Podcast - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Jan 13

734: How to Train Your Mind to Focus and Handle Distractions Better with Dr. Amishi Jha

By Ida del Mundo | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Amishi Jha shares the results of her research to provide a simple solution to improve your focus.

You’ll Learn:

The biggest myth about our attention spans
The four reasons your attention is getting hijacked
The three systems of attention—and how to train them

About Amishi

Dr. Amishi Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California–Davis and postdoctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University. Dr. Jha’s work has been featured at NATO, the World Economic Forum, and The Pentagon. She has received coverage in The New York Times, NPR, TIME, Forbes and more. You can find Dr. Jha at http://amishi.com/lab.

Amishi’s book: Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day
Amishi’s website: Amishi.com

Resources Mentioned

Study: The Stroop effect
Study: SART
Study: O-span Task
Methodology: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Book: The Essential Rumi by Jalal al-Din Rumi and Coleman Barks

Dr. Amishi Jha Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Amishi, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Amishi Jha
It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat with you about focus and attention. That comes up a lot from listeners. And at first, I was hoping you could settle this for me once and for all. Goldfish attention spans, human attention spans, shrinking, being worse than that of a goldfish? Is this a myth? How is this measured? How do we even know if the status of the American attention spans this day and age?

Amishi Jha
Great question. And the answer is, no, we do not have the attention span of a goldfish. We are stable in our attention. It has not shrunk.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Amishi Jha
In fact, there’s nothing really wrong with our attention, and that’s the sort of paradox at this moment, is that, oftentimes, we feel like our attention is in crisis, but, frankly, our attention systems are working perfectly. And to answer your question about how we know, it’s because we, as cognitive neuroscientists who study attention, have been using the same type of basic attention tasks for decades, about four or five decades now, and we haven’t seen a blip or a change since the advent of the internet and the advent of smartphones and their prevalence. Nothing has really changed. We’re still pretty much the same brain we’ve been for quite some time.

Pete Mockaitis
And what is the attention task that you use?

Amishi Jha
There’s a whole bunch of them but one example would be where we, for example, would have people come into the lab, and their task is to sit in front of a computer screen, and they see a series of digits on the screen, kind of appearing one, let’s say one every second or so, and press a button every time you see a digit, except if that digit is three. And when you see a three, withhold their response. But the threes only appear about 5% of the time. So, that’s one example.

And what happens is people are terrible at this task, and they’ve always been terrible at this task, because it seems pretty simple to just look at a digit on the screen and press a button. But we are very much prone to what’s called mind wandering or internal distract-ability. And that rate of internal distract-ability is pretty stable. It’s a high number. About 50% of our waking moments, we can get hijacked away from the task at hand. But that number has not gone up since, like I said, cellphones, internet, etc.

And then there’s other ways we can do it, too, looking at things called working memory, where we’re just looking at sort of the cache or RAM, if you will, of your mind, your internal capacity to have a scratch space. That also has not changed over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m just a nudge enough of a dork, so if you’ll indulge me, I’d love to know all of these because I went down this rabbit hole of research associated with the Stroop word color test, and even found a game on the iPhone called Stroop, which lets you put red, green, red, because – for listeners not in the know, it might show the word red written in a green font, color, and you have to select the font, color from options which may also be mixed. So, it’s tricky for your brain to attend to the thing and subdue or ignore the other thing you might naturally do. And so, that’s just kind of fun.

I don’t know if I’m actually doing something good for my brain by playing this repeatedly and trying to beat my score. Well, you tell me, is that a helpful activity?

Amishi Jha
I love that you’re interested in the Stroop test, and, yes, just to like refresh people in terms of what this task is because it’s a classic task of attention. And what we’re doing is unnaturally making your brain go to war with itself. So, the task itself is, yes, you’ll see a series of words on a screen, and your job is to press a button indicating the color of the font and do that as fast as possible.

Most of the time, when the font color is presented and it’s some all X’s or all O’s, we have no problem with this. We just press the button to indicate the color. But when we make it go to war with itself, we’re actually causing your brain to have to inhibit a very, very natural and automatic process, which is reading.

So, now we’re going to present those words, like you said, in the letters of a color word, so the word yellow would be in orange font, or something like that, so there’s a conflict there. Your job is to detect the font color, but the word yellow is so prominent that you want to say yellow in that and you’d be wrong. So, it absolutely is engaging, a very specific kind of attention process, executive control, but if you keep doing it over and over again, probably you’ll get better at the task and not much else. Not much else.

Pete Mockaitis
I was hoping to correlate to something.

Amishi Jha
Yeah, that’s the thing about the brain. It’s a smart organ and it will get very specific in its ability to maximize learning, but it’s also very context-specific. So, now if I give you some other tasks where I put your brain at war with itself, you may not benefit because you’re well-practiced at color word inhibition but you may not be very practiced at some other form of inhibition.

And, actually, it’s so funny that you mentioned that because it’s much related to the kind of things that we were doing in my lab. Brain-training games are so prominent and they’re available all over. Like you said, you downloaded an app to do this, but it ends up that there’s not a lot of generalizability. There’s not a lot of evidence that, after doing this game a hundred times, or let’s even say every day of the course of a year, you might see that your score on the game is getting better and better and better, but now if I transferred to some other tasks, it’s going to be back to where it was as if you’d never seen this kind of task before.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, for the research dorks, we got the Stroop word color is one thing, and you described the digit. What’s the name of that test?

Amishi Jha
That’s called the Sustained Attention Response Test, SART, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Sustained Attention Response Test. And there was a third one?

Amishi Jha
Oh, there’s many, many. We could spend our whole time just talking about tasks, but I’ll just give you another one that’s pretty straightforward. And that is something called the operations span task, and this is a classic way that we index what’s called working memory, this ability to maintain and manipulate information over very short intervals. Like I said, the cache or RAM, if you think of a computer analogy for the brain.

So, we don’t need to remember this information forever. We just need to remember it long enough for us to be able to use it. So, in the operations span task, what happens is we present a series of letters that you see, and your job is to remember those letters, but intervening between the presentation of the letters will be a simple math problem. So, it would be like ADZ, and then you’d have to do simple math, and some other set of letters, then simple math again. And at some point, you’ll see a bigger screen that has a whole bunch of letters on it, and you have to click all the ones that were part of those that you were asked to remember.

And people can do this reasonably well but it gives us a very solid notion of what the capacity of working memory is, which is, essentially, the ability to maintain, like I said, the information with this interfering stuff, the simple math, which is requiring work of your brain and potentially causing problems with you being able to remember it so you got to work a little extra hard to remember the information. And on those working memory tasks, like this O-span task, like I said, 50 years, not really any change in terms of how people perform on it. So, we’re not really shrinking in our capacity to pay attention and remember information in this way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is so fun to hear, well, one, I guess, it gives you more hope for our species and our future. And, two, it’s almost a trope nowadays, like, “Oh, with digital distractions, our minds are being hijacked and so…” You’re saying, “Well, no, according to the measures we’ve had for decades, it looks like our attention spans are actually doing okay.” Is something different? Has something changed? It feels like it has in our experience.

Amishi Jha
Well, both of the things that you said are true. Our attention is more prone to being hijacked and our attention spans are unchanged. So, why is our attention more prone to being hijacked? Because the opportunities for distraction are greater in our day-to-day lives. And the way in which we are prone to distraction is because social media companies, technology developers, are gaming the way the brain is organized.

There’s a reason why when you go on a particular website, let’s say a social media website, your name is prominent, the content is pretty much tied to what is of interest to you, it’s catered to you. There’s also a reason why things that are fear-inducing, threatening, novel, interesting, grab your attention. In fact, your attention is the commodity, is the product that the social media company is selling to make money for its own company.

So, yes, it absolutely is the case that you are going to be sucked in because not of your own failings, but because a team of engineers, not just an engineer or two, but like literally hundreds of people have built very sophisticated algorithms that not only know how your attention work but know precisely how to tune the enticements to your attention so that you will spend as much time as possible on the app.

And so, if you notice the qualities of that information – self-related, threatening, fear-inducing, novel – this is what the brain is tuned for through our evolutionary programming, through our evolutionary development. Of course, it’s the case that you’ll drop everything and pay attention to something novel, interesting, or threatening, or related to you, because that advantaged your survival over the millennia that humans have existed.

So, that’s what’s being sort of gamed and capitalized upon. And that’s why the way we’re going to have to battle the hijacking of our attention is going to require something different. We can’t simply just break up with our phones. We’re going to have to do something in a different manner to be able to manage the kind of pull we’re going to get on our attention. Very different from saying that there’s something wrong with our attention. There’s not.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So, in a lab-controlled setting, where the smartphone is away is like, “Hey, our mental capabilities are pretty similar to how they’ve been but in the real life, we’ve got distraction machines surrounding us like never before.” Is that kind of how we got both things true at the same time?

Amishi Jha
Yes, both things are true at the same time, but I do think it’s a point of empowering ourselves to know there’s nothing fundamentally broken here.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, amen.

Amishi Jha
In fact, it’s the fact that it’s so healthy and so predictable that allows these algorithms to be built around maximizing that. And so, part of that responsibility, I, frankly, think is on a lot of app developers and social media companies and technology companies to be aware of the costs on that and to build in features that might help us monitor better our own engagement with the technology. It doesn’t advantage their bottom line but advantages our ability to function healthfully. So, that’s one answer.

I think the other part of the answer is really what I wanted to share in my book, which is that we can train our own mind, not through brain-training games, but through other methodologies that might help us advantage ourselves better because we are training ourselves to be more aware moment by moment of where our attention is, to make better choices that favor what we want to accomplish and what we want to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was just about to ask that next. So, this next book Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day, tells us, what’s the big idea here and what’s the magic of 12 minutes?

Amishi Jha
Yeah, the big idea is, essentially, what we started talking about, that we live in a world now where it feels like a crisis of attention, even if the objective data tells us our brains are actually fine and healthy. And that crisis of attention feeling, by the way, if we locked ourselves in a room, had no technology, and we’re really intending to focus, we would discover that our attention is not going to be unwavering. And it’s not a modern feature.

If we look back hundreds of years to medieval monks, they actually did that. They became monastics, they isolated themselves from their families, and then they complained that while they were supposed to be praying, they were worried about lunch or a conversation they had. So, this is also something really to appreciate about the nature of the mind. It is built for distract-ability so even though our capacity for attention has not changed, we are distractable. It’s just the way it is. And there’s, again, an evolutionary reason for that.

But it ends up that under certain circumstances, very high-stress, high-demand circumstances, unlike the kinds of the professional lives of a lot of the people that we study in my laboratory, that number, that percentage of time that we’re intrinsically distractable goes up, and then we can really suffer a lot of problems, so that our attention is not in the task at hand, we lapse, we make errors, and those can be consequential, life or death in the case of service members or emergency service professionals, medical professionals, surgeons, for example, or even judges and lawyers. If you miss information, it has consequences.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with regard to the training, well, okay, yes, stress. So, with the stress perspective, I guess I was thinking in some ways stress can really galvanize your attention, like, “Okay, it’s do or die. This is the moment. Got to get her done. The clock is ticking.”

And so, in some ways, I thought that would make us less distractable. You say it can make us more distractable? Can you elaborate?

Amishi Jha
Both again are true. I’m not going to say, “You are completely correct, Pete.” And what I said is also correct. So, it ends up stress is a variable that can range from actually being very helpful to harmful. And we can even think of it as having a shape. So, if you think of it, imagine in your mind, a graph, and I’m drawing on the graph, the X and the Y axes, and then the shape of the graph itself as an inverted U.

So, on the X-axis, we have stress. Low stress, low performance. So, the Y-axis is performance, the X-axis is stress. Low stress, low performance. As the stress goes up, you start climbing up the U, kind of like the top of a mountain, and your performance will reach a sweet spot so that the right amount of stress is going to optimize your performance.

But, now, if you push past that sweet spot and stress keeps going up, you’re on the downward slope where you’re actually going to start degrading and depleting your performance relative to having less stress available to you. So, we can parse the way we think about stress as eustress, meaning the letters E and U, meaning beneficial stress, or distress.

And what ends up happening with a lot of the groups that we work with, like I said – service members, first responders, even students for that matter – what might be the optimal amount of stress, that eustress peak point, if you maintain that level of demand over a long period of time, you will start slipping into distress, and most of us will not be aware that that is happening.

So, it’s like, if you think about a student, “Oh, I’m really good if I have to cram for a final three nights before I have to take the final.” Now, if you’ve got seven finals, I guarantee you that cramming approach night after night after night is not going to lead to beneficial results. So, it’s just important to know that the features of stress that I’m talking about that are problematic are really dipping into distress. There’s not a match between what you feel like you can accomplish well and your capacity to do so.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, really? So, we don’t even know.

Amishi Jha
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, if we don’t know, how can we know? I mean, is there an alternative gauge by which we have a sense?

Amishi Jha
Well, we do know. It may not be a performance that we necessarily are…we’re not aware going into it, like, “Oh, this, my performance is going to suffer here.” We don’t have that view typically but we know what it feels like to be distressed. We know it feels too much.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like after the fact, we know.

Amishi Jha
No, even as you’re in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Amishi Jha
Even as you’re in it, you’re feeling, “Oh, my gosh, this is too much.” And so, what we can know from our objective data, if you take people over a protracted period of high demand – the academic semester, for an athlete, it could be competition season, or even pre-season training; for a service member, it could be pre-deployment training, or deployment itself. These are periods of time where you know it’s going to be demanding, and the demands are not going to let up for some multiple weeks.

If we test people’s attention with the same kind of tasks we were talking about earlier, O-span and SART and Stroop, and then we come back four to six to eight weeks later and then give them the same battery of tasks, if that period intervening between those two time points was very demanding, we will see a significant decline in performance. And, usually, we see people reporting that their mood is worse and their self-reported distress is greater.

So, that’s something to keep in mind. It’s that it’s not just that you feel icky and maybe burnt out from the psychological standpoint, but your actual effectiveness is going to be impacted. And what I was interested in doing, again, from this attention research point of view, is, look, there are populations, professions, for whom they will always have to operate their best when circumstances are likely to drive down attentional functioning. And we know what the features are of circumstances that are likely to drive own attentional functioning. Threatening circumstances, stressful, like we talked about; stress perceived stress that we experience and negative circumstances.

So, if you think about going into a warzone or going into a fire, if it was a firefighter, or having to deal with critical-care situations as a nurse or a physician, those are characterizing contexts where attention is going to be compromised. But we want these people to perform at their best because things could be a lot worse if they don’t. So, I wanted to figure out a way to train people so that they could be almost mentally armored against stress, and that proved to be a really tricky thing to track down mainly because of what you were saying earlier. There are so many solutions offered right now, like play brain-training games, or use this device to zap your brain with a small amount of electrical current.

Pete Mockaitis
“I have a Muse EEG in my hands.”

Amishi Jha
Exactly. And I’m not going to say anything about Muse in particular, or any particular technology, but I’ll tell you, that in our hands, in my laboratory, when people were experiencing high-demand circumstances, not a lot was helpful to protecting attention from declining.

Pete Mockaitis
Not a lot. Okay.

Amishi Jha
Not a lot. In fact, I would say probably nothing, it reliably showed, protective effects except for one thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you got my attention. What is it? What do we do?

Amishi Jha
It was a little bit of a surprise to me because I would say I was very skeptical of this solution just for a variety of reasons which we can talk about. But the one thing that tended to reliably, and now after about 15 years of research in my own lab and many other labs has been shown over and over again, was mindfulness meditation training.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Amishi Jha
So, when people engage in mindfulness meditation training, for as little as 12 to 15 minutes a day, during these high-stress intervals, we see that those tasks don’t decline, people don’t decline their performance on those tasks. They actually stay stable over time. And sometimes, if they do enough practice, even if the circumstances are likely to deplete the average person, they can actually improve. So, not only stabilize but potentially optimize attention when everything about the circumstances suggest they would be compromised to attention.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, so many follow-ups here. Okay, so 12 to…you say as little as 12 to 15 minutes. I’m curious, in some ways, I hear that’s sort of like the minimum effective dose. Is there like a noticeable point of diminishing returns? Like, if 12 to 15 minutes is good, is 120 to 150 minutes ten times as good? Or, how does it break down?

Amishi Jha
Yeah, I think that this is where we’re just at the beginning of the science. And my interest in the research program that I’m engaged in was really to ask that first-level question. These are time-pressured people, we’re trying to get them in the busiest most stressful periods of their lives, what do they absolutely need to try to do to benefit themselves? And it’s not one-shot 12 minutes or 15 minutes. It’s over the course of multiple weeks daily.

So, it’s like from the physical training point of view, would walking around the block in a leisurely pace be enough to actually improve my cardiovascular health? Or, do I need to run or jog or walk briskly at some level for a certain amount of time? And the answer tends to be around maybe 20 to 30 minutes a day of brisk walking or jogging can be more beneficial than a leisurely walk.

So, I want to know that. I want to know what the kind of minimum dose was. And the way we were able to find this out was not by prescribing people various amounts of training to do and then seeing kind of like maybe a pharmacologic study where you give people different-sized pills, and say, “Okay, this pill is the one that works.”

Humans, especially complex human behavior, does work that way. So, what we ended up doing is we went to the literature, and said, “Okay, what is typically done?” Because mindfulness training, even though I was one of the first labs to bring it into context like the military, or at least sports, mindfulness training had been around not only for millennia from the wisdom traditions, but even for several decades prior to our work beginning in the military, in the medical setting.

