Disrupt Yourself
Podcast

 

 

330. Shade Zahrai

 

 

Welcome back to the Disrupt Yourself podcast. I’m your host, Whitney Johnson, CEO of Disruption Advisors, where we help you grow your people to grow your organization because organizations don’t Disrupt people do. The building block of that growth. It’s you. Do you ever wonder where some of your instincts come from? Were you born with them or were they imprinted on you at an early age? For example, how do turtles know to lay their eggs in the exact spot they themselves were hatched? There’s something to be said for evolutionary psychology, how we evolve in ways that influence how we behave as much as whether or not we walk on two legs or in the case of the turtle for short.

 

Zarai is a master of unpacking that hind brain thinking. The part of us that, for example, mirrors the body language of someone we’re attracted to, or the part of us that just kind of knows what to do in social situations. Or sometimes the part of us that has no idea what to do. Shade is a behavioral strategist and leadership coach and the founder of influential Global Inc, where she works to strengthen the leadership of companies from Microsoft to McDonald’s, with 1.2 million followers on Instagram and almost a million on YouTube. Shade is bringing her unique take on building confidence and team compatibility into a digital age with bite sized clips. And the world is loving it. I hope you enjoy.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right. So, Shade, what is bachata? A Dominican dance not too far from salsa. Yes, I had to look that up. What does that mean to you?

 

Shade Zahrai: What a question. Wow. I didn’t expect it to go in this direction. Okay. What does bachata mean to me? Bachata signifies a really beautiful time in my life. When I was studying law and psychology, I was confused about my future, and I needed an outlet. And so, I pursued dancing on the side Latin dance. And I discovered this Dominican style of bachata while I was doing my law degree. So that’s what it means to me. Very fun. A wonderful hobby. Oh.

 

Whitney Johnson: Did you want to be a dancer as a child or is this something that you just took up as an adult?

 

Shade Zahrai: Yeah, it was something. I mean, I did ballet as a child. I think a lot of young girls do ballet, that wasn’t really for me. Dance was something that I did during high school. I did a lot of hip hop. I did some tap, but I never had aspirations to do it beyond it actually fell into it. So, what had happened is I just got back from spending a year overseas. I was doing voluntary service, overseas community work. It was at the Baha’i World Center in Israel.

 

Anyway, I’d just come back and I went into a bit of a this was in my second year of university. I went into a bit of a mild depression, which I think some people experience when they go and have an amazing experience where they grow so much and they come back and they’re expected to fill the slot that they left, you know, by those around them. So, I was really struggling and my brother and now sister in law were learning salsa for their wedding dance. They said, okay, you need to get out of the house, come with us. And that was my first foray into the world of Latin dancing, and I loved it. One of the things I think is so beautiful about partner dance and actually I did a performance, a narrated dance performance for one of the TEDx conferences with this message. It’s language without words.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right, so you studied law and psychology. What I’m wondering is, what did taking charge of your career look like for you?

 

Shade Zahrai: I had this really pivotal moment. So, when I studied law and psychology, I fell into that because I was always passionate about the psychology side. I have been fascinated by human behavior for as long as I can remember. I did law because I did really well in high school, and I felt like everyone was pressuring me to do something like law medicine or engineering. So, I just did law. It seemed like the easy option was not a good choice for me because I struggled. And then my early career started in a commercial law firm was never what I wanted to do. But sometimes you just follow the current and you end up in a space that you start questioning, what am I doing here?

 

I was so filled with self-doubt. I remember hiding behind my cubicle so that people couldn’t see I was there and wouldn’t give me tasks because I was convinced that I wouldn’t know what to do. I was so filled with imposter syndrome. It was it made me physically sick. Actually, I had a lot of anxiety. I had a lot of physical ailments as a result of that. In any case, I then moved into banking and finance, So I spent four years in the legal industry, moved into banking and finance, and all of my self-doubt came with me. I thought, new industry, great, I can start fresh. But no, it just came along like a bad smell. So I’m in this new environment again. The imposter. What am I doing here now? It was in my first year that I had a really pivotal moment where I met with someone who would become a mentor and she was a senior leader within the organization. And so I’m I’m new, I’m young, and she’s graciously giving me her time.

 

We’re sitting in the internal cafe and she said, Shari, what’s on your mind? What’s going on? And so, I’m sitting there with my coffee and I said, Mel, I don’t feel like I have what it takes to succeed here. I don’t know how to do financial modeling. I’m not good with numbers. Someone’s going to figure out that I don’t belong and I’m going to lose this opportunity. I can’t succeed. And so, she just sat there watching, and then she said, Chad, why are you focusing on everything you can’t do? You’re not here because of what you can’t do. You’re here because of what you can do, what you can bring to the table, find a way to leverage your strengths and really bring them to life.

 

Now, that message was exactly what I needed to hear at that point, because up until then, I had been fixating on everything I didn’t know how to do. And as we know, the brain is wired to magnify what you focus on. So, by me focusing on those things, that’s all I was seeing. That’s all I was paying attention to. Confirmation bias was reinforcing that I didn’t belong. The moment she said that, I thought, gosh, yes, I have wonderful strengths in being people oriented. I have strengths in being curious, my growth mindset. I can just bring those along with me and use those to learn what I need to. And that became a real turning point for me, but also something that has fueled the work that I do now with the company that I run, working with companies, working with people, helping them recognize how to overcome the limits that they’re imposing on themselves.

 

Whitney Johnson: So that conversation for you was pivotal. What did you do differently? So your your brain shifted. But what did you do differently right after that conversation or in the succeeding months?

