84. From Stressed to Resilient with Dr. G

Transcript – Episode 84: From Stressed to Resilient with Dr. G

Joe:
Can you really go from stressed to resilient, especially after the two years we just had? My guest today says yes, and she’s written the book to help you do it. It’s nothing but a G thing now on Boss Better Now.

Jamie:
You’re listening to Boss Better Now. This show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Now here’s your host – speaker, and author, Joe Mull.

Joe:
Welcome back, BossHeroes to your regular dose of advice, humor, and encouragement for bosses everywhere. I am so glad that you are joining us – however, and wherever that might be. I do always love getting notes from you about how you consume this show. I’ve gotten notes from some of you who say that you listen during your commute, while having lunch, or while walking your dog. So wherever or however you are listening, thank you for sharing some of your head space with us. I wanna start today with a special announcement. Drum roll, please. I should actually have had a drum roll sound teed up. Well, let’s do it the old-fashioned way. Drum roll, please. Okay, that’s just me banging on my chest. But one month from today, we are going to hold our next BossBetter Virtual Summit. That’s right on Tuesday, December 6th. We’re the, we’re gonna gather once again online for a one-day live engaging virtual conference designed to help leaders navigate the unique people management challenges we face in this new age of work.

Joe:
There’s the sound effect that we probably should have used with the announcement anyway, whether you are an experienced leader looking to level up your knowledge, a new manager who’s been recently promoted, or an exhausted leader, somewhere in between. This is a can’t-miss learning and development experience for bosses everywhere. We’ve got some incredible speakers lined up and the sessions are short with breaks in between so you can attend and still attend to your work that day. And here’s the great news, we have a special presale happening right now that allows podcast listeners, that’s you to get tickets for a limited time at half price.

Joe:
Yes, I did just use a bicycle horn as the half-price exciting announcement piece. All you have to do is go to bossbettervirtualsummit.com and use the promo code PODCAST at checkout and you can attend the entire event for just $199. Now when… if you can’t attend the live event – register anyway, and we will send you the recordings which you can access for 60 days following the summit. So, one more time, our next BossBetter Virtual Summit will be on Tuesday, December 6th. And you can get tickets for a limited time at half price by using promo code PODCAST at checkout to use that discount before it expires. To see the schedule and to review the speakers and sessions, just go to bossbettervirtualsummit.com. And now, today is a special day here on the show because, for the first time in the history of our podcast, over 80 episodes, we have a returning guest.

Joe:
As you know, I invite guests on the show now and then, but not for every episode. But this is special because we have had so much fun learning from Dr. G around here that when her new book came out recently, I said we have to invite her back. Resilience expert, Deborah Gilboa, MD, AKA Dr. G works with families, organizations, and businesses to identify the mindset and strategies to turn stress to an advantage. Dr. G is a board-certified attending family physician and is a leading media personality seen regularly on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and the Doctors. She works with groups across multiple generations to rewire their attitudes and beliefs and create resilience through personal accountability and a completely different approach to adversity. She’s also the author of the new book From Stress to Resilient: The Guide to Handle More and Feel It Less. Please welcome back to the show, Dr. G. You got the applause sound effect.

Dr. G:
Thank you so much. The applause is amazing

Joe:
<laugh>, so glad to have you back. You get the unique distinction of being our first returning guest. I couldn’t think of a better person to join us. Thanks for being here.

Dr. G:
I’m really honored. Thanks for having me again, Joe.

Joe:
And that “nothing but a G thing” line that I use during the preview that was probably a little bit forced, but that can’t be the first time somebody has dropped that on you.

Dr. G:
I often get Dr. G is in the house.

Joe:
Oh, okay.

Dr. G:
Because we’re all trying to be hip <laugh>. But yeah, I like all the, it’s funny I didn’t actually pick this. One of the amazing front office staff at my office years ago picked it because she was tired of listening to people try so hard to stumble their way through my last name when they would call for an appointment and she would just say, did you wanna see Dr. G? And they’d say yes with this relief in their voice. So, it’s just a compassionate step for people.

Joe:
I love it. Well, congratulations on the book. This thing is impressive. I’m gonna hold it up for the camera here. You did some work, my friend. For those who are listening, this book isn’t like a compact novel-size book. It actually resembles a robust workbook because you went seriously deep on this topic, and you obviously wanted to create something people would actually use. So, it’s built to write in – to work through in stages. Tell us the story about how this book came to life.

