The Secret That Is Undermining Your Success As A Leader

The definition of Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting different results.

When it comes to Leadership Development, this is exactly what has been done for the past 30+ years.

$350 Billion is spent every year to "Develop Leaders".

Results show the Failure rate of "Leadership Development" is 80%.

Arguably it is actually higher than that because I would say "Limited Success" is not truly Success.

So, why do we keep spending so much money on something that clearly isn't working?

Also, why does Leadership Development continually Fail?

It was something that really irritated me.

So I went looking, searching for the underlying cause of this Failure.

What was undermining the Success of Leaders?

As I searched, I discovered that the root was found in our Psychophysiology.

However, continually searching through research, I discovered a Triangular problem.

There is an interaction in our Psychophysiology that is regularly preventing success.

The Goal

We start at the goal, where do we want to be?

You can think of this as the top of the Triangular Problem.

From a Leadership perspective, we are looking for a few things:

• Where we do our Best Work
• Where we Feel our Best
• Where we are Most Creative/Innovative
• Where we see Problems Faster (Pattern Recognition)
• Where Productivity Increases
• Where we Learn Faster

Wouldn't it be great if there was a Psychophysiological state of being where we could accomplish these things?

Well, there is!

It's called a Flow State!

As Leaders, our goal should be to reach Flow States as often as possible, and also get our Teams in them as well.

Ideally you would reach what is called "Group Flow" where your team and organization would achieve this State together.

But what I found was that people are not getting here.

Most people in any organization are not achieving Flow States.

The few who do are achieving them in complete Silos.

The problem with employees who achieve Flow in Silos - they are likely to leave to another organization.

They do this because there is an innate desire to be part of an organization that achieves Group Flow.

If your organization is not attaining Group Flow, then the best employees will always be keeping their eyes open to other opportunities.

I also saw that traditional "Leadership Development" did not really help individuals get to these states.

What "Leadership Development" fails to accomplish is to start with the Psychophysiology.

So, I went further into why we were being blocked in our Psychophysiology.

The Fuel

Flow States are considered a High Energy Demand State of Being.

When we talk about "Energy", we are not talking about some "Woo-Woo" mystical type of nonsense.

We are talking about the body's literal source of Energy, Magnesium Adenosine Triphosphate (or Mg-ATP for short).

In order to reach Flow States, we need adequate levels of Mg-ATP.

However, in reality, this is a huge problem in our society right now.

Depending on the source, it is estimated that at least 45% of people are "clinically" deficient in Magnesium.

However, there is evidence that exists that claims the number may actually be closer to 80 - 90% of people who are deficient in Magnesium for a number of reasons.

• Lack of Consumption in Diet
• Problems In Agriculture (Less Mg In Natural Food Sources)
• Supplements Impairing Mg Absorption (Iron, Synthetic Vitamin D, Synthetic B Vitamins, Ascorbate/Ascorbic Acid/Citrate/Citric Acid (Not the same as Wholefood Vitamin C), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Industrialized Oils (Especially Vegetable Oils), and more)
• Improper Metrics (RDAs May Be Improper, therefore "Clincal Deficiency" is drastically underestimated)

Magnesium is essential for us to utilize ATP.

If we lack Magnesium, we will be unable to use whatever ATP is created.

However, it gets worse because most people are not efficiently creating ATP either.

Based on the Standard/Modern American Diet (aka SAD/MAD, which has impacted much of the world), we have been seeing that most of our "Diet" has many problems.

Based on the science, there are 3 sources we can "technically" utilize to create ATP - Fats, Carbohydrates, and Protein.

Now, "technically" speaking Protein alone is really only used by our bodies to create ATP in DIRE emergency needs, such as long term starvation.

It is a very intensive process to turn Protein into ATP and creates a lot of exhaust that is extremely difficult for the body to eliminate.

This leaves Carbohydrates and Fats as the primary ingredients to create ATP.

However, Fats are significantly better.

They create about 4x the amount of ATP utilizing the same efforts, more of it can be stored, and it also creates a lot less exhaust.

However, a MAD/SAD focuses almost exclusively on Carbohydrates.

This focus has also been shown to lead to a host of other problems on MAD/SAD, including Diabetes and Obesity which have caused all sorts of different problems in creating ATP.

These problems combined have made it so we have significantly less Energy (Mg-ATP) in our lives.

The low levels are barely enough (many would argue nowhere near enough) to take care of basic survival processes, let alone enough to achieve Flow States.

This means that people simply don't have enough Energy to get to Flow.

This also helps explain why Leaders struggle to get organizations to achieve any levels of Change.

ALL Change requires Energy.

The more change required, the more Energy is needed.

What happens when 80-90% of an organization lack the Energy to achieve necessary change?

Simply, they can't, and the organization stalls.

However, there is yet another Psychophsyiological problem that is occurring preventing people from achieving Flow States.

The Rupture

Now, is there a State of Being that is incredibly pervasive that also prevents Flow States AND dramatically decreases Mg-ATP?

Well, indeed there is!

It's called Burnout.

Nearly 80% of the Workplace is experiencing Burnout.

What is Burnout?

Essentially, it is when our levels of Stress are so high, that we cannot keep up with them.

There are different levels of Stress that exist in our lives.

There is a level where there is a Lack of, or No, Stress (though few people actually are experiencing this).

There is also a level where we can experience beneficial Stress, or Eu-Stress.

Then, there are excessively high levels of Stress, known as Dis-Stress.

When Dis-Stress has been experienced for long periods of time, without recovery, it becomes Burnout.

In any level of Dis-Stress, we actually will burn through Magnesium at faster rates (contributing to less overall Energy) and we will also become blocked out of Flow States.

To achieve Flow States we need to go through the Flow Cycle.

• Struggle (Eu-Stress)
• Release
• Flow
• Recovery

However, if we are in Dis-Stress we will find 2 problems in the Cycle.

First, we will find ourselves unable to "Release".

An easier way to understand this is that we are Struggling "Too Much".

Here, we are burning through Energy at fast rates, without the benefits of a Flow State.

The other problem we experience is that when we are in Dis-Stress, we typically don't Recover as well.

For better Recovery, we need to be in a state of mind opposite to Dis-Stress.

When we are constantly in Dis-Stress though, the body is unable to Recover efficiently.

Without proper Recovery, we gain many hurdles in producing Energy efficiently, and continue to add more Stresses onto the Dis-Stress that already exists.

As I always says, All Stress Adds.

It creates a vicious circle of not De-Stressing enough, adding more Stress on top of our Dis-Stress, becoming more Frustrated due to Over Struggle, burning through the already small amounts of Mg-ATP faster, and the cycle continues.

What makes this worse is that most Leaders are choosing to do things that will actually make this worse.

Instead of helping their organizations get into Flow States, they are actively contributing to higher levels of Burnout, faster.

Instead of using our Psychophysiology to our advantage, Leaders are doing EVERYTHING to make it worse.

You can know all the "Secrets" of Leadership Development, but all of your Leadership efforts will be hijacked by not understanding the "Secret" of Leadership Psychophysiology.

Leadership Development does not improve our Psychophysiology, and it is exactly why it continues to fail no matter how much more money you put into it.

It is Insanity to continue to spend Billions of Dollars on something that very clearly does not work.