Podcast Player Episode 057

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome to The Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and author of the bestselling book, The Gaslight Effect. I'm an educator and a psychoanalyst, but first and foremost, I'm a wife, a mother, a sister, aunt, and healer. And just like many of you, I was a victim of gaslighting. Please join me for each episode as I interview fascinating guests and explore the concept of gaslighting. You'll learn what it truly means to be gaslighted, how it feels, how to recognize it, and how to understand it, and ultimately how to get out of it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Before we begin, I want you to know that talking about gaslighting can bring up challenging and painful emotions. Give yourself permission to feel them. Some of you may wanna go more deeply with your emotions. While some of you may hold them more lightly, no matter what you're feeling, know that your emotions are a guide to your inner life. Your emotions are sacred and uniquely you respect and embrace them for they have information to give you. If you want to listen to other episodes of The Gaslight Effect Podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being here with me.

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome everyone to this episode of the Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm so delighted and really honored to have my colleague and friend, Dr. Richard Boyatzis with us. Richard is a distinguished university professor of Case, Western Reserves University, and a professor in the Department of Organizational Behavior Psychology and Cognitive Science. Something I did not know about you, Richard, is that you have a BS in aeronautics and an astronautics from MIT and a PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard. Please tell our audience about yourself. Your bio is so long that we would take the entire hour if I were to read it. So thank you so much for sharing your background with, with listeners.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Thank you, Robin. First and foremost, I'm a scientist and, uh, among the sciences, I would say I'm probably more rooted in the social sciences of primarily a psychologist like you, Robin. And, but I also, because of the training I got right from the very beginning in a multidisciplinary doctoral program, I also do a lot with cultural anthropology and sociology and social psychology, but also clinical work. And, uh, as you know, having, I, I did clinical work and trained therapists and worked with alcoholics and drug addicts during the seventies while I was starting the research on competencies and also working on what made people who drank get aggressive when they did. Fundamentally, my quest though, started back when, I mean, I'm not gonna go through a whole history, but let's shorthand my parents immigrants from Greece, although my father had started the university in Greece, he got to the us took out legally 1938.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: I mean my, my in-laws, my wife's parents immigrated from England, but, so, and my father got to the US in 1938 and he, um, got in under the Roan quota because they all came legally, which is an important distinction. Um, and because he took out papers right away to become a citizen, he got drafted and ended up immediately when Pearl Harbor was hit, get his battalion, his company, his old battalion got sent down to the Panama Jungle. So he spent two years in the jungle and then came north and, uh, their battalion got some retraining and they went over to land following the troops on Normandy, uh, you know, a number of weeks later, but marched through France and Germany, all that's to say in the process. Um, he was initially working at his brother's diner, and my mother and her family lived across the street.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: They had met during the respite in between the Panama Jungles, they got married. So my father gets out after, you know, the war's over and he knows that there's no way he's gonna be able to continue college. Uh, he was married now and in a new country. So he did what every Greek male adult I knew growing up. 'cause I only knew Greeks then, um, in New York City, which is , went into the restaurant business. So my father basically worked, uh, from three in the afternoon to three in the morning, seven days a week for most of my life. The net of that is I spent a lot of time in our sixth floor apartment reading. And then when we finally, when I was about to go into, um, I was in fifth grade or in fourth grade actually, we moved out to a little house on Long Island, a working class community.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And fortunately despite three times at PS one 50, and then again at East Meadow Elementary, where they tried to leave me back because I was behind, oh, . Um, in, initially it was because I could, I spoke with a Greek accent and I, and I was, we were in Greece for a number of months, and I, so I missed a lot of work in kindergarten, the work, and they thought I should redo it and I could read Greek letters, but I couldn't read English letters and, and all that kind of stuff. But God bless her. My mother would pull me out, catch me up, and put me back in. And after Nik went up and they tested everybody in the us I got tested and all of a sudden the school system said to my mother, 'cause my father, they invited the both to the meeting, but my father was working so that I was really smart and they could skip me two grades or put me into this new experimental program.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: So my mother kind of knew I was a bit geeky and I, I should probably do the experimental program. So I did junior high school, high school, and two years of college over the next six years. Oh my goodness. And it was the beginning of what we today know as commonplace, the AP program. But then it was, you know, it was a big deal in 1959. So, uh, I just, it, I mean, it turned out I had a lot of proficiency with math and with physics, and I was fascinated by space. I wanted to go into space. I discovered as I was applying to my, my, you know, colleges that, and my first choice was the, uh, astronautics program. Amazing. Was work on space programs at MIT. But when the Air Force Academy was recruiting me, I said, can I get into the astronaut program?