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Dr. Jaime Goff on Attachment Theory, Rewriting Your Leadership Story, and Retaining Talent through Values
80 Plays1 year ago
Dr. Jaime Goff (theempathicleader.net, drjaimegoff.com, jaime@theempathicleader.net) joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com) to discuss her forthcoming book "Rewrite Your Leadership Story: Overcoming Anxiety and Insecurity to Fulfill Your Leadership Potential." Jaime and Dan explore the influence of her background in marriage and family therapy on her views of leadership and leadership development. Jaime believes that leadership is ultimately about relationships and that understanding human relationship dynamics is crucial for effective leadership. She emphasizes the importance of addressing deeper internal barriers and engaging in vertical development rather than just focusing on horizontal skill-building. Jaime and Dan also discuss the role of values and principles in leadership development, highlighting the importance of aligning values with actions and creating a culture that embraces and lives out those values. Recommended reading: “Immunity to Change” and “An Everyone Culture” by Robert Keegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, “The Developing Mind” by Dan Siegel, and “The Elevated Leader” by Ryan Gottfredson. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Forward Looking Leadership
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Forward Looking Leadership, a podcast for visionary executives building future ready organizations. I'm your host, Dan Freeling. I'm the founder of the coaching and consulting practice, Contempos Leadership, developing the leaders and teams you want in charge through cutting edge approaches and common sense solutions. I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Jamie Goff. Jamie is the director of leadership development at Christus Health, a nonprofit healthcare system with over 600 centers,
00:00:28
Speaker
15,000 physicians and 45,000 total associates across the US and Latin America, where she leads the design, implementation, and evaluation of leadership development programs. She's also the president and founder of the Empathic Leader LLC, a coaching and consulting firm that specializes in helping leaders understand the emotional, systemic, and relational factors that lead to individual, team, and organizational success.
Leadership Perspective: A Relationship-Centric Approach
00:00:52
Speaker
And the author of the forthcoming book, Rewrite Your Leadership Story,
00:00:56
Speaker
overcoming anxiety and insecurity to fulfill your leadership potential. With a prior career in academia and a PhD in family and child ecology specializing in marriage and family therapy from Michigan State University, Jamie brings a unique perspective to leadership development, which I can't wait to explore in our conversation. Leaders and L&D practitioners, you're in for ideas and insights way beyond the same old, same old for leadership development. Thanks for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership, Jamie. Thank you for having me, Dan.
00:01:25
Speaker
Thanks so much for taking the time. I can't wait to get into this and hear from all of your experience and backgrounds on all of these areas, Jamie. Absolutely. So first, I think that the background in marriage and family therapy is just fascinating to me. So I'd love to hear how that has influenced your views on leadership and leadership development. Well, yeah. And some people, when they learn that, they're a little confused and they're like, huh, interesting.
00:01:53
Speaker
I really think that ultimately leadership is about relationships, right? And one of the things that really distinguishes the field of couple and family therapy from other mental health fields like psychology or social work is its foundation and systems theory and its focus on those human relationship dynamics. So I just truly believe that whether you're looking at, you know, dyad relationships, families, teams, organizations, you're essentially looking at a human system.
00:02:22
Speaker
And all human systems are really governed by the same operating principles, regardless of the context in which you find that human system or even how large they are. And so I really feel like I draw on my background in couple and family therapy every single day of my work, whether that's, you know, when it comes to designing leadership development programs, coaching leaders and executives, even, you know, leading my own team. Because I, I truly think that if you have an understanding of how human relationships work,
00:02:51
Speaker
The other leadership challenges that you face, they become a lot more manageable. And regardless of what you might be dealing with as a leader and those hard decisions that you have to make, if you start with consideration of the human-relationship dynamics, I think you're really going to be setting yourself up, yourself up for success.
Writing a Book on Leadership: Psychological Insights
00:03:08
Speaker
I've come around to a lot of that too, and just seeing all these different ways of getting at that human experience that I do think leadership is just another way of getting at that human experience, as you've been mentioning. And when you start seeing all these different concepts from different academic fields, it seems like they're all getting at a kind of similar core message in my experience. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:03:34
Speaker
So this book sounds absolutely fascinating as well. So yeah, I'd love to hear what led you to write the book and what the core message is of it. Yeah, absolutely. I think like a lot of authors and potential authors out there, I've been thinking about this book for a really long time. And I actually wrote my first blog post that was related to this topic probably about 10 years ago and even
00:04:00
Speaker
kind of did some lunch and learns, and my former organization taught some classes to leaders around this topic. But honestly, at the time, I didn't get a whole lot of response or traction when I would, you know, share what I was writing about and thinking on, like, LinkedIn and social media. And so it was a little discouraging at the time. But as I look back, I, I just don't think it was the right time for what I was really wanting to say, if I'm being honest. I don't think people were ready for it.