 

Shade Zahrai: The first thing I did, which is seemingly simple. I exercise a little bit more self-compassion. So, what that means is when I started to notice my thoughts going into that self-betraying place of, oh, you don’t belong here, I gave myself a bit of extra grace and I reframed my internal dialog. Now my background was in psychology, so I was quite aware of a lot of the techniques and tools that we have available to us. So, I started applying some of them and that changed how I felt. So simply by changing my, yeah, it’s great. We can apply things we’ve learned in the past, in the present, and just by simply changing my thought process, I noticed that I felt differently. And then when I felt differently, I was showing up differently to meetings, to work environments. And because I was showing up differently, I was doing different things. I was putting up my hand where before I hadn’t, I was seeking support and asking questions where before I was too afraid to because I thought it would reflect a lack of competence or, you know, something else that was holding me back. So that very first piece around, focusing on mindset really shaped the rest of my outcomes. And then, of course, I started asking questions from people who became mentors. I started becoming more intentional about my career. I mean, look, things didn’t radically change overnight, but it was a slow transition and it really paved the way for the rest of my career in the corporate world. And then, of course, coming out of it as well.

 

Whitney Johnson: How many years ago was that when you had that conversation?

 

Shade Zahrai: That was. Ten years ago. 10 or 11 years ago. Mm. I’m so glad I had that conversation too, because I think about what would have happened had I not had someone like that tell me that at that time where I would have gone, how I would have felt and I’m so grateful for it.

 

Whitney Johnson: When was the last time you thanked her for that conversation?

 

Shade Zahrai: Recently, actually. Well, I say recently, but a couple of years ago. So, she I call her a mentor. She didn’t know she was a mentor. She was just a friend of a friend who offered to meet with me. And then I tell that story so frequently. And every time I do, I kind of thank her in my mind. But I reach out to her a few years ago. I think I need to do it again. She’s moved on as well. It’s been beautiful to see where her career has taken her, and I don’t think she realized at the time the impact that her words would have on me and then the impact that her words have had on the thousands of others that I have then shared that story with, which I think is a testament to the fact that we have so much influence in the lives of others, we don’t even realize it, this beautiful ripple effect that we can create so good.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right. So, you are studying for a PhD. That’s right. How far along are you?

 

Shade Zahrai: I’m in my final year, so the pressure is mounting. We’ve got a one final piece of research. I conducted a piece of research last year. I’ve got one this year. And it’s such an exciting space. I can’t wait to tell you about it. It’s so relevant. I picked it because it’s a passion project for me and it actually came up because I had been noticing. So, through a lot of the work that we do with companies, mainly Fortune five hundreds, we’ve really focused our attention on studying the psychological and the performance experiences of high potential individuals, so people with a lot of potential. And we found that the central driver of sustained performance is actually the quality of someone’s inner world. So, their self-perception, their emotional state, their motivations, how positively they view themselves. And these elements either fuel people to achieve great heights or confine them to limitations. What we were coming up against and you might have come across this yourself as well, Whitney.

 

There’s this common universal frustration. A lot of people are experiencing, and we were hearing it as people feeling like they were underperforming. Now, peak performance, which is the space that we spend a lot of our time in a professionally in the company that I run, peak performance requires you to take action and to move forward in spite of obstacles. A prominent hurdle to that is self-doubt, which is powerful, deflating and paralyzing. And so why I decided to go and pursue PhD research is I wanted to understand what is it that really holds people back from taking action. What is it that’s preventing people from performing at their peak? And fundamentally, it comes down to some element of self-doubt or what we hear in our minds. And we’ve come across three distinct areas that people get stuck the most. Three dominant recurring mean we call them mind pits because they’re very much created and perpetuated by the mind. We’ve got three of them.

 

The first impediment, which is the one that we find right up front, is we call it failure to launch. So, this is where you might have a lot of goals and you want to achieve amazing things, but you just can’t get started. Now we find a lot of people are in this space. They they have these beautiful aspirations. They know where they want to go. They have business ideas. They have plans to start side hustles or to advance in their careers or to write a book or whatever it is, you know, learn bachata. But they don’t get started. And when we look at decades worth of research, there’s one very common overarching theme as to why they get stuck here. And it’s because of rumination. Overthinking and overthinking leads us to stagnation because we fixate just like how I was fixating on everything that was wrong early in my career. We fixate on what’s missing, the threats, perceived threats, because they we feel like they’re challenging our survival and we have a negativity bias. Now, of course, it’s not helpful for us because, as I said, the brain magnifies what we focus on. So we find a lot of people find themselves in this particular space. And then the next question that we hear from them when they’re like, Well, that’s me, I can resonate with that.

 

What do I do about it? I want to just share one quick technique here for anyone who might be saying, okay, this is me, what do I do? So you’re in this space because you’re not taking action. There is a beautiful insight from the work of Peter Gollwitzer, who’s done a lot of work on goals. Fundamentally, what you need is something called a goal intention. You will become three times more likely to get started if you have a clear goal intention. And there are three things you need to specify. You need to specify the time when you’re going to get started on something. You need to specify the location, where are you going to do it? And then finally, the behavior. What are you going to do? So at in I will. And it sounds remarkably simple, but there are countless studies that reinforce when you’re really clear on these things, you basically hold yourself accountable. You’ll be more likely to get started and then you’ve just got to do it. Don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough for now because a lot of people who are here are perfectionists. They don’t want to start unless they know they’ll do it perfectly.

 

Whitney Johnson: Yeah. Okay. So let me jump in, because this is something that’s firing for me as I’m listening to you. So as you know, in our work, we talk about we use the S curve of learning as a way for people to think, to understand what growth looks and feels like. So what I’m thinking in my brain is I’ve got a person I, you, anyone that we’re coaching is at the as at the top of the S curve and they’re thinking, oh, you know, I’ve accomplished what I wanted to do here. It’s time for me to do something new. But I’m afraid to do that new thing. I’m afraid to jump to a new S curve. And so what I love about this is that you’re saying, okay, when, where, what at in I will. And you just jump and that helps you start that new s curve. It may not work, but you don’t know. You know, as as one of my coaching clients says the know you already have so you don’t know if it’s going to work, but you just jump. So that’s I love that. And it’s and I love that. The person’s last name is Gollwitzer, who is an expert on setting goals.

