Deborah Gilboa: It’s really interesting. I’ve just in doing my own background, writing for the most recent TED Talk I gave, I was trying to figure out what my own story was about my content. What I researched, and speak on, as you mentioned, is resilience. And, for me, I think the biggest thing that informs that is that I’m second generation American, all four of my grandparents were immigrants, really the sort of traditional movie story of being in a place where they were dealing with both poverty and oppression and risk of their life and of their community. And each of them left illegally from Russia or Eastern Europe and made it on to Ellis Island on boats. And actually, one of my grandparents had to come through Venezuela and lived there for five years because of quotas. But then he came up through Ellis Island to and made it as far as the Bronx and settled there. My experience just in those two generations. I’m the only grandchild on one side and the only granddaughter on the other side. And my grandparents all came from huge families, not everybody lived or made it. But the experiences that I had, when I was in my first five or six years of living near my grandma, you could see the stark differences in our experiences of identity in just two generations. You know, I grew up on Sesame Street. I’m a kid of the 70s and Sesame Street was huge. We didn’t get our first TV until I was like four. And I remember walking down the street in the Bronx with my grandma and seeing a police officer and remembering the police officer on Sesame Street. I smiled and waved and said, “Hi Mr. Officer”. And my grandmother almost yanked my arm out of out of its socket and pulled me into the alley and chastise me and shushed me and you don’t try and get a police officer’s attention ever. And that privilege, although I didn’t at the time, have a lot of financial privilege. I had a lot of comfort in my own skin and in my own community kind of privilege that she absolutely didn’t have you hide from the police. And I remember when I think back on it, that my whole life she had we’d been walking down the street together. And she was this tiny little woman like four foot 10 she would try and get smaller. If we saw anybody in any kind of uniform meter maid, whatever, she would walk closer to buildings, step into shadows, walk slower, put her head down, more moving in between her in the apartment buildings that we were walking past to protect me. And it was so different than the way that I had been taught just by watching Sesame Street. And it really made a big impression on me trying to figure out like were police officers safe people or not safe people in my little kid mind. Obviously, it’s a totally different conversation today than it was then. And I understand that there are so many more perspectives that I could have had, but I couldn’t when I was a little kid.

Jackie Ferguson: Not at four.

Deborah Gilboa: So a lot of my identity comes from being the grandkid of four immigrant parents were Jewish. That’s our mean. Strangely, I guess that’s been our main racial identity, although maybe not strangely, because when I did the DNA testing it told me that I was 99% Jewish and I don’t think Anybody else besides Jews gets a religious answer on a DNA test? 

Jackie Ferguson: It’s an interesting question. 

Deborah Gilboa: When I was younger, there were lots of things I wasn’t allowed to do because I was Jewish, not because of my parents, but because of society. There were teams I wasn’t allowed to be on in clubs, I wasn’t allowed to be in. My very good, very wealthy friend in high school tried to bring me as one of her guests to her debutante Paul, and I was not allowed to go because I was Jewish. And I very much remember the no blacks and no Jews world, in just my lifespan, really just the last 30 years, I’ve become white passing. And it’s a really interesting perspective. For me, my kids definitely are white. My parents definitely were not. And I wasn’t, and then I was. So that’s my identity from a racial perspective, I’m a bisexual woman, and I think that pretty much covers my identity stuff.

Jackie Ferguson: I love it. Thank you for sharing that. I love the stories about you know how we grew up because it shaped so much of how we think about the world, and how we think about each other. And so I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Dr. G. Will you tell us a little bit about your medical practice, and then about your consulting and speaking? 

