Leading Under Pressure: How to Master Stress & Thrive in Leadership with Dr Amar Dhall https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/06b01bc3-8ada-4519-9564-b41a00552acc/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:
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00:00 – Introduction & workplace wellbeing
02:00 – What “leading under load” means
04:00 – Stress, trauma & leadership behavior
07:00 – Capability vs capacity explained
11:00 – Vertical vs horizontal development
14:00 – Autonomic nervous system basics
18:00 – Trauma as unprocessed stress
22:00 – Neurosomatic leadership explained
25:00 – Cognitive vs embodied leadership
26:50 – Leadership under stress & its impact
31:00 – Burnout cycles and healthcare crisis
35:00 – Certainty vs uncertainty in leadership
37:50 – Thrive vs survival mode
41:40 – Building collective regulation in teams
47:20 – Practical stress regulation tools
54:50 – Future of leadership & psychosocial safety
57:40 – Final insights & closing
Leading Under Pressure: How to Master Stress & Thrive in Leadership with Dr Amar Dhall Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)
Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.
Well, you I feel rather passionate about psychosocial safety in the workplace. In fact, I feel rather passionate about workplace wellbeing. Now I’ve been in healthcare for 45 years and I have come to the conclusion rather sadly that the healthcare industry is not perhaps the best industry to become healthy in. There is a serious conflict of interest.
And a regular listener to my podcast or reader of my book will have some, a life less stress that is, we’ll have some idea of why I say those things. in the workplace, workplace wellbeing makes so much sense. Not only is it good for our health, physical and mental, not only is it good for our family lives, but it is also a terrific return on investment. And if money talks and let’s face it, it does.
Workplace wellbeing and a return on investment need to go hand in hand and they do. Well, today we’re really getting into workplace wellbeing. My guest is Dr. Amar Dhall. Now Amar is a psychotherapist, a leadership researcher and founder of NeuroSomatic Research. Amar works with senior leaders and executive teams and what he calls leading under load, the capacity to stay clear regulated and effective in high pressure environments.
Now in a world where complexity and uncertainty are the norm, and let’s face it, they are, and they’re growing all the time, understanding your nervous system and how it impacts on you. Well, it may be the missing link between surviving leadership and truly thriving. And that is what this program is all about, thriving. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Amar Dhall.
Welcome to the show, Amar.
Dr Amar Dhall (02:01)
Hello, thank you Dr Ron, lovely to meet you.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:04)
Well, I’m, you know, I’ve been in healthcare for 45 years, but, uh, in the last three or four being particularly focused on workplace wellbeing. Um, and so when I saw your focus was very much on that and, and the connection with the nervous system and how this all interacts, psycho-social safety, a major word that every employee, anybody who’s managing anybody in the workplace should be familiar with.
You use the phrase leading under load. Now, what does, what does that mean in general? And specifically, what does it mean from a nervous system perspective?
Dr Amar Dhall (02:45)
So in a, a great question leading under load really just refers to what it is to be functioning in a world that’s stressful and have stressors coming in. So that’s what it is to be alive, right? Every organism has to navigate a fairly stressful environment in one way or another. And for humans, one of those domains is then applied in the workplace where we have a whole bunch of stressors that come in, some of which I guess we’re going to expand more on as we roll through the conversation.
But that at a high level is where we’ll start.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:16)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, we, you say, we live in a very stressful world and that’s what the focus of my work over professionally and on this podcast has been unstressed is a, an appropriation of understanding stress and reducing it. But anyway, we can talk about that, but many high achievers actually normalize. fact, arguably a lot of people normalize chronic stress.
As part of success, as part of being busy, it’s almost worn as a badge of honor. How does unrecognized nervous system deregulation shape, shape leadership behavior and culture in a organization over time? How does that impact on the workplace?
Amar Dhall (04:04)
Great. Well, I think that actually it goes back to my response, or go back to what you talked about in terms of the name of your podcast, right? Understanding stress. What I would maybe add to that is that ⁓ cognitive understanding of stress is one way of looking at it. I understand, or the way that I frame it, metaphorically, if not literally, that stress, humans need to metabolize experience.
And so I would say that trauma could be understood as a ⁓ failure to metabolize experience. Right. So it could be too much, too fast, too soon, or too little, too late in terms of support. So in terms of how this would then shape leadership in the workplace, it would be about a leader having limited bandwidth or engaging in cycles of burnout.
So, you know, hard work, stress, collapse recovery, then getting back onto the mouse wheel until the next episode happens, or being reactive and not really being able to shape things in a way that feels that perhaps it could be some internal impulse to order or performance that never really fully gets to be expressed and embodied.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (05:20)
Yes. Well, I mean, the whole ⁓ area of stress is, mean, evolutionarily speaking, it’s been a very protective concept, a particular part of our nervous system that’s been able to deal with perceived real and perceived dangers. But of course, today, that model of stress is a little bit different. How do you define stress? Let’s talk about stress in general. How do you defined stress in the modern world in the modern world.
Amar Dhall (05:53)
In the modern world, well, I think definitionally, it’s kind of the same as it’s always been, but the stressors themselves that exert stress are unique. So, know, physiology, you know, in the process of adapting to what is around us or expressing what is inside, we come up against constrictions of all kinds, limitations, whether, as I said, environmental or internal.
