In this episode we unpack the topic of: "Cracking the Code: Exploring Emotional Literacy and Embodiment” This is Part 1 in our emotional literacy and embodiment series. Our special guests are returning alumni with Divinia Knowles, Founder of the COO Roundtable and Maddie Fox, a leadership development coach across venture-backed organisations. 

Bethany and I discuss the concept of “reading the room” and “the pause”. 

We discuss the following with Maddie and Divinia: 

• How far can you push as a challenger COO to the CEO? 
• What is emotional literacy and embodiment? 
• How do you move from your head and into your body
• Can you have emotional literacy without embodiment? 
• Is embodiment a personal journey? If so, what does that mean? 
• How do you stop yourself from taking on other people's emotions? 
• What was your personal journey to embodied leadership? 

References:

COO Roundtable - https://www.cooroundtable.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/diviniaknowles/

Divinia’s email - divinia@diviniaknowles.com

Biography: 

Divinia was COO, CFO & a director at both Mind Candy and Pact Coffee, where she also served as interim CEO.  She has held or still holds chair and board seats at too many companies to list and is occasionally an angel investor. Divinia re-trained as a coach in 2017 and combined it with her previous experience to become the COO Coach, working with start up/scale up COOs/CEOs to help guide them through successfully starting up, scaling up and exiting. And in addition to all that, she is also the Founder of the London COO Roundtable, a community that brings operations professionals together to define what it means to be a highly effective startup and scale up Chief Operating Officer.

Maddie has over 20 years experience in HR and Learning & Development working with various organizations from corporate to fast growing tech, in Europe, the US and Australia. She is an ICF accredited executive coach, leadership and HR consultant with a wide range of experience, however specialising in developing leaders from emerging leaders to seasoned CEO’s, building high-performing sustainable teams and helping clients successfully navigate change. Her style is eclectic, using research, theory and direct experiences to ensure individuals find ways to effectively embed new behaviours, build resilience and deliver results. More recently she has been working in VC backed start-ups, series A-B, working for mostly founder led businesses as a Chief People Officer, Leadership Coach and Advisor. Clients include Blippar, Lantum, Trint, Mixcloud, amongst others. 

Summary:

• Emotional intelligence and leadership in the workplace. 0:05
• Brandon and Bethany discuss emotional literacy and embodied leadership with guests Devaney and Maddy, focusing on reading the room in tense team situations and galvanizing the wider organization around new initiatives.
• Reading the room in meetings. 1:31
• Bethany and Brandon discuss leadership skills in meetings, with Bethany focusing on reading the room and Brandon using a surprising tactic to get teams to work together.
• Participants in a meeting shared their emotions using a "vibe check" technique, allowing for a more empathetic and understanding atmosphere.
• Emotional preparation for presentations and leadership. 4:47
• Brandon emphasizes emotional preparation for presentations to connect with audience.
• Actors tap into true emotion by embodiment, leading to powerful connections with others.
• Embodiment and pausing to manage emotions. 8:07
• Brandon and Bethany discuss the concept of creating a pause in emotional situations to think about new options and respond thoughtfully, rather than react impulsively.
• Bethany shares her personal journey of discovering how to pause and choose her responses, rather than reacting instinctively, through therapy and embodiment practices.
• Bethany felt angry and frustrated about a decision made by her company's head of marketing, and she expressed her feelings by pacing and feeling her physical sensations.
• Bethany eventually realized that her anger was not about the specific decision, but about feeling disempowered and unheard in her role.
• Bethany shares her experience of self-imposed torture due to misinterpreted emotions in a board meeting.
• Giving feedback to founders in a supportive manner. 14:33
• Maddie and Bethany discuss the best approach to giving feedback to founders, including waiting for the right opportunity and being perceptive to the founder's needs.
• Bethany shares her experience of observing and waiting for the right moment to give feedback, rather than scheduling a specific meeting.
• Emotional intelligence in leadership roles. 16:41
• Divinia emphasizes emotional literacy as a crucial aspect of leadership, highlighting the importance of understanding one's own emotions and being able to articulate them in a constructive manner.
• Embodied leadership and emotional literacy. 18:25
• Emotional literacy is key for leaders to read the room better, as they often don't know how to name their own emotions or understand others'.
• Bethany shares her personal experience with embodied leadership, mentioning she went to a yoga class religiously for a year and a half but hasn't done yoga since.
• Maddie shares a conference example where she incorporated embodied practices and received positive feedback from some attendees, highlighting the importance of setting seeds for future understanding.
• Emotional intelligence in leadership teams. 22:44
• Divinia notes that many leaders live in their heads and struggle to connect with their own feelings, leading to a lack of emotional intelligence in leadership teams.
• Divinia uses embodied practices and emotions wheels to help leaders articulate and understand their emotions, creating a common language for the team.
• Embodied leadership and commitment. 25:16
• Maddie highlights the importance of embodied leadership, where a leader's commitment is reflected in their body language and actions.
• Personal growth through embodied leadership. 26:28
• Bethany shares her personal journey of embodied leadership, from impatience to patience and calmer environments.
• Embodiment and emotional literacy in a work environment. 28:19
• Divinia and Bethany discuss the challenge of embodiment without emotional literacy in a work environment.
• Embodiment and emotional literacy in leadership development. 30:02
• Maddie discusses the concept of embodiment in leadership, highlighting the importance of being fully present and aware in high-pressure situations.
• She argues that practicing embodied leadership allows individuals to pause and make conscious choices in response to challenges, rather than defaulting to habitual reactions.
• Maddie provides an example of a leader she coached who improved their emotional literacy and relationships by practicing somatic practices, becoming more curious and open to others.
• Embracing body leadership and emotional expression in business. 34:17
• Bethany shares her personal journey of embracing her body and emotions in leadership, finding abundance and presence in meetings.
• The challenges of embodied leadership. 35:48
• Divinia notes the complexity of being an embodied leader, open to others' emotions while maintaining effectiveness.
• Empathy and emotional overflow in helping others. 37:11
• Brandon struggles with taking on others' emotions, leading to burnout and decreased empathy.
• Self-care for leaders in high-stress work environments. 38:16
• Leaders must prioritize self-care to avoid burnout and lead effectively.
• Coaching, emotional expression, and leadership development. 40:09
• Divinia shares her journey of understanding the importance of resilience practices in coaching, emphasizing the need to recognize and respect clients' emotions.
• Bethany seeks advice on how to help others start their own transformational journeys, acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
• Personal growth and leadership development. 42:53
• Maddie and Divinia share their personal experiences with self-awareness and personal growth work, highlighting the importance of taking time for oneself and recognizing the impact on all areas of life.
• Divinia shares her journey of self-discovery through coaching, from early experiences with a functional leadership team to later struggles with dysfunctional teams and personal emotional takeovers.
• Divinia highlights the transformative impact of coaching, including sessions with her founders coach, Penny, and personal training in Gestalt, embodied somatic, and TA practices.
• Embodied leadership and community-building. 46:33
• 
  