00:04:30
Speaker
I think still at that time, of course, that was pre-COVID, right? And the field of leadership development was still highly dominated by more traditional approaches that focus on skill building, right? Or basically, it's more like management. How do we manage other people's work and drive results, those types of, you know, kind of technical, functional aspects of leadership and management? And, you know, with my book, I'm going to be asking people to go a lot deeper.
00:04:59
Speaker
than that is they consider their leadership style and behavior. And so I think now is the right time, and people are really hungry for something deeper. I think a lot of that is due to everything we've experienced, right, since 2020.
Post-COVID Leadership Challenges
00:05:15
Speaker
And leaders are really struggling to adjust to the demands of that kind of post-COVID, politically polarized trauma-exposed workforce.
00:05:25
Speaker
that we weren't really dealing with in the same ways before 2020. And I think we see that in some of the recent research that firms like McKinsey and Deloitte are putting out, where we're seeing that 75% of workers are saying the most stressful thing about their work is their manager. And 56% of workers are saying that their leaders are mild or highly toxic. So there's something going on at a deeper level. And
00:05:54
Speaker
So I think as I look at that current research, the challenges leaders are facing, the expectations that are being put on leaders right now, the different things their employees are looking for in their organizations and from their leaders, I think now the time is right. And so that's really just inspired me to, you know, dig in and actually write the book that I've been thinking about for such a long time.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, this sounds like it's so needed and that timing is just perfect on it. I do feel like COVID has quickened a lot of these, what would have come eventually but were kind of longer term transitions into this new way of working and getting away from that kind of like industrial era managerial economy is something that comes up over and over for me.
00:06:45
Speaker
in thinking about this, and I totally agree that it's really sped that up a lot, and I'm glad the time is right for the book. And just in a nutshell, what is the book about? Yeah, I think, so like I said, it goes a lot deeper. It goes to a different place than I think most leadership books do, in that I'm really asking leaders in my book to really examine
00:07:15
Speaker
where their leadership story has come from. And I think when I say story, you know, I'm really talking about those kind of neurological connections that we develop and those scripts that we live our lives by. And those scripts that we have about how we interact with the world around us and with the people that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, both personally and professionally,
00:07:41
Speaker
Those, those scripts are really helpful because they help us to make predictions. They help us when we're under stress. They kind of guide our, how we think and what we do, how we feel. And they're heavily influenced, and this is where it gets a little different, I think, from what a lot of other leadership books get into. I think those scripts are heavily influenced by our very early experiences in life, even going back to very early childhood.
00:08:10
Speaker
And we know that from research. We, you know, my area of expertise is really Attachment Theory. And what Attachment Theory basically says is that the most fundamental human need is for connection. And before we're even aware of it in our lives, in our early lives, we're answering 2 really fundamental questions about how we navigate human relationships. The first one is, Am I worthy? Am I worthy of love, belonging, dignity, connection?
00:08:39
Speaker
The second fundamental question is, are other people trustworthy? And a lot of times, we don't even realize how powerful our responses to those questions are. And unless we're really intentional about looking at how we interact with those questions, we may not even realize how much they're driving us. So with my book, I'm digging in, asking leaders to really dig in to how they answer those questions and then how their responses to those questions develop these scripts for them.
00:09:09
Speaker
and, and how they're driving their leadership, whether that be in kind of healthy or unhealthy ways. So, so yeah, that, I think, in a nutshell, is what I'm asking leaders to do. And so the first half of the book is really about identifying, like, What is the problem? What's your leadership story? What's that script look like for you? And then in the second half of the book, we get into some of those rewriting techniques. So how do you fundamentally change how you respond to those two questions?
00:09:38
Speaker
um, in your interactions with, with other people. So, um, so yeah, I think in a, I guess that's a nutshell, if you feel, uh, of what the, what the book's about, but I'm happy to expound or clarify.
00:09:51
Speaker
No, I think that's great. It's wonderful when you have a concept that goes that deep that it can't be so much of a nutshell. I'd love to hear more on those two questions. Am I worthy and are other people trustworthy? How do those show up in leadership? Yeah. I think that
00:10:21
Speaker
What we're looking at currently with leadership is we have to be paying attention to who the who, right? So not the how, not the what, but the who. And those two questions really get at the who. Those are the first two questions that really are informing our identity from the time that we are coming to this world, from the time we're infants.
00:10:46
Speaker
And in terms of how they specifically show up in leadership, for example, let's take the first question, Am I worthy of, you know, love, belonging, dignity, connection? And you can take that, just even just stopping with, Am I worthy? If you have a leader, for example, who really, maybe the problem that you see as that leader's leader, perhaps, is that they are really struggling to delegate. They can't do it.
00:11:15
Speaker
their, their teams are frustrated because they're not being empowered to do their work. The leader is down in the weeds, right? They're, you know, they want to do everything. They, you know, they're, they're not empowering their teams. They're not growing and developing their team members, and their team members are just kind of stuck, right? They're, you know, they're, they're not growing. They're not moving forward. Well, if you think about that question, Am I worthy?