Dr. G:
So, I’m a family doctor, like you pointed out, and I see. So that means I see kids and their parents and sometimes their grandparents and even great-grandparents in my office. And I had been noticing after I’d been in practice probably five years, and I’m at a federally qualified health center, I see folks from over a hundred countries right here in Pittsburgh. And I had been noticing that my training was doing a good job helping me prevent illness and injury in folks and helping them recover from illness and injury, but it hadn’t taught me how to help people truly be well and be pleased with their life. And I wondered what’s in that gap. And so, I turned to the medical literature as I had been trained to do. And what I found is that the medical literature says, well, that’s patient resilience, which I will admit sounds a little bit like it might be a cop-out, but it also might be true. So <laugh>, I said, Okay, if that’s true, what is that? What is resilience? Well, this is about 15 years ago and at the time most of the research about resilience was about combat veterans and other people with post-traumatic stress disorder and folks with severe debilitating mental illness. And that is all interesting, but most of it was not directly applicable to my patients. And so, when there, I’ve also been taught that when there isn’t the research you need, go do it. And I was lucky enough over this last decade to partner with a lab at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. And we’re really interested in what is resilience in adult professionals. So first we had to figure out the working definition of resilience. So, can I start there?

Joe:
Let’s go.

Dr. G:
Okay. Resilience. When I ask students, sometimes I get to work with students, I say, What’s resilience? They always say bouncing back from something bad. And I say that is a hundred percent true if you’re a rubber band. I like to ask fourth graders if they are rubber bands because it gets them all agitated. They’re like, no, we’re people. So, the definition for resilience in humans is the ability to navigate change with intention and purpose. Interestingly, Joe, in the business sense, the definition of resilience for organizations is the ability to navigate change, mission-oriented. And when you think about that, it’s really the same thing just on a personal level. The ability to come through change pointed towards your personal mission. What’s your intention and your purpose? And the first thing that really struck us about this is that it wasn’t the ability to navigate struggle or difficulty or challenge, it was the ability to navigate change. And in there in the years and years of research that we dove into, what why is it about change? All change really helped me understand what it is that I need, and my patients need. And really everybody needs to understand about stress and then how to get from there, how to use that to get to resilience.

Joe:
So, there’s so much built-in here that I want to ask you about. And the first thing that I come to is this idea that obviously change, or disruption is a constant, right? That that’s sort of inherent in the definitions that you just gave us. Us both at the individual level and the organizational level. We’re gonna constantly be asked to navigate change. So how do we do it with intention and purpose or how does an organization do it in a mission-oriented way? But I guess the first thing that I want to ask you about is… are there certain kinds of change or disruption that are harder to navigate than others?

Dr. G:
So, here’s the thing about change, and it’s so exciting to get to speak to your audience about it because in the absence of change for that 20 minutes or week, if things are going really, really well, that’s when your people don’t need a boss. We only need leaders to prepare for – navigate or recover from change if really not if own a movie theater and the movies are set and you’ve been running them already for a couple of weeks and they’re not gonna change this week and your ticket prices are set and your concession stand is laid in and your staff schedule is good and nobody’s gonna call off. If there’s nothing that’s a good week for your family vacation. It is when there is any change, any disruption, anything different, that’s when we need leaders. And the frustrating thing for leaders is that I really believe leaders have been, they’ve been fed and untruth, they’ve been fed this belief that if they’re a good enough leader, people will be able to navigate change pretty easily. They’ll be able to accept change and move forward with it. And so, when people struggle with change, leaders think one of two things. Either it’s a referendum on my leadership and I’m not good at this, or people think I’m not good at this, or you don’t trust me, or you haven’t seen everything I’ve done to be forward thinking about our work. Or they see it as a referendum on the character of their people. People are lazy, obstinate, unmotivated, <laugh>. And the struggle with change is a reflex, a deep-seated brain reflex. It’s not a referendum on leadership and it’s not a referendum on character. So, all that, to answer your question to say different changes are hard for different people. I was the kind of kid in school, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were to Joe who loved a good fire drill.

Joe:
<laugh>.

Dr. G:
I loved an assembly that messed up the usual schedule. Yes, I loved that change.

Joe:
Yes, variety is the spice of life.

