Leadership Book Club: Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud

[00:00:00] Welcome

[00:00:06] to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator. And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

[00:00:23] Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books and interview inspiring guests. Whether you're a seasoned executive, or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

[00:00:46] Kristen: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen,

[00:00:51] Mike: I'm Mike.

[00:00:52] Kristen: and today is our very first book club episode, Leadership Book Club or LBC. Not to be confused with Long Beach, California, or other potential acronyms for LBC.

[00:01:07] Mike: Which I now know is an acronym for Long Beach City? Yes. Or California. Okay.

[00:01:13] Long Beach City. All right.

[00:01:15] Kristen: Yes. Some Southern California knowledge being given to Mike here. But anyway, so today we are talking about the book Boundaries for Leaders: Results, Relationships, and Being Ridiculously in Charge, which is by Dr. Henry Cloud. And I know for both of us, this is a book we've read previously and really enjoyed.

[00:01:41] Mike, what was your impression when you did this reread for this episode?

[00:01:47] Mike: Well, I don't know that my impression was different than the first time. I have used the concepts in this book as one of my, uh, like first principles of leadership. If I give people leadership books to read, I usually start them with one of three books.

[00:02:03] And this is, one of the main ones. I think it's, It's fabulous. I mean, there's a lot of psychology being brought into this, organizational psychology, personal psychology, we're going to get into, you know, the inner judge that you talk about a lot. And, you know, with the three Ps, there's just so much psychology and, it kind of breaks it down.

[00:02:28] I found it a very, very practical way to evaluate how you are leading a team and the kind of culture vibe energy and direction that you're creating. And as it kind of says in the title. You know, when you're the leader, you are ridiculously in charge. You get what you create and what you allow. And um, yeah, I love this book.

[00:02:52] I can't wait to talk about it. 

[00:02:53] Kristen: Awesome. Yeah. And I, I agree. I'm a big fan of this book. I think it gives a really good overview.

[00:03:00] There is a, a lot of neuroscience, which I am a big fan of. And it's funny because I think when I originally, from the title, what I thought this book would be is more about like setting boundaries in terms of your time and energy. And other things that I thought it would be, but it's actually, I think it's a really good introductory book to how to lead teams. And we'll get into more of the specifics shortly.

[00:03:29] Mike: I love that actually, the self boundaries, I think his, his whole first kind of repertoire of books was about different kinds of boundaries and definitely as a leader, you have to set very strong boundaries for yourself, very firm boundaries, or you're going to, you're going to get washed downstream, trying to manage goals and manage other people because you will just get dragged around for things that seem very urgent, but don't actually like leverage the outcomes you're looking for for your organization

[00:04:03] Kristen: Yep, absolutely. And just to give a quick background on this book and the author before we dive into the chapters, Dr. Henry Cloud is a psychologist and a leadership consultant. He's very, very prolific author. I think he's, he's written over 45 books and he's, most known, I think, for co authoring the original book called Boundaries, which was originally published in 1992 and had many other versions that followed, like Boundaries in Marriage, for Dating, etc.

[00:04:39] And many of his books, including I think the original Boundaries book, I have not read it, but many of them have kind of like a Christian influence lens to it, but it's worth noting this book is secular and just very focused on leadership in general. And Boundaries for Leaders was published in 2013, and I think has gotten some good traction from, from that. So just a quick overview. 

[00:05:06] So let's dive into chapter one, which I think really gets into the, the whole of what this book is saying, which he literally says this book is about what leaders need to do in order for people to accomplish a vision. And, He talks about the fact that so many leaders will come up with a vision, but they don't maintain focus with it.

[00:05:31] And really the, the whole point of this, he calls it the people are the plan, is that it's not just coming up with a plan, it's actually doing what is needed to get people to execute it, to empower them, to do the right things in the right ways at the right times. And he, he names a lot of examples in here of common issues that, indicate there's a disconnect.

[00:05:58] There's like 20 plus of them, but a few resonated with me, like, people sound like victims of the economy, the market, or someone else's actions.

[00:06:09] There's, there's a lot of that I have seen in the workplace. The culture is tolerating mediocrity or even poor performance. Even though people have bosses and there's performance reviews accountability is not being exercised and just general morale is not where you need it to be. And basically what he has to say here is that when, when leaders lead in ways that people's brains can follow, good results follow, which I think is really important.

[00:06:44] Mike: Yeah. I love that. Can we go back to where you talk about this book being really based on neuroscience?

[00:06:50] Because I think that's fascinating. Throughout this book, he's talking about the way you as a leader behave, the way your tone is, the way you present yourself, the way you set boundaries does a certain thing to people's brains either positive or negative that will allow their executive functions to either flourish, or you will put people in you know a fight or flight type response state and I think that's really prevalent.

[00:07:18] He, he talks at some point, not in the beginning, but later on in the book where you as a leader are experienced by people as every boss they've ever had and every authority figure they've ever had .

[00:07:31] Kristen: Yeah, for sure.

[00:07:33] I think that's a good, that's a good take on it. And so in chapter two, he really gets into this concept of being ridiculously in charge. And he defines it as knowing that whatever culture you get, you're either building it or allowing it.

[00:07:51] So basically you are, you are fully in charge of the vision, the people you invite into it. What the goals and purposes are going to be, what behavior is going to be allowed, and what isn't, and it really comes down to that fundamental boundaries are made up of, one, what you create, and two, what you allow.

[00:08:10] And as a leader, you will always get a combination of these two things. And I think this is so important because I, I see this really often with clients who are dealing with a difficult situation, like whether to remove somebody from their team who is maybe not meeting the expectations of the culture but do their job pretty well otherwise.

[00:08:39] And that decision of do you let this person go, even if they're like a reasonable performer. And I think what is really important to consider in those situations is people are watching what you tolerate, like what you allow.

[00:08:55] Mike: They're watching what you tolerate.

[00:08:56] Kristen: Yeah, what you allow is just as, if not more important than what you're talking about, what you're, you're really creating.

[00:09:02] And people often forget that.

