Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

You're the Boss with Sabina Nawaz

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 305

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Sabina Nawaz is the author of YOU’RE THE BOSS: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need) and an elite executive coach who advises C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions around the world. Sabina routinely gives speeches each year and teaches faculty at Northeastern and Drexel Universities. During her fourteen-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company’s executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives, advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly. She has written for and been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, NBC, Nasdaq, and MarketWatch.

A  Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “It’s not power that corrupts. It’s pressure.”
  • “As our job expands, the added pressure to perform corrupts our actions, and our increased power will blind us to the impact of those actions.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. 

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.


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Scott Allen:

Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have an author and educator, and well, just all kinds of things. And you'll learn about that in a moment. Sabina Nawaz, and she's the author of You're the Boss, Become the Manager You Want to Be and Others Need. She is an elite executive coach who advises C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions around the world. Sabina routinely gives speeches each year and teaches on the faculty at Northeastern and Drexel Universities. During her 14-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company's executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives. Advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly, she has written for and been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, NBC, NASDAQ, and Market Watch. Savina, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I am so appreciative of your wisdom that you're going to share with our listeners. I can't wait to jump into the book. But what I would love to do is what's not in the bio that listeners should know about you. Maybe we start there for just a moment.

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, thank you, Scott, for having me on the show. I am so excited about what you're trying to do right now with the content and bringing this practical wisdom to your audience, which ties into something about me. I think of myself as a minimalist contrarian. You know, listeners, you're listening to this podcast, you're listening to dozens of podcasts. What do you do with it? Often nothing. You just sort of think about it. Maybe you discuss one of those at a dinner conversation. But for me, the smaller the actions I can provide people, the more likely they are to take action. So that's the minimalist piece. Everybody's busy, everybody's got pressure. How can we create things in the smallest possible chunk? And the contrarian piece is to up-end conventional wisdom. We are living in a time where truly the old formula is not going to succeed. Not only is it not going to succeed, it's going to help you tank really fast. So it's time to reverse, almost literally reverse, some of the statements we have been saying forever.

Scott Allen:

Yeah. Well, I have so much, I mean, I keep hearing when I'm working with organizations, uh, which is a few times a week. And and Sabina, like you, it's all over the place. It might be oil and gas one day, and then it might be construction, and then it might be automotives, and then a nonprofit, banking, healthcare. But I keep hearing things like time starved. I keep hearing things that, you know, even for someone to go offline for a half day or a full day, they, they're they're anxious and agitated in the room because of everything else that is happening around them. And so I love kind of the, and we could go to maybe the work of BJ Fogg or or James Clear, just the atomic, you know, you and I should write the book Little Baby Subatomic Habits, and we will become billionaires.

Sabina Nawaz :

Absolutely. In fact, uh, one of the threats that's through every chapter of the book is what I call microhabits. Yes. Which is exactly it's the baby subatomic habits that are so ridiculously small, as Fogg also says, that not doing it is harder than doing it.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Which which I love, which I absolutely love. I mean, I literally I have a keynote coming up, and I did the math today. I'm gonna have 160 people in a room. This is a construction company, and and they want to talk about culture and they want to talk about actually making work fun, which is kind of an interesting uh challenge, which I absolutely love. But I think if I remember correctly, I said, look, if 160 of you just get one positive out a week, that's 800 uh in those five days. And then if we do that for 52 weeks over the year, there's tens of thousands of, and we've shifted the weather patterns. We've shifted the system in a really substantial way, and that's one, just each of you, one. And uh so uh we are on the same wavelength for sure.

Sabina Nawaz :

I love this notion of shifting the weather pattern and how does that weather pattern shift with one tiny acknowledgement every day.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

So this thing of you can dream really big and you should, because that purpose is gonna anchor you, especially when times are tough. But then act small.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

Act small every day, you're gonna get to that dream.

