The Neuroscience of Leadership with Dr. Alok Trivedi
Learn critical elements of the neuroscience of leadership to be a better leader. Leadership is not just execution and getting things done. When you understand the neuroscience of leadership, you will lead with more power. Today’s guest is Dr. Alok Trivedi. Inc Magazine ranked his company #672 on the 2021 Inc 5000 list. Dr. Alok Trivedi is a consulting company that helps entrepreneurs and leaders become high-performance thinkers by rewiring challenges and transforming their businesses and life. Dr. Trivedi gives you a better understanding of the neuroscience of leadership. We look at the essential elements in the brain’s management of thoughts that drive leadership. Discover how the understanding of the neuroscience of leadership drives growth.
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Dr. Alok Trivedi: The Transcript
About: Dr. Alok Trivedi is an expert in the field of performance. He is the author of the book Chasing Success: Lessons in Aligned Performance. After building one of the largest health care clinics in the world seeing over 1200 patient visits a week he went on to become the President of Mental Toughness University. Mental Toughness’ past clients include Coke, Proctor and Gamble, and Toyota and has been featured on every television station from CNN, Good Morning America, and The Today Show. He has shared the stages with legends in the personal development industry ranging from Bob Proctor (from the movie, The Secret), Brian Tracy, Don Yaeger, Steve Siebold and Grant Cardone.
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Dr. Alok Trivedi: [00:00:00] You got pride. You got shame. You got resentment infatuation and you have guilt. Those are the five states that I’ve isolated for the last 25 years of the five primary emotional states that we hold on to happiness, sadness, joy, sorrow. These are all symptoms of states, but the true states are pride, infatuation resentment, guilt, and shame. These ones constantly regulate how we function, how we feel. So as a leader, if you are stuck in a pride position, you’re going to have a lot of resentment being built up because whenever you have pride towards eventually you resent. And what have you have guilt or shame towards you’re eventually going to give yourself away towards, you’re not gonna be able to stand up for yourself. Cause the whole game, in my opinion, at least of leadership is to become authentic and authentic leadership means devoid of emotion, because then you can actually be able to deal with the support and challenge of being a leader, to be able to stand up for yourself and stand up for the team and not be so afraid of the challenges that leadership bring.
Intro: Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs, of the fastest-growing privately held. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett [00:01:00] I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?
Gene Hammett: Today we look at the brain inside of leadership, specifically the neuroscience of leadership, our special guest today is Dr. T that’s the easy version of Dr. Alok Trivedi, he has Dr. Rewired if that’s easier for you as well, but Dr. T and I talk about the neuroscience of leadership from our concepts. Around the emotions that are getting in the way of us leading powerfully. We look at some of the interactions between our work around identity and core values but also look at some of the differences that really different approaches, or able to unlock the potential in your leadership next to, you know, what you could be doing otherwise. When I think about this conversation, I’m really kind of fascinated around his view of the brain and the impact that it has on who we are and how we lead others. And that’s really what I want you to take away from this. If you’re looking for the neuroscience of leadership, you’ve come to the right place because we’re going to [00:02:00] dissect it and really get to the core of it in a short interview here with Dr. T. Now.
If you have any questions about your own journey as a leader, and you really want to take it to that next level, make sure you check out Genehammett.com that’s my core website. And if you want to have a conversation with me, just schedule your call. I’d love to talk to you about what’s getting in the way of you being the most powerful leader you can be. I know from my heart that when you understand what’s getting in the way and how you want to move forward and that evolution, you have a much greater chance of actually becoming that leader. And becoming the person that is a catalyst for growth inside your organization, not just in the company revenues that happens, but in the people around you, if you want to have that conversation, just go to Genehammett.com and schedule your call. Now here’s the interview with Dr. T
Gene Hammett: Dr. T how are you?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: I’m great. Thank you. How are you?
Gene Hammett: I’m fantastic. Excited to have you on the podcast.
Dr. Alok Trivedi: Well, so grateful to be here now. This is going to be fantastic. I’m looking forward to this conversation.
