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speaker-0: In my book Moment Ready, I share back about psychotic grit. It's this relentless maximum effort with this disconnect. ⁓
speaker-1: Thank you. I loved that phrase by the way. Thank you for that. And then by doing that, hopefully right, you're creating a team, you're creating a group of people who can and should work well together.
speaker-0: Yes. I'm Dr. Amy Aethe. As a licensed psychologist and performance expert, working with elite athletes, C-suite executives, and high performers operating in some of the most demanding environments, I've seen what it truly takes to perform when it matters most. From supporting members of the Naval Special Warfare community to advising leaders in high stakes, high pressure situations, One Truth remains consistent. The tools that drive performance are the same. You prepare in a way that allows you to show up ready when the moment arrives. Each week, I'll share practical tools and insights to help you strengthen how you think, lead, and perform. Welcome to Still Evolving. I'm Dr. Amy Athe. I've watched something unfold across the leaders I work with for years now, a pattern so common that it almost passes as normal, where the very trait that got someone to the top of their field becomes the thing that quietly starts working against them. That's where today's conversation begins. Let me start with a concept from my book Moment Ready, which is now out and available on my website or Amazon. Because this sits at the heart of today's exchange. I call it psychotic grit, and it names something I have watched play out inside high achievers across every domain I have worked in, from elite sport to the military to the executive suite. Angela Duckworth's original work on grit. was and remains genuinely important. Passion and perseverance towards a goal is one of the more powerful predictors of long term achievement we have. The trouble is that a certain kind of high performer takes grit and turns it into a full time posture, applying maximum effort to every task, every project, every day without regard to whether the situation actually calls for it. That is not grit anymore. That is grit disconnected from judgment and the Cost it lands in the same places every time, in physical health, in personal relationships, in the quality of the thinking a leader can bring when the moment genuinely demands their best. Most of my career has been spent inside high performance environments where this pattern was studied close up. In elite sport, athletes learn that maximum effort applied indiscriminately does not build a champion. It builds an injury. Coaches design training cycles that toggle deliberately between load and recovery, hard days and easier days, sprint and rest, because the body only adapts inside that rhythm. And the military operators learn the same lesson under higher stakes. The person who is running at full capacity between every training mission is not the person who will be ready when the real mission arrives. What both of these worlds have in common is And what most executives never had the benefit of being taught is that effort is a resource that has to be allocated, not a virtue that has to be maximized. The skill of high performance is not how hard you can push, it is how well you know when to. The second piece of today's conversation lies right next door to the psychotic grit. And it is a framework I write about in the book as well, which is the compass and the current. Every career is Every leadership arc, every life gets shaped by two forces. The compass is what you choose, your values, your priorities, the direction you are trying to head. The current is what happens to you, the circumstances that arrive without your permission, the illness that shows up, the market that shifts, the family situation that changes the shape of your week without asking your opinion. High performers who sustain themselves over decades tend to be unusually clear on both. They know what their compass is pointing at so they can make deliberate choices about where to put their maximum effort. And they know how to read the current so they can adjust their pace, their priorities, and the expectations of themselves when the water gets faster or slower than they had planned for. What ties psychotic grit and the compass together is that psychotic grit is what happens when you lose sight of the compass. And are grinding just because grinding is what you know how to do. The antidote is not softness. It's not doing less. It is the discipline of matching your effort to what actually matters, which requires you to know what actually matters in the first place. That is what a strong compass gives you. It gives you permission to pour yourself into the two or three things that genuinely deserve it and gives you permission to deliver B minus work on things that do not. Because you've made a deliberate call about what each category task belongs in. Leaders who learn to do this well are almost always the ones with the longest, most sustainable careers. And they are almost always the ones who look back at the earlier chapters and shake their heads at how much energy they spent on things that they did not need to. My guest today is Jennifer Stanley. Jennifer is a senior partner at McKinsey and Company, where she leads work at the intersection of growth, sales, and And marketing for some of the world's most complex organizations. Her career spans more than two decades of consulting inside McKinsey, where she has become a nationally recognized voice on B2B commercial excellence, channel strategy, and the transformation of go-to-market models across industries. She is a frequent author and speaker on the future of sales, and she has partnered with executive teams on some of the most consequential growth decisions. those companies have made. What makes her exactly the right voice for a conversation anchored in psychotic grit and a compass is that she has lived both sides of it
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herself. She has been open about her own passage through that maximum effort trap. The sponsor who pulled her aside in an airport and told her she needed to chill out, and the deliberate work she did with a coach to rebuild her relationship with effort itself. She now leads with that hard won clarity, and she is unusually generous about sharing it with the next generation of leaders coming up behind her. Jennifer, I've been looking forward to this one. Welcome to Still Evolving.
