Every human being has the potential to become their best selves. Unfortunately, we live in a world where the control system limits our potential. It is very important for every individual to develop their own internal motivation in order to realize their full potential. In this episode, Judy Ryan shares her responsibility-based approach in the human system where people are intrinsically motivated to develop their true selves and unleash their full potential.
Welcome to the fast leader podcast where we uncover the leadership life hacks that help you to experience breakout performance faster and rock it to success and now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligent practitioner Jim Rembach call center coach develops and unites the next generation of call center leaders through our e-learning and Community individuals gain knowledge and skills in the six core competencies that is the blueprint that develops High performing call center leaders successful supervisor student not just happen so go to callcenter coach.com to learn more about enrollment and download your copy of the supervisor success path ebook now okay fast leader Legion today I’m excited because we’re going to have a great discussion today that’s going to help us all move onward and and upward faster because I have Judy Ryan on the show with us today Judy welcome thank you Jim I’m happy to be here now Judy Ryan uh was born in St Louis Missouri and she is the fifth of six children and she had a safe and affectionate UPG upbringing however her parents believed that their job was to instill only the beliefs and behaviors they believed in within each of their children without any input from them uh this was challenging as her parents were extreme in their views about politics and religion because there was no receptivity to the unique thoughts and feelings of the children Judy and her siblings were intelligently and emotionally neglected and oppressed and this has actually led to Judy’s life’s work Judy’s mission is to create a world in which all people love their lives she raised her three children on a shared power responsibility based model by the time her children were four years old they each knew how to run a weekly family meeting in which leadership was rotated and everyone had a voice and shared power the parenting model Judy focused on was about developing leadership intrinsic motivation emotional intelligence and task ownership so that her kids could manage their relationships their own productivity engagement and more she eliminated common practices that would diminish each one’s need to feel empowered lovable connected and contributing instead of stopping at loving her children she listened to their ideas and feelings and helping them to learn to lead and follow flexibly and to be critical thinkers rather than people Pleasers in using this model Judy healed her own childhood deficits and saw the positive impacts that are possible in other settings this is the basis of her Decades of work in corporate nonprofit government education family settings and more beginning in the 1980s Judy taught a human systems model to parents then in 1998 she began to work full-time with companies to bring them Concepts that aligned with what is now recognized as transformational leadership and teen culture Evolution because she was initially a parent doing this alone her work involves engaging all Stak holders for example when working in a corporate setting she involves the entire Workforce from the CEO to Frontline staff and when working in school reform she has her team at life work systems engaging teachers School administrators parents and a neighborhood team and the students uh this has won her Awards the Legacy Judy is proud to leave behind can be described by a recent call she received from a high school principal in the spring of 20 21 she had participated in Judy’s reform model in her first year teaching 20 years earlier and she told Judy that not only did she become an except exceptional teacher and principal that she won Teacher of the Year Awards multiple times and attributes her Effectiveness with students to what she learned from Judy she said schools were just now bringing in a program similar to Judy’s redirecting negative behavior topic uh an alternative to punishment bribing and permissiveness and it was not even as comprehensive as the one Judy brought in 20 years ago and for this work uh Judy and her company won the Vanguard award for Innovation from the St Louis Mental Health Board for her work in some of the most atrisk neighborhoods Judy still lives in St Louis and is recogn and is a recognized thought leader writing two columns with over 200 articles to date and is currently producing her own TV program Judy was married for 22 years and divorced in 2002 she is a mother of five grandchildren and nine F grown of five grown children and nine grandchildren and they are all powerful in their lives and work due to leadership develop development opportunities to take initiative and to respect uh that that the respect that they were shown as children Judy Ryan are you ready to help us get all all get over the hum I am happy to help if I am able to here now I that was a rather long bio but I think it was important because there’s a lot of context uh that comes from that and that’s also one reason why we we do this on the fast leader show is to have these more you know human humanistic types of of BIOS because it’s really interesting to me how all of the things that we experience in our life now become our mission vision and purpose and something that we help others you know to overcome because we’ve had struggles in that area so thank you for sharing you’re welcome thanks for reading all of that okay so now give us some understanding about when you start talking about systems