#53: Brooke Deterline - Humility is the Doorway to Wisdom

How do you tell the truth when there’s so much pressure to do the opposite?

How do we stop greasing the slippery slope to hell?

What is “ethical fading” and what can we do about it?

These and other compelling questions are addressed Courageous Leadership pioneer Brooke Deterline joins The Rabbi and the Shrink.

https://www.thecourage2lead.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-deterline-428aa7/

1:30  Our most real beliefs may not be true

“The Heroic Imagination Project”

It’s easy for good people to do the wrong thing under pressure

The danger of situational influences

“Now that we know, what will we do?”

8:00 Brooke’s own epiphany of moral vulnerability

Responding through social fitness against our biology

Professor Dumbledor’s wisdom to combat groupthink

Courageous democracy

Grief is a powerful connector

14:00  Strengthening ethical decision-making through cognitive behavior training

Physical mindfulness

Write down your negative automatic thoughts, i.e, fears

Identify the behaviors emerge in stressful situations and what’s the likely impact

What we can do that’s helpful to ourselves, e.g., give ourselves distance

We can always circle back if we don’t get it right in the moment

Forward-cast others in their best roles

22:00 Even if it’s not my fault, it might still be my responsibility

In teams, we learn how to give those around us the support they want and need

Don’t be afraid to ask

Simulations need real anxiety to create muscle memory

What are the outcomes we want based on our values?

33:00 Have we thought enough about our core values?

We may not have learned to articulate them

God created difficult people for our benefit

The domino system of learning empathy

Invite participants to take the role as leaders

39:00  The 4 stages of psychological safety

Belonging safety

Learning safety

Contribution safety

Challenger safety

Transform anxiety into excitement

Three contrarians can create safety to challenge

The danger of ethical fading

48:00 Why do we miss the gorilla in the room?
Learn to see in 3-D

Don’t trust yourself until the day you die

We need to keep each other honest

There’s no such thing as an expert

Dissolute

indifferent to moral restraints; given to immoral or improper conduct; licentious; dissipated.

Dissolutive

1. Decomposition into fragments or parts; disintegration. 
2. Termination or extinction by disintegration or dispersion: 
3. Indulgence in sensual pleasures; debauchery. 

The dissolution of the empire was remarkably swift.

Joseph’s brothers and Reuben’s irresolution

When we see ourselves as individuals, we lose conviction in carrying though on our values

Connection with the right people is a source of moral strength

Transcript

Brooke Deterline: 0:03

Welcome to the Rabbi and the Shrink, a podcast about every day ethics unscripted. This is Dr Margarita Gurri, Dr. Red Shoe and my favorite Rabbi

Yonason Goldson: 0:14

Yonason Goldson.

Brooke Deterline: 0:16

And together we're very delighted we have with us, Brooke Deterline. Hi, Brooke. Hi all.

Yonason Goldson: 0:23

Welcome back.

Brooke Deterline: 0:24

Thank you. She is the partner and CEO of lots of things including courageous leadership, LLC. She's been part of a Heroic Imagination Project with Yes, one of my childhood heroes for research, Philip Zimbardo, she's done a TED Talk that is worth watching, I saw just five times, everyone should watch it about courageous leadership. And the reason why we're very excited is we're living in interesting times, which is considered a curse by many. And I think that the rabbi talks in his book, grappling with the gray, about ethics requiring courage on an everyday basis. And I think you speak to that beautifully. So why don't you start off first, please? How did you get to courageous leadership as the thing that you do? So well? What's that journey about? Well, thank you. It's wonderful to be here, you all know a lot. So I'm going to learn as much as I say, not more. So. I think I actually to be, to be super authentic, I think I came to this work from childhood, which I think a lot of us do the work. Some pain point in childhood is the thing that we want to heal for ourselves and for other people in our lives. And so I came from a divorced family, there was a story that sort of arose about the difference between the my father and my family, like we were the core group, and he was good, but not quite as good. And it wasn't until the moment he died was when I was in my early 30s. That the second he died, the scaffolding of the story came forward. And I could just see the heaviest falseness of it. And it was the it was a second too late, there was nothing I could do with it at that time. And so I think I spent the rest of my life one holding in my soul that I can believe something that is not true, and it can feel real, and people can have that sensation. And so how do I understand how situational social systemic influence influences the way I think as if it is reality. And so, I knew Philip Zimbardo because my mom worked at Stanford. And they work together, she took over the Stanford shyness clinic from Phil. So he'd been a family friend, when I left an organization that I started, I took a year sabbatical to see what do I really want to do. And I bumped into phil giving a talk at the Greater Good Science Center that I've been a member of for a long time, they do a beautiful job, making science accessible to enhance our our lives and create greater meaning and happiness. They're awesome organization. But he was doing a talk on this new organization, he started called the gorilla Imagination Project.

Margarita Gurri: 3:25

What was it called?

