Today, we have the honour of sitting down with a truly remarkable guest, Dr. Chris L. Johnson. a trailblazer in the realm of conscious leadership, embodied learning and resilience, combining the innate wisdom of our biology with practical strategies that enhance influence, confidence, and sustainability.
INTRO
Welcome everybody. Good to have you back for another episode of the rising resilient series. And today I’m joined by Chris Johnson.
Dr. Chris L. Johnson is not only a highly respected psychologist but also a Master Somatic Coach and a successful business owner. With over 25 years of experience under her belt, she has dedicated her career to partnering with leaders to cultivate resilient, conscious, and impactful organizations, reshaping the very landscape of leadership and business.
PREFER TO LISTEN?
Chris’ journey is nothing short of inspiring. Growing up with entrepreneurial parents, she was destined to make a significant impact herself. Her story is one of perseverance and transformation, having navigated both personal and professional challenges, including the aftermath of a tumultuous marriage and the reinvention of her career. Through it all, Chris has emerged stronger, developing a powerful methodology that empowers leaders and teams to thrive, even under the most intense pressure.
In our conversation today, we’ll delve into her unique approach to embodied learning and conscious leadership, uncovering how it serves as a powerful tool for becoming more effective and productive. We’ll also explore practical tips for cultivating resilience, insights into authentic leadership, and the profound impact of intuition, deep listening, and collaboration.
Whether you’re a leader navigating the complexities of today’s business world or someone on a personal growth journey, Chris’ insights offer invaluable wisdom and actionable strategies. So, without further ado, let’s dive into this transformative conversation and discover how we can all embody a new way of being in leadership and business.
INTERVIEW
JAY: Hello Chris, welcome to the leverage business podcast. It’s really fantastic that you agree to come on the show. I was delighted that you said yes, because I mean, we’ve known each other for a long time now, I felt that a lot of what you were saying about conscious leadership was very much leaning also into the idea of how resilient shows up in leaders.
CHRIS: Yeah. Well I think it’s super essential, what you’re up to and it’s super essential for all of us who care about the future and not just stuck in the past that we want to be able to create with a lot of good enthusiasm and energy, and that’s what resilience is about, right?
JAY: Okay. So you’ve got the gist of why I started doing all of this and, you know, why I chose Rising Resilient. And it does seem that I’ve picked consciously or unconsciously female entrepreneurs. Whether or not it’s just that in coaching because most of the people on the show so far, the guests have been my clients.
And so in coaching, I can pick up some of their tricks and techniques for keeping resilient, keeping that sustainability, that sustained effort, particularly when we’re doing business acceleration work, it’s intense. But there’s also quite a few of those people who don’t just apply it to themselves, but actually also use their own experience working with their clients.
First, make sure you can do things yourself and then you can coach others. So there’s a little bit of that. It was sort of surprising as I say, how everyone came at it from a different angle.
I usually like to start off by saying so that’s the theme. The sub theme was tackling challenges and changes in your life and business with confidence, compassion and courage. There’s a lot more that’s come out beyond that subtitle now, but that’s how I broached it and framed it for people.
So, what part of that theme, and in a sense how do you define resilience, what part of that theme spoke to you.
CHRIS: Yeah, thank you. I used to think that if we tackled a challenge, it would be done, and there would be a finish and it would be over and I would have arrived. And I think that I’m not alone in that view. And what I’ve learned over my life and work is that the challenge is actually the path, that we are on to transforming ourselves and making a positive impact in the world.
I think this is something that I heard you say it somewhere, one of the things I read or listen to, is just the further along we are in being committed to sustainability of the planet, of ourselves, of our community, it really does start with leaders. Leaders go first. And so the more we are clear about that, and the further along that we keep traveling on the journey, I think what happens is things do start to become more clear. Like, Oh, this is it. Oh, I didn’t think I was a mindset coach or whatever, but in fact, yeah, that’s exactly maybe what’s showing up.
So for me, a lot of that what seems to be really coming up for me right now is how women are I think going to be leading the charge in this century for transforming the way that the larger structures of our society, Western society in particular work.
The short answer is that the shift in who I’m working with is becoming more clear too – conscious leadership, leaders who are aspiring to be purpose-driven, leaders who are willing to say like, you know, I’m kind of getting in my own way here and I need to get out of my own way.
