“It was all about preparing my mind to be the best when it mattered most.” - Sarah Milby

This week on The Digital Download we'll have a special guest, Sarah Milby.

It’s our accomplishments that have propelled us to where we are today.

But operating at our best all the time is hard. And sometimes it can lead to burn out.

This week on The Digital Download we'll have a special guest, Sarah Milby. Competitive athlete turned CEO, Sarah wanted to motivate people but not have them burn out. As a college athlete, in addition to her technical coaches, she also learned from a coach who was focused on mindset. She was taught strategies to handle pressure, see opportunities in challenging situations, and prepare for future successes. Now she and her team help others do this through her company, Valor Performance.

We’ll talk with Sarah about achieving and sustaining peak performance, and how mindset is the key.

We'll address questions like –

* What is meant by mindset, and how can that help me?

* How can we use mindset to operate at our best?

* With all of the growing pressures to deliver, what can we do to prevent burnout, and what can we do if burnout happens?

It takes courage to keep growing — to up-level your skills, and continue to improve and develop yourself throughout your career. And it takes courage for organizations to see the potential that the future holds. On Friday Sarah is going to give us some insight on how we can use mindset to do just that.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Audience participation is highly encouraged!

This week we were joined by our Special Guest -

• Sarah Milby, CEO & Founder of Valor Performance

Panelists included

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of DLA Ignite

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a partner of DLA Ignite

• William Shorten, Learning Consultant / Business, Team and Individual Coach at William Shorten Learning Solutions Ltd, a partner of DLA Ignite

• Lenwood Ross, CEO & Founder of Accelery, a partner of DLA Ignite

• Jordan Abbott, B2B social influence and interaction advisor at Supero and partner of DLA Ignite

• Jensen Abbott, B2B social influence and interaction advisor at Supero and partner of DLA Ignite

• Alex Abbott, Founder of Supero, a DLA Ignite partner, and

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, Founder of Flywheel Results, a DLA Ignite partner

Transcript of The Digital Download 2023-03-10
How to Understand Those You Communicate With,
with special guest Sarah Milby

(00:01) so he bursts through the door and the door slams behind him and he looks around and there's nobody else there [Applause] [Laughter] oh great uh good morning and welcome to another edition of the digital download today we're going to talk about mindset it's our accomplishments that have propelled us to where we are today but operating at our best all the time is hard and sometimes it can lead to burnout this week on the digital download we'll have a special guest Sarah Milby we'll talk with Sarah about achieving and

(00:46) sustaining Peak Performance and how mindset is the key but before we bring Sarah on let's go around and uh introduce everyone uh while we're doing that let's have the audience reach out to a friend Kingdom and have them join us we strive to make this a highly interactive experience so audience participation is encouraged right so introductions Adam would you please kick us off hi I'm Adam gray I'm co-founder of dla ignite and and Rob you didn't say you said the digital download but you didn't

(01:28) say what the digital download was did you no I did not thank you for joining us on the digital download the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn live thanks Adam Tracy hello everyone I am Tracy Morrison founder of tlb coaching and events proud partner of dla night and our Canadian representation welcome Tracy William thanks Robie and I'm William shorten so I'm an associate with dla Ignite uh along with uh Adam uh and I also run my own consultancy uh William shorten learning Solutions so I'm a consultant

(02:18) facilitator and business coach excellent thank you Lenwood good morning my name is Linwood Ross I'm the founder and uh CEO of accelerate accelerate um and ni we're both located just outside of New York's the Royal Way exactly we're just we're located outside of uh New York City we help people get work done faster and we are partners of dla ignite excellent thank you Jordan hello I'm Jordan Abbott B2B social influence and interaction advisor at superhero and of course proud dla ignite partner

(03:07) and and a representative from from uh France Jensen hello I'm Jensen I work at Superior and I am a proud dla associate working from Little buzzard working from where Leighton Buzzard are you not familiar Rob that sounds like something the Cat Dragged In you've been there excellent welcome gentsy Alex hello folks uh Alex Abbott founder of sapiro and we are also uh as Jordan and Jensen have said a proud dla ignite partner excellent welcome thank you Alex and myself I'm Rob Durant founder of

(04:11) flywheel results we provide Staffing training and consulting services to Tech startups so let's bring on our guest Sarah good morning and welcome well good morning and thank you for having me absolutely great to be here if you don't mind I'll share a little background about you for our audience competitive athlete turn CEO Sarah wanted to motivate people but not have them burn out as a college athlete in addition to her technical coaches she also learned from a coach who was focused on mindset she was taught strategies to handle

