Dr. Laura Gallaher on humor at work, leadership at NASA after crisis, and building a business traveling the world

[01:00] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path, exploring the human side of work. I'm your host, Paul Millerd, and I'm fascinated with how we can imagine past the default path to do things that matter. I have conversations with entrepreneurs, freelancers, and thinkers who are questioning the role of work in our lives who are thinking about how we can unlock creative potential in ourselves and organizations and are carving new paths in the world to create a more human future of work. If you want to support the podcast, check out the Patreon link in the show notes. And for more information, go to BoundlessPod.com. Today I'm talking with Dr.

Laura Gallaher, who is the founder of Gallaher Edge. She's a organizational psychologist and has some pretty incredible work experience with NASA and Disney before founding her own firm. Right now I'm talking with Laura from Serbia. Serbia, right, Laura?

[02:06] Dr. Laura Gallaher: That's right.

[02:07] Paul: And where she is traveling to one place each month with The Remote Year. So we'll definitely dive into that and her story. Welcome to the podcast, Laura.

[02:18] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you so much for having me, Paul.

[02:19] Paul: So I'd love to start with just your path in psychology. Was there a time when you first knew you might be interested in trying to figure out how other people think?

[02:33] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Definitely. And I think that it started originally from a place of complete ego, which was—

[02:40] Paul: as most things do for people, right?

[02:43] Dr. Laura Gallaher: So when I was in high school, I just loved it when my friends would talk to me about what was going on in their lives, whether it was difficulty with school or issues with a boyfriend or anything like that. I just, I loved it. I loved that they would come to me for advice and, you know, as a 16, 17-year-old, I thought I knew everything and I just thought that was great. So I thought, wow, what if I could actually get paid to do this one day? And so I decided to study psychology.

[03:12] Paul: So when did you first start thinking about pursuing a PhD?

[03:17] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I started out thinking I was going to become a psychiatrist, actually. And this sounds really goofy, but it took me a year or two to figure out that, oh, that's medicine. And I didn't really want to do medicine. Like, I knew that would mean med school, but I was like, oh, that means giving people drugs to help them figure out, you know, their lives. And I was like, I'm not sure if I want to do that. So then I was sort of searching for, okay, what is it?

But I felt pretty confident that no matter what, I was going to end up getting a doctorate in something related to psychology. And then it wasn't until I think it was my junior year of undergraduate that I realized that organizational psychology was a thing. So social psychology, I had fallen in love with, like what happens with groups of people? How do we perceive each other? How, How does our behavior change when we're around others, and how are we influenced by the presence of other humans? And that's social psych, but I was like, ooh, that's all really academic.

I want to work with people in a very applied way. And then I discovered organizational psychology, and that was my direction from that point forward.

[04:29] Paul: Were there any areas of focus that fascinated you during your research and study?

[04:36] Dr. Laura Gallaher: So originally it really was anything to do with social perception. So my initial passions were actually in the areas of diversity, uh, discrimination. And then as I learned organizational psychology, it became focused on things like affirmative action and prejudice in the workplace and a lot of that type of stuff. And then honestly, it was the goofiest situation. I was in my maybe fourth year of my PhD program, I was trying to find an article for my dissertation. And as I flipped to the next page in the journal, I saw this title.

And I wish I remember the exact name. Maybe I'll shoot it over to you later and you can include it or something. But it had to do with like a new level of manure. And I was like, what is this? And it was some like meta-analysis about humor at work. And I got completely sucked in.

I sat there in the library and read the whole thing, and then I went over to the photocopy machine because, yeah, that's how old I am, and I photocopied the whole article. And the next time I met with my advisor, I had— I kind of abandoned my 30-page draft of my previous dissertation topic, and I had done this like 7-page outline on the psychology of humor at work, and I made my case to study this really unusual subject, and she was sold.

[06:03] Paul: So unusual, but I think still very needed. So where did that research take you? Maybe we can get some takeaways for people in companies today.

[06:14] Dr. Laura Gallaher: All right, so studying humor was already weird. I don't know if people have much context for that, but in academia, I think people are really mindful to avoid things that seem too frivolous. In all honesty, humor in communication is a huge area of subject. I mean, humor is an incredibly powerful communication tool that can be wielded both for good and for bad. So, you know, I was able to convince my advisor around that and she said, okay, I don't know anything about humor academically, so let's just pair this with something I know a lot about, which is interviewing people in the selection process. And I said, "Okay." So, we started to look at gender and humor combined in the selection process.

So, the name of my dissertation ultimately was, "The Moderating Effect of Gender on the Use of Humor During a Job Interview: That's What She Said." So, I got to have some fun with that.

[07:18] Paul: That's pretty amazing. So, I take it you're a fan of The Office?

[07:22] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh yes. Oh my gosh, such a fan. And I, so I finished my PhD in 2010 and so I named my dissertation probably somewhere in the 2009 timeframe. And I think that was kind of during the prime of The Office and I am just a geek like to the utmost degree. So for my dissertation defense, I had purchased these, um, they weren't like custom, but I mean, I didn't have them custom made, but they were custom made by somebody, these notepads. So like lined paper, but they were all Office-themed.

So they all had like a picture of one of the characters from The Office and something ridiculous at the top of it. And I saw— I did, I bought like 4 or 5 of those notepads and gave them to each member of my committee. And I would love to tell you that they thought it was hilarious and that they were—

[08:10] Paul: that's what I was gonna ask. No.

[08:15] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, no, I think, you know, my main advisor was definitely a good sport about it. And then the other person that was on my committee is Dr. Philip Mead, who actually works with me now on Gallagher Edge. He thought it was great. He thought it was hilarious. And I think that's one of the things that he and I always bonded over, is that there were lots of things that he and I both found to be so funny that other people would just be kind of like staring at us blankly.

