A LOT with Audra

Ep29
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​[00:00:00]

Introduction to Self-Sabotage
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Audra Dinell: Hey, welcome to a lot with Audra. Let's talk about the person who most often gets in the way of your growth, your peace, your leadership, and your potential. No, it's not your boss. It's not your schedule. It's not even the economy. It's you and me. More specifically, it's the voices in our heads. We all have internal patterns that quietly sabotage our goals.

These saboteurs show up as fear, perfectionism, people pleasing, hyper achievement or constant self-doubt. And while they may have once served to [00:01:00] protect us, they've now become the very things that are holding us back today with our guest, Amy Leslie, CEO of Perspective consulting. We're going to unpack where saboteurs come from.

The top three she sees most often show up for high performing women. How the way we think about stress is shaping our behavior more than the stress itself. And finally, how to shift from these negative mental habits to more empowering ones using the science of positive intelligence. This isn't about becoming someone else.

It's about coming home to who you truly are underneath all the noise. Let's get into it.

Meet Amy Leslie: Leadership Expert
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Audra Dinell: I'm so excited to have our guest, Amy Leslie, here today. We have been working with her at the thread for several years, and she is just such a gift to our community and a wealth of knowledge and a science geek, I'm just gonna say it.

She has 20 years of experience in building, turning around and leading teams with p and l responsibility. Her [00:02:00] experience in the trenches of leadership spans all levels of leadership in all sizes of companies. From small startup firms to large, well-established Fortune 500 companies. Amy is currently the CEO of Perspective Consulting, a woman-owned management consulting firm, and a certified premier partner of the Predictive Index, also known as the pi.

Amy loves helping organizations leverage PI to put humans in front of their thrive zones at work. She also has a passion for helping promote gender equity. She serves on several boards where she is a passionate force, accelerating women in business and helping organizations to create space for gender diversity, understanding diverse perspectives and building inclusive environments where we all thrive.

Amy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I'm so happy to have you.

Understanding Saboteurs
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Audra Dinell: Okay, so saboteur, this is a term that I didn't know until I met you. Can you explain what that is and maybe how you first encounter the concept?

Amy Leslie: Yeah, so I, [00:03:00] I actually encountered the concept of saboteurs through researching what is also called performance mindset.

So my son was a junior Olympian, high jumper. And a very gifted athlete. However we did notice that when he would get really nervous for big events he just kind of wouldn't perform. And we discovered the science of performance mindset, that when our bodies go into stress response, the parts of us that create high performance, whether that's physiological or physical or mental, shut down.

Your body's preserving basically your brain power and your muscle power for a specific function, which is fight or flight. So the saboteurs and I, I love the name actually because it's so true. The saboteurs represent those stress responses that we all have. There are neural pathways that were developed when we were in our [00:04:00] formative years because our brains weren't fully developed.

So we all have them. I hate to break it to you. No matter how beautiful your child was, how wonderful your parents were. All human beings have saboteurs. Just based on our experiences we will have different ones that we developed before our brains were fully developed.

Audra Dinell: And I think it's so relatable, your story of your son, because even though we're all not at that level of athleticism, we do have to pitch to crowds or advocate for ourselves for a raise.

We do have to be in high stake situations and don't wanna just drop the ball.

Amy Leslie: Yeah.

Audra Dinell: But that anxiety just shows up.

Amy Leslie: It shows up in our everyday life and general conversations with our spouse our children, with our coworkers. Sometimes our brain takes over and, you know, we don't say the smartest things in that moment.

So it happens. It happens.

Audra Dinell: I've been there, I've [00:05:00] been there any time or two. Okay. So. There are nine saboteurs, if I'm remembering correctly, and then one that we all have. Can you talk about the one that we all have and then maybe the top three that you most often see show up in high performing women specifically?

Yeah.

Amy Leslie: Yeah.

The Universal Saboteur: The Judge
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Amy Leslie: So, the one saboteur that all humans have is the judge. And the judge is basically a result of how our brain evolved to protect us. Our brain is wired to assume negative intent. Mm-hmm. I know we tell ourselves all the time, assume positive intent. Mm-hmm. But in actuality, our brain is wired to look for threat to protect us.

And so the judge is in all of us, and the judge is basically our survival brain. And thank goodness we do have the judge because it is responsible for many things that do keep us alive especially when we are children and young. [00:06:00] However sometimes it over activates and activates inappropriately.

