Leading Beyond Burnout with Purpose-Driven Communication

We explore how burnout creates a communication gap and why regulating the nervous system turns scattered messaging into clear, trustworthy leadership. Laura Cardwell shares tools that blend applied neuroscience, human design, and somatics to move from reaction to resonance.

• the cost of misalignment on trust and buy-in
• dopamine loops versus purpose-led motivation
• imposter narratives and self-worth at work
• breath and co-regulation as fast resets
• integrating human design for team synergy
• reframing “soft leadership” with data and outcomes
• building resonant teams for sustainable success
• curiosity as a daily leadership practice

“Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose”

Chapters

• 0:00 Burnout And The Communication Gap
• 2:07 Laura’s Journey And Applied Neuroscience
• 5:47 The Cost Of Misalignment And Lost Trust
• 10:57 Dopamine Loops Versus Purposeful Motivation
• 16:34 Imposter Narratives And Self-Worth
• 20:36 Integrating Neuroscience, Human Design, Somatics
• 26:40 Breath, Co‑Regulation, And On-The-Spot Tools
• 31:00 Addressing Skeptics And The “Soft” Myth
• 35:05 Resonant Teams And Sustainable Success
• 39:10 Final Advice: Lead With Curiosity

Transcript

Dr. Leah OH: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of The Communicative Leader. I'm your host, Dr. Leah O, and today we're diving into a topic that's perhaps the single greatest challenge to sustain strategic leadership: burnout and the resulting communication gap. Today we're joined by Laura Cardwell, a mystic neuroscientist and co-author of the powerful new book, Unstuck Yourself: Thrive Beyond Burnout and Discover Your True Purpose. In a world demanding more and more from leaders, the ability to communicate with purpose is often lost when a leader feels depleted and disconnected. Laura's unique approach blends the science of applied neuroscience with the wisdom of human design and semantics. This methodology offers a transformative solution and provides leaders with actionable tools to reconnect with their authentic selves and critically lead and communicate from within. Her work asserts that the greatest strategic advantage is a well-aligned, purposeful leader whose internal clarity translates directly into external influential communication. In today's episode, we're going to explore how Laura's strategies can help you move past overwhelm and stop communicating from this place of reaction or stress and instead foster a culture of sustainable success and genuine purpose-driven leadership. If you are ready to unlock your most authentic and powerful leadership voice, this episode's for you. Let's dive in and have some fun. Laura, welcome to the communicative leader. I'm really excited to spend some time with you today. And I know your expertise, you combine mystic neuroscience with practical tools for leadership. And this is so exciting for me to learn more about. And I'm hoping, you know, to set the stage, you could share a little bit about your personal journey into this unique blended approach and kind of maybe that time when you started to realize that that leader's inner state is inextricably tied to their outward strategic communication.

Laura Cardwell: 2:24

Yes, absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. And right, so you don't get to this kind of blend of mystic neuroscience with practical tools for leadership without having to really have done the work, right? So the journey is long and winding to have gotten me to a place where where this is where I'm leading. But but ultimately it comes from my own story of burnout. I've I've run a couple of companies in in my past, small small businesses, and and just grown them at a pace that was not sustainable, wasn't true to my authentic self, and ultimately ended up in states of physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual burnout. And so as I kind of went on my own personal growth, spiritual growth journey, I began to realize how important it is that we get the whole mind, body, soul working together. That often in our world, especially when it comes to our work in the world, how we're our career, let's say, we're sacrificing one of those things to fulfill one of the others. And so, and at the heart of all of that, a lot of my background is in applied neurology, which is like an energy, it works with the energy of the brain, not necessarily the chemistry, which is what we would be doing if we were in psychiatry or even the thoughts, which is more psychology. Applied neurology looks at it as an energetic system and how we get disruptions in the way that energy runs in the system. And and so from that, I realize that's like what we're really talking about when we say that is nervous system work.

Dr. Leah OH: 4:02

Okay, I was just thinking that. I was just thinking, I'm like, I wonder if this is connected to the nervous system. Like this has got to be exactly awesome. Yeah.

Laura Cardwell: 4:11

It's so funny because sometimes, sometimes I can really be brilliant and sometimes I can just be dumb. You know, like it's like I think we all have those moments. Yeah. And so for me, it took me a long time to realize that working with the energy of the system was working with the nervous system. To put those two things together took me a while, right? Like it's like, yeah. But it is so your nervous system is really your brain and your spine working together. That is a mind-body connection, right? And so we we see that in a lot of ancient modalities or even eastern modalities that they've never really been separate. But really, in in our culture, we definitely look at them as two different things, and we do not use the body as a resource to help the mind. Yeah, and so that's really how we get to this place where purpose then becomes regulating the nervous system helps the purpose of the soul use the body to create, to become the leader that you're meant to be.

Dr. Leah OH: 5:10

Yes, I love that. And I I always think too, I think I'm not sure why we're so quick to separate things and call them mutually exclusive, especially when they're not. But I I always find that there's so much truth when things are we recognize how they're cyclical and interdependent and connected. And that's when we finally start to get, I mean, buzzwords like the synergy, but that's when everything works together. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Laura, thank you for sharing some of your experiences and the past that kind of led you here. Because my next question, I want to think about that cost of inauthentic communication. So, you know, you do work, your work focuses on moving leaders beyond burnout. And from a communication perspective, how does leader depletion, it how does it it not just affect productivity, but also compromise the authenticity and clarity of a leader's messaging? And what is the cost of that misalignment?

