Elevating Leadership from the Inside Out

What if true leadership wasn’t about doing more, but about becoming more? In this thought-provoking conversation, host Dionne Malush sits down to explore how mindset shapes everything, from the way we see the world to the way we lead others.

You’ll discover why some leaders plateau while others grow, the difference between developing your doing side and your being side, and how transformational growth often begins with a single “heat experience.” This episode dives into the four core mindsets that influence how leaders show up and challenges you to examine the self-protective wiring that may be holding you back.

If you’ve ever felt stuck or wondered what it takes to move from incremental improvement to lasting transformation, this conversation will give you the clarity and inspiration to elevate your leadership, starting with the way you think.

Connect with Ryan here:

Website: https://ryangottfredson.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RyanGottfredsonPhD/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryangottfredson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-gottfredson-9a0b466

Transcript

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Introduction to Ryan Gofferson

Speaker 1 0:02

Today's guest is redefining leadership from the inside out . Brian Gofferson , phd , is not your average leadership expert . He's a respected researcher and professor and one of the foremost voices in vertical leadership development . His work goes beyond tactics and systems and straight to the core of what drives leaders mindset , which you all know is one of my favorite things . He's written the transformative book Success Mindsets , the Elevated Leader and Becoming Better . Through his research , consulting and teaching at California State University , fullerton Ryan is equipping today's leaders to elevate how they think , so they can elevate how they lead . If you've ever wondered why some leaders grow while others plateau , this conversation will change everything . Welcome , ryan . How are you doing today ? Yeah , doing great Thanks .

Speaker 2 0:46

Conversation will change everything . Welcome Ryan , how are you doing today ? Yeah , doing . Great Thanks for having me on . I need to have you write my bio . That was awesome .

Speaker 1 0:52

Thank you . I'm becoming a wordsmith that's what I call myself . I'm really good at it , so thank you , though , for recognizing it . So I always like to start with this question . It's a really important one . It's what's one thing you want people to know about you , outside of the bio and all the information that we now know .

Speaker 2 1:07

Well , I think you captured some of that , but I think I'd like to consider myself to be a deep thinker and a deep person , particularly around how we become better , right ? So one of the things that I just feel like I've always had this internal drive not always for the best reasons , admittedly , but I've always had this internal drive to want to just be better so that I could have a greater positive influence in the world around me and one of the things that I've discovered is that I think most of us want to become better , but what I've , what I've discovered , is that most people actually don't know how to become better , and so I feel like I'm on a mission to help people to learn how to not just incrementally become better , but transformationally become better .

Speaker 1 1:49

I love that , so share with me one mindset shift that changed your entire trajectory as a leader .

Speaker 2 1:55

Oh well , there's multiple mindset shifts for sure . But let me paint you a picture . So I grew up in Utah and I would say it was kind of just standard middle class . My parents were maybe the most frugal people that I knew . So I just remember complaining that they wouldn't let me buy Nike brand and I had to buy all the off brands and I wanted Nike Right . So that just says a little bit of how frugal they were . But I also recognize where they came from .

Speaker 2 2:23

So both of my parents kind of grew up on the tail end of the great depression their communities didn't come from a lot and my dad , right before I was born so this is the early eighties he had his own business and it effectively went under during the economic downturn during the during the 1980s and so he kind of had to regroup and one of the things that he did is he got a job . That was it was a stable civic engineering job for one of the cities in Northern Utah and while that provided the stability that we needed as a family , we never had more than what we just needed . If that makes sense , it makes a lot of sense and I kind of grew up with this mentality for my parents , which was I'm going to call it a deficit mindset . Now I think we could talk about it more specifically , but the idea of a deficit mindset is that , in order for us to create wealth , our mentality is we've got to capture more of the pie . So my parents' philosophy was you've got to work hard and you've got to save , because the higher percentage of your income that you could save , that's how you grow well .

Speaker 2 3:26

And that's kind of the mindset that I took towards adulthood and , quite frankly and here's a saying that I've come to love , which is the wiring that we need to survive our childhood is not the same wiring that we need to survive as an adult , as a parent , as a spouse , as a leader , as a fill in the blank Makes sense .