 

Shade Zahrai: I didn’t even pick up on that. But yes, how convenient. That surname is perfectly suited to what he’s doing.

 

Whitney Johnson: Yes. Okay. So that was your first impediment, the failure to launch.

 

Shade Zahrai: The second one we call treading water. We know what it’s like to tread water in the water. You don’t go anywhere, but you’re exhausting yourself. It’s a very good skill to learn. But we’ve defined this as the second and I’ve got a story that actually illustrates this particular pit. You can probably figure it out based on the name, but some years back I was connecting with a highly talented young man. He was one year from finishing his PhD, so he was I think he was in year four IT who was involved in rigorous experience. He’d done his research and he told me he was going to drop out, which I couldn’t believe. I hadn’t started mine then, but still I couldn’t believe he would drop out at that point. Then he also told me he’d half finished his second master’s degree, which was an MBA, dropped out of that to then pursue the PhD. So as I was speaking to him, I was learning that it seemed like he couldn’t see things through. He wasn’t getting anywhere and he was exhausted. He was part he had part completed commitments but unable to make progress on them. And so we call that treading water. He was exhausting himself without actually going anywhere meaningful. We call this the Second Mind pit because it’s very easy to fall into and it’s largely because of self-doubt.

 

Self-doubt leads you to question if you made the right decision, Is this the right thing? Should I be spending this time doing this? Is there something else? So you feel dissatisfied? You convince yourself that the grass is greener on the other side with that thing or that job or that opportunity, so you lose motivation for the thing you initially committed to doing, and then you get bored. And then when you’re bored, there’s no more dopamine hit in your brain. So you go on search of it somewhere else. And this is why some people are addicted to starting new things, constantly multitasking, never seeing things through because the self-doubt is. Think better of them, the better of them, and it keeps them from committing 100%. Now, this is a really interesting thing with this this gentleman. There was an underlying reason why he was doing this. And for him we discovered it was a lack of meaning. He stopped the PhD to actually start a charity where he was working with underprivileged youth, and he’s still doing that seven years after and he is very fulfilled. So it’s not actually that he couldn’t commit. He was just doing the wrong things.

 

Whitney Johnson: And we find he was on the wrong S Curve. That’s interesting. Yeah.

 

Shade Zahrai: So on the wrong he was climbing a ladder but going to the wrong destination.

 

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, it’s interesting too. I remember having a conversation a few years ago with Patrick McGuinness, who is the person who coined the term FOMO, fear of missing out. But he also talks about FOMO, fear of better options. And as I’m listening to you think about this notion of treading water. There is sometimes, like you said, are there better options for me? And so people aren’t actually committing. I do think it’s interesting in this particular gentleman’s case where it wasn’t that it was fear of better options, he just didn’t have the right option for him at that point.

 

Shade Zahrai: Beautifully said. Yeah, exactly.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right.

 

Shade Zahrai: Really appreciated hearing that because he was beating himself up. Why can’t I commit? What’s wrong with me? Then we uncovered. Actually, it’s just the wrong option you’re pursuing.

 

Whitney Johnson: Oh, so good. All right, so we’ve got failure to launch treading water. What’s the third one?

 

Shade Zahrai: Yes, well, we first need to. We need to for anyone who’s going. Okay, well, I’m stuck in treading water. How do I get out of it? I just want to quickly share two very quick steps to help. If someone is listening and they think that’s me, what do I do now? In. Well, the first step is meaning You need to identify the meaning in what you’re doing. In 1987, there were two researchers, Vallacher and Wegner, and they proposed a way to understand how individuals interpret and think about their actions. So there’s a range. We have low, low level identifications which focus on the how of an action. It’s the mechanism.

 

So for example, right now I’m sitting and talking to a camera that’s the lowest level mechanism of what I’m doing. But then there’s always a higher level action as well, where you emphasize the why of an action, the purpose or the goal of the action. So with that same action, rather than I’m sitting here speaking to a, you know, speaking to a microphone and looking at a camera, I would say, well, I’m empowering professionals with tools to improve or whatever that might be. So the first tip, if you’re in this space, is find the inherent meaning in what you’re doing, hone in to the higher level. And that’s really important for people who are in jobs that they don’t fundamentally like or they’re having to do a lot of tasks that don’t light their fire. Sometimes by simply shifting how you’re expressing or explaining something to yourself, you can feel a whole new level of motivation.

 

Whitney Johnson: Mm hm. Okay. What’s your second tip?

 

Shade Zahrai: All right. Oh, yes, of course. Second tip plan ahead. Really, really simple plan ahead. A lot of the time why people fall off track and don’t commit is because they face an obstacle and they just don’t know what to do. So they move to something else because it’s all too hard. There is a concept called inversion or a pre-mortem in the project management world. Essentially what you want to do, and this is the second part. So if you recall in the first part, it was around goal intentions for failure to launch. It also comes out of Peter Schweitzer’s work.

 

The second part is your implementation intentions, which fits here. What this means is you need to actively think about all the ways that your plan, your goal could go wrong. What are all the things that could get in your way and then troubleshoot before it happens? What will you do if you do this? You’ll be two times more likely to actually succeed. According to his research. And a simple way to do this is you develop an if then plan. If this happens, then I will do that. If this comes up, then I will do this. Remarkably simple. You’re getting into the the what ifs. And it’s interesting because a lot of people who overthink naturally are thinking about all the what ifs. So this is actually honing that natural tendency that your brain has to fixate on the negative, but you actually channel it into, okay, if I’m catastrophizing, if this happens, what can I do? You’re reminding yourself that you have self-efficacy, you have tools that you can rely on to actually get through. It’s remarkably powerful.

