Joyce Chen - Conscious Leadership (Part 2)
Welcome to Part 2 of our discussion with Joyce Chen! Unlock the secrets to conscious leadership with Joyce from The Conscious Leadership Group as she outlines the transformative power of recognizing the drama triangle's roles—villain, victim, and hero. You'll walk away with a deeper understanding of how these roles play out in everyday leadership scenarios and how this awareness can boost your self-awareness, helping you maintain a calm and effective leadership style.
Links and Resources from the Episode:
Click here to order The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
"Joyce Chen - Conscious Leadership (Part 2)"
Original Publish Date: 9/17/2024
Hosts: Sara Best & John Broer
John Broer: Welcome back everybody out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is your co-host, John Broer. Welcome to part two of our conversation with Joyce Chen from The Conscious Leadership Group. If you listened to part one, you already know that Joyce has provided some amazing insights to help our managers and supervisors stay above the line, stay out of the boss hole zone, and today she's going to take us through the drama triangle. We ended part one just as she was beginning to introduce us to that, and now the waiting is over. You're going to get a chance to hear it. Part two is as impactful as part one. We're so glad to be able to bring this special guest to you, and so settle in. Let's hear more from Joyce Chen. The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback.
Joyce Chen: And so knowing how we show up on the drama triangle is another huge self-awareness tool that we use. So I actually have the cards where I can explain it. The first base on the drama triangle is called villain, and that's when we point blame and criticism at others or ourselves and everybody tends to do this. It's a natural reaction. Something goes wrong and we say you did it, it's the system, it's this leader, it's anything. That's not my fault. And then, with a lot of leaders I work with, they point back itself, which is I should have known better.
JB: I did something wrong.
JC: I should have done it differently. Every villain needs a victim, so the next space we tend to be on is victim, which is a sense of like. Woe is me, I feel powerless to do anything. This is terrible, poor me. It's like this. It's a victim consciousness around not being able to do anything about your circumstances or feeling like it's not in your control.
SB: Doesn't matter what I do, it always ends up this way. Yeah, woe is me.
JC: Yes, yeah, then hero is the third and hero is a- it can be a dangerous base because many companies reward hero behavior. Hero behavior is something we can get promoted for. It's when we seek temporary relief. We just want it to be better in the short term, but it's not necessarily a sustainable solution. So a heroing leader is somebody that fishes for everyone else and doesn't teach them how to fish. And hero can be really dangerous in the case of overachiever over here or how my boss showed up in that it often leads to burnout or exhaustion, which then you're of no help to anyone when you're at that point and you're role modeling that for others, which is demotivating and not healthy for the organization. We tend to oscillate between these three bases anytime we're below the line. And knowing how you show up on the drama triangle I think is really helpful self-awareness tool because it's just a shortcut to understanding more quickly that you're below the line, if you are, and how below the line you are.
If I were to role model a really quick drama triangle, say I'm working on a project for six months and then suddenly the company tells me it's deprioritized, we're going in another direction and in that moment in victim it's like oh, why do I always work so hard? And then the company just does whatever it wants. And then in villain, it's they don't know what they're doing. This place is so messed up. If they don't have their priorities straight, they don't know how to lead this company. Back in victim, I'm so tired of this, it's not fair. And then in hero, it's like well, I'm not going to say anything, I'm just going to keep working harder and I'll just tell my team it's fine and we're working on the next thing and everything's okay, and I, I just want to make sure everybody knows I'm a team player. You can see how the drama triangle shows up and we're on all three bases, for it could be anything that we go below the line around, and it just helps. It's a practice of what we call making the invisible visible. It's bringing some unconscious beliefs, thoughts to the actions, to the front of our awareness, so we can see oh, how am I going below the line, how is this showing up, and which bases might even be the most prominent for me.
When we get on the drama triangle, we tend to get a little bit agitated too. So it's one of the things I love about that exercise, it re-stimulates some dysregulation or some activation that's happening in the system. And so when you do the drama triangle, you tend to notice there's some fear in the system, there's some threat in the system. The next step that we do after the drama triangle is just noticing. Can you acknowledge that you're scared? This is huge, acknowledge fear? So many leaders that we work with when we ask them are you scared? They say I'm not scared, I'm just. I'm just like, I'm just frustrated, and they can't locate feel name. That fear is is in the system and it's so important to notice that fear is the controlling feeling that's happening when we're below the line. And so if we don't address that, if we don't look at that, we're not really giving our systems the ability to downregulate out of a state of dysregulation or reactivity.