[00:09:04] Mike: So my personal experience, you know, as a leader, I think from the beginning I was pretty good at setting a vision and driving action forward. I'm very, uh, goal and task oriented. And I, you know, we would teach the skills necessary to accomplish a mission, but I did not do a good job setting the negative side of the boundary. I I firmly believe that the only real discipline is self discipline. Any discipline from the outside is really temporary. It requires some type of force or cajoling or you know. So I I was kind of hands off and I would tolerate behavior that was contrary to the success of whatever organization I was working at the time.

[00:09:52] And so you recommended this book to me after I think we started dating like very early on and I read this book while I was working at my hotel in downtown San Francisco, very, very busy hotel. And I went from being a general manager to being assistant general manager.

[00:10:09] So I went from being, you know, the captain of the boat and trying to create a certain kind of culture to having to follow someone else's. But what I found with my GM at the time, Keno. He just naturally does a lot of this. I don't think he's ever read a leadership book, uh, but he's a fantastic leader and he gets really good results.

[00:10:29] And he was super interesting to me because he's such a nice guy and he's easygoing and he's happy and he's cheerful. And he doesn't fit the archetypical, you know, uh, leadership presence model, but one of the many things that I noticed he was doing very well is he sets boundaries. And he was especially good at setting the not allowed boundary.

[00:10:55] And my example with that is, You know, we were working in a hotel that had, was trying to recover from COVID, right? And COVID hit San Francisco particularly hard. The industry's here and the, the tourism industry has been one of the slowest to recover in the country. So we're, we're dealing with the hotel that's kind of off the chain, you know. And what I observed is, you know, customer service has never been easy, but it definitely got harder after the pandemic because people's expectations were not aligned with reality.

[00:11:28] The big brands are selling one thing and the reality on the ground was something entirely different. In the best of times, customer service is challenging. But after COVID, it got very hard. People expected daily housekeeping, they expected full service and we were just struggling to turn rooms over. So what was the boundary that Keno was great at setting?

[00:11:47] He didn't allow anyone to speak negatively about guests, no matter how difficult they were. And we had so many problems in that hotel. We had ACs that for the most part were non functional. They would go into some power cycling mode where the ac would shut off and the vents would just keep flipping back and forth. And can you imagine like a 200 room hotel that only like maybe half of the acs, my wife is making an aghast face. Yeah, it's horrifying and these people are calling us and they're yelling out at the front desk, you know And they're paying two three hundred dollars a night.

[00:12:22] You expect that to work, right? But it's not super in our control. It was a high tech manufacturing problem of the brains of these, but you, you could sort of fix it. You could run upstairs, you could turn it off. You could turn it back on again. You could hard reset. And then he had to flip the vents back and forth and then it would work for a couple hours.

[00:12:42] And I was the AGM and I didn't really complain the way other people did, but Keno wouldn't allow that at all. Anytime you said anything like, Oh, this person's so difficult. He would say, what have you done? To fix their problem. What have you done to make them happy? And he would always frame it that way.

[00:13:00] The framework was always of all the tools that you have at your disposal. What have you done to make this person happy? And the main tool at your disposal is your sincerity and your willingness to extend yourself and let people inconvenience you. You know, good service is a little bit saying like, I don't care what happens.

[00:13:17] I'm going to allow you to totally inconvenience me, you know, for whatever period that I'm working for. Our goal was to really have the highest service scores in our company. And. He just kept setting that boundary. It was like a goalie.

[00:13:32] Anytime you went to him to complain about a guest, he was going to turn it around and say, what did you do? The things that are in your control to fix it. And I know, uh, in the book, he talks about that later, like focusing people on their sphere of control and eventually people stop complaining because you knew Keno was going to give you like a 10 minute lecture.

[00:13:51] About like taking care of people and like, you know, and, and it, it really works. We had the highest service scores out of the 70 hotels in our company. And I was like, that's why he's so successful. He sets these boundaries and he's super consistent about it. It was fascinating to watch someone who was very natural at it and

[00:14:11] he didn't have to yell. He didn't have to threaten. He didn't write people up. He just, he's going to talk to you until, until you gave in. As I'm reading the book, I'm watching him do this. And I'm just like, this is, this is good stuff. You know, you don't have to get excited. You don't have to get stressed out yourself.

[00:14:29] You don't have to get anxious or frustrated, you just keep setting the boundary and anytime anybody bounces up against that boundary, you just, you kick them back in the field. So, yeah,

[00:14:41] Kristen: No, I think that's a really good example. It actually encompasses a lot of things that are covered in this book. 

[00:14:47] Mike: You talked about Dr. Henry Cloud having a lot of Christian influence in his writings. When you think about it, religions are really just boundaries for behavior. Of what's expected and what's not allowed and what you're always supposed to remember. And culture is just boundaries.

[00:15:05] What do we allow? What do we inhibit? What do we remember?

[00:15:08] Kristen: That's a little profound.

[00:15:11] Mike: I think when you strip things down into very basic, like, what are they at their core? Right culture is a boundary. It's what do we expect of people? What do we allow from people? Christianity is very obvious like thou shalt not kill.

[00:15:27] Here's here's a do not allow boundary. Honor thy mother and father. Not only in allow, but keep it in your working memory how much you're supposed to respect them every day. That's it. That's culture. That's religion. It's all boundaries. So I I you asked me how my experience with this book. My original experience with this book is I found it very very profound to to really guide what I do both at work and in kind of in my own life. 

[00:15:55] Kristen: That's awesome. I'm also a little bit proud of myself for recommending it to you at the right time.

[00:16:00] Mike: right You, you, you, yes, you're awesome. We know this.

[00:16:04] discussed I've discussed this at length.

[00:16:06] You can read my 35 page paper. Why Kristen is awesome on love and leadership. com. Do we own that domain?

[00:16:14] Kristen: We own loveandleadershippod. com.

[00:16:17] Mike: Okay. All right. I'll post it there then. All right.

[00:16:20] Kristen: Anyway, um, so. Um, getting back kind of into when he's talking about like, what, what kind of boundaries leaders set, he really talks about, there's like seven key areas that leaders are defining boundaries in.

