Randstad RiseSmart is the only coaching provider that lets you offer coaching to all your employees. Their disruptive, innovative approach does away with cumbersome and expensive licenses, allowing you to be more equitable and inclusive and extend the reach of coaching for all like never before. Welcome to ATD's Talent Development Leader podcast, featuring monthly conversations with the greatest influencers in the talent development field.
We cover the latest trends, hot topics, and future-focused ideas that current and aspiring TD leaders need to know. Learn more by visiting www.td.org and searching for Talent Development Leader podcast. Today I'm joined by Ryan Gottfredson, a cutting edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. Ryan helps organizations vertically develop their leaders primarily through a focus on mindsets.
Ryan is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of Success Mindsets, the Elevated Leader and Becoming Better. He is also a leadership professor at the College of Business and Economics at California State University Fullerton. Ryan holds a PhD in organizational behavior and human resources from Indiana University and a BA from Brigham Young University. Hi Ryan. Thank you for joining me today. Yeah, thank you.
Hey, I've gotta say Ann good job reading my bio, which there's a lot there, but I'm also having flashbacks because you mentioned my book Becoming Better and I started recording the audio book today and Wow. I don't know if you've ever recorded like an audio book, but man, you make just so many mistakes reading and you think, oh my goodness, I thought I knew how to read. But when you're trying to get it right, then it's messing up. And you did awesome. Yeah. First take. Good job. Thank you.
Is this your first audio book? First time? Third. So I did an audio book with the first two and now we've got this third book coming out in June. And you know, just excited for it to get out into the world. Absolutely. Well, we'll be talking about becoming better today and we're gonna really focus in on that and its content. And I'm excited. I've got a advanced copy of it and I've started reading it myself. It's fantastic.
And one of the major stances that you take with this book is that most development efforts desire to be transformational-ly helpful, but are only incrementally helpful. Could you explain why that is? Yeah. And if it's okay, let's maybe just like circle around to that. You know, any developer of course, wants to have a meaningful impact on the lives of others. That's really why we're doing the work that we do.
But what we also kind of recognize is most development efforts don't have as big of an impact as we would like them to have. I mean, one statistic that I've seen is the Brandon Hall Group reported that 75% of organizations say that their leadership development efforts are not very effective. Which is just like as a leadership developer, it just makes you cringe.
So I wanna kind of, if it's okay, just kind of come back to why is that, why aren't our development efforts a little bit better and more transformational? And to get us into this, I'm gonna ask you a question if that's okay. I'm gonna put you on the spot. Okay? All right. Okay. So I'm gonna give you three individuals, and I want you to tell me what you feel like these individuals have in common. Okay?
Okay. I'm assuming you'll know these people, but Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, and Ellen DeGeneres. Hmm, what they have in common. Golf. I don't know. Tiger Woods played golf. I don't know maybe Bill Clinton golf played. He plays golf. Right. But they're well known. Right. Famous on some level. They're successful in their careers. And you might even say wildly successful at certain times in their careers.
But I think another thing for us to recognize is there has been controversy with each of these individuals. Mm-hmm. And so I wanna play off of this idea that, they have been wildly successful and there's been controversy, and I wanna kind of just unpack one explanation for why that is. I think it's helpful for us to recognize that there's two different sides of ourselves. The one side is our doing side, and this is our talent, our knowledge, skills, and abilities.
And so when we think about the success of people like Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, and Ellen DeGeneres. These are incredibly talented individuals and their success has come about because of their talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities. But their controversy isn't really connected to their doing side. It's connected to something else. And what is connected to is what I call their being side. So if you think about like almost a graph and x axis, our doing side, a y axis is our being side.
And our being side is effectively at a really high level, the quality of our character, our mindsets, our psyche, our consciousness, and even our emotional intelligence. And so when we kind of step into these individuals is we could kind of recognize. They have been successful because of their doing side, but their controversy largely resides because of inadequacies along their being side.