JB: Joyce, I don't know if in your preliminary conversations with Sara, although I'm pretty sure she did. In our world, at Real Good Ventures, we use objective data. We have four diagnostic tools that help us help our clients see things objectively. Focus on the data, not the drama, one of which is the Predictive Index and PI. I don't know if you've ever taken it, but it helps a person understand their natural wiring that they've had since they were eight to 10 years old, their natural self or what we call their behavioral or leadership DNA. But there's another thing it measures is their perceived need to adapt.
And we find oftentimes when managers are sort of drifting into the Bosshole Zone and then many times they are well, there is little or no self-awareness and no adaptation and they are just driving as hard as they can.
But then there are other circumstances where people are adapting in a way that is so contrary to who they are. They're totally lost, they're burning out, they have no bearing point and no ability to really rationalize what's happening, and you could see just by your description, see how that pulls them down or they drop down below the line, whether it's victim or villain or hero. That's such a powerful reflection for managers listening to this right now, of where am I right now and how displaced do I feel from who I really am to what I feel like I'm supposed to be for my team and putting on this facade or persona and just not finding that fulfillment. I agree with Sara, the imagery that you create no surprise with your expertise in marketing is just so vivid and learning versus the energy of reactivity, which is fear, defensiveness, being closed off, righteous and leading from those two energies.
JC: You can make impact both ways for sure, but from above the line we're just way more available to solve what's in front of us. There's like 100x probability of a better outcome. There's no ceiling on how successful or like how fulfilled we can be from that place.
SB: And it's also a different experience of leadership.
JC: So I know I talk a lot about outcomes or I have so far. But you get to choose your experience of how you're leading. Do you want it to feel miserable, stress out, anxious in suffering, pressurized, or do you want to choose a different experience, where it gets to feel open, playful, collaborative, and we get to choose that. We've all worked with leaders probably what you would call Bossholes who have no awareness of where they are, above or below the line. They are making some degree of impact but because they don't know where they are, there's not a chance that they're gonna be able to shift it when they're solving from. Everybody has a certain experience of that kind of leader and that leader is having a certain experience for themselves. It's not wrong or bad to lead from below the line, but there is another way that could drive better outcomes and create a much better experience for yourself and everyone involved.
SB: So just to recap, first thing people can do is notice where they are near either above the line or below the line, and it's not about the stuff. The content is not the issue that we need to pay attention to. It's the context from where we come above or below the line. And you mentioned the somatic wisdom, the intelligence of our body. I know that the conscious commitment number three is about feeling, all feelings, and there's even direction in the book about how to find that feeling in your body. Would it be worthwhile to speak about that for a quick moment? We could do a whole podcast just about that.
JB: Oh yeah, and I would have very specific people that should listen to that podcast, because when you start talking about feelings like what are we talking about? There's a business. What are we talking about feelings?
JC: Yeah. Well, feelings are, we define them as sensations that occur in and on the body and feelings. There are a million feelings, but the Conscious Leadership Group, for the sake of simplicity, we distill them into five core feelings. So sadness, anger, that feelings are just like data. They're messages that your body wants you to be aware of, and so most of us go about our days and we're just operating from here, from the head center, and we've learned through our life experience or through the workplace that this is what's acceptable and anything below the neck is not as valuable. And we actually say heart intelligence and body intelligence are wiser than the brain. So the brain takes in 4 million bits of information a second. The body takes in 11 million bits of information a second. It is an older form of intelligence that lives inside of each human. The body is smarter than the brain.
An example I like to give of that is have you ever felt your face get hot, even before you have the thought I'm angry? Yes, that's happened to me where I thought I'm angry. It doesn't even show up for like two weeks because my mind makes it. So not okay for me to be angry about whatever's happening. But something happens, someone says something, my face immediately gets hot or my jaw clenches or my hands clench, and so my body's letting me know anger's here and there's a message inside of it for me that's worth listening to. But because of how I've been conditioned personally over here, I was around a lot of below-the-line anger as a child and so as I grew up, I learned and I told myself a story anger's not okay, it's inappropriate, it's destructive, and so I don't let myself feel anger.
