Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Neurodiversity With Katherine McCord

Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Neurodiversity With Katherine McCord

Katherine McCord is neurodiverse. She is the founder of Titan Management. A consultancy firm that helps train organizations and teams about neurodiversity and inclusivity. She has awesome insights. 

On this episode we talk about the important of neurodiversity. What it is and why inclusion is so necessary to thrive in business and in life. 

• 14 components of neurodiversity
• how to be more inclusive 
• leadership roles to cultivate psychological safety in the workplace 

KEY TAKEAWAY -
Neurodiversity needs to be better understood across the board in most organization.  The importance of everyone in an organization or team feeling included, heard and honored and alignment with one mission is the most necessary thing for a company's success.

To learn more about Katherine and her work click here.

To see more of my work check me out at my website

Where I write and cover mindfulness and other things to help you Blossom Your Awesome.

Or follow me on instagram where I post fairly regularly and ask an inquisitive question or two weekly in hopes of getting you thinking about your life and going deeper with it.

My Instagram - i_go_by_skd

To support my work - my Patreon

To see more of who I'm talking to on the Podcast, to advertise your brand on the Blossom Your Awesome Podcast or just get in touch click here.  

Transcript

Sue (00:01.356)
Hi there today on the show we have got Katherine McCord here with us. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Katherine (00:09.186)
Thank you so much for having me. It's a true pleasure to be with you today.

Sue (00:13.908)
Oh, I am so excited to have you here, Katherine, and get into the work you do. You are the founder of Titan Management, and you work with neurodiversity. That's one of your specialties. So I want to get into this. I mean, there's so much that you do, but let's start there. Tell us what neurodiversity is, how you got into this, all of that, and then we'll take it from there.

Katherine (00:39.267)
Yeah. So, neurodiversity is amazing. And it's been around for life. We just didn't know it until recently, right? So, neurodiversity is basically a medically visible and or diagnosable difference in how a person processes information and stimuli. So, some examples are cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's a very broad spectrum.

estimated to be around 20% to 25% of the population. Oh, and then you asked how I got into that. Right. So, I am neurodiverse multiple times over, but that's actually not how I got into it, believe it or not. So, I have been working in the HR field and people operations for many, many years now, and I've been consulting in that space. That's what Titan does.

So I really started focusing on human behavior and working with all that. I started seeing a lot of misuses of human talent and inclusion problems and just people really being a lot more dramatic about some differences than they needed to be like hiring managers and stuff like this that just were way too dramatic about things. And then I started realizing that people's talents were not being cultivated properly and some of that had to do with their diagnoses and things like that. So I really started diving in.

I study this stuff constantly. I have now spoken to multiple political organizations, including some United Nations delegates – that was awesome back in May – about neurodiversity and how to properly include and utilize that tool of neurodiversity because science has finally caught up and realized that neurodiversity is not a deficit, it's just a difference. As we all know, difference helps us grow and elevate humanity, right?

Sue (02:29.008)
Mm hmm. Oh, I love this. And you know what's interesting? So a couple of things. One, I think people would find it very eye opening, you said 20 to 25%, right? We would never think that would be the number. So that's like one in every, you know, three or four colleagues has got some sort of something. And you know, and what I do love is that we're having this conversation more for one, like I'll just really quickly, autism.

Katherine (02:41.774)
Thank you.

Katherine (02:47.622)
Okay.

Sue (02:58.64)
right, which has always been looked down upon. And now we're learning that, wow, these people are, you know, very artistic and super creative, and they have all of these abilities that other people who are not do. So talk to us, because it sounds like this is part of what they're looking for.

Katherine (03:15.494)
Yeah, that's part of the work. I do want to acknowledge the disability aspect too. That is part of it, although a lot of the disability is social disability, which is when society tells you, no, you can't, as opposed to what you can and can't do yourself. That's very common. People make assumptions based on diagnoses or physical manifestations, and that's very problematic because that has nothing whatsoever to do with the individual. Disability is very real, but there are also proven benefits.

So for instance, you'll have just vigorous honesty, which is so funny, hyper-processing speeds. In neurodiversity, you'll have to your point, creativity, innovation, 3D model thinking, extreme empathy, and ability to think on a level outside of yourself that's extremely common in the community, and the gifts kind of go on and on from there.

