84: Why Your Team Nods Yes.. and Still Fails to Deliver w/ Dr. Laura Gallaher

If your meetings end in agreement but nothing gets done, you're not dealing with alignment; you're stuck in artificial harmony.

In this powerful episode, I sit down with Dr. Laura Gallaher, organizational psychologist, leadership expert, and co-author of The Missing Links. Laura began her career helping NASA rebuild its culture after the Columbia Shuttle disaster. Since then, she’s become a go-to advisor for leaders who want to build high-performance, human-centered organizations that actually deliver.

We unpack why so many leaders unintentionally lead through silence, how to foster psychological safety that drives execution, and why true growth starts with self-acceptance, not self-judgment. If you're leading a team and feel stuck between pressure and performance, this episode is your playbook for lasting leadership impact.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Laura Gallaher
01:44 NASA's Cultural Transformation Post-Columbia
04:21 Designing Culture: Engineering Approach
06:42 Aligning Culture with Strategy
09:48 Unity vs. Diversity in Organizational Culture
11:32 Artificial Harmony vs. True Unity
14:48 Concordance in Decision-Making
18:22 The Balance of Culture and Decision-Making
22:25 Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Improvement
25:36 The Nature of Self-Worth and Fulfillment
28:06 The Power of Self-Acceptance
30:54 From Survival to Thriving Mindset
36:08 Inside-Out Leadership Development
42:13 Building Relationships in Leadership

Connect with Dr. Laura at:

Website: drlauragallaher.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laura-gallaher-phd/

Instagram: @drlauragallaher 

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
Welcome back to the No Limits Leadership Podcast. Today I'm honored to be joined by Dr. Laura Gallagher, organizational psychologist, leadership expert, and co-author of The Missing Links, a book that explores the often overlooked elements of building high-performance, human-centered cultures. Laura began her career at NASA, where she was part of the cultural transformation effort following the Columbia Shuttle disaster. That experience sparked a lifetime commitment to helping organizations grow from the inside out. Her work blends

behavioral science, deep psychology, and leadership in a way that challenges conventional thinking and inspires meaningful change. I am much looking forward to this conversation, Laura, and I know it's going to be powerful. And I know it's going to help our audience, not just focused on how to lead others, but how to be a better leader in their own life and self leadership. So I'm excited for this. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (00:47)
Yeah, thank you for having me, Sean

Sean Patton (00:49)
Well, let's start that. Pretty early in your career, you jumped right into NASA. know, we're going to the deep end. Yeah, right? So tell me about that. How did that all come about?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (00:54)
Yeah. Just to start things off. It's fine. Yeah.

So I came out to Orlando for graduate school to study industrial organizational psychology. I was only two years in, actually, to my PhD program when I found out from my roommate at the time, who was interning at NASA, that they were hiring organizational psychologists. And I remember saying, like, the NASA? He was studying engineering, and so that made sense to me that he was working there. But I was like, wait, they're hiring org psychologists?

What I came to find out is, yes, they were hiring org psychologists. And the reason is because when the Columbia accident happened in 2003, the investigation looked into all the technical aspects of what happened, which I might get into a little bit. But they said NASA's culture was to blame for the accident. And just to throw an extra wrinkle into the whole thing of like, OK, culture is the culprit, NASA had just been rated the number one place to work.

in the US federal government just a couple months before the accident. And so my now business partner and my co-author, he was the one that was asked to lead the culture change initiative at Kennedy Space Center. his background, his PhD is industrial engineering. And he'd worked for NASA for I think maybe about 15 years at that point. I don't know. I got to check the math on that. But he was like, this is a great place to work. Like, what do you mean fix the culture?

And so it sparked in them really important questions about, what is culture? If it's not just making a great place to work. mean, NASA has literal rocket scientists, Nobel Prize winners. You know, they're the most engaged and dedicated workforce in the US government. And I worked there for about eight years. I never met a single soul that didn't care deeply about the lives of the astronauts. And so my business partner now, I didn't meet him until I worked at NASA. He learned that org psychology is this whole field.

that exists to help you understand people's behavior at work. Like what are all of the invisible forces that are influencing people's beliefs and subsequently their behavior, which ultimately leads to these outcomes. Having a, you know, engaged workforce and, you know, making the employees lives better by being a great place to work is an insufficient way to define culture.

The third missing ingredient here, which is relevant for all companies is does your culture actually drive mission success? And obviously with NASA not being able to return the astronauts home, they were not successful in the mission. And so it was really that that sparked them to want to bring org psychologists in. So it wasn't just me. There was a team of us that he hired to come in and work with him on the culture initiative there.