Scott Allen:

I love it. Act small every day. There's a wonderful video by Kobe Bryant, and and he says, you know, uh a little bit every day and do that for a year and do that for five years and do that for 10 years, and you are one of the best. And so, okay, so I I'm I'm really excited to jump in and talk about the book a little bit because I I I would love listeners to just have a taste of kind of how you're thinking. And so you're the boss. Become the manager you want to be, and others need. What are a couple things you want listeners to know? And and we're not going to share everything because we want them to be intrigued and we want them to go to Amazon or or their seller of choice and pick it up. But uh, what do listeners need to know about your work?

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, there's three things in the book that they might start with. One is that promotions are often the riskiest times in your career. Riskiest times in your career. Second is that remember I said I'm a contrarian. Uh so I don't agree that power corrupts. It's actually pressure that corrupts.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

Under pressure, each of us has a choice point to manage it or have it manage us. And when pressure manages us, we raise our voice, we give harsher criticism than necessary, raising pressure for everyone else. We go from good boss to boss from hell in an instant. Okay. The third piece is that power then comes in and isolates us and insulates us. So we are the last ones to find out the impact we are having when we act out under pressure. Of course, the harm we might be creating, because nobody wants to tell the person in a position of power what they don't want to hear.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Yes. Well, let's okay, let's go into each one of those areas a little bit. I'm I'm intrigued. I'm very, very intrigued. And I see the pressure, I see the fear in giving others feedback. So I see a number of these things every day. So let's talk a little bit about each one of those, if you would.

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, let's start with why are promotions sometimes the riskiest times in your career? Yeah. And this is, of course, let me first just acknowledge it's wonderful. You got promoted. Congratulations. It's great to celebrate that. And you got promoted because you were great at something. That great thing is going to look very different to the next that are now craning up toward you. So let's say this is you just got promoted to a manager. And let me ask you this, Scott, if you're willing to play.

Scott Allen:

Sure.

Sabina Nawaz :

What would be a key strength of yours?

Scott Allen:

So a key strength of mine is um task orientation. I can plow through tasks like a champ.

Sabina Nawaz :

Yeah. Fabulous. So task orientation. Now let's say that you get promoted to manager or manager of managers. You get more senior.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

How might that task orientation? It's possible that that task orientation is seen as wow, my manager responds to my messages, makes decisions, helps me get things done. How else might it be viewed from people who are who are across what I call the power gap from you?

Scott Allen:

Well, okay, okay. I mean, I I've had this feedback. And so early in my career, it was that I struggled to slow down and be truly present when uh you know an individual walked into my office, or I struggled to prioritize the people part of the work versus the task part of the work. I get energy from knocking things off the to-do list, but slowing down to have a conversation or a coaching dialogue, um, that was at times, especially when I was younger, an annoyance. And I didn't want to have to do that. So that strength became a weakness for sure.

Sabina Nawaz :

Yeah. So, well, I I don't know that the strength became a weakness.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Sabina Nawaz :

I I am not saying ditch that strength. Sure. Keep that strength, append an and.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Yep.

Sabina Nawaz :

That and when you get promoted, more people are dependent on you. There's more of a connection that needs to be made because guess what? You're not just working alone in your office and somebody sliding pizza under the door for you every night. So you've got to bring others along and you've got to see how that strength is landing on them and at the end. So I'm sure you've done that, Scott, with the feedback you've gotten from your early years. But there are so many strengths, and every single one of them has a counterpart. So detail orientation, of course, can become micromanaging. Guess what? Strategic can look manipulative. I had a coaching client who's very, very strategic, got promoted because she's strategic, and then suddenly she starts to get feedback that she's manipulative and political. She's like, Wait, wait, what? What's that about? So when I dug into that feedback by interviewing people who work for her, what I learned is her behavior of sometimes not speaking early in a meeting, waiting till the halfway point to see what people were concerned about, where they were. She truly was deeply trying to understand that and add value in a relevant fashion. But to them, it looked like she is sizing up the room. She does, she's going to be uh noticing what the senior most person is saying, which way the wind is blowing, we don't know where she stands, all of these things. And the fix was relatively simple once she realized that. She continues being strategic and she uses a tool in the book I call mapping, where she explains, I tend to not speak in the first 15 minutes of a meeting because this is what I'm doing. If you want my opinion in those first 15 minutes, ask me. I will share it.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Well, and and that's so wonderful because, you know, again, also in some 360s along the way, I had gotten feedback. Let's see, um, can be overly assertive in his opinion and intimidates others to contribute. And I thought I was just participating, but I didn't understand some of the power differential that was going on or that people experienced or perceived. So then I learned to say, similar to what you just said, hey, I don't care if it's my idea or your idea or a third idea. Let's just find the best idea, never hesitate to push back. If you think that I'm going down the wrong road or to be a contrarian in the meeting, please do that. And then of course I have to actually follow through with modeling that I value that. And I I would say, look, we might not always, or I might end up making a decision you disagree with, but I always want to hear what you have to say. And then that kind of managed that impression a little bit. Um, I'm sure it didn't eliminate it, but I love how you're framing that for sure.