And it’s hard. It can be hard. Right. And challenging. So that’s the longer, shorter answer. I hope that’s helpful.
JAY: Where’s that shift happened? And is it over the last year? Because I mean, you’ve got your Leadership Pause podcast and your book. This is the book that we kicked off.
CHRIS: Yeah.
JAY: How different is it to what you were doing then in terms of the shift?
CHRIS: I don’t know that it’s different in kind. I think it’s different in distillation. I’m more clear. Yeah. And so I’m being called into places that I wasn’t before. And therefore there’s a different depth, if you will.
Because there’s been an over emphasis on masculine energy and drive and entrepreneurship and I’m all about that right ambition, all of that. But it hasn’t been so balanced over the course of history. And I think there’s a real time for the feminine principle – Lynne Twist would call it the age of Sophia – that really coming into our power as women and the feminine kind of energy. So that’s becoming more clear for me. It’s like, oh, I think you’re supposed to do this. And then it’s like, am I ready? Am I willing? Will I do it? You know, that’s the bigger answer.
And so things like I get triggered, I shouldn’t be triggered, but I am triggered. I write about this in my book. Triggers actually the portal right through to the other side for the transformation to happen. But for a long time early in my career, I didn’t fully appreciate that.
And so now what I would say is all of that challenge on the path is where we need to be, and that resilience is the ability to not only bounce back, which is kind of the traditional view, but how to stay the course. And to keep seeing and hearing and listening. And that it really has net net at the end of the day, it’s a lot about how we work with our energy and whether we’re replenishing our energies or expending them.
I mean, it’s like what am I personally willing to keep growing and becoming more resilient and all of that so that I can support others to do that. And the answer is yes, but it isn’t always comfy. Just saying.
JAY: Yeah. And for me boundaries is a really big part of resilience. And I mean that’s come up that much. But for me that’s how I protect my space. Like work-wise, socially, personally, all of that.
CHRIS: Uhhuh. Yeah. How do you do that, Jay? Can you give an example of that? Well, on the social side, I’ve got this funny little meme – it’s a woman, blonde hair, tied back, dressing gown, sitting in an armchair saying, I love being in my own space, surrounded by nothing. And I just think, there’s parts of me that needs to lock away and not have social contact.
JAY: Because on the work side, I’m on Zoom a lot. And it’s very easy for that to just take over everything. Yeah. It’s like projects, like scope creep. Yeah, yeah. So, I have to kind of say, no, enough, I won’t do this. And like Fridays, protecting my Fridays, for example.
Yeah. So there’s some sort of mental space things, and there’s some time scheduling type of things that come up. Yeah.
CHRIS: That’s interesting. Thank you for sharing. That’s interesting like the notion of bandwidth. You haven’t heard people speak about it, but it kind of goes bandwidth and boundaries.
JAY: Yeah.
CHRIS: Yeah, together right. Because if I can’t set them, then I’m going to get overwhelmed with scope creep versus Oh, no, it’s really, it’s an essential leadership. It’s a power move to say, Oh, thank you. And I love you and God bless you. And I’m going to let you have that. And I’m going to go over here and do this, right? Even if I’m sitting in my armchair with all the space. Because that’s another piece around resilience is this we’re so driven. I am I know. Sounds like you are too and we both like to get things done and make an impact, but it’s how do we renew ourselves. There’s no renewal, then we’re out of luck, right?
JAY: I’d love you to dive into some of that because I pulled some of that out of one of your posts about rejuvenating our energy. It was brilliant. And in fact, that’s why I invited you in many ways, because all the stuff that I’ve seen you posting about on LinkedIn, particularly, and the focus of your book, your podcast, it’s all kind of leading into the relationship between leadership and resilience and their energy is part of that – the triggers you mentioned as well. So I was picking up on that, and particularly the connection between triggers and burnout. I’d love to be able to dive into some of that with you.
Tell us for context about yourself, the work you do, the clients you help.
