Mastering Imperfection: A Roadmap for Agency Owners and Business Leaders to Embrace Emotional Intelligence and Overcome Perfectionism with Steve McCready

Do your emotions ever feel like they're steering the ship of your decisions? Join us for today's episode as we hear from Steve McCready, a seasoned leader in personal development, who charts a course to reclaim control. Steve's journey from IT to psychotherapy and coaching equips him with unique insights on balancing emotions and logic, empowering high-performing agency owners and business leaders to amplify their impact.

For many high achievers, the grip of perfectionism and fear of failure can be paralyzing. But fear not! Steve unveils the transformative power of turning setbacks into stepping stones for growth, challenging the fixed mindset that often hinders progress. His anecdotes and wisdom from "Rejection Proof" inspire us to embrace imperfection and harness the resilience within us.

Join us on a journey through the landscapes of personal growth, drawing parallels from iconic sagas like Star Wars and Star Trek. Characters like Kirk and Spock embody the delicate dance between reason and emotion, urging us to unlock our untapped potential. As we navigate this odyssey, we're reminded of the profound value of authenticity and self-discovery, even in the face of criticism.

To connect with Steve McCready and explore more insights on personal development, visit his website at www.stevemccready.com.

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I'm so excited to have Steve McCready on the show today. After spending several unfulfilling years in IT, while doing career counseling, steve came to realize that helping to empower others was work that he was both good at and found incredibly fulfilling. Psychotherapy Over time, coaching has proven to be the place where he applies the knowledge and skills that he's gained over the last 20 years in a space that allows him to help people doing good work to be able to do that work more powerfully. Building on his past experience as a psychotherapist and his extensive study of the human brain, personal growth and personal performance extensive study of the human brain, personal growth and personal performance Steve is a coach who helps solo and small business owners make a bigger impact in the world. Steve, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Steve McCready: 0:54

Well, yeah, thanks for that intro. I should have you write all my intros, man.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:00

Feel free to clip that. Use that however you want. I will.

Intro / Outro: 1:12

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:23

I would love for you to start by sharing some of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Steve McCready: 1:33

Steve McCready: Yeah Well, so I mean, one of the things that I'll say as far as background goes is I had a childhood that was in some ways very good and very fortunate, in other ways very problematic, and so the key piece is, while I never lacked for things, or food or a roof over my head or safety, what I did often lack was guidance or instruction or teaching, and that's because I had a number of different factors there. One my parents divorced when I was young. I did have contact with my father, but he was not much of a teacher, as it turned out. My mom taught me a few basic things, but she had her own challenges and issues that she was often wrestling with and that left her not in a position to do that.

Steve McCready: 2:16

So I had to figure out a lot of things on my own and, as you can imagine, that was a hit and miss kind of thing, and so that's, I think, part of why I was ultimately really felt called to help others. Uh, cause I know how it feels to not have that help or support, and, um, and I really have come to understand how, by being willing to engage, support of others, how that was really so important for me, um, you know, and finding people who are ahead of me on a journey I wanted to go on and letting them support and lead me has helped me to think about how I want to do that, how I don't want to do that in some cases, you know, and really become a big influence in in how I do my work, which is really fundamentally about possibility and empowerment, but all coming from a place of really ultimately recognizing the fact that we are all humans and humans are imperfect, messy creatures.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:13

Boy, isn't that true? We are indeed that. You talk about possibility, and I love that word. That's one of my favorite concepts the idea of the possibilities and the capacity that a person has, the potential that is in them. And so many of the people that I work with and I imagine you too feel stuck. They feel like they're stuck in a place and they can't even think in terms of potential and possibility. Do you see that, and how do you help people move from where they are into that place?