Dr. G:
Anything that took us outta the routine and people say, oh, kids love routine. I was not one of those kids. I love that kind of change. So, a change in the schedule, if you’d had to message me today and say, can we do this an hour later if I was free, no problem <affirmative>, I’d be like, oh good, look, I have this time free now and I’ll just move those things later. For some people, a change in the schedule is really disrupting. It’s really a big change. But in another way, if you were to have said to me, Hey I’m not gonna be there today, but somebody else is gonna interview you that you’ve never met, I would do it and I would handle it, but it would be more upsetting for me because, for me, I love connection. And so, I love getting to talk to somebody that I’ve already made a connection with and that I really feel like, oh, we’re gonna move things even further. So different changes are hard for different people and leaders should not expect that they’re gonna be able to predict what change is hard for whom.

Joe:
So, you said something a few minutes ago that I wanna make sure I heard correctly, which is that I think you said change is one of the only times when employees really need their leaders. Did I get that right? Did I hear that right? I love this idea because we know that change produces some predictable emotions and reactions and patterns of thinking. And what I guess you’re saying is because we know that because we can spot it, because we can see it coming, then we know we need to make ourselves available as leaders to get in there and help people through it, not penalize them for feeling it. Right?

Dr. G:
Absolutely. And the reason I wanna point out that it’s a reflex, Joe, you have kids and you’ve taken them to the doctor for their well-checks <affirmative>. Now, I’m not your kid’s doctor just for clarity, but if you brought one of your kiddos in to see me and I’d sit them up on, or you would sit them up on my exam table, the three of us would talk. Eventually, I’d listen with my stethoscope, I’d let them listen with my stethoscope, and I would take out my reflex hammer. And unsurprisingly to you, I would tap your daughter’s knee and she would kick right. Now, if I stood directly in front of her and hit her knee with my reflex hammer, what would happen to me?

Joe:
You’d get kicked.

Dr. G:
Would you chastise your daughter for disrespectfully kicking the doctor?

Joe:
No.

Dr. G:
No. You might at least in your inside voice think, why was the doctor such an idiot? Stand right in front of my child? They knew what would happen. And yet this reflex that our brains have when we encounter the possibility of change, even change, we want change. We asked for change, we work for, we have these three reflexes. Our brains try to figure out, well, could I lose? Can I trust this? So, distrust and what will be uncomfortable about it? And leaders continually stand right in front of their people, announce, change, and get kicked. 

Joe:

Yeah. <laugh>

Dr. G:
What we need to know is how to stand to the side, have empathy for the kick as opposed to betrayal, hurt, frustration, just, yeah, oh yeah, that happens. That’s your brain, your brain’s working, right? Then we have to help people navigate through that to the next parts of the cycle. So, I have a cycle and I’m happy in your show notes to give folks the link so they can download it themselves and see it. But change gets announced, even the possibility of a change. Your wife says to you, oh, my family might be having a reunion, get together next June. Just the possibility. And your brain says, what could I lose? Did I have work planned for that time? Was there a weekend with my buddies I was hoping to get in? That might be at the same time, Will we miss anything big for the kids here at home? Can I trust it? Boy, does her family follow through on stuff like that? Or if we’re the ones to put in the deposit, are we gonna be holding a really big money bag at the end of that and then uncomfortable? Oh, we’re definitely gonna have to have that night that my wife’s brother cooks. And that’s tragic, <laugh>, whatever it is, click through. Even if you’re also thinking, oh, I love those people. We’ve been wanting to do this for a while, I’m so happy it’s in the works. Your brain insists on making sure that it’s not dangerous to you. It’s basically your brain being like a 14-year-old boy being like, but could you die, bro? Our brain does that every single time. There’s the possibility of a change, even a great change. A really quick story just to demonstrate that

Joe:
Go. Yeah.

Dr. G:
I got called by a company that I’d worked with a couple of years ago and they said, hey, we did a thing that we thought was a good thing and it’s going terribly. Here was the story. They did what a lot of consultants recommend. They surveyed their people. And what they found is that 96% of their people thought that their payroll system was clunky and awful. And they listened and they researched, they asked HR, can you bring us back proposals? And they looked at three different payroll companies and software and they picked the one that made the most sense and they implemented it, and they announced it, and people lost their minds. This is how they get paid. They have to know how to put in time off and their hours and make sure it gets signed off on correctly. And they have just barely got their current password memorized and steps, and now they’ve gotta do something new. And everybody and they said, You people spoke, we listened, we’ve answered, here you go. And they waited for the parade and instead of a parade, there was loss and distrust and discomfort. And the leaders felt really understandably frustrated. You ask for this and we did it. So why are you having such a hard time?

Joe:
It made a choice about great change, but then they didn’t do the work that you’re describing to move them through it in a way that addresses all of those emotions and fears, and reactions.

