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Oct 31
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1007: The Overachiever’s Guide to Finding More Fulfillment at Work with Megan Hellerer

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Megan Hellerer reveals the simple shifts that make your career and life feel more meaningful.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why many overachievers feel underfulfilled 
  2. The mindset that leads to fit and fulfillment 
  3. The key questions to ask before any decision 

About Megan 

Megan Hellerer is a career coach and the author of DIRECTIONAL LIVING: A Transformational Guide to Fulfillment in Work and Life. She has led hundreds of women, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to transform their lives by transforming their careers. After checking all the traditional boxes of success—graduating at the top of her class from Stanford University and spending eight years as a Google executive—and still deeply unhappy, she quit her great-on-paper job with no plan. Now her mission is to provide others with the support and guidance that she needed when she herself was struggling.

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Megan Hellerer Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Megan, welcome!

Megan Hellerer
Pete, it’s so good to be here today. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to have you and discuss some of the insights from your book, Directional Living. And I would like to hear a story about a transformed client, but it sounds like, in many ways, your own story is like the picture-perfect textbook case for what we’re talking about here. Could you tell it to us?

Megan Hellerer

Absolutely, yeah. I consider myself my own first guinea pig. All of this grew out of my own need for solutions, for answers. And so, my story is I was what I now have come to call an under-fulfilled overachiever, which is someone who has checked all the boxes, done all the right things, did everything they were supposed to do, and really built this great on-paper life that did not feel so great inside.

And, for me, that looked like, you know, getting straight A’s in high school, captain and president of all the things, going on to Stanford, graduating at the top of my class, starting at Google almost immediately after I graduated, and dutifully climbing the ladder for eight years there, and getting a bunch of different promotions, and getting to work on cool stuff, and be exposed to a lot of interesting ideas.

And, in the meantime, I was having near-daily panic attacks, I was deeply depressed, and was struggling really even to get to work every day. I was just miserable. And I should say this wasn’t always how I was. My mental health started suffering in my time at Google, and yet I couldn’t quite connect it to the fact that I was unhappy at my work, and maybe it wasn’t the best fit for me. I felt so ashamed of the fact that I had this dream job that everybody would want, and what was so wrong with me that I couldn’t be happy or feel like a job was just a job or find fulfillment in this.

And, eventually, I ended up quitting my job with no plan, simply because I really could not do it anymore. And through that process of simply trying to help myself, I sought out many resources and teachers and mentors and programs, and nothing was quite helping me find a new approach or new way of thinking about my work and my career.

And through that process, I ended up taking a coaching training course, simply in an effort to help myself, but also thinking that it might help me when I was back in corporate land, mentoring and managing teams again, and I just loved the way that coaching worked, the frameworks around it. I did not intend for it to be a career. I was extremely skeptical and dubious of coaching as a career. I very much had a lot of ego involved where I was, like, “Who goes to Stanford and becomes a coach? That’s not a thing,” and didn’t really think I could also have an income from that.

But I kept sort of going through the process, and, in order to get certified, which I did just because I figured “Why not? I’m already here,” I had to coach, get a certain number of paid hours of coaching and reached out to some friends of friends. And what happened is that their lives started to change. My life started to change through helping them change their lives. They started referring people to me and before I knew it, before I even had the intention of having a coaching practice, I had a full roster of clients.

And sort of still dragging my feet, I decided it was something that I needed to, I couldn’t not try. And fast forward 10 years later, I’ve now been working with helping under-fulfilled overachievers find fulfillment and developed a methodology and a framework for thinking about this and looking at this, that I realized also applies beyond under-fulfilled overachievers, and now have had the great fortune and joy of getting to write a book about it as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so cool. Well, I want to dig into so many little tidbits here. First, my own curiosity, which coaching certification body?

Megan Hellerer
Coaching Training Institute, CTI. I think they might have changed to Coactive Training Institute.

Pete Mockaitis
jI was going to say, I don’t know a ton about the coaching landscape but I did do the fundamentals course with the Coactive folks. And it seems like the people in the know often say “This is what’s up.”

Megan Hellerer
Yeah, that was the first course that I took was the fundamentals, and then, for the sake of brevity, I left this out of it. But I took that and then I didn’t go back, you know, there’s many other series. I didn’t go back for, like, three months because I was, like, “This is too much fun. This can’t be serious work because work has to be hard and serious, and, therefore, this is a waste of my time because it’s not going to lead me to where I want to go in my career,” which was a whole other mistake or misguided belief. And, eventually, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and went back and completed it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then let’s back it up a little bit. The panic attacks and the deeply depressed and the miserable situation at Google, were these in your life prior to Google, like, as you were crushing it at Stanford, etc.?

Megan Hellerer
No. So, I think that’s a key part of the story is that I did not struggle with mental health previously. I should say, I had high-functioning anxiety, to some extent, but it wasn’t debilitating. It wasn’t getting in the way of the way I was living my life. I had pretty decent coping mechanisms. And so, it really escalated majorly at Google.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, now you’ve done a lot of work and a lot of reflection, and can you identify, is it your assertion that it was the primary driver of some of these mental health challenges, was the mismatch of you and that role there?

Megan Hellerer
Yes, actually. So, I often refer to it as the fulfillment ache, which is like the distance between who you are actually and how you’re showing up in the world. And when that chasm gets too big for too long, this sort of existential depression, anxiety, struggles develop in that gap. So, again, it really does become physically, viscerally painful to live that way.

And so, I think it was a misalignment of my life, in general, Google being a very big piece of it, given how much time I was spending there and how maybe unbalanced my life was. But I don’t think my relationship was a good match for me at the time. I don’t think the city I was living in was a good match for me. And so, there was, holistically, it was the misalignment of my life but that was a major piece of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, since we’re talking about being awesome at jobs here, at How to be Awesome at Your Job, I’m curious, can you identify the particular pieces of mismatch within Google? Because I would imagine, and you correct me if I’m wrong, that there may well be some roles inside the vast breadth that is this company, in which you might be delighted. Do you think that’s the case, or, no, no, there were a few fundamental things that just weren’t working for you?

Megan Hellerer
That one might be delighted in, or that I personally might be delighted in?

Pete Mockaitis
Ah, sorry, you, Megan, would be delighted in.

Megan Hellerer
Yes, because I was going to say, this is not an anti-Google thing, right? Like, there are many people for whom working at Google in whatever role they’re in, and I’ve coached people into Google or supported people’s decisions to be, to stay at, or join Google or other tech companies and all of that, so this isn’t anti-Google or anti-corporate. For me, personally, I do not think there is a role at Google. Never say never, but as far as I can tell, I do not think there’s a role at Google that would be aligned for me.

So, there are a few broader things, like environment, like I just don’t think I’m meant to be in, like, an open floor layout plan. Like, I’m very pretty introverted, and I like to do deep focus work separately from people. So, there are things like that, that I think were never a good match for me and really drained my energy.

Well, I love working from home, which I think is another thing, like, I am most creative and most effective from, like, five to nine in the morning, and that’s when I do my best writing, my best deep thought work. And so, it’s hard to do that when you are keeping corporate hours.

I mean, you can still do that, but then you’re spending four extra hours with your butt in the seat to demonstrate that you’re there in the office. You don’t have a lot of control. Like, I only take meetings at certain days and certain times in order because that’s like the best flow and efficiency for me. All of these things, not Google specifically, but are difficult in corporate land.

I also really like working for myself, as in being my own boss, and kind of, I don’t know, directing the flow of things and deciding what the priorities are, and I really like to be able to be nimble and make quick decisions, like hiring, firing, joining, a lot of testing and learning.

And I found that it was very, draining to have to support decisions and strategies that I really didn’t agree with because that’s the nature of the game. You can voice your opinion, leadership makes the decision, and then it’s your job to enact those things. I also was working on, like, sales and partnership side of things. But living and dying by the spreadsheets of revenue, and that are kind of arbitrary things were really difficult for me, and kind of just, like, the death by PowerPoint, I just like couldn’t. There was all the meetings about meetings and meetings, and I really, clearly, I need to go to more therapy for this.

