Podcasts

Episode 36- Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Shane Ram - Slowing down to speed up

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, and welcome to the next episode of Decoding AQ. With me today, I've got Shane Ram, who's coming to us from Trinidad, welcome.

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Shane  

Thank you, Ross.

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Ross  

It's been great. We've been already talking off-screen, and I can't wait for this one, it's going to be very, very exciting and coming from over a decade in HR. And now in transitioning to this consulting and coaching for the last decade. Shane is a leadership coach, for business professionals, he’s an author like myself lots of stories about how challenging that is your future ready leadership in the background for those that are watching this on a video feed. And I'll tell you what, one thing Shane when I read your mission for Go for 10 of which are the founder and CEO, I want to share this because I really love the mission. And it's to create a better everyday life for people by creating learning experiences that produce real transformation. Using leading-edge ideas and technology. I just think that is a fantastic mission to have. So it's really great to dive into that.

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Shane  

Absolutely. Ross, it's my pleasure. And as you said, spending so many years in human resources, obviously, it's about people. And at the end of the day, spending a lot of time in human resources. When you step back, when you think about a lot of the initiatives that organizations go about, they really want some level of change. And to some extent, adaptability comes in there. And companies spend millions, billions of dollars in training, and sometimes you don't get the change that you want, you don't get the results that you want. So it's always been something, fascinating and interesting to me because I'm a problem solver at heart, how do we get people to change. 

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And, what I've also realized is that some people have the formula. And because it is said that one person with courage is a majority. And not only the courage, but the ability to go out and get results. So what Go for 10 is about is like, let's cut through the chase, talk to the people that actually have the results, who have challenged the status quo, who have been adaptable, who have said, this is not working. And we could no longer continue like this, let's go about and do something differently, and actually get the results out of it. And those are the people that I invite as guests in our podcasts, and then that in itself is a learning and our future courses, we are a young company, still. But that's the mission because life is short. And our systems that we have gone through school, parenting, religious systems have sort of made us think that we need to do all of this by ourselves, we need to figure out everything by ourselves. And life is short, we can't know everything, we can’t figure out everything by ourselves. But I wanted to create a platform, a space where we could, cut to the chase, cut out all the noise, get the people who have actually produced real results out there and get them on to the Go for 10 platform.

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Ross  

And it's an interesting concept in terms of how many of us are going through life living at a level seven, in terms of how do we know what good or great really is in terms of our potential, and to release that by being inspired or by having a platform where we can understand what that could even look like, and like you say not do it alone and do it with others and collaborate to become better in the future. So tell me a little bit more about your future-ready leadership and some of the sort of core concepts and thoughts behind that and how you're helping people navigate their change and their best selves?

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Shane  

Absolutely, Ross. Well, just a little background on future-ready leadership. As I said, I was asked to do a keynote speech for an association and they actually gave me the topic so I have to give kudos to them about being very proactive and understanding what's required for the future. But I also think Ross, I think somehow I felt that intuition which I speak about in chapter eight of the book that somehow we just could not continue the way we were going, and sort of like a tagline for Go for 10, which I changed in 2019, which is Education for the New Way of Living.  and just something inside of me. And I think, we all have it as people, you know that power of intuition, but we don't know how to trust it, we don't know how to develop it. And I go into that in chapter eight in the book. But, just to say that was a big part of creating the book and the ideas behind the book.

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So jumping in chapter one is entitled, slow down to speed up. Because we were busy being busy, we're not necessarily being busy being better. And sometimes we talk about resilience, we talk about burnout a lot, is a very common topic, if you go on social media for executives, and that sort of thing. So sometimes, we just need to absolutely slow down to speed up. And within that chapter, I have the concept of functional executive coaching, which is really getting to the root cause part of that slowing down requires some level of self-analysis, let's look at ourselves. And what I included there is about 14 to 16 of the top negative leadership behaviors, the not showing respect, maybe too much control, maybe a little too much ego, a little bit of narcissistic behavior, what's really the root cause of that is what functional executive coaching is all about, and functional, taking from functional medicine, which is not just treating the symptom, but treating the root cause of it.

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So I introduced the topic of functional executive coaching, hoping that people reading it will take it up. Because it's not necessarily for the faint-hearted, but you definitely could get to a different level, if you were to really get to the root cause. Because you would go through your life, your career struggling with these underlying issues, if you're not really able to deal with it. So we look at that, and those issues, Ross, to be quite honest, if you look back at journals, and before the days of blogging, and the Internet, leadership has been a perennial issue. And those same issues have been issues for so long. So I think, cracking the code of, those negative leadership behaviors are so critical and getting to the root cause of it.

