The Impact of Grief on Humans at Work with George Kohlrieser
Welcome to the We Are Human Leaders podcast. What do hostage negotiators and CEOs have in common?
Which skills serve you when your life is being threatened, but also when you’re relating to your colleagues in an everyday meeting?
On this episode of We Are Human Leaders we’re talking to someone who has vast experience with both situations: George Kohlrieser. In this conversation, we are talking about grief. We explore how grief - especially unresolved grief - impacts us as humans and as leaders. And how we can start to bring awareness to grief so it becomes a powerful tool for connection and even creativity in the workplace and beyond.
George is a clinical and organizational psychologist, author, speaker and consultant. He is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) business school based in Lausanne Switzerland and the author of the award-winning book Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others and Raise Performance and co-author of Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Performance through Secure Base Leadership.
George shares his personal experiences of grief as well as his professional experience as a hostage negotiator. He gives us powerful takeaway tips that we can use today as leaders, and as humans, to open up this important topic.
A strong content warning for this episode, we discuss issues of mental health, violence, trauma, death and suicide, which may be distressing or triggering for some listeners.
After our episode recording with George, Alexis and Sally chatted for probably another hour on the insights we’d each gained. There is no escaping grief. It is part of the human experience. By owning our own grief, and being present to the grief of those around us, we grow as humans, and leaders.
And as George mentions, we cannot grieve alone. If you’re experiencing grief we encourage you to reach out for support.
We hope George’s experience, kindness and wisdom touches you as much as it did us.
Find George's work here: https://georgekohlrieser.com/
Connect with the Kohlriesser Leadership Institute programs here: https://www.kli.swiss/
And access his incredible books 'Hostage at the Table' and 'Dare to Care' here: https://georgekohlrieser.com/books/
And you can join us, and our community of human leaders at www.wearehumanleaders.com
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Sally, Spk1 Alexis Spk2 George Kohlrieser
:08] spk_0: Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast. What our hostage negotiators and C. E. O. S have in common which skills serve you when your life is being threatened, but also when you're relating to your colleagues in an everyday meeting. I'm Sally Clarke and together with my co host Alexis Zahner Today we're talking to someone who has vast experience with both situations. George cole research. In this conversation, we're talking about grief. We explore how grief especially unresolved grief impacts us as humans and as links and how we can start to bring awareness degree. So it becomes a powerful tool for connection and even creativity in the workplace and beyond. George Kohlriesser is a clinical and organizational psychologist, author, speaker and consultant. He is professor of leadership and organizational behavior at the International Institute for Management Development Business School based in Lausanne Switzerland and the author of the award winning book hostage at the table. How leaders can overcome conflict, influence others and raise performance and co author of Care to dare unleashing astonishing performance through secure based leadership. George shares his personal experiences of grief as well as his professional experience as a hostage negotiator. He gives us powerful takeaway tips that we can use today as leaders and as humans to open up this important topic. A content warning for this episode. We discuss issues of mental health violence, trauma, death and suicide which may be distressing or triggering some listeners, both Alexis and I were left moved and inspired after this conversation. We suspect you will be too. Let's dive in.
[00:01:52] spk_1: Welcome to the We are human Leaders podcast, George, it is an absolute delight to have you here with us today, joining us all the way from beautiful Switzerland and we'd love to know a little bit more about you first George and your journey and in particular what's brought you to the work that you're doing now around the subject of grief.
[00:02:14] spk_2: Very good questions. And first of all, thank you for the invitation. I'm very happy to be there. I love Australia because of covid. It's not been so easy to come, but I hope to get there not so far in the future. So what happened is I ended up working in the whole arena of mediation, conflict management, hostage negotiation. And it became clear to me that stress was the guiding force behind the motivation and the stressor was really lost in all the various forms. So it could be everything from death to disappointment to frustration, not met expectations, changes, and identity. So it became clear to me and then I sought out a wonderful teacher, Elizabeth Kubler, ross, maybe you're too young to remember her, but she was an inspiration to me and a teacher and a friend and a colleague before she died. And I realized how important it was to understand grief across a broad range of behavior, but especially around conflict. So, working with police, working with patients in psychotherapy and dealing with mediation loss was one of the key factors,
[00:03:34] spk_1: Wow. And just looking, you know, I heard you mention that George this idea of grief and the first sort of mentioned you made of that is I guess the typical one we associate grief with and that is like bereavement, the loss of a person. But I heard you mention a few other ways in which we experience grief, the loss of a job disappointment. I think this is a concept that we so often don't under and really the depth in which grief touches our lives. And can you give us a little bit more, I guess, well rounded picture of the different ways that we experience grief. Like what, what causes us to experience grief?