I really had a hard time with things that felt inefficient or ineffective. And that stuff really grated at me. I also think that’s part of why I was good at my job there, is because I have an eye for scale and operations, and I was able to offer ways that we could improve things, but that isn’t always taken into consideration.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, Megan, I’m relating to this so much, and I love how you’ve teased out some of the very specifics. Like, based on who you are, how you roll, the means by which you operate and exist in this world, were not fitting there with regard to the bureaucracy, you wanted to do more testing and learning, the open floor plan was tricky, supporting things that you weren’t the boss of, making the decisions on, living and dying by spreadsheet revenue, things that felt inefficient.

And it’s funny, I can really relate to so much of this because I thought I had a dream job at Bain & Company and I learned a lot of stuff, and the people were phenomenal, and there was not a jerk or an idiot anywhere to be found there, in my experience, and some cases were really cool for me, and some really weren’t.

And that was really intriguing how we see, “Oh, well, some magazines say this is the best place to work,” Bain or Google, “And yet it’s not the best place for me to work. Huh.” And that’s natural for you to think, “Oh, well, what’s wrong with me? If the world says these are the best places to work, and I’m not happy there, maybe my happiness functioning is just broke.”

Megan Hellerer
Yep, exactly. And I think that gets to the point of there is no objectively great jobs or objectively perfect. It’s only good or right for you. And I will say that in terms of “Would there be a job at Google that would be a good fit for me?” I made many tweaks and shifts in the eight years there to try to make it work. This wasn’t like I did one thing the whole time and then I was like, “Hm, I’m done.”

Like, I changed teams, I changed roles, I changed locations, I changed organizations, I changed products, I changed, like, every managers, seating arrangements, like pretty much every tweak you could make, I made. And when I finally, in sort of the last role, was the thing that I was like, “This is my last hypothesis of what would make this work.” And my idea was, if I was working on consumer-facing products instead of ad-oriented or enterprise or some sort of products, like maybe then if I was working directly with the end consumer that I would care more about the impact I was having.

And even then, and we were working on Google Wallet at the time, like tap and pay, which was brand new and, like, such a revelation and was, like, novel and interesting, and as a consumer I was excited about it, and I still was not excited about doing the work involved in that and the day to day of what that actually felt like and the experience of it, really made it clear for me. And then I think working, I’d been working my butt off for this promotion. I really was like working so hard for so long and, whatever, doing all the things.

And then I got it, I got the promotion, and I felt nothing. In fact, I felt emptier, I was like, “What am I working for now?” And also, nothing actually changes. It’s the same job, which is like maybe more responsibility, maybe a slight pay increase, higher expectations, and now I just work for another promotion? And there was no one ahead of me that I could see, that I was like, “Oh, I actually really want that.”

And it just dawned on me, like, “Who am I doing this for?” And I think those were some of the moments where I couldn’t see somewhere that I truly wanted to get to, or where anything was going to feel different after having made all of those adjustments that I could think of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. And I like the word “hypothesis” there. You were testing each of these things, and it sounds like that’s kind of like a fundamental means by which you cracked the code on this, in terms of “What’s going to do it? Well, let’s see. Maybe it’s this. Let’s try it. Oh, I guess that wasn’t it.” And then, “Oh, this coaching thing is really awesome. Huh, how surprising. Well, maybe let’s do a little more of that, see how that goes.” So, that seems to be one thread there.

Could you share what are kind of the fundamental principles you recommend people keep in mind? If folks are resonating, like, “Oh, this is haunting. Megan is like telling my story,” how would you recommend people start thinking about this thing all the wiser?

Megan Hellerer
I love that you brought up hypothesis because I often talk about it as sort of the scientific method for life, where our job is not to know the answer or to figure out the answer. We’re meant to sit there and be like, “Okay, what am I meant to do with my life? Let me think really hard about this.” We need to live into those things. We need to experiment.

So, have a hypothesis. That’s great. And think, “Okay, I think I want to go into this field,” or, “Coaching seems more interesting, or something to do with counseling and advising and consulting. That seems like a better direction for me.” And then the key thing, is that when you’re doing an experiment in scientific method, the goal is not to prove yourself right. The goal is not to prove the hypothesis right. It’s to find the truth.

And so, what often happens is we pick, in my language, a destination, and say, instead of a hypothesis, “I wonder if this is the right thing for me,” we say, “This is the thing I’m going to achieve. I’m going to become CEO by the time I retire,” and we get so attached to that goal as our failure or success, as opposed to testing and learning, that we don’t even realize somewhere along the way that that actually is not the truth, that’s not the results of the experiment, that’s not actually what we want. And so, when we get there, it doesn’t feel like what we thought it would. And that’s kind of where one of the biggest problems are.

So, to go to these core principles of what I call directional living, which is the first principle, which is focus on the direction, not the destination. And what I’ve found is that most of us who get stuck in our careers, and frankly in our lives, it’s because we focus on the destination. We are being outcome-oriented. We think we need to know exactly where we’re going before we start moving.

So, we think, “Okay, I want to be CEO in, however, many years. I’m going to reverse engineer my path in order to figure out exactly how I’m going to get there. And then I’m going to put on my blinders and I’m going to brute force, just make it happen because that’s what determination is,” and we miss out on so many opportunities and so much information about ourselves as we’re evolving and learning, and also the world as it’s evolving and learning.

And so, what we want to do instead is focus on the direction. And this is sort of the biggest place that we’ve been misled, I think, with traditional career guidance that says, like, have the five-year plan or the 10-year plan, and know exactly where you’re going. So, if you’re focusing on the direction, you’re focusing only on the single next directionally right step. That doesn’t mean, again, we don’t have an idea, a hypothesis of where we’re going.

So, if you imagine it’s a road trip, you might think, “Okay, I’m headed towards the West Coast,” which is different than, “I’m going to L.A. no matter what. No matter how many roadblocks there are, no matter how many detours, I am going to L.A.” to find out, when you get to L.A., that you actually don’t want to be in L.A., or that isn’t the best suited role or job or place for you.

So, instead we’re heading towards the West Coast and we’re allowing ourselves to launch and iterate, to use tech language, as we go. And that, I found, allows for so much more adjustment, flexibility, responsiveness, again, to our own selves and to the world around us, as all of these things are changing at a faster pace than they ever have before, and it allows us to evolve. So, that’s the first principle, focus on the direction, not the destination.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. Thank you. And it’s intriguing, I loved when you said the word blinders, that resonated as the distinction in terms of directional versus destination. With the destination, we got the blinders, like, “Okay, just buckle down, grind, hustle, get her done.” But blinders, by their very definition, literally, I’m imagining a horse with the blinders on, it says, “You’re not looking around, you’re not observing, you’re not gathering the information.”

And yet, earlier in your story, you said, “I looked around and saw those in the elevated positions, those were also not what I wanted. Nobody was doing the thing that I wanted.” And I think that’s so huge, it’s like, “Are the blinders on or are the blinders off?” Because if they’re off and you’re observing, new stuff comes to light.

I’ve got a buddy who’s just on the cusp of the executive leagues at a major retailer. I want to keep it a little vague. And he’ll say the same thing, he’s like, “You know what? I thought I wanted to be a CEO and yet, when I observe CEOs and other executives, I don’t think that’s what I want. They actually seem to be working more than I’m working, and have more stress and responsibility and less time at home, and I’m already feeling like I’d like to spend more time at home with my two little ones and wife. So, I guess I don’t want to be a CEO?” And it was like quite a revelation for him.

Megan Hellerer
Yeah. So, I would say a couple things about that. So, in terms of your friend specifically, I love that he’s thinking about it that way. I would also caution that or I would question, if I were him, I would wonder if there is space to redesign what CEO looks like.

So, I wouldn’t just throw, like, “I don’t see any CEOs that look like the way I want to be a CEO, so I must not want to be a CEO.” Like, there may be room for him to design it in a way that works for him, especially because he’s going to be in a leadership position, or, again, he may say, “I don’t think I do want to be a CEO. What is directionally right for me? What’s like a one-degree turn? Is it something else in the C-suite?” Is it staying where he is for the next however many years? And then maybe he wants to be a CEO when he feels like it better suits his lifestyle at some later time.