I think stress is part of the process of existing in this world and actually express, as I said, what it is to what wants to come out and be expressed in action, the process of making that fit or responding to some stimuli or work pressure that I would frame the load as stress.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:45)
And how do you unpack that? I mean, it’s one thing to say you’re under a lot of load. You’re under a lot of stress. ⁓ we need to, ⁓ deal with that. How do you approach that? How do you deal with that? We’re in the workplace, not personally, although personally is probably as much a reflection on the workplace, but in the workplace and that, do you deal? How do you unpack modern stress?
Amar Dhall (07:09)
Well, I think that to do that, we need to understand the difference between capability and capacity. Right. And I think a lot of, a lot of people focus on trying to build their capacity to do things and stretch themselves. However, if they’re not capable, then their intention around capacity is irrelevant. So for me, what would be different about the way that I see it is I would say if you increase the ability to actually do things, the ability to metabolize stress, the ability to metabolize challenge, then the capacities actually get to express themselves in a very, very different way. Does that make sense?
Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:53)
Yeah. Well, I think it’s interesting to view that capability versus capacity ⁓ conundrum, if you like, because, I think, you know, we’ve done programs just recently on digital health, digital nutrition, and, ⁓ what drives some of these companies and the people that develop these products that put us under a lot of stress. The, that incentives often Trump.
Intentions, incentives, often Trump intentions. And I purposefully use that word Trump. I think it is almost like an exclamation mark to that concept really, isn’t it? It says so much more than it used to. So again, coming back to capability versus capacity, ⁓ you know, I think that’s a really interesting way of looking at, at stress in our modern world. What are we capable of?
And what is their capacity to deal with it? How do you, how do you, how do you quantify that or advise people, you know, you’re dealing with leaders, and, you’re dealing with workplace. ⁓ what, what kind of, ⁓ how’s your approach to that? When you give us a bit of insight into a miles approach to toxic load, the workplace load 101. Getting started with a month.
Amar Dhall (09:18)
So I think the, and I’ll try and make this really practical because the models that we’re talking about, clearly you and I are both deep thinkers about things. And so we can create abstract ways and frames of looking at what may be really simple from an embodied experience. So I’ll try and cover both of those in this moment. So to give the frame, I would frame the differences is, you know, often people think in terms of what I would frame as horizontal, working on the horizontal plane of doing things, a skill set, et cetera. So this is kind of moving horizontally through life. The ability to respond is about actually where someone is vertically in themselves. So to me, the ability to develop vertical verticality, and that means being able to both drop into yourself and also be able to move up high and see things, quasi objectively, right? We’re all subjective beings.
So in terms of the frame, I would say that it’s being able to blend vertical development with horizontal skill acquisition. So to make that really practical, what that looks like, the way that I would be developing vertical capability is around creating a really robust vocabulary around, for example, the autonomic nervous system and understanding how
You know, the state of the autonomic nervous system will profoundly shape the way people interpret things and make meaning of the world. So this, you know, that would be, well, that really is the tectonic plate, I think that sits underneath our embodied experience of stress and our ability to respond to it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:01)
Hmm. Yes, I like that. Also, you’ve given me two things I like now, capability and capacity, but also vertical and horizontal way of looking at things, because the vertical way of looking at it implies the importance of foundations on which you view things vertically. need good foundations for that vertical model to stay usable, healthy and be able to see things clearly. And I guess it’s that foundation that gives us greater capacity and capability.
Amar Dhall (11:39)
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, the other, the other part of this is I think if we were to then talk about people in the workplace or look at people in positions of authority, what is it that got them there? And it may be that they are very skilled or they’re very capable or they, you know, they’ve scaled a mountain and now living at altitude. Along the way, they will have necessarily had to adapt and, and sacrifice and or they may have come into their working and professional life from a place of sacrifice.
I saw this when I was an academic. To get to the pointy end was a lot of work. So what is it that people had to sacrifice to get to that pointy end? Did they sacrifice their congeniality or were they intrinsically oriented towards being a little more isolated? So I think when it comes to having a conversation at the level where we’re talking about, it’s about becoming alive to what
What is the price that I have paid to get here? What have I focused on and cultivated my excellence in? But also what have I missed? And generally, unless you’re extremely fortunate in the family you were brought up in, there’s pretty much a zero. I’ve yet to meet a professional who has taught a vocabulary around the autonomic nervous system that would be in any generation remotely resembling either of ours.
Right. This is pretty new stuff. So I think the process of being curious, of being willing to learn, about being willing to ask the question, what am I not seeing in the way that I construct myself in the way that I relate with others? That is really the curiosity to follow. if you happen to follow that diligently, know, people listen to your podcast, I’ve heard a few episodes, you you’re exploring robust ideas, following the curiosity into robust ideas will produce a paradigm shift.
And this is then where people get to formulate responses that you know, feel really true for themselves and also have a really robust evidence base as well.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:43)
You’ve used the word, ⁓ autonomic nervous system. And I know that you and I both know what that means. And I wouldn’t really hope that my regular listeners would as well, but I think it doesn’t hurt to just go back to some basic lay down some basics here. So we are all on the same literally on the same page, because I know you’ve also coined this term, neuro somatic leadership. And I want to unpack that a little bit.