Speaker 2 3:45

And so I kind of came to learn that , look , having a deficit mindset isn't the only way to go about living one's life , and I came to learn about more of an abundance mindset , which is the mentality here is not trying to capture a higher percentage of your pie , but how do you go about expanding your pie , percentage of your pie , but how do you go about expanding your pie ? And another way to think about this is . It's probably better to have a small piece of a really large pie than a large piece of a rather small pie . And shifting this mentality I would say in general and there's other mindsets connected to this is largely what got me to step out of my comfort zone and put myself out there as a business owner , as an author and as a consultant .

Speaker 1 4:29

So what drew you into the mindset and leadership studies Like where did that start ? What did you do before that ?

Speaker 2 4:35

Yeah , so I did my PhD at Indiana University and I did my dissertation on leadership , and this was great because it allowed me to review the last 70 years of leadership research . And one of my primary takeaways from this literature review was that there's really been one primary question that's been asked and answered over the last 70 years in leadership research , and that question is what do leaders need to do to be effective ? And that's a really good question and it's led to some really good answers . But I also feel that question is a little bit short sighted because I don't know about you , but I think about . Leadership is not about doing certain things . Leadership is about being a certain type of person

From Deficit to Abundance Mindset

Speaker 2 5:20

.

Speaker 2 5:20

Where I've been for the last 11 years and that's been the focus of my research over the last 11 years is how do we tap in to the being side of leadership ? And so I first started by focusing on motives , recognizing that two different leaders can engage in the same behavior , but if they do it from different motives it has a different impact . So that's where I started . But as I got deeper and deeper into motives , naturally that literature bled into the mindset space and I just found that there's a lot more , I could sink my teeth in more deeply to the mindset space , and that's become the place where I now focus , when I help people and leaders to become better . I focus on mindsets because what I've learned is that our mindsets are the most foundational aspect of everything that we do , because our mindsets are what shapes what we see in our world . They also shape how we interpret what we see , and , based upon what we see and how we interpret it , changes everything . Does that make sense ? It definitely makes sense .

Speaker 1 6:23

And so how has personal development in your life ? How has that helped with mindset training ?

Speaker 2 6:28

Well , here's how I've come to think about this . I've come to think about it that we actually have two different sides of ourselves and we can develop on both sides . So the first side of ourselves is what I call our doing side . This is our level of talent , knowledge , skills and abilities , and when you think about our education system , our athletic programs and most of our organizational development efforts , it's largely focusing on improving . On our doing side , we gain new knowledge , new skills , new certifications so that we can do more , and that's one way to develop and it's not bad , but I do think it generally is only incrementally helpful . Okay , but there's another side of ourselves and that's what I call our being side , and our being side is not our talent , knowledge , skills and abilities . It's the quality and sophistication of our body's internal operating system . Almost literally , our body's nervous system and our mindsets are not connected to our doing side . They are a core component of our being side , and so one of the things that it's really helped me is I don't know if you've ever been here before , but I remember just wanting to become better and I focused on developing on my doing side because that's the only way I knew how to develop and I actually you know I could go back to different times where I have failed .

Speaker 2 7:44

There was one time where I was a consultant for a consulting company called Gallup and I got fired . You got fired and I just never thought I would get fired . And here's the thing that was so frustrating about this for me is I knew that I had the knowledge and skills to be successful , but I wasn't . Well , why wasn't I ? It wasn't because of my doing side , it was because I had some self-protective mindsets that held me back , and so understanding we got these two sides of ourselves has opened up a new developmental strategy for helping me become better . So , rather than try to focus on my doing side which you know , it doesn't mean that I'm ignoring my doing side but now I've got a different developmental strategy , which is to focus on my being side , and what I've learned for myself , and what I've seen in my wife and in the people that I've coached or consulted with , is that if we can elevate along our being side , we become transformationally better .

Speaker 1 8:39

That is so good . I really never heard anyone explain it like that . It makes a lot of sense . I'm always on the doing side , I just keep doing everything all the time , but I do think the being is , you know , I think I have it there and I don't , just don't recognize it that way . Right , I've never really had anyone explain it and I've been , you know , reading , personal development , I've been doing masterminds and things all the time . I think I'm in a better place than I've ever been because I've been through a lot the last couple of years and I'm still here smiling and doing right , I'm doing well . So here's .