Dr. G:
And yet we can all remember a time where we announced a change that we thought was gonna make our employees or our colleagues or our customers or our family happy, and we were met with that, what my kids call the splash zone of the loss and the distrust and the discomfort and that splashed on us and we’re like, What? I didn’t know this was a water ride. What the heck?

Joe:
<laugh>

Dr. G:
And so, knowing that it’s coming, knowing that no matter how great the change, parents love to show those videos where they tell their kids they’re going to, I don’t know, the county courthouse and they’re really taking them to Disney World, right? And there’s always one kid on the video, you can see it on their face that even while they’re like, I’m supposed to be really happy, they’re like, Ugh,

Joe:
<laugh> still processing still, right? Wait, how do I feel about this? What these

Dr. G:
Feelings? And it’s not because that kid is a problem kid, it’s because these rough reflexes are just there to protect us. So as leaders we can recognize this is gonna be great, but first, it’s gonna be hard.

Joe:
So that kind of sets us up for what we need to do first. So what are the things that, if we put this in the context for a lot of the leaders who listen to this podcast where they have to announce some kind of change to their personnel, maybe it’s a minor change, like an adjustment to the operating hours or which might not be a minor change for some folks, or maybe it’s a more of a major change where our company just got bought and we are emerging with a larger organization. All those things create perceptions of instability and fear and many of the reactions that you’re talking about. So, what do employees in those situations need to hear from their leaders first, and then what do they need to hear or experience later?

Dr. G:
The first thing is they need a leader who has first navigated, put on their own oxygen mask, who’s navigated this change for themselves. So that’s that illusion to the flight attendant saying, if we lose cabin PLA pressure, please put on your own oxygen mask first. They don’t say that because they hate children. Maybe they do hate children, but that’s not why they say it. They say it because if you don’t put on your own oxygen mask first, you may need to not even get the other person’s oxygen mask on before you both succumb. You have to navigate this change for yourself. Listen, Joe, a lot of bosses are in the position of having to announce change that wasn’t even their decision

Joe:
And that they too are afraid of or nervous about or don’t agree with.

Dr. G:
And entrepreneurs sometimes announce change to their people. That was their decision and they’re afraid of it and they’re nervous about it <laugh>, and they’re not totally sure it was the right thing to do. And worse, it was our choice then. But even so, the first thing is to navigate this cycle for yourself. And the first thing you have to do is to stop the self-blame. Stop thinking, Boy, if I was more knowledgeable, better at my job, more confidence stronger, this wouldn’t be hard for me. Yes, it would. It’s a brain reflex. Your brain’s trying to keep you alive. The good news is we are all currently alive. The bad news is our brain has to look at every change as suspect. So go through the process that you’re about to help your people through first for yourself. And that involves taking a few steps. One, empathy. Empathy for yourself. Actually, just empathy. Some people call it giving yourself some grace. Just saying, oh right, this is hard.

Joe:
<affirmative>

Dr. G:
Feel your feelings for a minute. Whether that’s frustration or annoyance or nervousness or shame or fear, whatever it is, just feel it for a minute. Be like, Okay, this is useful to me because when we try to shove our feelings down and don’t feel them, that’s when we get a lot of negative physical and emotional side effects of stress. But also, if I’m feeling this, I can certainly expect that a lot of my people will too. So, it’s gonna make you a better leader to notice how it lands with you. So just notice how it lands with you. Then take a little bit if you can. Sometimes someone comes to you because some of our leaders are what I think of as the squished baloney in the sandwich. They’ve got the pressure from above and the pressure from below in the org chart and they’re feeling really squished. But if you can take one minute to say, Right, how am I gonna navigate this? How is this actually mission-oriented? Or is there any way that this change gets me closer to something that I actually want? If you can find that way through, if you can figure out how to, and if it’s something that’s just terrible, you found out that your company has been actually under huge financial strain and they’re being acquired by your competitor and nothing about that feels good to you, you figure out. But it does let me tell X number of people that they get to keep their jobs. And that is important to me. And I want them to see that it, not to say to them that it could have been worse, but to say to myself it could have been worse <affirmative> to say, Okay, I see how there are some things about this that align with my goals. My goals of keeping my people employed, of being able to support them and them being able to support their families. It keeps me employed. Let’s assume -so – it’s aligned with my goal in that way. Then I’m gonna figure out, okay, what choices do I have the way to turn down? You cannot turn off those reflexes just like you can’t turn off the safety mechanism in your car that locks your seatbelt when you slam on the brakes. Mm-hmm. You just can’t. Right? It’s built. You can’t turn this off, but you can turn it down. And the way we turn it down is by asking one question, what choices do I have

