In this episode of 'Two Shrinks on the Farm,' Robyn and Barb revisit their influential book 'Smart Girls in the 21st Century' ten years after its publication.

They delve into the societal changes that have reshaped their perspectives, including the Me Too movement, the 2016 presidential election, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conversation covers the impact of racism, sizism, and evolving gender norms on the careers of notable women, debates over the 'lean in' philosophy, and the challenges faced by women in academia and corporate environments.

The episode underscores the importance of following one’s passion despite societal pressures and systemic barriers. Ending on a hopeful note, the speakers emphasize the resilience of women and the shift towards valuing workplaces that align with personal values and aspirations.

This thoughtful exploration invites listeners to reflect on progress and the ongoing challenges in the pursuit of meaningful work and personal growth.

00:00 Welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm

02:20 Reflecting on 'Smart Girls in the 21st Century'

03:40 Unforeseen Changes and Regrets

06:17 Eminent Women: Hits and Misses

10:08 The Lean In Dilemma

18:59 Personal Reflections and Mentorship

27:27 Understanding Structural Backlashes

28:09 The Rise of the Men's Rights Movement

30:08 Impact of Roe v. Wade Reversal

33:48 Pandemic's Effect on Young Women

37:06 Pandemic's Effect on Accomplished Women

38:54 Navigating Corporate and Personal Life During COVID

47:45 Reflections on the Beehive Model

51:19 Empowering the Next Generation

56:46 Final Thoughts and Regrets

57:43 Closing Remarks and Future Plan

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Hi, I'm Dr. Robin McKay and welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm. Yes, we really are shrinks and we really do live on a farm. No white coats or sterile offices here though, just wide open spaces, four horses, two dogs, and a couple of cats to keep things interesting. The title of this podcast was actually born one sunny Saturday afternoon when I was out picking cherries in the front yard and Barb was weeding the garden.

I yelled across the yard at her, Hey Barb, we should start a podcast called Two Shrinks on the Farm. And, well, here we are. Barb is the Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Kansas and an award winning psychologist. She was also my professor once upon a time. And I earned my PhD in Counseling Psychology from KU as well.

Though I started my career as a university psychologist, I left academia years ago to found my own consulting firm. When I was just finishing my PhD, I lived with Barb on this very farm. And since then, the two of us have taken wildly different paths. But now, 16 years after graduation, we find ourselves back here once again.

We've both dedicated our lives to finding, guiding, and celebrating creative and talented people from all walks of life. And this time, we're ready to share our perspectives with you. In this podcast, we're not here to offer you the same old recycled advice. We're here to blow up the cliches and explore creativity from angles that might just make you squirm a little, or laugh out loud.

Whether we're talking about the real meaning behind those motivational posters, spoiler alert, they're not helping, or sharing stories from real life on the farm like how picking ticks off dogs can teach you more about life and love. This isn't your typical psychology podcast, so if you're feeling stuck, burnt out, or just a little bit bored with the status quo, you're in the right place.

Welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm, where the two of us turn over the soil in your mind and plant a few seeds of radical new thinking.

Welcome back to the podcast. Hey you guys, guess what? It's been 10 years since Barb and I published our book, Smart Girls in the 21st Century. 10 years. And we were just talking the other day about how things have changed since we wrote that book. And Barbie had a great idea for the topic for today's episode.

So we will get to the rest of the Neo personality profile in upcoming episodes. But because this is actually the week that our book was released 10 years ago, I thought it'd be great to do this episode right here, right now. We'll also put a link to the book in the show notes. So you can grab that on Amazon, but as Barb says, don't buy it until you listen to what we regret about it.

Yeah, we almost titled this podcast, Je Regret. Because there, it, re reading the book, I realized there's, whoa, still a lot of good stuff that I still, fully stand behind. On the other hand, there were some things that we did not anticipate that would happen in the next 10 years. That would that would really change how we how we would approach smart girls.

We would have Done it differently in some ways. 

Well, I mean, hindsight, I suppose is 2020 in this case, we couldn't have anticipated the me too movement. We couldn't have anticipated Trump getting elected in 2016. We couldn't have anticipated a pandemic or the effects that would have on gifted and talented girls and women, around the world.

So there's a lot to this. 

And even in 2013, when we were writing this we had no idea that, women would lose reproductive rights. We had no idea that would happen. We were just assuming that, just like the rest of the developed world, that women now had control over their bodies. Ah, and then the rise of the men's rights movement.

The I You know, Robin, I always say in my talks about Smart Girls, that if we recognize that for the last 8, 000 years men have dominated women, have owned their bodies, women have been property since the beginning of agriculture in most human societies, did we really believe that 8, 000 years of, The dominance of women would end in one or two generations.

Yeah, I think we did. At least that was our hopeful thinking. And I think that our book is full of that kind of optimism and hopefulness that we could undo those effects on bright women because we'd made some advances. 

And I think too for me coming into the smart girls world a little bit later I was in my 30s by the time I started reading the book that originally you had published based on research of my generation Gen X back in the mid to late 80s.

I sort of had this optimism that just accompanied my life because I had been. taught from the time I was a little girl. I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up and really truly probably my generation is the first generation who had actually a shot at that. So there is sort of this, Enthusiasm and optimism for what's possible for girls and women, particularly at the time that we wrote smart girls.

And that was published back in 2014. And little did we know the the shifts that would be happening over the, subsequent 10 years that would maybe look at and create the conditions for us to look at the book and say, Hey what, have we done differently? Knowing now what we know, how will we make our contribution to maybe the next edition of this book?

Do you want to dive into one of your least favorite chapters of the book to start and then we'll get into the 

nuances? Oh, I'd be happy to. Je regret. I am so sorry, oh world that we inflicted the chapter on eminent women upon you because since we chose our eminent women, some of them just turned out to be terrible people or else just be blah people.

I mean, just 

big assholes, basically, and I'm still grateful knowing now what I know that you didn't let me put the essay on Sarah Blakely, the Spanx lady in there because, oh, 

God, oof. Well, yeah, thank goodness we didn't get her in there. But, you know, I was all for. I was all for putting in the the leader of wait a minute.

It'll come to me. Well, let's just go with J. K. Rowling. I was all for putting in J. K. Rowling. And I did. Oh my God, we had no idea that buried somewhere in the unconscious mind of this author of these delightful Harry Potter books was this lurking, intense fear and hatred of trans people. And You know, in our book where we talk about LGBTQ, about how important it is that we understand this intersectionality, we had no idea that J.

K. Rowling, who we thought pretty much followed the pattern of eminent women that she would turn out to be such an awful human being. And so yeah, we regret that, and probably, and then Oh, gosh, I could go on and on about the eminent women. Why don't you throw out an eminent woman you're sorry about, even if they weren't terrible people?

Well, je regret.

Here's the thing. I loved writing about them at the time. I really did. I think that was a chapter as a I'll say a young author that I felt like I made a contribution from my heart. Do you know what I mean? Like I fell in love with these women as I was researching them and understanding them and so on.

And so I think that my great disappointment, let's just start with Jennifer Hudson. Yeah. I really liked writing about her because I did think she had a good story and you know, come growing up in the south side of Chicago, starting singing when she was a little girl and so on. But really in the last 10 years, 

 I don't know. I just like, I feel like that she, that. I had great hopes for her to step into her eminence and perhaps she still will she's still fairly young, and that's, I know that's my eternal optimism speaking but I think for what we've seen over the past 10 years there hasn't been a whole lot of contribution on her part she's sort of gone her way and I don't even know what she's up to these days.

We have no idea what kinds of, , what kinds of external barriers might have affected her. Certainly racism, certainly sizism that could have really affected her career, but we don't know. I'm just disappointed that for a singer that, you know, she was the one. I'm also super sad. About the fact that that we praised Sheryl Sandberg, because at the time, and this goes for the, one of the big regrets I have about the book in general, one of the big themes of the book is lean in, little knowing the challenges that were going to happen with the pandemic and everything else.

And I'm afraid that by choosing Sheryl Sandberg, we were featuring a woman who was already privileged by her education, by her position. This woman who was telling all of us to lean in when she had nannies, for heaven's sakes. You know, she had the support of family and friends. She had the privilege that was needed for her to lean in.

No, today I wouldn't give the Message to women to lean into their corporate lifestyles because often their corporate lifestyles are taking away their opportunities to live full lives. 

Not only that, but we couldn't have predicted of course with COVID. And I know we'll get to this, how COVID really created a collapse between any separation that women who worked outside the home in corporate leadership had with Their families and how that changed everyone's relationship with work and family and life and so on.

I do want to go back to Jennifer Hudson, though, because I feel like I was just a big able to stop. 

You can't stop. 

I just, well I have to because I feel like I was a big a hole in, having some criticisms about her and to your point, we can't know the external barriers and I think that's one of my big mistakes.

As. Privileged white lady having these conversations, then even though I had been educated and trained in multicultural development and distance from privilege and all of those very important features that we really must look at when we're looking at any woman's. trajectory. But I do think that, you know, in terms of her being a singer 

who, would have we chosen instead of her knowing now what we know? 

Well, actually, I was thinking of a, dancer that was covered very little in before, but now I think we understand her incredible contributions. And that's Maria Tallchief the ballerina Native American who has been a prima ballerina and has has really shown a genius that I think that she would have been good in there.