speaker-1: Thanks Amy for having me. I'm really looking forward to the talk.
speaker-0: Jennifer, can you share back? Your career is remarkable. ⁓ and yet you've also described it as almost a career-like frogger, right? Leaping forward, sideways, back. ⁓ when did you realize that nonlinear path was right for you? And can you just reflect on that journey and some of the takeaways from it?
speaker-1: Yeah, sure. ⁓ so I like I like the visual of a beautiful pond with lots of lily pads and then a frog, you know, maybe jumping forward and zip zipping across quickly or maybe jumping to the side or jumping backward. And that's how I've really thought about my career. And I I can tell you the year that it happened, ⁓ was many years ago, actually l over twenty now. I was a young manager, newly married, just bought a home, ⁓ and then all of a sudden a a bunch of things hit at once. I got sick. My house burned down. ⁓ we are in a I'm in a dual career couple and my husband's changing jobs. And ⁓ by the way, I realized that even though I loved consulting, this was ⁓ very, very early at McKinsey, all I really wanted to do was to consult ⁓ in the sales and marketing and the growth space and in the revenue functions. And back then that just wasn't a thing at McKinsey. So I was trying to like think how am I gonna just cope in life and then put this career together. And looking externally at like the markers of what it means to progress, you know, at a firm like McKinsey or frankly any anywhere else in those functions, and also like figure out what was going on ⁓ in other areas of my life, it just hit me that I might have to take it a little bit slower in some areas, make some different choices ⁓ at home or just whatever I needed to do, and that may result in, you know, not a straight path across the pond.
speaker-0: So for you, what helped guide you in that along the way, right? Like we talk oftentimes ⁓ in my book, Moment Ready, I talk about like the compass and the current, right? Like the current, sometimes those things out of your control. Like I I hear that like life throws us these punches, that current, we we don't always foresee that that challenge coming at us. But then ⁓ There are some, whether it's your values, whether it's your connections, ⁓ talk to us a little bit about what has anchored you and in making those choices which could have been perceived by externally like the ⁓ it's a step back, right? Or it's a lateral move, right? And yet for you it sounds as if it very much
just added to your experience and preparation for the leadership ⁓ role that you hold now.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's true. I love the compass current because sometimes the current is just carrying you and like things are happening and you have a choice but to just like look for the branch and hang you know and and hang and hang on and that that's life, right? That happens. ⁓ but for me I think ⁓ there were a couple of things that were anchoring me. One was a knowledge of what I was really good at. I think about it often as like the highest and best use of my time and what I really like to do. So this notion of coming to the realization that if I was staying in business, I needed to be on the growth side of the equation. I wanted to be helpful to people in their careers and helping them as individuals progress, not just like serving ⁓ a company, if you will, but actually helping the people in that company. That was very clear in my mind. Now how I could do it then could be a number of different ways. ⁓ but that that was clear. The other thing that was super clear and continues to be clear is I wanted to be a really good wife and a good friend. And I wanted to be as much defined by having a happy marriage as being defined as having a successful career. And so when you're in a dual career couple, that means that there might be times, right, when one person does need to actually dial it back a little bit because the other person's dialing dialing it up. And so that I think has been a really important anchoring ⁓ you know, ⁓ has been a very important anchor in my life.
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. And it it it it very much is fluid, right? I I appreciate how flexibility ⁓ comes in and and certainly many of us, especially in dual career ⁓ relationships, are you have two very driven people, right? You're two very goal oriented, achievement oriented people and and and being able to anchor back to what really seems to matter in terms of your prioritization and your your the space, the energy and certainly y the where you're giving. that anger is so so powerful to come back to those relationships. But can be challenging. I read
speaker-1: Yes, for sure. By the way, I mean if my husband were here, he would say, ⁓ y'all, you know, I'd score you an A, but it's not an A plus.
speaker-0: I'll give you some credentials. Let's not go crazy. No, I feel you. I part of my journey was ⁓ working with special operators in the military. and one takeaway from that experience is, and I very much appreciate how military leaders define success by not only accomplish accomplishing the mission, but taking care of the people. And so when I hear you talk about that value of in the anchor for you, the relationships, ⁓ I I also think about perhaps the relationships you've held along you have along the way, the one the new ones to come. ⁓ how has that resonated for you in your leadership at McKinsey?
speaker-1: Yeah, so I I grew up in a military family. My father was career military.