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And they said no, because I had to wear glasses. And in those days, you had to have perfect vision rate. Well, we're glad you didn't. Yeah. So my, I went to MIT but my parents couldn't really help me out. And by the time I, um, and I was specializing in control systems of interplanetary vehicles, and by the time I hit into my junior year, I was tapped out. I mean, the feds wouldn't lend me any more money. Banks wouldn't lend me any more money 'cause I topped out. I got all the scholarships I deserved and I was just flat broke. So MIT got me a job doing what I was being trained to do, to work. So I went to work in the experimental guest dynamics research unit at Northrop, er, working on, at the time, their big project was the competitor with Boeing, the Boeing one for the space shuttle.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Um, but what it taught me was it was boring. I mean, being in space was exciting, but I wasn't gonna be allowed in space. So the rest of it meant I was sitting in a cubicle. 'cause I was in the research unit, not manufacturing research unit, but I was basically sitting in a cubicle with computer programming, you know, and in those days you did your programming on these little IBM cards and submitted them to the big machine and all this. And not very relational. No. And the whole, there were two research departments and we were all made up of Sheldon's, you know, which is everybody was anywhere from super smart to scary smart. But we were all weird. There was one guy in the two departments that was kind of normal. Um, gene, I always liked him. I, I ran into him years later in the cafeteria at Mattel when I was doing some consulting.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: He had given up working on real vehicles to work on toys. But anyway, toys. But the managers were like that too. So they were literally incompetent when it came to people. So as I get back to MIT I'm almost done. I, I needed two courses. I actually took three more, um, technical ones to finish 'cause I'm too compulsive not to finish. But I didn't know what else to do. And so I figured, okay, I'm not gonna go into the restaurant business. I tried that. I didn't think my music was good, although I'd saved enough in high school jobs to pay for part of MIT but I didn't think I was good enough to really become a self-sufficient pro. So I said, okay, I'll go into management. It's gotta be easy. Look at these idiots we had at Northrop. So I go to sign up for a management course at MIT and they have the professors who are teaching courses that don't have prerequisites, you know, all in one big meeting, tell the undergraduates about their course.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: So this one young fellow who is finishing, hadn't finished yet his PhD at Harvard called David kob, was talking about his course organizational psychology, which sounded like utter garbage to me. But he said two words that made me run to the basement classroom to get in, which were no tests. It, years later in my psychology program at Harvard, I had figured out that I'm test phobic and I have an amount of test anxiety that I've always had. And any rate that led to a whole set of things. He, I, I wanted to do my term project on how managers didn't help subordinates. He said, here's some data on how our MBAs help each other. I worked on it. He liked what I did. He offered me a job for the summer. Uh, and I actually ended up working for him as a research as assistant and then research associate after I graduated.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: But he got me into PhD seminars. So all of a sudden I was in two PhD seminars with Ed Schein, who I didn't know he was a giant, which he was even in 1967. But he ended up being one of my mentors and studied adult socialization with him, with Everett Hagen, who created the psychoanalytic delay Psychoanalytic Historical Society with Eric Erickson. And, you know, went on like that. And Dave McClelland, who was on sabbatical doing some teaching at MIT, the next thing I know they had convinced me I should go to graduate school. They explained to me that usually you get a master's, then you get a PhD. 'cause I didn't know. But they then said, but in psychology, you often go right for the PhD and get a master's along the way. And then they said, I should go in psychology, not management, because that was where my s my talent was, which I had no idea talking about being relational.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: I mean, nobody noticed because of my, um, abilities in math and physics that I was al I always had several bands. We were always working paid jobs. Was What did you play? I was, I played guitar and it was dance music. It wasn't rock and roll. Mm-Hmm. . I mean, we played VFW dances and Republican Club and Democratic Club and um, Italian weddings and Greek christenings and uh, you know, things like that. But, um, I was always in a bunch of clubs. I was usually ended up being one of the officers. And I always was dating one, sometimes two or three women at the same time. So I was always very social, but nobody noticed all that. So what did you notice? I noticed, but I didn't, because I was so focused on doing the space thing, I didn't really appreciate the fact that that was a flaw in my aspirations.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: I know I loved being in the fraternity house at MIT and feel like that really accounted for a lot of my maturity. Mm-Hmm. , you know, 'cause we had two houses on Beacon Street. 72 brothers. We were living there. Wow. And we were running it ourselves. There were no adults or advisors. And all of a sudden, you know, you're, you're running two large buildings and 73 lives are, you know, on your responsibility. So any rate, um, they got, helped me get into the PhD program at Harvard. And that's when things really started to move. Now it was interesting, they thought because of my math background, I could help transform psychology into more mathematical modeling. What it wasn't clear to them was I was, I wanted to go the other way Right. Towards more clinical work. 'cause I was very taken by the social change movement. And, you know, I was doing work with Dave k and Dave Taylor to help the Roxbury Businessmen's Association. Amazing. Which were all black businessmen in Roxbury and very involved in the race relations movement and all that. Mm-Hmm. . But anyway. Um,