• Bethany seeks community for embodied leadership practice, feels lonely.

Brandon 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the operations room a podcast for CEOs I am Brandon Mensa joined by my lovely co host, Bethany Ayres. How are things going, Bethany,

Bethany 0:16

they're doing much better today, Brandon, thank you. This is three weeks and two days since coming down with COVID. And it's the first day where I feel like a normal person again.

Brandon 0:27

Lovely. So you're you're back. 100% ready to roll?

Bethany 0:31

I hope so I really hope so. Maybe not 100. But like, so close.

Brandon 0:37

So we've got something a little bit different for our listeners as we end the year. And the topic today is emotional literacy and embodied leadership. We've got two returning guests as part of this. Devaney knows the founder of the London CEO roundtable. She, of course did the what is a CEO inaugural episode for the operations room some time back. And we're also joined by Maddy fox, a guru and leadership development for venture backed companies. And she also joined us several episodes ago for navigating team leadership success and transitions. So what I wanted to do Bethany was start with this, which is in the context of emotional literacy and embodied leadership is this idea of reading the room in two different contexts specifically, one is when there's tension within a team, sensing that feeling that what to do about that, and the second one, which is distinct, I think, which is trying to galvanise the wider organisation around a new initiative. So

Bethany 1:31

my first question would be, some of you don't seem very happy here, what's going on, and then find out what the issue is, and bring it forward. Just because I'm a open book, as you know, I can't keep anything to myself. And I want everybody else to tell me everything that's going on. Not a lot of subtlety in my world. And then the final one is reading the room when it's a bigger group. And then that's the one where different leadership skills come into play, and it becomes more performative. And it's almost more like, not how do I read the room? But how do I change the way the room is feeling? And think about what are the feelings I want people to have? And therefore, how do I embody those feelings? And what words do I use to inject energy, inject fear, inject enthusiasm, inject camaraderie into the group, I'll just give

Brandon 2:22

me two different thoughts here. One is that I had a meeting a long time ago, where I didn't really need to read the room. So I knew going into that room that there was a highly charged situation that was happening. And what I was thinking about prior to that meeting was how best to get the teams to think about the issue and to work together in a constructive way, as opposed to what had already been known to be quite an antagonistic situation, but actually asked them to close the rise. I think it surprised everyone, because this is not typically Brandon's style of running a meeting. But ask them to close their eyes, pause for a moment. And think about how they're feeling in that particular moment, as the meeting was happening, which is, I don't care about how you felt yesterday, or last week, or what you had for breakfast this morning. But literally, as you're in this room right now being present, how's it feel, and have them open their eyes at that point, so it was a bit of like a 62nd, meditative opening. And when they open their eyes, I then went around the room to ask them how they felt, how do they feel emotionally, sitting in that room across the table from the others that were sitting in front of them. And I remember one girl in particular, she talked about the fact that she felt like a big red balloon that had been popped. So I think there's techniques and ways of thinking about this to go into highly charged meetings, if we know that you're going to be doing that, and approach it in a very, perhaps unusual way. In that case,

Bethany 3:46

that's a great technique is reminds me of something that Brene Brown talks about in her podcast, which is I can't remember what it's called a something check, let's just call it a vibe check. And so at the start of every meeting at her organisation, and also at the start of every class that she gives, I assume for the class, it's like a word cloud, everybody has to share to feelings. And so they go around the room. And it's just like, check in I'm feeling or two words summary of how you feel. And then that gives her the ability to understand where everybody's at in the room before starting. I actually did that in my team. We didn't do it every single meeting, but we did it a couple times a week. And it was very helpful because it helps open up the door for people to talk about things outside of work. And it also gives you an idea of how much reserves certain people have versus others, because might be work issues. We had some new parents and so you know what that's like, they just had no reserves whatsoever. We're holding on as much as they possibly could, and therefore, you know, who to treat gently and who are more robust. Yeah,

