Upgrading the Leader Within: Why Your Vertical Development is Everything

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Already, thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. If we have not met before, you don't know me. I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist to manage, a consultant, speaker and author, and my team and I at Gusta Now help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. You learn more about us and how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site at least Coortes dot com if you're just tuning into the program we have with us today. Doctor Ryan Godfredson he is a cutting edge leadership development author, researcher and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders primarily through a focus on mindsets to elevate the organization and culture. He is the author of the Elevated Leader, Leveling Up Your Leadership through Vertical Development, another book out as well, and other things that have he's been working on since. But today we'll be talking about the difference between horizontal development and vertical development in leadership development and how leaders and their organizations elevate true vertical development. He joined you today from Orange County, California.

2:15 Ryan A Hearty, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Hey, thanks for having me. And I love this concept of working on purpose and here's why, and we'll get into the details. But I've spent the last fifteen sixteen years doing both academic and applied research to study what makes great leaders great and leaders operate at different levels of sophistication. And what I've learned is that the most sophisticated leaders all have a purpose and it's a purpose that is connected to something bigger than themselves, and it's about creating value to their primary stakeholders. So I'm so fortunate to be on the show.

2:56 Thank you for having me, and I'm excited to help leaders better or work on purpose. Well, Ryan, you and I are so crazy aligned, it's crazy. It's just I devoured your books. As I told you, I know you've written a few, and as you mentioned to me before we got on air, you've of course your your thoughts continue to advance so much. Goal though, just to be able to harvest out of this one the elevated leaders. So I do want to definitely give our listeners and viewers some good nuggets from that, and we can also talk a little bit about some of the other things that you've been working on too. But I want to just really start with this idea here. You know, you and I of course have been doing this work together for some time, where you know, we're working with organizations, but many leaders, you know, they're doing just fine, you know, running their organizations. Everything's good, and so they don't think that they need any help or any development. So can you talk a little bit about kind of what that missing is, that sort of ignorance that comes with that stance, if you will, Yeah, let.

3:52 Me use a metaphor if that's okay, And in the metaphor, this is going to make a lot of sense if you've ever driven manual transmission of a vehicle. So we've got a manual transmission vehicle. We got five gears. So what I've learned is that most leaders operate in fourth gear. In fact, research suggests that eighty five percent of leaders operate in fourth gear. Now, what's fourth gear? Fourth gear is a really great place to be because in fourth gear you can go really fast and you can get a lot done. But at the same time, when we're operating in fourth gear going really fast, we're going at really high RPMs and you could feel the speed. And what I've learned is that most leaders are in this place.

4:37 They're going fast, they're pushing hard, going at high RPMs, and they almost their bodies almost get addicted to that feeling of speed because to their bodies, feeling speed feels like progress. And so this is where most leaders operate. But what I've and they know that this is a good place to be because of it's better than third gear, it's better than second gear, and it's better than first gear. So these are advanced leaders, but what they oftentimes don't recognize is that there is a fifth gear. And the great thing about getting into fifth gear is if we could get into fifth gear, then what ends up happening is we could actually go faster and at lower RPMs.

5:23 And that's the beauty of fifth gear. And what research has found is that only eight percent of executives get there. And so I kind of feel like it's my purpose, my mission to help leaders awaken to what fourth gear leadership is and then help them to shift gears and get into fifth gear. You know, I love that, and I love how you talk about it on your LinkedIn profile too, because it's so crisp. And you know what I think is beautiful because you do say that only eight percent of leaders really get there, and to me, that represents such an opportunity for everyone, you know, for us to be able to help and serve, and for leaders to recognize that we can get to fifth gear. So I think that's really exciting. And the other thing that you talk about in your book that I think is important is that when leaders aren't actively working on elevating their mindsets and their operating system like you talk about in your book, they're already operating at a leadership deficit in today's incredibly fast moving, you know, crazy high pressure moving environment. And I think that's really important to point out. If you're not working on this, you are being left behind.

6:24 Well. Yeah, I think one of the ways to think about it is as we shift into the higher gears, so as we go from first to second, second to third, right, as we just move our way up, we become a more complex being. Yeah, And that's one of the benefits of that, And the more complex we are, the greater are complex our ability to navigate complexity, right, And so what we've seen over the last really, let's let's just say, in the last seven years, we have seen complexity of our world go up and up and up and up. And so the question that we've got to ask ourselves is as our personal complexity followed the pace of the rising complexity of our environment around us, and for most leaders, unfortunately, they have it at least to the degree that it needs to. And so as the complexity of our world, like, if our complexity exceeds our environmental complexity, we can navigate that world really well, we're going to be successful.

