Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast designed to elevate your leadership and amplify your impact. Each episode offers valuable insights to help you transform your vision into reality, cultivate high-performing cultures that attract top talents, and navigate the complexities of today's uncertain, chaotic world with confidence and clarity. Now tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and leadership alchemist, david Craig Utz.

Speaker 2: 0:46

The most precious resource an executive has is not time, it's attention. Where your attention goes, your organization follows. In today's storm of disruption, division and distraction, many executives are unknowingly losing control of this vital resource and, with it, the clarity and impact they once commanded. And because of today's disruptions, control of your focus is harder and harder to maintain unless you know how to take control of it. Welcome to Unphased Under Fire, the podcast for conscious, courageous leaders who want to ignite human spirit in the workplace, reimagine what leadership can be and create impact from the inside out.

Speaker 2: 1:23

I'm your host, david Craig Utz, the leadership alchemist and co-creator of the Resilient Leader Method. This show is for leaders committed to rising above the noise and navigating the complexity of our times with clarity, grace and purpose. And in today's episode we're going to look at deeply at one of the most priceless advantages an executive can develop a higher level of focus. We'll explore a foundational truth in leadership that focus or direction of your attention is not just a skill. It's a direct reflection of your level of consciousness.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Now joining me again are my two powerful co-hosts, anatoly Yokorov, who's a master in the field of conscious development, with a unique background in inter-global leadership, transformation, ethics and compliance. Anatoly is also my partner and co-creator of the Leadership Resilient Method, and Ryan McShane's here, an experienced coach and organizational strategist who brings a rare combination of insight, empathy and clarity to our show and to his client's leadership journey. He's the founder of HR Evolution. So today we're going to explore why executive focus is the real advantage and impactful leadership which traditional leadership development approaches miss. So welcome to the show. Guys Appreciate you being here.

Speaker 3: 2:37

Thank you, david, I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 4: 2:39

Yeah, great yeah, thanks for having me Well.

Speaker 2: 2:40

I'm going to set just a little bit of context. Yeah, thank you, anatoly, appreciate you being here. We're going to set some context for today's show, which is also going to help us with the upcoming episodes. I want to introduce the Authentic Creatives Leadership System Applied, which is a model that highlights the core competencies executives must embrace to evolve from high-performing professionals to deeply impactful, visionary leaders. Now, this framework is the result of 26 years of experience I've had in coaching hundreds of executives and will serve again as a foundation for the upcoming episodes as well as today. Now, this model is kind of a lens which I support leaders in helping them master their inner and outer game of leadership.

Speaker 2: 3:22

Now, if you're watching the video version of this episode, you're now seeing a quick image of that model. If you're listening, you can imagine a circular model with a large circle in the middle with five distinct arrows moving around that center circle, which are key leadership competencies. Now, the very center of the model is executive presence. In short, executive presence is your ability to be fully in the moment so that you can deal with whatever is happening around you with grace, and to be fully available to lead with power and authority At its heart. Your executive presence aligns with your level of consciousness, how awake, aware and aligned you are in any given moment. You'll then notice that the other leadership elements that surround it are influenced and touched on by this central element, because our presence is required for all the other competencies to work at peak level, whether it's sharpening our focus, building collaborative relationships, creating and maintaining alignment in our organization, or executing at a high level or innovating. These all rise and fall in effectiveness based on your state of consciousness.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Again, today we're going to emphasize the first element around the inner circle of presence, which is focus. As I said, this is a critical executive competency because you create what you focus on. Every conversation you engage, every decision you make, every resource you allocate, it's all shaped by where your attention is directed. So when your focus drifts, your leadership drifts and your organization starts to reflect that misalignment, I'd like to kind of revisit this disruptive, rapidly changing, uncertain environment that we find ourselves in and I don't want to berate that because we know that Everybody knows we're dealing with that but given the current state of development of leaders in that environment, I want to talk about how that complexity and intensity and disruption is impacting focus and one of the ramifications for an executive on their own performance and the impact of their organizations. We've got all these things coming at us. We've still got my job to do, and how is that impacting our experience of being able to bring attention to what we want to bring attention to?

Speaker 3: 5:38

David, I think that no one would argue that our world has grown in increasing complexity over the years.

Speaker 3: 5:45

I think we all recognize that in our own walk of life and when you're an executive, you just have more balls in the air than most people.

Speaker 3: 5:52

So you're trying to keep all those plates, spinning those balls in the air, however you want to refer to it, and you've exponentially increased the number of plates you're trying to spin and balls that you're trying to keep up as a result of that increased complexity and, to your point, it distracts us and it keeps us continuously in a reactive mode rather than a strategic and creative mode and at that level you really need to maintain that operation from a strategic and visionary and creative and constructive standpoint. So I think that you're right on to something very powerful for people to understand. Is that attention that's so important, that focus that's so important because it ultimately dictates what we do, what we continue to embrace or not embrace, what we accept and what we don't accept. And that reactivity, biochemically speaking, the survival brain, the fight, flight or freeze, as we have talked about before in prior episodes it hijacks our higher processing that takes place, that conscious focus that you talk about?