And then there's and, then I think, yeah, I might choose somebody who, , going from the if I was sick with popular culture I would want to have somebody who had a lifetime, of achievements and, , that was our overall problem. We chose people who weren't dead yet.

Yeah, I think you're right. Our future book will have to look only at dead people for the trajectory dead eminent 

life because even in elderly years, people who've had a lot of achievements and have been real geniuses can just suddenly become. Horrible people. Oh my god.

Do you know we, well you wanted so much to do Malala and I was like, oh hell yes. Oh no, we did Malala. No, we did do Malala. I'm glad. But but the editor wanted us to cut down that chapter, so I cut out Aung San Suu Kyi, and boy am I glad.

I am so glad that you wrote up Malala, because if I'd written up Aung San Suu Kyi, I would have been writing up a person who went from being a person promising democracy to her country to a person who became a tremendous oppressor of the minorities in her country. Yeah, thanks for not doing that.

You're welcome. On behalf of, everyone, I suppose that would have made the chapter even more difficult to read, I suppose, now these days. Who else? Who else do we have in there? Tina Fey. How do you feel about Tina Fey these days? 

I'm okay. I think, you know the fact that she's continued from being a comedian.

to then becoming a writer, and a very funny one, and a producer. I mean she really has continued to rise and do amazing things, you know, so I'm okay with that. I don't think they all have to be, I don't think our eminent women, You know, all have to be sort of people who achieve in the classical fields that are considered fields of genius, because another thing that happened during the last 10 years was the amazing research on conceptions of genius.

Have you heard about that? No, tell us about them. Well Sympion is the name of the, Leslie Sympion is a researcher who began to study what people mean when they think of brilliance or genius. And it turned out that there are certain fields where where there are expectations among people that the people in that field will be geniuses.

And they tend to be fields where men dominate. For instance even though women are beginning to be really well represented in some sciences, like biology, and especially in the humanities it turns out that in the, women are underrepresented in the fields where practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement.

And can you guess what some of those are? 

I'm going to guess the hard sciences. 

Absolutely. Physics, computer science, engineering, math, astronomy, philosophy, musical composition, econ, classics. You want to know where people consider where people don't think genius is needed? You're gonna hate me.

education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, communication studies, languages, history. So I'm just talking about in the general republic, in the general public, those are the stereotypes. And I think that finding helped me to understand why we had such difficulty looking for eminent women.

Because we were trying to define genius as we thought of it, which was this combination of ability, personality, values, right? But the general public was just thinking ability, alone and, stereotyping certain occupations. It also explains why when I did the first Smart Girls in 1950. 85. I could hardly find any biographies at all of eminent women, which is why I was stuck with, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie and people like that.

But at least they were dead. 

At least they were dead. At least they were dead. I hate to say it, but I agree with you that I think that we need to wait for them to be dead so that we can see that the trajectory of their lives and, Have it be kind of a full circle moment so that we can make sure and, double make sure that they aren't being coming big a holes by the end of their lives.

Exactly. 

But here's the other thing. I want to get personal with this for a moment because I remember when I first started working with you, it was probably one of our first conversations. You told me, you said I will help you, but you have to promise not to fade out of your profession or something like that.

Do you remember that moment? Not to fade out of the profession, not to fade out. You said, I will help you, but to fade out or to drop out of the profession. And I promised, but this is something that we see with with women who have such high potential. And then somewhere along the way they do fade away or they do step away from their professions and so can you talk about that just in a more personal way as you've seen this play out over and over with people who you well you've mentored along the way.

Well, you know, I began to think that being a woman's advisor, you know, that Barbara Kerr was the kiss of death, because here I am, a feminist scholar, and yet many of my PhD women who had such incredible promise, got married, changed their names, moved off, and never you know and then did not go forward as scholars.

I'm not saying it's a terrible thing to be a practitioner, but many of them went part time just really even you know, even in fields where there aren't ranks like in academe, they fell behind in terms of salary and so that I've come now to understand that just having a feminist mentor does not make you immune from the pressures in our society for women to see marriage as their major achievement and as this life change that they symbolize by changing their name, that now they become one with a man and either follow or engage in a dual career where somehow his career always ends up more important than hers.

It reminds me back in grad school when we were studying for comps. I remember some of the women in my cohort were negotiating out loud with themselves. If I don't pass comps, I'm going to have a baby. If I don't pass comps, I'm going to get married. And for me, that was never. Even in the front of my mind, I just knew I was going to pass comps and move on.

But even in my career, you know, I left academia 10 years ago, 11 or 12, actually 11 or 12 years ago now, and was never in a scholarly role necessarily. I was a practitioner and a a teacher, but I think that the message that I got from you then is don't fade away, keep going, and I like to think that I did that.

Although it hasn't been without its, of course, foibles and missteps. 

Yeah, but you know, Robin, I think you're a good example of what we really mean when we say, don't fade away, rather than the lean in message, which is just like, you know, whatever your corporation is handing out, you lean into it. Our message is not about a job that you lead into.

It's about leaning into your calling, leaning into your purpose in life. And that means, Yes, you can take time off. You can you can, you know, move to a place where your career is not as valued as your husband's career. But that doesn't mean you give up your calling, your vocation. You keep writing about the things you care about.

You keep volunteering for the things you believe in. You stay active in your professional associations. You don't give up, you know. You could lose a job, but you cannot lose your vocation unless you give it up. And so I did want to make that clear that even though the book came across as lean in, it was not about leaning into a job.

It was about, 

has been, it's always been for you about. Falling in love with an idea. That's something that has always stayed with me. And first you fall in love with an idea and then somewhere along the way, you find your partner as well. Those are the two things that always stood out for me about still 

very early work together.

And so I also realize now as a mentor that I have a responsibility to be sure that the women and the men and the non binaries that I am advising that they are falling in love with an idea and that I'm helping the courtship along. Sometimes things like graduate school are so punishing and so miserable that people can't wait to escape.

And so they associate even their passionate ideas with this bad experience of graduate school, and that's not good. We have to, I have to make sure that my people graduate in with their love of their idea and their passion intact, and not completely beat up by the APA. accreditation requirements. 

Yeah.

Well, I can say you certainly did that with me. And I like to think that 10 years after the book I'm still following that path of falling in love with my ideas and. 

And it is happening. It is happening with my with, most of my, current students for quite some time now. But. That's wonderful.

But when I was at Arizona State I, was still under the curse. But again, you know, that was two decades ago. And in the last decade, I've had more and more women graduate students who have stuck to their passion. And that's, I love 

that. So they're on track for becoming eminent women as well. Let's go back to the book.

Thanks for that bunny trail, but I thought that was important to bring it into a really personal perspective for a moment. Any other regrets? From the book besides the chapter on eminent women. 

Yeah, that's the biggie really. I'd say the chapter on eminent women and the and the chapter in which we encourage women to lean in and we weren't really clear as much as it needed to be about that.

I think also I did not anticipate the. The viciousness of the the viciousness. of racism rising again. I never dreamed that there'd be states that legislate that young people cannot be taught the history of slavery because it might make white kids feel bad. I did not anticipate that the Black Lives Matter movement would occasion such a racist reaction or that Obama, you know, he was president when we were writing this, are that Obama's presidency would unleash the kind of white supremacy and reaction.

Never dreamed that. I also didn't anticipate the once the, we had the gay marriage amendment in, I'm sorry, the gay marriage ruling. I thought, Oh, this is great. Now we're on our, on track to LGBTQ people being fully accepted by our culture. And no sooner did that happen, then politicians found themselves another scapegoat in transgender people who make up 1 percent of the population.

But who are, but seem to be, you know, about half of what legislators spend their time thinking and fantasizing about. So I think, I regret that we didn't. Even though we couldn't anticipate how bad it was going to be, that we didn't talk in more detail about the ways in which structural racism, homophobia and, of course, sexism, to talk about what backlashes are like, because we know those backlashes happened before.

We know about Jim Crow, we know about the backlash of the 50s against women who were independent, these things happened, but we didn't anticipate that. So now, I would want to write about the ways in which those trends are affecting women. Hey, so what do you think about the men's rights movement, Robin?

That's new too. 

That is new. And with that being on the rise, let's, I want you to dive into that and I want to contribute, but I know you've given a whole lot of thought to how the men's rights movement has affected women and non binary people and men also. 

Well, I was just so disappointed in the hordes of young white men going to Jordan Peterson talks in which you know, half of his you know, half of his talk is always about make your bed, You know, be prepared, be be well disciplined.

And the other half is, you know are, women really necessary? Or, shouldn't women be in their traditional roles? And now we have a vice presidential candidate who says that women who don't Have children are not contributing to the future, and that single cat ladies are just miserable. And oh boy, we 

are the poster children for the anti JD Vance movement.

I think I think to, I think that the optimism that I had 10 years ago about women's role in the wor women's roles in the world and our capacity to make. contributions and to be respected and affirmed in culture has been really, for lack of a better thing to say, kicked in the teeth when I look at some of the things that are going on with the men's rights movements and the the just what you're talking about, the criticisms of women who make choices that are other than what J.