Sean Patton (03:38)
Yeah. So it's interesting. You said that, you know, I know you had, you've mentioned in some of your content about, ⁓ you know, designing culture, like an engineer, reverse engineers of products. And I find that really interesting because my, what I've sort of said in my own, in my military background is that mission drives culture in the sense that I tried to describe why, like in special operations, like, a Navy seal platoon, right? Like.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (03:48)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (04:05)
are as they operate in 30 person platoons, all operating the same platoon together all the time, just them on a mission. The average age is like 25. There's like, all these different factors that go into like what a Navy SEAL platoon is versus I was an Army Green Beret. We operate in teams of 10 to 12, average age is 30. Everyone speaks a foreign language. And our missions are often, you know, six Americans, 200 indigenous forces working on a target.

So it's like, there's no precision. It's like, the world is gray. We're just trying to get everyone to solve this complex thing. Just try not to get everyone pointed guns in the right direction. That's a whole different thing and capability versus 30 people that you've worked in exclusively together. mean, it's like the types of missions we're expected to do drives the culture we have. And so I kind of think of it that way, but to think of it as really...

Dr. Laura Gallaher (04:37)
Yeah.

Yes.

Right.

Sean Patton (04:58)
analyzing it down to reverse engineering and really getting clear on that. how do companies start? Where do you even start to reverse engineer culture?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (05:05)
Yeah, it's actually, it's

totally congruent with what you're saying though, Sean, because the way that we talk about it with our clients is when you're deciding how you want to design your culture, you want your culture to support the execution of your strategy. And so that's actually one of the first steps that we do is making sure that people are super clear about what the strategy is. I think one of the areas that the military tends to have a step up or maybe many steps up on private.

workforce is that like clarity in, you know, what is the mission? What is mission success? A lot of organizations really struggle to be clear enough to actually have alignment. And you need for alignment to exist. We like the Patrick Lanchione definition of this. You need it to be clear and you also have to have buy-in, which is another kind of cultural difference, right? Between maybe military and other types of workforces, including NASA, where the buy-in isn't just like

You know, yes, sir. And a salute. It's like people push back, they resist, they don't get it. They, if they don't fully buy in, they don't necessarily fully support it. And so they're not executing against that strategy all that well. So all these problems start to come up inside organizations when the strategy isn't clear, but the strategy is something that we actually turn into like design criteria. And so it's totally congruent with your concept that you're describing, which is, know, the mission actually drives the culture, but.

Because a lot of organizations don't have that clear strategy. They certainly don't have the clear culture or there's a clear misalignment. You know, if the culture exists in one way, and then there's some sort of shift to the strategy that's going to require people to start to behave differently in order to make it real. This is where that famous expression of culture eats strategy for breakfast comes from. It's not that strategy is not important. It's crucial. It's that culture is going to win.

if you haven't done the work to align the culture to whatever your strategy is.

Sean Patton (06:54)
So when you say strategy for businesses, are you talking about, what is the, like what are we, I always think of it as like, what are we trying to do in the world? Like I think of strategy as up and out, right? Like, so like, what's out there in the world? What are we trying to change, impact, like what are we trying to do in this environment? And,

Dr. Laura Gallaher (07:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (07:16)
And so I think of that as like mission and strategy. Is that what you're saying? Like you're trying to identify that first. Like that's what we need to clearly identify.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (07:23)
That's part of it. mean, we definitely work with clients to help them figure out like, what is their highest level purpose, which will stay consistent even over time. You know, we talk about like Kodak is a very famous example of a company that maybe didn't have a clear sense of purpose. They were focused on being about cameras and film instead of a purpose of like helping people capture their memories, right? Which would have maybe let them be more agile. So we'll help them think about their high level purpose. We help them paint a future vision.

which is, think, what you're talking about. Like, what is the change that we're wanting to make in the world? And then we go a level deeper to say then, OK, so let's take a look at where we are, which can be like a classic kind of like SWOT. There's some other tools that we use. And then where we're trying to go, that's that future vision that we've painted. And what does the landscape look like? So how are we positioned right now in order to get us from here to there? And then the strategy, the way that we talk about it is it's a set of decision-making filters.

So you want the strategy to be clear enough that especially leaders, but hopefully everybody in the organization can look at a decision that they have to make and they can apply those filters and make very consistent decisions despite like no matter what part of the organization they're in, no matter what level they're in, which is going to like help that organization move that much faster from point A to point B.

Sean Patton (08:37)
Yeah, I love that. Like the ability to have some criteria or intent around, what do we stand for? What are we trying to do so that I can, so you can, mentioned being an Adroid, so they can make agile decisions inside an organization. You know, one thing kind of to go back for a second that I found interesting was we can go over the whole thing. You've got this amazing model, this missing links model, and you talk about different components inside an organization.

And there's, there's kind of two, there's two parts that you identify. So one is around, ⁓ you know, unity. Right. And one around diversity. And so as, know, to some people, because you mentioned before, you just mentioned, ⁓ you know, getting everyone on the same page and aligned and like a common clear vision and, ⁓ and how in the military, you know, I'm not sure if it's.

the sort of, yes sir, like I'm all in. I do think that in the military, the one thing that I know I didn't appreciate when I got out into the civilian world after I was in the military my entire adult life from like 18 to 32 was the amount of self-selection that happened for someone to get like on a special forces team. Cause you know, we had people from socioeconomic diversity, racial diversity, like, I mean all kinds of diversity, like all over the world coming together. we,

Dr. Laura Gallaher (09:48)
Hmm.