[00:04:10] spk_2: Well, you're absolutely correct. It's not just death actually. The biggest amount of grief comes from loss is not connected with death, but it's the end of something, it's the end of something identity. It's the end of an expectation, it's a merger and acquisition in a company, it's leaving home. It's everything that has to do with how I let go and move forward. And your right grief is very much misunderstood. And it's a normal process. The psychiatric and psychological community has made a serious mistake by associating or being focused on transforming grief into a psychological problem. It's normal, it's natural, it's how we let go. So when I'm asked, what is grief ? Grief is the experience the emotional experience of how we let go of something, whatever it might be. And how many times do you see people not let go of something? They get a divorce and don't get over it, They lose a job and don't get over it. They have an expectation and that is not met, they have a failure. I could keep going for long list, but they suffer, they become a victim to that or as we talk about in in the hostage negotiation arena, they become a hostage to what they have lost. So, grief work is about how you say goodbye to something and remembering that you don't just one time get over grief, grief is a lifelong process and the deepest grief you revisit by the triggers that remind you of what they have been in your life. So it's not that you want to always be over grief. It's when grief is triggered or something reminds you you're then able to go through that grief again and the outcome of knowing when you're over grief is to come to the full joy of work, come to the full joy of life and how many people are not experiencing the full joy of living or even the full joy of work.
[00:06:20] spk_0: It's really a beautiful observation that George and I really feel like it's almost if we can accept grief as a natural part of life and not something that is finite. There's almost a sense of a paradox. So we can have grief and experienced loss, but we can also have joy simultaneously. And it's not mutually exclusive yet. I feel like there is in our culture and you spoke to this a little in the sort of psychiatry world psychology world that there's been this kind of labeling as something that is inherently perhaps weak or something that we need to be embarrassed about. Almost hide. What are the dangers when we actually do that, when we push down grief and we don't give ourselves space to experience it in work and also more broadly in life.
[00:07:06] spk_2: That's a really good question because the article I wrote is about hidden grief and its role in leadership, but its role in human behavior. So when you hide grief and it remains head, it's going to come out in depression. How many people are depressed because they didn't get over something. And to go deeper in understanding that we have to be able to tap into emotions. What are the emotions involved in the grieving process? It's not just crying, it can be anger, even rage, it can be fear, even panic, it can be lost and crying. Those are the primary emotions. And then you have the secondary manifestations. So, grief is about the emotional process of being able to go through that depression is one signal that you have unresolved grief addiction is another, my goodness. The massive amount of addictions, not just the drugs, but any kind of behavior that is a pathological relationship. So dr monte defines re or addiction as focused on the short term benefit with long term consequences and that qualifies for all kinds of addictions. And then you mentioned, we mentioned physical illness. How much physical illness is manifestations of unresolved grief. One question from a doctor or a helping profession or a nurse or a caretaker, what is the major stress that's happening to you? What is the loss that you have recently faced to make all the difference in opening up those emotions? So that becomes very important to understand all the different manifestations and then they come out in all kinds of behaviors.
[00:08:55] spk_1: Absolutely. And it sounds like typically some of those behaviors, you know, tend to be then problematic or perhaps manifest in other physiological things that are uncomfortable or that we don't want to experience. And this I guess is more of a personal question for me and I think what I would love to know is I've experienced grief in many different manifestations in my life. I've experienced it, you know, through the loss of loved ones such as parents and as friends and family members. And my first real big experience with grief as a young adult, when I lost a parent was to avoid handling it. And you know, for parents or for all of us learning to handle grief. I think when I reflect now and when I reflect on what you've already said, you know, there are so many moments in my life before that where I learned to handle things that were uncomfortable that I couldn't label at the time as being grief, you know, the disappointment of not getting picked in a football team, disappointment of not getting picked as a girlfriend. The disappointment of not getting picked or getting my a plus in my english class. Yeah, and for me, I realize now that my way of dealing with those things was to hide my disappointment and actually just kind of pushed through them and say, well they don't bother me, I don't care anyway. And you know, I realized then when it came to losing a parent, which was my first significant out of grief as an adult, that my entire mechanism was to run from it for years, you know, push it down, soldier on, get on with it. But I'd love to know a little bit more because I know in your incredible research and in the McKenzie report, information that you published, there were some great case examples of how then that manifested for people in their professional life. And I'm starting to notice now in my professional life all the ways that when I'm uncomfortable, it sabotages some of my other ability to put myself forward for work and things like that. And I'd love to hear perhaps if you could help us George to connect some of those dots around how unresolved grief might actually impact us in things like leadership positions or career even
