121: Smart Emotional Calibration with Dr. Nicole Lipkin

Pete Mockaitis
Nicole, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Nicole Lipkin
Thanks so much for having me, Pete. I’m excited to talk to you today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some really great stuff, and I’d like to start with your blog series. It’s How to Torture Your Boss and How to Torture Your Employees. That made me chuckle. What’s the skinny behind the scenes there?

Nicole Lipkin
Well, I started them because I think everything is so serious in the leadership and the management and the business world and I think some humor needed to be added. So, they came from, you know, the things that drive us crazy about working for people and having people work for us. So, they’re just kind of funny little blogs that everyone can relate to. It’s just a little bit of sense of humor, a little bit of sarcasm, and I think that can go a long way. So it’s just fun. And it’s just fun for me. It’s cathartic for me to write.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Can you maybe give us a teaser in terms of amongst the most torturous examples that are pervasive and painful?

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah, I mean, I have to and full disclosure, a lot of them come from my employees.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, they’re listening and feeling sad.

Nicole Lipkin
Right, exactly. I mean, like one example is how to torture your boss while she is away on vacation, you know, by sending constant emails, or sending the email, “Boss, don’t worry about it. Everything is fine. We kind of just lost that contract, but don’t worry, we have it all under control.” You know, like jarring emergency emails when you’re finally away on vacation for the first time.
And, you know, from the employee perspective, the kind of the micro management stuff or the never-leaving-your-office, or never leaving the office until very late so people feel like they have to stay late, or whatever. Just all the annoying little things that happen in the workplace that, I think I can say, we all experienced and that frustrate us. So they’re just funny quips about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, those are fun. Thank you. And so, please, keep the humor coming. It is appreciated here. And I really like to dig in a little bit in terms of you talked about three things that tend to derail leadership. Can we spend some good time just unpacking each of those?

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I wrote my last book What Keeps Leaders Up at Night it really was inspired from a lot of the leadership consulting work that I do but also my background as a psychologist and also from a very personal experience that I had. And it might be helpful to share that.
You know, I own two companies, and one of the companies is a leadership consulting company, and one of them is a group psychology practice based in Philly. And the group psychology practice have had a really cool culture and I feel people in my field are strange so I decided to bring on people I knew and build a great culture. I’m really proud of it. But it was getting really busy and it was time for me to hire an office manager. And I did because I was getting also very busy with traveling with the leadership development work.
And, admittedly, and this is the worst thing you can do, I hired out of desperation, but I hired this woman from… and she was 28 years old, and she had a really big personality. Like really big personality. But she had an interesting background in recruiting, she didn’t have office management experience but that’s something that I felt I could teach. What she did have was when she “grew up,” and I put quotes around that, she wanted to be a psychologist. So I felt like, “Okay, I can teach her the business of psychology.”
So, anyway, I had a bad feeling in my gut. And by the way, really important, if you have a bad gut feeling, that’s not like your gut is not wishy-washy. That’s actually science. That’s based on your experience and your mental models and your exposure in life. But I did what I frequently do and I ignored my gut feeling and hired her.
And I was a really good boss, though. I would coach her, I would take her off for coffee when she messed up and be like, “Okay, what were the problems that you saw? How could you do this better?” And we had a ton of coffee in that year. A ton of coffee. And let me just clarify that, “When you mess up in office management in a medical practice, that’s insurance fraud.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Nicole Lipkin
So she was really messing up, and I was spending more time fixing her mistakes than I was doing it myself. She also, because of her attitude and just the way she was, was really infecting the culture of my company. People couldn’t rely on her. My clinicians couldn’t rely on her.
Anyway, a year, as you can see the problem, a year into her employment I sat her down. I’m like, “Listen, I’d love to give you a raise but I can’t because you keep messing up, but here are some things that we can do to work on that and let’s revisit this in three months.” And she said to me, “Nicole,” and this is a quote, “I totally understand, but you need to understand how hard it is to be 28 and to have your dad pay for your vacations, your credit card bills and mortgage and your rent.”
And I’m like, “Wow.” I was like, “Well, why don’t you get another job to help subsidize,” because she was only working part-time for me. And she’s like, “But, Nicole, this is my fun year.” Well, needless to say, really, I mean, I was already a bad boss at this point because I didn’t fire her. I became a horrible boss, and I was mean.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s her fun year, Nicole. Come on.