Sean Patton (09:56)
if you look at sort of maybe standard demographics and a lot of ways we were very diverse. But, and so in my mind, I'm like, I've led diverse teams, but there's this self selection of like, someone signed up to wanna be in the military. Then they made it through these things. Then they went to special forces selection. Then they signed up for, you know, it's like they, all these things, all these, the self selection and filters happened. So we're actually pretty aligned when it comes to like mindset values.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (10:24)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (10:24)
you know,

and some other things, which allowed us to do some amazing, amazing things. But what's is that unity component and the diversity component? Are those opposing? Are those different things?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (10:36)
Love this question. So I would say, like yes or no, the way that we look at it is that too many organizations think that they have unity when they actually have artificial harmony.

Sean Patton (10:49)
Tell me more about that.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (10:50)
So too many leaders make the mistake of thinking that silence means agreement, or they don't even bother to check. Does everybody here on my team truly support the direction that we're going? Do they support this decision that I've made? Do they understand the decision that I've made? When we're working with our executive teams, Sean, and we are slowing them down in the decisions that they're making,

⁓ it's kind of wild, I think for usually the CEO to realize and recognize how many people in the room are just like, they just, they're not either, they're not following, they're not keeping up, they're not getting it, or they have strongly held opinions that don't support the CEO's decision or direction. And they have all of the, ⁓ insecurities stopping them from speaking up. So artificial harmony is the belief.

We're like pretending that we agree when actually we do not. And so the reason that diversity is part of our model, it's one of the four traits, right? Because there's maturity, diversity, community, and unity. We have diversity in there because we want to make sure that teams are willing to consider different perspectives. And yes, include people from different backgrounds and all of that on the way to get ultimately to unity. really see the, this is an oversimplification as are all models, but.

It really does start from the left with maturity, and it grows into unity. But without the artificial staff, I mean, most people know the experience of being in a meeting, and people are sort of like nodding their heads. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, OK. And then in the hallway, it's like, pff, I'm not doing that. Or like, that's never going to work. Right? Like, this happens. Or nowadays, people are on Zoom, and then they're like chatting each other. They're not speaking out loud in the meeting to say what they really think, but they're chatting each other like, well, this isn't going to work.

So a lot of the work that we do, and this is part of what came up from our work with NASA, was how do we create enough psychological safety inside the teams to ensure that if there is dissension, people have dissenting opinions, dissenting ideas, different ideas, different perspectives, they will bring them up so the team can spend more time, slow down, slowing down is a big part of it, to ensure that we've heard all those different voices and that we're considering all the perspectives on our way to unity.

Sean Patton (13:00)
So I've seen this.

I've seen this in a few companies and personally, and so tactically speaking, I guess if you're a senior or middle manager and you think, what's the balance? Because what I've also seen is sometimes it's like, God, we're not going anywhere because every decision, all 15 middle managers need to get their say in and give their opinion. Everyone's in and it's just back and forth. it's like, well, we just talked for an hour and a half in a meeting and

got nowhere. So we're just going to be here again. And eventually, you know, leadership's like, well, deadlines here. We're doing this anyway. Right. So like it's too much versus maybe you think you have, maybe you, know, you think people are able to give their opinion, but they're not. And you're kind of steamrolling them. Like what are some tactics or I guess two things, one, ⁓ what are, as a leader, how do we know? Like, how do we know if we're doing it right? Or if we're, going too far on, on either side.

And then how do we pull it back to tactics to pull it back to where we have that right balance between collaboration and feeling psychological safety, but actually moving forward? Yeah.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (14:05)
And actually doing something.

Yeah. So, ⁓ gosh. Okay. So multiple things to unpack. So let me start with, I'm going to talk about this concept that's called concordance and concordance comes. learned about it specifically through a program called the human element, which is amazing. was life-changing for me. ⁓ and it's at the core of a lot of the work that we do with our clients. And so concordance comes from the Latin of concord, which is with heart, with heart.

So concordance is a step beyond consensus and concordance says that, and this is where a lot of leaders get super uncomfortable, Sean. So anybody listening, will just say like, just hang with me for a moment and play this out. Concordance says that everybody has equal decision-making power at the table. And you're going to include the people in the decision who know the most about the decision being made and also who are most impacted by the decision. Most organizations leave this step out.

And so there's these criteria around inclusion, control, and openness. And there's something called the yes method. This is every single person who's included in the decision is going to give a yes or no as the team is making a decision. And that can be making a decision along the way to the bigger decision, right? Like we might be able to like come up with some options and then rule some options out, but each decision along the way, we want to check in with concordance and the yes method.

says that I'm going to hear from every single person. I'm going to write the decision down so we're clear what we're deciding on. And then I'll poll. I'm looking for a yes or a no. Go all the way around. Now here's the key. If somebody says, yeah, that's fine. That's a no.

