Richard:
[0:00] 80% of elite performers in every field around the world, business, sport, art, entrepreneurship, Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, Elon Musk, have a daily meditation

Richard:
[0:12] practice they use to perform at such a high level. So every single day they're sitting on the cushion or in a chair and for at least 5-10 minutes they're doing some attention training, which is what meditation is. And a lot of them say that if they weren't doing that, they wouldn't be able to operate at such a high level that speaks volumes to the power of meditation.

Debbie:
[0:33] Today, we're joined by Dr. Richard Chambers, an award-winning clinical psychologist, leadership coach, and mindfulness expert who spent 25 years helping leaders and teams boost well-being, sharpen focus, and elevate performance. Richard has worked with organizations from startups to Fortune 500, delivering science-backed strategies that drive real results. He's the co-creator of the Smiling Mind app with over 8 million downloads, the architect of top-ranked online courses reaching half a million people globally, and the brains behind transformative programs like Mindful Peak Performance and a Mindful Leader's MBA. In this conversation, we'll unpack how mindfulness isn't just about stress reduction. It's a strategic advantage for high-performance leadership. Richard, good to have you. Your unique background spans clinical psychology and leadership consulting, fields that seemed unrelated. How did your clinical experiences shape programs like Mindful Peak Performance

Debbie:
[1:39] and Mindful Leaders MBA? What made you see mindfulness as the solution for business challenges today?

Richard:
[1:47] Well, I studied my undergraduate psych degree back in the late 90s and didn't feel very inspired to continue on. I went traveling for a few years and I started meditating around that time and it really changed my life, improved my mood and my focus. And then when I came back to study psychology, I managed to niche myself in mindfulness really before it was a thing. This is in the early 2000s now. So before the mindfulness revolution or this whole mindfulness wave came, I started doing some research. I started to teach. I eventually graduated as a clinical psychologist. I've been working as a clinical psych for about 15 years, actually. I've just had my 15th anniversary. So for a while, I was using mindfulness in my clinical work and teaching programs. And then my clinical work just naturally started to morph into coaching work. And the programs I was teaching, while originally they were just for anybody, they became more and more business focused because I realized quite a while ago that working with leaders, particularly leaders in big firms and big companies, they have a lot of influence. And so if we can make them more present and connected and emotionally aware and more able to stay focused on the right thing at the right time, that's going to help not just them, but everybody that they lead and have ripple effects out into society. And so these days I work more as a coach and a leadership consultant.

Richard:
[3:14] Trainer, facilitator, but I do draw on a lot of what I learned and what I've been developing in my clinical psychology career because I find often, even in my coaching, that we might set some clear goals and break that down into manageable steps, set some smart goals to move my clients toward the direction that they want to go, their mission or their values. And sometimes they just take steps and it's easy. And other times they get a bit caught up and feel a bit stuck. And that's when I put my psychologist hat on and we start to take a bit of a look within and we start to notice the hidden mindsets, belief systems,

Richard:
[3:52] and behavior patterns that might be getting in the way of moving forward. And so I do that both in my one-on-one leadership coaching work, but also in any program that I deliver. So you mentioned two of my flagship online programs, Mindful Peak Performance. It's really about teaching people to use mindfulness skills, to focus on the right thing at the right time, training attention, prioritizing, managing time, and doing deep work. And when leaders or anybody really starts to apply those skills, they become much more productive and much less stressed. And then I've got a much bigger program, which is one I deliver online, but also it's the foundation of my leadership training programs, the Mindful Leaders MBA.

Richard:
[4:33] Goes into a lot more depth. And my leadful model is performance, well-being, and leadership skills all together. Because what I've noticed about people in the corporate world is that if they're in survival mode, if they're stressed and burning out and full of stress hormones, they can't lead effectively. They can't focus. They can't connect empathically. They can't lead effectively. If they're drowning in their workload and feeling completely overwhelmed, again, they just can't be effective leaders. So we need to help them focus, get out of survival mode, and then we can start empowering them to be better leaders.

Debbie:
[5:09] There are a lot of instances like what you have described. You've advised organization ranging from tech startups, which can be quite stressful, to Fortune 500 companies.

Debbie:
[5:19] What's a common leadership hurdle you see and how have your insights from one sector inform your strategy to another?

Richard:
[5:26] I work with leaders at all levels, whether they're a startup founder or perhaps a senior leader or even executive in a Fortune 500 company.

Richard:
[5:36] And my sweet spot, though, is senior leaders and executives who found themselves in their role and don't necessarily have all of the skills and tool sets that they need to thrive in that role. Because very often, if we take the example of a senior leader or an executive in a large company, very often they've been very good at doing the job that they were initially doing, and that's led to leadership positions. And so then they've found themselves, of course, trying to lead a team. And sometimes they lack the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, influence, communication, conflict resolution, et cetera. There are some specific tool sets that they're often lacking. So I get in there and I teach them practical evidence-based strategies is to plug those gaps, give them all of the foundational tools that they need to thrive in their role, and then that unlocks greater personal and team performance. And it's often the same, of course, for founders in startups because they might just have a fantastic idea, somebody like an Airbnb or a Facebook, you know, fantastic idea. And they then start to grow that company. And in the beginning, it might just be them or them and a handful of select people where everyone's kind of wearing every hat. I've had startups, so I understand what it's like to wear multiple hats and everyone's kind of doing a bit of everything. But eventually, once the company scales, they might find themselves in more of a leadership role. And again.