So I think it is helpful to understand that we've got these two different sides of ourselves and I wanna add on to that, but let me just ask you, do those two sides, does that make sense to you? Or do you have anything to add there? Yeah, absolutely. When you mentioned at the beginning kind of the overall fixation on leadership development in the field and how it's, you know, the statistic from Brandon Hall and it's just not effective.
I mean, I think to me, that makes so much sense when you think about how much focus people put on doing in leadership, right? And the differentiation between that and being, so, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You're right there with me. When we know these two different sides, we can ask. Okay where do most of our development efforts focus on? Well, it's the doing side. It's about finding skill gaps and closing those gaps.
We are just so familiar with development here because it's the major focus of our education system. It's the major focus of our athletic programs and it's the major focus of our organizational development efforts. And so when you think about any development in organization, I'm not gonna say there's anything wrong with doing side development. Surely we need this.
And what I might even add in is we probably need more of the doing side development earlier in our careers, and we need being side throughout our careers. One of the things that I've learned is as we elevate along our being side, we enhance our capacity to get more out of our doing side. Then the question becomes, well, what side is more transformational for us to focus on? What I'm kind of suggesting is that the being side is more transformational for us to focus on.
And so let me give you just one quick analogy to kind of hopefully make these ideas come to life is I kind of think about doing side development is like putting tools on our tool belt. It's awesome to have tools. But just because we have tools in our tool belt doesn't necessarily mean that we know how to utilize them effectively. And so while doing side development adds tools to our tool belt and that's good, it makes us more versatile perhaps.
The being side development really is focused about upgrading the person wearing the tool belt, right. Because I don't know if you're anything like me, Ann, is, I feel like for example, I know about patience. I know how to be patient, but there are times that I really struggle with patience. And what that suggests is I don't need to go to a training on how to do patience better. I actually need to go to a training on how to become more patient.
And that being side is hopefully we're kind of feeling into this. That being side is much more connected to refining our body's nervous system. Not just adding knowledge and skills and abilities. Coming back to your question, why aren't our development efforts more effective? The answer that I'm putting forward is, I think it's because we focus too much on the doing and not enough on the being. To kind of clarify for our audience, this is more than just soft skills training, right?
Communications, EQ. You mentioned central nervous system. Like this is something that a lot of talent development leaders don't do, don't consider, don't integrate in their leadership development programs. Yeah, and I think a lot of times the being side is connected to softer stuff because knowledge and skills that, that just feels a little bit more tangible, a little bit harder. But here's one of my pet peeves. I'm gonna use emotional intelligence as an example, right?
A lot of people in organizations, if they want their people to develop greater emotional intelligence, they'll send them to a workshop on, let's say, delivering feedback more effectively or crucial conversations where they will gain knowledge and skills to deliver feedback or have these crucial conversations and that knowledge and skills can be helpful.
Don't get me wrong, it can be helpful but just because again, one knows how to deliver feedback or have crucial conversations and maybe even develop the skills to do so because they roleplayed it during these workshops in the heat of the moment, when it's hitting the fan for that leader, do they utilize the knowledge and skills that they put on their tool belt? Or do they fall back to their kind of default mode when they're under stress?
Which may not involve that knowledge and skills that they had learned. And what I see in the leaders that I work with is most leaders know how to deliver effective feedback, but when the pressure's on the line. When they're not hitting deadlines or whatever it might be. The stress ratchets up. Then they lose and they increasingly lose capability of delivering effective feedback. I think ultimately this is the cutting edge of the future of development.
To be a little less skills and knowledge focus and more about our ability to apply those knowledge and skills in the heat of the moment, if you will. That's good. Putting the, being side in the driver's seat. Because you're right, I mean really that kind of training, the soft training is really still about doing those things better, right? It doesn't really tap into that being side transformationally like you've been talking about.
With that in mind and kind of understanding that most people you work with really aren't doing this yet, how do talent development leaders need to adjust? What can they do so that they have more of a transformational impact? Well, one, we've just gotta get it on our radar. I mean, that's, the biggest hurdle is getting it on our radar. And I'll talk through a few different ways in which we could do that.