If they say, sure, anything other than a yes is considered a no. And even if they say,

Yes, that's a no. Because what we're looking for is with heart. We are looking to see, can they, without any hesitation, support with heart? Yes, I support this decision. And so literally taking that poll helps you know where people stand. It's actually very hard for people to truly fake complete alignment and agreement with something. It's really actually hard for them. Some people can do it. Like, some people really can.

fake with the best of them. But most of the time, if they actually do care, they're going to struggle to say yes if they're not fully bought in. And so that's where we get to the expectation of openness, which says, if you are anything other than a yes, then you get the floor. You get to speak. And it's not just that you get to, but there is an expectation that you speak. So you're not allowed to just disagree but not get into why. We want to hear from you.

And so that's, and there's so much more that I could say about concordance, but as a tactic, even if you don't want to give away full decision-making authority, I think a leader can ask for verbal agreement from every person and ask for that. Yes. Versus yeah. And then some of it is about paying attention to the gut. You know, if somebody's like, yes, like, do you, do you feel something? Is there any sense there of like, I'm not sure if they're fully bought in and just hold space.

for them to raise their true thoughts and opinions in the meeting.

Sean Patton (17:06)
Yeah, I think that.

The ability to make decisions, I think it's really interesting because there's two...

my thoughts are in the past, I've been there's sort of two things, I should call it a better word than things, two things that leaders can never delegate, right? And it's so interesting, talking about them in this context because to me it's culture and decision-making. Like ultimately, you have to make, you know, it comes down to like someone has to own it and own the responsibility. But this construct of

Dr. Laura Gallaher (17:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (17:40)
everyone getting a whole a wholehearted yes, 100 % yes. And then if not introducing, you know, more discussion around that. And, you know, I guess what I found is that

You know, just, I love the way you brought that up because just allowing someone to be, feel heard and feel that their input matters. It doesn't, you know, if you've got five opinions about how to do something like obviously four or five, like we're not doing what they, what they think is the right decision because, you know, we can only go one direction and you're not going to get, you know, a hundred percent agreement on everything. Or if you do, know, every time you're probably in danger of that group think, ⁓ or, know, that's maybe a trigger that you have.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (17:56)
Yes.

Yes.

Sean Patton (18:18)
you have that going on. So it's like, how do you, ultimately you have to make the decision, but just giving people the power and the psychological safety to be heard gets them bought into the final decision, right?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (18:32)
Yeah,

so concordance is not something that I would recommend for every decision that's made inside the context of an organization. And the funny thing is that the leader is the one that actually decides if the decision will be made concordantly or if they're going to retain decision-making ability. And so in my opinion, they are in fact retaining that decision-making control. And the reason that I will push leaders to do it at least once, give it a shot.

on something that's really vital. Like as an example, we were working with a client a few years ago and they wanted to create a very clear priority number one. So not like these are our 17 priorities, but like, you know, what is the number one thing? And it doesn't mean nothing else happens, but it means if there's any question about what to prioritize in terms of time and resources, there's no question. We know what number one is and that's it. We don't have to figure out two, three, four, five right now. Let's just figure out number one. And so we were with this executive team.

and they were making a decision of all of the priorities, all of the different initiatives that they had going on, what was number one. And Sean, do you have any guesses how many hours this team met in order to come to full concordance? They had 11 leaders on the team.

Sean Patton (19:40)
Four hours.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (19:40)
It took eight and this, and it was over two days. So we started in the afternoon and we finished it up the next morning. And this terrifies leaders. It terrifies them. They they're like, I cannot, I cannot spend eight hours on a decision, but here's what people often forget about humans. If I am not fully bought into something, even if I'm not trying to be a bad employee, even if I want to be a good steward of the organization, I am not going to be giving the same.

degree of effort toward that direction. I'm just not. And so we ask leaders to look at decision-making as not just making the decision and that's the time that it takes, but consider the time to make the decision as well as the time to actually implement and execute that decision. When you look at that whole thing, all of a sudden it's much faster to use concordance, especially for the very big decisions. And as a bonus to your point from earlier, everybody feels heard, which is amazing.

The level of clarity and understanding that the team has to about like everything going on in the workforce is huge. And then the other piece that I get really excited about Sean is that usually when you're really pushing a team to use concordance, other stuff comes out too. For example, somebody might say, ⁓ you know, Sean, I have a story in my head that you're really wanting this initiative over here to be the top priority.

because you've put so much effort into it so far. And I think that you're actually deriving some of your feeling of importance in the organization from that initiative. And while I think that's amazing, I'm not sure it's actually what's best for the company as a whole right now. Like they're able to have those mature conversations where they can help people see how sometimes our ego gets in the way. I mean, more than sometimes, our ego gets in the way all the time, but that becomes, right? Like all the time.