 

Whitney Johnson: So good. All right. We’ve got those tips now. What’s your third one?

 

Shade Zahrai: Third one destination obsession. So if you don’t resonate with the first two, you might resonate with this. It’s the inability to be still, You keep pushing without giving yourself a break. You feel guilty when you stop working. It’s called productivity guilt. You reach a goal, you get to that destination. And rather than enjoying it, you, yeah, you’re waving Whitney a lot of people resonate you immediately and put the next one in your GPS, right? It’s never enough.

 

Shade Zahrai: And so where in the second pit, sometimes it’s a discipline problem because you don’t have the motivation in this pit. You often have iron discipline, so it’s not a discipline problem at all. You might experience perfectionism, you might set impossibly high standards. You’re just never satisfied. You also might. So we find a lot of people who do this also engage in something called revenge bedtime procrastination. They lead such busy lives that rather than sleeping, they procrastinate from sleeping. Because the sooner they sleep, the sooner tomorrow arrives and they have to get back to it all. It’s the only alone time you have. So you’re in bed scrolling your emails or YouTube or social media. You know you should be sleeping, but you’re procrastinating from it. So a lot of people find themselves here. I do. Clearly you do. Whitney I’m sure a lot of people listening to how do we overcome this? People who have a tendency to do this are very good at getting things done. They prioritize what they sorry, they make time for what they prioritize us. So you need to prioritize taking breaks and see it as a tool to help you be more productive. Meaningful breaks, go for a walk because it opens up your stores of creativity, reconnect with a loved one, because we know that social connection is so important for our sense of well-being, which has a performance impact.

 

Go for a walk without your devices, you know, leave your tech at home. This obsession with tech, it’s killing our creativity. Was having a conversation with Professor Peter Steele recently. He’s one of the preeminent researchers in the realm of procrastination. And he had this beautiful line. He said, we’re amusing ourselves to death. And I love it because it’s almost like this distraction, constant distraction we have with social media and technology. It’s killing our creativity. It’s killing our drive, our higher purpose because we’re just so tethered all the time. So there the three mind pits and techniques to overcome them. And I know that some people listening, if you’re anything like me, either you’ll be taking notes or you’ll want to know which pit you’re in. So I have created a summary handout with a self-diagnostic to determine which pit you’re in. There are nine questions and then you’ll determine which one you’re stuck in most, along with simple strategies to overcome that. So I’ve created a special resource page at https://www.shadezahrai.com/mindpits, which is just mind and pits.

 

Whitney Johnson: One word, mindpit and grab that.

 

Shade Zahrai: Mindpits.

 

Speaker3: Easy, easy.

 

Whitney Johnson: So question for you. I would love to hear a personal experience beyond the procrastination bedtime scrolling around one of these where you really did struggle to launch off of an S curve or you did start something and you found yourself treading water. What’s been tell us about one of your wrestles around one of these.

 

Shade Zahrai: Oh, this is a fantastic question. I have I have stories of where I because I was aware of these pits. I then took action not to fall into them. Let me think. I would say one of them related to treading water and it was it’s a bit of a it’s almost failure to launch and treading water. I spent too I spent too many years in the corporate world when I was very ready to leave it. I tend to be more risk averse and I don’t like to do things until I’ve assessed all the risks and until I know that nothing catastrophic will happen. So that inversion is really good for me because I realize that, hey, I think this is going to happen, but actually I can I can overcome that. So I spent too many years in corporate, and towards the end I was really not satisfied with what I was doing. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. I knew that I could do so much more. What what I found. So I had a really broad and varied experience. When I was in the corporate world. I worked in retail distribution and sales. I worked in strategy, corporate philanthropy. What brought me the most joy had nothing to do with my day job. And it was when people would seek me out for guidance for career advice.

 

So I’d be sitting having a coffee in the in the internal kitchen area. And just those moments where you feel like you’re having an impact on someone’s life, that’s what lit my fire. And so I knew probably three years before I actually left that I needed to do that. And so I was treading water, just staying in this space. A failure to launch in the sense that I, you know, Newton’s first law is objects in motion stay in motion. It’s much easier for us to just keep doing what we’re doing. And human behavior is once we start behaving in a particular way, we maintain that pattern. And so for me, I was doing that. It was just easier for me to keep waking up knowing that that wasn’t the right path for me or the right role for me. But I kept doing it. And then it wasn’t until God bless my husband, he recognized that I needed to get out. And so I did. And that’s when we started our business. And we’re doing things that we love every day. I mean, granted, there are things, parts of it that we don’t enjoy, like all the emails and all the admin, but there’s so much purpose behind what we do that it’s so energizing. What about you? Whitney Do you have a story?

 

Whitney Johnson: Um, I will give you one in just a second, but I have one more question there, which is what was that catalyst? What did that conversation look like? So it takes you three years and finally you do it. What did those conversations, that truth telling moment, look like?

 

Shade Zahrai: Well, I will tell you exactly what happened. So we were planning for it. There wasn’t really a culminating moment. He seeded the idea and thought, This is fantastic. I’d always known I wanted to leave, so I was on the fence and just needed to happen. And then. As it happened, my role was made redundant.

 

The entire part of the business I was in was made redundant. So I took on another role where I was this is when I was in corporate philanthropy. I was able to go and work in that space. But I thought maybe this is a sign that I just. This is it. This is, you know, things are telling me that this is the path I should be on. And I genuinely believe that if if you look out for signs, I mean, it’s confirmation bias, but it’s wonderful. It works in our favor sometimes. Yeah. If you look out for signs, you will find them and then use that to fuel you forward. I could have seen that as a Oh, no, this is terrible. The uncertainty, market uncertainty. What’s going to happen? Can’t do it. Focus on the risks, but chose to flip it and focus on the opportunity. So in that case, I had this. This shift that just pushed me along and said, okay, this is happening. Just go for it.

