(00:05) Stephanie Warner: Welcome our fellowship of the trail to Season 4, episode 54. Hello, Father.
(00:12) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter.
(00:14) Stephanie Warner: And happy autumn is finally here this week in the northern hemisphere. And also happy Hobbit Day to all who celebrate.
(00:28) Marcus Warner: Is this his eleventieth something birthday? Is that what’s going on?
(00:31) Stephanie Warner: I mean I guess he’s frozen in time. So yeah, Bilbo and Frodo have the same birthday actually.
(00:34) Marcus Warner: Oh, okay.
(00:35) Stephanie Warner: So, you know, extroverts and introverts can celebrate how you will. You can throw a feast or you can just, you know, read Lord of the Rings or you can…
(00:46) Marcus Warner: Or just disappear. Yeah. Okay.
(00:49) Stephanie Warner: Indeed, indubitably. Although we do…
(00:56) Marcus Warner: Frown on magic rings. Yeah. Okay.
(00:58) Stephanie Warner: Recommend avoiding magic rings. So Okay. There was our nerddom for the day. As we get into the topic, we are actually continuing our Rare Leadership book study. We are in chapter four, “When the Fast Track Needs Fixing.” If you don’t know what the fast track is, we can re-explain that and also pop into chapters one, two, three. We’re unpacking brain science, and emotional maturity, and all sorts of things here.
The goal of this series is to equip you to live and lead with more emotional intelligence and resilience on your walk with God. And you can check out the free discussion guide for this book in the description links. We hope that is helpful for you. Father, let us get into chapter four: When the Fast Track Needs Fixing. And let’s go ahead and just give a quick refresher – what do we mean by slow track, fast track?
(01:58) Marcus Warner: All right, so there are two systems in the brain, and these aren’t locations in the brain, they’re systems that function. But the fast track is largely on the right hemisphere, and the slow track is largely in the left hemisphere. So every now and then we’ll slip into right brain, left brain language. But we use fast track and slow track, [we] try to be a little more precise about what’s actually going on.
The fast track is the part of the brain that reacts to things, faster than conscious thought. So that’s probably the simplest way to think about it. It is constantly moving at a speed faster than we can think about things. And so this is where we react in fear or anger. It’s where we remember our character and act like ourselves. We don’t have to constantly stop and analyze, like what is my character? How would it be like me? It’s like it just automatically shows up as long as the fast track is working.
The slow track is where conscious thought dominates and where problem-solving happens and focus and that sort of thing. So that’s kind of the difference in a nutshell.
(03:08) Stephanie Warner: Awesome. And so we are talking specifically and applying this toward leadership and relational dynamics and things like that. And so in this chapter, again, “When the Fast Track Needs Fixing: The Cost of Toxic Community” right? And so what does the fast track have to do with affecting toxic community?
(03:37) Marcus Warner: Yeah, it seems like a leap, doesn’t it, in terms of like, well, okay, that’s a big, big sweeping thing. So the fast track houses my character, it houses my sense of identity, and it houses the part of me that is the most relational, and feels connection to other people. And so what happens is if my fast track begins to malfunction, I lose my ability to think as clearly as I should, and I do a poorer job of solving problems, and all of my other functions go down.
So if I am going to contribute to the toxicity of a culture, if I am going to behave in a way that creates problems in my culture, you will almost always be able to trace that behavior back to somebody, if not a lot of people’s fast tracks shutting down. And so when the fast track is malfunctioning, I stop acting like myself. I stop remaining relational. I’m going to be more likely to blow up, you know, meltdown, shut down, that sort of thing.
So I can give you an example of how this happens. So one of the first times I ever did a corporate training event on Rare Leadership, we had a slide up there with like ten different ways you can tell that your fast track is shutting down. And one of them was I don’t want to make eye contact. One is I just want to stop this conversation right now. I just want to get rid of you.
(05:03) Marcus Warner: I don’t want to finish listening. I just want to, you know, there’s a lot of things like that. And somebody in the room blurted out, I don’t think my fast track’s ever been on. Because it’s like I live that way all of the time, was sort of his point. At which moment he said that, it’s like every eye in the room looked at me as if to, nodding their head as if to say, no, he is not kidding. He is like, does not function that way.