CHRIS: Sure. So I’ve been a clinical psychologist for 25, 30 years if I do the math. And most of that time was spent in doing a lot of work in the trauma space, both individual, family, but also in the workplace. And that’s how I got really interested years ago in working with teams and leaders. So I’ve been doing that work kind of peripherally since my late 20s. So that’s definitely 30 years or so.
And then probably the last 20 years is when I’ve actually shifted over with focusing more on coaching clients, because I really believe that business is a force for good in the world, and that we all work. Most of us work. And so if we’re working, then we’re impacting people at work, either positively or negatively and they us.
And so, really shifting the focus to how do I support leaders. Leaders also have mental health issues, leaders have energy challenges. So if leaders in business are doing what they need to be doing, then they’re going to need support as well. So most of the focus today that I work on is having all of that as background to how I view mindset and the lens through which I see folks.
But it’s really today working with leaders and their teams, knowing that they may have had mental health challenges and lots of stress and don’t feel so resilient. And yet they are committed to a new way forward in the work world. So those are the folks that I work with. I’m really privileged to do that work. And I like doing the deep dive at the deep end of the pool. So I can help folks set their goals and keep them accountable. That’s great. But I really like to do the depth work because that’s where the juice is on that resilience and transformation journey.
JAY: You mentioned trauma earlier. I’m always curious, for the different people I’ve talked to, how anxiety, stress, overwhelm shows up because trauma, you don’t kind of say, Oh, I’ve had trauma in the past. You know, it doesn’t come up first, especially when you first start working with a client, I would imagine. So what, what are you seeing in terms of why people hire you, want to work with you for themselves and their teams, what’s showing up for them that’s pointing them towards needing help.
CHRIS: Yeah, you know let me just say something about your first point. When I first started out in my clinical career, trauma wasn’t really on the radar like it is today from a clinical perspective. Trauma doesn’t happen in most of the population was the kind of the common belief. We now know fast forward that’s just patently false and not true. But there’s a big T trauma like I had a really awful traumatic event. And then there’s little ‘t’ trauma, in the kind of day-to-day and how do I function.
So when I end up signing on to work with somebody as a coach or with their team, I have all that as backdrop. And so the way I start is: what’s troubling you today? What is it that you want and need? What outcomes would you ideally like to create, and what’s getting in your way? And often it’s some version of the team’s in the way. Less often, it’s I’m in the way, although that’s often where we go is because I’m in the way is the leader and need to unpack that a little bit relative to how I’m showing up with the team and with the folks that they work with in their businesses.
JAY: I’m also curious how it shows up differently between genders.
CHRIS: Well, women are in my experience much more likely to both share their emotional experiences and hold back, in terms of, I think I need to present a certain way because as women rise in their leadership, there are more pressures on them.
Men generally are less forthcoming about feelings. Maybe they don’t even know how to identify or name their feelings because socially they’ve been socialised to not. And so for men, it will show up often in probably not listening and not having presence are the two things with men. And women are not showing up as competent and therefore not as strategic, neither of which I think is actually true for many women, but that’s the kind of story that gets promoted.
Does that make sense?
JAY: It does. It does. And something you said earlier, I don’t know if I interpreted it the right way, but often I find with women that they always look to themselves first. It’s like, Oh, it must be me. It must be something I’m doing wrong, as opposed to the situation. Do you find that as well?
JAY: I definitely find that as well. So women are like, Oh, I need to shift something in me and how I’m handling, getting another set of skills. Men are more like, it’s my team, you got to fix them, dah, dah, dah. So those are kind of the poles that are, I think, kind of typical. You probably see it a lot. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it’s interesting some of the things you were saying. Like how do you get into working with somebody, and what are the first questions you ask? I mean, those are similar questions to what we do in business strategy to some extent.
CHRIS: Yeah. You know, where are we trying to get to and what’s in the way is a very typical bottleneck kind of thing.
JAY: So you talked a little bit about how you start working and coaching someone who says they’re feeling some of these signs, let’s say. You talked about creating the outcomes. What are the milestones? Is it a typical journey, does it vary, what’s your experience?
CHRIS: Yeah, so here’s a distinction I would make. Most of us, we’re not very good as humans at self-observation. We like to think we are, just like we like to think that we’re really good listeners, like, hey, I’m a great listener, and he’s not, right? But the reality is, we’re not very good at self-awareness, and at listening kind of in general, because we’re caught up in this world that’s today, hyper busy, like there’s no time, just like you said there.