 

Whitney Johnson: Mm. I’ve got to say, layoffs can be such a blessing.

 

Shade Zahrai: They really can.

 

Whitney Johnson: It’s fascinating where, you know, over and over and over again, having conversations with people, they will say, I knew it was time for me to jump to a new curve. I knew it was time to do something new and I wouldn’t quite do it. And then I just got this this nudge and what a gift that they are. All right. So to answer your question, I think. Real time. Actually, I’m going to give you a failure to launch real time, which is I have been saying for probably a year that I want to buy a building.

 

Shade Zahrai: Ooh.

 

Whitney Johnson: Which is a little bit amorphous, but I want to buy a building and I keep on talking about it, but I haven’t done anything about it. And so I did finally put into my daily app where I go through it’s the streaking app, which is a funny name, but it’s very effective of I say every day I am going to buy a building by such and such a date so that I’m, you know, that when, where and what will I do. But that has been something I’ve been talking about for a year and only probably in the last week actually put it down in writing that I will do this. So that’s my my real time example.

 

Shade Zahrai: Wow. How exciting as well. Wow. Buying a building. Yeah. Well done. That’s that’s super exciting.

 

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, but again, the failure to launch was talking about it and not actually doing it.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yeah. And a lot of people do that. The talking about it makes a lot of people feel like they’re working on it. A lot of people also will go through the research. They do so much research, they feel like they’re working on it, but actually they’re just distracting themselves. And then it allows you to think, well, I don’t know enough yet. I just need to learn about this. I just need to do that. Then I’ll be ready. But, you know, newsflash no one ever feels ready. You just have to find a moment. Make it work. There’s no perfect moment.

 

Whitney Johnson: That’s the treading water piece.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yes.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right. Um, well, I’m excited for you to get your PhD. That’s it Sounds like you just maybe a year away at this point. Yeah.

 

Shade Zahrai: That’s right.

 

Whitney Johnson: So what do you think about growth within our industry of leadership development? Any challenges that you can see?

 

Shade Zahrai: Really interesting. So part of my part of my PhD research actually, and I was working on it today, is looking at the work that has been done on leadership development and training within organizations, because the research I’m doing this year is specifically developing. So just to link it to what we were talking about, what my research is doing. So we’ve identified these mine pits people fall into. We’ve also identified that there are two things that determine whether these mine pits become completely detrimental or whether you can work through them. And the first one relates to something called core self-evaluations, which is how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as someone who is inherently worthy? Do you see yourself as someone who focuses on what they can control? Do you see yourself as someone who can achieve their goals because you will never rise above your opinion of yourself? And there is huge volumes of research that reinforce that. How we see ourselves called core Self-evaluations is a predictor for our achievement, our happiness, our success, the amount of money that we make regardless of where we start out. So that’s one of the factors that influences whether these mine pits completely derail us or whether we can still move through them. The second one is then do you take action or do you get stuck in overthinking? It’s called action orientation.

 

So the reason I’m mentioning this is I’m developing an action orientation training program to see whether we can train that within an organizational setting within a six week period. Can we train it in leaders, in teams? And the the result is, okay, does it increase job performance and career satisfaction and engagement? Now, looking at a lot of the work that’s been done, I think one of the biggest challenges is when it comes to leadership development. What we know from the research going back 30, 40 years is training programs are only one part of the equation. It’s looking at it from a very microcosm perspective. What needs to be done is the lens needs to be lifted up to recognize that there is both a pre situation, a during situation and an after situation. And all of these things influence a person’s experience of the training, but also the effectiveness of that training. So the pre components are, well, how motivated is that person to actually join the training in the first place? Is it mandated or are they choosing to be part of it? Is the organization one that supports people’s growth? Do people feel like they have psychological safety? These elements, we can’t look at them in isolation. So that’s the before elements.

 

Then during its obviously what is the nature of the training? Who’s delivering it? How many people are involved? Is it face to face? Is it virtual or all of these little mechanism things? And then after the training, it’s do people have the opportunity to apply these new skills from one particular lens? It’s a new resource that they’ve developed. Can they essentially practice them frequently as soon as the training is done? And do they feel like they’re going back into a company that supports them? If you don’t have these things on either side. The training is essentially it can essentially be a complete waste of time. People are not motivated. It’s not effective. And then the company assumes that the training was a waste when actually it’s the company that needs to change how it does things. So I think one of the biggest insights that organizations need to understand, and I think we’re moving that way, there is more of an appreciation of that since Covid, since the acknowledgment that people really matter. Employee engagement really matters. Wellbeing really matters. These organizations need to have the right frameworks in place, the right cultures, the right environments. To then facilitate the learning, the development of leaders and the uprising of. That wonderful culture that we’re all looking to achieve within these companies.

 

Whitney Johnson: So training on its own. If you don’t prepare people or people aren’t prepared and you don’t have the follow through, it is a waste of their money. So just don’t spend the money. In fact, it’s probably worse. You know something you said, though, that caught my attention of you’ll never rise above the opinion, your opinion of yourself. That just sparked something in my brain. Which is. We talk a lot about imposter syndrome and people having that feeling. And you even mentioned it earlier of I don’t know if I should be here or not. And yet if we are here at some level, there’s some piece of us that believed that we should be here.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yeah. It’s an interesting, interesting way to think about it. I think with especially with imposter syndrome, goodness, we could have an entire discussion on this. When we look at when it was originally developed, it was discovered by researchers and they were just looking at high performing women. That was the first sample, first population it was found in, and they referred to it as the imposter phenomenon. Somewhere along the way we pathologized it, called it a syndrome. And now it’s something that people actually use to hold themselves back or to explain. If someone didn’t take action, they say, oh, it was I was experiencing imposter syndrome, so I didn’t raise my hand or I didn’t get the job. So it becomes this fallback thing where I think we need to separate.