Joe:
<affirmative>

Dr. G:
So as soon as you figure out, boy, there’s been this big budget cut or this hours change or personnel, whatever it is, what choices do we have left in this new parameter? Once you’ve answered that for yourself, you are already taking resilient steps. You are navigating change and trying to come through it, pointing towards your intention and purpose. Yes. Then you’re ready to talk to your people not to tell them what the choices are and that you’ve figured this out. And they shouldn’t be scared, and they shouldn’t be mad. That doesn’t work to gently stand next to them while they go through this cycle. Yes. I talked about the worst part of the cycle. You hear about a change, you feel lost and distrust and discomfort even while you might be feeling happiness and excitement and pride, whatever, you’re still feeling lost to stress, discomfort. The active part is you think, Okay, what choices do I have? Just by asking that question before you’ve even listed them, you’ve engaged the venture medial prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is…

Joe:
Okay, now you just showing off Doc, but am okay, I’m with you.

Dr. G:
That’s the most sciencey I will get. I promise. <laugh> asking that question. You turn on the thinking part and it really suppresses the amygdala, which is giving you the fear response and by asking the question that’s choice. When you pick some and move forward with them, that’s engagement. And that brings you to the goal of this whole cycle. Reunification, not necessarily reunification with your new payroll system or with the company that’s acquiring you, reunification with your intention and purpose. This is who I mean to be through this change. This is who we as a department mean to be through this change. This is who we as people ask me a lot, they say, Can you gimme a solid example? And I say right at the beginning of the pandemic, I mean the first two weeks <affirmative>, I got calls from a lot of clients saying, what do we do? How do we navigate this mess? Partially because I’m a medical doctor and they thought I might understand the infectious disease part. And partially because I help companies with change resistance. So, they said, what should we do? And they’re basically saying, should we stay open or closed? Should we keep our people here or go home? And I said, I don’t know what your mission does Joe. All of your United States listeners know that the postal service knew what they would do about anything because it’s right there in their mission statement <affirmative> that most of us know through hail and sleet and wind and rain. We deliver the mail. So, they knew they had to keep delivering the mail, they just had to figure out how are they gonna do it. But for them, it wasn’t a choice of like, should we close the post office? All of them just no more mail for the US until this is over. Their mission is really clear. When your mission is really clear, it guides, it doesn’t make it easy, it doesn’t simplify necessarily <affirmative>, but it guides your choices, and it allows you to reunify with that mission.

Joe:
And not just mission, but the organizations who have done deeper values work, which we talk a lot about on this show, to really get clear on not just who are we and what are we trying to do in the world, but how do we operate what, what’s important to us? What are our values? Or for my organization, my little company here, we call them our five commitments, the commitments that we make to the people that we work with and the people, the commitments that we make to the people that work here. And those kinds of things have served as a kind of compass during times of difficulty change challenge. And so, to be able to point back to those and use them to shape our responses it is critical.

Dr. G:
It is critical. A compass is, I think, the best possible analogy because you keep referring to it to keep correcting course. Yeah. It doesn’t mean you’re always getting it right. Yep, absolutely not. It doesn’t mean you’re never blown off course. It doesn’t mean you’re never confused or upside down. It means where to go to reorient yourself every time you need to reorient yourself or your company. So when you have to tell your people about a change, if you’re clear about your mission as a boss, and I think so many people, because I love to read stuff that the reviews that people write about your podcast, so many people tune into your content because they’re getting more and more clarity about their purpose as a boss, who it is they wanna be, how it is they wanna be when they’re responsible for the employment of other people. And so, the more clarity you have around that, the simpler it will get to navigate your people navigating change.

Joe:
Right. Well, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about helping people through change as a leader, but we’re gonna pause briefly in the middle and you know what’s coming.

Dr. G:
I’m excited

Joe:
Cause you’ve been through this before Dr. G. Yes. Every week on our show we do what we call the Camaraderie Question of the Week. Bosses build camaraderie on teams by making it easier for people to find things in common with each other. That’s why on our show for every episode we give you a question leaders that you can use at meetings or in huddles or during one-on-ones to facilitate connection and build camaraderie. And I did give Dr. G a heads-up that we would be doing this. And right before we hit record, I told her what the question is for this episode. And she is gamely playing along here. It is. What is one thing that people are generally surprised to find out about you? You want to go first, my friend?

Dr. G:
I will go first. I really went two different ways with this. If I was in a group of people and I was trying to find places to bond <affirmative>, I think the thing that I would tell them is that I don’t like chicken.