Brooke Deterline: 3:26

The Heroic Imagination. Okay, and so what Phil, it said, for those who don't know, Phil, he did the Stanford Prison Experiment in the early 70s. And he really showed, it's very easy for good people to do the wrong thing under pressure. There's really no such thing as good people or bad people, we are capable of both. And it's really the environments in our own awareness that helps us decide which one to do to be to choose good or unhelpful outcomes. And so he had said in this talk, he said, Look, I spent 15 years at Stanford, teaching people about situational influence about how systems the roles that we play can have an act outside of our values, how authority figures can have us act outside of our values, how peer pressure can help us act outside of our values. But I never asked now that you know, what will you do? And so he started the Heroku Imagination Project of knowing these things, knowing that we're really vulnerable. What will we do to change our behavior because what we know in social psychology during the 50s and 60s, the Milgram experiment, obedience to authority, the Asch experiment around conformity, knowing that we're susceptible does Zippo to change our behavior unless we have some kind of a behavioral change model? And so he was using the social psychology And when I, after the talk, I came up to him, I said, I would love to spend my life doing this. I'm happy to spend some pro bono hours. And after about a month, he said, we'd like to hire you to run the corporate division, because we don't know anything about the corporate side. And I was like I do. And I would love to you were born for that job. For for that time. Yeah, you were born with all of the sensitivities and the experience, you were born for that? Thank you. That's the way it felt it was like, Oh, this is it. This is that thing. And so when, because I'd worked in the corporate world. And the organization that I left before I joined the rogue imagination project was called street smart. And we worked with public company CEOs and CFOs. To build leadership credibility, which basically came down to how do you tell the truth, when there's a lot of pressure to do the opposite. And in public companies, they're getting pressure by investors, the public employees to do the wrong thing to say, it's not so bad, oh, it's not really our fault, it's not really going to be harmful, and really act on their values. And what I saw doing that work was that it's really easy. Again, what Phil found out, it's really easy for good people that came up because they wanted to build an organization that treated their employees, well, they created something cool in the world that was helpful, to all sudden do small things that just kind of hide that is not quite working, and just grease the slippery slope, slope to hell. And so after I joined the rogue Imagination Project, we coupled it with a cognitive behavioral model to really give people the social simulations to build that muscle memory, so that when they're flooded with cortisol and adrenaline, they already have the muscle memory to act in alignment with their back.

Margarita Gurri: 6:56

Wow,

Yonason Goldson: 6:57

there's so much to unpack in all that. I talked for principle for many years, and he was a good state psychology. One of his teachers had been with Solomon Asch on the conformity experiment, where people were manipulated into saying answers that they knew were wrong. But she told him that actually, some of the people reported that they couldn't figure out why everybody was giving the wrong answer. And they looked, and then they saw, they actually perceived differently. And that's really frightening. It's, it's one thing to say, I'm afraid to go against the group. It's something else when the group can actually change my perception of reality, into something that's not real.

Brooke Deterline: 7:52

Yeah, and I think we do that more than we think. We don't want to not belong. So maybe it's not so bad. I mean, the TEDx talk you all were talking about I had that moment, when I found out that I was told that the CEO of this company that we were working with had done something unethical and probably illegal. And when I went to say, we need to go talk to the board, and the CFO said, you know, he was having his own panic moment of, you know, let's give it give it a little time and do a little research. And it was my own thought process was trying to talk me into, maybe it's not so bad. Because if I stick with what I believe, I'm super uncomfortable and alone, where I can join the group, and feel safer, like my nervous system just relaxes when I'm with the group. And so it takes something which is why we call it a practice, like I practice this stuff all the time. Because it you know, I mean, and we use a cognitive behavioral method called Social fitness, and I love the health orientation. Because we won't be physically fit. If we don't work out and we won't be socially fit. We won't be ethically fit, because we're going against our biology for safety. That's absolutely right. That's okay.

Yonason Goldson: 9:22

Because one of my great favorite philosophers, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Dumbledore says it doesn't take scrape courage to stand up to our enemies but even more sometimes to stand up to our friends. And in this cultural group think I Yeah, never long bottom. Yeah, you know, in this culture of groupthink, when we consciously so many of us we consciously remove ourselves, from the company of people who have different points of view, different ways of thinking, different outlooks, and then we just become increasingly calcified in our thinking and And increasingly eager to vilify anybody who doesn't think like us, and really, increasingly insecure, because we haven't thought through our positions. We haven't heard the other side. And so we feel that we're, we're not really genuine in our beliefs. Yeah. And the simple practice of engaging with people who think differently is really empowering.

