How to Regulate Your Nervous System Before a Hard Decision

Carolyn Coughlin (: 00:00

You don't know how people are going to respond. And if one person responds in an unpredictable way, if they happen to have influence in the system, that will influence other people in different ways. the thing that's predictable is you know that people are not predictable.

Ashish (: 00:14

If you're searching for how to lead through uncertainty, working harder may be exactly what's keeping you stuck. Complex problems like culture change, AI transformation, leading people do not have one right answer. Treating them as such leaves even the best leaders exhausted and ineffective. Today I'm joined by Carolyn Coughlin.

Ashish (: 00:37

Co-leader of Cultivating Leadership and author of Unleash Your Complexity Genius. In this conversation, you'll discover how to recognize when you are facing complexity, not just a merely complicated problem. You learn to notice and read your nervous system as an early warning signal. You learn to use your power of breath and movement to reset.

Ashish (: 01:02

Start to make progress through an experimentation mindset, creating safe to fail experiments, and you'll be able to use wonder and laughter built on a foundation of love to truly unleash the wisdom that lies trapped in your organization. If you're leading change, navigating AI, or wrestling with challenge that refuses to be solved, this episode.

Ashish (: 01:26

will help you start to dance with that complexity.

Ashish (: 01:30

Carolyn, it is so lovely to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast. Thank you, my friend.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 01:36

It's so good to be here finally, Ashish. It's so good to see you.

Ashish (: 01:39

Well, listen, you know, the powerful work I experienced in the domain of complexity with you almost now four years ago at the Next Practice Institute has stayed with me. And I have to admit, you know, that week really helped me build a solid foundation. that has helped me really navigate with more agility, or as you would call dance in complexity. rather than just try and

Ashish (: 02:03

try and survive it. And so I'm excited to have a conversation on that so that other leaders too can learn some of the key moves. One, learn the distinction between, you know, complex problems versus the simple, complicated problems that so many of us are trained to to lead and kind of make our way through. But also really start to learn the moves that you so beautifully teach about that create that foundation for them.

Ashish (: 02:28

and so with that, you know, I just want to start with that question about differentiate for our listeners what differentiates a complex problem from a simple or a complicated problem that we experience in the business world?

Carolyn Coughlin (: 02:42

this is a question, interestingly, that when that when we talked about this, you know, my colleagues and I talked about this with leaders, it wasn't even a question that people asked. And when you we

Ashish (: 02:51

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 02:52

talked about complexity, they would mostly say, right, that sounds like not what I'm dealing with. but

Carolyn Coughlin (: 02:59

Today, people really get, at least the the leaders I interact with, really get that what they're dealing with very often is complex. And so you asked what the difference is. Complicated problems are problems that can be solved. They have knowable solutions. So like simple examples are doing your taxes, fixing a car engine.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 03:22

figuring out a you know like a a a workflow an optimal workflow those are those are problems that have knowable good enough answers and and once you find an answer if in similar contexts it's repeatable so if you apply a solution in one context a similar context to another context it should work there too

Carolyn Coughlin (: 03:45

The thing about complexity is it's not like that. In complexity, there are a number of features, but there one of them is that there are many, many interconnected things, often referred to as nodes and complexity. And complicated problems can have many interconnected things as well. But the the relationship between and among the nodes and complexity is itself unpredictable.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 04:12

And so when the relationship between things is changing, or when one thing in a system changes and it has knock-on effects and changes other things in unpredictable ways, that's complex. So the the simplest example I can give you, we usually use the example of raising children, is complex.

Ashish (: 04:29

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 04:30

Rocket science is complicated, it can be figured out.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 04:33

Although there are bits of it that are complex, like the people involved. but raising children, anyone who's ever raised children knows that if you figure out how to raise one child you might see patterns that help you raising the next child, but it you can't just like rinse and repeat. You can't do that. Because each child is different. And if you figure out what how to like what works with a child on one day, it may not work on the next day.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 04:57

it can be explained in a much more complicated way, but I'll try to keep it simple. People are inherently complex. because we we there there are so many interconnected parts in us, including, you know, our genetic makeup, which is knowable, but our experiences are shaping all of those things lead and we have agency. So it leads to human beings being

Carolyn Coughlin (: 05:20

not predictable because we don't know which thing is going to matter most today in terms of how we show up. And then if you put a groups of you know number of people together, you've got all these unpredictable nodes that are now interacting. So groups of people are inherently complex, which is why we talk about leadership as being inherently complex.

Ashish (: 05:39

to me that was such an important distinction when I discovered this work, right? Because if you think about change management as a profession, right, or at least how it's rolled, every transformation program, you know, you're upgrading a system, you're doing a digital journey, there's a lot of elements of that that are complicated that need that can be figured out. But I think a common flaw I often see organizations do.

