Episode #97: Lighthouse Leadership: Harnessing Somatic Awareness and Self-Regulation in High-Pressure Fields with guest, Jennifer Zach
May 28, 2024
Garry Schleifer
What if the key to becoming an effective leader lies not in your strategies but in your ability to manage stress and foster a sense of safety? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with executive team coach Jennifer Zach as she unveils the concept of "Lighthouse Leadership." Jennifer breaks down how leaders in high-pressure fields like healthcare can harness their inner light to guide their teams through turbulent times. She shares invaluable insights on self-regulation, revealing how understanding and managing our bodily responses to stress can create a secure and high-performing environment. We also delve into the practice of co-regulation and its alignment with the International Coaching Federation's core competencies, particularly in building trust and safety within teams.
Curiosity and safety are foundational elements of effective leadership, and Jennifer introduces us to the transformative power of the "three N's" - Notice, Name, and Navigate. Explore practical self-regulation techniques like scanning a room for calming elements and differentiating between discomfort and real danger. Discover the profound impact of curiosity-driven leadership and active listening, as opposed to dominating conversations. We wrap up with a deep dive into somatic awareness and its role in leadership, offering recommendations for further learning, including Jennifer's own book on the subject. This episode is a treasure trove of actionable advice for anyone looking to elevate their leadership skills and create psychologically safe spaces for their teams.
What if the key to becoming an effective leader lies not in your strategies but in your ability to manage stress and foster a sense of safety? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with executive team coach Jennifer Zach as she unveils the concept of "Lighthouse Leadership." Jennifer breaks down how leaders in high-pressure fields like healthcare can harness their inner light to guide their teams through turbulent times. She shares invaluable insights on self-regulation, revealing how understanding and managing our bodily responses to stress can create a secure and high-performing environment. We also delve into the practice of co-regulation and its alignment with the International Coaching Federation's core competencies, particularly in building trust and safety within teams.
Curiosity and safety are foundational elements of effective leadership, and Jennifer introduces us to the transformative power of the "three N's" - Notice, Name, and Navigate. Explore practical self-regulation techniques like scanning a room for calming elements and differentiating between discomfort and real danger. Discover the profound impact of curiosity-driven leadership and active listening, as opposed to dominating conversations. We wrap up with a deep dive into somatic awareness and its role in leadership, offering recommendations for further learning, including Jennifer's own book on the subject. This episode is a treasure trove of actionable advice for anyone looking to elevate their leadership skills and create psychologically safe spaces for their teams.
Welcome to the choice Magazine podcast, Beyond the Page. My name is Garry Schleifer and I am thrilled to have you here today. choice, the magazine of professional coaching, is your go-to source for expert insights and in-depth features from the world of professional coaching. In each episode, we go, duh, beyond the page of articles published in choice Magazine and dive deeper into some of the most recent and relevant topics impacting the world of professional coaching, exploring the content, interviewing the talented minds like Jennifer's behind the articles and uncovering the stories that make an impact. choice is more than a magazine. For over 21 years, we have built a community of like-minded people who create, use and share coaching tools, tips and techniques to add value to their businesses and, of course, impact their clients and make a difference.
Garry Schleifer:
Yay, love saying that. In today's episode, I'm speaking with executive team coach Jennifer Zack, who's the author of an article in our latest issue, and if you're watching by video, it's a brilliant pink and it's awesome, "Unspeakables, uncomfortable topics we avoid that impact coaching outcomes. Her article is entitled Lighthouse Leadership Guiding with Inner Light. A little bit about Jennifer. She's an experienced executive coach, speaker and ATD magazine contributor. She specializes in somatic awareness and helping leaders create psychological safety and better business outcomes by managing their fight flight freeze response. For more than 14 years, Jennifer has been a leader in the business leadership coaching space. You may know her for her previous contributions to choice magazine, ATD's International Magazine and online blog and as a VP of Programs for the ATD Hawkeye Chapter in Iowa. She's very humble and didn't remind me to say this, but I have a copy of her recent book "Somatic Awareness, leading with Body Awareness and I love that this came in. Thank you for sending it to me because it's going to go right along with the conversation. So thank you for joining me today.