But neither one of us are in the academic world. He worked me at NASA, so he didn't take that whole you know, professorial route. Not that all professors are humorless or anything like that, but yeah, no, I don't think it lightened anybody's mood. It was a tough defense.

[08:56] Paul: Well, you probably knew that your path was not going to be in academia at that point.

[09:02] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh yeah.

[09:03] Paul: Or they were giving you that advice.

[09:05] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, I was already, by that point, I had actually been working directly at NASA for 3 or 4 years already, so I was very committed to my career path in the applied world at that point.

[09:18] Paul: So I think there's something deeper there about the lack of humor in academia as you study academia. So it sounds like people at least taking themselves pretty seriously. So can you make the case for adding humor to cultures or academia to improve what they're doing?

[09:40] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh my gosh, absolutely. On so many levels. I mean, okay, so I feel like I want to kind of get this part out of the way. So there's aggressive humor, which is humor that's used to— really, it's humor that puts anybody down, which is really, really common actually. Like, for any of your listeners, just, just notice, just pay attention when people are cracking a joke. How often are they putting somebody down?

Even it could be, you know, lighthearted and with love, but technically that falls into the category of aggressive humor, which is part of what I studied in my dissertation. So Aggressive humor can absolutely be used negatively. Sarcasm is one of the most common forms of aggressive humor. That is unfortunately where a lot of people go with it. No research that I have found supports that it's useful in organizational settings unless maybe it's a very well-established baseline of The way that we show you love is by giving you crap.

[10:40] Paul: Yeah, it's like the New England brand of love.

[10:44] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Is that right?

[10:45] Paul: A lot of sarcasm in New England in the US.

[10:49] Dr. Laura Gallaher: And I acknowledge I've had multiple people tell me over the years, just in general, that if they're not giving me crap about something, then they don't really like me. And if they're teasing me, making fun of me, then that's how they show me that they actually think I'm pretty cool. So I can buy into that. But in general, it's a bit dangerous to use aggressive humor humor without setting that expectation.

[11:13] Paul: I've seen the research on that, that even if it's sarcasm and you mean well, there's still grains of truth that has some effects that still put down people and make people feel uncomfortable.

[11:26] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, absolutely. But separate from that, gosh, infusing humor in what we do is amazing. I mean, not only does laughter create bonds, I mean, it changes the chemistry that's happening for each individual human. Affiliate humor was the other type of humor that I studied, which is humor that's really designed actually to create bonds. We're talking about humor as a tool that can increase trust, grow team cohesion, make it a better place to be, which if people enjoy coming to work, then they're more likely to stick with the organization for the long haul. Not to mention they have boosts in their productivity.

Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on. Humor in the workplace is great.

[12:10] Paul: Anyone, are there specific actions people could take that are very simple to increase the level of humor or at least psychological safety to be humorous at work?

[12:22] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I think that the most useful place to start actually is being willing to laugh at yourself. It's a little bit different than self-deprecating humor, which is another type of humor that was in this 2x2. We love 2x2s in the psychology world.

[12:40] Paul: Consulting world too.

[12:42] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Consulting word. Oh yeah, consulting is all about 2x2 matrices. So if, especially if you're a leader in an organization, but really anybody, if you can prove that you don't take yourself too seriously and that you're willing to laugh at yourself, that's a really, really great place to start. And so putting yourself down is actually, that usually gets annoying pretty quickly because people tend to think that you are sort of fishing for compliments. You're seen as somebody that, yeah, looking for other people to validate them. But if I do something silly, if I make a mistake, if I'm able to just laugh it off, that sends a really strong signal to people around me that, hey, this is fine.

And you know what, that's actually pretty funny. Right?

[13:33] Paul: No, that's, that's fascinating. And you just see so often that people think they need to play the role that they never make mistakes and everything's always perfect. And it can be so counterproductive to the team and people feeling comfortable.

[13:49] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, and I think like a lot of things, it's really useful just to have open dialogue about it. So we all have different senses of humor, right? Different things that we find funny, and not everybody enjoys joking around in the same way. So just like any other type of communication at work, to even spend 5 or 10 minutes getting to know somebody in terms of what do you like and what do you not like and how can I best work with you, I would say humor falls into that category too. It's worth it to have that conversation.

[14:21] Paul: So I wanna shift to some of your professional experience. So you joined, I think right out of school after they decided you were too humorous for academia. That you joined NASA. And I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you joined right after the Columbia crash, which was quite a tragedy, and helped to help them think through working through that and their culture. Is that right?

[14:53] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, there was a little bit of a gap in time. So the tragedy happened in 2003. And, you know, they did an investigation because of course they wanted to understand how did something so tragic happen. And so part of what came out from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report was an entire chapter dedicated to culture as well as a couple chapters dedicated to decision-making. And so, I mean, you can easily argue that anything related to anything even technical still comes back to human error or human behavior. But they really specifically were calling out some of the things that had emerged from NASA's culture that were not too terribly different from what happened in the '80s.

And so they spent about a year and a half with a dedicated team that Dr. Philip Mead actually was a part of. He led that effort. I've mentioned him because he was on my dissertation committee and works with me now with GallagherEdge. So he actually led that effort. But at the end of that 18-month period, the center director at Kennedy Space Center was wise enough to acknowledge this is not a one-and-done.

We can't just spend a year and a half focusing on building leadership capacity for our current leaders and think that this is never going to happen again. We need a constant presence. We need people here all the time helping us pay attention to culture, making sure that all the new leaders that are rising up in the ranks of NASA are learning these same useful skills and know how to behave so that we can drastically reduce or hopefully eliminate the chances of this ever happening again. And Dr. Philip Mead said, that's called organization development, and I can start that for you. And that's when he hired 3 of us organizational psychologists to come in.

