#126 - Elevating Leadership Through Vertical Development - Ryan Gottfredson

[00:01:09] Episode Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hello again, to all of you, my friends and my listeners. Welcome to the Tech Lead Journal podcast, the show where you can learn about technical leadership and excellence from my conversations with great thought leaders in the tech industry. If this is your first time listening to Tech Lead Journal, subscribe and follow the show on your podcast app and on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. And for those of you longtime listeners, if you find my podcast helpful, and want to show your appreciation and support for my work, you can subscribe as a patron at techleadjournal.dev/patron, or buy me coffee at techleadjournal.dev/tip.

My guest for today’s episode is Ryan Gottfredson. Ryan is a leadership development researcher and a bestselling author of “The Elevated Leader”. In this episode, Ryan explained the concept of an elevated leader and why it is important to have elevated leaders in an organization. He described the role of vertical development in elevating leadership and how it differs from the horizontal development that many of us are familiar with. Ryan described in-depth the 3 different levels of vertical development, including the cognitive and emotional aspects associated with each of the level. Towards the end, Ryan explained the 4 different types of mindset and why it is important for leaders to understand and heal from past traumas in order to become elevated Mind 3.0 leaders.

This is such a great conversation with Ryan! And I’m really fascinated by the concept of vertical development. I find it is a very important concept that all of us leaders must understand in order to increase our effectiveness and create a bigger impact in our leadership. If you also enjoy listening to this episode, will you help share it with your colleagues or within your social channels, so that more people can benefit from listening to this conversation? Also leave this podcast a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to help make it easily discovered by other people on the platforms. Let’s go to the conversation with Ryan after a few words from our sponsors.

[00:03:38] Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hi, everyone. Today, I have with me a guest named Ryan Gottfredson. He’s a professor, a leadership professor, actually, at the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton. So if you are wondering why there is a leadership professor in this show today. The reason is because Ryan is a Wall Street Journal and US Today bestselling author of the two books, “The Success Mindsets” and “The Elevated Leader”. In particular, today we will cover the second book, “The Elevated Leader: Leveling Up Your Leadership through Vertical Development”. I listened to one of Ryan’s podcast episode with another host before, and I found the concept is really interesting, this vertical development. And hence, I’m inviting Ryan to share with us here as well in this episode about vertical leadership and development. So, Ryan, thank you so much for this opportunity. Looking forward to our conversation.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, no, thank you so much. It’s always great that we were talking a little bit before we started recording. It’s always great connecting with somebody almost halfway around the world from where I’m at in Southern California. So thanks for having me.

[00:04:38] Career Journey

Henry Suryawirawan: So, Ryan, I always like to ask my audience first to share their background. So if you can share maybe any turning points or highlights in your career.

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, yeah. I guess let me start where I’m deeply passionate about leadership, about self-development. I feel like I’ve almost always been that way. And I think it’s a way for me to deepen my knowledge and expertise in this space is I decided I should go the professor route. So I did my PhD at Indiana University in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources.

My dissertation was on leadership. One of the things about my dissertation that was really great was it allowed me to review the last 70 years of leadership research. It was just such an eye-opening experience. But I would say one of my takeaways from that experience actually didn’t sit too well with me. What I observed is that most of the leadership research over the last 70 years has been focused on answering one question, and it’s not a bad question, and it’s led to some good answers. But the question is, what do leaders need to do to be effective?

And like I said, that’s not a bad question. In fact, I think that’s a question that most leaders want to know. Just tell me what to do and I’ll go and do it. But it didn’t sit very well with me, because I don’t think about leadership as just doing the right things, about just checking certain boxes. I think about leadership as being more about our being than our doing. And so for the last about nine years, I have been focusing on how do we tap into the being element of leadership, and that’s what ultimately landed me on this topic that I’m now focusing on, which is vertical development, which is all about the development approach that’s focused on improving our being. So I’m excited to jump in and share ideas related to it with your audience.

[00:06:38] Elevated Leader

Henry Suryawirawan: So I think what you said just now also resonating with me. A lot of leadership, coaching program, training program. We are all taught about how to be more effective, be it time management, communication, influencing skills, presentation, the list goes on and on. But I think what you said just now is very interesting, right? That we should also focus, or even focus more on our being, not just the doing part. And you call this concept the elevated leader. So maybe, first of all, try to explain what is the concept of elevated leader? And why we actually need to focus on being an elevated leader, or what you say here, focus on the being?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. So the concepts behind vertical development. So vertical development, if you’ve never heard of it, it’s a fairly new term. It’s been around for about 10 years, but the ideas behind it go back to the 1960s, and they stem from the field of developmental psychology. So let me just give you a really brief history lesson around developmental psychology.

Developmental psychology started as a field of study in the 1880s. From the 1880s until the 1960s, the primary focus of developmental psychologists was on children and their development. In fact, they largely assumed that adults, when people hit adulthood, they don’t develop. But what we learned from these scholars is that as people go from infants to adults, they go through a number of different developmental stages, and they do so rather automatically. It’s essentially a function of age. Well, in the 1960s, a select few developmental psychologists started to wonder, do adults develop? And if so, do they develop through different developmental stages?