00:11:42
Speaker
what it's, what's going on, perhaps, for that particular leader. And my guess is, and my hypothesis is, and I think, you know, I'm right about this, is that there, on some fundamental level, that leader feels like in order to be worthy of, you know, praise, of acceptance, of belonging, they have to prove themselves. And they have to, and that it's really based on their performance and their achievement, not just their fundamental dignity as a human being, right?
00:12:13
Speaker
So that's, I think, one example of how that question can really impact how someone shows up as a leader. And then with the second question, I would say using that same example, you know, around, Are other people trustworthy? Fundamentally, that leader probably doesn't think that's the case, right? Because that leader doesn't trust that their team members are going to be able to achieve the outcomes that they're looking for. And so they don't, fundamentally, they don't
00:12:42
Speaker
trust their team members to follow through, to perform with excellence, to achieve, you know, those goals. And so that's just one example, I think, of how you can see how people are responding and interacting with those two questions on a deep level can show up in leadership.
00:13:00
Speaker
makes so much sense in it. I love that it humanizes toxic leadership in some ways where it's so easy to just write that off as this person's a jerk and there's no reason behind it and there's nothing we can do to, okay, there are these really fundamental psychological questions behind this and how do you then use those to either as a coach or as a manager of them or as managing up of like, how do I use those to influence a better
00:13:30
Speaker
way of being for these people. And this is another area, you mentioned the who and I know where we're both trained coaches and that's always such a big coaching concept of getting to the who and a lot of what I think about often and work with other people on is really expanding upon that of what does that mean practically, like how do you get to the who, what is the who,
00:14:00
Speaker
And there's no simple answer on it, obviously, but I love this angle on attachment theory being part of the who and really getting to that rather than just kind of trying to rattle off people's values or like flag when they say something that's, you know, raises something that's of interest to go into further. It's, okay, this is one way of looking at what constitutes the who and how can I be intentional about paying attention to that.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Implementing Leadership Concepts in Organizations
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that, you know, again, for me, that's kind of the background I come out of. I mean, that's the most fundamental. And how we respond to those two questions around our identity in many ways, that's what ends up informing our values as well, right? Right, right. Because if you are like,
00:14:56
Speaker
again, going back to the example of that leader that I was sharing, that leader, you know, people have values for achievement, right? Well, that's probably largely informed by their, you know, fundamental belief that in order to, you know, be worthy, they have to achieve. So I really think our values even flow out of how we respond to those two questions. I, again, I just, I just think this is such a needed,
00:15:25
Speaker
contribution to the field of leadership development and bringing in this other already really well-researched and well-developed field and emerging content I think is so key because one issue I have with a lot of the academic leadership literature is how isolated it can be from other well-established fields and I think you're providing a real contribution to it by bringing this in. Thank you. Thank you.
00:15:52
Speaker
I hope so. I think so. I hope and I think that it brings a unique perspective and helps people look a little deeper maybe than they typically would. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:16:07
Speaker
So in terms of putting this into practice, so if there's leaders, if there's L&D people, if there's managers, whoever is listening to this, and they're saying, okay, this makes sense. I really, you know, there's something to this. I can see this playing out in the workplace. What can they do to really put the concepts in this book into practice? Yeah, I think that's a bit challenging, right? Because what I'm proposing
00:16:36
Speaker
really does not entail those kind of quick, easy solutions. Because we're really talking about, again, like I said, kind of deeper work. And we're asking people to look at, or I am, I guess, to really dig in and look at some of those internal, you know, barriers, those deep stories that are, you know, really that are adaptive more so than technical challenges. And it's
00:17:04
Speaker
you know, easy to give kind of quick fixes for technical challenges, but a little harder to do that with adaptive challenges. But, you know, that makes it a little hard to say, you know, do these 3 things, and, you know, you're going to help your leaders, you know, kind of rewrite those scripts or remove their, you know, internal barriers. And this really requires, I think, a lot of transparency and vulnerability on the part of leaders. But without being said, I do think there are
00:17:31
Speaker
you know, maybe a few things that organizations can begin paying attention to when it comes to leadership development. And so first, I would say that, you know, I think we need to shift leadership development away from focusing primarily on tools, conversation models, tips and tricks, etc. And those are the things that, especially when it comes to training, right, that, that we tend to focus on most. And those can be helpful. It's not that they
00:18:01
Speaker
It's not helpful to teach leaders those things, but if they're struggling with the deeper story or internal barriers that are getting in their way, those tools aren't going to help them. So we also need to start thinking about those deeper internal adaptive changes that leaders need to make to meet those demands that we're making of them in the current climate. So given that kind of necessary shift
00:18:28
Speaker
and how we think about leadership development, I think we need to be willing to address those deeper issues and actually talk about them in the workplace, which I know can get a little bit, you know, that can be a little dicey. I mean, you don't want to become, you know, you don't want to do therapy with your leaders, obviously. But I don't think you have to do that. And you can certainly hopefully have resources if that is a need. But I really think those issues are already showing up.
