Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

You can learn more about VUCA on several websites, including: https://itsvuca.com and https://itsvucamax.com.

The It’s VUCA documentary can be rented on Amazon at https://bit.ly/ItsVUCA. And you can pre-order their book, The Rise of Humanness, on their website: https://itsvuca.com/pre-order-the-book.

And if you’d like to check out Mike’s podcast for veterans, pop over to Podbean at https://themilitarywire.podbean.com.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. The audiobook version is available now at https://amzn.to/3Vko2IW. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)
• Jilly Truit murder mysteries by Beverley McLachlin:
  • Full Disclosure – https://amzn.to/46TxW6Q (paperback) https://amzn.to/46VDL3Q (audiobook)
  • Denial – https://amzn.to/46YCbhs (paperback) https://amzn.to/3GJc0AA (audiobook)
• Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Chris Nolan, multi-Emmy Award-winning writer-director, author, story guru, and change consultant, and Mike Schindler, writer, host/co-executive producer, Award-winning author, Navy Veteran, and host of The Military Wire Podcast, and one of the nation’s foremost experts on veteran issues and individual/team leadership, teamed up to co-write and produce the groundbreaking documentary IT’S VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century, which features 17 of America’s top thought leaders, best-selling authors, and military experts who reveal the little-known practices used by Zen Masters, elite military teams, Olympic athletes, and the top 1% of companies to OVERCOME UNCERTAINTY, improve mental and emotional well-being, and achieve personal and professional success.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] I am Maureen Metcalf, your host for Innovating Leadership co-creating our future. I’m also the founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute where we help leaders be future ready. Today we welcome Chris Nolan multi Emmy award winner, writer, director, and author, and Michael Schindler, writer and host of Military Wire Podcast.

They teamed up to co-write and produce the groundbreaking documentary, it’s vuca, the Secret of Living in the 21st Century. What is VUCA and what is VUCA Max?

Chris: VUCA is a term that’s been around for about 30 years. It was coined by the [00:01:00] US military about conditions of the late 20th century, which were volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

VUCA Max is where we are now because we still have those VUCA conditions, but we also have something called massive accelerating exponential change, which means things are doubling in intensity. As you can see, the future’s moving faster than we think. What we mean by doubling is that at one time maybe, it seemed like every year was, well, kinda like the last year, but now it feels like boy, like 10 years have gone by every year, and that’s this doubling era that we’re in.

And so what that means is to put it in context, in the next 10 years, we will see a hundred years of change this century, and in the next 80 years we’ll see 200,000 years of change. I know that sounds crazy. But that’s what’s happening with technology and with AI and with all the converging forces that we have in our [00:02:00] environment right now,

Mike: which is a great lead in Chris to answer.

You know, what the heck is antifragile resilience or antifragile confidence? I mean, the resilience piece, that’s where you think about the tennis ball and the egg people being fragile. If they’re an egg and you slam that down on the concrete, it explodes. It breaks when people are resilient. We talk about bouncing back, but bouncing back into what you were before, right?

So you go through a traumatic event, but you’re able to bounce back. You’re still the shape of that tennis ball. Well, when you talk about anti-fragile, you’re really reshaping. Yes, you’re bouncing back, but you’re bouncing back into a different shape, different environment. Better, stronger, but not the same because the environment’s changed.

And so when we talk about resilience, it’s a confidence that you understand that you’ll be able to go through a moment coming out stronger, better. It doesn’t mean it’s not gonna hurt going through it, but when you’re talking about anti-fragile confidence, it’s going, okay, I know I’m gonna bounce back, but I’m gonna bounce back [00:03:00] better, stronger in a different environment because to Chris’s point.

Things are changing, so you can’t bounce back to the same because the environment’s not the same.

Chris: That’s right. So really anti-fragile is the opposite of fragile.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So what Mike’s talking about is, as you can see, we live in an environment where a lot of people are really fragile right now. There’s a lot of stress.

There’s a lot of emotional trauma, so this VUCA Max World can make you break easily. So how do you have anti-fragile confidence in this environment? Anti-fragile confidence takes anti fragility, which is a quote from Nicholas de Loof who came up with an economic term about fragility in our environments.

But the idea here is that anti-fragile confidence, it’s a trust in yourself.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Chris: How do you have a trust in yourself? And anti-fragile confidence is an intense trust in yourself that you have what it takes to overcome and navigate anything that this VUCA Max world throws against you,

Mike: which [00:04:00] takes a little effort.