7:27 But if the complexity of our world starts. To exceed our complexity, then we start to feel like we're in over our heads. We start to experience burnout. And that's what I'm seeing from the executives that I work with, and they just don't recognize that at the root of the issue is this dynamic between their personal complexity and the complexity in the world around them. And let's just face it, the complexity of our world is unlikely to decrease, so really our only option is to elevate ourselves and if we can do that, then we could better navigate the complexity in the world around us.

8:08 Yeah, and I do want to talk more about, you know, kind of how do you recognize that we actually might need some help as a leader, and you talk about George, the guy that you worked for some time ago. I do want to get into that at some point because I want our listeners and viewers to start to recognize, Oh, that kind of sounds like me. I do that there's something wrong with that. I could do better than that. But I do want to let's situate the idea of you distinguishing horizontal leadership development and vertical And I hadn't really ever heard those terms, although I have a very steep background in developmental psychology too like you do, and I hadn't heard those terms. Yeah, these terms are fairly new, at least the vertical development term, So that term was coined about thirteen years ago.

8:50 It's growing in terms of it being. Well known or more well known. But the basic concept is is that we can develop in two different ways, and one of these ways, I'm going to call it the horizontal development path, is what most people take. And we are all familiar with it because it's what our education system runs on, it's what our athletic programs run on, and it's what our organizational development runs on. And so we are familiar there and I'll describe it here in just a second. But there's another path, and that's the vertical development path. And if people could step onto this path, what they're going to find is that this is a path that is transformational. Horizontal development is good, there's nothing wrong with it, but it can only be incrementally helpful.

9:37 Vertical development is transformational and here's why. So horizontal development is improving our talent, our knowledge, and our skills. It's kind of like adding tools to our tool belt, right, there's nothing wrong with adding tools to our tool belt. In fact, we need to do that, and that's what our schools are designed to do. That's where our athletics programs are designed to do, and organizational development. But at the end of the day, our effectiveness is not based on the tools and our tool belt, but our capacity to leverage the tools in our tool belt. And that's what vertical development is all about. Upgrading the person wearing the tool belt so that they have a greater capacity to employ the tools let me give you a quick example if that's okay, bet So, here's what I believe I've learned is that almost all leaders know how to listen.

10:34 They have the knowledge on how to do so, and they have the skills to do so because they have done so in the past. But what I find is that a. Lot of leaders struggle to listen when they are feeling rushed, stressed out, and pressured. And so we know how to. Listen, but most leaders aren't able to employ that tool because they aren't vertically developed enough to be able to employ that tool in those high pressure situations. And so when we do vertical development work, what we're doing is we're upgrading our bodies internal operating system, literally our nervous system, so that we could better navigate the change, stress, pressure, uncertainty, and complexity in the world around us.

11:23 And I love how you distinguished and you say the way that we do that is we're elevating operating system, specifically by increasing the sophistication of our emotional and our cognitive capacities. I think that's really compelling to understand that. You know, that's how you isolate that that's what we're upgrading and elevating and I love how and that's the first and we're in the two belt. So I think it's helpful. And I did take your assessment as well if we could. I know what you've done, Ran is you've gone through and looked at all these different other developmental models and they have anywhere from three to twelve stages of development. You have been able to isolate really a three stage mind one, Mind two, and mind three point zero. For our listeners and viewers who have read your book like I have, can you just distinguish those three levels for us and kind of who they are and what's going on in those levels.

12:14 Yeah. So where these ideas and these stages come from is from the field of adult development psychology. So adult development psychologists have learned that in adulthood we can develop and there's different adult development stages. Now, the number of stages that are out there is contingent upon the thought leader who kind of designed a model. And so to your point is, I've seen thought leaders with three adult development stages, and I've seen it up to twelve, but at the end of the day they all collapse onto three base adult development stages. Now, what's interesting about this is. For the longest time, adult development psychology or developmental psychologists assumed that we stop developing an adulthood. But that's not the case. We do have these different stages. But what's really interesting about their research is that while there are three base adult development stages, they find that most adults never develop in adulthood. So there are three stages, but sixty four percent stay at that base level what I call as you labeled mind one point zero, and then we have mind two point oh, thirty five percent of all adults get there, and then only one percent gets to that mind three point zero level. And that's you know, so once you have a framework like that, then it becomes easy to say, oh, well where am I at?