00:18:55
Speaker
right? We just don't talk honestly about them, about what's going on. So I think we can start to, or organizations can start to create some awareness of some of these issues in training workshops. But I think when leaders are really struggling, I think this is where investing in one-on-one coaching can be, you know, really, really strategic and very helpful. Because that's where that honesty and real vulnerability and kind of digging in a bit deeper
00:19:25
Speaker
might be more appropriate for leaders to do that. Yeah, you and I are just so aligned on this. I came out of a learning development background with, I know you're in a healthcare system and I was in a public health agency with it and I think there is this very technical mindset that's so great for a lot of medical issues and problems. Sure, yeah.
00:19:50
Speaker
It makes a ton of sense, right? And you do need that highly technical approach and all of the complications that come with that and making sure that you're checking off every single element of what's going to change something. And then I do think it hits a real barrier in the leadership
00:20:09
Speaker
element of it where it's you can't just apply these quick fixes and a checklist of the things you're supposed to do to leadership and expect it to be fixed. And it's really that more in-depth adaptive conversation than the technical toolkit kind of a thing. And I think that's so key. And I think that's right in terms of how organizations and leaders can and should respond to it is
00:20:39
Speaker
interventions like one-on-one coaching are strategic, as you've said, and they really get at the heart of what's going on rather than just investing in more kind of tick the box training.
Using Data to Support Leaders
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things, and this is something in my organization, but one of the things that talent development, L&D professionals can really do is
00:21:08
Speaker
For us, for example, we do engagement surveys on a quarterly basis, which is sometimes frustrating, you know, for leaders and associates, but is also just so helpful in identifying ongoing patterns, right? So, you know, in, in our organization, you know, we have very high engagement scores across the board. We're typically in the top, you know, 5 to 10%, with regard to like national benchmarks.
00:21:39
Speaker
in healthcare. So overall, like we're doing great. But if, when we look deeper, and we look at those results, often what we find is it's kind of the same leaders who are struggling, right? So you can identify the patterns, like who are the leaders who seem to be, if you have those engagement, you know, scores, and you're kind of seeing the same patterns over and over again, especially if you are doing them a bit more frequently, then that helps you really
00:22:05
Speaker
identify in, you know, a real data-driven way, like who might really be struggling with something deeper? Because those, we're, we're teaching kind of the same skills to all of our leaders. Some are getting it. Most of them are getting it and doing really great. They're probably, have a pretty healthy story. They're probably answering those two questions that we talked about earlier. And generally speaking, yeah, I'm worthy. And yeah, I can trust other people, right? The leaders who, we see that pattern, they're continually struggling.
00:22:35
Speaker
what their team is engagement, and you can look, you know, overall engagement, but then also dig down into specific questions. My guess is what you're going to see. They're, they're struggling on a deeper level in terms of how they're responding to those two questions. And then that's how we can just really look for those patterns and identify who needs more of that, you know, perhaps one-on-one coaching assistance to really get where they need to be.
00:23:01
Speaker
such a practical way to approach it, not just ignoring all the good things that come with data and surveys and all that, actually using them to really narrow in on where your interventions are going to be most effective and bring that in. I think that's a real tangible takeaway for folks. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are some things that just generally speaking, when we're talking about leadership development,
00:23:30
Speaker
you know, we can think about what are some of the things, topics or areas we can make sure we're addressing, you know, in more of the training setting, right, that help people grow cognitively and emotionally and become more, you know, mature and more healthy. So talking about things like, of course, emotional intelligence is popular to talk about. But even beyond just, this is what emotional intelligence is, but, you know, there are ways we can help people
00:24:01
Speaker
be more emotionally self-regulated, right? We can help them build their emotional self-regulation, and that will help them become more mature cognitively and emotionally. So they're kind of growing, not just in terms of their toolkit, but growing as a person as well.
00:24:22
Speaker
right, focusing in on building those skill sets that seem quote unquote soft but are actually what's underneath. I'm sure it is. That's so important there.
00:24:37
Speaker
The question I like to ask, I think almost all of our guests, is these changes you're foreseeing in the business world. And this can be, you know, this can be however you want to take it. It can be in the healthcare space. It can be business overall. What do you foresee in the next five or 10 years changing in the business world?