Deborah Gilboa: Yes, I went to med school in what’s called a non-traditional path. My first career was in theater. And then I became an American Sign Language interpreter. And I use that to work my way through medical school, and I won’t drag you into all of my thought processes. But once I became a doc, I got a medical training as you do, you go to college, and then you come to medical school. Now I work in between because I went to college for something else. But then you go to medical school, that’s four years during medical school, you figure out what kind of a doctor you want to be. And I don’t mean like a good one. I mean, like what field you’re interested in medicine, because in family medicine, we get to see everybody, and things change up all the time. And we get to see patients in the office and in the hospital, and also do house calls. It’s really cool. So it’s really the kind of medicine I wanted to practice. Family Medicine is a three year residency training program. And so by the time I was done with those seven years of training, I was out as an attending physician. And my second position as an attending physician separate from teaching at the Med School, which most of us do teach in some way or another. I got hired at a Federally Qualified Health Center, and FQHCs are somewhat government funded, although not government run health centers that exist in every county in the US. And they’re kind of as close as we get to having socialized medicine, different FQHCs are created to serve different needs. Ours was created to serve linguistically and culturally and religiously underserved in Pittsburgh. So we’ve been open when we’ve been open for 15 years, we did another audit of our patient population, and found that our patients speak 62 different languages natively, and come from over 100 countries. And so I get to do global medicine, a mouthful house, which is really fun. We don’t hire anybody at our health center who only speaks English, I speak three languages, most of the other providers, doctors and NPS, pas all speak two or three or four languages, our Ma’s and front staff, and nurses, everybody speaks at least two languages, if not more, and yet we can’t come close to covering the 6160 languages that we have. So we use a lot of interpreters. And we try really hard to use cultural interpreters as well as language interpreters. But what I find is that I’m just learning from my patients all the time, the work that I get to do there is really a big part of the reason that I started doing the consulting that I do. So when I’ve been an attending for about five years, I started to notice this gap between what I had been trained to do, which is help people get better when they’re sick, or when they’re hurt, or help them prevent illness and injury, right? Wear your seatbelt, get your Pap smear those kinds of things. There’s a big gap between helping them get better, and helping them be well and truly live the life they want be as thriving as they can be in their circumstances. And so I thought, “What’s in that gap?” And the more I looked at the research, the more I found that gap described, and usually attributed to patient resilience, which I recognize sounded like a cop out. But I also thought things can be both annoying and true.

Jackie Ferguson: I love that, I have to write that down because that applies to so many things. Doesn’t it?

Deborah Gilboa: We want the annoying things to be wrong, but sometimes they’re not. So I was like, “If that’s the case, what is patient resilience?” Those go back over 10 years, but at the time, a lot of the research about resilience in adults, was done on folks with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or severe Your mental illness. And although that describes some of my patients, it’s not really applicable to the vast majority of my patients. So I was like, “Well, if the research you want doesn’t exist, then do it”. And I entered into this work first about what is resilience? And how do we draw it out in kids, as teachers, as parents as coaches? And then, in the last five years or so, what is resilience in adults? And is it a trait? Like your eye color? You’re just born with it, or is it something that you. Can we have a growth mindset about resilience is something that goes up goes down both what it made of? I’ve been lucky enough to do research with a lab at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. And we’ve been really interested specifically in resilience in the workplace, and for adult professions. And I was so excited, when your team asked me to have this have me on your podcast, because our work on resilience is fundamentally about navigating change. The definition of resilience that people use in the colloquial world is, it’s the ability to bounce back from difficulty. But that’s not actually the social science definition of resilience. Because there’s two problems with that. One, it assumes that you only have to be resilient about negative change. And that turns out not to be true. You actually have to be resilient about all change, even the good stuff, the stuff that you worked for, that you dreamed about, that resilient, that change also requires resilience. The other thing that isn’t great about that bounce back definition is it assumes that you can go back to how you were before you experience something. And humans are always changed by their experiences. The social science definition is that resilience is the ability to navigate change with intention and purpose towards a goal. And one of the obstacles that people face to DEI work, is that because it is a righteous change, because it is a moral change, we believe it should be an easy change. And our brains don’t make anything about change easy. Even with the good stuff. 

Jackie Ferguson: That’s right. Absolutely. You know, that’s so interesting, because when we think about change, it’s the things that are hard, or the things we don’t understand, that we think this is going to be a challenge. But it’s interesting that you said, even the good stuff, those changes that are positive that we’ve been hoping for, right, can create some level of stress and anxiety. And then what do we do with that? 

Deborah Gilboa: A lot of your listeners lead groups. They lead teams, they have groups of clients or customers that they’re trying to usher through change. And they may sit on a DEI committee or be in charge of DEI, and they’re definitely trying to help other people navigate change. And leaders make this fundamental mistake. They think that when people struggle to navigate change, it either means they’re a bad leader, or the people are bad people and neither is true. When a group of people struggle to navigate a change that you announced, it doesn’t mean you didn’t announce it. Well, it doesn’t mean they don’t trust you. It’s not a referendum on leadership. And when that group of people struggles to navigate change, it likewise doesn’t mean that they are lazy, or obstinate, or unmotivated, or don’t really believe in the mission that they pretend to believe in. When people struggled to navigate change, it simply means their brains are trying to keep them alive. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. But the first thing you can do is understand that it is a reflex. Jackie, did you ever have occasion to bring a kid to a doctor’s office for a while check for a visit? 

