(This post may look a little long because it’s packed with juicy quotes and ideas for you to put into practice.)

Dr. Jekyll

Most of us like to think we’re good people and that, if put in an unethical or dangerous situation, we’d do the right, noble thing. We claim assuredly that if given power, we’d wield it fairly; or that we’d call the police if we saw someone getting abused.

Perhaps.

But study after troubling study shows that the majority of us, when put in certain difficult circumstances, would act in ways we’d later be ashamed of. The truth is, while on the fringes of society we can talk about saints and sociopaths, we are all capable of good and evil.

Mr. Hyde

I had the pleasure of listening to Philip Zimbardo at a recent Neuroleadership Conference. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil. While you may not recognize his name, you’re probably familiar with his infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment where normal, healthy people cast as guards became sadistic authoritarians, while those cast as prisoners became hopeless and traumatized. The 2-week simulation experiment was cut short after just 6 days.

People aren’t born heroes. Our brains run on a 100,000-year-old operating that errs on the side of self-protection and suspicion. Scientists literally refer to it as negativity bias. Put in a threatening situation, our brain makes saving ourselves top priority.

While it may not be our default nature to act in others’ best interest, we can retrain ourselves. We can build a heroic brain and become the person we’d like to be — the person we claim to be. And when we act heroically, we improve our home environment, work environment, and communities. In essence, we improve the lives of everyone we touch, including our own.

Here are some essential hero-building steps:

Building Heroic Muscles

1. First: acknowledge your fallibility. Ignoring our dark self self doesn’t make it go away. It just hides until one day in a weak moment it inconveniently emerges (like Mel Gibson getting caught in a drunken, racist rant, or a sanctimonious AWOL politician found Tango-ing with his mistress in Argentina). It doesn’t do us any good to label deeds, thoughts, or people as evil. Rather, know that any person is capable of making bad choices that can create horrible irreversible ripples.

2. Second, notice your ripple. Done anything you’re not proud of? Maybe you raised your voice at your child, or rolled your eyes in a meeting. Or maybe you just forgot to thank someone for their efforts. Stop shaming yourself (or making excuses) and get to work by first apologizing, and then doing better.

3. Third: start practicing small acts of kindness. You become what you practice. Put a Tibetan monk in an MRI, and you’ll see a brain that’s trained to tilt heavily toward compassion and kindness. But you don’t have to meditate to re-train your brain. And you don’t have to be anyone special to be a hero. We often think of heroes as extraordinary people doing big things. But, as Zimbardo explains, heroes are ordinary people acting selflessly to protect or improve the lives of others. Heroes take positive action, where others stand by and justify their inaction.

Here are some small actions that can go a long way toward improving others’ lives:

- Listen to someone without judgment.

- Compliment someone you care about (without expecting anything in return).

- Compliment a stranger (without expecting anything in return).

- Ask the cashier how her day is going…then listen.

- Give your change to someone in need.

- Talk to the shy person at the holiday party.

- When talk about someone turns negative, instead of piling on, say something kind.

- Stop and give a confused tourist directions.

- Listen to your partner, your child, your mother –anyone you think you know well — with genuine curiosity and wonder.

- Instead of getting angry or blaming someone at work when something fails, assume good intent, pick up the phone or walk over to them, and seek to understand their point of view.

- If you like to talk, keep your views to yourself in your next meeting and ask others for their opinions. Then listen without interrupting.

- Thank someone.

- Apologize.

- Forgive someone you’ve held a grudge against.

- Forgive yourself.

- Admit your mistakes.

- Acknowledge your weaknesses.

- For every holiday gift you purchase, add a small (or big) donation to a trusted charity like Oxfam who will make the most of your gift so that it improves lives.

Ta-Da, Brilliance!

With practice, you’ll break free of your default inertia and find that acting positively comes naturally. You also run a serious risk of creating an engaging, trusting work environment where people are free to speak and act without fear.

— — — — —

Quotes

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

— — — — —

“With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

- Joe Paterno

— — — — —

Legend

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied,

“The one you feed.”

Video:

Phil Zimbardo talks about his new mission: The Heroic Imagination Project

Check out our related post: How to Tell if You Work in a Fear Ridden Environment with to-do list for the courageous manager

We’d love to hear from you!

- What small gesture has made a positive difference in your life?

- Which small act will you begin taking today?

- What other small heroic acts do you recommend?