There are many ways to look at this, but I love that he’s asking that question. And that is the opposite of blind ambition, in the sense that you aren’t looking around and you aren’t asking yourself the question. The moment you highlighted that I was recapping when I looked around and saw, “Oh, I actually don’t want this life that I have been working towards,” that was the moment my blinders came off. I wasn’t clear about that until those later moments. I was completely in the blinders, and this is where blind ambition comes from.

And a lot of people who come to me who are miserable, but have all the achievements and none of the fulfillment, all the success on paper, feel terrible, they’re like, “Maybe I’m just too ambitious. Is that the problem? Is ambition the problem?” And I feel like this question is coming up more and more. And the thing to me is that ambition is just the desire for impact, the desire for contribution, almost the desire for more life. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think that’s a beautiful, wonderful thing, and it’s the type of ambition, the way and the how of the ambition.

So, the blind ambition is the destinational thinking, the pick the destination and decide no matter what you’re getting there. It’s sort of like the end justifies the means approach of navigating your career and your life. Aligned ambition is “Is this warmer? Is this colder?” launch and iterate, directionally right approach where you have an idea of where you’re heading, you’re not aimlessly wandering.

And maybe CEO has been a beacon for him, and that’s been incredibly effective as a direction, but it’s different than holding on so tightly in the blind ambition sense that it becomes a destination, and the only way that he can achieve success in his life.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Okay. So, that’s a core principle right there. We are going directionally as opposed to strictly to a precise destination. We are not having blinders. Rather, eyes wide open, observing what are we seeing, what are we thinking, what is this information sharing about our emerging evolving hypothesis. Is there another key principle you reckon to keep in mind?

Megan Hellerer

Yes, and we’ve touched on it a little bit, so perhaps we don’t need to go into as much depth about it, but it’s launch and iterate. So, take an experimental approach to your career and your life, and this is especially important for overachievers, or perfectionists, where it’s like either you failed or you succeeded.

But when you take an experimental approach, it can really help to sort of loosen up your ability to try things because if you learn, if you get any more information from whatever you’re doing, it’s been a success. So, if we’re redefining success as learning, as where the only mistake or the only failure is not taking action, this gives us so much more freedom and so much more permission to figure out what works for us. And that is actually what tends to build the most effective, fulfilling, impactful, meaningful careers and lives, is a willingness to launch and iterate, and test and learn.

Pete Mockaitis
And when we’re launching, iterating, testing, and learning, do you have any favorite approaches by which we could do this that might be lower risk than, “Quit your job, move across the country, and do the thing?”

Megan Hellerer
Well, that’s the whole beauty of it. With a launch and iterate approach, with a directional approach, you never have to take gigantic leaps because every single step is just taking the next directionally right action. And so, I actually discourage people from making any gigantic sweeping decisions. This should be a lot of small tweaks, and then when the big decisions get there, they feel like just the next decision as opposed to some gigantic leap of faith.

So, your job is only to move the plot forward. If you made progress that day, you’re good to go. So, again, it’s not about quitting your job, or getting divorced, or moving across the country, or selling all your things, or switching industries, or any of that. And often that is impulsive and running away from something as opposed to running towards something.

Obviously, I had to do that but not everyone has to blow up their life, and my hope is that, had I had these frameworks and tools, I might not have had to do that. I may have been launching and iterating and testing and learning a lot earlier.

So, yes, small decisions are important. And whenever you’re feeling stuck, I encourage people just to, “Where’s my curiosity leading me? What’s one thing I can do that feels, that makes this feel warmer as opposed to colder, that’s moving me in the right direction as opposed to the wrong direction?” And following just that sort of simple calibration, if you make enough right turns, you’re going to end up in the right place.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you give us some examples of tiny, hotter, colder decisions?

Megan Hellerer
So I recently moved Upstate New York. I guess it’s been about a year or two now, so not that recent. But I grew up in New York City, I, obviously, did a stint in California, but I was like, “I’m New York for life,” and really thought I was never going to leave, but I haven’t really given it much thought. I was never like, “Where am I going to spend my life?” It just was like, “This is where I am.”

And in the process of writing my book, I realized I really needed to give myself a DIY writing retreat. And so, I rented a cabin in Upstate New York and went there just to focus and write this book. And I ended up in this one place and I was blown away by how much I loved it and how different it was than what it was in my head, and also how differently I experienced it at this point in my life versus other points in my life.

So, I went home, went back to our normal life but I kept thinking about it. So, the next summer, we decided to rent a house for the summer up in the similar area and try out for the summer what it was like there. And, again, I was like, “Wow, I really love it here.” And then I started thinking, “What if I don’t leave? What if we actually live here?” And that felt like a complete revelation. But instead of getting rid of our apartment and buying a house Upstate, and just like making it happen immediately, I was like, “I just need to take one more directionally right step.”

So, I asked the person who we were renting the house from, you know, what her plans were, and she was actually like, “Well, I happen to not be coming back, so I would consider renting this to you long term,” which is actually a big deal because we didn’t want to buy because we wanted to test.

So, we ended up staying in this house and renting for a while longer, and just testing and learning, because there were many variables that we needed to figure out. My husband has a job in the city, so he’s a professor, and so he does need to be there a few days a week. What was that going to look like? And so, we did that for six months, see how it feels, and we loved it.

And so, then when it turned out that she was going to sell the house, we ended up finding another place, looking around and deciding, “Okay, what are we going to do?” And we found the most perfect home, and it happened to be right around the same time that we found out we were pregnant and we were going to have room for the baby, and so it all sort of, like, worked out. There was a lot of synchronicities involved.

So, that’s an example of how some people might be like, “I need to figure out where I want my permanent home to be,” versus, “Wow, I’m just noticing I really like being here. What if we tried this out for a few more months?” or whatever it is that you have the possibility of doing. So, that’s not a job example. That’s another life example, but that is kind of the framework you can think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, I actually love that right there. And what’s fun is it’s just starting with that directional, as opposed to destinational, and blinders off approach. When you went on that writing retreat, if you had a different mindset, you might not have noticed at all that you liked being there, it’s like, “Got to get the pages. Got to get the pages. What’s the word count goal for the day? Oh, not there yet. Got to hustle. Got to crank. Got to get more words on my writing retreat.” And it could just blow right past you, that, “Hey, this is actually kind of an awesome spot. I’m enjoying being here.”

Megan Hellerer
That’s exactly the point. And I love that you picked up on that, because one of the things I’ve found with people who are used to this blind ambition approach is that we have been taught, or we believe on some level, that our curiosity, our interests, or our joy are a distraction from the goal at hand. So, it’s sort of like, we actively ignore it.

So, for example, I mean, I could think of picking a major in college. I was like, “Oh, I love this creative writing thing.” Well, that is just a distraction from the very practical major that I need to decide on that I’m going to use, as opposed to seeing that as, “That’s really valuable information about what I care about, what I love doing, what excites me, what makes me, gets my creative juices flowing, all of that kind of thing.”

And so, most people, when you ask them, “What do you actually want?” don’t know because they’ve been ignoring it for so long. So, exactly that, had I had a different mindset, if somebody had said to me, “Do you like living here? Have you liked spending your three months here for the writing retreat?” I think I would have said, “I don’t know, that’s not the point of me being here. That’s completely irrelevant information,” versus allowing that information in.

So, one of the practices I tend to do with people a lot is learning how to allow that information, recognize that information, and just even register it. You don’t even necessarily have to do anything about it. But one of the first steps is what I say screenshotting your mind. So, when you’re having ideas or thoughts cross your mind, to get into the practice of noticing them, and you’re sort of sending a message to your brain, to your psyche, to your creative, whatever you want, of “I’m paying attention. I’m ready to capture these ideas.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and I love that so much in terms of like the joy, we could perceive it as a distraction from the real work, or I think we could be quick to write it off. And what comes to mind is a few times my wife has said while I’m just being silly with the kids, “Dada needs an improv class.” Because I’m being kind of kooky and silly and ridiculous, and I sort of immediately dismissed that in terms of, “Well, you know, hey, there’s a lot of going down with work, and the young kids, and this is not practical.”

