When our children were very young, I had been a very senior leader in a corporate organization, and becoming a full-time mom was an interesting journey.

This is Gill Campbell.

 

My husband ran his own company, and the navigation of two small boys under three became what we used to call “Top Trumps”—who's tiredest, who's done the most today, who's been most stressed. Between full-time working mom and my husband running his organization, we got to a place where our marriage was not comfortable or safe for both of us.

 

Gill is one of Arbinger’s most seasoned executive coaches, and she brings her own raw, lived experiences like this into her coaching with senior leaders to help them uncover and address the friction and difficulty beneath their success.

 

Alec, being a resource investigator, would look for solutions. Alec is the husband Gill's having the “Top Trumps” battle with. He discovered the Arbinger course someone suggested to him. He headed off—“I'm off to a training course!”—and I remember thinking: great, bye.

 

He came back from the course fundamentally different. Alec and I had moved into this competitive, “who's tired, who's worst off, who's the saddest”—and I’d try and reengage in that argument, because that was the safe place. But he didn't roll over or give in—he was boundary, compassionate, honoring where I was, and would really listen. The more reasonable he became, the more frustrated I got.

 

Actually, Alec having learned this outward mindset material and me not, and in fact me rejecting it—hating it—went on for about seven months. Eventually, I realized the Alec I was now co-parenting with was really quite an okay kind of person, so I thought maybe I’d read the book. But he never once said, “You should read this” or “You should go on this course.” He was just different.

 

So, very reluctantly, that's how I got involved in understanding the outward mindset.

 

What began as a personal journey for Gill and Alec—practicing outward mindset in their marriage—grew into co-leading Arbinger UK, where they help organizations and executives improve collaboration, client relationships, and effectiveness. Gill spends most of her time helping highly competent leaders untangle the hidden, critical barriers to greater success. She walks us through the coaching journey for these leaders.

 

Welcome to Leading Outward, the Arbinger Institute podcast, where we explore the tools and ideas we've used for over 45 years to help people solve their toughest leadership and organizational challenges by leading with an outward mindset—seeing people as people. I'm McKinlay Otterson.

 

McKinlay:

Gill, you said you resisted it and kept trying to engage Alec in the same pattern. Why were you so resistant?

 

Gill:

Reflecting—fifteen years later, as head of leadership development and coaching, full-time outward mindset coach for senior leaders—I see now I wanted the comfort and security of the fight I knew. Reigniting the competition felt safe, familiar, and not as frightening as facing tricky conversations or navigating things differently.

 

In the same old cycle, I was comfortable. Doing it differently felt too scary.

 

McKinlay:

Do you find that’s true for the individuals you coach, too?

 

Gill:

Yes. The patterns of inwardness—where we feel in control—are universal. The control pattern might not help us (maybe we over-rescue, or always need to be the expert or make progress), and may even look positive, but they're there to protect us from what I see as the core of the inward mindset: the fear of being exposed.

 

We all unconsciously operate from: "Will I be exposed? Will people see I'm not brilliant, not leader material, not kind?"

Seeing ourselves as people means sometimes we're not kind. It's a journey every senior leader I've worked with embarks on.

 

This fear of being exposed can show up in different places—maybe in the areas where we crave control (like a parent obsessed with kids' behavior in public), or in places we want to avoid (like removing Q&A from presentations because we don’t want to be seen as ignorant).

 

McKinlay:

What does it look like when a leader begins to recognize fear of exposure in themselves?

 

Gill:

A leader shares something from experience that isn't feeling okay—not always outright conflict, but uneasy. We work through “how are you seeing others, yourself”—and what quickly shows up in the language is binary clues: black/white, win/lose, good/bad. “They shouldn't have done this; this was wrong; but they tried that and that was right.”

 

Experienced clients pick it up themselves, but with someone new, we start working with their innate fear of facing parts of themselves they're ashamed of, afraid of, or wish were different.

 

For new clients, start by noting where you blame, because we often blame others for things we’re not comfortable with in ourselves. The places where we feel justified are typically blame spaces.

 

Blame reveals the inward mindset:

"Am I blaming the other? Yes, because they're wrong, said/did this."

"Do I blame myself too? Yes, disappointed in myself for how I handled the meeting."

That shows they’ve moved away from the humanity of other and self.

 

Blame and justification prevent us from seeing solutions clearly. Others might be objectively wrong, and I might have been ineffective, but blame makes it harder to see and deal with those realities.

 

Then we identify “the musts.”

 

What are the other person’s needs, pressures, and challenges?