Future Business Challenges: AI and Economic Disparity
00:25:00
Speaker
Yes, I was thinking about this. I'm not necessarily, you know,
00:25:07
Speaker
futurists and I might be a little bit of a Luddite, Dan. I don't know because I'm sure, you know, of course, everyone is talking about AI and all of the changes that AI are, you know, going to bring in. I don't know how much healthcare is really digging into AI quite yet. And
00:25:34
Speaker
For me personally, when it comes to AI, like I said, I might be a little bit of a Luddite. I might be one of the few people who I have not even touched at GPT. I was like, I don't want my life to be more ruled by algorithms and machine learning than it already is. But with that being said, I do think that we need to
00:25:59
Speaker
really seriously begin thinking about what it truly means to be human. And how we'll bring humanity to workplaces that are becoming more and more dominated by advanced technology. And so, because, you know, it's coming. And I know I need to, there's no way to avoid it, right? AI and technology will continue to advance even further and
00:26:28
Speaker
I think I was just reading something earlier, you know, the jobs that are going to grow are those that are, you know, very highly skilled in those, you know, those knowledge areas. But we're going to start creating even more of a economic gap, I think, because, you know, the jobs that are more automated are probably going to be, you know, taken over by, you know, AI and technology even more so than they, than they already are.
00:26:57
Speaker
So I have some concerns, you know, about what that's going to do for economic disparity. So I think we need to be paying attention to just humanity and dignity and, you know, how all of this is impacting things on that economic and that, that just that level of justice, you know, more, more deeply. And in some ways, as I think about what current,
00:27:24
Speaker
and younger generations of workers are really looking for. We're reading things about their wanting more belonging and connection and purpose in the workplace. And in some ways I think that's due to that felt sense of disconnection, of human disconnection. And so I think that that's gonna become even more relevant as AI and other advanced technologies continue to proliferate that we're gonna really have to
00:27:53
Speaker
think carefully about what it means to be human and how we bring humanity and not only what it means, but what's the value? What is unique about what we as humans bring that can't be replaced? I don't think that's a lot I answer at all. Well, thank you.
00:28:22
Speaker
I totally share a lot of that sentiment. I view it as almost like two concurrent prongs of how we're moving forward where there's gonna be the technological progress that we have to be open to and it's gonna happen regardless. And then simultaneously almost going
00:28:45
Speaker
down and in depth into exactly what you brought up. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have dignity? How do we leverage that and make that a core part of what we're doing as professionals? And I kind of see them almost merging together in that as
00:29:05
Speaker
as all of the kind of rote managerial or rote technical tasks slowly get automated away or able to be done by AI, what's left? And how do you bring that front and center now before it's like you're in a crisis situation with it? Yeah, absolutely.
00:29:31
Speaker
So I'm going to kick us down the road 50 years, but I know there's no way to know about this. What could you even imagine 50 years from now in the space? Yeah. I, that is so hard to say because it seems like, you know, things just move so quickly. Um, you know, I grew up in the eighties, so I was grew up on a dot matrix
00:29:59
Speaker
printer and playing Oregon Trail on the huge desktop computer, you know, that my dad bought and brought home. But, um, and I could have never, you know, looking back, it's like you could have never imagined like where, where things would be just haven't even lived on this earth 50 years yet. Right. So, um, it's, yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of mind blowing. So, um, I mean, I hope,
00:30:28
Speaker
I guess what I hope for is that we will, I try to be optimistic. I try to be optimistic, but I hope that as we advance in technology and AI and machine learning and all of this, and who knows what else might be out there on the horizon, I think my hope is that we just use that in ways that
00:30:58
Speaker
promote, like you were saying, I guess, that, that we're able to maybe, if some of the kind of problems or challenges that we're dealing with now, maybe we can take care of those. You know, that's what I hope that some of those things that can be solved by technology will be, which will allow us to really focus resources and time and thought on, yeah, human, human dignity and human flourishing.
00:31:27
Speaker
and really helping people live into, you know, and have whole identities and really live into their purpose and into dignity. So I hope that's, over time, what technological advancement will enable us to do. Those are my hopes. I don't know. I guess we'll see.
00:31:54
Speaker
Right, right. Here's to that. That sounds like the real optimistic case. I think it's incumbent upon people who want that kind of a future to work toward it in some ways too. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's beautiful.
00:32:12
Speaker
So in looking at the leadership and management space, I know there's so many concepts out there and you were saying earlier on what was popular, even pre-pandemic in terms of leadership theory and that kind of stuff. What's a popular leadership or management theory or concept that you disagree with or think is overhyped in some ways?
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was trying to think about this. And I don't know, I think disagree is a, you know, I think there's value, right? I mean, I think there's value even in, you know, in various, you know, leadership theories and leadership and management concepts. I just don't think they provide. So I don't know that there's like a particular concept or theory that I would say I disagree with.