But I think a better approach, steeped in these principles, would be to say, “Hmm, there is something to that. Like, there is a part of my silly, kooky nature that is meaningful and joyous, that isn’t getting a chance to be expressed as fully in my current set of roles and duties that’s worth reflecting on” as opposed to immediately dismissing, “Oh, improv class. Ah, I’m not going to drive all the way into the city for that. Ah, forget it.”

Megan Hellerer
Yeah, exactly. And that’s exactly the type of thing, because here’s the other surprising thing or at least surprising to me, curiosity, so an interest like that, like, “Huh, improv,” is the best proxy that we have for purpose. So, we spend so much time, “What is my purpose? What am I meant to do here?” We’re not going to be able to necessarily figure out the answer to that. I don’t think we have to have some broad mission statement.

The best thing we can do is figure out what our curiosity is telling us and know that that is going to lead us somewhere. So, if there’s something, when someone said, “Oh, improv class,” first of all, if it wasn’t interesting to you, if there wasn’t something in there that you were interested in, you wouldn’t even bother rejecting it, right? You would just be like, “Mm, yeah, no, that that’s not interesting to me.”

The fact that you, one, have noticed it, but two, actively are like, “No, I’m not doing that,” tells me that there’s something interesting in that to you. And then doing that, I would love to encourage you to explore, even just looking up improv classes, or maybe it’s a one-day workshop, or maybe it’s just going to more improv shows.

The lowest stakes thing that you can think of as a way to take another step, to explore this curiosity, because we don’t need to know where it’s going, and it doesn’t mean most people will jump to the destination, “Well, I’m not going to be a professional improv person,” or, “How am I going to use that in my life?” But instead, realizing it may not be that you do improv in some way, but maybe it sparks you, like just makes you so much more creative, in general, that suddenly you’re having all of these other ideas for a podcast or for whatever other things that you’re working on.

Or, maybe there is something there that you’re, again, it doesn’t have to be improv specifically, but maybe it moves to some other kind of performance, or you make some sort of connection that ends up being something that becomes really meaningful for you. These are the breadcrumbs; these are the clues that are telling us, “This is where the meaning is. This is where the fulfillment is,” and we’re so used to ignoring it.

Another analogy I like to use here is that it’s like cravings for food. So, the cravings are meant to tell you where the nourishment is, right? If you are lacking vitamin C, you might start craving an orange. For us, the craving, the curiosity craving for improv, for silliness, for goofiness, for whatever that self-expression is for you, is your body’s, your psyche’s, your spirit’s way of telling you that there’s some sort of nourishment fulfillment purpose there for you, and that you need to follow that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Well, Megan, tell me, any other top do’s and don’ts you want to make sure to put out there for the under-fulfilled overachievers?

Megan Hellerer
The first thing that I want to highlight is that many people say that this, they feel like doing this work, this reflection on like, “Where’s my curiosity leading me? What am I interested in? What do I care about? What is fulfilling for me?” is selfish or self-centered.

And what I want to say is that I really believe and have found that everybody benefits when we are doing the work that is most aligned for us, when we’re living the life that is most aligned for us, because we’re not only happier and more fulfilled, but we are giving other people permission for them to do what’s most aligned for them, and we’re also doing our best and most impactful work.

You’re actually not being helpful to your team for you to be in a job that is not aligned for you. Donate that job to someone else who actually is really aligned for that work, who can actually show up and want to be doing that work. A lot of people feel like, “Oh, but I’d be abandoning my team.” You’re actually abandoning your team by doing work that isn’t really where you want to be doing and where you could be having such a more impact.

The way that you contribute most to the world, the way that you can benefit most to your community, to the people around you, to your family, is by doing the work to figure out what is most aligned for you because that’s where you’ll be the most impactful. And this ties into the second point, which is another pushback I get, which is, “But what if I can’t afford to quit my job?” or, “What if I can’t afford to do this kind of work?”

And this is completely valid, in the sense that coaching is not available to everyone, and most people can’t afford to quit their job, and the good news is you don’t have to. But we are making decisions every single day in the life that we’re already living. And my suggestion would be to start asking yourself in all of those decisions, “Is this directionally right or is this directionally wrong? Is this warmer or is this colder? And how can I make it more directionally right?”

This could be in what you’re eating for dinner, “Am I doing this because it’s something I think I should do or because I actually want to?” in what books you’re reading, what podcasts you’re listening to. If you can start to make all of your decisions, steering them more in the directionally right, most-aligned-for-you way, this is going to have huge ripple effects on the rest of your life and costs nothing.

Exploring your curiosity doesn’t mean spending a couple thousand dollars on a program. It could mean taking a book out from the library. It could mean listening to a free podcast. It could mean doing a Google search. It could mean sending an email to someone to have a conversation about them. Take an action, any action, towards your curiosity and advance the plot and you’re doing your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Megan Hellerer
One of my favorite quotes that is actually the best analogy I know for directional living came from E.L. Doctorow, which is, “It’s like driving in a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights in front of you, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Megan Hellerer
I think these are depressing studies, but I think they’re important, which is engagement at work is at an 11-year low, where only 30% of people feel engaged with their work. That’s a Gallup poll. And only 17% find it to be a source of meaning, which is half of the rate from four years ago, and that’s a Pew study. And both of those are post-pandemic. This isn’t like the middle of the pandemic when there are many other issues going on.

We have a huge issue with engagement and meaning and fulfillment at work. The way we are working is not working and it’s only getting worse. This problem isn’t going away. And I found that those numbers to be shocking and really important for that reason.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Megan Hellerer
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Megan Hellerer
I would say this inner navigation system, calibration and barometer of simply asking, “Is this warmer or is this colder?” when I’m making decisions to make sure that they’re aligned for me. And I use it for everything, including coming on this podcast. I get an invitation for a podcast, and I ask, “Is this warmer? Is this colder? Does this feel directionally right or not?”

And I do say no to podcast invitation events that don’t feel aligned for me. So, I think that is sort of the cheat code to keep it really simple if you’re confused, “Is this warmer or is this colder?” I think that’s the easiest, simplest, most basic, and most effective tool for decision making there is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with your clients; they bring back up to you often?

Megan Hellerer
I think simply the terminology of under-fulfilled overachiever and people having a word that resonates with them to articulate what they’ve been struggling with, and then also the vocabulary of the old way of doing things that we’ve been taught, destinational thinking, and the new way of doing things, directional thinking. I think having words to capture this tends to be one of the most revelatory things for people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in, where would you point them?

Megan Hellerer

My website is my name, so MeganHellerer.com, and I’m also on Instagram, @meganhellerer. And my website also has connections to all my socials and books and more information on my philosophy and all of that good stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Megan Hellerer
I would suggest asking yourself “Is this aligned for me?” and trying to be radically honest with yourself, tell yourself the truth about your life. And if the answer is no, or any part of that is yes or no, figure out what are the parts that are aligned and what are the parts that aren’t, and see what you can do to tweak the parts that aren’t. It doesn’t involve blowing up your life. Small tweaks can make a huge difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Megan, this has been so much fun. I wish you many happy directions.

Megan Hellerer
Thank you so much, Pete. Have a great day.

Oct 28
0

1006: A Navy SEAL Shares the Hidden Attributes Enabling Optimal Performance with Rich Diviney

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Rich Diviney reveals the hidden drivers of optimal performance: attributes.

You’ll Learn

  1. The crucial difference between skills and attributes
  2. When your “weaknesses” are “strengths”
  3. A neuroscience hack for focus and overcoming stress 

About Rich

Rich Diviney developed his expertise in human performance during his over twenty-year career in the US Military, during which he completed more than thirteen deployments overseas and held multiple leadership positions.

While serving as the officer in charge of selection, assessment, and training for a specialized Navy SEAL command, Diviney was intimately involved in an extremely elite SEAL selection process, which required pairing down a group of exceptional candidates to a small cadre of the most elite optimal performers.

He also spearheaded the creation of a mental performance directorate that focused a strong emphasis on physical, mental, and emotional discipline to optimize individual and team performance, allowing operators to perform faster, longer, and more effectively in all environments—especially high-stress ones.