[00:16:36] It's around the vision, focus, attention activities that create forward movement, the emotional climate, the unity and connectedness of the people, basically, the thinking and beliefs of the organization. The amount and kinds of control and empowerment that individuals have the performance and development of teams and direct reports and self leadership, the leadership of oneself.

[00:17:08] So he defines these are seven areas to think about. And he he has a quote I think really exemplifies what you were talking about with Keno's leadership, where he says "strong leaders set up the kind of culture and structures that will deal with negative behavior quickly and effectively so that it never takes root. If you truly build a high performance culture, for example, it will not allow weak performance or non performance to take hold. Instead, the culture responds by either fixing it or removing the source. All of that flows out of the boundaries established by the leader.

[00:17:45] Mike: So I, I assume that you can hear that in the background. Our cat has entered the chat. One of our cats with her LoJak.

[00:17:55] Kristen: Yeah, I feel like this is worth a brief tangent. Sorry. Sorry, listeners. It's so

[00:17:59] Mike: worth a brief tangent. So one of our cats is a food monster and she will eat all of our other cat's food.

[00:18:07] So we had to get this RFID controlled cat feeder that RFID tag, which is enormous around her neck. I'm a little worried about her posture with the weight of it, but whatever, it's her own fault. Uh, and. So anytime she goes within like three feet of the feeder, the door shuts and she does it maybe 10 times a day.

[00:18:33] She just, she hasn't gotten food out of there, but she knows it's there. So she won't quit. Unfortunately, this is radio and she has definitely a TV face. Uh, she's so pretty. Hi Beezus. Hi baby.

[00:18:47] Kristen: We're a little obsessed with our cats. A little

[00:18:49] Mike: bit obsessed with the cats.

[00:18:50] Kristen: as well know

[00:18:51] Mike: as well know that. They're

[00:18:53] Kristen: Our allies. I

[00:18:54] Mike: allies. Paul, Paul, Paul M. M. Cooper. Oh, there it is again. Beezus, we're recording. Beezus. No. Beezus, no. She, she, she doesn't listen.

[00:19:06] Kristen: Now, she's, she's a typical cat.

[00:19:08] Mike: I, back to this. I, I love this. I love this. Strong leaders set up the kind of culture and structures that will deal with negative behavior before it takes root, right?

[00:19:20] You don't allow negativity to enter the chat. You don't allow learned helplessness because there's always something you can do. And if you keep, you know, like a goalie, keep pushing people back into the field of play with a focus on what's the actual goal. And you have to define that. We didn't mention it yet, but , it is so important to be incredibly specific with your goals. And not just say oh we want to have good service scores. No, I want to have the best service scores in our company or I want to break 80% occupancy for the next quarter and really get super specific about your goals and then you can reverse engineer the behaviors that will both drive you and your team toward those goals and the behaviors and attitudes that will uh, Beezus is here. Hi Beezus.

[00:20:14] I wish we had I wish we were on camera. You're so pretty

[00:20:17] Kristen: At some point we'll add video

[00:20:18] Mike: need we need

[00:20:19] Kristen: to our recording

[00:20:20] Mike: need to demonstrate her

[00:20:21] Kristen: you can see how she wants to jump on the table with all of our podcast equipment and she's, oh my gosh.

[00:20:28] Mike: Hi baby Oh,

[00:20:31] Kristen: Podcasting with cats.

[00:20:33] Mike: Podcasting with cats.

[00:20:34] You cannot set boundaries for cats.

[00:20:36] Kristen: There's really, it's true.

[00:20:37] Mike: It's very challenging to set a boundary for a cat.

[00:20:40] Kristen: Yeah, they're, they kind of do whatever they

[00:20:42] Mike: of do whatever they want.

[00:20:43] Kristen: Yep. But yeah, I think that that leads well into the next chapter too, where he's talking about like, what does it actually mean to lead so that brains can work? And the brain's three executive functions, which are attention, so like the ability to focus on relevant stimuli and block out what isn't relevant. Inhibition, which is the ability to not do certain actions that could be distracting, irrelevant, or destructive. And then working memory, which is the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning, decision making, and taking future actions.

[00:21:25] And he gives an example to explain this of driving a car to a grocery store. And for attention when you're doing that, you're paying attention to things like the speed of the car, where the car in front of you is, oncoming traffic, what lane you're in, et cetera. You're also at the same time inhibiting what isn't helpful.

[00:21:46] So hopefully you're not texting, for example, or trying to watch a YouTube video while you're driving because that could really get in the way of your ability to drive. , And then for working memory, you're remembering where you are within the drive. So you know what point you're at between the starting point and the ending point. You're paying attention to what turns you've made and what turns are coming up. I think that's a good way to explain this.

[00:22:15] He summarizes it, so great leaders have structures, disciplines, and practices to make sure their people are attending to what is most important, have processes to inhibit what's disruptive, irrelevant, or toxic, and keep what is important alive and constantly remembered in the flow of progress.

[00:22:38] The next area he talks about is emotional climate. And, the fact that the brain cannot work when it's drowning in stress hormones. What I really like in here is that he, he talks about how important it is as a leader, and you, you mentioned this earlier, Mike, to be aware that your position carries a lot of weight, like there's a lot of psychological and emotional weight that it carries and I, I have this with coaching clients a lot where they don't see themselves as a senior of a leader that they are, but just by being in that position, the things that they do are going to be much more observed, they're going to have a lot more weight, and they also have the ability to have more of an emotional impact for other people because of that.

[00:23:31] Mike: I agree with all of that. And he talks about unhealthy fear and healthy fear. And he talks about there is stress necessary for success and stress necessary for adaptation.

[00:23:44] You think about like working out, okay, I want to do some curls and, you know, get the guns going, but if you do too much weight. A, you won't even be able to do it, or you will do it with such poor technique that you won't actually affect hypertrophy or, or strength gain, or you will use a weight that provides a modicum amount of stress, the right amount of stress, and you will get stronger and then you will be able to add more weight to that and, you know, or more reps or more density.