Laura Cardwell: 6:11

Absolutely. It's such a great question because it's really we're starting to kind of get into the heart of why. Why bother being a purpose-driven leader? Why bother healing the burnout, right? Most of our culture just teaches us to push through, just to push, right? And so I think there's a couple different costs. The first cost is personal, like when we're really out of alignment, our body, mind, and soul is gonna show us, right? We're gonna have pain in our lives, and that could be physical pain, it can be emotional pain, it can be mental pain, it can be spiritual pain, but we're gonna experience pain. And so, and then pain that isn't dealt with personally is projected. So then we begin to project that pain onto our people around us, our families, our corporations, our businesses, right? And and then pain that's being projected onto someone now becomes their responsibility and they have to take it on. And so now you've got this like this cycle that that needs to first be broken internally, right? And we need to value slowing down and saying, Well, why am I feeling pain? Yeah, and not just like, what's the band-aid I need for the pain? But like, let me just like you know, so so what happens when a a leader is living in pain of some sort and trying to lead from that pain, that misalignment, I'll just, you know, those are words, but like when people say misalignment, we're like, what does that mean? And I'm like, it means pain, right? Like that's what it means. But when people lead from that, the cost of that is trust. There's you know, like I can't trust you as my leader because you're projecting your pain on me. Yeah, right. And so, and now if I don't have trust, I don't have buy-in. I don't have buy-in. Oh, yeah, you know, yeah, I don't, I'm not here for you now. I'm here for me. And now I'm gonna start to make decisions that are based on me and not the the choice to be part of something that's here. So and when people stop trusting and buying into the corporation or the company they're working for, they've got one foot out the door. They're starting to look for something else, right? Yeah, because you're create you're now creating a pain point for them, which is now their misalignment. And if they're listening to their misalignment, they're gonna start to make shifts in their life and you're gonna lose them. Yeah, you know, so it's like you're gonna, and then you're gonna have the the cost of that becomes a loss of productivity. I mean, we can see it statistically in the number, the bottom line numbers, right? We we see turnover rates go up, we see productivity go down, vice versa. We've seen companies bring in, you know, oh, especially over the last 10 years, we've seen major companies like Microsoft and Pepsi start to move towards heart-centered leadership decisions and strategies for productivity and longevity in the workplace. And and they've had huge, I think one of those statistics is 236% increase in productivity. Wow. Right? Like because people are buying it. Yep, yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a it's got a ripple effect that's much bigger than just like I'm in pain and I'm just gonna push through.

Dr. Leah OH: 9:14

Yeah, exactly. And when you were talking, especially like losing trust, losing buy-in, I was thinking it's it's like a bad game of dominoes, like you've knocked like one thing knocks over the next, and then you realize you're in this place where you have more pain and less folks around you who are there for the you know, the collective for the group as a whole.

Laura Cardwell: 9:38

Yeah. And now you're just working with a group of people in pain.

Dr. Leah OH: 9:42

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Cardwell: 9:44

It's um it's not gonna grow, right? And what we know, and I think we'll probably talk about this at some point, is that growth really comes from internal resonance and alignment, you know, that synergy that you said. Like that's where growth actually comes from. So you can't grow if you're living in pain. Yeah. That's also I mean, pain can be a way to grow if you're listening.

Dr. Leah OH: 10:07

Yes. Exactly. And I love too that idea when you're talking about these huge organizations that are taking kind of that heart-centered approach to leadership. I love the modeling, right? I love what that is communicating in terms of uh value. And that's what I tell organizations. You don't even really have to like buy in or believe this, but if you want to see that impact on your bottom line, you want people who are engaged. This this is the path. And I love that so many organizations are starting to finally get on that healthy bandwagon.

Laura Cardwell: 10:42

Absolutely. I don't think it's a choice. I mean, this might be skipping ahead a little bit, but I I do believe that kind of the future, the future of business, the future of wellness, the future of prosperity, yeah, the future of how we be in the world, it really is about alignment and resonance. And and I think even companies are waking up to like, oh, I mean, we see that, right? We see that with the the whole millennial generation that was like, I'm not doing that. Yeah. And then everybody's like, whoa, whoa, wait, you're not just gonna be the cog in my wheel that I want you to be. Yeah, I'm just gonna judge you back into it. And they're like, no, no, right now they might have been the pendulum swinging kind of hard to one side, of like, but what they're saying spiritually is like, I refuse to be in pain in this company in some kind of way.

Dr. Leah OH: 11:34

Exactly.

Laura Cardwell: 11:34

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 11:35

And Gen Z is continuing with that torch and yes. Yeah. Oh, I love this. What a fun conversation, Laura. So it's just like my happy place to be in. So I want to learn, you talk about a purpose gap, and I want to learn more about this. And I know you in the work that you do, you help leaders reconnect with their authentic selves and lead from within. So I'm hoping you can help us, you know, how do you define authentic communication, especially when we have these high-stakes corporate leadership environments, and and then help us to think about the self-alignment and how what does that do for us then?