When we ask program participants and clients about times when they felt in the zone, nearly all can name one. Barely anyone claims to there now. And survey research supports this observation. According to a Gallup poll, more than 70 percent of people are disengaged from their job.

There are several key ingredients to peak performance. Knowing them can make it easier to diagnose what’s missing.

Recipe at-a-Glance: One part S (Strengths) to four parts P (Passion, Purpose, Preferences, Progress).

One Part ‘S’

1. Strengths:
In every peak moment, you will find that you are doing what you do best. Strengths may be learned skills or innate abilities. Either way, they are things that you excel at. Sometimes it’s hard to notice your own strength because it comes easily to you. What comes easily to you – public speaking, playing music, interpersonal skills, listening, remembering and using data – is terrifyingly difficult for others. Where you exhibit grace, others stumble or exert more effort for the same or less outcomes.

Ways to determine strengths:

• Take an inventory assessment: Gallup’s StrengthsFinder or Highlands Ability Battery are good options
• Recall what tasks at work you do most effortlessly

Four Parts P

1. Passion:
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you like doing it.

Ways to determine passion:

• What tasks do you rarely procrastinate?
• When you do procrastinate, what do you tend to work on instead?
• What projects, work, tasks, do you volunteer or readily take on?
• If you could go back to school now, what would you major in?
• If money were no concern, how would you fill your days?

2. Purpose:
Whether you’re making a difference within a home, a company, or more broadly in the world, you feel like your contribution matters.

Ways to get clear about your purpose:

• What would I do if money were no object?
• What am I here to do?
• How can I add value to others and the world at large?
• How would I like to be remembered?
• What are the three most important lessons I would like to pass on to my children?

3. Preferences:
If your work doesn’t fit your personal preferences, you won’t feel motivated.

Preferences may include working:

• Alone or on a team
• In an office or at home
• At a fast or slow pace
• With a flexible or predictable schedule
• In a quiet or sound-filled environment

Of all the ingredients, this is the one that most fluctuates over time. What matters one day may change the next. Perhaps you were fine with working 60 hours a week when you just graduated college. But not now. Or, maybe a consulting job with lots of travel worked well until you had a child. Now, not so much. Or maybe now that you’re a parent you’d like to travel more!

4. Progress

In August, 2011, Harvard’s Teresa Amabile and Psychologist Steven Kramer published their book The Progress Principle, where they share their findings from a data-rich study of over 200 people in 7 countries. Dan Pink, author of Drive, calls it the best business book he’s read in years. The authors amassed 12,000 days worth of data from study participants and reported fascinating conclusions about what really motivates people at work, and conversely, what chokes creativity and engagement. They found that what motivates people most is making progress on meaningful work. And sadly, they also found that these valued “small wins” are too rare. What can you do? Amabile suggests:

• “Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. Hide in an empty conference room, if you have to, or sneak out in disguise to a nearby coffee shop.
• Make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day.”

We also suggest that you

• Allow yourself to really savor the accomplishment, by pausing and letting a sense of satisfaction penetrate you…before you jump back on the hamster wheel. (like savoring clicking the “Publish” button on a blog).

Managers!

• Ask your employees how easy it is to make progress on meaningful work (on a scale of 0-10)
• Ask what gets in the way
• Ask what ideas they have for removing obstacles
• Support them in removing obstacles and check back often to recalibrate

Living Brilliantly

When life feels a little bitter or salty, take a look at the recipe for brilliance. Compare it to your life. Figure out what’s missing and take steps to get it more in balance.

We don’t mean to oversimplify. Taking steps to add a dash of anything may take incredible efforts. This is where it may make sense to find a coaching partner to help you bring some brilliance back to your life. An effective coach knows that living brilliantly involves more than creating quality work. To really feel “in the zone” you need to build a strong foundation of support in all aspects of your life, for example, good health, quality rest, fulfilling relationships, and fun. Every individual has a unique recipe that leads to ultimate fulfillment.

Note, if life feels sweet, just relax and savor.

Managers: this is the key to career development coaching. Many of your staff could use help figuring out how to get in the zone. They may feel awkward admitting to you that their job situation isn’t optimal. You can help by actively helping people develop more of a balance in their recipe.

Recommended Reading

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (2004)

Don’t Waste Your Talent: The 8 Critical Steps To Discovering What You Do Best by Bob McDonald, Don E. Hutcheson, Lazar Emanuel, and Thomas N. Tavantzis (2005)

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham (2007)

Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton (2001)

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Amabile and Steven Kramer

Note: This is an updated version of the original, first published in our ebook, Conversations for Brilliance. This version was amended to include the very important fourth P, progress on meaningful work.

