Neuroscience and Implications for the Family Office
Dr. Kevin Fleming
President & CEO of Grey Matters International, Inc.
Dr. Keven Fleming (BA, MA, PhD from the University of Notre Dame) is the Founder of Grey Matters International, Inc, a one-of-kind neuroscience-oriented behavior change firm that leverages the most salient fMRI-based research around decision-making, mental health, and self-regulation shifts that uniquely influence the UHNW client. With distinctive successes that include published work inside a NY Times/Wall Street bestselling book and endorsements from both Harvard Medical School faculty, Dr. Fleming’s work spans the globe with a wide array of executive clients, as well as former NFL players, Washington DC politicians, a Rock n Roll Hall of Famer, and an invite to speak to cabinet members for the King of Jordan around his thought leadership. Dr. Fleming is an active member of the World Business Academy, the Institute for Executive Development, and the American Society of Training & Development.
His book (The Half-Truth High: Breaking the Illusions of the Most Powerful Drug in Life & Business ) is released and available on amazon.com. It features a foreword by NY Times bestselling author Tom Morris. This book has received noteworthy praise from Patch Adams (from the blockbuster Hollywood film starring the late Robin Williams), Harvard Business School Emeritus Professor Gerald Zaltman, as well as Dr. Joe Dispenza, a featured scientist in the hit underground movie, What The Bleep Do We Know?
Kirby Rosplock
Welcome to the Tamarind Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock. And today we are so fortunate to have Dr. Kevin Fleming with us to talk more about the neuroscience of the families that we work with, family offices, and families of wealth. And so I'm really thrilled to jump into this topic today because it is so incredibly interesting and fascinating, but it also might give us some keys to some of the secrets, some of the hidden challenges that are just below the surface, that we just don't understand what's going on in our brains when we're dealing with sort of the complexities of wealth and families and family offices. So, Dr. Fleming, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Yeah, thanks for having me, this is fun. Appreciate it.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, let's understand more about you and how you got to do this work and sort of your background because I think for many neuroscience and neural leadership coaching and the complexities of working with families, maybe this is a new sort of area that isn't as familiar.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Yeah, I think you're right. And we do live in a world where pretty much anything on Google right now is brain this, brain that neuroscience is popular. And with that, of course, you get some great discoveries and insights and innovations, and you get to watch it. You get a lot of shadow stuff. You get a lot of half-truths. You get a lot of pseudo-neuroscience, as I like to call it. So Gray Matters is formed as an integral space between what I would say is the psychotherapy, psychology, and clinical psych pathology kind of world. Dr. Frasier Crane shrinks of the world kind of thing. And over here, the more pumped up, Tony Robbins, coach motivational kind of part of the business, they both have their place in their world, right? In our world sometimes, as we all know, not just in family offices, but in our own families, in our world, we've got over here some clinical problems, pathologies, issues, people's personality disorders, things like that. A lot of these people get rewarded more and more. The more they work up the ladder in corporate America, we all see that certain narcissistic and sociopathy type traits and so success come at a cost.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And so, to take away any part of my background that was a Ph.D. in neuro-psych guy would be foolish. You need to have some conceptualization skills when you're working with dysfunction and irregularity and error and problem behavior. Over here on the coaching side, you also have to have engagement, the ability to be a little more positive and focused, and solution-oriented. Of course, but what the coaches in my world, my feelings have done is they've removed a lot of sophistication and nuance around what is human nature. And with that, the brain and what comes along with how decision-making works. You can't just motivate yourself to deal with crazy every day. It helps you get up. It's necessary but to do things well takes energy, motivation, and positive hope and belief. Yes, sign me up. I'm all for those things. However, and you know this, Tamara, in our work, if we just walked into our clients and said, hey, buck up, little got you need a few more positive. No, I mean the depth and breadth, especially in family office work, of complexities of cost-benefit ratios and the high stakes of dollars, and the pathology over here in certain types of family systems, that comes at a cost, and it's very delicate and fragile with a lot of systems, families that we work with, to kind of.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Either way, you're going to miss them. If you're over here and you pathologize them too much, they're like, hey, I don't want to be diagnosed by you. Or if you're over here and you're just minimizing them and telling them to put a smile on their face, you're going to miss them there, too. Gray Matters International was formed as a company to split that space, right, to bring the best of clinical neuroscience, as well as an engaging, helpful, solution-based concierge come-to-you kind of way of doing work, like a coach. And so it's a leading-edge company I created about 15 years ago now. Wow, time flies. That is using a lot of innovative neurotechnology, and neuroscience, to help accelerate outcomes. So you're not bitching and moaning in psychotherapy or having every type of business consultant in your office and nothing's changing. I love getting the phone calls when people find me, and then they say, we've done this, we've done this, we've done this. And they just list off every type of family retreat they've been on, every type of dollar spent for this, and they're in that realm of hopelessness. They're like, nothing's going to change.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
This is why we're in dire straits. Those are my clients. And because that's kind of where my beginning begins in terms of what we do.