I mean, to be honest, ’cause some people don’t even trust where they put their keys or, I mean, they’re walking around going, I don’t even know where I left those.

Chris: And some tools that we’re gonna show you.

Maureen: So I was talking to A CEO yesterday about the people he hires and the environment he’s creating. And this was exactly what he was pointing to.

We expect our people to be able to shift quickly to the changing environment. Mm-hmm. The employees themselves will need to change quickly. And I love how Mike, you framed that we have to bounce back. Differently because the CEO was saying, I don’t want people who need a level of stability. I want people who are able to push themselves all the time.

And to do that, we have to have confidence that we won’t break the team is crucial in helping build this kind of confidence with that accelerating change. If I fall across the finish line tonight, am I gonna be able to get up and do more tomorrow?

Mike: Yeah,

Chris: it is a [00:05:00] lot of business. I mean, you probably got more work than you need.

Mike: Yeah. But I think what Maureen, what you said was so important. Like the team environment is so important, right? And that comes from leadership. So if a team knows that they can trust the environment, they can trust their leader, maybe not the environment. ’cause the environment’s. Shifting and changing quickly.

Right. But if they know, listen, the leader’s got my back, then I can trust that and I can fail forward. That’s important. Sometimes we get so caught up in not living on the edge of our comfort zone or not being willing to take that next step because we’re afraid of what the repercussion would be. But if we know that it’s, listen, you own the problem, you own the solution, we’ll figure it out.

We’ll keep moving forward. That’s the Microwind piece. Chris and I talk a lot about this. Micro winds are so important when you’re looking at today’s environment. If you do anything like a plank, right? And people are like, oh, I’m gonna do a three minute plank, and then they get 15 seconds into it and they’re like, oh my gosh, I have two minutes of 45 seconds left.

They start thinking like [00:06:00] that’s a long goal. But if they start thinking and like, Hey, I can do this for 10 seconds at a time, and they just start talking themselves in 10 seconds. I did this with the song. I found a seven minute song. I put it in my ears, and I held the plank for seven minutes.

Chris: Is that while I survived Mike?

Mike: Exactly. I’m trying to remember who sang that song. It was a funky song, but the whole point is you’ve gotta distract your mind. Keep yourself focused on the goal. And just take it a microwind. We can stretch ourselves 40% more than what we think is we hit the wall. Ah, I hit the wall. Can’t keep going. Our body and our mind can actually go, no, guess what?

I’ve got a reserve tank. You can go about 40% more.

Chris: This is the thing that we get with most of our clients. This is like the number one thing is anti-fragile resilience or anti-fragile confidence.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Chris: You’re right, it’s a team thing. Especially with return to work, it’s a big deal. How do they keep up their resilience given things like ai?

Is AI gonna take my job? But I think what we’ll get into, we call this a [00:07:00] VUCA Max Warrior system. There’s actually some kind of ancient philosophy that it’s, you know, right out of the Ninja Warriors or Japanese Zika or something like that, where it’s a philosophy of living too. That’s a big part of this that we don’t really have in our culture right now.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Maureen: How would your clients go about building anti-fragile resilience? We all need it because if we look at the level of anxiety, depression, drug use, this seems like an opportunity to help people counterbalance the challenges that they’re facing.

Chris: There’s a military aspect to this, and when I mention kind of an ancient, uh, philosophy here, it’s the idea of MINDBODY spirit where you have to have a foundation and you’re, you’re right on with this, Maureen, with the idea of how we kind of have a koana squat about how we go about things.

And a lot of that has to do with the idea of not having our foundational plus ones sleep, nutrition, energy, [00:08:00] your q. Your prana or your key, whatever that’s called, weaving together these negative and positive aspects of our life. In fact, Abraham Maslow talks about either you’re going minus one every day or with every decision, or plus one every day with every decision, and we call these plus ones.

So you have to look at yourself and saying, when you’re talking about stress or drugs, or drinking too much, those are all minus ones. And minus ones, like plus ones compound. So if you’re doing plus one, plus one foundations, getting enough sleep, getting enough nutrition, getting enough energy, all of those good things.

That’s compounding into your anti-fragile confidence. And that leads right into Mike, I’m sure you’ll take off on this as what Jocko willing says, there is freedom in discipline.