Nicole Lipkin
I know. I know. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know what I was thinking. Oh. So, anyway, three months later she gives me her two weeks’ notice because her dad was paying for a month-long European vacation, and then she was going to go find a real job, and those were the words she said.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh.

Nicole Lipkin
I know, poor girl. But what was so interesting is, you see, my first book was written about, it was about managing millennials. And I’m paid to help people be better leaders and be successful leaders, and I’m a shrink, so I’m supposed to be all nice and understanding, but I wasn’t. Like none of those things worked. Like that was such a kick in the butt. And what I realized stepping away from that is that, wow, I was way too busy, way too busy to win. I was so overwhelmed that I wasn’t even thinking straight.
I was way too proud to see, meaning I was so resistant to changing and so resistant to letting her go because I was so invested because I had hired her and I couldn’t make, you know, in my mind I’m like, “How can I make a mistake?” And I was so afraid of losing. So I realized from that, my personal experience, but also of years doing this work and being a shrink and doing leadership work and working with all these fabulous folks that these are such common natural human derail-ers that we all experience professionally and personally.
And it’s our responsibility as human beings to recognize them and look at them and see what we can do. And recognize them so when we hit that bump in the road we can turn it around. And that’s why I think they’re so important. There are so many factors that make them up but that was my own personal experience with those three derail-ers. So I babbled on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no. That’s a pretty fun story. Thank you for sharing. Do you know where she is now?

Nicole Lipkin
Well, she became a therapist, which is so frightening, and I don’t know, she moved out of the state. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’m sure her dad is still paying for her European vacations.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man.

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is fascinating and wild and intriguing, and I think it really just goes to show you that it’s like when it comes to firing people what would you tell me? Before that had you fired anybody?

Nicole Lipkin
No, I hadn’t. I hadn’t been in a position to fire people, I mean, I hadn’t needed to fire people. But I have been in that position since that time and it will never get easier. It will absolutely never get easier. It’s one of the hardest things to do. And I think, you know, just because of empathy and when people have empathy and feel bad and all that, but also because especially when you hire someone you’re invested. There’s something called sunk cost bias which we will put more time, money and effort into things that are our decisions or our things even if it is a really bad decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Nicole Lipkin
I mean, it’s amazing. You know, the Aerospatiale? You ever heard of that, the Concorde plane? It’s often called the Concorde bias, too. It was the British and French governments had built this Concorde plane. It was going to go faster than any other plane. It was very exciting, it’ll cross seas and all of that. And they were losing money. They put a lot of money into it but they ended up, over time, losing money. It wasn’t paying out as much as they thought it would.
And what did they do? They ended up putting more money, time and effort into this thing. And, finally, they pulled out but that is a human psychological bias. And especially when you hire someone it is so hard to stop putting the money, time and effort into that person.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, thank you. So, now I’d like to dig just a bit more into each of these three. Too busy to win, too proud to see, too afraid to lose. In terms of seeing exactly how you would define that, recognize it and address it. So, when you say too busy to win, that’s just a fun term of a phrase because, “Well, the reason I’m busy is because I’m trying to win. How can I be too busy to win?”
But I think what you’re saying there is you have so much just stuff that you’re committed to, activities and doing this in your world that you are unable to make sufficient time for the things that truly are going to make the difference. Is that a fair synopsis of that?

