EP 5 Multitasking is Cocaine with Dr. Matt Kodsi | Deep Work Out Loud

Julie Harris Oliver: Welcome to Deep Work Out Loud, the thinking that fuels our life, our work, and our leadership. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. This is the podcast where I sit with another professional coach and we do some work around a single concept of an idea, a piece of inspiration, a topic, something we've seen come up in coaching.

If we're really lucky while we're talking about it, we might get a minute or two of what coaching might look and feel like, but we'll see how this goes. It's all an experiment. With any luck, you'll leave with something you can apply and use in your work or your life, or both. Today I'm here with Dr. Matt Kodsi.

Matt comes from a background that makes him an ideal coach for executives in a number of industries, both inside and outside of healthcare. After 17 years as a practicing neurologist, Dr. Kodsi took on the role of Chief Medical Officer. He brings what he learned through implementation of an electronic medical record, the COVID Pandemic, and a number of other challenges to work with executives as they navigate their own professional journey and build the bridges that will take them further [00:01:00] along in their professional path.

He also has a background in theater and has recently rediscovered this love, and that is how I know he is my people. Hi, Matt.

Matt Kodsi: Hi, Julie. Thank you so much for having me.

Julie Harris Oliver: Thanks for coming. Now, before we dig in, what was your journey to becoming a coach?

Matt Kodsi: So, it's interesting, Julie, and, and I've had this conversation with a few people, and the more I've thought about it, a light bulb went on for me.

That coaching really for me has been more of a rediscovery than a discovery. You, you mentioned my, uh, my involvement in theater that goes back more years than I care to count. And it really stemmed from a fascination with why people make the decisions they do, what motivates them to, to take action, what they're thinking, what's going on in their head.

And, and that fascination led me to my neurology practice, uh, in medicine for 17 years and, and now has led me to the next stage for me, which is [00:02:00] the coaching work because it's a very similar interest. Why do people make these decisions? What are they thinking? What are the stories they're telling themselves?

So I, I really look at it as a rediscovery.

Julie Harris Oliver: It is also related. I, I remember having that thought during training of, wait a minute, this is, we covered this in acting training. This is all very similar with, you know, the human condition and motivation, all the things you said. So what did you bring for us to dig into today?

Matt Kodsi: So Julie, I think the, the biggest sort of eye-opening. Lesson for me in the coaching training was about presence. Mm-hmm. So I'd like to talk a little bit about presence today.

Julie Harris Oliver: Great. What does that mean for you?

Matt Kodsi: So, when I think about presence, I really look at it as two different types. There is the standard presence that we talk about all the time in coaching, which is being present for our clients.

Being there, being focused, really listening to what they say and and listening for what they don't [00:03:00] say as well. And when I look at that, I think about that as an external presence being present for others. I think in addition to that, there is what I look at as an internal presence. One of the things that we learned at Hudson together was that you really can't take the client any further than you've taken yourself.

So if we're going to be present for our clients and listening to them and really hearing them, then before we can do that, I think we have to be internally present to ourselves. We have to know what drives us, what motivates us, what stories we're telling ourselves, both outside of coaching and during coaching sessions.

Really having a deeper understanding of ourselves before we can work with a client to help them. Better understand themselves.

Julie Harris Oliver: So how did you find that presence? Was that, was that new for you?

Matt Kodsi: It's interesting because I [00:04:00] think I have always looked at myself as being a very introspective person. Take time to reflect, look inside, think about things.

Yet I still got trapped in the same sort of. I don't know. I think the term rat race, although that's an older term that everyone else does, I was, I will tell you, Julie, you, you didn't know me a few years back, but many people knew me as the ultimate multitasker. Hmm. I rarely focused on one thing at a time, let alone focused on myself.

And so, although I thought I was present both for myself and for others, I've really discovered that I was present for neither.

Julie Harris Oliver: Because you were so busy in your head.

Matt Kodsi: Mm-hmm.