[00:11:04] spk_2: that's the organizational aspect, there's the personal aspect, the way it connects Alexis and sally is through the attachment behavior, how do we attach? How do we bond? So the question becomes, when was the first major loss in my life? So if you are adopted, if you go to a boarding school, if there's a disruption in the bond with the mother, the father, the grandparents, then you have to understand that becomes a printing in the brain to already understand the impact of loss. How was it dealt with? Did were you taken care of where you nurtured? Did you create a bond after that? Whatever the disruption was? So that later losses then trigger those memories of early trauma and we know now that it's very significant to understand where the disruption in the attachment system occurred before the age of 12 and that presents the possibility that that is the early trigger then in the present situation, how do the emotions show up, the emotions can be rage and anger, the emotions can be sadness and crying and the point about grief is that you can get over anything but you have to feel it, you have to feel it and the brain hates pain, it's that simple, but we have to teach our brain self leadership how to engage in pain, it's just like learning a new habit. If you're gonna work out if you're going to establish some kind of change in behavior, you have to go through the pain of making that happen. So once you understand the importance of feeling it to heal it, you engage it, You engage it like yourself, you lost a parent. If I understood you correctly, I lost his son 1993. After our trip to Australia. He was in medical school, we came back and thank God we took that trip. He was in an accident in front of the hospital and he died. Now, even though I knew about grief, I had to go through it, I had to go through the pain and the rage and all the manifestations of that to be able to come back and be inspired. And here's the thing grief is a pathway in the journey for future inspiration. What do I remember about my son? What do you remember about your parents? What do you remember about a failure? How do we reconstruct the brain so that we have learned something from what happened and we can see it as a positive thing. Dr Edgar who was in Auschwitz as a teenager almost well, you probably know her sally or heard about her because she was in holland, she came, I invited her to I M. D. And her parents were killed in Auschwitz, she was tortured, she nearly died, took her 25 years to deal with that grief. And then she wrote a book called the choice. The essence of that is I have a choice. Every person has a choice to think about what they have lost and to find it what is meaningful. She describes being in Auschwitz as the greatest gift to understand the joy of life, Mama Mia the greatest gift. It's what she learned. And this follows victor frankel's work. He was a mentor to her and victor frankel was the whole person who talked about it was very early in the neuroscience. We did. He didn't know all the neuroscience of today, but he didn't know about brain reconstruction and how to reconstruct the memory and go on and use whatever the losses as an inspiration. That's a challenge. And if you have someone who teaches you that you are blessed,
[00:14:57] spk_0: thank you so much for sharing George, your own personal experience and also those two names. It's recently been going through a divorce and it's interesting that without even consciously making that link, I picked up both the choice and victor frankel's book as well. Man Search for meaning almost subconsciously, I think understanding that there is a big grieving process going on and that being able to frame it in that way was helpful. I want to reflect on something that you mentioned that I think it's really important that you you said, you know, even knowing as much as you did about grief at the time of the loss of your son. It's still this actual experience, this emotional experience. I think for many of us in leadership roles. we can very much understand at a very intellectual level what happens and and understand and see see it, but that can sometimes almost create distance and inhibit us from actually having the courage to go through that emotional process. It's almost like we have to let go of the comfort of our intellectual understanding and let the emotions be that is that something that you've had experience with and also witnessed in leaders?
[00:16:03] spk_2: Yes, very, very much massive amounts. It shows up, you use the word distancing, it means they are not able to create upon or they're emotionally unavailable. So we have so many leaders who believe and have been taught, if you're vulnerable, if you have emotions, you're not a good leader, strong leaders don't show emotion, don't are not emotionally available, which is pure garbage we know from emotional intelligence, it's central to being able to connect with the people you are leading. And so what we have to do is help leaders understand what the grief has been in their life. And there are two aspects of that, What have been the recent or recent past losses and what have been the early losses because the foundations of leadership becomes so important. If you went to a boarding school for example and you never dealt with a painful experience or you went to a boarding school and there's a positive thing and you emancipated very early. Both of those can have serious ramifications on your leadership behavior. It's the key is awareness. How am I aware and in the article Charles and I talk about three special steps. One to accept I am grieving. Most people can't even accept it. And then once you accept it to be able, well, first to be aware, I should that I miss missed it, to be aware and then to accept it to say, OK, I am grieving and then to do something about it, no loss is too great to get over. And for leadership, it's massive. Whether it's a merger and acquisition, it's a failure, it's a disappointment. They're carrying all kinds of pain, but it's not just the present pain, it's the early pain. So I just dealt with somebody who's the ceo of the top company and he's very vulnerable to rejection. He gets really upset because he thinks he's done something wrong. Where did this first start with his father? His father didn't never accepted him. He was never good enough. So it becomes hardwired in the brain that he has that grief of the father that gets triggered when people give him feedback in which he's not perfect. So we have to not just understand the immediate past but also understand the foundations of leadership And one of the things that I'm most focused on is helping emotional leaders become emotionally available and that simply means first of all to learn how to cry. I can tell you that people who come to my training programs, the high performance leadership, which we run 10 times a year, full, almost a year in advance 60 top leaders at a time. Many have never cried or they stopped crying at a certain point in their life to go back and be able to do that again or tougher is how to deal with rage. Many people carry rage and they don't even know how to put a word to it. So part of the grief understanding is to be able to label the primary emotions, anger, fear, sadness and then the secondary manifestations which can be quite extensive.