So, one of the distinctions in starting is really to ask somebody where they’re at and what’s concerning them right now, and to make the distinction between simply coping and then how to transform. And we can think of this like a mask that I wear.
So we’ll use women. Let’s say that I am a smart enough, educated enough, vocal enough woman, and I find myself on a leadership path, and yet I’m getting a lot of pushback from the culture that I ought not speak up as much and being bossy, etc. like that. So then we would look at, what do you make of that externally, but internally what do you make of that?
And women, like you said just a bit ago, will tend to go inside and say, is there something I’m doing? And so what I might say with her is, how did you learn to cope in such a way that being you in all your brilliance isn’t quite enough? Like, where did you get that message, first of all, and then we would unpack that.
Because when we’re simply coping, we kind of get stuck in a particular orientation or wearing a particular mask of competence, let’s say, versus when we’re actually practicing being aware – which is why I wrote the book, The Leadership Pause, because we can’t be aware unless we’re pausing to notice – that’s where the real juice comes in.
Very simple, small, super powerful, because if she can say, Oh, well, I learned it back here, and this is the culture I’m in, and this is the work environment I’m in, and so I think I have to perform this way. And then we unpack it and we find out that, you know, there’s more to her than that, then she’s getting curious now around. Oh, well, what else do I need to either let go of or step into, right, so that I can move forward, pass this threshold and on to the next part of the journey. So that would be an example.
So to move from coping, which keeps me kind of stuck, I have to do this to transformation involves that awareness and I would suggest starts with a pause.
JAY: I think the other thing that’s coming up for me as you were speaking there is we’re often like trying to fix stuff. It’s all about what can we do better, what can we improve. And one of the things we do in business coaching a lot is celebrate the wins.
Sometimes you forget to stop and celebrate what you’ve actually done well, you know, and typical appreciative inquiry is to know what’s working well. And what’s not working so well tends to come up on its own. But what are the accomplishments, what are the wins, what are the learning points, you know, let’s start with that. Because we’re always beating ourselves up. And I’m sure that’s part of what drives the cortisol, the adrenaline and all of those things that wear us out, you know, hormonally and physiologically.
I’m kind of going off on that track because the question I have for you is how much of that is involved as well as, as well as kind of deep diving, as you mentioned, and trying to figure out where’s it coming from and what’s triggering it. All of those things is actually balancing it with some of those positive intelligence self-observations.
CHRIS: Yes. Like I said, we’re not very great self-observers and I would also say that we don’t celebrate ourselves as well, especially as women. Men actually tend to like go right in there and say what they’ve done and accomplished and women, you know, it can take us a little while.
I know this morning I just got off a call with the Conscious Capitalism team in Chicago that currently I’m chairing, and that’s one of the things we did today is we did a check-in. How’s your mood? We did another bit of a check-in, like what’s a win? What’s a win relative to what we’re up to that you’re a part of this week? So we’re celebrating people.
Because we know from the physical research, the neurobiological research, is that when we cultivate that, it shifts our neurohormones and we’re in a better mood. And when we’re in a better mood, we’re more open, we can take in more information, we can make better decisions.
But when we’re the problems come and we’re closed down and we’re bogged down. We lose our capacity to see as much and hear as much. And that’s just a biological fact. And then it affects our energy. So the more we can be present by pausing and like, what’s up, let me count the wins first and celebrate. And take some time to rejuvenate because we’re so busy, I don’t think clearly a lot.
JAY: Yeah, that’s that space that I mentioned earlier that’s my go to place is just to take that time where you’ve not got your head full of stuff.
You were talking about bandwidth earlier as well, and one of the things I was thinking about was there’s different kinds of brainpower. There’s some stuff that you can be busy and you know, you’ve got a pile of work to do, but it doesn’t require a lot of brainpower. It’s kind of low-level stuff.
And then there’s the bandwidth where what we often struggle to find, I feel, is that high level focused, intelligent, high intellect work. Where because we’re buzzing around from bits and pieces operationally that then you don’t do some of that strategic stuff. That’s classic leadership management differentiation. Right?