(04:54) pressure see opportunities in challenging situations and prepare for future successes now she and her team help others do this through her company Valor performance Sarah please tell us a little bit more about you and how you got here sure you started right where I would have which is as an athlete I played competitive soccer I then got into competitive running and I was fortunate enough to have a mental skills coach at the time it was a little bizarre but I saw it as just an additional tool in my toolkit and a competitive advantage

(05:42) so I had as you mentioned the technical coaches who worked with me especially in soccer dribbling and shooting but I had Paul who was my coach who worked with me on my mental skills especially his competition was Rising how is that going to continue to step up mentally emotionally and make sure that all of the work that I had done for physical preparation could be maximized and how it then leapt into many many years later Valor performance was I then went on into my career post College working in all different sectors

(06:26) non-profit government Finance and then I found my way into startups and technology companies and I found as I worked my way into leadership roles that the same issues kept coming up for myself and my teams how do you see opportunities and challenge how do you make sure that you're positioning yourself to be primed and optimal mentally and emotionally as you go to execute on whatever the strategy methodology processes of your work and I kept hearkening back to Paul and I kept wishing that my team had access to a Paul

(07:10) in a scalable way and then it started to just slowly plant the seeds for when I took the act of Courage hence Fowler heroic courage I'm sort of obsessed with courage um and just seeing what would happen if I tried to create a scalable technology driven approach to giving people access to some of these best practices and having a coach in their corner so we do leverage a lot of performance psychology but we apply it into corporate and increasingly actually now into health care which we're really excited about so

(07:50) that's a little bit more of connecting the dots a lot of zigging and zagging but now I have the privilege of running this company Valor awesome thank you for that I want to pick up on that word courage um as you know it takes courage to keep growing to up level your skills to continue to improve and develop throughout your career and it takes courage for organizations to see the potential that the future holds for its people so we've asked you to come on the show and give us some insight on how we can

(08:28) use mindset to help us find that courage but first what is meant by mindset and how can that help me yeah sure I mean it's all about how you're viewing uh and reacting and responding to your environment and the we all have internal chatter whether you have the awareness of it or not is another question but we all have the potential to hold ourselves back or Propel ourselves forward by what we tell ourselves in our minds and mindset is really what gives you some power and acknowledgment of the power that you

(09:24) can choose different thoughts and the thoughts that you choose is very tied to then your emotions and your behaviors which is of course Very tied to your interactions with other people and your connections with other people you know many times people uh in our space will talk about leadership development meaning how do you manage other people how do you talk to other people communication yes yes yes that's all critical but sometimes we've under invested in how we talk to ourselves as the starting point

(10:02) and how that is so tied to then how we communicate and interact with others so mindset is bringing that back and we have a strong Approach at Valor where how you lead yourself is then a building block to how you lead and connect with others which is critical as you lead during times of change and so I love mindset and I love how you connected in that question to courage because we all have the courage to potentially reframe something a little differently and to see it in a different way or at least consider seeing it in a different way

(10:47) uh as we navigate our day-to-day environment Tracy I saw you nodding along yes I have so I have this question that I ask myself when I'm feeling like my energy is Shifting in a downward way whether I'm thinking empowering thoughts or I'm thinking disempowering thoughts and one of the things that I found really interesting on the things I've learned about like brain science over the last couple of years is the amount of subconscious thoughts that we can process that don't become conscious thoughts and because I think it's

(11:29) something crazy like 4 000 thoughts a second but you can only process 90 or something like that like it's a drastic difference and so one of the things that has been like really helpful for me is just being able to just take a step back and say okay is what I'm thinking helping me right now yeah um it might be true right it might be about a situation but if you can shift that to be like okay this is the situation this is my disempowering thought about the situation how might I be able to find a empowering thought

(12:03) about the situation that can help help me help my team but one of the things I really wanted to I put out to Sarah in the panel is I I had an experience in leadership um where I so can let me paint a picture for a moment because to me it's a picture um so there's my team and my team lives on this beautiful tropical island with sun and the beach and Beverages and it's beautiful and it's nice to be there and then there's this wall that go this like big castle wall that goes around the whole outside of it and there's

(12:47) these really stormy seas on the outside of the wall so the wall is there to protect from these stormy seas and also dragons so there's like dragons trying to attack this island and then there's Tracy with my armor and my sword and I'm out fighting dragons so that my team can live in this like peaceful Sunny environment that feels good and is supportive of them and all those things and when I look at that now that seemed like something I had to do like literally I felt like I was defending my team from

(13:21) the rest of the company and I didn't want the like corporate culture to permeate my team because I didn't like it um it wasn't supportive to me and so I fought it off really aggressively and then when I think about how that contributes which I don't think it does to Peak Performance of our leaders then we have like this really big break point in an organization um so Sarah I wanted to ask in like all the other panel members too like if that's something you've witnessed if that's something you felt yourself and