Ashish (: 06:04

Is they'll have 10% of the effort going on change, and the effort they're using on change, they're solving it like a complicated problem. We're gonna communicate this often, we're gonna do this training, we're gonna tell people, we're gonna have these posters, and that's gonna go across the whole organization. And then they wonder why it actually doesn't work.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 06:24

That's right. Yes. And why it doesn't work.

Ashish (: 06:25

Right, because implicitly people are complex.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 06:28

That's right. You don't know how people are going to respond. And if one person responds in an unpredictable way, if they happen to have influence in the system, that will influence other people in different ways. the thing that's predictable is you know that people are not predictable.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 06:43

So knowing that the effort that goes into figuring out what to do in a change management program, I think there's a really, really important that there's a healthy dose of humility about how much you can actually make people change.

Ashish (: 06:58

Absolutely.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 06:58

Yeah.

Ashish (: 06:59

There's a lot of truth to that, right? Like you have to be open.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 07:01

Huh. Yeah.

Ashish (: 07:03

You know, you can take a horse to water, you can make a drink. You might, you might think you've got it all figured out. And you have to be able to figure out what will drive change in that organization or in that unit, in that person,

Ashish (: 07:15

So one of the key things so I'm curious from your point of view, what advice would you give to leaders to first even be able to know

Ashish (: 07:23

Is this complex or complicated based on kind of what they might experience somatically?

Carolyn Coughlin (: 07:28

I'm gonna give you one that's more of a it's not necessarily a somatic signal, but if it has to do with people and getting people to do things, it has some element of complexity. So that's like kind of the easy one. I think somatically what

Carolyn Coughlin (: 07:43

leaders could pay attention to and people who support leaders could pay attention to is if if the person a leader is feeling like they're rolling a ball uphill or maybe even a better analogy is like kind of

Carolyn Coughlin (: 07:58

You look I don't know if you've ever looked into a a pond full of like tadpoles swimming around. And

Ashish (: 08:03

Mm-hmm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 08:04

they're they're sometimes they're so thick it looks like you could just put your hands in there and pick them up.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 08:10

But it the feeling of trying to apply complicated approaches to complex situations is kind of like looking at that thing thinking, I'm just gonna stick my hands in there and I'm gonna you know pick out a handful of tadpoles. And every time you put your hands in the pond, they disperse and you get nothing.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 08:28

And so it's this, it should be easy and it's not. I should be able to figure it out and I can't. So that feeling of grasping and not getting and and often the action urge that comes up for people, especially people who have been really successful by working harder and trying to get smarter and trying to get the right resources is if only I had more resources, were smarter, worked harder,

Carolyn Coughlin (: 08:54

So if you get that feeling, you might actually be dealing with complexity.

Ashish (: 08:58

Yeah. for me, this notion of always feeling like there is not enough and I'm trying so hard, or almost oftentimes I get the feeling, and I think it's a good trigger for me, is I'm trying so hard, I'm running so fast, and yet I'm still in the same place. Right? So this just notion

Carolyn Coughlin (: 09:13

Yes, that's right.

Ashish (: 09:14

of efforting without actually getting anywhere is an important one.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 09:17

Yeah.

Ashish (: 09:17

I also like you start to kind of really, you know, in in complicated problems.

Ashish (: 09:22

it's more of our head that is, okay, let me go figure it out. And often I can go long hours trying to solve my way through it. I think for me, with the other t telltale sign that I've experienced with this work is

Ashish (: 09:33

You actually get more like exhaustion because you're trying and nothing is working and you're frustrated and you start to actually question your own worthiness. Like, am I good enough? Like, can I actually lead this? Right. So there is a lot happening within us that is fundamentally keeping us from being able to move progress. And from that activated nervous system, it's very hard to find the moves.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 09:58

That's right. So you've just described the paradox, which is that when we're faced with something that's hard to solve, and we keep trying to solve it as though it were a figure-outable problem.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 10:08

it's like banging our head against the the wall again and again. And that banging your head against the wall usually is associated with an activated nervous system, you know, like you're in a fight or flight mode, like, gotta figure this out. And

Ashish (: 10:22

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 10:22

exactly what you say from that nervous system, it is actually exactly the opposite of what you need to deal with the complexity. So it's it's pretty impossible to do what's needed in complexity.

Ashish (: 10:37

So in your book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius, you highlight a range of moves. Right. So first is, you know, when I when I get here and I recognize I might not be in a state fully capable to navigate, there's a set of things that leaders can do and I would love to go through those with you. Maybe give an overview of some of the complexity moves and we can go into a couple of them and bring them to life.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:00

Yeah.

Ashish (: 11:00

For

Ashish (: 11:01

how leaders could use those.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:02

So do you want to start with noticing?