D. Vance and his crew would like us to be. 

And I think the removal of, you know the, end of Roe versus Wade, the and now threats to contraception, which is hard to imagine but that's there in Project 25, 2025, they want to make contraception more difficult, this idea of forcing women to have more children and, it's stated as, You know, women need to have more children in order to have more workers, but what the subtext is, they want more white children and to replace the immigrants that they're going to deport.

And so that just puts young women, I think, in a terrifically fearful position right now.

Everything that you were talking about reminded me of the Handmaid's Tale, which had not been produced at that time. I know the book was out, but the Handmaid's Tale has become sort of a playbook that plays out in our reality. It's where, what do we say when art becomes real? And that's sometimes how it feels to me.

Yeah. 

Yeah. Or that truth is stranger than fiction. I think about. Adolescent young women now, and I think about what it would be like to, fear pregnancy so terribly as to completely fear their own sexuality. And, It was, I think we made such great strides forward in having women accept their sexuality, having, being positive about it, being positive about their bodies, that we made such strides forward.

And now, once again, we have young women who have to be afraid that getting pregnant doesn't just mean that they're going to care for a child for 18 years, it can also mean that they're going to die in childbirth. Most people don't realize that before contraception, a woman had the capacity to have 19 births, and most women actually had around 12 or 13 births and of those half miscarried about and then another half didn't make it through their first couple years.

However, there were women who had 19 and 20 pregnancies and ended up with six kids, you know? And people don't also realize that about 1 in 20 women died in childbirth before doctors started washing their hands. And that didn't happen until the 1900s. That women, that doctors consistently washed their hands and knew how to do what midwives knew how to do.

We're closed out of their jobs. So it's so yeah, that's what adolescent women are facing right now. And I don't know how it's going to change their relationships with young men. I 

don't either. And I do want to, if we can turn the page and talk about another thing we couldn't have predicted or controlled in 2014 was The pandemic, and the effect of the pandemic.

So you guys, Barb has spent much of her career researching and, supporting and guiding the young women. And for the last 10 years I've spent a whole lot of time with the adult accomplished women who are the physicians and the engineers. the attorneys and so on who are, out there in the world working.

And when COVID happened, when the pandemic happened, everything changed for all of them. So do you want to start by talking about what you noticed happening during the pandemic for the young women? And then we'll kind of tag team on this next part. 

Sure. Well we we wrote about it in an article in Frontiers in Psychology that was called They Saw It Coming, where we we looked at the sense of foreboding that so many of the highly creative young people had Even before the pandemic, it's they were so worried about environmental issues.

They were so worried about society collapsing. You know, they were reading a whole lot of post apocalyptic novels and things like that. That was already going on, and then the pandemic happened. And just like, We saw across adolescents, yes, they did become more depressed, and yes, they did become more anxious.

But for these highly creative, talented kids, it was the continuation of a decline in their mental health. But we ended on a hopeful note. In the articles that we've written about it, the articles and papers we've written about it since then, The whole notice is that despite their anxiety and depression and isolation, loneliness during the pandemic, they turned to social media to be productive and creative, So that the gifted girls, the creative girls, they kept on creating despite how upset and miserable they were.

They were turning out hilarious TikToks, or they were singing beautiful songs, they were composing music, they were telling stories they were sharing their anim you know, sharing anime with one another. Learning how to use technology in ways to create their own their, own videos. So, there was a burst of creativity among the teens as well as a burst of depression and anxiety.

Now, I suspect that all that productive creativity was possible because Their mothers were taking care of them. 

Yeah, you think? 

Thanks to your work. How did the pandemic affect the right accomplished women that you were working with? 

You know, for those years, I often felt like I was, in a mass unit right behind the lines of a big war.

And every time one of the women would come in for a session we can talk about the physicians and the engineers and the scientists and so on who will come in for their, sessions. I felt like I was having to stitch them up, brush them off, pick them up, put them back together. Not that they were falling apart, but they were, battle weary over time.

And I remember several of them saying to me, I just want somebody to tell me what to do. And I had to deliver that because they weren't getting information from their governing bodies or the, leadership in their hospitals weren't making decisions fast enough or they were having to fight for personal protective gear where the obstetricians and the gynecologists were whereas the.

Of course the, knee surgeons and the hip surgeons got all of their gear right away. So there were all of these things that were happening in, especially early on in the pandemic that I found with the women who I was working with. And they all came to me with that same question. I just want somebody to tell them, tell me what to do.

And I said, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but nobody's coming. And what I meant by that is that it's your turn. You decide you lead, make your decision, the right decision. And we'll, work it out. We'll figure it out as we go. And that was often what I was doing with the women who were in leadership.

Now, the ones who were staying home, got sent home from corporate and then had no division between their, work life and their home life. There was no 30 minute ride in the car to listen to their podcast, to decompress after a hard day of work before they got to see their kids and their families.

We had to do a lot of working on understanding how to navigate the boundarylessness that was the pandemic for many of them. The physicians at least got to go to work, I say at least, but then they had to, you know, do their surgeries in full. protective gear on COVID positive patients and things like that, things that we had never seen before, things that they had never really even trained in before were happening, not to mention, then we have all the political upheaval that's happening at the same time.

And there were companies that I worked with to simply help navigate the Black Lives Matters I don't even know what to call that the violence that came out of the Black Lives Matters movement, I will say, and things of that nature that really created the very, difficult and stressful.

Workplace and just way of being in the world. And on top of it, shall I go on. I mean, there was a lot here wasn't there Barb. On top of it, then we have the people who are fully isolated they're single and now they're working from home and they really can't go out. Because of the restrictions in their cities or their, states.

And so then we had to deal with the the, depression, the anxiety, and then on top of it all, on top of all of that, we have the existential stuff. What is my purpose? What is, happening here? What am I meant for? Is this all there is? And on the other side of it, what I've seen happening in the past couple of years for the women who I work with they're saying, I want to work in companies that share my values.

Yeah. 

I know that I made for more than being a cog in a great machine 

and I 

want to find a way of, living and working in the world and contributing in the world that aligns with who I know I am in my heart. That I'm not just a worker bee, that I am something so much more than that. So I could go on and clearly I have a lot to say about this, but I would love to 

know your thoughts 

on that too.

As you were talking about it, Robert, I could just even imagine all the comforting that you had to do. And it makes me feel very fortunate. Because. I am with a faculty that actually managed really well during the pandemic and that's I've often said to you that the reason I stayed at my university for the longest I've stayed anywhere is not not like it's a first rate university or anything.

I've stayed here because of my faculty. who care about each other. During the pandemic, we had four of the faculty had young children at home. And that was, the four of the six of us, right? And so I admired so much how how the, you know, how faculty came to each other's aid and supported one another.

Our department chair, and this is the larger group, our department chair made it very clear that we were to take care of ourselves as well as our students and. And our teachers and so there was just such compassion and such an attempt to to make it easier for the students to survive, to support one another.

That the I was living alone, recently widowed, and even I just felt this outpouring of compassion and care from my colleagues. And it made me wish that every woman could have had that experience. It wasn't like that in other academic departments. Where women would not only have to care for their children, but be working desperately toward tenure and being held to exactly the same standards as men who had fewer care responsibilities.

I should also mention that the men in our department tend to be really fussy. It's really egalitarian in terms of caring for children. But it's so different from what the women that you work with experience, since they're out there working in hospitals, in corporations, and in a world that, where even if they cared about and supported each other, the rules of corporate life.

were stacked against them. 

Definitely were stacked against them because when we look at the the gender disparity, especially in leadership and in tech, I will say they, the women who I worked with continued to have to do all of the daily activities with the kiddos not to mention the online school and All of the other things and lead their meetings and, it just became well, an exercise in how much can you handle.

And at some point, something had to give, I think. And I think that each of them, each of the women who worked with me found their way through that, but it was not easy by any means. And I think that to go back to the book and the chapter on leaning in, I think that's an example of well, let's don't, let's let's take a step back here and see what's really working for me at that, or working for the individual at any given time in their life, rather than under the, old rules pre COVID, I'll say.

Okay, I have to say I am seeing that. You know, I recently attended my 55th reunion and most of the women are still alive that I graduated with, and a big part of my original little gifted class, the post Sputnik gifted kid, the, I mean, they were still alive and still going, and they had, an attitude that's very similar to what you're talking about, you women, and that is, we have been through a lot.

very much. And we have survived so much. Here's the key. I no longer care what people think about me. It's incredible, and I do see this in older gifted women now, and I'm talking about usually the women over 40. They don't give a damn anymore about what people think of their opinions, what people think of their clothes, what people think of their bodies.

These were really important aspects. I mean, do you remember dress for success? 

Do I remember Dress for Success? Of course I do. 

That is so over among the bright women that I work with and certainly with the women I graduated with. It's like, no, they're just like, no, I'm not doing it anymore. You know, I've been through it.

I've seen what happens. You know, if they sometimes the pandemic pointed out to them that they were really in an unequal relationship with their husband and they parted from them and those are not miserable divorcees. They're pretty happy. And, but most of them renegotiated their relationships. In such a way as to be more egalitarian, because as we said in the book, right, women are well adjusted and, that really is a good thing until they're too well adjusted for their own good.

And then it's a perfect time to start renegotiating all those, all the things that you say yes to when there's certainly other people who can carry some of the weight for you as well. 

Yeah. 

The eternal optimist that I am. Can we go back to the book and just talk about a couple of things that we're most proud of.