And what they found in their research was really fascinating. So what they found is that, yes, adults can develop and that there are three different developmental stages. But what they also found was that most adults never develop. So they identify these three different developmental stages, and what they’ve found is that 64% of all adults never develop into the second level of adult development during their adulthood, during their lifetime. So 35% end up getting to the second level of adult development, and only 1% get to the third level of adult development.

And so, when we talk about an elevated leader, we’re talking about how do we go through the process for ourselves to develop vertically as adults and ultimately, hopefully, get to that highest level. Because when we learn about that highest level, what we’ll find is that the most effective people are the types of people who have developed to that level. When we think about actually some of the biggest names in our world’s history, people like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela. These are types of people that show a lot of evidence as operating at that highest vertical development level. So, for me, what I found is that it’s just been really eye-opening to understand what are these different levels? Because it gets me a sense of, well, what is my vertical altitude and how do I elevate?

Henry Suryawirawan: Thanks for sharing this. I was quite intrigued by this statistic numbers that you quoted. I also found it in the book, like 64% of people actually are only still in first stage. Less of them actually move to the next stages. And this is very interesting because the fact in the industry we have many of such people, right? Which means that we have probably some leaders who have not been developed or elevated, so to speak. And I think in the book also you mentioned, it’s pretty rare if we can find a team that is in a better psychological state than its leader. So the leader’s position, the leader’s role, is actually very crucial in any kind of team and hence the company or organization.

[00:10:30] Importance of Elevated Leader

Henry Suryawirawan: So there are also some statistics that you quoted about if a manager is not effective or not elevated, it impacts the team. Maybe you can share some interesting statistics here for us to know why this is such an important thing.

Ryan Gottfredson: Here’s what I think is helpful to realize is that the leader of an organization or even of a group, their vertical altitude sets the ceiling for how effective that organization or that team can be. And so if we ever want to improve the effectiveness of an organization or a team, what we have to do at a foundational level is help that leader develop vertically. Because when leaders operate from lower altitudes, they end up implementing tactics or making certain decisions and implementing certain policies that, while may serve some benefit, are ultimately limiting for that organization. So let me give you maybe a quick example of that.

And I would say, Microsoft is a company that most people around the world are familiar with. When I studied Microsoft leaders, particularly Steve Ballmer, the CEO before Satya Nadella. Microsoft is a completely different company now under Satya Nadella than under Steve Ballmer. And what I would venture to say is that Satya Nadella, and my study of him, is a very vertically developed leader. Steve Ballmer, on the other hand, wasn’t as vertically developed. Let me give you an example of some evidence of that. One of the things that Steve Ballmer did is he implemented stack rank performance management systems. These performance management systems are designed to help identify the top talent in the organization and kind of treat them in a special way. That’s great because what Steve Ballmer was all about was about how do we stand out. And a stack rank performance management system helps him identify those who stand out. But what he didn’t fully appreciate was when you create or utilize a stack rank performance management system, what that actually does is it fosters a culture of competition as opposed to collaboration.

And so, even though Steve Ballmer was really well intended, what he was doing was ultimately putting a cap on the effectiveness at Microsoft, that under Ballmer, they were just not able to be very innovative. And so, when Satya Nadella comes in as CEO, he says, the C in CEO stands for Curator of Culture. And one of the first things that he did was he threw out the stack rank performance management system to create an environment that was much more collaborative as opposed to competitive. And that’s fueled a huge amount of growth in Microsoft since Satya Nadella took over. So, you asked about some statistics. That’s kind of an anecdote. But what we find is there’s statistics that suggest 65% of employees would rather have a new boss over more pay. 85% of employees don’t trust their leaders to tell the truth. So these are a couple of statistics that demonstrate that, unfortunately, most leaders don’t operate from a really high level of vertical development or altitude.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thanks for sharing that study case for Steve Ballmer and implementing stack rank, simply because he has a well-intentioned strategy, but actually his, maybe, leadership stage actually capped the thinking behind the intention of implementing the stack rank. And I think we can see many leaders as well. If we are stuck in this kind of a mindset, then maybe we’re also implementing decisions or maybe treating people that is probably not optimal. I guess many people also say, you don’t leave the job unless you are not happy with your manager, right? So a lot of things actually hinge on the optimal relationship with the manager. So I think this is really important for us to learn from you, right? So how we can elevate ourselves as leader as well.

[00:14:27] Horizontal & Vertical Developments

Henry Suryawirawan: By elevating, you also mentioned there’s this vertical development, and there’s also the opposite of that, which is horizontal development. Maybe let’s go there and try to explain the distinction between these two horizontal and vertical developments.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, really good. So it’s just helpful to recognize, and just most people aren’t familiar with this, is that there’s two different forms of development. There’s horizontal development and there’s vertical development. And we are very well-versed in horizontal development. This is the primary form of development of our education systems and our corporate training programs.

So horizontal development is adding new knowledge and skills and competencies to ourselves. The focus is on doing more. And there’s nothing wrong with horizontal development. It’s a lot like downloading an app onto an iPad. When I put a new app onto an iPad, that’s great because it allows me to do more than what I could do previously. But what we’ve got to ask ourselves is does having a new app improve how effectively that iPad operates as a whole? Answer to that question is no, of course not. Adding a new app isn’t going to help the iPad operate more quickly, do more complex things.