It's a suppressed thing in me that I'm always working through. But when I came across cross-conscious leadership and started to learn every feeling, every one of these five feelings, has a core message. It's just trying to give you. It's not good or bad, right or wrong, it's just delivering information. Am I willing to that, to see how it might inform how I move forward and navigate the unknown as a leader? Because that's what leaders are doing all day and part of why we take leadership positions is our ability and willingness to navigate the unknown. Each feeling has a corresponding message, and for anger it's something needs to stop or change. So from below the line, anger might look like blame or criticism, and from above the line, it's just what needs to stop or change, and am I willing to listen to that, pay attention to that.
SB: I love the productivity of an above the line emotion that we might perceive as negative, like anger. It is a clue, an indication, a prompting perhaps to notice or answer the question what needs to change versus I'm not supposed to feel this way. I know that when, in the material which I'm a big fan I'm really trying to be a student of the 15 Commitments that you know, first thing you do is ask where am I? Where am I above or below the line? Number two do I accept myself for being there? And I know a lot of times when I feel below the line or when I am below the line I'm like, oh, you're such a loser, like why do you always go there, why do you have to be such an egomaniac? And the judge and jury in my head just go crazy. But can you accept yourself for being there?
JB: Oh, villain, yeah Villain, there you go, that's right.
SB: Bad person. Bad person. Can you accept yourself for being there? And then are you willing to shift, not without awareness of the brain and the body, and I'm guessing, with practice, Joyce, this gets easier, for people.
JC: It takes so much practice, and so I would say the shift from what we call to me to by me understanding how to shift from a state of victim consciousness to a state of creator consciousness, moving from below the line to above the line, being able to locate, accept and then shift that could take 10 years to get really masterful or adept at, and so it's just a practice. As soon as we start, we're going to see some meaningful improvement, I think. But a lot of leaders say why am I still dropping below the line for this long? Or why did I go below the line this many times in a week? And it's like well, because you're human and we don't want to bypass that in any way. You're just reactivity, not a problem, and you're just learning this material. So having some compassion for the self as we're practicing this and building that muscle because it is a muscle that we all have and we're just building is an important thing to keep in mind.
But what I love you're pointing to is the structure of if there's four steps to learn inside of conscious leadership, what are they? And the first, is where am I at any moment? Any second can I notice if I'm above or below the line? Could I even be so astute at noticing? Like two breaths ago I was below the line, now I'm above the line. You could be above the line before you walk into your in-laws house and then you take one step in the door and somebody says something. You could be below the line. It changes that fast, so being able to notice at any given moment.
Then the second is, can I accept myself for being where I am? When we talk about fear, noticing fear is in the system, oh, there's just a scare here. My ego is perceiving threat to either approval, control or security. All human beings want that and if we perceive we don't have that, or it's being taken away or it's being threatened, we will dip below the line. And can I just be with the scare that's here for a few breaths or as long as I need to be in a state of acceptance. You don't have to accept the problem that you're dealing with. You're just accepting your reactivity. And then the third is, am I willing to shift? A lot of times we say we want to shift, but we're not quite willing yet. We're not done with blaming and criticizing, we're not done with the drama, we're not done with our righteousness and so being really aware, am I actually willing to shift, or do I just need to stay where I am for a little bit.
SB: My mom used to say she'd say you can be upset, just set the timer, give yourself a window, give yourself permission to be where you are, but turn it off at some point.
JC: Yeah, well, and I think, having that compassion for being where we are and then the awareness around am I actually willing to shift is so important because a lot of people will just jump and pretend to be above the line when they're not, and that doesn't work, because you're not actually in a state of presence, you're just pretending to be in a state of presence, and so you can't really fake being above the line or people can sense it. Checking on willingness is really important. And then the last is how will I shift? And inside of this book, the 15 Commitments, every chapter is a tool that helps you shift if you're willing.
JB: If I can go back to the word fear, we talk a lot on the Bosshole Chronicles, how organizations inadvertently shove managers and supervisors into the Bosshole Zone because they don't prepare them. I mean, they said, hey, we want you to that thing. You did by yourself as an individual contributor. We now want you to help this group of people understand how to do that, but they don't give them any equipping or prepare them in any way and talk about creating this sense of uncertainty and fear that'll push somebody right below the line and the organization could have mitigated that. By this I mean by helping them understand how to be a conscious leader. Here are practical steps. Before we even give you direct reports, we're going to equip you and this seems like such an easy way to do that.
