The Pillars of Peak Performance - Lara Menke

0:00Leading a team to greatness begins with understanding yourself. So some founders think only about their own peak performance and they forget that it's about team. As a business psychologist, CEO and co-founder of Kaya, Lara Menke has guided countless founders to transform into truly impactful leaders. There is a couple of traits that I've observed that founders have when it comes to reaching peak performance. In this episode, Lara and I explore the hard truths around how to do feedback well and And be more empathetic. But how do you practice empathy? What we call empathy is actually very selfish because...

0:41And most importantly, we talk about the key to real leadership. Self-awareness. As a leader, what do you think you're in denial about?

0:56So when I came to you initially, it was all about... I was in a difficult place and I wanted to get into a better place psychologically and also create the space to create something new. And then the sort of mission of how we work together and stuff moved much more into your, I guess, zone of genius, right? Which is insight around peak performance and how to get there, not just yourself, but also your team, your colleagues, etc. etc um so before we get into how to achieve peak performance and everything else how important do you think peak performance is today and do you think culturally the idea around peak performance and ambition and hustle and stuff is sort of changing or is it just as important today as it always will be um it's changing definitely so it used to be like you said hustle culture or is the main thing to to care about but now it's more about sustainability and that's our zone of genius how do you create sustainable performance um like stamina basically stamina exactly exactly which you need you need to it's not as friend as a marathon i hate these cliches but that's what startup life is like so how do you have peak performance in the long term um That's the conversation.

2:16Okay. Tell us, what is peak performance in your definition of it? For founders. There is a couple of traits that I've observed that founders have when it comes to reaching peak performance. Number one is obviously drive. So there's something about energy. The best performers I've worked with, they have this really strong drive. Whether that's a natural drive, some of it probably is natural. I haven't yet to meet a peak performing founder that hasn't taken care of their body. Not yet. They exist, of course. But on average, you do something to reach that energy level. So workout, nutrition, all of those things.

3:00You've not met Warren Buffett, clearly. I mean, yeah. Of course, there's exceptions. Some weird exceptions. Yeah. So it's something about drive and passion and motivation for sure. And how do you do that? By knowing your purpose and knowing why you do what you do. Very important. And then the second point is optimism. So peak performers that I work with, they tend to be optimistic. not in a cliche thing cliche kind of way that they're all positive and they're sugarcoat things but no they have a bias towards seeing opportunities over risks they um find that they are afraid they're not always here they are feeling the fear but their curiosity outweighs the fear right so they have trained themselves or they're naturally like this so that they can pay selective attention to the successes over the failures and so on so there's something about optimism self-belief um as well um yeah and they're inspired if you want to reach peak performance you've got to be inspired okay and how can you get inspired how can you inspire others is by firstly inspiring yourself and how do you do that is by understanding who you are and what you want and that's already huge a lot of people think they know what they want and they think but it's a much deeper level of okay what's my purpose beneath what's the thing that's bigger than myself that I'm intrinsically motivated by if you want to become a peak performer and you know a lasting peak performer not just a peak performer once a week you really have to be committed to truth meaning you have to work on yourself and get feedback because without feedback you're living in a babble most likely most people overestimate how well they know themselves it's it's been shown by plenty of psychological studies that we have a bias towards being overconfident Dunning-Kruger effect yeah exactly exactly so we really do need feedback regularly in order for us to reach that sense of awareness.

5:06So, for example, you can send out a 360, but most people don't do that because traditionally 360s are very cumbersome and outdated and too complicated and too long and no one has time to fill it out. So there's actually just simple ways in which you can ask for feedback. And if you want to do that right away, I would start by asking, your closest people for critical feedback. If you really have to start somewhere because people don't have time, ask for one piece of critical feedback. One sec. So, for example... Hi, Will. Hello. Can I have some critical feedback? Just one piece, please. Wow, wow.

