People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First. My guest this week is the amazing Rosie Ward. Dr. Rosie Ward is a fierce advocate, not just an advocate, a fierce advocate for humanity and a sought after to help. I'm going to do that again because I do want to emphasize that. All right, take two. Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And my guest this week is the amazing Rosie Ward. Dr. Rosie Ward is not just an advocate. She is a fierce advocate for humanity who is sought after to help re-humanize workplaces that free, fuel and inspire people to bring their best selves to work and home each day. You can probably realize why Rosie and I have bonded from the get go. She serves as the CEO and founder of Salveo Partners, which was awarded the twenty twenty four Stella Business Award for Best Business Consulting in the United States. and, through her firm, focuses on future-proofing organizations by strengthening culture and equipping leaders and teams to show up courageously and more effectively navigate change and disruption. Rosie recently received a Female Voice Award as the Business Coach of the Year. She's also a top voice in leadership, leadership development, and culture on LinkedIn, an award-winning author, and an award-winning podcast host. Rosie has an incredible gift for synthesising complex ideas about culture, leadership, behaviour change and what it means to be a human and presenting them in a way that makes them relevant, understandable and meaningful for people. Rosie, welcome to my room and welcome to People First. Okay, that was quite the introduction. It's my pleasure. I just had you on my podcast. So it's like a repeat geek out session. I'm so excited. I know, we're just going to be bouncing off. I was watching one of the snippets before we got on here. And it's given me that little energy boost. Yay. So I am looking forward to but we're now focusing on your side of the equation. And I know that much like a Venn diagram, your research and mine and that of Sky Team, it overlaps. But I want to start then with asking you, what role have relationships played in your success? What role haven't they played? I mean, seriously, they're everything. This isn't a solo journey. And I just think about every... twist and turn of my journey of my life and my professional life up until this point, whether it was positive or negative or anything in between, it has been in conjunction with other people and either someone opened the door and introduced you to something or you met someone or you had an idea from somebody or whatever it is. I mean, it's everything as far as, I mean, there's no way you, no one can say that they're standing where they are because they somehow were magical and were some solo person charging ahead. Like, no, sorry. I love that. I mean, it goes back to the conversation we had on your podcast about leadership and success in business essentially being a team sport. And I know because I got to have an advanced sneak peek at your upcoming book and the title for those of you watching and listening, go get it. It is called Future Proofing Leadership, Navigating Change and Disruption to Thrive in an Uncertain World. Let's face it, We're living in an uncertain world. But you talk extensively at the beginning there, and this goes back to the relationship theme, about how connection is part of our DNA. And yet loneliness and disconnection is at crisis levels. So tell us a little bit about what your research has shown. Yeah, I mean, we could go on this forever, but I mean, we know from so many different amazing researchers out there that we are biologically hardwired for a connection. We are a social species. Even people who are introverted or people who come in any assessment that they don't get their energy from people, we still need human connection. It is a core human need. to feel like we matter and to feel like we're seen and heard. And in fact, Zach Mercurio out of Harvard has a great book out called the power of mattering and digs into this, that we need to feel like we have significance in other people's lives. It is, is what makes us tick. And when we don't have that, our mental health, our emotional health, our physical health, like so many things, erode. There's a study one upon a time that said that loneliness is a greater risk for our health than like secondhand cigarette smoke and other things. So just overwhelming amount of research showing how we need to be in connection. But I think that there's multiple things going on of why we're feeling disconnected. So you could, first of all, just take a generational divide between what is being, I love the term native digitals and native analogs and native analogs, basically people who in their formative years um didn't have a smartphone or smart device they had to make relationships with people and learn how to have those awkward interactions and conversations which is basically anyone that's a millennial or older is considered a native analog even though the millennial generation didn't know world before the internet and cell phones but they didn't typically get their smartphones and until beyond those formative years. So they're sitting in