Mike: Oh yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, people think that, boy, you know, being disciplined takes a lot of work. It does take some work, but when you’re so disciplined, there’s freedom in that.

And let me explain that. It really comes down to Chris and I had coined this [00:09:00] term called purposeful presence. So in the military, we’re really good at painting mission, purpose, identity. Purpose is help save the world from bad people. Mission is commander’s intent. What am I doing on a daily basis? My identity is, you know, what’s my rank, my uniform, things Along that line, you’re focused on the purpose, and that’s where, whether it’s return to work or return to culture, or whether it’s people living their daily lives, it’s really what is my purpose?

What is my purposeful presence? So I’m in the moment. And so that really goes back to a quote, you know, when the vision is big, the circumstances don’t matter. Because people will do things that are super important to them, and that comes down to self-worth or self-image. And so how do you get there? When Chris and I go into companies, we’re, we’re working with individuals.

We always start to, what Chris’s point was, is the core values. Really, what is the core of the company? What is the core of the individual? Because that is how you get people to [00:10:00] embrace discipline. Because if it’s important to ’em, they’ll figure out how to do it right? I mean, any of us that have ever raised kids, we’ll see it.

They’ll do things that we think are extraordinary, even though there might be fear attached to it because it’s really important to them. We’ll do things in the film industry that are groundbreaking. That’s what we did when we did the first film during COVID. We’re like, I don’t know how this is gonna work.

And we’re like, well, let’s just give it a shot. And we found new ways to film and we found new ways to record and we found new ways to edit, but we had a big vision. And that’s the piece is when the vision is big, all of a sudden the discipline happens. A short story here, when I was in college, this is before cell phones,

Chris: did they have

Mike: phones?

Meg even they did have phones and they were attached to the wall. Okay. I told my grandparents this was gonna come visit and I didn’t get down on a Saturday like I told ’em, but I got down on a Sunday, so I showed up a day late and my grandfather’s like, Hey you, you didn’t show up yesterday. And I said, well, I [00:11:00] got busy with, you know, college, et cetera.

And I said, I tried to call but nobody answered. And he goes, well, you told me you’d be here on a Saturday. I had plans for us on a Saturday and I said, well, it’s Sunday. We can do those plans down. He goes, you know what’s interesting? You know, if it was worth a million dollars to you, you would’ve been here on Saturday.

And I just went, wow, that’s crazy. But he wasn’t wrong. That’s what happens. So we all, as a human or a company, have something that’s worth a million dollars. Use that term. Whatever’s so important to us that we’re willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. That’s how you form discipline. So that’s purposeful presence.

Chris: It’s a very powerful, purposeful presence is a, is a big idea today because they want people to go back to work. And so it’s a responsibility both the company and the employee to make that presence purposeful. ’cause you can’t just say, well come back and just sit in front of your computer and we won’t talk to you for eight hours every day again.

Then they lose their mojo. This is really important. I mean, even with kids [00:12:00] or anybody, the discipline thing is a really big deal.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Because it’s paradoxical, right? I mean, you go, wait a minute. Discipline freedom if they seem like they’re counter to each other. But Eric from was a sociologist and a philosopher and a psychologist, and he said there’s a difference between negative and positive freedom, and it’s about free will.

Right. It’s about choice. So you would think that freedom means I can do anything I want, but it’s, it’s like we have this good and bad vuca. You know, I’d mentioned the bad vuca. There’s a good vuca, which is vision, understanding, clarity and adaptability. So those are the positive sides of vuca. The thing is that people don’t understand that that free will.

If it’s negative, has no rules or boundaries.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So it has no rules or boundaries. It can get into things like insecurity and depression and anxiety. ’cause there’s no constraint there. You’re not giving yourself anything back like, I did this right. I made good choices.

Maureen: [00:13:00] The phrase we use is liberating structure.

That the structure itself gives me freedom because I know what my guardrails are. I know what my expectations are. It’s not, you can do anything absolute freedom, but that the structure if created properly with the right understanding, aligned with purpose, I. Helps me be more effective, and that structure also allows me the stability from which to change.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. As Mike was saying, if it’s a plus one, if it contributes to your wellbeing, you understand that that’s actually increasing your power. If it’s negative, it’s making you powerless. In too much negativity.

