Psychology driven Leadership (Interview with Dr Maike Neuhaus)

Petra

Hey there, and welcome back to another Future of Work Campus Industry Insider. This is where we are joined by some of the brightest minds and experts in their field who share with us their wisdom so that we can fast track our learning and our experience in that field. 

And today's topic is one that we all need to get better at. It's becoming more and more important, but at the same time, it's not necessarily talked about that much. What is it? It's about self-leadership. And we are joined by Australia's number one expert in that field, Dr. Mike Neuhaus.

We actually met online, thanks to social media. We connected on Instagram, and I just loved her content, I loved her direction, and I love her specialization. And in the end, if we want to thrive, if we want to become a leader for others, it comes down to leading ourselves first. 

So we are going to talk a lot about what does it take to become a high performer, how to set goals and also achieve them? And what's difference between those who set those intentions and goals and the ones who actually achieve it? 

And much, much more. I'm really looking forward to welcome our guest, Dr. Mike Neuhaus.

Maike

Hi, Petra, thank you so much for having me.

Petra

I'm so excited. Honestly, I've been following your content for such a long time. And I love the direction that you're going to. And also the specialization, not many actually take the stance of self-leadership. But for those who haven't come across you, can you talk us a little bit through your background, how did you learn where you are now?

Maike

Yeah, thank you so much. So basically, my background starts in psychology.

Well, to be honest, I've always had this fascination with the fact that some people seem to thrive, while others seem to get in their own way. 

And it basically led me to studying psychology, because I was fascinated by the human mind, by motivation by what makes people driven what lets people achieve whatever they set out to achieve in their life. So I studied psychology, I specialized in behaviour change science within that, and, and sort of into different tiers. 

One was sort of health psychology and one was, was organizational psychology. 

And, and that is basically because at the time, those were the only fields or disciplines within psychology where the science of behaviour change and flourishing was

applied. 

And all our knowledge that we had in psychology was applied in a positive way. So you know, everyone who thinks about psychology thinks about are how can we get people who are mentally unwell to get better again, and but I love this thinking of how can we get people who are well to get them to flourish and thrive, so really take them from zero to 100. 

But at the time, this was not something that was sort of widely practiced, and even Positive Psychology at the time, and even now, today is not taught very broadly. 

So anyway, I ended up always working in health behaviour change at population levels, I ended up doing a PhD in that field as well here in Australia. And but it always bugged me, there was always something missing. And I couldn't quite pinpoint what that was, until one day, I got so frustrated with it that I sat down, and I thought, well, if there's something missing, then what is it, I couldn't pinpoint it. 

I sat down with paper and pen. And I started writing down anything that had ever fascinated me about psychology and why I studied that science in the first place. And I ended up writing a workshop. 

This was completely unplanned. And this is about 3, 4 years ago now. 

I ended up writing a workshop. And I thought, this is exactly what I love so much about psychology and what we know about the science of human drive and flourishing. And I thought I want to show this is a word, something I want to share with other people because I feel like it is so empowering. 

I just started off in my local yoga school, literally because I didn't know where else to go. And I loved the location. And they had. 

So I started giving these workshops in back then I called them personal growth workshop workshops, I think, because at the time, I didn't even know what this was about self-leadership. I couldn't put the word to it. And you said it beautifully in the beginning. It's because we don't even talk about self-leadership very widely yet. It's not a word we use in our everyday vocabulary. And, and it's just the more I sort of dove into the literature and the more I read and learn at some stage I came across the concept of self-leadership.

I knew that that is what this was all about. But I also found out very soon that we don't actually know all that much about it yet, which drove me even further to take this topic up and run with it.

Petra 

It's such a beautiful journey because We always talk about make your mess your message. And it's usually actually in a negative way. 

So you face kind of a challenge or disruption and you learn something. So now you're teaching it others. But yours was actually the other way, you were fascinated by something. And you just took initiative and thought, what is it that I'm interested in? And what is the missing point. 

And basically, you develop your own IP, your intellectual property, based on what was missing for you. So your message doesn't always need to be something negative. And I always loved that you said, psychology is associated with something negative, but it has a different spin. And I also know that you are an NLP coach at Neuro Linguistic program, coach and coaching is all about the future. Can you tell us a little bit through how you landed in this world?