Jennifer Zach:
Thank you for having me, Garry. It's always a joy to have a conversation and connect with you and contribute to choice Magazine, the leader in the professional coaching arena and an industry that means so much to me, so I'm honored to be here.
Garry Schleifer:
Well, we're honored to have you so thank you so much for taking the time.
Jennifer Zach:
You know, Garry, the funny thing is that, as I said in the article, I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was that made Michelle, who I reference in the article, what made her so special. And the word came to me the last time we did a podcast together regarding my other article.
Jennifer Zach:
Through our conversation I'm like I know what it is. Lighthouse Leader. She's a lighthouse leader. And then I wrote the article and here we are again.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, thank you, and I love the way you say it. She shone the light over the path that her team and her co-workers so it could show the path. I love that way and that's more than just being a lighthouse. That's like. That's really well shining a light on the on the path to get to where they needed to get to, so brilliant. yes yeah, especially considering this is in the health care industry, where that, especially during covid, was oh
Garry Schleifer:
challenging, so challenging and, post-Covid, still challenging. I'm just gonna say we have that here in Ontario and in Canada we are constantly challenged with a shortage of doctors, nurses, long-term care, long-term care facilities, even.
Jennifer Zach:
Yeah, yep, and the stakes are so high. We're talking life and death here. This is not an easy road for leaders in health care.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, no kidding. I have to ask. You spoke much about this in the article about self-regulation. What is it?
Jennifer Zach:
Yes, Self-regulation is a skill that we can all learn. It's a very important skill because what it does is it allows us to shine our lights brightly to others by creating our own sense of safety within ourselves and when we feel safe, because people co-regulate, when we can emit safety to others, then they can feel safer too. So it's a set of tools, really, and strategies that help us cope with stress and trauma in real-time situations.
Jennifer Zach:
Self-regulation is being able to navigate those moments by being aware of what our body is telling us, being aware of our somatic awareness, so that we can respond instead of react. The difference between responding and reacting is when we respond, we are coming from the prefrontal cortex, where we have access to our best logical and rational thinking. When we react, we are reacting while being under the influence of the amygdala. That's where our fight-flight-freeze reaction is, and the only thing that the fight-flight-freeze, the amygdala cares about is keeping us alive. So only about survival which creates tunnel vision. We forget about the resources that we have. The more resourced we are, the safer we are, and when we react from the amygdala, fear begets fear, safety begets safety. We're creating fear and we're not creating the optimum environment for which people to do their best work.
Garry Schleifer:
Great, well said, thank you. I'm hearing a lot of core competencies from the International Coaching Federation. I'm hearing trust and safety? Obviously. Co-regulating, the way you said that. Is self-regulation, similar or different to self-management, self-managing? I think that's one of the core competencies subsets.
Jennifer Zach:
Yeah. How do you hear self-management being defined?
Garry Schleifer:
It's about taking care of yourself both prior to and well before a coaching conversation and in the coaching conversation. So, for example, me coming to this call right, like I know it's not a coaching call, but just getting off a call with my mom daily call and then getting myself set and ready to be in this conversation with you. So you know that's a simplified version, right?
Jennifer Zach:
So yes, thank you for sharing that. That's helpful to me. Self-management is, I would say, a very important component to self-regulation. It's what gives us the capacity and the safety to be able to create that calm and regulate ourselves. Because if we haven't taken care of ourselves and we're all ramped up, so to speak, then our window of tolerance is smaller so we're going to be more likely to be triggered and have a big reaction, an overreaction, which ends up scaring people.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, I call it coming in hot. It's like loaded for bear sort of thing, right yeah.