You have staggering statistics about entrepreneurs being neurodiverse as well as scientists, things like this. And the artists and so people that move our world forward and make our world more beautiful fall into this category. And now there are multiple studies. You can look at Harvard, Stanford, National Institute of Health, National Library of Medicine, and even Hewlett-Packard has a beautiful freaking program where they cultivate neurodiversity

And what's been found is that neurodiversity has proven benefits to the human being and therefore to society. And autism in particular is interesting that you mentioned that one. It's actually my favorite. I actually love autism so much that I married it, literally. I literally did. And so autism is particularly interesting because it's been linked directly to the genes.

that cause human evolution. And now people are like, oh, why are we seeing so much autism? And they've been some very interesting inventions as to why that happened. But now there is a very strong theory that what's happening is human evolution is moving towards neurodiversity. And so what we're saying is, okay, we don't need these very primitive things that we needed back in the hunter-gatherer days now, right? We're evolving, we're moving forward. So the idea, one of the prevailing theories right now in the scientific community is that

Katherine (05:36.918)
this is what humanity is going to be. So all these neurodiverse folks, pretty soon that's going to be the majority of humanity, which I think is utterly fascinating.

Sue (05:47.548)
Wow, that is utterly fascinating. So give us, again, tell us, so what in the workplace, like is there one that's more common than the other, one that goes missed or overlooked more than others? Give us some of that for like the average person in a workplace.

Katherine (06:12.287)
There's really not like one neurodiversity that's more overlooked or anything like that. I will say in terms of hiring, the groups that tend to have the hardest time being hired are ones that have more manifestations that are noticeable. So for instance, people with...

Obsessive compulsive disorder and ADHD can often actually mask so well that you won't notice it in an interview process. But then when you get to the job, then you might notice it, right? But for people who are further quote down the scale or down the spectrum for certain other conditions such as – and dyslexia is another one you wouldn't really notice in an interview necessarily. But for people with maybe cerebral palsy.

or autism or Tourette's or something like that, it's going to probably be more visible during an interview process. Those folks sometimes don't get hired, which is utterly ridiculous. I mean, they're awesome. I had somebody once say to me, I don't think I could live with this person's tics. It was a person with Tourette's. I said, well, you don't have to live with it. They kind of laughed. They said, well, that's not what I meant. I don't think I could work with it. I said, well, you don't have to live with it.

why not?" And I said, well, it annoys me. I said, well, that sounds like something you should work on, yeah? This is the thing that this person cannot help. And so what I did is I coached them through how to do that because what it was was – and that's okay, by the way, I want to put that out there. Even in the neurodiverse community, we collide sometimes. For instance, my obsessive compulsive disorder works very well with my husband's autism, but you put my mania from my bipolar with his autism and it's a disaster. Right? So –

So you will have conflicts, you will need to form balance and compromise. And so that's okay. So it's just talking through it and working through it and figuring out what you can do to compromise. So if your nervous system is set off by another person, that's okay. That's just your body expressing itself in some need that it has. So there are certain exercises that you can do to teach your brain that this is okay and that it doesn't need to be stressed out about that.

Katherine (08:31.978)
And that's what we have to do. So if that's happening, I always tell people just reach out or find somebody who understands nerve, nerve work, and kind of regulating the nervous system. And you can get right back on the same page. No need to discriminate.

Sue (08:46.136)
Mm-hmm. I love that. Now, it sounds like, you know, it's probably easier than people one would imagine, but I think it's so easy for people to discriminate. And I'm saying it's easier to work with somebody or work on yourself to be able to be more accepting than people would imagine, right? So give us some of those insights, like, can you just walk us through something really simple? Like if

Katherine (08:58.102)
Yep.

Katherine (09:06.798)
I don't love you. Yeah.

Help me.

Sue (09:14.524)
Somebody listening has got someone who has something that bothers them that makes it hard for them to work on their work. What is that exercise that person can do or where can they start?

Katherine (09:21.15)
We all do, right?