But let’s just start with the autonomic nervous system, 101 and the stress response 101 and, how that’s happening in our modern world.
Amar Dhall (14:23)
Okay, great. So the gist of it is that I would say we have three parallel intelligences working all the time and they’re interrelated, but also still fairly independent. So there’s the cognitive intelligence. So that’s the stories, the words, the thoughts, the meaning making, the interpretation of whatever’s going on. Then there’s our emotional world and that consists of internal experience, which will also have the physiological correlates but the emotional life, then I would say there’s an instinctive intelligence that operates.
And this is where I would fit the autonomic nervous system in, in the context of this conversation. So in any given situation, we are going to have a cognitive way of responding to it. We’re to have an emotional response to it, and our autonomic nervous system is going to respond to it as well.
If I was to frame how I understand the autonomic system to be working and frame it in terms of a question, it would be asking, am I safe? Right? Every organism is asking, am I safe? And the response to that question is done pre-linguistically. It’s not really thought about. The autonomic nervous system is going to have its own way of responding and it’s going to prime us in one of three ways. And this is really drawing on the work of Dr. Stephen Porges and Polyvagal Theory.
So he would say that or applying that theory, if we’re safe, if the answer to, I safe or safe enough? If the answer is yes, then the social engagement system will be activated, right? Which is one branch of the Vegas nerve in his theory. If I’m not, then there’s a spectrum of possibility that opens up. And depending on the threat level, it will either trigger the sympathetic nervous system.
So fight or flight, which essentially is either to move toward or away, right? And if it’s toward, it’s with a an intention to resolve through conflict. And if that would fail, then we would then go to a collapse overwhelm response or a freeze response. So the autonomic nervous system will create its own response. Unless there’s a little bit of training and awareness, people won’t necessarily understand to which, it’s not, one, I’m either safe and social or in fight or flight or collapsed and overwhelmed.
It’s more like all three systems, as I said, will be working, you know, at the same time, one will always be dominant. And so it’s about learning to distinguish what that is, understand like, so for example, if anyone can relate with the idea of friendly competition and competing, and then something happens and then suddenly the competition is not so friendly, right? And things get a bit serious.
So that is the social engagement system or the ventral branch of the vagus nerve being dominant in terms of its activity sympathetic nervous system, the fight flight being activated and then something happening, which then has the sympathetic nervous system come up and become the one that’s got the biggest impact on our physiology. So that’s, that’s hopefully gives a little bit of an introduction into what’s going on with the ANS.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:31)
Yes. Yes. The, well, the autonomic nervous, I think that work of Stephen Porgis and his polyvagal theory is just so interesting because so often in stressful situations, in assaults in particularly in instances like rape, why didn’t you run? Why, why, know, if you had to do, why didn’t you run?
Well, the polyvagal theory points out as you have now that we actually don’t have a fight or flight a response, but there’s a freeze response to which, which is, is really interesting. and yet within our it’s interesting too, because the physiological response, and they always talk about if I came across a saber tooth tiger, we haven’t seen many of those, but we often get that as a model, you know, then I will be caught up and I will fight or flight or freeze. ⁓ but, but in our modern world,
There are other versions of the saber tooth tiger that we confront consciously and subconsciously out there.
Amar Dhall (18:36)
Absolutely. So if I was again, going to bring it back to what we’re talking about in terms of understanding stress, I would talk about then what we’re discussing with someone’s being pushed into the realm or their nervous system is being pushed into the realm of fight, flight or collapse to some, you know, to a significant extent, let’s say, then the question would be, trauma then and traumatic stress is a failure of us to metabolize our experience.
Right. And so what this looks like in a, I use the term metabolize in ⁓ a functional way, not a literal way, but I think human beings need to metabolize stress and metabolize experience. So traumatic stress or a traumatic event then is a frustration in the body’s ability to metabolize that experience, which means, and this is the point that I wanted to make, right, which then leads to what would be classified as a frustration of or of ⁓ the completion of a response.
So what I mean by that is that in the wild, if an animal goes through something really traumatic, it may shake for a period. And in that shaking, there’s a discharge of the fight flight energy that it wasn’t able to express because maybe it did go to a collapse or was immobilized. Now for us in the modern world, where you talk about some of the ways stressors are different, we might go through a, a, cognitive way of restraining our responses, right?
When we say, I feel like punching that person, but we don’t, or we keep a ⁓ brave face. And so what we’re doing on the one hand is to maintain social cohesion and connection where we’re functioning in that system. But at the level of our physiology, that energy actually is trapped. And this is the essence of PTSD is a re-traumatized, a re-triggering of that survival energy.
And this is not drawn from the work of Dr. Peter Levine and somatic experience in which I was being fortunate enough to learn. So, you know, in a trauma resolution ⁓ paradigm, what we’re doing is we’re actually looking to titrate that energy and have it come out slowly in ways that the body can actually integrate afterwards, rather than these big swings of energy or these big swings of stress.
