Ruth Malloy: The Many Facets of Achievement

Ruth Malloy gives an insightful look into how leaders arouse the achievement motivation in others through feedback, affiliation and standards of excellence - and how that motivation can run amok. Focusing too much on achievement can diminish trust and erode morale.

Ruth Malloy, Ph.D., is a leadership advisory consultant and Spencer Stuart’s global assessment solutions leader. She is based in Boston. For more than 25 years, Ruth has helped Fortune 500 companies, across multiple industries, achieve their strategic goals through the assessment, development and alignment of their leadership and talent. She brings deep expertise in executive assessment and succession, executive coaching, top team effectiveness and talent management. Prior to joining Spencer Stuart, Ruth was the global managing director of the leadership and talent practice at Hay Group. She also served as Director of Research and Technology for the McClelland Center for Innovation, and started up Leadership and Talent Direct at Hay Group, which offered on-line assessments including the ESCI, development tools and accreditation programs for individual practitioners, executive coaches and clients. She has published and presented on topics including women in leadership, motivation and leadership effectiveness. Ruth spoke at TEDx Fenway, presenting “From Leaning In to All In: What Organizations Can Do to Advance Women,” and co-authored “Leadership Run Amok: The Destructive Potential of Overachievers,” which was cited as one the most popular articles in Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 2006. Ruth has a B.A. in psychology from Vassar College. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Boston University, under the mentorship of Dr. David McClelland. 

In this podcast, Malloy joins Daniel Goleman to discuss the how empathy tempers achievement. Tune in for this insightful conversation about: 

• The pluses and minuses of high achievers.
• What inspires high achievement.
• How risk factors into achievement.
• Leadership run amok.
• Antidotes to micromanagement.
• Three social motives: achievement, power and affiliation.
• The importance of a leader's focus.
• The impact of self awareness on leadership.

Daniel Goleman talks about his Emotional Intelligence Courses, available at danielgolemanemotionalintelligence.com

Transcript

Kai: 0:51

What do you think you're good at? I'm good at doing my chores and helping around the house. Is there something you want to get better at? I want to learn about saving. Why do you want to get better at saving? So I know how to manage money, and how it works for my future? How are you working toward getting better at saving? What I earn money aside for saving or spending? Also, I can track how much is in each one. How does it feel to get better at something that you've been working on? Feels very exciting.

Hanuman Goleman: 1:35

Hi, I'm hanuman Goleman. Hi,

Elizabeth Solomon: 1:38

I'm Elizabeth Solomon.

Daniel Goleman: 1:40

Hi, there. I'm Daniel Goleman.

Hanuman Goleman: 1:42

You're listening to first person plural emotional intelligence and beyond. This is the first in a three part series about achievement.

Elizabeth Solomon: 1:49

Dan is someone who has achieved quite a bit in your lifetime. What is your own early experiences with achievement? And how do you understand your achievements and your your own journey of achievement, and maybe even some of the things that you gained and sacrificed along the way?

Daniel Goleman: 2:05

Well, it's interesting, I was just writing about my parents generation, they were children of immigrants to the states and their parents were largely uneducated, and for that generation, children of immigrants, achieving in school and achieving the professions was the road to success was the road to financial security. And so each of them my father, and my mother, her brother, that entire generation, really drove themselves to achieve and I think I got it osmotically in the family. So I just did it as a matter of course, I did well in school, got a PhD went into the professions. And then I had a huge success, nose around 50 with a book Emotional intelligence. I look at that as kind of an accident. You know, there were 1000s of books published that year, why that became a huge success. I couldn't have predicted in fact, before the book came out, I thought I better write another proposal, so that I'll have some cushion. Once people see how poorly this book does. So I was shocked and surprised. And then emotional intelligence became a whole basis of a career, I left the New York Times I was too busy giving talks. And I think I didn't have mine is my son who can give his point of view. But I think that I got too wrapped up in success and achievement in spent, from my point of view, too little time with my family with my kids. While they were kids, I didn't enjoy them enough, I'd say that was a downside.