Katherine (09:26.786)
Yeah. And actually, this works with any diversity, by the way. What I'm going to share is going to work with anything in your life. This will work with your partner. This will work with your friends. This will work with coworkers, whatever you got in any diversity, and even just down to just different human behavior. So we have an internal ego mechanism that is designed into us as humans. It's a defense mechanism. And so

That's that little voice that tells you that says, I need to be right because right is safe. Okay. So, and it's not ego as people think, but ego, it's kind of gotten misused. But basically, it's your brain's need to be correct. And when it hears information that is different or sees something different or experiences something different, it can throw up this defense mechanism as no, I don't like this, things need to be my way so that I'm safe.

Well, we don't need that as we get older, right? That was for hunter-gatherer days, and that was for when we're little bitty humans and don't understand the world around us and don't have the ability to communicate with the world around us. So what you want to do, and by the way, we actually get addicted to this mechanism. So it releases adrenaline and dopamine. And so when you see these people that are just aggressively arguing about things that you just don't need to be aggressively arguing about, or they completely—

deny an obviously logical point and they're just insisting on their way, that's the ego mechanism activating in a very extreme way, but we do it in little ways. If you ever hear somebody say, oh, it'd be really helpful for you to do this way and somebody just shuts them down, also ego mechanism. Then also that, I don't like how this person is behaving, so therefore it's wrong, that's the ego mechanism. We don't determine what works for other people. Our normal is just our normal.

What we want to do is break that defense mechanism. We want to tell it, no, thank you, I'm safe, I'm okay. Then we respond in curiosity. It's respond with questions. For instance, what I started doing to train my brain to this, and now it happens extremely instantaneously to the point that other people don't notice that I'm doing it, is when something activates that ego mechanism and you feel it, you feel that real quick, like, I need to defend myself, and it's instantaneous. When I feel that,

Katherine (11:42.05)
The first thing I do is I touch the chair that I'm sitting in, like I kind of grab the hands or I tap my foot on the ground just once. And what I did was I spent about five minutes training my brain that means that I'm safe. I did those things and I said, when this happens, I have food to eat, I'm in a safe place, no one is attacking me, everything is okay. So I touch those things and I take a very quick breath just to, just that quick.

and then I respond with a question. And what happens is you can actually feel your brain chemicals change from the fight and flight response back to, which is exactly what's initiated even in those little like, ooh, you're twinging my nerves kind of situations, right? So we're re-regulating our nervous system. And even when it's not the ego mechanism, this will still re-regulate you. So re-regulate the nervous system, take a deep breath, remember that you're safe, and then respond with a question. And if...

If somebody's saying something that's bothering you, doing something that's bothering you, ask them about it and from a curious standpoint to learn. So say something like, hey, you know, I noticed that you're doing this. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Or if you know what it is, you know it's a medical thing, just and it's really bothering you, just regulate for a minute that real instantaneous regulation and then just say, okay, thank you so much for sharing. I'm going to come right, I just need a break real quick. I'm just getting a little overstimulated. I'll be right back. And just go back.

breathe, prepare yourself. And then also once you know a person's patterns, you can come into that situation already knowing and that decompresses you. So just come in knowing when I see so-and-so, you're like, I get facial tics, Catherine might be having some facial tics today and that's okay. Or so-and-so might be super loud, the way that they speak, right? Like the volume kind of bothers me. And so I might need to let them know, hey, just have a little signal with them and just let them know, okay, it hurts my ears or it gives me headaches.

and say it in a nice way and then just come up with a signal, give them that signal and on you go. So having, you know, regulating your nervous system with a grounding exercise, that's a good one. Ground yourself, respond in curiosity, and just be honest. People are so scared to just have honest conversations, but it works. I've never had it backfire. It just doesn't backfire. When you approach it and you just go, hey, you know, I'm experiencing this and you just say, I'm experiencing this when this happens.

Katherine (14:06.347)
I would love to talk to you about it and figure out a solution because I value you and I want to work with you in a successful way. Never have had that backfire on me or anybody I've told to use that. So communicate curiosity and ground and work on your nerves a little bit. Like in your nervous system, when I say I mean your nervous system, work on your nervous system a little bit.

Sue (14:27.636)
That is great guidance there. Let me ask you. So, you know, part of the work you do, you're working with, like you said, corporations and people are starting to incorporate this in their organizations. Because I would imagine a lot of times, Catherine, I think people aren't always capable. Like you say, they're so scared to talk or address something. So,

let me ask you, some of the work you're doing, is that to help train managers and people? Because somebody may feel more comfortable going to a boss or a superior saying, hey, this person's doing this and it's driving me crazy. And then that person is trained in regulation and all of these things and can go address it in a more diplomatic way versus a one-on-one, right?