But if we want that, we can’t use horizontal development. We’ve got to employ a different developmental approach, and that is vertical development. So vertical development is not helping us to do more. It’s helping us to be better. And the focus is not on adding an app onto the iPad, it’s upgrading our own internal operating system. It’s upgrading our being. So that’s what vertical development is all about. Hopefully, that analogy helps explain why it’s so important. And let me even try to drive that point home. Downstairs, I have an iPad that is about 8.5 years old. When I pull it up, I could go to the app store and I could try to download an app. And every time I try to do it, I get an error. The error says this app cannot be downloaded onto this iPad, because the operating system is too old. It doesn’t say it that way, but that’s effectively what’s going on. And so, I am unable to download new apps.

Well, when you think about corporate training, for example, we may want to develop leaders’ emotional intelligence, and we could put them through a horizontal development approach that might say, let’s have you go to this training on how to listen more effectively, or how to deliver feedback more effectively. Those are kind of doing horizontal type trainings, and those might be incrementally helpful. But if the individual, as a part of this development, if their internal operating system is wired such that they have a really hard time even listening to the ideas of others, maybe because they have their own insecurities about how they always have to be the one with the right answers, then that training on how to listen more effectively isn’t going to work. The operating system that individual has is not compatible with that app that they’re trying to download.

So that’s one of the biggest limitations that I see in terms of leadership and employee development, is too often we’re trying to download apps that are more sophisticated than the individual’s operating system to begin with. And so, the whole idea here is not to say horizontal development is bad, just the ideas that we also need to consider vertical development and the operating system, so that we can better develop ourselves as leaders, and then so that we can even grow. Here’s the argument that I’m somewhat trying to make. As we grow vertically, we enhance our capacity to grow horizontally. I don’t think it’s the same the other way around. I don’t think by having more horizontal development necessarily helps us vertically develop.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! That’s an interesting analogy. Like downloading an app or upgrading your iPad OS. So this internal operating system that you mentioned. So I think it makes sense to me why vertical development is important. And just now, you’ve also mentioned that if we elevate ourselves in terms of vertical development, we can also enhance our capacity to develop horizontally. So I think that’s also a very interesting concept.

[00:18:48] Cognitive and Emotional Development

Henry Suryawirawan: And I just want to read the technical definition of vertical development that you quoted in the book as well. So, vertical development is elevating leader’s ability to make meaning of their world in more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated way. So the two keywords that I pick here are cognitively and emotionally. Tell us more about that. What do you mean by these cognitive and emotional aspects of the development?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And it involves both. And in fact, I’m going to pick a different term in that definition to focus on, to help us understand those. So I’m going to pick the term, make meaning. Our mind is a meaning maker machine. That’s one of the primary purposes of our mind is to make meaning of our world. But here’s what we need to understand is two different people can see the same thing, but make meaning of it differently and with different levels of cognitive and emotional sophistication. So let’s step into this. So I’m going to ask you a question here, Henry. And I’ll be curious about your response. How would you say most people make meaning of constructive criticism? How do they react when they receive constructive criticism?

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, I think most people, first of all, will be defensive. Like, okay, I will receive a negative thing about me not doing well on some aspects of my work, or maybe behaviors, whatever that is. People forget the constructive part, because first of all, yeah, this is about defending myself first. Only then secondly, maybe if the manager conveys it in the right way, then maybe they look at the constructive part. That’s my view.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think most people are prone to get defensive. Why would somebody get defensive? When we get defensive, it’s like we’re holding up a shield. The only reason why we would hold up a shield is if we feel like we’re getting attacked, right? So if we make meaning of constructive criticism as an attack, of course, we’re going to get defensive. That makes complete sense. But then we’ve got to ask ourselves the question, is that cognitively and emotionally sophisticated? No. We kind of let our emotions dictate our reaction to that situation. We don’t necessarily process through that in a very cognitive way. So that’s a really low level of cognitive and emotional sophistication.

You also leaned into what might be the next level of cognitive and emotional sophistication, right? You said, well, if it’s my manager and they deliver it tactfully, well then maybe I’ll be more acceptive. So at that next level, we might make meaning of constructive criticism as it might be an attack, depending on who delivers it and how they deliver it. And that to me feels a little more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated, but to me, I don’t think it’s really cognitively and emotionally sophisticated. The most cognitively and emotionally sophisticated people, they are able to make meaning of constructive criticism as an opportunity to learn and grow regardless of who delivers it and how they deliver it. They recognize that even if that person may be their enemy and may have malintent, there may be some truth to what they’re saying that I can benefit from.

I mean, we’re both living life. It is not easy to get there, right? We have got to be in this cognitive and emotional state where we are good with being told that we are bad. And it’s just not easy to get there. It takes cognitive and emotional sophistication. So this is just one example of looking at constructive criticism about how people can make meaning of the same thing, but in different ways and at different levels of cognitive and emotional sophistication. I mean, we could explore other things like failure, different ideas, vulnerability, like these are concepts that people make meaning of in different levels of cognitive and emotional sophistication. The higher our altitude, the better that we make meaning of our world, and therefore, the better we navigate our world.

Henry Suryawirawan: So I really like the term making meaning to simplify the cognitive aspect and the emotional aspect. And I think what you mentioned just now as an example is like something really important for us to understand, right? So we all have our own bias. We all have our own perspective. Maybe we also have our own past that drives us to certain behaviors. And I think being able to make a different meaning for the same situation is really crucial for leaders, because that will determine the next step of action that you will take as part of your understanding of the situations.