Maike

Yeah, absolutely. 

And I think you said it's a nice, I didn't know that you say, make your mess your message, because I think I tend to speak about things very positively. 

But I was certainly in a mess. And it was so frustrating for me. But to get back to your actual question, so yeah, I did an NLP practitioner qualification back when I was doing my undergrad. 

So yeah, and that sort of early 2000s. 

And this was back in Berlin. And it was because I had this fascination with thinking into the future and being proactive, supporting other people in their own ambitions, rather than lecturing them around what they should be doing. I love the whole philosophy behind coaching, that people that come with their own problems also come with their own solutions. 

And it's not about telling them what to do, it's about supporting them to sort of take all that out of them. And I just really love them that that whole philosophy around that. 

So I actually got this coaching qualification, many years ago, and, and just every now and then have been using that sort of coaching in my work. So I've worked a lot in consultants, even though over the years that I've worked in research, always worked very much in Applied Research, and even my field studies have always worked with people one on one, and also coaching them individually to adopt sort of healthier behaviour. 

So eat healthier diets, that sort of stuff. And obviously, he's critiquing there a lot too.

Petra

And, you know, self-leadership, this is so good emphasis, also, what we see in the future of work concept, with changing from being a manager, to being a leader, and leading means coaching rather than telling, ‘you need to do task 123’.

Because this is not how, an organization survives, we have to adjust more and more. And he also said your specialization is extreme change management. So maybe before we get into this topic a little bit further, can you talk us through what exactly is self-leadership? Can you explain the concept so that we're all on the same page?

Maike

Yeah, good question. And so I always say self-leadership basically, is the lies at the intersection of self-knowledge, self goal setting, and self regulation. 

It's understanding who you are identifying your desired experiences, and then intentionally guiding yourself towards that. So that is in a nutshell. 

There are sort of three big elements that are always talked about. But of course, you can probably already imagine that each of these three elements is pretty much loaded, there is a lot within self-knowledge, things that you can know about yourself and how to do that. There is a lot about self-goal setting, what does it even mean self-goal setting is not necessarily a term we use, but it's all based on that sort of proactive mindset. 

And also, self-goal setting meaning that based on understanding who you are, what you're good at what you are hoping to get out of life, setting your goals proactively based on that. And then also, self-regulation is basically where you are creating the agency where you put your plans and your goals into action. And again, that is very much loaded. 

There's a lot in self-regulation, things like emotional regulation, constructive thinking, self-monitoring, and growth, mindset, resilience and grit. 

There are a lot of big concepts that sort of make up the whole self-regulation component as well. And you can imagine I could talk about this for ages. But just to keep it simple, I always think of those three elements self-knowledge, self-goal setting and self-regulation.

Petra

What I love about this concept is it taps into a key skill that we need for the future of work and this is self-drive and self-image.

If you can't expect your manager or your leader to tell you what's next, because no one knows what's next, and nobody can reach the crystal ball as to what are you good at what you enjoy doing? 

And if you don't know that, how could you expect anyone else to help you and support you along the way. And 100%, you know, also, when we talk about, you have to have more careers such as professionals or jobs in your lifetime, but actual careers to complete different skill sets, it's more important than ever to change and adjust and create or make your backgrounds foundation for your next step. However, that also means that so many people are confused, they don't have a vision, if you don't have a vision, you can't bring people along the journey. Can you tell us a little bit through how you help people to find the vision get this clarity that they need?

Maike

Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge first, that the way that you describe this is perfect. And that's exactly where the whole topic of self-leadership has come from. 

So when you look at the literature, and you know that I'm a mess, I am a scientist, and I'm a massive fan of working evidence based because I think, otherwise, you're just wasting your time if you go with anything else. So when you look at the actual literature of what we know, about self-leadership, when it came sort of it was first termed, in the in the 1980s, by a guy called Charles Martin, who basically made the exact same observation and or listened to other people making those same observations, who said, it's such a tedious task to constantly having to tell people when to perform, and how to perform and why to perform and all those sorts of things, it would be so much better if people would just find that for themselves, you know, and if we could empower people to do that. And so, this literature actually lives within the organization or leadership or management or business type literature. So this is where it's come from. 