classrooms and sitting at bus stops and having to interact with people. Native digitals are Gen Z and Gen Alpha and everyone that comes beyond, and they've made relationships through a screen. And their relationship with the digital world and human world is very, very different. And so if you think about any of us, regardless of generation, what happens now? We're sitting in line for an airport or a grocery store or And instead of having an awkward interaction with somebody, yeah, we're immediately in our phone and our devices and we're in our own little world. And so we are losing the ability to actually see other people, like truly see them, pay attention, read body language. The list goes on and on. Jen Maher has been doing great work in this space as well of just how we've lost that ability to see other people on a normal day, let alone when they're struggling. And so you start to see all the stats of the just eroding mental health issues. connection in native digitals and beyond is profound. But now you add what is going on in our world. So our world is completely disruptive. It always has been, but the last several years have just been to an extreme level. And what that does for us as a human being is it bumps us up against also our biological wiring, not just for connection, but our biological wiring for safety. So as a species, we are wired physically and emotionally and mentally for survival and for safety. And which means that our brains like the status quo, we cling tightly to what is familiar. We actually download programming in the early years of our life that tell us the rules of the road of when to be quiet, when to speak up, when we're going to be rejected, when to be accepted. And basically those, that programming we download helps us feel in control, feel safe, find love, find acceptance, belonging, the list goes on and on. But most of that programming is head trash. It's flawed, negative, self-sabotaging. And neuroscientists estimate that we are on autopilot about ninety five percent of the time. So what that basically all means is we are hardwired for this safety. But based off programming that is flawed or head trash and the more disruptive that our world gets, the more that those instincts to protect ourselves, that programming kicks in and we have a gap that is widening. And we call that gap the stuckness zone. And so when you think about disconnection, it's I'm going to hang out with people who look and sound like me or I'm going to stay by myself because it feels safer or I'm not going to speak up and say what I really think because it feels threatening or I'm going to overcompensate for all the ways that I feel insecure and less than. And it's a human experience and a human condition. No one is immune from this. And so that's my long-winded way of, I think that's, we're wired for this connection, but our own biology, biology and biological wiring and programming is working against us. And then you add the disruption of our world that is further working against us. And we're showing up guarded in self-protective mode, disconnected when what we need is to lean in and be collaborative and be curious and have learning agility and be adaptable to But everything in our human DNA is saying, don't think so. That reminds me of a quote from Sean Aker, who wrote The Happiness Advantage, where he talks from his research that the people who successfully navigate change are the ones who actually lean into their relationships. Whether that's asking for help, sharing that you're having an off day, comparing notes on, oh, my goodness, can you believe what happened? Whatever it is, but leaning into our relationships, which is actually the opposite. You've just made that point that many of us do, which is, oh, my God, it's just me. I must be broken. I can't deal. I can't even whatever. And so we lean back and it just furthers that divide. Mm hmm. So you mentioned faulty wiring. And in the book, you touch on seven faulty programs that we can have. So as I read it, I thought, I've got all seven. But I'm curious, from your perspective, as you were writing it, which is your default faulty program that rears its head? And what impact does that have on how you show up in the world? Yeah, well, Morag, I'm laughing because when we identified this from the data, I was like, holy crap, I think I have a little bit of all seven, no lie. For sure, like a nasty combination of four. We have yet to have anyone come through our data set that only is running one. So I would put it that way. But I was just going to focus you on what is the demoness of the demon all, the one faulty program to rule the others. Yes, my kryptonite or my Achilles heel is actually a combination. So I will say, and I talk about this in the book, that I have... for the most part, effectively upgraded my other faulty programs. And I say that because we have to have ongoing practices to kind of keep that upgrade at bay. And they rear their head, but it's like, oh, I can do a quick reset. It's like when your phone acts up or your computer acts up, you do a quick reset and you're back in action. But the two that are my ongoing kryptonite that go tandem for me is the overachiever and the