Hanuman Goleman: 3:42

I also like that you're talking about how many books were published that year. And there's a sort of arbitrary nature to the success of emotional intelligence, you were able to get on Oprah for it. And I think Hillary Clinton was in a bookstore and pointed it out during a public event so that there were cameras there. And all of these different moments added up to the conditions for success for that book. And there wasn't a massive war that took the headlines that day, you know, like, all of those things have to be in line. And that doesn't happen for everybody. In fact, that doesn't happen for most people. And so there's this like, working hard, but also not being attached to the outcome.

Elizabeth Solomon: 4:31

This is such an important conversation talking about achievement, because how do we reckon that with the presence of systemic racism or biases, etc. So it's not just that the culture at large is ready for the vision you're putting forth but that the culture at large is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt the credibility, the support the social and financial capital that you need to achieve based on your identity?

Hanuman Goleman: 4:56

Yeah, some of us have some serious drags on our achievement and our endeavors, or what we look to achieve.

Daniel Goleman: 5:03

So you could say the shadow side, the underside of achievement, is blaming the victim is not seeing how, for example, privilege or luck plays into individual achievement and looking at it all as do to the person themselves rather than the system with which they're operating, living, which may, as you point out, Liz have implicit biases against them, stereotype them. It turns out, for example, that if you're anxious about how you'll do on a test, you'll do more poorly on the test. Well, bias against you and your group might make you anxious about the test. So in a way, it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Hanuman Goleman: 5:48

It also comes back to what You were saying earlier, that's a common experience that our personal goals and achieving our personal goals specifically at work, come at the expense of the rest of our life. I mean, as as your son, I can attest that I would love to have spent more time with, you know, when when I was growing up, and that really does matter, you know, and happily, we're healing, we're doing that healing now. But that's real, and it does come at an expense.

Elizabeth Solomon: 6:19

And I mean, it's like, I can't tell you how many nights I'm sitting here, you know, at nine o'clock, having finally just, you know, got all the dishes into the dishwasher and finished the work day. And the soccer practice drop off, and the meals and all the things and me and my partner look at each other. And we're like, this is really an untenable and kind of ridiculous reality to be living to be two parents who are who both want a family and are choosing to have a big family, and who both have flourishing careers. You know, for many middle class families in America, that's the

Daniel Goleman: 6:53

norm, but the norm sounds like overwhelmed to me.

Hanuman Goleman: 6:57

This is the first in a three part series about achievement. This episode will focus on the theory of achievement. We're talking today with Ruth Malloy.

Daniel Goleman: 7:07

Ruth Malloy is a very old friend of mine and a fellow psychologist she'd like I was a student of David McClellan, one of the great psychologists of the last century, and his focus was on the motives that drive us on what gets us up in the morning, what gets us going, he's particularly interested in achievement. He felt that being, for example, a outstanding entrepreneur, depended on the degree to which you wanted to achieve your goals. Being outstanding athlete, being on a sports team, that's a winning team means that people need to embrace having a goal getting achieving that goal. It's everywhere in the business world, in the sports world, in our private world. We're all pursuing goals, whether we think about it that way or not. Ruth has no illusions about achievement. She wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review called the leadership run amok, which was about people who are high achieving leaders, but who are pushing their people to get, you know, quarterly results. And they don't really care how they get those results. And it burns people out. What Ruth said, and will say in the interview that really hit me was that people who are highly successful as an executive have achievement tempered by empathy. They care about the people they're leading. It's not just using those people to attain some goal. Ruth, I want to welcome you to our podcast. Oh, thank

Ruth Malloy: 8:47

you for having me, Dan.