And the interesting bit is that this is where it's still stay has stayed for the entire time. So you would think if anyone knows about anything about self-leadership, and how to find self-motivation, and all those sorts of things, you would think it's psychologists, but they haven't adopted the concept yet. And it's sort of it. Yeah, it frightens me a little bit as to why. But I think it's literally just the organic development sometimes of knowledge pieces that we have. 

Petra

How can we find this visual and this clarity for ourselves? Because, as you said, no one else can give us the direction?

Maike

I think the key lies exactly across those three big elements. 

That's why we have to start with self-knowledge. And you said, you know, if you don't have a vision for yourself, if you don't know what drives you, then no one else can find that for you. 

You know, and so it has to start with self-knowledge, because you have to know what gets you out of bed every morning. And I know that we often talk these days about our passion is overrated, and it's a Gen Y or Gen Zed, I don't know what letter or what to thing, you know that they have this expectation that they need to find their passions, but we can also not underestimate it, because this is where intrinsic motivation lies, and there is a big driver there. And for anything that we do, so it really starts with yourself knowledge, you have to know about your values, what is it that is important to you in life, because that is like your compass, that determines the direction you want to take not necessarily the end goal. 

We're not even talking about end goals yet, but we're talking about broad directions. And that's determined by your values, you have to understand your strengths, what is it that you're good at, simply because if you can work to your own strengths, you will find a lot more joy, doing the things that you do, you will feel a lot more fulfilled when you've finished doing what you did. 

And you will also be a lot better at it and you'll be more resilient, you will last longer doing those tasks. So those sorts of things. So they all live within the self-knowledge, sort of compartment of self-leadership. And I think you know, starting with self-knowledge is so important because it plants, the seeds for everything else, then you look at setting your own goals, they should be based on that. 

It's not that you need to know everything about yourself first, and only then can you set goals. Sometimes we get stuck on that because then we sort of become a little bit too perfectionist about Well, I haven't got everything figured out about myself yet. Therefore, I can't possibly set a goal. 

It's about staying in action as well. You can set goals and then the more action you take, the more you will find out about yourself. So the more you know it's sort of like an iterative never process as well.

Petra

And that's the beauty of it, there is no end goal as such, it's a constant evolution. And this is also what I love about the concept of personal branding. You don't brand yourself once, and then you stay like that for the next 70 years, you're hopefully growing and evolving. 

And this is where the storytelling comes in: how you bring people on the journey with you did your change makes sense to others, that going into new direction, all of a sudden makes people excited for them to be on your journey and support you and open doors for you.

As you said before, especially in change management. This is something that we all have to get better at. Also, especially when you know, jobs are getting replaced by technology or tasks are no longer required. And we can't put our take our identity on our job title, because maybe it's not, you know, relevant and required anymore. After we've known our values, what's important to us, and also what drives us, how can we then better deal with change, especially when we think we finally found something that really excites us? And then we realize nobody wants it anymore? 

Or it's not required? How can we initiate this change?

Maike

So I'm not sure I'm understanding your question correctly. But I think if we're thinking about, you know, once you have identified your values, and you experience that this doesn't fit into the environment where you're currently working, because maybe it's not something that they value, or as part of their agenda and strategic direction, and well, then that's somehow a little bit like a relationship that falls apart, isn't it because we do develop and, you know, individually, we develop and an organization will be on an agenda and going a certain direction, as individuals, we will have our own agenda and going our own direction. 

And if it just no longer fits, then that is really sad. But then that is just the reality. I mean, obviously, not a fan of giving up straightaway, you know, hopefully, if you have good management or good leadership, you can have those conversations and communicate the change that is happening within you or the new direction you would like to take, and then hopefully, you know, you can, as an organization try to accommodate that, if it's sort of, you know, goes into the same direction. But if it doesn't, then I, you know, I would just say, you know, just looking elsewhere and looking where you can find, you know, an environment that you fit into, and this is probably easier said than done, it can be really challenging to then start thinking outside the box, maybe taking on a complete career change. 

