Sep 23, 2026 · 17 min · 9 segments
Fight or flight on one end. Total shutdown on the other. These are the extreme states of being when we fall out of our window of tolerance. Host Roshini Rajkumar probes what it all means with licensed…
Roshini RajkumarHostSo my background, like you mentioned, is as a marriage and family therapist specializing in complex trauma and PTSD.
And part of why I actually made the transition about 10 years ago to close the therapy practice and bring it into the business world was seeing that whether it was the head of a family or an organization, a team, the issues at the top always flow down.
And if you could have healthier, wholehearted people at the top of systems, it automatically flows into healthier cultures below because whether we like it or not, whatever is the internal culture of the leader flows down and impacts everyone around them.
One of the ways I think about it is a lot of people hang out at the base of a mountain, but not a lot of people make the trek up.
The lonelier it is, it's almost like you're the one taking the machete to the jungle and clearing a path and you're getting the scrapes and bruises, but you're actually making a way for those who come after you.
So there's a lot of even well-intended leaders that are navigating so much pressure and so much uncertainty that everyone's experiencing right now.
But the level of pressure when you're responsible for payroll or to figure out how things are going to land is there's not many places for those people to get to take the mask off and actually get to work and process through what they're actually facing and navigating.
Yeah, I don't know if I'll quote it correctly, but there's a line, something like, way to lose all your friends, become a manager.
Because when you are a manager at any level, whether it's a manager, a vice president, a C-suite executive, you're There are fewer and fewer as you go up, but it also gets lonelier and lonelier because you're also making some tough decisions that often affect hundreds or thousands of lives.
And sometimes living with the tough decision isn't easy for you or the people who have to live with those decisions.
But maybe they're the best thing for everyone's futures or salaries or for the company's survival.
Yeah, that makes me think of one of the analogies I think is really helpful in leadership in general is kind of like healthy parenting.
So at its core, if you narrow down parenting, it's a combination of high warmth and nurture and high structure and expectations.
So if a kid is in a home that's all structure and expectations and no warmth or nurture, it's not healthy for them.
Alternatively, if it's all warmth and nurture, no structure and expectations, it's also not good.
And when it comes to business, obviously, there's clear structure and expectations.
So my background, like you mentioned, is as a marriage and family therapist specializing in complex trauma and PTSD.
And part of why I actually made the transition about 10 years ago to close the therapy practice and bring it into the business world was seeing that whether it was the head of a family or an organization, a team, the issues at the top always flow down.
And if you could have healthier, wholehearted people at the top of systems, it automatically flows into healthier cultures below because whether we like it or not, whatever is the internal culture of the leader flows down and impacts everyone around them.
One of the ways I think about it is a lot of people hang out at the base of a mountain, but not a lot of people make the trek up.
The lonelier it is, it's almost like you're the one taking the machete to the jungle and clearing a path and you're getting the scrapes and bruises, but you're actually making a way for those who come after you.
So there's a lot of even well-intended leaders that are navigating so much pressure and so much uncertainty that everyone's experiencing right now.
But the level of pressure when you're responsible for payroll or to figure out how things are going to land is there's not many places for those people to get to take the mask off and actually get to work and process through what they're actually facing and navigating.
Yeah, I don't know if I'll quote it correctly, but there's a line, something like, way to lose all your friends, become a manager.
Because when you are a manager at any level, whether it's a manager, a vice president, a C-suite executive, you're There are fewer and fewer as you go up, but it also gets lonelier and lonelier because you're also making some tough decisions that often affect hundreds or thousands of lives.
And sometimes living with the tough decision isn't easy for you or the people who have to live with those decisions.
But maybe they're the best thing for everyone's futures or salaries or for the company's survival.
Yeah, that makes me think of one of the analogies I think is really helpful in leadership in general is kind of like healthy parenting.
So at its core, if you narrow down parenting, it's a combination of high warmth and nurture and high structure and expectations.
So if a kid is in a home that's all structure and expectations and no warmth or nurture, it's not healthy for them.
Alternatively, if it's all warmth and nurture, no structure and expectations, it's also not good.
And when it comes to business, obviously, there's clear structure and expectations.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