(13:56) what are some things that have worked for you to navigate out of that situation oh yes I have thoughts I'm curious the other panel though because I'll just start rolling so I can tell you from oh go ahead Alex no I'm just throwing a flip a flip comment out there a flamethrower might help you fend off the dragon Tracy I can tell you from a sales leader to have peeps that are recommending those types of things they're old school swords like broadsword in the list well it's an interesting it's an

(14:34) interesting picture and um you know what I was thinking about uh while you were describing it is how and I don't know the answer um so you know I'm just raising another question is I don't know how helpful it is actually for your well-being or your team right for you to be out solo fighting dragons um and I wonder whether it might be more effective for the whole team to be embracing the challenges and complexity of the environment that you um that you're working in so um you know that'd be kind of my question is that

(15:15) you know how how is what is the best approach to the challenges that we face whether those challenges be external you know challenges that are out in the market or internal challenges that we have we need to overcome in our organizations I think a big problem that we have here is that we are we are all Islands we've got a singular Viewpoint and a singular experience of this stuff so I've worked for bosses that have said we have a problem by which they mean you have a problem and the problem is this and equally I've worked for bosses that

(15:54) have said you don't have any problems you just get on with what you're doing I will deal with all of this I will fly air cover for you to make sure you can Excel of what it is that you do and uh and I'm it that's a lovely environment to work in but I'm not sure that that necessarily makes it more successful or not and I think from the leader's perspective like you were saying Tracy you know you you you're swinging your broadsword and fending off dragons and that's that's a really tiring thing

(16:27) isn't it but but I always think from an individual perspective whether you're a leader or not it's very easy to get embroiled in the interaction that you're currently having so you know you're sitting opposite somebody they say something that you don't like or they say something that you don't agree with or they say something that is not uh is not part of your execution plan of what it is that you're going to do and the natural response is to meet that head-on the natural response is to fight

(16:54) that battle rather than taking a step back and looking at yourself and the person having the interaction and say okay what am I hoping to achieve with this interaction because you know if I if I win the argument but turn you off as a champion of mine or make you resistant to to the change then I may well have won that battle but I'm going to lose the war so I I think that that certainly in my experience which is limited compared to your Sarah um certainly my experience of this is that we have to have a strategic view of

(17:29) what it is that we're doing and you know is this interaction and is this task I'm doing contributing towards the long game or am I getting embroiled in the uh the the the arrogance of winning this individual fight guess I'd ask a follow-up question uh Tracy and thank you for sharing because really Vivid images of what you were talking about there and very strong metaphor um you said it was a team that you managed in the past what was the what was the defining factor in the end that um made you leave that organization or

(18:02) that situation yeah it's so the Dragons Were My CEO um and not that she was a dragon or mean or any of those things like in lots of ways she was very supportive and like critical to my growth to where I got as a person but it was just that we were very misaligned in how we saw success how like one of the things that's most important to me is the empowerment of the people human optimization right doing things that work for individuals and not just this like very transactional here's the business stats right like we

(18:46) execute on business stats and however people experience it people experience it that's not how I do things and so what I realized is that we were just very misaligned and I ended up leaving the organization um like not again not mad it's just that like this isn't the place for me um and and I would I would like like language was saying I would like if I'm not saying we never have to fight dragons right but when we do have to fight dragons how successful is one person fighting a dragon versus a team

(19:16) of people fighting a dragon um and I just didn't feel like I had a team of people on the management team that wanted to go fight dragons with me so now I come to the digital download and hang out with people who will fight dragons Adam that that air cover is uh exactly how I felt when I was um a leader in sales my job was to keep anything that could detract the front line sales people from closing one more deal but Tracy what I didn't realize until you said it earlier was that I was also protecting them from the company's

(19:54) culture where I didn't feel that it was aligned with me or my team Sarah you said you had some thoughts yes I think and I I hope I'm not frozen so I think I might have Frozen there for a bit but hopefully you can hear me okay you know I think okay great I think we have to discuss values uh in this conversation as it relates to being such a strong pillar to creating culture it's very normal for an organization to have Micro cultures so a team has a culture within a broader organization which has a culture which

(20:34) by the way every organization has a culture whether they have intentionally created it is another question and part of that intentionality is having to do oh there's a slight time lag sorry about that um having to do with the values that you set as a leader you can foster those conversations for a team to be empowered in how they want to show up in the day-to-day the values that then drive the pro the pop the processes the actions and the interactions across the team and it's we see it all the time where a