And here we are, again, at the topic of coaching, 

I always say and I work with a coach, if you can afford him, you know, this is where they can be immensely helpful to take on a career change me and I and, and just and then it comes down to just being really creative and innovative. Because it might just take on a completely different shape or form, whether that is going from working in person to working online or working for someone else to working for yourself or from a management sort of position to something very creative. I don't know, you know, it can just look really, really different. 

Just being open to all options and adapting to that and considering those options. And then we're probably talking about topics like embracing your fears. And you know, or taking it step by step. So, yeah, so that is a huge change. 

It requires certainly orchestration of a lot of different elements. But yeah, I think this is just something that probably happens more and more because I think as a society, we probably become more aware of the VUCA world.

So the constant change in AI that is happening. I think long term contracts are a thing of the past anyway. And I think we are starting to understand that we need to be always ready for change and to adapt and to China to little chameleons to know what I mean.

Petra

So good. And you know, I also love that you bring up the concepts, or the two principle of coaching, it's all about opening up new perspectives. Because often we're so much in our own bubble, we don't see left and right and all of a sudden, instead of having two options, that yes or no left or right, or black or white, you all of a sudden have 1000s of options.

And if you see there are more options, you are more optimistic and with that you attract different opportunities to you rather than you having to chase it. And in the end, this is you know what makes the difference between people who thrive in this future of work and those who are getting crushed by that wave of change and constant adoption. 

In terms of practicability, I know we can unpack so much goodness, an obvious You've got so much wisdom to share, which we're going deep in our hands on workshop in tune. However, what can anyone do to start with self-leadership? 

Have you got a couple of breaking tools, tips, apps, any resources that you would recommend for us to start with?

Maike

No, yeah, absolutely. So, in terms of starting off with self-leadership, so as I said, I would always start by looking at what is currently going on for you. So some people might already have a very strong sense of who they are, others don't. 

If we look at this sort of chronologically, again, I would start I would say, start with self-knowledge, you know, what do you know about yourself and understanding your values is a big one, understanding your strengths, there are really two key ones from your, from their sort of their self-knowledge and element and also maybe your interests and passions, but um, um, so for that, I mean, anyone is welcome to head over to my blog. 

I actually do give away a free e-book on self-knowledge. So including lots of exercises across the range of elements there. And I also have lots of other tools that I'm giving away for free on my blog as well, you can literally just go there and download them and those tools and tap on the various elements of self-leadership. 

So definitely starting off with self-knowledge. And then it depends on where you are, you know, if you are already taking action towards your goal, then maybe just looking at well, how's that currently going for you? You know, if anyone is looking to become a stronger self-leader, I would in the first instance, as instance, ask why. 

Usually, it's because either someone is not happy with something in their lives, they're craving something else, but they don't know what it is, or they know exactly what it is. And they've tried to attain it already, but they haven't been successful. So just really depends on where people are at. 

And it's sort of hard to give a one size fits all answer for this, because everyone is different. And, and I would just encourage people to understand to identify exactly what it is, where they're at, and what it is they're not happy with. 

And also, what it is, that is going well for them in life already and then identifying small steps that they can take in a new direction or the direction that they think is important for them. 

So, in terms of you asked about some resources, maybe and I have to say: All Apps, I'm not a big sort of app fan or anything like that. I've actually tried to spend a little bit less time on the phone, and using apps, but in terms of resources, and I am completely geeking out on positive psychology.com is a website, I write for them as well. S

o it's a bit of a disclaimer here. But I love them because they work evidence base. 

And, and they just in general share a lot of knowledge on a broad broad spectrum or across a broad spectrum about positive psychology. So, anything that helps people to flourish and thrive. 

And as I said, it's evidence based, so it's all rooted in science.

And it's awesome.

They also have master classes there. Yeah, you definitely have to pay for them. 

So just you know, just wanted to mention that. But another thing I'm loving at the moment, I'm doing a positive psychology practitioner certificates through the school of positive transformation in the US. 