some the systems that you’re utilizing you know and some of the things that you know are common struggles that you know quite frankly if we just all knew a different path in a different way we can make some significant difference with yeah well first of all Jim I agree with you if we knew better we would do better and to kind of bring what that bio says into the 21st century right now people are dealing with um in organizations they’re dealing with um how do we keep up with diversity and inclusion how do we keep up with globalization how do we keep up up with the complexity and digital transformation and agile and all these different Trends right now and and what is happening is people are are kind of hitting a wall of the human systems and so for centuries I think people have sort of felt like working and dealing with the people aspect is a nice to have it’s not necessarily A need to have and that’s changing right now and so one of the things that is really inherent in the bio that you read is I learned a particular psychology model that when I first heard it I thought oh no wonder this guy didn’t get a lot of press because he was around during Freud and Yung um because if you really understand his model we’d have to change the win-lose Dynamics and the power structures that we’re operating from and what I’m seeing today is where culture evolution is going is moving in a Direction that’s the same as the model that I’m using but there are people from the old way of thinking that are holding on to the power structures of the past with a death grip and then there are other people saying we need systemic change whether it’s politically socially in an organizations and businesses but they don’t actually know what systems need to change so I say all of that to really mention that if you understand what causes all struggles within individuals and between individuals you’ll really start asking questions like well what do we need to do to create conditions where people don’t go into that it’s it’s called inferiority complex what causes people to go into inferiority complex and some of today’s thinkers like bernee brown you know and and and uh Simon sinic they’re really talking about conditions that cause people to go off the rails even if it’s kind of hidden and they’re pretending everything’s okay so that’s really the the the core of changing any kind of um environment and creating the kind of successes people want to create is you cannot ignore that human aspect of what either causes a person to expand into potential and what causes them to become shrunk in their potential okay so I I okay I need to make sure that I’m clarifying and understanding appropriately um so are what you are what you is what you just said in regards to Simon cnnic and ber Brown are teaching us in correct no I’m saying that their their work is becoming famous because they’re bringing in a new way of thinking for example Bernay Brown talks about shame and vulnerability and how we’re such an addicted o you know obese kind of society because of all of our shame well Adler called that inferiority complex and even bernee Brown who’s a famous author and speaker when she goes to speak people will say ber we really love you you’re funny you’re smart but how about you not talk about that shame stuff it’s a little dark and it makes people uncomfortable and her response to that is until we deal with that it’s my number one platform well that was always Adler’s platform and that’s my
platform it comes down to some really basic things that we’re doing in childhood with our kids and education at schools we’re doing them in our workplaces and and we’re not even aware of these practices and how they cause massive levels of disengagement and disc cord and struggle and and most people haven’t really connected the dots on that well uh okay so okay what we’re really talking about is you know thousands of years of human history yes yes that’s why it’s a challenge what what one of the things we do right off the bat when we’re working with people is is uh this was also a term that Adler created called spitting in your soup now isn’t that a beautiful image Jim spitting in your soup what that means means is sometimes we have to take something that’s perceived to be wholesome and spoil it in order for people to start saying okay okay okay I will I will drop those things and I’ll learn a different way so what we mean by that and it’s super super core is that we are using different control tactics trying to really create good citizens whether it’s at home at school in a workplace and we don’t even realize that some of these are control tactics like some of the more obvious ones are being an autocrat you know like Jim you do that or else you’re in trouble right but the more subtle control are things like dangling carrots and kind of bribing people and using judgment whether it’s um I’m proud of you or I’m ashamed of you or disappointed in you or another control tactic is enabling and overcompensating for people which actually creates a sense of I can’t do things I need other people to do things for me which really shrinks a person’s potential because now they have an impression of themselves as less capable those may not sound like control tactics but they actually are and so we’re spitting in the soup of those because um they look like they work and they’re socially accepted and socially um promoted and supported like I saw a sign one time that said you can’t be a don’t be a parent be a or don’t be a friend be a parent well if you’re using control tactics you can’t be a friend as a boss you can’t be a friend as a parent but if you learn other ways to develop people you can so it’s even this misnomer that we can’t really be both but you you know it’s just because we don’t understand that these control models are in the