And so I started with them in 2006.

[16:42] Paul: That's pretty amazing. Uh, I know from the '80s, I think this is a famous experiment they often, uh, or exercise they do in classes where they basically just show all the analytical data about something that eventually led to one of the, one of the earlier explosions in NASA. And they bring up the point that you're looking at all these analytical things and it's very easy to disconnect that from a minor thing might lead to some disaster down the road. So were you looking at similar things and how that comes out culturally?

[17:20] Dr. Laura Gallaher: To a degree, yeah, to a degree. So, um, what I remember, uh, because let's see, so during Challenger, which was back in the '80s, I was quite young, um, I was alive, but you know, a lot of what they pointed to there had to do with issues of groupthink, and what was similar was the fear of speaking up, the fear of speaking out. So there was so much, um, pressure around schedule and budget. I'm not sure if you remember any of the details of the Challenger tragedy from the '80s, but that was the first shuttle flight where they had a teacher on board. This was a very big deal. I mean, this was one of the most— besides probably the first launch of the space shuttle vehicle, this was probably like the most famous one.

It was the first time that somebody was sort of, you know, plucked from the civilian world and was going to go up and teach from space. So the idea of delaying launch was just being met with so much negativity because every time they would delay, NASA would just get kind of beat up in the media. And so it's not that they thought this would happen. I mean, obviously they— it was just the concern and the question. And so allowing pressures of schedule and budget to overtake really what was actually kind of an absence of data Like back in the '80s, it was a question of we don't know if these O-rings, which are in the solid rocket boosters, the white things that are next to the giant orange external tank, they said that they just have not been tested at these temperatures, 'cause it was very, very cold.

It was like 20 degrees or something crazy in a January back in the '80s, and they just said, you know, we just don't know how they're going to perform. It's a risk and we shouldn't do it. But they didn't have any data at that point to say it's definitely going to be catastrophic. And that was kind of a similar situation in 2003. They knew that foam had come off the external tank and struck the wing or struck somewhere on the orbiter, which is the actual plane-looking part of the shuttle. I didn't know any of this stuff before I worked for NASA, so sometimes I like to explain it to people.

Yeah. So they knew that happened, but they, even with all of the cameras, there's like 130 cameras or something on every launch, but they still didn't have any footage of exactly where it hit. Nor did they have any kind of easy or guaranteed way to check out the damage. So again, some of their simulations and data, like, suggested that this could be catastrophic, but they didn't actually know. And the other thing that became an issue is— so between, you know, the mid-'80s and the early 2000s or early aughts, um, is they did so many successful shuttle launches. And so that's part of it is that they basically developed an overconfidence in the vehicle and the systems.

And then there's a phrase that I'm probably going to butcher here, but it has to do with the normalization of deviations. So like foam coming off the external tank and striking the orbiter, that's, that's a deviation, but that had happened many, many, many times in the past. It had always hit on the underbelly of the orbiter, which that's like those tiles that are really, really strong. And so yeah, those tiles would need to be replaced when the shuttle came back for processing, to turn it around for the next launch, but it was never ever catastrophic. And so all those deviations and anomalies, those are things that people pay attention to, absolutely, but it was, it almost hurt them that it had happened so many times without significant incident. So when it happened here, a lot of people just had seemingly good reasons to think that this would not be catastrophic either.

[21:04] Paul: So behaviorally and organizationally, what were some of the things you identified that needed to shift at NASA?

[21:12] Dr. Laura Gallaher: One of the biggest things that came out from just a very human behavior and communication aspect had to do with silencing voices. So besides everything that I just explained around the anomalies and overconfidence in the vehicle, I think that one of the biggest things that I was there to help improve was the number of people, especially on the individual contributor level or perhaps lower-level management, that genuinely feared a negative impact on their career if they were too loud or too vocal or too pushy about probably anything, but that included, unfortunately, issues of safety and concern of safety that the programs— and so part of this actually came back to organizational design, the way that the organization was designed, um, safety professionals and engineering all fell underneath the program, and the program is primarily concerned with schedule and budget.

You know, they're kind of like the project managers, the program managers. They make sure that things are moving forward and happening that way. And so when you have the voices of safety and the voices of engineering that are basically, um, subservient's not quite the word that I want, but they're underneath the program management, when that's the highest level of leadership in the room, at a certain point they just became afraid Well, okay, I've said what I'm gonna say, but I really don't want this manager to get mad at me, or even having bosses coach people before meetings, like, don't get too pushy on this, et cetera, et cetera. And I always want people to understand, because I worked for NASA for 8 years, there are some really incredible people there. It's so easy to look at a situation like what happened both in the '80s and 2003 and ask, how could they be so dumb?

But they're not, they're not dumb and they're not callous. These are not callous people. They actually just fell victim to the same kind of thing that can happen in any organization. The really, really sad part about this is that unfortunately when there was a failure, it genuinely was a matter of life and death. And a lot of organizations fall victim to this. Programs fail, projects fail, new initiatives don't get off the ground for a lot of the same cultural reasons that managers don't listen effectively to the people in the organization, that minority opinions are suppressed, or that employees in the organization fear disagreeing too hard because it'll have a negative impact on their career.

It happens everywhere.

[23:51] Paul: Right.

[23:51] Dr. Laura Gallaher: But at NASA, it was just very, very unfortunately, like I said, life and death. And so that's where it became a very clear case to the center director at the time, this cannot happen again. We have to have people in place to pay attention to this all the time.

[24:08] Paul: Right. Do you— so I've, I've seen those issues too. I mean, part of me wonders, is it just an inevitable, uh, result of hierarchies and organizations where people are going to be afraid to speak up? But have you seen things either at NASA or in your other work that helps transcend that?