Kirby Rosplock
You made a conscious decision. You said, I'm good with leaving my sort of clinical practice in the back rearview mirror, and I'm moving on. It sounds like Gray Matters International is this sort of hybrid of sort of bringing some of that clinical intervention into the consulting realm, into the coaching realm. Talk to us more about what that looks like. So, give some of our viewers, and listeners an understanding of what it was like to be working day in and day out in a sort of therapeutic, maybe psychiatric psychology kind of vein versus what it looks like now. Can you help us with that?
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Yeah, it's a good question because there's a very clear train track switch that I had to pull, and it's kind of an embarrassing story, but it's a fun one if we just kind of can giggle at this one a little bit. All of us, actually, the dawn of my company kind of came to me through a very embarrassing moment in psychotherapy years ago when I was like you alluded to doing 1314 people a day in a burnout land, myself at that time, and hanging on by a thread, by showing care and compassion with every type of part of me that I could do. But the brain is a very tricky kind of self-deceptive organ. It can certainly make you feel like you're doing certain things in a connectable way when you're far from it. And I had one of those days where I was the last person coming in, and I was in a semi-conscious state, I pretty much believe, doing the. Yes. Wow. Okay, interesting. And I was getting through the meeting, but I should have canceled. I was beat up that day, and I was kind of winging it. And at the end of it, this client of mine, this gal, says to me, Dr.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Fleming, that session was brilliant. Thank you. And I stopped. And I remember, know I'm catholic, so I had this catholic guilt complex that kind of came over me, and I was shit, you know, do I take that compliment and run so they have no idea? Or do I begin a whole other level of dialog with really radical honesty? And I just thought, I'm going to go for it. And I turned to her, and I said, listen, let's get our benchmark straight. Albert Einstein, that's brilliant. Let's put him over here. That's brilliance, Carnet. What you experienced could have some components of something that's very interesting and engaging, but it's not brilliant. I'll tell you why. I found myself falling asleep a couple of times. This dialog was pretty difficult. It was a little disinteresting at times. And I found myself going on automatic pilot. And these are not very flattering things to tell you, but I think we need to kind of start there. And not only are you not paying me. I'm going to take my checkbook out, and I'm going to give you a check back for the hour you lost. And all of a sudden there was this tear that was coming down her eye, and I was like, oh, no, I went too far.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And then she said, no. It just hit me. I go, what? She says, I'm this dishonest with men all the time, and I don't even know it. I go, what do you mean? She said I compliment them before I feel what I am feeling. And I go, wow. So let me get this straight. You call this brilliant. I unplug the brilliant machine. I call myself highly incompetent. You have a tear. And then the tear leads to this level of realization with you. She says, yes. I said, well, I'd love to speak more like this, but I got probably a state board over there that would not like me to do this all the time. And there will be clients where this is not the proper way to talk. Are you wanting to kind of go create a whole other way of speaking and dialog? And she's like, yes. Nobody speaks to me this way. And so that was kind of like a very big. I remember when she left, and I said, I have to make a choice. I got to choose to either stay in a safe, kind of innocuous, self-indulgent space where people will call you brilliant even if you're not or do you remove yourself from there, get into the high stakes arena where if you're working with an NFL guy or a Hollywood guy or a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, they're going to look at you and say, I don't give a shit if you're brilliant or not.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
I have this problem. This has to stop, and we have to get this stuff finally working. That's what I realized. I do better. I was working better in that kind of realm where people wanted that speak and they wanted top-notch science and tools and technologies to make that happen because otherwise you wouldn't have a reputation or a business if you couldn't do that. And so gray matters really couldn't. I took the leap. I left what I was trained in for years ago and created Gray Matters and became a real niche guy for family offices, amongst other distinctive clients who have sticky situations, behavior change problems, mental health issues, all types of stuff, burnout, stress-related disorders, conflicts in their team. And we kind of roll up our sleeves and say, let's get finally to work yeah.