Speaker 2 9:11

yeah , so here's the thing is you , I'm there with you . I've been through some difficult , difficult things as well , and one of the things that we've learned is that if we want to elevate along our being side , we actually need what is called a heat experience . And and I think there's a couple of ways to think about heat experiences . So a heat experience can be an external event that occurs to us or with us . Right , it could be a car accident , a medical diagnosis , it could be a divorce , for example . Right , these are all heat experiences that occur external to us , that affect us . I'm also going to say that there's what I call internal heat experiences . This is when we come to a deeper sense of self-awareness and we realize that we can become better and we have some clarity on how we could do that . And so one of the things that we've learned is that if we want to elevate a longer being site , a heat experience is necessary , but it's not enough on its own to get us to elevate , because almost everybody we know has had a heat experience , but very few people have capitalized on it . So there's got .

Speaker 2 10:17

There's other ingredients in addition to the heat experience . So some of these other ingredients involved . We need to engage in elevated sense making meaning . We need to start to rethink how we typically see and view the world , and that's where mindsets come in right .

Speaker 2 10:33

So in a way , it took me , with my parents and having that deficit mindset , it took a heat experience which was getting fired by Gallup , to then to start to question has my wiring that I developed during my childhood ? Is that setting me up for the level of success that I want in adulthood ? And what I discovered was that no , and it I needed that heat experience . So that happened and then I was able to capitalize that because , fortunately , at that time I was doing a lot of research on mindsets and that allowed me to inspect my mindsets and then work on elevating my mindset . So in a way , that's kind of what I do when I work with leaders of organizations is I help them to have I don't want them to wait around for an external heat experience . We try to create these internal heat experiences and then capitalize on them to help them elevate along their being side .

Speaker 1 11:25

Because the external sometimes is so devastating they can't break through , right , they can't . It takes them down , and that's what I'm here to prove that you can get back up . And I'm sure you , ryan , have had some of that too , right when you've been down . And you know , some people don't make it up and it's hard . I feel sad for them because there is so much amazing things and there's so many amazing things on the other side of it , you know , and there's so many amazing things on the other side of it . You know , university has just it's plummeted me in my life and I just don't live there . You know I could stay in that all the time , but I just I don't . And so thank you for sharing that , because I think that's really important . There was something else that I read about , where you talked about four primary mindsets and how they influence leaders that actually show up . So can you tell me a little bit

The Two Sides of Development

Speaker 1 12:09

about that ?

Speaker 2 12:09

For sure . So one of the things that I discovered is I started to learn about mindsets . I was okay . Well , I want to know what mindsets are out there and what mindsets I need to have , and so , as an academic , I opened up the academic literature and I searched for any research that I could find connected to mindsets . And what I found in this search is that there's four different sets of mindsets that have been researched over the last 40 years . So these aren't the only mindset sets that are out there , but they're the ones where we have the most research backing . And what I've done is I kind of compiled these four sets together into one framework which allows us to evaluate the quality of our mindsets . In fact , let me share a statistic with you . So I leveraged this to create a personal mindset assessment , and it's free on my website at ryangoffersoncom , so anybody can go and take it , but I've had over 50,000 people take this mindset assessment .

Speaker 1 13:00

Wow .

Speaker 2 13:01

What I've found is that , across the four sets of mindsets , only 2.5% are in the top quartile for all four sets of mindsets . Wow . So what that means is that most of us have some mindsets are what I call self-protective . We have them because they protect us in some way , but they're also probably holding us back from creating value . And so what we've got here with these four sets of mindsets is a continuum that ranges from self-protective to value creating , and what I try to help people do is to awaken to where they are along these continuums . So , with that foundation laid , do you have any questions before I jump in and just kind of quickly share the four different sets ? No , no , I can't wait to hear them , okay , so so the four sets of mindsets . Here's the labels for them . I'm going to start kind of I'm going to mentally at the top and just work down .