Jackie Ferguson: Yes, absolutely. 

Deborah Gilboa: So if you brought a child to my office, and sat him up on my table, and the three of us are talking, and you know how you doing and how you growing and how’s your body? And are you feeling are you doing school, whatever. And I listened with my stethoscope, and then I let them listen with my stethoscope. And then at some point, I take out my reflex hammer, right? And I tap their knee. What are they going to do? 

Jackie Ferguson: Their leg is gonna jump. 

Deborah Gilboa: Their foot kicks out. If everything’s wired the way it’s supposed to be wired, their foot kicks out. If I stand right in front of that child, and I tap their knee, they kick me. Do you chastise that child for being disrespectful and kicking the doctor? 

Jackie Ferguson: No.

Deborah Gilboa: You might at least in your inside voice think, why is she an idiot? She stood right in front of my kid and got kid. She knew what was going on. And I hope leaders insist on standing right in front of their people announcing change. And then when the reflexes our brains have against change, kick in, we get kicked. And we either think I’m not a good leader, or you are a disrespectful person. And neither is true. Our brain has three reflexes, every single time we encounter even the possibility of change, good change, bad change, or neutral change, because our brains have a million functions, but our brains actually only have one job. Do you know what our brains job is? 

Jackie Ferguson: To keep us alive.

Deborah Gilboa: That is exactly right. At our most basic, our brains, all those functions are for one purpose and purpose is to keep us alive. The good news, we are all currently alive. The bad news, all change is suspect. Every single change our brain goes, but could we die though every change? And so even if it’s the job you’ve been hoping for that you got or you pop the question, and the person says, Yes, or you trying and trying to have baby and you’re pregnant, or your partner is, or you’ve been trying to try to have baby and the adoptions gonna go through like something you really, really wanted, you put together a really big proposal. And the leadership says, “Yes, we’re going to do it”. Here’s the budget for it. Even that stuff, your brain goes, even while you might be feeling happy, or excited or proud or relieved, your brain goes, “What could we lose? Can we trust this? And what will be uncomfortable about it?” Those are the three deep tendon reflexes that we cannot stop. Any more than that kiddo could have stopped kick it from kicking me when I kept their knee just because I happen to be standing right in front of. 

Jackie Ferguson: Yeah, that’s right.

Deborah Gilboa: So if you think that you’ve come to your company, and you say, there’s a DEI initiative that would cost us nothing and would gain us so much. Let’s do it. And then they go, basically, could we die though? We think you’re a terrible human, aren’t you? Like down deep, you might be a terrible, terrible human but that’s not it. If we can say if they have that, but could we die though? Will this take away resources from something that we need? Will this take away time or money or people or whatever, from achieving our mission earning the money we need to pay our people? Are you sure this is where we should be putting our time and effort? What’s going to be uncomfortable? People won’t like it, it will be itchy or uncomfortable. And we think, these are those three reflexes. Now what do we do? So as soon as you recognize these three things are just reflexes. It’s not because they’re a bad person. It’s not because I didn’t present it. These are reflexes. That’s the downswing of the cycle of resilience. The upswing, will get you to turn at the bottom and move things up, is simply remembering that you have choices. As soon as we remember, I have choices. Before we even list them. We started to engage the ventromedial prefrontal cortex here at the beginning at the front of our brains that quiets it can’t turn off those reflexes, but it quiets the reflexes that are in the amygdala, those fear based responses of loss, distress and discomfort. And then we start to behave in a resilient way. We say, “What choices do we have?” So it’s a new DEI initiative that costs nothing, doesn’t need to take from anybody’s budget, but would make a huge difference. Let’s use for example, using pronouns in a meeting. It costs $0. So we think this is something that would make people feel more respected, it would help live our mission that we have recently been asked to write about our DEI perspective at our company, here’s something easy to do takes two and a half seconds for everybody to put that in their zoom or say it as we’re introducing ourselves, or a land obligation statement about the land that we’re on whatever it is, it costs, nothing takes almost no time. And somebody the leader that you’ve presented it to is like, well, but is this going to make somebody uncomfortable? Well, we have a client that we lose, because we do this, because it’s not part of their worldview. Are you sure it’s not just performative and people are going to feel like just lip service, and we don’t really mean it but last is trust discomfort. And if we’re able to say, I heard that doctor say this was going to be a thing. This is a normal reaction. And we say, okay, I hear you. This feels risky to you in some way. Here are some choices that we have for what choices do you think we might have keeping in mind? Remember, I said resilience is the ability to navigate, change with intention and purpose. So keeping in mind that our intention and purpose is to be more inclusive. So what choices we have in this situation towards the goal of being more inclusive, and not in a snarky? There’s only one possible answer here, Jackie, say that I’m right. But actually, can we talk about our choices? Maybe it is to have me do it. Just me for the first couple of meetings and see how it goes or just the leader do it and see how it goes or make it optional, and see how it goes or floated in an email and ask for responses, we have choices. And as soon as we remember that those reactions are reflex, just our brains trying to keep us alive, not only people trying to continue to be oppressors, or unwilling to be at all uncomfortable, and then say, but we have this goal that’s agreed upon mission. What choices do we have, we then pick some of those choices, we engage with them, and we get to re unify. That’s the top of the cycle. That’s the goal. And that reunification is not necessarily with best DEI practices. Yet, that goal is not necessarily with everybody being super comfortable. That goal, that reunification is with us knowing that we are genuinely working towards our purpose. 