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And it's simply that, us we're all human beings, leaders are human beings who go through life,  we have hurts, we have regrets, we have trauma, we have disappointments. And that's when we don't know how to deal with it, because unfortunately we don't pay too much value to our emotional health as we do our physical health, if we were to get a simple cut, we'll stop what we're doing and go tend to it, right? But, we don't seem to do that for when we are hurt, or we have a regret, or we resent something.

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So that really is the root cause and I think just sum it up in that idea. Oprah said it best I think, after all of many years of television programs, interviewing some of the best in the world, and so many, her synopsis so to speak, is that there's nothing wrong with you. But something happened to you. So what is that original sensitizing event, we call that in our model. So that's, slowing down to speed up as we call it there.

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Ross  

It makes me think of a few things in terms of that slowing down to reflect and one of your values is about speaking the truth. And for ourselves, how often can we speak our own truths? And we tell ourselves these stories. And we put these layers around those situations, those traumas, those experiences, often as coping mechanisms to deal with it, both positive and negative emotions, to cope with great things, and we might play it down, to cope with bad things we might try and forget. However, in order to move forward as you talk about to slow down, all progress starts with telling the truth. And that base point we're then able to reflect and be aware and make deliberate conscious choices, which I think is a great, great place to start. And I love the idea of functional executive leadership and coaching to deal with the root cause.

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Shane  

Yeah, absolutely. And it's sometimes so difficult for many leaders, I was coaching a GM of a big company, a global company. And, the coaching was initiated because of usually some negative leadership behaviors, let's put it that way. But it took us a little while to get to understand what that is. And that's the truth felon because sometimes it's so difficult for us to tell the truth to an absolute stranger, I'm on the other side of the world from him.

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But as a coach, we know how to ask questions to get better. So like, if they would say, “Well, my emotions got the better of me.” So I’ll be like, “Okay if I'm in a room, how would I know that your emotions got the better of you and then the truth will come up?” Well, I’ll shout, I’ll raise my voice I do stuff like that. So yeah, absolute, truth-telling is critical.

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Ross  

And a couple of the other aspects to then consider where the truth resides, because it resides inside layers. And it's the Japanese, sort of five why's, we might think that truth is what shows up at the top. But after we discover and ask ourselves a few whys behind, we can get to the root, not something that is at the top. And it leads me to try and get to know you better, and understand you better in terms of what shaped your career? You're in this position now, where you've chosen deliberately, who you serve, who you're a hero to, what you believe in, what your mission is? What are some of the events that perhaps are your truths that shaped your view of your career and how you show up in the world?

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Shane  

Well, some bit of luck, and some bit of just processing experiences and really, Ross. I had to figure out a lot of things by myself. My family weren’t really well educated, I was probably the first one in the generation to go to college and that sort of thing. So a lot of it had to do with, finding myself, discovering myself learning, coping strategies for everything in the world almost, because I wouldn't say that I had a strong relationship with my dad, for example, to learn how to be a man in the world even, those were struggles. Where do you learn?  And us as kids, we learn from our experiences and talking about that.

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When I do the functional executive coaching processes, you talk about the five why's, I actually have five layers, quite interestingly, to get to the root cause, because that's my challenge with leadership is that we have been trying to change behavior at the behavioral level, you don't listen well, well go to an active listening program. You don't show empathy? Well, we'll send you to emotional intelligence training, so that you learn how to show empathy, but not really understanding what prevents us from being empathetic. And I'm leading to something here Ross, in the sense that one of my little challenges that I had with my dad was about recognition. So little Shane, would accomplish things that I felt proud of in school or whatever. You came home and you didn't get that recognition, good job, Shane. Good job, son. Even sometimes, my parents would forget my birthday as I would say, so recognition. And I said, well my underlying belief was that well, that's not important. I'm okay, I didn't get it and I’m okay. So it's okay if you don't get it.

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So being the head of HR. Now, let's just fast forward a little bit, I should have been the champion of recognition and stuff like that, I should be. And that's what is so important to understand, a leader should do this. And they should be able to do that. You are an HR, you should be able to do that. You’re a leader, you should be able to do that. But I got to realize after many years, well it sounds logical, but that's just the 5% of our conscious mind. Our subconscious programming is 95% of that, and that's what takes over our bodies, our nervous systems that actually, we know it logically, but it stops us in our tracks. And it's only when I went through this process myself that I was able to understand, “Oh, that's just my belief, but that may not apply to everyone else.”