way um so okay is it possibly that we are just using a different um type of you know method and approach um under the opice of influence and persuasion yes yes it’s absolutely influ influence and persuasion but what it is is the control models are extrinsic influence right I’m going to influence you from the outside in if I don’t think you’re really um capable of motivating yourself I’m G to dangle a carrot that’s outside in if I don’t believe you’re going to do the right thing I’m G to judge you into doing it by using shame or praise if I don’t believe you can do it I’m going to do it for you or enable you or I’m going to threaten you and coer you now that’s all influence it’s just outside in influence and it’s it works like if I held a gun to your head but it doesn’t create it has a ton of negative side effects so what you want to do is how do we create influence that helps people develop their internal motivation from the inside out and that’s a completely different model than the control models okay so um one of one of one of my favorite people in the world world is Susan fer and she does a lot of work in the science of human motivation and you know she talks about you know the models and the things that we need to do and and really be able to you know help people to find things that align with them from an internal motivation perspective but what happens when you have somebody who is you know emotionally stifled I mean because here let’s talk about the realities of today’s world in the workforce is you have a lot of people who are entering the workforce who are you know emotionally in very immature right right and and so when you start talking about you know what what is it that you want what is it that you br that brings you Joy what is it that I mean they have no clue at all 100% agree what one of the things we teach people are you know what’s the difference between being responsible and not being responsible and when you’re not responsible you’re actually operating out of resentful compliance or you’re rebelling and and and it’s because you have a belief that you don’t have any choices deep down inside and so you’re doing things things in a blind spot of reactivity to something so when you if you if you’re not operating from that you’re asking yourself questions like what am I feeling and what do I want I don’t normally do a lot of personal coaching because my um coaching is really
focused changing an entire Community within an organization but I happened to help a friend last night and and it was a a young man uh you know was one of her relatives and he’s moving on to to college and I know a lot about his background and so when I talked to him I said do you even feel like you know what you want or are you constantly operating from I should I have to it’s the right thing it’s the good thing it’s what everybody else tells me I should be doing and and that’s absolutely what he started to recognize he goes I’ve never asked myself what it is I want and here I’m expected to go off to college and and all of a sudden be this person that knows myself and I don’t know myself and and I’m grateful that he’s learning it at 18 instead of because I see people in their 40s and 50s that are like I’ve never asked myself what am I feeling what do I want I’ve never um I’ve lived in this place of reactivity either I feel like a victim or I’m constantly in Rebellion like I remember one time I dated a man and I I asked him I said why do you why just out of curious curiosity why don’t you wear your safety belt and he said to me well I’m not letting the government control me and I said the government’s not even in the car with us that’s an example of a person that’s unconsciously in reaction to some kind of authority figure that they’ve internalized and they’re not really deciding from what do I want I mean this person was a divorce a with kids and he was willing to go through the windshield because he’s going to prove nobody can control him can you see how that’s a very powerless way of operating and yet he felt puffed up and Powerful from acting that way so I really believe that what happens to people is the because of the conditioning they don’t know who they are they are emotionally immature well however as an organization you know we we need to have you know a Persona an identity a you know something that you know our customers and clients can actually you know connect with because they because they don’t say Jane did this or John did this or Jim did this or I mean what they do say is they I mean so they see us as a as a physical entity and so we have to setep forth expectations you know as an organization and so you you can’t just do whatever you want you can’t be whoever you want 100% agree I think a lot of people they think that if we drop these control tactics that she spit in the soup over that we’re going to have this milk toast permissive environment it’s not that at all it’s the opposite of that so A Persona of a company should be based on personal responsibility purpose and values social interest is a very important phrase that we use use and it means teaching people to consider the consequences that they’re causing others we can see all over right now politically and socially how people are not necessarily focusing on how is my behavior causing consequences to other people so when you’re building a persona for a business what’s good for your employees is good for your customers and that’s really coming to a place of personal responsibility most people want to be responsible but they have not been given the tools and Concepts to let go of these other ways of operating and choose something completely different okay well then the other thing I start thinking about especially when you look at a lot of these organizations is you know you’re I mean you’re talking