What I wanted to come back to Chris, you know, normally I talk about these things with coaches and I say, well, what are your experiences and how do you apply that onto your clients? It’s a little bit different with yourself because you’re a clinical psychologist and, you know, you’re coming at it as you said, the neuroscience and neurobiology, you’ve got a lot of techniques in the sense of what to apply, but how much of your own life experiences and resilience tactic plays into how you support your leaders?
CHRIS: Yeah, well this morning, Jay, I got up and I did my exercises just to kinda warm up the body and feel the energetic juices flowing, and then I went outside on my porch. It’s a beautiful day here. It’s often hot and it’s really not. It’s very lovely temperate, and the flowers are blooming in my front yard. I have my coffee and I did a morning meditation practice there for 15 minutes.
And part of doing that is (a) it’s part of what I practice, but (b) it’s not always easy to do. Sometimes I don’t want to, or I get too caught up. And lately, as I mentioned earlier, when we first got on, I’m in a bit of a transition myself in terms of recommitting. No, this is really it. And I do need that space in the morning. And so I function better if I’m fully present. I can hear and see and be with you versus just kind of getting caught up in my to do list.
So What I did first is I went to my to do list. I’m like, no, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to go out on the porch with the coffee, do the thing, and then get yourself set up with conditions for success for today. And so I feel like I got off to a great start today. So I don’t know if that’s exactly answering your questions, but do I apply this? Absolutely. I have to.
JAY: Yeah. Well, cause sometimes, you know, you could like do it by the book, like, here’s what the science tells us we should do, but you bring a lot of wisdom and experience from your own journey. So I just was curious how much of that played into how you work with people.
CHRIS: I work with people that way. Probably one of the things that’s different about my approach as a clinical psychologist and now as an executive leadership coach. My early life training working with clients, you didn’t talk about yourself. I didn’t give personal examples. I wouldn’t have shared stories of own traumatic events or how I recouped, but the shift over time with the advent of positive psychology as an area of practice in psychology, it’s basically shed a way new light on what’s possible for us as humans and permissible.
And so over time, I was kind of always banging the drum because I always thought that way, initially. So now I’m much more inclined in my work to share a personal anecdote or that I was sitting on the porch this morning with my coffee and I was practicing this stuff.
Because I think it’s essential to integrate who we are as humans, whether we’re working or with our families. And if we don’t find that elusive balance and know that – I actually wrote a piece on LinkedIn – it’s like a gyroscope, right? It doesn’t stay stable. It’s kind of constantly moving. And that’s okay, because that means we’re alive and we can feel alive and we can bring all that energy to bear on what we’re doing.
JAY: I love that. I love that. Yeah, it’s interesting otherwise life gets pretty boring. Or it gets very static and very samey. Yeah, samey, not rather boring. Yeah, it’s an interesting one.
I mean, in your book, The Leadership Pause, you brought anecdotes and things into that as well, and with the podcast, you can see a flavor of that for those that want to go listen in. Who’s the book, the podcast aimed at primarily?
CHRIS: The podcast is through People Forward Network and showing up as a leader, which is a colleague named Rosie Ward, and it’s targeted to people who believe and want to practice that purpose matters and that transforming ourselves to transform our organizations is going to be the greater good for us all. And so It is true that in the podcast that I’ve been doing this last year, a lot of the examples and stories are from the work that I wrote about in my book, but also the day to day in terms of how it’s showing up.
And, you know, recently the last month or so one of the more recent podcast is on being out in nature as a way to rejuvenate and renew because it’s so essential. Like every person that I talked to one way or another, they’ll say that they have a plant in their office. Do they need to sit on their porch or they took a little walk, and being out is so essential especially for those of us who live in cities where there’s lots of asphalt and concrete and brick.
We need to be in touch with nature. It makes such a difference.
JAY: Yeah, it does. I live in the middle of nowhere, so I just step outside and I’m in there. Cause it’s my go to place. Yeah. I absolutely love it. And it’s just very rural and yeah, fields. So you, so you get to step out anytime you want and be in nature and get some rejuvenation just by being on your porch. That’s why I chose to live here. Right.
CHRIS: Okay. Love it.