00:33:10
Speaker
but I think they're not expansive enough. Most of what is out there is not expansive enough. I might sound a bit like a broken record, but I think just as we've been talking about, it's really about a way that another author puts this and he and I have had some conversations around this. It's Ryan Gottfritzen and he has a book called The Elevated Leader. I don't know if you've
00:33:37
Speaker
Reddit, but I just like how he describes it. So I'll refer to him. But he talks about vertical, and he's not the only one, but vertical rather than horizontal leadership development. And that's really what I'm focused on as well. And so I think that's where, so it's not necessarily a disagreement, but I think most of what has been out there is really focused on that horizontal leadership development, again, equipping
00:34:03
Speaker
leaders and managers with a big toolbox of things they can pull out of their toolbox to, you know, apply to problems they encounter, whereas vertical leadership development is more about the who of the leader and really, like we've been talking about, kind of digging into their identity and those, those stories they tell themselves and helping them to
00:34:29
Speaker
make significant adjustments in those areas and tackle the adaptive challenges that they're dealing with, overcoming some of their assumptions that really drive them that are harmful and not helping them anymore. And so I think that's where I would say. I think it's more such a huge focus on horizontal development is what I would say I disagree with and want to see us moving more into that focus on vertical
00:34:58
Speaker
leadership development. It's, it's harder. It takes more work to do that. Requires more, it's more, it's riskier, right? Because if you're asking leaders to engage in deeper conversations, you have to be able to go into those places with them.
00:35:16
Speaker
I love the vertical versus horizontal development framing because it gives some way to describe what we know as coaches and people who've studied real organizational development and real leadership development and seen where the sort of horizontal tactical elements hit their limit. And it's so helpful to have this kind of a framing in it. And I think it's
00:35:44
Speaker
It's something that's tough to present in a lot of ways when it's so much easier to say, okay, we're going to do all of this horizontal leadership development and we're going to offer this many things and we're going to have these metrics and all this kind of stuff. And it's much harder to present the real vertical leadership development that's needed of getting to the who and helping people overcome
00:36:10
Speaker
a lot of what you've described to help people expand on the strengths they bring to it. I just think it's a greater challenge, as you said, but I think it's necessary and worthwhile. Yeah. If we can help leaders grow vertically, then all of those tools that we've taught them on the horizontal level, they'll be more equipped to use them effectively.
Horizontal vs. Vertical Leadership Development
00:36:39
Speaker
Right.
00:36:42
Speaker
So again, it's not that those, those tools that, you know, that horizontal leadership development, it's not that it's unnecessary. It's just that it has to be, in order to be really used effectively, I think it really has to be partnered.
00:36:55
Speaker
with the focus on vertical development. I think that's so well said and yeah, it makes total sense at any other endeavor where you have both tools and personal development that once you're more developed as a person and able to use those tools more effectively that all of the different things that you're learning about the tools themselves become more applicable and more useful. Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:24
Speaker
So Christus is a Catholic organization, and I know you've worked for other Christian organizations in the past.
Integrating Christian Values in Leadership
00:37:33
Speaker
I'm interested in what role, if any, you see Christian values and principles playing in leadership development, even for people who might not be at a Christian affiliated firm or who might not be Christian themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I think at Christus,
00:37:51
Speaker
Our core values are dignity, excellence, compassion, integrity, and stewardship. And for Christus, specifically, these values are, you know, they're based on Catholic teachings, right? But those aren't uniquely Christian things. And you're going to see some of those same values, right, that are espoused by non-faith-based organizations. So they're not uniquely Christian, although, you know, for an organization like Christus, they are based in, you know, that Catholic teaching.
00:38:22
Speaker
I think perhaps the biggest difference between an organization like Christus and maybe one that's not faith-based is the depth of commitment to those values. And I've been specifically with Christus for 5 years, and I've
00:38:45
Speaker
I have been with organizations where there are values, but, yeah, they're just kind of there, right? We all had those experiences where they say they're values. Yeah, yeah. They're mentioned in the workshop. Again, they might be, you know, there might be something on the wall about them, but they're not, no one really pays much attention to it. And so I think perhaps the biggest difference for Christus, and I can say I have experienced this and observed this, witnessed it.
00:39:14
Speaker
is that commitment to those values. And so for us specifically, you know, we have sponsoring congregations with board representation and a dedicated team whose focus is holding the entire organization accountable to those values. And so that's, I think, really where the difference lies. We've taken the time to really define each of those values behaviorally.
00:39:41
Speaker
And we publicly recognize employees who go above and beyond in demonstrating those values. We have a whole program around peer nominations for, you know, people you see who are just, you know, really showing dignity, for example, to our patients or compassion or whatever, or to one another, to their peers. We have a whole program built around recognizing that.
00:40:05
Speaker
So I think the lesson really is that if you want your employees to truly embrace and live those values, your organization's values, whether they're kind of based in, you know, Christian teaching or not, the organization has to really invest in that, right, from the top down. And it has to be clear to people that they're important. They need to be rewarded. And to some extent,
00:40:35
Speaker
measured, included in performance conversations and, you know, all of that. So I think that's maybe the biggest difference in the lesson to be learned is just really investing in the values that you say you espouse.