Laura Cardwell: 12:13

Absolutely. This is where I have to, you may have to rein me in. Okay. No, no, you go, girl. I'm gonna I'm gonna encourage you. Yeah, this is really kind of the heart of my aha moment in my work was this realization one day. I was studying. I mean, a lot of my background comes from studying perception, how we perceive things, you know, and that really helped me to begin to understand the how what we're thinking becomes this photon storm of electrical activity that becomes neurotransmitters, that sends chemical messages through the nervous system, lighting up feelings and sensations in the body. And then that becomes that that literally delivers a message to the cell that says, be this, do this, right? And so this connection between what we are thinking ourselves into being and the meaning we assign our lives around us, and how we physically become that and how our environment begins to reflect that just was it's just fascinating when you get into that realm of study, right? And so mind-blowing aha moment after mind-blowing aha moment, right? And so, but in that, in that journey, in in applied neurology, there's a lot of you're just kind of doing the thing, you're looking at the pathway, you're tracing the pathway of where the energy goes during from different areas of the brain. And you and you kind of know what you're doing, you know what you're doing, you know where you are, you know what you're doing, but you're not necessarily looking at it like a system. Right. And so one day I was really deeply kind of following this. We have a this pathway called the reward pathway, the motivation pathway. And it kind of gets passed over a lot when we talk about all these other more important, like fight or flight, people focused on other kind of neurological pathways when we're looking at the nervous system. But I really began to slow down and look like at the at the primitive level, this pathway is the one that gets us to go eat, to find shelter, right? It's it motivates us. It gets it, it literally collects everything and says, go into the world. And then as it gets into the more limbic areas or the more emotional areas of the brain, it becomes this pathway that's really about reward and pleasure and play. And you know, so it's like reward and motivation, and and so it's like that is that I I got the signal to go eat, but I actually went to eat ice cream because it made me feel good, right? Like it's like it's that drive to like go get the ice cream and fill the bowl. And so so we get so and that is a dopaminergic pathway. And we, you know, dopamine is something we're hearing tossed around a lot right now. It's a kind of a hot word. And dopamine is a motivator, right? It is it's a motivator, but by itself, it has no real emotional context. Okay, and it can keep us in these loops of external validation.

Dr. Leah OH: 15:08

Okay.

Laura Cardwell: 15:08

And so when we have leaders and when we have workers who are looking or being driven by external validation, then it is it is productive but meaningless. And so it has no meaning. We haven't assigned any meaning to it. It's only when this same pathway travels kind of through the cortical areas of the brain, the thinking mind, and then back down into the system that we see it gather the neurochemistry that starts to assign deeper meaning. And that's the pathway that says, but why? Who am I here to be? Why am I here? We will inevitably start to question that because it motivation is really curiosity, right? We're curious. And so curiosity then opens the mind. Curiosity opens the mind in so many ways. And so when we're open, we're more creative, we're more innovative, we have more access to the both the right and the left brain, and we're asking for deeper meaning. And so for me, if you really want to be a high-stakes leader, yeah, you have to be going beyond using that dopaminergic pathway. It will wear itself out, it will create either addictions or it will create burnout, right? So it's like and for that long-term kind of sustainable being able to let your purpose lead your your communication, it has to have a deeper meaning. It has to access that deeper part of the neurology. So that's we're waking up. I think we're waking up as a culture to like our purpose is more important than our be our doing. Yeah, you know, and when when I say purpose, I always mean it's who I'm being. And then from there, why I be that, and then from there what I do. Okay. So we tend to talk about purpose as our career or what we're doing, as we're doing, you know. Yeah. But it's actually even and even if we've evaluated that, where we say why, right? So it's the same pathway, yeah, right? We the dopamine to the seeking, but really believe below that, but in the depth of it, when it we really go in, purpose is about am I being who I was, I'm here to be. Yeah. Right. Am I in alignment with that truth? Yeah. And then am I communicating from that place?

Dr. Leah OH: 17:19

Yeah, exactly. And well, I love the learning the physiolog physiology of that, of purpose and the that deeper meaning making. And it is helpful, you know, as a society that's wired for, I think, these like quick dopamine hits and this external validation, it becomes a lot easier to see why so many people get stuck on that track and why it's so hard to get off of.

Laura Cardwell: 17:50

Yes. Yeah. I tell people all the time, you know, getting the external validations at work is like eating sugar. Yes. Yeah. Right? You're getting, you're getting, yeah, every time somebody says, good job, you know, you're getting that little, but it is finite. You cannot sustain it.

Dr. Leah OH: 18:08

Yeah.

Laura Cardwell: 18:08

Right. The the real joy has to come from an internalized alignment, not an externalized success.

Dr. Leah OH: 18:14

Yes, yes. Beautifully stated, Laura. So let's keep thinking about leaders. And you know that many of our most successful leaders and organizations and industries, they're subject matter experts, right? They've gotten here because they they know they can talk the talk, they can walk the walk, but they struggle to transition from communicating what they know to kind of who they are, or even the ability to connect these in meaningful ways. So I'm wondering in the the work that you do, what do you see as these big internal barriers or these self-imposed old narratives that prevent our leaders from speaking their true purpose?