[00:19:16] spk_1: Well, I have reflected very deeply personally as he was speaking then George.
[00:19:24] spk_2: Yeah, let me just have one more point. You cannot grieve alone understand grieving is done in a tribe and a family and a clan from the beginning of mankind. It was never meant. We need people around us. We need secure bases. And so one of the big problems is people who hold the pain inside and they don't share it with a family, a clan or a tribe. So there's only a small part that you can do alone in which you come back to some significant part of yourself. And usually that has to do with identity. We don't understand as much as we should about the grief of loss of identity. You're a child growing up in a family. You change the identity when you leave home, Emancipate when you get married or former partnership when you have kids when you get a job. I mean all of these changes in identity require letting go of something grieving and letting go of something but we can't do it alone.
[00:20:28] spk_1: No. And I think what so impactful George about your last comment. I mean I have about 1000 thoughts that I'd love to go back and re cap on. But just starting with this concept of the tribe because something that I see a lot happening in organizations is that people don't feel seen and they don't feel heard and I think and tell me if I'm wrong. But part of the grief process to me feels like just the capacity to be witnessed by other human beings in our pain and be loved and accepted and held regardless of what we're going through. Is that something that you've experienced? People just really
[00:21:06] spk_2: absolutely in a hostage situation. For example, the hostage negotiator dealing with a very psychotic person, criminal, a narcissist, whatever the behavior is, hostage negotiator has to create a bond with that person and they have to listen to the pain points empathy, compassion, the person wants to be understood and then you move to the concession making process. And what would you say? The success rate of hostage negotiators are is measured by Interpol and the FBI rough guess
[00:21:42] spk_1: oh my goodness,
[00:21:43] spk_0: step in the
[00:21:44] spk_2: dark.
[00:21:45] spk_1: Oh I would want to say really low to be honest because I feel like these are cases that feel like
[00:21:52] spk_2: very
[00:21:53] spk_1: extreme. Yeah.
[00:21:54] spk_0: Yeah, I would have said quite low as well. I think it's really there's
[00:21:58] spk_1: so much to unpack with someone,
[00:22:00] spk_2: 95% success rate.
[00:22:02] spk_1: Oh my God, that's crazy.
[00:22:05] spk_2: It is the art and science of influencing It is the most advanced form of leadership that I can identify. So what happens is they want something, they have a desire, they are built into a negative destructive process with negative emotions. Or I shouldn't say negative emotions, destructive emotions and then how to be able to see some path out. The 5% where it doesn't work is people want to commit suicide by police. So they do something stupid and they get themselves shot by the police. And the big sign for that is if they don't want something, you see the key is what is the desire. And this is a very negative sign for grief as well. If you lose the desire for anything into the future, then you become a different kind of risk. Even to suicide. I mean suicide is very highly connected to loss and the despair and not seeing a way to get over a particular loss. I cannot live without something.
[00:23:09] spk_0: Yeah, I think that's so profound what you're saying and particularly around the idea of you know, there's such an extreme situation when you're dealing with a hostage negotiation that's obviously high stakes and a lot of its experience in our own lives to some extensive high stakes interactions with people. But what I'm hearing is there's almost in order to have a chance of coming to any kind of healthy conclusion. We have to form a bond with the other. We have to see the humanity in that person irrespective of the criminal behavior that they're displaying to you in that moment at the same time.