Speaker 2: 6:57

And I would say I don't think executives don't realize that their attention is not their primary resource. Right, there is some degree of awareness around. Until you and I talk about this, An executive might think they have charge of their focus. Right, they might think they have charge of their attention. What are your thoughts on all this?

Speaker 4: 7:17

Well, let's put it this way what's the difference, let's say, between executives these days and those executives say even 10 years ago? So we've got new levels of complexity, right, coming from the geopolitical situations. Globalization, I mean supply chain, is like anything that happens. Just how can you manage that? It's out of your hands. You can't control that. Now, on top of that, you have a layer of digital infestation, because you've got this digital connectivity 24 by 7. Anybody can reach out to you. You have to respond. You can't just sleep on the bunch of emails that you get. So this just increases the pressure and creates this cognitive load. Now, what does it do to your focus? It flipping, destroys it, because you can't swim in this murky tide. All this stuff happening Because, on top of that, you still have to deal with your toxic employees, toxic bosses.

Speaker 4: 8:20

You know, for various reasons they're different, right, but there's still a level of toxicity is different. 10 years ago you had a boss who was a narcissist. Great, Everybody walks on, that shows around the guy. Life was pretty easy, right, you kowtow to him, you pat him, keep him happy. But these days you've got people who demand your attention. Right, because they're super high, you know, sensitive to all kinds of issues. So you have to respond to that, otherwise you see your social, you know social interactions in the office. You know, portray you as a bad guy, right. So I mean just social, geopolitical, and all that stuff leaves nothing for the focus. What is the focus? It's the ability to stay focused on a single task. Just get something done and then it's gone. You just don't have any fuel for that. You'd rather be doing a thousand things like spinning your wheels, and that's why this concept that everybody talks about, busyness, crept up in our lives. You want to stay busy for the sake of being busy, because it gives you an impression you're doing something.

Speaker 2: 9:40

Yeah, I see it all the time the initiatives that get spawned in organizations that take people off their game because on high they're thinking we need to attend to this. Now we have a high-performance initiative or 30-minute meetings or whatever. There's an attempt by organizations to kind of layer on things to help people be more effective, but all that does is dump into this whole thing you just talked about, which is additional things Now I have to be worrying about. Am I doing my 30 minute readings well, or are we, as a senior leader? Now we have to make sure we're the we're on the bully pulp of talking about this initiative. You know, and and we're here to serve customers, to do what's what, to improve the customer experience, and you're, you're off your game, you're being pulled in a direction. You know we almost don't trust the kids to do the right things. So we're talking about good stuff.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Not that these initiatives don't have some merit in what they're talking about, but they have the opposite effect that they need to ultimately have. So you know, you walk in with this great plan and your office at 830 in the morning and you don't have control of the circumstances, but you do have control of your attention, but you then get drawn into the circumstances. So that goes back to something you mentioned, ryan, which is about our conditioning. So there's this underlying part of ourselves that reacts to those circumstances and in that moment we're lost in a certain way and frustrated most of the time. I mean, I think there's some intuitive knowing, right that I know I got to shift over here, but these three things are demanding my attention, right?

Speaker 3: 11:20

You know, david, it occurs to me that not only that leaders who prepared their subordinates in terms of their supervisory responsibilities and don't empower them to solve those problems, but have to go to them to get permission to address those issues because they have not been originally empowered.

Speaker 3: 11:40

Now you're encumbered by solving all their mistakes or problems or issues that they have not been empowered to solve for themselves, so you've got a ripple effect that all too often happens. From a leadership standpoint, I think that you know that bears mentioning because I think it's an all too common issue. You know, from from online on down the line, we need to make sure that everyone is empowered to fully embrace their role and their responsibilities related to that job, and I often you know tongue in cheek used to say, well, if it's not a flaming bag of something on your doorstep, we're not responding to it, and that's that's typical. Management's highly reactive mode is what I'm speaking to, is what I'm speaking to, and that's something that can be prevented through active focus, attention and a characteristic of leadership called conceptualization, where we stand back and we examine what really needs to be addressed in this moment, rather than what do I need to react to.

Speaker 2: 12:38

That's well said, and I think people know how to create crises because they know they're not getting my attention. So therefore, I'm going to throw a grenade into the room because I need attention on me, right? And so we have this kind of interesting human dynamic that unfolds, and even our own profession, right, sometimes comes in and says, okay, here's how you'll fix this. But it's kind of at a cognitive level, right, it's at a level of this was how you want to structure these things. I'm not saying that isn't helpful, but that is what do people do with that, right? I say this all the time, but I was in sales and I was trying to make sure my days were sharp and focused on what I needed to do. Of course, it was easier for me than most executives, because I'm only dealing with my own individual time.