Brandon 4:55

no, that makes sense. And I think you're right, I think there's some simple techniques that can be quite useful in the back pocket to to pull out when you need to do these kind of activities. I guess the other one I was just thinking about was that performative aspect when you get in front of an audience, you know, team meeting, in this case to really get across the message, how do I want these people to feel when they get up and leave. Because often as you know, team meetings can be drying, they can be boring, they can feel monotonous people are on their phones, people don't give a shit, whatever the case might be. And I think getting them in a place where they actually care and shaking them a bit in that respect. I think a lot about this when I head into these types of meetings. One is this idea of emotional preparation a little bit, and emotional prep. This goes back to my acting days, which is, before you enter a scene, you need to put yourself in an emotional state, whereby when you walk through that door, you are in character, and you're ready to roll. Basically, nobody wants to see an actor getting into character, two seconds into the scene, because it destroys everything. And the same thing goes for your presentation capability, they want to see you on and ready to roll with a message that needs to be delivered with emotion behind it. And this emotional preparation trick, at least in the acting realm that I've kind of taken for business purposes, is you want to identify a feeling that you want to get from the audience and a feeling within yourself and actually get that emotional reaction. And that feeling, you need to go back into your history of your life, basically, and figure out how to make that connection to pull it into yourself to make yourself feel that way. At the outset. Yeah,

Bethany 6:24

it sounds like method acting. I know very little about method acting. But I've been taking a method writing course, that uses some of the same techniques, interestingly, of like, the truth of the emotion, regardless of the truth of the story. I feel like what are those ways that you can tap into true emotion and when you feel it and embody it, other bodies react, it's not a head thing. It's a body and nervous system thing. And it's immensely powerful. Like even right now, having you just talk about that has dropped me into my body. And I am feeling like solid, and here and deeply grounded. I

Brandon 7:10

have a distinct recollection of my training in this respect, because I walked into a scene where I was in my head, and I wasn't in my body. And within five seconds of entering that room, the teacher stopped me. And she was like, Brennan, get out, like what, excuse me, stop the scene, you're in your head, get out of the room and do it again. So I went out of the room, and went through this little process of the emotional prep a little bit came into the room again, same thing, just like Brandon get out. And she was quite brutal about it. But I think being forced in a position where, you know, you're forcing yourself to do it to connect as best you can, even if you're not succeeding, it just an important ability to go through the process of trying to connect to make it happen. It's not gonna happen every time. But when it does happen, it can be magic.

Bethany 7:54

Yeah. And it can be used for leadership. Like it's just another tool in the toolbox to help people be inspired to follow your ideas and vision.

Brandon 8:06

Yeah, exactly. So I guess the second concept here is this idea of creating a pause. And the purpose of creating a pause is for you to sit back to not emotionally react and perhaps an emotionally charged situation. And really think about new options and new courses of action you could take on what you've seen, instead of simply knee jerk reacting in that case. What's your take on that one?

Bethany 8:27

I think for me, this is the biggest gift that I have been given through my embodiment journey is the discovery of how to pause and I actually before just as a quick potted history, I did five years of therapy, which basically as I'm sure I've mentioned before, meant that I could become a human and allow myself to have emotions and realise that I'm not so her rhythmically, dirty and awful, that I belong in the world with other people, like I spent up until I think I was I don't know, I think I started therapy like 35 on the outside of every group feeling like I inherently don't belong. And so five years of therapy made me realise that actually, I do belong. My therapist would talk about like, Oh, are you reacting? are you responding? And I was just like, Are those not synonyms? I have no idea what you're talking about. And I left those five years having no idea what she's talking about. And I was like, I don't know, am I reacting by responding? What craziness is this? And then I started my embodiment journey for another five years. And somewhere through that, that maybe like two and a half, three years in, I was like, Oh, I can feel these emotions. And I do not have to react to them. Whoa, I can choose how I respond. And suddenly I realised that reaction and response were not the same thing. And that there is this pause with She has a place of abundance, because instead of reacting with one thing that you're expected to do, like I'm angry, I'm going to shout, like, I am angry, okay? I feel all these sensations in my body that are anger. But I don't have to do anything about that I can just sit with it, I can laugh at myself. I can use anger to carry people on. And actually, I want to express anger. But I have so many choices. And also, by the way, it's not I'm not perfect in any way. So there's like, for me, my perfect example of response versus reaction took me 12 hours to learn, by the way. So you know, we're far from perfection here. But I think this is like the best learning moment. So I was at peak, probably two and a half, three years into my embodiment journey. And as I was leaving a meeting, our head of marketing, just in passing, said, Oh, by the way, we've decided we should change the go to market and just focus on retail. I did not agree. I mean, who cares, but I really didn't agree. And so then I went to the hotel rah rah rah rah, rah rah with all the reasons why they're wrong, all night long eating my dinner, or watching my Netflix, or go to sleep because it's in a hotel room and I never sleep well in the hotel room because tigers are going to eat me three in the morning wake up, on and on and on. Every reason why they're wrong, so much anger, so much logic, absolutely going to fix us wake up in the morning, tired, pissed off, have a shower in the shower, or and we have a board meeting and go to Mark is going to come up. And I'm going to have to disagree because I disagree. And it's going to show badly and blah, blah, blah, but it's all his fault

or right. So the ultimate prep for a board meeting.