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, just think about it. We’re so inundated, just constantly we’re so inundated with information, with technology, all of this stuff. And the way I like to think of the brain, I like to think of it as a shelf that you go get at IKEA, right? And which I think is just a doomsday for all couples. IKEA is just amazing. You walk in so happy. You walk out so miserable.
When you are there, you go buy your shelf, right? And you get home, and you have the little directions and you put your shelf together, and you hang it up. And before you throw out the directions the shelf says, “Don’t put more than 80 pounds or it’ll break.” And you throw out your directions, whatever, and you start piling your books and your tchotchkes on your shelf, and you’re up 50 pounds. You pile some more books and more tchotchkes more books, more tchotchkes and you start seeing the shelf sag a little bit, right?
But what do you do? You ignore it because you got the shelf and you want to put on all your books and tchotchkes on it. So you keep on piling stuff on it even though it’s sagging and it, all of a sudden, snapped and your shelf breaks. Well, it’s the same thing with our brains. We have all the signs and symptoms of a sagging shelf in our brains.
For example, waking up chronically angry or agitated, going to the supermarket to pick up a few items and then you get there and you have no idea why you’re there. You can’t remember your list. Or just anything like that or feeling kind of chronically anxious. Or not being able, when you’re reading a paragraph or something in a book or an email, you just keep on reading the sentence over and over and over, and it’s not sticking in.
So, the truth is, unless someone has a pretty significant learning disorder, or a real illness that they’re suffering from, we’re supposed to be able to remember what we went to the market for. And we’re not supposed to be waking up chronically agitated or chronically anxious. And we’re supposed to be able to get past a sentence and move onto the next and comprehend. Those are the signs of a sagging shelf. But what do we do? As adults, like what do we do? You move on, you plough through and you ignore it and then all of a sudden, snap. Your own shelf sags, or your own shelf breaks.
And the thing is, and you have an outburst, or you get pissed off at someone, or freak out on someone, whatever it might be. The thing is, the consequence of that is way more significant than we would like to think. First of all, we all know physically, our mental health and our physical health, we are given the gift of our bodies and our minds. And to wear that out early is just stupid. You know, we have to take care of ourselves. It is such a short time on this earth that we have.
But when you think about the impact you have on your friends and your family and your colleagues, it’s pretty significant. So there’s this thing, have you ever heard of the concept emotional contagion?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I’m thinking about Michelle Gielan and Shawn Achor right now in terms of some of this mirror neuron stuff. But, go. Run with it.

Nicole Lipkin
Okay. So, when you freak out, the impact that you can have on other people is so significant. So, as human beings we’re designed to mimic one another. So, when we’re born and mommy is holding us in her arms, and she looks down at us and smiles, we smile back. If she frowns we frown back. And the thing is, emotions really aren’t very sexy. They’re neurological firings. We’d like to think they’re more sexy than they are.
So when you smile, it sends off, with the muscles from that smile, it sends off all these physiological processes in your body that triggers your limbic system, your emotional center. It’s a very powerful part of your brain which produces the feeling of happiness. And when you frown those muscles set up all these physiological processes that trigger the limbic system and create sadness, anger, so on, so on and so on.
Again, it’s not sexy at all. It’s just these neurological firings. That’s why when you’re walking down the street and someone is smiling at you, not in a creepy way, but someone is smiling at you, it’s hard not to smile back. Or if someone is crying, or feeling down, if you have a friend that’s depressed or sad, it’s really hard not to feel depressed and sad around that person.
That’s emotional contagion. So if you think about that, it happens in an instant. And if you think about not managing your shelf and letting it snap, of course you’re going to have emotional reaction. But the impact that that can have around the people around you is so, so intense and so significant. And the thing is, is as humans, we hold on to negative experiences and negative information more than positive experiences and positive information. And it’s just because it’s easier to retrieve in our brains and we use stronger adjectives and we like to complain about things, we like to talk about crappy things that happen, and talk longer about it.
So what we know research-wise is that it takes five positives to make up for one negative. So, you allowing your shelf to snap not only impacts you and the people around you, but people start holding on to that impression of you, and that can really impact careers. It can impact relationships. And I think with our, you know, I’m sure on your podcast you’ve had people come on and talk about the science of technology and the impact that that’s having on our brain and our relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
With all that distraction and such and attention spans a little bit. But if you have a gem, you know, don’t hold back.