 

Why might they be showing up this way?

This isn’t about excusing behavior—just seeing it.

 

Many clients fear if they look beyond fairness or expertise, their world falls apart. If they're not the expert, or if fairness isn't the only rule, that's scary. But we can just see it. We don’t have to act, just observe.

 

Then we explore our own perspective:

 

What are my needs, pressures, challenges?

 

Where am I possibly closing down or excluding others?

 

Next, what would the world look like without measurement, without the binary “musts,” “shoulds,” and “have to’s”?

If we blame ourselves—“I failed”—we move away from how do we solve this? What does the project, room, or decision need? Who’s impacted?

 

Blame (of others, self, society, the system) takes us into an inward space. The coaching journey brings us back to: What’s needed? What do the humans need?

 

We live in a world of blame—sometimes blaming others, sometimes ourselves, sometimes the weather or circumstances. It’s a protective move. So the question is: What are we protecting ourselves from?

 

Often the most pervasive inward mindsets are those that feel morally justified—the ones we see as virtues.

A leader might say: "I'm fair; everything I do is fair." While fairness is a wonderful value, if it becomes the only lens, it can quickly become inward.

 

When we only see fairness from our perspective, we measure self and others by “fair/unfair”—and clash with others who don’t share our definition. Through coaching, we explore where the need for fairness (or any virtue) has become inward and about our worldview.

 

McKinlay:

I actually struggle with this—not necessarily with fairness, but with other values that matter. How do I hold values while seeing the people around me?

 

Gill:

We all develop self-justifying images—a picture of ourselves we feel we have to show, that justifies our actions. Maybe “I’m shy"—so I don’t have to reach out. Or “I’m important”—so I don’t stoop to menial work.

 

It’s trickier when the self-justifying image is a virtue: “I’m a hard worker.”

Instead of just working hard, we unconsciously focus on making sure others see us working hard. The energy then shifts to how we appear, and we lose awareness of the people and work around us that would actually confirm the virtue.

 

This can apply to any virtue or value: generosity, compassion, leadership.

 

The rules, values, and moral codes we live by are usually good! But every principle can be inward if it becomes about our perception and the only way.

 

What we teach at Arbinger is that change comes from seeing ourselves through others, because we’re always in relationship—never out of it.

 

If we see ourselves as “right,” then someone else has to be “wrong.”

McKinlay:

I remember a college conflict communication class—sorting our values. In conflict, what matters most to me might only be “somewhat important” to someone else. Turning my top values into non-negotiables for how others should live created distance; I lost the ability to take in the whole person and accept differences.

 

When we’re inward, there’s a binary: “If they’re right, I must be wrong.” Accepting we can see things differently and both be okay is frightening. Even our moral codes can become inward.

 

It’s not binary—“inward or outward”—in every relationship or moment. But when we’re inward, we can't see the options, solutions, and connections.

 

Gill:

When we're caught in our self-justifying image (say, being the expert), if anyone asks a question I can't answer, all my fears are exposed—Am I useful? Am I enough? What's my purpose? It’s deep. So I double down on being the expert, which makes me inward.

If we want to see others as people, we have to allow ourselves to see we're people—we're not always right, fair, or expert. We have to have self-compassion for our own humanity.

 

McKinlay:

Most of the time, I’m inward because I conveniently ignore all the times I’ve done the thing I’m frustrated with. The self-compassion angle is so interesting—actually, it's about recognizing I am flawed. I don’t always need to be the expert.

 

Gill:

Exactly. The binary language of inwardness is “must, should, have to”—red flags for more inward traits. The people I coach are exceptional leaders, but they want to spot and grow past those inward tendencies.

 

McKinlay:

Final question: What’s your guidance for someone about to coach senior leaders to be most effective and stay grounded?

 

Gill:

See yourself through the outward mindset lens: you're a person, just like your client. When you're sitting with someone and they recognize those parts of themselves they thought were virtues but maybe excluded others—hold space with them. It's okay to be a flawed, beautiful human. Be in that space with them.

 

There’s no trick or technique—just the courage to see our own humanity, and to accept that it can be frightening to believe we are people and try to accept the world as it is.

You're okay. You’re flawed. Welcome to humanity. Me too.

 

Leading Outward is produced by the Arbinger Institute. To have a conversation about how we can equip you to transform your leaders and organization, schedule a complimentary strategy session at arbinger.com. And whatever came to mind for you while you were listening—a conversation you’ve been putting off, feedback that needs to be shared, action that needs to be taken—don’t wait. Take that action, because that’s how change starts.