(21:17) leader and maybe their team have values that are different from the broader organization and there are some some situations where you can navigate that you can control the controllables there's so many different types of dragons right there's so many different types it could be an individual it could be in internal situation or change it could be a competitor it could be external change that we all have seen time and time again especially over the past few years so how do you navigate that change do you see the opportunity

(21:56) or is it debilitating and I think that's something that's going to be dependent on the situation but what I love about this conversation is almost everybody acknowledged that you need to take a step back Tracy you even use that in your language sometimes I can take a step back and I can see this broader point and I think just that being able to see the bigger picture can help inform how do you show up to that situation and whether it's going with which type of sword or rallying the troops and say hey this is what we are facing

(22:33) how do we want to come together in this moment I love that we've landed on the dragon matter of course that but before you go I want to acknowledge the question from our audience uh Curious Sarah how you're aligning microcultures within a larger organizational culture is there ever friction between micro micro culture Dynamics and the entity at large easy for me to say right of course Sarah and I'd love to hear your experience with this but of course on this ladder one that there can be friction I mean almost everybody was nodding when

(23:16) I I said just that comment about microcultures it seems like that definitely struck a chord I'm curious what the other panelists think but you're 100 right Sarah that there can be friction between a microculture and sometimes those microcultures uh in a beautiful way can come together to create the fabric of a a great organizational culture but how are they aligning needs to be intentional and so and by the way we see this uh we're a globally distributed company so we see this also culturally and celebrating the individual cultures of

(23:56) certain uh regions teams and bringing them together in a unified organizational culture with values so all of these things need to be intentional and deliberate conversations what we find in our work and in our coaching we talked a lot about mindset obviously that's our bread and butter but not being able to uh have those conversations is something we've seen over and over again of just not knowing how to navigate the conversation to say hey we say this is our value what does that mean to us how do you think we should show up in

(24:36) these various situations if XYZ is one of our values and by the way is that still one of our values at this time for our organization or is it looking different for what we how we want to show up right now yeah this is a really awesome conversation um and just to I would like to respond to what you said about the microcultures because I have seen that um I've seen that play out in a way that is extremely destructive in an organization um and I think that it is emblematic um or maybe even that's a really a bad

(25:13) word it is a it is a it is a byproduct of the hierarchical nature of organizations you know that kind of grew up in the um in the 20th century that that the the the hierarchical structure was um good for efficiency and even Effectiveness but it's not really or but you know the Modern Age which is um moves much faster and requires much more agility and adaptability so um this actually happens to be an area of focus for me but when it comes to like you know taking a step back and really being able to kind of assess

(26:05) those things in the organization for me when I started doing that that's when things things changed um you know I was a horrible leader at one time I mean absolutely terrible um no we can't believe that Lynnwood uh you being sarcastic um anyway he said was yeah well I was I mean I was really I was really horrible but um but but what was that is is that because you were young and inexperienced or because you had specific pressures on you because I think that I mean I I was kind of obviously my comment was was a

(26:46) funny comment but the fact is that you are a really nice guy I mean a really nice guy and yet you identified looking back with hindsight that you were a whole leader so what drove you to be a horrible leader because that's out of character for you isn't it uh yeah so it was youth in an experience okay so that there was that con combination but really when it the pressure of the job um started to weigh down on me without having any tools in my toolbox to handle it then the flaws in my character started to appear

(27:31) the there started to be a you know just sort of like um if if you have if you have character flaws as we all do but you know if their significant character flaws when and they're imagine you know kind of a wall um and there's cracks at the bottom when you start putting pressure on that wall those cracks will start to spread and eventually there'll be a breakdown in in the wall so um basically what happened is um you know there was a tremendous amount of this was an extremely high pressure situation there's not character

(28:10) you know I was in a I was the level below the sea level um our CEO was under investigation my boss The General Counsel was under investigation and when I say investigation you know was like the FBI the Securities and Exchange Commission Banking Committee of the United States Congress I mean this is serious stuff and I will and the and so the pressure on me in that situation as the senior uh corporate attorney for the organization was was pretty was significant and I didn't have awareness about number one my position in the

(28:53) organization and how people saw me uh and so because of that lack of self-awareness you know I was just I was like a person who was like it's all about the job you know I've got all these things I've got to manage between the board and outside counsel and all these different things I I just didn't appreciate what people were seeing and what other people were going through in the organization so we have an organization that's under pressure and you know I was like focused on myself like I've got all this pressure on me

(29:27) but it was really the whole organization all the people in the organization even all the way down to the executive assistants who are supporting their the executives they work for and feeling that pressure on them right so I just did not I had no awareness or and so um you know my my actions which were tough and very legalistic you know because I'm a lawyer you know I I didn't I didn't agree know shins in so many awareness and and leading yourself first right and just taking this taking that beat and saying you know what one of the