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If you want to have a good relationship, well you can't forget birthdays. You can't think it's not important, right? But I dealt with it and that's my real life example of understanding how we get programmed, how we form certain beliefs, how it gets tucked into our nervous system and our belief system that operates, spontaneously and automatically that prevents us from doing the things that we logically know. We should do and actually easy to do. I mean like, think about it, Happy birthday, here’s a card, here’s a gift, here’s a cake, you know? Good job, pat at the back, here’s a recognition. I mean like, how easy is that but, and most other leadership skills, I think,  separate from management skills about critical thinking and strategic planning, I'm talking about leadership and dealing with people. It's so easy enough to do. But or simple, but not always easy, because those resistances now come at a deeper level. And quite recently, Ross, I wrote an article about, it was entitled, “Mindset is Not Everything.” Because we've been trying to change the mindset, let's change our mindset towards that.

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But recent work by for example, Dr. Joe Dispenza who says, the body is a subconscious mind, the body is a subconscious mind. So when you think about what, logically, we might have a positive mindset or a growth mindset, but we might still procrastinate, which means not do an activity, not take an action. And if you think about it, it's the peripheral nervous system that at least stops us from picking up that phone to make a phone call, or do whatever simple things that other people do every single day.

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Ross  

And it's often in those situations, when we feel uncomfortable, when it's uncertain, when we're stressed, that actually it triggers our, the chemicals to reduce our cognitive function. So it might be logical, but in the moment, in the environment, in the situation, we might then act not as we would, if we were thinking logically. We go into that subconscious, and it's a different part of a brain state that then drives those decisions. And I think it's interesting when you were talking about recognition, it reminded me when I, got given a little book, it was called “The One Minute Manager,” it was a Ken Blanchard book, and something that stuck with me is, “Catch them doing it right and recognize it in that moment.” Because there's a balance, we can think, “Ah, recognitions good, I can do it, I can find it. Can I be authentic? And really, really feel it? And do I do it at the right time?” So all of these things, their processes, their methods, but once we've got it, they shift becoming habitual, and they become our new subconscious. So from “Oh, I'm going through those motions, or well done,” to then really understanding what does well done mean, to getting it at the right time? Not “Oh, yesterday, well done. Because I've looked in my list that I've got to show recognition.” I guess it's these things about how do we evolve a future leader, when things around us are changing so quickly? And where we might have had confidence where we might have had the answers to things? I think one of the big challenges for leadership now is how do we lead when we don't have answers? So be really interested, from all of your experience of leading teams of being in HR and then coaching countless people to become their best selves is have you seen people that are doing that really well? What people, what teams, what stories, where they are dealing with uncertainty and able to lead in that? I'd be fascinated to learn more.

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Shane  

Well, one of the things really is what is called radical acceptance, but things are changing a lot of things are beyond our control, because a lot of leaders like to be in control of everything and of everyone which turns into a negative thing sometimes where employees feel controlled. So I think radical acceptance that there are many things beyond our control is one critical thing that a lot of people who are able to adapt well, do well, which is that radical acceptance. And another one I mentioned it earlier, it's really about intuition, tapping into that intuition. What it's like almost always you're guaranteed to have the right answer because it's coming from a higher intelligence so to speak.

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And that's what you found with people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Richard Branson, that there's a certain level if you dig deep and listen to as much as I listen to them and read their books, you'll see, I see it as a trend of that intuition, a higher knowing and Robin Sharma talks about this, see what everyone sees but think what no one else think. And I see that those people who are really able to be those future-ready leaders always tap into that super intelligence. And the thing about it Ross, how it works is it's like stages. You just can't tap into the intuition because just below it, so to speak. So you want to think about it like three levels. So you have instinct, you have intellect, and you have intuition, the three I’s.

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So just below that is intellect. And what I'm saying is that there's so much information around there, there just the internet, things are at our fingertips. And what I'm suggesting to leaders is that you can no longer compete on intellect alone, or see that as a critical success factor or a unique value proposition. It's not, I have the brightest and the best. That notion, I think needs to change. And I think that has been accepted by even some of those same people that I refer to who says, “You don't need necessarily the degree to come work for me.” And that's how we used to define the best and the brightest by which universities are churning out the top students as the case may be.