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, I am so grateful for that story because I think it's a perfect catalyst for some of the questions, I have for you next. You were brutally honest, right? So, you were super frank, super authentic. And in that moment, you realized that you called her bluff, right? That she wasn't authentic with you. She was just giving you her programmatic compliment right back. Because that's just how she continued to cope, right? That was probably a coping mechanism for her. Let's just talk about the work that you're doing with families through Gray Matters. And let's talk about the topic of vulnerability, because I think you became vulnerable, and in that moment, you disarmed her, right? So, you all of a sudden changed the way that exchange was going. And I'm sure you're going to tell me what was happening in the brain for you and her because that unlocked something, right? That shifted the whole. So, it helps us understand what was the brains doing at that moment.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
I'm glad you popped into the vulnerable construct is very big. We know Brene Brown, right? She's got one of the biggest TED Talks on vulnerability. She's onto something. She's on to something here. Now, flip that coin over. And there isn't a seminar somewhere that doesn't have some word of empowerment inside it, okay? Empowerment is a big buzzword. Now, let's go back to the dialog I just shared with you. In that example, she was empowered. How? By my disempowerment first. Okay? This is the key part that a lot of self-help people are missing. They're running around on stages and publishing these books talking of empowerment, and nobody's talking about disempowering the right people. Okay? Now, that is part of the vulnerability dance. In other words, I can go around into a family office or to another client and say, look it, I can just describe the water to them while they drown and call that success. Hey, here's what you got to do. You got to do this. You got to be more vulnerable. Going to tell someone to be more vulnerable is very different than starting the chain, the causal chain process of leading and dumping and falling into vulnerability, okay?
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Sometimes a system must be unplugged first before you get individual vulnerability. That's the other piece that I'm trying to get to now, neurologically, why was I, for some reason, able to unplug my machine that day? Here's another vulnerable statement. I have no clue. Okay? I think for some reason, some way, Grace hit me. I don't know. I had enough of having enough sick and tired of being sick and tired in the same sort of sham of a psychotherapeutic process. I don't know. I think there's a lot of nature-nurture, right? We have a lot of. But we know this. Here's what I know. We all have these moments that we shun and turn off the desire to be vulnerable when it pings and comes up in the background and pops up and into the water, like, in our brains, and it's a little bubble, and we go. And that's why the neuro-philosophers call free won't. More important than free will. And what I mean by that is, that the inhibition piece of pushing things down is a big part of this next piece that we need to work on. In other words, self-deception is a thing that I work a lot on in Grave Matters.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And when I model that level of authenticity and radical honesty, it does help, because they give me the power. They project that power onto me. And when I throw all the power off me, whether it's how I dress, how I talk, the way I come into a company, the way they go, wait a minute. You're Dr. Fleming, who's worked with this famous person, but you're talking to me like I'm a regular guy in a schoolyard. It's like, yeah, because the brain needs to. What? Feel safe must come down from its projections. It's got to come down from the prefrontal area down into the amygdala and fight-flight. And what I've noticed is most of my client's brains are operating in a state of threat, even though they don't have an Uzi in their hand or one gun pointed at their head. Their brains have gone through very high-stress situations, and usually not just high stress. They usually have something called a double bind, where they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. The brain doesn't like that. Where it does not. And it's called learned helplessness.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Marty Seligman has done some great research on this, where they talk about that, where they feel screwed going one way, screw screwed to go the other way. Most families or companies or clients who call me have a sense of double blindness, okay? They have to move something forward, but they have to let something go. They have to gain; they have to lose. And these trade-offs are very difficult to negotiate. And the brain is trying to do what it's a neuroeconomic organ. It's trying to hold on to both. And when it does that, sometimes we get these cracks, and psychiatric stuff happens. Addiction issues, self-medicating, poor sleep, conflict out the wazoo, and all of a sudden, we're moving coconuts around just to make sure the bleeding stops. But the brain hasn't been given a chance to transform from a very high-threat state into one that can go. Now, before you can talk to somebody about vulnerability, you've got to give the experience of vulnerability to a brain. And that is where the neurotechnology solutions of Gray Matters come into the picture. I don't waste time, excuse my French, verbally masturbating about these kinds of things when I know a culture has a high threat, high fear ratio, I've got to bring that down because everything else I'll get speaks from the neck up.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