Brooke Deterline: 10:22

Yeah. Yes, I couldn't agree more. I think that's so wise. And we have a program that we've been doing actually in communities, often through Rotary Clubs, because they are a community center. And they have this long history of service over self. And they come together across difference. They don't talk about politics or religion, sadly, because they have this overriding identity of Rotarians. So it's one of the few groups that you still see out in the society, 13 million of them, or 1.3 million of them, that actually are doing service across difference. And so we have a program called courageous democracy, where we have people talk across different and we also, all of our work is really exposing ourselves to why it's more challenging than we think we're not bad people. We just have highly overactive biology and threat systems that were really beautifully designed for 20,000 years ago, they really get in our way. Now, our brains and conditioning are not our fault. And they are our responsibility if we want to act in a way that's in alignment with our highest values and wisdom. But I think it's really letting people off the hook of it's not your fault. Like it's hard to talk sometimes across difference, because it represents a sense of insecurity. Once I know that actually engaging in it, we're going to find common commonalities. There's a lot of common humanity. So I think it's giving people tools to face the difference. Understanding that it may feel threatening and finding ways to sort of soothe the nervous system, we often get people in groups of, you know, sharing positive emotions. I mean, I know you all know that the psychology of positive emotions to build connection. But also think sharing things like grief, there's nothing that gets a group more connected, and on the same side is share something that you've lost. And also that person that was like he she voted for did it. It was like, I know that, like I know that. And then there's a softening of the heart and and easier way of caring, like, Why do you worry about that? How does that affect you? How do you come to have that belief, but it's getting through that electric fence of our biology to get to the other side? Well, I love that you're doing this courageous democracy. And I came to this country from a communist Castro, Cuban. And so I'm a huge supporter of democracy. And Rehbein, I've talked numerous times that you need to be courageous democracy comes from one choice at a time what we say and don't say, doing don't do, how we treat others ourselves, you know, the larger world. And I think that the whole idea of being able to give positive reinforcement to the one person who says, Hey, I think we've made a mistake. How many companies actually have that culture? Usually, they're working on making that person somehow look bad or feel bad or shut up, right? So what how are you making that leap from communicating the importance to teaching? How, what do you do about it? So now we know we have a problem. And that is natural. What do we do about it? How do you teach that? Sure, well, then you this will be very familiar to you, doctor, because you, you you are a psychologist. A lot of what we do here is actually teach cognitive behavioral. So techniques. So we have people think of what are the situations we find challenging? Because it's different for all of us? Where are we likely to act outside of our values? For a lot of people, it can be giving bad news to a boss. For me, it's sometimes feeling like I'm letting down somebody who thinks well of me or that I'm close to like, they won't think I'm good enough, or I'm not a good enough friend. They won't love me anymore. I mean, to the simple, negative automatic thoughts we have. So you think of this situation. What are the physical sensations because those are often our first alarm bell that we're walking into what Paul Gilbert refers to as the redzone. So our fight flight, we're flooded with cortisol, narrow point of view. It shuts down not only our cognitive functioning, but also our capacity to care for others. I mean, again, if my body thinks I'm in a life and death situation, it wouldn't make sense. And I'm like, Are you guys okay? Are you okay? like I need to get what I need. And then I can think about other things. So help people figure out what the situations are, what are the physical sensations, because if you can catch it early, like I know, when I get a drop in my stomach, it's a good time just walk away from the computer, walking outside, I can sometimes catch it before it becomes a full blown redzone. Um, the next thing we do is what are your negative automatic thoughts, you know, these, we called It's a fancy way of saying fears. To those who don't know this, we use the term negative automatic thoughts, because when our bodies feel like we're in threat, we just secrete negative automatic thoughts. It's just scary stories to get us out of harm's way. It doesn't mean that they're real, but it, but it is something that we believe in the moment and there's really 10 to 15, negative automatic thoughts out there in the world that we all share in moments of threat, I'm going to get fired, I'm going to disappoint them, they won't like me, all look like an idiot, I'll get excluded, I'll be alone, things like that. Um, once they see their negative automatic thoughts, and just the simple act of writing these negative out of our automatic thoughts out on paper, getting them out of our heads, and onto paper, diminishes their power over us a little bit. Um, and then we look at, we call these a stress profile, and people share these in teams. So what do you do in those moments that in the past has been helpful to you, because we all do this all the time, we remember the times that we didn't soothe ourselves and that we acted out. But we all also find ways to be courageous, but we in this culture, we often don't celebrate it. So actually, I skipped a step. So you we look at the situation, physical sensations, the negative automatic thoughts, the fears that come up? And what are those fears what unhelpful behavior comes out of that? For most of us, we're silent. We just don't say what needs to be said. Some of us lash out. Some of us go along to get along. But you look at what what's the behavior that I do in these stressful situations that's unhelpful? And thinking to ourselves, what's the likely impact? And then what do we do that's helpful to ourselves? Because, again, many of us override this in instinct a lot. For a lot of us again, it's just giving yourself some compassion, like, Oh, this is hard. One of the best things to do is just, again, walk away, give yourself some distance, you know, go to the bathroom. That's an easy one that we always tell people. If you're in a meeting, and something's happening, you think like something should be said, and no one's saying, just say, I gotta go go to the bathroom. And give yourself the space to remember why is this important? Like, what's the value that makes you want to speak up because most of us, if we can reconnect to why it's important, can often say something. And maybe we can't say it all. Because we don't have enough. We can't settle enough. But we can say, you know, what, I'm feeling uncomfortable about what just happened. I'd like to pause and circle around to this in the next meeting, like you don't always have to say, I think that's one of the primary mistakes that we think of when we think of courage that has to be in the moment, maybe the best we can do is say I need to pause. Um, the other thing is, we can almost always circle back and the honest answer to your question about, you know, his courage in the moment, is it after the fact, um, you can do it in the moment by saying, Hey, I just need to pause or go to the bathroom, come back and and say what you need to say. But you can also remember that it's never a one and done. It's, you can almost always circle back at the next meeting. If you didn't say it in that meeting, you circle back in the next week and say, you know, I thought about what happened at the last meeting. And I'm feeling like, we need to open that up again, and have a discussion about it. Because I think we, I think we mistakenly or unintentionally, maybe moving in an area that's outside of our values, and I know how much we all care about this. But it's a nice way of putting it, it's so harsh and judgmental, and it kind of makes people's ears do the opposite of open up, you know? Oh, absolutely. We do this a lot in equity and inclusion work of there's times that we're right at we're understandably angry, and anger is often going to get a defensive response. And so, the more we can maybe be upset by the conditioning, like, you know, our conditioned responses going black and white is super frustrating and I know we care about you know, creating greater understanding of the diverse ways of looking at the world. And we're, we're all standing against black and white thinking. So can we have that conversation, so that the heat and the anger is at the conditioning, not the person, because as you said, we'd get defensive, and it doesn't land. And so it's understandable, it's just not particularly effective when we get angry and call out the person. So a lot of the techniques we use in, in that kind of situation is reminding ourselves of our own values makes helps us be courageous and going to the bathroom and thinking, Oh, I care about inclusion, and that person keeps getting left out, I'm gonna go back to the meeting and say, Hey, I'm noticing something, I really love to hear more from x. We can do it with other people, too. I learned this at MIT, forward cast, and this can be in a courageous conversation, this can be in a group conversation, forward cast the other people in their best role. So forward, cast them with their values. So in a meeting, like what I just described, I know how much we all care about, you know, acting in alignment with our values, I think we just unintentionally did this thing. I know how much we care. So let's bring it back. It could be a courageous conversation, where somebody is not being inclusive, because they're at a time they're like, we just don't have time to get everybody's feedback. Simply reminding the person I know how much you care about this team. I know how much you care about inclusion. I know we're under a lot of pressure. How are we going to do it to make it more inclusive? You make the presumption of like, how not if, and you forward cast, like I know you care about this, it's got to be true, though, we remind people when they're doing it forward, Cassie, you've got to pick a value you think is actually true. You know, if you they clearly don't care about the team, I know how much you care about the success of the organization, whatever it is, but pick something authentic, because people will know it if it's not.