But as a whole, and this is essentially what I do in the development work that I do, there's kind of three steps that I see to this. One is we gotta help people learn what their being side is and just start to get connected to it. One of the ways in which I do this, for example, is to help people explore if then statements that are about themselves. So it's almost like if, fill in the blank, if this happens, then my body typically responds in this fashion.
So we were talking before Ann and I, about our families. I've got a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old, and one of my if then statements might be if my children start fighting with each other in the backseat while I'm driving, then I will quickly lose my cool, right? That's just part of my body's almost automatic programming that's built into me, and we all have our own automatic programming now. Some of that programming serves us well. But some of that programming really holds us back.
So when we get in touch, that's the first step is learning what our being side is and getting in touch with it. The second step is then to gauge our altitude along our being side. So one of the things that I've learned is that our being side really represents the quality of our body's nervous system. And I call it our internal operating system. And people who are less developed along their being side are more wired for self-protection.
People that have a higher being side are more wired for value creation. So let me give you an example of this. How do you think most people think about and respond to failure? I think they shirk away from it. I think they're afraid of it. They wanna avoid it at all costs. Yeah. And why is that? Because it feels uncomfortable. I might be seen as a failure. Right.
So when we move away from failure, that is a self-protective tendency and it's actually kind of representative that we were a little bit lower along our being side. Because another way that we can make meaning of failure is we could see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Maybe even our best opportunity to learn and grow. And when we see failure as this opportunity to learn and grow, we're much more willing to step into learning zone challenges.
And that allows us to grow, get better and become greater value creators in the long term. One of the reasons why I bring up this example is because what I found in my research is that over 60% of executives are more what we would call in this instance, fixed minded. They lean more towards self-protection in the face of failure as opposed to value creation.
They have a tendency to hold on to what's worked in the past because they're fearful of trying something new that they're unsure might work better in the future. That would be a learning zone challenge. And so this is just coming back. This is just a summarized step two, which is awakening to our altitude. So where are our bodies wired in this continuum from self-protection to value creation. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.
And then the third step is then, okay, when we know where we're at, along that continuum and we understand that continuum. It helps us have clarity about where we need to go. And that's ultimately what the third step is. We've got to implement development practices that help us to upgrade and refine, and I'm even gonna say heal our body's internal operating system. And that's ultimately where the rubber meets the road with the being side development work.
But I think it starts again with what is our being side, what's our altitude, and then how do we elevate along our being side? Mm-hmm. And so any thoughts as I kind of walk through those three steps? Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I think about myself and I think I'm, you know, fairly self-aware, but when I think about that continuum, kind of knowing where I am, but then knowing how to move the needle is I think the part where you know, I could really use the most, the most help essentially.
And I'm sure that's true for many, but another kind of nugget I got out of that is, you know, it's not what you focus on. What you focus on is what you will see. So even when you're talking about failure. The idea that there's value creation on the other side of that rather than failure, right? And kind of how some people are perhaps more wired to see that side of it, but then knowing you can move the needle. And I think that's the hope in all of this, right?
Regardless of where you are on that scale, you can elevate yourself. Yeah. Let me give you an example. So one of the questions that might come up is. How do we know if we have elevated along our being side? Yeah. Right. Here's one way to kind of gauge this. There's a variety of ways, but one way is to investigate how we have changed, how we make meaning of our world. And ultimately what that also means is how do we change our relationships with different things, right?
We all have relationships with different things like time, with money, with others, for example. And if we can improve our relationships with those things, that's actually a being side upgrade. Let me give you a specific example. And I'm curious, Ann, if you've ever read Brené Brown's book Rising Strong. I think I read Dare. What's the one with Dare In It? Dare to Lead. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I read.
And she may reference this example now that I think about it in Dare to Lead, but in her book, Rising Strong. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Actually helped me develop along my being side. I'm gonna use hers as an example, and then move it over to me. So in this book she talks about this event where she agreed to speak at this conference and she said it was kind of a favor to a friend. If she was getting paid, it wasn't very much. She had to travel for it. So she travels to this conference.