[00:23:18] 3 Levels of Vertical Development

Henry Suryawirawan: And I think it’s really important as well that we understand how we actually make meaning. But before we go there, I actually want to go deeper into these three stages that you mentioned in the beginning. So you quoted there are three levels of vertical development. So maybe if we can go in high level each of them and what is the characteristic for each of the stage.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And I do want to do that. I do want to bring up something, cause you leaned into it just a little bit is, in fact, I would say most people are not conscious of how they are prone to make meaning of their world. It’s just naturally what their brain does, and they haven’t yet vertically developed enough to be somebody who is able to step outside of themselves and evaluate how they make meaning. And so, as we’re going to go through the three different levels of vertical development, to me, that is actually one of the biggest signals of whether somebody has gone from level one to level two, is do they have the capacity to step outside of themselves and evaluate the quality of their meaning making? Does that make sense to you?

Henry Suryawirawan: Yes, certainly it makes sense. And I also want to add also from my point of view, there are many nuances in certain conditions. So I think being able to interpret these nuances maybe relate to the levels or stages that you are about to explain.

Ryan Gottfredson: That as well. Yep. So, perfect. All right, so let’s jump into these three levels. What are they all about? Well, I think it’s helpful for us to understand that what we’re talking about is our internal operating system and the quality of that. And so, at each of these different levels, our body is programmed to fulfill different needs.

So at the first level, and I call this mind level 1.0, because it’s representative of the quality of our internal operating system. At Mind 1.0, our body is programmed to be safe, to be comfortable, and to belong. When we’re in Mind 1.0, we want to join and identify with groups or tribes that will help us to fulfill these needs of safety, comfort, and belonging. Oftentimes, what happens is we will join a group that could be a family, a friend group, a religious group, an employer, a political group. We like to join groups, and when we join these groups, we usually don’t say I want to take charge. We usually say, “I don’t want to take charge. I’ll let you tell me what to do, and I will go and do it, provided you keep me safe, comfortable, and feeling like I belong”. And if we’re at this level, this doesn’t make us a bad person. But what we are is we are a dependent thinker. We are allowing other people to dictate kind of the big choices, and we just kind of follow along with it. Whether we’re there now or not, we have all been there, so we should all be able to relate to this. So that’s Mind 1.0 is focused on safety, comfort, and belonging.

As we elevate into the subsequent levels, what you’re going to see is a dramatic shift in our needs. So, at that second level of vertical development, Mind 2.0, our body is programmed to a standout, advance, and get ahead. In fact, we are now willing to be unsafe, uncomfortable, and not belong in order to stand out, advance, and get ahead. And when we’re here, this is, again, this is a place where we have a greater capacity to step outside of ourselves and evaluate how we make meaning of our world. We’re also able to step outside of our relationship with our groups and say maybe I don’t need to follow everything about my group. I could develop my own opinions, my own ideas. So what’s happening here, as we shift from Mind 1.0 to Mind 2.0, we’re going for being a dependent thinker to being an independent thinker. And when we become an independent thinker, we have our own ideas. We usually think, you know, hold on to these pretty tightly because we’ve worked hard to develop our own independent ideas, and now we kind of want to put them to the test. We want to implement our ideas. So when we get to Mind 2.0, we generally want to take on leadership positions. Something that we didn’t want to do in Mind 1.0.

In fact, what we find is 35% of all people operate in Mind 2.0. But 85% of executives operate in Mind 2.0. They kind of recognize there’s a whole bunch of Mind 1.0 people. What if I can employ them to do work, and they kind of want to be told what to do? I will tell them what to do. I will employ them and I could get them to help me stand out, advance, and get ahead. All right, so let me give you an example of a Mind 2.0 leader that I’ve been working with. When I first met her, she’s a COO of an organization, and I asked her, “How do you measure success in your organization?” And her answer was double digit growth year over year. That’s a Mind 2.0 answer. It’s all about outcomes, results. Am I standing out? And that’s what she was all about. And she’s all about how do I employ my people in such a way that will help me get better numbers? So that’s Mind 2.0. Those first two levels, make sense? Or do you want to add anything there?

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. So the one thing that I just want to highlight is the statistics that you mentioned. So initially, we heard that 64% of people are in stage one, and only maybe about 35% in stage two. But if you look at leaders that are available out there, or the executives you mentioned, actually the ratio changes. Simply because leaders want to stand out, they want to take that position. And hence, you also quoted just now, it’s actually 85% of leaders are in stage two, not in stage one, right? So I think you can see it is interesting statistics of different ratio for leadership and also the employees right under them. So, yeah, maybe that’s my interesting fact that I just want to highlight.

Ryan Gottfredson: Good. And let me just add in one statistic there that we’ve missed is 7% of executives operate at that Mind 1.0, that first level. So not very many operate there. All right, so we’ve covered Mind. 1.0, Mind 2.0. Let’s jump into Mind 3.0 and, again, you’re going to find that the needs shift dramatically.