about executive functioning and decision-making abilities and you know the whole development of the prefrontal cortex I mean that’s when you start getting into that and and again if I’m an organization and I have you know a A Younger You Know Workforce that’s coming in that that not developed right no it’s not it’s not developed even in a lot of the executives and it’s not developed in the employees and so the real question become and everybody pretends everything’s okay right like oh I’m fine I’m great I’m gonna act like an adult but deep down inside a lot of people have no real resources within themselves to be internally motivated and to know how to manage their relationships their productivity their engagement their Pro progress plans their their the tools that they need to be using and so you’re ABS I love it that you mentioned the FR frontal cortex because Neuroscience says if we’re not developed in that frontal cortex we’re operating out of survival and that’s what happens in the inferiority complex is people are um in these internal and external struggles because they’re in a survival mode and whenever people are using control models they’re believing negative fearful limiting things about each other if I’m dangling a carrot in front of you Jim it means that I think that on your own you’re going to be lazy and selfish and that it’s my job to motivate you so all the control models hold a really negative view of human beings when you hold a responsibility based model you have the belief that people are great or they want to be great even if they don’t look like they want to be great and premise creates a whole different Dynamic than the control models well okay so needless to say when I start when you start talking and I’m starting to think about all these different scenarios both of managing staff he managing self um you know managing you know children who are are going to be um you know part of a future Workforce and hopefully you know a positive Society you and when I say manage I I I mean I unfortunately that does come with the caveat and and thoughts of people talk thinking about control right um but but I think you know when you start talking about management and Leadership um what do you see as the difference between the two I love the question and I want to just um use a story to kind of help you see how we approach this even when we go talk to some of the largest International conferences on diversity and inclusion for example or agile or you know or how do we um Bridge globalization diversity and Technology with emotional intelligence that might be a title of a topic we open with a story about an eighth grader who was being bullied by a teacher which is an authority figure and how do you transfer responsibility to that student so that that student can go and manage that relationship with that authority figure that’s what you need in your employees you need your employees to know how to manage their relationships and figure out their part in things and yet we don’t know how to do that so I see the difference between managing people and leading people as being I’m transferring responsibility to you like in my bio you read said uh By the time my kids were four they knew how to lead a family meeting what was equally important is I’m a steamroller mom who’s dominant and I had to learn how to be a good follower to a five-year-old or a four-year-old and and that’s what’s important in agile Transformations is that people need to be able to be leaders and followers in a very Dynamic flexible agile way but if they’ve never been given the opportunity to do both over and over and over again they won’t know how to do it when they’re called on in their real world work and so um so that I hope that’s answering your question is that the transfer of responsibility and helping pick people pick up their tasks what it does for the leaders of a company is it distributes the responsibility to everyone so that the leader isn’t feeling like a policeman or I’ve got to manage all these people like I’m hurting cats that’s a miserable existence for the executives and the mid-level managers and so how do you transfer that responsibility so even though people um like you talked a little bit about the you know the impression of a company and it’s they are doing this they are doing that inside of an organization for example the question shouldn’t be who’s to blame or why is this happening necessarily but the question should be what system if it were put in place would fix this problem and that’s why we approach uh the entirety of the community um like had one of my instructors she was very passionate about you need to go in and fix the police departments because they’re just all this brutality and blah blah blah and I said Terry you’ve forgotten that we don’t do it that way if we were going to try to help the police we would bring in the religious leaders the political leaders the neighborhood and we would help everybody look at a system problem and what is the system that needs to be um re replaced and that way there’s not it’s not about blaming and oh we got to fix you because you’re the bad one it’s more about the system is the bad one I hope that kind of makes sense well it does make sense and and you know this that goes back to some of the you know thinking and we and a lot of times it goes back to a lot of the thinkings of some of those folks like you had mentioned the system and um and and the teachings of the person who you follow and you could if you could before I go into what I was going to ask is um State who are who is your Mentor in this in the system well he’s actually a man who lived the time of Freud and young Alfred Adler and it was interesting because he didn’t receive a lot of press during that time I read a book about him that was written a couple years