13:41 What level do I operate at? And it really opens the door for a deep level of introspection awakening, and if we so choose to do so, I think it really can empower us to level up ourselves. Yeah, and I just to kind of quickly share a little bit about that. I mean, your you know, level one is really focused. Their needs are about safety, comfortable, and belonging. And I have seen that in some of the managers that I've worked with. I've seen that standard the radar kind of thing, and so they tend to be people pleasers or or controlling those two things. And I wonder if George that the person you had before that you worked before, would be an example of a Mind one point zero leader. Was that writer? Is he close to?

14:26 Yeah? Sometimes they just show up differently depending on it's really we're connecting into their motives. And so one of the things that I want to bring up, and why I label it Mind one point oh two point oh three point zero, is our bodies at each of these levels are programmed to fulfill different needs. And we shift from one level to another, there's a shift in these. Needs, there's an upgrade. So to your point and Mind one point oh, our bodies are wired to be safe, comfortable, and feel like we belong. We kind of want to stay, you know, we don't want to rock the boat, but we want to create some structure. We want to do good things. But the motive foundational motives is I don't want to cause any problems. And let's point out something like if that's our focus, where is our focus? It's on me. I don't want to cause any problems, and so I do reference a manager in my book named George.

15:22 George is a leader that I used to have, and he was kind of the stereotypical authoritative, micromanaging leader. And I have seen these leaders. These types of leaders operate from a mind one point oh level because they micro manage, because they want to make sure nothing goes wrong on their watch. Yeah right. In this case with George, I think that George is more of a mind two point oh leader. So at min two point zero, our bodies aren't wired for safety, comfort and belonging. In fact, they're wired to stand out, advance, and get ahead. And we know that we've leveled up here because now we're willing to be unsafe, uncomfortable, and not belong in order to stand out, advance, and get ahead. So we move from this mentality of as a leader, I don't want anything to go wrong to now I want to be seen as the best. And this is actually the fourth gear that I mentioned earlier, is this mind two point level.

16:22 So I actually think George and in this instance, his motives seemed to come from a place of his authority, need for authority, need for control, micromanaging was because he wanted to be seen as the best. He wanted you know, if if me as a subordinate was successful, he would take the credit for it, so other people would see him as as a success. And so that's the mind two point zero level. So I don't know if you want to slow down at all and go I want to more about the first two level. There's so many let's just quickly hit three point zer because we're going to grab our brake after that. So talk to us about three point because that's what you and I are out to develop, help our leaders grow into.

17:03 Yeah. Perfect, So the my one point ohd level again, we're wired to stand in. Now the mind two point oh level we're wired to stand out, and mind three point zero we're not wired to stand in and we're not wired to stand out. So what are we wired? We're wired to contribute, add value and lift others. And this is why purpose is so important, is that we need to have a purpose to get us into that frame of mind of and for our body to now be wired to contribute, add value and lift others. That should be driven by a purpose that's bigger than ourselves. And so not only do our needs change as we go from bottom to top, if you will, but our complexity of thinking changes. At mine one point zero, we're an independent thinker. You tell me what to do and I will go and do it. And mine two point zero, we're an independent.

17:56 Thinker, so I and then independent Yes it's. Yeah, So dependent thinker is mine one point zero. Okay, independent thinker is mine two point zero. I've got my own ideas and I want to run with them, so I could be recognized. At mind three point zero, we are now an interdependent thinker. Right, we recognize, yeah, I have some good ideas, but they're not the only good ideas, and that collectively we could come up with great ideas. Also, those at the lower levels tend to be more short term oriented, focused on standing in right now or standing out right now, whereas those that mind three point zero are now focused on a longer term purpose.