[00:24:14] But good fear is a, is a thing like a recognition of positive and negative outcomes. So if we can, as an organization, as a team, if we can attain this goal, we all win.

[00:24:25] And if we don't, we're all going to get fired because ultimately we're employed based on our ability to affect success of a, of whatever our position is. 

[00:24:39] So how to generate the good kind of focus where people are focused on the attainment of the goal rather than the lizard brain reflex where we go into fight or flight. Um, he provides a lot of step by step of how to create those things.

[00:24:56] Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I really like the, he talks about this good stress performance curve where he points out that. At first, as, as stress increases, performance goes up until a certain point, and then it starts to reverse, where people eventually just shut down and cannot perform. It is really good to consider, what is the good stress, but at what point is it destructive fear and destructive stress?

[00:25:26] Mike: I think that's a, a huge question nowadays, you know.

[00:25:30] Stress management. There's another book I want us to read, uh, The Upside of Stress. And it talks about post traumatic stress growth and how to like actually utilize stress to move forward. And a lot of what we experienced as stress or even the fight or flight response is a biological response and recognizing it as such will kind of allow you to transmute it into something useful and not crippling.

[00:25:56] Kristen: And he does give some things that cause destructive fear. So like paying attention to your tone, like hard on the issue, soft on the person. And lack of structure is something that will create destructive fear and threat of what he calls relational consequences.

[00:26:15] So basically fear of having the person in authority be angry at you, shame, guilt, withdrawal of support. Basically, I think it really comes down to, and this is what I definitely found as a leader as well, people need to know that you have their back. And that even if they make mistakes. You're still going to have their back, you still are going to look out for their best interests, and they're not going to be punished, particularly on these emotional levels, for the things that they do wrong.

[00:26:49] Mike: I mean, I've suffered from this where I felt like if I didn't perform perfectly and not good, but perfectly that I was useless or worthless, or I'd be thrown away or fired or cast away. And that's really not how I lead, but I will still have that, that fear. That's not healthy and it's not healthy for your organization.

[00:27:11] You want people to feel safe, empowered, guided. People see you as the leader before they see who you are, you know, and I, I definitely don't see myself as a senior executive or senior leader or anything like that. So I have had to really consciously remember that everything I say and the way I look at people and the jokes I tell or whatever is perceived in a different way than the way I'm perceiving it because I just see us as two people.

[00:27:45] Kristen: Yep.

[00:27:46] Mike: They see me as the boss and I don't see myself that way. So he talks about it later. I'm sorry. I'm going to jump around. He talks about developing the observing ego, which I think is the most important quality a leader can develop. It's like, who am I? How do I behave? How do people perceive me? And what about that is either helping or blocking what I'm trying to accomplish? Yeah,

[00:28:20] Kristen: I think that's fundamentally emotional intelligence, right? Like the foundation of, which we'll, we'll definitely do an episode on what emotional intelligence is early on, but fundamentally, The first thing that has to be present is awareness, and that's awareness of both what's happening inside of you, your own emotions, your own reactions to things, your own behavior, and also awareness of others, which includes perceiving how others may be perceiving you, as well as what's going on with them and their perspective and so forth.

[00:28:57] So I think that that really is the root of this.

[00:29:00] Mike: heard I think I heard Jocko on his podcast at one point talk about the number one thing that would indicate to him as a teacher of SEALs at some point, he was like the training instructor, was whether your version of yourself and the way people perceived you were the same.

[00:29:20] So it didn't matter If you thought you were a jerk and everybody thought you were a jerk, okay, it lined up, you know, that was good. But if you thought you were a nice guy and everybody else thought you were a jerk, uh, it's not going to go well. Right, because you don't perceive yourself correctly, you are not aware of how everyone else is looking at you or how you're coming off. And he has a few really cool examples of himself in that book how he was unwittingly putting his team into fight or flight and he was just absolutely shocked because he had no idea that they felt this way or that he was coming off as like an angry, volatile person. And probably in like a personal life he was not, but people are very sensitive to the facial expressions, the emotions, the, the way your boss says good morning to you.

[00:30:13] It really affects your day. Like really, is he mad at me? Did I mess up? Uh, what's wrong? Like he wasn't nice to me and he's probably not really thinking about you. He's thinking about like the sales call that he's got to be on with the you know, the shareholder like he's not you didn't register but the way he said that to you. You're now about to have a fight or flight response to the day.

[00:30:35] Kristen: Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it's like, think about before you put a just a quick chat one on one for the next day on your employee's calendar with no context.

[00:30:46] Mike: Yeah,

[00:30:47] Kristen: Think about like how that's going to be perceived if it's not literally you laying them off or whatever. Um, but yeah, things like that really, really do make a difference.

[00:30:56] Mike: Well, and Keno was so, go back to Keno, Keno, I learned so much from this guy, he is going to come up, hopefully he'll be a guest, uh, but he's going to come up a lot. He was just really, I mean, he was hard on me as his, as his like executive officer, but not on anybody else.

[00:31:13] Uh, but even with me, he would smooth it, like whatever he told me, he would smooth everything over. He's like, I know you've got this, I'm not worried about you at all. I know you're going to do it. And he would just use these boundaries, you know, where he pushed me to attend to something and not let me get negative or like doubt myself.

[00:31:29] And he really turned me from someone that was like a student of leadership into an actual leader. You know, I, I very much had to monitor my emotions and my tone because we were, we were struggling for a long time. And if I came to work and I had a dour countenance or I was stressed out that that's not going to help.

[00:31:55] So I, I was like, okay, I, I have to separate the personal part of me, which is sardonic and, uh, curmudgeonly and, and, you know, sarcastic to the person that I needed to be to drive the results that we wanted, which was very positive and upbeat, which is not my inherent personality. Right. But I, I got that from him and I got that from this book.

[00:32:20] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:32:21] I do want to talk about chapter five, which is power through connection. Cause there's a couple of things in there that I found really important.

[00:32:27] Mike: So good.