JAY: Yeah. And I’m not a city person for exactly the reasons that you, that you said. I think the, the downside though, is that you can get kind of quite mellow in your mood, you know, talk about some energy. And I mean, I’m always kind of energetic and doing things, but you can kind of feel quite calm. And sometimes it can come across of like low energy.
Anyway, that was an interesting reflection because I was out gardening before we came on. It was work, still being outside. It’s wonderful. Yeah, sure. Yeah.
I was gonna change tack a little bit because I’m really wanting to know a bit more about this connection between triggers and burnout. Because one of the things that I hear a lot is that they didn’t see it coming. We talk about preventing burnout, but often you don’t see it coming. So when you say triggers, I don’t know if that’s where you’re coming from.
There’s the triggers that start to build up unease and tension and stress and overwhelm, but there’s also triggers of the things that you said to look out for, self observation type of thing, what’s going on inside you, around you.
CHRIS: Right.
JAY: I’d love you to unpack some of that a little bit for us in a probably more structured way than I just explained it.
CHRIS: I’ll give it a go. The way that I talk about triggers are that they’re anything that provoke us on an emotional level, to be out of the moment and somewhere else. Okay. And those triggers are typically felt in our biology.
So I’m driving to work and some knucklehead gets in my lane and I’m immediately kind of frightened. I go to the office, we’re in a team meeting and somebody’s having a bad day. They’re sharing their bad mood, and they’re crabby or very stern, and I noticed myself provoked.
Triggers can be external, stuff outside, they can be internal in terms of the mindset that I bring, the shaping that we have. We’re all shaped by life events, our first family, where we grew up… and so we come to where we are all of us for really good reasons.
What happens though is often the shape that I have or the role that I play, or we might even say the personality that I am, that shows up, developed for a really good reason, but maybe no longer works as effectively as it did before.
So let’s say that I was the class clown in school, and I’ve taken that and parlayed that into I’m really easygoing person at work, but now I never get anything done because I can’t keep deadlines, right?
So that would be kind of an extension of that. Now I’m in trouble because at work, they’re saying, you know, Chris, you need to get your act together and meet your deadlines and et cetera. And I’m not quite sure what to do with that. That would be one example. Maybe I’m triggered by that conversation with my boss to like, she shouldn’t have talked to me like that or something.
Right there, if I bear down on that and I dig my heels in, I might say, I’m just, okay, leave me alone. And you’re a bad boss. Right? Or I could say, all right, let me take a look at what you’re saying. Where have I gotten this feedback before? So I could be triggered and feel emotionally upset. If I’m willing to look and stay with the trigger, they typically emotionally only last 60 to 90 seconds until we feed them with the story.
If we feed them with the story, we keep them alive. But if I can hang out there, then it’s like I go through this portal. It’s like, Oh, I am part of the deal. I need to have a look and let me see if I can unpack that. And we can do that with the person who’s angry all the time. We could do that with what is very stern or buttoned up or whatever. So part of being triggered is just to simply notice – and notice the emotional piece – notice where the trigger takes me.
Because underneath the emotion is usually a set of core beliefs: I’m not good enough – with the clown: nobody’s going to take me seriously because I’m always just making people laugh. There are series of beliefs, usually three to five I have found that keep us stuck, keep us coping and trying harder to do what our personality would have us do.
And actually, that’s when we’re more likely to be more stressed and more likely to be set up for burnout because we keep trying to do the same thing over and over. Because it used to work and it was actually okay. But now today it doesn’t work and it’s not working and it’s not okay. I’m not in a great place about it.
So triggers are a way to start on the path of transformation is really the key into what your core genius and power really is. But most of us just don’t want to go there. Because we don’t like to feel bad. We don’t like to have those beliefs examined. And so we don’t, we just stick to what we know how to do.
And that’s, that’s a setup for all of us to not go into growth. So when we talk about a growth mindset versus kind of a fixed mindset, we can get very fixed in coping. And what we want to do is help people shift into growth. And it requires a certain capacity on the part of the coach to hold space for tenderness, because you don’t want to look at of this core belief, let’s say that Is really kind of not you, but you’re holding it. And so you’re the only one who can let it go. And there’s tenderness there, which requires care and it’s our humanity.