Joe:
Wow.

Dr. G:
<laugh>

Joe:
First one. I love the answer.

Dr. G:
I don’t mind chickens, but, and this makes it really hard for me to go most places and not offend my host or hostess. So, I have eaten chicken, but I don’t like chicken. And this I have found leads when I’m willing to confess this sin, I find out all these commonly adored foods that other people don’t like, and I feel less alone.

Joe:
There you go. I love it. And it’s funny cuz in my head the first thing I’m going through is all of the things that I experience in the world as pleasures that you don’t, I’m like, oh, that means that you don’t eat wings, you don’t like wings, it means that you don’t like fajitas, chicken fajitas. Oh, my goodness. But then like, hey, to each their own. Right?

Dr. G:
Right. <laugh>,

Joe:
How do you navigate that when you go someplace and it’s only chicken? Do you just suck it up?

Dr. G:
Right. It turns out there definitely probably are some banquet managers that probably think I’m vegetarian even though I’m not.

Joe:
I’ll have the vegetarian option, please. Thanks.

Dr. G:
Right, exactly. Cause as a speaker, you know, often get fed a meal without anybody having had a chance beforehand to see what you might want. And so, I often, I’m like, is there an extra vegetarian option?

Joe:
<laugh>

Dr. G:
But it’s not outta any altruism. It’s really just, I don’t like chicken

Joe:
<laugh>. Just a preference thing. Yeah, absolutely. No, and thank you for answering the question in a really colorful way. When we talk about our camaraderie questions of the week here on the show, we encourage leaders to try to encourage members of their teams to reach for something unique and different. Not sometimes people would answer a question, what’s one thing that people are generally surprised to find about you? And you’re like, Oh well I’m easygoing and <laugh>. Like that’s not really an answer. Tell me something really

Dr. G:
To find that out about me. I’m not easygoing <laugh>

Joe:
Either. No. My answer to this question is actually something I have talked about on the show before and I tend to try to go with my first blush reaction to these questions. I’m sure there’s probably some more colorful answer I could come up with. But what people tend to generally be surprised to find out about me is that I am an introvert in every way that you can define what an introvert is. I really value time alone. It’s where I get my energy from. People think introversion is about social comfort. That means I’m shy and I’m not a shy person. Introversion is about where you get your energy from how you like to process information. And so, when I spend a day in front of a room full of people, especially if I’m doing work around personality differences and I ask people to type me out, at the end of the day everybody automatically guesses that I’m an extrovert because I’m outgoing and I’m verbal and I’m friendly. And you can be all of those things and still be an introvert. The difference is for me, if I spend a day in front of a room full of people or facilitate a workshop, my gas tank is empty at the end of that day. Whereas for an extrovert, they would be really energized by all of that. So, when I have to work on something, I prefer to start alone. When I have to recharge, I prefer to be alone. I’m an introvert.

Dr. G:
It’s really good for bosses to know too because how people present in group settings we think we know and the more we identify with someone, the more we think we know how they’ll react, how they identify what’s important to them. And so, we’re much more likely to make assumptions with people that we feel really connected to or that we identify with. So, ask, I tell my medical students all the time, you don’t even know what you don’t know about people. Right. Ask.

Joe:
Great point. And that’s the Camaraderie Question of the Week. Thank you for playing along my friend.

Dr. G:
That’s really fun.

Joe:
I wanna get back to just a couple other questions that I have for you about this book. And the great thing about this book is you’ve clearly plotted a journey for people to do some work moving from start to finish. So, if I am someone who has really experienced a lot of burnout over the last couple of years, or just find that my reserves, what we might call resiliency is not as accessible to me as it was perhaps prior to 2020, how does this book help me? What does the work I’m gonna be doing along the way?