And so we all have this judge of ourselves that questions. Everything we do or are we capable? We all have judge of others judging them for their actions, words and behaviors. And then we have judge of situations. So depending on your formative experience, one of those may be more active. Some people are more self-critical, some people are more critical of others, and some people are critical of situations or attempting big things.

So, but we all do have the judge,

Audra Dinell: and when I learned that it was a little bit freeing to me because I. You know, aim to be non-judgmental. I'm sure many people do, but to just have that freedom to know like, you know what, it's there. So now you can just be aware of it instead of, you know, kind of trying to convince myself or prove to myself, oh, it's not there.

I'm not judgmental. It [00:07:00] was really helpful to, to just know, to just be free to know, like, no, everyone has this part of their brain and. It's gonna flare up in different ways, and it's my job to be aware and decide what to do with it. Right, right. Yeah.

Top Saboteurs in High-Performing Women
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Audra Dinell: So what abors do you see showing up in high performing women?

If you could say, you know, the top three, is there a top three? Like, is that a good Yeah, so,

Amy Leslie: I did actually ask, you know, the Shazad, she mean, do we have statistics on saboteurs by gender? I would be really curious to track that data. I don't have that information from a statistical standpoint.

I can tell you anecdotally what I see in working with leaders, I get asked to coach a lot of leaders. I do a lot of these sessions. I don't necessarily, although I would expect to. Mm-hmm. I don't necessarily see a preponderance of certain saboteurs by gender. However, I do see in leaders, three saboteurs that seem to be in the highest numbers.

Okay. [00:08:00] Number one being the controller.

Audra Dinell: I'm laughing because that's my number one.

Amy Leslie: I do believe that people who have, and I think it's probably by people who have the controller saboteur seek to control and therefore seek positions of power and leadership. So I, I do see the controller very often in high performing leaders and executives men and women.

I. I see the hyper achiever.

Audra Dinell: Mm-hmm.

Amy Leslie: A lot in leaders, in high performance people. And I see the pleaser.

Audra Dinell: Mm.

Amy Leslie: And, you know, I would expect to see the pleaser more in women, but I'm actually seeing it. In both men and women who were raised in certain environments where they may have developed that kind of need to be accepted need to, to desire maybe attention or acceptance from friends or family members.

But I do see the pleaser quite a bit as well.

Audra Dinell: Interesting. Okay.

Deep Dive: Controller, Hyper Achiever, and Pleaser
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Audra Dinell: So tell us a little bit about each of those. So, the controller, the [00:09:00] hyper achiever, the pleaser. What is a controller?

Amy Leslie: The controller is, you know, this saboteur that needs to control needs to control work being done, needs to control outcomes.

And so people who have the controller saboteur have a difficult time in delegating and letting go, and they often overextend themself to the point where it's exhausting and it creates resentment on their part. And so, you know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be assertive. But the difference between an assertive person and a, you know, when your saboteur kicks in is when you're trying to control so much that you actually create helplessness in other people.

Mm. And so it becomes this self-fulfilling processes of leaders I work with where they're like, well, if I don't get involved with this, then bad things happen.

Audra Dinell: Mm.

Amy Leslie: Because you have created a situation where your team doesn't feel empowered, [00:10:00] they know you're gonna get involved. And so they don't

take control. They don't. So it's, it's learned helplessness.

Audra Dinell: Oh gosh. I see this in some of my relationships. I don't know necessarily if I see that in my team at work, but I see this in other relationships in my life. Yes, yes. So, so the controllers one, I, I see a lot. One of the thoughts that I really resonated with on the controller was the thought that others want and need me to take control.

So when you do this. Study with you? Is that what it's called? Study? Yeah. Yeah. When, when you do the study with you, you get your own list of saboteurs from top to bottom and how strong they are, and it gives you like an overall definition of what that saboteur is for you, and then characteristics you can decide, okay, yes, I identify with these.

Maybe there's some I don't identify with. It gives you thoughts and [00:11:00] feelings. And I just like went to town on this. It talks about the justification lies that you tell yourself, and then the impact this saboteur has on you and others. And I just resonated so much with this controller one, and that thought was one that, you know, I didn't realize, I subconsciously had like, oh yeah, others want and need me to take control of this situation.

And it was like a little bit mind blowing that it was like, oh no, that is not always true. Mm-hmm.

Amy Leslie: Yep. I have a little bit of the controller too. It's not my highest, but it's one of my higher ones, and I'm married to a controller, and so it's really hard to parent. Especially a young adult, we have a young adult on our hand and it's hard to let go of control and not step in and say, well, you need me to help you make this decision.