Speaker 2 13:51

So the first set is the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset . Okay , you may be familiar with these . These are most commonly known mindset . So when we have a fixed mindset , our body is wired to want to avoid failure and looking bad . Well , why ? Because it protects us in the moment from not feeling the shame that comes with failure , but that's different than a growth mindset . When we have a growth mindset , we are not focused on not failing , we're focused on learning and growing and in fact , we become willing to step into situations where we might fail , such as learning zone challenges . So that's the first step fixed and grow Anything you want to add there .

Speaker 1 14:31

No , that's exactly how I believe it to be .

Speaker 2 14:35

The next set is closed to open mindset . So closed is more self-protective . When we have a closed mindset , we have a fear of being wrong , so we always need to be right and we need to be the one that has all the answers . When we have an open mindset , we don't care about being right . What we're focused on is finding truth and thinking optimal , and so I think a really just quick gauge to kind of sense where we're at on this continuum is how easy is it for you to admit that you were wrong ? Yeah , right , and that might be a quick gauge to where you're at on that continuum .

Speaker 1 15:09

It's not very easy for me ? No , because I'm just never wrong .

Speaker 2 15:17

So that's the second set . The third is what's called the difference between a prevention mindset and a promotion mindset , and this is the one that's most closely related to deficit and abundance mindset . So when we have a prevention mindset , we are primarily focused on not having any problems in the short term , okay . When we have a promotion mindset , we're focused on a purpose and fulfilling that purpose , okay . Why this is important is because people who have a prevention mindset they never want to get out of their comfort zone . The only people that are willing to get out of their comfort zone are the people that have a purpose or a why or a reason to get out of their comfort zone , and usually that , hopefully , that reason is about creating value in the world around them . So that's prevention and promotion . Does that make sense ? Yep .

Speaker 2 16:03

And then the last one is the difference between an inward mindset and an outward mindset .

Speaker 2 16:08

So when we have an inward mindset , we see ourselves as more important than others , and when we see ourselves as more important than others , we have a tendency to see others as objects , but when we have an outward mindset , we see others as being just as important as ourselves , which allows us to see them as people and to value them as such . And I just imagine all of us have been in a situation where we have been viewed by somebody else as an object right . So , for example , when we recently bought a new car , I felt like the salesman who sold me the car I felt like he didn't see me as a person . He saw me as a dollar sign , as a dollar , yeah . So inward right , that would have been an inward mindset . But there's also we've also probably hopefully had some really good customer service experiences , and those are only going to come from a place where that individual had an outward mindset and saw us as a unique person with unique needs and served us where we are at .

Speaker 1 17:03

That makes . I've never heard of that . This is . I am so interested in everything that you're talking about . It's so so makes sense . It's so easy the way .

Speaker 2 17:10

This is right , whether we have , if we have

Four Key Leadership Mindsets

Speaker 2 17:29

a fixed mindset , a closed mindset , a prevention mindset or an inward mindset . We have them for a reason because those protect us from feeling unsafe , uncomfortable or like we don't belong , and so these are self-protective wiring that we have built , oftentimes because of harm that is that we have had to walk through in our past , in our life , right . So , in fact , one of the things that I'm finding now this is where my research is at the moment we're looking at the role that trauma plays in mindsets and , as you can imagine , the more trauma one experiences , the more self-protective their mindsets become . Absolutely and here's the cool to me , this is just the most powerful takeaway from understanding . This is , at the end of the day , elevating our mindsets , improving along our being side is , at a foundational level , about healing our minds , our bodies and our hearts from the crap that we've been through .

Speaker 1 18:22

We've been and we've been through a lot as a world . It's been a lot .

Speaker 2 18:27

Yeah , to me that's been maybe the most beautiful thing that I've learned , but also , fortunately , have experienced . So as I've , you know , as I've learned these things , I've tried to apply it to myself as much as I try to teach it to anybody else . And man , I mean honestly . If you were to ask me four years ago if I had trauma in my past , I would have said no , like my parents have been what they went to every sporting event that I ever played in . But what I've come to learn , doing some deep work on my internal operating system , is that I have trauma in my past , that while my parents were always there for me physically , they were rarely there for me emotionally , and that emotional neglect came to shape my wiring in adulthood .