That's just all around. Yeah, we should do that. Yes, that's right, or yes, but. Yes, yes, but all those are signs of internal conflict, and too many consultants go in there with their information without matching the brain's level of readiness to even receive it. I think a lot of times we blow over this idea of receptivity of information. Why? Because especially with family offices, things look good on paper. People are successful. The rewards are coming in. Judgments are being made. But inner will. There's a brokenness internally. There's some pathology and hurt and pain and wounds. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture.
Kirby Rosplock
I love it, though, and it resonates on many levels with me because I also am so intimately connected and working with so many families that are great families and great individuals. And the people in their family office are top performers, and they have good hearts, good ethics, and good morals. So, we have all the bones. Right. But I do think that somewhere along the way, there's been a little bit of brokenness, right? And almost everybody's. Everyone's, whether you're wealthy or you're not, right? There are skeletons in everybody's family closets. And for some of them is like an anchor that they continue to drag along. And even though they're persevering and trying to manage change, those anchors are keeping them from being able to engage authentically, to feel safe, to talk about what they think, what they feel, because they're afraid of being shut down. They're afraid of being sort of. Your views don't matter. Dismissed. And so, again, back to this vulnerability question. There are so many high stakes of failure, so then it's like, I'm never going to put myself there. Why would I do that? That's crazy. And yet we know that it's one of the only ways to have real, authentic dialog to help shift.
Kirby Rosplock
Right. Shift these narratives and maybe let go of some of those anchors.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. You said something very interesting that I want to pull out here a little more and put under the light a bit more. There are a lot of these people who are stuck in these family systems that have this sort of lack of safety and trust issues. They're not crazy. As you said, the brain has been logging these sorts of events where I did this and this happened, that didn't work. Did it? Again, this did happen. And so, the brain is remembering these things, right? And what ends up happening is the dissociation kind of thing happens inside these people. And I made this illusion when I said, you got to give the experience of Owen barely before you talk about it. All this trauma and it is trauma. I think everybody thinks trauma is capital t, that they have to have some horrible story. And that's the other thing that's unfair with families with high net worth, is they think because they've had some good things or they've had the pleasures of life, that they can't talk about trauma. But it's like, oh, yeah, you can, because it's a different type in a different form.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And we have this phrase now in the business, microtraumas, right, where we're realizing that all these microtraumas over time can have the same effect as big t trauma. And so, we look at brains from people that are growing up in these family systems, and they match very similar to a vet coming back from Afghanistan. That's what's very interesting. And it's because what you're saying is, like, they've chronically kind of been a bumper car hitting a wall doesn't work, and then at some point, they do, there's an internal shutting down. And to awaken that, you have to kind of. And this is kind of maybe moving into more the solution side, but to awaken that, you kind of have to get the body to not be dissociative anymore. And then the brain comes along for a ride. The brain is reorganized from the bottom up, from the brain stem up. And this is where the trauma pockets or the difficulty is it's really from the mid part of the brain down to your brain stem, is really where the action is. Most consultants who are coming in to talk and reorganize a family system are talking from the top down.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
This is your CEO of the brain, right? And you can see the incredible mismatch, right? Gray Matters is kind of coming in as a USB plugin for the Kirby's of the world, right? And are putting that USB plugin from a neuroscience side to say, let me do what I need to do on trauma neurophysiology behind the scenes because there's a lot of double bind stuff going on here. And these people aren't crazy. They need to have a brain that feels safe inside their body. And that's the first thing. The nice thing is we have technologies where we can do this stuff pretty fast so that we don't have to spend our whole life in psychotherapy forever.