Mike: I mean, it really is defining like if you had your best year, like even from an individual standpoint, I’ll just take from an individual standpoint, Maureen, is, you know, if you had your best year mentally, physically, spiritually, relationally, financially, do you know what that looks like and can you measure it?

So then [00:14:00] everything that you do in your life, you essentially process and ask the question, how is what I’m doing right now helping me move the needle in these five areas? Is it moving me forward in those five areas or is it moving me backwards? Oh wow, I had four donuts. Well, that’s not helping me move the needle in a positive direction.

Physically might be helping me mentally for the moment because you know, I’m stressed out and I eat. When I get stressed. So you really want to design your life in a way that’s like, okay, what are the things I’m doing that are helping me move the needle in these five areas? From a company standpoint, it’s like how am I improving morale and how is what we’re doing improving profits?

And what most companies miss today, which I think is pretty fascinating, and you see this today as most companies are so focused on profits, which is not wrong at all. However, how you improve profits is by improving morale. So when you improve morale and you, the vision is big, all of a sudden people get excited.

That’s the moonshot that Chris and I talk about is when they paint that moonshot, [00:15:00] people become excited. They’ll become more efficient, they’ll get more creative in their thinking on how to solve problems, and they’ll be like, wait a second, if I could solve this problem faster, better, it adds to the bottom line and I feel like I’m adding value.

Companies today have unfortunately separated that oftentimes when really they are a parallel path, that when we focus there, that people will see increased profits and then you’ll start to see a decrease in the mental issues and some of the other ailments that go on in society.

Chris: Mike, I think, uh, companies aren’t too focused on profits these days before they were still focused on profits.

There was a bigger value system.

Mike: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.

Chris: I don’t think that they focus on culture as much as they should.

Mike: I agree with you. Yeah. No, I think they’re way too focused on, I don’t wanna say too focused on profits, but

Chris: they’re very stockholder oriented rather than stakeholder oriented.

Mike: Agreed.

Chris: One of the thing I would say also about discipline, that’s really, really important, and we have a tool that deals with this. It’s about avoidance. It’s called the bring it on tool, discipline, defaces Excuses. [00:16:00] It defeats avoidance. That’s a big deal. ’cause the excuses are what thwart you from moving forward.

It thwarts forward progress, which is what we all wanna be part of.

Maureen: As you say that, I think of what we’re doing with yoga. I’ve always exercised, but now it’s almost maniacal and that discipline really is helping me. Have the foundation, as you’re saying, to adapt to changes that are happening that I can’t control?

Chris: Well, yeah. There’s a lot of Eastern philosophy behind a lot of this stuff. You know, your key and giong and all those kinds of things that align yourself, balance yourself. Once again, that’s the foundational plus ones.

Maureen: With the plus ones. Then we have the capacity to absorb and metabolize. Some of the change that’s happening,

Chris: it helps you keep on track.

Mike: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

Maureen: So then what is the Bring it on tool,

Chris: the Bring Iton tool. Maybe we should do the three anti-fragile disciplines first.

Maureen: Okay.

Chris: That will lead into the Bring It On tool. And it’s interesting ’cause these all do align with each other. [00:17:00] These are all based on one of our mentors and uh, one of our tent pole gurus in the VUCA Max program.

Phil Stutz. So I went to Phil Stutz for about 10 years. Jonah Hill made a documentary. He is on Netflix called Stutz, and he has all these tools and he’s, he’s really a remarkable guy. He has these three structures, these three disciplines of anti fragility. There’s the first one, which is structural discipline, which we just talked about, which is what you eat, how you sleep, how you exercise, how you’re in a constant rhythm, how you get out of the lethargic state.

It’s your daily living, and it’s really important about a lot of these to understand that your ego will not like any of these.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Your ego will not like structural discipline. Like you’ve gotta get up and you’ve gotta exercise, you’ve gotta meditate, you’ve gotta journal any of those things that keep you into a structural discipline.

The next is reactive discipline. Now, this is very important because we actually have two tools that really expand on reactive discipline, which is part of [00:18:00] VUCA Max conscious leadership and VUCA Max Anti-Fragile Resilience, and that’s called the VUCA Max Line. So Mike, I’ll let you talk about reactive discipline.

Mike: So there’s response and reaction. A response is you’re taking a moment to understand, really thinking. Second, third, order effects. So thinking kind of chest plain. Your decision making process. Like if I make this decision, then I’m thinking through what that decision’s gonna be as opposed to a reaction.