[24:30] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I have definitely seen behaviors and initiatives and things that can transcend that, yes. So one of my favorite examples is actually one of the first clients that I had when I started my own company, GallagherEdge, in 2013. I was working with a tech startup and they had grown maybe faster than they were really prepared for. And so they brought me in just to help them with some of their, their growing pains. And I worked with them for about a year and a half, maybe 2 years. But about a year and a half into it, one of— I really, I almost cried, maybe I did cry, I don't know.

One of my favorite moments is we were working with the executive team and we were asking them about trust and their propensity to trust. And we asked them to explain why they think that they scored the way that they did on this assessment. It was really just an assessment to get them talking. And I listened to one person after another. Talk about how before they came to work for this company, before they came to work for this leader and this CEO, they did not have a high propensity to trust. That if they had taken the same assessment 2 years earlier, 3 years earlier, whatever it would have been, that it would have been very, very different.

But that the culture in this organization was one that challenged all of the things that they thought they knew about hierarchy and companies and helped them realize that there are leaders that can cultivate that environment of openness and trust. I feel like the What was the main thing that that leader and CEO did all the time very, very consistently? Well, two things. One is that he was almost never afraid to be vulnerable himself. Yeah. So, he would put himself out there as a flawed person and he was not afraid to show his own emotions.

And the second thing that he did very well and very consistently is he made it extremely clear both through his words and his actions that he cared very, very genuinely about the people in the organization. And he had, you could almost argue, you know, in the beginning, too many initiatives where he wanted to hear from them. I wanted to hear from you, like, tell me what you think. He was doing one-on-ones with every single person in the organization on a quarterly basis until they reached like 25 or 30 people. And then, and that's part of what I helped him do actually. I go, you got to farm this down to your leadership team.

You know, like, that's awesome. I love that you're doing this, but if you want to continue to scale, you have to take a lot of your concepts and philosophies and beliefs about leadership, pass them down to leadership team that you're nurturing underneath you, and then they can carry that forward.

[27:07] Paul: Right. Yeah, it's, it's such a key point there that I, I still think unfortunately within these hierarchies, a lot of the onus does rely on those leaders to really decide, I want to transcend this. I want to step out of this idea of what a leader is supposed to be. And really believe in my team and create that environment.

[27:33] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I think it's useful to remind leaders that they have people working for them not to be robots or machines or mindless drones or droids or whatever. We hire people because of how they think. It's not even— I mean, sometimes we hire people for what they know. That's true to a degree. Especially in a technology company, everything changes so quickly. So who cares what you know?

It's going to be virtually obsolete in about a year. What we care about is your ability to learn, your ability to think, your ability to grow. And so creating an environment where the employee's opinion and input has value and you ask for it and you seek it out and then you actually listen to it. This is where really, really engaged organizations are born. And where really powerful cultures are created.

[28:27] Paul: I love it. So, was there a moment when you first thought, "Okay, maybe this is something I might want to do on my own"?

[28:37] Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, my mom tells me that I talked about being an entrepreneur since I was a kid. I don't really remember that. I'm sure I didn't use that word because I feel like in the beginning I followed not necessarily a traditional path, but I mean, gosh, I had a permanent federal civil servant job, um, that by the time I left was, you know, paying me quite well, and I loved the work and all of that. Um, I think the moment for me actually was quite benign. Um, I became a certified coach, and I'd heard that many other consultants that worked in similar roles in different space centers across the country would often just coach on the side. and it was a way to make some additional income, and I thought, oh, I could do that.

Um, but I kind of drug my feet and didn't really make it happen. And then, um, I actually had this moment where I had been accepted to present my dissertation, you know, with the amazing title, as you may remember, at a conference. And, um, I had even gotten a fellowship program from NASA to finish it up, so they were sponsoring me to go and present my findings. And then they made a bunch of cutbacks They had, it wasn't even budget issues, it was like optics or something, I don't know, something that I remember being frustrated about at the time. And they said, not only were they not gonna pay for me to go, which is fine, I was just gonna pay my own way, they said, oh, you can't, you can't go present because you're there representing NASA and you can't represent NASA if we're not sponsoring you, so you can't go.

And I was like, you don't understand, this is my dissertation, it was submitted once, I can't submit this again, this is a panel and I got in. So I said, if I change my affiliation and I'm not with NASA, can I go? And they were like, yeah, I don't see why not. And so that was my moment to be like, okay, I'm gonna make it real. And I registered my business, created the LLC. I remember doing this like super fast brainstorm to come up with a name for my company, which I changed a few years later.

So it didn't stick around, but yeah. So I like hurried up and did it really fast and changed it. And so then when I presented my dissertation, that was actually the first time that I was representing launching my own company. And it was probably 2 or 3 months later that I got that first client. And probably about 7 months after that that I decided to leave NASA.

[31:01] Paul: That's amazing. And did you go to Disney first before going out on your own officially, or was that in a consultant capacity?

[31:09] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Uh, neither actually. So one of the things that I like to share because I think that it can be encouraging to anybody else who's considering a path of entrepreneurship or doing your own thing. So I left in January of 2014. I did set up a bunch of teaching gigs for myself. I think I was afraid of not making any money. And then I was spending so much time on all those teaching gigs because it was all brand new stuff and I was creating 3 different curriculum and it was just— or curricula.

It was so much work and then I was doing everything wrong with the business at that point. I was like trying to throw myself into marketing and building a website and basically doing a lot of stuff that I didn't know how to do and I wasn't good at and I didn't enjoy. That was a disaster. So, um, I had the chance to start with Disney as a full-time employee a few months later. I'd seen the, uh, the job opening kind of come through my, my inbox. Looking back, I can tell I wasn't fully committed to the entrepreneurship at that point.