And so that becomes part of the conversation. So concordance also works best when you've done some self-awareness work and you've really gotten into that maturity strand of our model, which is all that self-acceptance, self-awareness and self-accountability work.

Sean Patton (21:42)
Yeah, all right, perfect segue, because that was, I did the self-acceptance quiz that you have, reckon, I'll put that link in the show notes here, everyone needs to go and do it. So I, here, I'm actually gonna pull it up, because I have it here, I closed it, but I laid it into pushing but pressured. And this is something that is,

Dr. Laura Gallaher (21:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you were in the pushing but pressured. Yep.

Sean Patton (22:10)
is congruent with my own self-awareness and something that I'm working on. I'll tell you that, let me just ask first, what are you gonna say to someone who shows up as pushing but pressured, someone who's high in self-improvement, but maybe low in self-acceptance?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (22:29)
Yeah, I mean, so this is, I think that I still find myself there sometimes. And, you know, I work all the time to get more into that flowing and growing, which is high self-acceptance and high self-improvement. self-acceptance, as you know, Sean, because we've chatted about this, I am so passionate about it. And it's one of the most misunderstood ideas. So I have no doubt that the people listening to your show are high on self-improvement. Like, that's why they're listening.

Right. They're always looking for how they can grow and improve. And a lot of those people that I, I call them high achievers, they have this belief that they need to beat up on themselves. They need to be really self critical in order to grow and develop. I certainly believed that I believed that for years. thought this was a necessary condition. In fact, a lot of high achievers believe that self acceptance and self improvement are opposites.

Like I can choose to either accept myself or I can improve myself. And so this is where paradox theory becomes crucially important. And paradox theory says you can have two dimensions that seem like maybe they're in contrast, but actually upon closer examination, you see there's nuance and they coexist. And so we place it on like an X, Y axis, self-acceptance and self-improvement. So you can see that they coexist and that's where you get the two by two, you know, consultants. love our two by twos.

So, so this matrix, ⁓ if you do the quiz, which is just like self acceptance quiz.com, it's going to place you somewhere in one of those four boxes. So you can be higher, low on self acceptance and you could be higher, low on self improvement. And so what I would say to people who are in that pushing, but pressured area is you can focus on self-improvement from a self judging lens, or you can focus on self-improvement.

from a self-accepting lens. Because self-acceptance and self-improvement aren't opposites. The opposite of self-acceptance is self-judgment. And you don't need it to grow and improve. So that myth is the most important thing that I always want to say to people that end up in that pushing but pressured box.

Sean Patton (24:28)
Yeah, because I mean, this dichotomy is hitting really home with me. It's something I've been working on through a lens of conscious leadership and that model. I've got clients, I would say the vast majority of the executive coaching clients that I work with when I have conversations around this, it's similar. And it's this idea of, you have worth just being you?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (24:36)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (24:53)
Are you worthy? Uh, not because you do, you produce something or provide or impact. And I'll tell you that I struggle with this viewing it as sort of, uh, as mutually exclusive or a dichotomy, whatever word you want to use, because I do think there's a sense that as human beings, I guess, let me know what your thoughts on this. I'm right, or if you think I'm looking at this wrong, you know, we're tribal creatures, right? Like that's who we are. Um,

Dr. Laura Gallaher (24:53)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (25:21)
We can't exist without a tribe and relationships and interactions. And so I think that genetically fulfillment, we've been designed to experience fulfillment by how we positively impact others. And so sometimes it does feel like when they're like, do you love yourself? Do you feel worthy not doing anything but just breathing? Seems to be.

seems in my head, I'm like, well, seems like a waste. If someone just did that, I would have a very low opinion of them. And I don't know if I could feel fulfillment if I just completely sat in that extreme. So how would you define that construct?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (25:49)
Yeah.

Ugh, I think this is such an important point. and so one of the things I want to say about this, ⁓ in this two by two, so of all the people that have taken the quiz, I've never ever had somebody land high self acceptance and low self improvement, not a single person. And I think that speaks to the power of self acceptance. I'm not saying that like, you can't score that way. Like you know, somebody certainly could, but to the extent that this

abbreviated quiz is capturing something real here. When somebody is high on self-acceptance, they are so intrinsically motivated to be in service to others. That is the nature of self-acceptance. so it's, again, like, I get so excited about paradox theory and everything because it feels so counterintuitive sometimes. But the more OK you are with who you are right now, regardless of what's happening around you, regardless of who you happen to be with in that moment,

the more effective you're going to be at literally whatever it is you're trying to do. And so the idea that somebody is going to feel worthy, even if they're not doing anything. Okay, yes, that does mean they're not going to do something though. It's the fact that like everybody can be fickle. And if your, your self-worth is based on somebody else being happy, you're giving away too much power because they have their own stuff.

And there's so much more I can say there, but I'll pause.