martyr. And so with the overachiever it and parts of it are completely upgraded, but there's parts that aren't. So the overachiever is where we have a fundamental warped sense of our value proposition that we feel that our value is conditional upon our achievements, how much we get done, how much we produce. And so we're constantly trying to do more and more and more to feel like we add value. So it leads to overpacking our calendars, taking on way too much, you know, never having downtime, et cetera. And that is the death of me at many times now. But hand in hand is the martyr and the martyr fears dependency. And it can come from two places. It can come from a place of I don't want to be a burden and I don't want to appear selfish to other people. Or it's I feel like I cannot rely on other people because they're going to let me down. And in either case, we end up doing it ourself. We don't ask for help. We don't accept help. And it's like, nope, I'm just going to do it myself, do it myself and go off and be a Lone Ranger. And my wicked combination, when I get really stressed, I say I get into hyper productive, hyper independent, pain in the ass, get shit done mode. I take on way more than I can handle, but I don't want to let people down. So then I'm like trying to make it all work. And the people who pay the price besides my health and well-being are the people who are closest to me. they get the crappy leftover version of me while I'm trying to be everything to other people. And so I've done a lot of work to upgrade the perfectionist and the counterfeit and the people pleaser one, but the martyr and overachiever, I have posted notes all over my computer to be my reminder of, Do I actually have the capacity? What's the cost of taking this on? I'm reading them right now. I need constant reminders around me to keep that one at bay. It's going to be my ongoing life journey, I think. I really do. Well, I think for all of us listening, the listeners are going, me too, because we are taught hustle. It's at the core of the American dream. Work hard, get it done, never complain, just get it done. And as you say, it's the cascade effect that that happens that when you've got these seven faulty programs or four or three or six, it's the order in which they play out. And how do you break that spiral? So how does one break the spiral? What's the first step? Well, yeah. So what the, the very first step is one to recognize, like which one you might be running or which ones that, you know, that kind of sounds like me. And the first thing, it sounds really elementary, but is naming it because there's something about naming it, that that's my faulty program. It's not me. Right. And so it may, it moves us from being subject to it, to like seeing it in an objective way. Like that's fine. Yep. Name it then. So we've mentioned overachiever and we mentioned martyr. Yeah. So there's six, five. I can't do the math because I did funny hands. I have no idea what I'm doing here. Thumbs up. Yeah. So what are the seven? Let's just give everybody the titles and then they can dive into the self-assessment and the book in due course to find out or just ask your loved ones. They'll tell you. All right. So overachiever. The most common is called the counterfeit. So that's where we feel like we have to be something other than who we are and hide parts of ourselves and can't be authentic, et cetera. So that's that's the first one. Then we have the overachiever, which I already described. Then we have the perfectionist, which is pretty darn self-explanatory. But we hold we hold that failure at a very different level for ourselves. Like it's OK for other people to fail and be perfect, but not me. Right. No, no, no, no, no. I I'm held to a different standard. So that's also a sign when you're like, oh, it's OK for other people, but not me. That's a sign that there's a faulty program at play. The next one is people pleaser. And that's a fundamental fear of rejection. So that can show up in all kinds of ways, like from not speaking up to I'm not going to advocate for my needs to I'm just going to go along. It's anything where we fear rejection is at play. The people pleaser tendencies can keep can kick in. Then we have the martyr that I described, which is that fear of dependency and doing everything ourself. We also have an interesting program that we identify called the mime. And the mime looks a lot in practice or behaviorally, it looks a lot like the people pleaser. But the fundamental difference with the mime that we realize like, oh, is that mimes fear disharmony, where people pleasers fear rejection. Oh. So with time, it's like if there's discord in the room, they are either going to like tap out or they're going to jump in and try to keep the peace or stabilize the situation because it feels way too cringy for them. Again, there was probably fighting or whatever volatility in their in their growing up home. And now that feels really risky. And so they take it upon themselves of I have to be the one to stabilize. And then the last one, which is also probably fairly self-explanatory, is the control freak. And control freaks fear uncertainty. And a lot of times, while it comes across in