Steve McCready: 3:50

I see that all the time, of course, I mean, we all have our own self-limiting stories, even folks such as ourselves who you know, in theory would know better, but in practice we're still human. And so, like, the first thing is helping people to really recognize one, that those things are stories too, that those stories actually exist for a good reason in some context. But they're also problematic because they are limiting Right. And then for me it's often with my clients, a path of finding ways to challenge or test or confront those stories, right. So building experiments or ways of facing it, standing up to it, trying something different and essentially confronting the story and really through those experiments, coming to learn that that story is not as true as it felt like in their head.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:47

I often talk about the importance of emotions and how we are designed with emotions and they're important. They're a critical passenger in your car but you can't let them drive Right Because you're going to end up in a ditch a hundred percent of the time.

Steve McCready: 5:01

Yeah, totally. You can't stuff them in the trunk either. That's its own problem, a whole different problem. A whole different problem, a whole different problem. I stole that from a movie. But um, it's one of my favorite lines, but, but, but it is a really good, I think, metaphor is. It's true, we have to learn how to have them sit in the passenger seat or the back seat and how to uh, while they're yelling at us very kind of irrationally sometimes, to be able to filter through and find that there is pretty much always something in there, some nugget of truth or value, that we can't actually utilize. It's just sometimes hard to see it through the noise, especially if we're someone who's really attuned to the input of the world and that way, you know, we can be very affected by just the noise and the bluster, and it's hard to see through for the actual value or the, you know, the diamond that's hidden in there for us.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:56

Do you find overthinking to be a significant problem in your clients?

Steve McCready: 5:59

All the time. I think about it a lot myself. All the time I think about it a lot myself, yeah, um, but no, I mean absolutely. I work with a lot of people who are, who are very caring, very smart, uh, very driven and, um, one of the things that comes with that is their brains are really busy and really active and that can be both a good thing and a bad thing and can get caught. They're.

Steve McCready: 6:24

Also the problem, when you're really good at figuring stuff out in your head, is you start to think you can figure everything out in your head, which, in my experience, is not true. But, uh, doesn't keep people from trying, and so they get stuck running through these loops of thought patterns and things in their head and, and it's just, you can't see it. It's like the idea of trying to read I heard this a while ago and I'd never heard this metaphor before I had. It was like this is amazing. It's like you can't read the label on a bottle of wine from inside the bottle. Yeah, and that's kind of like trying to sort this stuff out in your head by yourself is what you're doing and there's a reason it doesn't work very well.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:59

That's so good. I often say you can't see the whole picture when you're in the frame.

Steve McCready: 7:04

Totally Same same idea. Right, there's any of these things that it's, it's the idea of perspective and that we it feels like to us, our perspective feels complete and whole, but it's not. It is incomplete. Number one and number two it's distorted. And until we get better at recognizing those distortions and limitations and stepping away from them and getting help from others or outside sources to fill in the picture, we're working with a really, I'll say a corrupted data set to steal an IT term from that part of my life and there's nothing. You know, garbage in, garbage out is is kind of the deal there.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:40

Yes, yes, so good. So when? When somebody is in the middle of a situation like that, they so often don't know where to go, where to turn. Yeah, what's the first step if somebody's listening to this and that's where they're living? You? Know, they're living in that overthinking space where they're stuck, but they don't even. They don't even see where to put their foot next.

Steve McCready: 8:06

Right, I, I, for me, I think it's about getting all that noise that's in your head out of your head. Um, if you're in a space to be able to do that, sometimes it's about just having to find a way to ground yourself physically in physiology. Right, so it might be you might need to go take a walk, uh, listen to some music that's something that I I've often used or do something creative. But then to me it's about get all that noise, just dump it out. Don't worry about it being organized, about it being coherent. It's like when you go clean out the garage you haven't touched it in like 10 years and there's stuff everywhere You've got to like, pull it all out of the garage, dump it out in the driveway and on the lawn and then start sorting through it.

Steve McCready: 8:37

And until you do that, it's kind of hopeless. And once you do it, even just having the garage empty, even though there's still a lot more to do, inherently feels better. So for me, that's always the starting point, especially when I'm working with someone, because then I can see it too and we can start going through it together and be like well, what do we want to do with this? Well, what about this thing? Does this thing even belong here? You know that kind of thing. It's not a microwave process though is it it?