Richard:
[7:04] Very rarely do they have the skills and the tools that they need to lead effectively. And so that's how I would help them. Same basic tool sets, same basic problem, just coming about through different pathways.

Debbie:
[7:18] Many people see mindfulness as a stress band-aid. You have emphasized its vital role in enhancing high performance and effective leadership. How does it give teams a competitive edge beyond just well-being?

Richard:
[7:32] That's a great question, actually. I think that perception, it's still here, even after, I mean, mindfulness in its current secularized and decontextualized form, its more scientific form, that's been around since the late 70s and mid-90s really started to get popular. 2003, there was a big sort of uptick in interest around mindfulness once it started being used by psychologists to treat depression.

Richard:
[7:58] But initially, there was an emphasis on well-being. Mindfulness-based stress reduction with Jon Kabat-Zinn was one of the better known sort of programs that really launched it into the public consciousness. Then, as I mentioned, 2003, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy took Jon Kabat-Zinn's work and applied it to depression. And there are now thousands of studies every year showing that it improves mental health and well-being. Okay. And so when people hear of mindfulness, they immediately think of well-being. But it also improves cognitive performance. It strengthens the prefrontal cortex. It helps with things like emotional regulation, impulse control, and makes us more self-aware. Really, when we're training our prefrontal cortex and strengthening this front part of our brain, that helps us to manage the stress circuits, stop the fight and flight circuits from taking over. But it also helps us to concentrate.

Richard:
[8:53] It makes us more self-aware. It makes us more empathic. It makes us better communicators, better at whatever we do. So when I talk about mindfulness, I like to talk about focus, awareness, and presence. And these are three things that any business leader, anybody working in the corporate world, any human being really can benefit from. If we're practicing mindfulness and strengthening our ability to concentrate, well, obviously we can focus better on anything that we want to focus on. We also become more aware, we develop metacognition, we become aware of our thoughts as things that are moving through our mind rather than reality. So we get a little bit of a gap or what's called metacognition, some space between us and our thoughts and our emotions. So that's the foundation of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. And of course, you know, when we're communicating, trying to lead others, if we're talking to them, but thinking of 500 other things, that's not a powerful leadership moment. If we're fully there with them, even just for a few moments, that has much more gravitas. So it's great for leadership and executive presence. I really think about these three things, focus, awareness, being self-awareness and awareness of what's happening around us and presence, just being more present, more in the moment. And that has a very different influence on the people around us.

Debbie:
[10:17] Focus, awareness, and presence. I'll remember that. Could you tell us what are some of the common objections or skepticism you encounter when introducing mindfulness to business leaders? Could you share a story where a skeptic became an advocate?

Richard:
[10:33] Well, I don't actually get a lot of resistance anymore. First of all, let's just say that mindfulness is a foundation to what I do, and it's woven through everything I do, but it's not all of what I do. There's a whole lot of performance psychology and coaching tools that I bring in and leadership frameworks that I bring in. But mindfulness is really the foundation. But if I am wanting to get people practicing mindfulness, and we could take something really simple like meditation, let's say. Mindfulness is not meditation. When we sit and meditate, we're doing an intensive period of retraining our prefrontal cortex. And then when we open our eyes and jump up out of the chair after five minutes of meditation. It's really the other 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day that we're also practicing mindfulness. I think of like some challenging groups that I've worked with over time might be police, judges, lawyers, people with sharp, critical minds, engineers, high school students. I've really, I've worked with a lot of different groups over the last 25 years, a lot of different people and some of them more challenging than others. Now, because I present mindfulness in a practical and.

Richard:
[11:44] Very simple evidence-based way, that tends to cut through the resistance. I might sometimes talk about the benefits of being present in the moment. I might talk to somebody about the cost of not being in the moment. And pretty quickly, people can just start to think of examples of problems of being not present or the benefits of being present. But you make me think of a policeman once. There was a highway patrol officer in a leadership workshop that I ran, Victoria Police in Australia. They were an organization I did a lot of work with a few years ago, training 5,000 of their emerging leaders in mindful leadership. And so, of course, there's a real mixed bag of people in the room in any of those workshops. And I remember teaching meditation to people in the way that I just described it, referencing the prefrontal cortex, the evidence, the science, helping them to make sense of it in a way that's you know, it's decontextualized from Buddhism or any kind of spiritual path. And it's just a practical attention training exercise, five minute meditation.

Richard:
[12:47] And I remember this guy at the beginning was kind of sitting there with his arms crossed thinking, you know, what's this guy about? But as we started to talk about the science, link it to his everyday experience, and then take him through a meditation, he actually did it. And he came up to me at the end and he said, you know what? I've never meditated in my life, but that was game changing for me. I'm going to meditate every day now, you know, somehow the penny had dropped for him. So it's moments like that that really make my day when somebody who would never think of practicing mindfulness is able to hear it presented in a way that just makes sense. It's clear. There's no woo woo that it's backed in science.