18:39 Beautiful Ran, it's just so exciting for our listeners of viewers to start to recognize, oh, there's more for me. I can do more. As you say, only three percent of executives are in that. Eight percent or in that mind sort, yes. And so much true for us to be able to help the lift. So on that notelet let our listeners and viewers reflect on those three levels or they might be. And take our first break. I'm Alice Cortez, your host. We've go on air with Ryan Godfredson, who is a cutting edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders, primarily through a focus on mindsets to elevate the organization and culture. We've been talking about the difference between vertical and horizontal development. After the break, we're going to dive into how we can start to take the journey into vertical development. We'll be right back.

19:41 Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A LISEE at Eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

20:33 Thanks for stting with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I too, am a dedicated to help and create a world where organizations thrive because the people thriede. They are also led by inspirational leaders that help them find to contribute their greatness and we do business the better in the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wanted to help leaders understand today's workforce. So what do they want to need to stay with you and give their best? Then I provided you twenty two best practices to equip your culture to be able to provide that for them. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site at least quotes dot com if you are just to at uce. My guest is Ryan Gonfordson. He is the author of a few books.

21:15 One of them is The Elevated Leader, leveling up your Leadership through Vertical Development. So before we get into a bit of how we can step into this world of vertical development, Ryan, I do want to do something for our listeners and viewers, and that's to help kind of bring to life what might a level two and a level three leader look like. So you do a beautiful job in your book of really helping us compare the worlds of Microsoft when Steve Malmer was the CEO and really performed more on that level two point zero, and that, of course Satndela, who has done an incredible job at turning the organization around it has been performing at a level three point zero. So can you kind of bring those two leaders to life so our listeners and viewers understand just the opportunity of this three point zero beckoning we're talking about.

22:00 Yeah, And I think even as we get into these examples, what I've learned is that the vertical altitude of. A leader sets the ceiling for. The effectiveness of the organization. It is almost impossible for an organization to operate at a more sophisticated level than the leader. And so you know, when we compare and contrast leaders in this case Steve Balmer to Satching Nadella, one of the things that I would say, and I think the evidence is there. It's not to say that Steve Ballmer is a bad person. He's just not as sophisticated as a leader as sach A Nedella. And we could kind of look at the success of Microsoft under their tenures and see that that's very much the case.

22:44 You know, the effect that Steve. Balmer had was very minimal. Microsoft States stagnant really throughout his tenure. But since Thatching Nadella has taken over, it's been almost a hockey stick curve upwards in terms of their success and impact on the world. And so what are some. Of the signs and signals that we'll find from the leaders at these different levels. So one of the things is interesting is when you take Steve Balmer, and you could YouTube this YouTube Steve Balmer on stage all right. When he would get on stage, it was like a rock concert. He would get up loud music, he'd be dancing around out of breath, and then in the YouTube video you could goy and hear him as he's dancing around, throw his arms in the air and he says, give it up.

23:32 For me, And so it's kind of a see me. Now when Sachi Nandella gets on stage it's a very different approach. It's almost like he's kind of subdued. Now that's a little bit extreme, but it's it's kind of level. But he's speaking with intention, and whenever he's speaking in a meaningful way, he's connecting back to purpose. And so he sees getting on stage as an opportunity to clarify and unite through purpose. And so that's one of the big big differences. Right. So mine two point zero leaders tend to focus on results. My three point zero focuses on purpose. So I would say results and ourselves. My three point zero is purpose and something bigger than ourselves.

24:24 So that's that's one signal, you know. Another signal in this case was Steve Balmer was famous for saying my kids will never use an Apple product. But Satcha Adella's first public speech, in his first public speech at a conference, he pulled an iPhone out of his pocket. And so in Steve Baumer's mind, it was about competition, We've got a win, And in satche Adella's mind, it's not about win or lose, it's how can we create value for our stakeholders? Right, Because if we can integrate Microsoft products with Apple phones, and computers. Look, we're going to rapidly expand our customer base. And so that was a big shift early on in sache Nadella's tenure that that was really valuable. And so that's another signal. And I think another signal is Steve Ballmer didn't really focus on culture.

25:22 Evidence of that is he instituted stacked rank performance management systems. In his mind, it was get help them to identify the people who stand out, right, that's not mind two point on mentality. And when satchan Adella came in, he took out the. Stack rank performance management system And in his book Hit Refresh, he says the c in CEO stands for curator of culture. And so what he sees at this mind three point old leader again a more interdependent thinker, He sees the systems that go into outcomes. Steve Ballmer focused on the outcomes. Satchanandilla focused on the systems like culture, and he knew if we can get the systems right, the outcomes will take care of themselves, and that's what's been need. So those are some different signs or signals that I think those provide. Those two individuals provide a good contrast to kind of explain the difference between mine two point zero and mind three point all leaders.