[00:32:28] Kristen: Yeah, it's really good. And his first like fundamental point with it is that relationships reduce stress and like our brains need positive relationships in order to grow and function well.

[00:32:41] And he cited a couple of studies. One of them was a study with monkeys where the, the first thing they do, the monkey is alone in a cage and then they expose him to loud noises and flashing lights and basically terrify the poor monkey.

[00:32:58] Mike: We don't approve of animal experimentation.

[00:33:01] Kristen: yeah. It's just for the record, but, um.

[00:33:03] Mike: The Love and Leadership podcast is

[00:33:05] Kristen: Yes. Yes. And they were measuring their level of stress hormones in the brain each time.

[00:33:11] And his stress hormones were very high when it was just him. And then they did the same exact thing, but they just put another monkey in the cage with him and his stress hormones were cut in half. Which is pretty powerful. And then kind of similarly, like they've done brain scans on children who lacked bonding experiences with their parents.

[00:33:36] And the brain scans just show black spots where neural pathways should have formed. 

[00:33:43] Mike: That's in the upside of stress to their like everyone knows fight and flight, but there's other stress responses and one of them is tend and befriend.

[00:33:52] And I started to notice that again at the hotel I would get super stressed out and I would just sit down and talk to my awesome front office manager and I wouldn't talk to her about the problem or anything like that. I would just like talk to her and feel like we were on the same team and there was like a bonding moment.

[00:34:08] Like, Hey, we're in this together. I'm not alone. 

[00:34:11] Kristen: Yep.

[00:34:11] Mike: Yeah. Tend and befriend.

[00:34:13] Kristen: to Yeah, and the other thing that I think is really important to notice. He talks about like, how do you, how do you form relationships and both quality and quantity matter. And what I really got from that is like, there's no shortcuts. Cause I've, I've seen so many times at companies where it's like, Oh, morale is low.

[00:34:33] Let's, let's do a team building event. Let's have a morale event. Let's take everybody to happy hour.

[00:34:38] Mike: Trust falls.

[00:34:39] Kristen: Yeah. 

[00:34:39] I've never actually done that at a company. 

[00:34:41] No., we can't do those anymore.

[00:34:43] Yeah. But.

[00:34:44] Mike: Axe throwing..

[00:34:46] Kristen: I actually have done axe throwing

[00:34:48] Mike: think we can't do that anymore either.

[00:34:50] Kristen: That's, that's

[00:34:51] Mike: Have you done an escape room?

[00:34:53] Kristen: um, I don't think so,

[00:34:56] Mike: But

[00:34:57] Kristen: that's a common one.

[00:34:58] Mike: Paintball.

[00:34:59] I've

[00:35:00] Kristen: No, but it was discussed.

[00:35:02] I've done a lot of team building events. I worked in tech. There was a lot

[00:35:05] Mike: a lot of, a lot of off sites,

[00:35:07] Kristen: Yeah. A lot of offsites, but yeah,

[00:35:11] Mike: We can't shut down, that's the, that's where my industries are different. Service industry. Hotel is 24/7. You can't ever leave the hotel unstaffed.

[00:35:23] You always has to be one or two people at the front desk. There always has to be like a man. It's hard to get everybody to have the same block of free time. It's really hard. It's it's even when you do a party, it's like, how do I get the night auditors who are vampires to show up for a 3pm party? Like they're asleep, man, you know?

[00:35:43] Yeah. But

[00:35:45] Kristen: I think that's, that's an important thing to note is quality and quantity and frequency over a period of time is ultimately what builds those relationships.

[00:35:56] Mike: Oh I love that too. This was earlier probably in a chapter, but I'm going to jump around. Uh, which is our song by the way.

[00:36:02] Kristen: our song, by the way, you should

[00:36:05] Mike: You should insert Jump Around here, like a little, like just a few notes.

[00:36:10] Kristen: Just enough that we won't get sued.

[00:36:19] Mike: enough that we won't get sued, but I'm not, I mean, house of pain has not been, uh, is that still copy? I don't know, but

[00:36:26] Kristen: Oh, that is definitely still copyrighted.

[00:36:28] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:36:30] Mike: Hmm. What were we just talking about? Well,

[00:36:34] Kristen: kind of go in and maybe this will spark it for you, but he also just kind of talks about he gives like 10 ingredients for connection and unity, but a few of the ones that I noted from that. Like coming together around a shared purpose or goal, I think is a very strong theme throughout this, but also like mutual awareness of what's happening with each other and in the organization.

[00:36:57] So like, feeling like they're in the loop and. I, I talk about this a lot as the calling out the elephant in the room, like when something is really obvious and everybody's thinking it. You need to acknowledge it, otherwise it just creates this tension that gets in the way of everything else.

[00:37:15] Mike: I mean, that's a boundary you create. Like, Hey, we're not gonna leave unresolved problems below the surface, we're gonna confer. That's a, that's literally an inhibiting boundary or attending boundary. Hey, when there's conflict, we're gonna. We're going to attend to it right away. I, I remembered what I was thinking about. Back to neuroscience, attending to the same thing over and over again, actually grooves new neural pathways in the brain.

[00:37:40] So every day when we do our standup, we groove the same couple of concepts, you know, we'll, we'll get into other books, but when I do my standup in the morning, the first thing everyone does is tell the group a win that they had yesterday. It can be a positive thing from your personal life or it can be a win from work and I don't even have to ask them to do it anymore.

[00:38:03] Like I, we show up, we stand in the circle and the first person goes, okay, my win from yesterday. And you know, we get a lot of great stuff. Sometimes it's, I closed a sale and a lot of times it's like, Oh, my sister came from the Philippines and we had dinner and you get people thinking very positively.

[00:38:22] So if you keep attending to the same subject over and over and over and over again, the brain will develop pathways where that happens naturally.

[00:38:30] And it's something you told me that leaders have to communicate a vision, which I thought I was doing. And I was doing at the beginning of the year and I thought that was enough and you're like, no You have to do it 65 times a day and I remember Keno doing that like he would just keep saying the same things over again. Focus on the scores focus on the take care of the people, you know, and you you're like no leaders have to communicate vision constantly and consistently.