And what the person does is they use their brain to force themselves to regulate or they disassociate, right? Which is a type of ⁓ dorsal vagal response. it’s a collapse, type of, you know, in the category of collapse and overwhelm and tell ourselves that things are okay or go and use maybe alcohol or some way of coping, which doesn’t actually resolve. And this is the point that I, the deeper point that I wanted to make.
These strategies don’t resolve stress. They simply kick the can down the road and the bill will come to you at a later point. So to bring it back to this conversation, understanding the autonomic nervous system and creating a vocabulary around this is about supporting people to begin to catch that and understand when they’re forcibly down regulating themselves versus understanding what it would be to complete a response and work with their physiology.
and couple our mind and our brain into one. And this is then also what neurosomatic leadership is about, is reintegrating body and mind with a higher level of vocabulary and understanding so that we can metabolize stressful experiences. We can build that vertical ability of ours to respond and enjoy life really and have greater meaning and wellbeing.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (22:23)
Yes, I love it. And I mean, I think this is well, it’s the mission of this podcast. Amara, that is to, ⁓ I mean, in order to solve a problem, I always feel it helps to know firstly, what that problem is to be able to identify it, articulate it and think about it. So if you’re going to solve a problem like stress, I think it helps to, as you nicely put it, have a vocabulary, ⁓ with which to understand what exactly is going on.
How does that differ from the traditional cognitive or mindset based leadership models?
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Amar Dhall (24:11)
Well, I think it’s like the difference between someone thinking if they read a lot of books about dancing, they’re going to jump out on the dance floor and look amazing versus someone being trained in how to dance. And what I mean by this is these are embodied skills. It’s not a cognitive understanding. Someone who thinks they can cognitively, you know, it’s like this. If someone was to say, all right, I’m going to challenge you not to go to sleep. So that’s a cognitive challenge.
There will be a period where someone can use their will and their mind and try and stay awake, but in an arm wrestle between body and mind, the body will always win. And so it’s about really understanding how we can get these two different aspects of our being working together. And so, and then that is the fundamental, is, you know, this is also why, if I think, you know, we look at this as a different example, but you know, I really think it’s analogous, which is in the GFC, right?
In the global financial crisis, the people who were making really horrible decisions were often trained at top universities and had studied a unit called ethics in some way, but weren’t actually embodying it. But they had a fantastic cognitive understanding of the concept. So this gap between cognitive understanding and embodied experience and embodied learning is maybe the difference between sort of superficial knowledge and wisdom.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:32)
I know that that’s an interesting point because I know one of my mentors in my professional journey said that if you ask your patients the right questions, they’ll often not only tell you what’s wrong with them, but they’ll tell you how to fix it. And I think one could look internally and say the same thing that if we as individuals ask ourselves the right questions, we begin that journey of being able to fix it.
But coming back to the work place because what has happened in the workplace and a lot of leaders, CEOs, boards, managers are not aware of this, but I know that in 2022, Australia, a lot of governments in Australia legislated about psycho social safety in the workplace. And when we were looking at having you on the program, you know, I know this is a major focus for you creating an atmosphere of psychosocial safety and leaders have to lead.
Ironically, are the often the most stressed and the least psychologically safe in their own heads. What happens when leaders operate in a survival mode and how does that affect the people they manage in your experience in the workplace? What are the, what is the implications of that?
Amar Dhall (26:52)
Hugely.
So what we’re talking about there, so, okay, to bring this back to what we were saying, with looking at it through a nervous system lens, one of the aspects of the sympathetic nervous system, so that anxiety or fight flight energy, which a lot of leaders have learned to focus into achievement or working or doing, one of the side effects of this is binary thinking.
So right or wrong, my way or the highway. And so they become grounded in a paradigm of right and wrong. And what we lose are the shades of gray. What we lose is the ability to look at complex problems and bring the best of ourselves and draw out the best of the people around me or around them to solve this problem. So that’s problem number one.
Problem number two, if any of your listeners or yourself think about what it is to be around someone who is unconsciously leaking stress. That’s not a great thing to be around. Right. It’s not conducive to trust. It’s not conducive to flow, know, group flow and getting into that place where we’re working as a team and we’re doing good work and we’ve got the right level of challenge. So it collapses that possibility. Third, they will inevitably burn out.
Right. And in my experience, burnout doesn’t happen once. It’s an orientation that leads people to, you know, get stressed, burnout, recover, then burnout again, then recover and be on this mouse wheel until such time as they learn to get off it, or they actually become incapable of working and showing up. So off the top of my head, I’d say that that would be a few.
Actually, the last thing I’ll say, because I think this is a really good get for leaders and CEOs is with that binary thinking, is to begin to see the problem as existing out there. So everyone else is the problem and not really being able to think from a place of radical self responsibility, you know, how have I contributed and co-created this? Because that’s a dangerous thought.
And if I’m already on edge, if I’m already stressed and I’ve got then maybe some guilt and shame that may come around my achievement and maybe not doing things perfectly, which a lot of really high performers have, then it’s results in me, know, cumulatively all of this is that I’m peering through a keyhole that a universe and a workplace where there’s a full room to be engaged with and cultivated and worked with. And all of that capability and capacity is, you know, is just squandered, I would say.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:34)
I mean, we could unpack each of those and we should unpack each of those because that’s just opened up a whole story. mean, talk about binary thinking. mean, we’re talking leadership, but we could be talking about the world population, ⁓ right and wrong, polarization being led down ⁓ algorithmic rabbit holes that give us a very binary view of the world.
