Join Regan Archibald, Cade Archibald and other special guests weekly for the PAC webinar. This article will go over some awesome content that was discussed during a previous session, where members learned information and helpful insight through our practice accelerator course.
Previously, Regan spoke about how the most important part of innovation is teamwork and collaboration. Let’s get started!
So, collaboration and teamwork: remember, teamwork is about coordination, cooperation and collaboration. Those are the three legs of a healthy team.
The foundation is all of your core values, what do you really believe in? What do you see?
Regan is going to start off by sharing some stoic wisdom, stating:
I’ve been listening to the daily dad podcast by Ryan Holliday and he summarized stoicism this morning in a way I’ve never heard anyone summarize it. He says, “stoicism is not controlling what happens, but controlling everything that happens.”
So what he meant by that, is the fact that things are always going to change and there are going to be circumstances that arise from that that you don’t like.
There’s things that life brings us and we have two choices: we can either react to it and fight against it, resist it and wish it to go away. Get really angry and emotional about it, or we have another choice.
Which is, we can be proactive around it and we can actually control as much as we can control, but most importantly we control how we respond to that event or to that circumstance.
So that’s what we’re going to be covering today, is how to end the ego in your practice acceleration challenge.
How to Foster Incredible Teams
The best way to foster incredible teams is to get rid of drama. In the book No Ego, by Cy Wakeman, what she found is that each person as she surveyed teams, she observed major corporations and organizations and this goes from small businesses to large businesses.
Is that every person on average spends two and a half hours every single day working on drama focused on ego written things.
For example: “He said that she didn’t do that for me, he was supposed to do that.” So, if you think about that two and a half hours every single day that could be focused on serving your patients, this is a big deal.
So, for those of you who have incredible teams, even if your teams are not focused on drama and they’re focused on the purpose of your organization, which I’m sure most of your team members are. There are still little subtleties, little cracks, that start to show up in the foundation.
The webinar being discussed today, by the end of it you’ll be able to diagnose those cracks before it gets out of hand because I’ve seen it where I didn’t act fast enough, you know that stoic philosophy is control.
You know, you can’t control anything but you need to control everything. So I tried to play passive in it and not get involved right away and put an end to the drama and it led to just an immense migration of some of those talented people.
So I can tell you, if you guys can learn these principles and sniff it out yourself, sniff it out your team, you’ll make so much more progress and everyone will be happier. If any of you guys have ever worked in an environment where there’s a lot of drama.
Drama in the Workplace
Speaking on the topic is Anne Markt: I mean now in acting, I came from the industry as a matter of fact. You probably saw it, even on Broadway there’s probably some serious drama going on. It’s probably more drama behind the curtains then on stage right.
In theater there are also amazing lovely humans, not every actor is ego driven, which is so amazing. You’ve got to respect those people who think it’s about the arts, not the drama.
Yeah I have like i’ve worked in companies with incredibly talented people. it was more like constant management of yeah, ego and or i’d say just unnecessary chaos that led to a lot of drain for some of the most talented people.
So that unfortunately led to them wanting to leave because they just, you know it sucks your energy and they weren’t the type of dramatic people to want to put up with that. They just wanted to come in and do wonderful work and good service for people every single day, which I respected so much.
Drama in Management
There’s both the ego drama aspect and also maybe unnecessary drama too. Like sometimes in companies the higher ups it’s like, why are you causing chaos in my life, I just want to do good work here.
It’s really stressful, so yeah I think it’s both ends of the spectrum.
Regan speaks on how you can get to know someone who’s manager over somebody else and they just may have taken something personal and just want to get you involved in their own drama. So that’s when it’s really challenging.
So I can tell if you are a healing organization, which we’re all healers, and one of the goals of Go Wellness is to allow you to have a self running practice and create freedom.
You can’t do it with drama and what have you seen, Annie, who has worked with me for almost a decade now, and you’ve seen drama what’s it like when drama enters into the clinic.
When Drama Enters a Workplace of Healing
Annie speaks on this subject, stating that:
“There’s just no place for it. If people just realize you work better together, if you can just table the ego, open your communication lines, everything functions beautifully and smoothly and you’re able to tackle problems and navigate through things in such a better and more effective way.”
So we didn’t really ever have that much drama at the clinic, but I ran a restaurant for like 10 years. I mean, that’s drama.
Teamwork makes the dream work, If you can just ditch the ego, man there’s some magic that can happen.
Diving into the Principles of Workplace Drama
Regan further states, so we’re gonna dive into some of these principles. So here’s the sources of drama. Remember this is two and a half hours a day, so.
For those of you who have not hired somebody and you’re thinking about it, this is a really good lesson for you to just think about this in the beginning:
You’ve got to remove your own ego.
Sources of drama, addressing ego behaviors. Just by addressing someone, sometimes that can do it.
Increasing accountability, that’s working to engage employees.
These are ways you can get rid of all the sources of drama on the inside.
The ego that can be at lack of accountability, lack of overcoming resistance to change. So change causes the ego to flare up.
When employees want you to engage them and you have to work on employee engagement, then you’ve got the wrong person.
You want people who are engaged right out of the gates. As the strategic coach Cy Wakeman says, “batteries included”.
So we’re going to talk about each one of these functions.
Mindset: Being a Better Leader
So, the first mindset is we’re going to talk about being a better leader.