00:40:52
Speaker
And I do think when there's that espoused value and actual value, enacted value, whatever it is, misalignment, that's where a lot of the angst comes from in the workplace, right? And it's a lot of disengagement stems from
00:41:09
Speaker
when people get told that these are the values and then they see leaders not following them and then they see leaders actually being rewarded when they don't follow them. And I think that just causes so much disengagement, misalignment within the organization. And at Chris's, for example, we even use what's called a values-based decision-making model.
00:41:37
Speaker
primarily used for, you know, those really big, significant decisions, right? You know, a large organization when you're thinking about things like mergers and acquisitions or whatnot. But we, we teach that decision-making model. You know, we do teach that in our leadership development courses. So, and again, like senior leaders, executive leaders, when they're really dealing with those big, big decisions,
00:42:05
Speaker
that model is utilized. So everything is run through the filter of dignity, excellence, compassion, integrity, and stewardship. What are all the possibilities, you know, with this decision? And then how do they align with our values? So it's really just, it's, it's about, like you said, yeah, they have to be in active values and infuse through everything. And when
00:42:30
Speaker
your employees and your patients or your customers can really see and feel that. It makes just a huge difference. It's such a great takeaway I think for organizations of all types too is what really are your values driven organization and then using them at an executive level when you're making serious organizational decisions.
00:42:55
Speaker
And I think that kind of goes back to what we were talking about with, like, the future of work, too, right? Because people are looking for, you know, purpose and meaning, and that really flows out, that flows out of those values. And so as we think about all the technological advances that are going to be coming, that's what, that's where the humanity comes from, right, are the, are the values and how we demonstrate those and live those out. And
00:43:24
Speaker
In some ways, I think your ability to do that as an organization will kind of, will probably yield positive outcomes and some things that are huge concerns right now, like, you know, like retention and recruiting, that the whole war for talent, right? People want to see, I think, I think employees now want to see
00:43:51
Speaker
that values are being enacted and they want to see evidence of that. And that's one of the things that helps them choose where they want to work and also stay, be retained.
00:44:05
Speaker
It becomes a differentiator. Yeah, absolutely. As a lot of organizations veer away or show that they have never actually cared about these, the ones that do exactly as you said can be a beacon for the right kinds of talent that is aligned with those values and can drive that ongoing engagement. Yeah.
00:44:29
Speaker
So in terms of leadership books and other resources doesn't necessarily have to be a book, but what do you find yourself coming back to the most often?
Recommended Resources for Leadership Development
00:44:41
Speaker
You know, I don't know that I go back to leadership books. You don't have them just over the mantle.
00:44:53
Speaker
Oh, I do. I do. But I think really when I go back to really, you know, regularly, there are, there, there are a couple of scholars from Harvard, Robert Keegan and Lisa Leahy-Lasko. They're actually in the educational psychology. They're in educational psychology. But their, their, you know, area of expertise is really adult development. So not
00:45:23
Speaker
you know, not child development, but adult development. And they have a couple of books, one that's called Immunity to Change, and the other one in Everyone Culture. And they're like mid-2000s publications, like mid-well, mid-2000s, probably, it might be like 2010 or something like that. But I really think that they are probably the first, the first scholars who really started to, to look into
00:45:53
Speaker
Really deal with that vertical development like we're talking about earlier In their organizational consulting work and to really write about it and provide some frameworks for thinking about that so those two books have really informed me a lot and I don't know how many times I've reread each of them but every time I it's one of those things where I go back to them repeatedly because I know I'm always something else something new will always strike me and it's great because
00:46:23
Speaker
immunity to change, the first one really takes a look at it more on the individual level. And then in every one culture, looks at all of that from that more organizational level. So those are two, I just think, great resources, especially if people are interested in, you know, learning more about what it means to focus on the who of the leader in that vertical development, like we were talking about earlier.