Dr. Robin Stern: Is that when you started working with Dan and David

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: McClellan? Dan and I were classmates. We were both entered the PhD program at the same time. Right. He was in the clinical psych wing. I was in the social psych wing. Mm-Hmm. . But we took our classes together and we ended and I started working with McClellan. And he liked McClellan. So he, Dan and I became close personal friends. So we used to socialize and hang out together. And, um, that's really how that whole relationship evolved. But I started working on the research with McClellan. I had to do consulting as well as teaching. 'cause I had to pay my tuition and after tax dollars because they thought I was interesting to get into the doctoral program. But they didn't think I was interesting enough to gimme any money . So I was literally working my up. My, my graduate years, my doctoral years were truly the worst years of my life. I mean, I think clinically I was the most, uh, anxious and depressed. Although I was so driven that, um, I just, you know, over rode Any thoughts or feelings?

Dr. Robin Stern: Sorry to hear that. Did you use the, the work you were doing with Dan on emotional intelligence to get you through at least intellectually?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: No. 'cause we didn't. I started the first competency study in the summer of 70, uh, for then macur because they needed somebody to do the research and nobody there knew what the whole paradigm was about. And McClean turned to me and said, Hey, would you take it? So I did. And then, um, the company, when Dave was generating his 1973 article, the company started doing these competency studies. Hmm. So Dave McCall and I are seen as two of the five people who started the competency movement in human resources. Yeah. But basically the competencies, which, you know, came out in terms of the empirical studies, um, as my book in 82, in 95 when Dan's EQ book hit really big, that's when he called me and said, Hey, you know, you're the one really doing this stuff. Mm-Hmm, , let's put it together. So we basically repackaged what I'd been doing, both in terms of the competency research, but then since 79, trying to develop graduate programs to teach people how to use the competencies. And because it was the behavioral approach, not the trade approach, um, it made sense that we were looking at a different approach to emotional intelligence, which was looks, look at the behavior patterns, and let's do the ones that are anchored to performance.

Dr. Robin Stern: It's so interesting to hear you share your background and so generous of you to do that. Thank you. Um, and I'm, I'm remembering that when the competencies were first, uh, when you first talked about them, motivation was one of them.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Well, motivation is one of the levels.