Steve McCready: 9:01

No, unfortunately no In our, in our microwave. You know, done yesterday world, this is definitely not that.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:09

Yeah, I think that's hard for a lot of people, particularly in the entrepreneurial space, who you know. They're so used to doing everything themselves, and faster is better, right. And so is there a shortcut? Is there a? Is there a quick fix? Is there a bandaid?

Steve McCready: 9:23

we can put on this now, and, man, that is so often not the best solution when it comes to what we're talking about bring aspects of the process out sooner in ways that can be providing value or getting something back, like the concept of a minimum viable product right or services, and I is an example of that. Sure, but no, I think this is exactly part of why people do get stuck is this isn't necessarily fast, and what we can do, of course, is we can spend a bunch of time looking for the shortcut and, in fact, spend more time looking for the shortcut that we never find than we would have spent just doing the thing Right. It's like I like to say the quick fix is neither, it's not a fix.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:16

Oh, that's good. I like that. Yeah, that's so good. Hmm, many of the clients who come my way, and I imagine yours too, are high performers. These are really smart people, like you said earlier, and they operate and they have found success.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:33

They're afraid of failure, and sometimes it's because they've experienced it in the past. Sometimes it's not. It's just this fear that it's going to happen. One client said this to me not long ago what if this stops working tomorrow? He's having more success than he's ever had in his life, but what if it stops working tomorrow? How do you address that? How do you deal with that?

Steve McCready: 11:06

Well, it's a great question, and I think you're right that sometimes, folks, this was actually one of my own challenges growing up is school, and most educational stuff came really naturally to me until college, and so I was completely unprepared for the academic rigor of college, especially the college I went to, and it was like I just got you know, suddenly like ran into a wall and was suddenly like, oh, I guess I'm an idiot and I, with a lot of things in childhood, struggled with that, like with creative things I liked, I wanted to draw or paint, but I wasn't like immediately good at it and so I just at that point had decided that means I'm not, I'm not going to do it. I had very fixed mindset, beliefs, and one of the things that I had to do myself and a thing I really do with clients on, is changing your relationship to failure and starting to understand that it doesn't mean you're a failure, you can't do this. It means this is just representing where you happen to be and if you're willing to take some action, gather some data from that action, refine your action and go again and build a sustainable path of doing that, you will go from a point of not being really good at something to eventually being really good at something, and I've done that in a few different things in my life and it's been a really powerful teacher for me and freeing me to be in the place of. I don't know if this is going to work, I don't know if I'm going to be any good at this, but I'm really interested in it. So I'm just going to go do it, give myself permission to be a beginner at it and get better. That's one.

Steve McCready: 12:32

Now, on the other hand, you get people who they've built something big and it crashes. It's like there's a lot of stories of people who have had big failures and recovered and built something new and gone on from them, and it really comes down to this. You can focus on the fact that it didn't work out and you can make that about you and some statement on you, or you can go through all the data that's there and find a constructive way to use it for going forward, and that that shift right is what makes all the difference. But a lot of it's about being able to ground yourself enough and have enough of a sense of fundamental self-confidence to be able to see the possibility versus seeing all the negative stuff.

Dr. William Attaway: 13:21

I think Nelson Mandela captured the essence of what you're talking about when he said you know, I do not lose, I don't lose. I either win or I'll learn something.

Steve McCready: 14:04

But there is still that thing and that is really. It is the more we work on extracting the possibility or the value of what's there. It's the same thing. We look at like Covey's idea of circle of influence versus circle of concern and if we focus on the circle of influence, it grows. We focus on the circle of concern, our circle of influence shrinks. It's the same idea and this is so much of it is where do we focus our attention and energy? And we have to be careful because this is where our brains that are threat oriented and danger oriented and negativity oriented as a survival mechanism often keeps us focused in the wrong place and missing some just critically valuable data.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:23

That's what we actually need to go forward. What we actually need to go forward. High performers so often have a real struggle around perfectionism. This is part of that whole fear of failure thing. Everything has to be just right, they have to get it perfect, they have to get it right. If they don't get it right the first time, well, I'm going to stop trying. Like you described earlier, how do you overcome that rhythm, that pattern of perfectionism being the central focus of what you do?