Julie Harris Oliver: Thinking ahead, I would say the same thing. Like, I remember when I was, uh, working, I would go, go, go, go, go, go, go all day. I wouldn't start to process a single thing until I laid my head down to sleep, and then the whole day would come rushing back to me and then keep me up all night.

So [00:05:00] I'd, I'd do my day twice, mostly filled with recriminations and regret about things that I said because I was just going too fast.

Matt Kodsi: I, I found that I was either thinking, I, I was never, let's say never. I thought that I was focused on the moment when I was in meetings and in conversations, but really my brain was probably 30% thinking about the meeting.

I just had probably 20 to 30% thinking about the meeting I was in. And Let's do the math there. Hold on. That's gonna be, so then about 40 to 50%. Yes. Thinking about the meeting I was gonna have next, or all the other things I had to do the rest of the day. So what coaching has shown me is that it was an illusion that I was fooling myself, and it's, it's amazing how many of us live in that world and don't realize what we're missing, not only in interactions with [00:06:00] others, but interacting with ourselves.

And understanding ourselves

Julie Harris Oliver: because you're not even there really.

Matt Kodsi: Right. And, and the challenge, the real problem is that going at that pace, in a sense is rewarding. We talk about, uh, for example, I'll tell you something that I had read recently that I had not thought about until I saw it in print. One of the things that I did was I considered myself incredibly responsive.

Mm-hmm. And so. If I got a text from someone in the hospital, I mean, it was immediate. I could be in a meeting. I could be in a conversation with my wife. I hate to admit it, and I would immediately look at the text and respond. Mm-hmm. Because I felt like that that's what I needed to do. What I didn't think about was the fact that that quick response actually activates what are called the reward circuits, in a sense in the brain.

Which if you really dig deep, they're the same circuits that are activated by drugs like [00:07:00] cocaine.

Julie Harris Oliver: So what you're, what you're saying is multitasking is cocaine. That's what I'm hearing.

Matt Kodsi: In a way. It is, and in a way it is just as addictive. We don't realize we, we quickly respond. We get a hit and that makes us feel good.

So we continue to respond in that fashion because there's a positive feedback and you don't realize until you're out of that loop that you were in

it.

Julie Harris Oliver: Well, , as you said, it was re, it felt rewarding and I think also rewarded. Right. Like what, and you said something about how you prided yourself in returning those texts immediately.

Like what was the story you told yourself about your identity, about being that responsive?

Matt Kodsi: it's a bit

of a mixed bag for me. I mean, I felt like my role when I was in the Chief Medical Officer role, especially if you think about during the COVID Pandemic, was to provide support so that everyone else in the hospital, the physicians, the nurses, et cetera, that they could get their jobs done.

So I was there to support them. So if I am there to support them, in my mind, if they need me, they need me [00:08:00] right away.

Julie Harris Oliver: And I imagine it was that time of crisis and then that crisis went on for a really long time.

And then I imagine you're really addicted to that. ' cause when things start to slow down, how are you getting that dopamine hit,

Matt Kodsi: right? Where you continue the behavior, you continue and, and there's a balance. I mean, there are times when someone needs you. But it's, it's rare. One of my, actually, my coach said to me, and he was right, I mean, I wasn't involved in direct patient care.

Mm-hmm. So it's not like someone was calling me 'cause a patient needed medication or a patient was crashing. They, they needed an answer to a question. They needed to figure out how to do something that wasn't immediate. It didn't need to wait an hour, but it didn't have to be instantaneous.

Julie Harris Oliver: So what do you think you lost by not being really present in those times?

Matt Kodsi: It, it's interesting when you asked me that question 'cause the thing that comes to mind is I had a 360 done, uh, when I took on an executive coach as Chief Medical Officer, and that was actually about two years into my role. [00:09:00] So I've been doing the job for a while, and that 360 brought out a lot of comments about, Hey, we know Dr.

Kodsi cares. We know he's here for us, but I'm just never really sure if he's paying attention.

Julie Harris Oliver: Ooh.

Matt Kodsi: Yeah. And that hurt.

Julie Harris Oliver: So then how did you change that? Or did you?