Yonason Goldson: 22:01

You mentioned something earlier that I'd like to circle back to you said, it's not our fault. But it is our responsibility. And you Rabbi, I think that oh my god, I just think that's so powerful. Because our reflexes, it's not my fault. It's not my responsibility, mate. Right? That's, that's sorry, instinctive way of reacting. I'm, I'm just I'm exempt. I'm off the hook, because it's not my fault. And what you're really offering here, which I think is really so compelling, and in when you when you describe the courage as a skill that we can learn and practice, is you're giving us very specific responses to help us correct these bad habits that we've fallen into. Because that's just, that is just our nature. We do react sharply, we do retreat when we feel threatened their natural human reactions, and it's okay to have done but we don't have to let them control us. But they're not going to get better. Unless we have a system for changing them, and the discipline to put that system in the practice. So, you know, it's one of the struggles I have, and the doctor knows this. This is why we're partners is that I'm very theoretical challenge for me to bring things down. And so I really love what you're what you're describing very hands on practical way of self transformation.

Brooke Deterline: 23:38

Hmm, thank you, and beautifully said, better than I would get it. So thank you. I love it. One of the things I was also taken by because the rabbi I know he's talking about people come to us for advice, or for consults or whatever training speaking. And one of the things that is always hard is we can talk until the cows come home. I don't know where that expression comes, but I like it. But then how do you convert that, to getting it in the brain and in the heart and the soul, so that there can be real change now, cognitive behavioral isn't magic, but you do something and I think is beyond your magic pause button. I think you do these social simulations. I think they're fabulous. Please talk to us about and explain and then help that conversion to real action. I love it. Well, thank you happy to. Um, so the Just a follow up, and then I'll get into the social simulations, because it's part of it. Um, I love what you said about self transformation. Rabbi. And one of the things I think that makes it stick is that there's also the social support, both in the stress profiles we do in teams that just helps people be vulnerable sharing fears or negative automatic thoughts. One, we feel so much better thinking I'm not the only one feeling Like, I'm gonna look like an idiot or get fired. Like, even though all the people I respect have the same things, it changes a team to be able to say those things out loud. And at the end of the stress profile, they say, What do I do for myself that helps calm my nervous system so that I can be courageous. But what can other people do for me, so that we understand on a team, you know, Sally gets stressed, not so much with authority, but when there's when there's team pressure, so we're going to be looking out for her when she's looking stressed. And we're going to remember from her stress profile, she doesn't want to hug like these other people do. She actually wants, hey, do you want five minutes, she actually likes to go reconnect to herself, and then come back. So we learn and teach each other how to support each other, because we want different things. And we would do it if we knew. I mean, that's a beautiful thing on teams, is somebody tries something that works for them, and it didn't work the other person, and then they're like, Well, I'm not going to try that again. It's like, well, no, they still want support, they just want it in a different way than you do. So just ask them. I mean, that's the other thing we get into organizations around equity and inclusion. There's so many folks that are trying to get it right, what's the right word to say? What's the right language? You know, and, and the good news and the bad news is, don't worry, nothing will work out. Because at the end of the day, what works for one person doesn't work for another. So if I'm not looking to get it, right, but I'm looking to a tune with you. Oh, I'm sorry. I was trying to say, I was trying to honor something, but I don't think it landed that way. Can you tell me what would be 100? Like, I can't know for you. But I can ask. And so I love the social support of all of this. And the social fitness model is all about using the group using the social support. So when we do these social flight simulations, similar to the stress profile, people come in with situations that they're currently finding stressful, I have to give bad news to my boss that the products not working. Um, they scale of one to 10 how stressed are you, um, we're looking for ones when they're practicing. But between like a five and an eight, you want enough adrenaline, that you can't get the muscle memory, if you don't have some anxiety, running, the whole idea, just like with pilots, is you want some fear, so that when you're in the actual moment, and the fear arises, you act in the way that you practice in the face of fear. So they pick something that feels a little scary, and most people feel anxious. Role playing something you have to do in front of the group, it's kind of embarrassing, you feel a little anxious, that's perfect. We'd love that. So they read it. They find something that's within that 4748. And then, you know, what's the physical sensations? What are their negative automatic thoughts? And then, similar to cognitive behavioral, we do what they call cognitive restructuring, which is really just challenge your automatic thoughts, challenge your fears? Do I? My fear is this guy's gonna think I'm an idiot? I should have known he's gonna fire me. Am I 100%? Certain that's true. No, what's the percentage? Well, in reality, probably like 20%. So already, I went from like, having these fears drive my thinking to actually it's a very low probability that this guy would fire me, he needs me like, and I'm the only one actually telling him about something that he needs to know. So I still feel a little anxious. We asked him again, well, now what are your what's your stress level? Usually, maybe a pointer to lower? And then what's your values based supportive statement that you will say to yourself, when you're having this conversation, especially in a moment, when you're feeling the cortisol and you're thinking, why am I doing this? What will you say to yourself in place of the negative automatic thoughts that reminds you of your value, so it could be something like, regardless of the outcome, it's important for me to be honest, or I want to model at the word courage for myself and my team. I believe we, as an organization want to do the right thing, whatever it is, it's not advice giving. It's connecting us to our values. What would you say to a good friend that was going to go through a similar situation to just help them remember why they're being courageous? So they write out their supportive statement, and then they write two or three behavioral goals. I want to say, you know, do you have time? Do you have time to talk to me right now I want to and we say this in every purchase conversation, connect with a shared value. So hey, I know how much you About our team been successful around this thing. And I know how much you care about us being honest and being able to share honestly on the team. So because of that, I would love to have this conversation. So that's always the first goal, that's always your first goal, create an alignment and shared values forward, cast this person, so you're connected. And then I want to share that the products not working, you know, this is what I've checked out. These are, what my concerns are, this is what I'm thinking about doing. You know, what's your advice, whatever it is, you want to say to that person, but you write it out. So many of us when we get anxious, again, we can't access our cognitive functioning as well, we scatter a, and we say a lot of words, and then we kind of make other people anxious, because they're clear, we're anxious, but we're not seeing anything clearly. So write it out. And then we practice it, people get on their feet, they do it in front of the group, they do it with another person, and we tell that other person how we want them to play it. So when we're first doing it, for the first time, we might say, play it fairly easy, like, be really understanding, you know, give me positive feedback. We worked with them Kaiser for a number of years around their patient safety and some of their executive team. And we worked with them long enough that we would amp it up because there will be working with some of their partners that were very adversarial. So they would practice these courageous conversations. First, we'd start off like, you know, being very friendly. And then we'd amp it up as they built the muscle memory that I can come at them with, like, That's ridiculous, how's that ever gonna make it stay in that, like, I'm going to be calm and caring, this person's really anxious, I'm going to say calm, because that's going to be best for this person. And for the outcome of this project, like so you can build your muscle to stay centered, even when you're not getting feedback. But and you created quite a cultural understanding of the steps and so people can shine in a way that they know is is an agreed upon way. It's lovely.