Laura Cardwell: 18:58

Oh, I mean, do we have all day to talk about the narratives? Right. Because it's like, think about how many people end up in a leadership position in which they now feel the imposter syndrome of I don't deserve to be here. Yeah. That's the first one, right? Like it, you know, so much of leadership is based in self-worth and self-value. And so if we're not, if we don't believe we're worth the position that we're in, then then we're gonna project pain because we're we're in pain, right? And so we're gonna project that insecurity onto our team. We're gonna, we're gonna look for other people to validate us instead of knowing that we're valid, we're valuable just because we're in that role, right? So so it starts with every single narrative, and we don't have to all day to list why we all have the narrative. And it is true also statistically that women are more likely to experience the imposter syndrome as they move up in leadership roles than men are, right? Like, because I mean, that's just a statistic that still just goes with all the other they're not being valued often the same, right? So it's like we can, you know, those things are true, but I think I think so. It starts with being willing to evaluate your own story about your own worth. Do I believe I'm I'm worth it? I also want to just take a second and and say here that I believe that every single human is a leader. It's not, you know, we call them titled leaders, right? When they finally when they're in a role in a company that's deemed a leader, we're looking at things from like a hierarchical perspective. But when we look at things on the on the full grid and not just in one ladder order, everyone is here to lead and we're leading in different ways. You know, we lead from the front, we lead from the sides, we lead from the back, we lead in all sorts of you know, support is leadership, empathy is leadership, you know. So it's like so all of us then are being asked to look at our story of self-worth and self-value, right? Because if I'm in a support role in a company, do I value myself in the support role? And am I being valued? Because if I don't value me, no one else can value me. So I need to look at my narrative around value. I I find that we we wrap that conversation up in lots of different words. We can look at it from lots of different angles, but when we really peel away the layers, it almost always comes down to self-worth.

Dr. Leah OH: 21:22

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. And it's it's so challenging, right? Like, and especially you bring up women in leadership positions, and we think about socialization and then I mean the literal narratives we hear on television, the headlines. And when you were talking, it made me think so way back in season one of this podcast, and I was just kind of finding my footing. I even did this episode all on my own, and it was about imposter syndrome. And even, I think it's like six years later, it's still in my top five most downloaded. I was my own guest. I was just like presenting literature on it, you know. And and so, yeah, I really see how that that is one that kind of is this weight that continues to kind of pull people down and be a hard one to escape from.

Laura Cardwell: 22:17

It's so hard to deal with. I mean, I just want to say there, like when we talk like this, it makes it sound like it's easy to just name imposter syndrome. Like it's like, yeah, but it's so much deeper than that. Like you said, it's it's it's in the energy of the world we're born into. It's not even just the narratives we're told, it's it's reprogramming. And that is why it's so important to get the mind, body, emotional system all on the same page. Because if you're just doing the affirmations like, I am worthy, I'm worthy, that's only working in the mental field. If your nervous system doesn't believe that, you're still radiating a different story. Yeah. It's like it's deeper than just the mindset.

Dr. Leah OH: 22:59

Yeah. And I'm wondering if this next question will get to that alignment. Um, and if not, maybe we can circle back to that. But I'm thinking about the strategic voice and thinking about your methodology. And I know you bring applied neuroscience, human design, and somatics. And I'm wondering how you integrate these principles to help leaders physically, mentally, spiritually create that strategic voice. And I think most important, that is sustainable, right? And certainly I think when we have all those, we can assume it's kind of rooted in purpose. But how do you Laura, like, what does that work look like? How do we start to integrate those so that we really have that inner power, right? And that inner peace and that source of energy that continues to give, instead of just, like you said, waiting for the external like hits of sugar in the office and the good jobs and well done.

Laura Cardwell: 23:57

I mean, this is like first of all, it starts with I got here because this is my journey. I didn't read something in a book, go to school, learn it, and decide I was going to teach everybody how to do it. Yeah. You know, like I got here because this has been my journey to like trying to heal things and realizing I only had a piece of the puzzle. And so I had this very long and varied background. You know, I was an art jeweler. Actually, the the first time I burnt out, I was an art jeweler for about eight years and I grew my company too fast. I had too many accounts and I couldn't make the jewelry necessary in the time frame. And I just ended up really in fetal position, you know, just like I just could not function. It really deep states of burnout. And it wasn't because I didn't have the passion or the love. Yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 24:43

Yeah.

Laura Cardwell: 24:44

Have the self-worth to tell people no.

Dr. Leah OH: 24:47

Yeah.

Laura Cardwell: 24:47

Right. So, so in the so as I start to kind of talk about these things, this has been on my personal journey back to health from being really, and I think health is a mind-body-soul thing. It's not just one, you know. And so I started off working with, like I said, the nervous system and the mental field of what's going on and really kind of understanding how blocks in the in the energy of the spine and the brain created pain points mentally and emotionally and physically for people. And I really, I really loved that work, like helping people kind of move that, see different things, and starting to ask the right question at the right time to get that energy to move in a different way. Perspective can shift energy in really big ways. And that's where we bring in kind of coaching. Coaches, coaches don't give you answers, they ask you questions, right? And and it gets you in that place. And so, but what I found was that no matter what, it was still kind of missing this like this deeper, but who am I here to be?

Dr. Leah OH: 25:49

Who am I here to be?