And she checks in and they say, oh, we have you rooming with so and so. And she wasn't aware that she would be splitting effectively a hotel room with somebody. And so she's kind of like, oh my goodness, this is terrible. And she goes up to the room and kind of knocks on the door and the other person's in there and she hears the other person on the other side of the door yell, come in. So she comes in and hears this lady that's sitting on the couch.
She's got her shoes on, which were not clean shoes apparently. And they were up on the couch and she's eating this really messy cinnamon roll. And as she comes in, she sees the woman put down the cinnamon roll, wipe her sticky fingers on the couch. And then shake her hand and Brene Brown is like, oh my goodness. Like, this is off. To add to this, Brene Brown is a former smoker, this is a non-smoking room. And the woman goes out on the balcony and starts smoking a cigarette.
And so Brene Brown is like fuming about this for several days because when she gets back home, she had a regular meetup with her therapist. When she meets with her therapist, she talks to her therapist about how terrible this woman was and what a bad experience and how she regretted going to this and all these things. And her therapist asked her a question, like, kind of stopped her like Brene. Do you think that woman was doing the best that she could?
Brene Brown's answer was very quickly, no, she was not doing the best she could and gave all these reasons for why she wasn't doing the best. And so immediately after meeting with her therapist, Brene Brown goes to the bank and she's in line in the bank, and there's a woman, a white older woman who is speaking to a black, younger teller. And this white older woman is upset and this woman says to the teller. I want to talk to your manager.
And so this teller goes and gets the manager, which is a black woman who comes over and the white woman says to this teller, no, I want a different manager. Implying she wanted to talk to somebody who is white, right? And so eventually another manager comes over, ushers her away, this woman to an office, and Brene Brown walks up to this teller and she asked the teller the question that the therapist asked her. Do you think that woman was doing the best she could?
And, Brene Brown is assuming, I don't think she was doing the best she could. And the teller said, I imagine she probably was. I think people can kind of get really scared when there's issues with their money.
That was like a light bulb that went off for Brene Brown and she actually went on to do research around this question, which is, do you think in general that people are doing the best that they can and what she found is that most people say that they think that in general, others are not doing their best. But some people say the answer Yes. I do believe that people are doing their best and what she learned from this research is that.
When we see others as not doing their best, we tend to struggle with shame and perfectionism. But when we see others as doing their best, and this is her language, we are more prone to live wholeheartedly. When I read this, this was Brene Brown, it seemed like she changed her perspective on this, right? Yeah. How she made meaning of others. She saw others not as not doing their best, but as doing their best.
This hit me really hard personally because I resonated with that perspective of I see others as not doing their best. And what I know for myself is when I see others as not doing their best, I'm really quick to become critical of them. But when I choose to see others as doing their best, and even if they're not doing a good job, rather than get critical of them, it makes me wonder what's going on in their world that's holding them back from performing at a higher level.
That allows me not to wanna move away from them, but actually to move closer to them. To help uncover any obstacles or barriers that are getting in their way. So I use this as an example to demonstrate a being side upgrade. I didn't necessarily gain any knowledge or skills, but I improved my body's operating system such that when I see people who aren't performing at my level of expectation. I don't see them as not doing their best and get critical.
I see them as doing their best and I get more empathetic. This example I think we could apply it to leaders. What I find is that so many leaders are really quick to become critical of the people that they lead. In fact one CEO that I've worked with. He said, if people can't get the job done or catch up to speed within their job, within two weeks, I let 'em go because that just means that they don't have what it takes to be successful and he is really not willing to develop these people.
And what that says is he sees these people, as, you know, not doing their best. And so I think that this could be applied, but does that example make sense of we're not changing our knowledge and skills, but we're actually changing how we make meaning, how our bodies make meaning of the world around us. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. How we make meaning of the world around us. I wrote it down how to create meaning in those aspects. The idea of empathy really hit home for me too there.