ago by these two Japanese authors and even in the forward of that book they said he was at least a hundred years ahead of his time he would be 30 right now and so I I thought when I read that oh my God that’s what I’ve been thinking since the 80s because his psychology Ruffles people because you’d have to really look at the win-lose Dynamics we’re doing and change it and so where culture evolution is going right now in organizations is dropping hierarchy doesn’t mean that people don’t have authority and roles that are different than one another but in terms of sharing power operating from purpose and values is a Distributive process in the in the newer culture Evolution it’s about teaching people how to [Music] be of saying let me just give you the answers like there’s some kind of formula that they have to follow because we can’t do that today things are changing so rapidly people have to be capable of creating new Solutions on the Fly we definitely saw that during this pandemic right and if you have people saying sitting there going just tell me what to do they’re not contributing what they could be contributing and the other thing that happens is people feel like they have to bring their um this like Game Face to work and it’s not the same person that they are in their personal life so in the newer culture model it’s about it’s about integration it’s about coming in as a holistic person that’s the same person in all of these different environments that’s why really good human systems transfer that’s why uh somebody can learn something in a corporate setting and it works for their their relationships in their homes or their neighborhood or their school or whatever and vice versa well part of what you’re talking I think is also we had um Dr Edwards on the show talking about the fourth evolution of leadership and he refers to collaborative leadership um well so I I mean there’s a whole lot of ongoing development and reprogramming that needs to be done in order for us to modify thousands and thousands of years of human behavior I know I I it seems just absolutely overwhelming and daunting and it CH causes you know people who are even close to retirement saying y forget it that’s tomorrow guys’s problem I’m out of here yeah well there’s a a quote that I love called it’s by uh Samuel arbisman who said there’s some his book is something like the halflife of everything like things are always going to be evolving but he said that we have this problem with change blindness and it’s not that we don’t see new facts because people are starting to really see new facts about culture for example but a lot of people just don’t want to go out of their way to do something different the other reason that they have a change blindness is they don’t really want to look at their own ideas as possibly being outdated like none of us would would balk at the idea of taking our phones in and upgrading them but when it comes to our human systems we think that it’s somehow u i it threatens our identity if we have to change our human systems and upgrade them so that’s one thing the other thing is that uh while it’s been thousands of years of conditioning we are a we are as people evolutionary some of them some of us are terrified of change but a lot of us are eager for Change and so um we are uh it’s kind of like an alcoholic you know how an alcoholic has to hit bottom in order to change our world is in so much turmoil that we’re primed for change that’s why people are saying we need change we need systemic change the the important part of a system Sinker like myself is and which is only about eight% of the population is that we can see what kind of system needs to be put in place so that there’s an implementation it’s not just a concept it’s an implementation how do I shift from this way to that way so you mentioned collaborative ways of functioning you can have a collaborative model and still have it being hierarchy in the model that we use it’s more about everybody develops their leadership so that there isn’t so much of a hierarchy even in an a collaborative environment so people who study spiral Dynamics and K Wilbur’s work they know that even some of the evolutionary stages have still you know they they’ve talked about consensus building and collaboration but they really haven’t dropped that power over power under Dynamic that’s the new thing that is hard for people to accept they do well and I and I guess you know well there’s been constant reinforcement and all that plus you know knowledge is power right yes um you know the just the whole um father mother figure you know that’s inherent powers um you know um in insecurity and vulnerability um and not wanting to fail you know if I am you know a person that’s me relinquishing power I mean there there’s to me I think about all the different power dynamics and then we even talked before we started Rec recording about how it flips into certain you know levels of narcissism which often times we think ill intent with narcissism but after talking to you it doesn’t seem like that’s the case I mean sometimes narcissist is developed out of desperation yes it’s it’s a coping mechanism it’s when we’re not in our frontal cortex and we’re in survival mode I think people are unaware of how much they’re operating from survival and conditioning and it’s terrifying to some people to consider doing something other than that because you’re right the public is widely promoting the control models so what what’s interesting to me is that