Right. So in Mind 1.0, our needs are really to stand in. In Mind 2.0, our needs are to stand out. In Mind 3.0, we don’t care about standing in and we don’t care about standing out. Our needs are all about contributing, adding value, and lifting others. So, again, we don’t want to stand in, we don’t want to stand out. We’d want to contribute to something bigger than us. And as we make this shift, we started out a dependent thinker. We’ve moved to being an independent thinker. At this third level, we become an interdependent thinker. We don’t hold so tightly to our own independent ideas. We recognize that there’s a lot of nuances, there’s a lot of complexity. The world is not white and black anymore. It’s shades of gray. And we are also able to see the bigger picture. When we’re in Mind 1.0 and we want to stand in, we want to stand in right now. If we’re in Mind 2.0, we want to stand out right now or in the near future, such as at the end of the year. Did we get double digit growth year over year? That’s in the short term. In Mind 3.0, we don’t care about standing in or standing out in the short term. That allows us to focus on creating value in the long term.

I’ll just bring up Satya Nadella again as an example here, because when he took over as CEO at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer had never implemented a purpose statement in the 14 years he was CEO. Satya Nadella says, “My first year, my number one priority, was listening to employees. All for the purpose of developing a really clear and powerful purpose statement that would guide and direct us.” He’s focused on the future and that purpose statement is all about creating value for their stakeholders. And so, that’s an evidence of somebody who operates at that Mind 3.0 level. Again, not that they don’t want outcomes and results. That’s just not their priority. Their priority is on contributing to a bigger purpose. Something bigger than themselves.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! I think that’s really an inspiring stage for all leaders to be in. Just want to highlight the needs for this type of leaders is actually contributing, adding value, and lifting others. So maybe if we all can assess ourselves, our behavior, are we still contributing to the people under us? Are we lifting them? So I think that’s really a good reflection. And you also have a personal assessment on your website, which I did a few days back. It’s very, very interesting. And I think every one of us here can also do this kind of assessment and see which mindset we are. We tend to think that we are operating at the higher level, but I think this result will open your eyes as to what stage you are in.

[00:32:28] Center of Gravity

Henry Suryawirawan: And I think you also mentioned a few bright sides about this Mind 3.0 leaders. They are also having a good relationship with time, good emotional intelligence, systems thinker, and actually infinite minded, right? So borrowing the concept from Simon Sinek. Anything that you want to add here regarding this bright side?

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, I mean, these are the type of people that are the most dynamic. They’re psychologically flexible. They have intellectual humility. You don’t really find that for Mind 2.0 leaders, like, for example, Jack Welch is a pretty stereotypical leader, and people reference him a lot. And to me, I see him as being a Mind 2.0 leader. One of the reasons why I say that is he wrote a book called “The Winning”. I don’t think a Mind 3.0 person would ever write a book called The Winning. The percentages here is that 1% of people get to this Mind 3.0 level. Only 8% of executives get here.

And so, what we’ve just done by laying out these three different levels, I think, naturally, it gets us asking a really powerful question. And it’s a question most people never ask, which is part of what makes it so powerful. And that question I think we naturally want to ask ourselves is, well, what is my vertical altitude? What level am I operating at? And I still think it is a really powerful question, but I’m not sure it’s even the best question that we can ask. And here’s why, and you kind of stepped into this a little bit, Henry. If I’m envisioning you, the listener here in front of me. If you were in front of me, I’d ask you, can you see all three mind levels in yourself?

Henry Suryawirawan: Yes, I can see. Yep.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, I’m the same way. I could see all three mind levels in myself. So it’s not like we spend a hundred percent of our time in just one of these mind levels. So another powerful question that we can ask ourselves is, what is my center of gravity? What percentage of my time am I spending at each of these different levels? And you alluded to my vertical development assessment on my website. If you go there, it’s RyanGottfredson.com. It takes less than 10 minutes to take the assessment. But if you get your results, it’s going to help you identify what’s your center of gravity, right? It might say, Mind 2.0. That doesn’t mean you spend a hundred percent of your time at Mind 2.0, but that may be where you spend the most predominant amount of time there.

So there’s an assessment that can kind of help us awaken not just to our vertical altitude, but to our center of gravity. And I think one of the valuable things that I would encourage you to consider as you think about your center of gravity is what can I do on a daily basis to get in and stay in Mind 3.0? Cause I don’t think we get there by accident. We only get there by intention and building the habits that help us to be in a really sophisticated, a really cognitively and emotionally sophisticated state.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! Yeah. I like the concept that you mentioned, right? It’s like a spectrum. You don’t actually just fall in one bucket and that’s it, right? You behave everything perfect. And I think in your book, you also mentioned different situations, sometimes we also behave differently. Like, for example, in one particular context, we might act as a Mind 1.0 leaders, while in maybe many aspects of the work, for example, you can act like Mind 2.0, Mind 3.0. So this is a spectrum, and it depends on the context, the situations, the behaviour as well. So thanks for highlighting that. And I like the concept of center of gravity. We can move towards different minds, but we tend to maybe go back to our center of gravity, and this is where we need to think about like how we can improve from there.