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But the thing is that you need to develop your intellect and what happens is that the intuition now takes that intellectual information and processes it at a much higher, deeper level. I can't explain it anything beyond that for us and how it does it, and spits out answers to us that almost always correct. So I'm developing that intuition, trusting that intuition is something that I think that future-ready leaders should start working on today so that they feel a little more comfortable about dealing with change. And it could also help you to create change, and one of the chapters that I have there is to self-disruption, which is doing it to yourself before it's done to you. It's going to be done to you. So I think the future-ready leaders are the ones who say, “Okay, I'm going to disrupt it before it's done to me.”

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Ross  

Yeah. And then that's a state of then deliberate act. Your piece about intuition, it reminds me of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, the art of thinking without thinking, that thin slice, that ability to listen to our intuition. And recently, I had a doctor on a podcast, and he was talking about the different brain states. And we mentioned earlier about neuroscience in this, we have a task active brain, and we have a neutral brain in which it's not task orientated. And it's within there, where we can perhaps harness our intuition. It's in that readiness state, it's the car gearbox in neutral.

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And so to get to that state is very much a link between our body and our minds, by our state of breathing, our heart rate, all of these things can help us tap into those different brain states, to then unlock those potential opportunities that intuition can give us. And yet, what I fear at the moment, is this sense of humans becoming task rabbits, where many of us are remote, we jump on to the next Zoom to the next Zoom, and it's all-around task, task, task. And your piece of well slow down, slow down in ourselves, when we collaborate, can we collaborate that's not about task? That's about slowing down? Can we tap into imagination into intuition? And how do we create spaces for that?

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And I think doing that when everything is easy, and going well, is one thing. Being able to do that when you are up against it. When we're in the middle of a pandemic, when we're in survival mode. Can we do it? Is there any examples where you've worked with teams or coaches that in a moment of high stress, in panic are able to do that and perhaps share how are they able to do it? And how could you help peopl, what sort of tips in areas to get into those states, those states of unlocking intuition of being able to slow down when everything seems so urgent?

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Shane  

Yeah, yeah. Great question, Ross. And I think one of the important tools to have and I call it a tool or resource as a case would be is an accountability partner. A quote someone that you could, that you could lean into, whenever you feel stressed or overwhelmed as the case may be. I think that's really an important asset. And I think that with teams that I've worked with, whether it’s the leader who’ve been trained to be a coach, the manager’s the coach so to speak, really important skill, I think to be able to be the one that your team sees as that's a semblance of peace and calm in the whole scheme of things.

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And if they need to get out in the first place I think, to have an accountability partner who could take you through that. And then one of the things a accountability partner, including a coach or a mentor would help you with is developing routines. And even things that you can do that while you are in the midst of it, that you can remember to do it. And mindfulness is one of the things that I mentioned, when you talked about the mind-body connection and breathing. So you can be in the middle of a boardroom, and simply casually put your hands or hands on your navel, and just if you think about pushing it out, you'd actually be deep breathing, and nobody has to know that you're practicing mindfulness in the moment.

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But the thing is that it does just not take that long, I guess sometimes you have to figure out the right moment. But this is what gets you into the neutral brain, because it's been proven Ross that if you follow your breath, if you think about it coming in through your nostrils and down your throat into your lungs, it is actually impossible to think of something else, impossible. So literally a few minutes of that could bring you to that neutral status, as you talk about regulating the mind body as a case may be in the middle of a boardroom. So there are techniques like that, but I think individuals have to have personal development as part of their routine, it's not a night along, it can be an everyday practice, and a good accountability partner will insist that I would say or show the client the value of having that in their routine.

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Ross  

It's important to come back to where you said at the beginning, if we physically harm ourselves, we can see that and we often react very quickly to it. If we cut ourselves, we then go and get a plaster and we repair it. With our minds, it can be under duress, it can be being cut in a moment, in a boardroom, in various things. But “Oh, hold on, I've just been cut, I need to go and put a plaster on it.” I like your thought there of these routines at which we can both prepare our medical fitness for when we're going to go and have those situations and experiences, and equally repair and rejuvenate when we've had that onslaught and see that as an ongoing, habitual routine for leadership in the modern world of where we're under such immense experiences both good and bad, which is part of life, right?

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So I want to come on to something where there's a number of conversations about skills, about superpowers, about who somebody is and what they are, what our purpose is, what our passion? For you with all of your journey that you've had, what is it that really excites you? Where do you draw your energy from? What are your superpowers as you describe it, and of what you're bringing to the world?