[00:39:01] And I started doing that and it's been fairly effective.

[00:39:05] Kristen: Well, people need repetition and they and they need to And they need to see it applied in different ways too, so it's, it's not enough to just say what your vision and your goals are, it's also revisiting those and making sure everything you're doing is relating back to what that is.

[00:39:21] Like that is what really, really internalizes it for people.

[00:39:26] That brings us into the, there's a few chapters that really go into learned helplessness and

[00:39:32] Mike: Oh yeah, that's good.

[00:39:33] Kristen: What to do about it, which I, I thought this was a really good summary of it. Learned helplessness is basically the, the point where we find ourselves in situations continuously where we are continuously affected negatively, and we have no control over it. And if that happens enough where your brain realizes that like this negative thing is happening that affects your well being and no matter what you do, it's going to happen. Our brains, well, shut down, like all initiation, creative thinking, problem solving, because it's just that attitude of like, what's the point?

[00:40:17] Mike: It's a very easy thing to condition people to. Also, another animal experiment that he talks about, which we do not condone. They administered, like, a shock to a dog. And, like, he couldn't get out of it, right? Like, they put him in a crate, like, and they shocked him, and then they changed his physical crate so he could avoid it if he wanted to, or tried to, but he had already been conditioned to, he was like, there's nothing I can do. And he just accepted his fate, you know, and that's, that's a real. I mean, I suffered from that myself, you know, and he talks about that people who perceive their options as limited or more limited are prone to far greater negative thinking, learned helplessness, and they just won't even try because they don't think they can.

[00:41:06] They don't, they don't see a scenario that's ending positively for them.

[00:41:11] Kristen: Yeah. And you see this over and over if you're looking for it in the work world, like oh wow, okay. So if I work really hard, I'm still not gonna get a promotion, so why bother? I might as well just do the bare minimum.

[00:41:26] Mike: Or we see that, you know, on a bigger societal picture, like, it doesn't matter how hard I work, I'll never buy a house.

[00:41:33] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:41:33] Mike: It used to be that hard work would equal at least some level of success in America, you know? Uh, and that has changed. It's changed. Buying a house now is a very different scenario than buying one when it was, when I was a kid in the eighties, you know, and it's hard to feel positive when everything feels like an uphill battle.

[00:41:59] But as a leader, you have to set the very specific goal and drive people toward that, and not allow them to get stuck in the mud. And the question, what can you do? What did you do? Did you try and make a little bit of space? Did you go upstairs and turn their air conditioning on?

[00:42:18] And if you didn't do that, well, there's something you can do. Don't tell me you have nothing that you can do. There's, there's always something.

[00:42:25] Kristen: Yeah, and that kind of leads into the what you can do about this, right? But I think it's worth noting that the three Ps of learned helplessness, which are from Martin Seligman. So they are personalizing, pervasive, and permanent.

[00:42:41] Meaning that you're negatively personalizing the experience. So it's happening because you're bad in some way. Or the company's bad in some way. You're basically like personalizing it and not just making it about the, the situation itself. You're seeing it as pervasive. So not just a single event, but kind of looking out for words like, always, every time, never.

[00:43:08] Yeah, never, like this is never going to happen, right? And then also viewing the experience as permanent. So that really takes away hope, right? Because if you see if a situation is never going to change, then why bother? 

[00:43:22] Mike: You know, when I read this, I remember I was in a pretty challenging time in my life and I definitely was experiencing these three psychological conditions very, very strongly.

[00:43:34] Not even really at work, but I was just like, oh, I'm doing all of these. And I, I kind of got at that point what my then therapist was trying to teach me. I don't know who Sel. 

[00:43:47] Martin 

[00:43:48] Kristen: Selgiman, I believe.

[00:43:50] Mike: Is he a psychologist? 

[00:43:51] Yes. 

[00:43:51] Kristen: He's done a lot of, a lot of really critical, work in psychology.

[00:43:56] Mike: The 3 Ps, it's so powerful. It's so, so powerful. You can get somewhere, maybe you can't get exactly where you think you want to go, but you can always get somewhere. You can always improve. You can always improve your situation. You can always get better at a skill. And nothing's permanent, right?

[00:44:14] Like, but we feel like it is. Or if you go through a long period, like I've had a hard time for 10 years, it feels very permanent, you know, but there's so many stories of people like I just took one more audition and that was the one that made me famous.

[00:44:27] When I was a percussionist, there was a fellow percussionist. His name is Chris. Chris, uh, was one of the top students of Alan Abel, who was a percussionist in the Philadelphia orchestra who trained like an entire generation of orchestral percussionists. And Chris was famous for being second place.

[00:44:49] I mean, he's so talented. He's so good. He was the runner up at an audition I was at in Pittsburgh. He was second place for the New York Phil. He was second place for the Boston Symphony. He was second place for the New York Phil again. He was second place for the Boston Symphony again. I think he, he took like 20 something, 25 auditions before he won one. And now he's the principal percussionist in the Philadelphia Orchestra and he will be for the rest of his life. But if he'd given up on number 19, uh, he wouldn't, you know, he, he's sitting on the crown jewel of orchestral positions, but he had to go through decades of not winning, but he didn't give up. I talked to him. He was just like, I'm, I'm just not going to quit.

[00:45:39] I think if I had been second for the New York Phil a second time, I think that would have been it. I would have been like, this is not going to happen. This is not for me.

[00:45:49] So. Three P's. They're the enemy of success.

[00:45:53] Kristen: Yeah, so then he, he kind of goes into like, what do you actually do if you see this happening in your organization? And the first thing is to examine your own thinking. Because leading yourself is so important.

[00:46:08] But the other thing that I think is so powerful is the asking the central question, what factors do we control that will contribute to our success? So he talks about how he literally has people make a list of all of the things, first make a list of all of the things that they can't control, that are out of their control, like the economy, or what competitors are doing, or et cetera, et cetera, and then make a list of all the things that they can control.