26:18 Excellent, Ryan, That's just what I want to thank you so for this next bit here. I just want to dive in a bit to help our listeners and viewers understand how they might start this process. You know, I know you do a lot of work with organizations diving deep into into vertical development. But let's just kind of give our listeners and viewers sort of taste. I know we're going to talk about mindsets and how they're formed, of course, and why that's important, But where do you want to go to help our listeners understand how to start diving into vertical development? Yeah? Great, So again, we are really familiar with horizontal development and vertical development. I'm not going to say it's any more difficult or any more easy, but it is going to be different than what we're used to. One of the ways that I've come to think about this is at a foundational level, vertical development is about upgrading our body's internal operating system, literally our nervous system. And so if to know if it's vertical development work, is it improving our bodies regulation? Because and maybe I should have said this earlier. When we're lower on the lower levels, like bottom line one point zero, we our bodies are more reactive. Is that we are more easily triggered.

27:31 As we move up to. The higher levels, we're less we have a wider window of tolerance, we're less likely to be triggered, and we could stay more calm and composed. That's one of the reasons why we could navigate complexity at a higher level. And so I think about vertical development work as occurring at potentially three different levels, surface level, deeper level, and deepest level. So surface level tactics are things like meditation, journaling, yoga, gratitude journaling, even cold plunging can be surface level vertical development efforts because what these activities do is they help us learn how to better regulate our body and our so and it refines our body's nervous system. So I say that that surface level because it's something every everybody can do and it kind of globally helps us improve ourselves.

28:30 The next level if we want to get deeper, and this is the space that I play largely when I work with organizations, is we want to become aware of the programming baked into our internal operating system. So for me, I focus on mindsets. I help leaders and employees awaken to the wiring involved in their mindset. So, for example, how do you see failure something to avoid or an opportunity to learn and grow? Right, And we could connect into our bodies programming through a focus on mindsets. So that's the. Deeper level, but there's still deeper levels. At the deepest level, we generally need some form of professional support. Usually this comes in some form of therapy. You could think trauma therapy, neural feedback therapy, even I've kind of got my eyes on research connected to psychedelic assisted therapy and how that might help us heal and refine our body's nervous system.

29:32 So you know, I'm not saying that's where we have to go, but I have learned that that's where. Many of us need to get into. If we really want to become the people that we want to become. So hopefully that just provides a taste of what vertical development looks like at different levels of depth. But happy to dive into greater depth on any of those if you'd like. Yeah, So first, let me just share listeners of viewer because I've devoured this book, as you know, I really appreciate that you talk about just the utility even of being able to have language around our mindsets and kind of how it is we're framing things. The other thing that I think is really incredibly useful and distinguished about your work, Ryan, is that you do call out the you know, the centrality of trauma. You know, for every one of us, for the most part, I have gone through some kind of trauma, and so many people are like, I don't. I don't have any fears, I don't nothing happened to me.

30:29 I'm good. And yet what you talk about is the resistance to vertical development often indicates that there's probably something there to be able to heal and to address, and that you know most of us are benefit. And even just reading your book helped me Ryan get more present to Yeah, I did go through that. I can start to see how that would, how that changes how I, how I relate to people, how I let people in or don't let them in. So thank you for that gift. So I want to just go a little bit deeper because I think part of what you do in your work is you're helping to hold up that mirror, so people could start to recognize, you know, when they can't attune to their to their team because they're not connected to their body or their emotions anymore. That's part of the issue.

31:11 So if you could say a little bit more about just you know, some of these things that would you start to notice when you're working with leaders that they resist or you recognize, or you've got three different ways that people tend to respond to you, if you could go into a little bit of detail on that. Yeah, let me give you an example. I was working with the CEO of an organization. He's a founder of the organization, and in the year prior to a year and a half prior to me working with the organization, the organization had grown from five hundred employees to one thousand, so they had doubled in terms of employee account and that's rather remarkable, right I in that span and time, So in some metrics, it was a successful organization. But what I came to learn is if you start to talk to the leaders in the organization, particularly his executive team, they were all burnt out and most were looking to exit. So while the metrics on the outside appeared pretty good, internally it felt like it was crumbling, and so that's kind of why I was brought in to help kind of stabilize the situation. And so in my first conversation with the CEO, I asked him, why did you start your business? And his answer was to prove others wrong.