Okay. I'm like still really proud of the beehive model, which even a few people have written about and I wish it would get out there more because you know, Robin, we based it on, the most we really based it on empirically valid research not on our opinions. What we did is combine everything we knew about general ability, general intellectual ability, and specific ability.

We combined that with what we knew about personality. and with what we knew about privilege. I, further, I took our model a little further in a recent chapter that my students and I got together and wrote that was called Cognitive Ability, Personality, and Privilege, and showed how when those are the three most powerful variables in determining a pathway, and particularly for women, if you understand their, abilities, especially their specific abilities, what they're really good at.

And their personality, like what aspect, and that's what we're getting into the next few weeks, right? We're going to be talking about the neophyte factor, but the factors of personality. When you combine those, then you've got a really clear idea. When we have intelligence and personality, we have a really good idea of what kinds of career paths, what kinds of vocations, callings, would be appropriate.

Right for that person, but then you have to add privilege or distance from privilege and that's an and that's intersectional and when we combine those we can really figure out how to do psychotherapy and counseling with women in such a way as to help them to Use their abilities to the best the ones they like as you and I know you can be really good at something You totally hate but the abilities That they treasure if you put those together with their strongest personality traits, and then you help them to work toward social justice within their family, meaning their gender relations within their community and within their society so that they can neutralize some of those of.

Then you've got a woman who's firm in her purpose and can go forward with her life. I'm still proud of that chapter, Robin, and I think it still helps us to understand pathways for gifted girls and women. I think it does, 

too. I, you know, I just did a talk for the AAUW, the American Association of University Women up in South Dakota, where I grew up, and I brought in, I didn't talk specifically about the Beehive model, but I did bring in distance from privilege as a, something that yeah.

You're welcome. I know for me, I have to keep paying attention to in all the work that I do because so much of my work in the last 10 years, it's really been about internally changing things inside of us. I will say that sometimes I make myself a project more so than I will probably like and I think a lot of talented women do the same.

The thing that I'm most proud of is. You know, I was able to highlight some of the young women who I was working out with at the Herberger Academy at ASU right before I left, and I, am still, I've told those, all of the students boys and girls alike, I'm here for you until I'm dead. And I, so I've stayed in touch with them and I love to see where they're taking their lives and truly, so proud of what they have accomplished in their lives.

We have somebody who when she was 12, wanted to be a veterinarian, she downgraded her career aspirations at her, the first exam that she got to be on. And she ended up graduating from an Ivy league veterinary school not long ago. She's an example of somebody I'm so proud of. So I think that for me, as I.

I was inspired and very, grateful that you invited me to co author the book with you. And I was so glad that I could bring in some of the young women the stories of the young women who I worked with. During the time I was at the Herberger Academy because I've been able to follow them for 10 years and to see the remarkable women that they have come into so something that we're doing is working.

That is delightful and I, have to say it's the same. I still hear from, I hear from girls who I talked to in their, you know, in special presentations with smart girls, and now they're young women doing these amazing things and saying just want you to know that it had a real effect on my life. I hear from graduate students who I didn't even think liked me at the time I felt like you were challenging me to do something that I wasn't able to do, but now I realize that I really was.

So I want to thank you. I think, well, that's funny because, you know, honestly they're people I didn't think I had that much impact on but that, but they were impacted by smart girls and by the, message that we gave that. You know your, purpose in life is what makes you strong and and that there is a place for you in the world that you don't have to give up.

You don't have to give up the idea you've fallen in love with in order to fall in love with another person. And I think that it's true. A lot of the things that we wanted to come true for young women did come true. You know the, group of people that bought most of the books, I mean, all the smart girls now are approaching having sold a hundred thousand books of that group.

The largest group was teachers. And it makes me glad to know that teachers read the book and didn't just see, really see and know the girls in their class better. They saw themselves. I can't tell you how many teachers have said, I never thought of myself as gifted or creative and now I see, and that's a wonderful thing to learn.

It really is. It makes all the difference because when you understand yourself, when you truly understand who you are, how your brain works, that your brain is faster than most other people's brains, that you have different responsibilities and gifts than other people have. It makes all the difference going forward so that regardless of what's happening in the outside world, what we're navigating politically or societally and all of the external barriers.

If we remember who we are, I think that's the key to this, isn't it? 

Yeah, and not giving a damn about other people's opinions. It's I mean, I really think that I love Gen Z so much because I think they're really taking a cue from this generation of women who survived the pandemic, and they're saying, I am not going to comply.

I am not going to conform with your ideas of what a girl or a woman is supposed to be. And I'm not just talking about the privileged kids. Like here in my rural area, I see young women who are, you know, in rodeo and stuff and young women who are Really succeeding in agriculture, who I never would have, you know I don't think 20 years ago, I could have fathomed that.

And then also the, when we were bringing in young people from urban areas in Kansas City who were really coming from difficult backgrounds. It was stunning to see the amount of creativity and activism in this group. None of them saw social activism as separate from their lives as students, or separate from their career.

For them, it was all intertwined, and it made them so brave. So I remember sitting there thinking, Wow, I wish I'd been that brave when I was that age. You know? Brave 

and complex and I think and creative and those are all the things that we wish for any, person. Oh, for sure. 

Well, Barb, any final thoughts we could go on and on, but any final thoughts for us today on smart girls and regret.

You regret ? 

I really I, think I've gotten the regrets outta my system. And I hope that we have pled for forgiveness for not seeing into this. If we do ever write one again, Robin. We will write only about dead eminent women and. And, I think, you know, really we, instead of leaning into our institutions and corporations, we'll teach women instead how to not lean in, but push back.

I'm going to leave it at that, everyone. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time. Take care.

Well folks, that's a wrap for today's episode of Two Shrinks on the Farm. We hope you had as much fun listening as we did making this episode, and maybe even picked up a new way of thinking along the way. We're here to offer you something different, no growth mindset platitudes or just work hard or mantras.

We're all about getting you to question everything, especially those voices in your head telling you to stick to the status quo. And if you've ever wondered how the two of us ended up on a farm, it's because we figured out that sometimes the best way to get unstuck is to dig in the dirt, literally and metaphorically.

Plus watching the horses roam free, tromping through the fields in search of the elusive morale mushroom, or picking cherries along the road. It's way more enlightening than a year's worth of meetings. So if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, or maybe with that one person who needs to hear that it's perfectly fine to trade in the corporate grind for something a little more natural, like planting flowers and dreaming up your next adventure.

And by the way, if you're interested in having your personality tested and interpreted by the two of us, or you're ready to bring us in to work with your teams, Get started by sending an email to [email protected] and we'll take it from there. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram for more behind the scenes fun from the farm, creative insights, and plenty of laughs from the reels that I'm constantly posting in stories.

Until next time, we'll be here on the farms during the pot, both literally and figuratively. See you soon on Two Shrinks on the Farm.

if you're interested in having your personality tested and interpreted by the two of us, or you're ready to bring us in to work with your teams, Get started by sending an email to [email protected] and we'll help you start the process.

Don't forget to follow us on Instagram for more behind the scenes fun from the farm, creative insights, and plenty of laughs from the reels that I'm constantly posting in stories. You can find us on instagram at @twoshrinksonthefarm.

Last thing: we'd really love it if you'd rate and review our podcast on whatever platform you listen to us on - and share us with your buddies - the more the merrier!

Two Shrinks on the Farm: Merging Creativity and Psychology

In 'Two Shrinks on the Farm,' hosts Dr. Robin McKay and Distinguished Professor Barb Kerr introduce a unique podcast concept that blends psychological insights with farm life experiences. The episodes explore various facets of personality and creativity, from understanding creative personalities to delving into the Big Five traits and the NEO Personality Assessment. The hosts use personal anecdotes to discuss traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness, emphasizing their roles in personal and professional growth. They also challenge societal misconceptions about creativity and share the unexpected life lessons learned from farm living. Listeners are invited to explore their personalities through assessments and find fulfillment beyond conventional career paths.

00:00 Welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm

00:33 Meet the Hosts: Dr. Robin McKay and Barb Kerr

01:17 The Podcast's Unique Approach to Psychology

02:06 Diving into Creative Personalities

03:17 Farm Life and Personality Traits

05:41 The Importance of Diverse Personalities

10:28 Understanding Personality: A Mini-Series

24:30 The Big Five Personality Traits

29:03 Exploring Extroversion and Introversion

30:44 Diving into Conscientiousness

37:00 Understanding Agreeableness

42:28 The Importance of Openness

49:47 The Role of Personality Assessments

54:54 Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dr. Robin McKay and welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm. Yes, we really are shrinks and we really do live on a farm. No white coats or sterile offices here though, just wide open spaces, four horses, two dogs, and a couple of cats to keep things interesting. The title of this podcast was actually born one sunny Saturday afternoon when I was out picking cherries in the front yard.

And Barb was weeding the garden. I yelled across the yard at her, Hey Barb, we should start a podcast called Two Shrinks on the Farm. And here we are. Barb is the Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Kansas and an award winning psychologist. She was also my professor once upon a time.

And I earned my Ph. D. in Counseling Psychology from KU as well. Though I started my career as a university psychologist, I left academia years ago to found my own consulting firm. When I was just finishing my Ph. D., I lived with Barb on this very farm. And since then, the two of us have taken wildly different paths, but now, 16 years after graduation, we find ourselves back here once again.

