to win. You look for the positive within the negative. That doesn't mean you ignore risk, but you're able to evaluate them accurately and not let your mind's eye focus on that. Our brain is fundamentally negative. Most people know that by now because we need to survive evolutionary psychology. Many people never get out of that survival mode. So when you are able to override that by the frontal lobes, making a choice, then you're able to manage your mind's eye. It's the first role of leadership leading yourself and the mind's eye.
Speaker 1 00:28:48 How do we practice a more positive outlook? How do we teach the mind's eye to look for the positive within the negativity?
Speaker 2 00:28:58 Wow,
Speaker 1 00:29:00 Big question. You know,
Speaker 2 00:29:01 That's a very powerful question. I think it happens at two levels at the behavioral level and at the deeper psychological level, it may require, in some case, going to coaching, going even to therapy, to go to the deeper levels of mistrust and the, the pandemic has brought out in so many leaders, the LA fact that they don't trust their followers. That's another whole story, right? The other behavioral control is you start teaching yourself saying to yourself, I wanna be positive. And so you start looking, what is the silver lining here? Where is the positive? And probably the best is get into coaching or get in feedback, or find a mentor. Someone who is a secure base, who helps shape your mind. The original shaping of the mind comes from the secure bases as a child, mother, father, grandparents, so forth. Were they positive or negative teachers you had, so that secure basis can help rewire the brain so that you start thinking in terms of positive, you can't possibly be a high performing leader without inspiring. It's impossible. You have to be an inspiring person.
Speaker 1 00:30:15 One of the things I have found is powerful is the self talk. How do we talk to ourselves about ourselves? Are you familiar with Emil? Kua
Speaker 2 00:30:23 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:30:24 Yeah. And I mean, he did some research in Geneva with patients and they had two groups of patients. One patients they didn't do. They gave them medication, the other group, they get medication and they gave them a daily affirmation every day in all areas of my life and getting better. And in that second group, significantly healed faster than the first one.
Speaker 2 00:30:45 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:30:45 That mental self affirmation. We talk to ourselves in a positive way.
Speaker 2 00:30:51 Yeah. And do you know how many words we say to ourselves in a minute on average?
Speaker 1 00:30:55 What
Speaker 2 00:30:55 Is it? A thousand words.
Speaker 1 00:30:57 A
Speaker 2 00:30:57 Thousand. That's how fast it is. Can you imagine talking with that? The thousand words a minute impossible, but our brain is speeding with the speed of lightning words. And if they're negative, you feel negative. If they're positive, you feel positive. Yeah. So affirmations are important. However, they often cover up the deeper level of what's inside. We have to understand two levels, behavioral control, and then changing the really deeper internal states. Coming back to our authentic self. Most of us have lost parts of ourself by the losses that we've endured in our life. What Warren benic called, the critical incidents, the crucibles and Warren, who is one of the leading gurus and leadership always said, we have to have the leaders face those crucible. If they're ever gonna recover parts of themselves that they've lost. And many leaders are just functioning without part of themselves, uh, being present, they have it buried. And so at some point there's a breakdown
Speaker 1 00:32:02 Mm. Mentorship or having trusted, uh, mentors or teachers or coaches is, is a key part. Who, who in your life played that role? And what did you learn from them?
Speaker 2 00:32:16 One of the very first ones was my father who was a secure base. However, I had to go through a number of challenges with him, because if you didn't do what he wanted, he tended to over force what he wanted without fully listening. But he was a secure base in the end. And then when I left home, I went to a boarding school to study, to be a priest. When I was, was, uh, 12 years of age. And then I had a priest there who was a secure base, who really helped me survive. And then I had a professor, Dr. Rank Carello who inspired me throughout my professional development. Carl Rogers, as I talked to earlier was a secure base. I have been blessed with over a hundred clear secure bases that came in and outta my life at different points. So you don't have a secure base necessarily that lasts for a whole lifetime. Some do, but they come and go, as you need them. And life gives you experiences. Sometimes the most painful experiences that teach you that what you think you need is not really what you need. And so good things happen after painful things.
Speaker 1 00:33:28 Yeah. Yeah. How do we in organizations, how do we find people who are secure for us? Do we reach out? Do we create connections? I work in big companies and one of the important skill is work across different organizational units and stakeholder influence expectation management in a big organization with all those different interests and political dynamics. How do we create that safe base?
Speaker 2 00:33:58 Well, it starts by being willing to be vulnerable. Going back to that idea of Renee, being vulnerable, being emotionally available, taking a risk to trust somebody. Now you don't, if, if somebody's a thief and you know, they're a thief, you don't hand them their wallet to your wallet, to have them watch your wallet. You have to know who you're dealing with. What is the person affected the other person, but you have to be sensitive, but trusting, but not over trusting in the beginning, then you build a relationship, but it starts by vulnerability and the ability to, to trust. And then you're gonna be hurt. You just have to accept that you're gonna be disappointed, disloyalty political things happen. They're narcissists all over the place in organizations, but how do you build a team around you? And this becomes very important for leaders, build a team and then build a team of colleagues and be sure you're working for a boss. Who's a secure base. And sometimes you have to have that dialogue. What I need from you to feel safe, what I need from you to have this psychological safety. That's so essential that Google has studied right. Enormously and is foundation to high performance individually. And on teams.