Daniel Goleman: 8:49

The topic of the day is the achieve competence, which is a derivative of David McClellan's work and which, you know, well, both through your own work on his motivational model, particularly, you did work on social motives. But also, when you were back at Hay Group, you did an article a co authored an article in Harvard Business Review on leadership run amok, which is about the achieved competence gone crazy. We're going to talk about that. And now of course, you're the leadership advisory consultant and global solutions leader for executive assessment at Spencer Stewart. So having said all that, let's just launch in Ruth. The achievement motive, which I talked about in terms of the achieved competence. describe someone who has very high standards, very high internal standards. Have you seen that

Ruth Malloy: 9:50

in action? Oh, my gosh, it is rampant. Particularly I work primarily with executives at the top of the house. And it is the signature competency. I would say at this point, more so than ever, over the past decade. That, you know, if leaders don't have that competence, they don't rise. It's a huge differentiator.

Daniel Goleman: 10:19

Okay, good. So there's there's a real plus side to this ability. And also there can be some drawbacks. Let's go into the pluses. One of the things that we've observed is it's such leaders really seek out challenges. They don't take it easy, you know, they don't rely on a cash cow. They want to find the new thing that's going to take them forward.

Ruth Malloy: 10:42

That's correct. One thing that McClellan talks about when we say, motives, is that the actual pursuit of the goal is intrinsically satisfying. By itself there, there is an emotional drive and energy when the achievement motive is aroused. So you can think about it like a drug, it's addictive. They're seeking out challenges, whether it's doing something that's never been done before, whether it's simply improving performance because they get frustrated by waste or efficiency, or you'll see it manifest itself in executives in terms of their own mastery, or self improvement. So often, you know, I do a lot of assessment with executives, and a very common theme is just what is the next challenge? You get bored? You've mastered something. What's next? How do we raise the bar?

Daniel Goleman: 11:43

I love your pointing out that people with this kind of drive, seek out the challengers work toward the goal for its own pleasure. It's not really the goal. It's the process. It's the push the excitement of that. And what are the things that seems to mark such people is that they love metrics, they'd like to measure how they're doing?

Ruth Malloy: 12:09

Yes, exactly. There were few things like McClellan pointed out, which I love is how do you around the achievement motive? Okay, because motives, you can think of motives, we all have motives, such as achievement, the others have affiliations, and power or impact, you know, making a difference. But there are often conditions that leaders seek out that really arouse the modem. And one is a challenging task. So one that's not too easy, or it's not fun. So that's why they're sticking it out. But also not overwhelming. Because it has to do with your abilities. Achievement is a very personal motive. It's individualistic, it's about mastery. So that's one thing. First of all, it has to be challenging, but as you said, then it's about the metrics. Because if I don't know how I'm doing, it's not fun, I've got to get that feedback to know that I'm getting better, or that I'm mastering something. You know, if you think about my son is upstairs in his room a lot now with the pandemic. And one of the things I find is he's on video games all day. And video games are almost designed to arouse the achievement mode. You know, there, you're getting scores, right, you get tasks, and they just kind of know what your competence level is. Right. And there's a standard of excellence. So it's not just about doing things, but it's doing things better. And, and seeing if you can get better at something. So they have all these things are these conditions in place. And unfortunately, he can play these all hours of the night, as I find out and I tried to wake him up in the morning to go to school.

Daniel Goleman: 14:02

I just was remembering another thing, David point out, which is that he found that entrepreneurs, particularly tend to have this achievement ability to achieve motivation, and that they took what he called smart risks. That is, they knew what they were good at. Because they had gotten metrics, they'd gotten feedback. And they might go ahead with a challenge, or seeking a goal that other people thought was a little crazy. I'll never be able to do that. But they knew they could. One way he measured this was with a ring toss. I don't know if you remember, oh, yeah, you know, you, you set it, you set these pegs out, and you have a ring and the further out you go, the bigger your score. And you have to decide where you can toss basically, and entrepreneurs tend to know what they could do. And people who were too shy about taking a risk. they're risk averse, they get a low score, people who were crazy about taking a risk, but missed the big one, but the people with the achievement would pretty much get whatever they knew they could get. And that seems to say a lot about how they handle risks in general in life,