Totally like, this is what's going to happen and it's going to be shit and I'm going to blow everything up, but fuck them all. And I'm right. packing my bag, putting on my coat. And for whatever reason, the moment my hand touch the doorknob, I was just like, this isn't real. This is just me having a temper tantrum. There is more to life than this. And I just left my bag, kept my codon sat down on the floor. I was like, let me just feel my anger. I'm not going to analyse it. I'm not going to figure out why am I angry? It's not about the go to market. What does it really mean? Whatever, who cares. I just sat there and felt felt my stomach churning. felt my knees on fire felt my toes curling, notice my hands were clenched. My jaw was clenched. I was just like, Okay, I'm just gonna feel it all, all of this energy. And I'll just let it sit there and be angry energy for as long as it needs to be. And I swear like 90 seconds later, it all just lifted. And I was calm. And I could see the ridiculousness of it all. And I was like, Well, you know what, let's just see what happens today. So felt much happier. saw the ridiculousness, let's say of the world quite giggly, got to the board meeting, go to market never came up. It was a totally normal, good meeting. At the end of it. As I was leaving, I was just like to read, she was like, Oh, I've heard you want to change the go to market. I'm gonna maybe we can talk about and it's like, I don't want to change it. I'm happy with the way it is. All that? And I was like, I tortured myself tortured myself for 12 hours of entirely an illusion, and entirely sucked into my emotions. And that's for me what that pauses is like the pause on the doorknob to realise. And granted it was a 12 hour temper tantrum before I realised and figured out that there was a pause, gave me all of the options that I needed in the world. Wow.

Sounds horrendous. self imposed torture for something that actually was not real.

And of course, you don't even realise that you've self imposed it right? Like it's totally real to you in the moment. But yeah, it's not.

So today, we have a really interesting conversation about leadership, emotional literacy, a bit of psychology, embodiment, maybe some trauma in the CEO role in all of this. And I wanted to start with you, Matty, which is classically, the role of the CEO, is to play challenger with the CEO. And I guess my question to you is, what is the best way to approach that? And how do you know how far to push? And how far is too far in certain circumstances?

It feels like how long is a piece of string type question? Because it's really very dependent on the individuals and their relationship, right and what you have capacity for and that and what your relationship with that founder have capacity and at the time as well, I appreciate that. It's not a very concrete answer. But some of that is about testing the water putting your toe in. Oh, what feedback Am I getting here is that actually pushing it a little bit too far. And I think there's a real sort of give and take in those relationships to sort of just kind of see if you can flow into it. I'm sort of swaying slightly here, because it's like it's the tree, right? Can I go with what the feeling is the day and my own experience of working with founders is, sometimes the day is not the day to be the challenger. And it can be really obvious, sometimes you think it's the day, but it turned out not to be, and it wasn't quite so obvious. And you shall get the feedback that that was not the right day. And those are the things that help you learn about how challenging you can be, and how you can do that in a way that stops you from sort of switching into that persecutor role. So

there's a couple of things I have to say about that when Maddie because I happen to have talked to somebody else about this this week of how to give feedback and when to give feedback. And what I found for working with SEO is, I would have something that I've observed or there's a behaviour or there's an issue. And I can take some time to understand what's going on and know what I want to say, but I don't say okay, and our next one to one, I'm going to do it, or I'm going to book it in or this is the day and this is the meeting. But rather, I will have it and be ready and just wait for the opportunity. And it's amazing, within one to three weeks, the opportunity will always arise. And there'll be some sort of conversation when you're like, ah, funny, you should say that something I've been thinking about is, and there's a way more perceptive opportunity and time for that.

I feel like there's something in here about so that piece around the COO challenger. In my experience with this, you can't really be the COO challenger, unless you're also trusted advisor back to your point, Maddie about that relationship. Because one doesn't work without the other in my experience. And the feedback piece is interesting. Understanding your own role in what's happening as well. And being able to articulate that and also being clear that the intention of that other person is normally not bad, right? They have reasons why this is going on, are there other behaviours here, which may well be out of their awareness, and may well be a reaction to things that are happening and happening in the organisational system that are not to their expectation. So how you can acknowledge different pieces of this within the feedback that you give them so that it feels you are that trusted adviser, it feels safe. The other thing that I was going to mention is, I had a brilliant founder that I used when I was CFO. And it was lovely the relationship I had with him because sometimes when I used to say to him, Can I give you a piece of feedback, you'd be like, not stay. And I had that good relationship with him that he could be that blunt with me about whether it was okay or not. And then other days, obviously, he'd be like, Yeah, I'm in the zone. Let's do it. Maybe he'd be able to take it on. But I appreciated that on those days, he could say no. And that was absolutely fine for him to say no, because actually, we probably would have had a terrible conversation, it would not be good for anyone.

It's almost like maybe a step apart or separate to embody leadership of emotional literacy. I think they're kind of tangential. And what you're talking about Divinia seems to be more emotional literacy. That should we define what it is and examples of it and why it matters.