Steve McCready: 14:51

Right, I think it's a story that you have to. You have to change, right, this idea that I have to be perfect or else is. Um is one and two, the story that the idea that perfection is actually attainable, which is, of course, not true, um, you know. So I think that's one. So we've got to deconstruct that too. We've got to change our relationship with mistakes, with failures, with rejections. Um, you know, there's a book. There's a book is a number of years ago now on this called rejection proof.

Steve McCready: 15:18

Um, and the author, like, did an experiment for a hundred days. Basically, his plan was I'm going to go out for a hundred days, every day, and do something to get rejected, and it's. It's what? It's really funny because a couple of things. One, he learned a whole lot about himself and about rejection. But two, he also had some things that he went and thought like no way is this going to work, and it did so. If anyone wants, yeah, so if you go Google, go Google rejection proof crispy cream, and you'll see. Like the first time he did, he actually I think it was like day three or whatever. He does this in his experience at going to Krispy Kreme donuts and asking for something and it's like the whole point. So it's that's it.

Steve McCready: 15:52

When we, when we're willing to face this and go hang on, we start to learn it's not as big a deal as we think. That and that's one. And number two is us Mistakes aren't the problem. People think they're the problem. They're not the problem, it's what we do next. That's the problem. It is when people make mistakes and then minimize them, dismiss them, cover them up, lie about them or do any of that. That's when everything goes off the rails. When you make a mistake and go, you know what. You're right.

Steve McCready: 16:20

I did poorly there, I could do better there, or I need to fix that, or, yeah, that is still a work in progress. I did poorly there, I could do better there, or I need to fix that, or, yeah, that is still a work in progress, we're going to work on it. And then do something. What you do is you establish two things you show people I care and you say I can be trusted, and those things are way more valuable than, again, this idea of perfect. That, just frankly, does not exist and should be let go of. But a lot of this requires us to get comfortable with failure and with putting sloppy stuff out into the world and doing experiments around that. That's the thing I like to do is.

Steve McCready: 16:56

I've done all kinds of them myself. I started, actually one of the things I did in the past. I started when I got back into painting and was like really working on, trying to give myself permission to be bad at it. I was also did this experiment where I was like I'm going to post a painting every week on Instagram and I'm just going to post it. I'm not going to post it trying to get anything, just I'm doing it as experiment of putting it out there, right and and allowing it to be. And it was really powerful because what happened is people actually got, you know, I got some positive attention and it was like, oh, this is weird and just. But then the idea of just iterating and I kept doing it and kept doing it, kept doing it. And that's really the key. If you keep doing something and you keep looking at what you're doing, it's almost unavoidable that you'll get better.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:40

You know, does that help you break free of this fear of judgment to like that other people are looking and saying there's. That's a real fear for a lot of people, I think it can.

Steve McCready: 17:54

I mean, I think another part that's really important to understand is that, like, no one's really going to appeal to everyone and if you try not to offend or upset everyone, you're you. You're doing this, you're turning yourself basically into vanilla ice cream, and vanilla ice cream is. It's inoffensive, but it's not something a lot of people get excited about, like my daughter gets excited about it, but she only gets excited about triple vanilla ice cream.