Leaders can’t motivate others, people make their own choices about:
Motivation
Accountability
Commitment
Happiness
Asking Cade Archibald: What do you think about that, that leaders can’t motivate others?
He mentions a quote from Wakeman’s book No Ego, discussing reality-based leadership:
“A leader’s new role: help employees eliminate emotional waste by facilitating good mental processes.”
This is definitely a mindset shift, so I think I always look at it as how it can be a motivator if I can get people in the right mindset.
What I love about this book is it really is like you have to alleviate the fills, it’s really that accountability and creating specifics.
I like the mindset of just being a better leader, but I have a tough time buying into leaders who can’t motivate others. I think they can inspire others to motivate themselves, because to her point, she’s saying motivation comes from within.
I think that’s a good point to take as well from a scenario I’m dealing with right at this moment: Don’t take it on yourself if you’re the leader and someone decides this is not the right place for them, based on pretty much lack of motivation. That’s me feeling like I’m a failure and it’s not necessarily that’s the case.
Regan Speaking on Being a Leader
Regan furthers by saying, I think it’s when you remove pressure from yourself as the leader of your organization, that’s when you can actually be the best kind of leader.
A lot of times, we want to dictate people’s behavior. We want to control what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, what they’re doing but, at the end of the day, we believe in freedom.
No ego is also getting your ego out of the way as far as you being so important in their life that you actually motivate somebody. We have no idea what motivates people. All of us are motivated by different things at different times of the day. I mean different times of the month.
I mean, think about even a hormonal cycle, you’re going to have different motivations. Women probably have a lot different motivations than men do at certain times of the month, and so I think there’s a lot to be said.
Wakeman uses this term in No Ego, called the reality-based leadership and one of the most important questions that she asks people, this goes all the way back to Plato.
The very first question that you want to ask when it comes to thinking and first principles:
What do we know is true about this moment?
if you’re dealing with a little bit of drama right now, with some internal strain and stress and if you’re frustrated with yourself or with any individual, then I’m going to ask you guys to just ask yourself that one little question: What do you know to be true about this situation?
What kind of energy do you feel when you just ask yourself, what do you know to be true about the situation?
Our Ego Wants to Be Right
Instead of being this big problem that you’ve got to solve right now and that there’s gotta be something to blame and some reason.That makes it all tied together in your brain.
Unfortunately that’s what our egos want to do, is they want to be right.
Whether it’s my fault or it’s their fault, that’s the ego talking. The reality of it is, which one of those are true, or are neither of them true?
Well there’s neither of those that are true, because I can’t dictate someone’s motivations. I can’t predict what they’re going to do. I can’t even predict what tomorrow looks like.
If I want to be real, I have a pretty good idea that the sun’s going to rise, and that we’ll be having new patients and that things will work to a certain degree, but you know we’re going to have to adapt. Reality-based leadership is one of the most important aspects of you dealing aside from the ego, because how many of you have let your emotions get in the way?
Asking Dan Kellams, Regan raises the question: let’s hypothetically say if you ever said anything that was based on emotion and not reality, what was the outcome of that conversation, how did it turn out?
Kellams states that, “hypothetically I said something out of an emotional response, that never goes well usually. Usually I end up in trouble regardless if any of my responses are emotional.”
“It piles additional things on top of the original problem. Now you have multiple things to sift through, versus getting down to the real problem ahead”, states Dr. Kellams.
Ego vs. A Real Problem
Now, the real problem can’t be addressed, because the other person’s ego gets engaged and they get offended. Now you have to first calm down the egos that are fighting and then, once they can calm down, then you have to repair the damage that occurred.
Then you can start back where you left off, so if you think about drama and ego based relationships, if you go away from reality and your leadership mode, that is the biggest waste of your organization’s time.
I mean think about how many people you could have helped, think about how much more fun you would have had in your relationship, if you weren’t focused on these emotional driven emotionally driven responses.
Ego and the Workplace
It’s amazing to think about it, because in so many different things, especially within the business it’s easy as an owner or manager, to build up a problem as far as ego is concerned.
Saying, “they’re doing something that’s disrespectful to me.” Rather than, saying “hey, they’re violating office policy”, or “have we ever trained on this?” and is there an office policy surrounding this right.
How many fictional policies if we made up just because someone pissed us off?
Here’s what Cy Wakeman says in a leader’s new role, I think this is so valuable and so full of wisdom is to help employees or help team members eliminate emotional waste:
By facilitating good mental processes, I have always worked with people who are very sensitive to energy and they’re sensitive to everything around them. Imagine having that case manager that goes in there and gets rejected and then rejected and rejected, and she feels the frustration, or he feels the frustration of the whole team because he’s not getting patients through the finish line.
I’ve seen case managers who are so talented nearly quit because they feel like they’re not cut out for the job because they had one poor performing day. That’s where the ego inflates its importance.
I think that’s you know, one of the most important things you can do in your organization and for yourself is say, what’s real about this? What did I create that’s fictional and what’s real?
In Conclusion
Our challenge for you this coming week is to practice some reality-based leadership and put your ego in check.
So ask yourself, what of this do we know to be true?
What of this circumstance did I contribute to?
How can I help?
These are some real key things and you’ll find that your life will be enriched, your teams will be enriched and then go and take that next step and start building out your masterful teams. We also recommend everybody grab that book by Cy Wakeman.
Like what you’ve learned today? Join our weekly webinar for more innovative and informational challenges each week, with the full conversations and intel at gowellness.com/pac