[00:36:04] 4 Different Mindsets

Henry Suryawirawan: So I think many listeners will have been inspired by you about this Mind 3.0. But I think the next is how to actually get there? And I think coming back to the making meaning that we discussed earlier. First of all, like how do we consciously know how we make meaning? So you mentioned about two things, mindset and trauma healing, our past trauma. So maybe let’s go there and understand how we actually make meaning in our lives?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. It’s just really helpful to understand that our meaning makers are our mindsets. So if we ever want to vertically develop, we’ve got to focus on our mindsets. Now, one of the challenges, I think, for most people, in focusing on their mindsets is they don’t know what mindsets are out there. They don’t know what mindsets they have. And so, it’s really helpful to have a framework of mindsets to focus on. So that’s also something that we could talk through a little bit. Something I’ve done is I’ve put together, in terms of what I’ve seen out there, the most comprehensive and research backed mindset framework to date. While it’s the most comprehensive, I’m not saying it’s fully comprehensive, but what I’ve done is I’ve opened up kind of the doors to academic research on mindsets over the last 40 years, and I’ve identified four different sets of mindsets. And so maybe let’s just quickly introduce these. Is that okay, Henry?

Henry Suryawirawan: Yes, that’s perfect with me.

Ryan Gottfredson: All right. So I’m going to use you as a guinea pig here cause I’m going to ask you a question. I’m going to give you four different desires and I want you to tell me if society says these are good or bad desires. Is that okay?

Henry Suryawirawan: Yes, I’m all in.

Ryan Gottfredson: Okay. So here’s the desires. A desire to look good, a desire to be right, a desire to avoid problems, and a desire to get ahead. Would you say that society says these are good or bad?

Henry Suryawirawan: I think most of the society, I would say, think it’s good to do all those, I guess. Yeah.

Ryan Gottfredson: Because who likes to look bad, be wrong, have problems, or get passed up? Nobody does. But when we have these as our primary desires, where is our focus?

Henry Suryawirawan: It is ourselves. As an individual, like you mentioned, getting ahead, stand out, and advance.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. It’s, I want to look good, be right, get ahead, and stand out. When we’re here, we are self-focused. We are in self-preservation mode. These are actually the four desires that are fueled by the more negative, or I’m going to say less cognitively and emotionally sophisticated mindsets. Fixed, closed, prevention, and inward mindset.

On the other end of the continuum are more positive mindsets or more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated mindsets. These mindsets are growth, open, promotion, and outward. And they carry with them different desires, and these are higher order desires. They’re more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated desires. These desires are a desire to learn and grow, to find truth and think optimally, to reach goals, and to lift others. But it’s not easy to be here, have these desires, and here’s why. It’s because if we want to learn and grow, we’ve got to be okay looking bad at times. If we want to find truth and think optimally, we’ve got to admit that we’re wrong at times. If we want to reach goals, we’ve got to wade through problems at times. And if we want to lift others, we’ve got to put ourselves on the back burner at times. And I don’t know about you, but it’s just not easy to do those things in those at times moments.

And so this is a place where once we now have this framework of kind of four more negative mindsets and four positive mindsets, allows us to now do a deep introspective dive. What is the quality of my mindsets? Where do I fall along each of these continuums? And if anybody’s interested, I’ve got another mindset assessment on my website, and they could go take that mindset assessment. The value here is we’ve talked about two assessments now. We’ve got the vertical development assessment, which helps you identify your center of gravity. And then the mindset assessment, to me, what it does is it helps us to identify the place for us where we are in greatest need of vertical development. We all need vertical development, but what do I focus on for my vertical development? And to me, that’s where understanding this framework and having that assessment can really help us to identify what mindsets to focus on to raise our altitude.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! When I hear you describing these four different types of mindset, I find someone who is very enlightened. You know, I think of it like very inspiring leaders. They’re always less selfish, always think about how to solve the problems, always learning and growing, always seeking truth, never defending themselves. So I think it’s really a very tough situation to reach, but I’m sure by first being conscious about where we are at, and what you mentioned also, which area that needs us to improve a lot more. I think by being conscious, that’s the first step so that we can actually move ahead and get there. So I think I really like this, and many people also without knowing about their limiting beliefs, or maybe mindset that they adopt maybe from certain culture, certain family, or certain school. So I think this is also important because we tend unconsciously to adopt some mindsets that probably a bit outdated. Coming back to the internal OS that you mentioned, a bit outdated and we have to upgrade them in order to move to the next one.

[00:41:34] Understanding Past Trauma

Henry Suryawirawan: So, the second aspect of how to develop vertically is about understanding past trauma. So I know it’s a bit tough to go there, but let’s try to understand why do you think trauma plays a bigger part here as well?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. So what we need to recognize is how do we come to the quality of mindsets that we currently have? Well, it’s really two things, two broad things. It’s our life’s experience and our current culture. Part of our life’s experience, and it’s ubiquitous across all people, is everybody lives through trauma in some form or some fashion.

The definition of trauma is our body has a stress response system built within it. And it’s great. It is designed to take on stress. But when we encounter situations that exceed our body’s capacity to deal with that stress, our body has to go through drastic measures so that we survive those situations. And those drastic measures are literally a rewiring in our mind. What they do for us is they actually shrink down our window of tolerance, and they cause us to be more self-protective. In other words, to adapt more of those negative self-protective mindsets. So what trauma does for us is it just causes us, our body wants to become more self-protective. That is a step away, if you will, from vertical development or from the more ideal mindsets of more vertically developed people. That’s why it’s important to kind of get in touch with trauma.