I think I still felt very afraid of how it was going to go because I was like, sure, I'll just apply. I mean, it looks like a cool job, it's Disney, I'll just apply. And then as I moved forward in the application process and it seemed more and more real, then my thought pattern became, well, I mean, I could do my own thing anytime I want. I don't know if I can work for Disney anytime I want. So when they offered me the job, I accepted it. But I only lasted 10 months because— and I think there's something to do with confidence.

As soon as I stopped feeling like I needed revenue from my business, clients started coming to me and I started to ask Yeah, for higher fees for the work I was doing, and I wasn't scared of it anymore. They didn't even blink at the prices that I was throwing out there. That was a really powerful lesson. Then I was working full-time, and I was teaching, and I was building the business. That was not sustainable in the long term. After about 10 months, I said, "You know what?

I'm going to try this again." I left in April of 2015. And I've been just doing the business ever since then.

[33:13] Paul: [Speaker:JEFF] That's fascinating. So, Adam Grant has some interesting research that pretty much backs up the path you took. A lot of people think that people who are entrepreneurial just take bold leaps and just figure it out. It sounds like that's what you did in round 1, but round 2 you had this backup and you were able to operate almost without fear. The second time. I think Adam Grant was showing that a lot of entrepreneurs will actually have like full-time jobs or things they're doing that are more steady that enables them to take risks.

So it's more about thinking about entrepreneurship as risk mitigation than massive risk, which is, I think resonates with my story as well as kind of testing out these things on the side and saying, okay, there might be something here, let's go do it.

[34:04] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, absolutely. I had heard that. I had heard, you know, take the leap and you can always get a job. That was one of the things that gave me the most confidence and courage. Honestly, I still have that in the back of my mind today that if I really want to get a real job or a full-time job or whatever you want to call it, if I want to do that, I still believe I can. When I believe that's possible, then it makes a lot of risk-taking a lot less scary, including my decision to walk away from Orlando where I built up this awesome network and community of clients and travel around the world.

[34:46] Paul: Yeah, so let's dive into that. So you're in Serbia right now.

[34:50] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes, Serbia.

[34:50] Paul: You're traveling around to 12 countries in 12 months. When did you first hear about Remote Year and say, okay, this is something I want to do?

[35:02] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I think I heard about it first around July of 2017. And I, at that point in time, thought that I was going to move to Australia. That was my 2018 plan. And I was moving down that path. I was trying to figure out the whole visa process. And I'm a believer in the idea of manifestation and this idea of speak what you seek until you see what you've said.

And so I was telling everybody that I could how I wanted to go to Australia. And a colleague of mine, Isabella Johnston, said, oh, you should do this Remote Year program. And I asked her a couple questions about it and she described it and I was like, that's not what I want to do. Like, I want to go, you know, live abroad, put some roots down, but just in a different country. But I looked at it and You know, weirdly, I don't know how those algorithms work, but I started seeing ads for it on Facebook and stuff. It's so creepy.

[35:54] Paul: They're so effective once you've been to certain sites.

[35:58] Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, so I was like, you know what, okay, sure, I'll try this out. And I applied, and they contacted me almost immediately for the interview process. And, and you know what, it just— everything seemed to line up so well. Oh, and this was a really weird moment. So, uh, Lawrence is the employee of Remote Year who handled my admission. He is from Sydney, Australia.

[36:22] Paul: Wow.

[36:22] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, and so I was like, oh, that's so weird. Okay, I think that's where my Sydney is, because Sydney is the— my favorite city in the whole world, actually, and my favorite city certainly in Australia. So that all happened, and I made the commitment to travel around the world back in September. And then I didn't even know exactly where I was going to be going until like November, December, or something like that.

[36:45] Paul: Amazing. So how many months in are you?

[36:46] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I was like, sure, you guys can take care of that.

[36:49] Paul: How many months in are you now?

[36:52] Dr. Laura Gallaher: We are just past halfway. So this is currently month 7.

[36:57] Paul: Awesome. And how's it going?

[37:00] Dr. Laura Gallaher: It's really great. And it's really hard. To a certain degree, it feels like the new normal. This is my life now. The idea of going back to Orlando actually feels really foreign. In fact, I went back in May and it felt weird.

I landed at the airport and I was like, I'm not meant to be here. This is just, this is not right. Um, so the new normal is this whole having roommates again, which I haven't had roommates in quite a while. And every month just being plopped down in someplace literally foreign where I got to figure out, okay, where's the closest grocery store? How do I get to the workspace? You know, what's the Wi-Fi password?

Which sounds small, but when you're on your laptop as much as I am, it's like, gotta get another password up in here. Um, but what's amazing about it— two things really, really stand out to me. One is a Saturday for me when I was home, I might have a lovely day, you know. I might spend some time walking around Lake Eola in Orlando. Maybe I would go to a fabulous restaurant for brunch like Artisan's Table. I'd hang out with friends, you know.

I'd come home, maybe I'd grab dinner that night. Like, it was beautiful, lovely. A Saturday here is like, let's drive an hour and a half outside the city of Belgrade. Let's hike up this epic mountain that has like, you know, a world-famous arch, and then we're gonna go have lunch at a winery. Or— and I'm like mixing up different events that I've done, but it's like, this is just Saturday, you know, this is what we're doing. Like last Sunday We did, oh my gosh, we saw so many things around Serbia, including having lunch with a local Serbian family where all the food they served us was food that they have grown on their land, including the grapes to make the wine and some other kind of liquor that I didn't try because it was a bit too strong for me.

So I work a ton. I'm working a lot. I'm working now. I'm in the workspace. Evenings and weekends when I can drag myself away from my work, which I love so much, it's a total adventure. But it's just a Saturday or it's just a Sunday or oh, it's just a Tuesday night.