Speaker 2: 13:22

This was back in the mid-90s. I would walk into a Stephen Covey store and start salivating, and I want to get to this idea that if I get this book and I do this system, there's this great hope that I would certainly be more productive, but also that I would take control of my life in this little book. And how disappointing, over and over, that was. Now time management and understanding how to structure our day is still highly valuable. There is some guardrails you could put in to support you, but there's been this quest for the perfect time management system. I mean Covey's rocks and the things that go between the rocks and all that stuff. There's value in it and all that stuff, there's value in it.

Speaker 3: 14:10

But really isn't it what we are talking about here, more about attention management than time management? I like that term, attention management, because I think it puts a fine point on exactly what we're doing behind the scenes. You know, you can call it time management, you can call it prioritization, you can call it a number of things, but attention and you kind of started the episode with that is where the attention goes, the energy flows, so to speak, and that's what we continue to fixate on. We are drawn in several different directions. So how do we make sure, at the end of the day, that we're attending to the most valuable thing? I know, as a solopreneur and business owner myself, that's a constant challenge. I might go down a certain path and say, well, today I'm going to focus on this, but, to be honest with you, the whole time I'm thinking should I actually be over here focusing on this, or should I be over here focusing on this? So I'm not fully attentive. I'm dividing myself in many different ways.

Speaker 2: 15:06

Yeah, absolutely Well, and what is the primary lens a leader ought to be using to sharpen their focus? At the end of the day, if you think of leadership Anatoly, what is the lens? That, if leaders were operating out of it 100% of the time, would change everything. That if leaders were operating out of it 100% of the time, would change everything.

Speaker 4: 15:32

If they were able to cut the distractions out and remain focused and use something to focus them. What would that be? Well, I guess everything goes back to clarity of purpose, because it's very easy to get mired in a multitude of small tasks and then you get your dopamine high as a result. I ticked one box, or two boxes? Oh, I checked my emails, right, I responded to a couple out of a thousand. Great, I can go home now.

Speaker 4: 15:54

But what really happens to people is the clarity of purpose is always gone, because you're consumed perpetually by all these small tasks and you never accomplish anything because, like again, you're spinning your wheels. Right, but the clarity of purpose, once it's, you know, put right in the center, it does make a difference. Well, sometimes people actually go another way. They delegate as much as possible. So there's a guy who delegates everything to his subordinates and one day he walks in and his office is locked. What happened? I got fired. Oh you idiots. You got me fired. I delegated only five tasks to you to get done and you messed up everything.

Speaker 4: 16:34

There's another extreme to that. Right, apparently, if you cannot manage your attention, which is just basically a group of items that you can hold in your short-term memory right. If you can't really handle that and you can't handle the focus and you don't have the general awareness of things, your environment, what's happening on the social level, you're totally lost because you're not in focus, you don't have enough attention, you don't have awareness, right. So that's why I'm just saying that, going all the way back to why is it that we're here? What's our purpose, what's our long-term goals? That's what nobody likes talking about, because CEOs, executives, think like, hey, my contract expires in two years, I'll be gone by the time the house catches fire, I'm out of here. So you guys, you do whatever you want, right, get your trained monkeys, you know help you, you know good luck, I'll be on, you know. To another, you know cushy job. So clarity of purpose is this reminder Okay, what's the big, you know, vision that I have, so that I know I accomplished enough to get us somewhere.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Yeah, I mean I think you know you touched on it. I was going to say like vision is kind of the broader has other components, like who do we want to be, what kind of results do we want to produce, what kind of culture do we want to have? You know really articulating that because, again, that focus, what you focus on, you create. So you're focusing on just trying to get this moving forward. Or we need to make sure our quarterly results look better or we have to. Now we have a talent issue. We got to focus on that. We get off of that broader, more, more picture that holds all that together. And you know you look at the best leaders that have. You know some of the vision. The greatest leaders have been visionaries. You know. You know you have. You have Schultz of Starbucks. I mean that got created. He basically created that because he had a vision of what would it be like if and what would that experience be like for customers when they walk in the door.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Or I'm trying to remember the name of the guy that started Southwest, or the CEO of Southwest for a long time. His name is escaping me now. I don't know why, because I know this name, but the Southwest is another example of that as well or FedEx. You have these companies that are driven from a vision. These were at simpler times, maybe right. It's more challenging today, but that is so true. Greatness happens out of that because they stand. They stood in it. Very clearly, this is what we're trying to create, and then they're enrolling other people into that, which is enrolling their intention and the vision, and that tends to be inspiring to people and meaningful to people to do their job every day.

Speaker 3: 19:28

And you know, I think we're really good at compartmentalizing as people. So we might have the intention to follow that vision or purpose that we established, but then we come into the work environment and say, well, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I've got to do the other thing, whereas if we stood back and said, if that's your intention and your purpose, what are the actions that follow that support accomplishing that intention or purpose? And you'll see that they're very rarely what we do on a daily basis. So I think there's a very human element of that.