Steve McCready: 18:20

Oh see, so even that isn't really vanilla, it's not really pure vanilla, it's not just plain vanilla, right, and that's my point is like and so, yeah, the good thing is people aren't offended by it. But that's not a way in this world to stand out. You can only do that once you're big and you can afford to do that. But as you're, if you want to stand out, if you want to get attention, you're going to have to be distinctive, and that means some people are going to be like what the is this? No thanks, right, and they're not going to be, um, they're not going to like it, but other people are going to go Whoa, this is cool. And that's the hard part is really recognizing we don't have to be a fit for everyone to one, be a fit for enough people to be successful, but to to be able to do something that actually moves the needle, in fact, I think being bland and inoffensive has probably never moved the needle on anything that is a brilliant insight.

Steve McCready: 19:20

Being bland and inoffensive has never moved the needle on it. I don't think it has, and I get it. It's from a safety standpoint. It feels safe, and that's why so much of this comes back to making sure, fundamentally, we have a good relationship with ourselves and our humanity and our imperfection, that we have enough support and other resources and people around us and tools that we can use that, when life smacks us in the face, as it inevitably will, we're able to kind of, you know, shake it off, get back up and get moving, and I think that's that's really really important. Um, but the more we have a clear idea that we are okay fundamentally, we're doing good things, we are contributing, we're just again, a human, and that's a case of something that didn't work out, or that we maybe made a mistake or maybe we did mess up on it or whatever. That's okay, we can clean it up and we can move on.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:09

That's so good. Steve, I want to talk about you for a minute. Okay, you are a continual learner, and that's obvious. Anybody who spends more than five minutes talking to you. You know you, you learn, you grow, you read, you have, you really embody a growth mindset. I'm curious how do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with new leadership skills that you are going to need and your team is going to need you to have in three, four or five years from now?

Steve McCready: 20:39

Sure. So I think there's. There's a couple of things I mean. One I I have the good fortune, I think, to be like wired to be curious I mean I think humans in general are but I'm especially like I'm much always wondering why is it like that? What's up with that? How is that? What could what you know, could you do this? So my brain's kind of oriented that way and so that's a little bit of an advantage. Probably A lot of it is about really trying to ask myself the question regularly of not even how could I get better, but is there an improvement possible here?

Steve McCready: 21:12

You know what went well, cool, is there a way I can build on it, what didn't go so well and what can I adjust or tweak to improve that? And I try. I ask myself those questions real regularly. I have a daily writing practice and those questions are there or prompts for me, and that's a thing you can overdo.

Steve McCready: 21:31

I've learned when I was younger, in my 20s, that wouldn't have worked because I would have been making these huge lists and like I've got to do all of this today perfectly.

Steve McCready: 21:40

And now I'm older and a little bit more tired and relaxed and I'm just like it's more, just kind of like general exploration of here's some ideas and thoughts, and so what I do is I use that as a space to just encourage me to think about that a little bit, and then from there, inevitably there'll be something that I'm like yeah, okay, this is a thing that looks interesting, or this is a thing I want to work on, or whatever, and so it kind of goes. It goes from there, I think, is having little routines that prompt me to be thinking about it, um, and a willingness to just go and see, like where I'm doing something that didn't really work so well, to really ask myself well, how could I make it better? Um, or in some cases I mean to be honest about this too there are some things where I go I could do that better. I'm not going to, and I think that's important too, because then I'm not trying to improve everything, because Hmm, that's insightful.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:33

As an entrepreneur yourself, I think a lot of people are looking at you and saying, wow, steve's, you know he's never really had a bad day Like his journey. His journey's just up and to the right. You know, like it is so often to look from the outside and see somebody's highlight reel and think that, right, right. I'm curious, if somebody were to come up to you and tell you that, what would your response be?

Steve McCready: 22:58

I I try not to laugh quite like that because I wouldn't want to sound dismissive, um, because it's not intended to be dismissive at all, it's more just the idea that I don't have a bad day. I'd basically be like, I'd be like no, um, you know which? Which bad day would you like to hear about and I could, you know, I could give them.