 

You know, I would say that anyone who has started a new role will have experiences where they didn’t know all the answers or they didn’t know how something would turn out or they may not have felt ready, which a big part of imposter syndrome is that I’m not ready. I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve this. It’s all about how you perceive it. Do you allow that? Do you listen to that voice and obey that voice and hold yourself back? Or do you say, well, this is exactly what I’m meant to be facing right now? Because guess what? That’s when growth happens. That’s how growth happens. You do not grow if you’re not in a position where you know everything already.

 

Whitney Johnson: Yeah. So I’m a big believer.

 

Shade Zahrai: It’s all about how we perceive it and then the story that we tell ourselves about it.

 

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, it’s interesting. So you you are going to be there because I mean, again, this idea of you’re not rising above the opinion of yourself, but once you’re there, you’re on that launch point of a new curve. Um, there should be a little bit of I don’t feel like I should be here because that means, like you said, we are in the process of growing and changing, which is the whole reason we went to this place in the first place.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yes.

 

Whitney Johnson: Your career has taken off over the past few years. I’m wondering how have you allowed yourself to stay grounded so that you don’t believe your press clippings, as it were?

 

Shade Zahrai: Yeah, it’s the last three years have been truly remarkable and beyond our wildest dreams. Quick little backstory as to how it happened. We were. It was the beginning of the pandemic. 2020. I just left this ten year corporate career because of the things that I’d shared already. And we had planned to relocate overseas to Southeast Asia. We were in Australia, Melbourne at the time. We were going to relocate to Southeast Asia to be closer to the rest of the world because we did a lot of work with clients overseas, especially in the US and Southeast Asia. We were looking at expanding the business in that region as well.

 

So I leave my corporate career. Our flight is seven days out. From that point, guess what happens in those seven days? This is 20 20th March. The world essentially goes into lockdown and is thrust into this period of uncertainty. We’re not allowed to leave the country. We had sold our couch. We had sold a lot of our furniture already. And then suddenly we get caught in this lockdown, which ends up being one of the world’s longest lockdowns in terms of the city. Melbourne was one of the world’s longest lockdowns. So our plan completely went went out the window. And here’s me getting so excited about, yes, I’m leaving corporate. I’m finally ready to do this and then this happens.

 

So our business was dead in the water, all of our engagements, because they were in person, they were canceled or postponed indefinitely. And I think a lot of people experienced this, this anxiety of what do we do now? Now, it was in that point where we had a number of months where we were thinking, what do we do? I thought, well, what is our business do fundamentally, it helps people. Where are people now? Well, they’re not at work. They’re in their homes. How do we reach people in their homes? Well, they’re probably on social media. What if we try and reach people through social media if we can’t go through their companies? Let’s go direct. And this is when I created 40 videos in one day, 40 sub 62nd videos, short videos in one day.

 

The story I scripted them one day, the next day I recorded them, which meant I had 40 days worth of content and I couldn’t back out and I started sharing them on social media. And this was powerful for a number of reasons. It took three weeks to see any kind of traction. One video took off, captured the attention of the algorithm. It went viral, and from there it’s been crazy. So three years ago, zero social presence. Three years later, 4 million cumulative across platforms. Now the 40 day message. Why that’s really powerful is I would have gotten stuck in failure to launch if I hadn’t done that because I would have said we should do this, this would be great. Let me research. Let me learn. Let me wait till I’m perfect and then we’ll start. I just said, no, I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to record 40, which means I cannot back down for 40 days because I also know myself if I try something for a week and I don’t really see any positive reactions or no traction, I assume it’s not for me and I will spend my time elsewhere. It was a wonderful way to lock myself into something, which is, I think, a really powerful lesson for a lot of people if there’s something you want to do. Do something, that means you have to do it at least for a certain period of time, and then you can decide.

 

So your question, going back to your question, Whitney, how do I stay grounded? My husband and I laugh about this all the time. Nothing has changed between us. Nothing has changed about how we live our lives. And we’ve been very clear on that. And we often don’t look at a lot of what’s out there, the information, the headlines. There’s a lot of social media comments that come in as well. We have to practice boundary setting about how deeply we get into that world and we just remind ourselves what a blessing it is to be able to do what we do and to live at a time where you can reach so many people and help so many people without physically having to be with them. So it’s been quite an incredible journey. And who knew that social media would open doors to Fortune five hundreds JP Morgan in Switzerland and Microsoft UK because they’re their decision makers, were on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube too. During the lockdown. So it’s been. Yeah, truly remarkable.

 

Whitney Johnson: It sounds like your husband helps you stay grounded. So I am actually quite fascinated by partnerships, in part because, you know, you can be in a life in a life partner relationship. But I also think about from a business partner perspective and I have a business partner and we often say that it’s easier to get out of a marriage than it is out of a business partnership. In terms of putting that together, we spent a year and a half, Amy and Humble and I, negotiating that contract. So I’m fascinated when I hear that you’re a husband and wife partnership in life, actually, and in business, what does that look like? How do you structure that? How do you divide and conquer from a from a business standpoint?

 

Shade Zahrai: Oh, well, you said it perfectly, divide and conquer. So for us, it’s really important that we have alignment on the important things, the values, the strategic direction. But then we divide and then we are very respectful of each person’s domain because he has strengths and I have strengths, and we know that, you know, we can offer an opinion on the other person’s strengths, but really we allow that person to shine. And I think that’s been such an important aspect when it comes to a business partnership where you’re also married, where you do have an opinion on everything the other person says and does. It’s having that respect.

 

I think the biggest lesson that we’ve had to learn is not to allow work to take over our life, because what a lot of married couples do or couples partners in terms of, you know, relationships, they will come home from work and talk about their workday. That’s the connection point. Let’s talk about it. And then they go on and, you know, talk about their hobbies. In our case, we’re with each other all day. And then after work, we’re still talking about work. And then on weekends we can still be talking about work. We love what we do. So it’s a work hobby as well. So it’s really important. And we haven’t figured this out yet. We’re still trying to get through it in terms of, okay, we’re not talking about work while we go for this walk right now, we’re going to have two hours where we do not think about that. And it’s good because we can catch each other out.