But the more that you notice these things, the easier it is for you to recognize when your controller does rear up. Mm-hmm. And be able to disrupt and say, oh, this is my [00:12:00] controller. I'm gonna do a PQ rep and back off. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna, I'm gonna not do this.

Audra Dinell: Okay, I wanna get to PQ rep. So before we do that, tell us a little bit about the hyper achiever and the pleaser. Yes.

Amy Leslie: The hyper achievers hyper achievers are so focused on the outcome and so I, I worked with a lot of hyper achievers, so part of my management career was managing salespeople. And top performing salespeople have a bit of hyper achiever in them, and so they're so focused on achievement and success and winning.

What happens is there are elements of your life that are out of your control. Hmm. And the hyper achiever. Almost goes into what we call scarcity mindset when they're not achieving. Mm-hmm. And it actually makes them achieve less. Mm. And so I would see some of my top performing salespeople. Struggle for a period of time because they were so focused on not having their quota [00:13:00] met, that they were actually behaving in a way that was not helping the sell in front of clients.

And you could see that behavior, it's like a scarcity behavior, and it's. off-putting.

Audra Dinell: Mm-hmm.

Amy Leslie: And so we had to really work on, hey, enjoy the journey. I know that's hard 'cause you want the outcome, but you have to just kind of trust in yourself and know that it's going to come. If you're doing, the work, you know what to do.

Sometimes you may not get the outcome you want, but you just keep going through the process. And so that's really hard for hyper achievers. And I see a lot of hyper achievers that get caught up on outcomes. And again, they create an energy around them on their teams and among clients that is not actually allowing them to be as successful as they would want.

So it's almost like it's, it's a negating of achievement effect.

Audra Dinell: I'm wondering if that was a saboteur for your son [00:14:00] being a competitive athlete.

Amy Leslie: I think it, is for young people, especially the pressures that are put on them by themselves and then all others. Mm-hmm. You know, as much as we think we're not putting pressure on them, we do.

I think it definitely right now a lot of his saboteurs have to do with the avoider pattern. 'cause I think sometimes young people who have grown up in environments where we've tried to make them very comfortable. A lot of times they develop an avoider pattern.

Well, I'm just going to not. Deal with this conflict, or I'm not, I'm just not going to deal with this. I'm gonna put it aside. So, his greatest saboteur right now is actually the avoider pattern.

Audra Dinell: Before we started podcasting, we talked about brushing the teeth and the water bottles, and just my morning, which included some of those things.

And my, my kids are young, so maybe it's to be determined, but I could see that in, parenting and, kids today? Mm-hmm. Okay. So what about the pleaser? Tell us a little bit about the pleaser.

Amy Leslie: The [00:15:00] pleaser. I do see a lot of the pleaser. And the pleaser is someone who has hyper focus to acceptance, and that can lead to a lack of boundaries. It can lead to people who have a hard time creating assertion or saying no, and that can be really bad in both personal and professional relationships.

So if we are focused on pleasing. We don't always create the honesty and transparency that all relationships require in order to create a healthy relationship and a healthy set of boundaries. I also see pleasers in the workplace who are leaders who become resentful. So they will, in an effort to be so helpful, they will overextend themselves to the point where then they become very angry and resentful.

And then there's kind of this blow up that tends to happen. [00:16:00] So, I do see the pleaser quite often in a lot of my leaders, and it can be very, again, detrimental to their teams.

Audra Dinell: I could see the pleaser being, easy saboteur to lead to burnout. Absolutely. Among leaders. Absolutely.

The Impact of Stress on Performance
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Audra Dinell: Okay, so what is the misconception that people have when they think about stress?

Because where I'm coming from with this question is we are talking about how we get in our own ways, and these saboteurs we have developed in our formative years that may protect us from a perceived threat then can really harm us. If they're not checked in our adult years. So that creates a lot of stress.

Let's talk about it.

Amy Leslie: Absolutely. So, I actually watched, there's a TED Talk from Kelly McGonal that talks about stress is not harmful to your health, it's living in stress [00:17:00] response. So our bodies if we're not careful, can sit in stress response. So, you know, having external pressures. Can actually allow you to perform in the short term.

But if you do not command your brain to get out of that stress response, then you will continue to have the bad parts of stress response, which are dilated blood vessels, which cause heart disease um, excessive amounts of cortisol floating through your body. So we have not been taught. And really we didn't even understand until recent years in neuroscientific developments that we can actually command our brains under pressure and we can re divert that stress response into a positive response.