these we say these sacred cows aren’t giving good milk anymore because the sacred cows begin in childhood and that’s something people go oh don’t go there you can talk about changing a workplace culture but don’t try to change how I’m doing my parenting or how we’re doing education and yet when you look at parenting and education there’s huge challenges happening right now in those in those areas because evolution is required starting in those places too and I don’t even worry about that when I work at the corporation I already know it’s going to change their family Dynamics because you can’t learn something and then unlearn it when you go home so if if we’ve adequately spit in the soup they’re now going okay okay I’ll do this new thing I’m open to this new thing I’m willing to upgrade the way that I see things and and that does take courage and it does take um you’re right knowledge is power that’s why our hardest job is educating people on what they don’t even know that they don’t know around human systems yeah uh um as they as that one meme that keeps getting passed around the internet this is this is mind-blowing I mean it is and I I mean the whole practical application piece I think is such a massive Gap um for most people um maybe we’ll talk about that in the end as far as how people can get in touch with you and learn more because I want to make sure that we go on and we do some of the things that we always do on the show because I think they’re critically important so you know one of those things is looking for you know inspiration and finding inspiration and one of the things we do on the show is we look for quotes to be able to do that is there a quote or two that you like you can share oh my gosh I wish you would have asked me in advance I collect quotes I put them on almost all of my over 200 articles I would say the change blindness is a quote that I love I also love the quote by Einstein who said that we can’t uh solve the problems that we’ve created using the same thinking that we used to create those problems so I sometimes refer to that as we can’t change the problems we have today if we continue to hold on to the control systems that cause those problems you know so that I’m connecting those dots um I’m also a a big believer that um that we don’t realize our capability so in in the quotes that I focus on it’s really about what you have in you that um like like for example when we teach people how to like we don’t just look at the executives defining purpose and values Envision we look at everyone in the organization creating that when we do that particular training we get more push back we get more resistance more fear more anger from people and so one of the quotes I love is actually by Maryann Williamson and it’s uh the quote our deepest fear is not that we’re inadequate our deepest fear is that we’re powerful beyond measure so people have this power but they don’t have any idea how to guide it and even trust it and that’s what we did when I was raising my five children is I wanted them to see and know their power and I wanted to guide it and we did tons of unconventional things like by the time my kids were between five and 11 they were there were four of them at that point um we would give them a couple hundred dollars and let them go to the grocery store nowadays I’d probably be put in prison for that or get given a ticket or something but it was a safe neighborhood and we train them how to do it but the reason we had them do it and they would get to the checkout and the person would go you guys have hundreds of dollars where are your parents but we wanted them to have experiences of feeling empowered lovable connected and contributing and they weren’t going to get it just talking about it we had to help them experience themselves as powerful beings and a lot of people are afraid to um encourage the power in people so what happens is that power gets like clogged up in their system and causes them stress and depression and shutdown and all these things because we haven’t known how to give them applications to use their power in a new way I think you just frightened a whole lot of people just even going through what you just said right there I frighten them is that what you say absolutely talking about the whole risks associated with doing some of those things and even from a I was just having a conversation last night with somebody about him who had had some rental properties and he actually had a rentor who filed a civil suit against him for something that had no basis or or or meaning and ultimately was was thrown out of court but it cost him $1,000 just the cost to defend himself um because it ended up getting filed and he had to defend um and then also while that renter was in the space they destroyed the space that cost another $155,000 so I mean when you start thinking about the risks associated with all that today I I want to reframe that you’re saying gosh this idea of us having to shift so much is frightening to people I want
right I want people to look at what is the risk if we don’t do anything different like a lot of our clients one of our clients that comes to mind is he had more than 50% turnover and he and some of his team did a co-presentation one time and the audience member asked what was your biggest concern when you started this shift in the system and everybody had well I thought it was you know G to be bogus or I thought they were going to try to get me to you know Bear My Soul all the time you know they all had these concerns well the owner’s concern was my concern was what am I going to do if this doesn’t work so there’s fear and there’s fear and I think it just like I use the analogy of an alcoholic hitting bottom you have to be able to see what it’s costing you to continue to do it the old way in order to be motivated to say okay let’s let’s see what you got that’s a great that’s a great point I mean we have to be able to to monetize what we’re currently swallowing it for years we’ve had over 70% disengagement which cost companies close between anywhere between $250,000 per 100 people to 900,000 per 100 people depending