Ruth Malloy: 15:21

right. And I love the analogy of the ring tosses is such a great symbol of the achievement but they are they are calculated they really think through again one of the things when you look at motives are almost conscious and non conscious thoughts or concerns around doing things better and people when when the they are high in the mode of spend a lot of time thinking through all the scenarios and contingencies and have a good sense of their abilities. So that when they do take risks, as you say it may look big from the outside, but they are very thoughtful and calculated, which enables them to perform better. So as you said more times, they tend to do better on that, then people who are lower in the mode of

Daniel Goleman: 16:21

Well, that's a natural segue to the article you co authored in the Harvard Business Review, called Leadership run amok. One of my favorite articles, can you reproduce some of the key points there as it relates to achievement? She went out of hand?

Ruth Malloy: 16:35

Sure, well, we did that article. My colleagues and I, probably 15 years ago. And I would say it's continues to resonate today, as I see it, in my practice, when I work with executives, and and organization, what we've found back at Hay Group, we actually directly measure the mode, and had seen over time, that the achievement motive had been increasing, particularly in executive population. And there, there might be a reason why, you know, the emphasis on continuous improvement, short term results, public companies, you know, there's, there's this need to deliver. And the value of achievement has continued to rise and achievement. As I said, there's a lot of good outcome from high achievement, as we talked about entrepreneurism, innovation, a performance oriented culture. However, we've seen when it can easily get out of hand, and this happens at an individual level, with leaders in terms of how they impact their team. And you could think about how you could see a leader when their achievement motive gets aroused, kind of getting too into the weeds in terms of the work where they're not enabling the people below them to lead and do their jobs,

Daniel Goleman: 18:08

to the best that they can micromanaging is, is a big

Ruth Malloy: 18:11

thing with micromanaging, particularly, you know, in recent times with the pandemic and crisis, and people are under stress. You're also seeing executives, high in achievement, just setting almost overly ambitious goals, not necessarily for them. But for their teams where people get burnt out, overwhelmed, it can cause chaos, there's a lack of alignment, because what happens is the leadership style, the leader starts doing the work, doing the job of their employees, rather than helping provide vision direction, support and empowerment, some of the best ways to keep people engaged, is to arouse the achievement motive in your employees. And they're actually some very well researched and clear conditions about how you can do this. So one is, is about the clarity, you know, creating a clear, consequential goal that people can be excited about, that is challenging to people, but also attainable. You know, think about how the vaccines got developed so quickly, right, there was a clear objective in mind about what needed to happen. And people were also clear, if you think about what leadership can do, it's not just about the goal about the big picture. But how does your role, kind of that role clarity, fit into that and contribute to that goal. So you're breaking it into something that's very manageable. Another thing is ensuring that people have that freedom to do their job. So again, one of the things that's gonna get in the way of feeling energized and satisfied is work if you feel like you don't have control, you know, and that's, I think a lot of that great resignation is that lack of control. You know, things keep coming to me. I don't have accountability, I have to keep asking to get things done. Or I'm running into a lot of bureaucracy or rules and red tape. So so it just gets so frustrating. You know, it becomes very demotivating the last piece is about getting feedback. You know, as a leader, one of the things that you can do is provide particularly the power Positive feedback. It's not just, you know, how am I doing in terms of the metrics, but getting recognition when you're doing a good job can go such a huge way, particularly coming from the leader that you are recognized? genuinely not, you know, sometimes leaders will say, thank you for all you do. You know, and and the cynical employee can say, do you really know what I do? You have to keep an eye on that, and see that. But if you can really create those conditions, which in a way are so manageable, work becomes fun for people again, and satisfying. I think that, you know, there are a lot of other reasons, to compensation or whatever, but, but if you have those conditions in place, where really, people feel challenged, and are using their skills and abilities to their potential, and are getting that opportunity and stretch and grow, if you're having fun, it gets hard to leave.

Daniel Goleman: 21:46

So from what you're saying, I would gather that you'd agree with the outlook that says a really good leader sets, clear goals, but leaves people free to get there on their own.