Jackie Ferguson: I love that. 

Deborah Gilboa: It’s in this case, in this example, that reunification is about authenticity. 

Jackie Ferguson: That is so interesting. Dr. G, thank you for sharing that, you know, it’s tough to navigate change, personally, and to help others navigate change in the case of DEI practitioners or leaders. And so just having that understanding, it feels like it takes some of the pressure off. 

Deborah Gilboa: I hope that it does, I hope that it allows you to feel less frustrated personally, when it’s other people who are struggling to navigate the change, to feel less fraudulent. Personally, when you’re the one struggling to navigate a change. It’s any change. It doesn’t matter what it is. Most of us have some changes that we have no problem moving through loss and distressed and discomfort really quickly. So here’s an example of a neutral change that causes most of us a little bit of a hitch in our gidea, as one of my nurses used to say, you pick up your phone to send a text, and you can’t because it’s updating its operating system. That’s happened to you? 

Jackie Ferguson: Yeah.

Deborah Gilboa: It’s happened to me. So your brain immediately goes, am I going to remember what I was going to do when it’s done? Did I click something that I said I wanted to update right now? And I did not what distrust and discomfort? How long is this gonna take? But most of us like we can navigate that. By the end of the day, we might not even remember it happened unless someone asks. But we also all have moments where our phone updating our operating system is the very last straw. Pitch the phone across the room, or just collapse in a pile of frustration, or Huff or snap the next person who speaks to us, or walk away or whatever our negative coping mechanisms are, because it’s just one too many changes. 

Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely, I hear you. 

Deborah Gilboa: With a growth commodity, we can build it at any time. But the downside of growth commodities, as any stockbroker knows is they can drop unexpectedly.

Jackie Ferguson: That is so interesting. And I appreciate that perspective. Let’s talk about your book. Dr. G, I love that. So from “Stressed or Resilience” is your book and you talk about this within it and the eight necessary skills to be resilient? Will you share a few of those with us?

Deborah Gilboa: Absolutely. What happened was what we discovered in our research, the first really good news we discovered is this fact that resilience is a growth commodity, that it’s not the same as my eye color. And that just I got what I got when I was born and that’s it. And that’s really good news, because that means you can grow it at any point. Some people definitely are more naturally resilient than others in the beginning of their life. But also, we have a narrative. If you heard this phrase, what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. My professional and personal observation is what doesn’t kill us usually makes us miserable. And if you could just go with that, if you’d be like, “Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger than everybody would be stronger to you”. 

Jackie Ferguson: Nope. 

