Rewire, Untangle, Lead: Dr. Marcia Ruben on the Neuroscience of Leadership and Untangling Your Mind

Hello everyone, welcome back to Telling My Story, the podcast where we explore real life stories, personal growth, career journeys, challenges, and the lessons that shape our lives. I'm Henry Chiwetelu, and today we are having a powerful conversation about leadership, neuroscience, self-awareness, and the hidden pattern that influence the way we think and behave. My guest is Dr. Marshall Robben, also known as the Untangle Doctor. Marshall is an executive coach, organizational consultant, and graduate leadership professor emulator with more than three decades of experience helping leaders overcome complexity and lead with clarity. the author of the neuroscience of leadership rewire untangle lead a research informed book that explore why capable leaders sometimes become stuck in reactive patterns and how they can learn to respond with greater intention marshall's work combines neuroscience leadership development adult development complexity theory and the practical coaching experience to help people understand their minds and improve the way they lead today we explore tangled and untangled leadership thoughts not emotional reaction under pressure, and how leaders can develop clarity, confidence, and self-mastery. Dr. Marshall Rubin, welcome to Telling My Story, and it's a pleasure to have you here with us today. Thank you so much, Henry. It's a pleasure to be on your show. All right, Dr. Marshall, you have spent more than three decades working as an executive coach, organizational consultant, and leadership professor. Can you take us back through your... journey and explain how you became known as the Untangled Doctor.

Well, I think, you know, I'm going to start before I started my profession. I was just always interested and intrigued by the idea of transformation. And by that, I mean personal transformation and an organizational transformation, and I mean, quite frankly, transformation in the world. I was really troubled by the conflicts that arise between people and the negative consequences of that. So I began studying, well, I actually, for my university studies, I actually started as a math major, but I made that my minor. And I studied anthropology, the study of man. I found that quite fascinating. um, how, how we evolved. And I was really interested in, in different cultures and how those evolved. Um, and I did, I started my career actually as an, uh, middle school eighth grade math teacher, um, And I found that that wasn't... I loved the children or the teenagers individually, but as a group, they were pretty difficult. So I was able to transition into the business world where I worked doing basically sales training, working with large groups of people. And then I transitioned into... training and development companies. I started off as a consultant and then I actually went into sales for two or three years, which actually was a very formative experience. And then I moved on to working with some consulting firms and leadership positions. And at some point, I was working in a very large organization that was undergoing massive change. And it seemed to me that it was so complex, I couldn't really... wrap my head around it. And I felt I