Speaker 2 19:11

And one of the ways that that played out is I've learned that I've come to have more of an avoidant attachment style . I don't like to feel vulnerable . I keep people at an emotional arm's length , and that's part of my body's wiring . And it wasn't until I discovered this and started to work on it that I started to open myself up more and I started to let the people that I care about in more . So one of the things that I would say is like . I mean , I've been married to my wife now for 15 years . For the 10 years of our marriage I thought we had an okay to good marriage with me keeping her at an arm's length , honestly , but now that I've become more willing to let her in , I would say our relationship is at a completely different level and that's been life changing .

Speaker 1 19:59

It's very life changing . So mindset work like what's the misconception that you think that people have about mindset work ? Like it's , like you know the movie the Secret , which affected me in a positive way . I love that movie , right it was , I'm a visual person , so when I watched it it affected me , but it's more than just that , right Yep .

Speaker 2 20:19

So I think a lot of people , mindset is a term that I think is actually used too much . Yeah , it's just used too flippantly . Right , the way that we commonly use the term mindsets is our attitude towards something . Right , we could say an entrepreneurial mindset , and that's about your attitude about entrepreneurship and I'm not going to say that's a bad way of thinking about mindsets , but I think it underserves what our mindsets really are .

Speaker 2 20:42

Our mindsets , at a foundational level , are neural connections in our brain that are responsible for processing our world . So , as I mentioned before , they dictate what we see and how we interpret what we see , and they operate largely below the level of our consciousness . And here's the cool thing about it is , when we understand the foundational role our mindsets play , it becomes clear that if we want to improve ourselves , our being , we're going to best do that by getting at our foundational level , and that's our mindset . So hopefully , people , if you're listening to this , you are sensing that a focus on mindset is a different developmental strategy than what we're typically used to . But if we can utilize that strategy , we're going to create some . But if we can utilize that strategy , we're gonna create some massive transformational change in our lives .

Speaker 1 21:33

So then , what do you say to a high performer that says to you , I've already mastered mindset , I don't need mindset help .

Speaker 2 21:39

Generally . I have them take my mindset assessment and it's very quickly , you know . And then what they say to me is oh , your assessment's wrong , right , which you know . I'm not going to say it's 100% right . But here's what I've learned is that the people who think that their mindsets are optimal , that in and of itself is a self-protective strategy , Because who wants to admit that their mindsets aren't optimal ? Nobody right .

Speaker 2 22:06

And so one of the things that I've had to learn for myself and I help others to do that , do this is we've got to create some psychological space in our lives for investigating our being without feeling the need to protect ourselves or to write , is we've got to see who we truly are and not who we want to be . And if we can do that in a healthy way , that in and of itself , I think , is trajectory altering , because we're gonna start to develop ourselves in a completely different way if we're willing to investigate the ugliness within ourselves and we've all got it , but are we willing to see it , Are we willing to own it and are we willing to do something about it ? Becomes the questions .

Speaker 1 22:54

So let me ask you this what mindset do you personally struggle with most , and how do you manage it ?

Speaker 2 22:59

Yeah . So what I've learned is when I first learned about these four sets of mindsets is I had all four of the self-protective mindsets fix , closed , prevention and inward and so I set out to work on these and , to be honest with you , I felt like I was able to move the needle quite quickly to the growth , open and promotion mindsets . But the one that was really sticky for me , and still is , is this inward to outward , and one of the things that I've come to learn is the reason why is connected back to my past trauma . As a child , I learned that if I I couldn't trust others to meet my emotional needs , and so that forced me to develop an inward mindset , because that was the only way that I could protect my emotional needs . And so this , this inward to outward has been the stickiest for me , and I've . What I've come to learn is that most people have a sticky one . It's not always the same one , and that's the sticky one for me .

Speaker 2 23:51

And for me I would say it took engaging with a trauma therapist to really move the needle on it . So I think here's one of the ways that I want you to think about this is there's kind of surface level being inside development strategies . There's deeper level and there's deepest level . We probably shouldn't start at the deepest level . That's where trauma therapy , I think , resides . I think at the surface level are day-to-day habits that help us refine our body's nervous system . That's things like meditation , yoga , journaling , working on our self-talk , et cetera . So that's the surface level . The deeper level is when we focus on our mindsets , and the deepest level that's when we get into the different therapy modalities .