 

But you’re right. My husband keeps me so grounded. I’m so blessed to have him. And it’s just such a beautiful partnership because we are like yin and yang. Our strengths are so different, yet so complementary, which just works really in a beautiful way.

 

Whitney Johnson: What are some of the things that you do and what are some of the things that he does specifically from a business perspective?

 

Shade Zahrai: So my areas of expertise are in the psychology space, the the understanding of peak performance. I’m a scholar practitioner, so I do a lot of the content. I do a lot of work with our clients in terms of keynotes, webinars, training programs. He has experience in that space, but he did that many years ago. So now he’s a domain of, you know, realm of genius, as they say, is really understanding the business, the strategic direction of the business. What do we need to be doing to get our systems going, our operations going, all of the things that a business really needs and are not my areas of enjoyment, should I say. So we are really respectful of that.

 

One of the things that’s worked really beautifully as well he has in the past, he has essentially done what I’m doing now in his realm. He had a best selling book in South Korea when he lived there. He spent ten years there. He’s very international. He’s run businesses overseas. He’s scaled start ups. But he has also worked with organizations. He’s his view is, well, I’ve done that before, so I’m happy for you to really lead this when it comes to how we run our business. The other thing is I’m very much the face of the social media, the face of our videos and our content. So people will see me and then we’ll work with these organizations and they often just think it’s me. But really, he’s the one that keeps it all going. And so sometimes I remind them, it’s not just me. There’s a company, there’s there’s a team here. And my husband is such a wonderful partner in that.

 

Whitney Johnson: What’s your husband’s name?

 

Shade Zahrai: I just realized I’m referring to him as my husband so frequently. His name is Faisal.

 

Whitney Johnson: Okay. I’m like, Yeah, what’s your husband’s name? Okay. Interesting. As you were talking and you look at the the system where you’ve got a visionary and an integrator and it sounds like that’s what happens for the two of you. You’re you’re the product. You’re thinking about the IP, and then he’s integrating all of that work.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yes, absolutely.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right. So as we start to wrap up, talk to me about an S-curve that you’ve jumped to recently. What is it? How does it feel? And what motivated you to jump to that new S-curve?

 

Shade Zahrai: Oh, that’s easy. That’s the PhD. So I you know, I think we all get to a point in our adult lives where we know our area of expertise. We’re very comfortable with it, and it’s easy to just cruise and stay there. But then also, if you’re anything like me, you get antsy and you want to challenge yourself. And I’ll be honest, the biggest challenge to my brain has been pursuing a PhD because it’s not an area I’m familiar with. Understanding the research world and quantitative analysis is not something that I’m comfortable with, but I really love the fact that I’m challenging myself and it is stressful and it is anxiety inducing. In fact, I was listening to one of your other podcasts recently. I can’t remember her name more.

 

Whitney Johnson: Oh, Mora.

 

Shade Zahrai: Mora, Yes. Oh, love what she was talking about and how she’s so open about her vulnerability and her mental health challenges. I haven’t spoken about this before, but I had a panic attack or an anxiety attack for the first time since I was a child. In response to some of this analysis I was doing. And it was just a beautiful reminder that, okay, I am learning, I am growing. Thankfully, I have so much awareness of, okay, what do I need? I got my husband to get me some ice and I use that to ground myself. But this. So in terms of the S-curve, there have been so many moments where I think, oh, do I really need to be doing this? I don’t actually need to be doing this. I want to be doing this. And I have to remind myself, I’m doing this because I want it.

 

A lot of people actually drop out of PhD programs. They get 2 or 3 years in and they think, Well, I don’t need it. I’ve got a job or I’m starting a business. It’s not. And that’s when it gets challenging. When you get to years three, two and three, it’s the rubber hits the road. You need to be in it for the right reasons. And so I remind myself this learning is for a purpose. I feel like an imposter a lot in these environments. I’m comfortable speaking to organizations. Sit me in a room with these academics who have 20 years worth of research experience, who are experts in their area, and I share some of their area with our clients in terms of here’s what the research says. Well, they’re the ones doing the research. I feel like an imposter, but I remind myself what a beautiful opportunity I have to be here in a room with them. What can I learn? How can I add value? And that is, you know, that’s been a beautiful reframe for me to just, again, prevent yourself from getting into that negative, self-defeating mindset. Remind yourself that you’re on that curve and you will get there at some point. You just have to believe.

 

Whitney Johnson: You know, what I loved Jade, is first of all, I love the idea of calling you Dr. Sarai. Isn’t that fun? Dr. Sarai.

 

Shade Zahrai: Also, my mom is pretty excited about that. Yes, she should be.

 

Whitney Johnson: But the other thing that I noticed is the minute you said what a beautiful experience this is for me to be around these people whose work I admire. Could you immediately feel how the energy shifted as soon as you said that? I could feel the energy shift? It’s so powerful what you said at the beginning of our conversation of how am I going to frame this experience? Am I going to frame this as a positive or as a negative? And the words that we use are so powerful. And I felt it when you said that.

 

Shade Zahrai: I felt it, too, when it happened in the moment. And even now it’s the, you know, the power of our words when we’re either vocalizing, vocalizing them or thinking them. It’s absolutely phenomenal. Truly.

 

Whitney Johnson: All right. Just a few final questions.

 

Shade Zahrai: Okay.

 

Whitney Johnson: And I’m asking you now to encapsulate a lot of what you’ve said. But for someone who is interested in accelerating their growth up an S-curve they’re currently on, based on your research. What suggestion would you make? What’s one practical thing they can do right now?