Ashish (: 11:03

Yeah, let's do that since we were just touching that anyway.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:07

What's also the of the complexity geniuses that we talk about in the book, it is if you don't do that one, it's pretty hard to do anything else.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:16

I remember one time probably, I don't know,

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:19

eleven or twelve years ago we were working with a new client and we were talking about what would we do to it was a program for developing leaders who could lead better in complexity. And we were talking

Ashish (: 11:28

Mm-hmm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:29

about what are the competencies and I said, noticing. And this client said to me, Seriously, Carolyn, like we can't tell these senior leaders that the thing they need to do more of is notice. Like that's not very sexy and it's not very earth shattering. And

Carolyn Coughlin (: 11:45

And you know, it's true, it's not very sexy and it's not very earth-shattering, and it's also really crucial. So, you know, we talk about so there are a lot of there are a lot of practices that people can be in to help them notice more. Meditation is helpful, various presencing exercises are very helpful, but actually

Carolyn Coughlin (: 12:06

I find this like very simple idea that we can direct our attention to be very helpful in terms of learning how to notice. So I often will take people through a quick exercise where I'll say, okay, focus your attention on noise noises in the room. Can you do that? Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 12:25

Focus your attention on what you're what what you see far away from you. People can do that. Then focus your attention on your feet. What do you feel? People feel stuff, they can describe it. So it's like really it's it's bringing people's attention to the fact that they can direct their attention is I think very, very basic. So why why do we need to do this? that

Carolyn Coughlin (: 12:47

So there's there are two things that are crucial to notice when leading in complexity. One is the most important one, I think, is what is happening in me. So you mentioned kind of what's

Ashish (: 12:56

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 12:57

happening somatically. I think this is absolutely crucial because as we just talked about, one of the key signals that we're dealing with complexity, but not approaching it in a complexity-friendly manner is this set our our our nervous system is activated.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 13:13

And so because we're we're fighting, we're trying to kind of figure something out by beating our head against the wall. So noticing in ourselves what that feels like. For different people, it's different. You know, some people it's sort of like a clenched almost like a clenched fist or a tight

Ashish (: 13:28

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 13:29

jaw or a kind of forward leaning.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 13:33

It's different for different people. But being able to notice that is super important.

Ashish (: 13:37

Yeah, just the signal of how you

Ashish (: 13:38

react when you're in a fight flight, right? Just becoming aware that you're actually activated.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 13:45

That's right.

Ashish (: 13:45

and also, you know, I think you talked about when you said like, look, we can direct our attention. I think that itself is is so revolutionary.

Ashish (: 13:53

Because we know that our brain basically ignores almost ninety-five, ninety-seven percent of information coming at us. And I'm I always you know, if you want to talk about the power of noticing, I'm sure you've shown that video of people throwing the balls the you know, to each other like

Carolyn Coughlin (: 14:09

Yeah, with a gorilla.

Ashish (: 14:10

how many times is the person in the black uniform passing to the white

Carolyn Coughlin (: 14:14

Yes.

Ashish (: 14:15

and half the room doesn't notice the gorilla.

Ashish (: 14:18

That actually goes in the middle of the room and nobody sees it because everybody's so busy counting the ball. And so I think it's an

Carolyn Coughlin (: 14:24

Yes.

Ashish (: 14:24

important element that you point out that in complexity, if you're activated, I think it's important to notice what are the parts of the system, what's actually happening, the information that's coming to you that you're actually not paying attention to, that might actually

Carolyn Coughlin (: 14:38

That's right.

Ashish (: 14:38

hold the clues to the answer you're looking for.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 14:42

Yes. And what you're pointing to, Ashish, is the is the kind of external noticing. so in order to be able to notice what's happening around me, kind of in a way that's wider than than what the thing I think I need to pay attention to, I have to be in a state that enables me to do that, a nervous system

Ashish (: 15:00

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 15:01

state that enables me to do that.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 15:02

and one of the key practices or competencies in complexity is to be we call scanning the system. So scanning widely.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 15:12

But when our nervous system is activated, we actually narrow zero in on

Ashish (: 15:16

Focused.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 15:17

the threats. Right, exactly. So broadening our gaze, scanning widely, and particularly noticing things that don't fit the story that we already have. So in complexity, we want to look for outliers. In in c the complicated world, outliers are noise. That's what I was taught in my consulting career.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 15:37

don't pay attention to the outliers.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 15:39

But the the paradoxical thing in complexity is that the outliers matter a lot. And so training ourselves and being in practices that help us pay attention to the outliers is really crucial in complexity.

Ashish (: 15:52

Yeah, you know, it points me, it highlights to me this work by Kim Cameron and the Center for Positive Organizations, looking for the energizers, looking for those who have the courage to be positively deviant. Most of us want to conform

Carolyn Coughlin (: 16:04

Yeah.

Ashish (: 16:04

to the norm, but there are few who are willing to be positively deviant and almost learning from what they're doing, right, in order to make things happen, I think is an example of that.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 16:14

what are the hardest things to do as a human being who's who's under stress to solve a problem, to lead a change, to make something happen.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 16:24

is to not only notice that there are positive deviants or other kinds of outliers, but then to actually pay attention to them and get curious about them. That is really counterintuitive and it feels to our bodies unsafe.