Katherine (15:01.453)
Yes.

Katherine (15:13.59)
Yes.

Katherine (15:20.482)
It's a few things. It's a few parts. So number one, I train in vulnerability and psychological safety. And we work on that from the ground up and what it actually is to build that so you can have these conversations and you can work on these things. But yes, every leader should be trained in this. If you don't know already and you're out there in leadership, wandering around, your job is taking care of you. That is your job. That is it. That is the primary function of you in your role.

So you need to be good at understanding them and communicating with them and helping navigate these kinds of situations. HR needs to be trained in it too, obviously. I put a good deal of responsibility there as well as with leadership. So leadership needs to be trained, needs to understand what it is to work with and mediate these things. I teach Maslow's hierarchy, which is that theory about you start with the basic needs of safety and then food and these kinds of things and kind of work

And I tell people that's what you use to help find your compromise. So if somebody's safety or their biological need is a thin threat, that's what you take care of first. Then you take care of, you know, like belonging and all of this kind of stuff and kind of work with period of the pyramid, excuse me. Um, and that, that really works. So we teach vulnerability, psychological safety, train how to do that, how to respond to curiosity, how to ground, how to find these compromises.

how to work with people in ways that are natural to them and not insist that they fit into some little box. And then which Hewlett Packard did a phenomenal study on and it's now been expanded, which is great. And then the other piece though, that a lot of people miss is that everybody that comes in needs to start with this kind of understanding and understanding that this is your culture. This is how you treat and I teach how to start it in the interview process, even in the application process.

how to start this mood and this mindset and how to get it going, it's absolutely paramount. So a lot of responsibility and leaders, yes, absolutely, but it's everybody's responsibility. And whenever I hear somebody, I can't, I say, yes, you can, you're choosing not to. And so that's a very important mentality too, is that we're the boss of our own minds, not the other way around. So if something is annoying us, something is part of our personality, we have the ability to alter that.

Katherine (17:42.622)
and to strengthen it or get rid of it or whatever we need to do. Now if you don't have buy-in from somebody and you have someone who puts their foot down and is not willing to participate in this, in inclusion or anything else, fire them. That's it. Done. If somebody is not in mission alignment, which inclusion should be a mission and psychological safety should be a mission. If they're not in mission alignment, they got to go. Period.

Katherine (18:11.95)
Thank you.

Sue (18:12.14)
I love that. And you know, the this is so needed, like you say, just from the get go from the top to the bottom, from the very beginning, so people don't even these issues don't come up. If people are trained from the top down, and from the very beginning, and, you know, leaders are explaining, okay, this is our work culture, and this is what we promote and encourage and cultivate here, then people feel safe. And these things don't happen from the just to begin with.

Katherine (18:37.431)
Yeah!

Katherine (18:41.718)
Right. And nobody should, inclusion is not exclusive. I tell everybody that. I walked into so many rooms and I say, who here feels like they're part of the inclusion movement and only a portion raised their hands. And I'm like, no, absolutely not. Inclusion is for all of you. All of you are in this. And we go through and we talk about that. And a lot of people don't know the 14 categories of diversity, the broad categories of diversity. And people go, oh my gosh, I'm diverse. I have a diversity.

Sue (18:41.745)
Right?

Katherine (19:10.406)
Just about everybody does, just some of it in one of the categories. And it's about coming together and understanding and voicing opinions and everybody understanding that they get to ask questions and they get to participate. And that's so very important to work because you can't innovate without that. And you can't find true success and really grow as humans or as an organization without that. So breeding that in. And then the coolest thing to me.

is that according to a study by Boston Consulting Group, as well as a few others as well, that will increase your profits almost 20% when you build these kinds of cultures and support people working naturally, embrace inclusion in a very strong way. It increases your profits because you increase efficiency, you increase productivity, you increase customer satisfaction, you increase retention, everybody's healthier and happier, profits go up. Who doesn't want that? That's literally the whole point that we're all in business.

I'm sorry.