5:51You see, for context, Dan and I... Well, maybe you want to explain this actually because you're on the line. The other day, Will had to give me feedback. and I think and this might be my blind spot but you weren't me I think I'm good at receiving feedback and so I don't feel like I make people scared or anything and all you know I try to make people feel comfortable about it because I'm aware that it's a scary thing yeah and the fear in Will's voice and everything it was just it was sort of shaking doing it and I was like I literally had to say to you like why are you so scared like it's okay you can tell me and you were like apologetic well you know i i just sort of think that they're like mate you can tell me what is the thing i was basically saying you know that dan can come across as rude on slack um and you know i'm discussing about directness and being oh you know various things like that i could see it as soon as he said it as well i was like you know usually it's very helpful to say can you give me a time or an example you know someone telling you that you're communicating like directly and rude on slack you probably are familiar with the fact that you do it anyway that's that's a very niche example where you you know written feedback in that stuff or written words in that in that format probably do come across not quite how you intend it it's not crazy right so yeah it was a good one to not be offended by yeah equally um if he didn't give me that feedback i just carry on doing it which if it's a toxic behavior that's actually upsetting the team you can see how when they say feedback is a gift if he doesn't give me that negative for everyone myself included true true um anyway i can i could comment on that yeah please yeah so yeah i mean we're not we're just the subjects you're the psychologists um and also why is he so scared of giving me feedback how can you help him give so that more comfortably i come from the same background as you so i used to be kind of spiritually so i i um someone with a people-pleasing background from upbringing So I find it very hard to give direct negative feedback.