So emotional literacy is about increasing awareness of your own emotions, as well as that of others in order to improve relationships. And there's something about knowing and being able to name emotions. Brene, Brown did a huge piece of work on this. Recently, her book Atlas of the heart, talks about how I think we could name five emotions, generally people will name anger, happy, sad, I can't even get to the five. And her research showed something in the region of 80 or 85. Emotions. So we often don't know how to name what's going on with us. And to the physical point or the embodied point. Emotions are a physical energy, in another example, 15 commitments of conscious leadership, they talk about emotion being energy in motion. So it's something that we feel first, and then we will start to bring a narrative around it. And so that kind of feeling response can often result in a behaviour far quicker than the narrative kind of catches up with actually what's going on with us. So as a leader, the more emotionally illiterate that we are, the more we can sense into one of my emotions here, what's the baggage I'm bringing here? What's going on to someone else? And is this the right place to be talking about this? Before we get to that place? We have to be working on our own emotional literacy so that we can read the room a little bit better. I think

my experience with embodiment has been So, organic in such a surprise, I left New voice media, my mother was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. Like the day I signed my departure from the voice media agreement, I had all of this stuff going on. And I decided I was gonna get into yoga. And there happened to be a yoga studio that was a less than eight minute walk from my house. And I did yoga, seven days a week for about a year and a half. And it definitely kept me sane. And I did as you can imagine a million different classes, but one of the classes was hatha yoga at 630 on a Wednesday evening, and I was like, oh, Hatha Yoga has changed a lot since I last experienced it like, this is pretty cool. I like this. Let me go and find some more healthy yoga and then went to another hatha yoga class, it was like back to normal is like, oh, no, it hasn't changed at all, or like PIPA wasn't around, and you'd have some other person that was like, I don't know what this is. And what it was, was embodiment. And I went to that class religiously. And I haven't done yoga since. And when I go to a yoga class, I'm just like, What is this? I hate every second of it. And don't you tell me what I'm supposed to do with my toes? You can just fuck right off. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do with my toes. Thank you. But because it was a surprise, and it was an appeal. And it's been a very long and unwinding process. When you say Maddie, like, we have a somatic process that we can bring everybody in the leadership team along with, I immediately go, don't you tell me what to do with my toes? And so I'm kind of wondering, can you introduce it to somebody who isn't actually interested? Yeah, so

I can understand that can be tricky, Beth, because for lots of us, we have come to this work sort of more personally. And certainly, that was my journey. Initially, I can give an example of I spoke at a conference at the weekend, and my talk was all about the future of leadership. And I chose to talk about embodied leadership and did some embodied practices. There were 45 people in the room, they all got involved. I'm sure there were some people who felt really cynical about that. And I had some individuals who came up and talked about what a great opener had been, and what a really interesting place to play in. And I think, you know, I often think it's about setting some seeds. And so for some people, they might be further along and go, Oh, wow, I get this, I'm really into this. And for others, it may be less. So that doesn't mean that in time to come, they're not going to come back to it and say, Ah, right, the pennies dropped, right, we sometimes need to hear it from multiple sources.

I think it's interesting back to Maddies point about our ability to connect with their own feelings. I think that unfortunately, or fortunately, a lot of leaders live in their heads. And that's where this sort of really what you'll notice most in organisations, and what you notice most in coaching is when you're talking to people they're thinking, that's very cognitive. And so they will give you cognitive, pragmatic, rational answers for everything, until you say something like, how does that feel for you? Or I noticed that you might be feeling something here, what is it? And where are you feeling it in your body. And normally, when you do something like that, the shock on someone's face is interesting, where they're like, oh, I don't really know. Because they're so on use to thinking about their own feelings, or be even being able to articulate them. And in a more advanced sense, feeling their own feelings, and then being able to bring them to the surface. And for me, when I'm working with leadership teams, especially, there are a couple of things, I think that make the difference here, which is contracting, which is that you have to contract around embodied practice, because it's weird. Some people are gonna think it's a bit woowoo, right? So they can look at you and think, what is that? And sometimes when you introduce it, even in a one to one coaching session, somebody will be like, Oh, what's this about? I don't know that I wouldn't do it. And so there's a contracting piece here. And also, it's got to be totally okay, if people don't want to do it, not initially, at least, and there may be some modelling or role modelling from the coach or other people in the group to help them get into that zone. The other thing I think, is that when you coach leadership teams, as well, you notice in the way that they talk to each other, they don't talk about feelings at all, not at all. And even when you then bring it in as a subject, there's still a lot of not really knowing what you're talking about often. So you may have to bring tools into this, the emotions wheel, the blog, tree, all of these different things, which allow people to then be able to properly articulate what their emotions are. So the emotions when there's good remote has core emotions in the centre. There's about five or six of them back to that Bernie brown piece you were talking about. And then you work at to the outer fringes of it, and they're really nuanced to the outside edges. Once you can get people in the mindset of using some Something like that, then you, you, you're cracking open the door, I think at that point, and how you allow them to start talking about this with each other. So it becomes their own common language. Because without that you will never stay the head, if very pragmatic and rational talk about business stuff,

I think embodied leaders, their commitment to what they are doing, like they have embodied commitments, and this shows up in their body and actions, right. So you'll be able to think about leaders, where you go, oh, wow, that person is 100% believable, because it's not just I'm saying in my head, something, it's like, the whole of me, is committed to this, and it shows up in my action. And I think this is work that I have done in coaching a lot, you know, you've got that one on one relationship, to be able to coach that leader with it, because they may well have done yoga like us, or they may well have had some therapy or something that's allowed them to go, oh, hang on, there's a missing piece here. That emotional piece that we're talking about, is missing. And that's holding me back as a leader. And I think that is a little tougher in groups. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not there. And I would say where it starts to happen is where perhaps, you know, for me personally, where I've been coaching a leader who's like, Oh, I get this now I want to help my team get this as well.