Jennifer Zach:
Right, exactly, yeah, and there it's like loaded for bear sort of thing.
Garry Schleifer:
And there was something else you said too, which reminded me about being ready. You can't be present when you're coming in hot or you're just off something else. I'm understanding a little bit about the difference as well and how to do it. I want to ask you something about what you wrote in the article. You said her approach to leadership was characterized by thoughtfulness, a willingness to embrace new practices like meditation and the somatic awareness principles I introduced to her.
Jennifer Zach:
Oh, one of my favorite principles of somatic awareness, make sure I'm tracking correctly, curiosity, because I have a framework that I call the 3 N's and I talk about in the book Notice, Name, Navigate. Before we can notice, we have to be curious. And before we can be curious, we have to have a sense of safety because when we're coming from fear, remember that's survival mode, there is no room for curiosity. We need, before we can feel safe or before we can be curious, we have to feel safe. That's where we get the our innovative ideas and where we can help people.
Jennifer Zach:
I just taught about this yesterday. Help people by validating. Coming to a conversation leading with curiosity. In the talk yesterday, I was really pleasantly surprised when I had a person who said that, you know, when I felt validated and validation comes from feeling seen, heard and believed, and by that you know someone else giving her that, giving them what they had within them, being the lighthouse to her, she said she felt more open minded about the challenge that she was facing. So that told me that she felt safer, which helped her navigate towards the safe end of curiosity, and we have to have that to survive and move forward in the complex world that we're living in.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah and say the three N's again.
Jennifer Zach:
Notice, Name and Navigate.
Garry Schleifer:
Notice, Name, Navigate. I forgot the middle one. And then step back in order to get to that. It is the safety we all work in in coaching and the curiosity which is, you know, just makes it so much fun.
Jennifer Zach:
And it all starts with noticing. Noticing our physical sensations that we all start out with because sensation is a universal first language for all of us. None of us come out of the womb knowing how to speak, so we are really dependent upon our natural body sensations. But as we mature and as we learn to speak, which are all good things, we get more distanced from what our body is speaking to us and we can really benefit from the mind-body connection and noticing those gut feelings. It's a disservice for us to be encouraged or discouraged from listening to the body because that's such a huge, huge resource for us.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, no kidding and we spoke a lot about that in the recent neuroscience and coaching issue too is that mind body connection. That's awesome. You spoke a lot about the lighthouse leader. What's the first step to becoming a lighthouse leader?
Jennifer Zach:
The first step is noticing, and for anyone listening to this podcast and is curious about noticing, I would recommend checking out the book Somatic Awareness, Leading with Body Intelligence, and becoming familiar with that framework of the three N's, Noticing, Naming and Navigating. Because the thing about this skill is that once we're aware of it, it's quite simple to apply.
Jennifer Zach:
The challenging part that I hear from my clients is remembering to apply it. So that's where the coaching can be really helpful for people to put this somatic awareness into a regular practice, becoming familiar with their own triggers and skills that they can choose from to help them navigate those moments in real time. Seeing and sensing works for a lot of people, and just a quick introduction to what that is is for feeling that stress contracted. We can scan the room. You know like a difficult conversation is a great one to use this one. Scan the room without being too obvious of what we're doing and let our eyes land on something pleasing. That's enough to calm the nervous system.
Garry Schleifer:
I'm thinking. Sorry, I'll interrupt. When I heard you say that I thought you were leading to, I heard in my head reading the room, but you literally are scanning the room in order to find something. Go ahead.
Jennifer Zach:
Yeah, to find something that calms the nervous system, which creates that. That in and of itself is regulating the self-regulation. There's choices. You know that works for many people but not at all. Another technique would be, you know, feeling that sensation again, noticing, and then asking oneself is this unsafe or just uncomfortable? That's also very helpful to people because we know that we can handle the uncomfortable. The unsafe is something completely different and where we want the quick survival reaction. But a lot of times those things get confused because our amygdala, it can't tell the difference between a real and perceived threat. So it needs some help with the mind-body connection.