7:58I've struggled with that all my career because I had this huge need to be liked and fear of being rejected. And it goes back to childhood, fear of abandonment. And I could go on. But anyway, I understand the real fear of giving someone negative feedback. um so first of all um don't judge yourself for that because it's common and the more you judge yourself the more negative emotions add to it but um one thing that helps is to understand um that you may be you may be thinking that you're being empathetic by not giving this negative feedback maybe a part of you thinks actually that's a good thing maybe part of you thinks oh I'm being too sensitive I'm being too empathetic and I used to think that too um until I realized that that kind of from a team member I didn't share negative feedback with in the moment I decided okay I'm gonna wait to the one-to-one and then I'll share it then but I realized that was a selfish thing okay what we call empathy is actually very selfish because we are not protecting the other person's feeling like your feelings we are actually only concerned about our own discomfort when we're really being honest with ourselves so you and then we tell ourselves the story that oh i'm just protecting dan's feelings here no really you it's your emotion that you really are trying to protect so what so be aware that this is not real empathy empathy is not about making people happy all the time empathy is about guiding people to the truth because only the truth can liberate them and help them and help others as painful as that is so maybe that's a little re reframe for people who are shy about giving negative feedback okay and in the specific example of how to give and receive feedback well how how does one do it so think of a conversation right now that you're avoiding it's a negative conversation conversation and and why are you avoiding what is the fear write down the fear on a piece of paper because um chances are even just by naming that you think oh that that's not even making any sense that fear so write it down and and then do a thought experiment i recommend to do this if i knew that this person couldn't get angry if I knew nothing bad would happen or what would I say and then just write that down and and because that's the truth and it might not be you know you might not say it word for word but you really want to get to the truth otherwise you are wasting a lot of time and that thought experiment helps remove the fear at least before you enter the conversation then when you have the conversation first ask for permission that that person is in the in in the right emotional state to receive any feedback maybe they're too busy maybe they're just very sad on that day that's not the right time so ask permission before you give the feedback don't just say hey our feedback here it is ask permission because maybe you want to schedule it at a different time and then when you are finally at the point where you share that critical feedback um i recommend that you start by sharing one positive thing about that person just because you want to avoid the risk that that person thinks that you see them as one-dimensional as negative so say one thing you appreciate in that person for example well I really appreciate your effort in delivering this presentation in time say one thing you appreciate what that does is also that you make sure that you're not overtly angry or yeah so share one positive first you're not oh they're not either way that you just have a bit of balance it puts them at ease i recently read the chimp paradox have you read it no but i know of it of course and it's you know limbic system monkey mind all that kind of stuff and so the the thing that i learned in it and the thing that i started to understand better is you don't want to activate the monkey mind you don't want the chimp to be activated and woken up this ancestral thing within us that's like angry and raging and so I can never really square that off between people who say don't do shit sandwiches which is what you're technically describing say something nice oh you're not you're saying it's an open-ended I'm not saying yeah just one slice and then all the shit yeah okay good um but anyway so that's kind of thing I'm always trying to wonder how does that work with the chimp stuff where you're really trying to keep the chimp down so starting with something positive does make sense to me yeah but how do you approach the conversation to stop waking up the the chimp of anger and sometimes people are just very defensive and can't hear it no matter what approach happens so how do you how do you deal with that so after you've um shared one positive thing to make sure that you're balanced you do you do share the negative piece of feedback for example you can say um i've observed in the last meeting that you were always on your phone and it really made me question whether that you cared about the content and it made me feel uh unsure about your performance so you are specific in addressing a behavior that is negative and you're sharing how it made you feel and the impact it had on you why because then that person can empathize with you more and and um and sit in your sheets yeah yeah and and you are not making a generalized statement that you're always like that or you're a bad person you know that um but um one thing if it's really really bad feedback um you can also do is share your critical feedback as a hypothesis and that's not being fake but really if you think about it it's just your perception of that person and if you really think you know better or you've got them right then you were probably too arrogant to be having that conversation so so say for example um so i have an observation about your development area as a team member do you want to hear it yes okay well what do they say no they say no then they said okay why don't you want to hear what is the fear what is the fear right i guess the reason i'm asking is i i've had a couple of colleagues who just do not want to receive it um they're not the company anymore um yeah but it's true it's true it happens and it really like as a coach and as someone trying to work people really stops you in your tracks um and then even people who are like which i think is the space for patients around this stuff because not everyone's amazing at this stuff it's a developmental area people go from bad to better to good over time um but even people who like are aware they're really bad and really uncomfortable about it um are and and want to grow through it I found still very difficult about the track of no so like you know it's like you want to give someone critical feedback you want to help them in their career but they don't want to grow then what so it sounds like that in that case where you've tried the nice the proper way it's no longer a coaching conversation and more of a performance management conversation where it's about yeah their role and are they in the right company this is my boundaries and i have to be got it okay so now i've said yes then what um so then you share your truth and you can say it in a way that is humble but direct so um my observation about your behavior is that i feel that you have and you are not so good when it comes to confident public speaking because when you did last time you were always you know playing with your hair and and I feel like you could do better next time by taking more time to prepare I got the sense that you didn't prepare so how does that resonate do you does it resonate with you so you check whether there is the same perception in that person or not um and then at the end you come to agreement about how you can help that person grow um or whether they even need your help this so okay what else is important in peak performance eq emotions are part of performance and emotional intelligence is very important so practice empathy and practice managing your own emotions and being comfortable with your own emotion because you need to be very resilient when it comes to performance and peak performance there's going to be a lot of obstacles and challenges and things don't go as planned all the time so that's why it's so important to not be afraid of your own emotions because if you are then you will probably create like stress somewhere in your system, in your company, in your body.