Steve McCready: 23:15

I could yeah, I've got a catalog. I mean I, you know, I think about any, any number of bad days going back, like you know, cause I started. So, like I first started my well, I had my very for briefly a business in like early 2000s, but my first when I opened my therapy practice in 2006,. I've been continually like on my own and self-employed since then and you know all along the way there's these little spots where it's like here are some bad days or here's some messy things. And you know where I've either whether it was like when I moved my practice at one point and thought people would be willing to drive further than they were and suddenly like literally killed half my business overnight at the same time as the economy was starting to tank, like oops, you know there was that there's been any number of things that I've invested tons of time and energy in that never went anywhere, and you know there's all kinds of them.

Steve McCready: 24:01

And so it's really about saying hey, don't judge and compare based on the stuff you see, because you're never seeing the whole picture from anyone, including yourself, because your brain hides stuff from you stupid brain but it does, and so there's always stuff you're not seeing and I'm happy to share it, like if people ask, if people want to talk to me about it, like I'll tell you about it because I'm not. I'm not interested in hiding it and I'm not. I don't think it serves anyone to look as if, like I've got it all figured out and I've never had a bad day in my life. It's like cause, that's like. It's just it's a blatant lie and all it does is set people up to feel inferior. And I guess, if you're wanting to capitalize on that, fine. But what I know is when people get triggered by that kind of stuff and they start to feel things like shame, shame will stop you from growing because it just prevents you from looking at this stuff and you've got to be able to go yeah, this, this kind of sucked.

Steve McCready: 24:56

And here's what I learned from it, here's how I recovered from it, here's where I've tried to go going forward from it. And hopefully, if you accumulate enough of those over time, you know you one, get a lot better at recovering from mistakes and bad days and two, when they happen, they're not usually as big because your missteps are usually smaller, right, I very rarely. I used to take much bigger gambles in my business than I do now, because I was again young and a little clueless and a little blind. Now it's I'm much more thoughtful and deliberate about. I'm going to try and experiment here and see how this goes and it may or may not work out. But it's not a huge deal. If it doesn't work out it's not going to sink me, it's just some time and energy and some lessons that I get from it. So it's kind of educational in a way.

Dr. William Attaway: 25:37

That's good. A friend of mine has a mindset soundtrack that he uses and I've thought about it several times while you've been talking today Everything is an experiment. Everything is an experiment. And he'll just repeat that as a reinforcement of that idea. Hey, we're going to try something new. Everything's an experiment. We'll just he'll just repeat that as a reinforcement of that idea. You know, hey, you know, we're going to try something new.

Steve McCready: 25:58

Everything's an experiment. We'll see how this works. I ask my clients a lot I'll be like they'll. They'll have an idea or the way kind of you know, running through something I'll be like, is that worth an experiment? Because as soon as we get to a point of them, yes, it is. That that's basically simple enough to be quick and easy and low friction, and complex enough to have it be something that's going to produce some good data and let's do it, let's you know, it's like get out of your head and let's get into, let's get into action, because we can use that again to be able to build something bigger and do it. But yeah, experiments, I mean everything's an experiment, whether we admit it or not. Right, right, I mean everything's an experiment, whether we admit it or not, right, right, I mean sometimes it is an experiment where we really know the variables a lot better, so we have a much higher degree of reliability about being able to predict the results. But it's still an experiment because there's still plenty of factors we don't control.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:47

That's right. It's so good. Is there a book that has made a really big impact on you, a big difference in your journey, that you would recommend that every leader listening?

Intro / Outro: 26:57

A book.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:59

I know Maybe two, maybe two Okay.

Steve McCready: 27:03

So actually I'm going to give two. One's a book that probably a lot of listeners here have read, and then one is a book that a lot probably have not. Okay, and then one is a book that a lot probably have not Okay. So one is Good to Great, by Jim Collins, which I think anybody who wants to be in business for themselves or be a leader really ought to read, because there's just so many valuable lessons in it. It is also, it's just a really interesting read, but there's a lot. It'll illustrate a lot about human psychology as it applies to business in ways that are really powerful. So there's, there are timeless, really good principles, and it's just an interesting and entertaining read too.