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah, I mean, because when you’re thinking about your sagging shelf it’s not just the to-do list. Your technology, and more specifically your relationship with your technology, has such an impact on your sagging shelf, so much more than we probably all give it credit for. So, again, I’m sure people have talked about this before, but what happens is if you have a smartphone – and we all have smartphones – and you have it set to buzz or vibrate or beep or whatever, obviously you look at it.
If you have your notifications on, you can’t, most likely, control yourself from looking at it when it goes off. And, on a side note, if you’re in a conversation with a colleague or a client or a friend or whatever, and your eyes dart to your phone, which it automatically will because that’s how the human brain is designed, even though that’s not your intention, you’re giving a middle finger to someone. Even though that’s not your intention.
But, anyway, that light going off, or vibration going off, that hits the second, or equivalently the most powerful part of your brain, you have your emotional center but you also have your reward center, and that’s equally as powerful. Those are the two most powerful parts of your brain. So that sets off the dopamine loop. And I won’t get into all the like nerdy details about that but that dopamine loop is also set off when you eat a piece of chocolate, when you smoke a cigarette, when you drink alcohol. That center is the center for addictions.
So your phone is triggering that same area. And the thing is, over time, obviously many of us have become slaves to that. But that also means you’re never, ever, ever, ever turning off. And for those of you like listening to this, when you don’t discipline yourselves to kind of cut off your screen time at least an hour before you go to sleep, you’re setting up a cycle for yourself where your brain is not releasing melatonin so you’re not actually getting the deep sleep that you need for recuperation.
And what science is showing, what we know is people that have insomnia tend to also have comorbid depression. And the reason why is when we’re not having deep sleep, when we don’t get deep sleep, that lack of sleep tends to beat up the area of the brain that holds positive feelings, emotions and memories. And so the negative feelings, emotions and memories are way more retrievable, and that’s why over time, with not getting deep restorative sleep, it’s often associated, people often experience states of depression.
So this is a real thing, and our society, like we’re rewarding people for working harder and harder and harder even though there’s a counterculture coming with wellbeing and wellness and all of that, but we have to take control over this for ourselves because the impact can be so significant on our wellbeing but also on our relationships professionally and personally. But it’s a hard one. It’s a hard one to break because you’re dealing with your addiction center.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that is powerful. And so when you say your shelf snaps, I mean, I could understand how that provides negative impressions that you’re broadcasting all around you. Could you maybe give us a couple of examples of a shelf snap? I mean, it sounds dramatic but maybe it’s more subtle. Like what does it look and feel like when you are witnessing a person whose shelf is snapping?

Nicole Lipkin
Well, I think if you just look around, look at people that like freak out and like when they’re driving and freak out with road rage, right? Where you see them in the car, like, “Argh,” you know. Or when someone around you is extremely stressed out, that’s just shelf snapping. Like being extremely stressed out and not being able to kind of work through it.
I mean, obviously there are reasons why people get really overwhelmed and stressed out and that’s normal. It’s a normal part, like stress is not bad, but unmanaged stress is bad. So when people have kind of stress that’s leaking out and affecting everyone around them, that’s an example of someone whose shelf has snapped and they’re having that emotional contagion effect on other people, and also impacting themselves badly.

If someone gets really angry, starts yelling. Again, all of this stuff. Emotion is totally normal – anger, sadness, like all of the emotions. Totally normal. The fact that we can experience it is – I don’t mean to sound cheesy here – but it’s a beautiful thing. It means we’re alive. But how you manage that emotion matters. So if you’re snapping out on people, yelling at people, yelling at your peers, or being stressed out and leaking out all over the place, or yelling at your friends, or at your spouse, or whatever it might be.
If your sleep is disrupted from your level of stress, if your eating habits are disrupted, I think once you deviate from your normal behavior that’s when it’s time to take a look. Actually before you deviate from your normal behavior it’s time to take a look. Unless you’re in an emergency room, or a fire fighter where you have to respond to emergencies, like that thing we do is going to be life and death, you know.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. I have comforted myself with that in the midst of making mistakes. It’s like, “Well, nobody’s dead, or no one’s going to die even if you make the absolute worst decision on this question right now.”