17:30And so there is a journey that you can go on to be okay with your emotions more. How do you practice empathy? You know, I don't think of empathy as something that you can practice. Just next time you have a conversation with a tricky team member, just try to listen without reacting at all. at all that's one way to be more empathetic because we um it allows us to just be there for them and try to understand them like genuinely understand them and it's so hard to do that because we have so many judgments running in our head while that person is talking like all the time so notice them it's okay don't judge yourself for having them but notice those judgments that are running while that person is talking so notice if there's any patterns of which kinds of people tend to trigger these judgments in me so is it shy people is it people who tend to not be so stress resilient or where why chances are that you you're not being present and empathetic and emotionally intelligent with them because you haven't um accepted that side of yourself in yourself that dark side in yourself so so peak performance means learning to be okay with your own dark side and then you are less likely to project your own judgments onto other people and not being empathetic that way it's it's you've mentioned active listening so many times already like how does one actually do active listening like what's the difference between that and what everyone thinks they're doing anyway which is listening so the difference is that the intention is to understand the person that you're talking to rather than getting your point across or and so really the intention does matter so is your intention to really get them like or is your intention to just be silent or respond whatever it is and then another thing that i wanted to mention when it comes to peak performance it's about team effort so some founders think only about their own peak performance and they forget that it's about team so you don't just reach it's great if you know how to manage your own performance and reach peak set fantastic but it's about the team how do i create a team that reaches these states regularly how do i create a high performing team and that is um actually way more important because that takes again um empathy okay so can you summarize how to actually give feedback then yeah critical feedback first step awareness where's my baseline where's my personal strength when it comes to giving critical feedback and what is my fear when it comes to critical feedback write it down what is the fear because then you can distance yourself from that fear or at least have more empathy for yourself because it is a hard thing to do so that's the first step is awareness are you someone who struggles with empathy or are you someone who struggles with empathy for yourself and therefore you're not you're not sharing your direct truth and based on that identify that first conversation that you are avoiding that difficult conversation you're avoiding and do a thought experiment in preparation before you give the feedback.

21:07The thought experiment is one simple question. If I knew this person couldn't get angry, upset, nothing bad could happen, if fear didn't exist, what would I say? And that's what you're going to write down and that's what you have to keep in mind and try to be as close to that as possible in that conversation. Obviously, you can fine-tune it, but try to stay close to that truth in that conversation. And then you schedule the feedback conversation. You ask for permission before you share the negative feedback because you don't want to share it if the person isn't ready for whatever reason to receive it.

21:46And then when you start that conversation, I recommend that you start with one thing you appreciate in the person first. So one strength, one thing you're grateful for, so that the person doesn't immediately get triggered in the fear of fight or flight mode. And it shows them that you've seen them as a holistic person. Then you go and share your critical feedback. And there is just important that you are sharing it with the appropriate level of humility. You're not talking down to them and you're being specific. Give examples of why you feel that that person can change or needs to change. And then the final step is checking about their perception of the situation, whether it resonates and what they can do in order to improve.

22:34It's so simple, but that's actually hard to do. Yeah, I mean, that's a great step by step. Yeah. So, OK, in this situation, I've given feedback. I've learned how to be great at giving feedback. How do I receive feedback without getting super offended and triggered? well you really have to be serious about wanting the feedback so ask yourself why would it help for me to receive negative feedback and write it down ideally be clear why you want this in what way could it help you achieve your goal or your purpose because if you're not clear on why then you're probably not listening because you think oh this is just about them or so understand why it would benefit for you personally and specifically first step and then the second step is to understand we all have blind spots no one in this world is free of blind spots and it's only through feedback from other human beings that we can grow and make and be more aware so see it as a gift and and um be open-minded and also remember that this is just one person's data point someone else might see completely different so if you're someone and this is important because i work also with a lot of female founders female leaders and i find that a lot of them find it they are naturally someone who looks for feedback all the time and other people's advice and specifically women but also men have been conditioned to just take it all and not judge so take all the negative feedback so you do not have to 100 % accept any negative feedback that comes your way you really shouldn't because that can be detrimental to your confidence so yeah and people might have agendas right yeah exactly and I think especially in like larger organizations where politics is at play and stuff like you know there's a lot more to consider with that I think a really important thing I've learned with feedback in general is just because someone says it doesn't make it true but it's still a data point and it's important to understand how much weight to give it yeah and you can only really do that with more feedback yeah um okay so speaking of getting feedback like one of the things that is integral like a space to give feedback right is one-to-ones yeah so we talked a little bit about how we want um you know the extension of peak performance leadership is not becoming a bottleneck and freeing your team up to be their best selves so that you get a higher performing team.