I think it's a personal practice. And it's a personal discovery. Whereas what you're talking about Divinia was like the emotions wheel and bringing emotions into a group that's around emotional literacy. And you can up everybody's emotional literacy to some extent, but the embodiment at least for me, has been so massively personal. So if I give you examples of my own journey that maybe Brandon would help you understand is, the feedback I received constantly, until maybe like two or three years ago is got defensive, quick to anger. Scary, intimidating. I still get that somewhat, too, for people who don't know me, but like, I don't think it's because I mean, they just find me intimidating, whatever we can talk about that later. I had high and exacting standards and didn't really care about when I shared my feedback. And I was massively impatient. And a lot of this stemmed from impatience and hearing that feedback, and I'm like, Okay, so let me use this technique. Let me use, I will now like, freeze and ask a question. And I will get into a habit of breathing and ask a question. Like, it's just not very real people. And so I can never play poker, and you can read my face. And so people could tell that I was still pissed off, and I was breathing and then asking a question, but it wasn't like genuinely caring, I was just trying to be a little bit less scary. But through my own practice, and really getting into my body, and noticing my emotions coming up and noticing my reactions, I could genuinely create patience. And then with genuine patience, and not getting so activated so quickly, I can create a calmer environment in which to deal with tough things. And for me, that's what embodied leadership has meant.

So there's a slight challenge in here. Can you have embodiment without emotional literacy? That's the problem with this,

I think it's like maybe a next stage, or like, I mean, I think they're very interconnected. But it's almost like level one and level two.

I totally agree with you. And I'm thinking about, especially, and this has no slight towards technical leaders, but the technical leaders that I've coached to maybe more, and only some of them, not all of them, less able to sort of really connect with their feelings, trying to even sort of encourage a level of emotional, I don't know, labelling understanding, before any of that if I'd have gone into any sort of kind of conversation with them about embodiment versus, okay, let's start somewhere here and try to raise your awareness to other things that might be happening for you that at this point in time, you can't necessarily see understand, reflect on introspect. All of those things. Do start I mean, so yeah, in my head, it's also a possibly a sequencing issue.

I think there's a sequencing and by no means do I think they're two separate things. But I do think that articulating and interpreting emotions is less threatening than discovering that you have sensations in your body in a work environment with a team. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. And remember, the other thing that I'm really mindful of is that organisations in you know in a lot of my experience, discouraged this, they firstly discouraged that you have emotions at work at all. So you know, the system is also working against you then you're in trouble.

I think we're starting to see a shift in that right to have any of that maybe we could think back to Amy Cuddy and the power posing, whilst not fully embodiment, that started to sort of enter into this zone of, oh, you could state change, right, by doing this pose before you went to go and do something that was really stressful, or, actually, you could take yourself from one state to another in order to sort of be able to deal with that. And that's kind of the basis of embodiment, right is if we can really fully be embodied as a leader, we can put this pause in when we're under that usual pressure, but that you started to talk about is that actually, when we're faced with really challenging things, as leaders, which can be every day, right, so then you get this kind of buildup of pressure that's on you, we will typically default to the way that we have always reacted to those things. Whether that's to shout, right, in my experience, as an HR leader, there's always the shouting people in the organisation that we kind of say it's okay, because they make a load of money. But actually, often in meetings in places, they really shouldn't be doing it, their behaviour is coming out, because they're under that pressure. That stuff that we learned a long time ago, and we have been practising for a long time, following embodied practices, moving towards being an embodied leader, those practices allow us to put a pause in there and say, Oh, I'm at choice. Now, instead of doing what I always do, which is to shell be exacting, be intimidating, whatever those things might be, or be quiet, right? Because it may be that actually, under that pressure, what we do is kind of shrink into ourselves and not take our position as a leader, all of those responses will be unique and different for individuals, it gives us this pause that says, well, I could do that, or here are my other choices. And the impact of those choices, changes the dynamic of the relationship theory and founder, the culture, you know, of a team or of an organisation. And we start to see a really different kind of culture at play. Right one that's not as kind of stressed by that those kinds of responses. So

many, can you give me just one quick actual example of somebody you've coached at a leadership level, where they've made this change in terms of emotional literacy connecting with themselves embodiment, and the relationship with their stakeholder partner, whoever it is, just to make it come alive for me?

Yes. And look, I appreciate it can sound a little out there, right? Because we're talking about something that is felt, we're talking about a felt sense or an experience experiential learning, in a really intellectual way. We're talking about this in a heavy way. And so that can be really challenging. But I would say, you know, I've worked with leaders whose reaction to the pressures that they are perceiving is hugely damaging to their relationship. Maybe they are, you know, come across as being the smartest person in the room, right? Because they shut other people down, when under that sort of pressure to say, Well, hang on, no, I've got the right answer here. And working in this way, being able to pause that and start to get more curious about what other people are offering. Right? Because often those behaviours are just shutting everything else down. And when we shut everyone else down, we start to narrow our fields, right. And as an organisation that's hugely damaging. Because we're not listening to other voices, we're not being curious about whether we have the right answer or not. And so being able to sort of inject this pause through doing, you know, regular somatic practices, so it's a genuine thing rather than my head saying, right, I really need to be quiet, I really need to be quiet. This is a Okay, actually, now I'm I am present open and connected to what's going on in this room. And not just myself.