And so the result is when you’ve got somebody in the room like that, everybody else walks on eggshells around them, because you never know when they’re going to be relational and when they’re going to shut down, when they’re going to blow up, when they’re going to melt down. You never know which person you’re going to get. And so you kind of tiptoe around them, and they become the unstable presence that everybody has to adapt to in the culture. And so just that one person shut down fast track affected the whole culture of that organization.
(05:59) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. I had pulled a sentence kind of from the book like this. It says, “When leaders begin to be swayed by who is going to get upset, they are surrendering their guidance to the most emotionally unstable person in their group.”
(06:13) Marcus Warner: No, very true. Yeah, I mean, you think about how often we make decisions based on, well, if I do that, this one person’s going to get really upset. And we don’t know how to handle them really upset. We don’t know how to deal with that level of emotion. So it’s like, well, let’s not do that. And you can pretend that it’s out of kindness to that person, but it’s really out of fear that you’re going to have to deal with something you don’t want to deal with.
And so that’s the challenge here is that if I don’t have enough maturity as a leader, I will be constantly just turning into a doormat for whoever the least mature person in the room is, trying my best not to upset the apple cart. And when that happens, fear becomes the driver in the culture instead of joy, and toxicity is quick to follow.
(07:00) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about how just avoiding negative emotions can turn toxic?
(07:09) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so one of the things I learned from Dr. Wilder was that the only thing we truly fear is an emotion we can’t handle. And so what happens is, I may not be able to put into words that I can’t handle that emotion, but in the fast track knows, the fast track knows I can’t handle that emotion. Right? So my conscious thought may not know that I can’t handle it, but my fast track knows I can’t handle it. So my fast track’s going to send signals saying, hey, avoid that. Don’t go there. Stop, right?
And I will find myself then on the conscious part of my brain coming up with excuses and reasons why it’s a good idea to avoid this, and why I shouldn’t, that aren’t necessarily related to the actual reason why I’m avoiding this situation. And so what happens then is that with every emotion that I can’t handle as a leader, if I have to avoid that emotion, that is now a decision I can’t make. It’s a direction into which I cannot lead. And decisions begin being made for me based off of just things I’m afraid of.
And so it is a problem that comes up when we have to deal with the, you know, people who have unstable emotions, and sometimes it’s not even their unstable emotions. Sometimes it’s even our fear that they will become unstable. And so that fear ends up controlling us.
(08:37) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Well, it can be you can tiptoe around a leader, or a leader can tiptoe around an employee, or it can be in family dynamics, right? It’s not always just in a workplace setting.
(08:52) Marcus Warner: No, I’ve definitely done it. I mean, I know there have been times when I have just avoided making a decision, because I didn’t want to deal with the fallout it was going to create. And I have usually ended up dealing with a bigger fallout later than if I had just dealt with it the first time.
And it’s understandable because you’re like, I just really don’t feel like dealing with this person’s, you know, reaction to this right now. And so you put it off. And then in the time you put it off, they talk to four other people, and now, you know, it just escalates and that’s why avoiding emotions can actually feed the toxicity in a culture and help it grow bigger.
(09:39) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. So we’re talking about slow track, fast track, but slow track can’t really watch the fast track ’cause it’s slow. So how do we spot if there’s training that the fast track needs? What are warning signs? What are, yeah, what are some ways that we can start recognizing, hmm, something might be wrong.
(09:56) Marcus Warner: So what the slow track can do, right, is it can’t watch the fast track operate, but the slow track can see the warning signs. So the slow track is really good at problem-solving and seeing things that need my focus and attention. And so it’s my slow track that is going to say, okay, I see this happening. There is a problem. We better start trying to fix that problem.
Now, if I don’t have these categories and I don’t have this, then the problem I’m usually trying to fix is you, as opposed to something going on in my brain, and my ability to motivate myself, find some joy motivation in what I’m doing.
But for example, if I find that I just don’t want to be around anybody, and I am isolating consistently, I may cover that up by saying, I’d just rather do it myself, or I just need a break, or something like that. And sometimes that is, you just need a break. And sometimes that’s true. And it’s just true enough that it can be convincing, but it becomes a pattern in my life. And I realize that I am becoming more and more isolated from my team. I do not include them in things. I am staying to myself more and more. That’s a sign that I am avoiding something because of fear.