It's interesting because I talk a lot about people's capacity, so I think it's the same as kind of doing your best, right? Everyone has a different capacity. And that's helped me when I similarly am judgmental of, you know. What's their problem or why can't they, or, you know, whatever that language might be. But just understanding in any given moment, any given day, people are doing their best.
I think for me, I've gotten better at that level of empathy, but I still remain hard on myself when I, you know, I don't feel like I'm doing enough or doing my best or whatever that arbitrary standard is. Well, if you're anything like me, right, I think both of us know about empathy. We both have skills for empathy, but I also imagine you're like me in the sense of I also know there's times where I really struggle with it.
Yeah. And I move more towards self-protection in those moments as opposed to value creation. And so I love that you've brought up this term empathy, but let's bring up some other characteristics of great people and great leaders. So empathy's one. Humility, patience, authenticity, adaptability, openness. Right. These types of characteristics are really what set great leaders apart. But they're also characteristics that are not developed through the gaining of knowledge and skills.
Knowledge and skills can help, don't get me wrong, but ultimately the development of these characteristics comes through being side refinement and upgrades. I just think this topic is also so timely. I know our listeners always really focused on leadership development for their organizations and teams, but themselves as well, their own professional development. And kind of the what's next in that conversation.
You've really cracked a lot here, Ryan and in exploring this transformation through your being side. So really excited for this to get out to our audience. Can you share a few more practice examples? You work with a lot of leaders you know, you've done a ton of research in this space. Those who are focused on the being side, those kind of transformational leaders.
And you shared some characteristics here, but what impact did they have on their employees and on themselves as they tapped into that side? Yeah, so one of the things that we've learned, and this comes from the field of developmental psychology, is that people, adults can operate at different levels of sophistication. So if there's any listeners that are familiar with Jim Collins' book, good To Great. In his book he talks about a model of leadership that he calls Level five leadership.
And essentially in his model there's five level, but the top three are level three, level four, level five, which correspond to just the idea that leaders operate at different levels of sophistication. So we know this. And we also know, and here's what's really powerful about this, the level that a leader operates at sets the ceiling for the group that they lead.
So it's really rare for a group or an organization to operate at a higher level than the level of the leaders of the organization or of the group. One of the things that I found helpful, and this again comes from the field of developmental psychology, is developmental psychologists have identified that adults can operate at these three levels that Jim Collins identified. And at each of these levels, our bodies are actually wired to fulfill specific needs.
So let me walk you through just this framework really quick. So we've got these three levels. What we've learned is, so Mind 1.0 is what I call it, is the base level. And that's when our bodies are wired for safety, comfort and belonging. We want to fit in, we wanna be this team player, we want to do what's right. We don't wanna make mistakes . there's some self-protection elements to that, right? They want to be comfortable, safe, and fit in. So the next level up is what's called Mind 2.0.
This is when we shift from being this team player to being a progress maker. Our needs here are to stand out, advance, and get ahead. We could sense that this is a leveling up because now we're willing to be unsafe, uncomfortable, and not belong in order to stand out, advance and get ahead. The third level is we don't care about standing in, which is Mind 1.0, and we don't care about standing out, which is Mind 2.0. What we care about is about creating value for others.
And this level, we are now focused on something that's bigger than ourselves and contributing to that. And so when we understand this framework, and there's been research done on this, and what researchers have found is across all adults 64% operate at the base level. So most adults never develop beyond that base level. 35% get to the second level, and only 1% gets to that top level. But when it comes to leaders, and this is what's really fascinating, 7% operate at the base level.
85% operate at that second level. And only 8% operate at the top level. And that's what I find in my research as well, is almost all leaders and organizations operate as this progress maker. One of the things that we could do as developers is when we understand kind of the signs and signals of each of these levels, we could start to get a sense of where they're at and we can help them to see a higher level to operate at.