We've both dedicated our lives to finding, guiding, and celebrating creative and talented people from all walks of life. And this time, we're ready to share our perspectives with you. In this podcast, we're not here to offer you the same old recycled advice. We're here to blow up the cliches and explore creativity from angles that might just make you squirm a little or laugh out loud.

Whether we're talking about the real meaning behind those motivational posters, spoiler alert, they're not helping. We're sharing stories from real life on the farm, like how picking ticks off dogs can teach you more about life and love than you ever thought possible. This isn't your typical psychology podcast, so if you're feeling stuck, burnt out, or just a little bit bored with the status quo, you're in the right place.

Welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm, where the two of us turn over the soil in your mind and plant a few seeds of radical new thinking.

Hi everybody. It's Robin and Barb and we're finally doing our first podcast episodes for Two Shrinks on the Farm. We've had a whirlwind summer and it's early autumn here in Kansas.

And we're excited to share with you some of our wisdom and knowledge and perspective on all things. I don't even know what Barb, psychology, life, existential crises, name that tune, basically. So glad that I'm back here at the farm and it's good to be here with you. 

It's always good to be here with you.

I'm Barb Kerr. And I'm a distinguished professor at the University of Kansas, and my specialty is creativity and especially creative personalities. I love working with creative people. 

I know you do, and that's why I love hanging out with you here at the farm. And we were talking yesterday at dinner about getting started on the podcast, and you had a great idea.

That we will start with what we know and love the best, which is understanding creative personalities. So do you want to, do you want to dive in with that and see where this conversation leads? I want to find out. 

I'm going to ask you, so how does living on this farm make you aware of personality traits and differences in personalities?

I think that I can't live on this farm without thinking of personality because I learned about personality, especially what we're going to talk about today, all those years ago when I was a grad student at KU when you were just beginning your distinguished professor role there, and you taught me everything there is to know about creative personality.

Top level personality in the farm go hand in hand. But when you asked me that, the first thing I thought was about the rules of living at the farm. And we do have rules here, contrary to what some people might think , but a long time ago, a long time ago, you said a creative community has just very few rules, but they are that everybody gets to do something that they love and that they're really good at.

Sometimes you have to do things that you don't like. Fish in the dead possum out of the horse trough last spring, for example, but also I get to do cool things like pour the wine and light the candles and set the table and plant the flowers, which are things that I love. So that those are a couple of rules for the farm and we have just a few more, but that, that really gets to me at the heart of what personality is about because I have these very nuanced abilities.

That gets to be amplifies at the farm and you have different abilities and different strengths and personality characteristics than I do that you amplify in a different way. 

Yeah, I really agree. We tend to have pretty, we tend to be alike on those things that really matter, like being open to new experiences.

And we tend to differ on things that don't matter so much because one of us will pick up. You'll be more conscientious about setting the table and I'll be more conscientious about picking up roadkill from our front lawn. And I'm, and I'll be more 

grateful for you picking up roadkill from our front lawn.

And I will celebrate you every moment of the day as long as I don't have to do it. 

Same here for the grace and beauty that you bring to our lives. 

Oh, 

go ahead. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, do you want to know why I think about personalities in the farm? Of course I do. It came from one observation that the farm always worked best when there was a diversity of temperaments in the animals.

For instance, as you remember, we used to have four dogs, then we had three, all at various times we've had different numbers of dogs. But it's always been helpful when we had one dog who was super conscientious, like Rusty was the farm manager and Buck is like learning the ropes of that now, a dog that was always willing to check the perimeter every night, a dog that checked out every single guest.

And kept the other dogs in line, like these are the rules guys, you get, you're not allowed to knock over the trash. But then we also always needed a dog that was full of excitement and energy, like your dog, the Duke of Dork, who had no skills or traits whatsoever related to obedience.

But. But was always able to energize us and the dogs. 

In Cooper's defense, he did have some skills. They just weren't really practical on the farm. And his ears were always optional. I don't think that they were actually functional. His ears were an accessory, 

not a listening instrument. But similarly we've always had, we've just also had dogs who were our cuddlers, because you've got to have that kind of personality too. And they always worked well as a pack. And I also found the same thing with the horses. You cannot have four or five horses who are all dominant.

Who are all leaders because they just kick and bite each other all the time. And even when I had 2 dominance they were just after each other constantly. And it did not make for herd harmony. But now with being the obvious leader the 1 who looks for resources, takes care of the herd and with, and, I have to stop there with Dusty being the affectionate one who brings cohesiveness.

I'm sorry, I was just trying to think of a role for that awful pony. 

Oh, 

well, 

she's the most disagreeable horse on the planet, that pony. She is, oh, such a little shit. I don't know what, I don't know what her role is, although we do have a good time. Teasing about how 

disagreeable she is. We do have a good time dissing her, that's for sure.

And And then of course we have our gentleman Bill. Who is just always, always willing to do whatever needs to be done. Having that diversity seems to keep the herd in good shape and keeps them in harmony. Really led me to realize very early on that personality traits, that a group, that personality traits in a group need to be diverse.

And as much as we like surrounding ourselves with people just like us, it's hard to get anything done. Although we are 

a bowl of cherries when we're because yeah, parts of our personality are very similar and so we can spend hours, surfing the internet, correcting people, checking out what's going on match.

com. That was many years ago, by the way, when we were doing that, we did have a lot of fun, but we didn't get a whole lot done sometimes. 

Yeah. And so it always helps to in a group that says that has an important task or that has an important mission. It's so important to have people who fulfill different traits.

I feel different capacities, I should say. 

Yeah. I love that. And then when we integrate the whole of the community here, we have our neighbors across the street, Deanne, who she really is our high level conscientiousness. And she comes over here and whips through this house and it looks like a magical cleaning fairy has come through here and organizing and everything.

And I just so admire that and appreciate it. I'm just not capable of doing it myself. 

And she's always made my life more orderly by saying, aren't you supposed to be writing today? Isn't it time for you to leave for class? She's a really good mom. Yeah. For all of us. She has brought so much mom energy and helped us to to be more orderly and serious about things.

And I think that's been super helpful. Yeah, there's an ecosystem of neighbors, friends. where all of us are able to work together really well on tasks because we have that 

diversity. So let me give big picture real quick. The context of this is we're going to do a mini series about personality.

And we're starting with today with the overview of When we talk about personality, what do we mean? And we're going to dive deep into that. And then we're going to have, I think, five episodes, probably short bite sized episodes that you can listen to as you are learning about personality and how we think about it with our PhDs in psychology and having so many years between us.

in analyzing and discussing personality. So that's the big picture. And now that I've given you that, Barb, where do you want to go next? 

I guess it's time to talk about what is personality? And personality are the unique patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize an individual.

And when we say enduring, we mean they're very stable. Personality, each trait is more or less stable than the others. And, but they do tend to be fairly stable between about age 16 and older. So that's what personality is. It's just this enduring pattern patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

And we can get into how it's shaped by genetic, environmental, and social factors. And personality does evolve, but there's a general 

stability. That's great. How did you first become interested in personality traits? 

50 years ago when I was an undergraduate. I'm super old, everybody, okay?

Really old almost mummified. But 50 years ago, I was in this group of undergraduates that were the summer welcome leaders, and they were actually doing a lot of experiments on us, like PSYOPs. But, one of the things they did that was wonderful, Is they used a precursor of today's most used personality tests that we'll be talking about.

They used an earlier version of it. And I remember learning at the ripe old age of 18 or 19 that my highest need was for autonomy. And my next highest need was for achievement. And my lowest need was for order. And I think I realized right away what a tough road I had ahead of me of being a lone achiever who was going to have to really struggle to get myself organized to do those achievements.

You've done quite well. You've done quite well with that throughout your life though. Okay, but wait, time out because I want to go back to the PSYOP. Can you just this is a rabbit. A bunny trail, I'm sure, but can you, what do you mean are you teasing about that or what? 

And back in those days, there weren't a whole lot of ethics around psychological experimentation, and we always had the sense that we were the subjects of somebody's dissertation or something.

I actually don't regret it at all that they did all these personality and vocational assessments and values assessments. We got the results, which is great. But we also had all these weird encounter groups that lasted late into the night where we talked about our deepest feelings and cried and emoted.

And me being a autonomous achiever was like, can we just get on with things?

I'm glad you're not the only one who's felt like they've been studied their whole lives. But I know that we have simply because of all the testing that we've had done, especially in the gifted and talented community for sure. So you were at the leading edge of the psyops that were happening.

Not that this podcast is going to be about psyops, but she brought it up just to remember that. 

Yeah, but then you 

elaborated. I did.

I want to tell you though, I first became interested in personality traits. Before I met you, because I was already doing my PhD in psychology, and I was learning the different ways of understanding personality, so we took the Myers Briggs, and we took the the, what's that one, the eight, what's that one?

The one with the eight P I the 16th. Yes. 16 PFC. I don't like it's been so long, the 16 PF. And we took all of these different assessments, vocational assessments, and so on that really started helping me understand who I was, because that was, I think my greatest question at the time when I started grad school is who am I, and what am I supposed to be doing with my life?