Resources Mentioned

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Rich Diviney Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Rich, welcome.

Rich Diviney
Thank you, Pete. It’s good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear about some of your wisdom associated with The Attributes, but I think I’m going to put you on the spot and ask that you kick us off with a thrilling, riveting tale related to your time in the Navy SEALs and/or training that’s also instructive and tees us up. So, no pressure, but I want you to check every box with your opening story.

Rich Diviney
All right. Well, so I went into the Navy SEALs. I joined the teams in 1996. I graduated at Purdue University, was commissioned as an officer, went straight to training, and then got through training, which is always a good thing because it’s about a 90% attrition rate at SEAL training, which is called BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training.

And so, I went through, got through in ’96. Beginning of the career was, you know, it was normal, but there was nothing going on. Of course, 9/11 happened and things got very busy and kinetic. But what happened between 2005-2010, is I went to one of our very specialized SEAL commands, and that selection process was unique and intense. And I actually took over that selection process in 2010. And in doing so, really had to figure out what we were kind of looking for performance-wise.

So, in other words, to get to this command, you had to have stellar performance reviews, you had to have recommendations, psychological exams, physical tests, all that stuff. And when you went, you went through a nine-month course, a selection course, and 50% of the guys who went through didn’t make it, right? So, 50% of the top Navy SEALs did not make it through, and that’s okay. Every selection course implies attrition, but I think what was not okay and what they asked me to do was that we weren’t able to effectively describe or understand why guys weren’t making it through.

We’d say something like, “Well, the guy couldn’t shoot very well.” Okay, well, you tell a Navy SEAL that caliber, he can’t shoot very well. That’s like, I mean, this guy’s probably shot more rounds than most people in the military. So, it’s disingenuous to him and disingenuous to us. And so, they asked me, they said, “Rich, we need you to look at performance and figure out what’s going on.” And so, I had to really deconstruct performance.

And the couple stories that I’ll kind of harken back to, that hammered this home for me in terms of what I needed to look at, were these. So, in basic SEAL training, in BUD/S, you spend hundreds of hours running around with big boats on your head, you spend hundreds of hours exercising with 300-pound telephone poles, running around with those things, freezing in the surf zone. I was doing this work in 2010 and I had already been on hundreds of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I can tell you with certainty, never on one of them did I carry a big heavy boat on my head or a 300-pound telephone pole, right?

So, what I recognized in that moment was that they weren’t training us in those moments to be Navy SEALs. They weren’t training us in the skills of being SEALs. They were actually teasing out these qualities. They were putting us in these environments to tease out these qualities to see if we had what it took to do the job.

So, then I kind of thought back and I remembered a story I’d heard from an older instructor, and he said, “Rich, you know, years ago, a kid showed up to SEAL training, and he walked into the instructor’s offices, and he said, ‘I want to be a Navy SEAL.’ And the instructor said, ‘Okay. Well, you have to do a swim test.’ And the kid said, ‘Fine.’”

So, they took him out to the pool, and it’s an easy test, like 50 meters, so 25 meters to one end, 25 meters back to the other end. He gets all ready to go, and as soon as he jumps in the pool, he sinks right to the bottom of the pool. And at the bottom of the pool, he begins walking across the bottom of the pool to one end, he touches one end, he walks across the bottom of the pool back to the other end.

He comes up, he’s gasping for air, the instructor looks at him and says, “What the heck are you doing?” And the kid is still trying to catch his breath, looks at the instructor, and says, “I’m sorry, instructor, I don’t know how to swim.” And at that point, the instructor looks at him and pauses, and then he says, “That’s okay, we can teach you how to swim.”

And the idea is “Why did the instructors say that?” The instructor said that because he knew, if this kid had the attributes, the qualities to show up to Navy SEAL training, one of the most elite maritime units on the planet, and he didn’t know how to swim, he had everything inside of him to be a Navy SEAL. Teaching him the skill of swimming was going to be easy.

So, that was really the big story, the big “aha” for me in terms of bifurcating the terms between skills and attributes, and the fact that if we look at just skill, we’re missing a huge percent of the performance picture because we have to look at these qualities that people bring to the table if we want to understand performance at very elemental levels.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yes, let’s dig in to some depth in a moment, the distinction between skills and attributes. I think that’s really thought-provoking and useful. But first, I’m curious, with your specific charge, in terms of, we’ve got to get to the bottom of why. Why are half of these super highly trained, experienced operators not getting through? What was the answer?

Rich Diviney
Well, the answer was, we were looking for some specific attributes, and the guys who weren’t making it through either didn’t…well, they just didn’t have enough of them. So, for example, a couple of the attributes I talk about in the book are the mental acuity attributes, which are situation awareness, compartmentalization, task switching, and learnability.

When you are doing, for example, the level of operations that we’re doing, in this case, close quarter combat, where you’re going in and clearing rooms to rescue hostages, it’s a very rapid, a very fast, very dynamic environment, inside of which you have to do live fire, you have to take instruction, you have to learn, you have to upload it, you have to be very cognizant of your buddies, you have to move quickly, you have to hit your targets.

And I think what was happening, most of the guys would drop out during that phase, and I think what we found was that they were, again, they didn’t have none of these, none of us have no attributes or zero attributes, but, in this case, they didn’t have enough of an ability to run into environment, be situationally aware enough to pick a target, focus in on that target, address that target, and then switch to the next target rapidly.

So, it was, I think that the attributes that we didn’t see that were the most predominant in predicting failure, or at least attrition, were enough of those mental acuity attributes. And then another one would just be resilience. Resilience is defined as this ability to bounce back to baseline. It’s not really getting back up when you get hit, it’s to be able to bounce back to get back to baseline.

So, you think about that rubber band, you stretch, you let it go, it goes back to its original shape. Can you bounce back from hardship or even success? And the guys who would be screwing up and they’d get the spotlight on them and just get hammered, hammered, hammered, some guys would just be able to wash that off and bounce back. Other guys would just go into a spiral.

And so, that was, if we saw that, that was certainly an attribute that we needed to see a predominance of because we can’t have folks who can’t bounce back to baseline rapidly enough. So, those were probably some of the most predominant ones, and then there were others that we kind of identified too, but less predominant.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’m intrigued, Rich, we talk about attributes versus skill, is this mental acuity stuff and the resilience bounce-backing stuff not a learnable, trainable, developable skill?

Rich Diviney
So, it’s developable. It’s not teachable. Let me just identify the terms here just really quick for the audience. A skill is not inherent to our nature. In other words, none of us are born with the ability to ride a bike or throw a ball. We’re taught to do those things; we’re trained to do those things. Skills direct our behavior in known and specific environments, “Here’s how and when to throw a ball or ride a bike.”

And then skills are very visible. They’re very easy to see, which means they’re very easy to assess, measure, and test. You can put scores around them, statistics, and otherwise. You can put them on resumes, which is why we get seduced by skills often when we’re picking teams or performance evaluating.

But what skills don’t tell us is how we’re going to show up in stress, challenge, and uncertainty. Because in an unknown environment, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill. So, this is when we lean on our attributes. So, attributes, on the other hand, are inherent to our nature. In other words, all of us are born with levels of patience, situational awareness, adaptability.

Now, you can develop them over time and experience, but you can see levels of this stuff in very small children. So, anybody who has small kids or has, you know, experienced small kids will agree with me when I say there are one and a half year olds who are patient, and there are one-and-a-half-year-olds who are impatient. So, there’s a nature/nurture element to attributes.

Attributes don’t direct our behavior; they inform our behavior. They tell us how we’re going to show up to an environment. So, my son’s levels of perseverance and resilience informed the way he showed up when he was learning the skill of riding a bike and falling off a dozen times doing so. And then finally, because they’re difficult to see, they’re very difficult to assess, measure, and test, but they come up the most viscerally, and viscerally during times of stress, challenge and uncertainty.

So, the idea is we all have all of the attributes. The difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each. So, if we take adaptability, for example, and seven is high and one is low, I’d be a six on adaptability, which means when the environment changes around me outside of my control, it’s fairly easy for me to go with the flow and roll with it.