Which mood will it be?

Had any negative thoughts recently that you just couldn’t seem to shake?

Maybe someone cut you off in traffic and it bugged you the whole commute. Or maybe the company issued yet another dictum that had you steaming all day. Or maybe you keep running a frustrating conversation over and over again in your mind. Ever get home and dump accumulated frustration on the closest innocent victim?

Blame it on your left brain.

Actually, make that a peanut-sized area of your left brain.

Our left brain is our story-teller. Its job is to make sense of moment-by-moment inputs. And since it never has all the data it needs, it fills in the gaps, weaving so seamlessly that the story in our head feels like the inescapable truth. The cells that comprise this story-teller part of our brain are about the size of a peanut. Yet, they do their job so well, we ride along as if we had no choice, letting it loop and continually flood our bodies with cortisol and other stress-related chemicals.

According to Jill Bolte-Taylor — brain scientist, stroke survivor, and author — getting hooked on emotionally charged narratives of anger, resentment, guilt, shame, or fear for long periods can have devastating consequences on our physical and mental well-being because of the powerful ways they affect our emotional and physiological circuitry.

It’s vital to our health and relationships that we learn how to experience the emotion and then shift away.

And if you’re in a leadership role (at work or home), it’s vital to the mental and physical health of everyone around you because a leader’s mood is contagious.

90 Seconds of Pain

One of my favorite insights from Taylor’s book, My Stroke of Insight, is that it takes 90 seconds for an emotionally-charged thought to move through the body. In those 90 seconds you may have symptoms like shortness of breath, jaw tension, chest-ache, a strong desire to choke someone (to name a few) while the thought-induced chemicals move through your cells. After 90 seconds, the blood stream is clear of it.

So why don’t we feel better after 90 seconds?

If allowed, the peanut-brain will keep weaving a story and keep dumping stress chemicals into the body. You have to interrupt the story and redirect your attention. You have to take control.

5 Steps to Shift the Barreling Thought-Train to a Better Track

1. Notice the thought

Before you can shift away from the damaging story, you have to notice that your brain is telling a story! Most of us let our thoughts drive us instead of making conscious decisions about what we think.

2. Bring your attention to your body

Allow your body to experience the reaction. What part of your body is affected? For me, my facial muscles tense and my breath gets shallow. Then, move your attention to your feet and feel your feet against your shoes. Take a deep breath, notice sounds and smells in the room.

3. Deliberately shift to a different thought that brings a sense of ease and pleasure. Bolte-Taylor suggests thinking about one of the following:

• something fascinating or
• something that brings you joy or
• something you would like to do

4.  Feel the new physical sensations. Once you’ve jumped off the negative loop, allow the tense muscles to loosen and notice what peace feels like in your body.

5. Repeat. You’ll have ample opportunities to practice. Over time, you can make the shift quicker, and more often, resulting in better mental and physical health, freeing you up to share your talents and positively affect others.

These steps are immensely harder to do when you are sleep-deprived or otherwise incapacitated. Check out our recent post — Tools Are Not Enough — about seeking support from many directions so you can take control of your moods and your life.

Some Resources

Complimentary thought-shifting tool that we use with our clients

Related posts: Best Director

Video: Jill Bolte-Taylor’s inspirational, memorable TEDtalk

Book: My Stroke of Insight (Kindle, Bound, or Audio): This is going on my must-read book list for humans. I dare you to read it and fail to find insights you can use to improve your life.

“If I want to retain my inner peace, I must be willing to consistently and persistently tend the garden of my mind moment by moment, and be willing to make the decision a thousand times a day.”

- Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight

Below is an image I conjure to hit the brakes and switch tracks. The construction history fascinates me and the vacation memories bring me joy.

What works for you?

Brunelleschi's Duomo

There’s a lot of great advice to women about how to get ahead: how to have it all, do it all, and look great all the while.

I would like to add one more piece of advice to corporate women: wear comfortable footwear.

That’s right.

Gorgeous Torture

For some time, this topic had been a niggling thought. Then I went over the edge into official annoyance after reading an op-ed piece by one of my favorite journalists, Maureen Dowd, when, in a piece about France’s Christine Lagard — Minister of Economic Affairs, Finances, and Industry — she found it necessary to describe her beige patent Christian Louboutin high heels (pictured right). It’s not just Dowd: it’s the norm. Once I began looking, I noticed that reports of women in leadership often include descriptions of their appearance.