Dr. G:
Well, so what I really love about this book is I found a way to design it so that I don’t have to be an expert in you. I can remind you about your expertise in you. What I want you to do is definitely read the introduction. Because in the introduction first I’m gonna give you a little bit of the science and it’s gonna be familiar to you because we’ve talked about some of these ideas already just in this episode. But I’m gonna explain to you what it is about change that’s hard and help you view stress differently. Help you think about stress as getting you stronger. Exercise helps get you stronger for a physical endeavor. It can be damaging. You don’t wanna exercise injured, but it’s also the only way to get towards that goal of being able to have a stronger physical endeavor is to do some exercise in the same way. If you wanna accomplish more, if you want to have a better relationship or a bigger company or a job that’s different or a hobby that’s different, I want you to feel less overwhelmed, less winded by the stresses that go along with those changes. And then I ask you a bunch of questions in the introduction <affirmative>, I ask you to think about what change is top of mind for you, what is it that’s draining your resilience right now? And then I ask you to do a little pretest to figure out among the eight skills that help people navigate change better, which ones feel really solid for you and which ones do you feel like, oh, I could polish that more, or I don’t feel as competent in that. And then one more step, I say, Okay, now think about the change, in particular, that’s bugging you right now. If you could just snap your fingers, which of these would you want? And then you go to that section of the book, there’s no right order to work through this book. And as a matter of fact, you don’t need to work through the entire book at any one point ever <affirmative>. So, for example, this morning I was in a conversation with a colleague who was just back to work first day after his dad passed away and he was trying to figure out how to build his resilience back up because the pace of his work he’s in media doesn’t really change and the, there’s constant balls to juggle. And I said, and he is got people depending on him, he’s a boss. And he said, you got one idea for me, Dr. G. And I said, well, of the eight skills I’d say that you might be best served by one of these three right now building connections. And he’s like, Oh, I’m all over that. I got connections with a million people. I feel really tied in. I’ve had tremendous support during the funeral and before, while my dad was sick and everything. And I said, Okay, great setting boundaries, deciding what you will take on right now, and if there’s some things that you can delay picking back up that you’ve set down recently while you’re going through this process. And he said, Oh yeah, maybe. And I said, In managing discomfort. And he’s like, Oh yeah. So, he’s gonna pick one of those, and then if he was looking at this book, he’d go to the section either for setting boundaries or managing discomfort and he’d find there for exercises, and he might pick one and try it. It’s gonna take him somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes. But by the end of it, he’s gonna feel a little bit stronger in that skill of setting boundaries or of managing discomfort so that when he puts the book back down, he feels a little bit better armed to handle the changes that he’s dealing with and and feel resilient.

Joe:
So, this book isn’t just a tool for the ambiguous idea of change that we want to get better at. That comes down the pike. If I’m in it and I’m struggling, I can pick this up and I can reach for one of the activities, one of the exercises, which will help me get clarity around my thinking or help me hone around some of these specific skills that are gonna help me in the moment.

Dr. G:
Absolutely. Another advantage is there’s really nothing in this book that is so private or personal that you couldn’t use this in a work setting. <affirmative>, I really designed this on purpose so that, listen, I don’t want you to collect everybody’s papers and read their answers, but there’s nothing in here that you wouldn’t wanna read out if you were in a group meeting and saying, Hey everybody, we have this really big change that’s recently happened and I downloaded this cycle from this person I heard on a podcast and I asked each of you to tell me in this cycle, where are you about the acquisition that we just had, that new company we’re taking on? And some of you told me that you are still mostly in distrust but also a little bit in engagement. And some of you told me you’re big in discomfort, but a little bit in choice. So, we’re gonna try and move everybody through that a little bit by really focusing on one of these skills. And the one that I pick for today is finding options, the skill of finding that there’s more than one path to get us to our best result. So, we’re gonna do this activity about finding options that turns to be out to be about music. So, I just, I’m handing out or I emailed you this pdf, and will you guys sit with me for five minutes? We’re gonna do this exercise that’s about choosing different kinds of music to listen to. And at the end of it, it’s gonna just talk for a couple of minutes in debrief. And at the end of it, when you debrief, your people are going to be able to answer differently questions about when you feel like there’s one obvious favorite choice of yours, how do you dive in and find other choices?

Joe:
One of the things that I knew I wanted to ask you about today, and you kind of led me there perfectly, so thank you for that, is this idea of how willing do our team members need to be to become more resilient in order for us to help them? And I guess that’s probably the wrong question at this point, right? Cuz you’re talking about understanding the cycle and understanding the experiences that people go through when they’re in change. So how do bosses help team members become more resilient when maybe they don’t seem willing to do so?