Gene Hammett: We’re going to talk about the neuroscience of leadership before we dive into that, I’d love for you to give us the context of, you know, what makes you the expert on this so that we know why to listen to you.[00:03:00]
Dr. Alok Trivedi: That’s a great question well, I can tell you that I’ve done this on myself and the people I’ve worked with that over 400,000 clients. And as I’ve done, gone through this process, it’s what I realized early on in practice. is that Patient. I started having, we’re having all these psychological challenges and they started to ask different questions and I started seeing different patterns in them. And then because of that, I would start seeing that their body would heal in a certain fashion people with low back pain, would have constant challenges with money, or, you know, someone with allergies would constantly be stressed with some of that. So I started putting all these pieces of this together and they started getting, you know, executives and business people and small business owners and CEOs and salespeople, then athletes, musicians, all, and then they all started kind of calling me to get more help, to help them rewire it and get more what they wanted to their life. To get more money, productivity, business, and health, and that’s kind of how this whole thing started. So that’s kind of where the journey has been. It’s been twenty-five years, 400,000 people.
Gene Hammett: I don’t want to make assumptions, but you talked about some of the, like a physical doctor. You, you are a doctor of what
Dr. Alok Trivedi: I was. I have my master’s in physical therapy. My doctorate Harvard.
Gene Hammett: Okay. So you’ve got an understanding of the body and what I heard you say, and there was, you were [00:04:00] looking and talking to these people like entrepreneurs and whatnot, and you were seeing different ailments coming up, different patterns of this. What other things can you share with us? Just so that we completely understand what you’re talking about these patterns.
Dr. Alok Trivedi: Yeah. For example, like, I’ll give you an example of someone trying to sell more or trying to make more money. I’m trying to increase their sales. They couldn’t get past it. They couldn’t see why. And their thinking was all messed up around it. And so then they would try the belief therapy, the NLP, all that stuff. That’s out there to change their beliefs and do all that. And realistically, they weren’t getting any, you know, they’re doing the work, but they weren’t getting the results inside of it. So then people started doing the work with me and I would help them see the symptoms. What was going on in their outer world? And their body was showing me symptoms of stress inside that. And then I started asking them questions around their business and their money and their growth and their sales. And then you started, I started rewiring the patterns around what’s going on in their life, around business and money.
And then their business started growing the sales start to increase. They’re like, how did that happen? Well, it’s all interconnected because what’s going on inside of your consciousness is really what’s being displayed to you on the outside. So whatever is going on? I like to say that there are two patterns of emotions that you got to think of, especially with money. Because whatever you resent, you’ll resist and whatever you have guilt towards, you’ll give away toward, and I’m sure [00:05:00] we’ll get into this, but there’s five primary emotions that we go through and these emotions govern our states and our physiology is just dictating that from an emotional stamp. That’s all.
Gene Hammett: Well, you opened the door up, let’s go through those five emotions,
Dr. Alok Trivedi: well you got pride. You got shame. You got resentment infatuation and you have guilt. Those are the five states that I’ve isolated for the last 25 years of the five primary emotional states that we hold on to happiness, sadness, joy, sorrow. These are all symptoms of states, but the true states are pride, infatuation resentment, guilt, and shame. These ones constantly regulate how we function, how we feel. So as a leader, if you are stuck in a pride position, you’re going to have a lot of resentment being built up because whenever you have pride towards eventually you resent. And what have you have guilt or shame towards you’re eventually going to give yourself away towards, you’re not gonna be able to stand up for yourself. Cause the whole game, in my opinion, at least of leadership is to become authentic and authentic leadership means devoid of emotion, because then you can actually be able to deal with the support and challenge of being a leader, to be able to stand up for yourself and stand up for the team and not be so afraid of the challenges that leadership bring.
Gene Hammett: You know, [00:06:00] you said something there, I’ve got to kind of zero in on it the void of emotions. Like I know part of my work actually is looking at emotions that are getting in the way, but also how do identify and evolve into the more empowering emotions for the right moments but you’re saying that we take out emotions
Dr. Alok Trivedi: I’m saying you are devoid the emotion because when you devoid the emotion, you lose the story.
Gene Hammett: Okay,
Dr. Alok Trivedi: because all emotional stories, neurophysiologically are just part of hotter inside of us. So when we actually remove the emotion, right, and what you’re doing is amazing, and I love what you’re doing, and it’s so powerful to be able to change that story and use quote-unquote, negative emotion and turn it into a powerful emotion to get them to move forward. I think that’s fantastic. I’m just going to suppose and propose that if they didn’t have the emotion, they’d be able to move forward without needing the emotional. Up and down involved. That’s what I’m proposing.