Nicole Lipkin
Right, exactly. It’s the excuse I like to use all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, so now let’s talk about the “too proud to see” side of things.

Nicole Lipkin
You know, this is so – this one is so interesting because this speaks to the human condition. We are, as human beings, resistant to change. Period. And every single person. Even some people are better, like we are all. Our brains are designed to be resistant to change. When we are faced, and that goes back to when we first started coming into this universe, and it was a survival thing.
So when we are faced with change it triggers the same part of the brain that’s triggered when a gun is held to your head. The thing is your brain doesn’t necessarily know if there’s a gun at your head or if you’re being asked to eat yogurt for breakfast when you’ve eaten a bagel for breakfast for the past 25 years. So our brains are really kind of like basic when it comes to that and everything.
Everything in our body is designed to maintain equilibrium, our nervous system, everything. And our body is designed to maintain that. So when something is off kilter that’s when you have your shelf snapping, or that’s when you have this resistance to change. And there are so many reasons why resistance to change occurs.
There’s a bunch of psychological biases, and I’ll talk about some. But one of the main reasons why resistance to change occurs is just ego depletion or exhaustion. And there was a very interesting study done. There were three groups in this research study, and you might have heard this. Have you heard of the chocolate chip and radish study? Chocolate chip cookie and radish study?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking about marshmallows, so, no.

Nicole Lipkin
Different study, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know this one.

Nicole Lipkin
That study is willpower. But I just got really hungry with marshmallows and chocolate chip cookies. So there were three groups, okay? One was a chocolate chip cookie group, one was the radish group and one was the control group. So every group was brought into this room that smelled like amazing fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, and on the table was a huge plate of these delicious chocolate chip cookies and some chocolates, and then a huge bowl of beautiful red radishes.
So the chocolate chip cookie group was asked to come in and they were told you can have two or three chocolate chip cookies but don’t touch the radishes. And then they were sent off after they ate their cookies, they were sent off into this room to go solve an unsolvable problem.
The radish group was told to come in and they were told, “Don’t eat any chocolate chip cookies, but you can have these two to three radishes.” And then they were sent off to solve the unsolvable problem. And then the control group didn’t even go in that room. They were just told to solve the unsolvable problem. What do you think was found? Who gave up quicker on solving the problem?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, just because the term depletion that makes me think those two had to resist the cookies were depleted and thus had less power to go after the problem for a long time.

Nicole Lipkin
Exactly. Exactly. So think about this in our lives for a second. So, yes, just resisting, because most people would rather eat a cookie than a radish. Just being told that they had to resist the cookies, they gave up significantly sooner on that problem. So think about this in your own life.
So we get up in the morning, an alarm goes off, and we have to make a decision about whether we’re going to press snooze or not. Then we get up, and then we have to make a decision about whether we’re going to shower or not, and hopefully, we make the right decision. Then we have to make a decision about what we’re going to wear, what we’re going to make for breakfast, what we’re going to make the kids for breakfast, what we’re going to drive, which direction we’re going to drive, what we’re going to do at work.
By the time you get to work you had made so many decisions that you’re already a little depleted, and that’s why, just on a side note, really important decisions should be made first thing in the morning. They shouldn’t be made, like if you had team meetings and things like that where you have to flush out really important stuff, do it at 9:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m., don’t do it at 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. because by then you’re depleted.
Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day, you know, his jeans and sneakers and his turtleneck. Mark Zuckerberg with his hoodie. That’s why some people wear, that’s why uniforms are often put in place because at least it takes out that decision, and picking out an outfit is often a very big decision that can be very depleting.
So ego depletion and exhaustion very much contributes to our resistance to think about different ways of doing things, to think about changing or involving ourselves in decisions to change, and that’s fascinating. And when you start applying that to your own lives you can really see the difference about when you leave the big ones in the morning versus leaving those big decisions, or things that you have to change, at night. There’s a huge difference with that.
And once you start, that’s why kind of setting routine and habit when you talk to productivity experts, that’s part of the reasoning for it because the more things that you have that are routine and habitual the less you’re tapping into this ego depletion and the less you’re also tapping into your willpower which is a whole another topic for another day.