Speaker 2: 20:02

In a certain way, it's very simple to understand Vision, strategy, goals, project plans, tasks, right? It goes back to that Stephen Covey story thing. If you're diverting off of that pathway, you can always see that navigational pathway, at the level of goals and tactics, isn't working. We have to back up and look at it. Innovate, do things better, improve better processes All that happens, naturally, but we are at a point where people just don't know how to bring it back together. There's something occurring in them and I want to shift to that.

Speaker 2: 20:32

This ability to focus isn't just a skill, because if it was, we could have fixed it with some of the things we talked about earlier. It's really a mirror of our consciousness, and the level of our consciousness goes back to that fancy word and the quality of leadership. Your ability to move people, make wise decisions, generate meaningful results will only be as clear as your ability to direct your attention with intention, which is the vision, the purpose, the strategy, right. So let's dig deeper, because much of what drives people's focus isn't conscious, right? And Ryan, you had this great comment last time that 95% of the time we're on autopilot. That doesn't mean that we're like zombies. Our attention is being robbed and we are following the robbers, right. Whether it's I got to check my social media or I have to have that cup of coffee now I'm leaving the office, or it's this crazy person walks in my office now my whole day exploded, right. It tends to be reactive and hidden in past patterns within us why we react and deciding where to go next this whole idea that we touched on last time.

Speaker 2: 21:38

The unconscious mind is always in the driver's seat and we're not aware of it because it's unconscious unless we elevate our awareness. And many executives try to outthink their focus challenges through time management or through like, okay, I'm going to do this tomorrow. No, nobody can talk to me at these times of the day, or whatever. Uh, and they're not really sizing the old scripts and unresolved emotional trauma or paper cuts, depending on different levels of that and inherent beliefs are running the show. I'm just going to turn this over to you. That's that kind of you know you're a vegetarian. I don't want to say it's red meat for you, anatoly, but it's territory that you know very well, and so talk a little bit about it, because really, this is where the unconscious driving us starts. It's directing our focus right. Without our knowing it, we have this secret thing, working against us rather than working for us. So I'd love you just to unpack that a little Technically speaking.

Speaker 4: 22:37

Yes, this is a good point to address, even though nobody likes talking about it, right? Because that means that you're going to open up a can of worms. And now going back to your early childhood bullying at school.

Speaker 2: 22:49

Don't do that and kicking around.

Speaker 4: 22:52

It's actually talking to people around the world. The pattern is the same. Southeast Asia, like Latin America, kids go through the same type of like experiences, except as they grow up they dress up those old wounds and hope they're gone. But they are sitting right there and they keep festering because they've never been addressed, they've never been removed. Number one past experiences will always have some impact on the way we make our decisions, in very insidious ways, but they do have that control over us. Next one up would be all sorts of hidden biases that we have developed as a result of trying to deal with our traumas, and of course they were like mostly a fallacy here, a flaw there, and we ended up having a lot of garbage around the wounds. Right, it doesn't help.

Speaker 4: 23:52

Then social conditioning the way it was brought up, the way it was conditioned by my parents, society, school that adds another layer on top right. Then in the soup, the way our neural correlates. You know the nervous system tries to react, how we get triggered by simple things. Why do we fly off the handle at a very seemingly innocuous remark one of our you know employees make? And then you know, before we know it, we have a knife or a cleaver in the hand and it's this close to chopping off his head. It's all sitting there right, and then you think you have some core values. Oh, some firm beliefs really condition my character. But all of that still sits in this quagmire of stuff that impacts our thinking and the quality of our decisions. Now, of course, people say it's easy to address that. Do some breath work, do some meditation, a bit of mindfulness, a bit of this Eat, just less processed food, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 25:01

People generate all sorts of ideas, except it does not resolve. All. These strategies are kind of like weight loss programs promising you're going to lose so many pounds of weight if you do this program and you're jumping from one diet routine to another trying to figure out how to get that 15 pounds off your belly right. It's a little bit like that. But the question is why can't we learn our way out of this? What's the problem here? It's not like some of these things that we're told are not valid at an intellectual level. Why can't we just engage this process? Or let's make sure I have a rubber band around my wrist and I'll snap the rubber band every once in a while during the day. Wake up, are you conscious? It's not that executives aren't trying things. I'm not saying that these things did not work, maybe at one time prior to 2020. They might have been effective because it was a little bit more reasonable during those times, but we are being pushed to the edge. So why can't we learn our way out of this?

Speaker 3: 25:56

Yeah, I think there's a factor of discipline and commitment that we're talking about here. Yeah, and when you think about that, it's harder and harder to be disciplined and committed to what you're doing when you exponentially increase the number of distractions and you feel it to be your role to address those distractions. And it kind of goes back to what I said before there are some things that leaders and executives should not be addressing, that had they empowered the people beneath them, this wouldn't even make it to their desk. And you know, as a former director of human resources, I was inundated with this experience. People said, ah, go talk to Ryan, he'll address it, he'll take care of it. You're lying out your door and eventually that's almost what it became. It was like I need to get in a waiting room in here, type of thing.