They again are all evidence based, and they have lots of different classes, I love their stuff. And so, for me, it's basically websites, good quality, blogs, anything like that, where I can get good, bite sized pieces of evidence based knowledge, that stuff I love. 

And obviously, so many people are sharing their research these days. So that's really good, easy to find.

Petra

You know, that's also such a good tip already, because you said that works for you. And unlike you, I'm a left brainer. I need to have the facts and figures, and I'm not quite a woohoo person. 

Yeah, I don't think it's wrong. It's just a very different view or approach to solving a problem or challenge whatever it might be. 

Everyone's got their own right. But you need to in that start with self-leadership, what works for you, what do you resonate with more? 

Because otherwise, if you are struggling to believe it, or if you don't get the buy in, if you're not interested in? What are the chances that you stick with it and that you remember anything?

Maike

Yeah, 100%.

Petra

Maybe to wrap up:

Can you also talk us through a little bit the correlation between self-leadership and wanting to lead others or becoming a leader, a first time leader, or a better leader? 

Maike

is a very, very interesting question. And there is a concept out there that you've probably heard about authentic leadership. I'm not a leadership expert. This is sort of not my field of expertise. 

So, I'm very much looking at the industry. And how can you sort of become the best version of yourself and the concept of authentic leadership is actually one that is sort of frequently criticized as well. 

I'm not 100% familiar with all the literature behind that, I think the idea is that basically, if you have a good understanding of who you are, and, you know, and how, what motivates you, and all those sorts of things, then automatically you become a better leader. So I can't really speak to the research per se, but I can say that, for me, intuitively, it makes a lot of sense, simply because if you are a strong self-leader, meaning that you know how to regulate yourself, so meaning that you know, how to regulate your emotions, now, emotional intelligence and emotional regulation, there is a key concepts for any leader, because if you lose your patience with staff, it's not a good look, you know, you make your staff feel insecure, or anything like that they can't perform. 

So, this is just a very, very fundamental element that any leader needs to have. And I always say that, you know, ideally, an organization, any leader in an organization, you know, ideally should be a very strong selfie of also, because they are role models, because if they're in a in a in a position where they're not driven, where they don't find fulfilment, or you know, where they can't perform, because the whole idea of goal setting is foreign to them.

I think, in my perspective, IT organizations sort of, ideally shouldn't have a responsibility to support or empower individuals to become the best versions of yourself of themselves, so to empower individuals to thrive and to perform. But also, they have a responsibility to create an environment through their leadership, where people have an opportunity to realize their potential and to perform and to live sort of the utmost self-leadership, Janata mean. 

So I think in that perspective, they 100% go hand in hand.

Petra

It was such a beautiful summary and also explanation of leaders go first. And leadership is not a title, it's an activity. 

It doesn't mean that you have to have a senior manager or manager title in front of you to perform or act like a leader. 

It's simply you knowing what it means to go through a certain, you know, a one on one interview, of leading a team of going through different coaching practices, for example, also, because then you can be an authentic leader because you literally apply your knowledge and expertise and experience with it on others. 

And this is what people are picking up. And there's a good reason why some are chosen as a leader, even though they don't have the title. It's because we trust them, we are inspired by them, we want to follow their vision, and others have the title, but nobody respects them. No one buys into what they've got to say. And this is, you know, very dangerous.

Maike

Exactly. 100%. Love it.

Petra

There were so many gold nuggets, thank you so much for sharing so much wisdom. And this is just the beginning because we are joined by you in tune for our workshop. But in the meantime, I'll link all your resources that you're sharing with us in the show notes. Where can everyone find to connect with you and learn more about you?

Maike

I'm probably best either on Instagram, some endless Dr. Mike Neuhaus or on my website, drmaikeneuhaus.com, which I'm very happy that you're going to link it underneath the video because people obviously we won't know how to spell that because my name is just asking for trouble in the international world. But yeah, that's where you can find me download some tools, download my e-book for free. Yeah, we'll be very happy for anyone to join the community trail. 

Petra

Thank you so much for joining us and I'm really looking forward to learning more from you.

Maike

Thank you so much for having me. Petra was a pleasure.