Gene Hammett: Take us through this whole concept of the neuroscience of leadership. I know we’ve kind of been dancing around it a little bit here, but I’d love to zero in on what do we need to know about neuroscience as it relates to leadership?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: Well, I’ll tell you, this is that the brain is built in three-phase. [00:07:00] Paul Maclean’s model. You have three of the three areas of the brain, right? You have the lower part of the brain, which is the survival state. You have the middle part of the brain, which is the action and the limbic state. As we call it the emotional center, then you have the prefrontal cortex. Now we know that the brain moves in the prefrontal cortex. We use it for long-term vision. We use it for the highest energy, highest health, highest financial, but it creates a vision, a strategy. And you think more objectively from that state where the amygdala, for example, is the highly emotional center of the brain. And that area is always reactive. So to move from a reactive state to a proactive state, we’ve got to get our brain thing from the executive center. Now we have these parts of ourselves. And we all do. They’re called root experiences. I call them root experience. Some people call them traumas. That’s not enough.
It’s a root experience. Some are positive. Some are negative. Both of these states are quote-unquote dictating our, the way that our brain and our patterns in our brain works. So if our brain and our blood flow is constantly functioning from the state of the amygdala, you’re functioning reactively. So your vision is short-term, it’s not long-term strategy. It’s created in age. simple But reactive fashion. So it’s day to day, [00:08:00] week to week, maybe month to month where the executive, the leader leadership has taken a long-term vision of strategy, but how do we do that? Right. We have lots of tools out there to try and get us to shift that way. But if you rewire it, you actually remove the patterns and be able to move forward. I’ll give you an example of this. Just give you context. If a leader has their own route experiences from their childhood, They’re going to make a decision in that boardroom that is going to impact the way that the company functions, not from a strategy standpoint, simply from a root experience, which is reactive. That’s an amygdala-based thing. So I do in my, what we do as a team is that were rewire those root experiences so that to get leadership and leadership teams to move in a much more objective fashioned format, to be able to move with clarity and true what I call authentic leadership.
Commentary: Dr. T has been talking about being reactionary. Now a lot of business owners will say, this is the normal way of business. This is who we are. And I want to say that you can actually break that pattern. All you have to do is to really look at it. As you have a choice, you can be intentional or you can be reactionary when you catch [00:09:00] yourself in the moments of being reactionary. You can pause, you can ask yourself this key question. If we were intentional around this issue, how would it have been handled. Now it’s already too late for you to be intentional, but it gives you a chance to say, you know, where could we be intentional in other areas and gives you a chance to really look back and say, you know, where did we miss the opportunity to be ahead of this? And if you ask yourself that question enough, then you know that you need to make a shift that you’re probably not able to do on your own. If you have any questions about that, I’d love to help you. But this one little tool was knowing that you have a choice. You don’t have to just be reactionary. You can be intentional is the key because there’s power in general. Back to Dr. T
Gene Hammett: I love the work that you’re doing because it really aligns with the stuff I do all the time. When you think about what gets in the way of powerful leadership, what do you think of the top one or two issues?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: It’s such a good question. And I’ll throw that question right back to you afterward, right? Cause I’m interested in your perspective as well, but for me, I think, it really comes down to inability. To [00:10:00] devoid the emotion. What I mean by that is specifically the emotion of pride getting in the way of seeing what reality is. And the second one, I think that’s very important in this, that stops people from seeing it is I think shame because they feel guilty to their team and the people that they work for, they feel like they’ve gotten somewhere as a gift, not in a, in gratitude state, but a state that they don’t deserve it fully. And I like to say that love is the only thing that really heals. And love is the only thing that leaves. And so when you love your job and you love your position and you love your employees, that’s when you’re the best, most authentic leader inside that as well. I’d love to hear your take on that is too,
Gene Hammett: you know, I have this conversation quite a bit, and I think there’s a lot of things that get in the way of powerful leadership. One of the easiest, I think for people to comprehend is the fact that they are primarily focused on managing. Work and not leading people. And if you understand the distinction between the two, you’re able, to see where you’re spending your time talking about the project, talking about the quality, talking about the deadlines, the KPIs, all of that’s managing work and its important, but we’re never talking about confidence or fears or anything. That’s like more [00:11:00] internal based that is really leading the person. And until you learn to develop both sides of these, it really does limit your power in leadership. That’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Dr. Alok Trivedi: I totally agree with that. And then it’s interesting. I kind of say it a little differently, but I think we’re saying the same thing here. I like to say that you can, you know, people say that business only takes logic, right? And there’s no emotion in business, right? It’s all logic, all logical. That’s not true because you need emotion to engage your team. You need emotion to get people to grow and get further in their life, but logic is needed to make decisions making. But emotion is needed for motivation and inspiration leading. And I think you’re right. I think it’s, both of them are needed.