25:11So how do you run a good one-to-one? It depends, sadly, on the person that you're dealing with. Of course, it's the typical psychology answer depends. But one thing you can do is when you start working with someone early on, you establish your one-to-one routine with any person that you want to have regular one-to-ones with and you ask them simple questions firstly what do you need from me as a leader behaviorally give me some examples of behaviors that motivate you that bring out the best in you so it could be anything from I want to get feedback every week from you about a strength so what do you need from me as a leader and then you share what you need from that person behaviorally and specifically around the one-to-one routine do you need to meet once a month or once a quarter obviously you as the manager can give some structure I recommend at least once a month that you do one-to-ones but you can do more depends a little bit on your startup and then you make sure that in the one-to-ones you balance the conversation so there's a time and a place for one-to-ones that are very task focus of course that's simple to do but there is a very important that you do regular one-to-ones that are around personal development so coaching style one-to-ones so there one simple thing you can ask your team member there is to reflect the quarter and ask okay what has been the highlight for you and and what have you learned from that about yourself and what has been the most challenging thing that happened and why what have you what does that teach you about yourself and then from there what are some actions you want to take in the next quarter this helps the person learn and reflect about their own leadership style and strength and weaknesses so if you do nothing then just ask those questions how how important do you think it is to have those sort of pre regular scheduled and I suppose the reason for that question is a little bit like people get nervous if you are suddenly out of nowhere wanting to have these kinds of conversations they obviously just come up to it with a approach the meeting like they're about to get fired and any negative stuff you're saying it could be quite difficult because they're already defensive versus it's something we do every month yeah yeah exactly uh it's so important in my experience that this is actually in the diary and otherwise it doesn't happen it's that has to just be in the diary because how often depends at least once a quarter you should do this review one-to-one that i just said highlights lowlights learnings at least once a quarter maybe once a month better depends but yeah at least once a quarter okay all right i want to get specific what do you think makes a great leader the greatest leaders are self-aware leaders they have self-insight self-insight yeah so they understand themselves well so they understand their strength but they also understand the dark side of that strength um and they have empathy so leadership is not something that happens in isolation therefore empathy with other people that are different from them is critical so those two things if i had to say what are the key things um and in the essence the great greatest leaders are loving leaders but you could have all those three things um and be loving and not do anything about it so do you need a bias for action as well yes you have to act i'm not the psychologist i mean i'm probably the person doing it wrong so you have to it depends is the answer to be fair it depends but i suppose just to just to explain so and i use me as the example um will gave me feedback that i uh so the context is will gave me feedback about uh some of my mannerisms the way that i ask questions some specific ways that i do it which he'd given me for about six months realistically and so the the real hidden feedback there although i think you might have even labeled it which is that i'm giving it to you you've got to do something about it now which is really fair right sure um there are times when i receive feedback now i think i'm decent at self-awareness no one's amazing but i think i'm decent at it and then I also think that I'm like good enough at the sort of insight around what I like to do about it however I probably embodied those traits well I still hadn't taken action on changing it because change is hard so you can have all the best in class stuff and you can work on the awareness and all of those things you still got to do thing which is about habit building it's about changing behavior and my challenge to what you've just said would be in my own experience just having those things didn't change the behavior will still came to me six months later with the same same issues yeah that can be the the case for some in my experience um if you identified the area that you feel you need to improve um and you really understand you really understand it yet you truly understand why it's blocking you why it's having a bad impact and you even know where it's coming from so you've gone deep about it and you not just heard it a couple of times from certain people if you really understand it then you will change it you will do some it's going to be urgent so sometimes people haven't really understood the gravity of their problem and that's why i tend to not go to action mode too quickly because those actions don't last because they're forced and things that are forced tend to not be sustainable so rather than um giving getting into habits which is what most people jump to really sit with the discomfort of accepting that you the identity that you thought you had is probably not the identity other people see you as so it's probably more time for going even deeper into the pain of that because it's very painful it's super painful so if you're not feeling the pain then you haven't gone deep enough and therefore any kind of superficial action probably won't last that's been my experience over and over again with working with leaders coaching leaders once they really feel something painful um they will take action they will because they know they can't continue like that and it's not going to be perfect action is going to be up and down, of course, but they really will want to change.