So one of the things that I like to do when I start working with leaders and an executive team in particular, I'll ask them the question, how do you measure success in your business? How do you think, Ann, how do you think most executives might answer this question? I assume it has to do with numbers. Sales goals. If it's employee focused, you know, looking at retention, et cetera. So you're spot on. Right? Most leaders answer in the form in numbers.
Like one of the most common answers that I get, we measure success by double digit growth year over year. So here's some signals right in here. One, they're results focused and two, they're short term focused. And those are two huge signals of these Mind 2.0 leaders. Well, what does a MIND 3.0 leader look like? How would they answer the question? Well, they generally answer the question not by talking about numbers or results, but by talking about their purpose.
Hmm. And how they're creating value for their stakeholders in the long term. So there was one organization that I've worked with when I first asked them this question, they said, double digit growth year over year. Now, if you go and ask their leaders this question how do you measure success? And they operate in the healthcare technology space. They would say, we simplify healthcare for our patients. And that's very different. And here's one of the other signs and signals.
Because the Mind 3.0 leaders who are focused on this long-term purpose, one of their biggest priorities is culture. A Great Mind 3.0 leader is Satchin Nadella at Microsoft, and one of his kind of famous quotes is the c and CEO stands for curator of Culture. And here's why he says this right, is because he understands that culture is probably Microsoft's most important long-term play for fulfilling their purpose, right?
If you contrast his leadership to Steve Balmer's, Steve Balmer was all about the numbers. They implemented performance management systems that fostered competition as opposed to collaboration. And so Satch Nadella is like, we've gotta get rid of this. We gotta focus on culture. And we see the impact that that's had on Microsoft. The Mind 2.0 leaders, they don't like focusing on culture because culture never leads to short-term wins.
You could do other investments that lead to short-term wins, but culture's not gonna get you there. And so that's another signal of a Mind 3.0 leader, is that they value the systems that go into outcomes, not just the outcomes themselves. This is tricky, right? As a leader, you've got to be willing to take your eyes off of what is measured and put it on the things that drive what are being measured. And that's just not easy to do. It takes a lot of cognitive and emotional sophistication. Mm-hmm.
Which is kind of our gauge along our being side. Well, when you think about even moving from that short term focus to the long term. There's a lot of risk there. I assume you're gonna fail along the way, but if you have the vision and the foresight to stay focused on that, yeah, it's, it's complicated, right? I can see why 85% of people stay, leaders stay at 2.0. Because there is so much pressure for them to hit the numbers and results. Yeah. I mean, that's just part of it.
And so one of the things that we're seeing in the marketplace right now is our ability to succeed in our role as leaders is contingent upon our altitude, along our being side. in reference to the amount of complexity in the world around us. So if our being side is higher than the complexity of our world around us, we can navigate it effectively. But if the complexity is greater than our being side, then that's where leaders really start to struggle.
When we see struggling companies in the world, for example, Boeing, I think is one of those companies. What we can say is it's not like those leaders are bad. They are just in an incredibly complex environment and their being side altitude is not yet at that level. Another really good example of this and now it's about, you know, it's over 10 years old now, 15 years old, but is Ford before Alan Mulally. They were really struggling.
The Ford, who is the CEO, who then was just stayed on as chairman when Alan Mulally came in, he was really struggling with the organization, but then they brought in Alan Mulally, who's a really great example of a mind 3.0 leader. And he was able to navigate that complexity in an incredible way. It's one of the most remarkable organizational turnarounds, and it's because his being side altitude exceeded the complexity of his environment.
And you know, maybe not coincidentally, Alan Mulally, where he came from was Boeing. What Boeing did is they went with GE leaders. Who are notorious Mind 2.0 leaders and brought them over into Boeing and they became much more results and short-term focused and they lost sight of the long-term value creation that's connected to things like safety and customer service and things like that. That ultimately don't immediately show up on the bottom line.
At the end of the day, are maybe their most important things that they need to focus on. I'm glad you brought up the idea of complexity and you're working on an article for Talent Development Leader, which will kind of dig into this a little bit more, but how you've connected that to the being side I think is really interesting in that transformation. How might talent development leader listeners develop their own capacity for leading through complexity.