Gene Hammett: You’ve mentioned a few of the, emotions and you’ve given some examples when you haven’t is infatuation and, you know, ’cause it’s a great word and it’s got a powerful kind of, I think, meaning from a lot of us, what impact does that have inside of leadership?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: So it’s such a great question thank you for asking this you know, infatuation, when we look up to a leader that they’re better than us, we now subordinate ourselves inside. We’d look up to them thinking that they’re fantastic. They’re amazing. They’re so good leaders. They probably are, but we don’t see ourselves our own potential [00:12:00] inside that we think we’re not good enough. The by-product of that is own into our own internal shame, our own internal guilt. And we hide that though. Here’s what we do as leaders. We hide that in pride. So infatuation I’ll use, a leader that everybody knows, right? Like someone like Aaliyah, right. Someone, everyone knows that name in leadership. Great leader did something unique, very different.
Great, fantastic. Well, we look to them and say what they did is something I, you know, it’s just different. It’s not something I would do. Not some I could think of, but as soon as we do that, we take away the human factor that we’re all human, and we all have the ability to express and do things differently. And we’re doing the same thing just in our unique way. And when we realize that we’re doing the same things in our unique way, we don’t hold on to this infatuation to somebody else, therefore not putting ourselves in shame and we can actually be real with an individual.
Gene Hammett: Dr. T I know your company is one of the fast-growth companies. You’ve got a group of 22 people, as you told me earlier, how are you using this stuff to really develop the people inside your own organization?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: So I’ll tell you, we do a lot of unique things that most people come to my company, like what we’ve talked about, the first thing we do is anytime someone comes into our world, they get trained on the mission of the [00:13:00] company. It is so important. We spent a day just reeling down the mission and how the job roles and titles of every person. Are linked in their brains to their mission, to that mission. So we have a company alignment that comes together when they work with teams. This is kind of what we do is that we create this alignment inside of, so if there’s a conflict, if there’s a resolute, if there’s any challenges that go on the people know, and we’ve neurologically rewired them to let them see what they get by working in this company.
Because no person I’ve said this for many years is that no person ever worked for a company. They work for themselves. The company is the vehicle that helps them get more of what they want a lot. So we just help people get more, what they want a lot being our company and our company helps them do that. So we linked their actual values to that. And that’s a whole process that I do with myself, my teams. And then the other thing we have, I have a tool that I created using these neurologic processes of 92 different ways to rewire the brain. And we do a conflict resolution tool. So we like everybody else. has have our challenges with people instead of trying to put them to try and apologize and feel better.
We say, you know what, let’s go actually use the tools, use the methodology in the work to be able to rewire ourselves so that we can see how everything that’s happening to us on the [00:14:00] way, not in the way. So we don’t have to hold onto these emotions of guilt and shame and sorrow and pride rather. Let’s just see how it helps us get what we want by integrating it in our nervous system. When we do that, the conflict goes away and energy.