 

Shade Zahrai: So there is. I want to just dive into that a little bit. I won’t share a long answer because I know this is where people want to just tell me now, tell me what to do. I could give you a hack. I could give you a technique. But we also know that you will never rise above your opinion of yourself. So what does that mean? There are four things that you need to be thinking about when you’re struggling. If you want to be a peak performer, the first one is do you accept and value who you are because that will impact how you feel when you’re faced with rejection. When you’re faced with failure, do you accept and value who you are? And if you don’t find ways to cultivate self-worth, Self-compassion.

 

The second one Do you believe in your ability to accomplish tasks and achieve your outcomes? It’s self efficacy. So the first was self esteem. The second is self efficacy. If you don’t believe you can accomplish something, you won’t do it. So you might be stuck in failure to launch because you just don’t believe you’ll be able to do it. So ask yourself, why don’t I believe this and what can I do to get myself there? What resources can I seek? What support can I gather? The third is internal locus of control. Are you focused on what’s within your control? When I was in that organization and I felt like I was out of my depth and I spoke to that mentor, I realized I was focusing on everything I didn’t know how to do rather than focusing on the fact that I can control where I place my time and what strengths I bring to the table, You will feel more powerful when you focus on what you can, what you can control, and what you can do, and then take action.

 

And finally, emotional stability. Can you adapt emotionally to changing circumstances? Can you manage your anxiety? Can you manage your emotions? And these are the four components. When they converge, they form our core self-evaluations, which is how we see ourselves. So the greatest piece of advice I can give beyond a hack or a technique or a tool that you can apply and may or may not work, is actually come back to these four self esteem, self efficacy, internal locus of control, emotional stability if you’re lacking in one. You really want to focus on it, hone in on it and find ways to develop it. Because if you do, if you raise your baseline in each of these four things, and this is what my research is looking at, we know from meta analysis over hundreds of studies have been looked at. You will be more successful, you will apply for more challenging roles, you’ll be better at implementing feedback. You won’t get knocked down as much when facing failure. You will end up being more being a higher performer, happier, more fulfilled, all of these things. And it really comes down to these four qualities.

 

Whitney Johnson: That’s a hack.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yeah. Guess you could say it’s a hack. It is. It requires a little. Bit more time to work out. Right? Here are the four things.

 

Whitney Johnson: But the hack is when you hone in on the one that you’re struggling with, pay attention to that and figure out what you’re going to do about it. I think that’s a hack.

 

Shade Zahrai: Yes. Well said. It is a hack.

 

Whitney Johnson: What has been useful for you in this conversation?

 

Shade Zahrai: What has been really useful to me, actually, is how thoughtful you are in your questions Whitney and how you allow space. And I know it seems it can seem seemingly trivial, but when we’re interacting with people, we feed off their energy constantly emotional contagion. And, you know, we all have a psychological vibe called trait Affective presence, how people feel when they’re around us. And I did know this because I’ve listened to a number of your other podcasts and of course we did that LinkedIn live when you were launching the book. You have this magnetic energy that comes across virtually that not everybody has, and it’s so natural and organic, and it is something that we can develop and learn. Now, one of the things that really stood out for me and was helpful is just your thoughtfulness. And I’m going to take away the the lesson of how can I be more thoughtful in what I do? Because a lot of the time and I will reveal something here, I get super nervous on podcasts. I’m really good. Sit me in front of an organization, whether it’s virtual or in front of a room of a thousand people with my content and I can talk about it for an hour. But if I’m in a podcast situation where I don’t know what question is going to come up, I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t have my slides as pointers. I get super nervous and super anxious. So you had this way of really calming me. And I think part of that is not only how you show up, but the space you create and the thoughtfulness that you have. So thank you for creating that.

 

Whitney Johnson: You’re very welcome and thank you for the compliment. That’s absolutely.

 

Shade Zahrai: Of course.

 

Whitney Johnson: Let’s, let’s stay in touch. And when your book comes out, let me know so I can support you.

 

Shade Zahrai: Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Take care. Bye bye. Take care, Whitney.

 

It can be terrifying to think that there is a portion of your brain that just fires. It will it sees a foe or a friend and starts spinning the gears without you having to do anything at all. But that’s why I thought Shade would be such a powerful guest to have on our show. She’s building a career out of getting to know the sub and unconscious parts of our minds. That conversation we had about how what we pay attention to, we get more of. That’s the pivotal message. It’s easy to get lost in high level thinking when we’re tackling a problem, and it’s very easy to lose touch with how our bodies and brains feel in the moment. We might not be able to control how fast our heart beats, but we can be mindful about it. Like when Shade embraced her constraints and her anxieties when it came to kick starting her social media presence, recording those 40 videos during Covid, getting the hard part out of the way. First, the root of procrastination. Another one of those instincts is shielding ourselves from what we see as incoming emotional turmoil. We don’t want to do it because we have an idea of how we’re going to feel while we do it, and it probably won’t feel good.

 

But you can never rise above your opinion of yourself. That’s one of the last things Shade said. But it was one of the most impactful statements in our hour of conversation. There are external ceilings and we can work to break those down together, but we can’t ignore that we block ourselves in mentally too. If your opinion of yourself deep inside improves, it’ll naturally instinctually translate to tangible steps. Self-compassion can heal in ways we didn’t know were possible. For more on couples that live and work together, there’s episode 187 with Sid and Shay McGee. They’re co-owners of Studio McGee, one of the most successful interior design firms in the United States right now. And to dive deeper on this idea of subconscious brain circuits, I’d recommend my talk with Patrick McGuinness, the guy who literally invented the term FOMO, an instinctual fear of missing out wired into our neurons. That’s episode 266. Thank you again to Shade and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, hit subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Finally, thank you to our producer Alexandra Turk, production assistant Ange Harris and production coordinator Nicole Pellegrino.

 

I’m Whitney Johnson

 

and this has been Disrupt Yourself.