I mean, this is a big problem for us all, really, isn’t it?
Amar Dhall (30:08)
Absolutely. This is why I love your work and this is why I do what I do and maybe this is why we’re having a conversation.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:14)
It is, is, it is indeed. And then, um, well, we don’t have to talk about what it’s like to be around people that are highly stressed. think everybody has an innate feeling of that, but burnout. Oh my God. When we start talking about burnout and I am in the health area, I’ve been in the health area for 45 years, particularly interested in, in the effect on health practitioners who are delivering our healthcare system.
I mean, I read a review of the AMA report, which said, between 60 and 70 % of medical practitioners are suffering from burnout characterized by the acronym DIE. Interesting acronym DIE feeling disengaged. Now, remember these are the people who you are going to see for your health problems. They are disengaged. feel ineffective. Talk about a mouse wheel and, and they feel exhausted.
And so burnout is a huge problem again, not just in leadership, not just in health practitioner, but in general, then radical self-response, know, the problems out there. It’s not in, it’s not with me. It’s out there. mean, my goodness, what, what, what four things to focus on in leadership, but in, life in general.
Amar Dhall (31:35)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, picking up on different professions, there’s a, you know, for me, my background, one of the things, one of the domains that I was in was in law. And, you know, to be a lawyer is to have an opinion and to have an opinion and be confident means you need to think that I’m right. And, and with that comes even the image of the lady justice blindfolded, right? And the idea is to convey impartiality.
But I think the corollary message is to think that, well, sight is such an importance, one of our senses, right? So if I was to cut myself off from my sight, that I would somehow produce a more just outcome, right? And I think that that’s a little hubristic. so, you know, medicine is a similar profession where there needs to be a little bit of detachment to be able to deal with the stressors of the job. But I think again, you know, what is it that I’m not thinking about? What is the cost of this? remoteness or the perspective or what’s the cost of the way that I do things and without curiosity and a bit of compassion and also then by extension, if we’re in cultures, professional cultures where these things are stigmatized, that admitting vulnerability or fragility is seen as, or maybe your advice is actually now weakened for the fact that you’re not pretending that you’re bulletproof and made of Teflon simultaneously.
We go into the world of contrivance. And I think when we do that, the space to not understand what, you know, or to be curious about why am I, you know, on this cycle of burnout and what is it that I maybe need to change my grip on. And it’s so human to be able to do this. Like, okay, I think we have to, I think if we also just look at aside, there’s the cost to the individual professionals who are going on these cycles of burnout.
And you referred to it in saying, these are the people that we’re relying on when we go to see them. So it would be so beautiful if we could really support systems that actually, don’t need to valorize vulnerability, but we need to actually hold it with compassion and support people to do their human business of being a human and to understand that when we do that, one of the things that comes is deeper emotional intelligence, greater empathy.
Right? A doctor that would be able to be with their own mental health challenges or their own burnout or whatever it is, is going to quite, I think, reasonably cultivate greater compassion when they see these same challenges in their patients.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:07)
I mean, think with the story of doctors in particular, well, not just doctors, but doctors, you know, they love certainty. I mean, they must be drawn to certainty, seeing patient after patient after patient in a busy day, uncertainty would be a challenge. And I think, but to your point about validating or acknowledging vulnerability,
I always felt as a health practitioner, when someone presented something that I didn’t know the answer to, rather than pretend what they were asking me wasn’t important or because I didn’t know it, it probably wasn’t worth knowing. I would say that was interesting and I don’t know the answer to it, but I can find out and I can get back to you on that.
And that’s really an empowering thing for a practitioner to do. And I imagine for a leader in a workplace to do to, say, I don’t have the answers to all, but let’s collaborate. Let’s talk, let’s listen and come up with a solution much easier. Actually a much healthier way of approaching the workplace, isn’t it?
Amar Dhall (35:19)
Absolutely. I did some research last year and what you’ve actually put your finger on one of the findings that emerged from that research that leaders who I call it the superhero reflex, right? The desire to project certainty meant that they would overextend. And in doing that, 80 % of the people who saw that in themselves also recognize that they were burnt out. So what you’ve just put your finger on is some of the beliefs that people have that lead them to get onto that mouse wheel, you know, the never ending mouse wheel of burnout, recovery, burnout, recovery, et cetera and you know, think it’s also worth just picking up on another really interesting point that you made around certainty and the, the kind of, what would I say?
It’s almost like a willful blindness or a detachment because life is inherently uncertain and that brings with it fear and that fear is existential and that’s actually part of the human condition but to quarantine it and think that we can push it aside doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. All it means is that we’re suppressing it and putting a lid on a pressure cooker.
And eventually that lid will get blown off and that will express in the way that it does for the person. So I think part of what we’re talking about as well is about maturity of understanding that certainty while it would feel really good, it’s also just not the nature of the world in which we live.