Ashish (: 16:39

So what's the move to be able to get that capacity? So I've noticed I'm activated. I've noticed, right? My heart is beating fast. I might be leaning forward. I'm tight. What's this next step that if my leader notices that's my inner state? What do I do?

Carolyn Coughlin (: 16:54

there's no linearity to what to do next, but I will tell you what I do and I suggest to my clients is it to lean into this capacity, this thing that we have as human beings that's always with us, and that's breath. so our breath is as we talk about in the book, it's it's one of the, if not the only aspect of our autonomic nervous system that we can actually to some degree control.

Ashish (: 17:17

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 17:18

so it's happening in the background all the time, and we're and we're very unlikely to stop breathing under normal circumstances, even if we try. So you've all tried this, you hold your breath for a certain amount of time, and then you can't, even if you tell yourself I'm gonna hold my breath for 10 minutes, most people won't do that, no matter how much they want to.

Ashish (: 17:34

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 17:35

But we can control, like within the kind of constraints of having to breathe, we can control how we breathe.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 17:43

And so the very simple act of taking a long out breath.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 17:48

a sigh, an audible sigh. the the out breath activates our parasympathetic nervous system. So focusing on that very simple. that's and there are other breathing techniques that we can do, but the breath is a direct access to our nervous system. And it's I mean that's why the ancients have been doing it for like

Carolyn Coughlin (: 18:08

before any of us you know remembers. Yes, exactly.

Ashish (: 18:09

Thousands and thousands of years, millennia, yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 18:13

Exactly. And I don't think they knew why. Of course they didn't know why scientifically. They just knew that it worked. Which is, by the way, another aspect of complexity that we can talk about, which is just like

Ashish (: 18:22

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 18:23

rather than trying to know exactly why things work, which is important in some cases, trying stuff and seeing what works. Try breath practices that calm your nervous system. That's one.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 18:33

I mean the the other the next genius that we talk about which is also has not quite as direct access to our nervous systems but still pretty direct is movement. So I I tend to so use like using your actual physical body in different ways to calm our nervous system.

Ashish (: 18:49

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 18:50

So the first thing I try to do is notice what's tight. If my shoulders are raised, I drop them.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 18:55

if my attention is up here in my head, which it usually is if I'm activated, I bring my attention to my feet. I really like push my feet into the ground and feel gravity.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 19:07

because I love to move, I just go get up and walk around. It's or go outside. It it just changes my my nervous system state and therefore what's possible. I call

Ashish (: 19:17

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 19:17

them the direct nervous system access points.

Ashish (: 19:20

You know, just going spending time in nature that works a lot for me. We're lucky we live in Boulder. But you know, just even I found even when I don't have access, just sitting next to a plant, right, has just an effect on just getting. And even if you're in New York or you're in LA, right, there are l parks. Just go. If you're activated and you might say, I don't have the time for this, but try it. Go for 10 minutes just without your phone, just sit.

Ashish (: 19:44

next to a tree or a plant and just breathe. Right? Just breathe and let nature do its work in bringing you back to a more calmer, grounded state, and then go back and try and tackle the problem that you've been tackling. And maybe you'll tackle it with a different place.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 20:01

I love that idea of sitting next to a plant. I so want to hear what happens for you when you sit next to a plant.

Ashish (: 20:07

my God. we are blessed, Carolyn. One of these days when you come visit. I'm blessed because I literally, my office, we had this massive fir tree, unfortunately, that fell on our house and it's gone. But we have trees all around. We have a beautiful maple tree and we have a catalpa. I think to me, just surrounded by these giants that have been around for so many years, like I just have to I can have a really hard conversation. I can just

Ashish (: 20:32

They're first they're all around, so I'm anywhere enveloped. But then just going down and just even just regulating or looking at a piece of leaf and noticing all again, it goes back to noticing there is everything is a blur, it's just a tree. And then you start to notice all the different colors and the variants. And and I think I just find this level of soothing and just expansion in my capacities.

Ashish (: 20:54

Because you're choosing to see so much variation in something that you don't see, and then that curiosity comes in for me when I go back and look at what I was dealing with.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 21:04

That's beautiful.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 21:05

living things have an energy. And the plants and the trees are not probably consciously worried about, are they gonna make their numbers or not? You know, like it's

Ashish (: 21:14

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 21:15

it's a calmer energy. there's the awe of nature, there's the curiosity that that that you described about, you know, wow.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 21:22

What is it? Like, what are the finer details of that butterfly wing? But there's also just the pure energetic nature. If we let our

Ashish (: 21:28

Vibrational energy, yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 21:30

That's right, that we can co regulate. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just

Ashish (: 21:33

Absolutely.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 21:34

just before this I'm lucky enough to live in a beautiful place as well. And we have a little lake right down at the front of our yard and so I needed a little bit of additional energy 'cause I've been up for a long time and I just went down and sat by the water for just like ten minutes and listened to the water lapping on the dock.

Ashish (: 21:51

Mm-hmm.

Ashish (: 22:16

You know,

Carolyn Coughlin (: 22:16

Yeah.