Someone else might be a level three. If the same thing happens to them, it’s difficult for them to go with the flow and roll with it, there’s friction there. They’re still adaptable because all human beings are. It’s just harder. So, if we’re trying to line these up like dimmer switches, we’d all have different dimmer switch settings.

So, the idea is, yes, you can take an attribute you’re low on and develop it, but you can’t do it the same way as a skill, because…and just one more thing for your audience, a way to distinguish between an attribute and a skill is to ask yourself a question, “Can I teach it or can it be taught?” If the answer is yes, it’s probably a skill. If the answer is no, it’s probably an attribute.

So, Pete, you could say to me, “Rich, I want to go to a range and learn how to shoot a pistol and hit a bullseye.” I could take you to the range and teach you how to do that in a couple hours. That’s a skill. Or you could say, “Rich, I want to learn how to be more patient.” I can’t teach you that, all right? That has to be self-developed.

So, to develop an attribute you’re low on takes three factors, three things. The first thing is you have to know you’re low on it. The second thing is you have to have a need, desire, or motivation to develop it. What do I mean by that? Well, we have to understand that just because you’re low on an attribute does not mean you need to develop it. In fact, developing that attribute may be detrimental to what you’re trying to do.

I always say the stand-up comic with too much empathy is going to be a lousy stand-up comic, right?

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t like that joke?”

Rich Diviney
That’s right, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
“Really, boy, I feel terrible. Let’s just call of the set.”

Rich Diviney
Or, I don’t even tell the joke. So, yeah, just because you’re low doesn’t mean, you know, in fact, you’re being low might be exactly why you’re so good at what you do. But assuming both are true, you’re low on and you feel like developing will actually help your niche, the third is the most important. To develop an attribute, you must go find environments and place yourself environments that tease and test that attribute.

So, if you want to develop your patience, you have to go find environments that test and tease and develop your patience, whatever that looks like for you. It could be, “I’m going to drive in traffic. I’m going to deliberately drive in traffic.” Or, “I’m going to pick the longest line in the grocery store to stand in.”

I always say “Have kids. That’ll develop patience.” But whatever that is, you can do that for any attribute. So, those dimmer switches are not, and our attributes aren’t immutable, but they certainly take more efforts and consideration in terms of developing them or increasing them.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you there in terms of, I think the two-hour shooting example is handy because it’s not like, “Hey, there’s just a few guidelines associated with lining up the sights, or your breathing, or whatever. The fundamentals are there, “Okay. Now I know those things and I’m going to do those things. And, oh, wow!”

Because I think maybe one thing that’s coming to mind is you’ll see transformational results from zero to just a few hours later. It has been my experience with learning skills, like, “Oh, I had no idea.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, now I kind of know the fundamental things. I’m just going to do those things, and now we know the results are way better.”

Versus patience. Yeah, you’re right. It’s not like, “Okay, in two hours, I’m going to teach you deep breathing and thinking about where they’re coming from, and now you’re done. Your patience has been tripled in quality.” I hear you. It doesn’t tend to work nearly that quickly in practice.

Rich Diviney
Yeah, does not work, I guess, linearly. And we have to think about attributes. The reason why attributes are so important is because it defines who we are at our most raw, our raw selves when you-know-what is hitting the fan, when the plan doesn’t go, the plan goes out the window, we’re steeped in uncertainty and chaos, these attributes are what rise to the fore. All the rest of it goes away.

I always kind of joke, and you and I talked before you hit record, about personality tests. I think most of them are fun and great. The only thing about personality we have to consider is that when the you-know-what hits the fan, personality goes out the window, and we, at our most raw, are running on these attributes.

And I think the gift I was given in SEAL training, and my teammates were given, is that we, from day one of SEAL training, started to understand who we are at our most raw and started to understand who each other were at our most raw, because then we knew, okay, when everything is dropping in chaos and uncertainty, we know exactly who’s going to show up and we know when to lean on each other and when to support each other and all that stuff. That’s the importance of this stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Okay. Well, so I took the assessment, and it was impressive, 250 items, but it went by super quick. And I got a kick out of how I have taken a number of these as well, such as StrengthsFinder and more, and the results sort of have some confluence, you know. So, I mean, I guess, while we’re distinguishing, we got skills, we got attributes, we got personality, how about strengths? Where do we put that into this?

Rich Diviney
So, I’m glad you asked, because when we talk about attributes, we don’t talk about good or bad. What we talk about is your performance fingerprints, what’s your unique performance picture. And the reason why we don’t talk about strengths and weaknesses is because your top attributes, your top five attributes are just as meaningful and have done just as much for your success as your bottom five. In other words, you being low on your bottom five is also why you’re successful.

Now, when we look at it honestly, what we say is, let’s do some honest introspection and ask ourselves, “Okay, these are my top five, these are my bottom five, or these are my order ranked, whatever. What are ways that this has served me? But what are also ways that this can maybe not serve me?” because that’s when we have to understand some blind spots.

So, the attributes equation is not about strengths and weaknesses. It’s about where you show up performance-wise, and where you might want to either dial down or dial up certain attributes or even develop attributes if you so desire. But there’s no judgment, which is powerful because it takes judgment out of the picture, which makes teams run faster and better.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s interesting, so there’s 41 of them in the report. But as I read through the names, they all seem, like, good. Like, I’d like more discipline, charisma, confidence, courage, empathy, adaptability.

Rich Diviney
That’s exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “Oh, yeah, that sounds great. I’d love to have more of that.” But you’re saying like, well, having a whole lot of something is not always beneficial in a certain context, nor is having a very low score on something detrimental in a given context.

Rich Diviney
That’s right, yeah. Any one of the attributes, we could make an argument for pros and cons for that attribute, and we could also make an argument where at extremes, we could certainly have detriment. But the idea is the pros and cons are what you look at, and you start to say, “Okay, this is how and why I perform the way I do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking right now, so in my attributes, my highest, we’ve got creativity, cunning, innovativeness, open-mindedness, integrity. And it’s funny, because right now I’m going through a process of getting a mortgage, and from my perspective, it’s just kind of like, “Okay, guys, so you can see I got credit, I got assets, I’ve got income. So, like, we’re good to go here, right?”

Rich Diviney
That’s right, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
But the answer is no, like, “We have to comply with all of the things perfectly so that, in the United States the way it works, because we’re going to resell this to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who need to have their standards complied with to a T, and that’s why there’s a low cost of capital associated with this.”

“So, your creative ideas associated with how you might prove this or that is not what I want. I want you to go to your bank and ask them for this very specific document, and then include that along with 12 other very specific documents, and then we’re good to go.”

Rich Diviney
So, it’s funny you should say that. By the way, your results are great. I’ve never seen creativity, cunning, and innovativeness all in the top five. All three of those are attributes that involve imagination, but they’re different to an extent. And this is where we have to get precise with the language-ing. This is one of the things we find very powerful about the attributes content, because we’re very precise with the etymology of each word.

So, creativity is the ability to create something into existence that otherwise didn’t exist. This is the artist with the blank canvas, the writer with the blank sheet of paper, the sculptor with the lump of clay. You’re able to create new ideas that didn’t otherwise exist. Innovativeness, on the other hand, is the ability to take something currently in existence and use your imagination to iterate on it and make it better. And then cunning is the ability to use imagination to problem-solve in ways that are outside-the-box thinking.

So, you have a very powerful trio there of using imagination on all different fronts and facets. The other thing about this is you’re also high on integrity, which means, you know, cunning, people, a lot of times, view cunning as pejorative, but cunning is not pejorative. Cunning is just outside-the-box thinking.

But I always say the way we use cunning can be pejorative. In other words, you can use cunning malevolently, that’s Bernie Madoff, or you can use cunning benevolently, that’s Oscar Schindler. The fact that you’re high on integrity means you’re going to use all this stuff in a benevolent way, which is pretty cool.