It’s just not the way it does.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:50)
Yeah. It’s almost like whenever we as individuals are confronted with the death of someone close, it’s this shock that we are mortal. It makes us feel vulnerable that, you know, I remember once saying to my wife when I was about 40, if I ever die. And she said, hang on, it’s not if you ever die, it’s when you die. And I was quite confronted by that thought for a split second, but, listen, there, you know, I, I.
A focus that I’ve come to realize and I’ve looked at stress from a lot of different areas is mental fitness is, is the key that underpins so much of, of our lives. And your mind can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. And there’s of course a big difference between survival mode and thrive mode in, the mindset world in the world of mindset, from your perspective, what allows the leader to move from a reactive leadership position to a more regenerative one. What, is key to making that transition?
Amar Dhall (37:56)
Well, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier around the autonomic nervous system, right? The social engagement system. Am I safe? If the answer is yes, then I can cultivate that adaptive thriving mindset. If I’m living with a chronic state of sympathetic arousal or dorsal vagal disassociation and overwhelm and just keeping it together, it’s going to be physiologically impossible for someone in that state to think themselves out of it.
And this is where they may get little tidbits or ideas that are exciting or hear something on a podcast and go, yep, this is a great idea, but it won’t stick. And it’s because the tectonic plates they’re working on, they’re building on a fault line or on a swamp. And so it’s just not going to stick. I think understanding the vocabulary around the autonomic nervous system is going to be hugely influential.
It will create the ability to shift, and then it’s uncovering the beliefs such as those, such as the one that you mentioned earlier, right? Like, am I in a position to accept vulnerability that I don’t know everything? And then the more nuanced conversation around that is, okay, well, if I am going to be vulnerable and more authentic about the way I approach my limitations, how do I still do it in a way that maintains my professional persona and maintains the status quo enough
for me to still do what I need to do.
And this is a bit more nuanced. actually I think, you know, the other point that you raised, which is relevant here as well, goes back to what you were talking about around mortality, where you’re saying, in your forties, where you had that question, this is relevant here because for me, one of the highest forms of leadership is eldership, right?
Eldership is being able to empower in a way where I don’t need to constantly be having exercising oversight and rigid control true empowerment and understanding that when I’m not there, things are going to still move forward. So I think that the cultivation of a sense of place in the world and embracing, you know, what really is going on, forming a relationship with it, cultivating an autonomic vocabulary, and then identifying the beliefs that are problematic and keep me limited. All of these things are going to help someone pivot in a really meaningful, sustainable, permanent way from a threat-based physiology and way of living through to a thriving orientation and movement.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:35)
Hmm. It’s interesting. You know, I often reflect on the pandemic, the COVID experience and there are, we’ve done many programs on aspects of it that I’m less than enthusiastic about. We need to be very vigilant about, but one of the things I think we can all agree happened, which potentially was very positive that it was an opportunity for global reflection on what was important, our work, how we work price we paid for commuting to and from work, know, working from home became legitimized.
You know, it was an opportunity for collective reflection. And now it’s interesting because you mentioned there’s stresses now, which is cost of living and AI and your safety, you know, the safety of my work and my job. How can executives teams build a collective regulation, not just individual resilience, but in these especially volatile times, uncertain times, how can we build a collective regulation?
Amar Dhall (41:43)
That’s a great question. And I think it’s actually quite simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy. just means simple. begins by, well, the organizations with whom I’ve worked and with the teams with whom I’ve worked, it begins by creating a shared vocabulary around this stuff. in one business that I worked, they will talk about the states of the nervous system and have.
They’re playful with it. So there’ll be, know, I’m feeling dorsal and then kind of slump. Right. And it’s light, but it’s also really honest. So I think learning to identify autonomic mismatch. Right. So again, if in a team, one of us is ventral, one of us is sympathetic and one of us is dorsal. Right. If that’s not understood, real connection and forming a harmonious ⁓ vibe is going to be impossible or at least extremely difficult, or we kind of accept that we’re not really going to be that well connected.
So it’s creating a real sense around how can I learn not only once I learn my own autonomic vocabulary, I’ll see it in other people. And it doesn’t need to be as overt as it is in that organization, but it’s about being compassionate and understanding and following each other and leading each other and keeping that. So that’s one thing.
So having that, creating a space and it doesn’t need to be ⁓ over sharing, but creating some kind of ritual space, like a little circle where people get to actually just share what’s alive for them. And, you know, when we do that, when I do, I do that in my own company, we do that in other businesses where I’m a partner and we support that practice in, you know, businesses where we come in and, solve problems or support them to evolve.
Just creating that space tends to win people over. And what it gives leaders and each other is an understanding of what’s actually in the room, right? Instead of just being totally focused on the tasks of what’s going on, being really effective and creating a very contained space for there to be an understanding of the human being that’s behind the human doing in the workplace is going to be really conducive.
And then the last point I would say is, and this is almost a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason, which is having a shared real sense of purpose, vision, mission, values, right? And the two parts of that one is when we all actually believe in what we’re doing, then it’s actually very easy to be held accountable because I care about, I want you to hold me accountable because I believe we’re doing something important.