(11:18) Marcus Warner: Another one is when I need to motivate somebody else, I find myself turning more and more to fear as that motivator for them. And I will warn of the bad outcomes, like this is going to be catastrophic. This is going to be terrible, right? Horrible things are going to come. And I am motivating with fear almost exclusively. And that’s another sign that my fast track is malfunctioning, because I can’t even think of motivations that aren’t fear-based when I’m getting like that.
(11:46) Stephanie Warner: And motivations can be motivating ourselves or other people and so it’s you know, you can catch it both ways.
(11:52) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so if I am motivating, you know, my people like, this catastrophe is going to happen if we don’t, right? That would be an example. And so we see coaches do this a lot. We see parents do it with their kids. We see, you know, even pastors do it in the church. We see at smaller levels, like all of us did lead at something. And a lot of leadership is about creating engagement, and a lot of creating engagement is about motivation.
And so, we need to catch ourselves when we are motivating with fear, and find a way to bring some joy into the motivation, and not rely just exclusively on things like, shame and anger and fear to get people to do what we want them to do. So that’s a sign, like that our slow track can catch, like, okay, I am turning to a fear motivator here. Maybe I should take a closer look at what’s going on.
(12:46) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. I will just add a tangential comment there on, you know, one of the things when people are leading, or are motivating with fear, or motivating with problem-solving, you know, going back to VCR, which we’ve talked about on the various episodes before about validating, comforting, recovering, that when you’re always going straight to problem-solving, you’re always going straight to the fear motivator, it turns everything into a crisis.
It makes everything feel like, it’s a crisis or else, instead of like, well, you know, because sometimes, there is some fear or there is some, you know, something that needs to be handled right away. And it’s a problem-solving thing. But when everything is constantly problem-solving first, it makes everything feel like a crisis. And then it feels like, well, if everything’s a crisis, is anything a crisis? Like, but anyway, just a random thought I had.
(13:41) Marcus Warner: Yeah, exactly. No, it’s true. And so that’s what we’re looking at is, so I’m looking for the warning signs of isolation, the warning signs of motivating myself and others with fear, because that does turn things into crisis mode, and nothing’s going to burn people out faster.
And then the third warning sign I’m looking for is that I am beginning to become predatory. And that is, I am starting to hurt people with my words. I’m starting to maybe even track people, in order to watch them fail, like I’m rooting for them to go down. That’s predatory behavior. I’m bullying, you know, people and not showing them respect and kindness. If I am starting to get predatory in the way I’m treating people, it’s a sign that my fast track is malfunctioning and toxicity is going to be the result of that.
(14:31) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I had written down, happens when weaknesses are criticized, power advantages are exploited, and people look out for number one.
(14:41) Marcus Warner: Yeah. We’re going to talk about this later in our podcast as we get through the book, but you know, we talk about the difference between predatory leaders and protector leaders. So predatory leaders are bullies, basically, and both predators and protectors track weaknesses. They just do it for totally different reasons. One is tracking weakness to know where to attack in order to win, and one is tracking weakness to know where you need help. And so what our goal here is to be a protector leader, not a predator leader.
(15:12) Stephanie Warner: It’s a really good distinction. I also thought it was really good in this chapter, you bring up also the need for healing in some of these things, and that the healing itself is kind of beyond the scope of of this book of Rare Leadership, but there are times when you have to determine is this something that is a skill that needs trained in my brain? Or is there healing to a damaged system that needs to be done? And can you speak a little bit to, you know, maybe how to recognize that or go about that?
(15:47) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so they are often related, right? Sometimes the reason I’m lacking a skill is because of wounds that I have gone through in my life. The point we’re making here is that simply getting healing for those wounds isn’t going to give you the skill. And that is, that if you, let’s just say that you were bullied growing up. And now you have a tendency to bully people, or you have a tendency to want to be a wallflower and disappear, that’s a wound that needs to be healed. But getting that wound healed isn’t going to automatically give you all of the skills that you missed out on during all the years that you were living in fear, because of the bullying.
So what we’re trying to distinguish here is just the idea that healing doesn’t solve all of the problems, even if it’s really important that you get some healing about this. And what it does is it’s meant to kind of wipe away some of the things that are getting in the way. And make it easier to build these skills. but…
(16:46) Stephanie Warner: And vice versa. If you’re just learning the skills but you need healing, the skills aren’t going to…
(16:51) Marcus Warner: Aren’t going to heal you.
(16:53) Stephanie Warner: Heal you. So yeah.