on what kind of risk it puts for the engaged people to leave the same is true in our prison system we have 60 to 70% of prisoners across the United States who do what’s called repeat reincarceration or recidivism where an Elian psychology approach was applied in one of the prisons in Florida the recidivism rate which is that re repeat um went down to 4% now if we can do that with prisoners why aren’t we doing it in workplaces in families in schools right and so that’s what we need is enough people to see the successes of these changes to say Okay I want what they have over there hence the TV show right that’s the TV show exactly exactly yeah that was a really funny um occurrence because the person who is starting this new network and invited me I’m not believe it or not Jim even though I do these major conferences and everything I always joke I have to take a Xanax before I get up there but I once I get going I just forget myself because I feel so passionately that there’s so much unnecessary suffering so this man came to me and he said I’m starting this new network but one of my legacy goals is to create a different kind of society and I already know you can bring those messages so I want you to submit a program idea which we did which is called evolve now but that didn’t I had to pray about that Jim just to be able to say yes to it because it’s a big deal to put yourself at that next stage of growth and and I told him I said I know we’re gonna receive fan mail and hate mail and he goes all mail is fan mail so I I’m I’m kind of used to the idea that when you’re changing systems that have been around for centuries there’s going to be some people that are going to be upset I remember there was a group of people where this one person wrote in their survey this is ridiculous making a fouryear a leader at a family meeting you just need to tell them what’s what you know like even that story threatened that person oh sure I mean you know I mean to me I I I I guess you’d have to experience in order to to truly believe it quite frankly um because even when we started talking about the whole human development prefrontal cortex I mean you know we’re talking you know men you know mid mid 20s we’re talking you know females you know early 20s four-year-old there ain’t nothing there right oh you’d be surprised we have story after Story of how amazing it once you understand the psychology how you can actually even see the the Reckoning within two three and four year olds that’s why some people will say to me well can’t we use isn’t isn’t it appropriate to use the control models when they’re two and three and four not really like you want to start even then introducing models that are not bad now it doesn’t mean you don’t have to do some like if they’re running out in front of a car but um in general we underestimate their private logic and their use of power and we don’t know how to guide it when they’re two and three years old but it’s possible to do it yeah and we we kind of do that um even when when we see them you know replicate and repeat things they see on TV or see us do right I mean it it I mean I you know talking about instilling some of the you know values and things like that even my kids you know which irritates them but I ask them you know why did God put you on Earth to help others I mean they learned that when they were little right um so I I I get what you’re saying it’s just well they they learn it conceptually but they don’t experience it in reality so we might say that we’re here to help the world and then we have parents that are going to maybe do all these things to us to try to force us to be those P those people that’s why the kids are saying it that way yeah I’m supposed to help the world because they haven’t bought into it from the inside out they do they do when they’re in it but it’s you know when the parent says it it’s like you’re just too close to me right that’s true that’s true sometimes we sometimes we do a lot of good things as children and adults despite what’s been done to us because there’s a lot of
people good systems at times absolutely but there’s more people doing unconscious negative behavior uh we call it UNC you’ve probably heard this before unconsciously incompetent and they don’t know until they know and then they become consciously incompetent until they become really committed you can’t you can’t unlearn it right that’s right that’s right well gosh I mean I mean for us you know there’s things that we do on the fast leader show that we haven’t been able to to to to get to because we’ve had such an awesome discussion and dialogue and and I do want to make sure that we finish with a quick hump day ho down all right okay because the fast leader Legion absolutely wishes you the very best okay so now hump day ho down all right Judy the hump day holdown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast and I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses are going to help us move onward and upward faster Ryan are you ready to H down yes okay so what is holding you back from being an even better leader today um I would say that it’s me learning how to be in strategic partners with global leaders because my vision is to do uh my work in partnership with thought leaders and change agents and so it’s finding them it’s it’s finding the places where we can collaborate because we it’s the the need is so great we can’t do it as a single individual company so that’s my biggest challenge is how do I maximize that I happen to have this personal vision of being connected with a group of thought leaders uh that together we feel this Mutual support with each other because there’s a lot of people that are coming to the same convergence of what I’m doing they’re just coming at it from different angles so that’s my biggest challenge