Ashish (: 22:17

one thing that I would love to touch on as well, because we are in a sleep-deprived world. the first act of waking up often is with a phone. And so we are training our sympathetic nervous system to be on fire from the moment we wake up. And the last thing we before we go to bed, many people are checking is there anything urgent before I go to bed?

Ashish (: 22:37

and I think you also in your book and in your work talk a lot about why sleep is so important and why that found if you wanna do hard stuff, you have to able to tap into the magic elixir of sleep.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 22:51

Yes, absolutely. I just had them such a a huge revelation this morning because I had to wake up at three thirty in the morning I'm on a global board and it was my turn to be on the meeting at four o'clock in the morning today. And I think of myself as a very good sleeper. my aura ring.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 23:07

confirms that most of the time. it also turns out I'm not quite as good a sleeper as I thought I was in terms of how much, you know, REM and deep sleep I get. But this morning, I used to I used to think, I can power through a night of just five hours of sleep, no problem. And but this morning what I saw was I got almost no REM sleep at all because I cut my sleep out off at five hours and so often the a lot of the REM sleep comes ill in the morning.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 23:35

I used to be had this view that I didn't really want to know the data about my sleep because I thought, well, what good is it gonna do me? But actually it it

Carolyn Coughlin (: 23:45

it makes a really big for me it makes a really big difference because I can ensure that I go to sleep at the same time. I really think about like somebody was passing around a big bar of chocolate last night after a dinner party I was at and I did not have any. It it's not because I'm like live a boring life, it's because I actually want to sleep. And

Carolyn Coughlin (: 24:03

so many people tell me that they notice their Apple watches or their aura rings or their whoops or whatever they wear.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 24:10

really have made it so clear to them that even one drink in the evening disrupts their sleep. these things allow us to make different choices if we want to. not that we always have to.

Ashish (: 24:19

If we are resourced. if

Ashish (: 24:21

we build that capacity, right? If we build that foundation, we ground if we are activated, let's ground ourselves. in your book and in your work, you also talk about the importance when it comes to complexity of experimentation. so talk about why that is important and what is good experimentation versus bad experimentation.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 24:39

well my views on this have changed so much over the years. This idea that experimentation and complexity is crucial originally, at least for me, came from Dave Snowdon's, you know, the

Ashish (: 24:50

Mm-hmm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 24:50

he i in the Kinevan framework, which describes I won't go into it, but it describes the difference between, you know, predictable and controllable problems as opposed to problems that are not predictable and controllable, so complex or complicated complex.

Ashish (: 25:04

Yep.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 25:05

In complexity, he talks about safe to fail experiments. And so in the early days of doing this work, with

Carolyn Coughlin (: 25:13

clients and with myself, we did a lot of practice with developing good safe to fail experiments, which means essentially an experiment is different from a decision or an initiative in that it is small, it's doesn't take a lot of resources, it's quick, you want to learn the whole point of it is to learn from it.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 25:36

and you should get 80% of them should actually fail in the sense that they don't do the thing that you thought they were

Ashish (: 25:42

Right.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 25:42

gonna do. It's all about probing and learning about the nature of the problem or the system that you're working with or that you're in.

Ashish (: 25:49

Mm-hmm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 25:50

so we taught a lot about how to develop safe-to-fail experiments and how to distinguish them from solutions. it turned out that most leaders we worked with.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 25:58

didn't have such a hard time like knowing the difference. but there was such such a strong resistance to actually doing experiments. And so Jennifer and I came to refer to this genius not experiments, but as being experimental. so it's really

Ashish (: 26:15

Mm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 26:15

a mindset.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 26:17

experimental sort of means you're not attached to any particular outcome.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 26:21

It means you're always learning it so that you have to pay attention to all the information, that you don't get attached to your own stories about what the solution is or even what the root cause is, because there isn't one in complexity. So experiment, I often think of being experimental. I like sort of equate it with being playful, right? you know, we think about when we were little kids, like the even from the moment that we watched toddlers throw

Carolyn Coughlin (: 26:48

their their bottle or their food off of the high chair. And they're not doing that to be bad. They're doing that to see what'll happen. Will will mom or dad or the caretaker pick it up? And how many times will they do it?

Carolyn Coughlin (: 26:59

people learn how to talk through experimentation when they're little. That's why it's so easy for little kids can learn languages. It's probably about the brain as well, but

Carolyn Coughlin (: 27:07

It's just harder for adults to be experimental. Why? Because we're attached to our identities of knowing stuff.

Ashish (: 27:12

And we don't wanna

Carolyn Coughlin (: 27:12

So we had leaders say, you know, I get this experimental stuff, but really I'm gonna go into the organization or a thing that I'm leading and say, Let's do experiments and let's make them playful. it's so counterintuitive but also counter identity,

Ashish (: 27:28

Right.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 27:28

If a leader should know stuff. A leader should be in charge. A leader should be serious. A leader should be whatever the thing it's hard.