But then here’s to me the reason why it’s so valuable to talk about trauma in light of vertical development is because it introduces for me the most meaningful aspect about vertical development. And that is, if we want to vertically develop, we have got to heal our minds, our bodies, and our hearts. To me, that’s beautiful. That’s a beautiful part of vertical development. What I’m finding is that just everybody needs this. It is not uncommon for me when I’m coaching and working with CEOs, for a CEO to tell me something like, here’s some things that they have told me, “I try not to let anybody know this, but deep down I’m a really insecure person”. Another CEO said, “When I was a child, my best friend was my bike”. These types of things they show up in everyday in every decision that a leader makes. And it’s not until a leader can heal from these fears, these insecurities, this trauma that they will be able to become the leader that I imagine that they aspire to be. And so, trauma is something that inhibits our vertical development, but the good news is that we can heal from our trauma, and that’s a critical part of the vertical development journey.

Henry Suryawirawan: Really beautiful, right? So if we all want to elevate our leadership, at its foundational level, it’s about healing ourselves from our trauma, from the past experience that we had. And I think you mentioned about trauma versus stress. Not all stress becomes trauma, right? It’s only when we probably exceed our capacity to deal with the situation, then it becomes a trauma. And I think from my learning as well, a lot of personal self-help and, you know, personal growth framework, they always relate to our childhood past, and some of this trauma actually rooted from those situations, those behaviors, and those maybe teachings from parents or from school. Hence, we kind of like inherit that and unconsciously behave based on that. So I think some examples that you mentioned about the CEO’s behavior, definitely is something that we have to check out. We cannot just leave it on the back burner and just assume we are okay, and showing people that we are okay as well.

[00:45:18] Improving Our Past Trauma

Henry Suryawirawan: I think, yeah, we have to work on with our trauma, and I think what are some of the key things that people can do to actually work with their trauma or first identify and maybe the next is fixing it or maybe improve it?

Ryan Gottfredson: Well, I think that the first step is to actually just learn more about trauma and the impact that it has on us. To me, that in and of itself was a game changer for me. So let me give people a couple of different resources that I highly recommend. So one among many, but one book is a book called, “What Happened to You?”. It’s written by Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. To me, it’s the best book for stepping into the topic of trauma. It’s very approachable. They articulate the ideas really easily. So it’s a great first step into the ideas of learning about trauma and the effects on ourselves.

The next book is by far, for me, the most profound book that I’ve read related to trauma. And that book is called “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel Van der Kolk. In fact, over this last year, if it wasn’t the number one non-fiction book, it was in the top five of all non-fiction books sold during this last year. That’s an incredibly powerful book and, honestly, it got me started on my own trauma healing journey. So I was the type of person where I didn’t think that I had trauma in my background. I mean, my parents stayed married. They went to every basketball game that I ever played in. But what I realized after reading this book, I decided to engage with a trauma therapist. This trauma therapist helped me very early on in my working with her to realize that while my parents may have been there for me physically, they were rarely there for me emotionally. That effectively, as a child, I was emotionally neglected. And what the research on trauma has found related to neglect, it’s the effects of neglect are as bad, if not worse, than physical abuse.

And so what I’ve been able to awaken to is how this emotional neglect in my childhood, how it affects me today. I mean, what I came to realize is it affects all of my relationships. It affects my relationship with my spouse, my relationship with my parent, my relationship with my coworkers at work. And that’s just been a very eye-opening experience. When I first learned about mindsets, discovered my own mindsets and worked to improve them, I think that’s what got me to shift personally from Mind 1.0 to Mind 2.0. I believe that this awakening to trauma and working on it and my healing that has helped me to step more fully into Mind 3.0. I don’t think I’m there a hundred percent. I’m surely not there a hundred percent of the time. But I feel like I’m spending a much greater percentage of my time there than ever before. I credit that to working with a trauma therapist and doing some of that deep trauma healing work. And so, I don’t think everybody needs to do that. But statistics are, 70% of adults have lived through trauma that is negatively impacted their body’s nervous system. So most of us have some healing to do. It’s just like I said, in a ubiquitous part of life that we could all work on.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing your story. I think that also is an example how we can actually analyze ourselves, like what kind of trauma? Sometimes we feel like we are fine. We are happy. We progress. We have a good career. But actually, again, everyone has this trauma whatever levels they’re in. And I think it’s really crucial because you mentioned if we can work towards our past trauma, we can actually have a better chance of moving to Mind 3.0. Mindset is probably the first lever that we can do to actually move to Mind 2.0. But maybe trauma is the one that can move us to beyond that.

[00:48:59] Elevated Leader & Culture

Henry Suryawirawan: I just want to mention one more time that actually having elevated leader is very important in any organization, like we touched on earlier. Any team will not be better than the leader. And I think the second thing that also you quoted in the book, the culture of the company, is also capped to the elevated leaders mindset. So let’s touch on a little bit on that, the importance of elevated leader and the culture of the company.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. What’s interesting, one of the things that I do when I work with organizations is I have the leadership team and maybe sometimes all employees in the organization take my mindset assessment. What I have found across all executive teams that I’ve worked with, and now, that’s probably almost about 50 executive teams, every single executive team that I’ve worked with, the mindset that they struggle with the most is that fixed to growth mindset. They predominantly have a fixed mindset, and I think part of the reason for that, remember, when we have a fixed mindset, our desire is to look good, to avoid failure, as opposed to being focused on learning and growing. I just know executives feel a lot of pressure to look good, and they’re socially incentivized to take on a fixed mindset. So what I find is for, I would say, 75% of executive teams, they are actually quite high or decently high or on more of the positive side of the continuum for open, promotion, and outward mindset. But they all struggle with that fixed mindset.