Watch the news and you’ll see female politicians striving to strike just the right balance between power and femininity. They are subjected to scrutiny that their frumpier male counterparts rarely get. Can you imagine Newt getting reamed for big ankles or Obama for wearing last year’s suit? And can you imagine any of them stumping in stilettos?

My beef is actually not with the journalists. It’s with the shoes.

Here’s why this matters. I don’t care what you say; high heels are not comfortable. They contort your feet, toes, legs, and pelvis into unnatural positions and force your weight onto the ball of your foot. And a new study shows that they likely contribute to osteoarthritis.

I’m not making a feminist argument. I’m arguing on behalf of your brain.

An Unnecessary Disadvantage

Leadership is a competitive sport — one that requires you channel your mental and physical energy reserves for optimal performance.

All brain’s have limited reserves of attention. The more discomfort you feel, the more distracted your brain, and the harder it has to work. I AM NOT saying that women in heels are less smart. I AM saying that there is a cost. And businessmen never have to pay it (at least, not until they leave the office, and what they do at home is private — unless they Tweet about it).

So, why do we wear them? Let’s face it: they are lovely and they help us look and feel beautiful. Were it not for sciatica and a hip deformation, I’d probably still be wearing them.

Williams Girl Power

Worried that you won’t feel beautiful without the shoes? For inspiration, think of these powerful sisters who manage to be feminine and stylish on and off the field (but who save the heels for after the competition).

Shoes Are Just the Beginning

What are you saying yes to — for beauty or anything else — that no longer serves you? What are you saying yes to that results in resentment, pain, or distraction?

Here are Some Examples of Unnecessary Distractions:

- Home-baked cookies and cupcakes (when all you really had time for was a trip to Safeway)

- Saying yes to everything thrown at you

- Hanging out with people who steal your energy

- Trying to be perfect at anything

- Resentment (like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die)

- Guilt (for crimes you haven’t committed)

- Comparison (“I should be more like…”)

A Movement

I picture a movement where women say no to anything that robs them of their strength and energy. Where they embrace attitudes, actions (and yes, attire) that helps them feel empowered and at ease.

You can join me in this nascent movement on Twitter (@brillianceinc). Tell me what you’ve decided to say no to, and in saying no, what you are saying yes to. Please bring a sense of serious levity and end your Tweet with #nocruelshoes so others can join in on the conversation.

And, if you’ve found a great pair of comfortable, feminine, professional-looking shoes, post it here in the comments or on Twitter chatroom #nocruelshoes.

Here’s a stunning collection from CEO and ballroom dancing aficionado, Anyi Lu. To learn more about what motivated her to go from Chemical Engineer to Chief Shoemaker, check out her NYTimes article, Farewell, Aching Feet.

Men, you are free to join us there and declare your own freedom from unnecessary sacrifice!

Resources

Listen to Steve Martin’s Comedy Classic: Cruel Shoes

For truly incredible insights as to why we have too few women in leadership, check out the speeches delivered by Facebook COO Sandberg with grace, authenticity, and humor (and lovely, really high, shoes).

Read: Sandberg’s Commencement Address to Barnard College

Watch: Sandberg’s TEDtalk

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it in high heels and backwards.”

Don't go it Alone

If knowledge and insight were all it took to change our habits, we could just read a great self-help book or take a course and voilà: excellence!

No Magic Wand

Sadly (for those of us who like instant gratification), it takes effort and practice to shift patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. You’ve developed your current state over years of accidental practice and attention: it’ll take some time and effort to develop new, stronger habits (aka, neural pathways). You’ll be tested a million times a day and have a million opportunities to return to your comfort zone.

Got Support to Thrive?

This is why even coaches have coaches. We all need someone who can listen without judgment and help us see things in a way that opens up better possibilities for action. Someone who can help us stay focused and support our efforts to change. Someone who can remind us why we’re putting ourselves through the discomfort and who can highlight the small positive changes that would otherwise fail to get noticed and appreciated.

“When you’re weary, find relief. When you’re strong, find delight.”

- Martha Beck, author, coach

Before You Get Support, Build Capacity

And sometimes, even that’s not enough. Knowing the tools exist, and being able to explain the tools intellectually isn’t enough. When we are in pain — depressed, sleep deprived, injured, etc. — we need triage support to build up our resources so we have the capacity to improve. Once we’ve alleviated the acute symptoms, we can pursue higher goals.

