Best-selling author, professor, and leadership expert Ryan Gottfredson explains how mindsets aren't just attitudes, distinguishes the doing side vs. the being side of ourselves, and talks about gauging your "window of tolerance", the 3 levels of adult development, reaction vs. response, and healing to grow.

And be sure to check out Ryan's original appearance in Episode 317 of The Action Catalyst.

We're here today once again, actually, with best

selling author, professor and leadership expert Ryan

Gottfredson, Ryan, good to see you.

Yeah, great to be back on. I was looking at the

notes and my notes, and I think the last time I was on was over

five years ago.

Yes. So episode 317 back in January of 2020. Is what we

last had you on. And boy, did things change abruptly right

after that.

Yeah. So that was January, and fast forward a

couple months, and I was with my publisher in Nashville for my

first book, success mindsets in March, and we're there second

week of March. I think it was like a Wednesday, Thursday,

Friday. We're doing this red carpet event. I get an email,

you know, essentially, schools are shutting down, and I'm in

Nashville, I'm thinking, oh my goodness, what is happening? Am

I even going to get a flight back home? And that was the

weekend that, of course, the world essentially shut down. And

then fast forward, two months later, is when my book actually

hit the shelves. And so it was, in some ways, I think there were

some good things with that, with the book coming out of that time

and other things, it just made things really difficult. So I

think in some ways it was good because a lot of people were

maybe spending a little bit more time reading. But on the other

hand, is I do a lot of consulting work with

organizations, and that completely shut down. So I think

there were some good things and that helped it hit the Wall

Street Journal and USA Today bestseller list. But then my

business slowed down for a little bit, like many others

did. But that's okay, it picked back up. And you know, we are

where we are now, which is a different type of crazy.

Just a little refresher for our audience, we talk a lot

on the Action Catalyst, about growth mindset, fixed mindset,

about mindset general for you, there's actually four. It's not

growth and fixed. Do you mind just kind of walking our

audience through that just as part of our table setting for

the conversation today?

One of the things that I've learned is

mindsets is a term that is thrown out, I feel like rather

loosely, right? A lot of people talk about maybe leader mindset

or entrepreneurial mindset, and oftentimes, when people talk

about mindsets, they talk about mindsets as our attitude towards

something. But actually at a scientific level, even a

neuroscientific level, our mindsets are much deeper than

our attitude towards something. They're actually the mental

lenses that we wear that shape how we view the world around us.

And so what that means is our mindsets are the part of

ourselves that automatically interprets information in

certain ways. So for example, this is what explains why some

people can see failure as something to avoid, but other

people see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow

and in our mindsets, they really are the most foundational part

of who we are. And for most of us, we're not conscious of our

mindsets, nor do we know the quality of our mindsets. So the

quality of our mindsets exist along along a continuum from

being more wired for self protection to be more wired for

value creation and whether we have a self protective mindset

or a value creating mindset, both feel right to us, but one

helps us stay safe in the short term, but holds us back in the

long term. That's the self protective mindset and the value

creating mindsets allow us to step into short term discomfort

for long term value creation. So I coach my son's basketball

team. My son is 10 years old. That means that he and his

teammates are not very good, so it's my job as a coach to help

them to develop. And so one of the things that I'm trying to

help them develop at this age is, is they're all right handed,

and I want to help them learn how to shoot a layup with their

left hand when they're on the left side of the hoop. So this

is a pretty important skill for a basketball player, and so I'll

instruct them. When we do, we call them lay up lines. They

land up on the left side, and they take turns to shoot a

layup. And I'll ask them, all, right, try to shoot this with

your left hand. And I get three different responses. The first

response that I get is I get some players that don't even try

to shoot with their left hand. Well, why wouldn't they try to

shoot with their left hand? Well, it feels uncomfortable.

They're going to look awkward, and they're probably going to

miss their shot. You. So there's some justifiable reasons for

them to not try that. The second response that I get is I get

some players that are willing to try and practice, but they're

not willing to try in games. Well, why aren't we willing to

try in games? Well, it's because now my my parents are recording

me for the rest of posterity to see, right? And of course, I

don't want to let my team down. I want to win the game. There's

a lot more pressure in that moment. So that's the second

response that I get. But then the third response that again, I

only have a couple of players that are willing to do this, but

they're willing to try in practice and in the games. Well,

why are they willing to do this? Well, they're they've developed

this capacity to be able to feel uncomfortable, look

uncomfortable, and miss the shot, which may even mean

letting their team down in that moment or even in that game. But

for what benefit, it's because they will actually improve their

development of that skill so that they could be a greater

value creator for themselves and for their future teams down the

road. So there's some responses that are more self protective in

that moment, and others that are more value creating meaning.