So that’s where the juice is. But it can be a little tricky.
JAY: Others have talked about self compassion first, you know, yeah, and kindness tenderness. I’m still looking for the connection… I guess if you’re staying in that being triggered -stuck coping…
CHRIS: It’s reinforcing.
JAY: It accumulates and the connection with burnout or there is something else going on?
CHRIS: Well, I think that’s mostly the connection to burnout, although it’s not all of it. Because if I keep trying to do the same set of practices or skills, and they’re not working, I’m expending a lot of energy unnecessarily. So the energy is not flowing, it’s kind of getting stuck in the biological system.
But the other thing is, we have to really look at burnout from not only the perspective of the individual, although you and I might be experiencing it. We have to look at the structures at play in our culture. Because a lot of the work structures don’t support us taking good care, and knowing when to set a boundary, that kind of thing.
And so the organizations that we all work for need to take some responsibility to create workplaces where people can thrive, where we can have an honest conversation about, Hey, you kind of look stuck Jay today. I saw that, but I really care about you, what can I do to support you? Like how to move on. And we can do that in an honest, kind of transparent way. But not all the workplaces we work in allow for that. So there’s that balance or tension between these two, like, individually taking care and organizationally challenging what needs to shift.
JAY: I guess that’s why there’s such a rise in psychological safety. I mean, it’s a bit term in organizations now. Yeah, I don’t know what we used to call it in whether it was even on the radar. We talk about the power of emotions at work,. you know, Karla McLaren’s classic book, et cetera, but and we are trying to provide, you know, some of those comfort things at work. I mean, even to the fact that providing good parking so that your people don’t get stressed because they can’t part when they’re trying to start their day. That goes way back, you know, some of those things.
CHRIS: Can I just say one other thing about that?
JAY: Yeah, keep going. Yeah.
CHRIS: Well, so you and your listeners probably know about project Aristotle at Google where they did all the studies on teams. All things being equal, these teams are great and these teams are super great. And the distinction after three years of investigation and study is that – and this is part of where psychological safety was birthed, the term – was the teams who performed well, performed well, but teams who were rocking it everybody got a voice, and psychological safety, meaning I could be myself and you could be yourself. And there’s a general respect for that. That is huge.
And so no, it wasn’t a thing before it was studied and became a thing. And we could talk on and on about the incivility over time and all of that, we won’t get into that here, but that makes a difference in the workplace because you can’t separate who you are as a human from who you are at work. And we ought not to. We want to be able to do that self-compassion.
But I think, I don’t know what your other guests have shared with you, I think it’s really hard to practice self-compassion first, because when we’re stuck, and if I’m on the edge of burnout, there’s a lot of self-recrimination. So if you said to me, Chris, you just need to practice self-compassion, I would say great. But I don’t know how. Partly ’cause I don’t have any bandwidth. I don’t have any energy to do it. Right. So how to help people create that space. Because that’s what a lot of people need is the space.
JAY: Well, there’s a few directions that I would love to go in from all of that. One of the directions is around energy. I wanted to come back to that. But when you were talking about teams and about how we work in teams as individuals. There was also a book called Super Communicators, which I was reading, which is Charles Duhigg, if that’s how you say his name. It was the same concepts talked about in different ways, but the fact that in a team, there’s often one person who does that holding space and active listening, but also the curiosity to understand what’s going on and ask some of the questions that we do in coaching. And I find that fascinating. You know, I’m noticing such and such is happening, noticing that your energy is low today or whatever – some of the things you’ve just talked about. So I just wanted to mention that.
But let’s come back to energy because you said in your post about how we work with, protect, rejuvenate our energy, and how that plays a crucial role in our leadership and goes a long way to preventing burnouts.
You think sometimes when you’re very high energy that that’s why you burn out but tell me a little bit about your thinking there.
CHRIS: I don’t think it’s when we’re high energy we’re going to burn out. Because high energy can be great and we could be at a dance party or hiking or doing all kinds of things. I think it’s when the expectations either that are put upon us by let’s say work, an employer or an organization that we’re working with or ourselves when the expectation and the demands that we’re not able to match them energetically and resource wise. So that we’re set up or we’re setting ourselves up or we can’t see any of it, so we think it’s normal or just how it is. And we don’t pause to take a look at what are the underlying structures.