And when we talk about reactive discipline, it really is being below the line. It’s allowing the fear, the guilt, the anxiety, the things that we often say are the uncontrollables, the external environment. We react to it, we push against it without thinking through it, and there is a discipline in that, in the sense that oftentimes people operate.

Out of that. So when Chris is talking about, you know, moving forward or moving backwards, people are disciplined in some form. It’s either positive or negative. Some people are like, Hey, listen, I eat every day and I eat a pound cake every day. Well, that’s discipline.

Chris: [00:19:00] 95% of people are living in an unconscious mindset.

They are.

Mike: Yeah. I mean, they really are. And so the goal is, when you talk about the VUCA line, is getting people to move into an awareness state. Where am I? So anytime a situation happens, it’s really taking that pause, that 62nd pause. Remember when your mom used to say, or maybe your moms didn’t do this, but my mom did this?

’cause anytime I was being, you know, a teenage boy, she’d look at me and she’d say, give me a minute. I knew at that moment that if I did not give my mom a minute, I might be meeting Jesus in the next 60 seconds. So it is really about slowing the role in that. When you give your brain a moment to pause, as opposed to react, you can suddenly start making smarter decisions and that pulls you into an awareness state that then allows you to acknowledge where you’re at and then take action in a positive sense,

Chris: right?

And below the line is this survivor mode. It’s actually a victim mode. More above the line is a creative mode. So [00:20:00] below the line, you’re in a negative state, and at the above the line, you’re in expansive state. You can actually think of it if you’re in a spiritual concept here, you’re in your lower self, below the line.

You’re in your higher self above the line, and the reason we call this conscious leadership is a lot of leaders are walking around. 95% of them dealing with past beliefs, past baggage, past blame, past anxieties, past judgments. You have to throw all of that out to be above the line. Your listeners are probably familiar with Victor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning.

As Mike was saying, there’s this space between stimulus and response Viktor Frankl had said, and that we have the power to choose how we think, and that response is what gives us our growth and our freedom. If we don’t make that we’re going backward.

Maureen: In that pause is also engaging the breath. Helping our nervous system relax, because if I am in fight and [00:21:00] flight mode, I am gonna be in victim mode.

I actually have to shift my brain and my physiology to have the capacity to move out of the below the line state.

Chris: Mike calls that the 62nd lifesaver, right, Mike?

Mike: Yeah. I mean, it, it really is that, I mean, what you’re doing is you’re moving your system from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic. I know some of your listeners had a mom that said, give me a minute.

I know that. And you know what? Our moms were brilliant when they said it. They didn’t know they were doing this, but they were slowing their action down because they knew, um, my reaction might not be good. And Mike heard this a lot by

Chris: the

Mike: way I did, was constant, like I was at troubled youth. So it is a lifesaver.

If we can execute our lives, just take a minute. Just take a minute. No decision. I mean, unless you’re jumping in front of a car. But most decisions in our life, you can take a minute, you can slow down and go, let me take a minute because you’re gonna move out [00:22:00] of reaction. You’re gonna move yourself into response.

Chris: It’s huge for teams and leadership. ’cause so many people are in knee-jerk reactions and that’s, you know, just taking that 60 seconds is huge.

Maureen: We teach this in communication as well. When you are in that fight and flight mode, in the midst of a conversation, in negotiation, to be able to say, I need a minute to slow the heartbeat, slow the breathing, allow everyone to recalibrate and ask myself in that minute.

What outcome do I want from this situation to be able to then voice, Hey, it feels like we’re off track.

Chris: Yeah. And you’re moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. It’s about critical decision making. All of a sudden, now you’re in a clear creator mode. So it’s, it’s pretty powerful.

Maureen: And then what’s the third discipline?

Chris: The third one is Stutts, called it expansive discipline. I think Mike and I like to call it exponential discipline in this particular age. This is why it leads into the the [00:23:00] Bring It On tool. It’s action steps that force you to expand your life. So the universe is constantly expanding and to get into that flow, it’s about flow and connect to higher forces.

We have to keep up with that forward moving progress. Think of even day, which is why we call it exponential discipline. You have to actually move yourself faster. You know, you have to really get into this flow quicker. What that takes is courage. And this is what the bringing on tool really leads into because there’s a lot of fear in our age right now.