Kirby Rosplock
Yeah. I think that therapy is amazing, and I'm never going to say no or sell away to it. At the same time, what I find is dysfunctional is that sometimes a family group has well-intentioned, and they put a lot of work and effort into getting together, and they are very thoughtful about preparing themselves. And yet one or more people can hijack it, right? They can just railroad something that's so well-conceived, so thoughtful, so intentional. And then for the 80% who are present, who are vulnerable, who are ready to do the work, they are like, wait a minute, so and so did this again. They hijacked this again. And back to the trauma. It spirals stuff going back to this. Oh, God, this is happening again. So, it's like five steps forward, four and a half steps back. And that yoyoing, to your point, over time, is a vicious cycle that also is intended to keep the status quo. Right. So that is another thing that I try to reframe to clients is to say change is hard. But especially it's hard when the status quo is usually the goal of many of these structures is not necessarily to embrace a lot of change.
Kirby Rosplock
And so, when we're seeing this migration of wealth, when we're seeing businesses selling trusts, terminating major transitions happening, all of a sudden that anchor to the status quo is right now. We know it's on Donkey Kong and we have to step into this change mode. So, talk to me.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
It's very interesting, too. It's very interesting what you said. Curry, just one comment because you got me thinking, too. You get outside family businesses and family office work, and you get inside non-family businesses, public companies, and such. Think about it. It's this idea of when you just said 80% of the room is vulnerable, ready to do their work. And all it takes is one person in a typical non-emotional, family-bonded kind of issue, a CEO would come on in and this person's gone. Right. Hire slow, fire fast was our adage when I used to do all the corporate consulting pieces. It just takes one crazy person to kind of destroy a team dynamic that when you deal with family businesses and offices, understandably, you have these sacred cows, you have these very taboo kinds. You have to be very delicate with these sacramental kind of ways of talking with family members and ways things have been done, traditions and things may not be logically right, but they are what they are. And you can't be a bull in a China shop. But at the same time, and you and I both share this tension, you also have to call a table a table.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
If it's a table, it's a table. And there's a lot of these reality violations at times going on in these family systems where they go, well, that's just not a table. Well, no, I'm pretty sure it is. And that kind of stuff gets very tricky too. How do you get in there and get one uniform consensus of reality? That can be like months of work, just that in itself.
Kirby Rosplock
I'm glad you bring that up because I do feel, and I observe this repeatedly, that sometimes families feel like they're just constantly chasing their tail because the telephone is happening. But I heard from this person that this was happening. No, it's not. It's going like this now. Oh, well, no one told me that we're doing it that way. But that doesn't make any sense because we've always done it this way. So, it goes back to these psychiatric elements. It does start to make you feel a little stir-crazy. If there aren't clear lines of communication, there isn't a level setting around the true facts. Not interpretation, just facts. Right. And then making sure that people are educated and understanding, like, no, we don't interpret the fact that way. It doesn't work that way. It's just this. Right. Because again, I think there's this higher power that comes that says, no, I don't really have to play it, but those rules don't apply to me. Back to our earlier discussion around boundaries. I can totally take all of this. I don't have to just take this piece that you tell me is mine. So, I do find it fascinating.