And so we have this misconception of, well, I am the victim of stress that happens around me and there's nothing I can [00:18:00] do about it. That's not true. Science and neuroscience have proven even people who have high amounts of external pressures and stress, those who are training their brain to command their brain under pressure do not necessarily have the negative health and wellness effects of stress.

Audra Dinell: Oh my gosh. It's like if we could latch onto this, this could really expand our capacity to hold. The things that we wanna hold.

Building Mental Fitness with PQ Reps
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Audra Dinell: So how does one do this?

Amy Leslie: So the neuroscientists and, and they call the, this science is called a lot of different things. Mindfulness mindset. Performance mindset. I follow sh shain.

He calls it positive intelligence. And it doesn't mean that you think everything's positive. Positive intelligence means you are commanding your brain to have a much more positive response to external triggers and pressures, and he has discovered there [00:19:00] are scientifically proven techniques and they can see these techniques working through neuroimaging as well as studying the actual like anatomy and physiological changes inside the brain of people who rep.

You know, repeatedly perform these techniques and that is what we call mental fitness, and I love that he calls it mental fitness and he equates it to working out your brain. And so he calls it the command muscle. It's not an actual muscle, but it is like when we think about working out our physical muscles, we work out, we can't just lift a dumbbell once and be strong or have muscles.

We have to do this in a repetitive amount frequency, and so. Zad talks about building your mental fitness muscle and your command muscle, and it requires repetitive scientific activities that only [00:20:00] take about two minutes. Each. But if we do that throughout the day, repetitively, we become much more capable of commanding our brains under pressure.

Audra Dinell: And so I wanna hear about some of the exercises, but I'm also thinking like logistically, trying to remember this, put this into your life. Would this be like, you wanna do this morning, noon, and night? You're trying to do this when you're not under stress. You know, you're just trying to do this repetitively, habitually, multiple times a day.

Amy Leslie: Absolutely. And I think I'm gonna borrow from James Clear and Atomic Habits. Mm-hmm. Habit stacking Mm. I find is the best way to do this. So we already have habits built throughout our days. Each of us. If you can take that time that you're doing things like having your morning cup of coffee, brushing your teeth going to the restroom.

Mm-hmm. I know that sounds weird, but going to the restroom is a ha. You know, and. Taking those one to two minutes [00:21:00] and also performing what we call PQ reps that will help you build this throughout your day. And that is the the idea, we wanna be doing this several times a day throughout the day. And if we do that when we are in a stressful situation, we're going to be able to pull that

command a lot easier in that moment and disrupt our saboteurs.

Audra Dinell: Okay.

Practical Applications of PQ Reps
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Audra Dinell: So what are some PQ reps we can do while we're going to the bathroom instead of those who are scrolling on their phones? Yes. I mean, you know, that's gross and real.

Amy Leslie: It's, it's a real thing. I think that the best way to describe PQ reps are they are focused, very focused energy towards.

Sensations and for each person it will different. Whether you're tactile, auditory, visual there's a lot of different things you can do. So some things that are considered a PQ rep, [00:22:00] if you take your fingertips and rub two of your fingertips together and really focus hyperfocus on those ridges of your fingertips.

Really just focus on the sensation of feeling your ridges, of your fingertips. That's a PQ rep. If you listen to sound. So you can listen to all the sounds that you hear, label them if you want to. But be very, very focused on all the sounds that you can hear. That's a PQ rep. When you're brushing your teeth, if you can focus on the feeling of the toothbrush bristles, touching your teeth, touching your gums the smell of the toothpaste just really focusing on our senses.

In a very focused way, that's a PQ rep. Breathing is another form of a PQ rep. So [00:23:00] breathing while counting and being very focused to counting while you breathe in, counting while you hold, counting while you ex hold. So they call that boxed breathing? Mm-hmm. It is a form of a PQ rot. So there are lots of different ways and really it's intensely focusing on

some kind of sensation, whether it's touch, sound, breathing sensation, you know, whatever it might be.

Audra Dinell: I'm just thinking, for me, I wear an Apple watch that is not connected to my phone, by the way. It's just to track my steps, but I'm thinking it has these little timers on it. I could easily just set my timer for two minutes the next time I'm brushing my teeth and pull one of those activities out of the bag.

Mm-hmm. I could easily. You know, do the same while I'm using the restroom or Yeah, like you said in the morning, having my cup of coffee. I'm trying to think of other times in my life that that would be helpful on even like at the beginning of a walk, like taking the first two minutes to just [00:24:00] listen to sounds intensely.

Absolutely.