And so it's this very strange, like, yeah, I still work really hard. I spend quite a bit of time in the workspace on my computer. And people might say, don't you feel like you're wasting your time there? But it's like, no, 'cause it's just, it's right here. And I know for me, when I travel on vacation, vacation's great, but sometimes it's super exhausting because there's no sense of routine. There's no sense of familiarity.

It's traveling around and sightseeing, sightseeing, sightseeing. And, you know, a lot of people feel like they need a vacation after the vacation to recover. But this is just like, I get to space it out and I get to see really incredible places and I get to meet really incredible people. And the second part of it that's so great for me is the community. So I'm not traveling alone. I'm traveling around with 20, 30-something other people, other people who for the most part are also working remotely but wanted to see the world.

And we travel all year together. So it's just very cool. Like, I can go be alone if I want to go be alone, but I also have this like built-in community of friends and really people who in a lot of cases start to feel more like family. Because we have such concentrated time together and we have such unique and different and crazy experiences together. So, the bonds that form and the fun that we have and the ways that we get to know each other. I mean, it's crazy that I only met these people 6 months ago.

So, the community aspect of it and just like the, yeah, there's adventure right out the door because I'm in a brand new country every weekend is fun. It's really been a cool experience.

[40:50] Paul: Yeah, I've talked to a few people that have done Remote Year, a couple that just returned. I was talking to a couple months ago, and I think they resonated with what you were saying. It's a bit disorienting. And I've done a couple of 1-month travel trips, and when you come back, it almost takes a while to reorient to that routine. But I'm wondering Are there other things just from traveling, the constraints from that, that have forced you to be creative in new areas, um, from working remotely, traveling, or just thinking in new ways?

[41:30] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Um, completely. So I would say I probably spent between 80 and 90% of my time when I was living in Orlando doing face-to-face work with clients. Most of my clients were actually local to me. In some cases, their office was a 90-second walk from mine. I would literally host workshops in my apartment. I had a weird but very, very awesome apartment in Thornton Park.

And so that was my day. That was a lot of my day. Maybe I would do some coaching on the phone, but I was with people, in front of people, teaching, facilitating constantly. And a lot of people were very afraid for me. To leave and go do this thing because I didn't have it figured out and I just kept saying, you know what, I'm just—

[42:13] Paul: You weren't afraid.

[42:14] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I wasn't, well, I mean, I think that I was afraid but I had the courage to do it anyway and I just said, you know what, I'll figure it out. I will figure it out. I have figured out a lot of things in the past. If I'm determined to make something happen, I'll make it happen. And so we were in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the first month and I didn't have it figured out yet. We were still trying to set up some contracts for the year, still trying to figure out, okay, who's still in for coaching even though I'm on the other side of the planet?

Do we do an online course? Like, what are we going to do? Should we do a membership site? Like, we did not know what we're going to do. And I say we because I hired Kayla to work with me in April of 2017. And then after I decided to do Remote Year, I asked her if she wanted to and she said yes.

So she came with me. So we're traveling around together, which is amazing. I love her so much.

[43:04] Paul: It's nice to have a teammate with you as well.

[43:07] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh yeah. I think it makes it a very different experience than what a lot of other people have where they don't sit next to anybody that they work with anymore. Kayla and I are next to each other almost every day. It wasn't until month 2, which was Chiang Mai, Thailand, that we even decided, "You know what? We want to build a membership site. We want to teach online.

We want to take these concepts. We want to use this idea of micro-learning. We want to build an online platform." platform so that people can learn a lot of these concepts and still focus on leadership development and team cohesion and self-awareness and all the stuff I love, but we're going to do it online. And I was afraid to do that for many, many years. And creating a product is so much work. It's so much work.

I, I don't think I would have easily made the choice to build a membership site like Insider Edge if I was still back in Orlando because I would probably still have a ton of work face-to-face with my clients and that would have been revenue coming in and it would have been familiar and stuff that I knew how to do and I was very good at. I don't think I would have stopped then and there to say, "You know what? Let's go down this road of building a membership site and doing online business and learning digital marketing and all these things that really kind of terrified me." because technology is just a huge can of worms that changes constantly. I never would have done it, I don't think, if I stayed. So leaving, I'm like, well, yeah. I mean, it's not exactly what else am I going to do?

There's other things I could have done, but it's like, this is the time. I have created the environment and the situation for myself to completely pivot in terms of how I deliver the knowledge and the experiences that I have always wanted to create for people.

[44:53] Paul: That's amazing. Yeah, a lot of self-employed or entrepreneur— entrepreneurs I talk to will often reference moments when they almost blow it up or stop doing things that are paying the bills such that it creates this constraint where they have to innovate in new ways. They're like quitting something they're doing, moving like you did, So it's fascinating to hear that trend over and over again about and how that happens. I think a lot of the fear is you're betting on yourself, right? Like you said, you're, you're betting that you can figure it out, which I think is inevitably scary, but ultimately worth pursuing.

[45:39] Dr. Laura Gallaher: It is. It's, it's very scary. And one thing that I say a lot is that I have a borderline delusional sense of self-confidence. I blame my parents for it. I think I feel like if I really, really, really want to do something, I think I can do it. I think it's gonna take time and energy and effort and almost certainly sweat and tears.

Blood, probably not so much, but like, I will work my ass off to make something happen. Like, I can just be so determined. And so yes, I do, I really do believe in myself, and I always I could just again go, "You know what? If this doesn't work and I'm struggling to buy food, I can get a real job." But I mean, I was extremely fortunate coming into this year that even if I didn't make any money with the company, I knew I'd be okay for the year. So that made it a lot less scary and created the environment for me to feel like, "Okay, let's just figure this out." Now that being said, there's still the psychological element of I want to feel effective. I want to feel like all this work that I'm putting into creating content for Insider Edge every week is going to reach a large audience.