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, Scott, so I want to build on what you're saying. This is so good, so good, because it's great that you are letting people know that. And guess what? People will still not do it, especially the more senior you are. They'll just not, because every person has learned to say that, they don't know the difference between who really means it and who doesn't. So modeling it is great. Here's another thing to really make sure it happens is don't be the first person to speak with your idea. Obviously, you're convening the meeting, you're the first person to speak to frame the meeting. But then when it comes to ideation, be at least the third. So now people and and make that known. So they again don't think you're playing some weird game on them. But now they know, now those ideas can come unvarnished. They don't have to worry about how much do I disagree with the boss.

Scott Allen:

Yep. Well, it's so interesting. And this is a little teeny bit off topic, but you know, another thing that I've been interested in lately is some of the uh we we could call it PTSD, we could call it trauma, we could call it just negative experiences that people have had with other bosses. So, to your point of what you just said, even if you are the most well-intended, transparent, trying to be on the up and up, people bring in a lot of things going on. It maybe they had a previous supervisor that said, like you said, they knew to say it, but they didn't actually follow up on it, or their career was stalled because they spoke up in a meeting. And so it's so interesting to me, kind of that and I the word trauma might be a little bit too intense, but some of that that people bring into even when you're trying to be super transparent on the up and up, uh people still, like you just said, are gonna struggle at times to actually act on what you are suggesting.

Sabina Nawaz :

Absolutely. And that's where power comes into the equation. Our relationship to authority is is fraught, it's complex, it starts from birth. All of that stuff is gonna come in, even if you're Mother Teresa. People are going to feel intimidated just by your positional power alone. So power creates this gap. And my book has four common power gaps. And what to do to narrow that? How do you reduce that? One of those is to shut up, is to exercise what I call your shut up muscle by being the third to speak, by taking notes and not just verbal vomiting everything, by noticing your interruption cues. How do you build that muscle?

Scott Allen:

Oh, that's wonderful. Well, um, okay. So I I love this framing the pressure versus power. So let's talk a little bit about that. Pressure.

Sabina Nawaz :

Yeah. Can I ask you a question again?

Scott Allen:

Yeah, please.

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, what when you're at your best under pressure, I imagine you get a lot done because you have that task orientation, Scott. Is that right?

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Sabina Nawaz :

And things just become really focused, you compartmentalize, and you can home in on it. When you're yes, yes, oh, for sure.

Scott Allen:

I I know what music to put on, where to go. I know exactly kind of what setting to, and then I just I just put my head down and I plow.

Sabina Nawaz :

Oh, look at that, folks. You should you should just have an episode just from Scott on how to deal with pressure at your best because you've got there's an end coming, isn't there? Yes, and you're human. So I imagine there are times you're not at your best when under pressure. Yes. If you're willing to tell on yourself, what is it that you do that you're not necessarily proud of when you're not at your best under pressure?

Scott Allen:

Well, I I have a it's it's called the personal leadership profile. And so it's a a one-page document that just kind of outlines me as a you know, what you're gonna get when you're working with me. And I say in it, at times under pressure, under stress, I can get a little bit curt. I can kind of go within and and go right into the computer and attack whatever I need to attack.

unknown:

Yeah.

Scott Allen:

And I can become accessible inaccessible. And and again, maybe not even all that present. We might have a conversation, but I'll I'll say if it seems like I'm not present, challenge me on that because my mind might be elsewhere. So my mind will wander and I'll have a whole conversation and not hear what we just discussed.