Yonason Goldson: 32:08

You remind me of a school of music that I heard about once where while the students are practicing their performances, the rest of the class are being as just disruptive and as distracting as possible. Yes, clomping and stabbing and yelling it. Because if you can learn to perform with all that commotion going on, then nothing's going to rattle you. Yes. And so. So I really, this is a sort, it's really quite an insight to me that this is part of learning to be articulate. Because it's easy. If I'm standing in front of the mirror, practicing, it's completely different when the dynamic is, is in the moment. And I don't, I may get reactions that I'm not, I'm not prepared for, you know, you mentioned several times, go back to your core values. Do we have a problem that too many of us haven't thought about our core values, or can't really articulate our core values? You know, most of

Brooke Deterline: 33:17

the time we haven't ever Turner's think we've been doing this now for about 12 years, have I come up with a group where somebody really couldn't come up with a value? I don't know that I've ever come up with somebody who couldn't, they may not have thought about it in the in the before. But when we say what's having you want to have this conversation, you know, might be like, Well, I gotta do this conversation. But if we ask, what's the value that you care about on this team, or that you care about that underlines this and sometimes we help them? It sounds like you're standing for fairness, like you want the team to be treated fairly everyone on the team, you've seen them straight in their backs, like you see, it's just a different stance, and we talk about that a lot of like, what's the, what's the somatic marker for you when you hit your motivating value? So, you know, I go, Ooh, I don't want to have this conversation. We're just like, oh, but I'm committed to being to modeling our work to being courageous. Like, it feels different in my body. I still like you know, my heartbeat still pounding my heart still pounding. But there's just a resolve in a solidity that shaped me that changes when I hit that motivated value. That's a good feeling. And you can see it and smell it almost. You know, when you go into a group, I can only I'm sitting here smiling thinking of what good work you're doing, and how proud your daddy would be. Oh, because your bond and love for him is what helped me that was one of your motivating values. I love my daddy. I think it's a be so proud. So thank you my father would say I have a twin sister and an older brother, an older sister. And my older brother taught me a lot about anger management. Because he was really good at making us angry. And, and I remember thinking, and he was funny. I mean, he had, okay, this is a funny story. He had the living armpit. So he'd be a teenager, he's, he's nine years older than us, you'd have a teenager and you'd be lifting weights. And then my twin sister and I would be there. And he would we lived in Florida. So it was hot, sweaty, he put his armpit on our faces, oh, illuminating armpit. So we grow. And we go to my dad, and he he'd laugh. And he said, Well, what do you want to do about it? Well, well, we'll shave his armpits or we'll cut off his arms, he would tease us, you know, whatever. He was a Freudian shrink, shrink, by the way, but he just thought it was funny. And he said, You know, God traded Big Brothers, to prove that there's love and families. And I remember that when I think about when we're going to an organization and consulting the rabbi, right? thinking, Well, God created this person to remind us that there can be respect and trust and love. Even within this team. Some people were born to help the rest of us have an aha moment. Yes, yes. Isn't that? Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's a lifeline. You know, in those moments in your lives, like, why it's like, oh, wait, I could not learn this. Without You. I could not learn this without you. So thank you, you are in line you are in my tribe, like you are in my circle of concern, because I couldn't do that. We can all be grateful. And one of my favorite military leaders would give everyone dominoes. And out of meeting if someone realized there was something hard to say, that person would put the domino on the table. And they had a team voted for every day, there was a two pair for every meeting two people guess what the domino represented? Taught sensitivity. So let's say you were feeling upset about how we were treating the rabbi, because he was the only male and we were putting men down, or whatever. Now in some companies, you can, you can put everyone down, but not a white guy. So you know, sometimes it feels nice, but it's not nice. And it's not helpful. So, and it was fun, because this particular female, she was a captain. And she was such an amazing leader. And just this little Domino's, and the team would help everyone else. Like, why did rook put down the non dominant? What are we missed? isn't a great exercise. I'm gonna actually write that down. I love it. I will use that. And what I love about that, too, is that in guessing, what, what, and this person could have been why that person could have put down the domino. Other people are also exploring other ways that either they felt uncomfortable or other guests might have felt uncomfortable. So it's just a beautiful, like, you know, group activity around sensitivity. You know, and it has a game piece involved with

Yonason Goldson: 38:03

fun. So this is kind of a secret language.