And it was through a program called Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction, which is developed by a wonderful colleague of mine, Jon Kabat-Zinn, offered in medical clinics over 750 or more now around the world, usually offered for people that are suffering from intractable physical conditions that nobody else can help them. So, chronic pain, for example. People come into the clinic, they take a course for about eight weeks, they practice 45 minutes a day, and there are benefits. There are benefits to their body, to their mind, to their relationships, and now even brain imaging studies suggest that those are benefits.

But for the kind of groups that I was working with, 45 minutes a day was a nonstarter. Nobody was going to do that. So, in our initial studies, when, for example, working with pre-deployment Marines, we asked them to do 30 minutes a day, during pre-deployment, like I said. Nobody did 30 minutes a day. I mean, maybe, on occasion, one or two people did it but, on average, people were doing…well, actually, before I even talk about on average, there was just a huge range. Some people did what we said, very rarely but they did it. Other people did zero. And then we had all the combinations in between.

So, we decided to take a data-emergent approach, because just telling them what to do didn’t mean that they would do it. And, instead, we said, “Okay, what is the amount of time that the people that tend to benefit, what is the amount of time that they’re doing?” And it ended up that it was about 12 minutes or more that they were doing. And those that did less than 12 minutes really weren’t benefitting. In fact, they looked no different than the people that didn’t get the training at all.

So, then in the subsequent studies, we said, “Okay, if 12 minutes is some kind of sweet spot, let’s only tell them to do it for 12 minutes. Let’s prescribe them, let’s record guided practices that are 12 minutes long, and, first of all, let’s see if they do it more often.” And they did. “And now let’s see what the benefits are.” And what we found was that it was not just doing the 12-minute practices, which I like said, people were much more willing to do than 30-minute practices, but was doing them about five days a week where we started seeing benefits.

So, this is how study after study where we’re just trying to triangulate around the formula for a minimum effective dose. Now, you’re asking the great question, which is, “What about the other end? I want to optimize. I want to be superhuman. I want to be Olympian-level attention. What do I do then?” Well, you got three years to go on a mindfulness retreat and practice mindfulness practices 12 to 14 hours a day. You could do that.

So, there are people that are in that range. There are people, for example, monastics who devote their lives to intensive retreat practices, and those are very compelling types of data, and that’s a whole field of research. Unfortunately, because the nature of the groups that I work with, they don’t have the option of doing that, and it’s, frankly, just not my interest to look at that. But there is a world of beyond the minimum effective dose where we’re learning, just as you would expect, like an Olympic-level athlete is going to be much more capable than somebody who just starts a couch to 5K. Same thing is true for mindfulness training and the kind of brain changes you see.

In terms of specifically quantifying it, we’re not quite there yet but I think this gives you a sense that there is a minimum effective dose, but the more you do, the more you benefit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. And so, we’ll get into some of the particulars of mindfulness meditation training in terms of how that’s done. I guess I’d love to hear, when you talk about the benefits, like what does that mean in terms of quantitative-ness? So, we talked about attention decrements, it’s like it’s worse. Attention can be worse when you don’t do it. Could you maybe just contextualize or share some numbers? It’s like am I going to be able to focus like a smidgen better, like 3% better if I do my 12 to 15 minutes a day, five days a week? Or, kind of what’s the, roughly speaking, size of the price for the average professional?

Amishi Jha
Yeah, and we’re talking between something like that, between 5 and 10% better.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s the numerator/denominator we’re measuring with better?

Amishi Jha
Well, let’s just take one very specific task, the sustained attention response test. Like I said, you’re going to press a button every time you see a digit. When you see a three, you withhold. People typically press to the three 50% of the time even though they’re not supposed to, and this is usually because they are mentally time-traveling away. They’re hijacked away. They kind of go on autopilot and they just press, press, press. The three appears, they press, and then they might have a, “Oh, shoot,” they realized they’ve made a mistake. Too late, you already pressed. So, that is the baseline.

Under high stress, that number goes up. People press to the three even more often. And with mindfulness training, we see that they can benefit with about 10% improvement from their baseline. And so, what does that mean? You might say, “Well, that’s, okay, great. So, I don’t press the three, why do I care? Like, why does that matter?” Well, what we think it represents is really this ability to be more present-centered because you’re noting what’s happening moment by moment, you’re not defaulting to autopilot.

It also translates into really a correspondence with actual activities. So, for example, in the context of soldiers, if you’re doing a shoot no-shoot drill so that you know that you are to shoot to the bad guys and withhold from the innocent civilians. And if you’re making that level of mistakes, a 10% improvement is giant. That actually means life or death benefits for people. And those are the numbers that really matter and are actionable for people to not make grave errors that could cause them for their entire lives. So, I’ll just tell you that we’re just at the beginning of now trying to translate laboratory-based metrics into what we call operationally relevant metrics. How does it translate into real life?

But we’re starting to be able to ask those questions to see in the kinds of tasks that people do. So, for example, medical errors. What is the actionable benefit from mindfulness training on the rate of medical errors? And, again, this is now data that’s just starting to be gathered so I can’t give you precise numbers. We’re really on the edge of this knowledge right now but we’re asking the right questions to say, “Okay, attention may be protected and benefitted. How does it matter? And how does it show up in people’s lives?”

But even before we go to the objective, what we noticed people saying is that they’re more there, they’re not wandering away. The quality of their own relationships is improved, their leadership capacity is improved, their ability to do their jobs and feel engaged in their jobs is improved. So, that’s just painting the picture of where we are at the science in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s interesting. I can’t help but run some numbers in terms of an eight-hour workday, 5% to 10% more attentive minutes. That’s very rough and crude but I mean that is significant to the tune of 24 to 48 extra minutes, which is a lot more than 12 to 15 in terms of a profitable endeavor for us.

Amishi Jha
Yeah. And those are just estimates right now. I think that is probably a lot even more than that if you think about the nature of what kinds of processes improve. So, it’s not just being able to pay attention, which is just so important, but mood improves, work enjoyment and engagement improve, presenteeism is going down. There’s a whole literature on mindfulness in the workplace that is now revealing the benefits for organizations to offer this in the workplace context.

And not just as sort of a salve for like, “Oh, you feel burnt out. Here, just go take some mindfulness,” which is sort of the backlash against offering it. But people going to it on their own, and now finding that just like having a gym in your office building can help you, having courses available through their workplace may motivate them to actually be more likely to give it a try. There’s an ease about being able to incorporate it.

And then, of course, moving forward, it may actually impact work culture so that it’s very normal to begin a meeting with, as my colleagues at the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute say, “A moment to arrive.” It’s like every meeting, people are probably wandering away more than 50% of their time. But what if we make it part of the culture that we’re actually here? What if we can cut meeting time down because you don’t have to repeat yourselves, or there’s not conflicting and ambiguous information being thrown around because more people are really there? They’re not on their phone and they’re not off in their own mental time travel.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And they’re not saying semi-relevant things. They’re saying fully relevant things, which kind of prevents all of the side tangents that never needed to occur because that’s not quite relevant to what we’re trying to achieve in this meeting.

Amishi Jha
Yeah, absolutely. But I don’t think it’s part of most workplaces to take the attentional state of every member of the team seriously and to make it an explicit priority for everybody to show up. But if that could happen, and there are ways to train everybody’s minds to do that for themselves, and then do it collectively, that could be really, really powerful.

So, actually, some of the work we’re doing right now with the military, the kind of edge of our work in active projects is looking at team-based mindfulness. What happens when an entire squad that works together? And this is by the way known in the context of medical teams. When there’s mindfulness practice by the individuals, and even a nod toward what we might call collective mindfulness, team cohesion can improve, the sense of belonging can improve, conflict between team members can go down. And this can all relate to their productivity as well as their fulfillment in the work that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. So, mindfulness meditation training, that’s come up a few times on the show. What does that really mean we’re doing in practice?

Amishi Jha
Yeah. And this is one of those interesting things about a term like mindfulness being so common these days. Like, people have heard it probably at some point, and, like you said, you’ve even had it come up on your show. So, let me just take you through why it ended up, I think, being such a powerful solution for our work that was really focused on attention. And if you don’t mind, I’d love to say a little bit about what attention is because we’ve also kind of been using that word in a blanket way.

And I like to break it down as sort of this giant concept of attention, which is really, broadly speaking, the ability to prioritize some information over other information. And we evolved this ability to solve a big problem that the brain had, which is that there’s just way more out there in the world, and even generated within our mind, than we can fully process at any moment.

So, this notion and process of prioritization allows us to have more fine tuned and granular information accessible to us while everything else sort of fades into the background. So, something is prominent and other things are not. And when we think about the topic of attention, the way it’s been studied, we’re learning that there’s probably three main ways that we pay attention. In fact, three main brain systems that support these different ways of paying attention.

So, the first way is really just probably the way we’ve been using it kind of without even talking about it explicitly – focus, the notion that there’s content. And just like right now, I’m looking at your face, I’m not looking at the curtains behind you or whatever, the door behind you, whatever I see, I’m able to focus in on the granular detail, seeing the expression on your face, etc. Everything else kind of fades into the background.

So, the metaphor for this that I like to use is like a flashlight. If I were in a darkened room, wherever I direct that flashlight, I’m going to get crisp clear privileged information relative to everything that’s darkened around it. Attention really does the same thing, in this kind of flashlight metaphor, something called the orienting system of attention.

And, by the way, this is that same system that we talked about that ends up being a problem with social media and the pull on our attention, because, just like a flashlight, we can direct orienting willfully, we can decide where we want to point our attention. We can move it around. We can direct it toward the external environment or the internal environment. Like if I said, “Pete, what is the sensation right now of the bottom to your feet?” Probably before I said that, you had no idea, you weren’t thinking about it, but now you can check in and give me an answer.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m on a standing mat. It’s got a cushiony vibe to it.

Amishi Jha
There you go, see. Squishy and pleasant probably. But that same flashlight can get yanked. And the kinds of things that yank have those features of salience, self-related, threatening, novel, like all these kinds of things that are programmed into us. But that’s still just one system of attention, this kind of flashlight or orienting system.

Another way we can pay attention is not privileging content, but privileging time. So, what’s happening right now? That’s something that we call the alerting system. And if you want to think about when we use this, it’s like driving down the road or walking down the road, you see a flashing yellow traffic light or something near a construction sign, something that’s blinking and alarming.

You’re at the ready. You’re broad, receptive, alert, but you don’t want to be focused in on anything because you have no idea what could be coming. It could be weird equipment joining into the road, or children, or traffic patterns are weird. Something is odd and pay attention to what’s happening right now.

So, we can privilege content, like with the flashlight, or privilege time with the alerting system. And then the third way in which we can privilege information with attention is something called executive control, which we’ve definitely already talked about as it relates to sort of working memory. We’re privileging information processing based on our goals.

So, what is my goal right now? And is my action and what I’m paying attention to and doing, meaning the way I’m directing the other two systems, is it aligned to ensure that the actions and the goals are going to be aligned the whole way? Or, am I off-goal, or am I not even sure what the goal is? Like, these are ways in which we pay attention that can be so powerful but quite different.

Going back to your question regarding mindfulness, one of the reasons I think it ended up being super useful is that mindfulness training, which is essentially, I would describe as paying attention to our present moment experience without elaboration or reactivity, without having a story about it. Attention is central to mindfulness. And when you think about mindfulness practices, they actually engage and exercise all three of these systems of attention over and over again in a generalizable manner.

So, just to give you quickly, like one practice might be mindfulness of paying attention to breath-related sensations. If we talk through that, you’d see every one of these systems is actually engaged.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. So, that’s an overview of the three things that we’re talking about here. And so, when we do a mindfulness meditation training, you mentioned paying attention to the present what’s up right now, presently without sort of elaborating or creating stories. So, that’s kind of… could incorporate a whole bundle of different activities. So, what are some of your faves?

Amishi Jha
Yeah. And this is where, again, we borrow from the existing literature. We didn’t invent all these things, and the existing traditions, frankly. But one very, very common one is mindfulness of the breath where the intention, and I actually don’t call it mindfulness of breath in the way that I teach it because I know the vulnerabilities when we say that. I call it the find your flashlight practice.

And, really, it’s because that flashlight is such a handy way to think about how we can willfully direct our attention, but what we have to get insight into is oftentimes we don’t know where our attention is because we have no clue. So, I’m just going to give you a very kind of quick view of this. So, it is essentially the same thing as other people might describe as mindfulness of the breath or focused attention. There are so many different terms for it.

But essentially, what you do is sit in a comfortable quiet spot, dedicate a period of time where you’re going to do this practice, and the first step is, essentially, to notice that you’re breathing. And, obviously, we’ve been breathing this entire time but we haven’t probably been paying attention to our breath, but we’re checking in to the fact that we’re breathing, and then we’re going to notice what is most vivid in the breath-scape of our present moment experience.

And that’s actually why, I think, the breath is so handy. You can’t save up your breath. I guess you could hold your breath but you can’t really save it up. It’s happening. It’s transpiring in the moment. And, literally, it is about a respiratory rhythm. So, we notice what is most vivid tied to the breath, and that’s where we devote, we say, “For this period of time, my task, my goal, executive control says my goal is pay attention to breath-related sensation. Take that flashlight, point it toward the prominent breath-related sensation, and hold it there.” That’s the agenda for this. Let’s say you start out by doing just one minute of this practice.

Then the second part of the instruction, the first part is just focus. Focus on breath-related sensation, engage that flashlight. The second part of the instruction is notice if your mind wanders away. So, it’s like you’re checking in and monitoring, “Where is this flashlight? Is it at the breath-related sensation?” All of a sudden, you’re like thinking of the next vacation you’re going to take, or some worry you had, or a troubling conversation, or maybe there’s an itch on your face, or whatever it is, “Ah, look at that. Flashlight is not at the breath-related sensation.”

In that moment, the third part of the instruction, redirect attention back to breath-related sensations. So, it’s literally like my military colleagues, I love the way they put it, “It’s like you’re giving me a mental pushup.” Focus. Notice. Redirect. Or, in other words, engage the flashlight, engage alerting and monitoring, and then executive control, to know what the goal is and make sure I’m getting back on track.

So, that’s why I think that it can be so handy to understand how attention works because then we understand why we’re doing it. It’s not sort of some nebulous concept. It’s actually a workout for our mind in this particular way.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Okay. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Amishi Jha
I think the main thing is just I love the topics that you cover on your pod, and I love how like actionable you want to make it for people. So, one of the things I would just encourage people to kind of be left with is this notion to really pay attention to their attention, and to realize that the mind, just like the body, needs some kind of daily exercise to keep it psychologically fit and performing well.

And what we’ve happened upon my own research is learning that this very simple practice, not always easy, but simple practice done for not that long every day, about 12 minutes a day, can actually powerfully benefit the way that we operate and the way that we feel. So, give it a try.

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

Amishi Jha
Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study?

Amishi Jha
Oh, gosh, then I’m going to be probably picking one of my own because we’ve done so many really cool ones. Favorite study recently is one where we were able to benefit the attention and mood of military spouses by training other military spouses to offer mindfulness training to their peers. So, that was really exciting because now it shows us a path forward to have this all proliferate.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Amishi Jha
I would say I’m going to pick something completely uncharacteristic. It’s a book of poems by Rumi.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. What’s it called?

Amishi Jha
Oh, gosh. The Essential Rumi. I think it’s called The Essential Rumi. Yeah.

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

Amishi Jha
It’s a double-edged sword but I’d say actually my phone to use my timer to practice every day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Amishi Jha
Yes, and maybe that would go to a quote, but it’s not. It’s really kind of more of a concept, “Thoughts are not facts.”

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

Amishi Jha
If they remember my name, they can find me Amishi.com.

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

Amishi Jha
Yeah, I would say invest in yourself and invest in your attention, and do that by starting slow and starting small, and really practice paying attention in this way using the tools of mindfulness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Amishi, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck in your peak mind activities.

Amishi Jha
Thank you so much.

Jan 10

733: How to Keep Growing Over Your Whole Career with Whitney Johnson

By Ida del Mundo | Podcasts | No Comments

Whitney Johnson shares key science behind learning and growth so you can continue growing your skills smartly over the long haul.

You’ll Learn:

The 3 phases of growth–and how to master them
How to get your brain to learn faster
The tremendous power of ridiculously small goals

About Whitney

Whitney Johnson is CEO of the tech-enabled talent development company Disruption Advisors, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company in America and one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50. She is an award-winning author, a regular keynote speaker, and a frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning.

A frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, Johnson is author of several top-selling books including Disrupt Yourself and Build an A Team. Her latest book is Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company. She is also the host of the popular Disrupt Yourself podcast, with guests including Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, Susan Cain, and General Stanley McChrystal.

Book: Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company
Book website: SmartGrowthBook.com
Podcast: Disrupt Yourself
Tool: S Curve Insight Platform

Resources Mentioned

Book: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Book: Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You by Suneel Gupta and Carlye Adler
Book: Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan
Book: The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton Christensen
E-commerce: Rent the Runway
Study: The New Science of Wise Psychological Interventions by Gregory Walton
Tool: WHOOP
YouTube: Anxiety Skills – Therapy in a Nutshell with Emma McAdam
Past episode: 317: How to Form Habits the Smart Way with BJ Fogg, PhD
Past episode: 665: How to Make Lasting Change – According to Science – with Katy Milkman
Past episode: 708: The 7 Steps to Winning Others’ Support with Suneel Gupta

Whitney Johnson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Whitney, thanks for joining us again on How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Whitney Johnson
Thank you for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your latest book here Smart Growth. Can you tell us, you’ve been researching growth for a while, what’s an interesting maybe surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about that in the maybe years now since we spoke last?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. So, that’s an interesting question. The counterintuitive discovery that I’ve made, here’s what I would say. I think that this book is important right now because of what’s happening in the world, and so let me talk about that briefly, and then I can talk to about the discovery I’ve made. So, as we both know, we are coming out of the pandemic, we hope, and psychologists have said that when you come through a period of severe stress, which, of course, has been a very stressful period, there is this opportunity for people to undergo transformation, to do what’s called post-traumatic growth.