Sabina Nawaz :

Yeah, yeah. And here, so that's what I mean by pressure corrupting is we we start to act in ways when our time is squeezed, it squeezes out our humanity.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Sabina Nawaz :

And we start to act in ways our we're not in our thinking brain, we are in a threat state. So we're in fight, flight, fright, fawn mode. And so we raise our voice, we go curt. I was just doing some interviewing to get feedback on a CEO coach, and they said, Oh, he's just really pouty, and really uh, I said, What does that mean? It's like, well, when he gets bad news and he's under so much pressure right now, he just goes into his office and pouts. And I'm like, Well, how do you know he pouts? Well, his responses become very curt, just yes, no. You see him in the hallways, he's not even making eye contact anymore. He's like those waiters who are constantly not making eye contact when you're trying to uh get extra catch up. So so it and what's happening to these people, they're worried because power is like a broken volume knob, it's a distortion. Everything that's coming up, as we've talked about, is milder than what the employee experiences. So when they say yes, boss, everything's fine, they mean I've started a secret group chat about your management style. Now, similarly, everything that's coming down is amplified and it's not just amplified, it's personal, it's directed at me. So a casual, hey, can we meet on Monday means oh my gosh, I better pack my boxes this weekend.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

Right. So when you're acting under pressure in less than salubrious ways, just slightly curt, not even, you don't even have to be very curt, you don't even have to curse and swear, which some people do, but just slightly curt, not having that beautiful smile that I have the benefit of seeing right now on screen, Scott, then the other people are thinking I'm fired. And when employees feel that way, research shows that they even deliberately sabotage their own work to tank business results just to get back at the bus.

Scott Allen:

Wow.

Sabina Nawaz :

So it's not healthy for you, it's not healthy for them, and it is not healthy for the work.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, but you used a word there. I I think it was the this was the word distortion. Is that is that the word that you used?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Scott Allen:

It's such a beautiful word because I think, yes, even the simplest, straightforward message can be distorted in the mind of the receiver. Or at least it goes to the whole world of possibilities of what it could mean, quote unquote. And as humans, we don't necessarily go to all of the optimistic meanings uh first. We catastrophize.

Sabina Nawaz :

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And it goes back to that trauma you were calling, our relationship with authority, whatever, you know, it's wired. We're wired to see the threat first, the negative first.

Scott Allen:

Yeah. So the the third one where the the individual can become a little bit isolated. And again, speaking of distortions, Bomer or Gates might be walking around with a very distorted perspective of or or jobs or whatever. I mean, any C-level executive can be walking around with a distorted perspective on a lot.

Sabina Nawaz :

You bet. And it can be little things, it can be big things. It can be little things like, oh, I'm convinced that purple looks very flattering on me because everybody's told me what a beautiful color that is on me. And then, you know, just ask your 13-year-old and they'll tell you, mom, seriously, you need a fashion moment here. So, you know, so this distortion happens. It happens with just about every client I coach. Well, let's make that clear. Every client I coach. The minute I go get feedback in this process called a 360 that you and I are familiar with, where I'm interviewing about a dozen people that work with the person, and I bring that feedback to my client. There is not a single person who's not surprised or shocked by the feedback, not by the bigger categories, but by what people are actually saying. It hits them. And they go because look, the majority of people, despite what we might read in the press, are not waking up in the morning saying, Let me make life miserable for my people.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

So they're waking up wanting to do a good job, wanting to move the work forward. And no employee is saying, Oh, I want to go to work and and play revenge video games against my boss every day. They want to be productive and contribute as well. When this distortion happens, it it shuts down the connection, the relationship, and the productivity.

Scott Allen:

Shuts down. Talk about that. Go a little bit deeper there. It shuts down. I mean, that's a powerful phrase.

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, I have employees for the one of the interviews I just did where they are throwing up. They're actually throwing up before going and talking to the boss.

Scott Allen:

Wow.