Speaker 1 00:35:20 Now you are also involved in some neuroscience and brain science research.
Speaker 2 00:35:25 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:35:26 You have followed that for tens of years. Yeah. What are some of the most valuable insights from recent research? What are some new discoveries around brain research?
Speaker 2 00:35:38 Well, I think it's understanding that the brain survival mechanism is so easily activated by searching for danger. The brain is fundamentally negative. That's been reinforced study after study, and then choice can override that choice can override that. The other thing is that trauma lasts, even when we're not aware of it, but you have to go back and feel it. You have to let your brain feel it, go through the emotions to heal it
Speaker 1 00:36:10 Like a submarine,
Speaker 2 00:36:12 Like
Speaker 2 00:36:14 Yeah. And understanding that the whole idea of an internal world is active. You're not just a rational being. You're an emotional being. And the neuroscience is bringing out the whole fact that the environment is shaping the brain. From the time we are conceded in the womb. When we're young child, when we're adult, the environment is shaping the brain. And this is coming through epigenetics. Epigenetics is this study that your mindset and your social environment, get this shapes how you behave. It's far more powerful than genetics. Social behavior is so important. So we have to be able to put ourselves from a neuroscience point of view into the right social structure, create the right secure basis because a secure base can be negative. If you're in a cult, you may find that as a secure base, or if you're in an addiction of any kind, whether it's drugs or a behavior that may be a false secure base, that gives you temporary relief with long term negative outcomes. So being able to understand what is it I really need? What part am I living and experiencing? And that's the journey of life, our own journey and leadership is part of that. How do we live the adventure of life, the beauty of life. And when you're locked down with loss and grief and these negative internal states, part of you is dead. You don't experience the full joy of life or the full joy of work.
Speaker 1 00:37:54 Now you have experienced life in many ways. You learned a lot. What would be your advice today to the younger 20 year old church?
Speaker 2 00:38:06 I would say recognize the power of choice that you have. You don't have to be a hostage to anybody, anything even to yourself, know your choices, have your dreams, live your dreams, know what you desire. Find people around that you can trust and get feedback, get feedback. And mostly be curious. Don't be trying to be interesting. Try to see what's in other people. You know, this whole idea. I wanna prove how interesting I am, how smart I am. And that's not the goal. The goal is what can I learn? How curious I am? What is in other people's minds? And when you live with that curiosity, then you just open up all kind of avenues that look like luck, but they're not really luck.
Speaker 1 00:39:00 I gotta
Speaker 2 00:39:01 They're because you are open.
Speaker 1 00:39:03 I got a phrase to become interesting. We gotta be interested.
Speaker 2 00:39:08 <laugh> there. You got it. That nails it on the head. That's a bullseye transaction side. <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:39:14 Now
Speaker 2 00:39:14 That's why deep in your brain.
Speaker 1 00:39:16 Yes.
Speaker 2 00:39:16 Yeah. That's what leaders have to do. They have to get these bull side transactions or affirmations locked into their brain.
Speaker 1 00:39:23 Right? Right. This is so fascinating. So helpful. So insightful. If, uh, we wanna learn more about you, your background, your books, where do we find you?
Speaker 2 00:39:34 You can go to my website, George coer.com. You can go on imd.com and find me there because I lead a program there for some 20 years, 10 times a year, 60 top leaders, uh, thousands of people have been through that. You can go to LinkedIn or Twitter. I do workshops around any of your listeners who are in California or the us. I'm doing a workshop at Lin this summer. I don't know if you know Lin, but it's a growth center in big Sur, California. It's a five day program for personal development for leaders in big Sur, California. So there are many ways to stay connected to me. And I, I do try to respond.
Speaker 1 00:40:17 Yeah. So IM D some people might not know it's in Loza and it's a top university. And, uh, how did you get there? How did you
Speaker 2 00:40:28 Became by again, by being curious? Not saying no very often. I, I tend to say yet. So I was invited to help fill in for conflict management course. And, uh, one of the professors there needed someone to teach conflict management. And so I came, I was doing conflict management in Europe at that time, and it was successful and they asked me back again. And finally, the Dean Peter Iran said we would like you to join our staff, our faculty. So I got a, a part-time faculty position. And then I was so successful. I developed this high performance leadership program in the year 2000, and then I became a full-time faculty and recently became the first distinguished professor of IMD, which is one of the outstanding business schools in the world.
Speaker 1 00:41:16 Congratulations. And they can be very happy to have you a wonderful teacher and professor. So thank you so much, George. This has been wonderful.
Speaker 2 00:41:27 Well, thank you, Simon. Your questions were absolutely brilliant. Bringing out the best in me. So I hope this is helpful to your listeners and, uh, the world is just full filled with so much adventure. Just seek it. That's all I can say at the end.
Speaker 1 00:41:44 Wonderful. Thank you, George. Be well.
Speaker 2 00:41:47 Okay. Thank you. Simon.
Speaker 1 00:41:52 I'm Simon letter, and you have been listening to teaming up to never miss an episode. You can subscribe on apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Also, please refer, teaming up to your friends, colleagues, and coworkers. It will make me happy when more people can benefit from valuable content. Thank you for listening.