a pain in the ass way, it's actually coming from a place of noble intent. There is an underlying sense that somehow I have been gifted with or I have a burden of ensuring things happen, quote unquote, the right way. And if I can just control situations, I can somehow prevent bad things from happening. So it's coming from this place. And so, and you can see how all of them then show up in behaviors that are so not helpful for us or other people, but they're just deeply, deeply wired. Okay. So just from those titles, people might be going, Ooh, I have that one and a dash of this one. And maybe who knows the first you said is awareness naming it. Yep. Then what do I do? Help. Yep. So you name it and then you go, OK, then this is what I call the origin and expression exercise. So you name it and say, OK, I know. Here we go again. Here's my overachiever and my martyr. Well, then you have to look at because these were formed in the first ten years of your life or so. So you have to go back. And this is not about trying to go back into past trauma or something. But can you see where that came from? And it could be as you made sense of your surroundings, as you observe things happening around you. that somehow you created this narrative that I got to get shit done. Well, I grew up in an overachieving family. Good grades were expected. Everybody had to be like first chair if they were in band or the best at everything. And it was just like expected. And if you got something less than an A, it was like, what's wrong with you? You got to study harder. okay, duh, that's where overachiever came from, right? Where the martyr came from is I also, being the youngest of five girls, I joke in a lighthearted way that my parents were kind of done being parents by the time they got to me. And so I was left alone a lot. It was like, let your sisters tell you, let your sisters take care of it. And when you're in a household that is that busy, it's just like, you have to fend for yourself. I started doing my laundry when I was seven years old. Like, And again, life skills, but it created this narrative of I'm on my own. Right. So you have to kind of go do I understand where this came from? Because here's the key. It's not just naming it. When you name it, you also have to realize, oh, hold on a second. I'm not ten years old anymore. Because what's happening is when they're hijacking us, we're not showing up as an adult. The adult version of us is in the backseat or in the trunk or maybe didn't even make it into the vehicle. Who's in the driver's seat is that. I use ten as a nice average number. Some say seven, some say fifteen, but I just say ten all throughout the book. The ten-year-old version of ourself is in the driver's seat. So it's name it and then say kind of literally out loud, I'm not ten years old anymore. Like, I do have people to help me or I don't have to control this or I'm not in a volatile household or whatever it might be. So you name it and you say, I'm not ten years old anymore. And then when I say expression of how it shows up today, we have to be very mindful of what I call the head trash. What is the head trash that goes along with that programming that tells you I can't rely on other people? I have to do it myself. I have to be perfect. I can't let people down. I can't fill in the blank. And then try on a handful of different narratives. Like, you know what? Other people get value from helping me. No one expects me to be perfect. I'm okay just as I am. It is not my burden to own someone else's response to stuff. Like, people are going to grow more if I support them through struggle than support them through struggle. So we try on a handful and you're not going to believe him right away. But what you do is in the moment, then you start to go, OK, I can see it happening. I'm going to name the program. I'm going to remind myself I'm not ten years old anymore. And then I'm going to try one of the replacement narratives for the head trash that that program created. elicits and I've got to start to realize that what people what what type of situations activate that programming because it's probably not an all the time thing it's going to be certain people that probably bring you back to that ten-year-old self and so it's getting you out of being hijacked by this autopilot because that's how our brains are where that ten-year-old is in the driver's seat and going wait a second it is you know I am now fill in the blank I'm a thirty forty fifty sixty year old adult And that is long past. And I'm going to try on a different narrative. And I don't have to believe that just because I have that thought. So you start getting really intentional rather than reactive to all the crap going on in your head. I love that intentional, not reactive. It's almost like I was picturing is taking a breath in the moment, especially those high stake moments. And it provides an element of self-control because I took a breath versus just reacting, but also choice. How do I want to show up in this moment? Or how do I want you to feel? What's most important in terms of moving forward, being right or making the right decision for the business, the team, the family, whatever it might