And then, of course, your open-mindedness does not surprise me because, as someone with all three of those imaginative attributes on top, you’re someone who is constantly taking in and open to new ideas because it probably just informs your ability to use more imagination. So, I think it’s a fascinating top five. What are your thoughts when you see the top five?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it does ring true in terms of StrengthsFinder, I think Ideation was my number one, and I do find that when I am in settings, like teamwork settings, that’s what lights me up the most, is that, “Let’s figure out the new, cool, creative way to do the thing.” And what is less exciting to me is, “Okay. Well now we know what that is, so just do that hundreds of times repeatedly for the next decade.” It’s, like, “Ooh, can someone else please execute that? Ugh.”

Rich Diviney
Right. By the way, let’s just talk about now your bottom five. What you just said there is also indicated by your bottom five because you’re low on patience, which means you don’t really like to…you won’t bang your head against the wall, and then persistence. Persistence is an interesting one. It’s defined as a kind of a firm steadfastness in understanding there’s a course of action and sticking to the same course of action over and over again because you know it’ll work.

So, I usually say it’s the stonecutter approach. The stonecutter basically taps that rock in the same place a hundred times and nothing happens because he knows that after the 101st or 107th tap, it’s going to break. That’s persistence.

You’re someone who’s constantly trying to ideate, which means you like new ideas, and you have little patience for sticking to the same course if it doesn’t make sense or if it’s boring. You will shift very rapidly. Where it could be a blind spot for you is you have to say to yourself, “Okay, well, there might be times where staying the course is, in fact, what needs to happen.” And that might be where you have to lean on someone else in your team who’s better at persistence, who can basically say, “Hey, Pete, we need to just stay the course.”

Your high imagination may find you in a position where you’re just constantly inundated with new ideas and it’s tough for you to take one and stick to one because you’re just constantly having new ideas. And again, this is not that these things do happen. These are just blind spots that may happen based on the way these attributes line up.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s really true, and if I am not seeing some level of results when I’m doing a thing in my own world, I feel like I need some pretty robust evidence that this course is ultimately correct. It’s like, “I did the thing three times, I haven’t seen any good results or effects flow from it yet.” So, I’ve coaxed myself, and everyone says, “Well, Pete, take a look at these impressive results on the random control trial, you know, that lasted six weeks, so let’s give it the six weeks first.”

Rich Diviney
Yeah, give it some time. Give it some time. And again, this is stuff you can do. Again, it’s not that you don’t have these attributes. They’re just prioritized in your behavior lower than the other ones, which means you have to do more, you have to have more deliberacy in when you have to dial them up. Like you said, you have to consciously make the effort to say, “You know what, I just need to stay to this.” It’s a conscious thing. Whereas, if you’re just acting without thinking, you’re likely going to shift.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is fun for me. I’ve got a big report. So, what if people who don’t have that? What do they do?

Rich Diviney
Well, yeah, they could always take the assessment, but I think one of the things folks can do is they can begin to interrogate their performance. And the way we do that is we look back at our performance, especially during times of stress, challenge, and uncertainty, and only because that’s when these things are most visible and visceral, and start asking ourselves some honest questions about how we showed up.

So, if we went through a situation and we say to ourselves, “Well, as everything was changing around me, I was upset and it didn’t feel good and I couldn’t really flow. It was hard for me to flex and flow.” That might indicate you’re a little low on adaptability, and that’s okay. It just gives you an idea of where you stand on these.

And you can start to think about these attributes in terms of how you’ve performed. You could think about how you perform in every day, all day, but especially during stress, challenge, and uncertainty. Experiential knowledge is the most powerful in this case. And I would even encourage those who do take the assessment to look at their results and then begin to think about times in their lives where these attributes have served them or have not served them, and start to say to themselves, “Okay, I can see now, experientially, how and why these show up the way they do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I guess I’m curious, if you find yourself in a context, maybe it’s a job, or role, project, where it kind of seems like the attributes you have are not a great match up, “Maybe I am a super empathetic stand-up comic.”

Rich Diviney
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. Well, I always say, I mean, I like to think of human beings as cars, just like the movie. Some of us are Jeeps, some of us are SUVs, some of us are Ferraris, and there’s no judgment because the Jeep can do things the Ferrari can’t do, and the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can’t do. But it behooves us to lift our hood and figure out what we’re running with because the friction in our lives, that we’re talking about, might be because we’ve been a Jeep trying to run on a Ferrari track this whole time, or a Ferrari trying to run on a Jeep track.

And so, I think what folks can do, if there is significant kind of friction in one’s life, they may, in fact, be in a position, in a role, in a job, in a niche that is not suited to their normal attribute profile. And what’s happening there is they’re going to the job and they’re having to consciously behave differently, consciously dial up or dial down their attributes so that they can actually conduct the job, which you can do, that’s okay, but it doesn’t feel as good.

So, the idea would be, ask yourself, “Okay, what are my attribute sets? How does that performance picture look? And what might be some niches inside of which I could use this to excel?” And then if you’re a leader of people, you have to start looking at performance differently. In other words, low performance might not be because that person doesn’t know what they’re doing. It might be because their attributes don’t line up properly.

And that happened to me when I was commanding officer of a SEAL command, and I had a supply department. I had eight people; four people in this future look kind of innovative type cell, and then four people in the logistics kind of admin bookkeeping cell. And I had one sailor in the innovative cell that was not performing, bringing down morale.

And I brought her in, I started talking to her, and within 10 minutes I recognized her unique attribute set was a complete misfit for what I had her doing, but it was perfect for this other thing. So, all I did was shift her. I shifted her roles, her performance skyrocketed. So, it is about helping people get in the right seat on the bus as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we have 41 attributes, and if you don’t have a report in front of you, is there a bite-sized, manageable way you can think about these in a few categories so we can kind of map ourselves out a little bit?

Rich Diviney
The attributes themselves, I’ve broken into categories. Certainly, in the book, there’s five categories. The work we do now, we have nine. You can find those on the website, but those categories are like the grit category. So, what attributes make up grit? Mental acuity. What are the attributes that describe how our brain processes the world? Drive. What are the attributes that make up the driven person?

We have vision attributes, which have to do with creativity. We have service attributes, which have to do with our ability to serve other people. Social intelligence attributes, leadership attributes, and team ability attributes. And so, all those are grouped so that the attributes can clump kind of in a nice organized fashion.

It’s not to say that those attributes are strictly in those categories. I mean, even though courage is a great attribute, one could make an argument for courage also being a leadership attribute, but it helps them bin and organize the attributes in a little bit different way. I would say, though, if someone does, in fact, take the assessment and understand their rankings, I would offer and recommend people to look at their top five, bottom five.

This is one of the reasons why the assessment pulls those out because, the top five, bottom five starts to really describe and help one understand some unique aspects of their performance. The middle attributes, basically, are those attributes that you tend to easily shift in the polarities, between the polarities.

So, in other words, I just have to look at yours, but we take something like charisma. Charisma is something that you’re someone who can at times be charismatic and at times you’re not charismatic. You can kind of shift between those polarities, versus when you start seeing where they’ve been top and bottom, those are the ones you’re most often like or most often not like, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s funny. I mean, there are times when people, they say, “Pete, I want you to be the master of ceremonies for this event.” It’s like, “Well, okay. Let’s put on the tuxedo, and let’s, you know, the big smile, and away we go.”

Rich Diviney
Yeah, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And then there are other times where it’s like, “That’s fine. I don’t need to be the center of attention. I’d be happy to arrange the items at the event as well, if that’s what you need to do.”

Rich Diviney
Yeah, you shift in the polarities, which is what the middle ones indicate which is good. So, they’re all useful in terms of understanding.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say this is how we are under stress when it all hits the fan, maybe we could zoom out a little bit and share, are there general best practices, no matter what your attributes are, that are ideal for when we find ourselves in these intense situations?

Rich Diviney
The answer is yes. In fact, you’re throwing out a nice preview for my second book, which is coming out in a few months called Masters of Uncertainty, where I give some tools and techniques for, in fact, what we can do in stress, challenge, and uncertainty. So, there are ways we can actually use our brain and our physiology to step through stress, challenge, and uncertainty better.