And I got my PhD to find that out. And I still maybe don't know, but I'm closer. So when you came on the scene in my third year and you had already been studying and working with gifted and talented people, and you were really pursuing the question of what's the creative personality, that's when I really got interested in the Neo, in fact, and that's a personality assessment, by the way, we're going to be talking about, in fact, right before I learned about the Neo, I think I was using some kind of weird non validated assessment.

And I told you about it and you said, Oh, I would never use that because it's not validated. It's not standardized. And it's not proper to use that for somebody like us. So that was my first sense of, Oh, there's a difference in assessments and the type of assessment that we use as psychologists is important because we want to have the most accurate information possible for our clients and for understanding.

Personality more generally. 

This isn't the part of the podcast yet where we crap on the other assessments, but Really? I've got it. When do we get to that part? Because that's fun. That'll be the end, when we loosen up a little bit. Because we're not loosening up. Could we be any looser? Anyhow let's talk about the history of the Neo five factor theory.

Because all those tests that you took and that I took were all precursors of this big five theory. Started a long time ago with the usual suspects Sir Francis Galton and Cattell. But they did do this interesting thing and that is that. They realized that in the English language, there are all these different ways of describing people.

So they started with dictionaries that they had in the 1800s. They started with dictionary trait descriptions. They read Dickens and they and they read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. And they read all of these great character studies, right? And they looked at how humans described other humans.

And from that, they created this enormous list of descriptive adjectives. So that's why it's called the lexical approach, because it started with the lexicon, the whole as many descriptive adjectives. And that was only when the other suspect, by the way, these are not nice old white guys. Okay. They happen to have a few good ideas, but we'll talk about that later.

But anyhow. 

Is that going to be the same point that we diss all the other assessments too? We just saw the old white guys who started this. 

We'll just have an entire episode devoted to dissing the great white men of psychology. But thank you. I'll look forward to it. And why so much of psychology doesn't fit women, but anyhow but it needed the 

statistical method of

that first test that 

you took the 16 PF was developed by factor analyzing. As time went by, more and more personality tests were developed. Some of them horrible, some of them good. But the fact is that psychologists were continually giving all these personality tests out. In the late 80s the creators of the neophyte factor, Koster and McRae, factor analyzed all of them.

All of the tests of the previous tests, they put them all together. And what factor analysis does, as is create clusters. It clusters items together on how well they correlate. With one another and they came up with five clusters, they're a little bit overlapping, but not much. They're nice.

They're nicely separate. Now, things have been added like the new hex ago as a six dimension, but this one that we use the big five has become the gold standard of tests. all over the world through many languages through most cultures. Hey, how'd you like that? That was like right out of my classroom lecture.

That's 

really good. And it's basically the same thing that I say to the clients who come in because I start all of my private coaching sessions with the neo to teach people who they are, but also to help me understand and refine my approach to supporting them in whatever their personal development needs are.

Yeah, I think the other thing I really like about the neo is that it's norm based and standardized. And so when we look at norm groups, we say, basically, and you'll, I know, expand on this, but I always say that it's, you get compared to other people. who have also taken the assessment, just like you would on the ACT or the SAT or the MCAT or whatever other standardized assessment that you've been given, a norm based assessment that you've been given.

And I love that because that's what differentiates this particular assessment from all of the other assessments. The DISC and the Myers Briggs and so on, give us kind of ideas on how we might tick But it doesn't compare us to other people. It doesn't say in a room of a hundred people or in a room of a thousand people, this is why you feel so different from everybody else.

And we can look at the personality profile on the Neo and we can see very clearly what differentiates you from everyone else. Because as you and I both work with pretty unusual, very bright, talented, and creative people who, when I was a kid, I felt like a big weirdo. I don't, I think you probably, maybe not that word, but maybe you did too.

And I know a lot of the people who I work with feel that same way. And finally. I remember when you read my Neo for me, I finally understood myself in a way that made sense to my brain that was constantly trying to figure out why do I feel so different from everybody else when the culture is telling me I'm no better than anybody else.

And yet I felt so different from them and I know that better and different or two different words, but there is that sort of. I'll say connection in my brain that would say, but I feel so different from everybody else. There is something different about me and I just couldn't explain it until I got the data from the Neo to explain that.

And I find that over and over with my clients, the same thing happens. There's this light bulb moment of saying, Oh, that's why. And it makes intuitive sense. But then, because we're so smart, we also need the data, we need to be able to see the statistics, the graphs, that line up with what we know intuitively.

Oh, I just agree that it's such a good idea that we explain why we're using this test. Like you said, the other tests, so you take it and all you find out is what you think about yourself. And it's yeah, I already know what I think about myself. And that's why people get mad after they take tests and they go, just tells me what I already knew.

But you know what? I've never heard Anybody of the thousands of people that I've administered this test to, I've never heard one say, I already knew all that. Because we don't know how other people see us. And this tells us not just how we view ourselves, but how other people are likely to 

see us. I just think it's The it's maybe it's a panacea for everything around understanding ourselves, but it's definitely foundational.

And it's something I refer back to over and over. And the other thing that I really like about this assessment is that it is stable. You said that earlier across the lifespan, unless there's some kind of like major head trauma or some kind of major trauma, that's going to shift things dramatically the stability of the assessment over time.

Is going to be very consistent. And I, so that's another piece of it that I really appreciate. People are going 

to go up and down within a range. Graduate school changes people, for instance. Any kind of professional training changes your personality. You might think that people become more conscientious as a result of graduate school.

No, they don't. They, by the time they graduate, they're less conscientious. I think because there's

The assignment and the, we figure out the shortcuts and the conscientiousness kind of goes out the door as soon as we realize we're either going to get an A or a B. 

Hey, we haven't explained what these five factors are. Why don't you go for it and let everybody know what are these five factors?

I in grad school, speaking of that, I learned the acronym ocean, openness, conscientiousness. Extroversion, O C E A, agreeableness, and neuroticism. So there's five of them, and the one that I really always Gets my dander up, gets a burr under my saddle is that neuroticism one, because everybody uses that word.

Oftentimes it's a criticism and of women in particular, and nobody really knows what it means. So can you just share a little bit about what that. Yeah, it's really a 

measure of emotional stability, and we'll have a whole, we'll have a whole podcast on that. And they're like every other personality trait.

It has positives and negatives. We'll go into that in more detail, but basically. It's about emotional stability, wariness, and when we look at the neuroscience of it, we see that people who are high in neuroticism have much more active amygdalas. That's the reptilian part of our brain that says, beer, fight, flight, freeze, fun, and And, yeah, people like that can be a real drag to travel with.

But on the other hand, when we were all hunter gatherers, we really needed those neurotic people because they saw the clouds coming and knew when it was gonna rain. They heard the predators before everybody else did because they're super sensitive and perceptive about detail. Yes, they're very emotionally vulnerable.

Everybody's talking about me. Nobody likes me. But we need 

them in the human group. And I think the coolest part about the neuroticism factor actually is that it's highly malleable. It's probably the most malleable of all of the personality characteristics because it's all brain based. So as you take care of your brain and you Learn how to be mindful and pay attention on purpose and all of those things your brain actually can change and certainly I'm sorry if I was ever difficult to travel with BTW because my neuroticism for a long time was really high.

But as it turns out, I wasn't paying attention. I 

know you weren't. You guys, her neuroticism is super low and mine was super high. And you were the rock when we traveled, but that's something that has shifted over the years. And I just recently retook the Neo a couple of years ago and was pleasantly surprised to see that my brain has very much stabilized.

And of course I'm a little bit squirrelly because no, I just always will be, but it certainly is way better than it was earlier in my life. 

Yeah. 

So what about when my 

students ask me, why is neuroticism, it's unstable. So it can go up and down. I go, look, you guys, you're training to be psychologists.

If emotional stability, vulnerability, tendencies, anxiety, and depression, if they weren't malleable. We wouldn't be able to be successful as psychotherapists because psychotherapy changes people. Yeah. And reduces all those symptoms. So yes, thankfully people who go too far to the end of anxiety, become too anxious, too depressed, too vulnerable that can be changed.

So thank goodness for the the malleability of neuroticism that it's one of those that we do send, tend to see more fluctuations in it. Yeah, 

so let's talk about extroversion, because everybody thinks extroversion is just like that old Myers-Briggs version of it, which is a pul, a polarity with introversion.

I'm either introverted or I'm extroverted, or I'm an ambivert, which I just can't even, don't even get me started with that word. Is it even a word? I don't know. But what, when you think about extroversion on the neo, how does that differentiate from this broadly? viewed way that we think about extroversion in the culture.

Gregariousness, sociability is just one facet of extroversion. And a lot of times, Extroversion is now characterized as not just gregariousness, liking to be around people, but also dominance, but also warmth like not only being able to lead, but to show warmth toward people. In other words, having both task and relationship skills.

And it's also the that sense of driving outward, pushing outward, and getting information from the environment. And the Neo, unlike some of these others, weren't, that in our society, extroversion is all that's praised. The Neo makes it clear that inter that being less extroverted, which is what they nearly always say rather than introversion, being less extroverted makes for people who are much more reflective who, yes, they do enjoy being alone more than with crowds, but they also tend to be people who are really good listeners.

And and so there are really positive traits at both ends of that, but our society especially since the rise of service work, has really emphasized everybody being friendly, and getting out there, and being a leader, and God, we already have too many of those people. 