And so, I think we’re in this period right now where people are ready to grow, they want to grow, they aren’t always sure exactly how to grow. And so, this book that I’ve written, Smart Growth, is really addressing that question of, “Here’s a template, here’s a simple visual model for you to think about what growth looks like.”

Now, to your specific question, yes, I’ve been thinking about growth for a while. I’ve talked about the S Curve, and we can talk more about this in detail, but the S Curve of learning in my other two books, but it was always in the background, kind of this supporting actor. And what I discovered is that as I taught people about this S Curve of learning, it was very sticky. They said, “Oh, this makes sense. This helps me explain what’s happening in my career, what’s happening in my life.”

And so, I wanted to do a very deep dive in this book on what this framework is and how you can use it, how you can apply it, both as an individual for personal growth, to demystify the process, to help you decode talent development if you’re a manager, and then, from an organizational perspective, just think about this notion of if you can grow your people, then you can grow your company. So, that’s what we do in this book, is a deep, deep dive on what growth looks like using the S Curve of learning.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Well, tell us then, sort of what is the core thesis here or how you would go about defining smart growth?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. So, the core thesis is that growth is our default setting, as I just mentioned a moment ago, is that people very much want to grow. And then the question is, “Well, what does growth look like?” What I have studied and researched is that the S Curve, and this is something that was popularized by Everett Rogers in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that he used to figure out how quickly social change might happen, and then we use it at our disruptive innovation fund to help us figure out how quickly an innovation would be adopted.

I realized I have this aha that this S Curve that we were using to look at social change, to look at how groups change, could also help us understand how people change. So, every time you start something new, you are at the base of an S, and if everybody who’s listening wants to take their finger and draw a picture from the left to right with your finger, of just left to right, a line, a straight line, that’s the base of the S.

And whenever you start something new, the S Curve math tells you that it’s going to feel like a slog. It’s going to feel like it’s going very, very slowly, and so you can get discouraged, overwhelmed, impatient, frustrated, all sorts of emotions that you will have. But what’s helpful about that is you now know, “Oh, this is very normal. I’m supposed to feel this way. I’m supposed to feel like I’m not making any progress.” It’s not that growth isn’t happening. It’s just that it’s not yet obvious or apparent, and so it feels slow.

And so, that’s the first thing that you want to think about from this model perspective. Then take your finger, and I want you to draw from the left to right but I want you to do this swooping line like a wave, and this is the steep slick back of that S Curve. And what happens here, and we call this the sweet spot, this is that place where you’ve now put in the effort and the growth is starting to become apparent. And what took a lot of time to seem like anything was happening, now, in a little time, a lot happens. This is where it’s hard but not too hard. It’s definitely easy but it’s not too easy. And so, this is the sweet spot where you’re exhilarated, all your neurons are firing, growth feels fast and it is actually fast.

And then what’s going to happen for you, and I want you to draw again, because now you’re at the top of the curve, and I want you to draw a straight line, again from left to right. This is that top. This is that mastery portion of the curve. And what’s happened here is that you have gotten very good at what you’re doing, you’re very capable, you’re very competent, but because you’re no longer learning, you’re no longer enjoying the feel-good effects of learning, you can get bored. And so, growth now is, in fact, slow.

So, you’ve got slow at the launch point, you’ve got fast in the sweet spot, you’ve got slow in mastery; so slow-fast-slow is how you grow. And now you’ve got this mental model, the simple visual model for you to think about your career, for you to think about any role or project that you’re on, and, frankly, for you to think about your life. And so, I wanted to give people this simple template to think about growth because when you know where you are in your growth, then you know what’s next.

Pete Mockaitis
And I appreciate the finger movement since we’re in an auditory medium here, and I drew it. And so, just to remove any potential confusion, so this is sort of like a graph with the X-axis being time and the Y-axis being like skill or capability or how good you are at a thing.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, I love that, how good you are at a thing. Well-said.

Pete Mockaitis
And we might define that in any number of ways, like from pumping iron to making slides, to building models, to recruiting people, to sales, or any number of skills or things one might master.

Whitney Johnson
Exactly. Exactly correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when we say S, again, not to get into the weeds here, I think of my S as kind of has a curve, but I guess that doesn’t quite happen. It might look more like a slanted Z. Is that okay to say?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, you could also think of it as almost like a rollercoaster ride. So, you’ve got the base of that rollercoaster and then you’ve got the steep part, but in this case, you’re going up the rollercoaster, not down, and then you’ve got the flat part before you go onto another rollercoaster.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so then, I think that sounds right from my own experience. Could you share with us a couple cool experiments or bits of research or measurement that reveals this like pretty compellingly and quantitatively?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. So, when we do our research, we’re always looking at both the qualitative and the quantitative, but from a more quantitative research-based, one of the things that I did is looked at both biology and this idea of carrying capacity, but then also looked at the neuroscience around this. And so, basically, what’s happening is that your brain is running a predictive model. So, every time you start something new, pumping iron, like you said, learning how to build slides, or give a presentation, your brain is at the launch point of that S Curve.

And what’s happening is it’s running this model, it’s making lots and lots of predictions, many of which are inaccurate. And because those predictions are inaccurate, your dopamine is going to drop, which is why when you start something new, it’s hard to start because your dopamine is dropping, and we like that chemical messenger of delight. We like to get that and we’re not getting that, that’s why it’s hard to start at the launch point.

But then what happens is you continue to run that model and you continue to make predictions, and your predictions will get increasingly accurate. And as your predictions get more accurate, what’s happening is that you’re getting more dopamine, you’re having these upside emotional surprises, lots and lots of dopamine, which feels good, “This is fun. This is exhilarating. Oh, I love being on this S Curve,” going up the rollercoaster, if you will.

And then at a mastery, what’s going on in your brain is you’ve figured it out, the model is complete. It’s like playing middle C on the piano, or major C core for those of you who are musicians, you’re like, “Got it.” And so, what’s happening now is that your brain is saying, “Well, I get a little bit of dopamine but not very much. I’m a little bit bored. I need more dopamine,” for these thrill-seeking species. And so, that’s when you need to jump to the bottom of a new curve or find a way to push yourself back down into the sweet spot so you can continue to get that dopamine.

So, that’s one of the things I really looked at, is I had looked at the work of Rogers, all the diffusion theory that really backs this up, but I wanted to look at, “What’s going with the neuroscience? What’s going on with biology?” And then, of course, I’ve got all the anecdotal qualitative stories but the neuroscience very much backs up this idea of what growth looks like and what’s happening in our brain.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, is there, for quantitative neuroscience, I don’t even know what the units are, but like synapse connections, or FMRI activation of, I don’t even know what units we’re talking about.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, it’s a great question. So, one of the things that’s happening is that, first of all, when you start something new, you don’t necessarily have a neural pathway for it. So, you’ve got what you’re doing today, so whatever it is you’re doing today, you’re basically at the top of an S Curve, and it’s sort of like this super highway of habits, like you’ve got this very thick neural pathway and it’s just super comfortable. It’s like going down the road that you always go down every day.

And when you get to the launch point of a new curve, whatever it is you’re trying to do is basically like a cow path, there isn’t anything there, and so there isn’t a neural pathway, so you’re going to do something but it’s certainly not a habit, it’s not who you are, it’s sort of out here separate from you. But as you start to do that more and more, and you get the dopamine, it’s forming those neural connections and creating those neural pathways so that it starts to become automatic and habitual.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then in practice, let’s say, let’s look at these phases. We’re at the beginning, or launch point as you call it, and we are frustrated, I guess I’d love to get your thoughts on what we should do. We’ve had a couple researchers talking about motivation on the show, and there are some research suggesting that adherents to stuff is most linked to that stuff being enjoyable as oppose to it being important, which is kind of intuitive, even like, hey, we do stuff we like doing and we don’t do stuff that we don’t like doing as much, even though the unenjoyable thing that might be pretty darn important.

So, if we’ve decided, “Yeah, this is an important thing I want to learn, I want to master, I want to get good at, but I am frustrated and overwhelmed and discouraged and not having fun,” well, one thing, as we know, that that’s normal, that’s nice. What else should we do when we’re in those unpleasant moments?

Whitney Johnson
So, are you talking about BJ Fogg’s research?

Pete Mockaitis
So, we had Katy Milkman and Ayelet Fishbach, their research.

Whitney Johnson
Okay. Yes. So, I love that idea of celebration and being able to. So, the research of BJ Fogg, I think, is really interesting. And building on the two recent guests you’ve had, including Katy, who, I love her work, is this idea of whenever emotions create habits. And so, if you can enjoy something then you’re more likely to make it habitual.

So, one of the things you can do is, when you’re at the launch point, whenever you actually do the thing that you set out to do, you can celebrate, “Good job. You did it.” When you’re in the sweet spot, you’re doing the thing that you set out to do, you’re pumping iron, you’re lifting weights, you can say, “Good job. I’m doing what I said I was going to do.” And then in mastery, you can say, “I did it. Good job.” And so, you can use celebration at all different parts or points along that curve in order to cement or make that habit that you’re trying to adopt concrete, or whatever it is you’re trying to learn that is new.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, celebration. Any pro tips on celebrating well?

Whitney Johnson
Huh, that’s a great question. I think, yeah, my pro tip is to write it in your journal, so write it down. Like I did this today. So, something that we do every week in our family is at the end of…well, actually, we do it every week but then I try to do it every day, is we go through the sweet, the sour, the spiritual, and the surprise for the week. And I think one of the things that happens is that our brains tend to focus on the things that did not work because that’s what makes us feel safer from an evolutionary perspective.

So, the pro tip is a very simple tip, which is focus on what worked, what went right. If you remembered to take out the trash because you have a goal to take out the trash every day, then say, “Hey, I did this thing that I said I was going to do today.” Acknowledge it, anchor it, be aware of it, because then you’re more likely to do it in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, there is celebration. Any other? Does that work for all three of those phases? Anything else you’d recommend, particularly for the early not-so-fun part?

Whitney Johnson
Yes, absolutely. So, I would say in the early not-so-fun part two things. Number one is sometimes we can get very impatient because it is so uncomfortable, we can just like, “I just want to get through this. I just want to figure this out. I just want to close this open loop. This is so uncomfortable.” And it’s really important that we’re patient in that stage because sometimes we make hasty decisions.

We start to do something new, like we take a job that really wasn’t the right job for us, or we take on a project that really wasn’t the right project for us, because we just wanted a job, any job will do, as opposed to spending that time to do the work, to figure out, and be uncomfortable with not having a job for a little while. And so, I would say, in that launch point, is recognize the importance of patience.

The other thing that I would say is, this goes to James Clear’s work of the idea of Atomic Habits, is when you’re at the launch point, if you think about what’s going on in your brain, you’re running these predictive models, as I said, and a lot of your predictions are going to be incorrect. But if you can make predictions that you know will be accurate, then you’re going to be able to speed yourself along that launch point faster. And the way you do that is you set small, ridiculously small goals.

And when I say ridiculously small, I mean I had set a goal, for example, that I wanted to start playing the piano again. I didn’t set a goal to play for 30 minutes a day, I didn’t set a goal to play for 15 minutes a day. I set a goal to make sure I sat down at the piano for at least 10 seconds a day for 30 days. And guess what? I did it, because 10 seconds is so ridiculously small you can’t not do it, and then you build in those neural pathways, and you start that cow path slowly, then quickly, can become a neural super highway.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that ridiculously small bit, and I think it took me a while to rightfully believe, it’s like, “Oh, well, 10 seconds sitting at the piano doesn’t mean anything.” But I guess, as I just think about, it’s like, “Hey, you know what, one is infinitely more than none.” And you could say, “Well, hey, you know what, that might be nothing. But you know what, it is more than what I did before, and it’s more than I’ve done for months even though I’ve been wanting and telling myself I should do this,” and that gets you going.

And I think BJ Fogg, again, we had him on the show, and he said some great things associated about, like celebrating an infant to toddler’s first steps, it’s like, “Oh, you barely moved anywhere and you fell down after less than two feet. That’s lame. You didn’t cover much ground.” But nobody says that about a kid learning how to walk. We celebrate, like, “Yay! Those are your first steps. It’s a big deal. It’s special.” And that really resonates in terms of so it is when we’re starting something new.

Give us some more examples of ridiculously small and worth celebrating in a variety of domains. I’m sure you’ve got boatloads of stories so maybe let’s hear a couple of those, from the launch point and the ridiculously small, through the sweet spot to mastery of folks learning, growing, tackling something new, that made an impact in their career.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. So, one of them that I think is really relevant right now is health, taking care of yourself. And I was actually just on a call this morning with one of my coaching clients who is in this place where she is realizing, “Okay, I work very hard, I work lots and lots of hours. My steps on my Apple Watch are probably a thousand a day. I need more steps on my watch.” And she said, “But I don’t really want to. Like, I know that I should, but I don’t really want to. I don’t feel motivated to do it.”

And so, we had this conversation about, “All right. Let’s talk about ridiculously small goals. It might be that you literally look at your tennis shoes every day, like something that small. But I want you to come up with a goal that you can do every day no matter what for 30 days so that you can start to build that pathway.”

Now, why is that relevant to your career? Well, we all know that if we are exercising and our bodies are working, then we’re able to get rid of the cortisol and the stress that comes with work. And if we’re able to feel a greater sense of wellbeing, then we’re going to be able to think more clearly. And if we can think more clearly, then we’re going to be more productive. And if we’re more productive, we are much more likely to get that promotion and progress along the S Curve of our current role and of our career. So, that’s something very, very simple that I would say really illustrates that idea for people.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun, “Look at your shoes for 10 seconds.” I like that. If you really want to challenge yourself, you can touch the shoes for five seconds, or you can arrange those laces so they’re closer to getting your feet into them. That’s cool in the fitness zone. How about some more in the career zone?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. So, in the career zone, I would say one simple thing could be is that, for example, maybe you need to give presentations. And if you want to be successful, not even maybe, if you want to be successful in your career, you will need to be able to give presentations and do that well. And so, one of the things that you can do is you can say, “All right. Well, I get kind of uncomfortable when I need to give presentations so I find myself avoiding those.”

And so, a very simple thing that you can do is you can say, “I’m going to practice sitting at my chair, standing up, as if I own the room. In my brain, I’m going to think there is three feet in front of me, three feet to the side, three feet to the back, and I own the room and I’m going to stand there for five seconds, and I’m going to do that every day for 30 days,” and that will start to change how you feel about yourself and your ability to have that presence that you need in order to give a presentation.

Another simple thing that you can do, and this is going to sound very Stewart Smalley and from Saturday Night Live, is you can say, “I am successful in my role, in my job. I am successful,” every day for 30 days, and that will allow your brain, your identity, to start to shift. And as your identity starts to shift, because your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between a truth and a lie, if you tell yourself every day for 30 days, “I am successful in this role. I have completed everything that I needed to complete in this role,” or that presentation that you’re giving tomorrow, you’re acting as if it were two days ago, “I nailed that presentation,” and you say that every day for 30 days, “I nailed that presentation,” your brain will start to believe that it’s true and it will make it true.

Something you can say, takes you, what, two seconds, every day for 30 days, that is going to allow you to start to be successful in your career. You’ve got a presentation that you’ve got to do that you’ve been procrastinating, and it’s six weeks out. Well, for the first week, you don’t have to work on it at all, but what I want you to do is I want you to open up your PowerPoint and look at the main slide on it every day for the first seven days, just look at the main slide for the presentation. That’s all you need to do. So, you’re priming your brain to start to make progress.

So, small, ridiculously small goals that you can do every single day, and you have no excuse whatsoever. Anyway, those are a number of suggestions for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is fun. And it’s fun to do something ridiculously small and to celebrate it in terms of, “Hey, I looked at that slide for 10 seconds and I checked that off the box or the list, I win.” And it sort of feels good to have wins that are that quick and yet really are meaningful. I’d love to get your take on some of the affirmation-type stuff that you shared there, experientially and anecdotally. I’ve seen those are helpful. Can you share with us some of the coolest research you’re aware of when it comes to that kind of affirmation stuff?

Whitney Johnson
I would be delighted to. So, this is research I actually cite in “Smart Growth,” our next book, and it is research from psychologist Gregory Walton out of Stanford. And he describes these as psychologically precise interventions, and it’s, basically, using your words to change how you think or feel. And what found is that if you say something like, “I am a voter,” there is an 11-percentage point increase in voter turnout versus saying, ‘I vote,” which is so powerful.

So, for example, there is this one wonderful story that we tell in the book, a fellow by name of Marcus Whitney who, he had dropped out of college and had now two young children, he was living in an efficiency motel, he’s working as a waiter for 12 hours a day, and, basically, just scraping by, and he’s like, “I got to change. This is not working.” And so, he, fortunately, when he was about 10 years old, his uncle had given him a computer, he’d learned a little bit of programming, he said, “I’m going to figure out how to program again.”

And so, he would work for 11 hours or 12 hours, and he would spend four or five hours programming. He wants to get a job, he applies for hundreds of jobs, doesn’t get them, finally gets them. But what he says that I think is so important, he says, “It wasn’t just about hard work.” He said, “I had to believe that I was a programmer because there wasn’t a lot of evidence around me that this was, in fact, possible.” So, he did not say to himself, “I am becoming a programmer.” He said, “I am a programmer.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the word you said, so identity, that’s huge and I’m totally going to look at that study. That’s so good. Thank you.