Ruth Malloy: 21:59

Exactly. So give them support, gives them the room to lead. And, you know, give them the accountability, to do their jobs without having to ask for permission all the time. That basically creates an environment that arouses the achievement motive in their people. And ironically, if you have a very high achievement, you're suppressing achievement in your, in your own team.

Daniel Goleman: 22:28

I think that's a really important point that many leaders may fail to understand. Because one pattern I've seen is it someone individually as an individual contributor may do very well, because they have this very high internal standard. They're seeking feedback, they're constantly trying to improve performance, which is something we can get to. But they don't understand that when they become a leader, other things are required to they've become pace setters, that which is, you know, do it the way I do it. And they don't understand that they need to create connection to other people that people are leading to have a team a cohesive team. But there are many other things that a leader must do to balance too much achievement, can you say what some of those things might be?

Ruth Malloy: 23:17

Well, I think the first thing is recognizing, when your achievement motive is getting aroused, I think it's the first thing is apt go back to your model of emotional intelligence. Self awareness, is critical with being able to, to manage your own achievement motive. So you can create those standards of excellence and set goals for your team that are challenging and attainable. And when you go into autopilot, you know, that's often when things get in the way, where you again, start getting into the weeds, and not doing the work. But But I think it's that awareness, and then finding other ways. Again, the achievement motive is intrinsically satisfying. And for many leaders, particularly today, because one of the reasons they were promoted or got where they are is because they are outstanding performers. It is because of that achievement mode. And the hardest thing as people move up as executives is giving up the work that they enjoy. Their work is no longer doing the task, but it's empowering and and requires and coaching and supporting. So finding other ways to satisfy that is very important.

Daniel Goleman: 24:42

This reminds me of something that David McClelland talked about, which was socialized power, which is using your influence for the good of other people.

Ruth Malloy: 24:51

Yeah, David talked about three social motives that account for probably the largest variety of behavior, whether it's at work, you know, you can see it at home, or even at an organizational society level. Those were the achievement motive, which is the topic today. But as you said, Dan, there's also the power motive and socialized power, meaning that people get satisfaction when they have a positive impact on others, that they leave others feeling stronger and more capable. And the power motive is an essential ingredient of good leadership. So what is being able to as a leader, kind of manage your own achievement motive and start to get satisfaction from the role from helping and supporting and seeing a real high performer Any team that you've built and getting satisfaction out of that. The third, by the way, it's affiliation, I was

Daniel Goleman: 25:56

just gonna say affiliation that which is wanting to connect with other people seems to be essential to teamwork. That is, you know, when Google did their famous study of their top teams, I found psychological safety was a top characteristic. So if you're a leader, and you want to have a top performing team, don't you need to connect to reach out to people to create a sense of trust and safety?

Ruth Malloy: 26:23

Absolutely, it's core. And it's interesting looking at the history of the motivational research, because for a while, affiliation, motive was sort of poo pooed. You know, because sometimes, if you really cared about relationships, there was a risk that leaders would be reluctant to hold people accountable. So there could be some dysfunctional issues. But actually, you know, we're seeing it more and more, it is so essential for building trust, and creating an environment of psychological safety, that truly brings out the best in people. So people feel that they can contribute. And that is about really learning and wanting to know and connect with people personally, not just for the work.

Daniel Goleman: 27:20

And one of the hallmarks of the achieved, competence is wanting to continually improve your performance. So there's a little bit of a paradox there. Because the person who is a high achieving, once that person becomes a leader of a team needs to understand that, oh, there's something else that I need to deal which is very different than just go from my goals, it's reached out to the other people on the team, to connect to create a sense of trust, safety and belonging.