Deborah Gilboa: Jackie, don’t tell me who. But do you know somebody in your life who, every time they go through something hard? It’s awful. It’s just like the world for them. And it never seems to get easier. So if every hard thing made us stronger, we wouldn’t know adults like that. That’s right. So saying, what, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s how you get more resilient. That’s like me saying, I’m going to train for a marathon by forgetting where I parked my car in the parking lot and walking around to find it. It’s gonna make me a tiny bit more physically fit, but it’s not going to get me ready for a marathon. Even if the marathon is in the Walmart parking lot, it’s just not gonna help me. I’m still by the end of “Row C” gonna be really huffing and puffing. So it’s not enough to just go through hard things. And I love being able to reject the premise that only people who go through hard things are going to be as strong as it’s possible to be that like you have to have it’s like inspiration pouring. Like, you have to have suffered. People who start off behind the starting line are so much luckier. That narrative is just ridiculous. We discovered that this ability to navigate change and come through it with intention and purpose is built on eight skills. And those eight skills, and I’m gonna list them, I’m gonna list all eight. You’re going to think to yourself about yourself I hope, what do I know if you’re a parent? You might also be thinking about your kids but really, I want you to think for yourself right now. How competent from not at all too. Oh yeah, it’s very natural for me. You feel about each of these. And I’m not going to ask you to tell me, Jackie, because it’s really personal but just everybody’s listening. Just listen, how competent, do you already feel at any of these eight skills. And they’re in no particular order, because there’s no order to this, but I have an order in my head that I memorize them. And so building connections with other people, that helps us navigate change. Because when we don’t know what to do we know other people well enough to ask if they’ve been through this or what suggestions they have or how they can lend to him. The second one I want you to think about is the ability to set boundaries, which isn’t only about saying no, it’s about making sure that your “Yes’s” line up with your actual intentions and purpose. So you’re saying yes to the things that move you towards the life you need. The next one is opening to change. Recognizing that there’s more than one way to get you to a positive outcome. 

Jackie Ferguson: I’m learning that one, as a leader. 

Deborah Gilboa: A lot of three year olds, they really think the only way they can have a good day as if they are wearing the tutu and the Superman cape and the hat. Right. And you have to help them see that they could possibly have a great day, even if they put on a jacket because it’s 20 degrees outside. A lot of adults too, we struggle, we have one way that we can picture this going. And if it doesn’t go that way. We think it can’t possibly be good. But it’s much easier to navigate change when you have the skill of opening to different possibilities and evaluating. The next one is managing discomfort. I talked about those three reflexes, the last distrust and discomfort. And before we did the research, when we just discovered that those were the three reflexes and named them in that way, I thought most people will get stuck in loss, because we know how hard grief is. And then actually, during the pandemic, with all of the partisanship and echo chambers and bubbles, I thought maybe distrust is the place that’s hardest for people. But the research points to discomfort being the hardest place for people, that’s where we get stuck, and we don’t move through to choice, we move to our negative coping mechanisms, like substances and conflict and like conflict. I mean, violence and tantrums, and avoidance and we don’t get on to choice. So managing discomfort turns out to be a crucial skill in navigating change. And then we afford that kind of hang together. You have to be able to set goals. That’s important skill, you can’t navigate change with intention and purpose. If you don’t know how to figure out what your goal actually is, in that change. If you fail to find options, find more than one way to skin the cat. Because sometimes the first thing you think of isn’t the best thing or it doesn’t work. You have to take action. Because when people get stuck, they can’t navigate change. When they’re like on option overload, or they’re afraid it won’t be the perfect choice. So they don’t make any choice when it turns out that not making a choice is actually making a choice. So taking action, and the last thing is persevering. I’m especially interested in persevering because we’re terrible at teaching perseverance. Jackie, were you educated in the US? Were you in elementary school in New York? 

Jackie Ferguson: Yes.

Deborah Gilboa: Can you picture on one of your classroom walls, a poster of someone an inspirational quote about perseverance. Like Thomas Edison took 10,000 tries to create the light bulb, or Michael Jordan said success is falling down seven times getting up aid, or a portrait of someone and an inspirational quote about perseverance?

Jackie Ferguson: Not specifically about perseverance. 

Deborah Gilboa: So I remember this being and I’ve heard motivational speeches about perseverance. And I’ve heard educators speaking about perseverance. And they always want to tell me about other people who persevered. The guy who invented the Dyson vacuum cleaner had 5, 2, 4, 3 patents before the time that it worked. This is like you come to me and you say, Dr. G, I want to learn to be a professional figure skater. And I say, “No problem. Here’s a poster of a professional figure skater and an inspirational quote. Now go.” Here’s another way I’m going to describe how frustrated I get with how we think about perseverance right now in the world. Finish these two sentences. The first one is we tell children all the time, if at first you don’t succeed, try again. We say to adults all the time doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results is the definition of…?

Jackie Ferguson: Insanity. 