Garry Schleifer:
That's exactly what I was thinking. It's like okay, let's talk to the amygdala. Is it safe? Yep, it's safe because, let's be honest, there really isn't much in the world that we need in our world. Sorry, I'm not going to speak for what's going on in the rest of the world, but in our world and our experience there's nothing that is that dangerous and apologies to those that have had.
Garry Schleifer:
Very I really love this because I have too many coaching conversations where I'm still hearing, where leaders come into the room and take over. They don't listen, they're not curious, they don't self-regulate. Literally, they come in as and they. I'm regularly asking people what's your definition of a leader? Because far too many say hero because they're discovering, they're working on their own leadership skills and their own leadership journey, and I ask them so who do you see as a leader and why? And things like that. Because a lot of time they're experiencing the opposite. We still have these leaders that, like we said earlier, come in hot.
Jennifer Zach:
Uh-huh yeah, may I share a little something behind that? Yes, of course.
Jennifer Zach:
Okay. So a big part of that's where validation becomes huge and the somatic awareness becomes huge, because if there's a problem to solve, the body can perceive that as a threat and so we're quick to fix. That was yesterday and the exercise that I led people in. I had one person be the listener and one person you know talk about a challenge. And the listener, they needed to be aware of that impulse to fix and then not to regulate themselves enough to stay present and listen for the emotion. We can't listen for the emotion and be listening to fix at the same time. And when we listen for the emotion, then we can validate by letting the other person know that I see why you're feeling frustrated. When they feel seen, heard and understood, that's going to help get them unstuck from fear, help them move towards safety, where then you can problem solve together. There is power with, instead of power over or power under.
Garry Schleifer:
Wow, well said. What a great exercise that was. And it's funny because you were saying that and I think every time I do a podcast I am doing some form of self-regulating, because part of me is listening for what else my listeners might want to hear. But I also need to be present to what you're saying right now for my own understanding because when I do these podcasts, sorry listeners, but I do it for me too. Right, absolutely, that's important. I love doing these because I get it's literally in depth I should call it in depth beyond the page, but I learn more about it. I now have a deeper understanding of self-regulation, a little bit more understanding from your experience, of what's going on in the leadership coaching space, that sort of thing. So, and now I think the next question has to be so what's the impact? How does the team benefit from following a lighthouse leader?
Jennifer Zach:
They benefit, I think, from having some hope and being able to.
Jennifer Zach:
It increases their own self-efficacy and the belief in themselves and their ability to make a difference, and so that opens things up instead of having a situation where the leader becomes the bottleneck and they have so many people coming to them that they're not able to have the space and the capacity to vision and take the team forward.
Jennifer Zach:
Perhaps they're too busy fighting fires. Rather, if they're a lighthouse instead, it makes a big, big difference, and I've had a leader that I worked with that I really remember her saying this to me. She said my team loves it. They know they can come to me with anything and they don't have to be afraid that I'm going to react. So she created psychological safety as well as connection and created the space where because sometimes, as leaders, we need to hear things that can be hard to hear, and if people don't feel safe coming to us, they're not going to. So, in effect, leaders are in a better position to lead the team if they are shining their light brightly.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, no, well said. You know I keep having these flashbacks when you're talking. The same thing happened to me where I wasn't giving my team safety back, when I ran a third party logistics company in the late 80s, early 90s and I had someone from the outside do, basically a 360, but there were only like five people that reported to me and the outstanding thing two things. Number one was go do your own job and quit looking at ours, like we know how to do our job, which is true. I always hire people who know their job better than I do, but not enough to snow me like I know enough to know what to look for right. And the second thing was I was biting their head off. Like I was difficult. I had unregulated emotions so they never knew when it was safe to come see me, right.