Dr. G:
I think you’ve asked a great question, Joe, and it’s partially because especially as we’ve gone through the pandemic, a lot of people have heard this word resilience as a demand <affirmative> from their leadership. We just need you to be more resilient. Basically, it became a nicer way of saying suck it up buttercup. And that is not acceptable. There’s no empathy in that statement. So, I’m not at all surprised when people say to me, you know what? I’m sick of being resilient. I don’t wanna be ready for the next thing. I want things to get easier. I spoke at a conference and a woman very early in the, she raised her hand and she said, hey could you do me a favor? And she was obviously more performing for the group, but she said, could you never use the phrase, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon <laugh>. She said, Because I don’t wanna run a marathon anymore. I’m run out. I want to sit down and rest. And although she was certainly frustrated and it didn’t really fit in that moment, it was a really well-taken expression. She really was expressing not just for herself, but for a lot of people in the room that they’re tired of being asked to just step up and handle more. So, it is absolutely important for bosses to realize that framing this, contextualizing this is crucial. Just saying to your people, Okay, I heard this thing, I bought this book, we’re gonna be more resilient, may very well land with them as we’re gonna stop complaining and get more done.

Joe:
And putting in the work to help our teams with resilience doesn’t mean we also have permission to keep putting them in circumstances where they need to be resilient all the time. There is a kind of backlash to the word right now around what maybe instead of asking me to be more resilient, I could just have less work.

Dr. G:
Maybe you could hire more people or make this a little easier in some way. Top demanding as much. So, a patient of mine asked me recently saw me on a TV segment and a lot of my patients don’t know that I do this work cuz they just doesn’t overlap. He said to me, hey, I saw you on tv so I gotta ask you a question. Why would I wanna be resilient? I wanna be done with hard things. Why? And I said it’s such a good question. The point of being resilient is just getting the life you want. It’s having the energy to get the happiness you want. So, when we say to our folks, Hey, I wanna help you to feel the ravages of stress less, to be able to navigate, change more competently, <affirmative> more successfully in a way that works better for you. Those are some of the, That’s the impetus behind this idea. I used resilient because to me that word is salvation, but it’s really important to know if it is for your people or not to say, I want to help you because I know you were in a really difficult spot.

Joe:
What if I could tell you ways to experience less suffering as a result of life? What if I could tell you there’s a way for life to take less of a toll on you or our work to take less of a toll on you? That’s what you’re getting at.

Dr. G:
Absolutely. Joe spoken really eloquently and had people on your show talking about the generational differences. An amazing generational difference about Gen Z and millennials from Gen X, which I am, is that they don’t look at, they don’t put themselves in compartments. They don’t say, well this is professional development that has nothing to do with my personal life, or this is my personal time. I would never think about work. They see themselves as three-dimensional people with all their identities all the time. The advantage to that is you don’t have to say so that you can be a better employee. You must do this resilience work. It’s because I care about you, and I see that you are navigating a lot. I found a resource to help all of us navigate this stuff and come through it, the kind of people we wanna be.

Joe:
Yep. Fantastic. And yes, I’m a Gen Z, or excuse me, I’m a Gen Xer with you, my friend. We tend to be a little bit cynical, but we’re still here. So, where it can folks get the book?

Dr. G:
Easiest thing to do is to go to the website stressedtoresilient.com.

Joe:
Fantastic. And last but not least, my friend, tell me a little bit about why companies hire you and how you help them.

Dr. G:
Thank you. The biggest thing that I can do for companies right outta the gate is help them when they’re navigating a big change or have a big change that is gonna cost a lot of money or has right on the horizon, figure out where the resistance is coming from. I call it a change resistance exam. And that allows you to figure out what the friction points are. Like when you’re hanging a door and you open and close it the first time and you see where does it stick? So, I help people figure out where the change is sticking so that they can smooth that out and build skills so that that change navigation becomes more competent. I can’t make it more welcome. I can’t make our brains love change, but I can help with the skills that get us through it, towards our intention and purpose.

Joe:
Fantastic. And what’s the website? How do they find you online so they can get in touch?

Dr. G:
Askdrg.com

Joe:
Easy. Well thank you so much for being here with us, my friend. There is a chance I may call you later and ask you to record the 14-year-old voice that you gave me earlier. Like, What’s up bro? Cuz, I want that as my GPS voice. I feel like that would be highly entertaining. Would you do that for me, dude?

Dr. G:
Turn at the corner n’at <laugh>.

Joe:
Perfect. All right, friends, thank you to Dr. G. Check out her book From Stressed to Resilient: The Guide to Handle More and Feel it Less. If you got something out of our show today, please take a moment and leave us a review. Reviews have a lot to do with whether or not shows get traction, shows get distributed, shows, build an audience, and we are always trying to continue to fulfill our mission of filling the world with better bosses. So, if you liked what you heard today, please leave us a review.

Joe:
Until next time, thank you BossHeroes for all that you do to take care of so many. We’ll see you next time.

Joe:
This show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Remember, commitment comes from better bosses. Visit joemull.com today.