(30:18) things that I did for a period of two years after I realized oh my goodness I'm a horrible leader and I gotta get this under control is um I just I stopped speaking first or not even not speaking first I would just any time I was having an interaction with anyone I just would not respond in that moment if if I could say that you know I would just say you know let me just take a minute let me let me get back to you let me you know and just take time to process what was happening how that person might be feeling about it and the impact it

(31:02) might be having on the organization Linwood for that organization that you were working in what were the espoused values or the kind of mission that that's that that organization had that's it that's a great question um I can tell you the mission but I can't necessarily speak to the values because I don't remember what they were or even if they were if they were articulated it was articulated in a you know for the uh proxy statement it was you know it was something that was just a piece of paper it wasn't something

(31:35) that was necessarily you know spread across the organization but the mission was to make the very best accessible to all children and that was something that I obviously I still remember that even though it's been years since I worked for that company uh I loved that mission I love that mission it was I worked for a founder-led organization um a Visionary entrepreneur uh who is you know he's still out there doing his thing today that is what that the values around making the very best accessible to all children is What attracted me to

(32:12) the company and motivated me to go to work every day we then had some managers who were Wall Street types who came into the organization the conflict between those two ways of operating nearly destroyed the company I feel so oh go ahead are you go no I was just gonna say I feel so strongly to jump in just with the um the sentence around I was a terrible manager I just I feel like protective I have to jump in and just tell you how common this is and like we as humans uh we there's the Neuroscience to support

(32:57) how we react to stress and the pressure that you described and what it means for our own self-regulation and how when we aren't equipped and I liked how you said I wasn't given the skills that's so common how many times in organizations do we promote into management really strong individual contributors but not support them with proper training development and support and what I'm on a mission to do is encourage that part of that training and support support is the ability to lead themselves as we then are asking them to

(33:34) lead others yeah and equip them with some of the mental skills and the mindset and some of the stress regulation and emotional regulation we call it emotional flexibility because stress is not bad we can reframe stress if we have the skills the tools to to reframe mentally to say okay gosh this is a normal physiological response that I'm having gosh I must be also excited about this opportunity and I'm feeling this pressure maybe I have some fear about what if I don't perform but if we don't ever have those conversations then

(34:15) we're just leaving these unsupported leaders to have that ripple effect and that's why what's so interesting about our work now is we're correlating we're seeing man if you invest in top talent it actually does have an impact on the overall team engagement team performance not just of that individual but it's across the organization so anyway I just I had to jump in with your story and I appreciate you sharing it because we all often are coaching people who um I'm always surprised that there still

(34:54) are people out there that have fixed mindsets but there are that just say I've I've solved it all you can't teach me anything I am the way I am I don't think anybody on this call but so I don't know where it all works in front oh you have okay that's right okay so finally I've met someone okay there we go a digital download so I finally have met the person who has it all figured out don't you think that still the fixed mindset is still the prevalent mindset um in yes I thought the book doesn't that count

(35:31) yeah yeah it's just on the bookcase and that counts I didn't read all of them um I don't think any I don't any leadership um is lifelong learning like so much of I mean you're always learning and growing we were talking about the Dragons I'm going to keep referencing dragons Tracy thank you for this analogy Valor and Dragons somehow go together right right um you know situations are constantly changing and so therefore we as Leaders I often think about like Sarah 1.

(36:17) 0 wouldn't have started Valor Sarah 2.0 started Valor scaling Valor is requiring Sarah 3.0 we are all in a state of evolution in order to maintain performance you're in a state of evolution what you know and Rob you asked me this one time earlier is like what you know got you here is not going to be what gets you there and we just have to kind of like hold some of our practices routines mindsets Loosely and at least be thoughtful and intentional about them if we want to sustain Peak Performance so what got you here isn't going to get

(36:55) you there when do you know it's time to switch sorry I'm chuckling at digital download meets Dungeons and Dragons um gosh don't you don't you think that we can we all benefit from a little bit of the introspection and just asking ourselves that question you know it's never black and white to say okay so if you face this then you clearly you know you you switch I like to think of my own performance routines as uh experiments to consider or to try right because my situation not only with my organization that I talked about

(37:41) um but also we faced you know the pandemic I became a mom like situations are constantly needing to just say okay is this working for me I personally not to get into like specifics but I have a weekly review at the end of each week just to take 30 45 minutes to review my uh my schedule as far as how it aligned with my priorities dare I say values and then consider if I need to tweak anything or consider tweaking something not to put so much pressure on myself but just to say anything I want to adjust anything I I definitely want to take