Jennifer Zach:
The somatic awareness just takes us to the next level by bringing the body into the mix. And that's the somatic part bringing the body into it, honoring all pieces of the puzzle, that is person. Because the body knows first; 80% of the data is traveling from the body to the brain. Only 20% is coming from the brain to the body. So why wouldn't we consult the body?
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, well said, well said. You know, and I don't know if you know the answer to this question, but I'm thinking about it from the other perspective. What if a team doesn't have a leader, or a person doesn't have a leader that is a lighthouse leader? How do they cope? What can they do? And it's a difficult challenge I think and I deal with that as well we're talking about these non-lighthouse leaders that think they know everything and they don't give any space for anyone on the team to talk. I don't know if there's any ideas like, or is this really?
Jennifer Zach:
We co-regulate, so it works both ways. So if an employee is in that situation, the more they can self-regulate and emit safety, because leaders need psychological safety too, that they can build that connection, access their prefrontal cortex for their logical and rational thinking on best ways to communicate and problem solve with the leader for the greater good of the whole team.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah, excellent. Because right away, as soon as you said co-regulate, I'm like, oh right, so it can go both ways, or can be some.
Jennifer Zach:
Yeah, yeah, and that could be very scary but then you know, it's like FDR said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Another client that I worked with, she said something very wise. She said you know, the more you do it, the more you know you can do it, and so the more you'll continue to do it, which is that practice of curiosity. It's a lifelong practice.
Garry Schleifer:
Yeah.
Jennifer Zach:
And knowing that sometimes we are going to be able to self-regulate better than others, because there's things that impact that and it comes back to our window of tolerance. So if we're sick, we're not feeling well, our window is going to be lower and if we're aware of that then we can know make it work smarter rather than harder. Maybe that's not the time to have that crucial conversation.
Garry Schleifer:
Right, right, yeah, exactly, yeah, thank you, yeah, wow. So much from a Final Say article. I love it, well, and also this wonderful book that you sent to me, so I can't wait to dig into that. Just got it recently. Jennifer, what would you like our audience to do as a result of the article and this conversation and your book?
Jennifer Zach:
Oh my gosh I would like people to get curious too. You know, something I told the group yesterday is something as simple as noticing, and maybe what you do is every time you wash your hands throughout the day, you tune in just a little bit, notice what's happening in the body. Start with in the body. Start with that. And if you're curious about the book, get a copy of that on Amazon. I also highly recommend the book Self-Compassion, because we can only be as compassionate to others as we are to ourselves.
Jennifer Zach:
And if they want help implementing it, please, I would love to have a conversation. I'd love to have a conversation with you about how you can put the N's, Notice, Name, Navigate into practice for the benefit of yourself, your team, your organization and, you know, really become that lighthouse leader that we so desperately need in the world.
Garry Schleifer:
More of because you're already creating. Sure, you helped. I hear another article coming, maybe another book, who knows? I'm just saying.
Jennifer Zach:
Yes. Thank you. You know it took me a year to write this book. It's a very small book but that's why I needed the whole year to write it and I have people say that they really appreciate that it's a reference that they can, you know, grab and work from. And so I'm giving myself another, you know, a year off. But there's ideas. Things are percolating in there. Don't be surprised if this is not the first book you see from me.
Garry Schleifer:
Book, more articles and more podcasts. You're brilliant, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for this Beyond the Page episode, Jennifer. What's the best way for people to reach you?
Jennifer Zach:
Best way for people to reach me would be at my email address, which is Jennifer@J ennifer-Zach. com or my website that is just the same Jennifer-Zach. com. I'd love to hear from you.
Garry Schleifer:
Awesome and find out more about the three N's.
Jennifer Zach:
The three N's.
Garry Schleifer:
Thank you, that's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app. If you're not a subscriber and you're watching this video, you can scan here and get a free issue, or go to our website, choice-online. com and clicking the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery. Thanks again, Jennifer.