Matt Kodsi: Well, that's the question. I, I think what I did was at that time was I made sure to talk to the people who had answered the 360 and let them know that I was aware that was an issue, and ask them to, please feel free to call me out on it.

Because I wanted to be paying attention. I wanted them to know that I was focused, although I still wasn't. In the end, I believed I was focused, but I wasn't. So you asked me what did I lose? I, I lost the relationships. I mean, I still had them, but they weren't what they could have been.

Julie Harris Oliver: So were you able to make that switch while you were working or did you make it look more like you had that while you were working?

Matt Kodsi: I think it's a 50 50. I made it a little bit, but I didn't [00:10:00] make it enough to really understand what I was doing.

Julie Harris Oliver: So what clicked for you?

Matt Kodsi: when

I went to, so as a precursor for the. Coaching training program. I went to something called Life Forward. You know, life Forward. Mm-hmm. And it's a four day program. And I don't know about your experience, but for mine, I walked in and I thought, really four days, really?

Julie Harris Oliver: What are we doing?

Matt Kodsi: But it was amazing because I think we all came in ready to make ourselves vulnerable and, and I was at a point where I was burning out from the chief medical officer work.

And, and I was trying to figure out what's next. And I, and I think a lot of us went there and thought, okay, we're vested. We're gonna do whatever it takes to figure out what the next step is. So it's probably one of the first times I had truly opened myself up and made myself completely vulnerable. And that provided sort of the fertile ground for, for [00:11:00] growth and for

Julie Harris Oliver: what, what did that look like?

Matt Kodsi: What allowed myself to take a step back and look at where I'd been. And where I wanted to go and who I wanted to be. And, and that's when I started to see the change that needed to happen or the change that I wanted to happen.

Julie Harris Oliver: So then how did you make that change? I, or did you, I don't wanna assume, but you seem pretty present these days.

Matt Kodsi: No, I mean, I did,

it was challenging at that time. I was still working, so I, I was working up until. November of 24, I stepped down from the role, , and didn't finish the coaching training until February, March of 25. So I, I did, I did decrease how quickly I responded.

Not in a bad way, in a sense. I still was there to provide support, but it wasn't as, as immediate. It wasn't as instantaneous. But yet at the same time, I'll tell you Julie, I don't think I really. Fully changed, or at least nearly fully changed until I stepped down from the job, until I took a second to, to sort of breathe fresh air and [00:12:00] really take a minute to be introspective.

Hmm. Now I'll throw another one at you, although I Did you have a question?

Julie Harris Oliver: Well, I was just thinking it from, if you're working with, uh, executives who are currently working and aren't about to step down from their role and do something else. And yet need to figure out presence. How do you work with them on that?

Matt Kodsi: You know, as, as with any coaching conversation or coaching engagement, the goal really is for the client to get where they want to be. And so I think there's, there's two sides to, to that question or to answering that question. If, if someone doesn't want to change. And is happy with where they are, then it's incredibly challenging to, to work with them in a way that will help them have more presence.

Hmm. At the same time, part of the way I look at coaching work is to ask the client where they want to be, and then they may not realize or see the barriers or the [00:13:00] behaviors that are keeping them from getting there. So part of our job as coaches and, and as we've said at Hudson is to make the unseen seen, so to help them or to work with them so that they're able to see the things that they're doing that really are impeding them from getting to where they want to be and from being who they want to be.

And, and Hudson opened my eyes to see that. And so I did make changes, I think, and I said to my wife, it's funny, actually, the person who took my role is now retiring, and we joked the job was posted, although I, I will not

already.

It's a long story. And, and so I have said to her, I would be a very, very different leader today than I was a year and a half ago.

Julie Harris Oliver: Were you tempted to go back?

Matt Kodsi: No. Okay. No, I'm not. But, but I am certainly tempted to help those who are [00:14:00] still in that world. I mean, that's the goal is, is to, what's the word in a sense, you know, we, we, we build walls and we build bridges, is where I think about it. And unfortunately, we often build more walls and working with a client.