(38:27) with me into the next week or into the next month I like to think of puritization this is something a lot of elite athletes do we work with Elite athletes Elite military leaders uh corporate Executives sales teams Healthcare um so a lot of our coaches understand the routines across these different performance Arenas and I like to think about periodization right so uh let me give an example as a marathon runner there's such thing as a taper right before I run the race um sometimes you have a build up phase and so I think we can all as humans

(39:02) benefit from some periods chapters if you will seasons of our life and allow ourselves to have different goals for Different Seasons or different chapters use whatever phrase I'm trying to bring it back to dragons I haven't come up with something yet give me a second we'll have some way that it goes back to dragons hmm I think I think there's also a word that both you Sarah and Len would have used which is around kind of a well awareness and I think you know that's a critical phase of understanding actually as you

(39:37) as you kind of mature and get into leadership it's it's understanding you know where your strengths lie um Sometimes some of the under underdeveloped strengths you have which you can use even even more and those areas which either you avoid or you know need need some development so I think it's it's it's it's that basis to kind of work and and to build on those and and then of course as you said that the self-reflection and of course you know the reflection of others which you can get through feedback you

(40:07) know and that's why so many organizations these days are talking about establishing feedback cultures is because they want to kind of uh almost put this to act as a catalyst to kind of get this moving through throughout the organization the most important word you said There Will was maturity so I've been listening to the conversations here and you know uh lenwood's issue when he was a horrible manager had nothing to do with the fact that he was a horrible manager had to do with the fact that he wasn't

(40:35) mature and I think that one of the things that I have seen universally across uh organizations is that the best managers have been mature people now often that aligns with age not always but often it aligns with age but as you as you mature you become much braver about taking criticism and acknowledging your weaknesses so when we all set out in the workplace we think we have to be best at absolutely everything we think it's a competition and the idea of saying actually will can you do that because you're much better you'd never

(41:10) utter those words you'd just say yeah give it to me give it to me I'll do that I'll need to be better than you and as you get older you realize that actually the greatest value you can add is this little stripe here and an understanding of those things but not doing those things necessarily and and part of that is the open mindset and part of that is recognizing that that you have a uniqueness to you and it's that that is your USP and you don't have to be able to do everything and and that only comes with uh with experience

(41:42) and with maturity and when I've seen catastrophic management it's invariably been because people have been promoted too fast too far too soon and they're not inherently bad people but they behave inherently badly when they're put in that situation a situation where they have as you said no training no experience no tool kit or no no tools in the kit bag that they can deploy when these problems arise and they're afraid to put their hand up and say you know actually I'm lost can somebody please

(42:16) help me because I'm in this situation and that bravery back to broadsword and dragons that bravery and that ability to Vanquish those demons those demons are all internal aren't they you know it's about saying I need your help with this will I need your help with this Lenwood and that only comes when you're secure enough to be able to say yeah I'm not good at everything but knowledge some of the comments from the audience uh Sean Martin says not all managers are good leaders leadership can

(42:48) be taught but values such as integrity and kindness are critical and then this other fellow commented uh this Timothy Hughes uh there was a fixed mindset pandemic in business and I know people who say they have growth mindset but are very fixed well I think that goes back to the self-awareness it I mean I I have this conversation often about the concept of authenticity right because I feel like like Peak Performance authenticity evolves right so if you're gonna say Peak you have to evolve authenticity evolves this is The

(43:29) Human Experience and one of the things that I think is so like as you have time as an individual human to explore what is my thing that I'm good at how can I find that there's like very little in the societal narrative that's about that right so businesses end up they might have a certain amount of values on the wall and they might think that they believe them but then Lenwood one of the things I was hearing in your experience is that like leaders need to make fast decisions right like and if that that

(44:04) could be a way a business is run right like leaders are expected to make fast decisions and when you don't have the space to step back which we've all talked about is necessary to manage yourself let alone manage someone else in those perspectives we can't do that and so we need to be able to challenge those societal narratives and we're living in a world of instant gratification right and it's transitioned over into leadership I want instant gratification instant decisions from my leaders and

(44:36) that doesn't allow a leader to to be the leader that they can be to maintain Peak Performance with the team and similarly in that conversation about self-awareness where do we get taught self-awareness okay we don't get taught it in school I didn't learn it in business school that's for sure I never had like although I had people I would consider really great managers nobody had the conversation with me about like what do I believe what do I think what do I think my gifts are right the the practice of self-awareness isn't part of

(45:13) the education system it's not part of the narrative in most businesses and so then how can we possibly find it unless we've taken the time personally as an individual over x amount of years which is why the maturity is relevant to learn those things about ourselves you have you have to have sometimes that partner because to to Rob's Point yeah let me send you the 50 million books that then you have to read and then jot down some journaling and blah blah yeah that's for sure and many people do that