Richard:
[13:23] And linked to their everyday experience. And that tends to cut through all the resistance. And I've had a number of moments like that through the years with everybody from high school students to CEOs and judges. So it's very heartening when those things happen.

Debbie:
[13:37] Thanks for sharing that story. Nowadays, people strive to excel.

Debbie:
[13:42] The drive for high performance can lead to burnout and stress. So what practical advice can you offer to business professionals who want to sustain high performance without sacrificing their long-term well-being and effectiveness?

Richard:
[13:56] Yeah, another great question. So two of the things that I love to embed, either as cultures in organizations or as new habits and practices in my individual coaching clients, is sustainable peak performance and conscious leadership. And the sustainable peak performance piece is what you're asking about. And that's so important because as you've pointed out. It's possible to perform at a very high level for a short to medium period of time in burnout mode, in survival mode, full of stress hormones, fight and flight, working long hours, burning the midnight oil. But eventually that catches up on people. Eventually that's going to cause a problem. It's going to lead to, as you said, stress or burnout or relationship problems or something like that, you know, when we're not being present with our loved ones. So sustainable peak performance is different. And the key levers that I help people to pull are first of all to train their attentional focus.

Richard:
[14:59] Because quite often when we're busy, especially if we're in a startup or running a big company, there are so many things we might focus on and we get distracted and caught up in different things. So the ability to focus is foundational and that comes about through meditation training, managing digital technology, learning to unitask, learning that multitasking is actually really bad for performance. There's heaps of evidence that I can present people around that. Once they're able to focus, then the question becomes, what's important to focus on? So we start to prioritize Eisenhower Matrix Urgent Important Work, 80-20 Rule.

Richard:
[15:37] Start to tap into values as well. We start to look at what's really important to the individual, to the team, to the organization. And how do we orient our attention and our time around what really matters? So there's some of the practical things that I do. and that gets actually a lot of traction if I think about working with an individual senior leader or executive in coaching. That by itself will unlock much greater performance but without all of the stress because now they're starting their day with what I call productivity. You know they're sitting down for a few minutes and they're thinking okay what's the really important thing that I want to get done today? What do I want to focus my attention on? They've blocked out some deep work time in their calendar. They've educated their team members that deep work time is sacred and no one's allowed to book meetings or knock on their door during that time. And that maybe that's actually a good idea for everybody else in the organization. And when they then sit down and do that deep work with a mind that's trained, a prefrontal cortex that's been strengthened through training, and they're not getting distracted by technology, that makes a huge difference. But there's an extra piece that is where my clinical psychology experience comes in. And I think this is what sets me apart from a lot of coaches. Because while a lot of coaches might be able to do what I've just described, you know, teaching productivity tools and focus strategies.

Richard:
[17:01] Quite often, one of the things that I've noticed in pretty much every high-functioning leader that I work with, particularly if they're stressed or burning out, is that they're trying to prove something. And I recognize this in myself. Going back sort of 10, 15 years ago, I realized as my career was starting to take off, I also started to burn out. I thought to myself, this is weird because I'm teaching mindfulness. I'm teaching well-being and performance tools. I'm a psychologist. I know all of this. How could I be burning out? And when I stepped back and looked at what was really going on, I could see that somewhere deep inside, I was feeling inadequate and not enough and like an imposter, you know, a bit of imposter syndrome. And so I was putting pressure on myself to prove myself and success and achievement and external validation and people liking me. And so being a likable person, a bit of people pleasing, these were all ways that I got people to give me messages that I'm enough. And I call this deficit mindset. And when we dig into the research, the self-compassion research, if you listen to Brené Brown or Tara Brach or anybody who's talking about this, you realize it's pretty universal. Most people, in fact, maybe everyone on some level has some deep sense of being not as smart as everybody else, not enough, there's something wrong with them.

Richard:
[18:30] And then trying to compensate for that. Or of course, there are people that think, hey, I'm the smartest person in the room, you know, certain world leaders, et cetera. And you can see through a psychological lens, that's just a very strongly developed compensation strategy for perhaps not feeling enough. And so my psychology hat helps me to sniff that out. And with a lot of the leaders and the people I work with, we start to look inside and say, on what level might this be true for you that you're trying to prove something through your success and achievement. How might you be conflating, let's say, your self-worth and your achievement and success and all the external validation you're getting? And.

Richard:
[19:11] 10 times out of 10, when I invite successful leaders to take a look at that, they can see that there's some degree of that going on. So then we separate that out. What if your self-worth was completely unrelated to your achievement and your success and external validation? What if you were able to validate yourself and stay true to your intrinsic values

Richard:
[19:31] and not need the external validation that perhaps comes with that game that I'm playing? So that's one of the big things that I tend to do. I've got some blog posts on my website, if anyone's interested, this sense of just trying to prove ourselves. And it's an unwinnable game because how much success and achievement does someone need to prove once and for all that they're enough?