Deborah Gilboa: So square those two things. Kids, try again, we tell adults don’t do the same thing over and over. So like my book, my section on perseverance, and I’m like, how do you thread that needle Dr. G? What’s the deal? And the deal is, it’s not just about trying, again, it’s a two-step process, not a one step process, you have to try again, and change something. It could be something small. One of my kids really struggled to learn to tie shoes. And I’m one of those parents who’s like, you have to have a shoe with laces because you didn’t know how to tie your shoes and I don’t know why. And it’s probably like handwriting, but there it is, I want you to have that thing. But I found myself saying things to him a lot when he would fail at tennis shoes. I was like, “Why don’t you put down all the things in your hands?” And then try again, or why don’t you stop balancing on one foot, sit down and try again, we say change something, something small, something big, start with your left hand, whatever, and try again. But it’s not just try again. It’s changed something and try to and so persevering is this, we bring it up like a trait like some people just do it but actually, it’s a skill. All eight of these are a skill.

Jackie Ferguson: Wow that is helpful. And I’ve never thought about that. I’m assuming each other as adults. Try again but what’s the Tweak, that’s very important. So, Dr. G, your book talks about turning stress into resilience, and with all that’s occurring in the world with our private lives, our work lives are in the world. What advice do you give to someone who’s generally happy, but about gaining and keeping balance, and very stressful time?

Deborah Gilboa: I’m gonna have a little bit of an allergic reaction to the word balance and here’s why. I am a single mom of four kids and I have this other company where I work with companies to help them navigate change. And people are like, “How do you balance it all?” Here’s why I don’t like the image of a balance. I don’t know if you remember Jackie, or if your listeners well, but in science class, way back in the day, when you had to weigh something, you do it on a balanced scale. Not on a scale with a digital readout, but a balanced scale. And people may have seen pictures of these, even if they haven’t done it. The idea of a balance scale is you put your weighing on one side. And then on the other side, you keep putting weights until they measure it exactly the same. And you could count up how many weight you had. So the idea of balance is like me saying, “Well, if my kids need me a lot this week, if I have to take time during the day to do something, and all their evenings are full on our weekends, well, then if they took 60 of my hours this week, to be balanced, I better give my work 60 hours too” and I don’t know about you, but my hours don’t work like that. I can’t independently add them until they add up. Right. So the idea of balance, I think only makes sense over a season, not over a day or a week, every day, and most weeks are going to lean more towards one than the other. And also, I don’t have only two plates on my balance scale. I’m also the only child of an aging parent. I’m also involved in my you know, I’m on a national advisory board for the United States for Olympics teams. And I keep adding plates, I’ve got like this plated balance thing, if you just kept having to add weight to each of them until they all added up, I would be dead. So my brain is like, but could we die, though. Don’t do that. So I think that instead of looking at his balance, I look at it as trying my best over the course of a month or a season to match my calendar, like the things I’m actually spending time doing to my priorities and I give myself like three to five priorities. And by the way, I put my own health and well-being on that list so that I can be around to have that list next year to say.

Jackie Ferguson: I love that answer. And you know the thing about it Dr. G, as I love to use the word balance, because very often hyperkalemia and allergic reaction to the word.

Deborah Gilboa: I know what you mean and everybody and it is to feel balanced that’s really valuable. But I really want to think of it as matching. If I’m going to navigate all this stuff with intention and purpose, then my goals have got to match up with my actual purpose.

Jackie Ferguson: And one of the things that I’ve discovered by thinking that way rather then what’s the balance. The equal parts, all of the things that you are as an individual, it gives you the opportunity to give yourself some grace. And not to be excellent at everything, every single day because it’s impossible.

Deborah Gilboa: And nobody wants to be friends with somebody who’s excellent and everything every single day that’s true. Do you want to hang out with that person? I don’t want to hang out with them. I don’t want somebody can occasionally cuss like a sailor about how terrible everything?

Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely, because we all need that outlet a little bit. That is great. And again, it’s just so important to give yourself some grace, you’re not going to get it perfect every day, you don’t have to get it perfect every day, to be a good professional or a good parent, or a good daughter or a good friend or a good runner, or whatever your things are, it’s important to give yourself a little room. That’s great. Thank you for sharing that. Dr. G one of the things that I want to ask about is the word resilient. So often times that word is used a lot, especially among black women as a compliment to cope with inequities, imbalances, unfairness, things like that. So how do we use that word without it being that kind of proverbial pat on the head rather than addressing systemic issues that arise? And one of the things just to point out is, I love that your practice, the doctor speaks so many language, because that’s languages because that’s one of the inequities that we have in healthcare, is that if you’re not understanding what your doctor is saying, You don’t understand the diagnosis how to treat it. And so I love that your staff and your doctors speak multiple languages to be able to bridge as best they can that inequity. So I just wanted to point that out. And I went in a different direction but back to resilient.