One of those ways is just a way we can actually interrogate an environment and manage our autonomic arousal. One of the biggest things that happens to us in stress, challenge, and uncertainty is we get autonomically aroused, i.e. our amygdala gets tickled and our arousal goes up. This happens to a degree that can, eventually, if unchecked, reach what we call amygdala hijack or autonomic overload, where we’re acting without thinking.

That type of amygdala hijack is very handy when we are getting out of the way of a moving train. We won’t have to think about what we’re doing. We just want to move and act, right? Not as handy in most other everyday stress and anxiety because we want to put conscious thought into our decision-making process.

What happens as our autonomic arousal goes up is our frontal lobe begins to take a back seat to our limbic, and when we reach the point of amygdala hijack, or autonomic overload, the frontal lobe has now gone back and we’re operating on our limbic without thinking. So, the key in challenge, stress, and uncertainty is to keep that frontal lobe engaged, and one of the ways we can do that is to ask conscious questions about our environment constantly.

So, in other words, “What can I focus on right now at this moment?” Even something like, “How am I feeling right now?” This is why “name it to tame it” is a very useful emotional technique, an emotional tool, because it’s pushing your limbic back a little bit, bring your frontal lobe online.

So, I think the idea is, as long as we’re managing our arousal by keeping our frontal lobe engaged, and we can do that with better questions, it’s a way to step through our environments of uncertainty, challenge, and stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you walk us through an example of some “naming it, taming it,” great questions?

Rich Diviney
Yes. One of the best questions you can ask in an environment of stress, challenge, and uncertainty is, “What could I control in this moment?” And what’s cool about the brain is the brain is designed to answer questions. It’s constantly doing it. And so, if we deliberately put a question into our frontal lobe, our brain will immediately begin to come up with answers. And so, if you put that question to your frontal lobe, you’re going to start to get answers that allow you to say, “You know what? Okay, I’m going to focus on this.”

Here’s a real-world example. It’s a SEAL training example, but it can be relatable. In SEAL training, like I said, you spend hundreds of hours running around with big, heavy boats on your head. And I remember, it was the middle of the night, we’ve been running with these boats on our head for hours and hours, and it was miserable, and we were on the beach and we were running next to the sand berm.

And I remember being miserable under the boat, and I said to myself, “Okay, you know what? I’m just going to focus until I get to the end of the sand berm. That’s what I’m focused on. I’m just going to get to the end of the sand berm.” What I did in that moment, unbeknownst to me, but I deconstructed later, was I immediately took control of an uncontrollable situation. I gave myself a focus point and I basically said, “Okay, end of sand berm.”

And as soon as I did that, as soon as I gave myself a goal, once I hit that goal, my brain gave me a dopamine reward for that. It’s inevitable. When we set goals and accomplish a goal, we’re going to get dopamine reward, which allows then for us to do it again and ask another question. So, we can actually start setting these horizons in any environment, and asking better questions about our environments so we can step through.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really cool one. And I find that that’s true with regard to any number of unpleasant tasks, “If I could break this down into, I’ve got one page and I’ve got it into a dozen pieces and I’ve got my green is my pen color of completion. I don’t know, it just is. Green means done, money, victory. Then, yeah, it feels good.” It’s like, “Okay, well, there’s one piece,” as opposed to if you didn’t have the segmentation, you’re just like, “Oh, I just got one big mess that I’m dealing with.”

And I’ve also found that handy for exercise, even in indoor sterile environments, I don’t know, like a StairMaster or a treadmill or a bike or an elliptical, I find myself doing that just with numbers, like, “Hey, it’s a 30-minute workout.” It’s like, “Hey, if we get past 15, that means we got the majorities behind me. That’s awesome.” And so, I’m just making it up, and yet it helps.

Rich Diviney
And even that process, so neuro-scientifically, this is what we call DPO, duration pathway outcome, something that a good friend of mine, Andrew Huberman, who has a popular podcast called the Huberman Lab, he and I put together a few years ago, but the brain is constantly looking for these three factors in our environment to define it.

One is duration, “How long is this is going to take?” Two is pathway, “What’s the route in or out?” And then, three, is outcome, “What happens at the end?” And so, in the absence of one or more of those three things, that’s when we find ourselves in uncertainty, challenge, stress, anxiety. So, what’s happening there is we are literally creating our own DPOs, whether it’s you in the gym, me on the beaches of BUD/S, we are creating a duration pathway outcome, and we’re taking charge of this focus point, and we’re creating something to focus on and then strive toward.

I call this process moving horizons because these horizons are constantly shifting, and the distance or the size of each horizon has to be subjective to the individual and subjective to the intensity of the task. So, in other words, a more intense task, it’s probably going to be a shorter horizon. If I’m In SEAL training, in the surf zone, just freezing my butt off, and they’re keeping us there for hours, which happens, I remember saying to myself, “Okay, I’m just going to count 10 waves.” My horizon was short.

There were other times where I remember saying, “You know what? I’m going to just make it to the next meal,” the horizon shifts. The key, in terms of the dopamine reward system, is that you have to pick a horizon that’s meaningful for you. In other words, not too hard, so you run out of steam on the way, but not too easy, so when you accomplish it, you don’t get a doping reward. That’s highly subjective.

And so, as you do that in the gym, in life, on the beaches of BUD/S, you’re shifting those horizons constantly and asking yourself, “Okay, what’s the next meaningful horizon?” subjective to your own experience.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. And I’m thinking about just daily work in which you have to focus, because it seems unlimited. It’s, like, there’s an unlimited pile of things that you could do, and then the day could be long. So, then what do you do with that? I actually have a timer that I use, it’s set to an hour or whatever, and then I find that very helpful in terms of, “Okay, I’m just going to crank on this for an hour.”

And sometimes it’s like, “No, I’m tired. 45 minutes is all that’s going to happen this time.” And then it feels very satisfying, it’s like, “I did the thing. That hour is complete and now I’m having a break and it’s all good.”

Rich Diviney
Yeah, you’re creating your own horizons and the timer’s helping for that. What you’re doing also is you’re practicing compartmentalization, which is one of your bottom fives, but the fact that you use a timer means you’re actively practicing, which is a good tool to use because that’s handy and it helps you kind of set those DPOs.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Rich, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Rich Diviney
No, I just encourage people to just start exploring their attributes. If they want to visit us on our website, it’s TheAttributes.com, and we’re going to give your audience a discount code for the assessment as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Rich Diviney
The one that pops to mind is one from Einstein, because he has so many good ones, and it goes something, I don’t want to murder it here, but it goes something like, “Everybody is a genius, but if you try to teach a fish to climb a tree, it’ll look like an idiot.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Rich Diviney
Recently, I heard of some folks in the AI space who have been starting to deconstruct the language of animals. How about that? They started to understand the language of elephants, whales, and different animal species, which I think is utterly phenomenal.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! And a favorite book?

Rich Diviney
One of my favorite books is probably Sapiens by Harari. I go back to that quite a bit. That’s a great one.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Rich Diviney
I honestly try to put together and arrange habits or times, periods where I can just be in my own head, whether it be if I’m jogging in the woods or even on an airplane, I can look out the window. But times I can really just be in my own head and think about and process ideas, I think that’s a gift that we should give ourselves, we should all give ourselves more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that people really resonate with and quote back to you often?

Rich Diviney
When it comes to leadership, the one I hear the most is that being in charge and being a leader are two separate things. Being in charge is a position. Being a leader is a behavior. And the one I hear the most is I tell people you don’t get to self-designate. You don’t get to call yourself a leader. That’s like calling yourself good-looking or funny. Other people decide whether or not you’re someone they want to follow based on the way you behave. So, if you want to be a leader, behave like one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Rich Diviney
TheAttributes.com. So www.theattributes.com has everything there, the book, the assessment, a bunch of stuff we do with companies and things like that. So, yeah, feel free to go check it out.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Rich Diviney
Yes. Growth is found outside of our comfort zone, so always make it a project to step outside the comfort zone often because that’s where you’ll grow and that’s where you’ll learn, and it’s a great place to be.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rich, this is so much fun. Thank you. I wish you all the luck.

Rich Diviney
Cool. Thank you, Pete. Thanks for having me.