And then there’s all these funky psychological biases that we all have when it comes to change, and I talked about one before. The sunk cost bias, there’s the status quo bias, there’s loss aversion. There’s tons and tons and tons that play into our decision-making around change and our resistance to change. And actually when you think about it, some of the biggest companies, the mammoths have gone down because of their resistance to change. I always think of Borders when I think of this. Remember Borders Bookstore?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Nicole Lipkin
Well, when Amazon was coming onto the scene, Barnes & Noble said, “Let’s invest in our online store.” While Borders said, “Let’s invest in our brick and mortar stores.” So think about what was happening in that boardroom. You had people that were stuck in the, “Well, this is the way it’s always worked. Why change?” And eventually they went down. Same with Kodak, same with Blockbuster. And you know a lot of companies go down because of this resistance. So it requires really being adaptable and building your adaptability, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about the third one – too afraid to lose?

Nicole Lipkin
So, too afraid to lose, the way I like to think about this is this has to do with your mindset. You’re familiar with Carol Dweck’s research on fixed and growth mindset?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the fixed and growth, yeah.

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a really powerful research. You know, all of us have fixed mindsets about certain things in our lives, and hopefully some of us have growth mindsets about certain things in our lives. And obviously a growth mindset does set you up for being able to be open for growth and open to feedback and be okay with failing and being okay with tripping up.
So being too afraid to lose, that derailer kind of gets, is the derailer that creates this fixed mindset. And we all know that being in a fixed mindset really just closes off your options. It closes off your options for growth. But we all, it’s so normal. It’s so human. We all fall into it in certain areas of our lives. It’s hard to change sometimes.
So being able to develop a growth mindset means knowing your weaknesses. It means redefining what failure is to you, because there’s nothing wrong with failure. There’s nothing wrong with screwing up. The only thing wrong is if you don’t take the lessons from it and try again. To develop a growth mindset means being willing to do it in a different way and learning from other people’s mistakes. It means kind of reframing a problem as an opportunity, and getting pumped about the fact that you’re going to mess up but you’re going to invest in your own growth.
I think for something I’ve seen over and over developing a growth mindset very much means reshaping your relationship with time. Like we have this expectation that has to happen especially with the “too busy to win” thing that it has to happen yesterday, it has to happen immediately. But, no, when you’re learning and you’re scaling, or when you are in a situation that you don’t necessarily know how to navigate yet, it’s going to take some time.
Just like riding a bike. Like when you were born you didn’t know how to speak. It took time to learn how to put the ba-ah-ahs together and to make words, and then all of a sudden to make sentences, and then to put these things together. It took time. That’s growth. So I think in our “too busy to win” state we forget that learning new things and learning new situations. It’s not about being too afraid. It’s about reshaping our relationship with time and setting realistic goals and rewarding the progress along the way.
I think this is actually one of the hardest things to do because being too afraid to lose is so deep-rooted often into our own self-worth and I think especially when you think about entering a new career or just being in a job. You want to excel. And if you’re given a new challenge you want to do well. But it takes time. It takes time to do well and it takes time to learn.
That’s always a sign to know if you’re around a good boss, I’ll tell you that, if that person gives you time and gives you the encouragement and space to learn what you need to learn and to excel. So, yeah, I think this one is the toughest one because it really does tend to be tied into our own self-worth.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so now, I’d love to tap into your psychological brilliance on that point.

Nicole Lipkin
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with “too afraid to lose” and self-worth, it’s sort of like you’ve assigned a meaning there. Like, “If I fail in this regard that means something about me or my worth,” or whatever. So, maybe it requires maybe therapy sessions, but to the extent that you could give us a one- or two-minute trick. What can you do to try to sort of severe that false linkage there?