Amy Leslie: The other thing you can set, like you said, your watch positive Intelligence has an app and you can subscribe to the app and they run you through a very intensive six to eight week program. And there are notifications that are set up to prompt you to do PQ reps. But we have found in working with people that the more you can build this into things you already do, the easier it is to sustain.

Yeah. The other thing I do is before a very stressful situation, there are certain people that stress us out there are certain I didn't have to come and do PQ reps before interacting with you. Don't worry. But there are people, there are situations where we know maybe I'm about to have a difficult conversation at work.

I know that's gonna trigger a little bit of a stress response in any normal human being. So maybe do a couple PQ reps before going into that conversation so [00:25:00] that when your saboteurs rear up or there's a stress response that might happen, a little bit of nervous feeling, then you can quickly you will be able to handle it better.

So I, I also do them preemptive to any difficult conversations or situations where I know, you know what, I might get a little bit stressed out here.

Audra Dinell: Yeah. I remember applying for an entrepreneurship accelerator and before my virtual interview I was sitting there at my desk doing some box breathing.

I'd love to take that into just personal relationships in my life that feel that way, and. Do some prep be for that because you, like at the beginning I even said we're in situations like pitches and advocating for ourself and our pay, but you know, you pulled it to the day to day actually, it's like we're less often in pitches and we're more often.

Interacting with people that can stress us out.

Amy Leslie: Yeah. Or just in general. One [00:26:00] of my, I love it. One of my managers said that she started doing this before, all of her one-to-ones. Not that those were going to be terribly stressful, but she just wanted to be in a really good mindset to be present and to have good, meaningful conversations with her people.

So before each one-to-one, she's doing PQ

Audra Dinell: reps. I love that. I know I have a friend who's told me he will stay in his car before he walks into a meeting. He's like, if you ever see me before a meeting, I will be in my car doing some breath work. And I love that because that's a way to have it stack whether or not the person that you are about to see stresses you out or not, just have it stacking that and deciding before I interact today.

I'm going to do a PQ rep. Yes, that's good.

Amy Leslie: Yes. And then helping each other. I try to talk to workforces about this so that in a kind way helping our co if I see that a colleague is in stress response, kindly saying. I, I think maybe PQ reps would be helpful. And so we actually [00:27:00] teach this inside of companies.

We also teach people how to receive feedback, knowing that there are times when you're receiving feedback where your brain just may not be in a position to receive it in a way that's gonna allow you to grow and learn from it. So just having a language and I like the PQ reps to help each other as well, because sometimes it's easier for us to see stress response in others mm-hmm.

When it's happening and graciously saying, oh, I think let's take a break for pq.

Audra Dinell: Yeah.

Amy Leslie: And let people have that time to get their, their brain command, their brains and be in a position to hear what is being said in a way that's gonna promote growth and development, not stress response.

Audra Dinell: Yeah. And what a culture builder I.

Truly. So I know a lot of our cohort members through their companies, work with you and bring you in to work with their teams and figure out saboteurs. It's such personal work, but also I know [00:28:00] our team in working with you, it's so just eye-opening to see how we can help one another and where one another is coming from under times of stress.

So it has been a huge help for our culture.

Conclusion and Contact Information
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Audra Dinell: How can people find you if they're interested in learning their saboteurs, perhaps bringing you in to work with their teams?

Amy Leslie: Yeah, so probably the easiest way is on LinkedIn if you just. Search Amy Leslie, Perspective Consulting. Find me, connect with me. That's probably the easiest way to get in touch with me and I'll be happy to chat through it.

And we can talk about what makes sense. Sometimes we have to ease into this. I'm very experienced in making this about the neuroscience, which I think resonates with a lot of leaders. Yeah. A lot of times if you talk to leaders about mindfulness, they roll their eyes. Yeah. But if you talk to them about the neuroscience of performance, if you talk to them about the science behind this, [00:29:00] they really get into it because they do start to understand, oh, this is, this is happening.

Among all of us, and I, I get it. I wanna have a good stress response. I wanna be able to perform under pressure. And so yeah, just reach out to me Amy Leslie at Perspective Consulting on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest way.

Audra Dinell: Well, that's amazing. Thank you for coming on today.

Amy Leslie: Thank you for having me.

Audra Dinell: Could have talked to you and dove into many more areas of this, but I just appreciate you taking the time and I loved having you.

Amy Leslie: Thank you. I was, I loved talking about, I am a neuroscience geek, so I love talking about this.

Audra Dinell: Yeah. Well, thank you. I loved it too.