Kirby Rosplock
Right. How that, so part of this creating authentic safe space, the impacts of vulnerability. I'd love your response to that.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Yeah, you use that word I love boundaries. If I take this pen and I drop it, it always falls. Whether this pen is a high net worth pen or a cheap pen, it will fall. We all share a law of gravity. If family system boundaries were all equivocal to this type, we'd be fine. But literally, we have seen in family systems that they can rewrite natural law in some way. And things have been done very skewed and very disproportionately amongst members. And so there isn't just one universal law of gravity. Right. That becomes a very challenging thing to kind of rewrite when there's another one above me that's rewriting the natural above the one that I'm trying to kind of introduce into a family system. So that's why I go back to that piece about who can we disempower simultaneously while empowering. Now, when I mean that. I'm not trying to say we're trying to throw people off thrones, but my kind of speak that I had with my client earlier that started this interview I have with the head of families, okay? I talk to people like that. Some people don't like it, and I'm not a fit for everybody.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
But if you cannot speak that to the one who holds the most power, then I have the saying, in my business, I can help you, or I can help you have the right problems. You pick.
Kirby Rosplock
I love it. And I do agree with you that so much of the power shift only can occur from those who really own and have the power and then figure out how we scaffold. Right. There's some scaffolding that has to happen oftentimes for the disempowered, those that are like, I have no voice. Why should I even show up? No one cares about what I have to say to help them understand when and how and the on-ramps and that they don't get, like, sniper shots as they're just climbing over the wall for the first time and trying to show up and give an idea or express their own, hey, I don't understand. Like, I don't know why it has to be this. A real. That's a real challenge. When, again, those repeated traumas just keep you anchored to, like, I'm not going to put myself out there and be exposed.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And you know what this is, Kirby? You know what this is, too. It has hit me, too, because I talk a lot about this a lot is these family systems come straight up against laws of addiction. And I'm not saying necessarily they have to have someone who's an actual addict. And some of them do, okay, I get it. But if you think about the spouse who's married to an addict, they go through this every day, whether they're a high-net-worth family or not. Do I stay with somebody who's violating my boundaries as a human being, or do I leave now? It's a great example because there are spouses that I work with in those contexts where I can see the humility and the unbelievable character and the inner kind of like Rosa Park strength that they have, that they can do this with grace. And I'll say, you go, girl or boy, whatever, you stay in this situation, you can do it well. And there are those who don't have that internal fortitude. And someone's got to be an advocate to say, for God's sake, you cannot do this. You are in the realms and throes of addiction hidden in a very insidious way.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And for your self-care and for your actual integrity of self, you don't have that. That's not good or bad. We all have talents and gifts. May not be one of yours. You have a line there. You crossed it. That's great. And that's why I always say that example, because when people say, Kevin, do you coach people to stay with addicts or leave them? I go, really depends. I've got great stories where people leave them. I got great stories where they stay with them and they rise above, like a wave above it, and they're untouched by it. We have to help these family systems find out where the crazy is, where this addiction dynamic is because it's usually within. It's inside layer six or seven of the other four or five you're getting consulted on, right? It's way in there. And then people have to face the music and see, do they got what it takes to dance with that? And if you do, I want to teach you how to do it. Well, with humility and love. Yeah, love, mercy, and forgiveness. If you can't do that while saving your integrity, yourself, and your boundaries, you're out.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Make a change. Do something. Does that make sense?