Sue (20:09.48)
Wow. So, so many things I have to say here get your like deeper insights on. So, you know, you said something, their inclusion is not exclusive. Was that what you said? And it's kind of so ironic that people wouldn't just already know that, right? It kind of is one of those common sense things. So that's interesting. But let me ask you, now you talked about or touched on 14. Is it?

Katherine (20:20.302)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sue (20:38.616)
You know the 14 broad can you just mention like I know it's we're not gonna be able to get into all of them I'll be back for that. But can you tell us like can you list those out for?

Katherine (20:43.936)
Oh no.

Katherine (20:47.554)
Sure. I think I can run through them. I always miss like one, but I'm going to do my best here. Okay. So we have age, gender, sex, LGBTQ, military, socioeconomic, criminal background,

Katherine (21:15.19)
I usually can do this. So sorry, I'm just like completely blanking out, but it just kind of keeps going. But it just kind of keeps going like that, yeah.

Sue (21:17.444)
Okay, no problem. And I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that. Right? No, that's great. But just to, that was awesome. And sorry to put you on the spot like that. I never normally don't do that. No, that's okay.

Katherine (21:25.642)
Yeah. No, you're fine. No, I just I can never get through the list. There's always like one or two that I'm like, wait, that one. criminal background, people forget that one. I'm like, that's the whole that's the whole thing. You know, a multiculturalism is a huge one. So people that have lived in various areas are part of two different cultures, maybe they're biracial, or maybe they you know, whatever, but multiculturalism is a huge diversity group.

Sue (21:53.352)
Wow. And now talk to us about psychological safety. What? Because I think people, you know, there's sometimes in different workplaces, I hear stories, I've seen stuff myself, things that people get away with or are not, are kind of brushed under the rug. So what is not acceptable under like,

What does psychological safety, what should that entail?

Katherine (22:24.455)
So I love that you've touched on the not acceptables because that's always part of what I talk about with us. Right, exactly. So what is psychological safety is, is the ability to feel safe and not only safe, but even included to be able to speak up, share your mind and even dissent.

Sue (22:29.854)
I mean, what should it and should it not entail? You know, just.

Katherine (22:47.61)
that dissent part is important. It's not just being able to share ideas and speak your mind, but also to dissent and to feel safe doing that. Creating that means that you need to not only listen to feedback, but there needs to be action on it. I tell leaders that I say, you can listen all day long, but if you never do anything about it, they're not going to trust you. You have to create that. Everybody needs a chance to speak, and maybe not like in one time or in one setting.

but everybody needs a chance to be able to give their feedback and there needs to be equal weight given to each bit of feedback. It means not shutting people down. That's a big one. There's always that like, oh, or dismissing them with something. Again, action around it. But then the should not is, and this is one of my favorites. I see people do this all the time. I'm like, what are you doing? You just ruined everything.

is that if you shut down one group, what you just told everybody else is that you're not inclusive. So if you shut somebody down and you say, for instance, if you tell somebody that they can't do a camera off Zoom, you're having a big group Zoom meeting, you tell somebody that they can't do camera off because that's not your policy, what you just told everybody else is your policy is more important than our health and well-being. You just broke trust.

So you have to stop and be continuously flexible. So that's the second part of that. So don't shut people down, but then and put people first, but be flexible. And the biggest part of inclusion and psychological safety that people miss is that it's a constant evolution. It's not, okay, we did these things, poof, now forever we're inclusive or forever we're this or that, because then you'll get somebody new and they'll need something different. And so just continuously be flexible.

continuously be open and just build in accommodations. That's the most common sense thing. I never understood why it took so long for society to catch on to this concept, but just have various options available to people and then kind of a fill in the blank to let them hit the ball rolling. That's a huge part of psychological safety too is creating policies and procedures that say, hey, you're welcome here.

Katherine (25:11.502)
have to start with the vulnerability. You have to kick that off and go, we did some research, here's what we're trying to do, please feel free to add to it. And it lets people know, hey, this is safe over here. Would you walk into a company that are into any group that says that you're welcome, but then the second you go in there, anything that you need, they don't want you. Let's say you go to a party.