Steve McCready: 27:36

So that's one, uh, but the other one that this one might be a little bit um off of people's radar is um is a book called self-compassion, um, and the author is Kristen Neff and it's K?

Steve McCready: 27:47

R I S T I N? Um. On the one hand, this book has some elements to it that it can be a little over into the spiritual realm, and so some people have a hard time digesting some aspects of it and it's not necessarily applicable to everyone. But the fundamental concept of it is really about transforming your relationship with yourself to one that is less critical and more accepting, but not accepting in the way of like it's like no, it's just how I am, I'm just lazy. It's more about like, yeah, I am a human who's imperfect, on a journey of self-improvement, and so I'm going to allow myself to make mistakes and I'm going to hold myself accountable for cleaning them up, for learning and growing. That book fundamentally transformed my relationship with myself and some of my own self-criticism. I've seen it do the same with clients, and so that's one that I often give that a lot of people don't have never even heard of.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:38

I have not. Now I want to read it. Thank you for that. I want to pivot to a topic that is very serious and complex, and I understand that you, you have some insight on this, okay, um, so I really need to know which is which is better, star Wars or star Trek.

Steve McCready: 29:05

Right, and I could answer this so many different ways. I would say the answer is yes, um, cause I think I think they both. I think they both have strengths, but I'm going to start with Star Trek because I think Star Trek. Of the two, if I have to pick one, I'm picking Star Trek, and here's why I think that one. I think Gene Roddenberry was a brilliant visionary who understood a lot about humans and humanity and was really ahead of the curve in introducing some ideas to our society about diversity and about the value of that and about how we navigate difference. That I think we're really ahead of their time.

Steve McCready: 29:36

And it's really interesting to watch the original TV show. If you can deal with how cheesy it looks visually, the concepts in it are really powerful. So that's one part. But the other part is this so the human brain is a really, really complex thing, but one way we can look at it in a very simple way is we can say we have a rational brain, or we have a logical, rational brain and we have an emotional brain, right?

Steve McCready: 29:59

So there's these two parts and if you look at Captain Kirk and Mr Spock, they actually in a lot of ways represent those two parts of the brain, and not even just as individuals, but in this fact that both of them by themselves have fundamental flaws in how they operate.

Steve McCready: 30:17

But Kirk's a hothead.

Steve McCready: 30:19

Whatever Spock is too cold and logical, but when you put them together as a team, they literally can overcome and defeat pretty much anything. It's brilliant, and I think that actually is a great, great metaphor for our brain, because if we just focus on the rational and ignore the emotional, we ignore our values, we ignore the feeling and human parts about things. That creates a real problematic set of decisions and actions, and if we let the emotional part run, if we let that part drive the car, as you said, we're going to end up in a ditch, and so it's about learning to balance the two, and so that's why I'm such a fan of Star Trek as a metaphor and why I say that. But, to be fair to Star Wars, the whole concept of the force and being this energy that we can utilize and direct either way, I think is also a really powerful concept, and so I think really you can take whichever one you prefer and find something useful in it if you want, but again, if I have to pick, I'm a Star Trek guy.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:18

I'm with you. I just I'm totally with you on that. You know, often, steve, people are going to walk away from an episode like this with one idea, one big takeaway that stood out that they're going to walk into the rest of their day with. If you could determine what that one big idea is going to be, if you could make that decision, what would your one thing you want people to walk away today with?

Steve McCready: 31:44

Probably to have people really think about their relationship with themselves and how their relationship with themselves may be a very big part of what's keeping them from getting as far as they've wanted to on their journey, and that transforming that from trying to basically attack all their weaknesses and limitations instead of finding a way to embrace and nurture them might actually be the ticket. That would probably be the idea, cause I think that's certainly, for my own experience, been one of the very transformative things for myself and what I've seen with with clients, and so that would probably be the one. Again, if I had to pick, I hate. I'm such. I'm one of these people like I hate picking one thing because I think so many different things have value in them. I'm like they're like this and I like this, but that would be the one that's good, I imagine like me.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:31

you see people break their own businesses in their own way and they won't let go of something, or they won't hold on to something and they won't focus, or they focus too tightly on one tiny little weed in the garden and they break their own businesses. And I love that answer. I think that's so helpful.