Right. And so that’s one part of the vision mission values or VMV stuff. The other part is without that, the burden of culture and accountability will sit in a few individuals, which actually raises their overall level of stress and challenge. And so the third bit to put the little capstone on that is to actually have a real sense of why we’re all here and why we’re doing what we’re doing and to have that engagement.
And when we get those things, all aligned, so an authentic sense of our personhood, inappropriate measured buckets, an autonomic vocabulary, and a shared sense of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, we can then really begin to function and hum as a team.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:23)
Yeah, I love it. love it. I mean, there are so many things you said there. The shared vocabulary is so important, isn’t it? I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? That we need to share a language. When we share a language, we communicate much better with each other. It’s very hard for me to communicate with somebody who’s Chinese if I don’t understand Chinese or any other language for that matter. So in the workplace,
to share a language, even though we are all speaking English, perhaps is really important. the importance of values too, I’ve learned that to be a very important part of, of managing a team as well. remember years ago going to a workshop. This would have been 20 or 30 years ago. And the first day of a four day team building exercise was to the first day was to write out a mission statement.
And at the beginning of the day, I was so dismissive of it. thought, this is so, ⁓ just a really annoying thing to do. thought we’d get into some really important things here and we spent a whole day. And by the time we finished, we had a half page document that I have used every single day of my professional career.
And anybody that joined my practice was read literally read, not the riot act but read the mission statement and every team meeting, we reread it and coming from the principle of the practice, it kind of conveyed a very consistent and valued message about what our values were. So this is, this is music to my ears. Listen, ⁓ for people listening to this and you know, I have the varying people of varying professional and personal experiences and burnout, we’ve said, is a big issue.
What would be two or three practical ways that people can begin increasing nervous system capacity in the middle of a very demanding work day?
Amar Dhall (47:24)
Okay. Great. Great question. So I’ll give this with a caveat. And the caveat is that ⁓ regulating on the fly, like I said earlier, if we go back to what is it that creates trauma, it’s not completing a response, right? So down regulating the nervous system is not the same thing as actually healthily metabolizing it. It’s kicking the can down the road a little. So I just want to caveat it with this.
There really is no shortcut to long term, healthful living, right? It’s like there’s no crash start that’s going to be the same as a healthy lifestyle. That’s just the way that it is. Right. So with that said, really like really I slow down and interiorize. And what I mean by that is to take a moment. So the belief is it’s never inappropriate to center myself. Right.
This is the belief to have. But what that looks like is take a moment, feel my feet on the ground and notice if there’s any, do a very quick scan. Is there any tension in my body that I can let go of that I’m currently holding? And then it may be, I like the physiological breath. So two breaths in through the nose to really fill the lungs and then a long, slow out breath.
And that will work every single time to down regulate the nervous system and create some space.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:51)
I mean, yeah, you’d be pleased to know we’ve done many programs on breathing. when, ⁓ that Jim was shared with me 10 or 15 years ago, ⁓ that is a powerful little tool for the toolbox, but it’s not a whole box, but go on. Yeah. caveats. like your caveats.
Amar Dhall (49:11)
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, you understand where I’m coming from, right? Is because it was true. ⁓ but you know, for me with that breath, the, the part around holding attention with, with where, where am I holding? Where am I braced? Right. Cause that’s also part of the way that that nervous system sympathetic, you know, fight flight will express is in the way muscles actually hold tension.
So, so the, the breath, if I don’t create a little more space by unlocking my breathing a little, that’s going to limit the efficacy of that breath. The other thing which I really like, and it’s not something that I learned it during the ⁓ trauma resolution training that I was doing, is to actually practice breathing in. So people often talk about breathing into their belly, but this is breathing into the back.
And so to actually try breathing into your back and just notice what changes when you do that. And that’s a really lovely practice. So breathing into the belly good, breathing into the back. So just playing with that breath. know, one hypothesis that I’ve heard around this is that, know, because the adrenals sit on top of the kidneys and sort of allow the lungs to kind of fill in that direction is just given a little mechanical, little gentle mechanical rhythmic stimulation. So that’s another.
The last little tip that I would give, and this is good for people that are maybe feeling overwhelmed. So we’ve talked about down regulating the nervous system. So that’s if I’m sympathetic dominant, right? So I’ve got a little bit of energy and I want to bring it down. can do those two breaths, the double inhale, the exhale. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, the thing to do is to actually practice really interesting the vowel sounds, the R, E, R or OO, right?
Now, when it’s done a bit slower, the sound VU, this is from somatic experiencing like a long, slow VU sound, but done in a way that will actually vibrate in the chest, resonate in the chest gives the ⁓ dorsal branch of the vagus nerves, innervates the whole torso and 80 % of the nerve fibers on that, on the vagus nerve run from body to brain. So they’re afferent, right? Afferent signaling.