Richard:
[19:52] And so when we see that, when I help people to see that, when I did that work for myself, I was able to relate to myself in a different way. And it doesn't mean that I don't perform well, work hard, achieve great things, but it means that I don't have to because if I do ease off, take a break or lo and behold fail at something or not succeed immediately at something, I don't spiral into a sense of insecurity or shame or a feeling of inadequacy. I just accept that's human and that's okay and then I get back to focusing on what I need to focus on next. So they're the two things, the practical tools to help us stay focused on the things that matter without getting stressed and without worrying about the hundred other things we've got to do, because really we just want to focus on one thing at a time. And then that inner work of separating our self-worth from our success and achievement. And they're the two things that I've found make the biggest difference when I'm working with a leader. If we do both of those things, they can then perform at an extremely high level, but without burning out, without neglecting their wellbeing or their relationships. So they don't have the health problems. They don't have the relationship problems, they're more effective leaders, and they're able to sustain peak performance long term.

Debbie
[21:08] What you said is truly insightful because a lot of us define ourselves, whether it's work, whether it's family, there's always that external validation. And separating that with your intrinsic values, defining your worth in a different space is something that resonates with me. Thanks for that, Richard.

Richard:
[21:29] Well, welcome.

Debbie:
[21:30] Your program, like Mindful Peak Performance, emphasizes the neuroscience behind mindfulness. Take us inside the brain during a crisis. How does something as simple as a breathing exercise rewire areas of the brain, like the amygdala, to help leaders navigate high-pressure situations?

Richard:
[21:49] You might say if there's a crisis that's happening, some people will be bringing their A-game. Some people will, of course, fall apart, and there'll be something in the middle. And if we focus on the people that start to unravel a little bit in times of high pressure and stress, the VUCA world that we live in will sometimes really trigger people and bring out the worst in them. So what's happening there is that they're in amygdala hijack. So if we think about the human brain, right, I've mentioned the prefrontal cortex. If you could look inside my head, just here behind my forehead, prefrontal cortex, most recent part of the brain to evolve. It's what sets us apart from all of the animals as well, because we've got the most well-developed prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain responsible for executive functions, focus, memory, rational thinking, inhibiting impulses, managing our emotions, and self-awareness, empathy, compassion, et cetera. So when that part of the brain is running the show, we are obviously performing at our best. We're focusing on the right thing at the right time. We're able to think clearly. We're remembering things. We're connecting empathically with others and we're aware of what's happening.

Richard:
[23:03] The problem is that we also have another part of the brain called the limbic system. So that's kind of in, I don't know if you could go in that part in there, there about that far. That's the limbic brain, hippocampus, amygdala. A lot of listeners will have at least heard of the amygdala. It's the brain's key emotional center, sometimes called the brain's fear center. It's actually responsible for all the emotions that we experience, but the majority of them are negative or unpleasant emotions like fear, sadness, anger, and anxiety. So what the amygdala does is it detects a threat and activates the fight and flight response. So if we are swimming in the ocean and we see a fin pop out of the water, fight and flight, right? Well, we're going to maybe paddle away as fast as we can, call for help. If your Australian surfer Mick Fanning a few years ago punched the shark in the face and then paddled away, fight and flight, right? Or if we see a snake or a tiger or car about to hit us, it activates this survival response. So we get full of adrenaline and cortisol and we basically start to breathe rapidly.

Richard:
[24:07] Our heart pounds as we pump the oxygenated blood to the big muscles of our arms and our legs so that we can punch harder and run faster. And it shuts off all non-essential functions. Digestion shuts down. That's why we get nervous butterflies before a big event. It's why our mouth goes dry when we're about to speak on stage, perhaps, or speak up in a meeting. We shut down our immune system, and we shut down our cortex. We become very tunnel-visioned and very focused on the threat. Now, if there's a tiger or a car about to run into us, that's actually a very helpful response. But if we're in a crisis in our company, or we're about to get up on stage, or stand up in a meeting and speak, and we have a fight-and-flight response, that's not particularly helpful, obviously. And it's at the very least unnecessary and probably counterproductive because if we're trying to speak and our mouth's gone dry because digestion's switched off, or if we're trying to think clearly and we can't because our mind's just scattered and we keep thinking of all the worst possible things that could happen, it's a very unhelpful reaction. And so that's the simplest way. If we go neuroscience on things, which I think sometimes is really useful because it really cuts to the core of what's happening. In a crisis, if someone's falling apart or feeling stressed or just having that everyday level, sort of low level of stress, that's what's happening. The amygdala has detected a threat. Oh, we might lose this client. I might not meet that deadline.