Don’t I know it.

After my daughter was born, I suffered many months of severe sleep-deprivation and anxiety before I finally sought medical advice. I was surviving, but certainly not thriving. My brain was in a negative loop. I recall thinking that I knew how to escape my negative thoughts, but I lacked the capacity to use the tools. It took two PTSD diagnoses for me to decide that I couldn’t self-coach myself out of my state.

My brain is now healed and I once again feel vibrant, thanks to some great practitioners.

You don’t have to settle for less than excellence. Get the support you deserve.

Resources

Get Support: Find a Coach

• New Ventures West: A global resource founded in the Bay Area (Note: Brilliance Inc. founders are graduates)
• Brilliance Inc: Work with Heather Andersen or Denise Green
• Ask someone you admire who they would recommend
  • Here’s a plug for my coach Judith Duhl, great for career transitions and life-coaching

Build Capacity: Get Your Brain and Body Back in Harmony

Dr.’s in The Bay Area (and my hero’s in health). These amazing people have EQ and crazy-good skills.

• Dr. Raj Patel (South Bay/Peninsula) – Holistic MD
• Dr. Morgan Camp (Mill Valley) – Holistic MD
• Dr. Robert Gamburd - Physiatrist (Sports Medicine)

Video: I love this short video where author Tony Schwartz offers unconventional and really useful advice to help us all thrive. Here’s a hint:

“If you don’t eat for 5 days, you’ll be hungry; if you don’t sleep well for 5 days, you’ll be psychotic.”

- Tony Schwartz

Article: Via author and neuroleadership guru David Rock, this article describes our brains under depression

Tool: When you’re ready to thrive, try our complimentary and powerful Thoughts Upgrade Tool to help shift your attention to create better results in any area of your life.

Our last post featured excerpts from the late David Foster Wallace, one of the most respected and revered writers of our time. He suffered from severe depression and when the treatments failed him after 20 years, he chose a final tragic escape. He left behind a treasure of work.

Please share any resources you recommend to help people survive and thrive.

The most earth-shaking discoveries, inventions, and lives begin with powerful questions asked by people who seem delusional to the rest of the world. Think Galileo, Edison, Einstein, Gates, Jobs, Bezos to name a few.

When you ask a powerfully different question like, What if our world doesn’t revolve around the sun? you’ll notice supporting evidence that others have missed.

Truth is, you can build a case to support any theory. Think that the world is out to get you? I bet you can prove it. And what if you think, as Jack Canfield proposes, that the world conspires to help you?  What would you notice then?

Old at a Young Age

I’ve seen this work in my own life. At 26, I developed Rheumatoid Arthritis. One of my first questions was How could I have this at such a young age? which got me thinking that something was out of whack. I then asked What if my treatment over the past 4 years — high doses of anti-inflammatory medication and steroid shots for a broken back — has caused an imbalance? Then, I got really crazy and asked What if something I’m eating makes it worse? Traditional MDs dismissed these questions as the ravings of a crazy person and recommended more medicine to treat my new symptoms.

Hating that option, I sought less traditional thinkers until I found my Galileos in health. Within six months, we had pin-pointed the RA symptoms to a gluten and eggplant allergy (really). When I avoided those foods, I was 70% improved. My Doctor, Raj Patel, then asked me a question I will never forget. He asked “Would you like to remain here or are you interested in a cure?”

6 months later I was symptom free and have been ever since.

Age is Relative

One of my favorite delusional thinkers is Harvard Social Scientist Ellen J. Langer, author of the book, Counterclockwise, named after her famous experiment where she immersed groups of elderly men in a meticulously crafted 1952 simulation. After emerging from their week long time-travel experiment the men exhibited shocking changes including longer limbs, longer gait, taller, and younger appearance.

Here is a fact that Langer discovered in her research:

There are no definitive biological age markers.

Without knowing someone’s chronological age, science cannot pinpoint how old someone is.

Your Turn

We construct our results based on the questions we ask. Take an inventory. What questions do you ask about yourself, others, and possibilities? What results are those questions getting you?

Notice the difference between dead-end questions like Why are people out to get me/annoy me? and Why is my life so hard? and powerful (delusional) questions like How can I help others suffer less? and What changes can I begin making today to build my ideal life? or What old resentment can I drop so I can move on and thrive?

Resources:

Articles:

This article was inspired by Pam Slim’s great post on March 31

Managers: see our recent post: Conversation Training Wheels for some great questions you can ask your employees.