32:25 Oh yeah, yeah. It just struck me, like, you know, that's not I'm not going to say that's a terrible answer, but what it pointed to me is his motives are coming from a place of pain. He has been hurt somehow in the past professionally, and he has been driven and not to create value for others, but to help ensure that he feels of value. And when we operate from that place again, he was doing some really good things, but there was a wake of kind of collabal damage that was was falling out behind him, and it ultimately came from a place of hurt. And what I've learned is that, uh, I'm not going to say this is a blanket statement of all leaders who are struggling or kind of ineffective, which you know, statistics are that that's the majority of leaders.

33:21 I'm not going to say that it's all because of trauma, but what I've learned is that hurt people have a hard time leading effectively. And one of the reasons why this is so meaningful to me, well, I'll give you a couple. One is I've had to awaken to my own trauma in my past, which I which previously I had not been aware of and ignored. And you talk about that books so beautifully, Ryan, It's beautiful. Ah, thank you. And and so I've had to do some of that healing work and that that's been transformational. And what I've learned through the journey is vertical development at its very core, right I talked earlier, it's about improving our body's nervous system. But let me take it even a level kind of I don't know, deeper, maybe more meaningful, which is vertical development, and its core is about healing our minds, our bodies, and our hearts. Yes, because healed leaders are powerful leaders, They are great leaders.

34:21 And ultimately that's kind of what I feel like is my purpose is to help leaders to heal so that they could show up in higher and better ways. Lit Let our listeners and viewers just too on that beautiful what a beautiful way to be in the world, Ryan, and to be of service. I'm so happy to know you, to share with my listeners and viewers, and to be walking in step with you. I'm your host, Doctor Relie Cortez, who went on air with Ryan Godfordson. He is a cutting edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders, primarily through a focus on mindsets to elevate the organization and culture. We've been to talking a bit about the opportunity and the promise and what's involved in vertical development. After the break, we'll talk a bit more about advancing it and hope that's on the other side of that. We'll be right back.

35:26 Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose is with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise alisee at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to Working on Purpose.

36:18 Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. And so if you want to learn more about the work we're doing together and the Gusto Now Academy, make your way to gustodesh now dot com. Go to the training tab and you can find the academy and see if that's right for you or your team if you are just joining us. My guest is Ryan Gottferdson. He is the author of The Elevated Leader, Leveling Up Your Leadership through Vertical Development. So one of the other many things that I thought was fascinating about your book, and I want to give us a little bit of time to talk about what else you're doing as well since this book came out. But you do distinguish between top down approaches to vertical development and bottom up approaches. So if you could distinguish those two. I know you primarily work with the top down approaches, but if you could distinguish those two for us and tell us a bit more about how top done top down does work.

37:11 Yeah, these concepts of top down and bottom up relate to our body, right, So top down and starting with the head and essentially getting into our heart. Bottom up is getting from our heart and go into our heads. So this terminology comes largely from the psychology literature, oftentimes in kind of the therapeutic setting. With the basic idea is with our nervous system. You know, we've got a connection between our mind and our body and heart, and oftentimes when people have experienced trauma, there's just that connection. While it's hard for us to sense it in ourselves, that connection might be weaker. And when that connection is weaker, we do see the symptoms of that in terms of our level of reactivity, the width of our window of tolerance, our level of dissociation, or our level of anxiety for example.

38:06 So those are all signals that might you know, if we have issues with any of those things, that suggests that this connection between our head and our heart isn't quite as strong as it could be, and so there's different processes and therapeutic mid modalities that kind of can go either top down or bottom up. So to your point, when I work with organizations and do the mindset work, what we're doing is we're going top down. I'm introducing them to mindset concepts. I'm helping them to like cognitively pick up on this, and then once I do so, I'll have them to step into kind of what are the emotions that are going on here? What fears are coming up for you? And then ultimately how does that feel in your body? And what we've learned is as you make those steps down, it helps strengthen that connection. Conversely, now what I've learned is that some people have a really hard time stepping into this cognitively right because their bodies defensive mechanisms come up so quickly. And so in that case, what generally needs to happen is they need to start from the bottom up. Where they start in the heart with their feelings. What are you feeling in your body? Oh, where did those feelings come from? What?