Brooke Deterline: 38:07

It is absolutely a secret sauce. It's it's

Yonason Goldson: 38:11

a trigger in a positive way, that this is something we need to attend to. And we all home hone in on it. Yeah. And and we're ready. Okay, let's address what the issue is. Well, it

Brooke Deterline: 38:27

had some fun to your gray round by. Yeah,

Yonason Goldson: 38:29

well, yes. situation before you even start. Yeah, that's

Brooke Deterline: 38:33

kind of nice. And this Captain Took a little idea that I used to work with couples who were frustrated military couples that were having issues in terms of playful, loving. And we decided one couple said, Well, we take dominoes and put them on the others NiteSite table, when there's something we want or something we want to discuss, this Captain Took this simple idea from this couple and change the atmosphere just by thinking about how instead of fixing it herself, which is, I think a mistake a lot of a lot of leaders make. She was inviting everyone else to step up as amazing leaders. And your work does the same. So that's what that's what reminded me of that. Hmm. So how about the psychological stages of safety? I thought that was cool. Apparently there are four of them. There are and I love this model. Timothy Clark, because we've been doing using psychological safety, not calling out that way. It's part of our model, because part of being courageous you have to be even if you have a psychologically safe environment, because of the negativity bias and because we exaggerate threat, we still need courage, like we can have very safe environments and we still need courage. So we've always used psychological safety or how to create our own creativity. teams. But I've loved Tim de cartes model because it breaks it down. And every time you can create a little more nuance, it gives people a little bit more of an understanding. So the four stages of psychological safety is it's in. We used to call it inclusion, safety, but I always thought blah, safe, belonging, safety, it's safe for me. I like belonging safety better. Yeah, me too. Um, and then there's learning safety. Is it safe to learn here? Is it safe to ask the question that seems you know, sort of obvious to other people? Is it safe to contribute? Can I add ideas? And you know, will they be welcome. And then the last one, which tends to be the hardest, and again, really where our courage work comes in? Is challenge or safety? Can I challenge the status quo. And again, because as we've talked about, challenging the status quo often means standing apart, and saying something that other people aren't saying, because that has us feel like now. So more, we're more alone, it tends to be the hardest. We mitigate that sent that the risk of it a bit. And I can tell you how we do that. But I wanted to just pause after talking about the four stages.

Yonason Goldson: 41:24

If there was anything, all the all the Guru's tell us, we have to get out of our comfort zone. Why don't we because it's uncomfortable.

Brooke Deterline: 41:33

Yeah, and the rabbi and I are good at doing that for each other. And that's what good friends do or good partners do and the way he thinks and asks about things is so different than the way I do that alone. I that Scooby Doo face a lot when I'm reading his stuff ago, it never occurred to me to ask that question or, you know, yeah, I think that's kind of nice. Alright, so we have we have is this a part of our magic pause, then the will the way we will two things. One, I love what you were saying about YouTube I, I embrace. And I'm so grateful for my colleagues, because we have this commitment, that we help ourselves be uncomfortable, and we embrace it, like, Oh, this is what growth feels like. So there's a great research that I think they did at Harvard called Mind over matter, where if I simply look at a stressful situation, not as stressful move, but I look at it as Oh, this is my moment to grow my courage, like this is a moment to act on my values. And my body is amping itself up to give me the resources I need to meet this moment. My arteries stay open, I don't go into contraction, I don't lose connection to my natural compassion and cognitive functioning. So simply the way we think about it, and so we're constantly saying, Oh, this is a good thing, oh, this is a good thing, just like you were saying about the person, like, I couldn't grow without this lovely teacher in front of me. So simply changing my mindset helps. We call it the courageous mindset, in terms of Challenger safety, and also just more effective courage. Many of us have been taught that courage is alone act, you know, I'm gonna muster my, you know, my courage, and I'm going to say that thing, and that's it. And although one person speaking up is highly honorable, it's not particularly effective, especially if you're working in teams or in larger systems. And in actually, in the research in the 50s, around conformity, what they saw is, if one person went, you know, said the wrong thing, people would continue to do, do the right thing to people are more likely to push conformity, but the magic number was three. So three people going a different direction, can cause other people to sort of lift their heads and either conform, or at least try it on. And so we use sort of the magic number, the power of three, in this case for the good. So if you're in an organization, we see this a lot on boards that we work with. And there's a strong push to groupthink. If you know that other people on a board or on your team also have misgivings about where you're going. build that connection and one other because if you stand up in a meeting, and have a different point of view, but you do it with two other people, what it's actually doing, it's creating safety. So if I'm in the group, and I'm going to go along because it you know, I may disagree, but I'm safe here and I don't want to be the one person who speaks up. But then there's a group of three over here that says, hey, I don't think we're doing the right thing. I think we may want to go this way, I'm safe to join that group because I'm still in a group. I'm not alone, which is hard for many of us. So speak up in threes. It has a profound impact on a team. Yeah, it's one of my favorite things. When you watch teams start to use that number, how quickly they can move out of group think and go. Yeah, you know, I was feeling comfortable about that, too. And all sudden, the whole groups like, yeah, I wasn't sure about that. So there's the power free three have the same impact with negative values. Like, let's not be nice to men, or let's not be nice to Cubans. Or let's say Cubans are the best. I mean, I like nothing better. So anything that's not particularly nice or productive in terms of diversity? Does it work the same? You'd have three to get everyone to think about a negative thing and go with it? Yes. So we use when we talk about the good formative research, we say remember three people you want to be very aware of systemic and Sis, you know, in situational influences. So three people are saying something we know that's going to have more impact on us. Do we believe it? The first question to ask yourself is, what's the right thing to do? There's great. You probably may know her, and 10 brenzel and Max Bazerman backspace a minute Harvard and 10 brenzel, I believe at Notre Dame did work on something called ethical fading. So yeah, so if we have time and cost pressure, and we it's very easy for us under pressure, for the ethical implications of what we're about to do to fade from our minds. But simply asking ourselves, what's the right thing to do here pulls our values back online, because when we're in getting stuff done, we're in concrete thinking, and all my brain in concrete thingies trying to do is just solve the problem. But my values and long term goals lie in abstract thinking. And when I'm in concrete thinking, they're not attached, I have to make the connection. And I can do that simply by saying, what's the right thing to do here? Is this in service of our long term goal. But we actually have to I mean, we write it on the wall in our conference room, and we have organizations here to what's the right thing to do? Does this serve our long term goals? And with community groups? Who does this? Who does this decision serves? You we say we're about serving the community, yet under pressure, we might be doing something else. So just having it on the wall helps us