Laura Cardwell: 25:51

And that's where human design danced around me for a long time. But human design, if if for those people that don't know, it's like a personality quiz, you know, like a Myers Briggs, only it's a it's what we call a timestamp. So based on your birthday. What I like about things that are based on your birthday is it takes away all of your story. You cannot use your filters to fill it out, right? Like and so what we get is a really accurate imprint of what those filters, those perceptions might be. And then we can see, like, oh, that's the way I perceive the world. And so therefore, this is the way my brain thinks, this is the way my, you know, and it starts to fill in some of that, that, that subtle body question that we have of like, who am I here to be? Human design is is not necessarily meant to be this map to like you're this, this, and this, and these are the boxes you're meant to live in. It's more a guide to how you be in the world energetically. Okay. And it tells you, like, what who am I here? Who am I here to be first? What am I radiating from the inside of me? But then how am I meant to be in relationship with other people? And that's where it really takes it one step beyond a personality quiz, which is generally focused on just me. This is more about me in relationship to other. And then once I'm that, human design really begins to open up and answer, and also how am I meant to serve? And that is where purpose really comes in. Service is really our our soul leadership, right? Like the thing I'm here to give back in a bigger way. And so, but to incorporate all of those things together, we need the body to get online. Yep. And that's where somatics come in, right? So our physical bodies are just one constant signal to the brain. We actually have more information coming from the gut and the heart into the brain than we have from the brain going to the body. Oh, how interesting. Right. And we don't think about it that way, right? We think about brain down because we think hierarchy because that's what we've been trained to think. So, synergy, though, is that there's actually way more information coming the other way around, right? So we get this like flow up and down. And if we're not listening to the body, now I want to say this because right now there's this hot topic of like my body says you're not safe for me. Right. Like, and and my I'm listening to my body and it says this isn't safe and you need to change that, and this isn't safe and you need to change that. And I just want to name that that's a conversation that's going around when we first start listening to our body, we realize we might not feel heard or valued or safe in certain situations. And that does create some need for change. But if you're asking someone else to change to make it better, that's that's not what it's about, right? Like this is the body's wisdom for us. And so it might be that that person's not in alignment with you, that job is not in alignment with you, that situation's not in alignment with you. But your work is to learn how to regulate your own nervous system. And this is the part of the conversation that I think has been left out. Yes. We've somehow left it out, right? Like it's like every it we've almost turned. There's a really great book called The Coddling of the American Mind. Okay. And they kind of name the three things that are going on in this younger generation that are becoming the challenge that happens when we, you know, like what they call coddling. And one of them is that we have this whole generation, this Gen X, Gen Z, I mean the Gen Z and the millennial kind of where they're looking for the external environment to be safe. Yes. Instead of learning, no one's taught them how to create safety in their own nervous system. And so that's really what this blend of applied neuroscience and human design and somatics is really doing is it's teaching people how to create safety in their own system and then to lead from that safety. Yes. That that knowing, that inner knowing. Once we feel safe to be who we're meant to be, we can be it.

Dr. Leah OH: 29:51

Yeah. Yeah. I I love so much about that, Laura. So I love it, and I I do think I think your work is helping us to uh Kind of formulate that answer to that question that a lot of people have been like, okay, I know that I need to learn how to better regulate this, but how? Like what happens next? What are those steps? And it's funny too, and you're talking about these younger generations. So some of my peer-reviewed most recent work, I've done some looking at when millennials transitioned in, and most recently with Gen Z. And essentially it is folks who've been in organizations for a while being like, why do they expect us to change everything for them? We can't do this. And then these millennials and Gen Zers who are like, why aren't they changing these things? People are used to people change when we tell them this doesn't feel right, this doesn't feel good. And that's where we're seeing these like continued kind of clashes. So it's, I was smiling because I I always, you know, you can see how these things are happening. You're seeing what's going on in individuals, and then I'm looking at them in these big data samples, these large cohort groups, and we're seeing it in action.

Laura Cardwell: 31:06

Absolutely. I do think I think on a on a grand scale, we're moving from that hierarchy, right? Which has been kind of controlled down and not in a bad way. I think it just was what was was. Yeah. And and I think it's not on on accident. I think it is part of our human growth that we're at a place in humanity where we have to stop and say, wait, what is emotional regulation and why are we not teaching that? What is nervous system safety and why are we not teaching how to access that? What is purpose and why are we not leading with that? I think we are, these are global questions that are being that, you know, I always believe that there's the the interface of my personal growth. I have to do the work internally, but we are also kind of looking at things generationally, we're looking at things, there's archetypes upon archetypes upon archetype, yeah, right. And then there's the collective experience, and that's where archetypes actually come from. And so at that collective level, we're at a place in human history where we're saying, oh, wait, control is not a way forward, fear is not a way forward. My that's not the way. And so we have these, you know, we can look at those in microcosms and look at like how that's showing up in generations, but it's but what's bubbling up is that we've we have, you know, I'm almost 50. The generation before me had very little control. There was not, there was not a whole lot of, and there was very little emotional awareness, very little. I mean, they had it for themselves, but you didn't bring that into the world. No, so like my generation is this bridging generation of okay, I've been told that I need to just get in line and do what I'm supposed to do, but I'm having all these emotions, and how do I figure that out? And our leadership role, I believe, our leadership role as a generation in every role in which we are, yeah, is to teach the younger generations how to emotionally regulate. Yes.