Is opening their eyes so that they can see the stones that they have used to build those walls to basically get in their own way so that they can then take that wall apart brick by brick and use those same stones to build a bridge. And they use that bridge to cross over to be the person they want to be.

That's

Julie Harris Oliver: such a lovely metaphor. I, and also speaking as a patient, I, I want my doctor fully present and so many times you go in and they're thinking about who knows what, but accept.

You, you know, if you could have their attention for a full, however many minutes they can give you, it's such a different experience than someone who's flying by [00:15:00] and making notes and making decisions when you, not necessarily you even feel seen. I

Matt Kodsi: very much so, you know, on that front, I, you've asked me what's opened my eyes and what's changed me.

There's, there's another experience where I was a patient. So, you know, I joked with my friends. I said, don't step down from your job because bad things happen. Oh. About two months after I stepped down from my chief medical officer position, I started to have back pain Who doesn't have back pain? They got dramatically worse over a course of several weeks and turned out it was a, it was a cancer, it was lymphoma that was growing in one of my backbones.

And so I had an opportunity to see the world from the other side and to be in the hospital, chemo, inpatient treatment, other things. And, and I will tell you if, if there is one thing that helps you appreciate the value [00:16:00] of presence and presence for every moment is when you have an occasion. Where you're not sure how many moments you'll have left.

Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.

I feel like we should say that you're through it and you're fine.

Matt Kodsi: Yes, yes, I should say

that. So how far out now? Oh my gosh. Time flies. How last chemo was in April. So gosh, eight months out of chemo and seven months out of radiation. So as far as, as far as we hear from the oncologist, it is done. He considers me cured.

Wonderful. So thank God lymphoma is incredibly treatable. Okay. So I was, I was very lucky. Yeah. Very, very lucky. Wonderful. We were all, yeah. It reminds me, and I thought about this today, knowing we were gonna be talking, there is, there's a quote that I, I've heard, it's attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that I think of it because I saw it in Kung Fu Panda.

And if you've seen the movie, there is a time where the turtle says [00:17:00] yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. And that is why it's called the present.

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.

Matt Kodsi: And it, it's so true. And, and the word applies to presence being present both for yourself and for others. It's a gift. It's a privilege.

Julie Harris Oliver: So just talking from a practical standpoint. How do you cultivate that? Because I know it, it's hard and we have, we talked about the reasons why it's hard. Why is it so hard?

Matt Kodsi: Because there's a million other things going on. I, it depends on which part are you talking about the internal presence, the external presence, or both?

Julie Harris Oliver: It's the everything

everywhere. All at once of it all.

Matt Kodsi: We'll continue with our movie references. Yeah.

The internal presence for many people is challenging because some people are afraid of what they'll find if they dig too deep. Some people have never allowed themselves to dig deep [00:18:00] and, and they just don't know where to start.

And so both of those make it difficult. The, the external presence is hard because as, as we were saying, there are a million things going on in our lives and to. To turn all of that off so that you can truly be there for someone that's challenging. It's hard. It is. I will say it is as rewarding as it is challenging.

Julie Harris Oliver: And so if you were to take step one of how to start to make the switch, what would you do?

Matt Kodsi: If someone really wants to know how present they are, ask.

Ask those closest to you. Ask your significant other. Ask your family, your kids. If they're old enough, ask the people close to you. They're gonna tell you the truth. The answers may surprise you. They may not. They may just validate things you already knew, but were too hesitant to admit to yourself. Of course, make sure you let them know that you want the unvarnished truth, not the polished, nice version.

Julie Harris Oliver: Like it is [00:19:00] safe to tell me the answer to this question

Matt Kodsi: because the first step is with any change is self-awareness. If you can't see it in yourself, then you're not gonna be able to change it.

Julie Harris Oliver: So what changed for you once you were able to start practicing being more present?

Matt Kodsi: You know, it's interesting, there's so many things. One is, I mean, relationships. Yeah. I will tell you, I, I brought my wife up earlier and, and, and if she were here, she would agree with me. 'cause we've had this conversation . There came a time where she just didn't tell me about her day because she told me, and I didn't realize this, she told me this.