And what I’ve come to learn is that profile is the profile of Mind 2.0 leadership. They’re very promotion minded. They want results. They want outcomes. They want to hit their goals. Generally, if you’re an executive, you’re not a jerk, right? You’ve kind of developed to the point where at least I’m somewhat open to the ideas and suggestions of others. I actually care about people to a certain degree. Don’t get me wrong. There’re narcissistic leaders who don’t. But for the most part, they kind of have that open, surely that promotion, and that outward mindset. But what they get hung up on is, I’ve always got to look good. Another way of saying that is, I need to stand out. I need to stand out. And so that’s the epitome of Mind 2.0 leadership. But every organization’s a little bit different in terms of how they break down across those different mindset sets. But that’s usually a huge eye-opening journey for an organization is to look at what are our collective mindsets.

And so what I’ll find is, to your point that we talked about earlier, is that the mindsets of that executive team set the tone for the rest of the organization. State it otherwise, as you go down the organization, it is really rare to find more positive mindsets than what the executives have. And in fact, it’s usually the executives have a fairly positive mindset, and the biggest decrease in terms of quality of mindsets is going from that executive level to that next level down. That’s the biggest decrease as we go down the organization. There’s usually a huge jump on that level, and then they continue to decrease. And, of course, there’s usually some pockets that may do better than other pockets within the organization. But if anybody’s listened to this, who is an organizational leader who finds this topic interesting, then it would be fun to explore. What are the collective mindsets in your organization?

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! I think I really like the way you mentioned about this. So the executives at the top actually probably set the tone, set the right direction, right? Most likely, not many people below the executives actually have a higher mindset, or if there is any, they’ll be probably ousted, or maybe they kind of like self eject themselves from the situation simply because they think it’s not the right way to go. So I think that’s really crucial why we focus a lot on elevating our leaders, so that the culture of the company, the direction of the company, actually is selected appropriately based on the mindset and the thinking that we have.

And I think I just want to touch on a little bit about fixed and growth mindset. Almost any leader I ask these days knows about this theory, the theory of fixed mindset and growth mindset. But it’s very interesting that you said many of them are actually still in the fixed mindset. So I think it’s also an eye opener for me.

Ryan Gottfredson: Just imagine. Okay, if we’ve got a hundred leaders in the room, and if I ask them the question, do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Do you think any of them would say fixed? No. They all see themselves as having a growth mindset. In some ways they may, but what the data bears out is that executives generally have more of a fixed mindset. In fact, what I generally find is that in an executive team, two-thirds of the leaders will have a fixed mindset and one third will have a growth mindset.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow. Again, it’s also a reminder for us, leaders, managers, leaders out there. If you feel that you are already in the growth mindset, think again and see your behaviors, and I think it’s a good reminder.

[00:53:50] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: So thanks, Ryan, for this conversation. I really loved our conversation, but unfortunately, due to time, I think we have to wrap up. But I have one last question that is mandatory in my show to ask, which is to share your three technical leadership wisdom. We can forget about the tech part here and focus on three leadership wisdom. Is there any kind of advice that you want to impart to our listeners here about leadership?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. So I think, for me, the number one lesson of leadership, and we didn’t touch on this directly, but it’s surely related. The number one lesson of leadership is to become someone others want to follow. Most leaders operate from a place called organizational power, where they lead in such a way that others have to follow them, not because others want to follow them. So the number one lesson of leadership is we need to be somebody that others want to follow. So that’s maybe point number one. Well, how do we become somebody that others want to follow? We’ve got to vertically develop. And if I was to say the third point, and we’ve already talked about this as well, is and to me, again, this is the most beautiful message associated with vertical development. If we want to vertically develop, we’ve got to heal our minds, our bodies, and our hearts. And to the degree to which we do that will operate at those higher levels.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow. It’s beautifully said, right? So let me repeat one more time. As a leader, you want to become someone who others want to follow, not necessarily have to follow. I think that’s a very hard, like, big distinction, want to follow and have to follow. So I think if all leaders here can change, so that people want to follow us rather than having to follow us, I think that’s a big shift in itself, right? And there’s so many things that we have to transform within ourselves in order for people to wanting to follow us, and that speaks a lot to this Mindset 3.0 that Ryan just shared today.

So, Ryan, if people are interested in these topics, want to know more, want to learn more, are there any resources, links online that you can share with the audience here?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. Huge amount of resources on my website. I almost feel like you could spend a day just in my website. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but RyanGottfredson.com. Go there. We’ve got talks about assessments, there’re books, access to videos, articles, etc. I’ve got a couple of different libraries, digital coaches, etc. So anyway, there’s a lot there. And if anybody wants to connect with me on social media, I’m most active on LinkedIn, and would love to connect with anybody there.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thanks again for your time, Ryan. I hope people listen to this episode and get inspired and they want to move to the Mind 3.0. Thanks again for sharing all these great resources.

Ryan Gottfredson: You’re very welcome. And me too!

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