Sabina Nawaz :

So their brain is shut down and their body has shut down. Well, often our bodies are gateways to our brain. Their body is giving them powerful cues that there's so much danger there that, you know, let's hold you back, let's have you throw up. You know, so that's that's one way of shutting down. You know, I'm also thinking of this other person I coached, and it shuts down work. So it shuts you down physically, it shuts you down mentally and emotionally. It's also shuts down work because guess what those employees are doing? They're spending all their time talking about you instead of doing the work. Now, there is one. Remember, I said I'm a minimalist. So there is one really simple tool that you can use, not to solve all of this, but to make inroads. And that is a numbering scheme.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Sabina Nawaz :

With this distortion, everything the boss says comes across as super important, high priority, high volume because of the amplification. What if you used a numbering scheme? So if you said on a scale of one to 10, this is a seven. On a scale of one to 10, this is a 19. Because here's the other thing. If everything comes across at the same volume, a 10 for the employee, you might end up getting frustrated because the one that's truly a 19 is not getting done with a sense of urgency. Well, maybe because everything seems the same to them.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Sabina Nawaz :

So so use a number to communicate where it is in terms of priority, in terms of your excitement, or in terms of your concern. And by the way, if something is a two or a three, maybe you need to go back and exercise that shut-up muscle and not randomize people.

Scott Allen:

Well, and I mean, at least in my own career, it's it's fascinating to watch it play out where a leader that doesn't know that they're an extroverted thinker, for instance, right? You know, you have an E N on the Myers-Briggs type indicator, someone who's just an extroverted thinker and they're people walk out of meetings and they say, Well, he just said we need to do this. And, you know, I would be in conversations. I think he was just thinking out loud, we should double check if that's really what he wants to do. But they were marching down the road. And I mean, again, that that kind of distortion, uh if you're not known as someone who's open to feedback, or if you are again under that pressure and a little bit curt, and think of the rework that's happening in organization and the mental energy and the physical energy, the wasted energy at times. It's fascinating. It really is.

Sabina Nawaz :

It is, it is. And uh, given that we spend the majority of our lives at work, why would you do that?

Scott Allen:

Well, okay. One question I have as we begin to kind of think about winding down our time. I loved, uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Jocko Willink. Do you know Jocko? So he wrote a book. He's a Navy SEAL, and he wrote a book called Um Extreme Ownership. It was really, really interesting because he he wrote this book and he had a co-author and they they put it out into the world, and that kind of that book was was taken to an extreme in some contexts. Once it interfaced with human beings, you know, you had a a shop floor manager that just you know demanded extreme ownership in in their in their shop. So it was really beautiful because in their second book, they they said, look, this can be taken too far as well. I mean, they learned once it had kind of interfaced with human beings and interfaced with the public. And I really, really had great respect for them that the fact that they came back and said, look, we're learning as well, and this is something we've learned about the work. So what are some reflections you have on kind of watching the book interface with the public? Are there new insights or are there something, is there something that's intrigued you as a phenomenon that's come back that has caught your attention?

Sabina Nawaz :

A couple of things. Being an E N in Myers Briggs myself, I will think out loud. One thing that surprised me was three people so far have come to me and said that they have anonymously gifted my book to their boss.

Scott Allen:

Interesting.

Sabina Nawaz :

And I thought, well, great, they found value in it and they think this will help their boss. Two, this is the power gap in action where they're not able to give that transparently to their boss in the spirit of collaboration and hey, boss, this is a great book and a resource. There's a fear there, so it has to be anonymous. And three, I have hope that after the boss reads that book, they it will break that down, it will break that barrier down further. So that was one thing that surprised me. Another one is a senior executive i coach said, Can you just change the jacket cover of your book and title? And I said, What do you mean? You don't like red, you don't like the word boss? What's what's up with this?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Sabina Nawaz :