This was probably just a few months ago when we were talking about presence again. She said, the problem was, I've already told you I'd answer those texts right away. So she would start talking and I would be on my phone. Mm-hmm. Or she would be telling me a story and I would say, oh, I have to call somebody.

And, and she appreciated. She knew that I had to do it. She, she didn't resent the fact that I was busy at the hospital, but [00:20:00] she just felt like, well, it's not worth it. It's, it's not worth having the conversation. Oh man. So our relationship has changed dramatically.

Julie Harris Oliver: How was that

to hear?

Matt Kodsi: That was tough. Yeah, it's tough because that's not the person you want to be. It's not who I wanted to be, and I didn't realize it was having that impact and that, that's just part of the fact that we fool ourselves. You know, we talk about how we tell ourselves stories and we make assumptions.

Well, sometimes those stories. Allow us to continue the behavior that we're, that we're already doing and that behavior that's getting in our own way.

Julie Harris Oliver: And I know that your family and your marriage is the most important thing in your whole world. So I can imagine how devastating that was to hear and how motivating it was.

You'd be like, oh, I'm fixing this.

Matt Kodsi: Yeah. Uh, I remember the first thing I did, and it's funny, I hadn't thought about this in a long [00:21:00] time. The first thing I did when I came home from Life Forward was I, I apologized to my wife. We sat down. I just said, I'm sorry. I did not realize all the things I was doing that were getting in the way.

Julie Harris Oliver: She was probably like worth every penny.

Matt Kodsi: She said that actually

she did. She said it was worth, it was worth the cost.

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So what does your day-to-day life look like now, now that you're in it?

Matt Kodsi: It, it is much less busy. Mm-hmm. Which I am, I am truly enjoying, uh, you know, I'm in the early stages of building the coaching practice, so not a lot of clients right now.

I, I do cherish the time that I have with clients. You know, I've already said that how I look at presence as a privilege, uh, as, as really a gift. So that time that I can share that space with the clients is, it's just amazing. [00:22:00] It's just incredible and, and so valuable. And when I'm not sharing it with the clients, I'm sharing it with my family and, and getting all the things done that we hadn't done in the house in several years.

So, catching up.

Julie Harris Oliver: Do you have a practice that helps you drop into that space?

Matt Kodsi: You know, I, I take, I would say a few minutes. It varies from a few to 10 to 15, and I, and I, I remind myself of exactly what I've just said, what a privilege it is to be in this space, what my role is as the coach. Is to hear the things they're saying, hear the things they're not, ask them the questions that they're not asking themselves, the things that they haven't thought of, but challenge the way they see things now to allow them to step back and maybe see things differently.

So I think about all of that and, and the opportunities that come from that before I [00:23:00] start a session.

Julie Harris Oliver: Now, if you were back in your job as Chief Medical Officer and you have, I remember how booked your calendar was, we, in order to book a group meeting with you, we had to book four months out. It was crazy.

, If you were back in that role, how do you think you would behave differently in that role? What, what would, what would that mat look like?

Matt Kodsi: You know, one of the things I was really bad at was delegating And I think in that way I did not help other people grow. Hmm. And so I think probably one of the major changes would be less doing for, and maybe a little more doing with, and a little more allowing people to do for themselves because they knew that they had a safe place to land.

Mm-hmm. That if things didn't go well, they could always come back.

But, but we feel it's easier often to just do it ourselves, so we do it.

Julie Harris Oliver: I think we forget so often. Once you're in that role, your whole job is making everybody else [00:24:00] better.

Matt Kodsi: . And I looked at my whole job as being there to support them, but my definition of support was.

, Probably doing more than I should have.

Julie Harris Oliver: Lemme take it off your plate. Lemme make it easier for everybody.

Matt Kodsi: Yeah.

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. And how do you think your attention would be different now?

Matt Kodsi: It is challenging because keeping in mind that, in that job, I mean, I barely left my chair because it was Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting.