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Shane  

Absolutely. Ross, I love that question. I love the terminology. Because that's what I tell people my superpower is or that I have one which is really, to create those aha moments for people and my superpower is really getting people to that root cause, to understand, what has you stuck to help, discover that purpose because there is purpose in that pain. And almost everyone that I've worked with, when they discover their purpose and I have a process to help them to do that. It doesn't seem foreign to them because they would have, they now understood all of the events of their lives and it doesn't go to waste and there's no regret about things that happen because now you see that you can help yourself and then go help the world.

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And it's almost always the same and if I were to just give you two current clients and coming out of their own struggle is now that their purpose and helping so many other people. So I have a client who is well at least a qualified as a medical doctor, but was forced into it by her parents who at least felt she was at that particular age, absolutely hated, it was almost suicidal during internship as the case may be. Still trying to find her way for many years, and then you have the societal pressure, “Well, what are you doing with your life?” And when I sat down, and we dealt with anxiety, insomnia, all of those are side effects I call it of that lack of fulfillment, that lack of purpose or being off purposes as the case may be. But when I take them through the layers and just discover that there is purpose and create that light and I say I started program, I can't tell you what it is, it evolves, it emerges through the process that I take you through, and then you begin to realize that there are so many other people who are in the same position as myself, and you start to listen to what people are asking you as a clue. So you start to see value in these little things in life.

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So, many of our doctor friends say, “Well, how are you able to, spend five years of your life doing this prestigious thing, and now not do it and still be alive and somehow coping?” However, she said, “Well, not a lot of them know that it created anxiety and that sort of thing.” But, people started to ask, and then she's, before our last session, she said, “I just saw something on Twitter, someone wanting to start a support group for people who chose prestigious careers, and now unfulfilled and unhappy,” I was like yeah, the universe, starts to say these are clues. And then, I have another client who has, particular ailment, which we believe is stress related, because she's in a career that she's not necessarily enjoying.

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So, for that particular condition, there are diets, but there isn't a guide or a cookbook, for example, that's helpful and he has an opportunity, I want to help myself and help other people. So in short, I tell people, if you don't want to go through the process with myself or anyone else, purpose is really about going through your own crap, finding a solution and helping so many other people, to go through it. So it's really about people who feel stuck, who feel unfulfilled, or some people call it the midlife crisis where you have been task-oriented, because that's how you were rewarded as a kid. You do, do, do, do, and you're a good boy, Ross. So you think you have to do and as Joseph Campbell said, midlife is climbing the ladder of success, only to realize that the ladder was against the wrong wall.

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So that's basically my target market, so to speak. The people that I help, my tribe, people who feel stuck and I think that a lot of people choose careers, before they could have bought a beer don't know what to do now and what's the process? They lack the clarity about how to move forward, what's the step? And as professionals it’s like, we want to know the answer before we take the steps to get there. So that's one of the challenges so to speak, I face with the people that I work with. But yeah, that's my superpower, helping people to go through, that discover their purpose, find that aha moment, make sense of their life. Create those transformational stories.

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Ross  

I think it’s so interesting Shane, in terms of many people feel trapped in whatever sense they get to a certain point, they've pursued other people's goals. Maybe it's their parents, maybe they didn't realize, maybe it was someone else to prove something to someone else. And some point, we then ask ourselves of what do we want? Where is fulfillment coming from? And many of us, as you talked about, feel either are stuck or trapped, or we don't even give ourselves the permission to think there might be more. I'm seeing this real shift from I get my career and I pursue growth within that career, to a new age of career portfolios, where somebody can have many versions of themselves and decouple this link of our identity, to our job roles. So who, I am a coach or I'm an accountant, I'm a doctor. No, I'm Shane, I’m Ross, at the moment I'm a coach and I'm loving it. 

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But who’s to know what our encores gonna be and our next encore and our next one, in this opportunity of abundance that we have. And I love your work where you can help people find flow, help them find fulfillment. And that, as we know, it's uniquely personal, to go and discover that, go and try it on and to provide a space where we can experiment. That we don't need all the answers, we can go through and they will reveal themselves, they will show up. So I think that is wonderful. And just to close us out, Shane. I'm interested in this context, as you know of adaptability and people dealing in this exponential world of technology change, of disrupting ourselves as you talk about. Are there a few either tips or maybe some of your own routines that you practice that help you and or some of your clients navigate that, and not just survive, but thrive in that kind of environment.