(16:55) Marcus Warner: Yeah. And so the good news is you can start building some skills before you get healing. And that’s good news. It’s like you don’t have to wait till you’re completely healed in order to build any skills. And you don’t have to have a whole bunch of, you know, the two things can work together.
(17:11) Stephanie Warner: Absolutely, yeah. So can you talk more about the dangers of isolation in all of this?
(17:21) Marcus Warner: So, you know, for leaders, there’s multiple dangers in isolating. And one of them is you lose touch with the people, and you start leading out of your imagination more and more of what you imagine is going on, because you’re actually out of touch with the people around you. That’s one danger. Another danger is that you yourself don’t have a support group anymore, and so you find yourself doing more and more things to try to soothe yourself and make yourself feel better. And so it tends to lead to addictive behaviors.
As you’re doing more and more things like, I can’t count on anybody else to help me out here, make me feel better. So I’m going to do the things that, and so you end up with a lot of high capacity leaders who have some significant addictions. They can be addicted to a lot of sex stuff and a lot of, you know, alcohol and drugs and different things. You’re like, how do they function?
Well there’s a lot of anxiety that comes with leadership, because you’re constantly dealing with those what-if scenarios and what-if catastrophe happen, kind of things. And a lot of people learn that sexual stimulation is the only thing that quiets them. And so they fill their lives with it. Other people learn, like, I got to, you know, have enough alcohol or whatever in my system, or I don’t feel like I can function.
And so isolation adds to that. If I don’t feel like I’m part of a group that I can rely on, and that we’re all moving in the same direction, and that we are looking out for each other, the odds of me turning to addictive behaviors goes up significantly. So those are two, you know, concrete things that often happen as a problem with isolation. There’s, you know, probably several others. Does one come to your mind?
(19:06) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Well, and ironically, yeah, I mean, I was just thinking ironically, our brain, we’re created for people and community and all these things and we’re afraid of being alone, but sometimes in our fear of being alone, or our fear of being abandoned or rejected or whatever, then we just self-fulfilling prophecy make ourselves alone, so that we won’t be alone, you know. It’s like, wait.
(19:32) Marcus Warner: Yeah, no, that’s absolutely true. It’s like it can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy because you know, you keep telling yourself nobody wants me around, nobody wants me here, and you withdraw so much that people get used to you not being around, and you have your guard up so much that they don’t know how to act around you, and it can turn into that for sure.
(19:54) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. So we’ve touched on it a lot, but can we speak directly to, kind of the idea of this is your brain on fear? Like we’ve talked about, you know, our brains are designed to run on the fuel of joy, and with the fast track, we want to run at the speed of joy as chapter one talks about. What is it like to work to run at the speed of fear?
(20:19) Marcus Warner: So let’s be clear again here that the fuel we’re talking about is primarily motivation. And what we’re talking about is how do I motivate myself? And if I am constantly motivating myself with fear, that’s going to lead to anger, it’s going to lead to shame, it’s going to lead to a lot of other negative emotions. And what will happen is those emotions call for more energy. And so now I’m having to work even harder. And so my engine tends to run hot.
And it’s like the engine is overheating because now I’m not only having to solve these problems, I’m having to deal with the energy being created by all of the negative emotions that are going on with it. And things that maybe would be manageable, now become unmanageable and overwhelming, because of all the big, you know, fear-based emotions that are connected to it.
So that’s why motivation matters. That’s why this fuel matters. That is not a sustainable recipe for life. And so we have to find ways to motivate with joy. If we don’t, we’re just going to isolate more and more. And one of the problems with isolation again is that we avoid things, and one of the things we end up avoiding are tasks. And so sometimes even the failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because I’m so afraid of my feelings, I’m not getting anything done. And so it can create a really bad situation.
So I’m going to motivate you to joy with fear. That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s like, it is so scary. What will happen if you’re motivated with fear that you definitely want to do joy? There’s a little irony there. But what we’re trying to do is say, I want to be the best version of myself. I want to have my best brain working on this problem. I want to have a, you know, relational connection. I don’t want to be isolated. I do want team, I do want connection, I do want these things, right?
(22:13) Marcus Warner: So you’re looking at what are the joyful reasons to be doing what I’m doing? That can help. And this is like, you’re going through a time of transition in your life where you’re leaving behind something secure, and you’re going into something that where there’s significant change. And you can find yourself only motivating yourself with fear. Like I better do this or else. I better do that or else because in this transition, what happens if that takes place? What happens if the other thing takes place? And all I’m doing is, I’m rehearsing all the fears constantly.