This is one of my top examples of my class. You go to a party, you've been invited, and then when you get there, there's no food that you like, despite the fact that you told them what you like, no drinks. There's hardly anybody there for you to speak to, and it's so loud that it's giving you a migraine and they knew that you had migraines. Do you feel very welcome? Like, no, you don't. So you want to think of, I always tell HR people, think of building

setting up a party and accommodating people, right? You want to accommodate all your guests, you want to accommodate all your employees. Think of it that way. You're just welcoming everybody in, making them feel happy and healthy and heard. And then everything else kind of takes off from there and be flexible. For gosh sakes.

Sue (26:26.46)
Now, Katherine, I can't help but just feel that this is, God, I think so many organizations would just struggle with this so gravely because, you know, some of the psychological safety that you touched on was this idea of, okay, you have to be willing or feel safe in sharing what you need or for your safety or whatever, or, you know, what your thoughts.

Katherine (26:50.7)
Yeah.

Sue (26:54.724)
And then there has to be action that follows. So I think there's times people share and I think a lot of times there's no action, right? And then there's times that people are afraid to share if they have that kind of egotistical boss or a person who's like you say, they're there to take care of their leaders, but a lot of times they're there cracking the whip and feel like they're there to lead rather than cultivate.

kind of safe space.

Katherine (27:25.963)
Yeah, that's very true. There can be a lot of toxicity. Some leaders, it can be trained out because their intentions are good, they just weren't taught well. And that's really true. Think about like, most people you know that are in leadership did not receive any real training. It's just like, poof, here you go, now you're a leader, good luck, you know, which is so bizarre that we do that. So a lot of them can be trained out. Again, though, the ones that can't, let them go.

Sue (27:43.614)
I'm sorry.

Katherine (27:53.138)
If that means that they're not in the right job, it means that they were not meant to be in a leadership position and they need to be doing something else. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that they don't have great talents. It just means that that's not the job for them. And I always love the cracking the whip bit because I used to hear that all the time. If that's what you need to be doing, you are failing as a leader. You are failing. If you can't just walk out and get buy-in from your people by having a conversation with them and get them rolling.

you've missed the boat. You are in the wrong job. Or at least you need a lot of training. I think that creating that psychologically safe environment can mean letting people go. It does mean that all of your leaders need to be in alignment because like you said, top down. You've got to start at the top, make it strong, have HR leadership and executives all completely buy in, and then it trickles down.

and to everybody else and you can then set that expectation. But yeah, that's always one that cracks me up. And the fear of letting people go is interesting to me too. It's like, oh, if we let this person go, like it's almost like the people think they'll just never replace them. There's always somebody else always that can do the job. Just let them go. Sorry, you're not in mission alignment. Bye. Just very simple.

Sue (29:17.779)
I love that you're not in mission alignment. It makes it so not personal, right?

Katherine (29:21.614)
That's not it. It's just you're just not aligning with our mission. Like, hi. That's simple. Very easy. And I just heard a brilliant talk. Mark, oh God, I say his last name, it's Stout, but he's an extraordinary tech leader. And he did a beautiful talk on forgiveness in business and what it means to understand that just because somebody is not mission aligned does not mean that they're bad or wrong or...

anything like that, but sometimes it's just not the right fit. And then also how to forgive people that have even wronged you in business and the importance of that and even second chances. So, uh, you know, it's, it's another thing that doesn't mean that just cause you're letting this person go now, doesn't mean that they can't come back to you later. You know, that's, that's not it. It's just right now you're not in mission alignment, so you got to go. And if they come back to you later and they've, they've realigned with the mission, great, welcome them back.

How exciting is that? Especially if it's personal growth and somebody's changed and become a better human, great. Yay, let's have them back.

Sue (30:27.404)
So, I mean, this, it sounds amazing. I just can't imagine. And again, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I don't know why, but it just almost sounds too good to be true. Like, you know, I can't, I just, it sounds amazing where you have these like incredible leaders who are willing to listen and, you know, cultivate safety and nurturing and.

Katherine (30:41.514)
It's easy!

Sue (30:55.256)
open to ideas and sharing and a team effort, you know, it's amazing.

Katherine (30:56.63)
Yeah.