Dr. Leah OH: 33:10

Yeah. It's part of our role. What a gift. And I think this next question kind of helps us to start thinking about that in ways. I know you have a new book coming out, and I'm so excited about it. And I wonder if we could think about how to transform being overwhelmed into clarity. And I know in in your book you you kind of talk about this practical step-by-step strategy for leaders to take those moments of internal when they're overwhelmed or that decision decision fatigue. And then how do we get unstuck? How do we translate that into internal clarity and you know, allowing that to shine through in our messaging then in our our relationships with others? I mean, yes, yes.

Laura Cardwell: 33:56

So, and this is the heart of the book, right? Is that it's not enough just to know things. We have to be different. Yeah. And in order to be different, we need tools, right? We need we cannot just like we cannot think ourselves to different. We won't change. Right. Often our thoughts are based in very old programming. Yeah. And so part of the work is deprogramming what what that older messaging is. And so in the book, we give the the last part of the book, we really give the full what we call the integrative somatic experience, okay, which can be broken down into many practical steps. But the first one, the very first one, is to breathe. And it's so funny, Leah, because so many people like if we we know this, we we scientifically we know what breath does for us, right? We we know this, but if you ask people, it's when I do these these talks or these workshops, and I'm like, okay, how many people have heard that your breath can help regulate your nervous system? And almost everybody raises their hand. And then I say, keep your hand up if you do that when you need it. And only like one hand. Yeah, it's just like because it's hard for us to remember to use the tool in the moment. That's because that's what a reactive brain does. It takes us out of our what I call our responsible mind, which is the one that's able to respond, and it takes us into reactive mind, which is way faster. And and our reactive mind is often based in primitive fears and fight or flight and nervous system dysregulation. So practically, you know, in the book, we give like some different examples of some ways you can kind of change the neurology in the moment. That like if you have, we we start with if you if you don't, if you can't get away and you need to handle it right now in the boardroom. Yeah, how do you belly breathe? Three big full box breaths to like before you open your mouth. It's amazing breath. I mean, we could talk about breath in it for a whole episode, you know, and what it does to the system, but what it does to the brain is it it accesses creativity. Oh, and creativity gives us clarity. And so there's a direct correlation between oxygen in the brain, our ability to respond, and our ability to answer with clarity from our breath. Now that actually goes all the way back to Chinese medicine and the and the basis of Chinese medicine, there's there's five elements, and the element of metal is the lung energy, and the element of the lung and the metal energy is clarity and understanding from a higher self, right? So, like this is not something that's new to us, right? That's what I'm saying there is that we can trace that back. And so I tell people if you only have three seconds to answer the question, use those three seconds to breathe. Yeah, and then the second thing is to breathe from the body and not your mind. So don't, you know, like literally drop into get into the lowest part of your body you can feel, whatever that is, and breathe from there because you're reconnecting then the mind-body connection. Yeah, and you can access the wisdom of the body. We tend to feel like a culture, and I am very guilty of this that feels a pressure to answer from our minds to be certain, to know, to but but wisdom now I mean this is knowledge, right? What we've got in our brain, but wisdom comes from the body, yeah. So a few deep breaths and connecting to the body, and it's amazing what comes out your mouth, right? Like it's like, oh my gosh, that's the answer, right? Like, so and then if you need more, if you have a little more time, the book does give you some some deeper things where you can really move the emotion that's in the way if that's what's going on. But always the first thing, the step-by-step, the first thing is always breath.

Dr. Leah OH: 37:47

Awesome. Yeah, right. And something we can always access, but that we usually tend to forget. But if we're thinking about it, I like that. I always love the uh uh like the teaching, leadership, communication, you know, that tool analogy and being like we eventually you want to get to a deeper where it's it's you know part of your lens and your view. But in the beginning, if we are recognizing like I need help regulating, then pulling out that breathing tool and thinking about that is the way it's gonna set you up to be more successful.

Laura Cardwell: 38:22

Right. And for right now, breathing is free. Yeah, and yeah, and you know, like it's like you have access to it in the moment. It doesn't require that you remove yourself, you have other tools, you know. It's like the other thing that I have found that's really important is is can I connect to someone? You know, like clarity cannot come from chaos. I mean, clarity does come from chaos when it comes from wisdom and not knowledge, but yeah, it's like sometimes I tell people like connect to their self first and then look up and connect to someone. Right often when we're trying to get the answer from our own craziness, yeah, we can't we we need to co-regulate sometimes. So find someone who's making eye contact with you and hold it for a second. Yeah, it's amazing what connection can do to open up energetic space.

Dr. Leah OH: 39:10

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, that's something I learned. I have an anxious kiddo, and I one of the best things that I learned was how communicative nervous systems are. And so just being able to maintain my own regulation and calm in that moment would so quickly calm everything down for that little.

Laura Cardwell: 39:33

Yeah. It's I mean, we could talk about the science of co-regulation and what that actually means for a long time, but it is true we are energetic beings in interaction with other energetic beings, and our energy affects other people and their energy affects us. So it is true, yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 39:51

Like, yes. So that makes me think in communication. We have a uh theory emotional contagion, right? And it's it's explaining that just in different words, but it works both ways, yeah.

Laura Cardwell: 40:05

Like you can have an emotional contagion that is someone who's angry in an office and everybody is dancing around that person and and feels the anger, but you can also have someone who's just a little drop of sunshine and everyone feels that, right? It does work both ways, yeah, exactly.