Gene Hammett: Now, we both work on the edge of different aspects of leadership. A lot of people think leadership is just, okay, let’s get the work done. Let’s get it done. Right. Let’s get it done on time. Let’s make money for the company. Let’s continue to move forward, but you’re working on the inside out fair to say, right?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: A hundred percent
Gene Hammett: when you are doing this in someone. Meeting with a little bit of resistance right there. Pride is getting in the way of their ego is getting in the way. How do you address that to get them, to see how powerful from the inside out actually is?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: Well, if I can be so bold enough to say on your podcast, I call them on their BS because the only reason we hold on to that pride is to protect ourselves. And I’ve been doing this work with over 400,000 people, as I’ve said, and I’ve seen everything under the sun and I’ve seen the grown man. I have stories that people wouldn’t believe I’ve, you know, crazy things as children and left forced parents, all this stuff. This is all part of who we are and part of who we employ.[00:15:00] And if we discount that we’re making a huge mistake. If we don’t take that into account, these are the people we’re leading. We’re taking them to a massive mistake in our leadership and the growth of our individuals. And I think a company is a growth factor. And I always said that a business is the expression of the soul and work is the expression of the soul.
And I say that respectfully. We’ve just out a theory, but rather than the expression of who you are. And so if we look at this and say, Hey, look, if an individual is meeting me with challenge and conflict, then I have to ask the question what’s why is that called? What are they protecting? And then I do what I do, my certainty exceeds anyone’s done on this. Cause this is all based on science. Not my opinion. I can take any person in is reproducible and rewire anybody. With anything. So I’m not afraid of challenging in that capacity. And then we do, and then they, we, we get them to see it. They realize it. It’s like, oh, I never looked at it that way. And then we crack their, their shell, so to speak and they become a much more authentic person.
Gene Hammett: I want to take you in one last direction here. I think this is all related, but you mentioned identity before. I know identity becomes something. My work actually begins to shift because people can understand who they [00:16:00] are at their deepest core when you talk about identity, what is it and how do you actually get people to make the shifts necessary to be the powerful leaders that they want to be?
Dr. Alok Trivedi: Sure. Great question. I look at identity a little differently. I look at identity from the point of neurology versus psychology, right? And so when I say that there’s a place in the brain that we actually have these things that we, that we look at, call their values. And these values not are not loyalties. You know, I, you know, an idealism that, you know, loyalty, humility, openness, honesty. These are not idealism or excuse me, not values in my world. These are social idealists because every human being is going to be nice and kind, or nice and mean kind and cruel, happy inside. It’s going to be both sides. And I think sometimes as leaders, what we do is we put them to sit and they can only be one way. And that’s just not reality. That’s not how the brain works, not how the body or something, how the human word. So when I say the identity has to shift, is that the individual, once they know what their true core values. From that neurologically-based and their life determines their value. Their life will find it.
They act in accordance with their values. And if they don’t know it, nor you do, you know, it as a leader, you are managing the emotion and the symptom, not the [00:17:00] person. And so when I find that, then what I do is I take them and I realized what’s what does it identify for them? Why do they do that? And then we create their identity. And what I found that there’s two different types of identity. There’s a core identity of the individual. And then there’s the transient identity. Right. The core identities are the things that you’re designed to do. That’s unique to you. Maybe, for example, for me, it’s speaking and teaching. That’s what I love to do.
I’m a healer and I’m a teacher. That’s what I do. That’s what is my core identity, but there are other times that I’ve transient identity, like being a dad, hanging out with my kid, being, the CEO of my company. These are all transient identities. That come and go, right? I’m not a dad, a hundred percent of the time. It’s not, I’m a dad when I’m with my kid, for sure. But there are other times that you’re hanging out with your friends and at that time you have a different identity. So those are transient identities that are happening. But the core identity is who you are at the source all the time within you. That’s kind of like what I think it was, you know, Gary Keller, this it your one thing. And that’s kind of what I taught. That’s how I look at it.
Gene Hammett: Dr. T I really appreciate you sharing with us some of your work, some of the insights you’ve had and the stories, really appreciate this wisdom.
Dr. Alok Trivedi: Thank you so much. And I appreciate the time.
Gene Hammett: Wow. What a powerful interview. I learned so much here about the [00:18:00] emotions of this and devoting those emotions. It really is interesting to see how other people look at the work we do to help people evolve and grow to that next level.
My job is to help you be the best leader you can be. If I can help you in any way, make sure you continue to listen to these interviews. And if you want to reach out to me, I’d love to talk to you about what’s going on in your own company, help you be the more powerful leader, and create ownership across your company. That’s what I’m known for.
So when you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of Growth Think Tank. As always lead the courage. We’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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