Sean Patton (27:23)
Yeah, so it's just bringing up two concepts for me here. And one is you just mentioned at the end, the giving away your power, right? Like if you're saying my only worth comes from not just me providing, and maybe that's the difference, right? Like not just me providing or serving or giving or being of use, but it's of how is that perceived

Dr. Laura Gallaher (27:32)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (27:47)
Like is the praise coming from the other direction? If I'm if I'm depending my own self worth on that now I'm giving away the power of how I judge myself. If you is that what kind of you're saying?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (27:57)
Yes, absolutely. And

because everybody is always going through stuff, right? Everybody meets fighting a battle you know nothing about. And so if I am basing my self-worth on getting appreciation from them in whatever form I might want to receive it, and I don't get it from them, and I internalize that as a sign that I am now unworthy, that's extremely problematic for humanity. And, and.

It's what happens all the time. Like it happens a ton. And I think when a lot of people are on a journey of healing and growth, that's when they start to realize and recognize like, wow, I am far too dependent on what somebody else might think or feel in order to feel good about me. And so when I talk about the quiz, you your results can totally change depending on what's going on. So it's not like if you take it once, like that's it, you're locked in. And.

The goal is what if it didn't change? What if you are high on self-acceptance and high on self-improvement and you stayed there no matter what's happening, no matter if you've just had a failure, experienced a setback, made a mistake, disappointed somebody, faced rejection. What if all of those things can happen around you and you still feel okay with who you are? That is the magic. That makes you

Sean Patton (29:13)
That's

true resilience, right? Yeah.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (29:15)
Yes, I was just going to say that makes you so resilient. It does

because life is going to throw you challenges all the time. And unfortunately people, like I said, they can be very fickle. People have their own insecurities. Somebody who doesn't appreciate you for something that you've done has nothing to do with you. Other people's behavior is not about you. That's one of the key things that we get into when we're helping our clients really understand self-acceptance. Other people's behavior is not about you. That's about them.

Sean Patton (29:40)
And, you know, I try to, maybe I think this is my, I want to say it's eternal battle. Maybe not, hopefully not, right? Hopefully it's not. But is this concept around, can I still accomplish what I want to accomplish, live the life I want to live, have the impact, have fulfillment? And can I do it driven by love and joy and abundance versus driven by fear and scarcity?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (29:47)
You

Yes, that's exactly what this is about.

Sean Patton (30:08)
Yeah, so

but it's so foreign to most people because they because they've gotten you've gotten to whatever they're at now. I think about athletics like right like you know a lot of us or anything academics. It's like I need to get these grades so I get into school so can have this job famous thing or I need to you know I need to practice here because if not I'm going to fail. like we're we're all and it kind of goes to your book in your book. You talk about how we're preconditioned to have this negative cognitive bias of like looking at loss and looking at fear as like.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (30:12)
I know.

Yeah.

yeah. Yeah.

Sean Patton (30:37)
We think about that more and so we're in some ways people will use that as like a crutch and an anchor and they see it as the only way for them to drive forward. But I don't know, how do we switch that mindset to start asking those questions or start experiencing a different way to drive us forward?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (30:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so that you're describing survival mode. And that is the default mode. We come here onto this planet and we have an instinct to survive. We want to survive. And so if you're truly in a survival situation, fear is the exact driver that you want. That's what you want at that point. That fear is biologically, chemically in your body, things are changing to help you to be in that fight, flight, whatever it is that you need to literally survive.

When you're not in a survival situation, it's very different. If you bring that survival mindset and that fear-based, scarcity-based mindset into a situation where we're not actually talking about life and death, then it's actually working against you. And so that's one of the key things to recognize is that your brain and your body are fooling you into thinking that you need to be in scarcity. You need fear as the driver in order to survive. You need to remind yourself actually how safe you are.

and how much you're not about to die as soon as you're out of that thrive, right? From survive to thrive. So that's part of it. And just being able to recognize like this is not a design flaw, it's a feature. It's great that our brains and our bodies do this for us. We just over apply it.

Sean Patton (32:07)
Wasn't it? Yeah.

Well, and I take it as like, you're right. Like think of it as a gratitude. I, for me, I set a foundation of going back to gratitude of like, until you, I'm glad you bring that up. It's like, were designed and you know, of things I use, like in my, my, one of my speeches, I looked up, you know, there's been estimated a hundred billion humans have walked the earth, right? It's like a hundred billion, a hundred billion of us. And it's like, and the vast majority of those probably were living like,

and survived because they were driven by fear and scarcity and because they were, you know, in tribes, you know, hunting dangerous giant animals with pointy sticks and warring with each other. like that, that's how 99.9 % of all humans have lived. How lucky are we that we're in this 0.0001 % of people that's like in a house with air conditioning, with a society, you know, all this, all these things. And so it's like this disconnect between

Dr. Laura Gallaher (32:45)
Yes. Yep.

I know. Shelter sustenance. Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Patton (33:03)
the world we were designed for and the world we're living in is now creating these psychological problems we have to overcome. like reminding ourselves of that, right?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (33:10)
Big time.