Speaker 3: 26:43

And then I figured out really quickly that, hey, this is going to burn me out in no time. As much as my ego loves trying to be able to solve other people's problems, I knew that that was going to take a severe toll on me, and so I started turning it around on them and letting them know hey, listen, if you're not coming with a proposed solution associated with that problem, then I can't help you, at least be prepared enough to have some recommendations and options about what you want to see happen as a result of this problem that you've presented to me and that severely reduced the number of people that came to me with their issues because they knew in the process of preparing to come down to Ryan's office, oh yeah, I've got to have a solution associated with this, and before they knew it, they started developing the capability to address their own problems, and that's ultimately what I wanted for them is that type of empowerment. So it reduced that inflow, saved me some time. They felt empowered as a part of that process.

Speaker 2: 27:47

You really made a good point and it goes back to something Antoli said last time. It's kind of on us, right? We're in this Western society, you got to figure this out. We're not going to help you. I mean again, organizations tend to try to do things to help them. They have developmental programs, they have executive coaching programs and in many cases in the larger companies that support this. And what you pointed to, ryan, was that it takes discipline and consistency. But I'm thinking, okay, now I'm going to add that to my list, to the other things I'm dealing with, and I don't really have control over those things. What's the challenge with that today?

Speaker 4: 28:23

I have a great example for you, because I'm being part of one group and they're trying to do exactly this. How can we learn our way out of this? By using words and using flowery quotes and dressing up the whole process, and the leader of the group collapsed just recently. But the idea is that you cannot use the conscious process to fix something which is subconscious, right? Just use simple math. For things to become subconscious, they must have been triggered a gazillion times more than your conscious process, right? So that's why everything is ingrained. Well, you remember how to breathe. You don't have to set an alarm clock to remind you breathe, right? No, it's all happening automatically, right? So, of course, there I mean look look at your entire industry of coaching, worth 125 billion, right? Or something more you know? So that's what it's trying to fix. Another, another book here, another pamphlet here, another fly here, look here, read this, read that.

Speaker 4: 29:35

And then people keep believing that by reading more like you were talking about Stephen Covey's book, right, by reading more, I can dig my way out of a situation where I ended up being and you know, the best guy is Tony Robbins. He's built his empire around this. It's all like do as I say these instructions. If it doesn't happen, there's something wrong with you. Just go buy some more books and read, do as I describe it Now. But it doesn't work like that, right, we still have to address those issues that we have, because we have a very unique human experience which actually takes up what you know, a big part of our subconsciousness, and therefore we cannot just tell ourselves all this positive affirmations. We must have a way to fix it. But it's not that easy, even though they say like look, five minutes of mindfulness will yield you results in two weeks. Look, it's a pretty impressive way to get incentivized.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Five minutes every day.

Speaker 4: 30:35

Yeah, five minutes every day, three weeks you and your man. Well, would you believe that? Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 30:42

We're starting to touch on the next topic I really want to talk about, which is consciousness, is the foundation of executive presence. We talked about consciousness as simply awareness, being aware, and if you think about the trajectory, it's aware, attention, focus. You kind of go in that direction because attention is the outer expression. Our focus sharpens that attention right. What we want to talk about now is the more conscious an executive becomes, the easier it is to direct their attention to vision versus fear or reactivity. So let's talk a little bit about how rising consciousness improves clarity, and I always say that.

Speaker 2: 31:24

You know, if you're looking out of a telescope to try to focus a telescope and there's peanut butter on the lens, it doesn't matter how much you turn that dial. You have to have clarity first. You have to have clarity first and then you could turn that dial. So let's talk a little bit about how rising consciousness improves that clarity, that focus and ability to direct your attention. So when that light gets brighter and that's really literally what happens the brightness of awareness grows. That's one way of describing it, because that's the direct experience of it happening. In my experience it's like having a dimmer switch and the light gets turned up in your awareness and you go whoa, what have I been doing? Thoughts on that. What is the mechanisms that consciousness needs to resolve, to expand and allow us to have more control over our attention?

Speaker 4: 32:12

Well, that's a good point, because you just said that, yeah, maybe subconsciousness has something to do with it. Well, can you increase or expand your consciousness? If you have all this garbage in your attic, can you still rise above the law of gravity, right, and fly? So this is an issue, right? Well, maybe you could do it to an extent, but it's still going to hold you back. So okay, so I'll just simplify this very quickly. So we know that, since executives have to react to so many things and to prioritize them on the fly, it's hogging their resources, cognitive resources, all the time. So you can't be Einstein, you know, like, okay, well, I can see that coming, it's round the bend, I'm prepared, and all that. It's very difficult.