So this notion of ⁓ the mission and taking care of your people, it resonates completely and absolutely with me. And I think that's also a reason why I was attracted ⁓ to joining McKinsey and why I still love really being here because we have a dual mission that is actually about both. Like one side of the mission is to help clients make distinctive, lasting substantial improvements in their performance. And the other half of the mission is to build a firm that attracts, develops, excites, and retains exceptional talent. Like you can't help clients deliver n significant impact and also build a firm that has amazing talent if you're not constantly focused on the experience of people, both our clients and the people that are that are here at McKinsey. And so like in in a s in a way, I mean certainly we're not the we're not the military. But it reminds me of what I felt growing up as a child in a military, that you're part of something bigger than yourself, that you would be actually really taking care of, and yet it's in the context of people having to perform at a very, very high bar and in very difficult s very difficult situations. I I actually would say at this point too, Amy, in my career, I probably spend I I'm I I h hesitate to say like a percentage of the time, but it's a it's a significant chunk of time. just thinking about how am I actually ⁓ creating opportunities for other people? Am I paying back the sponsorship and the coaching that I received as a young manager at different points in my career? And I still get it now, for sure I do, but am I paying that forward, paying that backward? and really ensuring that our people have the opportunity to become the best version of themselves, whether that's here at McKinsey or somewhere else. We're equally committed to that.
speaker-0: Very much appreciate that role in leadership of being able to give back and and also support those who are in their earlier in their journey, maybe sharing back your lessons learned or even just kind of challenging or guiding. ⁓ most firms have that high, like a very clear bar of high performance. You you mentioned that yourself, right? ⁓ how have you balanced that high bar, the perhaps the performance metrics that have been externally placed for you and your leadership? deliverables, if you will, your responsibility. But then how do you balance that with also the one that you've set for yourself? Because it sounds to me like giving back, helping people progress also is is critically important for you.
speaker-1: You know, I'm not sure I see a massive distinction between the two. And maybe you tell me, since you know you are for sure an expert in this space, but what I mean by that is if I get to an objective outcome, let's just say you know, growing a practice by a certain amount or helping a client achieve a particular sales goal in a new geography. If I've done that, but I've done it in a way that has burned bridges or made people deeply unhappy with their work,
not created opportunities for people with their work, then I'm not really sure that the objective answer is the answer. Like yes, that metric is still there, but it the I I do actually think the means need to justify the ends, if that may if that makes sense. How we behave in pursuit Of delivering against that high bar is part of what the high bar is. It's not just the outcome, it's the way you behave and how you get there. And so thinking about it that way then does actually force me to think about when am I the best person or best place to contribute to a particular area of the team and when should I really go ask somebody else for help or bring someone else in because they can do something much better than I can. That also helps us get, you know, to that. ⁓ that high performance and that outcome. And so I'm constantly toggling on that in my mind of where am I best placed versus where where do I really need to think about bringing someone else in. And then by doing that, hopefully right, you're creating a team and you're creating a group of people who work can and should work well together in, you know, executing against whatever the objective outcome is that we're looking for.
speaker-0: I love that. It you know, ⁓ I used to joke, ⁓ working in sport, you'll hear the tagline all the time, like trust the process or right now it's fall football camp for American football, right? So you hear you see all the we've been working the process all summer and
speaker-1: Ted Lasso's Believe. I can't wait for season five to start tonight or four to start tonight. There you go.