Books:

Say Goodbye to Illness

Counterclockwise

Treatments:

These are the techniques that helped me say goodbye to Rheumatoid. Visit the sites to find local (delusional) practitioners

NAET

BIOSET

Heroic MDs in the Bay Area:

Raj Patel

Morgan Camp

How will you begin today to create the best life you can envision?

Please let me know how it goes.

Program Offering!

If you want a partner to help you craft better questions, actions, and results sign up for a public group coaching program. Groups will be small so everyone gets personalized attention.  More details will follow soon. Send us an email to get on the waiting list. First responders will receive a 20% discount!

As if we parents needed more reason to worry about how we might be ruining our children, Amy Chua comes along and writes Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Why Chinese Mothers are Superior). Her very restrictive parenting methods got her mixed results: one daughter on stage at Carnegie Hall, another so resentful she would have divorced her mother if she could.

Dr. Mac Hicks. offers a great analysis that helped assuage my angst (a bit). According to Hicks, one of the key problems with this approach: “The Tiger Mother philosophy is blind to the concept of individual differences.”

In a recent client conversation, it struck me that management theory shares much in common with the Tiger Mother approach to motivation.

After receiving an onslaught of criticism, Chua admits that she was not attuned to her daughters’ uniqueness. In subsequent interviews, Chua explains that A-grades are not what Chinese parenting is about; rather, they help children be the best they can be. Surely a noble goal.

Tiger Management

Tiger Managers are not bad people. They just aren’t very effective motivators. While they may want to bring out the best in their employees, their methods leave employees discouraged and potentially resentful.

You already know what the worst Tiger Managers look like. They enforce strict policies, treat people uniformly with little regard for individual preferences or strengths, micromanage, and are quick to find fault.

Yet, some Tiger Management behaviors are less obvious.

Here are just a few ways that well-meaning companies and managers crush souls:

• Misused rewards and consequences
• Comparing (via performance rankings)
• Giving advice
• Poorly phrased questions
• Focus on short-term behavior
• Saying the words “Can I give you some feedback?”

True Motivation

So what can you do instead?  We know from scientific studies that people do their best work when they feel respected and safe. Where they can do challenging work that gives them some sense of meaning. For starters, you can:

• Respect differences: one approach does not fit all
• Help people find work that puts them in “Flow”: where they feel as though they are developing mastery
• Learn to create safe environments where people feel they can take risks and speak their mind
• Help people find meaning in their work
• Help people find their own insights
• Offer meaningful thanks after the work is done

Resources to Help You Become a Maul-Free Motivator

Books

Dan Pink gave us the following two great books (just click on the titles for transport to Amazon.com):

• A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future: This book contains information and practices to help you become more effective in what Pink calls the Conceptual Age. Even more relevant is his latest book:
• DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
  

Articles

• Managing With the Brain in Mind: This article from David Rock should be required reading for all managers. He offers a compelling, succinct summary of neuroscience findings that show the five ways managers frequently put people on the defensive and squelch innovative thinking or collaboration. Rock offers the article free on his site. Or, you can grab a PDF right now. Just click on the article title.
• Why the Brain Hates Advice: For a condensed version of Rock’s findings take a look at this article we wrote last year.
• Chill Out Tiger Mother: On the Psychology Today blog by Dr. Hicks, this wonderfully titled article is a partial antidote to Chua’s teachings.
  

A Gift

• Use our one-page Flow Assessment based on the work of positive psychology researcher and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to help you begin a conversation about how to reduce anxiety and increase fulfillment at work.

What’s Your Legacy?

As we’ve noted in prior posts, managers are contagious.

All managers (and parents) leave behind a residue: toxic sludge, gold dust, or something in-between.

What are you leaving in your wake?

People may forget what you said and people may forget what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel.

-Maya Angelou

- Shakespeare

Step Off the Stage

If you want to take control of your results and your life, get off the stage, get out of character, and get into the director’s chair.

More often that not, we are so immersed in the show called life that we forget we own the script rights. We become lost in our character, allowing emotions and circumstances to direct us.

To author and neuroleadership expert David Rock,

“the director is a metaphor for the part of your awareness that can…watch the show that is your life, make decisions about how your brain will respond, and even sometimes alter the script. Without self-awareness, you would have little ability to moderate and direct your behavior moment to moment.”

“Without a director you are a mere automaton, driven by greed, fear, or habit.” David Rock, Your Brain at Work

Re-cut Your Results

Directors design films and stage-productions to evoke certain emotions and reactions from the audience.