Ruth Malloy: 27:49

That's right. And the hard part, the paradox is, when your achievement motive gets aroused, and this is again, where achievement run amok comes in, you put blinders on, it's, again, what makes you so good, in terms of your own individual performance, you get laser focused on that task, and you often will miss the social dynamics that are going on in the room, you know, you're you think you're doing a good job, and you don't think you're doing harm, but you can leave a lot of collateral damage in the way because you're not paying attention to that. So I think part of the work a leader has to do is to, in their minds, reframe the goal about performance, about being individual, but about performance of your team. And kind of channeling achievement mode is more about empowering and connecting with people and building a strong team.

Daniel Goleman: 28:50

This reminds me of the unconscious level of all this also where, because I don't know if you know, the work of Decker Keltner at Berkeley, where he talks about power relationships and attention. And he says in a dyad, the more powerful person pays less attention to the less powerful person, the less powerful person pays much more attention upward to the more powerful person. And this can mean for example, on a Zoom meeting, where you have your team by zoom, that when the leader checks his or her phone, they're looking away from whoever is speaking, that sends a message to everyone on the Zoom, that the leader doesn't really care about what this person is saying, which may be completely inadvertent, but it's a very powerful message. So let's suggest that leaders need to pay much more attention.

Ruth Malloy: 29:43

Yeah, that's such a good point. And I see this so much, you know, in our practice with executives, about not being mindful, you know, particularly when they are high in achievement, about the symbolic impact that they have as a leader just by being in the role, you know, as you said, you are under a magnifying glass. And, as you say, if you know, when somebody looks at the phone, it can be so demoralizing or demotivating. When when the person is talking, you know, the other thing I've seen with some leaders who again, get involved in the task, you know, so So as the team is solving the problem, they're they're incredibly creative and bright, and bring up ideas. And if they're not explicit, people take that as an order. So they may just be brainstorming or riffing you know, while people are so busy work in organizations today, it can create a lot of activity, and swirl. And this is another common thing we see sometimes with high achievement leaders like you have to be really careful, you know, when you bring things up that that, okay, no, this is not something to work on, or they get a great idea. And then people can spend a tremendous amount of effort going sideways on ideas, and then getting overwhelmed, because there are too many priorities.

Daniel Goleman: 31:21

In your position. Now, it sounds as though you're assessing top leaders in global organizations. Do you see a general pattern and his achievement part of that pattern in the best leaders?

Ruth Malloy: 31:34

Yes, I would say certainly, when you get to the C suite, and CEO, almost 100% have that achievement competence, it is probably the most defining characteristic of the top leaders, particularly in high growth companies. One of the things that enables the company to do so well, is that they channel that achievement motors into the strategy. So they find, you know, things that look groundbreaking, but they're really trying to figure out in the market, we say that thoughtful, calculated risks, what is going to differentiate us? What is going to be unique, you know, so you see, the innovation is often about figuring out the problem, and then creating a breakthrough strategy that that gets them ahead of their competitors. And often, you know, there is a lot of scale. And if you've got a healthy power motive as well, that socialize, you then spend a lot of your time communicating, and selling that vision and enabling your team to kind of help execute the strategy and how they get there. So what happens is also under stress, it can break down. So what are

Daniel Goleman: 33:00

some of the other strengths that support this in a highly effective leader,

Ruth Malloy: 33:05

I do feel there is good self awareness. And I think the balance, too, but like you were saying, with what Vanessa talked about, is that we had Spencer Stewart with called caring whether its affiliation, but a real value around talent. And this is, you know, I would say the best leaders really understand not just all about the strategy, and the results, but you have to do it through the people and investing in getting a good team, you know, really high performing team and enabling them to lead.