Ashish (: 27:35

Yeah. Well,

Ashish (: 27:36

we just covered this topic in the podcast we released this week. It was with Ramesh Srinivasan from McKinsey. He leads our Bower Academy. And we talked about the importance

Carolyn Coughlin (: 27:42

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ashish (: 27:45

of being vulnerable in in the right situations for the leaders to be able to say, Hey, I don't know. and I think we'll have to figure it out. But I think we will be able to figure that out, but we'll be able to figure it out together. Right. Here's what I do know.

Ashish (: 27:57

Here's what matters, here's what we exist, but how do we get past that? I think we talked about the power of vulnerability as one of the most important gifts and powers to navigate in this world.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 28:08

Ashish, do you get the sense from your work or from talking to people like that it is becoming more acceptable and even desirable for leaders to say, I don't know, we need to figure this out together? Is it shifting? Because back in the day when I was a consultant, that was not kind of that wasn't what leadership looked like.

Ashish (: 28:27

It's it's I you,

Ashish (: 28:29

it might have gone from five percent to ten percent, but still people today, right, don't. And in fact, one of so we're running a program right now, which is

Carolyn Coughlin (: 28:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Ashish (: 28:37

a eighteen month journey with with a large food company. and one of the biggest moves that we are trying to normalize, then we've been doing it, is for people to actually ask each other for help and even say, I don't know the answer, or here's what I'm thinking, I am open to other ways.

Ashish (: 28:53

and you know, we started with actually taking those who were willing to go do it to then create a space where others are now feeling comfortable asking and offering their help, right? So it's like small, like I think we have to, but this is where we had no idea how can you get somebody to be comfortable saying, I don't know, if they've grown

Carolyn Coughlin (: 29:09

Yeah.

Ashish (: 29:10

up for 25 years being the person who knew. But I feel that in the world we are navigating in today, I think that is the biggest difference.

Ashish (: 29:18

between companies who will be able to navigate, whether it's the AI, whether it's the economic disruptions, the constantly changing tariffs, the the climate change around us, is by tapping into the answers that exist at the edges, versus as a leader, feeling that I can know all the answers.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 29:37

Yeah, I'm so glad I asked you that question because listening to your response really crystallized something for me, which is that in my work with leaders,

Carolyn Coughlin (: 29:46

I don't hear overt resistance to the kind of the vulnerability and I don't know. people if you ask any leader I work with, they would say, Yes, of course. We can't possibly I can't possibly know everything. I can't do everything myself. I need all the perspectives. It's just harder in practice.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 30:02

It's it's very hard in practice.

Ashish (: 30:05

this is the complexity of humans. There's so many other things going on. So I'll give you this dynamic, right? They are all peers. They are the senior leadership team of this operations team. We can't ignore that part of it there is competition. So if I tell my peer I don't know, will that be misused against me? What will other people think about me not knowing versus somebody else who knows it all?

Ashish (: 30:26

Right. So I think there are all of these

Carolyn Coughlin (: 30:27

That's right.

Ashish (: 30:27

stories we actually start to create. So we are comfortable. Like, yeah, of course we need to be vulnerable. But how do we be vulnerable by sharing something about ourselves or asking for help? And I think that's where you start to kind of get uncomfortable or you'll ask, you know, you'll have the smallest thing that people will share, but not really.

Ashish (: 30:45

But I think this is where I think that trust also develops over time. And I think so the only way we can do that is like I share a little that allows you to share a little, that allows me to share a little bit more, that allows you to share a little more. And over time we get comfortable, with that move.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 31:00

Do you know I think people misunderstand vulnerability as well. At least I have a kind of a new definition of vulnerability, which I now call letting yourself be known. because

Ashish (: 31:11

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 31:12

that comes from one of my colleagues, I don't know where she got it from, maybe she made it up, but my colleague Heidi Brooks talks about this in her work. because vulnerability I think

Carolyn Coughlin (: 31:20

it it has come to mean a certain thing, at least with my a lot of my clients, which means talk

Ashish (: 31:24

Mm-hmm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 31:25

about your family, talk about your shortcomings, talk about your weekend, talk about, things outside of the kind of norm. I think that's part of it. But I also think that just consistently revealing yourself and that includes

Carolyn Coughlin (: 31:40

I don't know, but it also includes sometimes I do know, like I do have a really important perspective here, and it's an outlier, and I'm gonna tell you what it is. or I have a piece of feedback for the system or for an individual that I'm gonna offer and I'm gonna offer it skillfully and clearly, and I'm gonna do that even at the risk of disrupting whatever kind of

Carolyn Coughlin (: 32:01

collaboration or like homeostasis we're in. Yeah, harmony is the

Ashish (: 32:04

Harmony. Harmony. Right? For disrupting harmony.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 32:07

harmony is the enemy of complexity friendliness. It

Ashish (: 32:11

Let's just be

Ashish (: 32:12

comfortably numb. Because because we don't want discomfort. Right? And I think from that place

Carolyn Coughlin (: 32:13

Right, exactly. Yeah. Let's all just get along. That's right. Yeah.