39:28 Now emotions come up for you? Now, let's make sense and connect the dots cognitively, so that movement from bottom up. And that's if we were to look at the kind of trauma therapy research, that bottom up approach is generally a deep healing approach. Now that top down isn't. I'm just gonna say, doesn't feel as deep to me. It's a little bit more approachable. And that's why I feel like I could do that work at a corporate level, whereas only if we want to go bottom up we probably need some sort of therapeutic help. But what I've learned from my personal experience is I've kind of I've done both, and I've done both simultaneously, and so one is good. Both together is incredibly transformational. And so again this is just kind of languaging that comes from the psychology literature that hopefully just kind of opens up some pathways that we could think about, how do I want to feel about vertically developing?

40:36 It's just just so yummy on so many levels. And you know what's exciting for me, Ryan is you know, and I know you've this has happened for you too, is you know when we do this work well inside organizations, where really helped we help leaders to transform. Now we're impacting their culture as well. Is when you get the call from their certificate other saying thank you. That is where you know something's really happened here. And I just set some of them most joyful part of my world. And I'm sure you have the same thing, but but you know it's so important, you know I have over the years, I've had like Santa Claus and my podcast around the holidays, right, and one year Santa Claus and I were talking about the import of taking care of and healing and he said his Southern accent, of course, he says, southern Santa Indo. It's like hurt Papal, hurt papal yep. And I think that's really important. I recognize since that all of us are members of the walking wounded, none of us get this thing without being hurt. And so you know, doing this work is really important. I want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more what you mentioned as before we got there, that you've since this book has come out, you've done all kinds of other things you're thinking has continued to evolve.

41:43 I want to give you a chance to share a little more about that. I do want to finish the show at the very end, and there with some inspirational leaders that people can kind of think about, Yeah, I want to grow into something like that. But tell us about some of these other things that you've been doing since The Elevated Leader came out, and what have you learned since that would also be helpful to this conversation. Yeah. One of the things, of course, The Elevated Leader is the title of that's my second book, and it's clearly for a leadership audience, and of course that's who I typically work with as a consultant. But let me tell a story if it's okay, related to family impact. So I'm working with an executive team. The most senior member on the team, he wasn't the CEO, he was the COO of the organization, had been tenured there for thirty years, nearing retirement, so he's kind of in his early sixties.

42:36 And we started. Doing this work, and he kind of we did the work, and then about six months later, I had the opportunity to come back and work with the team again and just kind of say, all right, let's fallow through what was the impact of doing this vertical development work? And he was the first to raise his hand and I was like, oh, okay, and he shared. He says, I'm on my second marriage. I married my now my second wife about ten years ago, and for the last ten years, I've had my two step daughters live under my roof.

43:17 They are now college age. And he said, if I'm being honest with you, up until we did this work, we just kind of lived under the same roof, I didn't really interact with them, and he said, over the last six months, I have interacted with them every day and it's the best part of my day. And so when I first started hearing stories like this, it kind of caught me off guard, right because I did this training in a leadership and corporate environment, and whenever I would ask about the impact, they would almost always come back to an impact on their family. And so now I've come to expect that, and I've kind of asked the question, well, why is that? And what I've one of the reasons why is because we oftentimes feel safer trying out a new elevated version of ourselves with our families before we are our colleagues. And so that's been really cool to see. And so what I've realized from that and coming off of The Elevated Leader is these ideas are powerful for everybody.

44:24 So I decided I wanted to write a. Book that goes for that is for anybody, and it's about elevating themselves. So my latest book. Came out in June, just low over, you know, seven months ago, and it's called Becoming Better, The Groundbreaking Science of Personal Transformation. And it takes the concepts in The Elevated Leader and makes them more applicable. And I think one. Of the value ads is since I wrote The Elevated Leader, until I wrote Becoming Better is my area of focus in terms of my research was on the neuroscience of leadership development. And so as as we've talked, we've talked a lot about that, and so that comes out I think heavier but also communicated more effectively in Becoming Better. Wow.