I want to feel like people like what we're creating. And so if it feels like it's moving slow, I can get really down. I mean, there have been many, many, many days throughout this year where I have been in tears because I just feel so wildly incompetent and it's been incredibly hard. I've never regretted it once. Not once. I've never thought, oh, I made a mistake, I shouldn't have done this.

It's just at times been so painful because I spend so much of my time in a space where I don't know what I'm doing. And that's just draining on me. Like after a while it's really, really hard. But like anything else, I learn, I learn, I grow, I will figure it out.

[47:29] Paul: Yeah, and I'm guessing that's where the community comes in huge.

[47:33] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, the community is, is awesome. I actually did this like Instagram Live. I've been doing short live videos every day on Instagram in support of the launch of Insider Edge. And there was one day I was just sitting in the workspace just crying, like not loud, just sort of like tears coming down my face and just sort of sitting there like letting myself feel the emotion. And, and several people came up and in their own way, you know, brought me comfort. And so I did this this little video about how vulnerability is useful because every contribution from somebody in the community was helpful to me that day, whether it made me laugh or it brought me comfort or gave me confidence, whatever it was, it was really useful.

If I didn't allow myself to show the emotions that I was feeling, people maybe wouldn't have known that I was struggling that day and having a hard time and therefore nobody would have offered any kind of of support. So I was like, vulnerability is really useful. It's effective. There's a reason that we emote in visible ways as humans because it signals to people in your tribe or in your community that you could benefit from support. So they've absolutely been great for that.

[48:43] Paul: That's amazing. And so what fueled your passion for self-awareness work? It seems like that's been very useful, useful for you on this trip?

[48:58] Dr. Laura Gallaher: It's— it changed my life, right? So I don't know if we want to talk about age 27 yet, but I really think that's where it came from for me. So do you want to ask a question?

[49:13] Paul: What, what happened at age 27?

[49:17] Dr. Laura Gallaher: So when I was 27, um, I had not quite yet finished my PhD, but I was working full-time for NASA, and I was given the opportunity to participate in a workshop called The Human Element. Um, and it was taught by Judy Bell, who to this day is one of my mentors, um, and somebody that absolutely helped change my life. It was a 5-day workshop, and it wasn't even just 40 hours because Wednesday and maybe Tuesday were long days, so something like 45 to 50 hours of content and experience. And I went into that workshop feeling actually pretty good about myself, you know, life was great, had a great boyfriend, I was feeling good about my work, and I don't know, I was always just like a pretty confident young adult. And by the end of those 5 days, I felt like The whole foundation of who I was was just rocked to my core. I felt like a shell of a person.

I felt shaky and fragile and completely uncertain about everything I thought I knew about who I was. And it probably sounds terrible to people. And I won't lie, it was really, really hard at the time, but it became— I mean, if you think about any kind of change and maybe Lewin's model of change, there's an unfreezing process. Process and then a refreezing process. And I feel like that's what was happening for me. And when people say that behavior doesn't change, I think it's because there are some people that are not willing to let themselves unfreeze.

They're not willing to let themselves get so shook up into like a million pieces to put themselves back together that change is very minimal or it's temporary. But this experience of human element—

[51:02] Paul: It's also awful once you kick off that change, right?

[51:04] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh, it can be so hard. So hard. I mean, that's what it was for me. It was just gut-wrenching and emotional. But it set a path for me to be such a better version of myself. And there were just these incredibly powerful takeaways that I can never unlearn.

And it's exactly the kind of work that I use every day with my clients. And it's the kind of work that we bring to our members on Insider Edge. Is to help them realize, like, here's a great one-liner: what bugs me about you is really about me. Yeah, this whole idea, and it's powerful and also really annoying at times. It's like, oh man, so anytime like somebody's bugging me or I'm thinking like I'm annoyed by them, it's actually some kind of insecurity that I have. Oh dang it, you know, like I'd rather just be annoyed by this person.

Um, but no, it always creates a chance for me to go, okay, what is getting triggered in me? There's some subconscious part of me right now that is terrified and fearful, and so that is my critic, which is one of my defense mechanisms that just wants to blame them, blame them, put them down because that helps me feel better about me. But you know what? It doesn't help me be more effective and it doesn't help me grow and it probably doesn't help me reach my goals. People get almost nowhere ever by blaming. And even criticizing, when it's a defensive critic, it's not useful.

So for me, it created so much space for me to just slow down. And this is one of the most powerful things, right? We learn this in kindergarten, like you cannot control anybody but yourself.

[52:41] Paul: Right.

[52:42] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Right, or whenever we learn that, I think that all of us have heard that at some point in our lives.

[52:46] Paul: I think we all forget that when we become adults.

[52:49] Dr. Laura Gallaher: We do, we do. We try so hard, we have so many ways we try to change everybody else. I still catch myself trying to do it sometimes, But what's brilliant for me about this work and a concept like a simple one-liner like that, what bugs me about you is really about me, is that it allows me to focus my energy and my attention inward. So the whole like Insider Edge thing is because we talk about culture and leadership from the inside out. Everything's from the inside out. And so the better I can understand myself on a really deep level, which means that I allow myself to know the subconscious fears, triggers, insecurities, all of that.

Because you know what? They're— can I swear on the show?

[53:31] Paul: Go ahead.

[53:32] Dr. Laura Gallaher: They're bullshit. It's bullshit.

[53:33] Paul: I don't know if that's a swear. Is that a swear?