00:46:49
Speaker
And then I think the other thing, I am just fascinated by interpersonal neuropsychology. And so Dan Siegel is an author that I kind of go back to regularly, probably his most, the best book out there, I think he has is called The Developing Mind. But he really talks about, you know, a lot of things I'll be talking about in my book. It's a little bit more academic, if you will, but
00:47:19
Speaker
I just love thinking about, like, how do our brains interact with other people's brains? And then how do those interactions really, you know, create new neural pathways and, you know, within us? And how can we then, how do our brains continue to change over the course of our lifespan through human interaction? And so I just fascinated by those topics and go back to his work quite a bit. Those are all
00:47:48
Speaker
all really wonderful recommendations. And I do think this vertical development in particular for the leadership development space is something that everyone in an LND position really needs to start understanding more. And it's relatively new as you mentioned, but still there's a lot out there on it. I think it's starting to bring together a lot of these different concepts and interventions that we kind of know and have seen
00:48:17
Speaker
that have worked like coaching and OD and like really good leadership development and provide some basis for understanding the mechanisms of how they're working. So I think that's such a great rack. And then bringing in that interpersonal neuropsychology is just really fascinating. And I would love to hear from you, like how advanced do you think we are in our understanding of that? I've heard
00:48:43
Speaker
all over the place on like, this is like very nascent, or like we have a, we're starting to get a very good understanding of it. I'd love to just hear your perspective as a real expert in this. I don't know if I'd say I'm a real expert. Much better equipped to judge the relative merits of this. You know, I actually, I can't even remember where I saw it. You know, I think this is another one of those areas. It's just like,
00:49:12
Speaker
so rapidly advancing, just as we get, as technology advances, and we have, you know, greater capability to, you know, kind of understand our brains and how they work, because we have like functional MRIs and those types of things. And so, I mean, there has been, you know, quite a bit of research looking at, you know, using, you know, fMRIs to look at how people, how people's brains
00:49:39
Speaker
are responding and reacting to different situations, given the quality and the power of personal connection and belonging that they experience. And so, I mean, I feel like based on what I've seen, you know, when it comes to things like mirror neurons and how we interact with other people and mirror other people's kind of emotional, their emotional state,
00:50:10
Speaker
their mood, etc. We can use, if we are, if you have like knowledge about that, even as a leader, right, like I, I know that thinking about research on mirror neurons, that if I'm dealing with someone who is very upset, perhaps a team member, who's very upset about something and who maybe is getting heightened, one of the, if I can stay calm,
00:50:34
Speaker
they will begin to mirror me. And it was the same in when I, you know, worked as a therapist too, right? Like I could bring calm into the situation by maintaining calm myself because we begin to mirror each other. But the opposite is also true, right? Like if I allow myself to get frustrated and angry in those situations, then that will continue to escalate because we're going to mirror each other in that direction too. So I,
00:51:01
Speaker
I feel like all of that is very practical and applicable to what we do as leaders, and there's some really helpful insight to be found.
00:51:11
Speaker
Yeah, that seems spot on too. Who are you being as a leader and who you're showing up as and how does that impact the culture? I think that sounds like a big link between the leader themselves as we've been talking about and the overall systemic organization and the culture and all that of who you're being actually reverberates out and impacts the culture.
00:51:40
Speaker
And, you know, we can actually, like that, like when I was talking about like with kind of going back specifically to interpersonal neuropsychology, if like I, if I am vertically developed myself as a leader and I can maintain calm and show compassion and dignity in the face of, you know, someone who's very upset or very angry, that actually, and that's what the, you know,
00:52:07
Speaker
some of the neuropsychology and the FMRI research shows is that can actually begin to make changes in the other person's neurological connections. They're having an experience that maybe is different than what they're used to, and it begins to create a different neural pathway for them. So it's just fascinating to me that we can be, we can change. By the way that we interact with other people, we can actually change not only our own, but contribute to changing the other person's neural pathways as well. It's just fascinating.
00:52:36
Speaker
really it really is and what a refreshing way to look at both like personal growth and the impact of a leader in the this is this is how leaders can change organizations is by who they're being and not necessarily I mean there's always the the managerial elements which are which are key and we don't want to overlook as we've been mentioning but it's it's really those follow from
00:53:02
Speaker
who they're being as a leader in terms of actually enacting the different plans and strategies and all of that kind of stuff. But it really starts with that personal level. Yeah, absolutely.
Connecting with Dr. Jamie Goff
00:53:14
Speaker
So, Jamie, this has been a really great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to join and talk to me about this. Where can listeners learn more about the book and get in touch? Yeah. So probably the best place is to follow me on LinkedIn because I
00:53:32
Speaker
I do try to post regularly, share some ideas about things that will be included in the book as well. They can also visit my webpage and sign up for my monthly newsletter. Again, I'm keeping people updated on how things are coming along with the book, but then also I have some sharing some of the ideas and thoughts and also
00:54:00
Speaker
reflective exercises and strategies in my newsletter as well. And my website is www.theempathic, so not empathetic, and that's telling me wrong. It's an ongoing, ongoing consideration of the space, right? Yeah. The empathic leader, and it's a .net. So, or they can also drjamigoff.com. So they both go to the same place.
00:54:26
Speaker
But yeah, they can sign up for my monthly newsletter there. Of course, they can reach out to me via email as well or message me on LinkedIn. That sounds good. We'll link to all of that in the show notes and definitely would encourage anyone interested in this, which I'm sure many people will be after the subject of this on getting in touch with Jamie and then following along for the book launch as well. I can't wait to read that when it comes out. Thank you. Yeah, very excited.
00:54:54
Speaker
So thanks again for joining me, Jamie. Listeners, thanks as always for listening in. If you got something out of the show, please share with a colleague and leave a quick review on whatever podcast app you're using. It goes a long way in helping to spread the word. And Jamie, thanks so much again. Yes, thank you, Dan.