Yeah. And I think what you were referring to earlier is when we were writing in the book about how we're hardwired for discontent. Right? And that's a beautiful evolution strategy for us as a species. If we are never content with what is, that means that we will continue to strive and look forward. But this is exactly where paradox theory becomes so important. Because when we invite people to let go of fear and scarcity and self-judgment and lean in instead to love, abundance, and self-acceptance,

That desire to improve doesn't go away. We're so afraid. High achievers are so afraid that we're going to lose it, but you are motivated. bet you are Sean. And I can ask you first. I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but if you didn't have, if you don't have fear, cut. didn't like that. Okay. So if you didn't have fear as a motivator for you, what else do you think would still drive you to want to improve and grow?

Sean Patton (33:48)
Sorry, go ahead. I can edit it out if I make a pool myself.

think gratitude for what I have and how my life, didn't create this society, I didn't create this safety, I didn't create any of it, I was just born into it. Also the people in my life you sacrificed to continue to provide me opportunity, that would drive me to want to give back and then I think also just.

And part of that is I think there's an inherent gratitude or appreciation or love or sanctity for life itself, maximizing the experience of life itself.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (34:38)
Yeah. Yeah, so there can be this like, I just want to continue to make things better. A sense of wanting to give back, right? Having that gratitude and wanting to like pay it forward. I think what we talked about earlier, having a clear vision of the future is huge. Like you've been through that Sean, right? Where you paint a vision of the future of what something can be and like it triggers this excitement in you. You're like, man, wouldn't that be cool? That.

That's a huge driver. And the learning process, most of us understand that feeling of learning and finding joy in the process. Some stuff I've learned, I'm like, I wish I didn't have to learn this right now. And there's been so many things that as I'm learning it, I'm like, that is so cool. And I just, want to learn for the joy of it. And so helping people recognize that your desire to grow and improve isn't going anywhere just because you're choosing to let go of the fear and the self judgment and the scarcity.

Sean Patton (35:30)
Yeah. So I love this. I love this stuff. This is great, know, content that I've continued to work on and I've learned a lot. So let's talk about in organizations, right? Because you have this inside out theory, you know, which I agree with, right? Which, you simply basically it's just starts with self, then it goes to team, then goes to organizational culture, just for everyone who's listening.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (35:42)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (35:53)
And I agree with him. We've talked about the self-examination, all these things. We've talked about, know, improvement. And you talk about, you know, for me, the backbone of every leadership, intentional leadership development program I've been a part of all the way from, you know, Scouts, right? As a kid to going to West Point to like, you know, anything, it always started with character development, like integrity and character is the backbone of leader development.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (36:15)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (36:19)
self-development and this self-development is the key to inside out there.

Do you, I have not gone to a company or worked with leaders who are trying to develop better leaders and managers where they're doing character training, they're doing integrity training, where they're doing, where they even, is this even the role? this reasonable for us to have an expectation that our business managers have an obligation to help people develop to better human beings?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (36:32)
Mm.

Hmm. Is it reasonable? I would say it's desirable. You know, in the missing links culture model that you referenced earlier, there's the culture traits. ⁓ but we acknowledge that organizations are groups of individual humans. And so the other piece of the model is what are the fundamental drivers? Like I, I love talking about this as forget the carrot and the stick in terms of motivating people, motivation.

truly comes from within it only comes from within accountability only comes from within and the fundamental human drivers. I think it's chapter two that we talk about this. There is so much research that gets into what are the things that we are hardwired to want as human beings and we're born with it and it doesn't go away. Defense mechanisms might come in and like shadow it a little bit, but the very first one, our model is growth. are all fundamentally driven.

to want to grow. It's baked into our DNA. And so if you're working in an organization that doesn't provide any of that, you're never going to get the best that you can out of your workforce.

Sean Patton (37:53)
When also, right, you end up, now that I started like in business, MBA land, right, we all learn, wrapped about as the Peter principle, everyone gets promoted to their level of incompetence, right? It's like, you're good at this job, so you get promoted. And then if you're good at that job, you get promoted until you're not really that good enough to be promoted. So you just have like every level. So it's like, if you're not setting a way for your people to grow, like are you actually developing?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (38:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (38:19)
Are you developing more capable leaders or are you just promoting the least incompetent person in each role to the next level because they've been there long enough? Yeah.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (38:30)
Yeah. Just do it based on tenure. I don't know. Yeah.

And you know, there's this parable and I'm sure that it was based on an actual story at one point in time, but the parable between the CEO and the CFO where the CF, the CEO wants to develop the workforce wants to invest in their development and growth. the CFO says, well, what if we invest in them and develop them and they leave? And the CEO says, well, what if we don't? And they stay.

Sean Patton (38:53)
Yes. Yes.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (38:54)
Right. And so,

you know, I'm not big on shoulds for people. I don't want to tell leaders what they should do. I would say that the research is pretty clear that if you invest in the development of your folks, it's going to have a positive impact on your culture overall. So I won't say that they should. I think that it's in their interest if they're wanting to create a workforce of people that are engaged and loyal and actually performing at their peak.