Kirby Rosplock
I love that. I think it's super powerful, and it's straight-up honest. It's the reality. And the only way systems often change is by those that are in the system changing themselves. Not the system itself having this whole shuffle, but how the individuals in that system decide to engage and recognize that it takes practice and there will be mistakes. But if there is a conscious intention and a dedication, particularly by those with power, to help share power, but also to hear those who feel disempowered. I mean, there is a lot of cathartic reconciliation and things of healing that have to go on for people to say, you know what? I don't see her or him in that same light anymore. And I am willing to change myself and move on because that is a big problem too. Right. The power person might make the change. The disempowered don't make the change. It doesn't work either. These are big girls, big boys.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And not only that, but there are also two types of changes. There's superficial change where they do the behavior thing that they were told to do, and there's heart level change, right? And I know that's a granola kind of foo-foo phrase, but we call it metanoia in the catholic church. It's this idea of this sort of a heart-level radical sense where your sense of the actual essence of something has literally changed, perception-wise, sensory-wise. There's no need to bring it up. It's not even in your memory anymore because your heart is converted. That is a radical type of change that I'm always hoping for. The grand slam hit for certain clients to get there. That doesn't happen all the time because that's an inner grace. It's a sense of something. It's a lot of pieces lining up beautifully. And that's one of the things. It's another area to get into here a little bit with family office work is I'll help them figure out when they hire me to come in for these sticky issues. I kind of have to see if they’re ready for first-order change or second-order change. First order change is more.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
A little bit more transactional. We're going to decrease the bleeding, get the flooding down, and kind of get things more manageable. A lot of times they'll come in with second-order change phraseology. We got to radically change our system, or the matriarch will call me and say, I just want peace and these wonderful global phrases, and it's like, got it. But you're missing first-order tenants. Like, you're missing sort of some of the laws of first-order stuff. I'm going to have to move you back here where you have to have a lot of pain and suffering and conflict for good reasons. Then we'll see if we're ready and willing with the hearts to move here. But it's kind of like you have to help them. And this will do this with culture assessments to really give them a real kick in the gut. Your speak is over here (in second-order land), but your readiness is here.
Kirby Rosplock
Yeah, yeah. So, getting people to that awareness state, talk to us a little bit about some suggestions. What can people do on their own? What are things that you like to do with these types of families? And then where do the family office professionals come in?
Dr. Kevin Fleming
That's a great question. A lot of times, the family office professionals, and we were talking about this a little bit earlier, they're just pulling their hair out as well. That's happening on my side. They need some boundary work. So, a lot of my coaching for them is about where their day ends and my job begins and how to make proper referrals to me, how to move. A lot of times there's a lot of coaching work for them on how to kind of at least set the proper stage and turn and pivot them over here when they get one of those dialogs with a family member. But I think setting people up for this kind of work, a lot of times I'll use some very interesting neurotechnology and assessments to really see like I said, where people's pain factors are and resiliency pieces, how fragile an individual or a family system is. You have to really assess for that because if you come in with a hammer, you could really hurt some sacred stuff. It's very important to listen very succinctly to these folks. But pretty much, regardless of where you are on the scale of the stages of change, there are double binds, dissociation, and trauma in these families.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And you can't help by at least cleaning the slate a little bit by getting everybody involved with some neurotech work. Now, what does that mean? I've kind of thrown that around a little bit in this call. There are different ways to look at it. I have some very intensives where people have actually some real tough clinical issues going on, where I'm going to have to fly in, put some electrodes on ahead, do some real kind of safe, noninvasive neural stimulation type methodologies. But a lot of times, just low-level, low-hanging fruit. We can really do some really interesting remote-based neural technologies. I've got clients above four continents right now that are running some of these neurotechs via sound, that I run them off their phones from my back end, that use these very algorithmically adjusted frequencies that provide the inner ear with a sense of, quote, safe sound. Now, what does that mean? The inner ear has a muscle called the stapedius, and it's connected to your facial cranial nerve and your whole vagal system to the 10th cranial nerve, and it only seems to get innervated. This is a very interesting discovery we had.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
It only seems to get innervated when middle frequencies, not highs and not lows, come into the ear. Now why is that interesting? If you walk into any of these family meeting offices or facilitations that are very high, tense, and stressful, guarantee you you're going to be flooding that room with lows and high frequencies. Guarantee you that about 83% of that information that somebody needs to hear is not even getting into the ear, into the brain, because the threat, evolutionarily speaking, is coded by the brain in very low and very high frequencies, which are pretty much all around us. Every day you walk into a coffee shop and you're going to hear the grinders, and then you're going to hear clicks and clanking of plates. And these are all very low and high frequencies robbing me and you and our dialog in a coffee shop about what we want to talk about. But what do we do in our world? We keep going, we keep trucking, we keep kind of doing our conversations, and nobody's heart level listening. Okay? Now the feel-good, kind of coach folks are trying to get everybody to kind of listen more with love and empathy.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
That's great. But the paper that covers rock is the brain. If it's not getting in the first place, I don't care what kind of self-help program you do. Right. So, the neurotech part clears out where the threat circuitry is going on. Now, if you're flooded and you're not getting enough middle frequency, your vagus nerve, which is a very critical nerve, will be in what we call a dorsal state, which is a threat state. Now, why is that problematic? Well, if it's in a threat state pretty much all day, then it's never actually turning into a social engagement way. So, when you talk about the kinds of talk that you and I have, I need a fully present Vegas system that's working healthily because this is too critical stake stuff, right? I mean, what we're talking about with these clients, there's a lot at stake and to kind of half-ass that you just can't do. So, I'll pretty much run people off this sort of interesting algorithmic sound kind of way of getting the brain to rebalance itself. So, it's sort of a pre-coaching endeavor. And then we'll bring in the actual didactic pieces that will come from a strategic assessment and all those other neuro-psych tests that will run to see where people really are, where their impairment pieces are, and where they need to go and move.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
But again, a clean slate for a family system through this. Neurotech is a great way to do it, because what family doesn't have trauma? We all do.