Dr. Leah OH: 40:22

So let's let's talk about skepticism. Because I imagine sometimes, I mean, even as a leadership communication scholar, I'll have people, especially the old guard who will be skeptical of it. So I'm wondering, Laura, you know, when you're shifting to this purpose-driven, authentic leadership style, I think that it's often, not often, it can be mischaracterized as soft in some traditional business environments. So I'm wondering how can leaders effectively communicate, you know, in bottom line benefit terms, how you're unstuck, unstuck yourself as part of your book title, how this approach can lead to secure buy-in and and motivate those around them.

Laura Cardwell: 41:07

Yeah. I mean, I have a really, it took me a long time to really know this about myself, but I have a really logical brain. And I always really identified myself as kind of the more creative because I was raised in a house of of deeply skeptical scientific minds. Okay. And so yeah, compared to them, I was creative, right? Like it was like they, you know, like they're incredibly uh high-producing, amazing humans, right? So it's I have an amazing family, but it took me a long time to understand that my I actually part of my human design is to be skeptical. And that skepticism serves my curiosity so that I can build those bridges. So, one of the things I often find myself is in a room full of the old guard skepticism, you know, like, and how do we communicate how important this new type of leadership to them? It's to them, it is like a new paradigm of leadership. There's you know, it's it's it's often foreign, right? And so, and it hasn't worked for them in the past. I want to say that like they can list out why soft leadership has not worked for them and it hasn't gotten the results. And so I try and help them understand that emotional intelligence is not the same thing as soft leadership. Soft leadership is no boundaries, soft leadership is no no leadership, right? Emotion leading with emotional intelligence is is different than just not leading. Yeah, and that's what they've correlated often is that to lead with emotional intelligence means I can't lead. I can't I can't tell people what to do. And I'm like, you can tell people what to do, but you're gonna tell people what to do from a more informed and a more neurologically efficient place. Yeah, right. So if you are regulated and leading and communicating from authenticity, and that's what I often tell them is it's for them, it's not about make making everybody else be different. Yeah, it's about leading from their authenticity. Once they do that, that's regulating their emotional system, they're co-regulating the people in the room to their authenticity, and then those people want to do what you want them to do versus trying to control them into doing it. Yeah, right. Like, and that's inefficient and often doesn't work. And then you you le you lose people, you know, and then I I remind them that to be regulated in your nervous system is efficiency, right? Like that's the brain is always trying to be efficient, yeah. And so an efficient, regulated leader is more creative, they're more innovative, they make better decisions, they have they retain their client, their their people in their company longer, they have long-term buy-in from their, you know, they don't just expect people to commit, they create an environment in which people want to commit. Yeah, and that's different. And so yeah, and that that ultimately will save their organization. Like, then we put it into statistics, right? Like it saves money, it creates better productivity, it reduces turnover, it increases engagement, right? Like the data backs authentic leadership much more than it backs controlling leadership, which the old guard has only ever learned how to control their way into leadership. And it's not their fault, it's what they were modeled.

Dr. Leah OH: 44:25

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and and I like I like too that you raise up that, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, an authentic approach probably would have fallen flat, or you would have had to find the the exact right environment for this to thrive. And I think that's a really helpful way of removing any potential blame or shame and recognizing that things have changed. And you have this option to change with it, but it's likely to feel a lot better and like authentic in the in the title, right? It says it all there.

Laura Cardwell: 45:02

And they need to be validated in their what they've created. You know, we we're we're currently in a culture that's fairly shaming offense. Yes, yep. And so they're they're fairly defensive right now, and they yeah, and I get it, right? Like there's it feels like they're being devalued and and instead of appreciated, but need to change. And if you can appreciate what they've created and who they are, then they're willing, you know, like everybody's willing to make changes when they're feeling appreciated. Look at every single kind of, but we're we've we're in a dangerous place of shaming and blaming. And I don't I don't think that's leadership.

Dr. Leah OH: 45:41

No, nope, nope, I agree, couldn't agree more. Yeah. So let's look at sustainable success again. Because I think that in a lot of the conversations I've had, I've you know, talked to people, I've I've tried this and I worked for a little bit or I've done this for a little bit, but I couldn't, I couldn't sustain it. I couldn't integrate it into, you know, that daily repertoire. So, in your experience, Laura, how does communication, when it's deeply rooted in purpose and transparency, how does that foster a culture of trust, especially when that leader is communicating strategy in a different way?