Richard:
[25:35] What if I make a fool of myself in front of my colleagues or what if the business goes under and then the amygdala takes over the brain, puts us in fight and flight and the prefrontal cortex that I mentioned goes offline. And that's why mindfulness can be so helpful because if we're meditating every day, being present all throughout the day as much as we can, we're strengthening our prefrontal cortex when we do that. So then when the amygdala tries to take over, the prefrontal cortex can stay online and And even though we might be experiencing heightened levels of stress and anxiety, if the prefrontal cortex is online, it stops it from hijacking the brain and completely taking over so we can maintain some level of presence and awareness and focus even in the midst of a crisis. And so that's why a daily meditation practice, and again, mindfulness is much more than meditation.

Richard:
[26:27] However, the meditation is so fundamental and powerful. I spend 30 minutes every day on a cushion training my attention at the start of the day. Before I touch the world, I want to just get as present as I can so that I am more focused and present and aware and all the things I've mentioned. Even five or 10 minutes a day is enough. Training that muscle so that when we need it and the amygdala starts to try to take over, we've trained the ability just to stay present. We've strengthened our prefrontal cortex and that helps us to navigate challenging situations relatively easily, you know, relative to somebody who hasn't done that training. And a lot of your listeners are probably aware of Tim Ferriss, very well-known podcaster, best-selling author. He interviews elite performers in every field around the world, business, sport, art, entrepreneurship, Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, Elon Musk. He's spoken to them all and asked them about the different hacks and tools that they use to perform at such a high level.

Richard:
[27:32] And 80% of them told him that they have a daily meditation practice. So every single day they're sitting on the cushion or in a chair, and at least for five, ten minutes, they're doing some attention training,

Richard:
[27:44] which is what meditation is. And a lot of them say that if they weren't doing that, they wouldn't be able to operate at such a high level. That speaks volumes to the power of meditation. That's certainly my case. I'm a little bit probably ADD. I think I've never been diagnosed like a lot of people of my generation. But I would say now that I've learned what it is, I'd say, yeah, I probably have a little bit of ADHD. And so that attentional training helps me to stay focused and stay calm. And it's just a foundational thing. I can't really imagine my life without it, to be honest.

Debbie:
[28:16] Wow. Now I just do micro breaks, like two minutes. But you've actually convinced me to do longer, like five minutes. It convinced me.

Richard:
[28:26] That's what I do. I sometimes convince people out because there's just so much evidence and there's so many compelling stories. And I mean, who doesn't want to strengthen the part of their brain responsible for the executive functions like concentration, clear thinking, memory, managing emotions, inhibiting impulses, self-awareness, empathy, compassion. Like when you think about that, it's just a no brainer. And because we have a use it or lose it brain, if we're strengthening a brain area, if we're working it out, it gets stronger. And if we are not working it out, it gets weaker for better or for worse. So for a lot of us, if we're stress heads going through the day, worrying about everything, getting anxious, getting reactive, getting pissed off at people, we're strengthening our amygdala and it's getting literally, you can see it in the neuroscience studies, it's literally getting bigger as it starts to form new connections or synapses between the neurons. It starts to grow like a muscle, right? And if we're sitting on the couch after work every day, trying to relax, scrolling on our phones while Netflix is auto-playing in the background.

Richard:
[29:31] Unfortunately, our prefrontal cortex is atrophying, just like a muscle that we stop working out. Whereas if we're meditating, if we're being as present as we can during the day, if we're keeping our mind active with useful things, now we're strengthening our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala naturally starts to get a little bit weaker. So what do we want to be investing in? What do we want to be cultivating in this life? For me, it's an obvious choice. If I can be more focused and present and compassionate and self-aware and less stressed and anxious and reactive.

Richard:
[30:03] You know, it's a no-brainer for me. So I'm talking about 30 minutes a day of meditation. When people I teach this to do five minutes, it has an effect. Even one minute has an effect. And even little mini breaks during the day can have a really powerful effect. I do the same thing in between different tasks in my calendar when I finish my emails and I'm about to start a meeting with a client or something. I'll just stop for a moment and just reconnect with myself, which I think is a very powerful practice as well. I'm a big advocate of extended periods of meditation on the cushion, maybe starting with five minutes a day. But if that's not accessible for someone, then I would agree a minute or two here and there is actually very useful as well.

Debbie:
[30:43] So I'm just imagining a day in your life, especially when you're in office, you're busy in between meetings. How could you practice that? And what would be the minimum, maximum breaks that you can do this and be more effective? Can you give us an example?

Richard:
[30:58] So my day looks like get up, do my morning practice. I run, stretch, and sit down and meditate for 30 minutes. Then I have my breakfast. I'm learning Italian. I've got a 962-day streak on Duolingo. My wife's Italian, so I've been learning Italian from an app. Then I'll start my day, and I'll do two things. I set a Pomodoro timer on my computer. So Pomodoro technique is, you know, 25 minutes of focus and 5 minutes of rest. I prefer 50 and 10. The research actually shows that 50 and 10 is probably more useful for most people. So I'll set that and I set a 90-minute timer on my phone. Now, every 50 minutes, I get a pop-up on my computer. So I'm doing focused work for 50 minutes and then a pop-up will come and I'll stop and I'll do like up to 10 minutes of refilling my water bottle, having a stretch, going and talking to my wife, Elisa, looking out the window, getting fresh air, and then I'll do another set. And after 90 minutes as well, my alarm will go off. So if I'm not sitting at my desk, if I'm somewhere else, it's also reminding me just to stop. And in those few minutes, I'm resetting my parasympathetic nervous system because focus is...