[00:23:45] spk_2: And you can bond with anybody if you can find a common goal and the secret is turning an adversary or an enemy into an ally. But the hostage taking is one thing with a weapon. Now there's psychological hostage taking. So you can be a psychological hostage to a boss, to a situation to the pandemic. Look at how many people felt like a hostage to the pandemic, to just wearing a mass getting a vaccination or in personal life to spouses, to friends, to family members, teachers. And that's not even the worst. The worst is hostage to yourself. What does that mean? You are filled with regret, anger, revenge, shame, humiliation, the thousands of internal states that block you. So in leadership training and I'm working at a business school where we're focused on helping senior leaders learn how to overcome those barriers to be the best leader they can be. And that means leading yourself so leading yourself and then leading others and then ultimately leading organization. But you see how this whole process unfolds. If you are a hostage to yourself and you don't have to have a weapon to feel like a hostage. And I've been held hostage myself physically in my work in domestic violence. So I know the power of words and I know the power of bonding, it saved my life. I've been involved in over 100 situation's been involved directly being held by a weapon in four and talking and I'm very happy to be here today, talking saved my life. That's why I'm convinced of the branding process
[00:25:27] spk_0: incredible George. I think that's why we're so glad you're here too. That's just a really a testament to your skill and your capacity to create that bond. And I think also imagine very much staying. I'm curious about those moments because I can imagine there is a natural instinct to get caught in fear and escalate into a really stress state. But in order to get through those situations, you really imagine have to stay very present and very grounded. Can you tell us a little bit more,
[00:25:55] spk_2: you're absolutely right. So that the brain will actually for survival produce panic, produce deep fear, produce all kinds of emotion, Even rage and anger, but that has to be controlled. And so then you have to be able to use the executive part of the brain to manage that and focus on the goal. So then you let your words be guided by the goal, not by your emotions. Dan Goldman used to call that amaygdala hijack. He now calls it emotional hijacked. Many people have that kind of reaction. How do I control the focus? One time when I was held hostage it was with the scissors and Sam was putting the scissors to my throat after holding Sheila a nurse a hostage. And very shortly after I entered the room at the request of the police lieutenant, he cut her throat not her juggler but decide so she fell to the floor screaming my kids my kids like my kids in a panic she thought she was gonna die. Sam comes around the table towards me with that scissors. Now what would you say if someone is coming to you screaming with full rage? They're going to kill you. Well he never cut the skin of my throat but he did put the scissors there and after a few transactions didn't work I asked him Sam how do you want your kids to remember you? And he said don't talk about my kids, bring them in here and I'll kill them too. He did it with a lot more anger. Now that was a good transaction. Huh? Because we start the dialogue within 10 minutes. The first request we let you go And within 20 minutes because he had been brought to the hospital because of a stab wound. We had to get him out of that room and he walked out. But you see it wasn't the fact that I tell him he has to do that. He made the choice. So you ask questions, you don't use command and control. You always give choice
[00:27:55] spk_0: having an emotional response.
[00:27:57] spk_1: Yeah, agreed I firstly, just to acknowledge how unfathomable in my life being in an experience like that must feel so, you know, thank you for sharing that with us because I'm extremely confident every listener we have will not find that experience, you know, in any way relatable to what we deal with in our everyday lives. But I think what's so fascinating George is the thread between unresolved grief and how that actually manifest for those of us in our everyday lives, but how that left unchecked, you know, can in these instances still be the driving force for some of these, you know, psychotic behaviors. So thank you for sharing that. And again, this thread between conflict and grief is one that's very fascinating for me and the idea that this same skill set that you've used in negotiating as one that can be largely translated to how we perhaps manage ourselves and manage employees. And I'm imagining the implications or the usages for that around things like disgruntled employees, team conflicts within organizations. And often we see a lot of conflict arises. It may start as a task conflict in the or organization, but then it spills into the effective conflict into the interpersonal conflict when we feel like we're not being seen and heard. And often many of us aren't aware that some of those wounds are being triggered in those instances and that's what's causing that very emotional response for us. And I just want to go, you know, and step towards this sort of the context of the organization again. And obviously grief is something that we all experience and you've touched on these ideas that you know, going or experiencing grief in community and in tribe is really, really important. And that vulnerability is something that you implore in leaders. But what do you see in your work as being some of the barriers around why grief isn't being spoken about more in leadership and in organizational context.
[00:29:55] spk_2: The main reason Alexis is fear of emotion, fear of expression and emotion, secondly, not even being aware of emotion. So the person just keeps going on and on or they don't pay attention to what that loss has meant. So they do what is called rebounding. They go from one attachment behavior to another without going through the grief and you cannot truly say hello to you, say goodbye, you cannot truly say hello to you, say goodbye. So that all the following attachments then tend to be superficial. So it's not psychologically safe for many people in organizations to show how they feel. Um and so what we are now really focused on emotional intelligence was a game changer. Now the game changer is psychological safety, how does the leader create the psychological safety for people to act and behave without feeling they're going to be attacked or down created whatever. And so what has to happen is you have to be able to know what is it you desire? You see the foundation of all this grief process is to know what I desire. So if your desire is I can't live without this person. You see that's a suicidal statement. You can live without any individual. But it may be very, very painful. It may be in the mindset that you think that, but you have to be able to go through that. And what did I learn from that relationship to get over it? So in organizations, how to build the psychological safety, how to create the process for people to express what they desire, how many people swallow their desires. So they become depressed, they turn to addictions, they get sick. Dr Mahdi talks about the fact that the body, the person who can't say no, their body will say no. So the six is a form of no, the addiction is a form of no the depression. So what is the desire? And then how do I start putting those desires out? How many people don't know what they want. They don't
[00:32:11] spk_1: know what
[00:32:13] spk_0: very
[00:32:14] spk_2: abstract about it or they want two opposite things at the same time, how to get that clarity. So as a hostage negotiator, it's very clear you have to be able to help the hostage taker understand what they desire, what leaders have to do when they're dealing with a difficult conversation. What does that person want? Do they want to prove they're the smartest at the table? Do they want to apology? Do they want to just fight? What is it they desire and then you help them turn that desire into something constructive. So we talk about destructive emotions and how to turn destructive emotions, which is in the behavior into positive emotions. All emotions are ultimately positive, even if it's rage, even if it's deep crying and how to be able to understand that sally you look like you wanted to ask something
[00:33:07] spk_0: again, always 1000 questions George there's so much richness to what you're sharing with us. But I think particularly I really this is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently is this kind of idea of sort of negative and positive emotions. I think these labels really limit us because to my mind and I'm curious as to your thoughts on this questions are trying to tell us something there, it's a form of intelligence in, you know, that we have as humans and they can be so instructive and they can be so kind often trying to get us to acknowledge things that we don't want to, they can be so wise, I think and I think there's we really undermine ourselves when we and this is of course, you know, I think both socially but also in an organizational context for so long, there has been no room for emotions and certainly no room for negative emotions. Many of us grew up in households where negative emotions are not welcome and that's something we carry through our lives then some curious to hear a little bit more from you about the wisdom of emotions in you know, four leaders and how we can tap into that wisdom.