Dr. Robin Stern: Right. One of the levels. And I wonder if that was an, like an early harbinger of the intentional change work that you do now.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: It actually, in that very first thing I did in the spring of 67, while I was still an undergraduate, the, we ended up, Dave and I ended up writing, doing the research and writing three papers. We got two of them published. That was the beginning of intentional change theory. That's so cool. We were developing the, the, the model. Mm-Hmm. . And at the time we called it Self-Directed Behavior change. So when I was going through Harvard and my PhD, I actually would use any approach. Anytime there was an excuse to write a paper, I'd write it on that. Which, um, you know, was fascinating because it, it led me towards certain issues. I remember John Schlein, who was one of the proteges of, um, Carl Rogers. I was taking a course in psychotherapy training from him. And I talked to him about my theory and he push shot it because he said, oh, you're one of those individualists who, and I thought he made a good point, but I thought he was right.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: I was thinking it really was up to the person. And the earlier versions of the theories did not place the quality of relationships at the center of the model. That really happened to me in the late nineties. Tell us about that. When I changed the theory that, well, a number of things happened in the early days, we thought specific goals would help drive change. By the, the late nineties, I began to wonder, because I'd seen working with a lot of students realize that it was their vision papers, their dreams that were very motivating to them, not the learning plans. And so in, and then I was co-teaching a course on complexity theory in the School of engineering to graduate students with, um, Mike Ervic, who was one of the members of the Club of Rome, you know, major figure in the systems. You put some incredible colleagues.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And then, yeah, and then Neil Greenspan, who was a geneticist in the medical school, and Danny Solo, who was a mathematician, but in the management school. Um, and, and myself and the four of us were co-teaching this course. And we each had a fourth of the course, but we sat in on each other's modules and critiqued and talked about it with all the graduate students who were sitting there. And one of the things that became clear to me as I was placing my theory, 'cause this came out of a faculty, we had a faculty seminar that had been meeting for several years, every other Friday, anywhere from 10 to 15 of us faculty from all over case we'd get together for lunch and we'd talk about what each of us are doing with complexity theory. And it was wide ranging. I mean, like I said, from geneticists talking about viral virus development to fish populations in Lake Erie and all sorts of stuff.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: But it was very clear to me as I was teaching that course that I had to make a number of changes in the theory. One of them is I had to move relationships into the theory itself because the theory had to do with the kind of psychological process a person went through to pursue a change. But it, it, it had context and it had psychological safety in there, there. And what dawned on me was it wasn't just psychological safety. It wasn't being in a safe environment. It was the quality of one's relationships. And if you didn't have that, so all of a sudden I went from a linear, almost engineering looking model to a circular model with resident relationships at the center. The second thing that became clear was that I, I thought that I had missed the issue on the goals. And in fact, that started our FMRI studies, and then two of the doctoral students working with me, an, uh, Anita Howard and Angela Passarelli did hormonal studies.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And it was very clear from both the FMRI studies and the hormonal studies that as soon as you talked about specific goals, people activated the task positive network, which closed you to new ideas. And they activated the sympathetic nervous system and stress. So in both cases, you narrowed your field of vision because you were being defensive. And that was when, um, I had to reverse my prior finding. And it wasn't. So now in the book, I'm talking about the fact that it's vision, it's the dream. It's your deeper sense of purpose that motivates change, not goals. Goals are only useful toward the end of the process when you've exhausted all the possibilities. 'cause as soon as you set a goal, you narrow your focus.

Dr. Robin Stern: The first time I ever heard you lecture in person, or you were doing a guest lecture at Teacher's College and you talked about visioning and the power of visioning and that you and your wife visioned together. And that it was really the germ, the, the seed for amazing things to happen. And I remember the response from the audience was just incredible. Like, almost as if you were telling them there was this magical thing that nobody ever knew about. So I, I mean, I, I still can see that day because not just because you were fabulous, 'cause you were a wonderful speaker and engaging and all of that, but also because the audience was so wowed by, by just that realization, by just the, the No, it's not the narrow goal.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Well, and this is where Robin, something came together for me. 'cause when I was training therapists and doing psychotherapy for those eight or nine years during the seventies, it was very clear to me that most of the fields of psychotherapy and social work, counseling and counseling had it wrong. That by encouraging people to talk about their problems more and more, they were actually in Alcoholics Anonymous versions enabling people to wallow in the negativity. And I knew, I liked when it emerged. 'cause the therapy program I developed was really an early version of cognitive behavior therapy. Although we didn't have that label in those days. But by the time that label came about, I said, okay, that's what I was trying to get to. Because I didn't think spending a lot of time trying to probe, you know, why you still seek the approval of your mother's surrogate figures was gonna help somebody get anywhere.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Now I knew why, because as soon as you focus on a goal, a specific goal or a problem, you go into what I call the negative emotional detractor. The stress, the sympathetic nervous system. You go into a task act test, positive mode, neural activation, and you literally suppress the openness to other people. So it became very clear. 'cause the other big change I made in the early aughts, somewhere around 2002, was to articulate the tipping point, the P-E-A-N-E-A tipping points. Mm-Hmm. And that was when it became clear to me that, um, they, the psychophysiological processes were all a part of it. So I would say today, my theory of change is one of the few that has the physiological as a part of it. I mean, Barb Fredson has done a marvelous job with her theory, but she sees the physiological as an antecedent or a consequence.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: I see it as a part of it. And, um, the, the closest person who got to that was John Gottman working on his work on marriage. Um, or even Tory Higgins on the, uh, regulatory self-regulatory focus. But the other thing that became clear is that I've been writing about this at other levels since 1970 when I wrote this model applied to organizational change. And it was teaching that course in 2000 that made it clear to me that these weren't isomorphic, they weren't similar processes, they were fractals. So at every level, you know, teams, families, organizations, communities, countries, at every level of human organizing, the process of sustained desired change is identical. But, and that's another big dis actually mine is the only theory that does that. Uh, and when you have a theory that is multilevel in any field, you have to have something that the, the, uh, systems people say moves information across levels.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: What I said was moves in motion across levels. 'cause when you're dealing with humans, the, the emotion is the key. And that's when I started to articulate the, the importance of resonant leadership relationships. Not leadership, but resonant relationships and the social identity groups. So that's, so really the theory has, you know, I mean, it's morphed and it's gone through a, a bunch of changes over the decades and including me thinking that what I used to say about certain things were wrong. So, so I feel, I feel good about that because it tells me, okay, I'm more likely to really be doing science, not just proselytizing a model.