Does it really truly relate to, as you've been talking about, being versus doing? Yeah, it does. Here's the reality is we're never done developing along our being side. Yeah. We can always improve. So our job's never done and the more that we elevate along our being side as leaders, as developers, as parents, as spouses, whatever it might be, our greater ability to create value and impact the world around us.
So as developers, what this means is, yeah, we need to get in touch with our being side. We need to kind of get a sense of what is my level of self-protection versus value creation? What is my level of complexity? And one of the ways that we could think about complexity is, do I see the world more in white and black or, I see it as the spectrum of a rainbow.
People who are more able to see the world as a spectrum of a rainbow are just more complex individuals, and that allows them to better navigate complexity. Another thing that we can evaluate is what is the width of our window of tolerance? How much does it take for us to get triggered and to get thrown outside of our window of tolerance? Right? What we know is the people who are the most elevated along their being side, they've got these really wide windows of tolerance.
One of the ways that I see this pop up in leaders in all aspects of an organization is some leaders are really proud that they are great firefighters and what they do all day long is they rush around the organization putting out fires. There's many leaders who are very skilled at doing this, but at the end of the day, if a leader is rushing around putting out fires, they're never operating from the strategic level that they likely need to be operating at.
And what this means is that in order for a leader to go from a firefighter to a strategic leader, they've gotta widen their window of tolerance for fires occurring. They've actually gotta be okay with fires happening, right? If a fire pops up, they need to not oh, instinctively or reactively rush over to put out the fire. They need to be like, there's a fire. That's interesting. I'm curious how that fire started and I'm wondering who's the best person to put it out.
And it's only from this wide window of tolerance like I'm okay with the fire burning for a little bit because I don't need to be the savior to every fire. And if I could let that burn for a little bit, I could better implement structures, policies, procedures, whatever it might be to ensure that fewer and fewer fires exist over time. Hopefully what we've done as part of this conversation is given people different ways for them to investigate their altitude along their being side.
And ultimately, these are the different things that we have to help our, our, we have to develop in ourselves. We also have to help our leaders develop. We need to help, we need to help us improve our mindsets, how we see our world. We have to change how we make meaning of our world. We have to widen our window of tolerance. We have to embrace greater complexity and none of those things are done by learning knowledge and skills.
Again, that could be helpful and supplementary, but that's not what moves the needle on these being side abilities or characteristics. I'm very energized by this conversation, Ryan, and I love the tie between how this really affects every domain of your life, right? Personal, professional, you as a leader, as a talent developer. I think what I'm realizing, it's a lot, obviously about you, but it's also about enabling others, right?
So there is a big component of that about getting outside of yourself in order to empower other people. It kind of has that direct impact which is awesome. Yeah. So you'd say that like micromanagers. Right. That's just a sign that they're lower on their being side. The reason why they micromanage is to protect them in some way, but it doesn't create value in the world around them.
Let me get into something that I consider to be quite meaningful along these lines, both personally as well as I think it helps paint a valuable why, why, why do we focus on the being side? Well, one of the things that I've learned is what impedes our altitude along our being side? And I've identified a number of different factors and I'll dive into one particularly that I've found is trauma. When somebody experiences trauma naturally their body becomes wired more for self-protection.
So the more trauma one has experienced in their life, the more their body is naturally gonna become wired for self-protection. And what I've found is that it's not uncommon for executives and leaders in organization to have trauma in their past. I mean, as a whole, research estimates that at least 70% of adults have had trauma to the degree that it's made them more self-protective. So that's almost everybody, myself included. We've all kind of been through crap.
But that crap shows up in our leadership whether we know it or not. Like for example, I asked one CEO one time, why did you start your business? And his answer was to prove others wrong. And it just speaks to something has gone on in his past, he's been hurt by somebody and how he now leads as a CEO is he's a micromanager. He can't put up with problems or fires occurring in his organization because that's a sign or a signal that he's not proving others wrong.