(45:52) and a lot of other people may need a partner in this experience this discovery process too of self-awareness and to your point Tracy this is why I started this business like post-industrial Revolution to go back to Leonard is like we have focused our modern Workforce so much on the efficiency and effectiveness we've squeezed out the humanity and then why is anybody surprised when then we say gosh we really need stronger leaders and they need self-awareness wait a second wait a second we've created this modern Workforce okay I can

(46:30) get off on a many tangents on this but um but therefore it behooves all of us and especially those in leadership positions to encourage people to have taking the step back so they can be intentional and as Leaders we can model it are just full of meetings sorry William I'd have to just continue my little so fast it's just we're going from meeting to meeting to meeting and then we're saying and by the way at some point you should have this time to reflect meditate in between the meetings right yeah right there you go

(47:06) a little bit go ahead there is a bias and I know working in a similar space is is you're seeing a lot of organizations now taking on external coaches and you're also seeing a lot of them beginning to invest what are the the favorite programs going around at the moment is leader as a coach so they're trying to get these these leaders to bring these skills on board you know to a certain extent the issue is that they haven't gone through that Journey necessarily themselves and therefore you know they they don't kind of they're not

(47:38) aware if you like uh to come back to that of of what they need to be doing and how they they're getting the how but not the what and the why yeah shouldn't it shouldn't it therefore be the responsibility of the leader the hiring manager whoever promotes you to make sure you have the environment available to you to be successful in the past I think and I was really lucky with the the bosses that I've worked for is that a lot of them had a kind of inherent mentoring um kind of approach so they actually

(48:13) took time my first sales role I was working for somebody who was an experienced sales manager and they took time to take me through the kind of different processes to talk about how you needed to turn up you know some of the kind of financial commercial relationships in different parts of the world because we were dealing with customers on a global basis so I was very lucky to have those kind of people and I think you know it's one of those if if as a leader as a manager you see it as an important part of your role to

(48:43) develop the people that you've got working for you then yeah that should be something that kind of kicks in and I think you know the more we can talk about that and highlight that that the importance of that role plays again it kind of gets a message out yeah and I think though does that come from that leader having that level self-awareness about themselves right because if you don't have that then why would you even think about giving it to other people yeah whereas language situation he was high you know promoted and you were

(49:15) expected to sink or swim by the sounds of it yeah well um it's very interesting because you know to Sarah's point I can't I was I came into the organization I was you know a high performer and um you know they just kind of assumed maybe I don't know if they assumed or what but they act I think the leaders in the organization had a higher expectations for how I would perform than I even had of myself like I didn't like I said I didn't have an awareness of my own abilities and how I was able to contribute to the

(50:03) organization um part of that was the person that I was working for but also I lost the kind of natural opportunity to develop and have like a normal period of like oops and okay and correct because you know I had this we had this tremendous pressure uh that came on the organization um you know from extra internal and external external pressures that just it just put me in a in a hot seat that I wasn't really ready for so we we come back to pressure and one of the questions I I was hoping we could ask Sarah today

(50:44) with all of the growing pressures to deliver what can we do to prevent burnout how do we recognize the onset and what can we do if burnout happens any thoughts there sure and I I whenever asked about burnout I always have to give my preface which is it wouldn't be such an epidemic if I could just tell you three bullet points and we could solve it today so we have to think about the systems in which we are working the organizations in which we are working and that context I'll give an extreme example before I

(51:33) answer your question we do a lot with Health Systems okay so we work a lot with clinicians and non-clinicians and Physicians and so we can talk about individual uh changes and mindset and strategies but we also have to acknowledge the Health Care system policy organizational change that is required okay preface and uh and so therefore let me get to your question first I think it's really important for us to be thoughtful on what are we saying yes to and therefore what are we saying no to no one should be surprised if you're

(52:16) saying yes to everything that then lo and behold you get overwhelmed and therefore you start to feel some early signs of burnout meaning like some emotional exhaustion you don't have that same Vigor that same engagement in your work there's a strong correlation to work engagement and burnout or there's actually some really interesting new research demonstrating cognitive load uh it's out of actually NASA task index demonstrating how those can be early signs of burnout um how much mentally are you doing

(52:49) especially task switching all of us are probably guilty of it but the task switching is very exhausting to us humans and so even strategies like batch work um Cal Newport does a lot of great work around having like your again period periodization within your day of focused work and allowing yourself to have that uh scheduling yourself to have that and be thoughtful with your energy management around it gosh I'm much better to do my analytical work in the morning versus the afternoon the afternoon I'm starting to feel a little