Whitney Johnson
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
The word evidence is resonating because, I don’t know, it might’ve been like Tony Robbins, when I was a teenager, he was my idol when I was a teenager. What a weird fellow I was. And he talked about we have beliefs, when you sort of list out reasons or evidence for them, that could be powerful and cement them. And I’ve actually done this exercise in different shapes and flavors over the years as I find, “Ooh, here’s a little zone of self-consciousness or lack of confidence. Let’s take a look at some beliefs here. And then what is my evidence?”

And then, sure enough, as I sort of assemble it with examples in terms of it’s like, “Oh, I accomplished this. I did that. And I got praised for this. Even if it was three years ago, I got a compliment about this thing from someone for that.” And then, all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Okay, I’m not just deluding myself, like saying nonsense things, like, ‘I can fly.’” I’m thinking about Key & Peele sketch, “You can literally fly.” You can’t. But so you’ve collected that evidence, and as it grows, that gets pretty cool and exciting.

As I’m thinking about the programmer example, I don’t know if you did this, but right there is like, “Well, hey, I programmed this thing. Nobody asked for it, nobody paid for it. but, by golly, it works and it does what it’s supposed to go, ergo, I am a programmer.” And then that evidence just sort of mounts over time, it’s like, “I’ve programmed a dozen things.”

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. And you know what, as you’re saying that, I think it also makes a case for, I think, another important hack for us as we’re trying to move along that S Curve, is that when we’re starting something new, we tend to make this list of, “I’ve got to get these 50,000 things done on any given day,” and we start to get frustrated that we’re not getting those 50,000 things done to move along the S Curve. But if we’re willing to write down, “What have I…?” Make as I do it.

So, for example, I don’t write down that I’m going to do a podcast episode, I write down, once we’re finished, like, “We did this. We had this conversation. I prepared for it. It went well.” And so then, your brain starts to feel this sense of efficacy. So, again, this evidence of “I can make a list of what I’m going to get done today,” and I think this applies for anybody in their career, “I have this list of what I want to get done and/or I also did these things that I wasn’t expecting to do. I’m still going to check those off because those are evidence,” that, in fact, you are being effective in your work.

And oftentimes, as you’re moving along an S Curve, it’s not just about subject matter expertise. If you want to be successful in a role, it’s all those things that you do along the curve that seem like they’re interruptions – someone wants to talk about this, someone wants to collaborate on this, someone need your advice about that – all those things are what make you a leader and what make you successful in the role that you didn’t plan for.

But if you write them down, “Oh, I did this and then this and then this,” then you can put together the subject matter, that quantitative piece, if you will, the qualitative piece of that leadership, you put those together and you look at your list for the day, and you realize, “Oh, I actually really am making progress along this S Curve in this particular role.”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Beautiful. Well, we talked a lot about the first part, just because it’s hard and difficult. Can you give us your top do’s and don’ts for making the most of the sweet spot and the mastery stages along the journey?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. So, the sweet spot is that part where things are hard but not too hard anymore, and they’re definitely easy but not too easy. And you’ve got, again, all this exhilaration and so, now that you’ve started, so it was hard, but now you’ve got this momentum, and, in fact, it’s almost impossible to stop. You’ve reached that tipping point and things are moving along really well.

What’s happening for you when you’re in the sweet spot is that you’re feeling this sense of competence, so self-determination theory. You’re feeling this sense of autonomy, like, “I’ve got this. I’ve got control over my destiny.” And you’re also feeling related to the people around you and to what it is you’re trying to get done.

What I would advise people, when you’re in the sweet spot, for as an individual, is the importance of being focused. So, on the job, as you get very capable and get very competent, people are like, “Oh, I’ll have Pete do this, I’ll have Pete do that, I’ll have Pete do this other thing, etc.” And so, it’s important to learn to say no so that you can focus and still build that momentum along the curve.

And I would say, for a manager who’s looking at this, is when you have people on the sweet spot who are very effective, it’s easy to say, “They’re doing great. I’ll leave them be,” and we don’t take the time to say, “Thank you. I acknowledge you. I see you. Thank you for the work that you’re doing.” So, those are some things that I would think about in that sweet spot is the importance of focusing so that you don’t get derailed, you can continue up that curve, as well as making sure you focus on the people who are being effective in that role.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about mastery?

Whitney Johnson
So, in mastery, what’s happening, again, in your brain, is your brain has figured out that predictive model and no longer getting a lot of dopamine. And so, there are two things that you want to do when you’re in mastery. Number one is you want to celebrate – we’ve got a theme going here, celebration – of saying, “I did it. I completed this,” and acknowledge the fact that you did it, and be at the top of that mountain, and observe all that you’ve been able to achieve, and appreciate what you’ve accomplished. It’s the end of the year and so I think this is a good time to do that.

The thing, though, about that place is it’s also this place of poignance because, on the one hand, mountain climbers know that you get to the top of a mountain but any altitude above 26,000 feet is known as the death zone so you’re so high up, your brain and body start to die, and it’s also true for an individual. When you get to the top of that S-curve, if you stay there too long, your brain and body will literally start to die. So, there’s this moment of celebration that you’re here but also realizing that you can’t stay here too long.

And so, the advice for people, when they are in mastery, is that you hit the top of that mountain, you have to keep climbing. And keep climbing may mean you jump to an entirely new S Curve, it may mean you find a new assignment or challenge that pushes you back down in the sweet spot, but that plateau can become a precipice if you aren’t willing to continue to find ways to grow and develop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so now I’m thinking about that a lot folks feel that in their career. It’s like, whatever you’re doing – sales, project management, product development – in some ways there are endless intricacies and nuances to these domains that you could work on and become ever greater forever. But other ways, there’s a point of diminishing returns, like, “Well, yeah, I pretty much nailed all the basics and now it’s really just like super finer points.”

So, it’s tricky to navigate in a career because, in some ways, when you’ve mastered something, you can become very well compensated for that thing. It’s like, “Oh, you’re really excellent at this, so please do more of that and we’ll pay you plenty because we need someone who’s great at that, and the value created economically is big as a result.” And that can put you in a top spot, it’s like, “Well, yeah, I know but this isn’t really fun for me.”

So, yeah, you sort of mentioned that our choices are to find something else to conquer. Or, what are some other options here?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. Well, how about if I give you a couple of real-life examples that will help illustrate this?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, please.

Whitney Johnson
So, one is a company called Chatbooks. You may have heard of them. They turn Instagram photos into picture books. And it’s a company where people like to work, it’s got a really strong culture, they work very hard to build that culture, but because people like to work there, a lot of them were approaching mastery on the curve and sort of saying, “What’s next?”

And so, what we did is we went into the company, we administered our S Curve Insight tool that allows you to see where you are in the curve, but what that does is not only show you where you are in the curve but it now opens up a conversation. It gives you that vocabulary, that framework to talk about growth and opportunities. So, three conversations took place as a consequence, and I think this gives people some script and some idea of what that can look like.

So, one conversation was the chief marketing officer now said, “Okay, I have this language.” She was able to talk to the CEO and say, “It’s not that I don’t love working at Chatbooks, it’s not that I don’t love working with you, it’s just that in terms of what I set out to accomplish here as chief marketing officer, I’m at the top of my curve.” And so, they were able to, because they have that framework, because they have that vocabulary, it wasn’t personal, and she made the decision, they collectively made the decision that she would go to a new curve as a chief marketing officer at another organization. So, that’s one potential outcome.

Another potential outcome was the president of the organization, his roles and responsibilities were bumping up against the CEO’s roles and responsibilities, kind of crowding him out on that curve, and so he felt like he was in mastery. This allowed them to have that conversation of, “Hey, if you could kind of move on, CEO, to other roles and responsibilities, that will clear the pathway for me so I feel like I’ve got more headroom on this current curve. I don’t want to change curves. I like being on this curve but I need more headroom. So, can we rescope roles and responsibilities?”

And then the third potential outcome is the chief technical officer, where he was at the top of the curve, likes it, wants to stay there, “But let’s give you some new projects that will effectively put you on the launch point of that curve so that, by putting together the portfolio of projects that you’re on, it pushes you back down into the sweet spot.” So, those are three different things that can happen as you figure out you’re in mastery, and you’re trying to figure out paths forward.

I’ll give you one other example because I think this will be very useful to your listeners. A few years ago, we interviewed Patrick Pichette, who was formerly the CFO of Google. And so, when he was interviewed, he’d already been in an operations role, he’d been the CFO at Bell Canada, and so was like, “I don’t really want to do this. When it comes to doing this, I’m at the top of my curve.”

So, what he agreed with Eric Schmidt, who was the CEO at the time, was, “All right, we’re going to take this job, you’re going to be the CFO, and you’ll do this for about 18 months, but, at any moment, when you feel like you’re at the top of your curve and you start to feel like you’re bored, you come talk to me and I’ll put something more on your plate.”

And so, that’s how he went from being just a CFO to managing real estate, to managing people, to managing Google Fiber, etc., is knowing, having that conversation, that vocabulary, to say, “I’m at the top of my curve. I need something new because I want to work here and I want to work for you but I need to stay challenged.”

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, Whitney, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Whitney Johnson
No, I think that’s good.

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

Whitney Johnson
It’s a quote from Brandon Sanderson, who’s a fantasy author, who I love, and he said, “We each live thousands of lives; for each day, we become someone slightly different.” And I love that idea of how every single day, we become a new person. We live many, many lives. We’re on many different S Curves. So, I think that’s a very powerful idea that every day we can become someone slightly different.

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

Whitney Johnson
So, I shared with you already the favorite study, the Gregory Walton, psychologically precise interventions. But there’s another one that I think is really powerful, and I find myself recommending it a lot. Her name is Emma McAdam. We recently had her on the podcast. She’s a psychologist. And she did a YouTube video that talks about anxiety, and really does a great job of explaining how we can get into these anxiety loops, and how when we think, “Oh, I’ve got to do this thing, and I’m really scared about it and nervous about it,” we think, “Okay, I just got to not do it because then I know I’ll feel better.”

She talks about how that’s like basically a bear, and every time we avoid the bear, the bear is going to get bigger. So, the thing that we feel like we can’t do, we must do. And I think that’s a very powerful research. I’ve recommended it. Well, I’ve certainly ingested it but recommended it to family members, to clients, and it really is something that is resonating for people very powerfully because there’s a lot of anxiety. I think there always was but I think there’s even more as a consequence of the pandemic.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Whitney Johnson
So, obviously The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen because that has inspired all my work. Another book that’s really influenced me recently is Suneel Gupta’s Backable. So, we had them on the podcast, and maybe you have as well. It really influenced me, and I think from the standpoint of your listeners, is he talks about when you have an idea, you have to have conviction around your idea in order for you to be able to…like you have to believe it.

And I think that that is true for anybody who’s on a job, wants to be better on their job, whether it’s an idea, whether it’s a promotion, you have to believe in it. And I think that was really powerful for me to read, and I think it’s very useful for anybody who’s listening and wants to make progress. Like, you have to believe in you first if you want anybody else to believe in it – you and your ideas.

And then the fiction one is I just read a book called Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan. If you’re a Narnia fan, it’s basically fan-fiction for CS Lewis and it was just a delightful book.

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

Whitney Johnson
Oh, I’ve lots of favorite tools. Well, one is Zoom. I really love Zoom. I love Rent the Runway because I do a lot of stuff on camera, and it’s nice, and you can’t wear something that you’ve worn a million times, so I like Rent the Runway. Let’s see, I like WHOOP, which I’ve got on my armband right now. I love our S Curve Insight tool. Obviously, I’m going to talk about my own book. I love Enneagram, I love Google Docs, and I love drinking water.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a good listing. I’ve been intrigued by WHOOP. I’ve got the Fitbit Charge 5, which works pretty well. But whenever I keep Googling stuff, it lands me on WHOOP’s website, and it just seems like they really mean business over at WHOOP.

Whitney Johnson
They do. It’s good. I’ve had it for about, I don’t know, three or four months now and I really like it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Whitney Johnson
A favorite habit. So, I would say favorite is hard. Getting up early, I think that’s super important and very valuable in terms of being productive. Taking breaks is a habit that I most love, and having a standing desk, standing up. Taking breaks. Standing up.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that seems to connect and resonate; folks quote back to you often?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. So, I would say companies don’t disrupt, people do. The fundamental unit of growth is the individual. It’s not failure that limits disruption; it’s shame. And then the fourth, and this is the most recent, is it’s not really The Great Resignation, but rather The Great Aspiration.

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

Whitney Johnson
I would point them to two places. Number one is listen to the Disrupt Yourself podcast. And I was thinking about episodes that would be useful to your listeners – James Clear, habit formation, which we talked about; they could listen to BJ Fogg but they could listen to yours as well; Jennifer Moss on burnout; and Scott Miller on mentorship; and then Leena Nair on disrupting inside of an organization. And then people, of course, can go to my website SmartGrowthBook.com.

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

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. I would say get out your finger, or get out a piece of paper and a pen, and draw that S Curve of learning, plot out where you are right now, plot out where people on your team are, and then just know if you’re at the launch point, you need to encourage yourself or encourage people around you; if you’re on the sweet spot, stay focused; and if you’re in the mastery, remember that it’s not, if you’re feeling the sense of crankiness or ennui, it’s not the job, it’s not even the people you work for. It’s just that your brain needs a new challenge.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Whitney, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in all of your growth adventures.

Whitney Johnson
Thank you very much, Pete.

Jan 06

732: How Aspiring Leaders Can Succeed Today with Clay Scroggins

By Ida del Mundo | Podcasts | No Comments

Clay Scroggins lays out how leadership is rapidly changing and what aspiring leaders can do to adapt and succeed.

You’ll Learn:

The 4As for mastering tricky conversations
Why the “right” people aren’t necessarily the right people
One question to surface your superpower

About Clay

Clay is the author of the best-selling books How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge and How to Lead in a World of Distraction. He holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech as well as a Master’s degree and Doctorate with an emphasis in Online Church from Dallas Theological Seminary.

In January of 2022, Clay is releasing his 3rd book titled The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future: 9 Surprising Ways Leadership is Changing. No one denies the changing landscape of leadership, but Clay explains how to become the kind of leader the future is demanding.

For the past 20 years, Clay Scroggins has served in many pastoral roles at North Point Ministries, a multisite church started in Alpharetta, Georgia led by Andy Stanley. Most recently, Clay served as the lead pastor of Buckhead Church, one of North Point’s largest campuses.

He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Jenny, and their five children.

Resources Mentioned

Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Book: Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch
Book: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
Book: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Clay Scroggins Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Clay, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Clay Scroggins
Oh, Pete, thank you. I feel so grateful to be back because last time I was here, you changed my keynote talk that I do on the book that you were interviewing me about, so thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks.

Clay Scroggins
I hope today is just as impactful.

Pete Mockaitis
No pressure. Cool. Well, to kick it off, it’s been a little while and we’re going to be talking about your book here The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future: 9 Surprising Ways Leadership is Changing. And I’d love to hear a surprising lesson you’ve learned in the couple years since we’ve last spoken.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I resigned from my job three months ago, so I don’t know what exactly the lesson is for the future of leadership but I’ll tell you, for the now, it has been remarkably great to be self-employed.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Yeah, certainly. Well, I’ve enjoyed the journey myself, pros and cons, and every set of tradeoffs. Cool. Well, hey, good luck. I hope that you continue rocking and rolling.

Clay Scroggins
Well, you know, I feel a bit like a walking cliché about it because we’re in the middle of The Great Resignation. United States is resignation nation. We went through a pandemic, or going through a pandemic. Anyone who is in a helping industry – nurses, teachers, nonprofits – and then I was in the clergy business, I was a pastor, still am doing a lot of preaching at churches on the weekends, but anybody who’s in one of those lines of work, the emotional toll of the pandemic just seems to be a little bit more stressful, and I just felt like, “Oh, of course.” Like, I went through a pandemic and quit my job.

But honestly, it wasn’t the challenge of the last year and a half. I actually enjoyed the challenge over the last year and a half, but it was that feeling that I think everyone has from time to time, which is, “Can I do it? Like, do I have it in me to make a go of it on my own?” I guess it was like a little bit of a, “I’m going to take a bet on myself.” And, obviously, you did that. Was it ten years ago?

Pete Mockaitis
Just about, yeah.

Clay Scroggins
Crazy. So, that’s pretty much what I decided to do was, “Let me go out and see if I can do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, congratulations. It’s good to have you.

Clay Scroggins
My kid bought me this Van Gogh poster, and she’s been meaning to write “Let’s Van Gogh” on this poster. Well, she gave it to me as a gift for working for myself now, which I thought was really brilliant. She hasn’t “Let’s Van Gogh” on it quite yet. I need her to. So, let’s Van Gogh, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Let us. Let us, indeed, Van Gogh. Well, so tell us, what’s fundamentally sort of the main thesis or big idea behind the book The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I, like everyone else, noticed that leadership is…I like leadership. Let me back up and say I enjoy the concept of leadership. I think everybody was made to have an impact on this world. I think it is baked in your DNA that you want to make a difference, that you want to build something, grow something, create something, move something forward. And I believe at every level of any organization, every single person is a leader.

Leadership is not about authority. It’s not about a title. It’s not about power. It’s about the ability to influence someone, to move someone to do it, they maybe don’t even want to do to accomplish what they want to accomplish. And so, from that standpoint, I’ve written a couple of books on leadership. So, I spend a lot of my time speaking about leadership, talking about leadership, helping organizations that have a girth of emerging leaders, of swaths of emerging leadership, helping them figure out how they can become better people. When you become a better person, you usually become a better leader.