They're willing to step into discomfort in that moment to

become a better value creator over the long term. Are these

responses by my players? Are they intentional, thought out

responses, or instinctual knee jerk reactions, and that's the

role that our mindsets play. Right? It's our it's my players

mindsets that are dictating when I invite them, do they move

towards self protection, or do they move towards value

creation? And that's the mindsets. And if, then, if I

also ask these players, do you have good mindsets? I think that

all of them say yes, because they could justify it. Well, one

the one that's more self protective, well, it helps me

feel more safe and more comfortable in that moment, and

the one that has the more value creating mindset is, oh yeah,

I've got a better mindset, because it's gonna help me

become a better basketball player for the future, right? So

that's the inherent challenge that we as people face, is we

generally think that our mindsets are good, but we

generally don't know the quality of our mindsets. And so the

reason why I bring this up is it's really helpful to have a

mindset framework to help us to start to investigate the true

quality of our mindsets, and that's what I put together. Is

what you said, is these four different sets of mindsets.

If they're something that's so foundational to us and

kind of ingrained and shape the way we approach and view

everything else, how can we influence or adjust our mindset?

Yeah, great question, and it all starts with

awareness, and that's where the framework is so powerful,

because if I don't have labels for mindsets, if I don't have

descriptions for mindsets, then I can never investigate them.

They're going to continue to reside below the level of my

consciousness. But if I could put labels on it and

descriptions now I could start to develop greater level of

consciousness about my mindsets, and that's been part of my

personal journey. Is when I first learned about these

different sets of mindsets, I quickly learned that I had self

protective mindsets, which is normal. Most of us have self

protective mindsets, and I just didn't know what better mindsets

to have. So the first thing I needed to do is to deepen my

awareness, and then once I deepen my awareness, then I

could come up with plans and strategies and interventions to

be able to elevate my mindset.

Shifting from mindset to growth. The science really

points to there being two main types of growth, those

incremental, transformational I think people think they know

what each of those means. But could you define those for us?

Yeah, for sure. And it's really helpful

for us to understand that there's two different sides of

ourselves. So I'm going to give you some characters that you

probably recognize who they are, and I want you to tell me what

you think they have in common? Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods,

Ellen DeGeneres, uh, Bill Clinton, Gordon, Ramsay Shia,

LaBeouf. What do they have in common? They got multiple things

in common. I think so. I think most simply, they're all famous

and well known. They have all been incredibly successful

within their within their industry. I mean that they may

be at the peak. I mean, we've got the king of pop in there for

goodness sakes, right? So, so all incredibly successful

people. But the other thing that they have in common is they all

have some controversy. And so the reason why I've kind of

cherry picked these examples is to demonstrate this idea that we

have two different sides of ourselves. One side of ourselves

is what I call our doing side. It's our talent, our knowledge,

our skills and our abilities. And all of these individuals are

incredibly talented, knowledgeable and skillful

individuals, and it's their talent, knowledge and skills

that has allowed them to reach the success that they've

experienced, or at least their popularity. Priority. But then

their controversy doesn't really have anything to do with their

talent, knowledge, skills and abilities. Their controversy has

to do with a different side of themselves, and that's what I

call our being side. And our being side is the quality of our

character, our mindsets, our psyche, the quality of our

emotional regulation abilities. I call it as a whole our

internal operating system, how our bodies are wired to operate.

So each of these individuals were incredibly talented,

knowledgeable and skillful, but they lack some emotional

regulation abilities that caused them to misstep at different

points of time in their life and and so the reason why I bring

this up is coming back to your question is there's a difference

between incremental growth and transformational growth. And

what I've learned is that when we improve along our doing side,

it is helpful, but I find that it is only incrementally

helpful, and if we really want to transformationally grow and

improve, we've got to focus on our being side. We've got to

we've actually got to focus on our internal operating system,

our mindsets, our emotional regulation abilities, and when

we could elevate along our being side, we transformationally

become better people and better leaders. And what's interesting

about this is that when we think about development efforts in

general, is almost all development efforts focus on our

doing side. Think about our education systems, our athletic

programs and our organizational development efforts, they almost

all focus on gaining knowledge and skills. Yet it's only

incrementally helpful. And so my new book, becoming better is all

about helping people learn that they have a being side, learn

what it is, help them connect with it and evaluate their

altitude along their being side. And then how do they elevate

along their being side, so that they can transformationally

become better

When it comes to the doing side, most of the time, we know

what we don't know, right? We know what we need to improve on,

what we need to do to get better. How do we assess our

being side so we know where to go from there?