[53:36] Dr. Laura Gallaher: I mean, I don't know. It depends on— we're not regulated by the FCC or anything, but we have all these stories and fears in our minds that they're subconscious, and if you don't make them conscious, if you don't allow yourself to know them or to feel them, then there's no way that you can rewrite it. You cannot rewire your brain if you're not even aware of how it's wired in the first place. And so this idea of self-awareness was absolutely transformational for me and it still is because it's not just like a one-time flipping of a switch. What the Human Element and all that associated work did for me and still does for me and does for my clients is it gives me tools and it teaches me a process to continuously become more self-aware. It gives me a framework and it gives me options so that I'm not trying to change everybody else, but realizing that I have the power of choice.

And that I can choose to focus my energy inward to practice self-acceptance or self-compassion, which by the way, self-acceptance absolutely helps you with self-improvement. A lot of people fear that they're on opposite sides of the spectrum, but they're not at all. And so yeah, self-awareness to me is— it's the foundation of everything.

[54:48] Paul: And are there one or two simple things or exercises you've done with clients that help them make progress on this?

[54:58] Dr. Laura Gallaher: One of the things that I often use— well, okay, there's two things that come right to mind for me right away. One of them is the concept of openness, what that actually means, and the other one is the concept of defensiveness, because the way that I define those and explain those are perhaps different than the way that people have understood them before. But this idea of defensiveness We have a free download actually on our site and I'll be happy to send you the link if you want to share it with your listeners. It's called Signs of Defensiveness and it's a one-page survey and it has, you know, 50-some-odd behaviors and the whole idea is you just check off these behaviors, these signs of defensiveness if you have ever in your life done them. Which, if you're being really honest with yourself, most people check off a good 70 to 80%.

Almost every time I do this with groups, somebody goes, can I just check the ones I don't do? Because there are just so many ways that defensive behaviors can show up. And that has been a really, really powerful tool that's pretty simple. It only takes people maybe 3 or 4 minutes to go through it the first time around, just to realize and recognize that defensive behavior does not just mean folding my arms across my chest and putting on a pouty face. Defensiveness does not just mean making excuses or blaming every other department for why my project is behind schedule. Defensiveness is really sneaky and it comes out in all kinds of ways.

And so that has been one of the most powerful tools that I use with just about every single group I ever work with.

[56:39] Paul: That's amazing. So reframing what you think of defensiveness enables you to identify the areas which you're probably not aware of and just become a little more self-aware of some of those things you want to avoid.

[56:51] Dr. Laura Gallaher: [Speaker:DR_Laura_Gallaher] It's just noticing. Just noticing. That's so much of it and getting people to pay attention to what's happening in their bodies. Are they having a physiological reaction to something? Like pause, just slow down, pay attention because that means you're triggered and it means you're feeling defensive. So just in that moment, blurting out whatever thought is in your mind is probably not the most effective thing to do.

And so yeah, so much of what we talk about, because it's all just about progress, not perfection, is just notice. That's often the kind of homework I give when I'm coaching people is we talk about something, they identify a behavior or reaction, and I go, cool, like focus on that for the next 2 weeks. Just notice, just notice whenever that happens. Notice when that self-talk happens. Notice when you're doing that fidgety thing or whatever it is. Just becoming more self-aware.

[57:43] Paul: Amazing. So want to give you an opportunity to tell us what— how— well, I'd love to dig into your insider edge, right? So you're building this online platform, give you an opportunity to share that, but perhaps it might be interesting just to share how you're thinking about microlearning and and how like you're leveraging technology and how that's all evolving.

[58:11] Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, absolutely. So microlearning is, you know, more and more they talk about that being the future of training and development, and I've seen it kind of, you know, coming for the last few years or maybe even longer, and I just wasn't paying attention to it before. But the whole idea is that the majority of learning is lost like 90% of what somebody learns is lost within a 30-day period if there's no reinforcement. And so when organizations put in a ton of time and money to a workshop or a training event or anything like that, unfortunately a lot of that gets wasted because there's not that built-in reinforcement after the fact. So our plan, our intention, and I believe what we're accomplishing with Insider Edge is is that our clients can work with us, they can do workshops with us, and then they have this— we call it a daily companion.

We put out new content every week, but we have like a weekly challenge that's built in. So the other big thing that we build on is learn by doing. So most people are aware of that, right? That if you just listen to something, you're not nearly as— right, you're not going to learn nearly as much as if you actually do something. So every week, not only is there brand new content on the site which we keep very short. We actually started out at like 10 minutes and then with some feedback we shortened it to 5 because I get it.

Like I get the attention span thing and we want to make it super easy for leaders or really any human to fit this into their day. So it's like a 5-minute video and then they can sign up for a weekly challenge which is going to be an email. So an email is delivered straight to somebody's inbox which most of us still use our email inbox as like a to-do list. Right. Right. This is where our alerts come in, and it's something that people can read.

And again, within the span of 5 minutes, they can do it because it's either thinking about something, it's personalizing something, it's filling out a one-page worksheet. It's something that, again, it's very, very small, but it keeps these concepts very, very top of mind. And we've also gotten feedback from some of our clients where they have a new employee that has come in and they've never done our workshops, but they go through the basics course that we offer up as soon as people register. It's like, like, hey, here's some foundation, and that they've learned a ton even from that, which is only like 30 minutes. So we're trying to build on the idea that most learning and growth is incremental in nature. Like, personal development is a journey, not an event.

So we're using technology for ease of access. And, um, I mean, again, email— I know it seems like almost archaic at times, but it's still like what dominates people's day-to-day lives. Email is still the thing. So to have that coming in and it's optional, right? But like multiple days in a week, just as that reminder is such a fantastic way to just get somebody on the right path. You know, development is really more about direction than destination.

And so everything conceptually with Insider Edge as a platform supports that concept. Rather than trying to say, here is a, you know, one thing fixes all workshop experience and you're done. Because that's just not how humans learn. That's not how we grow.