[00:34:10] spk_2: That's a beautiful expression. The wisdom in our emotions, behavioral economics. Already in 1992 won the Nobel Economics prize for the two findings, basically there were many more but the two basic finding is one is we are fundamentally an emotional being who happens to think Many leaders think the opposite. They think we think and we happen to have emotions behavior Economics proved that not to be true. We are emotional beings that happen to think and loss is the most powerful emotion in motivation and making decisions, whether you're the most rational person in the world or the most cognitive person, you still are influenced by the emotions, The emotions are this deep gift that God gave us or however do you believe the origin was in which there are signals to survival. Their signals to survival and other times their signals to joy. What brings joy? So the thing is you can't always trust those emotions because it can be distorted by trauma so that you look for threat and danger where it's not really there. The person who worries all the time, They worry about anything anywhere anytime morning tonight, their brain is working perfectly correct, but they're going to die prematurely from stress, illness and disease and they're going to make others miserable while they're waiting to die. The brain has to be rewired in such a way that you're able to see beyond the pain or the loss and see the beauty. What blocks you from seeing the beauty is grief, It's being stuck with the emotion that you are trying to survive. And grief takes us back to that survival level. Why is the brain fundamentally negative? Because the brain has one overriding goal survival? So we have to look for danger and threat and laws is a danger and threat for the baby. It means death without being taken care of As you grow up, the whole idea of rejection can become a life threatening kind of thing. So the brain is fundamentally negative. But we have to rewire the brain to see the positive and we do this through secure bases, secure base leadership is about having people goals, homes objects, things that give us a feeling of protection and inspiration to take risks, seek change, do new things to experience the adventure of life. The beauty of life? How many people have lost that drive? They don't dare themselves because they don't feel safe. We had a senior leader from hr come to one of the programs that I? M d he was filled with anxiety, constantly anxious. And then he discovered that as a child he was not allowed to play with other kids. He was not allowed to go to the sandbox because his mother thought he would get sick. He did, she didn't want him to be around other Children. He never climbed a tree that became a kind of Point of focus. And he was in a coaching group of five other people and they found a tree and for the first time that 44 years of age he climbed a tree. He was terrified but they supported him. They were sick. Your base, he climbed it once. He did, he loved it. He loved it. They couldn't get him down out of the tree. Then he wanted to keep going back up again. Can you imagine 44 years old before you learned to climb a tree? But you see he was rewiring his brain through the secure basis to understand how to get over that loss.
[00:37:56] spk_1: Yeah. You know, interestingly George when you say this, you know, you make this comment, can you believe that actually? You know, personally I can through, you know, my own inner child work and feeling supported through moving some of these periods in my life as well. It is fascinating how you can as an adult start to appreciate some of the things that you are perhaps, you know, for some people, it might even be forbidden as a child, I certainly know the household I grew up in, we weren't always safe to make mistakes are mistakes weren't easily tolerated. So for a long time in my young career I was really fearful of trying things because I was really, really scared of making mistakes because that was punishable in my household and you know, that's simply the parents of that generation and how discipline looked for them and how they taught us right from wrong. However, you don't always connect the dots between how you internalize that and then how that presents as an adult. So it's really fascinating that gentleman was able to have that incredible experience and
[00:38:53] spk_2: let me just interrupt there as an example. What would have been the best response from your parents?
[00:38:58] spk_1: I think probably to let me know that the outcome I'd achieved wasn't what I was looking for, but how to do it better next time. However, I think there's a fine line between punishment and discipline. Yeah.
[00:39:11] spk_2: So keep the bond stay connected. That becomes traumatic for the child to make a mistake, threatens the relationship. And here's a very important point how many people are in the state of grief or anticipated grief, which is even worse than natural grief because they will sacrifice their own desires for the sake of a relationship. They will sacrifice their own desires for the sake of their relationship.