Yeah, and what's interesting, and there's

a variety of different ways that we can do this, right? So I'm

going to step into a few different ways. One way is to

look at our mindsets. Our mindsets are intimately

connected to this, to our being side, because they're about how

our bodies are wired to operate more self protective or more

value creating. So if you're listening to this, I've

developed a mindset assessment on my website called the

personal mindset assessment. It's free. Anybody could take

it, and it will help them to evaluate the quality of their

mindset. So that's a helpful tool, but not everybody has

access to that. I mean, it's free. Now you've heard about it,

but not everybody knows about it. But beyond that, another way

to kind of gage This is window of tolerance. The window of

tolerance was popularized by a psychologist called his name is

Daniel Siegel. He's written a great book called Mindsight, and

he dives into this concept there, as well as in other

places. But window of tolerance is effectively, how easily

triggered are we to difference, to stress, pressure, complexity,

uncertainty, etc. So we have a window that when, when the

stress is low in our lives. It's a it's a window in which our

body's nervous system is regulated. And so when you know

when challenges come our way, when we're in this regulated

state, we can navigate those challenges rather effectively.

We are in cognitive and emotional control, but the more

stress that we experience, or if you're anything like me, if you

get hangry, then you kind of sense that you're moving closer

to the edge of your window of tolerance, where you're losing

cognitive and emotional control. And there's even times where we

get we'll call it triggered, and we actually go outside of our

window of tolerance, and we've lost almost all cognitive and

emotional control. And so when we when we move closer to the

edge of our window of tolerance, or even beyond it, we become

more reactive, as opposed to intentionally responsive. So one

of the things that we need to recognize is all of us, the

width of our window of tolerance differs just as we differ in

height or weight. And so the wider our window of tolerance,

our greater capacity to stay in cognitive and emotional control

across difficult situations. And our window tolerance is also

something that we could widen. We can expand. In fact, as we

elevate along our being side, that's what happens. So people

with a wider window of tolerance are at a higher altitude along

their being side. People with a narrower window of tolerance

more reactive individuals, for example, then they're going to

be low. That's a. Find that they're lower on their being

side. So that's another, I think, a helpful way to kind of

gage our altitude along that being side. The field of

developmental psychology is the field that has actually done the

most research along our being side. Now, developmental

psychology has historically focused on child development. We

know that children go through different developmental stages.

They go from infancy to adulthood, but a narrow kind of

area of focus for developmental psychologists is adult

development, and what they've found is that just as children

go through different development stages, adults can go through

different adult development stages. In fact, what they found

is that there's three primary adult development stages or

levels. And what's interesting about this is that while adults

can develop what they've found is that most adults don't

develop in adulthood along their being side. So if there's three

levels along our being side, let's just call them for now,

level one, level two, level 360. 4% of adults operate in level

one and never get to level 230, 5% get to level two, and only 1%

gets to level three. So there's not many that operate there. And

so one of the things that I've learned as I've kind of

understand this, is the reality is, is that most of us, and most

of the people that we know, operate at this base level,

which is a rather self protective way to operate,

right? So for example, if I were to say to you, how do most

people respond to constructive criticism? Criticism, you would

say they get defensive, right? And that's a self protective

strategy in that moment, but it's one that probably is

something that holds them back from learning, growing and

developing. So that's a self protective reaction, as opposed

to a value creating response. So most of us and most of the

people we associate with, are people that operate at this

lower being side level. So this kind of becomes the norm, but it

doesn't necessarily mean that it's very cognitively and

emotionally sophisticated. And so when we understand this

framework, that's another way to gage it. And in fact, I've got

another free assessment on my website that will allow you to

kind of gage what level you tend to operate at. It's called a

vertical development assessment.

Very literally, once we've assessed that, once we know

where we're at, what is this trick to leveling up?