Deborah Gilboa: I appreciate it. But to your point about cultural issues, the language isn’t enough. And we recognize that we’re working really hard to one of the populations that we serve most in our practice is Bhutanese Nepali folks. And at first, we were really excited in the first few years to be able to get some folks from that community who wanted to train to be medical assistants. And they were really excited because some people were actually going to medical school. And now we’re getting providers or PA school or NP school. And now we’re getting providers who don’t just speak that language, but are of that culture and that group, because hearing your language is a bridge over a gap but seeing yourself in your healthcare provider removes the gap. 

Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely. 

Deborah Gilboa: And the bridge is better than no bridge, no question. So having me be able to be educated enough. And that’s all it is it just education to say to a patient, that I recognize that I’ve said to patients, for example, some of my trans patients, I’ll say, I recognize that there are just realities of our health center, that aren’t the best for you, you would be best in a health center. That was only for trans patients. We can’t offer that we can offer a health center that doesn’t put genders on bathrooms, that asks genders for every patient check in that makes a point of asking to be corrected if we say something that’s different than how you’d like to be referred. But still, you’re having to be the person who’s looking out for your speed bumps and just being like there’s another speed bump, could you fix it, please? As opposed to we’ve smoothed out all the speed bumps. Yeah. And those cultural differences make a really big difference. And so every single time that I see a patient of mine who is black, and they’ve been in the hospital, one of the things we talked about I asked about is what inequities they faced and if they weren’t discussing any of those things, that’s not as good as me being able to remove those inequities but it’s a bridge. So the gap still exists. And I’m not fixing the gap. I’m just putting a bridge over the gap. What you bring up with the word resilience, and what it means in different cultures is a good example of that gap. A bridge that I would recommend over the gap is to define our terms. I’ve heard from other people, especially in the corporate setting, that the word resilience to them is a call to suffer without complaint. Hmm. That especially during and after the pandemic, they are tired of being asked or patted on the head, by their leadership for being resilient. They don’t want, we’re gonna have to be resilient. They’re like enough. Don’t ask me to be resilient, fix some of the problems that I’m facing and I totally understand that perspective. But I also know that it is a personal goal for most of us to be able to navigate change and feel less winded by less oppressed by. And so I want to help people who want them to grab and polish more of the skills that will help them face the stressors they have today, and feel less oppressed by them. You know, while really important work exists to have fewer obstacles and fewer difficult changes, no question. 

Jackie Ferguson: Definitely. Dr. G, you speak about resilient teams. So we talked a lot about being resilient as an individual. How do we create a resilient team?

Deborah Gilboa: There are two things that we can do. One focus is preventive, and one focus is treatment. I noted speaking about it in doctor’s terms but so there’s one that’s like, before, you’re dealing with a difficult situation, or a big change that’s really negatively impacting your team. And the other is while you are navigating. And so from the focus of beforehand, some of the things that we can do, to have a team that’s more resilient, is a team that feels higher senses of connection and belonging. When people feel higher senses of connection, belonging and motivation, they are more likely to hang together as they navigate a change. 

Jackie Ferguson: Yeah, absolutely. 

Deborah Gilboa: While you’re navigating, the heart changes that’s a lot of the work I do with companies they bring me in when they are about to, or much more often, when they’re in middle of navigating a big change. Some examples would be changing an IT system or a payroll system, moving the physical plant of a building, merging with another part of the company, or changing leadership or organizational structure being acquired by another company, those big changes that make people feel really lost his trust, discomfort, really at risk. They bring me in to help navigate those, but there are some things that leaders can do. And the one in the time that we have that I’d like to point out because it costs nothing is empathy. As leaders, we tend to feel like oh, my people are upset about this problem. If I fix the problem, they’ll feel better and be more resilient. And it turns out, that’s not true. The evidence shows that if people are upset about a problem, they will be more resilient. If you show empathy for their feelings. You don’t have to fix the problem. That’s the good news. It’s hard on those of us who really like to be fixers. But that is the good news. Because often you can’t fix a problem to someone else’s satisfaction anyway. But if you can show empathy, but we have this myth in our society, that expressing empathy comes easily to good people, right? If you’re just a good person, empathy is simple. And that’s not true. There are seven cognitive barriers to empathy. As a matter of fact, right before our interview today, Jackie, I was doing a training for educators, sales educators and trainers from all over North America, about the seven cognitive barriers to empathy, and how to get past them and express empathy anyway, one hack I can give you. No, we’re not going through the seven barriers, and that’ll frustrate some of the more data minded folks. One hack is if you can authentically say you’re valued, so I care about what you’re going through.