32:23Okay. So this is a personal example of poor leadership from me then. I need to improve. Who's an example of a great leader that you've worked with? Or what are some of the traits that have really inspired you that you've coached them through? So one person I've worked with, what inspired me was their sense of awareness. So meaning that they knew moment to moment how to make the right decisions which um so for example when it came to a strategy they knew when to be inclusive and invite the team in and when to just make the decision and follow their intuition they knew when to invite critical thinking in and when to be following their own instincts and they had a really healthy sense of humility and confidence and balance basically of the yin and the yang so they were doers they were super driven and motivated and communicated that driven in a very inspiring way but they were not obsessed in a sense of being attached to that goal and ambition so when certain financial goals weren't achieved they communicated that openly without shame and guilt to their team very transparently or very honestly so they were honest with themselves and their team so they were also very non-hierarchical so for example they in this was a company of they led of 300 employees and they made sure to invite every single person to the strategy meeting even the security there was a receptionist they really really wanted everyone's voice to be heard no matter how junior or what you're so they created a real sense of inclusive culture in that organization and um yeah we're really authentic in that way and honest with themselves and others i think i'm just reflecting on you saying that uh the moment when i realized you weren't talking about me depressingly um was this sort of moment of knowing when to be inclusive and when to be decisive and saying which you just did that that was a moment to moment thing yeah I think on reflection something that I've got wrong in often is trying to be really inclusive and actually not being decisive because I really genuinely do want everyone's opinion and doing it too often and actually what you end up with is very circular it's so predictable but everyone feels like they've been heard but actually everyone in a group of people will express every opinion.

35:01So it's a full circle picture, which is fine, but doesn't get you any closer to it. And then you end up in sort of meaningless debates and actually can really see how that looks like poor leadership. And the intention was great. We've had feedback about this. Like I've had feedback about this. I've literally had feedback in an exit interview, which is, uh, which was like painful for me, which like, just, you don't know what you're doing. You seem like you don't know what you're doing because you're constantly asking me what I think and what I'd like to do and all this stuff. And I, you know, I was like, I was trying to be a good leader.

35:31You know, I felt defensive about that response because it's like, I was trying to do best practice, good leadership and ask you and bring you into the thing. And even when we're doing OKRs or something, you know, instead of telling you what your OKRs are and what I want you to do, I'm asking you, do you want to do this as a collaborative process? And the perspective was literally that, well, you wouldn't be asking me if you knew what I should be doing. I get that. And that's so common in founders. We focus often on doing the right thing, getting all the right external practices in place, having poll service, engagement service, inviting people's opinions.

36:07And it has gone too far. And we've gotten lost in doing the right thing. And we have to start to, as founders, reconnect with the original, why did I start this in the first place you know who am i as you know that's a process that we have to do and that create we have to create space in our own diaries to do that and therefore be connected to our intuition which is gold as a founder so that we can sometimes be decisive and and tell people no because my intuition tells me this and my intuition is important yeah i think as a ceo it's easy to forget you're literally paid by the quality of your decisions yeah and they're not all going to be right but you still got to make the decisions and if you go to committee too often how are you going to make those decisions effectively yeah how how do you find that fine line because you know I feel like this is actually one of the quandaries of modern day leadership you know you have the sort of old way that people complain about which is like too much top-down leadership and it's all toxic and it's all just like the egotistical old white male pale stale stereotype like manager type right who's just telling everyone what to do and that's like toxic and awful or whatever and then you sort of go too far the other way as well we are trying to be inclusive and diverse and like all of the things that like are the representation of the world we want to live in but actually in business there has to be like a slight disconnect from that pretty picture yeah and i think the key word is what you said trying to be if you are trying to be or you should it's probably out of alignment with your authentic culture that you meant to create or want consciously create so it might just be a matter of going back to square one to say okay remember the culture that we were planning to create or people just making space for those regular check-ins with your original vision or the strategy the that and making space for those moments of reflection with your leadership team is so important so you don't get sidetracked and and it evolves of course that's the other thing we start off a company like that and then And it changes, of course, after some years.