So this is about when you’re avoiding or when you’re making excuses, and a lot of times you’re facing fear. How do you get over that fear and say, bring it on. And that leads into Mike Schindler explaining

Mike: the Bring it on tool. Well, the Bring It on tool is great. Actually, you visualize, let’s just take public speaking.

’cause most people don’t like public speaking. Right? Because really the core is I’m afraid of what people are gonna say or think about how I deliver, [00:24:00] what I’m about to say or share, right? So they become inner focused as opposed to what can I give to others? They have this fear of public speaking. So the bring it on tool is you visualize that thing that you’re fearing most.

You visualize it. I’m speaking up on stage in front of a thousand people. Oh my gosh. You feel the anxiety building, but you’re like, no, I embrace this. Bring it on. So you start to visualize you on that stage and you’re breaking through this cloud almost. I think Chris in some ways describes it even more beautiful than I do, but I see it.

You’re going, no, bring it on. You’re visualizing every part of the success of this, and you’re addressing the fears that you have, but you’re like, no. Bring that on. Bring it on. I embrace it. Bring it on. I love fear. I love this, and you start to shout it, and you do it probably in the comfort of your own home or your car.

People don’t know what’s going on in your car. It’s okay. You can do it in traffic too. Keep your eyes open. [00:25:00] But you visualize this so that you break through that moment and you go, I can do this. Bring it on. So what Chris and I oftentimes do is we take a moment, where’re like, ah, this could be pretty overwhelming.

Chris is really good. Even at helping me sometimes get re-grounded. It’s just like, you got this. Just bring it on. Okay, great. But you’re really visualizing yourself breaking through. What’s holding you back. You’re saying No, bring that to me. Bring that to me

Chris: once again. I don’t know if I finished this, but Stutz was known as basically the shrink of the stars.

I mean, you name a big actor, director, head of a studio, probably a Stutz client. And I went to him ’cause I’m a, a film director and I had similar situations where I’d have a hundred people on a crew and something would go wrong. There’s a lot of anxiety when you’re in those situations. And so he was very helpful with that.

So he dealt with a lot of actors and actually fear must be equated to pain. That’s really what happens when you get high [00:26:00] anxiety. It becomes extremely painful. What Stutts told you to do is to. And you say, bring on that pain, bring on that fear. You see it in front of you as a cloud, and you actually say, you scream like, I love pain, I love it.

And you keep moving forward. And as you move through the pain, it spits you out into a higher force. That higher force is anti-fragile confidence. ’cause you’ve done that, you’ve achieved that, you’ve gone through that. It’s the things that the Navy Seals do and the elite forces do. They force themselves through these situations.

They go, oh, okay, I’ve done that. And they have this inner discipline, this inner feedback. And you wanna do that every single time throughout the day that you feel anxiety. Or overwhelm, whatever, or you can’t call somebody, you say, I, I should really call them. You know, but what if they say no or they reject me?

Call them, bring it on. What this does is this puts you into forward motion, and that’s once again that [00:27:00] third we call exponential expansiveness, where it pushes you forward.

Mike: Well, and Chris, when you talk about that, think about those things that you have in your own life where you’re like, man, I’m afraid of doing that.

But then you do it. You take that first step, don’t you feel such a rush?

Chris: Correct.

Mike: You get a big dopamine hit from it, right? You’re like, man, I did it. It could be something so small like Dan or Chris guys, when we used to have to pick up the phone and call girls to ask ’em out to a dance. Like, oh my gosh, I don’t wanna call the girl.

Right? And you’d pick up the phone and, and she’d answer and you’d be like, hang up real quick. And then you’d pick up the phone again and you’d finally be like, Hey, do you wanna go to the dance? And go, oh yeah, I’ll go to the dance. Right. It’s just so small little actions. That’s what it is, right? It’s the small victories.

Chris: They’re small, but sometimes the consequences, I’ll give you an example. Like I’m in Mexico shooting for Google and we have a hundred people on a crew, a lot of money every day being spent. We have Mexican federalis threatening, well, [00:28:00] they did a a few times where they go, well, you’re not gonna be able to shoot that in the morning.

And maybe an actress on a TV show is some drug related or alcohol related situation. She can’t perform or we lose a location. These are monstrous things ’cause you’re dealing with a studio, you’re dealing with a client, a lot of money, and you have to keep your gyroscope. And how do you do that? There’s actually almost a comforting factor.