speaker-0: And oftentimes I would I would get in front of like, you know, a team and I would say, okay, so we're gonna trust the process. And everybody's like, Yes, we're trusting the process. And I was like, so what's the process? Like what is it? Like how do you know if you are actually behaving in a way that meets that definition? ⁓ and I so I really appreciate your answer because ⁓ you did describe a process and you gave very specif specific examples by which If if your objective is to accomplish acts and take care of your people, it informs the action steps, perhaps the mindset, perhaps the interactional style, how you respond to challenge and how you lift others through ⁓ for a resilient culture and climate. ⁓ right, like those behaviors are congruent with what that process is to the outcome. ⁓ so yeah, very much appreciate the examples there. ⁓ you know, oftentimes I heard you say in trying to r reach X, you have to think flexibly around perhaps team members, like who is positioned ⁓ for for a whole host of reasons, capabilities, relationships, etc., to to execute on this. ⁓ but also there's a toggle of effort. And I think ⁓ coming out, you know, in my book I talk about the role of grit, and certainly any of us high achievers when Duckworth came out with her book on grit. It was just drinking the Kool-Aid. Like, of course, right? Passion and perse perseverance towards that goal. ⁓ in my book, Moment Ready, I share back about the problem though, what I see of psychotic grit. And that is that
speaker-1: I loved that phrase by the way. Thank you for that. ⁓
speaker-0: Yes. ⁓ it's this relentless maximum effort, ⁓ with this disconnect of the impact that that might be having, the consequences on one's personal health, the consequences on one's personal professional relationships, right? So it can't just be about go, go, go, go, go. and and certainly this is not synonymous with like you have to be soft, you know, and it it it doesn't mean that you get to take off. three days a week, every other week, right? Like that's not what I'm suggesting. But with an awareness that comes the the need the awareness of there's gonna be times for sprinting and there's gonna be also times for recovery and understanding where you tactically ⁓ or strategically place the effort, the the gas pedal. when you lead and you're working with your team When you see someone with that like gas pedal down, putting that max maximum effort in against everything else, what has worked for you and your leadership or management that has helped others ⁓ be able to pull back a little bit and be more strategic with that that effort pedal?
speaker-1: I first of all I have to thank you for that phrase because if I could be full of psychotic grit and be a psychotic grit, I felt like I was both of those things at the same time at one point in my career. ⁓ like it just it I was ⁓ this might probably like twelve years ago maybe. ⁓ so I was an associate early associate partner at McKinsey and I just Everything, everything, twenty-four hours of the day. Even sleep felt like it was taking maximum maximum effort for me. But I associated that with it's grit, it's resilience, it's I am, you know, I'm doing everything as as well as I possibly can be. Now the reality was I was definitely not doing everything as well as I possibly could be because I was exhausted ⁓ and not focused on this notion of like where is my time and effort best placed versus somebody else's time and effort best best placed. So it was really out of whack. ⁓ and I recognized it. My husband recognized it. I had a few colleagues. I ha a a s a mentor of mine, actually a sponsor, I I want to be very clear about the distinction. He created so many opportunities ⁓ created so many opportunities for me, pulled me aside in an airport one day and he said, Jennifer, you need to chill out. And then gave me a list of all of the things that I was doing that I thought, you know, I am like I'm Knocking it out of the park on a presentation, on a speech, on management of the team. And then he like had the counter list, which was all the stuff I did not need to be really putting as much intense ⁓ intensity toward. So I feel like I did go through this process of having to re-jigger myself and to learn about like what is the difference between a situation where you actually need real grit. Like there's things out of your
control, you've made commitments, the commitments should sh st still stand and should still stand and you've got a power through. Like there are times when that is very clear. Right. And then there are times when we just force it on ourselves because we don't know I don't know what else to do. I'm just so used to behaving ⁓ behaving that way. So long story short, Amy, ⁓ to get out of ⁓ the psychotic grit that was my life, I embraced I had a coach, her name's Julie Morganstern teach me Really th being intentional about every action, my plan for the week, my plan for the day, my plan for, you know, between now and my next performance review. What really is worthy of my maximum effort and where can minimum or moderate effort be be good enough? And like that concept, it stunned me. I'm like, what do you mean you put minimum effort to something? This is like this doesn't mean soft to your exact point. It doesn't mean slack off. It just means you need to do a better job of distinguishing the things that really matter. And need probably more of my attention from the things that, you know, if as as I often say, instead of getting an A, you could get a B minus and it's still fine. Yeah. Like figure
speaker-0: Ask for my transcript. I could tell you to ask to see my transcript.
speaker-1: Exactly. So I still practice that to this day and you know, miraculously most most things that I was thinking at least back then and even still to this day, ⁓ that I'd be tempted to just say, Okay, I I'm gonna spend the time or spend the effort. them really truly truly need it. And then that means though I have more time and effort to put toward ⁓ the truly difficult and challenging and important projects that I've got going on.
speaker-0: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about that process. I I love that Min Mod Max kind of that energy assessment that you described. ⁓ and I've heard it similar, I guess, challenge or questions that we can ask ourselves. I mean, I remember in grad school, they're like, it's an A minus, like relax, right? And I was just but it's not an A, right? Who cares? Like, really, who cares? and and even now.
speaker-1: Exactly.