[00:46:38] And just the act of talking about control, of like feeling like you can do things about it, like literally changes the brain. It's like a sense of being in control changes people's brains and affects their performance big time. Help them get a sense of what they can control that affects results and empower them to exercise control.

[00:47:03] What, what can you do that's within your control? And like, how do you use that to create a high performance team? It's also thinking about like what behavior specifically will change these outcomes. So like when you're prioritizing, like of all these things I can control, what do I want to focus on?

[00:47:22] Like really focusing on the specific behaviors and changes you can make that will actually have the most effect on outcomes and thinking about like what values are also driving outcomes and making sure those are really linked into your business is, is really powerful.

[00:47:42] Mike: I love that example. Like, right. The things you can control, right? The things you can't, you know, put a big X through the things that you can't control. And now you're only going to focus on the right hand column of things you can. And then you're going to set up behaviors, boundaries, if you will, for behaviors that attend to the goals, within using the things you can control as the things you're going to focus on.

[00:48:04] Kristen: Yep.

[00:48:05] Mike: You're going to attend to those. So you're going to create a positive boundary about those, you know. In hotels, it's like, what is in our control? Okay. The mood of the guest is not in our control, but the way we speak to them is, uh, the mood of the guest, maybe not under control, but the not taking it personally, that's more in our control. So when you set up behaviors, you know, attending behaviors on the things you can control, you will drive an outcome.

[00:48:31] It seems to work. But that comes back to being extremely specific about what your goals actually are. And then you can, you know, like I said, reverse engineer behaviors that will, will drive those things.

[00:48:46] Kristen: Yep.

[00:48:47] Mike: It, I love this book. It really breaks the process down. Right. And when you take it apart like that, you have to set a specific goal.

[00:48:57] You have to drive behaviors. You have to prevent unwanted attitudes and behaviors.

[00:49:02] I love this because it's so simple in a way. But it's pretty amazing for producing results. Yeah.

[00:49:10] Kristen: Yeah, so now we're kind of getting into the last couple chapters of the book. He does have a chapter on trust and how to build trust. Um, that was, I think, less impactful for me just because I think there's, there's a lot of really good resources and books specifically on that concept of like, how do you build trust within a team?

[00:49:32] But the, the last thing he talks about, which I think kind of pulls a lot of this together, is the leading yourself. And a lot of the themes within this are really about being open to other people, to inputs, to feedback about yourself and being like really hungry for it.

[00:49:51] He talks about owning outcomes, but not letting them define who you are, which, oh my God. Oh my God.

[00:50:00] Mike: God, oh my God, we both

[00:50:04] Kristen: Really feel that a lot, right? Like it's so hard to not wrap your identity into the results, but

[00:50:16] Mike: Of the exact specific thing you're doing at any one moment in your incredibly long life. 

[00:50:20] Kristen: Yeah, pretty much. Very high achiever personalities if you something cannot tell. But I think that's really powerful. Embrace and own outcomes, but don't let them define who you are.

[00:50:32] Mike: Well we can create an attending behavior that we, um, we're going to learn from anything and we're not going to take it personally or as little personal as possible. And then we're going to learn and adapt and reapply what we've learned. So you see leaders do that. They fail a lot sometimes and they fail and they fail and they fail and they fail and they fail. 

[00:50:55] You know, a lot of people have a really success nowadays with tech, with, you know, TikTok, you know, but a lot of people don't, and it can take a long time to, to figure it out or to start winning. And if you really internalize that as I didn't succeed or my goal for this organization didn't succeed.

[00:51:14] And therefore I am not a success or I am a bad person. That's hard to overcome.

[00:51:21] Kristen: Yeah. Yep.

[00:51:23] Mike: I think, I think a lot of leaders like , they feel all that stuff. They just swallow it and, and, you know, bury it deep down. But we all feel that like it's hard to accomplish anything. Anyways, but definitely if other people are involved and you have to marshall a whole team to accomplish something very difficult, you're, you're probably going to fail a lot, or you're not going to get the, the world record or world's best results that you, you think. It's a long process. 

[00:51:55] Kristen: Yeah.

[00:51:56] Yeah

[00:51:56] The other thing I love that he talked about was with time, um, like really owning your time because this is something I have done a lot of coaching with clients on.

[00:52:06] So I love that he talks about doing a time audit, which is a really good exercise if you're feeling overwhelmed. And this happens so often where a client comes to me and they're just, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I don't have control over my schedule. And the truth

[00:52:22] Mike: because you don't,

[00:52:24] Kristen: Well, the truth is, nobody else is going to advocate for your time.

[00:52:29] You are the only one who is going to advocate for your time and how you spend it. So going through the process of a time audit where you actually take a week or two and actually block out how you're spending your time is really beneficial because you get an idea of like, okay, what can I, what can I delegate?

[00:52:49] It's like the Eisenhower matrix,

[00:52:50] Mike: I was, I was gonna bring up the Eisenhower matrix. I love the Eisenhower matrix.

[00:52:55] Kristen: It's great. It's great. Um, do you want to explain what the Eisenhower

[00:52:59] Mike: Well, the Eisenhower matrix, and I think there's different versions now, it's basically drawing a four grid square and figuring out what tasks or what things you're paying attention to, which are urgent, which are actually important, which can be, ignored for the time being and which require constant attention.

[00:53:21] But one of the things you'll and God in the service industry, this is we are constantly bombarded with that, which is urgent. And we are not working on that which is actually important, or a leverage point, or a, you know, a results driver. We're constantly putting out fires, but we're not driving the boat where it actually needs to go.

[00:53:44] And if you don't manage your time, and by time I also mean focus. So a lot of times now I have one single thing in my important category and everything comes back to that and I will continuously focus on that one single thing. Now from that one thing, there can be a hundred things that need to be done to achieve that.

[00:54:06] But I'm constantly focused on that singular goal. And you'll see how much time you are wasting and it is wasting time because somebody else will take responsibility For it too. If you're the sole leader in your organization you haven't done a good job of making more leaders or giving people responsibility and they will come like only you can solve this problem Eh, no, and you get in the habit of solving problems for them and they don't, they don't feel the need to do it themselves.