So a colleague of mine, I spoke at a conference that she and I both spoke at about a year and a half ago. And she’s a physician and she gave an example, at least in the U. S. Jay, you know, doctors are, their training is to be on call for these obscene hours, like 36 on 8 off, et cetera. So it sets them up their biology, but also the expectation and for them to be always on. And when you’re tired, we don’t think clearly and we order more tests than we need if we’re a doctor versus if I was really listening I might just order one, right, for a patient.
Anyway, she tells a story about how a nurse stopped her and said, Dr. So and so, are you okay? And she said, Well, yeah, why I just asked you if you would complete this order for this guy. She said in the last five minutes, you said the same thing, four time, and I’ve given you the same answer. And she didn’t even know she had done it . And so just really, really severely burnt out.
And that’s what can happen that we want to prevent by looking at the structures organizationally, the health structure in the U S could use some work, right. And what’s going on personally in terms of, are we resourcing?
Because to her point, she said, you know, what would get me going when I was working a long shift like that was a Mountain Dew and a candy bar, right? So she was running on energy that was false. It wasn’t integrated into her system. So, when I think about that story, that’s kind of an extreme story that we want to avoid. But how do we avoid it? Well, we avoid it by pausing and looking at like, if I’m kind of stressed, maybe I’m actually more stressed than I think. Let me rally the troops of people that care about me on my team or my family, let me actually say, you know, Jay, how have you been experiencing me lately? Am I out there?
Yeah. And that itself is a leadership, a self-leadership move, because most of us don’t want to ask this question. We don’t want to hear it or we’re afraid you’ll judge about it or whatever we may have.
JAY: Absolutely. And again, that’s the power of emotions at work and being safe and supported to tell it like it is, just to voice what you’re noticing about yourself, but also the morale around you.
CHRIS: Yeah, that’s right. For sure.
JAY: This has been great and there’s more different avenues that we could go in, I’m sure
Finally, I would really love for you to talk about your positive superpower. Right the way through the Leverage Business podcast, , I’ve always asked, what’s your superpower for leveraging your business. But here we’re applying it to rising resilience.
So you mentioned a while ago, some of the things that you do in the morning, for example, but If you think about sustainability of your energy and your resilience in that sense, what would be your sort of positive superpower you do for yourself but also help to do for others?
CHRIS: I think a positive superpower in terms of mindset is that I’m a very curious person, and I’m up for learning all the time. So, that’s a real positive superpower, because that means that I’m going to learn that I have been wrong or didn’t not as informed or might have to unlearn something with new information that’s coming in.
In terms of a behavioUral superpower, I think based on the feedback that I get consistently is that when I’m present, I’m present with you. And I really support whatever you’re about in terms of where you want to go and the outcomes you want to create.
That’s not to say I don’t get impatient because that’s the downside and the flip back. I can get impatient when things don’t move quickly. So I have to like say, okay, let’s this, let’s just be here right now. We don’t need to be impatient or make things happen sooner than they will. Because there is a certain energetic flow in life and in the universe, and if we trust it, it’ll unfold and I really believe that.
JAY: So, yeah, you said something about being present as well and as leaders as well being present but I think just in your own life. Yeah, yourself is we’re always looking back, or always looking forward, and it’s back to that, you know, age old “living in the moment”.
CHRIS: Yes. Can we just be here? And what is here? Yeah, here is very juicy. Yeah, it’s juicy, right?
JAY: Yes. What a nice note to end on. Thank you really for this conversation. It’s brilliant to have captured your wisdom in here.
CHRIS: Well, it’s been really fun, Jay. Thank you for inviting me. Really appreciate it. And I look forward to more work together, collaboration, et cetera.
JAY: Yeah, that would be cool. That would be juicy.
CHRIS: It would be juicy. Yeah. Thanks.
JAY: All right. Take care, Chris.
CHRIS: Okay. Take care. Bye, Jay.
Learn more about conscious leadership coaching
Connect with Chris L. Johnson, PsyD
- Website: https://q4-consulting.com
- Book: The Leadership Pause: Sharpen Your Attention, Deepen Your Presence, and Navigate the Future