We can similarly direct ourselves. For example:

• When people aggravate us we can change the angle and try to see things from their point of view. We can get curious about why they differ so strongly and what stress they may be experiencing.
• When asking questions we can change the metaphorical lighting from cold, interrogating spotlight to something more diffuse and warm.
• When giving feedback we can replace the Halloween III soundtrack to something less terrifying.
• When we attempt to motivate others, we can be less like Sue Sylvester and more like Mr. Schuester. (Don’t miss the gift link to Sue’s soundtrack at the end of this post!)

Assignments

1. Observe yourself daily as though watching a stranger through a camera.

• What do you notice about how this person interacts with the world?
• What’s the tone/genre of this movie: Horror? Suspense? Comedy? Love Story? Tragedy? Farce?
• What soundtrack would best suit when this person enters a room? Darth Vader’s theme? Mary Poppins?
• How could you edit your character’s thoughts, tone, actions, to improve the tone?

2. Poll the audience.

• Instead of sending out a dry, data-driven 360-degree feedback survey, ask your staff what movie and/or music best describes your leadership. And encourage them to be honest and creative. Perhaps you are more Psycho before your morning coffee and more Sound of Music after lunch. Consider having a trusted neutral party collect the anonymous responses and give awards for most honest and useful. While you’re at it, ask your family, friends, love-interest.

Take Control

We can go through life passively unaware or as objective directors making intentional decisions about the mood we want to convey and the results we want to elicit.  Not everyone will like your version of the movie, but at least you won’t be a puppet to your thoughts and emotions.

Enjoy the show!

Click to hear Sue Sylvester’s theme music during her amazing post-Superbowl tirade.

Want help becoming your own director? Contact us about individual leadership coaching or group coaching.

A few years ago, I gave up the practice of making New Year’s Resolutions, thus giving up the sense of failure and accompanying guilt that rolled around mid-March. Maybe you are one of those people that always keep your resolutions. If so, stop reading. If not, don’t despair: you are entirely normal (unlike those other freaks).

Blame it on the Brain

Here’s neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz’ explanation for why we so often fail to meet our goals:

“Change is pain.”

“Trying to change any hardwired habit requires a lot of effort in the form of attention…which leads to a feeling that many people find uncomfortable. So they do what they can to avoid change.”

So, it’s not entirely your fault. Your brain is set on protecting you from discomfort. The result: you further cement hard-wired habits.

The good news: you can become the boss of your brain.

First, you have to better understand your specific resistance to change. For this, we can look to the amazing work of two researchers, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. In their book, Immunity to Change, they describe how each of us has a sophisticated, often subconscious, system of practices, fears, and assumptions that keep us locked in place and thwart our attempts to change.

They write: “The most reliable route to ultimately disrupting the immune system begins by identifying the core assumptions that sustain it.” Examples of big assumptions include:

• People are less capable than I (so I won’t delegate or will force people to do things my way only)
• People are not to be trusted (so I withhold information)
• If I speak my mind, I will be eaten (so I keep my mouth shut and my contributions locked in my head)
• ______ is evil (so I lose all compassion and curiosity, diminishing any chance of having a rewarding relationship)

Once the assumptions are identified, you can begin to test their validity.

Dangerous Assumption

It Works

In 2010, I began using their simple Immune Identification process with private clients and workshop participants. In one team offsite, a VP stopped me at the break after about 45 minutes with the process and said “I’ve been to a lot of these meetings and I have never seen people learn so much about themselves and reveal so openly as I just witnessed.”

Whether you want to change yourself, an employee, or an organization, begin by discovering the change immune system, or risk wasting precious energy and resources for short-lived improvements.

A Gift

Given that I could not find a concise handout in their book or website, I developed a brief set of instructions (with sample) based on Kegan and Lahey’s work that I use with success with my clients. If you’d like a copy, send me an email to denise@brillianceinc.com with subject Change Immune Instructions and I’ll send it promptly. No strings attached, no need to trade anything. I welcome any success stories.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

In the Pixar movie Ratatouille, a novice (and mostly talentless) cook gets an experienced mentor who gives him explicit cooking advice that he heartily heeds. Eventually, after much instruction, intense attention, and lots of practice, he can cook well enough to survive in a top restaurant. The apprentice tells his mentor “Thank you for the cooking advice” and she responds, “Thank you for taking it.”