Speaker 4: 32:57

So what increased cautiousness does? It's a top-down approach as opposed to bottom-up. Bottom-up is like how we react to all those external stimuli, right, coming our way, and at top-down it's all goal-directed, goal-oriented. Remember, like I said about the clarity of purpose, suddenly you rise above the fray, right, it's a totally different approach and you don't have to get bogged down in small trivial stuff. So the rising consciousness strengthens that top-down control which allows you to expand your focus. And what it also does, it filters out irrelevant distractions.

Speaker 4: 33:43

We talked about reactivity, right? This is a bit different. You don't even have to deal with reactivity because you filter out all that noise long before it catches and hijacks your attention. And it actually has to do with the deep changes in your brain, and especially with the part of the brain that's called the default mode network that deals with creativity and mind-wandering, stuff that allows you to apply your talent to work right. So that's why increased consciousness again, it's this ability to rise above and see the battlefield before all the soldiers start like really, you know, getting your attention. Hey, tell me where to go. Where's the enemy? Where do I fight? What do I do? Shall I use a bayonet Attached? No, I mean, see, you don't have to get bogged down with all that nonsense. You'll be more like a general. I see the battlefield, I see what they're trying to do, I filter out all that noise and that is a huge gain for an executive.

Speaker 2: 34:47

What I hear you saying is this is not something you have to go out and capture, it's not something you have to go to a workshop to figure out how to do. You have it already contained within you, this clarity, this energy, this creativity, this unparalleled confidence and gravitas. And I had, as you were talking, I had this image a hot air balloon with the sandbags on it, on the ground. And you're saying I can't get the helium balloon up. Why is it going up? We got plenty of air in the balloon, the sandbags, so once you, you could think about the emotional junk as those sandbags, and as you remove the sandbags, the balloon just goes up.

Speaker 2: 35:29

And that's the experience of raising consciousness that it can happen that quick with the right conditions and the right possibilities. Right, we're going to talk about that in a moment. But it's like just take the sandbags off, man, and the balloon will fly, and then you'll have that perspective and you'll see oh, I can see the whole place. Now I know what to do. It's that simple. It's not something you have to get a PhD in right, because Now I know what to do. It's that simple. It's not something you have to get a PhD in right, because you already have it contained within you.

Speaker 3: 35:54

The powerful visual that really speaks to what Anatoly's mentioned, and your thrust of this as well, is just, you know, getting rid of the things that hold us down and our unconscious, our subconscious, the things that we haven't addressed in the past are certainly holding us down. They're, you know, they're muddying our focus, they're keeping us at a lower state of consciousness, frequency and vibration and perspective. From a reactive standpoint, it reminds me of a quote he who has a powerful why can endure any how, and to me it really focuses on just the power of that why and how. That needs to be our guiding light. But you know, the how is often what distracts us from accomplishing that why. So when you have a powerful enough why and when you're also very conscious and committed and disciplined to that why, then the how doesn't become an encumbrance, it just becomes a vehicle to achieving that why.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Absolutely. The leadership development profession has taught very well what you just said. Right, it is the why. But what I've noticed in myself as consciousness has expanded is I don't have time for the how that's getting in my way. It's like nope, this is what I'm focusing on. And there's something the how that's getting in my way. It's like nope, this is what I'm focusing on. And there's something in me that knows where it's going. That helps me with that. And most leadership development programs teach new frameworks but fail to shift the underlying operating system.

Speaker 2: 37:24

And I thought I would share another story, because I think short stories tend to have a thousand words in them and you can understand what happens and by understanding like, oh, this happens immediately. Well, let's talk about how this helped one of my clients, where focus is one of the areas that shifted, and I was working with this VP of IT, prasoon, who is now a CIO, and when we started working together, he was very sharp technically. He was a great leader and someone who genuinely cared about his people. That was clear from the beginning and he really created a strong, high-performing team around him and our coaching initially was focused on helping him manage up more effectively, navigate these senior leadership dynamics, gaining more visibility with senior leaders and focusing on his own presence, and he was making great progress. But there was something else going on. This is what's interesting. Again, in the coaching he made sense to him. Okay, I got to make sure that when I walk into a meeting with a senior executive, I'm focusing on them and what they're trying to accomplish. They're the ones where value resides, so I have to understand what they want and I've got to be crisp in my delivery in a certain way, because they don't like silliness, you know. And he was learning all these things, but he cared so much for his team he had a tendency to overextend himself with them. He was always there for them, which was admirable. On one hand, you looked at that and say, man, but what's the cost? He was putting himself last and that was starting to wear him down. So I said you know, we can do this the long way or the short way. And I engaged him in doing the resilient leader method and after the reset, something immediately shifted. His energy picked up, he got clear, he got more confident, he got more resilient, like most executives.