Daniel Goleman: 33:47

You mentioned stress, and these years have been extra stressful for everyone. How does that impact all of this? And what are the big buffers? And what are the vulnerabilities here for a leader? Well,

Ruth Malloy: 34:01

I think with the pandemic, you know, march 2020, everybody went into crisis mode, often on Zoom. So again, you have the barrier of trying to connect personally. So it often all becomes about tasks, and problem solving. And leaders may rightfully so have to start pay setting or jump in or be very clear. You know, you have to have clarity, in crisis, but it can be really hard to sustain. And I think that has been the biggest challenge for a number of CEOs who, you know, in normal times have done very well, at managing the achievement mode. We've often seen this start to break down, and how that kind of cascades through the organization is you know, at the top team level, the leader starts getting into the weeds and pay setting. And in turn, that can create a lack of alignment, because there may be communication that isn't happening, or have been spoke or it's you know, it gets into the firefighting mode, Okay, you go through this, you will break it out into silos and and then the organization starts bumping into itself. And you know, two or three levels down is where you really start to feel strain.

Daniel Goleman: 35:25

I think we've covered the main points I had in mind, is there anything you would want to bring up or

Ruth Malloy: 35:29

the only thing that I would leave with is in terms of coachable clients, people high in achievement are very coachable? Because let's be cheap, and they want to get better and self improve. And you know, as we wrote about 15 years ago, in that article, leadership Around the muck, when leaders kind of get that aha and start building that self awareness, they can become tremendously effective and empowering leaders. And I think that's, that's the positive piece here, you know that they can go from being very disempowering, or causing burnout and chaos and stress. They can learn, but it really is about that self awareness.

Daniel Goleman: 36:19

And on that hopeful note, I want to thank you very much for joining me, Ruth.

Ruth Malloy: 36:23

Oh, thank you for having me, Dan.

Unknown: 36:39

Hey, Dan, thank you for doing this how to let go of grudges?

Daniel Goleman: 36:43

I love the question. I think part of the unpleasantness of holding a grudge is how it makes you feel. And if you can do something that makes you feel better, which is probably totally unrelated to the grudge. That's a better way to spend your time than obsessing about the grades. When the 25th anniversary edition of emotional intelligence came out, there was a review of it that was kind of it was a total put down of the book itself. And I got angry and ashamed and anxious and all kinds of negative feelings. I don't know if I had a grudge against the author. But what helped me was actually some advice from a friend of mine, who's a Tibetan lama. He said, you know, just handshake all that all the feelings and what he meant was just be open to it, except it befriended. And the more I examined the feelings from the kind of neutral space, the more they kind of dissipated, and then eventually they disappeared. So that was very, very helpful. It was Don't deny the feeling. Don't deny the grudge. But look at it, and feel it and just be with it, but not react to it. And that was really good advice.

Kerry Seed: 38:20

Thanks for listening to first person plural EI and beyond. Do you have a question for Dan Goleman he wants to hear from you. Go to First Person plural.com/ask. Dan, that's first person plural.com/ask. Dan, to record your question now. And while you're there, you can follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter to learn more about the podcast. Be sure to tune in next time. US Olympic team psychologists Peter haberle will talk about the challenges for high achieving individuals at the Olympics. He shares how achievement shows up in team sports. Through these two lenses we see achievement and systems. We care about supporting you on your ei journey and helping to bridge the gap between theory and application that starts by better understanding you and the resources you're looking for. If this resonates with you, and if you have six minutes to spare, please take our audience and emotional intelligence insights survey. You can find it at Keystep media.com/ei survey. That's Keystep media.com/e ai survey. In recognition of your time, we're gonna give you a free copy of the leading with empathy ebook. It's a collective guide that explores different applications and facets of empathy. This show was brought to you by our CO hosts Daniel Goleman, Hanuman Goleman and Elizabeth Solomon. It's sponsored by Keystep media, your source for personal and professional development materials focused on mindfulness leadership and emotional intelligence. Special thanks to Kai, whose voice you heard at the top of the show and today's guest Ruth Malloy. For guest BIOS transcripts and resources mentioned in today's episode, check out our episode notes on our website first person plural.com This episode was written and produced by Elizabeth Solomon and meet Carrie seed audio production by Michelle Zipkin. Episode art and production support by Brian Johnson. Music in this episode includes tiny footsteps in the snow by by unit, Norma by monpazier and our theme music is by Amber ohata. Until next time, be well