Richard:
[32:11] And like stress is fight and flight. That's the amygdala, the fight-flight circuits. But so is focus, actually. When we're focusing, we might be very productive. It's the fight and flight circuits in the brain that are driving that productivity as well as the prefrontal cortex. So it's good to stop and just tap the brakes. That's the accelerator, the fight and flight, the sympathetic nervous system

Richard:
[32:32] arousal. We want to tap the brakes. This is a great way of not burning out. because if we're on the freeway and we're just accelerated to the floor and there's no brakes and we're not changing gears and we never turn off the engine, I mean, it's obvious what's going to happen to the car. But if we are tapping the brakes, gearing down, gearing back up again.

Richard:
[32:50] Turning it off, getting it serviced, et cetera, it's a much better way of looking after the life of a car and our nervous system is exactly the same. So that's what a classic day looks like for me. If I can, the first half of my day is deep work time. I've got it scheduled in my calendar, someone asked me to book a meeting or a podcast like this. For me right now, we started this at three o'clock local time. That's when I want to do podcasts. I don't want to do them in the morning because I've spent the morning designing a keynote and a separate workshop that I have to run. So that's my highly productive focused time. I'm at my best in the morning and I'm doing those Pomodoro sets, taking the breaks and then getting back to work. So that's what my day tends to look like. And then mid-afternoon as well, right before this, actually, I did 30 minutes of meditation again. I really like doing it. I find it really helps me. And there are a lot of reasons why I meditate, but I like to do it a couple of times a day at the moment. The busier I am, the more I need my meditation practice.

Debbie:
[33:48] What inspired you to create the Leadful Framework and how does it address gaps in the traditional leadership models that you see today?

Richard:
[33:56] I've done a lot of deep dive into the leadership research and spoken to, of course, a lot of leaders over the last 25 years. And one of the things I've noticed, I kind of referenced this before, is that so much leadership training that I've observed and done and heard about

Richard:
[34:15] is there are often some high-level frameworks that are sometimes not all that practical. You know, it's like, how do I apply this? It makes sense in the workshop, makes sense reading the book, watching, listening to the podcast. Oh, of course, that's a no-brainer. And sometimes we can apply some of that, but sometimes it's a little bit high level. So one of the things that I like to do is just break it down. What are the core steps, the building blocks of getting to that point? If you leading in that way is step 10 or even step 100, what does step 1, 2, 3, 4, 99, 100 look like?

Richard:
[34:53] But then also so many leaders that I've worked with, they've done leadership trainings, they've had coaching, they've done all the things, and they're not fully applying what they've learned. And quite often it's because they're drowning in their workload and they're getting stressed and they don't know what to focus on. And they're just trying to get their work done. And they don't have a lot of mental space to lead effectively. Or they're stressed. Their amygdala is taking over.

Richard:
[35:20] They're full of stress hormones. Adrenaline means we can't focus very well. Cortisol is another stress hormone. It means we can't connect empathically with others. There's not a lot of empathy when we're flooded with cortisol. So again, not effective leaders. So that's why performance is a really important thing to teach leaders. Even if it's just reminding them or teaching them a few new things, you know, getting them to do some deep work, getting them to create psychological safety in their team so their team start performing and they can delegate, getting them to manage their team effectively. The performance piece creates mental space for effective leadership, getting them out of survival mode, improving sleep, preventing burnout, managing stress, et cetera. These are all things that I do that get them out of survival mode and their team so that now everyone's nervous system's calming down and they can focus and they can connect with each other and they can think clearly and creatively solve problems and then teaching them the leadership frameworks that I particularly like that are going to help them to resolve conflict and to lead effectively, whether it's self-leadership, team leadership or enterprise or sort of organisational leadership. So that's why my Leadful model came about because I just saw that so many poor leaders are trying to lead without being totally overwhelmed with work, totally stressed out, just unable to do it.

Richard:
[36:44] Effectively. So I get in there and I help them resolve all of those three things, give them the tools, the evidence-based tools they need.

Richard:
[36:51] And that's what unlocks true leadership in my experience.

Debbie:
[36:55] For the benefit of our listeners, could you share a win story of how an organization or an individual you worked with successfully apply the leadful framework and what positive outcomes they experienced as a result?

Richard:
[37:08] The thing that's lit me up the most at the moment, I've got some great coaching clients as well as I'm delivering some really great leadership training programs, things I could speak to when you ask me that. But I think the thing that's really lit me up the most recently is a coaching client that I've been working with. I did some work with his law firm. He's the owner of a law firm. I did some workshops for them at the start of last year. And then he reached out a little while after and said, are you available for coaching? I said, yeah, let's chat. And his law firm is doing things in a different way. Law is a burnout industry, right? So a lot of lawyers. I think 50% of lawyers aren't working as lawyers within five years or something insane like that. It just burns people out. Doing all of the unsustainable peak performance practices that we've been speaking about today. So he set up a boutique law firm that stands for something different. So people being able to leave on time, their kids are sick, being able to work remotely or take a day off, you know, carers leave, parental leave. The lawyers there are expected to take more ownership of the work, but it's doing things in a different way. And I just feel super inspired by them. Like I'm in love with this company and what it stands for as someone who's worked for a long time with people in the legal profession. I'm like, yes, finally, someone's taking a stand and doing something differently.