Yonason Goldson: 47:35

not there, when you hear stories of people who did things that were really corrupt or self destructive? And you think what were they thinking? I always think the answer is not much. But you just get in the habit of asking ourselves, what's the right thing to do? If I hear myself ask that question frequently, that itself is going to change my way of thinking. And I find really interesting here is that earlier on, you were saying that it's our it's the safety and numbers that makes us retreat into the group. That same safety and numbers, if we can create our own group, then we can create an a counterweight. So the safety in numbers is neither good nor bad. It's it's a tool. And we can use it positively. Or we can use it. misuse it. Yeah. Absolutely.

Brooke Deterline: 48:34

Listening to both talk, I'm reminded of the gorilla experiment, where they have people doing a task of counting the color of blue shirts, or red shirts, or whatever it was, I can mess up any punch, a basketball, or whatever. Yeah. And then well, there's several versions of it. And then there's a girl in the back. And most people never noticed the gorilla. And I think the gorilla in the room is better than the elephant in the room. Right? It's the same thing. It's just a little more scary. Talk about that, please. And how do you know when you're missing the gorilla? Sure. Well, and I think that's why we use teams. And we have because we won't and I think the first step of courage is just really realizing how susceptible we are to not acting courageously, and then recognizing where are we the most vulnerable, that that study and that those different videos are great ones. Because how often we don't see the whole picture. We can never see the whole picture. We talked about this a lot in groups we talked about it actually is learning to see in 3d, because all we can see is behavior. So if you are exhibiting challenging behavior, I kind of think you're a jerk. But if I ask the like the right questions, I might know that systemically they put you in a role that's impossible, like you're like it's like the Wells Fargo example, where they gave them insane sales numbers to hit and basically were, the innuendo was you get fired if you didn't do it? Yeah. And then they break the laws. And the CEO goes, well, it was a few bad apples. Well, it was 5400 bad apples. So we're doubting that it was the apple. So um, so I missed your question now. So now, let's circle back to your question.

Yonason Goldson: 50:25

Well, let me pick up on the Wells Fargo's because I talked about this in my keynote. And what I what I discovered, was in the Jim Collins book, Good to Great when he finds these 11 companies, like super company, it's Wells Fargo was one of those companies. And you know, and what happened? How did a company that was so far above the norm? How did things go wrong? And I don't know. But the lesson there is that no matter how good you are, right, the sages day and say, Don't trust yourself to this till the day you die. Um, culture can change if we are not alert and attentive. The culture can change and turn toxic.

Brooke Deterline: 51:17

Yeah. And I love what you say to not trusting ourselves, either. I had somebody that worked with us for a period of time. And she said, Well, I just, I just asked, What would Brooke do? I'm like, oh, no, no, no, don't. Because I'm just as likely like, the only reason that I can stay in alignment with my values is because I'm checking myself all the time, and you are checking me. Don't ever assume don't put that pressure on somebody. Because that moniker of I'm good, or I'm the expert, is a prison. It's a prison, because then I don't want to look anything other than that. And so I will hide when I don't know or I'm not good, which just makes everything worse. My favorite line about experts came from Ron Heifetz. At the Kennedy School, we went from my husband's reunion and Ronnie said, you know, we did it. Again, this is a Harvard professor, which is why I love it even more. He said, We did it. big disservice. Let me tell people, they could be experts. There's no such thing as as an expert, I know something. And you know, something. And the best we can do is say I promise to stay with you. So we can learn something together. And I love that because it honors, especially some of the equity inclusion work we do. We don't, we can't know forever. For others, everybody is the expert is they're the expert in their own experience. And so the best we can do is share something that was worked for us or worked in other groups. Same thing with social fitness. It's a learning based model, take what works for you leave the rest behind, you know, better than I know what works for you. So we're going to give you some things and then we're going to honor your way. So that's amazing. Well, I could talk with you forever. I know the rabbi can too. We've come to that point where we're going to have the rabbi do the word of the day, inspired by you, of course, when we come back, we're going to ask you to do two things. Answer first, what do you do for fun? And the second is because we find it fun helps people be ethical. And the second is, what are some final words of wisdom. So Rabat?