Yeah, I think that.

The thing I like about the extroversion factor is that it's way more nuanced than what we've been led to believe in the culture. And you're right. It would be similar to having all lead mares in the herd at the farm. Forget it. Like, why do we want a bunch of extroverts? I love the extroverts, don't get me wrong, but there is some benefit in, being able to go off by yourself and I think some of us were actually wired for 2020 and beyond where we all got sent home and we're able to just be by ourselves or be in small groups because that's where we actually thrive.

Let's go to. I want to save openness for last. So let's go to conscientiousness. What do you like about conscientiousness? And what's that one all about? 

Personally for me, there's nothing I like about it except the achievement orientation. It's such a drag. Oh my god. 

It's work ethic, right?

Like on a very basic, high level, it's like work ethic, guys. 

Yeah, and boy, America loves it. It's but it also is nuanced because it, Takes into account orderliness, seriousness of purpose being commit, committed to a task enjoying putting things into categories, but it also involves achievement, though conscientiousness.

Achievement tends to be more within the rules of society. And I know I diss it a lot, but a musician doesn't get anywhere without conscientiousness. Neither does a computer programmer. 

Neither does a psychologist or a writer or anybody. We have to have some kind of Internal volition to get us to do something.

Otherwise, especially when we get to openness, we'll be able to see why that's important. The thing I 

need to make the differentiation between being able to do something and enjoying it. You cannot get through a PhD, and all the stuff I had to do to get tenure and all that without being able to do it.

I have the capacity for orderliness and I have the capacity for seriousness and goal setting. I just don't enjoy it. And that's what makes the difference. There are people who truly love getting everything perfectly done and that's fine. We need them. It's just not my thing. 

I have a confession.

You will not be surprised by this, but before I met you, I was highly conscientious. When I was working in the pharmaceutical industry. I pretend, I will say I pretended to be conscientious because I knew that was the thing that would get me noticed that it would help me get raises and promotions and get on the best projects and things like that.

It came at a cost. Because I had to deploy so much of my intellectual reserves in order to be orderly and organized and detail oriented and all of those things. So it was really fighting against my nature of being open and creative. But by the time I met you in grad school, in my early thirties, and I watched how you were doing life.

And I was like, dude, like she's gotten this. She's written books. She's had all of these one awards. She's done all of these things and she's not friggin overly conscientious. What a relief. So thank you for that. And also for helping me emphasize my lack of conscientiousness, although I do have like you do that very high achievement.

Striving as part of my 

skill on that. 

And the other thing that I learned, I know we're going to go into this in detail, but I want to just mark this because there is one fact, one facet in conscientiousness, which is competence and people who score really high on competence are the kind of the go getters who you give them any task or any assignment.

They'd say, yes, I can do it. I'll figure it out. But the ones I'm always very curious about are the high achievers. Who score low on competence. In other words, it's not how well they will actually do a task. It's how well they think that they will do a task. 

And 

that actually creates procrastination ghosting on projects and things like that.

And I find that a lot with neurodiverse people to be a big challenge because, and not only the procrastination piece, but. When you look at their lifespans over how many times they got dinged for forgetting to turn in their homework and what's wrong with you and so on. There's a lot of deep work, I think that has to be done around your relationship with conscientiousness more generally, I'll say as a neurodiverse person.

Oh, I really agree. About how important that is. And again, it's malleable compared to like neuroticism, conscientiousness can be increased. That's why we teach study skills courses, but it can also be decreased. Oh, yeah. Oh, like you. Yeah. Through role modeling. Yes. And it's always been important to me to teach people what they can't afford to blow off.

And that was a really good lesson detail in the conscientiousness thing. And you remember what we learned about one of the first things we learned about Cleo's. About our adolescents that were in our CLIOS laboratory for creative young people. We found out that they were selectively conscientious.

That when they were doing the thing they were passionate about, they gave a hundred percent. They were super conscientious and then they blew off everything else. And then it turned out that eminent people are the very same. You can't do everything perfectly. But if you're really going to be To reach the heights in your particular profession, you've got to figure out what are the benefits and the costs of doing things perfectly.

Or like I always told the kids, the idea that anything worth doing is worth doing well is just a lie. 

Big fat lie. It's not 

worth 

doing well.

Oh yeah, all of those colloquialisms just fly out the window as soon as we start really learning what conscientiousness means and how it gets used against. I'm going to use this word and see what you think about it. I think it gets weaponized. 

My what do you have to get weaponized by American culture?

That person's just not a hard worker. That person could do calculus if they were more conscientious. It's just hello, we have in this society de emphasized abilities so much that now People are judged entirely by their personality traits. The idea being, Oh, anybody can do anything if they work hard enough.

And that's just so wrong. 100%. 

Yeah. And I know we've just opened up a can of worms because we're going to be going into that in detail. I'm sure too. 

Yeah. 

Let's go on to the next obvious factor, which is agreeableness, shall we? Yes. What do you think about agreeableness, Robin? I like to look at it at the polarities, the people who are highly agreeable, and then the people who are very disagreeable.

Now, I forget, Where do you land on that scale? I feel like that you, have you become more agreeable as time has gone on? I've become 

more agreeable. I've just become a total doormat. Oh, yes. Honestly, I think is part of it is that I am aging now. And so I'm just a lot more resilient with what I'm willing to put up with other people.

I can put up with a lot more. Of deviation from the norm in people and 

on behalf of myself. I am deeply appreciative of that. 

But, I've never been very just I've never been very disagreeable. Just agreeable people tend to be. More compliant. They tend to go along. I don't score high on the conforming aspect of it, but they tend to be easy going friendly.

And then there's a really important component that's about nurturing others, having great empathy and caring. And certainly that's not a trait that has been emphasized much in our culture. If you just look at who's paid the most people who tend to be high in agreeableness tend to be the care workers.

They're the teachers the people who provide care work, the counselors and they tend to be lower paid than non care 

workers. But and when we look at in past generations, I suppose too, we can also look at the gender role. The good girl the compliant one be seen and not heard and that kind of thing.

And so I think that when I have people who score high on agreeableness, I think one of the most valuable things we can practice with them is that no is a complete sentence. On the other hand, I score pretty low on agreeableness. I know that comes as a great surprise to you. And I think that pretty scrappy.

I do. And I think that when we When women score low on agreeableness, there's a, we get a read of being a big B or being very difficult to work with or something like this. But you told me something one time you said creative people in particular have to be disagreeable enough to defend their ideas and to make their points and get their work across.

So that has been very valuable to me as just a nugget of wisdom as I've Obviously pursuing my own career and so on, but is there anything else we want to talk about agreeableness in terms of just the highlight today? 

I was just thinking about selective disagreeableness. You just made me think about that, and that is similarly creative people and I can really relate to this, are selectively disagreeable.

Meaning you've seen what I'm like when I get in an intellectual argument. Oh my god, or 

when you're just correcting people on the internet at 10pm. 

Yeah, Robin goes to bed and I say, I have to stay up because there are people who are wrong on the internets and I need to 

fix that. Oh my God, you guys, it's an every night occurrence.

She says, I have to go correct people on Twitter, even though it's not even called Twitter anymore, but she continues to resist the new name for Twitter even. 

Totally resist it. And so I just I just have to get on and argue with people intellectually. It, I tend to only be in my areas of expertise.

If somebody says something boneheaded about creativity, I'm going to just jump right on their case. And so yeah, when it comes to intellectual argumentation, I am absolutely perfectly willing to do that. Especially in my area of expertise, but in my regular life. It's just not worth it to me to be criticizing people trying to get everybody to do things my way.

It's 

eh, it doesn't really matter. You're a defender of the, of ideas, I think. And I think that's a really important distinction versus just scattershotting your disagreeableness across situations. Or environments. 

Yeah. And we have a lot of young people being brought up to be disagreeable because that's their model is watching constant arguments, watching people on the internet fighting with each other.

So that urge to enter a relationship with aggression. Is getting to be more and more common and not very healthy for society. 

Not very healthy and not very pleasant to be around either. I was thinking that when we're constantly in social media being encouraged to be divisive or to be controversial, I'll say being controversial for the point of and sake of being controversial, that is and exercise in futility, I think.

So we have to look at agreeableness from the perspective of how does how does it help us thrive in our families, in our communities and so on. And also what can we do to be kinder and gentler as well for those of us who are a little bit on the the low side on agreeableness. Yeah, I really, I agree.

That surprises me. All right, let's go to the big one. This is my favorite one. I know it is yours to open this. What do you have to say about openness? 

It's what I've studied the one that's the facet of personality. I'm sorry, the factor of personality I've studied the most because the young people coming to our creativity lab who already have significant creative accomplishments, the They were different in so many ways, but what they had in common, whether they were little math nerds who invented new ways of doing, using mathematics, or whether they were fine artists who painted big paintings, what they had in common was openness to experience.

It's probably the most robust trait of creative people. 

I know you've always said that it's the hallmark of the creative personality and that it's also highly heritable. So we can actually look back at the parents and see perhaps which one was the creative one. In my work too, Barb, with intuition, creativity, and even people who are very involved in spiritual kind of activities, I'm seeing That playing out in the openness or so the ones who score very high on openness tend to identify as being identity intuitive, identify as being people who are open to different and alternative ways of healing and transformation and things like that as well.