(22:44) Marcus Warner: I’ve got to find the joyful motivator of well, what does this give me the opportunity to do? What does this give me the chance to create? What is, you know, going on here that I can take advantage of? I’ve got to find something in here that motivates me with joy. And that helps to balance things out, keep me engaged, keep me focused, and it keeps my whole brain operating the way it’s supposed to.
(23:09) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Well, and if you can find the places to smell the roses, you know, if there are truly things in crisis, or there is a change and the change is happening, and there’s nothing you can do about it, you know.
I just think about when I graduated from from Asbury and I was walking through the process of, okay, I’m about to move states and leave this community and leave this apartment, and leave all this stuff,and I just really deliberately started documenting things I appreciated about my surroundings, and about that season, and was just kind of trying to honor the the change of, okay, I love this and I love this, and I’m grieving that this is ending, but also I’m appreciating it, and now we’re going to go to the next thing or whatever and, you know.
Anyway that’s another tangent, but there’s I think that joy baby steps to the elevator, right? Sometimes it’s far reaching to get the joy on the really big thing. But you can get it in the small things and then work your way up there if it feels like, yeah, but you just don’t know the thing that I’m trying to motivate right now, right?
(24:26) Marcus Warner: Yeah. Well, good job getting a What About Bob? reference in there. Okay. So, baby steps to the elevator. Now it’s true. It’s hard to start with the biggest thing going on in your life, right? We need to practice with manageable things. And so the first time we try to find a joy motivator is with the biggest, scariest thing going on that I’ve ever had to face. It’s going to be difficult to do. So we want to practice with the littler things, and kind of see how it works. And then you begin dealing with the bigger things.
This can also be an opportunity to bring prayer in, and listening prayer specifically into the situation, as I begin asking God to show me what the joy motivators are in the situation that I am in, and what I have to be thankful for and appreciate throughout what I’m going through.
(25:21) Stephanie Warner: Well, I love that. That’s so good. Well, hey, next chapter we’re going to continue looking at immature versus mature leaders, and how to create culture, and well yeah, I’m excited for that as well. We’re so glad that you are all here with us. Thank you for being on the trail with us once again. Have a happy Hobbit Day.
And yeah, thank you for everybody who prays with us and partners with us and is tuning in. One of these days I need to figure out how we can get people badges, you know, the listeners. It’s great. But anyway, for now, we’ll just keep on keeping on, Father.
(26:02) Marcus Warner: We definitely need, yeah, fellowship of the trail badges, don’t we? That sounds like a cool thing.
(26:09) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. I like it.
(26:11) Marcus Warner: When you got a slogan like Fellowship of the Trail, how can you not celebrate Hobbit Day, right?
(26:17) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, I’m just saying. I’m just saying. Everybody likes to get cozy and have a meal with someone, right? That’s just…All right. Any final thoughts on this episode?
(26:25) Marcus Warner: Exactly. All right. We got to know how to get back off of that trail before we end up somewhere we can’t get back from.
(26:33) Stephanie Warner: It’s okay. One of these days we’ll start our In the Weeds Off the Trail podcast and digress into all the things.
(26:42) Stephanie Warner: Final thoughts on…
(26:43) Marcus Warner: My final thoughts. Yeah. So yeah. Now so, learning about fast track, slow track was really kind of revolutionary for me because before that, I did not see all the patterns of avoidance that I had in my life. And I realized that I was a very avoidant leader. I didn’t want to rock the boat ever. I didn’t want to get anybody upset. I didn’t want to deal with hard things.
And what I realized, I was cultivating that in the staff I was leading. And a lot of people were choosing avoidance over problem-solving. And when that happens, you stop solving problems, right? And so those problems get bigger, and it creates a toxic environment. Learning about this helped me to realize, okay, there is a way to actually face my problems, not lose my joy, stay relational, and act like myself as I’m going through these problems.
And it was honestly a brand new idea for me, a new concept, and it gave me something to target and to strive to to achieve, because I’m like, okay, well that’s a goal now and I didn’t even have that picture in my head before. And now I do. And so I think this fast track, slow track concept really can be revolutionary for you too.
(27:56) Stephanie Warner: I hope so. May it be so. All right, see you guys next week.