Kirby Rosplock
We all do. Regardless, it's pretty endemic at this point in our culture and certainly in our Western culture. So, this is so fascinating, I think, Dr. Fleming, we could talk all day, and I'm just so appreciative of your wisdom and your insights. Are there, like, one or two or three sorts of ideas that you want to leave our listeners and viewers with today from just all the different interesting things we've talked about from vulnerability and boundaries and safety? Neurotech?
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Yeah, it's a good question, and I've said it to you a few times in this talk region before. I think one of the first things, I know it sounds kind of cliche, but to help people know that I think this phrase has grown a lot in culture now. Gaslighting.
Kirby Rosplock
Right.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
We hear a lot of this now, and it's been around a while. It's not, like, just a new concept, but we really do feel crazy, a lot of us. And I think that one of the best things to take home is, like, nine times out of ten, you're not. What I want people to understand is that. And this is the hard part, is this concept of a trade-off. And I teach my kids this. We all want certain things. We need, maybe very little, but the want-need cycle or the circuitry of the brain gets hijacked. And the more that we're part of pleasures in the world and reward systems and things like that. And what happens in family systems like this that I've worked with, is things have been reversed. So, pleasures and rewards or boundary violations happened at such record paces and speeds that the body and its own internal organ, didn't get a chance to catch up to understanding the idea of a boundary in their self. It's so foreign to them. I think one of the biggest things that I can give people on this talk is just to understand and read about a boundary.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
One of the guys that I really like is Cloud and Townsend. These are two authors, John Cloud and me, John Townsend and Henry Cloud. They wrote a book, boundaries, when to say yes, when to say no. And if you think about it, does that title say it all? Like, if we could teach our clients that, right? And I can't tell you how many people, whether they're Christian, not Christian, atheist, agnostic. It doesn't matter what their belief system is. They grab wisdom from this book. It's a staple of my work because I have to kind of hand these copies out before I even get to speak about anything else. Because if you can't call a table a table, and we all can't call a table a table, I'm leaving and going home. Learning and understanding boundaries will get everybody in the room to say, this is what it is. And if you can't start there, then don't get me to change your tire while you're driving the car. It doesn't work. You got to stop the effing car. Okay. And we got to at least start with naming things. Naming things as they are and making sure we have them all named right.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
And I think in this culture that's so fast. Everything's nanosecond information. Everyone's sending this, sending that, and no one gives a shit about definitions, how we define things. Well, if you say this, do we mean really this, then okay. That proper plan for that, if you define it, would be this. But I'm defining it this way. We're going back to definitions, then everybody. We're staying in definitions until we're all calling a table a table.
Kirby Rosplock
So great. Dr. Fleming, thank you so much for sharing your brilliance today. Again, he's the president and CEO of Gray Matters International, a neural leadership consultancy and coaching firm. And we'll have a lot more where you can contact Dr. Fleming if some of his wisdom might be helpful to you, your family, your family office, or you as advisors out there. Again, this is the Tamron Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock. And it has been an absolute pleasure having you here. Dr. Fleming. Thank you.
Dr. Kevin Fleming
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure, too.