be? Yeah, like being liked or being effective, being right or having a successful outcome, doing everything yourself or going further faster by bringing people along. Like it's the, you know, which is more important, the one that feels safe or the one that leads to connection, growth, effectiveness, et cetera. And we have to call it out and name it for sure. So it's interesting because as you move in section three of the book into the, okay, so what are you going to do with this? You talk about the difference between the inner game and the outer game. So how does that play out? So this comes from the amazing work from Bob Anderson and Bill Adams from the Leadership Circle and And also piggybacked with some work out of Harvard from Bob Keegan and Lisa Leahy. Like they're just amazing people who've influenced me greatly and I've been able to train with them. And so I'm big about attribution. It's super important. But anyway, so basically they refer to it as the inner game and outer game of leadership. So the inner game is, I just call it the messy humanness. It is our level of self-awareness, our emotional intelligence, our identity, our value, our all of our inner narrative, all of those things. And the outer game are the practices, the behavior, the skills, the knowledge. And what you think about is most people, we tend to jump to the outer game. We're going to do a communication training or prioritization or goal setting, these very tactical aspects because they're tangible because we can see them, touch them, feel them where they're concrete and we can check the box, so to speak. But they talk about the inner stuff is they use the metaphor of our inner operating system. And so if you think about like, like Morag, if you were trying to run Microsoft three sixty five on your computer and your computer was still running the operating system of Windows XP, what is going to happen? It's not going to be pretty. No, it's going to crash. It's not going to work. It's not going to have the spell check features or like your phone. I have an iPhone. It doesn't matter what kind of phone you have, but I want to say the latest software update was like eighteen point six or something like that. Well, if you're trying to run your phone on the iOS operating system of four point three. Apps aren't going to work. So we have to think of ourselves in the same way. That inner operating system is all of that messy programming, narrative, emotions, the stuff that makes us a complicated human being. And if we don't upgrade that first, then all of that outer game work How many people do you know have gone to multiple communication trainings or courageous feedback conversation trainings and they're still not using the tools? Or they've gone to multiple workshops and stuff on how to have better boundaries or how to better prioritize and manage your calendar, yet they're still not using those tools because the operating system can't support it. So we have to upgrade. We have to tend to the inner work and then really hone and refine the outer game. They both are critical, but we go about them backwards because we don't want to touch the messy stuff that is vulnerable humanness. And we wonder why we spin our wheels and we don't get very far. So in the book, you provide plenty of resources in terms of ideas and tactics that can be done organizationally with the team. And as you pointed out personally, and then you have something called the three by three by three, three, three, three challenge. yeah oh look at that is it oh yeah yes so so and I can't take credit for this so one of the tools in our toolbox is um I am one of the certified trainers for organization called showing up that is gen mars work and this has been super impactful for me personally and it's just it's so simple so the three by three by three challenge is basically about building our muscle to start seeing other people and connecting on a human level and fostering that sense of mattering or fostering that sense of significance And so she's like, take three minutes a day. And you literally write down a list of who are the people that are in your circle of support that care about you or that might check in on you from time to time, even if you haven't talked to them for a while. You're kind of listing out. It could be work life, personal life. You know what? They're people that matter to you. and then what you do is you just so start with that list and then you take three minutes a day and just go you know what I'm gonna reach out I'm gonna reach out to them and it could be a text just to say hey thinking about you um hey I know that you started I had a friend I know you started a new job today I had a friend who retired last week so remembering those milestones of life and just intentionally reaching out to say I'm thinking about you they're going through a tough time how was today it might be you know um just showing up like helping out with something or showing up, you know, sending something to their house, never saying, let me know if you need anything. That is the most unsupportive thing you could ever say to somebody. And they feel worse than have you said nothing at all, but you basically find a way that