Yeah, at its core, what we've got to

recognize is, is our being side is connected to our internal

operating system, which really is our nervous system. So we've

got to engage in efforts to better regulate and upgrade our

body's nervous system. And I think that there's three

different levels that we could think about doing work on our

nervous system. So I'm going to say that there's surface level

approaches, there's deeper level approaches, and there's deepest

level approaches. So at the surface level are things that I

think are fairly common and they're being increasingly

promoted. These are things like meditation, uh, journaling,

gratitude journaling, engaging in self talk, doing like we see,

cold plunges. These are all actually activities that help us

better regulate our body's nervous system. And so I think

that there's surface level in that they holistically help us

better regulate ourselves to get into the deeper level. I think

that's where mindsets reside, if, because, again, most people

aren't conscious of our mindsets, and so if we could

help them to become conscious of our mindsets, we are getting

directly at one of the primary jobs of our internal operating

system, which is how our body makes meaning of our world. And

if we can awaken to how we make meaning of our world, or how

we're prone to make meaning of our world, then we could do the

work of adjusting and improving how we make meaning of our

world. So for me, and that's where this is the space that I

primarily play, in terms of the coaching and the consulting that

I do, is I help do some of this deeper level ver it's called

vertical development work, as opposed to horizontal

development work. So that's a deeper the deeper level

strategy. At the deepest level, this is where we find things

like therapy, like psychological therapy, trauma healing therapy,

and even if people have neuro divergence, then we like ADHD,

for example, is something that impacts our being side that

there's what's called neuro feedback therapy, and that could

help us, help us rewire our brain. And then one of the

things that I've kind of got my ear to the ground on is some of

the latest research coming out with psychedelic assisted

therapy. So all of the initial research that seems to be coming

out now is suggesting that it's one of the most effective ways

of rewiring our body's nervous system. And so those are I don't

play at that level, because I don't have the training for

either any of those things, but I've participated, for example,

in trauma healing therapy that's been a part of my own personal

development journey. And I would say, I'm currently not engaging

with my therapist, but I started that process that's about four

years ago, and I spent two years working with a trauma therapist

to heal from some stuff in my past, right? So, and I would say

five years ago, when I was on the podcast, if you would have

asked me if I had trauma in my past, I would have said no, I

had great parents. They stayed married, they went to every

basketball game I ever played. But what I've come to realize is

that while my parents were always there for me physically,

they were rarely there for me emotionally. So I've got some

emotional neglect in my background, and I didn't know

that five years ago, and I've come to awaken to that and

engage with the trauma therapist to help me kind of heal my body

from that experience. I guess one of the things that I've

learned is how we are wired to survive our childhood is not the

wiring that we need to be successful as adults and as

leaders. And that's ultimately what we're talking about, is,

how do we rewire ourselves? And what I've learned just engaging

in this deepest level strategy of engaging with a trauma

therapist is doing that healing work has done. I have, I have

grown and developed more as a person in that two years than I

had the prior 16 years of my adult life. And I think at the

end of the day, that's why doing you know, coming on this

podcast, sharing these ideas, is meaningful to me, because at the

end of the day, if we want to elevate along our being side at

a foundational level, it's about healing our minds, our bodies

and our hearts. And if we want to become transformationally

better, that's what it requires. It requires healing. And I've

just come to learn that most of us need some healing.

The first time you joined the program, we discussed your

book, which was just about to release, Success Mindsets. We've

touched today on a lot of the material that's in Becoming

Better your latest book, but in the meantime, you've also put

out another great book, The Elevated Leader. We don't want

to overlook that.

For sure. And thank you for bringing it up.

And in fact, we have talked about it. So when I talked about

those three adult development levels, level one, level two,

level three, that's what the elevated leader is all about,

getting to know those three levels and allowing us to use

that framework to introspect about the at the time, I wasn't

calling it this, but the I was calling it the quality of our

internal operating system. But now the terminology we've used

here is that plus elevating along our being side.

You mentioned a number of assessments available on your

website today that people can go and start taking action on what

they've heard about today, lay that website on us one more time

and talk about what some of those assessments are and any

other free tools.

For sure. So there's the two on my website.

RyanGottfredson.com, there's a free personal mindset

assessment, a free vertical development assessment, again,

both of those are help us to awaken to the quality along our

being side. And then, if you wanted to do deeper work for

yourself, you know, I help, I do engage in coaching to help

people to upgrade themselves. Or when I work with organizations,

what I'll generally do is I'll have groups or teams or even the

entire organization, take these assessments, and then I could

aggregate those results up to a collective level, and we could

look at the collective mindsets of an organization, of a group

of leaders or of a team. So if anybody wants to do some of that

deeper work beyond just taking a couple of assessments, would

love to have some conversations with folks. What I've

experienced, because I've worked with hundreds of organizations

and 1000s of leaders, is for every group that I've worked

with, this is an incredibly eye opening experience and which

allows for transformation to occur. And I just feel blessed

to kind of be playing in a, in a spot, and in a in a place where

I could help people to awaken to the deeper sense of themselves,

so that they can elevate themselves at this foundational level.

Well, Ryan, thank you so much for taking some time to

join us in the program today and for helping us become better.

Thanks for having me, and thanks for

creating this platform. I know having a podcast is not an easy

thing to do, and it's actually a very generous thing to do, so

appreciate your willingness to do that so that people like me

can share our ideas.