(53:24) Wayne that's usually where I want to have like more of a coffee chat maybe I need to go for a walk I've been really thoughtful about this like working from home thinking about two days a week wanting to do in persons so I go out of my way I think about this within the schedule my my weekly schedule to have some of these uh different types of energy different types of work um and so all's just to say there's like basically paying attention to your energy management your emotional exhaustion the cognitive load all of

(53:54) those things are important a couple other things to consider um one Brad stolberg and Steve Magnus they wrote this book Peak Performance their advisors of Brad is an advisor to Valor I love this kind of framework that they use around burnout mastery autonomy belonging what does that mean Mastery we as humans like to see that what we're doing is working towards something especially when we're feeling outside of think some things are out of sight of our control but we like to see that like man all of that worked but it wasn't for

(54:29) nothing yeah I went from X to y and so we have to be thoughtful about that as Leaders we have to be thoughtful about this for our teams for our organizations and being clear with our communication around mastery second is autonomy you're hearing all the rage right now is about flexibility yeah I want to be clear on the goals for my team but when and how you do it that's up to you or man this is the overall objective right so like classic okr stuff right um how do you think what do you think some good key results should be why

(55:09) don't you go think that through come back with three recommendations uh or three ideas and your clear recommendation for how we could Implement that you know so given giving that empowerment Tracy Tracy said that word earlier right that's like thinking about the autonomy people want to feel that autonomy at work and then lastly belonging we are tribal creatures we have to be thinking about the social connection and a sense of belonging being a part of something like Leonard mentioned about them he even still to this day remembers

(55:42) the mission mission can be a huge unifying force for us humans so can values but be thinking about those sense of belonging the team that is working so hard so those are just a couple thoughts again no Panacea sorry we have you here really I want to acknowledge some of the comments um Rob Turrell why do c-suite not get crisis Management training anymore this could perhaps stop burnout and Matthew Lampe says harking back to earlier comments on culture creating and supporting cultures of coaching mentoring and individual development can

(56:35) build mental Fitness and transform people and organizations and then we also have uh Sean Matton empowerment is an intimately linked to trust any thoughts around that Trust yeah psychological safety all of those are so connected I think those are great call outs um I mean Matthew yes plus one and then I'll just say to to Rob's Point interesting comment about crisis management I would frankly say like adaptive leadership is now becoming All the Rage these days because what leader is not adapting What leader is not having to navigate change

(57:22) we've been Non-Stop seems like in crisis management mode and so and you're inundated as a leader so how do you make sure that you are grounded when everything around you seems like the ground may be shaking how do you stay grounded and that's the power of a lot of mindset and Leadership coaching but that's my plug yeah so we're coming to the top of the hour uh before we do any last thoughts from anyone on the panel any last questions I've I've got a question so uh I don't think anybody could have

(58:01) listened to this and not be in agreement with how this conversation has gone and the challenges facing leaders and how they need to lead uh so so if you could give one top tip Sarah to something that anybody out there can do in terms of how they how they start to see with greater clarity how they can how they can manage the interactions that they're having in order that they don't default to their weaknesses and start to put pressure on other people and all of those things what would your one tip be so we've talked a lot about

(58:38) self-awareness and that can be like this big giant word it's like how do I get self-aware by the way an hbr article said that 80 percent of leaders claim that they are self-aware and I think we have all worked for people that were like no no my friends so um so I don't want to give something like be self-aware here's here's my tip we call it the secret weapon at Valor and it just starts with taking a breath sometimes we're in constant reacting mode by myself I I'm a high I I love to go go go go go go go go go

(59:17) and so my tip that I give to myself every day is take a breath because there is a difference between reacting and intentionally responding and sometimes all it takes is just that breath so is that the Sara Bareilles song Breathe Just Breathe there you go yes that's a that's the theme song for the uh Dungeons and Dragons there we go I think that's a great that's a great point you know and that's kind of what I was talking about is I would react rather than respond and just taking that moment

(59:59) to not react but rather respond it's it's a huge difference yeah awesome brilliant thank you that's that is our time for the week Sarah before we go how can our audience uh connect with you where can they find you all roads to Valor performance uh will somehow find their way to me so valorperform.

(1:00:25) com or I'm on LinkedIn so Sarah Milby Valor performance you can find me and I'd love to continue the conversation Sarah check it out we have something in common which I didn't know what's that these check the Yale Banner oh love it love it awesome she went to Yale too guys there you go well as always another great episode I want to thank our audience for the active participation I want to thank our panelists for your contributions to the show and Sarah thank you so much for your time it's been great getting to know you a little bit more and learning

(1:01:06) from you uh until next week uh this is the digital download signing off wow see you later hi everyone thanks bye

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