Intro / Outro: 32:51

And that's why we do what we do right.

Steve McCready: 32:58

Totally. They focus on what everyone else is doing and try and copy it when it's not them. Most of the big moves I've made in my business that have paid off in some substantial way have been about me going and doing something. That was not about anyone else. It was about me finally going. Oh, let me listen to myself, let me look at myself, let me use my strengths whether it's some of the ways I've gone about marketing my business, whether it's ways I've focused, and it's when I actually listen to myself and stop worrying about like, well, but is that going to? You know, whatever that's when stuff happens.

Steve McCready: 33:24

That's been true on multiple occasions. I've seen it with clients. But to do that again, we have to have a different relationship with ourself than many of us have, which is always focused on how we're flawed and how we have all these imperfections and how we've got to get better and we've got to do more and be more productive and all of this and it's like. I'm not against performance and improvement by any means, but I think there's just a much more compassionate path there that is way, way more workable and just a lot less yeah, a lot less anxiety and stress-filled.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:57

So true, Steve. I know people are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you. What is the best way for them to do that?

Steve McCready: 34:06

So I actually have one of the things I did, speaking of of me kind of going a little bit off the um, off the beaten path. I um rebooted my mailing list this year and I am doing actually a daily email. It's just weekdays, not weekends, um, I take those off, but, um, I but I sent out a short email every weekday, typically less than 200 words, um, often less than 25 words. I mean this these are short, these are single ideas, single concepts to get you thinking, to get you working on in this stuff we've talked about today. Right, and so it's just, it's just meant to be a little nudge or a little thing, to to kind of poke your brain, and but poke your brain in a good sort of way, and so that's a way people can get more of me and kind of my ideas about the world and stay connected.

Steve McCready: 34:47

And so if they go to my website, which is my name, Steve McCready, it's stevemccready. com, uh, they can sign up there. It's on um, on the homepage um, and connect with me that way. Um, I do have an Instagram. I am very inconsistent about posting there. People track me down on LinkedIn, but, again, my social media presence is limited these days because I have, um, honestly, mixed feelings about it. I and so I'm I'm focused more in trying to really have direct interaction, directly with the people that I'm serving and supporting, and whatever form that takes.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:18

I think that's a that's a great business move as well. Instead of focusing on leveraging somebody else's real estate, your email list is your own.

Steve McCready: 35:27

It's true, and I'm just not one at this point in my life anyway. Who's all that interested in trying to hack or figure out algorithms, or pivot or adjust?

Steve McCready: 35:33

And it's just not, just not my thing, and it's like I've realized, it's like you know again what is my thing. My thing is being short and snappy in in in the written word, which I'm pretty good at, and so, um, I had, I had a, um a friend say this was a very generous of her, but she basically described my, my email. She's like it's like Seth Godin crossed with your best friend and I was like, okay, I'll take that.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:54

I love that.

Steve McCready: 35:56

So if you want, some of that in your inbox. Um that you know, go to my website and you can, you can sign up there and um yeah, that's fantastic, Steve.

Dr. William Attaway: 36:04

thank you for your generosity today and sharing so much insight and so much wisdom with our listeners and with me. I've so enjoyed this conversation.

Steve McCready: 36:13

Well, you're very welcome and thank you. It's always fun to talk about this stuff as, as I hopefully it comes across. I I love this subject. I'm grateful to be able to do it as part of my work, and I'm always, I always enjoy the opportunity to talk with someone else who gets it and sees it and, to you know, to kind of talk about it a little bit. So I'm I'm really grateful for the opportunity to share.

Dr. William Attaway: 36:32

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:08

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro / Outro: 37:51

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.