Nicole Lipkin
Ah, you got it. Perfect. So what that is, first of all, let let’s normalize that because there’s a word for it. It’s called the cognitive distortion and we all get them, and there’s a ton of cognitive distortions, right? You know, example, if someone is supposed to call you when they get home and they don’t, a cognitive distortion is catastrophizing, “Well, they must be dead on the side of the street.” Right? Or, “If I don’t get that promotion that means that I’m a failure in life.”
So we all do that. But the question to ask yourself is, “What if?” and “What then?” So, “If I don’t get this, or I fail,” to jot down or think about in your head, “What then? What will happen then? So if I don’t do this what then? Will my life end? Will I be murdered? Will I never be able to get a job again? Will I never work again?”
So when you start actually listing out all the possible outcomes, you start to recognize that these outcomes are ridiculous. They don’t make logical sense. You know, if I fail at this project it does not mean that you’re going to be fired. I mean, it could but it doesn’t mean you’re never going to work in your life again. So when you start listing them out, you start realizing how illogical and irrational some of the fears can actually be.
But it’s important to do it either writing it out so you can see it, or talking it out to someone else who can be objective. Because when we’re in that state of, “If this doesn’t happen, then it’s the end of the world,” when we’re in that type of cognitive distortion state, what that means is we’re not seeing things clearly, and we often need a trusted advisor to help us work it through or we need to just write it down because when you get out of your brain, reality starts setting in. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Yes, thank you. That’s nice.

Nicole Lipkin
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Nicole, tell me is there anything else you want to make sure we cover before we talk about some of your favorite things?

Nicole Lipkin
No, I think that’s a good overview of that stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool.

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, can you share with us then a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nicole Lipkin
Yes, I can. You know, I have two. One is, “Do not take life too seriously or you’ll never get out of it alive.” That’s my favorite. But I also love the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.” I just always love that quote.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely. Thank you. And how about a favorite study, a piece of research you find fascinating and helpful?

Nicole Lipkin
So this is my favorite study and I think it’s very timely given the political climate that’s going on right now. So in 2009 there was a study done around The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Have you heard about this study?

Pete Mockaitis
No, I don’t know the study. Let’s hear it.

Nicole Lipkin
Oh, it’s a fantastic study. So Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville and Michael Beam, they used The Colbert Report on Comedy Central which, of course, is a satirical show, or was a satirical show, to investigate the subject of confirmation bias. And confirmation bias is like we see things and we hear things that we want to see that confirm our own beliefs, and we tend to ignore things that go against our beliefs.
So, as we know, Stephen Colbert parodies or used to parody Conservative politics and pundits. So the researchers asked 332 participants in the study to describe Colbert’s point of view. And those who held strong Liberal opinions viewed him as a Liberal and his show is pure satire, which it is and he is. Conservatives, on the other hand, saw him as a Conservative pundit expressing honest Conservative opinions through his satire.
So what this showed is that participants’ own views strongly colored their perceptions of the comedian. And, of course, there are studies out there showing this on both sides. But this one always stood out to me and I think it’s very timely with regard to what we pick up in the news and what we hold onto versus what we choose to ignore. So that study always kind of blew me away.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s so fascinating that they’ve studied that because I have talked to people and they say, “Well, Colbert really agrees with my perspective. You can tell.”

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, “Can you? I can’t tell.” I mean, he’s like playing a character, and some of these things he probably believes, sometimes things he doesn’t, because, you know, he is a Sunday schoolteacher like faithful Christian Catholic, so he probably does hold some views that tend to align on the, whatever, Evangelical, you know, Conservative right something. But also it is satire, like the whole thing is a joke. Like he’s role-playing a pundit. So it’s like I don’t know. Only he knows what’s in his heart.