I'm just so excited to talk about and body leadership. Because I felt like such a long time, I felt like I was the only person in the world. And now there are all these people I can talk about this with because it's like, because I didn't come through it as a body leadership, but like my own way, I really struggled between the world of what I was learning and the business world and also because like emotions and bodies and feelings tend to be more the remit of women, just in our culture. And when you're the only woman in the room and you're also going through having all that like I can feel my toes, I can feel the tight spread of anger. Oh my god, like I have this whole thing that I didn't know I had below my neck in meetings was that it was just very lonely to try and find the his experiences and share them with others. And the pause is so important, because it gives you a world of opportunity in that pause. And you're also deeply resourced. And so you come from rather feeling lots of scarcity to lots of abundance, which means that you're less threatened, which means that you can be present in your relationships, because there's enough there. And I know that sounds totally woowoo. But it's like, that has been my experience. And I would love for more people to experience this as well. And I genuinely feel like the more people who are able to come from a full person experience because your body is part of who you are, the less pain there will be in the world. It's

interesting, do you know what popped into my head, there's a level of complexity on the other side of this that I have noticed, however, which is being a more embodied leader, the commitment to this is really high, right. And so you're asking somebody to make a big commitment, and to not only practice their own practice developing themselves, but also being that person can actually be quite difficult because you're then letting yourself be open to other people's emotions, and there all sorts of other stuff that happens then right emotional transference, all of this other stuff. And sometimes, it can be quite traumatic taking on other people's emotions, like, there's a little bit of a, once you get into this, it's wonderful, and all of these different things, but I don't necessarily think it's to be taken lightly once you start to sort of start going into this. And if you're in a more embodied leadership team, you really are therefore open, like coaches learn to a certain extent, and I learned this quite early on in my coaching training to sort of shut out other people's emotions in a good way, right as in, you can hear it, you can understand that you can be very empathetic with it, but you don't take it in. Because as soon as you take it in, if it becomes yours, then you're you become completely ineffective with that person. And so also, there's skills to learn on the other side of this that I think are interesting, if you are to be more embodied leader in that relating to somebody else.

So actually, you brought up a really important distinction, which is being able to connect to your how you're feeling, be able to express that, conversely be able to take on board with somebody else's feeling in terms of their situation, but doing so from that other person without taking it on. Personally, I think that's a challenge for a lot of people. The question is, how do you train yourself not to take an onboard, because I've had people in the past that I've worked with, where they've struggled with that they've taken on the emotions of others. And by the end of the day, they feel destroyed, or just taking on people's situations, you know, one after the other, and it becomes untenable, you know, even for myself in a different way. As the day wears on, I get tired, right. And I'm not the best version of myself, by the end of the day, as an example, if I'm taking on people's situations, you know, by the end of the day, there's only so much of a cup, Brandon has to fill before it overflows. And when it overflows, I'm not the most attentive listener, I'm not the most empathetic person. So I guess my question is twofold. For that individual that takes it on nonstop and feels destroyed at the end of the day, what to do there. And with somebody like myself, you know, I've limited cup to fill, what do I do?

I'm thinking about that sitting on a plane, and they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first. And to working out what that means to you is really important. So I think first of all, for me, there's something about awareness. Are you someone who takes on others emotions? Like, is that something that you need to be particularly concerned about? And what does that mean for you? And I think there are resilience practices in there. It's very easy in organisations at the moment that it's nonstop. And I heard this all through the pandemic, if not before, it's back to back meetings, it's going from one thing to another. I mean, nobody can pause in that scenario, right? You're going to be taking whatever you felt from that last meeting into the next meeting, as you race from meeting to meeting, right? So there's some structural things in there that can help. And I often hear people say, well, the organ This is what the organisation does, right? The organisation narrative is that we can't push back on that. But actually, as leaders, it's hugely important to be able to say, Okay, what does my cup look like? And what does my day need to look like therefore, in order that I can be my best self, because without that, if the leader doesn't have it, how is anyone else expected to have it? And

that's also where the embodiment comes into play so that you notice that your reserves are running low. You notice that you're taking on other people's emotions, you notice that you're overwrought or you're not overwhelmed, but you're heading that way. It's like an early alert system. So rather than the first time you notice that you're exhausted is when you lose your shit. You notice like an hour or two earlier that you're exhausted and you have enough time to course correct. And so it actually again just gives you more of an opportunity to choose what you're going to do.