And I started realizing, obviously, in the last couple of years, “Oh, my goodness, leadership is changing at a rapid rate.” And I don’t think anybody would disagree with that. Every time I’ve started out to research the topic of how leadership is changing, every blogpost, every book, every research study, started with that same concept – leadership is changing. Leadership is changing.

But the more I tried to understand it, the more I realized, none of us really know how it’s changing. And if you don’t know how it’s changing, it’s really not very helpful. That Wayne Gretzky quote that to be really great at hockey you have to skate to where the puck is going, not to where the puck has been. If we’re going to grow and develop into the kind of leader that the future is demanding, then we have to know how leadership is changing.

So, that was really what was behind it all, was, “All right. Well, then how is it changing? What are the ways that leadership in the future is going to be different than it has been in the past? And let’s talk about it.” So, I threw a bunch of research, and reading, and studying, and thinking, and conversing, came up with nine, I call them, surprising ways. Some of them are less surprising than the others but nine ways that leadership is, in fact, changing, and how we can become the kind of leader that the future is demanding.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I would like to get a view of that. And maybe to kick us off, could you provide an example or illustration of what’s some leadership going on – and you don’t have to name names, but you can if you want – that is old and broken and not what’s with it anymore?

[06:02]

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think some of the cliches, some of the tropes of leadership that I remember, when I was probably 20, 21, I co-oped for Accenture business strategy consulting firm when I was an engineering student in Atlanta, and the phrase is like “Dress for success,” “Fake it till you make it,” “Don’t let them see you sweat.” They used to watch how people would salt their food to determine whether or not they made good decisions. If you salted your food before you tasted it, you were rash and impulsive.

They would look at how clean your car was to determine how organized you were. I would say, at a very basic level, it’s those kinds of things that I feel like are maybe good examples of the old way of leadership that is no more. That’s kind of that GE – and I love GE, I love Jack Welch. Straight from the Gut was one of my favorite books, but I would say that concept, that style of leadership is probably one that is of the past.

Clay Scroggins
Does that resonate with you at all? Do you remember any of it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I agree with you that. Well, I guess I thought those were never good. And they weren’t good then, they aren’t good now, in terms of because there’s all kinds of reasons why, “Oh, maybe they salted their food because they’ve been to this restaurant before, and they know darn well it’s insufficiently salty.” So, if you’re going to draw an inference on someone’s career and future and potential based on that datapoint, that’s really foolish and you should have a more robust process to assess the things you’re looking to assess. There’s my hot take on that.

Okay, so that’s old school. Well, then you’ve got nine particular surprising ways. Can you give us a quick rundown of what those nine are?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, the first one is the idea that you don’t have to know everything to be a leader. Most people think that, “I’m not ready to lead because I don’t know enough.” I think because the way knowledge is rapidly changing and growing, we have to be more comfortable with those three words “I don’t know” if we’re going to be willing and ready to lead.

The idea that you need a coach, whether you’re going to pay for that coach or not, I think is something that my parents’ generation were a little less accustomed to. The idea that all the greatest athletes have coaches. I think the great business executives have coaches. That concept is new. The idea that if you fail you’re not a leader, is outdated. I think all of us are going to have failings, that you’re not going to have just success after success after success.

The idea of not just being aware of your weaknesses, but being intimate with your strengths, I think it’s surprising to me. There’s been research that’s been done that says the majority of people think their weaknesses can grow while their strengths remain stagnant, remain fixed. But the truth is you can grow your weaknesses and you can grow your strengths as well. But when you ask that interview question, “What are your greatest weaknesses?” most people have their canned answer, but most people are not aware of their superpower, their strengths.

That Jim Collins line, “Get the right people on the bus,” I take that concept and really challenge whether or not we know who the right people are. I think who the right people are is changing. Some people that might have been deemed as the wrong people have helped me become, helped me make right decisions, helped me become more of a right leader, helped me to see more rightly even though they may have been the wrong people. So, challenging that concept was really exciting for me.

The idea of trust, I think, is pretty crucial as we look toward the future. In the past, particularly with our work environments where you could walk down the hallway and look over someone’s shoulder to see how they’re doing, within a matter of days, the concept of trust on teams was challenged in a way that it had never been challenged before because everyone is working from home. So, learning how to give trust without demanding trust, learning how to give trust to be trusted, I think is a way that leadership is changing.

The concept of conflict. The conversations that we’re having at work, I’m sure, Pete, even though you work for yourself, you’re well aware of this, there was a day where you left religion at home, you left what you thought about a lot of the social issue at home, but we’re having those discussions at work on a regular basis, “What do you think about race? What do you think about gender? What do you think about sexuality?” Those are conversations that are very common in the workplace. Not only that, but people are growing less accustomed to having conflict. So, the idea of learning how to have healthy conflict, I think, is going to be more important for the future than it even was in the past.

Learning to lead with vulnerability. Most leaders are, we’ve been taught, “Hey, I’ve got to ‘show the best and hide the rest.’” Social media enforces that. And learning how to lead with that thing that makes me feel most insecure, learning how to lead with my weakness is something that I don’t think we’re naturally accustomed to.

And then the last way leadership is changing is around the idea of success. Learning that success is not a scarce commodity, but learning that it’s really having an abundance mentality when it comes to success, making sure the people that you work around know that, “Hey, I’m in this for you. I’m not in this for me. And when you’re successful, I’m successful. If you’re not successful, I can’t be successful.” I think that concept is a way that the future is going to demand that of us whether we’re ready for it or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I like that. So, those are juicy in terms of we have nine ideas, which you can think, you can bat around, you can chew on and dig into. And so, to recap, number one, saying it’s okay to not know. That’s cool. Two, we all need a coach to be our best. Three, you’re going to fail and that’s normal. Let’s see, four, you want to be intimate and knowledgeable of your strengths, your superpower. Five, the wrong people can, in fact, be helpful. Six, give trust to be trusted. Seven, learning how to have healthy conflict. Eight, leading with vulnerability, a place where we’re insecure. And, nine, success is abundant and not a scarce resource we need to squabble over and politic and scheme to hoard.

Clay Scroggins
Pete, can I have an engaged interruption?

Pete Mockaitis
You may.

Clay Scroggins
As you look at those, which one do you think, “Oh, yeah, that definitely is new”? And maybe another way to think about it, Pete, when you think about your parents, which one would your parents go, “Wait a second. Why is that one on the list?”

Pete Mockaitis
I think that the one that struck me is new is when you talk about learning how to have healthy conflict, like in some ways that’s not super new. Like, I guess, what do we have? Abraham Lincoln, “Team of Rivals,” like, okay, yeah, old school, and that sure was helpful in terms of having that healthy conflict. But in terms of, yeah, what folks are bringing into the workplace, and I’m thinking right now about Basecamp. They had quite the kerfuffle associated with the leadership.

And I don’t know the ins and outs of the story, but it seemed like they were somewhat good-intentioned when the leadership said, “Hey, guys, you know what, these kinds of issues, I feel like they’re getting a little bit divisive, a little bit distracting. Let’s not do that anymore.” And then there’s like a riot, like, whoa, like it really blew up.

Clay Scroggins
Coinbase did the same thing. Sounds like they’re very similar situation, where the CEO of Coinbase basically said, “Hey, look, we’re not dealing with that. We’re here to continue to help in the decentralization of the economic system of the world. We’re not trying to solve the race issue, so let’s leave all that outside.”

Pete Mockaitis
And that didn’t go well for them.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think he feels great about it, but I think there was a walkout, there was a protest. And there’s a part of it I can understand why he would say that because he’s going, “I’m not an expert in this. I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s get back to talking about the economy and how we pay for things.” But, no, I think, in general, it was not received really well.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So, it does really feel like a new thing in terms of that’s happening now. And I guess that’s a whole other conversation if that’s good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate, inappropriate.

Clay Scroggins
Exactly. Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
But it’s there in terms there are a healthy proportion of folks who want to engage and think it’s necessary, proper, and appropriate to engage on those matters at work. So, lay it on us, Clay, how do we do that well?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think the way you put that is really great, Pete. Pete, just so you know, this is what’s great about your podcast, is you do a great job of playing this, like, Switzerland, neutral, “I’m just a facilitator,” but you’ve got really great thoughts, and you have great interjections and opinions as you’re trying to pull things out of people, so thank you for doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Clay Scroggins
But I give a plan, I give a, “Hey, if you’re trying to become better at conflict, here’s a way to approach it.” I give four A’s that you can work on, that you can go think about, you can prepare for. Number one, would you affirm the person however you can? You might not be able to say much, but would you affirm them? “Here’s what I believe is true about you. Here’s what I’m afraid you’re going to think about this conversation, and I just want to let you know that’s not what it’s about.”

So, it’s really affirming your intentions, it’s affirming what’s true about the other person, and it creates safety. What you’re trying to do in any high stakes difficult conversation is you’re trying to build a bridge of safety that’s strong enough to bear the weight of whatever is about to come across that bridge. And so, if you can start by affirming whatever is true about that person, I think you’re off to a great start, but you have to prepare for that. You don’t want to think of that on the fly.

Secondly, would you ask a couple of really curious questions? Arrogant people don’t ask questions. They don’t have to. They know it all. But people that recognize, “Hey, there’s something I don’t know. There’s something that you see that I don’t see. And whether you’re right or I’m right, or you’re wrong or I’m wrong, I’ll be better if I can get behind your lens and see the way you see it.” And so, would you ask a couple of curious questions that will allow you to see from the other person’s perspective?

And then, third, would you acknowledge what you’ve heard? Miscommunication has started wars in this world. It can certainly start a fight or a conflict in your workplace. And so, learning how to simply acknowledge what you’ve heard. We do this a lot with engaged couples. We do a lot of premarital counselling, my wife and I do, with engaged couples. We’ll have them sit on our couch six or eight times before their wedding, and the session on conflict, we’ll say, “Hey, bring the latest, greatest conflict you’ve had.” It’s always about the in-laws, by the way. Spoiler alert. It’s always about the in-laws.

And so, what we’ll do is we’ll say, “All right. You, sir, would you explain what you wish would be different with your spouse?” And he’ll say, “Well, I wish you would check with me before you call your mom about,” said situation. And then she’ll go, this is her acknowledgement, we’ll have her repeat back. He’s assertively communicating, she’s actively listening, and she’ll say, “So, what I hear you saying is you don’t want me to talk to my mom anymore?” “Okay, that’s not exactly what I said. That’s not what I’m hoping for.” So, there’s a chance for them to sync up what they’re actually saying. That’s really important.

And that’s what that step of acknowledgement is doing. It’s trying to let the other person know, “I hear you.” When you say something, that’s important. But when you feel heard by someone, it is such a crucial part of communication. So, if you’ll start by affirming and ask a few curious questions, and then acknowledge what you’ve heard, and then advise, and then give the advice, or whatever it is that you want to bring, you’re just off to a way better start. And the problem is if you don’t go through it in that order, if you go through it in the reverse order, which is what most people do, most people want to fire off the text to the boss or the peer, to the coworker, “Hey, I just want to let you know this is your problem. And how dare you? And you better not,” and whatever.

And if you do that, you end up having to walk backwards through the process. You end up having to acknowledge that you were wrong, ask for forgiveness, and then affirm that you really love working there. So, if you don’t go through it in that order, I think you’ll end up paying for it in the end, but that’s just a simple process. As we think about the future, why conflict is even going to be more important in the future than it was in the past, specifically healthy conflict, my hope is to give a pathway for people that they can prepare for so that they can have healthier conversations at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. That’s cool. So, affirm, ask, acknowledge. Nifty. Let’s hear about wrong people being helpful.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I love what Jim Collins has said. Jim Collins is like the GOAT. That book Good to Great, I’m sure it sold more copies. He has not sold more copies than you have had podcast downloads, I can promise you that.

Pete Mockaitis
What 50-million-ish? Maybe.

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, you might have, I don’t know. He has sold a lot of Good to Great copies. And that line “Get the right people on the bus” I’ve had it rattle around in my head for as long as I’ve been leading teams. But what I found is that what I thought was right might not be right. I always thought right was, “I get along with them. I like them. They’re like me. They look like me.” And the more I have stepped into leadership opportunities, the more teams I’ve led, the more I’ve realized that the right people aren’t always the right people.
And sometimes the people that I think are the wrong people are the ones that actually helped me the most. Just because you’re ambitious, it doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Just because you are prickly doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Just because you’re hard to get along with doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Now, certainly, you want to be a great team player, you want to be willing to get along with the people around you, but sometimes the wrong people really do help you see the right way or make the right decision. And I think that’s new. I think that’s different. I think that’s a different way of seeing the future than the way we’ve seen it in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they’re the wrong…I guess what this means is sort of like the halo effect or if there’s a devil horn effect in reverse.

Clay Scroggins
The opposite, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, someone is prickly or abrasive and, thusly, they’re all bad. And then they’re not the right person to be on the bus, and so they don’t belong on the bus and so don’t associate with them. They’re unclean.

Clay Scroggins
Unclean, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet, it seems that in this instance, like the very same candor, shall we say, associated with that prickliness or abrasiveness is just what the doctor ordered in terms of helping you see blind spots or learn, grow, improve.

Clay Scroggins
I certainly think so. I’m sure you’ve had people that have…it’s been the people that have challenged even the way you’ve ran your business or thought about your podcast that maybe, initially, you were like, “Ugh, I don’t like the way that feels.” But in the end, they’re the people that actually helped me grow and helped me change, helped me see something that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

And so, I think early on in my leadership, I thought, “Get the right people on the bus. I got to get the people that I like on the bus. I got to get the people that are like me on the bus.” But the longer I’ve led, the more I’ve realized I don’t know that I’ve got the right concept of who the right people are and how sometimes the wrong people are the right ones to help me see differently. Honestly, Pete, it’s why I think people underestimate diversity.

If your team looks just like you, there’s a problem. Somehow deep within you there’s probably something within you that wants to justify why you look the way you look or why you are the way you are. But valuing other opinions, valuing other backgrounds and the way other people see it is only going to help you see more clearly. It’s only going to help you reach the people that you’re trying to reach, or sell whatever it is you’re trying to sell.

And I think sometimes we miss that about diversity, that we feel diversity is…there’s an altruistic motive behind diversity that I think is great. But I think we miss out on the idea that you will come up with better…you will make better decisions if you get people around you that don’t look like you, that don’t see like you. It will only help you in the future. And I think sometimes we miss out on that. That’s a complicated thing for two white guys to talk about, but I think it’s a really important part as we look toward the future, as we start thinking about who should be on the bus and who shouldn’t be on the bus.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, certainly. As you have a broader array of perspectives, you get a fuller picture of reality and, thus, yeah, especially over the course of many decisions, you’re going to have better ones and sometimes epically better ones. So, that’s handy. Let’s get your hot take on being intimate with your strengths and knowing your superpower. First, Clay, what’s your superpower?

Clay Scroggins
I think my superpower is the people around me. They feel believed in. They feel like someone sees them. I’ll tell you, you’ll find out more clearly what your superpower is when you resign from a job, which is kind of unfortunate. But they did a little exercise on my last day of work where everybody had a whiteboard, and they said, “All right. Everybody, write on the whiteboard, what do you want Clay to know?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Clay Scroggins
And that was a great exercise. And there was a gal on our team who grew up very differently than me, looks very differently than me, has a very different background than me, but was an incredible teammate for me. And she wrote on her board, she said, “What I want him to know is I’m grateful that he always saw me.” And I thought that’s pretty stellar. I think that I probably gained more awareness of what I was good at by leaving than I had while I was there, which I think is one reason why every now and then you ought to just quit a job and resign from a job.

I had the same job for about 18 years, and so I don’t know how much you’ve done on resignation, Pete, but the morning I had to go meet with my boss to resign, I opened up my podcast app and typed “How to resign from a job?” because I had never done it before.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we had an episode on that. I’m wondering if we turned up.

Clay Scroggins
I wanted to make sure I got it right. It’s kind of a hidden…it’s one of those hidden parts of having a job that you just don’t think about until you have to do it for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, it sounds like you did it fairly classy if that’s the sort of exit they gave you as opposed to a swift kick in the butt, and a, “Here’s your pass. Get out of here.”

Clay Scroggins
Lit everything on fire and the doozies, right.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Clay, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I do think we would all agree that the future is going to be different. I think we would all agree that we’re moving toward a different future than the past that we came from, and I hope people feel encouraged by that. I certainly do. I think, as I started thinking through this concept, I felt so encouraged that I think a lot of these changes in leadership are healthy changes.

There was a story that Angela Ahrendts…I had a chance to interview her for this project. Angela was the CEO at Burberry, and then after that, left to be the senior VP of Retail for Apple. And Angela told this story about sending out these videos to her 75,000 retail employees at Apple, and she was trying to unify them, she’s trying to bring them together. And so, every Monday morning, she would send out a video called Three Points in Three Minutes, which I thought was a great little concept.

She said one of the first times that she shot it, she had a video crew in her office, and she had a phone call in the middle of while she’s shooting it, and it was her daughter, Angelina, who was in school in London, in college. And she said, “Hey, just keep it rolling,” and she picked up the phone, and she said, “Hey, Angelina, I’m shooting this video right now. As soon as I get done, I’ll call you right back.” Her daughter said, “No problem. Call me back.” She hung up the phone. She finishes the video. She gets done with it, she tells the camera crew, she says, “Hey, keep that in there, send it out just like that.” They said, “Are you sure?” They’re like, “We’re Apple. We make beautiful things.” She’s like, “Yes, send it out just like that.”