Nicole Lipkin
Right. But he has, I mean, he is more left with his political views and maybe some social. Again, with what you said, but it is a satire but people that held the belief did not see it as a satire. Just thought his satire was supporting his views. It’s just such a fascinating study. And, again, I think it’s really interesting with what’s happening in the world, and news, what’s perceive as fake news, what’s perceive as real news. I mean, this is so important right now of what’s happening.
And just people looking, I mean, people are so divided now. And you can have a group of people on one side, a group of people on the other side in the same room reading the same article and taking completely different points of view from it. Completely. Thinking it has completely different meanings. It’s fascinating stuff.
But it also speaks to how dangerous it is. When you’re in a conversation everyone takes, everyone has a different lens or mental models. All that stuff. It makes us see things from individual unique lenses so it’s amazing how you can walk away from a meeting or a conversation and walk away with two completely different points of view of what just went down. We really have to keep that in check. It’s pretty amazing stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Nicole Lipkin
I have to say I love Mindset by Carol Dweck. It was a very inspiring book. I loved it. So that’s my most recent favorite.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite tool, whether that’s a product or service or app or software? Just anything that helps you be awesome at your job.

Nicole Lipkin
You know, I think I just turn on my notes. When I have to kind of get into deep work and deep think, I turn off all my notifications, but I will say I’ve started using Google Boomerang and it’s made a huge difference. Because if you’re like me, you carry like this a ton of to-dos in your head, and this allows you to put the to-do memory load with regard to getting back to people or following up on a piece of technology versus your brain. So I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s handy?

Nicole Lipkin
You know what, I wake up really early. I do CrossFit, I do yoga, and the waking up early part allows me to fit in all of the things I love, and also, oddly, gives me more energy. I’m sluggish when I sleep in. And the CrossFit and yoga, that’s like my mental health. That keeps me grounded. And I also try very hard to be religious about chunking my time, so blocking out times of the days is where I’m working on specific things and nothing else is allowed to come in during that specific time period, and that’s very helpful for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great. And how about a favorite nugget, something that you share that really gets folks retweeting, nodding their heads, resonating?

Nicole Lipkin
I think when I talk about the emotional contagion piece just because we’ve all experienced it. So different things around the emotional contagion piece and different things around productivity. I can’t think of specifically one, specific tweet, but those two things tend to get more heads nodding.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what would you say is the best place for folks to touch base, to find you, to learn more about what you’re up to?

Nicole Lipkin
Yeah. Well, they can get me at my website which is www.equilibrialeadership.com. That’s E-Q-U-I-L-I-B as in boy, R-I-A leadership.com. Or @DrNicoleLipkin on Twitter or LinkedIn, Dr. Nicole Lipkin. So any of those places.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. And as we part ways here, do you have a parting word or challenge, call-to-action for those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Nicole Lipkin
You know, I would say, and I say this with love, but I say keep yourself in check. As humans we pick up on emotion in milliseconds, much faster than you can even express it. We’re designed to read others if we pay attention and put our minds to it. So you may not feel like you have control of your emotions but you have full control over your expression of emotions and stress.
So I think it’s just important to spend the time and energy necessary working on this right like your career and life. I like to call it emotional calibration, and if you can work towards the mastery of emotional calibration you can really unleash your influence and power. You know, it’s about kind of putting your mind to work whether it be through meditation, through kind of mental challenges, or just kind of working with yourself to reach that emotional calibration. I think it just really makes a huge difference in your ability to exert positive power.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I must follow up. So meditation is one specific action you could take to boost that. What are some of the practices that can move in that direction?

Nicole Lipkin
A big one is learning how to ask people for feedback and then being open to it. Without being open to feedback, and without helping people feel comfortable giving you feedback, you’re never going to know, you’re never going to truly know your impact on others.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Nicole Lipkin
We all have intention but it’s the impact that matters. So learning to be masterful at that is so important. You know, we’re here to grow. And like I said in the beginning, life is short. Like learn to kind of soak up the energy and the information people are willing to give you. So I think that. Obviously the basics, healthy diet, healthy exercise, routine, things like that, good sleep. Really good sleep that is so important. We need our sleep. And I think we also need our play in that balance.
So those kind of things help you learn to manage, you know, emotionally calibrate, but the feedback thing is key.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perfect. Thank you. Well, Nicole, this has been so cool. I wish you tons of luck in running two businesses at once and everything else.

Nicole Lipkin
Pete, thank you so much. I had such a blast.