45:18 Well, I here's the thing, my friend. You're coming back to talk about that book at some point. So that's just you know, you can run, but you can pretty fast on my feet. Okay, I love that. Now let's do this. Let's let's sprinkle some hope and possibility for our listeners and viewers. One of the things that I always say, I'm an organizational psychologist in part because I believe in the power and the place of work in our lives, and I know it can be such a tremendously beautiful, important part of our lives when it goes well, and as leaders, we have such an opportunity to greatly impact and improve people's lives and serve all those stakeholders you've been talking about. So let's do this to kind of at home. You mentioned a few really good examples of leaders that that you showcase in the book that I think would be good to look to an aspire toward.

46:09 We've talked about Satchua Nadella, and but it's this, you know, I want to just sort of share some of these quotes and perspectives that you have in your book here. But you say that Satchin Nadella, one of the things that he says is, I truly believe that each of us must find meaning in our work. The best work happens when you know that it's not just work, but something that will improve other people's lives. So we're not talking about you know, the you know what quarter revenues that we're hitting here. Those are important. It's much bigger than that so I just want to give you a chance to come in on that if you want to, if you want to share the other quotes from at catmull, Alan Malalley or Francis Hauselvin, they're wonderful. Yeah. So here's what we're going to see in the patterns of these elevated leaders language is they will use words like empathy, harmony, compassion, purpose.

47:01 Those are the types of words they lead with. They don't lead with, let's win, let's advance, let's push harder. And that's what that's the beauty of this fifth year leadership is because when we are emphasizing things like empathy, harmony, purpose, we are actually able to go faster, but it doesn't feel as fast. And so that's the beauty. Like Francis Hesselbeyen is fantastic and one of the things that she says that I love and it really played a big role in my thinking with my latest book is leadership is not about what to do, It's about how to be. And I think that's ultimately what we're talking about with vertical development is we're not.

47:48 Improving our doings, we're improving our. Being and that's when we could lead and impact let's go to some other examples. Let's take stereotypical great examples Gandhi, Nelson, Mandela Martin, Luther King, Abraham Lincoln. Right, these are people who have who have been very purposeful. And if we ask like why did they have their impact? Was it because they had specific knowledge or specific skills. No, not saying that they weren't knowledgeable and weren't skillful. They surely were. The reason why they impacted the world was because of their being who they were, not necessarily their knowledge and skills.

48:32 And so I think that when we do this vertical development work, what we're doing is we're opening the door to help people to elevate their being who they are. And then when we do that, naturally we're going to do better. And and so that's it's just a again, it's a different frame of mind when it comes to our developmental strategy. Well, Brian, you are such a gift. I'm so gr able to know you. I want to give you a chance to close this show in about say twenty seconds, knowing that this is heard by people around the world. This is what they care about, elevating their leadership and making the impact they create. What would you like to leave them with, Well, let's just. Come back to the idea that we brought up earlier, that vertical development and really improving ourselves. If we want to become better, we've got to heal our minds, our bodies, and our hearts. And as you kind of alluded to, we all have room for healing. And that doesn't mean that we have necessarily been hurt in extreme ways, right, but we all have room for healing because we're human.

49:36 And I hope this opens up a door for you to now sink your teeth into doing that healing work. Ryan, you are such a gift. So glad to know you and share with my listeners and viewers. Listeners and viewers, you are going to want to follow this man, Ryan Gotfredson the work he does elevating leaders in culture through mindsets and his books, one of which, of course, is the Leader. So follow him by going to his website. It's Ryan Goodfordsen dot com. So Ryan RYA N. Godfredson is spelled g O T T f R ed s O N, so find his website. He's also on LinkedIn last week. If you missed the live show, you can always catch it be a recorded podcast. We were on with doctor Tim Ilmore, the founder of Growing Leaders in Atlanta based nonprofit organization created to develop emerging leaders. We talked about his book The Future Begins with Z, nine Strategies to lead Generation Z as they this threw up the Workforce, which was an incredibly insightful conversation on how to motivate Gen Z and how leaders can best unleash their brilliance to reap the rewards within their organizations in doing so. Fantastic, You got.

50:44 To catch it. Next week will be on the air with Gray McDowell talking about his book Crafting a Corporate Camelot where leadership becomes Legend. See you then, and together, let's lean in and learn how to create destination workplaces where people thrive while doing business in a way that betters the world. Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, leadership inspires and passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose They crave see you there. Let's work on purpose,