Acclaimed leadership advisor Diana Chapman offers a masterclass in changing the way you respond to challenges, understanding where you are in the drama triangle so you can eliminate drama, and the power of the whole body yes. You’ll walk away from this episode a better leader, partner, and parent.
Chapman is a co-founder of The Conscious Leadership Group and has served as an advisor to more than 1,000 exceptional leaders and their teams. She also co-authored the best-selling book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success, in 2015.
Here are a few highlights from the conversation:
I’m obsessed with wanting people to be more comfortable being uncomfortable. I’m watching people trying very hard not to feel heartbroken, not to feel scared, not to upset others around them, so that they don’t have to feel any discomfort.
We’re just here to learn and grow and we’re all a bunch of scared kids trying to figure it out. And so, so many of us get caught in, let’s be appropriate. Let’s do it right. Let’s not offend anybody. And what I see is, the neater we try to get, the less growth we actually get to experience most of the time.
We all get secured up again in these defense mechanisms to protect this deep, deep vulnerability that comes under, “What if I don’t know? What if?” People don’t like to sit in, “I don’t know.”
And my definition of leadership is anyone who wants to take responsibility for their influence in the world.
One of the things I’m good at is helping people be with their discomfort because that’s the catalyst for most human beings to change is to finally face and feel the cost of the patterns that they’re in.
I relax more when you make the invisible visible. It feels like a friendlier world. It feels like we can do something with that. We can’t grow with the invisible. I think much of my work is about that, my inner work as well as my outer work.
Books:
Timestamps:
- 00:00 – Learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable
- 03:11 – How to control the nervous “pit” in your stomach
- 04:36 – How to give feedback in the best way
- 06:12 – How to value the messiness of people in the workplace
- 10:52 – The “To-Me” and the “By-Me” Leader
- 14:11 – The harmful effects of the “victim” mindset (Drama Triangle)
- 21:06 – How do we make the subconscious feelings, conscious?
- 27:46 – The Drama Triangle: Is one persona better than another?
- 29:10 – The power of slowing down and breathing
- 31:27 – The IQ, BQ, & EQ
- 36:08 – Why you shouldn’t avoid your feelings
- 36:22 – How to have conversations with people who think and feel different than you do
- 44:39 – On being righteous and valuing outcome over ego
- 47:58 – The “Whole Body Yes”
- 50:35 – When should we use the whole body yes and when we shouldn’t?
- 53:27 – Forsaking the ordinary to explore the extraordinary
- 56:32 – The Upper Limit and how it affects your life
- 01:00:34 – You’re scared to be happy
- 01:02:12 – Good hamburger vs. steak sex-life
- 01:11:36 – Intensity vs. consistency
- 01:14:22 – How feedback leads to good decision making skills
- 01:15:38 – Fact and story – how to create comfort in groups
- 01:18:19 – Making the invisible, visible
- 01:19:25 – An exercise to cultivate self-awareness
- 01:30:08 – How to raise the standards for others and ourselves
- 01:32:40 – How do we challenge the stories of others?
- 01:38:14 – How do you define success?
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