Is there anything sweeter than someone digesting your brilliant advice?  And, like so many of the most prized delicacies, it’s rare.

We wrote about the limits of advice in our prior issue Advice: Proceed with Caution. Now we have scientific data to explain why ADVICE SO SELDOM WORKS.

Advice as Threat

Dr. Evian Gordon, founder of the Brain Resource Company, explains that the brain’s overarching principle is to classify the world around you into things that either hurt you or help you stay alive. “Minimize danger, maximize reward” is the organizing principle of the brain. Your limbic system is charged with categorizing the world into friend or foe, safe or dangerous. And just to be safe, your limbic system errs on the side of dangerous.  Long ago, when a rustle in the bush could have meant imminent death, this was useful.  Now, our sensitive brain doesn’t always serve us so well.

And sadly for those of us who love giving advice (and particularly sad for parents of teenagers), advice lights up all our brain’s danger signals, sapping resources from our higher brain rendering us less efficient and less able to accept the advice. David Rock, CEO and author of Your Brain at Work, offers an incredibly useful acronym, SCARF, to explain why the brain’s threat system gets activated and how we can leverage knowledge of the brain to minimize threat and increase our capacity.

What the Brain Craves: SCARF

Status: We constantly assess how social encounters either enhance or diminish our status. In our personal lives, our neighbors’ new car, their kids’ college acceptance, their groomed yard and much more, are material for comparison. In the work place, even a casual conversation with a boss can trigger a status threat response. And when a superior offers advice, our limbic system focuses on their perceived superior knowledge and experience–not on how we can benefit from the advice.

Certainty: All humans crave a degree of certainty. When unsure how to resolve a problem, our memory decreases and we disengage from the present moment, focusing instead on what could go wrong in the future. In this mode, we are less likely to hear and neutrally appraise advice.

Autonomy: People need to feel some control over their lives and an ability to choose. When offered advice, the limbic system can trigger an emotional threat response at having our options narrowed.

Relatedness: Our brains are constantly assessing people as friend or, more often, foe. So before offering someone advice, build relationship.

Fairness: The cognitive drive to seek fairness is evidenced by people fighting and dying for causes they believe are just. If employees perceive a leader playing favorites, they will withhold trust and true collaboration won’t happen. On the flip side, employees will stay loyal longer to leaders and companies they perceive as fair. When a leader dishes out advice, an employee’s inner dialogue may sound like: “What, you don’t trust me to figure it out?  I bet you wouldn’t tell Suzie what to do.”

Good Advice for You but…

And just because your advice seems optimal to your brain, doesn’t mean it’s right for the brain you’re trying to influence. According to David Rock, “Human brains are so complex and individual that there is little point in trying to work out how another person ought to recognize his or her thinking.  It is far more useful to help others come to their own insights. “

What Works

When we come up with our own insights and solutions, our brain is deluged with rewards.Our sense of status goes up, along with a sense of increased autonomy and certainty. We even get a little lift from the dopamine burst that encourages us to take action and move us toward forming new neural pathways. Here are two approaches:

1.       Help others narrow the problem to one clear statement by asking:

• What’s the core issue?
• How would you describe the problem in one sentence?
• What will it look like if resolved successfully?

2.       Help them focus on their own internal thought process by asking:

• What solution are you leaning toward?
• What have you tried already?
• How did it work?
• If you had to guess what to do, what would it be?

And you may help motivate them to act by asking:

• If nothing changes a year from now, where will you be?
• What’s the first step you can take?
• What support can you gather?

For real change to happen, inspiration has to come from within. Sure, you might motivate someone in the short term with carrots and sticks, but it will be fleeting change at best.

Become an Inspiration Catalyst

Withholding advice can be draining. It takes great energy, patience, and self-control to help others find their own insights when you have a golden nugget that you’d love to share. To regularly evoke brilliance from others, you’ll need practice. In time, it will become more habitual and take less effort.

You can start by working on your own SCARF. That is, build a brain that trusts more and fears less, and gain capacity to perceive and evaluate options more clearly. While not easy to rewire a brain, with focused effort it will happen. Leaders who invest the time will reap huge rewards as they become more trusting to others and create low-fear-zones where people can let down their guard and do their best work. They also gain the ability to hear and act on good advice swiftly.

“[t]his need to demonstrate how smart we are rarely hits its intended target.”

~ Marshall Goldsmith

Other Resources:

Your Brain at Work by David Rock

Managing with the Brain in Mind by David Rock

Drive, by Daniel Pink