I almost had a sense of humor factor. Or if you’re saying bring it on, it’s just a different way of looking at it. It’s a different mindset. You’re going, oh, well, if it rains like buckets, well we’ll, we’ll try to shoot and we’ll do this. You’re moving forward. You’re not freaking out. You’re making conscious decisions.

I mean, it’s huge for leaders.

Mike: Oh, it’s huge.

Chris: It’s huge for innovation because innovation’s risky. It’s scary and you’ve got a lot of people and you’ve got stakeholders and stockholders saying, well what are you spending that money on? Oh, we’re doing this experimental thing over here. You know, think about Steve Jobs with the iPhone, [00:29:00] right?

What are you doing trying to reinvent the phone? You’re spending all this money, they just spent $10 billion on a car that they kaboshed. Well, good for them.

Mike: Yeah. ’cause there’s something new that comes out of that. Yeah.

Maureen: I love the idea that you’ve talked about the three anti-fragile disciplines from stats.

And the bring it on tool that anyone can do. That helps me then build the confidence when I get below the line. How do I do this? So you’ve given us two really helpful tools that people can walk away with and do today.

Chris: Right. We have another thing we didn’t get to that is really powerful too, and Mike’s huge into this, which is the plus ones and minus ones.

We actually have a a list of what we call superpowers plus one superpowers and minus one kryptonites.

Mike: Yeah. But we’ll save that for the next show.

Chris: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah.

Chris: We could do another show on those. Yeah.

Mike: It’s so important, Maureen, that we, we focus on the things that we can control. There’s an army term that says, sometimes you get the bear.

Sometimes the bear gets you. You just [00:30:00] say, bring it on. Now, there was a period in my life where I’d say, put it on my tab. Right? So I’d have a lot of bad things that happen. I’d just put it on my tab, but bring it on is so much better because it’s like, nah, bring it on, because it puts you into solution mode, and that’s the secret to it.

As opposed to put it on my tab, which is, I’ll just deal with that later, but bring it on really is, no, I gotta figure out how to operate through this.

Maureen: And it’s often not as complex or as emotionally challenging as we perceive it will be. Just our brains are wired to help us stay alive and that means amplifying risk.

Mike: Yeah,

Chris: yeah, yeah. It loops back to where Mike was talking about. That’s

Mike: right.

Chris: It’s really not looking at it as failure. You actually give yourself credit for just doing it. The idea of forward motion versus trying to put it in a category of win or lose. ’cause it’s really not how life works. You know? You don’t know sometimes as something that was a negative, turns out to be a positive.

We have a thing called the oodle loop, which is about assumptions. Another tool. If you’re in an assumption [00:31:00] mode. That’s a good way to get your fighter plane shot down.

Mike: Yeah, so true.

Maureen: Thank you so much for joining us. Where would people find out more about you and about the VUCA Max training?

Mike: They can visit it’s vuca.com.

It’s vuca max.com. They wanna watch the movie. They can go to Amazon or Apple tv. It’s vuca, the secret to living in the 21st century, but it’s vuca.com is where they can find all the tools and some of the great teachings and trainings that we do, and some of those we offer for free. Some of those are out there in the ether that are available, and we just encourage people just really take ownership.

Like we’ve got one life. That could be another podcast too. Some people might want to debate that, but you know, we, what we know is we have this moment, so let me start there. We have this moment and how are you gonna own the moment? To move your life forward and help other people move forward. ’cause that’s really what this is about, is how does your presence give other people purpose?

How does it give you purpose? But how does it make it really a better world? And [00:32:00] that’s what really Chris and I are about, is helping people achieve a better world, starting with their own world.

Chris: I also say stay tuned. If we have about 10 courses that we’re releasing, a whole VUCA Max program, we think we call it VUCA Max Leadership in Personal Development.

Yeah, the future of leadership and personal development, and we have 10 courses also, we have a book called The Rise of Humanists, the VUCA Max System for Expanding Human Agency in the age of ai, which is all about those superpowers and kryptonites that hold you back.

Maureen: So listeners have a lot of ways to access and learn from you.

Thank you very much and thank you to our listeners for navigating the volume of change and building your own anti-fragile confidence so that you are able to enjoy this journey.

Chris: Thank you. It was great fun.

Mike: Yeah. Thank [00:33:00] you.