how do you show up for people? And you do that for a three month period. And you will find that your own sense of wellbeing, as well as the strength of your relationships will dramatically increases. And so I just kind of put a note on my calendar of like, take three minutes today and check in on people. And I literally, it sounds dumb, but I am so driven by my calendar that I will put so-and-so's first day at the job, so-and-so's retirement day, so-and-so's anniversary of their parents' death or whatever it is. They're key things I want to make sure that I remember. And I'm not going to remember if they're not in my calendar. I will miss that. I just will. I do exactly the same. And it's not cheating to use techniques like this to keep things systemized. So that is powerful. The guarantee, like three minutes a day, that's all it takes. Send the text. I was thinking of you. Just slow down enough. And the space between the work is where we start to nurture connection. Mm hmm. So on that note then, Rosie, what's the message or the key message or messages that you hope that listeners and viewers of this episode take away from our conversation? Well, one, just I want to normalize the messiness of being human. It doesn't matter how much work you've done on yourself. It doesn't matter what kind of socioeconomic status you were born in. I mean, nothing matters. We are human beings and we are messy and we have this faulty programming. I don't care who you see out on TV or social media or whatever. They're a human being who has their own head trash. I don't care if they're CEO of a billion dollar company. Coach some of those. They have their own head trash. it's really normalizing this messiness of being human, that we are complicated creatures. And that a lot of what you see out there is filtered. It's probably not real. And that don't make up a narrative about people that, you know, that makes you feel crummy because it's a made up story anyway. So one, just recognize that being human is messy. We all have this head trash. It's a shared human experience. So don't get into this. It's just me, no one else. Nope, that's not true. So that's the one thing I want. I want to just normalize that for people so that that part of the head trash can hopefully go away. The second thing is that We make sense of our experiences by creating a narrative and creating a story. It's how the human brain works. And we have to recognize that in the absence of data, in the absence of information, our brains will automatically fill in the space with story. And usually that story magnifies our fears, worries, and it stems from that head trash. So it's really foolish to lose in our own fantasy. So if we're going to make up a story anyway, right, we can own that it's a story and start saying, okay, this is the story I'm telling myself. This is the story I'm telling myself. Is it still true today? Is it serving me well? Or is the story that I'm holding on to about this person, this situation, whatever it is, preventing me from having the impact that I desire? If we just do that and go, as a human being, I'm making up a story. It's not fact. How could I check that story out or fact check it? Is it serving me and other people well? And if not, what's the story I could replace it with? If we just start those deliberate practices, we would be able to squash some of the self-protective reactivity, defensiveness, disconnection that is just going on everywhere, not because people are waking up intentionally trying to be a butthead, but because their humanity is getting the best of them, because this disruptive world is activating those self-protective mechanisms left and right, and we don't realize it's happening. Such powerful, powerful insights. So where can listeners and watchers, viewers, learn more about you and the work and your research? Well, there's a few places. So one, follow me on LinkedIn. I'm on there, post stuff all the time. Instagram and Facebook, Dr. Rosie Ward, same with YouTube. But I would say if you want to learn more about the work we're doing, my company website is salveopartners.com. We actually have a white paper that has the results of our study where this all came from. you know, information on the book, various assessments there. You can go over to drroseward.com. I have blogs and other stuff there. My podcast is over there. So they link to each other and they intersect with one another. But I just hope that people can leverage the tools and start having conversations within their teams and organizations, but also with each other to just say, we're humans, we're trying to navigate this world. And can we I don't know, set down our crap for a little bit and just put the ten-year-old version of ourself in the backseat and let the kick-ass adult version get into the driver's seat for a while. Oh, my God. Those are words to end of. Can we put down our crap for a minute, put the ten-year-old in the back of this car and kick-ass adult in the front? Rosie, thank you for joining me here on People First. We truly are better together. I appreciate the universe bringing us together and look forward to many future collaborations. Me too. This was so fun. Thank you, my friend.