Richard:
[38:31] And at the same time, this leader was under pressure as he's growing a part of his business. And he was reverting to old behaviors that he used to do when he was working in big firms, which is working long hours, putting all kinds of pressure on himself, trying to do perfect work with no mistakes, get it delivered quickly to the clients to please them and keep that moving along. So I was helping him to manage his stress and his burnout. But as we start to examine it, I had a moment where I asked him, I'm like, hey, can you see that what you're doing is completely out of alignment with the stated values of your firm, like what you guys stand for.

Richard:
[39:11] And it was a big moment. And I helped him to do this inner work, you know, the success and achievement and the self-worth, we've separated them out. So his relationship with himself now is much more compassionate, accepting and human than.

Richard:
[39:25] And he's able to focus on work when he wants to. He's able to clock off. He recently, just really recently, had his first ever weekend where he didn't check an email for the entire weekend. It was really powerful. And as he steps out of those different parts of his personality, the achiever, the overachiever, the perfectionist, the people pleaser, they were three very strong aspects of his psyche or parts of his personality. As he stepped out of them, he got in touch with something that is his calm, clear, compassionate, connected, true self. And we spent some time in one of our sessions just sitting in that so he could just feel the ease in that, start to imagine how it might be to lead from that place and work from that place. I was really wanting to embody it in him to really land it. And then I got him to consider this experience here. This is what you stand for in your firm. This is what you're trying to achieve. And he's in this embodied experience of being present in his body.

Richard:
[40:27] Noticing his feelings, noticing his emotions, a calm mind, in touch with his intrinsic values. But it was a powerful moment where it's like right now he was embodying exactly what he was trying to do. And I love that moment because so many leaders have these intrinsic values that they're trying to achieve. They know what they're trying to do. They know how they want to lead, but they're unconsciously out of alignment with that. And so when I help people get back in alignment with what they really want to stand for as a leader and the impact that they want to have in the world, it's a really powerful moment.

Debbie:
[41:03] The qualities that you describe about trying to deliver excellent work, just doing a lot of things, I think you've described me in a lot of situations.

Richard:
[41:12] Me too. Yeah, well, high five can get everything like this.

Debbie:
[41:16] Now moving to your Mindful Leader's MBA, it's a very different concept from the conventional profit-centric mindset typically taught in business schools.

Debbie:
[41:26] How do you convince ROI-focused leaders on the tangible benefits of a mindful MBA? And what metrics do you think convince them?

Richard:
[41:36] Well, it's a great question. So first of all, I get in there immediately with performance enhancement. That's the first thing that I do in the Mindful Leaders MBA. So people are significantly enhancing their ability to be productive. Not busy, but productive. Very different things, right? Focusing on the right thing at the right time. I'm staying focused for extended periods, doing deep work and creating a lot more value for themselves and for the company. So we start there and I'm very data driven. So anytime I'm working with a coaching client, anytime I'm working with a leadership team where if I can, I like to do pre and post sort of testing some benchmarking around things like productivity, team performance, et cetera. And then afterwards, benchmarking again and having a look at the changes. So I'm usually able to demonstrate hard metrics that are showing that these leaders are becoming more focused. They're more able to focus on the right thing at the right time. There's greater levels of psychological safety in their teams.

Richard:
[42:45] They're better able to make decisions. They're thinking more clearly. We might do some sort of 360s or mini 360s where we get feedback from their direct reports and people around them. So we start to get some hard data showing that they're actually becoming more productive, much more productivity with the things that matter. They're taking less days off work, right? They're less stressed. They're less burned out. As a result, they're showing up in a different way. So their team members start to take less days off work. There's less staff turnover, they start to perform better as they experience greater levels of psychological safety, as they're feeling more connected and inspired by their leader, they're showing up with more engagement. And so I just benchmark this every step of the way. And it doesn't take long to start producing these kinds of results. And therefore, it's very easy early on in the piece to show data to the more skeptical people in HR or learning and development. You know, Leading in with performance was one of the things I learned really early on. You asked earlier about mindfulness and how everyone thinks it's well-being. And it is. There's lots of research around that. But it's also performance. It's also relationships and leadership.

Richard:
[43:58] So why not lead in with the performance piece? Because that gets everyone's attention. Oh, you can boost my performance with this stuff? Tell me more. Plus, of course, when we're more productive and we're no longer drowning in work, we have more mental space. So we're more able to lead effectively or get out of work on time so we can pick up our kids and spend quality time with them before they go to bed or whatever it is, right? So that's my general approach. I've been refining this for years. Basically 20, 25 years, and I've got it pretty dialed in now. So now I'm able to achieve this pretty quickly, and it gets people's attention very early on, whether it's the key stakeholders in the business or the people in the programs or in my coaching.