Speaker 2: 39:10

After the reset too, but related to today's topic, what really stood out was his focus just got sharp as a tack In the first two weeks. He said I'm going to look at my calendar and realize once again I'm saying yes to too many meetings. And he started just saying no, like okay, yeah, I'm up with the perspective, I see the playing field, I just have to start saying no. But he knew that before. But now he started saying no automatically and he began sending his direct reports to some of those meetings, which freed him up and, of course, gave them developmental opportunities. It was pointing to what you were saying, ryan Give them the opportunities to grow. Now, four weeks later, after having done all this, he came back to me and said David, look at my calendar, all this. He came back to me and said, dave, I look at my calendar. I got all these open spots. In fact, I've calculated, I've reclaimed 30% of my time.

Speaker 2: 39:59

And, the best part, he used that time to step back and think more strategically how he could add more value in the senior leadership circles that he was trying to engage. And, yes, he got back to one of his loves. He was able to get out to the golf course a couple more times a week and he used that time there Ryan, I know you'd like that. He used that time to do something he loves. He also said when I went out on my run, I used to be focused on just getting through the run, but now I just took off my headphones and I started appreciating what was around me. He was more in the moment on his runs and he started loving his runs even more. So he didn't lose a thing in terms of impact at all. In fact, that was magnified. He became more effective. So today he's a thriving CIO.

Speaker 2: 40:43

You pointed to this earlier, and it's only. What's happening is during the reset. The metaphor I've come up with is it's kind of like a disc cleaning program. Everything gets repartitioned and then the junk gets put into this partition in the brain that we don't even use. So we're clear, we're more organized and we're seeing the playing field right. Is that fair to say? Is that a fair metaphor?

Speaker 4: 41:06

Yeah, absolutely. Just want to add one more thing here so that people don't think that this is a bit of a mumbo-jumbo. You know, like defragment hard drives, better operating system I just want to use the terminology which I ran by. You know medical professionals who actually helped identify, from the neuroscience perspective, what is it that's happening inside the people, right, and basically it's one of the types of functional neuroplasticity which is called the compensatory masquerade, and the way what it does. It's like, you know, a person coming out of a stroke learning how to do things right. It's, you know, basically like learning new skills.

Speaker 4: 41:49

But you effectively defragment your hard drive, right, like you said, moving the blocks out, consolidate and all the healthy space and everything, and that's exactly what it does. So technically it's not something that is a miracle, it's just a neurological thing that happens to people and it's a phenomenon that does exist. It has a name and anything that is associated with this process could be looked up on ChatGPT, just type in functional synaptic plasticity, compensatory masquerade. I think it's like the fourth type that does exactly that. So it doesn't remove things, doesn't delete things from your mind, your memory bank, what have you? It reorganizes and defragments your hard drive to put you in the most optimal state. So there's no secret behind it.

Speaker 2: 42:47

Yeah, we're in this amazing technology, this body, right, and yet it gets kinks in it and stop points and things get jumbled around. You know, when we come out of the womb we're naturally aware and conscious, right? I mean, we don't have much experience, I don't think we could walk into the C-suite but we do have a wide, wide open consciousness. And so what you're basically saying is this gets you closer maybe not to the infant, but it gets you closer to a younger age when you had less paper cuts and traumas and emotional junk, and it kind of collects over time, because that's the beauty of our system too it compensates for survival. It's actually doing its job.

Speaker 2: 43:29

Maybe when we were a kid and we had a narcissistic father or alcoholic mother, it actually served us, right? That survival mechanism created a way in our nervous system to adapt and survive that situation. And yet now you're through that, that didn't have any impact on you. That's not lasting, but that stays in us, right, and it champs us down and of course, some people can go back to their childhood. I didn't have many traumas, I didn't have much that happened.

Speaker 2: 43:59

But you live life, man. You know we all get bumps and bruises and have many moments in our life where we say I'll never let that happen again. And that's one way you influence the subconscious right. You have a really strong emotional charge and you say something very powerful to yourself at that point and if you do that enough, it creates an impression and that's then begun to be part of the program. That runs the show right. And now you have which you're pointing to. This reset is not like we're doing this magic show here. This is literally using sound entrainment in a certain way and your gift to kind of shift the nervous system back to that original factory setting and then allows for that hot air balloon of consciousness to kind of just rise back up into its natural place. Anything else you want to say about that, antoli, or Ryan, if you have any comments before we close the show today?

Speaker 4: 44:52

Well, just a small thing that you mentioned about going early age. I was looking at the period of time that most people reported, comparing their new state to the time when they were about seven or eight years old. That age seems to be prevalent because this is the age when your theta waves brain waves are probably the strongest before they start fading out as your brain undergoes changes as you grow up, right. So apparently that reference to that peak state and remembering I was so happy when I was eight and you brought back that me, it's like I wake up. Hey, I thought I was still a kid, oh, but I've got a job, I've got a family, oh, and I've got it all for free and with all the responsibilities I'll deal with that later. So it's just like it's really funny that sometimes people have that shift and they were able to connect to that particular time in their lives.

Speaker 2: 45:52

Yeah, very good, that's kind of how I've explained it.