Katherine (31:00.814)
Yeah, and it's true. And there's big companies out there doing it. It's like the Virgin Empire is very well known for that. HP, Hewlett Packard is actually very well known for that. So those are some mega ones. I've seen it on smaller scales as well, with some really cool tech companies. I have a wonderful printing company of all things. They do like t-shirts and things in the Detroit area. They're fantastic with that. It's really cute.

There's a wonderful company called Synchro. They're a client of mine and they do beautiful work in that area. They always have. In fact, I actually learned a couple of things from them. It is very true. I think the main thing holding people back, the main reason that we're not seeing it is just the idea that it's overwhelming. People hear this, they're like, oh my God, there's just so much to do and it's so stressful. I tell people, okay, first of all, no, you're designed for this.

So think about all your family and friends, picture them. You know their names, you know what they like to eat, you know how they dress, you know the music that they listen to, you know the names of their friends and family, right? You know all these things about them. We are designed as humans for this kind of work and to learn everybody and to take care of everybody. That's actually how our brains are designed to function. So number one, everybody, you are designed for this. It's okay, you will be okay. Number two,

is understanding that when you're in mission alignment, that's what matters. How we get there, who cares? As long as the mission is done. So if your mission is creating great technology, that's the mission. And if your product is that you want to raise more money than anybody else in the history of life for cancer, great for you. That's the mission, right? And however we get there is flexible. So don't be so set in your ways. Just …

great, whatever people need, however we can best get there, let's rock and roll and let's do that. And then the other thing is breaking that ego mechanism and learning that your way is not the way. And we always talk about that responses have more to do with us than other people. And that's so true. It's our experience, what we've learned, how we've seen things. So when you're having trouble understanding anything in your life, it can even be something political or a social issue.

Katherine (33:22.662)
Learn the other side. Reach out, understand other people's experiences, come to understand them. I recently did a talk and I named a very controversial issue, and I won't because I don't know how you feel about these things on your show, but I named a very controversial issue and I pointed out that both sides, all they cared about were taking care of kids. They just came at it from two different angles and everybody's eyes got so big and they were like,

my gosh, they were all talking about that from a very—and I said, okay, now that we've had that part of the discussion, now talk about it amongst yourselves. And they did. And it was the most calm, loving, problem-solving kind of conversation, whereas before it was like this aggressive, angry, superheated conversation. But coming to understand, again, mission alignment, right? Both sides, all they wanted was to help kids. They just had different ways to get there, right?

And so when we come at it from this other perspective and learning the other side and, you know, kind of disproving our own biases, it really works. That's what I tell everybody, just disprove your own biases at every chance that you get. Do 60 seconds of Google research to start the process, dive in deep later, but it works. It really does. And just being flexible works. It's not too good to be true. I've seen it work multiple times over. People just choose not to do it, which is the most frustrating part of my work.

Honestly, so many people just are choosing not to do this.

Sue (34:56.04)
They call you in and then they're like, no, we're not doing it.

Katherine (34:58.474)
Oh, no, that's not happening. No, when I get in there, then, you know, and I'm bossy, it's scary. I think I get in there and I was like, I want to do this. No, I'm not going to do that. But no, seriously, it's just seeing so many companies out there struggling. That's tough when it's so simple to fix and it's so easy to fix and just so many humans could be happier if they would just be vulnerable and respond in curiosity and have.

honest conversations and check their biases. World would be a better place.

Sue (35:33.104)
Oh my goodness, I so hear you there. That sounds amazing. And now let me ask you, Catherine, so what is the...

one most common like downfall of a leader. Is there one common thing that you see over and over again that's

Katherine (35:54.626)
Fear. Yeah, fear. It usually comes in the form of fear of failure, but that's what it comes down to. Maybe they have executives that are putting a lot of pressure so they forget to do the important work and just focus on whatever the executive is saying is important, which usually, if it's like metrics and all this, that doesn't matter. Actually, one time I drove a leader of mine insane

Sue (35:55.358)
comes up.

Katherine (36:24.306)
metrics on my people. I said, I don't care. Are they getting the hires? It was a recruiting team. I said, are they getting more hires than ever before? Yes. Okay, then there you go. They're doing their job. I don't care how many calls they make. I don't care how many emails they send. None of that matters. That's nonsensical data. I said, all that matters is the results, right? If they're getting bogged down with those types of things, if they're scared to speak up to their people,

that can be a thing. But people will think about that, the leaders experience that fear too. They feel like sometimes they can't say something because what if somebody files a complaint with HR on me? What if, you know, this, that and the other? So whenever a leader is having fear, what I like to tell them is, number one, you know, you've been hired to do a job and if you're confident that you can do it, take a deep breath and just do your job, how you know it needs to be done.