I think what I would do would be to work to change the culture. Oh. Because if we don't change the system, then the system doesn't allow, it doesn't reinforce that sort of presence.

Julie Harris Oliver: I'm gonna push back on you a little bit.

Matt Kodsi: Go ahead.

Julie Harris Oliver: Knowing the part that you could control would be you. Mm-hmm. Would you be present differently in those meetings and not having three meetings at the same time?

Matt Kodsi: Yes. So let me qualify that. I [00:25:00] would absolutely be more present than I was before. There's, there's no doubt.

I just, it's who I am. Now, keep in mind that the way the system is constructed. If I am that present in meetings and conversations, then I, I really can't sleep because the amount of work that I would take home would, would be all consuming.

Julie Harris Oliver: It would all pile up for the end of the day.

Matt Kodsi: So that's why I say it's two parts. I absolutely would be more present. I think it is also necessary to work on the system to allow people to be more present. So, and the work still gets done. And, and that's true in so many industries. It's not like we need 10 hours to, to have conversations that we didn't have before.

It's that the conversations need to be more meaningful, but for them to be more meaningful, we need to find ways of distributing the work. And, and that brings to mind, I'll tell you, there's a, a book I read recently, uh, written by a coach that I, I actually work with [00:26:00] at, uh, Medi Leadership. Uh, his name is Michael Hein.

It's, uh, shifting towards Unorthodoxy. It's a great book. And in it he talks about the complex world we work in and how complexity demands a different type of leadership. And, and the term he uses is distributed leadership. Mm-hmm. You don't have just one leader doing all the work. Work. You have everyone contributing to leadership, everyone doing the work, and in a sense, everyone having ownership, which, which creates not only sort of a greater distribution so that one person doesn't have all the burden on their shoulders.

It also creates a greater sense of belonging within the group and within the organization

Julie Harris Oliver: and purpose, I imagine. Mm-hmm. I'm curious. When you talked about changing the system.

Matt Kodsi: Mm-hmm.

Julie Harris Oliver: I've been in systems where even the most senior leaders felt powerless to change the system. [00:27:00] And I remember thinking at the time, like, if you don't have any power, how does anybody have any power?

How do you look at systemic change and how that has to happen? I mean, this is a whole different podcast, but just in a sentence.

Matt Kodsi: I, I will tell you, I made some of those efforts and they were indeed challenging, and I can't say that I changed much, but I would say I feel like if you ask the people at the hospital, what I changed was the culture and, and it starts there. If everyone feels supported, if everyone knows that they have each other's back, then it creates a different interaction.

And then that breeds a type of success and environment that becomes infectious, because to your point, the one leader no matter how powerful they are, unless I guess they're the CEO of the entire company, even then, even then, one person can't make the change. It has to be everyone working together to make the change.

Julie Harris Oliver: And I, [00:28:00] I was thinking as you were saying that there, you're really speaking to psychological safety as a baseline. True. Okay. These are all topics for another day. What would you leave us with about presence?

Matt Kodsi: I, I, I think, and I know I've said it a few times already, it is. Creating a mindset to see presence, not as a must do or a need to do, or even a to do. It is. It is a privilege. It is something that is given to us an opportunity to interact with others in a way that is so meaningful. It and creates exponentially stronger relationships that if we just take a second and see it that way, then we'll start asking ourselves, why am I not doing this rather than, why should I do this?

Julie Harris Oliver: It's so simple, and yet it's not [00:29:00] easy.

Matt Kodsi: Absolutely.

Julie Harris Oliver: Thank you, Matt.

Matt Kodsi: Thank you, Julie. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker: This has been deep work out loud. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. I'd like to thank Matt Kodsi for joining the podcast. You can find him at bridgingjourneyscoaching.com. If any of this resonates with you, please subscribe and leave review at all the podcast places. And if you'd like to work with me, you can find me at julieharrisoliver.com.

And let me leave you with this. What might it look like for you to bring just a little more presence into your day? Be especially present for just one meeting, one conversation. Okay. Try some things. Report back. Thanks for listening. See you next time.