Jackie Ferguson: Yeah, that’s important. As a leader, I’ve learned that over time that sometimes, and I feel like it’s new to those of us who are Gen Z and spent a career with head down, do your work, get your promotion at the expected time and just go through the paces to moving into making time to just listen and hear and be there for the people that you’re working with and the people that are working under you. And so I think that’s so important.

Deborah Gilboa: You pointed out a really important generational difference. We were taught that you had to compartmentalize yourself, and you brought your professional stuff to work and your personal stuff stayed out of it. And that was that and that this compartmentalizing is not at all how millennials or Gen Z look at themselves and the world. And they’re looking at it much more three dimensionally and authentically. And so that’s one of the reasons that for them. Empathy rings the bell much better if you are authentic, when you say you’re valued, I care about what you’re going through. I don’t have to know how to fix it. I don’t even have to understand it. If I really mean when I say that I’m listening. And the truth is, it turns out to help Gen X and Boomer professionals as well, to hear that if it’s authentic.

Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely. Dr. G. Let’s talk for a moment about your courses at askdoctorg.com. Tell us about a couple of your curriculums.

Deborah Gilboa: I did a couple of things. I really like to find what I think are or what people have told me are particular pain points, and try and solve them. So one, for example is how to change the behavior in yourself this week, is behavior change is really the expertise of family medicine. I’ve spent my entire career trying to help people understand how to pick with behavior, they would like to change. By the way, start with just one don’t have what I call the January 2 problem, decided, this is my year, people come in.

Jackie Ferguson: New Year new me. 

Deborah Gilboa: I’m getting a vitamin every day and not drink anything more than one glass of wine a week. And I’m an exercise every day and no more smoking. And I’m going to get nine hours of sleep. And I’m like, Whoa, pick one, just one. See how that goes. Get really competent at that one, build your confidence, for your ability to change the behavior because behavior change is really hard. It’s the hardest kind of change, our brain pushes back with all kinds of loss and distress and discomfort. So there’s a course on there for you to pick which change you want to change. I don’t tell you, it’s not to lose weight or find your keys. It’s a picket chain. And then I give you a step by step process for navigating that change. And it’s really only 60 minutes of content. But you got to stretch it out over a few weeks. Because there’s homework in between. It doesn’t work to just sit down, watch all 60 minutes and be like, clearly, I’m done. So I think that’s the best example. There are other courses over there but they’re really all set out in that. Here’s one specific thing that you want to do. And here are the behavior management steps, the change navigation steps to help you do. 

Jackie Ferguson: Awesome. And Dr. G. Certainly I could find 50 more questions to ask you but we only have so much time together. But what’s the message that you want to leave our listeners with today?

Deborah Gilboa: My goal is to help people think differently about stress. Stress isn’t a toxin. It’s a tool “Stress builds mental health and resilience”, like exercise builds Body Fitness.

Jackie Ferguson: I love that. Thank you for that. That’s such an interesting way to think about it. “Stress isn’t a toxin, it’s a tool”. I love that. Dr. G. Thank you so much for taking some time with me today. I’ve learned so much I’m sure that our listeners have as well. So thank you again.

Deborah Gilboa: Thanks for having me. And I hope if anybody has any questions or wants to push back on any of my ideas, I’m always happy to learn with people. So just get in touch through my website.

Jackie Ferguson: I love it. Thank you, Dr. G. 

Jackie Ferguson [PODCAST OUTRO]: Thanks for joining me for this episode. Please take a moment to subscribe and review this podcast and share this episode with a friend become a part of our community on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. This show was edited and produced by Earfluence. I’m Jackie Ferguson. Join us for our next episode of “Diversity Beyond the Checkbox”. Take care of yourself and each other.