[00:39:38] spk_1: Everyone who's a people pleaser.
[00:39:40] spk_2: So this is how you can connect things back to the early traumas that are internal. If you ask somebody, they would not say, well that that's not such a big trauma, but it was internally a trauma because it was the threat. How did our caretakers, early caretakers respond to our desires most of the time they are failing in that they punish, they withdraw, they disconnect, They do all kinds of things that teaches the lesson. Don't make a mistake or don't show what you really want.
[00:40:13] spk_1: Yeah, you're so right. And one other reflection I picked up on George that I just wanted to reiterate was this idea that emotions are actually safe to experience. And I heard you say that often the bulk of our stress or did discomfort and perhaps even mental illness comes when we try and push whatever we're experiencing away and we can't accept or experience that. And so it stays trapped and then manifest into that stress that we're experiencing. So it's the desire to be in a different state and not accepting the state we're in is actually the cause of that stress.
[00:40:47] spk_2: Exactly, nice people do.
[00:40:52] spk_0: Why?
[00:40:54] spk_2: Because they don't express their desires. You read obituaries and you can often see the story because it's not just mental illness of manifestation, Alexis, it's physical illness, The disease. The amount of disease and illness is when somebody is sick or they have enough. They have to ask what has been lost in my attachment system, what has happened to the desires that I didn't express? And the whole idea of being authentic means I am in touch with my inner desires and then I express those. Now relationship is being able to control your desires and being able to take into account another person's desires. So we negotiate, we interact in a way and this is the heart of leadership. So on a team, the leader has to be able to do that. Know what the individuals that are following that person want, what do they desire? How do we take those into account? How do we engage people in desires that are destructive or desires that don't fit the team goals. All of this becomes fun matter for how to be able to deal with grief.
[00:42:03] spk_0: I think that's a powerful insight George because it helps us understand that. I think there's often leadership, we can be very forward focused, but it's so important to actually look at a personal level as well back to understand how the past is also informing our present and our future decision making
[00:42:22] spk_2: and the doorway to understand that is triggers what triggers people off and be able to track back the early trigger and understand where that early trauma was internally. The problem is we often think trauma is only external, but the real key is what is the internal reaction?
[00:42:42] spk_0: Amazing. Yeah. I think that being aware of our triggers and honestly, even during this conversation, I've become aware of a number more of mine that I had and also piecing together some of my past as well. So I'm just so grateful for being here with you George.
[00:42:55] spk_2: Thank you. one word. We slipped over pretty fast. There was anticipatory grief. So anticipatory grief is before the actual grief occurs. And the way anticipatory grief is even worse than the real grief because the real grief, it's over, it's done, it's finished. You have to let go. But anticipatory grief is living over and over again that you might lose that or that you will you lose that. So you anticipate the loss and you have the same emotions as the real loss, but it doesn't end till it actually.
[00:43:27] spk_1: And you know, to reflect on a personal experience there George, I think it's interesting because you hear people who are going through, you know, typically the loss of a loved one, they'll say, you know, there's the moment you find out someone's ill or someone's dying and that's grief and of itself and I've experienced this with the loss of my parent, my father and then you have the months or weeks of grieving the loss in advance. And then I always heard people try and explain to me before I went through the actual loss that the grieving process will start again when he really dies and oh my goodness doesn't it ever? And you know, it's grief in so many different forms and you know, it is unavoidable. But I understand how in some circumstances that anticipatory grief is almost like paying tax twice. Because in some circumstances we actually will have the choice to reframe that. You know, whether it's the loss of a job that you might fear could come in the future, you know, and sort of that grief in advance of something that may or may not happen. So I think it can show up in different ways, but it's I think that's a really important thing to clue into is this idea of anticipatory grief. And are we sort of punishing ourselves before we are actually experiencing it?
[00:44:38] spk_2: Well, there's an advantage and anticipatory grief, it's the realization that all attachments do come to an end. All bonds do come in. So if you use anticipatory grief to do what Elizabeth Kubler ross taught, say goodbye before the final goodbye, What does that mean? You sit down with a parent, you sit down with someone who's going to die for someone who's sick or someone that you're not gonna see again after you leave school or whatever it might be. And you say, if this were the last moment I would ever see you, here's what I would want you to know. And you go through the process of saying goodbye. So every moment after that becomes a gift. You see that's what you have to transfer Display of grief it and I've helped so many couples who face death after 50, 60, 70 years of marriage and one of the partners is ill and the other is likely to get sick or die within months after how to say goodbye before they actually one of them does die. And we know reef is a key factor in premature death. And it's also a key factor in people who lose a companion or a spouse after 40 years, 80% are dead or terminally ill within months. Same with retirement, you go through retirement, you don't have a new attachment. You don't have some dream that you want to live. The likelihood of being disabled or sick or dying at retirement is also very, very high
[00:46:09] spk_0: And I really relate to what you're saying about this, the sense of anticipatory grief being a gift. My dad passed away at 97 last year after years of dementia. And I saw my mom really go through a lot of anticipatory grief and I feel like to some extent I was able to and I love that you're putting words to it because reasonably early on I was able to really have that moment of goodbye with my father. And so every time that I saw him after that there was a lightness to it.