Dr. Robin Stern: Well, it's very rich and, and it really makes it digestible for people who are not just therapists and not just thinking about psychology. And, and I think, um, it's fascinating also because it get, you get to unpack it in a different way.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Yeah. When I gave that talk at Teachers College, you're talking about, I don't know if you remember me saying it, but I was still seeing double. I had some kind of neurological, my physio, my uh, uh, physical therapy person had basically taught, she thought I had an infection in the optic nerve. But, and after six, I don't remember six weeks, I got it to go away, but I couldn't stand straight. And they had me on the stage if, I don't know if you remember that stage, I do stage they have there at tea, uh, at teacher's college, but there's no, there's no railing in the front. Right. So I, I had a few of my, um, colleagues sit in the front row. 'cause I said to them, look, if I start to go over, you're gonna have to catch me . And I know that I'm, you know, heavy and all the rest of it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Oh my goodness.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And so it was very weird because I was wobbly.

Dr. Robin Stern: Wow. I don't even remember that. Well, and so obviously your, your, um, message stood out and not

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Not the fact that I looked like I'd had three martinis before. No, not

Dr. Robin Stern: At all.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Not at all. So, sorry, you were starting to ask a

Dr. Robin Stern: Question. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, for you personally, what's the deep down inside of yourself connection to the importance of change, of the intentional change?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Ever since I can remember, I've been curious about things. And I would say, if you said to me, what's my driving, um, passion, it's curiosity. And you know, I remember even when I was five, one time my mother was doing something and we, we lived in a one bedroom apartment. And by then my sister was around. So I was sleeping on the couch in, in, in the hall. Literally in my sister,

Dr. Robin Stern: The rest of

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: You, sister at the bedroom. Uh, but, and one time she was doing something in one of the other rooms and she comes out into the kitchen and I'd gotten a screwdriver and I'd taken the toaster apart

Dr. Robin Stern: Because what else would you do?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And she said, what are you doing? And I said, I didn't know how. And I couldn't have been five, must have been six or seven. But, um, I said, I didn't know how it worked and I wanted to see how it worked. And she said, so the problem was I would take things apart, but I never could put them back together again. Totally . There was always parts left over, even as I got older. So, but curiosity is the driver. And then socially, growing up in a working class neighborhood in Queens where literally, I mean, everybody was either a plumber or a fireman or waiter. You, I was around all these people and of certainly all of my relatives who were either immigrants themselves or were children of immigrants. 'cause nobody would stay in those neighborhoods unless you were one of the other. And everybody was working themselves crazy to basically create a different life.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: So everybody was focused on change. They were trying to do their work well, but, and although they all enjoyed their work, I didn't know anybody who would ever continue doing it if they weren't paid. That's what I learned when I started taking these courses, um, from Ed Schein and Dave k and, um, Dave McClellan and all that. I, I discovered this field that of psychology that I realized that I loved it so much. I would work in it whether I was getting paid or not. And I'd never seen that happen before. So everybody was focused on making it in the new country. And there was the classic and the, this was the American dream because every one of these people, um, I mean, everybody worked really hard. And the assumption was if one job wasn't enough, you got two. And if two weren't enough, you got three.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: But you worked. And a lot of it was focused on making sure that the children had a chance to have a different life, which meant that they had to get education and training. So the idea, so there's the intentional part. Yeah. There's the intentional and the change and the change. You know, you're talking about dramatic change. Mm-Hmm. So much so that people are willing to leave their families and friends, their language, their cuisine, all of the things to go to a place for a better life and work for it. Because, you know, the classic of all of these immigrants, and I think many immigrants today see, um, government handouts as an embarrassment. I mean, it's a statement of personal failure. And I'm not talking about somebody who all of a sudden gets sick and needs a little bit of help. Um, but I mean, you know, you, you start out realizing, you know, nobody should give you a handout.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: You should work for it. But again, what's in, what's underneath that? What's underneath that is you gonna work for it, but what are you working for? And that's where the message was a chance for the kids to have a different life, um, have a better life, whatever that meant. And that was the thing, even out in East Meadow where, you know, we moved and had the little house and all that. I mean, in my graduating class from the high school, the public high school, five of us went to MIT, you know, and a few went to Harvard and Yale and Princeton and other places. It was a phenomenal public school system. Yeah. But again, we were all filled with this assumption that you were, you know, working to create alternatives. So my fascination with that was that meanwhile, I'd also seen people who were really hurt.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Um, we visited my first time of spending in Greece. We went for about almost four months, five months, because my father's older brother who had come to the United States had died suddenly. And my father didn't want to just tell his mother, um, by telegram that her son had, yet another of her sons had died. I mean, she had suffered through being a refugee from Turkey and Romania and Russia, and then finally in Greece and lost a number of her children. So we packed up, you know, gave my mother two days notice and said, we're going to Greece. I, you know, I just, I just bought the boat tickets. So, and visiting relatives there. And in 1952, the Solinki was three years out of the Civil War. And the Civil War in Greece, 44 to 49 was fought mostly in the north where the Solinki is.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: So we'd walk along these streets, most of which weren't paved, and still seeing all the bullet holes in the, in the buildings. And I remember my father, the little apartment that my grandmother had, my grandfather had died a number of years earlier. Um, he wanted her to have a mo at least a modern appliance of a toilet bowl. Well, this was fascinating to her, and she didn't know how to use it. And there was all sorts of funny things around that. But, but it was all around this issue of change. And, and I was witness to my family. So it wasn't just others, it was my family as well as their friends and their extended families, um, trying to make a different life. And wasn't just the experience that we had in the United States of World War ii, in which a lot of people pitched in worked, if not fought for the country.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: But there, um, you know, I mean the Germans, basically the Solinki as the second largest city in Greece was actually a majority Jewish until Hitler shipped them to, um, Auschwitz and Booken Wald. But basically they, they decimated the population. And, um, between that war and the, um, then remembering all the stories of the diaspora in the 19, 20 22 war, and then the most recent, which was, uh, what they referred to, we referred to as the Macedonian War. So all of that led to this real fascination with how do people change? I didn't know enough to conceptualize it as learning.