Speaker 1 24:35

Makes sense . So how do you do it all balance being a professor , author , consultant and researcher without burning out ?

Speaker 2 24:43

Such a good question One

Trauma's Impact on Mindset Development

Speaker 2 24:44

. I love it because there's a lot of synergy between them , so that helps . That makes sense . Here's also something I've learned about burnout . Burnout is less to do with the amount of hours worked and more to do with our connection to a purpose . So when we are working a lot and what's connected to a purpose that's about creating value in the lives of others our work actually energizes us , yeah . But when we work a lot and it's not connected to a purpose , it depletes us . And so for me , it's all about making sure that I'm connected to a purpose , a why . That's about adding value to the world around me , and as long as I can stay connected to that purpose , I feel like I feel balanced . And energized Doesn't mean I . I mean I still feel like I work a lot , but I feel like I do feel balanced despite that .

Speaker 1 25:34

Because you love it so much . So what book besides your own had the biggest impact on your leadership style ?

Speaker 2 25:40

Ah man , so so many has had an impact In light of this conversation . I'm going to say the book Leadership and Self-Deception . It's written by the Arbinger Institute and it's all about the inward and outward mindsets and it was actually the first book I ever read on mindsets . So it's really the book that kind of opened up my eye to the value and importance of mindsets and I couldn't recommend it more . I think it should be a must read for everybody .

Speaker 1 26:07

I love that they should start putting that into school . Yes , that would be great . There's so many books . I feel that should be part of education and would be so helpful for people .

Speaker 2 26:17

Yeah .

Speaker 1 26:18

So what is an important mindset shift our listeners could make today , right now ?

Speaker 2 26:23

Well , I'm going to just suggest , before the mindset shifts occur , what's got to precede that is a deeper level of self-awareness . So I would just love to encourage anybody to take steps to deepen their awareness of their mindsets , because when we get to that depth of awareness , then we're going to have clarity on what to focus on for us to shift , because everybody's a little bit different . So hopefully my mindset assessment on my website could be a helpful tool .

Speaker 1 26:51

I'm going to share that for sure . That's a great idea . I'm going to do it tonight myself .

Speaker 2 26:58

In fact , I'll say this and I'll even offer it to you Anybody who's listening to this if you take the mindset assessment , you get your results and you wanted to chat about your results with me , then hit me up , either on my website or any social media account , let me know , and I'd be happy to jump on a call and walk through your mindset results .

Speaker 1 27:15

That sounds great . So tell me , Ryan , what kind of legacy do you want to leave through all of this work that you're doing ?

Speaker 2 27:21

Well , I hope so . I wouldn't say that I'm surely not the creator of this idea of this being side developmental strategy . I'm surely standing on the shoulders of greatness with that . But what I do hope is my legacy is I make that strategy more available to people so that they could experience the transformational development that they want , so that they can become the people that they want . So hopefully that's part of my legacy .

Speaker 1 27:52

I love it . Thank you for sharing that . So I know for me this conversation was packed with insight . I learned a lot in a very short time . So , for our listeners , if you've been feeling stuck in your life , your leadership , I hope you walk away realizing it may not be your environment , it may be your mindset , and if I were all of you , I'd go grab Ryan's book Success Mindsets Elevate a Leader and Becoming Better , or visit ryangoffersoncom to dive deeper into his work , Take his mindset assessment for sure and find out how you can work with him . So if this episode sparked something in you , please like share or subscribe to it , or send it to a fellow leader that you know . And Ryan , is there anything else you would like to say as we end our show today ?

Speaker 2 28:33

Well , I think you nailed it , so thank you . But if I'm going to add just a quick catchphrase that people might remember and maybe it's as simple as this success starts with our mindsets I is this success starts with our mindsets . I love how you said right , we tend to want to blame our environment for bad things that happen to us , and I'm not going to say that doesn't play a role , because our environment does impact our mindsets , but the way out of a not so good environment starts with

Purpose Connection and Leadership Legacy

Speaker 2 28:57

our mindsets , and so hopefully that's something that people will do .

Speaker 1 29:01

Definitely facts right there . Thank you , ryan , I appreciate you being here today .

Speaker 2 29:04

Thanks for having me .