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Shane  

Yeah absolutely, Ross. One of the things that I'm an avid reader, and now well, listening to podcasts, YouTube videos, clubhouses as the case may be, and I think that that helps a lot in terms of understanding what's next, what's possible around the corner by following the top minds in the world, so to speak, the top business leaders or whatever field you are in. And I think that's one of my routine. So for example, on Instagram, I choose who I follow. So when I open up Instagram, I know I'm going to get something positive, something building, something fulfilling, something about money, something about business, something about coaching, something about mental health, because mental health, as I said, is an offshoot to feeling stuck, you feel unfulfilled, and then you develop, anxiety, depression, about the future, and that sort of thing.

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So I think, getting that knowledge is really important. That's one of my definite routines is to always be learning, willing to understand that what I learned today may not be applicable two weeks, two months down the road, willing to just give away, so to speak, the mindset that I've invested in this, I've invested the time to do this, because in the year 2000, I believe it, was I did do my masters in the UK at the University of Surrey. I did a master's in E-business. And I went a few years after, I was looking at the books on my shelf. And I was like I can't even donate this to a library because it's obsolete. I spent thousands of pounds to get this information, this knowledge, this degree, but a lot of the ideas and notions are no longer applicable. So willing to give up that rush is important.

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Ross  

Absolutely, to go beyond the sunk cost fallacy? So it's exactly that, it's a key component of being able to unlearn to evaluate old information in today's context, and to say, thank you, be grateful, not regretful to then move forward and get new breakthroughs. I think that's a great, great piece and a great tip.

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Shane  

Absolutely, Ross. And my career has been pretty much like what you described, I remember saying to people, I've never spent, five years in a single company, not even my own, in terms of a brand or concept. So when I went out to my own, I first started in consulting, I do less of that now I do more coaching. So it has always morphed but there was one time in my career which I could reflect now andI coach people into understanding the difference between fear and danger and I think that's what keeps back a lot of people because that was working for a company good package, paid-up Mercedes Benz by the company, that sort of thing wasn't too stressful.

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And then I had this offer to create was basically a greenfield project, a greenfield company so blank slate, there were no guarantees, so to speak, and I had sleepless nights, Ross. My stomach was churning inside out. For a lot of people they might process that as that I got a bad feeling about that. You know, I couldn't sleep, it doesn't feel right. But what I understood, and that's how fear manifests in its body. And this is now how we need to learn to train ourselves and educate people.

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Because most people still are not really well trained in understanding emotions and emotional intelligence and how it impacts the body. I think a lot of the courses are basically, cursory information to be quite honest, in terms of creating real change. But I remember that the idea is that with respected danger that we may or may feel, then we have that fight or flight respond and response. And that's what we should do. If the building is burning down, we should leave if there's a dangerous animal, we should leave. But if we feel fear, it's actually what we should lean into. It's a sign of what we should lean into. Because if you go through it enough times, and you’ll realize that, and I've been through it enough times and taking those risks and realize, “Oh, that's what that meant that I should lean into it.” So they're supposed to run from it.

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And I think, unfortunately, with the whole emotional resilience stuff, happening right now, conversations like this, making the real change, understanding at a personal level, just thinking about someone who's sitting there, what are they feeling? What's really going on with them, when they feel that, who's the coach, who's the mentor, who's really going to be able to explain that to them that that's what that really means? And can we get people to say, “I'm going to seek expert advice, and not just talk to my friend or my boss, or my colleague, who may not be, well equipped to give you that information.”

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Ross  

That's given me a really great lasting peace of this thought for us of the difference between fear and danger and to apply courage to fear, when there is genuine danger, yes, just let our response system deal with that. And it's going to take care of us when it's life and death, when it's those things. But we can be hoodwinked, we can be given a false sense of representation of danger masquerading as fear.

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But when it's fear that it's just something that's unknown, we don't have the capability yet, so therefore, we don't have confidence, we need the courage in order to overcome that. And I think that's a very sound, beautiful piece, Shane, that you've shared there for everyone that many will be feeling this mix between fear and danger, between known and unknown between certain and uncertain and to lean in, lean into that, knowing that that's where growth is. But to do it, not alone. Know that when we lean in, we can lean in with others, whether it's an accountability coach, your colleague, your spouse, whoever it may be that we don't have to lean in alone.

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And so I really want to say thank you, Shane. This has been a fantastic conversation. And I hope our listeners have picked up a few tips, thoughts, and even just some curiosity of where they might slow down to speed up where they'll think about fear and courage and unlock their level ten, not just a level seven. So thank you, Shane.

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Shane  

Most welcome, Ross. And absolutely enjoyed it. You're a great host. Wonderful questions and I do hope that your viewers or listeners get some value from this.

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Ross

Thank you. Bye, bye.

Shane

Thank you.

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Voiceover  

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please do leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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