Dr. Robin Stern: Did you think, did you name it then? Were you thinking about, I'm, I'm interested in change? I'm curious about how these people, or you're just, were thinking, how are these people doing it?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Yeah, it was, it was focused on this practical. I remember somewhere around, I think I was 10, maybe 11. No, no, I had to be nine or 10. 'cause I read it when we were still in Queens. I read the Benjamin Franklin's autobiography where I tried to read it. My folks had a copy of it there.

Dr. Robin Stern: Aous, right?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Yeah. I went, well, I, there wasn't much I could do. I, I mean, I could go out and play, but I tended to get beat up more often. Well, that once every three times I went out, bad things happen. So I decided, what the hell, I'll just stay in and read. But in it, he talks about how to become a more virtuous person. And even though I was faithfully going to church, the Greek Orthodox every Sunday, um, reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and his, his search to be a better person, um, was really intriguing. Then meanwhile, thinking about all this stuff about how do we get into space? You know, how do we blast out of the atmosphere? And so change, I, again, I hadn't attached the, the word learning to it, but it all involved change. And it all involved doing something, something never done before it. But it was hitting me at many levels at once. That was the point. Sorry, it's a long wind way to say this. That was fine. It was personal. It was family, it was extended family. It was communities of the world. Yeah. It was different cultures and countries. Um,