Ashish (: 32:18

you don't have your capacity to notice. You don't have your capacity to make those moves other than what you've always known. you just sit.

Ashish (: 32:25

I loved your move also in this space of that's why bringing the power of rather than knowing, the power of wondering and laughing, as two of the kind of really complex detenius moves that you talk about. So talk about the power of those, wonder and why actually laughter is so important in this domain, if we have to figure our way out together.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 32:46

I'll start with laughter because I think that's more unusual. You know, what people

Ashish (: 32:50

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 32:51

don't talk about laughter and leadership that often. a couple things about laughter. One is it goes back to playfulness, which playfulness gets our our nervous system in a more of a parasympathetic state, and which is much more suited to complexity because it enables us to scan widely, to stay in a thing rather than fighting a thing.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 33:10

So that's that's one about playfulness. another one is that people trust each other. There's some research on laughing that suggests that we trust people that we can laugh with more. And

Ashish (: 33:22

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 33:22

Trust

Carolyn Coughlin (: 33:23

is that yeah, it's so interesting. Now we have to be really careful not to ever be laughing at somebody because that can really destroy trust. But laughing together is we trust people that we laugh with. And so there's like bringing some levity to situations and doing it, you know, like with care.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 33:44

is we need it builds trust among people and there because in complexity you don't have processes that can govern everything because you don't processes are only useful when you can sort of predict what's gonna happen and the process is

Ashish (: 33:56

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 33:56

there to either make things happen or keep things from happening. you what you have is people and you have trust and people to be able to have to respond to what's happening next. so that's that's really the second thing about laughter

Carolyn Coughlin (: 34:08

I won't tell the whole story, but the very personal story with laughter, in how how incredibly quickly it can shift

Carolyn Coughlin (: 34:17

my state. Like I have I found myself once in the really depths of despair and a really, really hard time for me. It's many years ago, about seven or eight years ago. And

Ashish (: 34:27

Mm-hmm.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 34:27

I was running a workshop. It was very bad timing. There was somebody in the workshop who taught laughter yoga. And I dragged myself out of bed early that morning to participate in laughter yoga. And I thought, my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing this. And just like engaging in

Carolyn Coughlin (: 34:44

in

Carolyn Coughlin (: 34:44

laughter about nothing, literally about nothing, shifted my state so profoundly. I mean it didn't mean I wasn't grieving anymore, it just meant I could show up differently because it shifted my state. So I am sold on laughter.

Ashish (: 34:57

Yeah. Well, there are lots of laugh clubs around, And sometimes till you participate

Ashish (: 35:02

in one, you go like, What are these odd people? Why are they just standing there in the garden just laughing? You know, beyond the fact that they're really breathing in a lot of oxygen and out because they're actually laughing. You know, th they it's it's a way to train our nervous system again. We don't laugh out loud, we try to be polite. So I think it's part of it is just truly creating that space. But yeah, it's very powerful. It is laughter is very powerful.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 35:22

Yeah, yeah,

Ashish (: 35:25

And I think it

Carolyn Coughlin (: 35:26

yeah.

Ashish (: 35:26

goes so importantly with, you can't have an experimental mindset and not actually laugh because if you're taking everything

Carolyn Coughlin (: 35:33

Thank you.

Ashish (: 35:34

so seriously, then you're not really being experimental. You're just, you know, only being experimental on the fringes

Carolyn Coughlin (: 35:40

Yes.

Ashish (: 35:40

because you need everything to be right. But being able to laugh at what didn't

Carolyn Coughlin (: 35:43

That's right.

Ashish (: 35:43

work and say, my God, look at what happened. Here's what I thought. Here's what happened. What can I learn from it? I think it again creates

Ashish (: 35:51

opens up more capacities to notice what we are learning from it.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 35:55

Thank you. That was the third point I was trying to remember and couldn't come up with it. That if we cannot laugh at ourselves, I think we're kind of dead on the water when it comes to leading in complexity or navigating complexity generally. Yeah,

Ashish (: 36:08

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 36:08

because we're gonna get it wrong all the time. All the time. And if we're not getting it wrong, we're not doing it right.

Ashish (: 36:15

Exactly.

Ashish (: 36:16

so look, you know, I really wanted to talk about something else in leadership that very rarely gets talked about, which is loving and the power of connections. Because we've up till now, we've talked about in complexity, you don't have all the answers. You'll never have all the answers. and your power to be able to tap in, I think

Ashish (: 36:33

I wanna hear a little bit about loving from you. and what do you mean and what does that mean like in a workplace context and how tapping into that power emotion and that act can really make an organization complexity ready.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 36:46

Yeah, thanks for asking about that. when Jennifer and I were writing the book, we got feedback from the editor, who said, Okay, look, this is great, but she really can't use the word love. Like that can't be one of the geniuses. And

Carolyn Coughlin (: 36:59

We were pretty adamant that that was the word we wanted to use because we could have gone with connection, which is also really, really important in complexity for some of the reasons we've talked about.