My supervisor, but but one that told me something, once when we were talking about this topic, or I was telling him that this used to be something that bothered me a lot, which was I was talking to him about clients who would cry in front of me, and how it would just sometimes, depending on what we were talking about, as well, like, and sometimes it can be very challenging, you know, you hear very sad things. And it always used to affect me. And he said, Well, what about if somebody shouts at you? And I was like, was slightly different? He's like, why? It's like an it's, it's somebody else's expression of emotion. Is that not yours? If you think about all of the different ways that you can have an emotional outburst? How can you therefore see it for what it is? And as you say, about resilience practices, definitely something in there about, what role do you play with that other person? What responsibility are you taking, because your responsibility is definitely not to fix the other person, when you get in that mindset, then your rescue, then you're in trouble. And also how you think about, you're in your own zone, they are in there, as they're absolutely allowed to have any emotion that they want, as are you. And yet you are in your separate zones effectively. The other thing here is like really investigating how you think about other people, because again, in coaching, there's a lot around unconditional positive regard, believing in somebody else's resourcefulness, understanding that they can resolve their own problems, can be a thinking partner, they need you to step into much smaller than rescue them all of these things. And so sort of investigating some of that around how am I approaching this person? What role Am I playing? And am I allowing them to have their own resource for this and be an adult in this situation? And am I playing that part listening in the right way? Understanding? That's why a lot of leaders now take coaching qualifications, I mean, I have to say it, it's because actually, there are so many brilliant skills in there that you can then learn in order to be a more embodied leader and help others and support your people in your organisation. So

I suddenly noticed the time and realise that we're really rapidly coming to the end. But really quickly, just from what you're saying, Maddie, if people have been listening, start to understand this sounds like an interesting world to dip into. How do we get started? I mean, I've shared a bit of my journey, I think maybe rather than the house sharing of journeys, because I suspect each of ours is different might be a way to start understanding that there's no one path. There's every single path and kind of almost to your point of any of like, some people find coaching transformational, but some people might find golfing, transformational, right, you don't know the thing that hits at the right time. That is the way for you to change the way you see the world. So

I guess to Divini, his point about changes take time. I guess my first kind of interest in all of this was being sent on the leadership course in my early 20s. I worked for a big retailer. They wanted to change their culture, and they sent all of their leaders on a three day leadership course, would there be 60 of us at a time, this one facilitator, I mean, you'd never have that now. And I think more than 12 people want more facilitators. And I saw people go through experiences grown men, who you know, cried in the room, the realisation about the connection between work and home, and how we're not two completely separate people. And I went, That's cool. That's really actually really cool. And I really love to go and do that. And so that was kind of my first foray into it. But potentially similarly to you, Beth, when I then started to really do my own work was assessing the relationships around me and realising the dysfunctionality, whether that had been relationships with people at work. And then I met my now husband, and I was like, Oh, I don't want to be the one that kind of screws this relationship up again, right. And so I went down a path of doing my own work, which included therapy, it included somatic coaching, it included transactional analysis that the venues are already mentioned, it included doing that kind of exploratory work, and it does take time. But that doesn't mean in the in between moments, you can start to have a greater impact on all areas of your life. Right home and work. Yeah, I

guess my experience of this started, I mean, it's interesting scaling businesses, right. And I always had this big question around, especially around leadership teams, actually, I was very lucky that very early on, I was on a very functional leadership team. But then in the same business, different iterations of that leadership team were absolutely terrible. I mean, very, very dysfunctional, and became fascinated therefore about business versus what about all of these relationships and people went down the orcas, well, it's like all of these people relating to each other. And that realisation which sounds quite trite, but it's true, which is like this is a huge body of people or relating to each other. So that's really important. Also, when I was younger, and I took on a lot of responsibility for the people functions, and the scaling organisations I was in, I noticed as well that I used to take on their emotions a lot. You know, I'd have conversations all the time with people in different states and different situations, some of which were quite hard to deal with, or hard to hear, and thinking about how I could therefore be more effective for them. So I was always a very good listener, but I was like, How can I be more helpful, and then bumping into coaching later on, when I had some sessions with my founders coach was like, ah, that's this amazing, sort of, like a real thing. And also, then we had a Chief People Officer at mine candy in the later days, who is a master coach, a lady called penny, and she is amazing. And just remember having some conversations with her that were absolutely transformational. Like, you know, that's what a master coaching is like, this is someone who has been practising this for 30 years or something, and then realised how powerful it could be, then I started my self training journey, and, you know, have also gone down the path of doing courses in the some of the different schools. So Gestalt done a bit of embodied somatic training, a lot of TA training, because I just love that whole area so much. And so I think also, the path that you choose in terms of the school you go down is very personal, too. But yeah, I feel like it's been really transformative for me.

And I think the thing is, there's so many different routes in and stumbling across it. And there's just no one way. But what I sometimes find quite frustrating is when somebody is discovered one way, and then decides is the only way, and the inner cynic in me is immediately like, well, that's not my way. The one thing I wanted to share, just selfishly, before we finish is that finding a community of people into embodied leadership is something that I'm looking for, because I have felt very lonely and Madea and we're gonna have some conversations next week. And I hope we can start to build out more people who are interested have done it experienced it. And by the way, it's not like ticking the box done. It's a journey, that's a lifetime of exploration. But one of the things that I had wanted to do and I think I'm finally gonna be able to get some time is to start to offer an embodiment class via the umbrella of the operations room on a Sunday evening in the UK time during the morning us time, so that if this sounds of interest to you, and you'd like to learn more and you'd like to explore whether or not my yoga s it's really not yoga anymore, but those were the roots appeals to you. Any listeners look for more details after this podcast comes live and also watch this space for anything that Maddie and I might end up cooking up in the coming time.

Perfect. So thank you Divinia and Maddie for joining us once again all the operations room if you like what you hear please leave us a comment or subscribe and we will see you next week.