Dr. Robin Stern: You know, I wanna ask you, um, since my work is on gaslighting, and I know you had posted something at some point recently about narcissism, and I've been thinking about, um, uh, narcissism and gaslighting and, and the abuse that happens. And, um, the incredible, um, effort it takes and intention it takes for people to change those relationships, to change, uh, the dynamic is sometimes possible, but often not. And so the change has to be about, okay, I am gonna change my life. I'm gonna move away. Right. I'm gonna leave it, I'm gonna limit it. And I, I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit. Like what happens when change is really hard? Sure. You know, it's one thing. Let, let me just say it's one thing to, to dream and to cast a vision. And you know, that we, um, we've worked with you when Janet and I, uh, built our model to have our dream, the dream and the vision be one of the first things that people think about so they can work towards it. So in, in a personal relationship where you're hurting and you're struggling and you realize, oh my God, this is not okay. And you dream for a better life. And how does it work there when people are hurt?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: There are three levels to your question. First level, I do think narcissism is rampant in our society, not just in the United States. In every country of the world. Yeah. Except Bhutan. Um, but in every other country I've visited, and I have exp and worked with people in the last six or eight years or 10 years, Mm-Hmm. narcissism is rampant. I mean, the example I used in, um, in writing about this in the last chapter of helping people change, I said, when did the selfie become the most popular form of photography? You know, that everybody is so self important. Mm-Hmm. . Now, as you know, as a clinician, narcissism is defensive. Yes. And it's defensive in the sense that a person feels threatened. Um, the only antidote is compassion is caring. I mean, I could say it more extremely of love, but I think it's actually caring.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Yeah. It's a little more gentle than having to Mm-Hmm. All the way to love. So, um, because when you try to engage in caring for somebody, whether they're in pain or they wanna grow, 'cause we use the more Confucian interpretation of it, you're stepping outside yourself. Mm-Hmm. And that way you're kind of interrupting this self-importance. Now, sadly, what's happened in most of the countries of the world, as we are witnessing now in this horrendous election season, that the narcissism has given way to, um, rigidity of thought. So not only are is everyone, I mean, there is, I've never met or seen a politician who wasn't a narcissist. I don't think you could do it unless you can even run for office unless you're a narcissist. But what happens is, these days, again, both in this country and in many others, they then, and their followers decide that as a part of the extension of the narcissism, they're right. And people who have different views are wrong. Mm-Hmm. . So now if you disagree with me, your, you are deplorable. You're not, it's not that you have a disagreement. And it's not that we are looking at the same thing in two different ways, and we should talk about it. So

Dr. Robin Stern: You, you are wrong and something's wrong with you.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Yeah, that's right. Definitely. Now, when we launch from that to what happens when people are a part of abusive relationships, where deceit, which is really what gaslighting is. Mm-Hmm. , um, whether it's conscious or unconscious, a person is trying to manipulate the other person and really with false, with all sorts of falsities. Yeah. And it doesn't matter whether the focal person, uh, the target is always a victim or is another, um, enabler. And the agent doesn't matter if the agent is a sociopath or a psychopath, or just somebody who's defensive good at it. Yeah. It, it was very manipulative. The fact is that it's not good. And having spent time, especially my wife working with women in distress programs and being on a board of a group that creates housing for women refugees, especially with families and groups, um Oh, beautiful. Of women coming out of these relationships, these horrible relationships. The fact is that most of the time women like men, if it's reversed, but more often than not, it's the women in most of our societies that are still abused. They believe it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: So the worst part of gaslighting is the self-doubt. Yes. And then the convincing yourself that you deserved it. That's right. Once people have made that shift, it's very hard for, you know, whether, you know, you and I are acting as a therapist or just a friend to say, you know, this relationship is treating you like, um, you know, one of the dementors, one of the guards from the prison of Ban and the Harry Potter series, it's sucking the life force out of you. You have to get out. Yeah.

Dr. Robin Stern: No, because they're not the same person they were when they went in. So you're not talking to that person.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: I remember reading a story in the New York Times, maybe 12 years ago, maybe it as long, maybe it was 18 years ago, of a flee former police officer in Moscow who had been a Mary Kay rep in Moscow and had built up, you know, a reasonable practice. But she also was a police woman in Moscow and had gotten herself up to, I think, I dunno if she had been promoted to detective, but, you know, she was promoted and she gave it, as soon as she had enough money, she stopped both jobs and opened a home for women in distress. And she said it was using every bit of her skills as a police woman and as a Mary Kay rep, uh, because she said, that's what I need to do with these women. Um, and you know, it's something sometimes as subtle as, I don't know if you've ever followed the work of Dixon Chora, uh, from Zambia, who, a psychiatrist who realized that a lot of people in the villages wouldn't go to the mental health clinics even when they were clearly depressed. So he had this idea of setting up a bench about a hundred yards, meters from the front of the mental health center, which is the bench. And he hired some of the, or at least asked him to volunteer at first and then hired some of the older women in the village. So I call it, he never said this, but I call it harnessing grandmother power in the book. And what he did was he trained them on how to be a friend. So they call them friendship benches. Oh,

Dr. Robin Stern: How beautiful.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: So who won't talk to a grandmother? You know, the guy who was brilliant. Well, these friendship benches are now used in many African countries in the us, in Canada, and in parts of Europe. And what was happening is the various people would come and talk to this grandmother type person and either benefit from that conversation, or at some point they would actually go into the clinic. Amazing. So the idea is again, um, how do you help people flip their relationships? Mm-Hmm. . And it is the most difficult when people have interjected or internalized, uh, the ridiculous abusive message about who they are and what they are, which isn't always the issue with gaslighting. Sometimes gaslighting, you know, is just the person's manipulating and lying and you know it, and you haven't bought their rhetoric yet.