She said the next morning, she wakes up, and looks in her email, and she had hundreds of emails of people telling her, “Thank you. Thank you for reminding us that you’re a person too, that you’re trying to do your greatest work, but you’re also trying to be an amazing mom, and you’re trying to have a great marriage, and you’re trying to be a great person. We’re trying to do the same thing.”

And so, I think some of those changes like that, that’s an example of vulnerability, it’s an example of being open and honest about what’s really going on in life, and I think there’s something for all of us to learn in that, that people want a different kind of leader. People do not want a leader that has it all together, that knows everything, that has the right answer for every single issue. People want a leader that’s willing to say, “Hey, I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know but I’m working on it as well, and I don’t have it together either. I’m inviting you to help me become a better leader. I’m doing something that’s such a big deal, I can’t do it alone, and I’m inviting you to be a part of this.”

And I think that’s who we all want to work for. I think that’s the kind of leader we all want to work for. So, why not become that kind of leader? Why not become the kind of leader that is growing into that kind of vulnerable, aware of conflict, better at conflict, giving trust even though you might not feel trusted kind of leader? I think it’s the kind of leader we want to work for and I think it’s the kind of leader that we all really want to become.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Okay, so resigning is one way that you can get some insights in your superpower. What are some of your other practices you recommend to get those insights?

Clay Scroggins
Well, the easiest way is to ask people. Probably the best simplest thing that I did was anytime you’re changing jobs, whether you’re resigning or not, it’s a great time to ask people around you, but you don’t have to wait until you changed jobs to ask the people around you. I just sent a simple Google survey with three questions, “What do I do that inspires you? What do I do that bothers you? And what do I do that I don’t even know that I do? What are my blind spots?”

And, of course, Pete, like anybody, the parts that I harped out on, that I really camped out on, were questions two and three. But reading the answers to question one, “What do I do that inspires you? What do I do that motivates you?” it gave me such crystal-clear clarity on what it is that I do that people appreciate. And so, the easiest way to find out what you are good at is to ask the people around you. Most people just don’t know.

I’m amazed at how many interviews where you ask people what their weaknesses are, and they give you the Michael Scott answer, “I work too hard. I care too much. I spend too much time at work. Those are my weaknesses.” But most people, they don’t know what they’re good at, and the people around you know. They know what you’re good at. And if you can become more intimate with your strengths, you’ll find that your strengths are what the people around you love you for, and you can grow in those and become an even more valuable player today and tomorrow as well.

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

Clay Scroggins
I love that Abraham Lincoln quote, “I prepare and I study because one day my time will come.” I love that little simple concept that I think what he’s trying to say is “I recognize that destiny has something for me in the future.” And I think that’s true for every person, that the future has something for you. The future has something where you’re going to be called a moment, a mission, an opportunity where you’re going to be called upon to lead, and so what you’re doing now is not wasted effort. What you’re doing now is not worthless. No, it’s so important because you are getting ready for that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Clay Scroggins
I love Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute. Do people ever comment on that one? Does that ever come up?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s come up a couple of times. I listened to the audio version but I hear it in my mind’s ear right now, “You’re in the box.”

Clay Scroggins
“You’re in the box,” that’s exactly right. That’s probably my favorite leadership book and it’s in the fable, it’s done as a fable, which some people like the fables and some people don’t. But, yeah, I love the concept that you are constantly affirming the narratives that you’ve already written about people, and so you have to challenge those narratives or else you’re going to just continue to put them, in the words of The Arbinger Institute, “In the box.”

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

Clay Scroggins
Well, ClayScroggins.com would be the easiest place to go but I’m on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, a bit on TikTok, not a lot, but some. So, @ClayScroggins, that would be great.

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

Clay Scroggins
Well, I would just say continue to study, continue to grow, continue to learn because you just never know when your moment is going to come. And if your moment hasn’t come and you feel passed over, or you feel like people have forgotten you, there’s still more to come. Your story is still being written. And if you can continue to grow and develop and challenge yourself, I think you will be better prepared for whatever the future holds.

So, I’m grateful for podcasts like this that help people grow personally because without this, we just wouldn’t have opportunities to challenge ourselves, to hear new ideas new and concepts. So, Pete, you’re modeling, I think, which is a great thing for every one of us, which is to consistently try to learn something from someone so that you can grow and prepare and challenge yourself to be ready for whatever the future holds.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Clay, thank you. This has been a treat. Keep up the great work.

Clay Scroggins
Back at you, Pete. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jan 03

731: How to Harness Motivation…According to Science with Ayelet Fishbach

By Ida del Mundo | Podcasts | No Comments

Ayelet Fishbach reveals insights into motivation to help you achieve your goals.

You’ll Learn:

The top variable for motivation
How to find motivation when you’re just not feeling it
How to make incentives really work

About Ayelet

Ayelet Fishbach is a psychologist and a professor at the University of Chicago. She’s the past president of the Society for the Study of Motivation. She is an expert on motivation and decision making and the author of Get it Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. Ayelet’s groundbreaking research on human motivation has won her several international awards, including the Society of Experimental Social Psychology’s Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award.

Book: “Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation”
Website: AyeletFishbach.com

Resources Mentioned

App: RepCount
Book: “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Katy Milkman
Book: “The Lying Life of Adults: A Novel” by Elena Ferrante
Past episode: 665: How to Make Lasting Change – According to Science – with Katy Milkman
Past episode: 727: How to Start Something New and See it Through with Michael Bungay Stanier

Ayelet Fishbach Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ayelet, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Ayelet Fishbach
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m excited to talk about motivation with you. First though, I need to hear about your nine-year old calls you an expert on how to fail. Tell us about this.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah. So, I’ll share the story with you. Doing my own things at home and my son is playing video games, and this is not when you usually expect parents to do anything, like this is what we let our kids do so that we can do something else. So, he’s playing these video games, and the monster keeps killing him, and he’s getting frustrated. As you know, this monster, they’re terrible. They’re just killing those innocent kids in the video game.

And I can see that he almost has tears in his eyes, so we asked him, like the entire family, like, “Do you want someone to be there with you?” And then my daughter suggested that she will sit with him so that he can better cope with those monsters, and he replied saying that he wants mom to sit with him because I know how to fail better than anybody else. I was proud.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with him in the failure zone, he’s like you were sort of the expert to assist in that territory. Is that the vibe?

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes, I have a lot of experience with learning from failure, and I think I take it to heart but not as much as he does. So, he realizes that if I’m around, we’re probably going to make fun of this and not take it too much to heart.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is kind words and something to remember maybe when in tough times. So, I’m excited to talk about motivation and your book Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. And maybe to kick us off, one of my favorite questions is to hear, when you’re researching a topic for many years, what’s among the most surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made about human motivation?

Ayelet Fishbach
We found that giving advice is more motivating than getting great advice from the expert.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if I give advice, I’ll be motivated more so than if I receive advice.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ayelet Fishbach
And that was kind of cool to us. We predicted that but still it was nice to see that it doesn’t matter what is the domain, whether it’s controlling your finance, or finding a job, or controlling your weight, or studying, those who are struggling are more motivated by giving someone advice than by getting advice back, which was nice.

We found that what predicts adherents to basically any goal, in particular, now we’re looking at New Year’s Resolutions because it’s soon, is how much people are enthusiastic about doing the thing, how much they enjoy doing the thing, and not how important it is, which was surprising for us because you do something, you set a resolution because it is important, not because it is fun to do. Nevertheless, how important that is for you can predict so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s juicy. And Katy Milkman, we had on the show, in her book How to Change, we talked a little bit about some of those principles in terms of being enjoyable, and that’s sort of like old-fashioned exercise advice, “What’s the best exercise? The one you enjoy and you stick with.” It’s like, “Okay, no, but seriously, what’s going to give me faster or big muscles,” or kind of whatever your outcome you’re shooting for, or lose weight, you name it. But there’s something to it, the adherence, you’re telling me that that’s the top variable you found for tracking adherence is how much you enjoy doing the thing?

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes. And I basically think about it as immediate rewards. And it’s interesting that you mentioned Katy Milkman because we did our research independently and we did get to similar conclusions. Yes, it’s how much you get some immediate feedback that this is working, that this is enjoyable, that you are in it. It’s not just enjoyment. It could be something else that is immediate, like, “It immediately makes me feel proud.”

We recently published a paper that found that even if there’s a slight discomfort, if it’s immediate, then that’s better than nothing. So, realizing that, “This is working because I feel like I’m slightly struggling is good. It motivates.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. As opposed to, I’m thinking about supplements, it’s like even if it feels a little weird, it’s like, “Okay. Well, it’s doing something as opposed to just nothing,” so that maybe gives you a dash of hope. And what’s funny, what comes to mind now is, as we speak, I just happen to be in one of my best ever weightlifting grooves of my life, and I think that’s exactly what’s going on here, is that because we got some structural and environmental things working in my favor so I have some consistency, and I’ve got a really lovely app called RepCount, which makes it so easy to track what I’m doing, it’s so exciting, rewarding, fun to see, “Oh, I bench-pressed as much as I could last time, and I could do this weight four times. Oh, but this time, I could do it five times.” So, it’s like, “I am stronger than I’ve ever been before. Yes.” And it just feels fantastic.

And then, of course, exercise in its own endorphin-y, positive, biochemically way does what it does, but then I’ve got that immediate reward. So, I really do, it gets me coming back again and again and again because I want to keep breaking records and feeling awesome each time I do, which, at this stage in the game, thankfully, is almost every time. So, I’m into it. And, yeah, my adherence is high because my immediate positive enjoyable feedback is high.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah. You actually mentioned out a bunch of things that all contribute to motivation.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, unpack it for me.

Ayelet Fishbach
So, the one thing that you mentioned is that this is immediate, like you do this and you immediately get the feedback that this is working, that you just broke a record. And we know that whatever is immediate is much more motivating than some delayed outcomes that will happen in a week or a month or in a year.

Then another thing that I like about your example is that you looked back, and you say, “Well, I only did three last week, and four earlier this week, and now I can do five.” And looking back is often the way to keep yourself going. If you always look forward then you might never quite be where you want to be, so that might be hard. We often tell people, like, “Look back. Look at how much you have achieved. That will increase your commitment.”

In studies, like students that look back were more motivated to study in particular when they were unsure whether they want to do the thing. Customers standing in line, when they look back, they appreciated more the thing that they’re waiting for. So, looking back is good. And then the last thing that you mentioned is having a miracle target, like, “I want to be at five or at six,” which is also a very good strategy to motivate yourself. So, you just found a combo.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, it’s working because sometimes I find myself daydreaming, like it’s Tuesday evening as we speak, I was like, “Oh, boy, Wednesday is a day away. I’m already excited for tomorrow morning to go to the gym.” And I find other times in my life where that was not at all the situation with regard to thinking about the gym.

Well, cool. So, we kind of got a little bit of hodgepodge of fun discoveries and practice how they’re working. So, maybe you could share with us sort of the core thesis of your book “Get It Done” and any key principles that we haven’t hit yet?

Ayelet Fishbach
All right, yes. And so, when I looked at the field of motivation, and I’ve been a motivational scientist for a long time, I feel that what is common to all the interventions, all the strategies that we developed is that they change the situation in order to change the behavior. And so, basically, if we wanted to change someone else’s behavior, we would change their situation, we would change how we present the information to them, or whom they’re going to do the thing, or we are going to give them certain incentives to behave in one way, or a punishment for behaving in another way.

We can apply this to ourselves. We can be the person that shapes our own behavior if we systematically think about the situation in which we put ourselves and how we think about these situations. And I started with this, and then I looked at all the strategies that we have been studying for many years, and thinking that they really fall into four buckets.

And so, when we think about changing our situation in order to motivate ourselves, first bucket or first element is setting a goal. How do we set a goal? Is it a motivating goal? Is it a “do” goal as opposed to a “do not” goal, which might seem urgent but is not fun to pursue? Is it an intrinsic goal? Everything on that. The second element is “How do we monitor progress?” Do we get feedback? Do we look back? Do we look forward? How do we learn from setbacks, from negative feedback? So, all these interventions.

The third element is, “What do we do with everything else?” “I might plan to exercise but I also plan for other things for this early hour in the morning when I thought I would exercise, so that doesn’t work.” How people design their environment for everything else. And then the last element is social support and all the interventions that get people to find other people that will help them.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. So, that’s a nice menu there, bits there to work with. And so, boy, it seems like we talked a good bit about the monitoring of progress in our earlier example. Let’s talk a little bit about setting a goal such that it is a motivating one. I’m thinking we recently interviewed Michal Bungay Stanier who was talking about making goals really juicy and epic that get you going or worthy. What does the research suggest makes a goal more motivating versus less motivating?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, yes, I agree that juicy is good, a goal that is enticing. We find that goals that are intrinsic, that feel good to pursue are motivating. We find that goals that are challenging are more motivating. And so, ideally, you should think about setting a goal that you have maybe 80% chance of achieving on a daily basis. You will not always be successful but you will also not be so unsuccessful that you will give up. The error can be on both sides, and the study shows that when people are in this zone, where they are not sure that they can do it, but if they work hard, they will. In this uncertain zone, this is where you see the energy level picks up.

We want people to set “do” goals more than “do not” goals, or approach goals not avoidance. The early research on this actually looked at thought suppression and Wiseman described that the study seemed intuitive. It’s much easier to ask people to think about something than not to think about something.

I can ask you to think about brown bears. You can do this. If I asked you not to think about white bears, that’s impossible. I can ask you to think about your current partner. You can do this. If I asked you not to think about your ex, you think about your ex, I think. It’s really hard not to do that. And, indeed, do-not goals are harder. They seem urgent, so if you want to do something immediately, then avoidance goals are maybe a good fit, but usually try to avoid them.

Pete Mockaitis
Avoiding avoidance goals.

Ayelet Fishbach
And a number, put a number on it is something that is pulling you toward it. One of the nice studies on that looked at marathon runners. A marathon runner tried to run the marathon under four hours, and so there are many more people that finished the marathon in three hours and 59 minutes than in four hours and one minute.

Pete Mockaitis
I bet, yeah.

Ayelet Fishbach
Right? Because it’s just like you really want to do this under four hours, so you just try to push very hard toward the end. It’s such a nice demonstration of the power of goals.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you mentioned four key principles there. One is sort of what do we do with the other stuff, like in the morning example, like there’s other stuff that happens in the morning. What are some of the best practices there?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, we never just want one thing. I would say that, to begin with, we need to realize that we want several things simultaneously. And we can think about identifying activities that achieve several things simultaneously. And so, a good way to pursue a goal is such that you also get something else out of doing it. If you bike to work, you get your commute and your exercise and saving money at the same time.

Some activities help some goals but interfere with other goals. If I make my lunch at home, well, I will be eating healthily and I will save money, but this is going to interfere with my goal to get to work on time because I have a lot to do in the morning and I’m slow.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. We’re socializing when the colleagues go out to Chipotle or wherever.

Ayelet Fishbach
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, well, I just have this, so, sorry.”

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes. And so, thinking about the impact that your action has on multiple goals is important. So, some activities achieve several goals, and they are good. We call them multi-final. Sometimes we fare to the saying, “Feed two birds with one scone,” if you will. Think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
This is very clever. Scone, stone, wow. This is an original. I like it.

Ayelet Fishbach
Thank you. So, other activities are what we call equifinal. This is all roads lead to Rome. So, there are several activities to achieve the same thing and when you think about this superficially, it feels like, “Well, why do I need more than one path to pursue a goal? Why do I need another way of exercising?” given that you just identified this thing that works so well for you. Well, we need that as a backup plan, and we need this to increase our confidence.

And so, when people identify several ways to do the same thing, they are more confident. One of the studies that I like, found that for new gym goers, new people at the gym, learning that there many options to get their exercise increase their motivation. For those that have been there for a while, that doesn’t really matter.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Yeah, I already knew that. Thanks.”

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay.

Ayelet Fishbach
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And then social support? I’m all about accountability groups, or people challenging and inspiring and being workout buddies, or whatever. What are some of your top do’s and don’ts when it comes to social support?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, there are a few ways in which we should think about social support. There are some goals that we are doing with others, and many of the important things that we do, we do with others. I do my research with others. I raise children with my spouse. I work with colleagues. We do things with other people. And then we should think about, “How do we make sure that we are efficient in our division of labor, how to combat social loafing?”

And many of the strategies that motivation scientists think about are meant to combat social loafing. How do we make sure that, when several of us are doing something together, we are not doing less? The classic studies found that when you put a few people and ask them to do something, either to pull a rope or just make a lot of noise, more people, less work that everybody is doing. And so, we think about how to make contribution identifiable, how to increase the identity of a person as a group member so that the presence of other people will not make them work less hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. You know, this brings me back to thinking about band in high school because I was pretty mediocre as a saxophonist, not the best, not the worst. But then, boy, when there were times when each person had to individually go into the room and play the piece for the director, the practicing really happened because there was no hiding in the crowd as to the sound. It’s like he knew what you could do and what you couldn’t do, not that he was going to scream at you but you just didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t know how to play the stuff. That’s just not a pleasant feeling.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes, as long as you remember that you need to listen to these kids individually sometimes, then you could keep the motivation high. If it’s hard to identify who’s doing what, then we tend to procrastinate.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Ayelet Fishbach
Then the other aspect of social support is just the people that are helping you with your own goals. So, they are there, they want more of the real estate, they want you to do well. You really need those people to keep going. It is actually impossible to adhere to any goal when the people around you think this is fully so unnecessary.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so these are some great principles. And I’d love it if you could help me get creative about applying them into some career situations. I guess I’m thinking about the stuff that tends to get left behind. And maybe it’s the email inboxes that never seems to hit zero, or maybe there are some strategic thinking and things I want to run after, or maybe there are some goals that show up in my annual review and I never seem to find the time to actually advance them until it’s a bit of a scramble towards before the next annual review.