speaker-0: also in gr the second grad school story I had was related more towards parenting, and this was before I became a mom. But of course, the overachieving, like you need all the books, and before I become a mom, like, okay, what do I need to do? And they're like, Well, you just need to be good enough. And I'm like, What what what the hell what the hell is good enough? Like, that's not that's not registering. It's not in any language that I I could relate to. And yet, ⁓ I even now, fast forward all these years later, twenty five years later, ⁓ when I reflect on my experience, even working with elite performers, I used to this was in the age where this was probably about mm, fifteen years ago, when the role of technology came into sports science. So you saw all the gadgets merge, right? Cognitive training, wearable devices,
this, that, and the other thing. And now they're more in the commercial space, they're they're accessible to us weekend warriors as well. But ⁓ I used to chuckle like there you go. Yes. I used to chuckle in that phase, in that excitement, how many people would like purchase the latest greatest gadget and within sixty days moved on to the next latest greatest gadget. And I said to my the athletic training staff I was with at the time and I said, you know, imagine imagine if we could just be like eighty percent. 80% of the time we're hydrated, 80% of the time we're fueled adequately, we have consistent sleep quality and quantity, we have healthy relationships, and all of this talent, the skill that we know from these athletes, this team. ⁓ imagine if you had that consistency. Just most of the time, if you were good enough with those other basics, would this gadget really even be needed, right? ⁓ and so it it does kind of pull you back to thinking about where's the greatest ROI on that energy. and I I would I'm glad you adjusted with the sleep 'cause that is the greatest ROI. So for sure.
speaker-1: Ariana Huffington, I think years ago was out in front on this. ⁓ she's not wrong. Sleep makes such a big
speaker-0: Difference. I that's I tell executive leaders, I there's no amount there's no deep breathing strategy I can lend you to help you maintain your composure if you are getting four hours a night of sleep and you're chronically sleep deprived. Like it's just how our our systems, you're just gonna be a little more wired, more reactive. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ⁓ speaking of of kind of the grind, we talk about ⁓ in high performance the role of allostatic load, which is defined by really All of that our bodies are responding to in the demands. It could be the cognitive demands, it could be the interpersonal, social, it could be emotional, could be physical demands, right? ⁓ and the role of recovery in that, right, to help offload some of the impact of that stress response. When we think when you think about your journey, like what has helped you either stay grounded, perhaps renewed, what has helped you sustain. ⁓ in this journey because you talked about we started at the beginning. It was this game of frog or a little bit of here or there everywhere. and and that takes a toll. It carries a load. But what has helped you sustain that? Maybe a daily, weekly routine perhaps?
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. ⁓ so two things helped me sustain it. I do I do want to say that the the first one may sound a bit counterintuitive, but I do a lot of practice of the thi even the things that I'm really good at because I for me and I actually saw ⁓ documentary Taylor Swift's documentary on the Ares tour where she talked about a similar I think a similar notion, which is when you practice over and over again, even the thing you're really good at, like a song that you've written and you know by heart and choreography that you know by heart, when it becomes muscle mar memory, it makes it a lot easier actually to be in the moment with people and groups and respond ⁓ to what changes and to be happy and engaged in responding to what's happening and changing in that moment. Because your muscle memory is wired to deliver the thing you're really good at. So if something goes wrong or somebody asks a question you didn't expect, it doesn't throw me off it won't throw me off. Like I'll still remember what I need to get done because I've practiced it so many times. So for me, one way to stay calm is actually to invest the energy to practice my art, if that makes sense. Yeah. ⁓ from a from a consulting, ⁓ from a consulting standpoint. So that's one. And then the second thing I do, which is Much simpler. ⁓ I have a very specific five-step skincare routine. And if it does not happen at night, I become unmoored. So it doesn't matter if it's 9 PM or 3 a.m., where I am in the world, jet legged, not jet legged, that every single day, that process happens. And there's something I think kind of magical about going through steps that you're used to and that are also associated with taking care of yourself. It's very calming, it's very soothing. And it's an it's something I can control. ⁓ back to this point of the compass and the current, right? No matter what else has happened that day or what's happening the next day, like I can control whether I do those five steps or not. Yeah. So I do them because they're soothing.
speaker-0: And what a great transition then and cue, right? That it's now time for rest. Right. So I I really appreciate that. Jennifer, it's been a pleasure. I I've really appreciated how real ⁓ in your sharing and ⁓ the opportunity to learn from you. ⁓ so thank you very much for joining me on Still Evolving today.
speaker-1: You're welcome. Thank you for having me, Amy.