Dr. Robin Stern: Right. But it, but to your point, it is that aspirational, um, look at your future that helps people free themselves. Whether it's suddenly realizing what happened to my integrity. Like I want to live in a way that's aligned with my integrity, or

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: What happened to joy. I haven't laughed

Dr. Robin Stern: In months. What happened to Joy. Exactly, exactly. When I wrote, made a, wrote a workbook to, um, uh, follow my Gaslight Effect book, and I did this recovery guide, as you know, um, the last chapter was on joy, right? Like on reclaiming your joy. Because when you're in these abusive relationships and you're not able to move forward, you're not able to change with from within, and you've gotta get out. One of the things that can help you motivate yourself is remembering what it's like to feel joy and wanting it

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Now in a much less emotionally intense, but still damaging. Think of all the managers, executives, and leaders of organizations who convinced people that this is the way we should go to maximize profits. When people are sitting there saying, you know, our competition's doing this other thing. Yes. And there's another way to go about this, and shouldn't we be trying that? And they're made to feel like they're blaspheming. And that's a part of, I even talk about it in the first chapter of the new book, change is essential. If we don't have change from the cellular level on up to the, you know, country and global level, we're gonna atrophy. But it's, it's actually fairly rare. And most of the time, even when we try it, it's ephemeral. You know, we give up after a while. So I, I think that it is both hopeful that we're still here , uh, that we somehow do innovate our way around it. But I think that if we could ever tap more of that, the, uh, all possibilities, the magical effect of enjoy enjoying somehow change in something new, that a lot more things would change a lot faster for, a lot better for

Dr. Robin Stern: Everybody. Well, that is such a beautiful way for us to, to wrap our time today. And I hope there'll be another time when your book comes out and your, there's more conversation about it. I'd love to have you back, and certainly personally I would love and professionally would love to continue the conversation about narcissism and gaslighting and intentional change. But I'm so excited for the Science of Change to be out there. I'm so grateful that you spent this time with me today and that you just gave so much of yourself to our listeners. And, and thank you so much. And where can people find you?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Uh, you know, I just thought about your next book, Robin, from gaslighting to Lamp lighting, , you know, going around and lighting lamps to help people see. Love it. But anyway, love it. Uh, where can people find me? Um, you can find me. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn, but, um, most relevantly, my email is my name Richard dot boy@case.edu. I'm still a full-time professor at Case and Lucky students. We have a bunch of, yeah, we have a bunch of these programs both graduate, um, executive doctorate for folks around 50 and other change programs like the, uh, master's in Leadership and Organizational Change for folks usually around 40. But we also have workshops, as you know, and, um, then others of us still travel around and have conversations, fun conversations with you, Janet, the whole crew.

Dr. Robin Stern: Love it. So what will you do to celebrate the book coming out?

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Um, spend, my wife and I have scheduled a number of trips that we postponed for the last year and a half, two years for both the constant, the, in part the book, but also one of our older dogs was needed more Constant Care. But, you know, so, um, part of it is she and I are, we're gonna Ireland on Saturday for a week, and we'll go to Paris over Thanksgiving and we'll even go to the Panama Canal in January. So part of it is just my wife and I playing a bit, and as she knows, you know, every time you, every time I do a book, it's like two, three years of me being preoccupied and not present all the time. So I owe it to her and me to have fun. So that's one major issue. The other is, I'm looking forward to a lot of conversations with people who are doing research or graduate students contemplating around how to refine and push the next level. I mean, the whole last chapter of the book are specific ideas for how to study this in the future.

Dr. Robin Stern: That's fabulous.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: And then I've talked about how to apply it, but my focus in this book is, is on the research. And I think, uh, you know, conversations like this for advanced professionals, um, people who know the difference between, you know, fads versus good sound work to continue having these conversations to explore what does it mean for how we develop our practices?

Dr. Robin Stern: I think it's so you to be mentoring people in your book and, and saying, well, you know, where are we going next? And here's some ideas. And thank you so much for always being so generous with your time and your, your brilliance and your wisdom. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Dr. Richard Boyatzis: Thank you, Robin.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thanks for joining me for today's episode. I hope you found it helpful and meaningful. If you want to listen to other episodes of The Gaslight Effect podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave a rating and a review. I also invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. This podcast is produced by Mel Yellen, Mike Lens, and me. All of my work is supported by Suzen Pettit Marcus Estevez and Omaginarium, also by Sally McCarton and Jackie Daniels. I'm so grateful to have many people supporting me and especially grateful for all of you, my listeners.