So, in these sorts of fuzzy things that might be hard to put a number on, etc., and might not even be things we are interested in intrinsically, how do we work some magic to tap into an extra level of motivation on the tricky ones?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, these are ongoing goals. The problem with email is exactly as you mentioned. It never ends.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Ayelet Fishbach
You might get to zero emails at some time in your life. It will probably last till like 30 seconds, so it’s really just keep doing it. It’s not reaching the end of it. And when goals don’t have a clear beginning or end, they are much harder to pursue. I talk in the book about the middle problem, which happens for goals that do have a beginning and end. But in the middle, motivation is not great, like, “I started the project. I was all into it. I’m about to submit the project. I’m super energized, but in the months in between, I can’t bring myself to work on that thing. This is hard.”

In our studies, we found that people relax their performance standards, they even relax their ethical standards. In one study, like, we found the people literally cut corners in the middle. That is we gave people five shapes, like drawn on paper, and a pair of scissors, and they had to cut them. And the first shape looked great. The last shape was pretty decent. In the middle, they literally cut corners. They were not good at their job.

And I think that this is a bit with like the problem with email, “It’s just that it doesn’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything. I’m just like on the treadmill, keep going.” It helps to find some markers, some beginnings, some ends, that sets your daily goal to answer a certain number of emails or address a certain aspect of the work so that you can achieve it and get to something that you can accomplish, to some end.

I also want to add that we ran a study a few years back in an advertising company where we asked people that was in Seoul, in South Korea, and we asked half of the people to reflect back on what they achieved, and the other half to reflect on what they have yet to achieve. So, either look at what you’ve done or what you still have to do.

And what we found is that those who look back were happier with their job, and those who looked ahead were more motivated to move forward. They had a higher level of aspiration. And so, yes, they were more thrusted with their current position but they were also more eager to do something else that’s even better. And I thought that that was good.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they’re both getting some good vibes. Can we recap? So, with people looking back, felt more what?

Ayelet Fishbach
Felt better about what they do. They liked what they do more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so maybe more satisfied with where things stand. And then those who looked forward were more hungry to get after it. Is that fair to say?

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah, they wanted to be on the next level already. They wanted to progress.

Pete Mockaitis
interesting. Well, I guess now I want to know in terms of their behaviors afterwards because, in some ways, feeling good sometimes results in us taking care of business. In other times, feeling good results in us chilling out and not pushing it as much.

Ayelet Fishbach
Exactly. And we can predict when we will see each one of them. The less committed people tend to work harder when they feel good about what they do, when they look back, and they say, “Well, I already did some,” they work harder. The fully committed people are more motivated when they get feedback on what they have not yet done. Although, in this study that I told you, we didn’t really look at commitment. Everybody was pretty committed. We really just wanted to see how high is their level of aspiration, how much they want to already be doing the next thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That is great. So, we got a lot of nice foundational fundamental principles to bear in mind as we’re designing goals and chasing after them and how we pursue them. I’m curious about sort of in the heat of battle, in the moment, it’s like, “Aah, I just don’t feel like it.” Any tips, tools, stuff to do then and there?

Ayelet Fishbach
I would ask why you feel like this.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, I didn’t get a great night’s sleep. Oh, I’ve just been going at it for a while. I’m just kind of tired of it.”

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah. Well, so you say that you didn’t get enough sleep, but the way you were, pretending to be that person that’s unmotivated, it sounded like you’re just not excited about what’s ahead of you. You look at your day and it seems kind of boring. It’s not intrinsically motivating. And if that would be my diagnosis, now, notice that I encourage people to run their own diagnosis. But in our play here, I’m diagnosing that what you do is just not exciting for you, so either you bring excitement to what you do or you do something else. You find another path to be successful at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, okay, so how does one bring excitement to what you do when it’s not there naturally?

Ayelet Fishbach
Something that you can do, actually, pretty easy, you can try to listen to music while you work. You can try to make your environment more enticing, so put around you images of things that make it more fun. In one of our studies, we encouraged students in a math class to listen to music while they were working on their problems.

The teachers were unhappy with us but the students were doing more math problems. I don’t think that they were more excited about the math. They were more excited about the music, or some support, some color of pencils, so it kind of made it a party. So, you can make your office more like a party without changing the actual work that you need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. I guess I’m thinking about there are times when I’ll take a phone call while walking, and so that’s kind of more interesting. Or, if I don’t need much brain power, like while organizing an area, a space, tidying up so it’s sort of like, “This call, I’m not looking forward to, but there is something that I can feel better about in doing that that works for me.” So, that’s cool. Thank you.

Ayelet Fishbach
And if you think about it, many people go to work to be with other people that they like, so it’s really not about the task. I’m not saying that you should not do something interesting. I think that everybody should try to find something interesting to do that the work in itself is rewarding. But in terms of an immediate change that you could do, you could do it with people that you like.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. What colors you like, colored pencils for the math problems. I think a great pencil makes an impact. Sure. Okay. And then do you have some thoughts when it comes to when we’re motivating ourselves versus trying to motivate others? Do kind of like the same rules and principles apply or are there some distinctions and ways we want to play the game a bit differently based on the target?

Ayelet Fishbach
That’s an interesting question. The main difference is when we look at incentives. Research on incentives, it’s easier to think about how to incentivize others than to incentivize yourself. Of course, you can use the wrong incentives for others as well as for yourself. In the book, I give the story of French colonials in Hanoi. They were trying to get rid of the rats that were all over the city, which was partially because the way that the French colonials built the city but, anyways, there are rats everywhere, and they decided to have a bounty system by which they give people a cent for a dead rat, actually for the tail of the rat.

Terrible incentive systems because the way to make money is by bringing dead rats, and the way to have dead rats is by, first, having live rats, and so the residents of Hanoi were breeding rats in order to get the money from the government. So, incentives can backfire and cannot do what we intended them to do, whether we incentivize others or ourselves. But when we incentivize ourselves, that’s, in particular, hard because we often find it hard to think how will we do that. And this is where often we see people struggling, like, “What do I give myself? And how do I make sure that I don’t give it to myself when I don’t deserve it?” Not impossible, but harder. And the other end, self-control is much more when incentivizing ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right. It’s almost sounds like you need a referee in terms of like, “I’m going to have some chocolate when I accomplish this thing.” But if you have the chocolate in the corner, it’s like, “Well, it’s right. I guess I can just have it now regardless of whether I do the thing.” So, I don’t have any clever ideas other than having a referee, a gatekeeper, holder of the chocolate or whatever, monitoring things. Are there any other tricks?

Ayelet Fishbach
I think that you are referring to having another person helping you, and absolutely having other people is always helpful. Giving gifts to yourself, a thing that you would not afford on a daily basis, like this coffee that’s way too expensive so you only give it to yourself when you feel that you have done something special, or going to the spa because you exercised a certain number of days this month, which, again, might be something that you, well, you can afford every week but is a reward. That’s harder.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, if it’s indulgent and kind of inaccessible, then that just sort of makes sense in terms of you’re less likely to say, “Well, I’m just taking a spa day here on Tuesday. Just that what’s happening.” That, of course, requires a little bit of thinking and planning in terms of like the obligations of the day and, yeah, I guess you’d feel more lame if you just took the incentive prematurely as opposed to chocolate which is something you might do anyway.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes, exactly. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, tell me, Ayelet, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ayelet Fishbach
Gosh, so you already realized that I am thinking about many things that people can do to keep themselves motivated. I will follow your question because if you just let me talk, we are going to just like, “Aargh.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, how about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ayelet Fishbach
Oh, a favorite quote. Let me go with Gramsci, “History teaches but it has no pupils.” The way I take it is that there is a lot of feedback out there but we often don’t learn. And I am particularly reminded of this when I look at how much people learn from negative feedback and from setbacks. And we often think about negative feedback and setbacks as something that you should just ignore and keep going. And I say, “Well, there was some interesting important lesson there. Have you learned that? Maybe not.” So, I will go with “History teaches but it has no pupils.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ayelet Fishbach
We did a study in which we wanted to explore people’s aversion to investing in means, like people want to invest their resources in this thing itself, not in a means to the thing.

And so, we auctioned a signed by a University of Chicago economist to some people, and they told us how much they’re willing to pay, and the highest bid is going to get the book. Then we took another group of people from the same population, and we auctioned a tote bag, actually a fancy tote bag that contained the same book.

And so, we asked these people, “How much are you willing to pay for the bag that contains this book?” People were willing to pay around $25 for the book and around $12 or $13 for the bag and the book. In economic terms, the value of the bag was negative. And so, that was a very cool illustration of how much we don’t like to invest our resources with a thing that is not the thing itself, that is a way to get there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’m just going to chew on that for a while. Thank you. Whew, that just makes me think about so many businesses in terms of you can buy a virtual assistant, that’s another business I run. You can pay for a virtual assistant, or you can pay for a podcast production. And that person is doing that thing, and yet how you present it can have wildly different implications for willingness to pay and such. And that’s kind of mind-blowing. Thank you. Whew!

All right. And how about a favorite book?

Ayelet Fishbach
I read a lot of novels so I would say my favorite book, anything by Elena Ferrante – how does it work? – “The Lying Life of Adults.”

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

Ayelet Fishbach
So, that was an important question. Go to my webpage AyeletFishbach.com. Everything is there, information on my book, on my social media, on my research, my publications, my teaching, this podcast hopefully soon. Everything is on AyeletFishbach.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Ayelet Fishbach
Okay. So, how can you work better with other people? How can you bring someone to help you, bring someone who is your role model, do something in order to connect to a person? Your challenge will be to do something with another person either in order to do it better or to connect better to that person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Ayelet, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and motivation in all your pursuits.

Ayelet Fishbach
Thank you very much. I hope so and I very much enjoyed talking to you.

Dec 23

730: How Leaders Can Succeed by Mastering the Eight Paradoxes of Effective Leaders with Dr. Tim Elmore

By Ida del Mundo | Podcasts | No Comments

Tim Elmore says: "I need to speak as if I believe I’m right, but I need to listen as if I believe I’m wrong."

Dr. Tim Elmore sheds light on the eight paradoxes the leaders of today must embrace to more effectively inspire and connect with their teams.

You’ll Learn:

Why leaders say it’s more difficult to lead today
The eight conflicting demands of great leaders
The two behaviors that set aspiring leaders apart

About Tim

Dr. Tim Elmore is the founder and CEO of Growing Leaders, an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization created to develop emerging leaders. Since founding Growing Leaders, Elmore has spoken to more than 500,000 students, faculty, and staff on hundreds of campuses across the country. Elmore has also provided leadership training and resources for multiple athletic programs. In addition, a number of government offices in Washington, D.C. have utilized Dr. Elmore’s curriculum and training.

From the classroom to the boardroom, Elmore is a dynamic communicator who uses principles, images, and stories to strengthen leaders. He has taught leadership to Delta Global Services, Chick-fil-A, Inc., The Home Depot, The John Maxwell Co., HomeBanc, and Gold Kist, Inc., among others. Committed to developing young leaders on every continent of the world, Elmore also has shared his insights in more than thirty countries. Tim’s expertise on emerging generations and generational diversity in the workplace has led to media coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, Investor’s Business Daily, Huffington Post, MSNBC.com, The Washington Post, WorkingMother.com, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, and Portfolio.com. Tim has appeared on CNN’s Headline News and FOX & Friends discussing parenting trends and advice.

Tim’s book: The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership: Embracing the Conflicting Demands of Today’s Workplace
Tim’s organization: GrowingLeaders.com
Tim’s website: TimElmore.com
Tim’s course: Habitudes for Young Professionals

Resources Mentioned

Book: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
Previous episode: 397: Making the Shifts Necessary to Grow Your Influence with John C. Maxwell
Previous episode: 537: How to Develop and Multiply Leaders with John C. Maxwell

Tim Elmore Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Tim, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Tim Elmore
Thank you, Pete. Good to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat. You’ve worked with a lot of leaders over a lot of years. I’m curious, what’s one of your most surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discoveries you’ve made about us human beings and leadership across your career?

Tim Elmore
You know, this won’t shock you, but meeting with C-level leaders and finding out they’re just as humans as the intern at the office. We gain experience and we gain wisdom, I think, I like to think we do, but then you find out, “Bob puts his pants on one leg at a time, and he struggles with his daughter and his dog,” that sort of thing. So, I think that’s liberating a little bit because I think we think we have to perfect something by the time we reach 50, and that just doesn’t happen.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I find that really reassuring and true to my own experience. I remember in consulting, the first time I was in a meeting with, like, “A CEO is going to be in the meeting and I’m going to be there too? Oh, my gosh.” My first sighting of a CEO up close and personal in real life. And then he asked us a very basic normal question, it’s like, “Oh, so does that number include the benefits or just the salaries?”

Tim Elmore
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “That’s what I would ask if I were him. Wow!”

Tim Elmore
Yeah, maybe becoming CEO means you get the guts to ask those questions that we’re afraid to ask.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. All right. So, your latest work is called The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership: Embracing the Conflicting Demands of Today’s Workplace. That’s cool. Tell us, what’s the big idea behind this book here?

Tim Elmore
Yeah. Well, I think it’s not hyperbole to say we’re living and leading in very funky different times. This is my 42nd year leading something as a paid leader and I’d just never seen a time like this that we’re in. So, I don’t mean to exaggerate or create drama, but I think I just look around. In fact, I tell you what, the genesis for this book actually was a green room conversation I had with 16 CEOs.

So, it was right before an event and I thought, “I’m going to capitalize on this moment and talk to these people about what they’re experiencing.” So, Pete, I asked the question, “Do you think leading people today is harder than it was when you first learned to lead?” And I thought I’d get a mixture of answers, but every single one of these people said, “Absolutely.” One of them said, “A hundred and ten percent.” They were ready to wave the flag.

And then I kind of pushed back, and I said, “Now, that’s kind of odd that you would say that. Wouldn’t you think leadership would’ve been harder when we were in our 20s and we first started leading something but we didn’t know much?” But everyone of them stuck to their guns. And that set me on a search, really, “Why is it that we would say that?”

And part of the reason, I think, is that we do live in just complex times. Post-COVID 19 pandemic is just weird and we don’t know what normal will look like two years from now. It may look much like this. We thought we were coming through the Delta variant, and then there’s another variant. But here’s what I also note. When I look around at leaders and teams, I feel like people come to our teams today with higher levels of education, higher levels of expectation, what they expect from a leader today, higher levels of entitlement, meaning, “I feel like I’m entitled to more perks and benefits than ever before.” That’s not wicked or evil. It’s just true. Higher levels of emotion.

Pete, I remember when I first began my career, it was very common for bosses to say, “Leave your personal problems at the door. Come and get the work done,” and then we say, “Okay.” Today, it’s, “Bring your whole selves to work,” and that’s awesome. We keep it real that way but we bring emotions, we bring baggage, we bring personal problems with us, and so it’s just a different day. And that’s perhaps why leaders go through decision fatigue.

I heard a leader say recently, “I feel like I’ve made a year’s worth of decisions in one month, last year. So, I’ll stop there but just feel like, because of the complex times, there are paradoxes. Here’s the premise of the book. There are paradoxes that all involve social and emotional intelligence. So, they’re doable for all of us, we can learn these, but we’re often not practicing them, and then we see a resignation that didn’t need to happen or a retirement that didn’t need to happen so soon because we just weren’t leading as effectively as we could.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Tim, I love what you said there because, well, as you might imagine, I’ve read a lot of business books, and, as we know, the first third-ish, I don’t know, it varies, of the book is convincing you how critically necessary, “This book is right now.” And a lot of times it feels a little trite, because you’re, “Oh, with globalization and competition,” it’s like, “Yeah, okay, globalization and competition has been going on for a while now.”

But, no, I think you’re keying in on something in terms of genuinely the human experience and expectations, it’s cool, like, “Bring your whole self to work,” has advantages in terms of, “Oh, yeah, we’re getting some, we’re tapping into some creativity and some passion,” which you just can’t get when it’s like, “No, no, no, leave that at home and you crank through the task list that I need you to crank through.’ You just don’t get that.” Well, you do with bring your whole self to work. But you also have a new whole set of challenges and expectations to live up to and deliver upon effectively. So, yeah, well-said. Thank you.

So, let’s hear about these paradoxes. You’ve, in fact, listed eight specific paradoxes. What are they?

Tim Elmore
Yeah. Well, let me be the first to concede, there might be 8,000 of these things we need to learn but I found eight. So, just to list them or, at least, a handful of them, the first one in the book is I believe effective leaders, uncommon leaders, must be confident and humble. And very often, you get one or the other. At least you lean toward one or the other. You’re a very confident leader. In fact, some people wonder, “Are you too confident now, Bob?” Or, they’re very humble and that’s winsome for us, but with a humble leader only, you kind of wonder, “Are we going to get to the goal or we’re just going to be nice to each other?”

So, I think the best leaders bring both – confidence and humility. And what I do in this book, Pete, just so you know, is I center on a case study for each of these paradoxes. And my case study for this one was Bob Iger, the former CEO of Disney. Bob took that role, followed Michael Eisner, and Michael was this very, in all due respect, cocky, kind of just full of himself, and actually was so arrogant that he stopped conversations with Steve Jobs when they were trying to buy Pixar, and never got it done under Michael Eisner.