Laura Cardwell: 46:19

Yeah. I think this is one of the places where human design really plays out in the when when we bring human design into the culture, to the teams, human design is really about the ecosystem of humans and how we interact. Yeah. And so when we first learn who I'm meant to be and how I function best in the world, and I really do the internal work to align with that, and that can be hard. I'm not devaluing the process of that. That can be hard. But what it what it happens energetically is we we become what I call resonant, a resonant leader, meaning I'm really in alignment with my mind, body, and soul are all in alignment, and I become a resonant leader, and a resonant leader is magnetic. It it's current, it's that charisma, right? We feel it, we know it, we're attracted to it. And so, in this journey, then to creating teams or sustainable cultures or sustainable success, they don't, they're not looking for perfection, they're looking for congruence. We're looking for everyone being in their resonant leadership. If everyone in the room is in their resonant leadership, what happens energetically is we are amplifying something much bigger than something much bigger than even the sum of its parts. Yeah. Right. It's like there's an amplification that comes when we trust that each person's authenticity is is valuable, you know. And what happens right now is that we can often not feel like that if that person isn't acting exactly the way that I think they should, then it won't work. Right. Like, but if we trust that diversity in that way, like people are meant to be different, yeah. And if we allow that that difference in the way they need to be, the way they need to show up, the way that even like when we really dive into human design, some people aren't meant to work nine to five. Yeah, what happens if we trust them to work based on their energy flow, yeah, then they are way more productive, they bring way more to the table. You know, like so it's like there's there's a it's a trust that flows both ways. Yes. And if you can really learn to trust, and we are not a culture that learns to trust very easily, right? Like it's like no trust isn't trained in us. And I think that goes back to like we have so many, so many of us were even born into like let's just say religions that taught us like trust was outside of us. We needed to trust in something out there, you know. So it's like learning to trust can feel foreign, you know, and then trusting myself first and then outward. So sustainable success happens through this internal work towards towards alignment, which creates resonance, which creates more charisma, yeah, and then amplifies a team in a way that's like it. I say that's where the magic happens because you cannot even now you're into the realm of possibility and you cannot even think your way to where that team is going. Yeah, it's even you can't even put on your vision board how great that team might be. Yeah, you know, it's just it shocks you. So so yeah, it's it's that. It's and and trust comes from the safety of knowing I am safe in me and you are safe in you, and it's safe for you to be you, and it's safe for me to be me. And we've relearned how to to navigate relationship from that place, and that requires emotional regulation and being willing to have hard conversations, yeah, and being willing to stay in our authenticity and being willing to stay curious, and you know, and those are just things that we're we're just relearning. We've known them, they're in there, but we're relearning them in business and leadership. Exactly.

Dr. Leah OH: 50:06

That's what I always think. I'm like, those are hard things for sure, but I think it's also important to raise up like staying in an inauthentic place or being in an organization where we don't trust and we don't have buy-in. That's a really hard place and a hard thing too. So it's kind of like choose, choose your hard. And one's gonna come with a lot more benefits than than the other.

Laura Cardwell: 50:30

Yeah, yeah, one's gonna probably lead to burnout somewhere.

Dr. Leah OH: 50:33

Yeah, exactly.

Laura Cardwell: 50:35

Exactly. You can't carry those. You we say it's wearing masks, you know, you can't wear the masks for for forever.

Dr. Leah OH: 50:42

Yeah, exactly.

Laura Cardwell: 50:44

They have a cost, yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 50:46

So, Laura, I have two final questions for you. And these are interconnected. This is way we end all of our episodes of the communicative leader. So the first part is, you know, what is the advice, the challenge, the tip for our titled leaders out there? And then the second part of the question is, you know, what do you want to leave employees of all ranks across all industries in terms of that tip challenger piece of advice related to, you know, leadership communication?

Laura Cardwell: 51:17

Absolutely. So starting with the titled leaders, yeah. You know, my when when when asked this kind of question, it took it took me a while to kind of hone in on what how I wanted to answer that question, because there's so much you want to leave a leader with, right? But I have learned that if I could just give one piece of advice, it's curiosity. It's like curiosity, if I just stop and get curious about how I'm feeling, about how they're feeling, about what's going on, about am I in alignment? Am I about to say something from my true self, my or from from a mask that I'm wearing? Am I listening to them fully? You know, curiosity opens the pathways that open up the right and the left brain together, and we get the cohesion state, right? And so so I would give every leader to be a curious leader, you know, like to ask more questions. And if you're not sure, close your mouth and say, tell me more. Yeah. You know, like that's that's pretty much all of us could use that in every relationship that we have. Yeah. And then for the employees of the world, you know, for for the rest of us, I would say that learning that that burnout isn't a failure. You haven't you haven't failed your way to a place. It's feedback. It's like, wait, I'm I'm being given an opportunity to look again and say, wait, something in that whole situation wasn't for me. Yeah. And either I need to clean up my side of the road because I've got some, I've brought some of my my shit with me to this. Yeah. Or the environment is not working for me. Yeah. You know, and and that can be a scary thing. I want to name that, or yeah, you know, even the idea that I might need to change jobs or I might need to change something in my life can be pretty scary for the nervous system. So same advice, curiosity. I wonder. Yeah. I wonder what's what my body's trying to give me.

Dr. Leah OH: 53:12

Yeah. And I really love because I think you're right, so many people see burnout as failure. Like I have fundamentally screwed something up. Yeah. Like I am driven this right into the wall. But I I love that idea is feedback and recognizing that you know, we're taking away that blame and that shame and saying, like, what are we learning? Getting curious about why we've gotten here and why we feel this way. Because then we can be productive. We're not stuck. Yes. Yes.

Laura Cardwell: 53:43

Yeah. Exactly. Those words. Yes. Yes.

Dr. Leah OH: 53:48

Laura, this has been an absolute delight. I have learned so much. And it's, I love leadership communication, and it's so just thrilling for me when I can learn about different elements and different fields that are infusing into it in such important and innovative, and I really think sustainable ways that we're going to see some cool changes. So thank you for sharing your time and expertise with us. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Laura Cardwell: 54:17

I'm so grateful.

Dr. Leah OH: 54:19

All right, my friends, that wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. Looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.