[00:46:39] spk_2: It
[00:46:40] spk_0: was a gift. Exactly that Yeah, exactly. And I'm curious and I feel like we could talk for hours because this is such an important topic and it really doesn't get nearly enough air time, if you will. But I'd love to know a little bit more about just to round out, we've spoken about grief, we've spoken about unresolved grief. I feel like almost there's almost more danger, there's almost more harm caused in unresolved grief. And I'm wondering if you can maybe share with us some of the steps that leaders might be able to take to shed light on unresolved grief or even transform grief into a creative force.
[00:47:20] spk_2: I think it's the use of questions, asking inquiry, non interrogation is not a prosecution inquiry, understanding what's going on with the other person and helping them put labels to what they are feeling and the feelings, primary feelings of grief are going to be anger, sadness, fear, panic, and then understanding the stages, the acceptance and being able to go through that and ultimately the new attachment of forgiveness and then coming back to the gratitude. So as a leader, how can I talk to a person about their experience of being disappointed in not getting a job or in a personal loss, how it is for them to lose a parent or a spouse. In the article, I talk about this man whose daughter was died in his arms And for all these 25 years, he lost jobs, he became an alcoholic. He was carrying grief until he could say goodbye to his daughter and then restructure in his brain come back to use the rest of his life to live joy to inspire his daughter. You see, we don't help anybody. And I learned this from Elizabeth Kubler ross with the death of my own son. We don't help them by suffering or being a victim. We use the time we have left to inspire and be inspired so that the leaders should not say don't feel what you're feeling. That's a no, no. What is it that you are feeling? How can I be a the help sometimes it does require in complex grief situations. Complex grief is where one grief activates or triggers many other griefs and you've got a whole network of grief as opposed to a single loss. Maybe that requires professional help, something beyond. But you as a leader can be a secure base in helping people label what they are feeling. That's what hostage negotiators do. They help the hostage taker label what the feeling is over the loss that they're experiencing and how to then identify what they desire. If the desire is unrealistic, how to be able to accept another form of desire that is compatible And we get a 95% success rate.
[00:49:42] spk_1: Well George the amount of just insight and you know, at a personal level, just raw experiential knowledge that you've brought to this conversation today. I've personally taken so much away from this and I know sally has to for leaders, what I'm really hearing is being that key takeaway is to just create the safe space to hold other human beings in whatever their experiences and that this is in fact a deeply organizational practice and the leadership practice not just one that we should be reserving for the homes and for our friends and for our loved one. This is a human practice and we can hold this sacred and special and extremely important space for human beings to experience their humanness. And this is what actually gets us through things like unresolved grief. So George thank you so much.
[00:50:33] spk_2: And I just say one thing that what we hear from leaders say, well that's not my job. My job is to get a result. Yes, but the way to get the best result is to engage people, inspire people. So yes, it is your job to be able to deal emotionally intelligently with the pain people are in. If you want a great result, it's being able to do that as a step before getting that result. But you're absolutely right. It is so fundamental in organizations to be able to face that grief and to not be a hostage and for a leader to be able to do that. They have to face their own griefs. They have to be able to be emotionally available to bond, to be empathetic, to be compassionate. And we know the high numbers of leaders who are narcissistic self centered, they're not able to be emotionally available. Sorry to add all that little quantification there at the end.
[00:51:27] spk_0: I love it. We're here
[00:51:28] spk_1: for fantastic George George again. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:51:33] spk_2: It's
[00:51:34] spk_1: been a delight having this conversation with you and I'm sure there won't be a single leader listening to this podcast that hasn't taken away incredible amounts of new insight. Thank you. And we're so grateful for the time you've given us.
[00:51:48] spk_2: You are very welcome. It's a pleasure. And I hope to visit Australia sometime in the future, not so far away.
[00:51:56] spk_0: We'd love that. We'd love that
[00:51:58] spk_2: God bless you and to all your
[00:51:59] spk_0: listeners, Thank you for joining us for this powerful conversation with George cole resa. After we spoke to George Alexis and I chatted for probably another hour on the insights with each gained. There's no escaping grief. It is part of the human experience by owning our own grief and being present to the grief of those around us. We grow as humans and as leaders and as George mentions, we cannot grieve alone. If you're experiencing grief, we encourage you to reach out for support. We hope Georgia's experience, kindness and wisdom touches you as much as it did us. You can find links to George's books, articles and work in the show notes and you can join us and our community of human leaders at www dot We are human leaders dot com. See you next time.