Debbie:
[44:39] Offering a money-back guarantee in your program is very rare in leadership development. What does it say about your confidence in these programs, and how does it ease the hesitations someone might feel about investing in their growth?

Richard:
[44:54] To be clear, the money-back guarantee is for my online program. I don't tend to do that. I don't need to do that in my face-to-face programs or my coaching. In fact, no one's ever asked for a refund, ever, ever, because they get so much value out of it. But if someone's buying an online course, and particularly if they're not getting a lot of access to me to coach them and keep them accountable, there's a possibility that they might start the program and then they might just stall and not really apply what I've been teaching them and not really get much from it. And if that's the case, I don't want to be keeping someone's money, especially if they feel like they didn't get value for it. I would way rather give that back to them so they can spend it on something else more important to them.

Richard:
[45:38] I'm confident that my programs work and I'm a data-driven guy and we do pre-post and sometimes follow-up testing with validated psychometric scales, sometimes 360 assessments. And I can demonstrate over and over again that it works. And so I'm extremely confident when I start working with a coaching client or with a company that I can make a difference. If it's a good match, obviously, I'm not the right match for every person to do coaching. And I'll usually sniff that out in the introductory call and I'll let them know there might be certain factors that mean I'm not going to be the right person for them and that's fine. I'm not perfect for everybody and I would rather work with the people that are going to get great results with me. And same with a business. If I sniff out that there's some kind of serious dysfunction that's hidden away behind the scenes and that's why there are problems, sometimes I can get in there and help and consult and do things and sometimes I choose not to. So if I choose to work with somebody, then I'm very confident that I'll get great results because what I do is it's well thought out. It's highly researched. It's based in evidence. It's based in neuroscience. I've refined it for 25 years. I adapt it very specifically for the needs of individuals and organizations. I'm very good at speaking people's language and finding the language that they use. And that just tends to get great results.

Debbie:
[47:03] Before we wrap up, Richard, I'd like to ask you if listeners would take away one insight from today. What's one small change you'd urge them to make in their leadership tomorrow?

Richard:
[47:15] One small change. There are so many that I'd like to leave them with, but what is the one thing, the most important thing that I could leave them with? Look, I want to say meditation just because, as I said, if 80% of elite performers in the world have a daily meditation practice, if I could absolutely not be operating at the level that I'm operating at without meditating every day, and because I've seen countless leaders now who start to meditate. They get way more out of my coaching or my programs. They progress faster and their life becomes better. So I'm going to say meditation.

Richard:
[47:55] Even just five minutes a day, jumping on my website, go to my coaching page. I've got some free productivity meditations there. Downloading them, I think is a really good start. So I'm going to give meditation a gigantic plug, I think, in response to that question. And for anybody who's just a hard note of meditation for any reason at all, I would say just trying to be a little more present during the day. So just pausing between tasks, just being present, looking out the window, having a stretch. If you're talking to a colleague or your partner or kids, It's just try to give them your full attention and be present with them. It's going to enrich those relationships. They're going to love it. You're going to get the benefit of that. And in that moment, you're not stressing yourself out, thinking about a thousand things, worrying about what's going to happen next week or dwelling on something that happened last week. Just being more present, you know, tasting our meals, exercising and just feeling our bodies. All these things bring us into the present moment. And the more present we are, the more we enjoy life. So many of us are just missing life because we're just going through the motions while our mind is in a thousand other places and we're in the future thinking about the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and then suddenly we're you know it's the end of our life and.

Richard:
[49:15] So that'd be my two tips. For anybody who's listening, who's even remotely open to meditating, it's not about stopping your thoughts. That's the big block. People think, I can't meditate. I can't stop my thoughts. Yeah, no one can stop their thoughts. I can't either. What you do is you sit and you focus on one thing and you learn to notice when your mind's wandered off. And you just learn to bring it back without getting frustrated. And so the mind continues to think, but you don't get so lost in your thoughts. And if you were to jump on my website, download my meditations, or if you were to get Smiling Mind or any of the other award-winning mindfulness apps around or do the Mindful Leaders MBA is another great way to embed mindfulness in your life or the Mindful Peak Performance 14-Day Challenge. If you do any of those things, that's going to help you to establish what in my experience has been one of the most life-changing practices that I could imagine.

Debbie:
[50:09] Meditation and being present. I'll always remember that, Richard. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, practical strategies, and those incredible stories. It's clear why so many people, leaders, and organizations turn to your work for transformative results.

Richard:
[50:25] Been great chatting today. Thanks for having me on.

Debbie:
[50:27] To our listeners, if this conversation resonated with you, here's how you can keep the momentum going. First, hit follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. Second, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or YouTube. It's the best way to help other leaders like you discover the show. For those ready to take the next step, check out Richard's programs, including the Mindful Leaders MBA at drrichardchambers.com. As we close, remember, the greatest ROI starts from within. Thank you for joining us until next time, lead with purpose.