Yonason Goldson: 53:33

Before we get to the word of the day? Yes. You may be familiar with the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. There was some family tension there, just a bit. And it reached the point where the brothers believed that they were justified in putting Joseph to death. And one brother Ruben, he recognized that this was a really bad idea. But he had already had a bit of a fall from grace. And he lacked the confidence to confront the other 10 Brothers, nine brothers. And so instead of saying, instead of actually intervening, he said, you know, why don't we take a pause? Let's throw him in that pit over there. And then we can discuss our options. And that's what they did. They listened to well, while they were discussing their options, some caravan of traders came by they found him they they took him out, they took him out Egypt sold him as a slave and, and so it went. The sages teach on this, that if Rubin would have known or contemplated that his actions were going to be recorded by Scripture. for all time, you would have acted completely different. You would have taken Joseph and carried it with his shoulders back to the front. And if we would think we want to hold ourselves accountable, I'd say, you know, we say, what's the right thing to do? What if my next fact we're going to be recorded in history forever? And it's actually easier for us in our generation? Because we could say, what if somebody is recording me? There's a fair chance they might be. That can give us an extra impetus to do the right thing. Once we identify the right thing,

Brooke Deterline: 55:47

sadly, some people don't think of social media as being recorded forever.

Yonason Goldson: 55:53

Well, yeah, and that's, that's disastrous.

Brooke Deterline: 55:56

We need to make that connection.

Yonason Goldson: 55:58

Yeah. And, you know, with social media, it's, it's become, in many ways predatory. But, you know, what I found particularly on LinkedIn, is that I found communities of people who are tremendously supportive. Yes, yeah. engaged and thoughtful,

Brooke Deterline: 56:15

willing things a little different. I think that many of them Yeah.

Yonason Goldson: 56:18

And that's, that's my lead into the word of the day, which is dissolute. This allude means indifferent to moral restraints given to immoral or improper conduct. And it relates to decomposition into fragments or parts disintegration, extinction by disintegration or dispersion. You know, you said, Brooke, that the the the problem with experts is that we become convinced we know everything. And it's it's, it's really quite disturbing to hear this statistic that that ethicists on average tend to be less ethical than average people. Which know enough I should tell our audience this. But you know, how do we combat that it's when we when we allow ourselves to fragment into tiny groups into groups of groupthink. Or just as individuals, we are setting ourselves up to become less moral, less ethical, when we make connections, and we strengthen the sense of group through diversity, diverse thinking, exchange of values, honest conversation and courageous conversation, then that actually pulls us all together and enhances our whole ethical outlook, in a way that we're going to support each other in doing the right thing. And so I applaud you, and we both applaud you. It's very heartening to see what you're doing and to know there are people doing what you're doing, because it's so easy to be depressed. In the in the climate of, you know, partisanship and acrimony that we see all around us. So it's important for us to be able to take heart that there is a there is a movement to make things better, that actually has some force behind it. So thank you for that. And do you have a final thought you'd like to leave us with?

Unknown: 58:34

One thing?

Brooke Deterline: 58:35

Thanks. Sure. And thank you both for all the work you're doing. We're sharing this movement. So I appreciate all that you were honored to be a part of the movement. So there's so much I do for fun. Oh, good. Let's hear it. I go to the beach. I run I love to run in the trees, anything. I am blessed with one of the greatest beloved communities in the world. My god daughter, my best friends, I have a courage club. They're made up of two of my favorite girlfriends in the world. We keep each other honest but expanding and growing. And I mean reading and research like I geek out on this stuff. So meditation, yoga, but most things in nature outdoors hiking, hanging out with my parents, it's all good and I to come from psychologist parents talking about your dad, my both my mom and my dad are one one psychologist one was a professor of experimental I can't smell it on you either. A Freudian shrink, it's good to know yeah, there's some of us out there they're like we actually are not so you know, we're in the we're in the we're in the zone ish. The final word, the phrase that I love that keeps me honest and also keeps me more peaceful and connected is humility is the doorway to wisdom. We did work with San Quentin with the guys inside and I will I was awed and humbled by how courageous and wise these men were. And just this humility of accepting their humanity. It takes us so long in organizational settings to get people to get down to humility, and have them experienced the relief of like, it's not all up to me, even if I've been conditioned that I'm supposed to be the leader, or that this or that, that. I'm just one of many. And it just has gives me the sense of like, Oh, I'm actually just connected to a much greater whole. Wow. Good final words. Well, thank you, I loved all of your words. So thank you, for the wonderful this has been

Yonason Goldson: 1:00:44

this has been quite a valuable discussion. And we hope you'll join us again.

Brooke Deterline: 1:00:49

Oh, I'm happy to share your

Yonason Goldson: 1:00:52

doctor, do you have the last word for us?

Brooke Deterline: 1:00:54

Oh, you know, me, I've never short an opinion. So I'm gonna start off by saying that our line, we thank you, and I know the world is excited for all that you're doing. You're part of this amazing legacy of unpacking humanity, so that we can do better and feel better. And I think that's lovely. So my final word is something I tell my clients and audiences everywhere, everyone out there, say I'm wonderful. And then they say, I'm wonderful. I'm awful. I'm awful. And I say both are true. And I get over it. So I think one of the things that the Rabban I talked about is the minute we say we're good people, or bad people, we're sunk. Because we're only as good as what we're doing now. And if you do something horrible, you can come back from it and learn. We've had amazing guests who've done terrible things, and they come back and make the world a better place. So it's not a static place where we're sitting, our cushions aren't permanent, right? It's a rotating thing. So having said that, I want everyone to please join us for the next episodes of The rabbi in the shrink. For questions go to podcast at the rabbi in the shrink. We will see you be good to yourself and be good to others. Thank you. And thanks again, Brooke.