So what we’ve found clinically extremely efficacious is when clients are in that freeze stuck state is for them to do three long slow voos. So big inhalation and then go voo in a way where they’re mechanically vibrating their chest. And the working hypothesis is that that’s actually giving a really gentle resonance and mechanical stimulation to the vagus nerve, which is then signaling the brain through those afferent nerve fibers that it can shift things. ⁓
And I’ll give you one more just quickly because it’s really easy. Track tension in the jaw, right? Most of the cranial nerves innovate the face. so getting stuck in the jaw and so just loosening the jaw and maybe making a different vowel sound like an R or an E that will vibrate in the back of the throat. Whereas the OO will do the chest. That will also be really helpful.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:28)
Oh, I love it. love it. mean, we’ve done so many programs on breath and, and, and, and I have often mentioned that we’ve got a whole set of lungs. using the diaphragm is a really important thing, but I love your, um, breathe into the back and this connection to the kidney because the diaphragm actually does, it’s like a tent that connects right around, uh, that that area and the back is included in that area, but we don’t focus on it often enough.
And interestingly, ancient wisdom is, always something that I’ve always been interested in. And of course, the most famous of all mantras is om and the sound must have, even if you’re not saying it, but if you are, it has a resonance thing. And I know that Stephen Porges has his own safe and sound the use of sound and vibration in his work. So it’s very interesting things you’ve mentioned there. I must say. love it.
Amar Dhall (53:29)
Yeah, no spot on. And I can’t take the credit for the breathing into the back. That’s I learned that from Cathy Kane, who is an amazing thought leader in the domain of developmental trauma. And so doing some work with her. That’s where I learned that. yeah, what you’re saying is absolutely true. Like the, VU and the or both have that O sound, right? The or, or VU kind of similar, similar vibe. So Yep. It is ancient, ancient wisdom. Absolutely.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (54:00)
Now, listen, we’re just finishing up. has been a great conversation. knew it would be, I had a feeling it would be anyway. Psychosocial safety, as I said, has been legislated in Australia since 2022. And there actually are quite significant fines being issued for not complying with that. And they go to boards, CEOs, even just managers who don’t enforce it.
I’m looking ahead. How do you see, how you seeing you’re in the workplace? How are you seeing leadership now in 2026 evolving? ⁓ How are they responding to this? And are they getting a better? mean, with your work, I’m sure they are getting a better understanding of stress and how to change. But how are organizations responding out in the workplace there in your observe? How do you observe that?
Amar Dhall (54:54)
That’s a great question. I think there’s a few different ways of dealing that I’m seeing. think some, some organizations don’t see it as a real, a real thing. And so they’re going to run the gauntlet on, just business as usual and power to them. Fair enough. I think those that do it’s a, I think of trauma and wellbeing as a polarity, right? And with the polarity they, inside trauma are the seeds of well-being, right?
Whether that’s post-traumatic growth, ⁓ which is Tadeshi and Calhoun have done an enormous body of work there looking at the way ⁓ trauma seeds ⁓ long-term improvements when it’s actually metabolized in the way people see it work and function and show up in the world. So why I’m saying this in the context of psychosocial risk is, okay, psychosocial risk is the stick.
The carrot is when an organization is psychosocially safe, then we’re safe. Right? And we said safe is the foundation of connection. It’s the foundation of creativity. It’s the foundation of sustainable high performance. It’s the foundation of creative problem solving to complex problems. So I think that, you know, the ones that the organizations that get this see that their greatest ⁓ probability of success is drawing the best out of everyone.
And that means psychosocial safety, which necessarily means addressing psychosocial risk. And it just so happens that that ticks the legislative requirement. So I think we’re kind of moving inevitably in this direction of psychosocial safety. And I also can see really clearly that the companies that value it are producing a better, more engaged workforce, lower turnover, lower churn, as I said, higher quality outputs, more, you know, a more enjoyable place to work they’re actually establishing an economic basis.
Like there was a study by the CDC in 2022, which said the cost of trauma in unacknowledged, unworked with trauma and trauma is a psychosocial risk, right? In the workplace in the USA in America, sorry, in the USA and Europe was valued at 1.2 trillion US dollars per year in lost productivity.
So I think that need to have a conversation that actually fought for the people in positions of authority that recognizes, hey, you need to be safe because we are actually evolving as a species and it’s not acceptable to think that the only risks that exist are physical. And also if you want to energize the greatest chance of success for your business, then actually create a psychosocially safe environment and see what happens.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (57:41)
Well, Amar, that is a great note for us to finish on. And I want to thank you not only for all the work you are doing, which I love, but also sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Amar Dhall (57:56)
Thank you. It’s been a blast and I really appreciate what you’re doing. And I think part of the reason why we’ve had such an enjoyable conversation is we’re pulling in the same direction. So thank you for the work that you’re doing and for giving me the opportunity to come here and have a chat with you.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (58:10)
Thank you.
Interestingly, mental fitness, as I said, is a major focus of my work now and will also be in the unstressed health community. Just ⁓ have done a live webinar by the time this comes out on mental fitness in a wide world. But your mind can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. And the reason I’m so enthusiastic about mental fitness is that it provides a language and structure that you can share in your workplace and in your home that that allows you to deal with the noise going on in your head.
Now, understanding your autonomic nervous system and the response is another aspect to a shared vocabulary. And how about that? Using the breath in all those different ways, using sound in those ways. Look, there was so much in that episode. I will, of course, have links to Ammar’s website and his work. I’m definitely going to be catching up with him and look forward to collaborating moving forward.
I again invite you to join that unstressed health community. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.
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