[00:54:37] So they're always looking for a top down leadership structure and that's not super effective. Eisenhower Matrix is, is dope sauce. Yep. Yeah. So, yeah, I

[00:54:48] Kristen: So yeah, I think that's, that's another, we have many potential episode topics, but that is, that is definitely another one too, is like, how do you, how do you manage your time and overwhelm as a leader?

[00:54:59] Mike: Prioritization. Ruthless prioritization. 

[00:55:04] Kristen: I think that brings us to our recap of this book. The way we're going to end with any book that we're, we're doing for Leadership Book Club or LBC, is we're each going to talk about one thing that didn't resonate with us. And I think this is really important because part of our point of view with this podcast is A,, we don't know everything. We're right there with you learning, right?

[00:55:35] And B, we don't believe that there's one central way, like one central book or point of view that's the right one. It's all going to be, depend on certain situations, it's going to depend on your natural strengths and what resonates with you. So because of that, we're always like any book we talk about, even if it's a book like this that we love, we'll, we'll kind of talk about something that didn't resonate so much with us.

[00:56:01] And then we'll end with each of us talking about like what we consider to be the most life changing takeaway from the book. So Mike, what, what was one thing that did not resonate with you from this book?

[00:56:14] Mike: book? You You know, I got that assignment after I read the book. 

[00:56:18] Kristen: You were, you had only listened to three hours.

[00:56:20] Mike: I was, I was like six hours. Okay. Uh, well, you know, going back and thinking about it, I didn't think the part on trust and communication was as strong as the other parts, to be honest.

[00:56:32] He has the right idea, creating communication, creating trust, community, creating teams. I felt like that part was a little bit surface level. I didn't disagree with kind of his perspective, but I, I almost thought that part of the book was unnecessary. Sometimes I think when people write leadership books, they feel like they have to make it a little bit longer than they do.

[00:56:54] Um, maybe not, but that didn't super resonate for me. 

[00:56:59] Kristen: Yeah, I do agree with that. That's kind of what I said. I was like, the trust chapter is there. I think there's, there's nothing really like mind blowing within it, right? I think there's better summaries of that out there that you can look to.

[00:57:12] Um, for me there was the thing that did not resonate with me, that I did not love was when he's talking about the attention and inhibition and working memory. He kind of talks about organizations having organizational ADD.

[00:57:29] And, to be clear, I do not blame the author for this because this book was published in 2013 and a lot has changed since then.

[00:57:37] So this is, this is more just commentary for anybody who's reading it and what I would love to see if there's another edition. But I do think that ADHD is a very misunderstood condition, and there's been so much progress in terms of it being seen as a form of neurodivergence, um, there's still a ton of, of progress to be made on that. It still really needs a new name, um, but

[00:58:08] Mike: Dopamine deficiency.

[00:58:09] Kristen: Yeah, exactly, like, like ADHD is fundamentally a, a lack of dopamine, and. Yes, one of the symptoms if you have the inattentive form is it's hard to focus on things that are not interesting to you and yes, that does mean maybe you're prone to shiny object syndrome, or maybe you, you spend a lot of time doing things that aren't important. But there's also a lot more to ADHD than that. And there's also like the power of hyper focus. And I just, I just don't love that being applied on an organizational level and really just kind of being used as an adjective.

[00:58:46] I think there's, a lot more education and awareness that needs to happen for ADHD. I say this as somebody with a diagnosis for ADHD. So that was my thing, but I think overall this book was really, really strong. 

[00:59:00] And then what was your most life changing takeaway?

[00:59:05] Mike: Well, So many. I love this book. Like I said, it's part of my trio of leadership 101. I think what was most impactful for me besides the, like the nuts and bolts of setting boundaries is you don't need to be aggressive or forceful or, you know, a stereotypical charismatic, authoritarian leader at all. You can absolutely be your authentic weird, in my case, self and attain great results. And the way to do that was setting these boundaries that allows brains to function properly and allows people to focus their efforts on the outcomes. And that helps me be, I would say, a more natural leader.

[00:59:55] I didn't feel like a square peg in a round hole anymore, you know? You can be your authentic self and you don't have to be a stereotypical leader. You can just set boundaries and use your own brain to win instead of outward charisma. And uh, you can focus a big group of people toward a singular outcome without being inauthentic.

[01:00:20] Kristen: And mine is, I think the concept of learned helpless, I know Dr. Cloud didn't create that, but I think it's explained really well in this book and how it applies to the corporate and organizational world. And I, I really, really loved the simplicity of figuring out what you can control literally changes the brain and just that, that process of listing out like when you're, you're feeling really powerless in a situation, making a list of everything that you can control.

[01:00:56] I think this is something that I've found within like my own personal life to be really helpful, but I think that that is a mantra that I feel like I can come back to and can also use with my clients in those kinds of situations.

[01:01:15] Mike: I would like to support that. I, I gushed over his elucidation of the three P's.

[01:01:21] I've read a lot of psychology books. The way he explained it kind of made my brain wake up and see clearly what I was. You know, these, these, uh, neural pathway traps that you get into. And I was like, Oh, I get it now. And it was weird because I'm, this is a business book, right?

[01:01:39] But he got me exactly what you said to, to recognize how I was doing this in my own life. And I kind of stopped doing it as much. And maybe you noticed my personality changed a little bit. You did agree to marry me. . You're a way more naturally positive person than I am. Um, I think I had a big kind of revelation from that, from this book. So I want to echo what you, what you said and really recommend. This is a self-help book almost. And back to self-help. But there it is.

[01:02:11] Kristen: Yep. Awesome. Well, I think that concludes our overview of Boundaries for Leaders. Thank you everybody so much for listening. And this is the last of the three episodes that we dropped on our launch day, if you happen to be listening in the first week and we will be back next Wednesday with a brand new episode.

[01:02:37] Thank you guys so much for your support. We really appreciate it.

[01:02:40] Mike: Thank you everyone

[01:02:41] Kristen: Bye, everyone. 

[01:02:43] The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as @loveleaderpod. You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.