Ashish (: 37:09

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 37:10

but look, we spend

Carolyn Coughlin (: 37:12

so much of our lives in the workplace, either virtually or energetically or physically. Right? So much of our lives. And if there isn't love in that place that we spend so much of our lives, I think that's really sad. That's really sad. And so there are very practical reasons, which many of which we've talked about.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 37:35

We love people, that means that doesn't mean romantic love. That means we have like genuine

Ashish (: 37:38

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 37:40

positive regard for them. It also means we can like tussle with them. I mean, I personally the people I tussle with the most in disagreeing in productive ways are the people I truly trust the most. and

Ashish (: 37:53

Yes.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 37:54

so we you have to be able to do that in complexity. But

Carolyn Coughlin (: 37:58

Also, if we're talking about our nervous systems kind of needing to be in a state where we can address complexity well, what other better way is there to be in a state of kind of the parasympathetic nervous state system state than when we're feeling love and positive regard? It just it's a mood elevator

Ashish (: 38:19

Yeah.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 38:22

and it it just helps us.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 38:24

be ready. So I I mean there are lots of other reasons, but it we did it as a because we believe it, but also as a kind of a nudge to say actually it is important. So

Ashish (: 38:36

Well, you would be I have two two stories that I would write. One is I

Ashish (: 38:40

was at a conscious capitalism meeting in Denver and we were going around and we were with Timothy Henry, who'd who's taken over as the CEO for conscious capitalism and they were talking about all these attributes around looking at what which companies would choose to be consciously capital, right? Follow up with the movement.

Ashish (: 38:59

And one of the CEOs in the room said, Well, have you thought about using scanning for love? He said, What do you mean by love? He's like, using the word love. Do you like do companies fundamentally believe and embrace in loving their employees and loving their customers and their suppliers? And it was interesting. And all of a sudden, people are like, Yeah, we have that in our motto. And we have, and it was no surprise. Seven out of the ten companies all actually had a very different relationship with love and the importance of love.

Ashish (: 39:25

Right, as as kind of a core foundational

Carolyn Coughlin (: 39:25

Wow.

Ashish (: 39:27

element. And it was like our invitation is don't search for do you connect with purpose and people are first, go for scan for do you believe in love?

Ashish (: 39:36

Right. exactly, right? And then I'll give you the

Carolyn Coughlin (: 39:36

It sounds like a song.

Ashish (: 39:40

second story, which I thought was very, very powerful. And it was with a bunch of corporate executives who were actually asking one of the mystics I've done work with and I love is Sadguru. And he has like an army of a million volunteers who go out of their way to do things, right? None of them are paid. and they just and these corporate leaders were asking him

Ashish (: 39:58

They're like, you know, I don't get it. Like we pay people and we can't get them to do one tenth of what these people do for you. And why is that? Like how is that? And he says, Well, it's simple. It's because they love me. Do your people love you?

Ashish (: 40:10

And they said, I'm not sure. I said, Well, that's it. They love me. And they said, But how do you get how do you get them to love you? I would love for my people to love me. How do you get them to love you? And he said, Well, you have to fall in love with them first.

Ashish (: 40:24

And so this notion of you want somebody to love you, love them first, hold them in utmost regard, care for them about who they are, nor what they do for you. Recognize that that everyone in the world has suffering. You are not responsible for solving their suffering, but you can create an environment where they can show up and they they feel psychologically safe because they feel loved to be able to tell you.

Ashish (: 40:48

things, to be able to grieve with you, to be able to cry with you, to be able to laugh with you, to be able to celebrate with you. And I think for me, that's why this notion of love is a complexity genius was actually one of my favorite moves and components of your book, Carolyn.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 41:04

that was the most vulnerable one actually. And I don't regret it one bit. And I'd so, so amazing to hear that all these leaders are talking about it. That feels really hopeful to me.

Ashish (: 41:16

Well, my friend, I love your work. I love the impact you had on my life.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 41:19

thank you.

Ashish (: 41:20

we're gonna put Unleash Your Complexity Genius, the link to it. I think it's such a simple, easy book. and offers such practical ways to master complexity. I think it's a core skill that we need today more than ever before when you wrote it. any parting advice for our listeners,

Ashish (: 41:37

That you want to leave them with.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 41:38

I think that I'll keep it very simple, pay attention to your nervous system. It is probably the most important lever that we have in terms of being able to thrive in the world as it is today. And it's it's a thing we actually have some agency over. And that's I think really useful.

Ashish (: 41:58

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, thank you, my friend. I know it's been a long day for you. I won't keep you long. Be well. I appreciate you and have a wonderful

Carolyn Coughlin (: 42:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Ashish.

Ashish (: 42:07

Have a great day.

Carolyn Coughlin (: 42:07

Yeah, thank you. You too.