And all the little stuff will work itself out because ultimately, if you produce good results, they'll put, you know, they'll be flexible with you. I've seen it a million times over. Um, so find your power, basically, you know, realize your confidence. Use HR as a, as a resource. Um, sometimes you can even reach out to your legal team and help have them help get you on a side and go, Hey, you know, I'm trying to avoid, um, you know, a EEOC or ADA lawsuit.

So I'd really like some help moving inclusion forward in my department. Watch how quick legal gets on your side and starts telling your executives that they need to listen to you. So quick. So use these other allies that you have. But I feel for leaders, man, because it can be so scary. It can be. But fear is the number one. So get your fear gone. That'll kill you as quick as anything else.

Sue (37:57.181)
Yeah.

Sue (38:14.212)
Mm-hmm. That's great insight there. Now, let me ask you, what about somebody, you know, the outside looking in, because I hear so often people who are looking for work, friends or you know, just people I know, conversations I've had, people are, oh, you know, they're not going to hire me, I'm too old, or I'm too this, I don't have enough experience. What should that person who's looking for a right fit?

You know, what should they be looking for?

Katherine (38:46.01)
Um, okay, you're gonna laugh because I already said this, but it was in relationship to something else. Mission alignment. Seriously, when you can mission align with an organization, that's so powerful. And so sometimes taking a step back instead of spray and pray, which I totally get, and I'm not against, you know, doing that and just sending out a lot of resumes, but maybe do that and also pick a few organizations that you just know that you align with. You know,

Sue (38:55.134)
Mm-hmm.

Katherine (39:14.826)
You can use Boolean searches and anybody wants to.

Katherine (39:27.65)
The other thing is when you're confident, so are they. So keep in mind, I have a seizure disorder. And I have days where I have tics where it looks like I'm pulling like a Michael Jackson move over here, or I'm trying to pick somebody up on a date because I'm winking too much. So imagine trying to rope in a new client that's supposed to be paying you all this money, and that's what you have going on. And then I also had some of this back when I was employed. So what I do is,

I just confidently let them know, hey, you're going to see some of this today. It's no big deal. It's just part of a health condition I have. I am perfectly fine. And I just keep on marching and let them know. I might even bring up a joke about it. Depending on my exact mood, I have a lot of jokes about all that. And so it lightens the mood and it lets them know I'm confident, I'm not scared. And so you shouldn't be either. And that's a big aspect. So your confidence is going to make a huge difference in those types of things. And for age.

The only thing I would say is on your resume, don't go back further than like 10, 10 to 12 years and then pass that. Your confidence will get it. You'll be good.

Sue (40:33.396)
Confidence or competence? Confidence. I just wanted to make sure I heard that correctly. Wow, oh my goodness. You were gonna say something. Catherine, this has been so amazing. I feel like we're kind of just scratching the surface here. And I would love to have you back.

Katherine (40:34.862)
Confidence. Sorry. I know I'm losing my voice today, sorry. Confidence. Also be competent too. I mean, don't be incompetent. That is important.

Katherine (41:00.79)
Yeah.

Sue (41:03.56)
to kind of dig a little deeper with this, take a deeper dive and touch on some of the key points here. But first, I would love it, we'll figure that out. I wanna just, first and foremost, say thank you so much for your time today. You've been so awesome. I'm gonna be sure to have links to your stuff for people to be able to get in touch, access and whatever they need. Now, in closing, you already said so many awesome, amazing things, but in closing,

Katherine (41:10.123)
Anytime.

Sue (41:33.092)
If there were just one message, your hope for everybody, what is that closing message?

Katherine (41:39.194)
Oh, that's very easy. It's learn to respond in curiosity, not ego, because it will completely elevate and change your life and you will grow exponentially as a human being. So learn to break that ego mechanism and just connect with your fellow humans.

Sue (41:59.536)
I love it. That was an awesome close. You've been so wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Katherine (42:05.843)
It was a plus, thank you.