Yeah. So their openness has lot has. many facets and and some scholars who study it think that it should be divided into two factors because some of the factors are clearly about intellect, like openness to ideas, openness to values, tend to be more of an intellectual openness and those are the facets that are really high in scholars.

But the other facets like aesthetic sensitivity, openness to emotions openness to fantasy, those tend to be more the artistic, the spiritual ones. Do you remember the time that we selected a group of kids because they were super high on on the imaginative and the emotional aspects. And it turned out they all wanted 

spiritual professions.

I do. I remember exactly where I was sitting. I was sitting you're in the living room right now. I was sitting right across from you running the factor analysis on that or some regression analysis, on that. And it was one of those moments in my life where I thought, Oh my goodness, we found them.

And it was fascinating because you guys, I have spiritual intelligence has been my overarching desire to learn as much as I possibly can about in my life. And so that was early on in the work we were doing with the creative kids that all of them were already studying Reiki and meditation.

And I forget what else, but there were just a lot of those going 

to Switzerland to study meditation. And another one wanted to become a rabbi and another one wanted to become a Jesuit. And it was just interesting. There was a diversity of religions, but they all shared this intense desire to explore meaning and purpose and all the things that are greater than us.

So it was really cool when those kids all turned out to be what we had predicted. They scored really high on absorption too which is highly correlated with openness to experience, but measures what I think. as coming close to spiritual intelligence. I've always defined spiritual intelligence as the capacity to alter consciousness in the service of others.

So being able to go into meditation, mindfulness, trance states in the service of other people. And within religion, that can be the capacity to use prayer to help other people toward peace and toward inner harmony. 

Yeah, I think that even transcends now the religious and spiritual and goes right into every day, just our everyday lives, whether it's attorneys who have this native intuition that they're using to figure out nuances on how they can support their clients or whatever.

There's so many ways that this gets expressed across careers. Even if they're not particularly leaning into spirituality or religious kind of careers or practices. 

I'm so glad you brought that up since so many of our adult clients are people who went into the careers that everybody said they should go into.

Now, in my day those careers were engineering, and business. Later on it was computer science, and it's always been business, computer science and business, accounting, finance law. So people were encouraged to go into those professions. And if you were a very smart girl, you were pushed into medicine.

Oh, for 

sure. In Gen X that we it was, you could, you should be a doctor. You should be a lawyer. You should be an engineer. Those were the big three, but on the tail on the back end of that, then we had the teachers and the nurses and so on. That's so it was a little bit cuspy, with generations.

And what I'm finding now is I'm working with adult women leaders who are asking questions. Is this all there is and what's next because they've lockstepped their way through. Their career is doing what they were supposed to do. I used air quotes there and now they're asking now that I've done that and I've reached the peak of my success or what is supposed to, what I'm supposed to think is successful.

And it feels empty up here. So I know we're going to be talking about that. In our future sessions as well, but 

it just reminds me of how many people don't think they're creative because they're not artists. And that's just such a narrow definition, as you said, creativity is in every profession, but some professions make it a lot harder.

Harder to be a creative person. And that's why we have people in midlife who want to make a career change and want to have a more creative career because they've been within a one that really constrains that ability, that, sorry, that constrains their tendency to be open to all experiences.

That's really good. 

I'm, I love that we've spent so much of our careers helping people to discover their own creativity so that then they can reshape their lives if they have to stay within their profession, finding a creative way to be in that profession, as well as sometimes just to make the change that they've always needed to make.

Yeah, it's really, that's one of my favorite parts of the work that we do is affirming people's creativity and then helping them find ways to express it. And sometimes it's at work and sometimes it's just doing something completely different outside of work that becomes a I don't want to call it a hobby because that minimizes it, but it becomes something that they just fall in love with.

So as we're wrapping up today, I want to ask you a couple of questions because this gets to the heart. We're talking to A couple of groups of people. We're talking, of course, to our professionals and to the, to the people who are out there listening, wanting to learn new information about themselves.

And there are also going to be counselors and psychologists and therapists who are listening to us. So why do you think, what's the deal that more coaches and counselors and psychologists don't use the Neo in their assessments of their clients? 

Oh that's a difficult question in many ways, because I think that The people who developed the NEO were researchers, not practitioners.

So unlike the people who developed the StrengthsFinder, they were not marketers. Okay. They were not out to make big bucks. They just wanted to understand people. So as a result the tests that are based on the big five, like the, Neo five factor inventory, the Neo PI three, those have not been marketed anything to the extent that things like the Myers Briggs has been and others that have entire industries behind them.

But the other is, as It does require that you have a licensed psychologist in your network to supervise you and consult on it because it's the highest level test like intelligence tests that require, they're very secure tests and you nearly always need to have counselor certification or psychologist licensure even to be able to order them, you have to be certified.

So that's one reason. And then there's, then you could speak to this about how nuanced and complex it is. 

To be able to read it, here's the thing is that you could go on, our listeners could go on and find some kind of version of the NEO online and take it and get their results. And that's not in my experience where the gold is anyway.

The gold is where we're Actually getting your brain on their results, my brain on their results, and because there is a complexity in the interpretation, and there are so many nuances in the interpretation, helping them understand their personalities in the larger context of their creativity, their intellect, https: otter.

ai

I know we're not going to show the video, but you've got kitty cat coming up behind you. That's super cute. Trying to sit on my head. 

But to go on with your point, although Kitty doesn't want me to I just think that that kind of nuance is so important. And it occurs to me that this test the ones that we use, not the ones you get online for free, it is, it's really hard to learn to interpret it, and it doesn't give easy answers.

And it doesn't always give good news. 

Yeah. And in the world, the 

tests that tell them how wonderful they are. 

Yes. And in the world where everyone is encouraged for their strengths and for what's right with them, the Neo really looks at. Where some of our weaknesses are and how we can either backfill or shore up our weaknesses in order to be fully functioning necessarily, but I'll say fully realized in who we're meant to be in our lives.

And sometimes there's bad news in there. And sometimes it's hard to, it's hard to frame it in a way that, you know makes sense in the context and also doesn't create, what do I want to say here? Create what? 

I'm sorry. I was just thinking of the time that I had a college student just telling me, I have to go to law school.

I have to go to law school. And she had no personality traits that supported that idea and no values, but it was just something she was being pushed to do because her family, lawyers all the way back. And, and I tend to give the book good the bad news bluntly I said, Okay, go ahead to go to law school and you're just going to cut your throat, because it's good.

You're gonna hate it. And it's. You have to look at hundreds of profiles, and you have to look at people who are at all stages of life before you're able to make blunt, wild assertions like I just did. And believe me, I don't do that all the time. But when somebody is really pushing back and going I don't care if it doesn't fit my personality, this is what I have to do.

I'll say, no not really, you don't have to do this and, your family wants you to, but I do know that your family loves you and wants you to be happy. 

I just have to tell you guys, Barb now has all the animals with her, Sparky's there, the cat, Bucky's probably around somewhere. It's 

surrounded by animals right now.

They're ready to, for us to end. So listen, they know when it's time to go. So we're going to go ahead and close out for today. And I have a couple of things. One is that, of course, we're going to be continuing with our mini series on personality. And two is, if you will like. Barb and or me to get our brains on your personality.

We have ways that you can do that, that we do these assessments for our our colleagues and our clients and so on. And so if you will like us to take a look at your personality, we are more than happy to do that. The way that you get started with that, I'm going to just have you reach out to me at drrobinmckay.

com forward slash call. That's a consult and I will. I'm going to chat with you a little bit and make sure that the NEO is a good fit for you. And then we'll teach you how to, you can sign up for your own NEO interpretation. Even though I 

see only a few people, I promise I won't yell at you. 

No, she won't probably tell you, you have to slit your throat either.

No, cause I'm too agreeable for that. Yeah but you're also, you can also be dramatic. At any rate, do that, reach out to me and we'll just have a quick chat about if it's a good fit for you. And if it is. We'll get you booked for one and that'll be, it just is such a enlivening way to understand yourself.

And it's always good to have both of our brains on your profile because we each have a different perspective for sure. So with that, we're going to go ahead and close for today. Thank you for joining us and we will see you next week. 

Thanks. Bye.

Folks, that's a wrap for today's episode of Two Shrinks on the Farm. We hope you had as much fun listening as we did making this episode, and maybe even picked up a new way of thinking along the way. We're here to offer you something different, no growth mindset platitudes or just work hard or mantras.

We're all about getting you to question everything, especially those voices in your head telling you to stick to the status quo. And if you've ever wondered how the two of us ended up on a farm, it's because we figured out that sometimes the best way to get unstuck is to dig in the dirt, literally and metaphorically.

Plus watching the horses roam free, tromping through the fields in search of the elusive morale mushroom, or picking cherries along the road. It's way more enlightening than a year's worth of meetings. So if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, or maybe with that one person who needs to hear that it's perfectly fine to trade in the corporate grind for something a little more natural, like planting flowers and dreaming up your next adventure.

And by the way, if you're interested in having your personality tested and interpreted by the two of us, or you're ready to bring us in to work with your teams, Get started by sending an email to clientcare at drrobinmckay. com and we'll take it from there. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram for more behind the scenes fun from the farm, creative insights, and plenty of laughs from the reels that I'm constantly posting in stories.

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