is how do I find those leaders how do I collaborate with those leaders and um so thanks for that question what is the best leadership advice you have ever received um I think this is going to sound like a weird one it just pops in my head but when I first learned about alternatives to rewarding and punishing people when they misbehave my very first instructor said keep spanking your kids until you really realize what you can do instead and I think for a lot of people the reason that that woman was probably upset that I talked about a family meeting where the five-year-old or four-year-old did this this leadership thing people are so hard on themselves the minute they see something that they realize oh my God I could have done it that way they beat them El up like I I must I maybe I ruined my kids because I didn’t know that right so the reality is we’re very resilient as human beings and if we could just come at things from compassion and curiosity instead of beat up we wouldn’t resist growing because if if we can’t even look at ourselves with compassion and forgive it and realize we’re going to be okay um we we won’t change so that to me is a weird kind of leadership but it was like just keep doing what you’re doing but be proud of yourself that you’re willing to look at something new and you’ll get it when you’re ready and what is what is your one of your best tools that you believe helps you lead in business or life I would say my best tool is focusing on my purpose my purpose is to create a world where people love their lives so not only am I looking at am I helping this person love their life I’m also looking at am I loving my life I remember one time my own coach said to me are you loving your life and I said there’s only two places I’m not like I if I don’t ask the question or have the question asked of me I may not be looking and I said I I I want to lose weight which I’ve so far lost 35 pounds and I want I don’t like prospecting and she goes well why don’t you just fire yourself from that I’m like I can do that and I did I fired myself from prospecting and I started working with these strategic partners and I’m happy because I’m In My Own Lane but but that’s something that you know conventional wisdom says you have to be a prospector if you’re the CEO to some degree and to some degree I am but it just felt like I was leted out of jail so purpose guides everything and the core values that I hold are servants to that purpose so like right now Jim I want to treat you like you’re a best friend and give you everything I possibly can because friendship is one of my core values and and I already feel it with you and you’re just super easy to talk to besides because your questions are good and you’re really pondering and I I just hope that you’re getting as much as I’m getting in this most definitely okay so what would be one book you’d recommend to our Legion and it could be from any genre okay okay there God I have so many books we even have an article on our website about recommended books but one of my absolute favorites I read years ago is by Patrick lenion it’s one of his lesser known books called uh getting naked and it’s not about hot tubbing it’s about um a contrast between two organizations and one um one of them comes in and is you know is um merged with another one in the old school company is like threatened by the new idea but basically it’s going into an organization and just starting to help them is if you’re already working for them and and being vulnerable about what you know and what you don’t know which really proves your support more than trying to sell them something or trying to act like you know everything so that whole concept that he has in that book is incredibly powerful I think if more people would just get busy helping um we’d all be selling these new systems without selling them you know just because we’re all in there helping each other okay fast leader Legion you can find links to that and other bonus information on Today’s Show by going to fast leader.net and doing a search for Judy Ryan okay Judy this is my last H hood on question but imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the Knowledge and Skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take it all you can only take one what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why H wow that’s a big question um I guess the knowledge and skill that I would take back is that in all things choose curiosity and compassion because when we do that we have courage we don’t um shut down we don’t contract and um you know in my 20s I was learning this information and I was passionate about it but I was also afraid because I felt so alone in it but if you have curiosity and compassion you’re you’re being supportive of yourself no matter what and so that’s what I would say most people are lacking a lot of that Judy I have had a fun time chatting with you today can you please share with the fast leader Legion how they can connect with you yeah I would love it if people would uh connect with me on LinkedIn we also have business and personal pages on Facebook but our website is life work systems so systems the is the only thing plural a lot of people want to say life works it’s life work systems.com and then we also can guide you there’s a a link to our courses site which is all about our LMS and learning management system so I would love to hear from people I wish I could you know talk to everybody that’s listening Judy Ryan thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and helping us all get over the hump W thank you for joining me on the fast leader show today for Recaps links from every show special offers and access to download And subscribe if you haven’t already head on over to fast leader.net so we can help you move onward and upward [Music] faster