38:35So that's why it's so important to create the regular time as the leaders, as the founders or the leadership team to do these check-ins on the why. What's the why now? Has the purpose changed? It's a muscle to train. And if it's not in a diary, it probably doesn't happen with everything. But yeah. You mentioned awareness earlier. Fun fact, current book I'm reading is called Awareness. have you read it oh no Anthony DeMello I have read it I love that book yeah but you don't have the awareness to remember that you've read it so kind of failed anyway and on camera so fact um but it's really entertaining uh and not quite what I was expecting anyway so I'm planning to finish that tonight I'm almost done um hopefully it'll help me become more self-aware however assuming it might not can you help me yeah right so how could I become more aware more self-aware yeah um three things one get feedback and don't stress out so it could be complicated send around one question to at least five people you're close with and it doesn't ideally it's not just work because you want to get a holistic picture of you as a human so ask your mom or your yeah really really that that that's how i'm gonna need to ask my mom for feedback i get it but that's why it's so effective yeah you ask you literally like your your family members your husband and wife um your closest friends uh work colleagues so get a holistic view of yourself at least five people can do with more and the question is what is one thing that if i changed about myself would help me grow as a person one thing that if I change about myself would help me grow as a person so with that question you're inviting critical feedback obviously and you will 100 % be surprised 100 % be surprised what people say and it's going to be very uncomfortable especially with if you have a tricky relation with some people and it might take time for you to even face that but that's the first step because these yeah people know you well and then you identify that as an area to work on and be more mindful of in your day-to-day interactions another that was number one another thing you can do is two questions right now if you're listening you can journal on those two questions first is get clear on your vision so write down one goal that excites you just any goal that excites you at the moment could be a financial goal could be anything yeah and then the second question you're gonna ask yourself is what are three ways in which my current actions or habits are not in alignment with that goal three ways in which you are on your own way with that goal that you just said excites you and be really honest and real with yourself when it comes to that and it might and you'll be surprised

41:59that you're probably not even aware of some of your habits that you're currently showing that are in your way of what you say you want so that's one way or actually two ways in which you can very quickly improve your awareness when's the last time you did this for yourself um i did it in last year so every year i do um a word for the year and i send that and i yeah and i i send out the 360 last year to some people that i care about oh so your word from the year came from doing this exercise yeah yeah last the one last year yeah what feedback did you get I got feedback that different feedback two two themes came out one that I need to love myself more so there was a huge theme around that I mean it was detail but I need to improve myself love and the second theme was i need to be more organized right and um i honestly like the it's very emotional when you hear that because it's true so it's true i think if you're german hearing you need to be more organized might be emotional to me i'd be like sure probably yeah i'm not surprised because it's true yeah and it's not part of my national psyche they're like you need to be more polite i'd be like how dare you it was very enlightening it's very enlightening because it came from people that i didn't expect would see that side of me i really didn't you know that's why it's such a powerful exercise you never know you're picking the same five people next year or you pick different no different different yeah fuck their opinions that was too upsetting yeah how dare they i don't want to hear it can i be one of your people yeah yeah yeah you want to make people yes yeah okay i like that okay we'll do it I can report back yeah uh as a leader what do you think you're in denial about um I think many things sure for sure but um probably I'm in denial about um my own selfishness so i as a psychologist as a coach as a lead you know i my identity is all about empathy and um you know i sometimes can judge myself and therefore neglect the selfish side of me so the one that is more egotistical and and you know so i think i'm in denial about that part a little bit and and there's a lot of untapped potential in me being more okay with that side of me and tapping into that side of me nice what about you what do you think um i think i think for a good period of time and i'm sure my colleagues here will attest uh i think i might have been in denial about what I really wanted for my own personal brand and my own like notoriety I sort of sit in between that weird space between I really enjoy the act of of listenership and this conversation and the depth of it and all of the stuff and then there's sort of a gap in confidence and where I need to get to to do the next thing and then another gap at where fame exists, which I don't want.

45:39So I think where I'm sort of in denial about is how to get comfortable with the steps in between and set the team up in a way that supports my ambitions with clarity and supports them with clarity of the jobs they need to do. And so as a result of all of that personal confusion around it, I think it's probably been a bit of a pain in the ass to work with me. Like sort of very typical, well, I guess unusual role. But like in this company, for example, I'm like inverted commas talent and the founder, but not running the company. And I certainly know from my experience of talking to other creators now and other people in, for example, Will's position or Ruth's position or other people in the team here, how irritating that actually is for them, not for me.