Speaker 3: 45:57

I've met with colleagues and friends and told them about some of the work that we're doing, and I've talked to them about you know what would it be like to have all the energy and vitality that you had as a youth and without all the encumbrance of, all the trauma and the impacts that we've had that have weighed us down? And immediately they were like sign me up, I'll do that in a second.

Speaker 2: 46:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:19

But, as you're talking about this, some of the work that I do is teach dialogue and, david, you're probably familiar with dialogue as a process and how it shifts us from a consciousness standpoint, and David Bohm had created this, and David did a great deal of research into the nature of thought and consciousness, and he talks about a phenomenon called fragmentation, where we divide up and categorize the world and act as though we haven't and think that we have an actual representation of what we're saying.

Speaker 3: 46:50

So we're only looking. If we're looking at a house, we're only looking at the front door and saying that's a house, but in fact, we have to zoom back out to see the whole picture, and I think that's akin to some of what we're talking about here in terms of conceptualization and the value of that and not being caught in the weeds. It's the old adage of the forest for the trees, and we're very ensconced in seeing all the trees but not the whole forest, and I think that consciousness enables us to see the whole forest and then make better decisions as a result of having the full picture.

Speaker 2: 47:23

Yeah, it's really well said and this has been a great show. We're sometimes challenged with promoting this method to executives. I think at some level it's too hard to be true. I mean, I've tried everything we talked about. You know, I've gone to this workshop, I've tried this mindfulness technique, I did an ayahuasca retreat. Whatever they've done, they've tried so many ways and they're exhausted.

Speaker 2: 47:44

Not just executives, the human species is exhausted and my take is that's a good thing, because at a certain point point when you're exhausted you eventually let go and open up to something greater. And what we're pointing to is this is not something that is higher level of consciousness that I point to and these abilities, these natural abilities and gifts that you kind of been muted over time, already have them, and that's the hardest thing for people that already have these already have them and that's the hardest thing for people that already have these. There's a treasure house underneath my basement but I forgot where the door is Right and I'm looking for the door and I'm up in the bedroom looking for the door to the basement. It's kind of like another way to look at it and it's so reassuring when you see that awakening people back into them after they do this process. It's just really remarkable to see it's there, right there it is right, just like that, I found it.

Speaker 3: 48:37

And I think that's a paradox that we often face and it's also a big part of our culture that you know the answer to most things is, oh, you just need to work harder. You know, you need to keep your nose to that grindstone. You know, I've been told my entire life yeah, you work hard, everything will work out okay. One of the biggest lies I accepted that's not necessarily true. It's how you work, it's how you approach, it's all of those things that really impact the success that we ultimately it's not the actual work itself that ultimately, is going to produce those, you know successes that you're looking for Now. If you've got good alignment, that can typically happen for you, but that's the problem we don't necessarily have that alignment, and I think that's what we've established very clearly up front.

Speaker 2: 49:22

Well, you know, and I totally can attest as things have changed for me, I work harder. He's happy because I'm not as lazy as I once was, because when you, but why don't you get that done? But now I have to really monitor my self-care because I got this idea and I'm just excited about this and there's like something. I can see all the connections that I gotta get this down and it's just a real joy to do work and work hard versus work hard to get there. Like when I work hard, I'll eventually get there, which is exhausting, but when you're working hard from an energy of passion, it's different. So thank you so much, gentlemen, for this rich and grounded conversation. I love these talks and what we covered today is simple but profound.

Speaker 2: 50:11

The executive's attention is the most precious resource they have. When their focus is fragmented, so is their impact as a leader. That's simple. When focus is diminished, so is influence. But when consciousness rises, clarity returns and with it the ability to lead with vision and not reactivity. So we've explored the cost of being distracted and unfocused, the unconscious drivers that hijack our attention, the profound connection between executive presence and consciousness, and then finally, again how the resilient leader method restores that clarity and centeredness leaders need to lead their day with grace and power.

Speaker 2: 50:45

Here's the truth. You can't think your way out of distraction. You can't think your way into sharper attention. You can't learn your way out of distraction. You can't think your way into sharper attention. You can't learn your way out of burnout. You must heal, reset and elevate your operating system. There's no way around it, and the resilient leader method is the most direct and effective and surprisingly painless way we have seen to date to do that.

Speaker 2: 51:06

We welcome other solutions like this. We want to encourage those, but this is what we have, and if today's message struck a chord for you, you're ready to take back control of your attention and presence and power. Reach out. Let's explore how the resilient leader method can support your leadership and help you create impact. You're here to make and remember. Authentic leadership isn't about knowing it all. It's not about. It's about willing to center yourself in what truly matters, as I totally talked about, in the vision and the purpose. Again and again, your people don't need you to be perfect. They need you to be more present. So stay on phase, stay on point and keep leading from your highest and best self. This is David Craig-Otz, leadership Alchemist, signing off for today. Thank you, gentlemen. Again, everybody, have a great rest of your day.