Commonly people with trauma in their past they want to step into leadership positions because it's a way for them to validate their worth and their value. This is a place where I've just experienced a lot of leaders hangups, reside, or are rooted in past trauma that has caused them to be more self-protective.
And here's the reason why I bring this up and here's why it's so meaningful for me, is because ultimately at the end of the day, when we do being side work, what we're helping people to do is to heal. Heal their minds, their bodies and, and their hearts. And ultimately, we lead so much better and we impact so much better from a place of love and healing than hurt and self-protection. And the reality is that more people than we would like to admit need that healing. Ryan, wow, thank you so much.
Becoming Better folks comes out in June, June 2025. I highly recommend you get your hands on a copy when it comes out. Again, I've started reading it and just our conversation today, Ryan, has been so inspiring, so relevant for TD leaders as well. As we wrap up today, one final question for you. What in your recent research, reading or work has surprised you lately? Something that's made you pause and think, huh? Or aha. We'd love to hear your insights or epiphanies.
Well, let me, yeah, I'll build off of what we just talked about. So we talked about how trauma is one factor that can impede our being side altitude. I've started to learn, and this is a part of my book, but I've started to learn that there are also neurological factors that could impact our being side.
And one of the most common neuro divergencies that exist out there is ADHD and ADHD actually affects our nervous system and the way that our brain works in such a way that it does make us more wired for short-term self-protection as opposed to long-term value creation. What's interesting about this is we know that at least 10% of the population has ADHD, but the estimates are much more than that. Because here's the thing, 75% of adults with ADHD do not know they have it.
And if we don't know that we have ADHD and we don't know its impact on our body's nervous system and how it causes us to be more self-protective. We kind of walk around life thinking how I operate is ideal, this is the best way to operate, but also they've found people with ADHD, their cognitive processing is 30% diminished from people without ADHD on average. So why this is interesting, well one is as we're kind of connected ADHD to our being side, but then two. Guess what?
We could do something about it. There's things that we could do, developmental tools and, and efforts that we can engage in. One of the efforts that I'm aware of and I actually have family members that have done it, is neurofeedback therapy. I don't know about the leaders you've worked with, Ann, but I would say it hasn't been uncommon for me to come across a leader who has ADHD. That doesn't mean that they're not an effective leader.
But if they're an effective leader despite having ADHD and just think if they could get the appropriate level of support for that, how much better of a leader they might be. Hopefully this just kind of points to just an undercurrent of our discussion is really I think that the cutting edge of development, particularly leadership development is rooted in neuroscience.
In our body's physiology and neurology and the more that we can learn about it, I think the more of an impact we will be able to have as developers. I love that and I love the just the whole person connection. And I know Ryan, your work in mindsets for years, right? Thinking about how mentally, physically, emotionally, all of the things are connected, right?
So when you really are able to better understand that and I love that there's always new research and science coming out to, to make us smarter and more informed about it. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. Please tell listeners how they might connect with you to ask any of their own questions or to continue the conversation. Yeah and thank you for creating space for me.
Hopefully you could kind of sense this is meaningful because I love this notion of just helping others to heal. My website is ryangottfredson.com on social media, I'm most active on LinkedIn. Would love to connect there. And one thing that didn't come up yet, and I'll just make it available on my website, I do have two self-assessments. One is what's called a personal mindset assessment, another called a vertical development assessment.
And I use both of those to help people awaken to their current altitude along their being side. One assessment is a little bit kind of broader, if you will. And then the mindset assessment allows us to even kind of niche down and figure out what aspects about ourselves are more self-protective as opposed to value creating. So those are free, those are for the listener. If they want to go in and just awaken more to their altitude along their being side great.
If they wanna leverage those in their development work then that's something that I would love to partner with them to do. I'm gonna go there and do them now. I'm interested. Yeah. Well, again, thanks so much and look forward to talking to you again soon. Awesome. Thank you so much Ann.