JC: So well said, when we're having issues with what's out there, creating any kind of pressurization on us. What we do over here is we go in and down, we explore ourselves through self-awareness, we understand our reactivity and we learn to manage that reactivity, because unless we know what's going on in here, it's impossible to be in relationship with what's out there. Yeah, I see a lot of organizations spending a lot of money trying to clean up toxic cultures or quitting all of a sudden, silent quitting conflict resolution, harassment cases, investigations. The amount of money organizations are sinking into the downside of not investing in a conscious culture upfront is huge compared to an investment upfront in teaching people the skills to have self-awareness and to manage reactivity, building that conscious culture from the ground up. And then you're equipping people with the tools to be in relationship with each other, to have alignment, collaboration, to be able to create with each other, to have compassion for themselves and each other, when we're just a bunch of human beings trying to get stuff done together. Right.
SB: Yeah, it's so good how you describe all of that, Joyce. You've talked about many of the bottom line results, like the ROI on being able to do this and what it can create in terms of healthier decisions, better decisions, but I do think the human factor, I think this saves lives, and I literally mean save lives. I know several leaders. One most recently found himself in the hospital, not for the first time, but undergoing some heart procedures. Very healthy, very fit, very active lifestyle. But it's that pressurization that you've described and it's real and it's present, and our response to it is, I think, what can make or break us.
So I'm over here claiming the business case is I want these leaders to be alive, not just full aliveness, but to continue to be alive, to do the work they do and to find a way to experience life without that giant globe sitting on their back, because, for all the reasons, it's there. But now there's a methodology and some simple tools, questions, an approach we can use to mitigate the natural response, which is to fall, to crack under the pressure and to have our heart not work right. This is the stuff that leaders need to be paying attention to. At the end of the day, it will help them understand. This is not about the work. It's about you and the person you're being. I couldn't agree more.
JC: I could go into a whole thing about the prevalence and the rise of autoimmune diseases what that has to do with stress, how our body reacts to stress, how our body reacts to the suppression of emotions. The more we deny, repress, push away our humanity, the more it starts to show up in our bodies. The body will whisper, it will yell and then it will scream to let us know when something's wrong with that online that's trying to come through.
JB: Well, maybe that's a good reason to have you back. Would you be game for that, Joyce, for a sequel, of course.
SB: What I do want to tell our listeners is you are available and we will have in our show notes a link to your LinkedIn profile much more specific information about how to contact you through the Conscious Leadership Group, because that is what you do. You coach leaders and teams to use these tools?
JC: Yes, and we do trainings. We'll come to off sites. We have different engagement level training programs that we offer for companies that are interested in doing this kind of work and weaving consciousness into the fabric of their organization. And, by the way, I noticed I didn't define conscious leadership, and that might be helpful. We define conscious as being in the here and now, in a non-triggered, non-reactive state, and we like to say that because, as we talk about presence and reactivity, so many of us, as leaders, are going about our day and just being reactive and we have no idea what does it look like to have intention, awareness around, being in a non-triggered, non-reactive state.
And then leadership we define as those who are willing to take responsibility for their impact and influence over others. So by that definition, you don't need to be a manager or appointed a leader. As long as you're willing to take responsibility for how you impact and influence those around you, we consider you a leader. I really believe that inside of everyone there is a conscious leader, just as inside of everyone, everyone there is a conscious leader, just as inside of everyone there is a boss hole, and so we have choice around that, we have awareness. With awareness comes choice. What do we choose? What do we want to experience? What do we want to create in the world? And that's totally up to us, and these tools really point us in how to do that.
SB: This may be one of my all-time most favorite episodes. Thank you for imparting just your wisdom and the cool way you outline this for us today. Very helpful and will be very useful to our listeners.
JC: Great. Well, I'm so happy to be able to talk about this. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about it and I'm happy to keep talking as much as you guys want. So thank you for having me and for bringing this to your listeners.
SB: Yeah, it is truly our pleasure and it is a certainty we will see you again in the future. If it's okay, I'd love to reach out again, but for now we want to say thank you and we'll see you all next time on the Bosshole Chronicles.
JB: Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here, and if you have your own boss hole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, we'll see you next time.