And he said, No, no, no. My partner and I are using this book with our children. We are talking about the chapters after dinner, and we are creating microhabits. We have talked about the communication fault lines, we've talked about the singular story, multiple meanings. So all you have to do is now say you're the parent as the title of the book. Yes. Change the cover, change the title, and this is just as applicable at home as it is at work. Love it. So that those are things that that um I mean, I talk at the end of the book that you can use this for a number of things, but it was really powerful to see that from somebody. I also find, like you, Scott, that people are really resonating with this notion that pressure has the power to corrupt us.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Oh, yeah. And what that means. I think that is more accurate than the power. You know, the what's the what's the famous quote? You know, power corrupts and absolute, power corrupts absolutely. I agree with you. I think if someone is ascended to a role of uh authority, maybe not as likely in a family-owned business or in a privately held company sometimes, but if someone's ascended to a role of authority, a position of authority, in a let's let's just say in a normal publicly traded organization, I do believe it's the pressure. I I don't think it's the power that shifts. I think for some, of course, that's the case, but the immense pressure that these high achievers likely, right, are are feeling and experiencing and the distortions they experience back to your numbering system, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott Allen:

I I love that distinction that you've you've landed upon here because I I think that is the core. I think that's at the core.

Sabina Nawaz :

It is. And I'm really seeing that as people read the book, they're really gloming onto that piece and then going, okay, so now you mean I don't have to go on a retreat for three weeks and I don't have to have a personality transplant. I can apply this tool. I love multiple meanings, or I love whatever the you know, name your tool. There's 16 of them in the book that they that they use to then go, okay, all is not lost. Yes, I I have something to grab. Me with this.

Scott Allen:

Well, and I love the fact that you have tools in the book, 16 of them, so that not only are you identifying something as a concept, but there's some action I can take to uh, you know, practice or to minimize or to experiment with to see if that's something that you know what I mean? I mean, I just love that.

Sabina Nawaz :

Well, I know exactly what you mean, Scott, because I'm an engineer by training. And so once an engineer, you're it's really hard to get that out of me. And it's it's got to be just like your task focused, I'm practical application focused. It's it's got to be applicable. If you had a good time reading the book, yeah, you can also watch Netflix and have a good time. So, what are you gonna do with it? Is the real question here.

Scott Allen:

I want to watch this on Netflix. I I think we could create a whole new. We will write baby subatomic habits and we will make a Netflix special out of it. Deal.

Sabina Nawaz :

Deal. We can live coach people on their baby subatomic habits, God.

Scott Allen:

They're subatomic, little tiny baby habits. Oh well, okay, as we wind down our time today, I always ask guests the last question, which is you know, uh, speaking of Netflix, what have you been streaming or what have you been listening to? What has caught your attention in recent times? It may have something to do with what we've just discussed and leadership and management, but it might have nothing to do with what we've just discussed. So uh, what's caught your attention in recent times that listeners might be interested in?

Sabina Nawaz :

I read four or five books at the same time. So I get, you know, am I in the mood for the heavier read here or the lighter read there? Uh and the I believe it's called Creative Acts for Curious People. It comes out of Stanford Design School.

Scott Allen:

Oh, wow.

Sabina Nawaz :

And it's a number of activities that people can do to free up some of their creativity and to approach things from very different angles like a great designer would. That has really stimulated my creative juices in turn. So that's one of the books I'm reading. And the other one that I just finished this morning, it's called The Power of Pressure, which of course you can see from its title why I would pick it up. It's by Dane Jensen. And it's a fantastic read. Again, some very practical ways to understand pressure and then how to address it.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Sabina Nawaz :

And then my husband and I are binge watching The Resident on Netflix, which is a standard hospital drama.

Scott Allen:

Okay. Okay. What's the one that just won all of the Golden Globes? I'm thinking a pit. Was that the I think?

Sabina Nawaz :

Yes, I that's next on the list. In fact, my nephew, who is a doctor, said, watch the pit. That's the best one.

Scott Allen:

So awesome. Well, Sabina, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate your time today. We'll have another conversation, I hope.

Sabina Nawaz :

I hope so too. Be careful what you ask for.

Scott Allen:

Okay, take care. Be well.

Sabina Nawaz :

Thank you.

Scott Allen:

Okay. Incredible respect for all that Sabina's working on. And as I said in the episode right here, you know, the the practical wisdom for me is how do you make all of this actionable? And how do we communicate in ways that help people now? And she is doing that work. And for that, I have so much respect. So, Sabina, thank you so much for being with me. Thanks so much for the work that you do. And for those of you listening, take care. Be well. Thanks for checking in wherever you are in the world. Bye bye.