46:29So I think there's some level of denial about it. Does that sound relatable? No comment. No, no, it makes sense. Next question. I did actually want to touch on confidence. We, just before we started recording, we were talking about our word for the year because we both do a word for the year. And my word in 2023 was confidence. And you just told me that your word in 2024 is confidence. So that's really interestingly, I see you as a confident person you probably see me as a confident person so it's a really surprising word sure and I think that's actually a really healthy place to start which is the external even through friends we work together and we're friends like even through that lens it's really surprising to not see someone properly yeah right like for me the confidence comes from a lot of insecurity and uh negative self-talk yeah just pre-existing it's there and so that the way that I got over it was committing to which is so pathetic really but was committing to a daily post on LinkedIn because LinkedIn is the social platform that I take the most care and pride on because I'm a business person yeah and that's what business people are and so that's where I also think people be the most judgmental of me I don't look great in a bikini so that is TikTok and Instagram out.

47:51But for me, that's like the place to manage my reputation. Also because, you know, whatever, Twitter is like come and go in like a second, but LinkedIn feels like a big deal to me. So doing it every day was my way that I built up confidence over the year. And it really helped because it just became a cadence. It was less and less over the year about like talking myself out of it and more into like, this is what I said I'm going to do. This is my practice. And every time I didn't want to, I came back to the word confidence, which helped me push through the barrier where previously I would have been like, no, I don't feel like it today.

48:24So that's my approach for how I got through it. And it's resulted in, you know, again, back to the previous question, Will saying, you know, and the team saying, we need to do video, blah, blah, blah. And me always saying, no. Well, one of the reasons is confidence. And even though people see me as a confident person, I don't feel confident yet in front of camera and I'm learning a new skill and it's outside my comfort zone externally I'm aware that that's not necessarily how people see me yeah how what about you how come you you give off an air of confidence yeah I think similar so I think I've trained myself to appear confident and and even trick myself to be confident sometimes and that's not always how I feel inside of course and I think that I have a tricky relationship with the word confidence because I know from experience of that actually confidence is also massively overrated in leadership and so I've had a tricky relationship and that's why I'm choosing the word because of the discomfort that that word gives me it would be very easy for me to choose a word like I've done in the past like freedom or you know so confidence And yeah, I'm really excited to explore what that means to me this year.

49:42I haven't defined clearly what I'm going to do with it, but I'm definitely going to embrace and deal with that part of me more because I don't feel confident often as I don't. Absolutely not. Why do you say that leadership has a tricky relationship with confidence? What does that mean? So the research shows that confidence is one of the highest predictors of leadership failure. So whilst it's an important skill, of course, it's the one skill that can easily become a derailer in a leader because it means that they become overconfident when they empower and they're not listening and so on. So it's actually better to be humble than to be confident as a leader.

50:31And also, as a female leader, I've always gotten the advice, a female founder, that I should be more assertive, I should be more confident. Like, I've heard it so many times that I understand there's also a lot of bias attached to it because I don't, yeah, I don't know. Women are not sometimes behaving in ways that others see as the signs of confidence. so anyway I'm excited too well and at the same time though surely it's the most important thing that you can gift to your colleagues especially younger ones coming up right like people start in a career often full of doubt not everyone but full of doubt looking at their colleagues being like wow you're so impressive I'm amongst such interesting amazing people I'm not that surely part of the job of a leader is to try and instill confidence in other people to believe in themselves Yeah, I think belief is probably the nicer way of putting it.

51:30So a healthy sense of self-belief, but an open mind and therefore not necessarily too confident viewpoint on decision making and other things. So healthy sense of self-belief, but open mindedness to being wrong. Lara, thank you so much for joining us on Secret Leaders, unpacking what we need to do to be peak performers and great leaders. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

52:26I did. The end.

52:32I wanted to come out