Sean Patton (39:21)
You know, there's a great question that recently a mentor of mine brought up because what I, framed my conversations around the work I do around leader development and, and, you know, helping companies retain and attract top talent. And, and then later on, after I came with it, this mentor said one of his favorite questions to ask, you know, these leaders is, so you want top talent, right? Everybody wants A players. Everybody wants great people on their team, right? Like everybody, everybody does. said, okay, so

Dr. Laura Gallaher (39:46)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (39:47)
Outside of compensation, why does top talent want to work for you?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (39:50)
Did you have a question? Do you want me to answer that or do you have an answer for it?

Sean Patton (39:50)
And it's, yeah, yeah. I'm

just saying like that's, I'm hearing you say is like, it's like if you're developing them, you cause you mentioned that's like an inherent driver for humanity. So it's like, if you're helping them grow, they're going to want to stay, like top talent is going to want to grow, right?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (40:06)
Yes, absolutely. And, and you know, my other maybe bigger answer to that question too is how does that person, that top talent, how do they feel about themselves in your presence?

Sean Patton (40:16)
Good one. Now you're talking about like, really is, yeah. How do they feel? How do they feel when they're in your presence?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (40:17)
one of the biggest drivers. Yeah.

How do they feel about themselves when they are in your presence? So leaders who lead with fear as a motivator, they're like, you know, sometimes you got to use fear to motivate. I'm like, it is a tool, and it gets you perhaps very short-term results. It doesn't usually give you long-term results. And so over time, you're not going to have the results that you're looking for if fear is your primary tool to motivate people. And so if you're using that fear of, I'm going to

you're going to feel judged if you're not doing the things that I want you to do and they don't feel good about themselves in your presence and they might be like scrambling trying to get that sense of approval from you. You're never going to get as much out of that person as the person who actually feels like they matter to you, like you believe in their abilities and that you just generally like them, right? Or regard them with warmth. We talk about it in our world. We use a theory that says all humans want to feel significant, competent, and likeable.

And so what are the things that you as a leader can do so that the people that are working for you, it's easier for them to feel like they matter, like you trust them and you like them. And all of that, just to circle back, is much easier when you actually feel those things about yourself, which is that self-acceptance.

Sean Patton (41:36)
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, and modeling that behavior.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (41:40)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (41:40)
So what a leader wants to do, they want people to feel that. are the first things they can do?

help increase the probability that the people will feel that way around.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (41:50)
Okay. So significance is, about including them. So like pay attention to them, get to know them as a human being. Like get to know who they are. This is part of why leadership is so difficult. I think is because truly effective leaders are creating very powerful relationships with each of the people that are following them. And depending on the scope of your team, that can be a lot of folks. So yeah, pay attention to them, get to know them as a human being. It doesn't have to be like all their personal life stuff. can be, but you know, what do they like? What are they not like?

How do they, what kind of work do they enjoy? You know, just get to know them, spend time with them, listen, actually listen to them. This is still the number one thing that I'm working on as a leader is like making sure that I am listening well when it comes to like our own decision-making. As far as competence, the best way to earn trust is to give it.

So if you want somebody to feel competent in your presence, then you want to show them that you will give them some degree of control. What are you delegating to them? Are you asking for their input? If you never ask for somebody's input on something, they're going to think that you don't care about their opinion. So how can you empower them? How can you give them that trust by giving them some control over some piece of the work?

And then when it comes to likeability, the biggest thing that you can do is be authentic, be willing to be vulnerable. It doesn't have to be full balls to the wall kind of vulnerability, but be open. Let your guard down. Share something about yourself as a human being, and they'll likely do the same. And that's where you can create that feeling of connection. Those are my quick tips for each of those. There's depth in every one of them, but.

Sean Patton (43:21)
Yeah. Well,

no, yeah. And this is, uh, yeah, we could, man, fight this for, we could do a full like a Joe Rogan three hours on this and keep going. I'm sure. Cause I love this. Um, man, but I'll let you go. Cause we're about running out time. Um, Dr. Lorgow, this has been awesome. I really appreciate the work you're doing and, in all the wisdom that you, you shared with everybody here today, when they want to, you know, when listeners want to

Dr. Laura Gallaher (43:32)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (43:47)
Find you, get in contact with you, learn more. What's the best way to do that?

Dr. Laura Gallaher (43:51)
⁓ so the quiz is probably great, right? Self acceptance quiz.com. Cause we'll be, ⁓ in touch via email after that, you'll get a report and I'll send some coaching emails based on the results that you got. ⁓ and the next best place would be LinkedIn. Just tell me that you heard me here on Sean's podcast, if you want to connect and I'd be happy to answer any questions that came up or just, you know, welcome you into the circle.

Sean Patton (44:11)
Awesome, well thank you so much. Again, I appreciate it and I look forward to hopefully having a conversation again soon.

Dr. Laura Gallaher (44:16)
Thank you, Sean.