Bob Iger comes in, knows less about leading an empire like Disney because he’s never done it before, and calls Steve Jobs up, and says, “Steve, it’s Bob. You don’t know me. We’ve never met. I’m heading up Disney now, and I just can’t help but think that we might be better together. What do you say?” And Steve Jobs goes, “That’s not a crazy idea. Let’s talk.” And he gets it done. Disney buys Pixar.

But then what I love about this story about confidence and humility is when they buy Pixar, Bob and the Disney enterprise put Pixar in charge of all Disney animation, “So, I just bought you. Now, would you tell us what to do?” That, to me, is confidence and humility, and that’s rare but I think it needs to not be rare. So, that would be the first one in the book, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Tim, once again, I love what you’re saying here. It’s like we have an idea, we have an example, and it’s like, “Okay, I get what you’re saying.” So, can you just do that for the next seven, please?

Tim Elmore
Absolutely, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re crushing it.

Tim Elmore
Well, let me give a homework assignment to listeners on this one. I am trying to practice these eight paradoxes. I didn’t write them because I know them all. I wrote them because I’m trying to be them. My assignment for this one is when I’m in a meeting, I need to speak as if I believe I’m right, but I need to listen as if I believe I’m wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s kind of thing will re-tweet, Tim. That’s well-said.

Tim Elmore
Yeah. Well, thanks. It’s a great assignment for me because I don’t do that listening thing well. I listen as if I believe I’m still right and I’m just waiting for my next turn to talk. Anyway, that’s been good for me. So, the next one is even more, I think, challenging. I believe uncommon leaders, paradoxical leaders, leverage both their vision and their blind spots, which sound like, “No, you can’t have those together.” But I actually believe, in all the leaders I interviewed, they actually said, “No, I ended up benefiting both from my vision, ‘Here’s the target we want to hit.’”

But isn’t it true, when you talk to leaders, a lot of them will look back, and go, “Man, if I had known then what I know now, I never would’ve started this enterprise. I learned so many things.” And it was because they didn’t know the protocol. They didn’t know how it was done before that enabled them to find a whole new way to reach the goal.

So, my case study on this one is Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. So, she created this industry, shapewear for women, it’s kind of a combination of pantyhose or stockings and girdle, and she ends up calling Neiman Marcus, and ends up talking to a female executive, and says, “Hey, can I come have 10 minutes of your time?” She gets the meeting, she tries them on, she tries on Spanx in front of a lady in the restroom and, of course, sold, “This is great.”

Well, later, when Sara was doing a Q&A session for a large group of business leaders, one of the people in the audience stands up and says, “Sara, how did you get the attention of a major department store in a trade show where there’s a thousand exhibitors?” And she said, “Tradeshow? I never went to a tradeshow. I just called up this executive.” And Sara looks back and says, “It’s what I didn’t know that saved me. I didn’t do the normal stuff that people wade through that most people die in.” It’s what she didn’t know that helped her.

Pete Mockaitis
So, she didn’t know, “This is not how this is done, Sara, the whole process by which we onboard new products into our merchandising lineup.”

Tim Elmore
Yes, that’s exactly right. And isn’t it true, the more experience you gain, the more you know what the protocol is, and you can get stuck in doing it the way we’ve done it before. So, Sara says, “Hey, it may be what you don’t know that may completely put you in a blue ocean where there’s nobody there yet.” And that’s what happened.

I feel like, when I started Growing Leaders, I didn’t know what I was doing. Thank God, I didn’t know what I was doing in some ways. Anyway, I’ll stop there but that was a really, really important one for me to learn from as I wrote it down.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Well, let’s hear about the third paradox.

Tim Elmore
Okay. The third one is I believe effective leaders practice both visibility and invisibility. And all I mean by this, and everybody listening that’s a leader will go, “I know exactly what you mean.” When you’re up front, in other words, when you’re beginning any project or product or offering that you are going to sell, people need to see their leader very visible. We need to model the way. We need to set the example. We can’t just give a lecture. We need to show them the way.

But along the way, if we stay visible, other people aren’t going to step out. They’re going to defer to us in the meeting. They’re going to lean on us. They’re going to say, “Well, I can’t say anything. Tim, go ahead.” I think there comes a point in every leader’s journey that he or she says, “I need to be invisible now. I need to perhaps not show up at that meeting because John or Susan needs to step up.”

So, my example on this one is Dr. Martin Luther King. Between 1955 and 1963 in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King was a very visible leader. He marched, he protested, he boycotted, he, on purpose, got himself thrown into prison. There were 29 times Dr. King was imprisoned. Part of it was just setting the example for making sacrifices.

From ’63 on, you begin to see him do something different in his leadership. He didn’t show up at some meetings. And when young John Lewis would call him and say, “Dr. King, we need you here,” he’d say, “John, you know what to say.” He knew that young John Lewis wouldn’t speak up if Dr. King was in the room because, “I defer to Dr. King.”

So, there’s a point in our training process, in our equipping process, we’ve got to be not absent emotionally, or not purposely absent because it was a hard meeting…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, didn’t feel like it.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, exactly. And that’s a problem today, absentee leadership, because we didn’t feel like it is a problem. But I’m saying, now we start strategically saying, “You step up, you step up, you step up.” And I just think the greatest leaders always find their way to do that, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Keep it coming. Number four.

Tim Elmore
All right. Here’s another tough one for me. I believe uncommon leaders are both stubborn and open-minded. Now, does that not sound like an oxymoron? How can you be stubborn and open-minded? But here’s what I would say to this. I think, at the beginning of any venture, leading any company, you have to be stubborn about a few things. You’re not going to reach a goal unless you’re strong-willed, and you say, “Doggone it, we’re going to do this.” You just have to have that. Obstacles will throw you if you don’t.

But I think any leader would say, “If you’re only stubborn, you’re not listening to anybody, you’re not open-minded to new ideas, you don’t think you need anybody else, aargh, that puts us in trouble.” So being stubborn means you got a chance at reaching the goal. Being open-minded means you have a chance at taking others with you to that goal.

So, my example on this one was Truett Cathy, long time ago founder of Chick-Fil-A restaurants. Truett only had one restaurant for 10 years, and he was tweaking his recipe, not just for chicken but for the way he was going to run this restaurant. And you and I both know he was very different. You’d like him or hate him but they’re closed on Sunday, “This is our values,” so forth and so on.

So, I discovered Truett was extremely stubborn when it came to some core issues. He was very open when it came to almost anyone else. And what his core issues were, Pete, was his people, he really erred on believing in his people. He would keep people long just because he so wanted them to know they were believed in, but he also had his core values. I know that sounds cliché, but he had a core set of beliefs, that he said, “This is how we’ll run the company. I don’t care if it’s 2021 or 1951.”

And those cores were what he was stubborn about, and everybody knew this is sacred here, and I think it’s actually served them. I think they’re becoming a leader in the quick-service restaurant industry. Now, McDonald’s is copying them. Now, Kentucky Fried Chicken is copying them because, I think, they had that core that they’ve never left.

Pete Mockaitis
And there are some of the things that they just totally throw out the window, like, “You know what, let’s do the opposite of what we were doing. That’s fine.”

Tim Elmore
Yeah. Well, so you might know this. I don’t know how often you get to a Chick-Fil-A, but wherever a Chick-Fil-A is, you know if you walked in that restaurant and you order something, and you say, “Thanks,” they’ll say, “It’s my pleasure.” That’s their phrase, “It’s my pleasure.” It doesn’t sound like a big deal.

But Truett Cathy introduced that phrase at their big annual conference for all the operators, all the owners, and he didn’t push it. I mean, he did push it but he didn’t demand it. He didn’t say, “Now, you’re going to get fired if you don’t use this phrase.” But he kept creating a tone and a spirit and a culture of, “Let’s say, ‘It’s my pleasure. It’s my pleasure. It’s my pleasure.’” Ten years later, it stuck.

And I would say what happened was originally people were going, “I’m not going to say that phrase.” First of all, in quick-service restaurants, they’re not asking for great customer service. They want speed and cheap. In other words, most of the time you go to a fast-food restaurant, you want it really fast and you only want to pay $2.50 for a burger or something like that. He kind of introduced a whole new…and they adapted along the way to introduce some things that they just became open-minded about.

So, the way they’ve gone about it, the new menu items on the restaurant, it always involves chicken in some way, but there’s all kinds of menu items they were adaptable about. At 92 years old, Truett Cathy actually designed a brand-new restaurant called Truett’s Luau. It was a Hawaiian restaurant. It wasn’t just selling chicken. He came up with all the décor and the menu at 92 years old. He’s still learning. He’s still growing.

He wrote me a thank you note in his 80s for a book I’d written, and just said, “Here’s what I learned,” and I thought, “Oh, my gosh. He’s in his 80s, he could teach me everything.” So, I’m not sure if that answers your question but that’s what I think of when I think about what you asked.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that open-mindedness, that really shows in terms of it’s not like, “Oh, we’ve already figured out restaurants. That’s how it is.” Like, “Nope, here’s a new kind of restaurant.” As well as, “Hey, I read your book in my 80s, and here’s some learnings,” and that’s got to feel good to get that letter.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Let’s hear number five.

Tim Elmore
Okay. Next one, yup. This one really is geared at the heart of a leader, and I think sometimes leaders maybe aren’t as aware of their heart issues, not just head issues, we need to master. I believe uncommon leader practice this paradox. They hold high standards for their people but offer gracious forgiveness. So, high standards and gracious forgiveness.

What I mean by that is…well, let me put it to you in the opposite way. If we only have high standards and not gracious forgiveness, our people aren’t going to take any risks because they’re going to be afraid for their jobs. If you just have a bunch of high standards, “I may get fired if I make a mistake,” they’re going to be scared to try certain things that we need them to try to move the company forward. But if we only have gracious forgiveness and not high standards, people are going to give you mediocre work. They’re going to go, “Oh, he’ll forgive me. He’ll forgive me if I’m lame on this one. It’s no big deal.”

So, I think we need to say, “We got these high standards.” This about Amazon, think about Apple, these great companies that set these ridiculous high standards for the industry they’re in. But I think the best leaders say, “I’m calling you up to this high standard but just know I love my team members. And if you shoot for the standard, you give it everything you got and you miss it, you’re going to be forgiven.”

So, if you don’t mind, I want to double-click on this one because this is one I often talk about, and people go, “How do I do that? I don’t know how to do that.” One of our habitudes images,- we teach leaders with images. One of our habitudes images is called the Golden Gate paradox, and it’s actually a paradox for this one.

You’re familiar with the Golden Gate Bridge. It was built way back in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Because it was built during the Great Depression, they had a whole line of people that joined the team to build the bridge that were just regular workers, they were just looking for jobs, so they weren’t engineers, they never built a bridge before, but they needed money.

So, they hired these workers who were up on the scaffoldings, building this incredible engineering feat in San Francisco, and people were falling. They were falling to their death. So, they have a meeting with the foreman, Mr. Strauss, and Strauss is asked by the workers, “Could we put a safety net underneath this bridge?” Well, that was not common because it was going to cost a lot of money and that was just not common at the time. But Strauss, thankfully, said, “You know what, it’s going to cost us some money so we’re probably going to go overbudget, and it’s going to cost us some time to build this net so we’re probably not going to finish on the deadline, but I owe it to my people to do this.”

So, they put a $300,000 net, and back then, $300,000 was a lot of money. They put the net up and quite the opposite happened. They actually finished on time and on budget. But here’s why. Now, the workers, because they had a safety net beneath them, could focus on succeeding not surviving.

Pete Mockaitis
More attention on the thing itself, and so it’s like, “Whoa, don’t do this wrong or you die.” Okay.

Tim Elmore
Yeah. And, by the way, don’t you know companies, everybody is just trying to survive, not succeed. I mean, if they were honest, they’d say, “I just don’t want to lose my job.” So, I’m saying if we find a way, figuratively speaking, to put a safety net, and say, “Go for it. Give it everything you got. I’m going to catch you if you fall,” oh, my gosh, people stay.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a beautiful image, yes. And I guess what I’m thinking about, I’m thinking about the infamous, or it can just be famous, it’s both, the Netflix culture document, which is funny that that’s achieved such fame. Part of me thinks like, “Well, every company should just have that and be clear on that,” but it’s rare and that’s why it’s famous.

And I think one of the points there was, “Hey, you know you’re going to perform at an exceptional level or you’ll be given a generous severance and you’re going to be compensated top of market as well, so it’s kind of how we operate.” And I get the vibe that there’s no animosity, it’s like, “Hey, you know what, you’re just kind of not delivering at this level, and so this may not be the place for you.” That’s not going to feel good, of course, to get that messaging but there is a bit of that net.

And I’d been on the receiving end of that as well. I remember a notion of…it was an expectation that in consulting that I was to perform zero defects analysis, which is really kind of intimidating when you’re a few months out of college, like, “So, don’t make any mistakes. That’s our expectation.” Like, “Really? Is that fair?” But I guess no mistakes mean like the clients will notice or your manager will notice so just take the time to double-check in advance, basically, is the practice.

And so, I remember falling short of that and also receiving sort of gracious forgiveness in terms of like, “Hey, well, it’s just work. Nobody died but, yeah, this is why we believe in this because it can hurt our credibility, and we’re backtracking a little bit, and so let’s figure out how we can do that.” So, that is nice and it feels good.

It’s interesting, like, I remember the word forgiveness is interesting in that…well, I believe we all make mistakes and we all need forgiveness. And, yeah, I remember one of the first times someone actually said to me, “I forgive you,” it was sort of off-putting. One, people don’t say that very often.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, it’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, literally, “I forgive you, Tim.” It felt a little odd to me because it was like, “Oh,” because it’s sort of like, “You’re not telling me I didn’t screw up,” which is what most people would say, “It’s fine. No big deal. It happens, Tim.” In fact, it almost double-affirmed, “Yeah, you screwed up, Pete.” But then it also… so at first, I didn’t like it, it’s like, “Whoa, that’s kind of intense but also very true and right and big of you, and I like and respect you more.”

So, yeah, just that…it takes a little getting used to but it’s awesome. That’s my take. What do you think about forgiveness as a word and a term and a social vibe?

Tim Elmore
Yeah, no, I think you’re spot on. It’s weird. It seems spiritual, like, maybe in church we’d say that, or maybe God says to us in church. But, you’re right, when someone says, “I forgive you,” it can feel at once, like, “Well, that’s patronizing or that’s condescending,” “I’m the holy one here and I’m going to forgive you. I am perfect and you’re not.”

But I think what I love about what you just said was that person didn’t say you didn’t make a mistake. They’re actually saying, “Yeah, I’m sorry. It was really bad. It was bad. It’s wrong.” But then they let you off, and say, “Let’s do better next time.” One phrase we try to live by at our organization, Growing Leaders, is this, “Let’s shoot for perfection but settle for excellence.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, because excellence is pretty good. We know we’re human. So, I worked for John Maxwell for 20 years, and I feel like John modelled this for me right out of college. I was in my 20s at one time, and, gosh, I did some wingnut foul-tipped bonehead things. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I went to John with fear, thinking, “Oh, my gosh, he’s going to let me go,” and he didn’t. He said, “You know, we learned from that, didn’t we? And let’s talk about what we learned,” so I had to come up with some things I learned.

But I built some confidence up, and thought, “I’m going to keep pushing myself because he’s not going to let go of me.” And for 20 years, I stayed there. So, anyway, it was just a great, great lesson for me to say there’s a heart issue to leadership, and I think that’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s beautiful and John is beautiful, and we’ve had him on the show a couple of times.

Tim Elmore
That’s neat.

Pete Mockaitis
I actually keep forgetting I need to send him something.

Tim Elmore
That’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Listeners can hunt down that episode if they’re really curious about that.

Tim Elmore
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Okay, so high standards and gracious forgiveness. And so, maybe while we’re on the topic, like, in practice, when someone screws up, what do you recommend we say? So, that’s a good phrase, “Hey, we learned something today, didn’t we? I forgive you.” For some personalities, it can really be powerful. For others, it can be very off-putting. What do you think?

Tim Elmore
Yeah, it can be. Of course, people bring different experiences to the workplace so that might be I don’t know how they’re going to respond. But I tell you what, the classic story for this one is…it’s not my case study. My case study for this one is Harriet Tubman, the leader of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. She’s a brilliant picture of this. But the story, I think, we’ve probably all heard, the business story, is Tom Watson who was a former executive at IBM. He was quite famous for having a young manager under his care that made a million-dollar mistake decades ago.

And Watson called him into the office, and the guy came in and spoke first, he thought, “Man, I’m going to just rip the Band-Aid off,” and so he said, “I suppose you want to fire me for my mistake.” And Watson said, “Why would I want to fire you? I just spent a million dollars on your education? Let’s keep going.”

And I thought, “What a great attitude that is.” But it sounds cliché but that’s essentially what a boss needs to, “We learned from this. Let’s make sure we did learn from this. Let’s not repeat it but now let’s move forward but let’s keep the standard high.” And I think most people need a leader to keep the standard high.

Most of us would begin to settle in for average, “Whatever my teammates are doing, if it’s average, I’ll be average.” And I think leaders need to keep calling people up to a standard that’s above and beyond what we would do on our own.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Thank you. All right. Well, let’s hear about the paradox about being both deeply personal and inherently collective.

Tim Elmore
Yeah. So, all of these are different categories of paradoxes. This is the paradox of vocabulary. This paradox is, have you ever noticed when a leader is communicating with a team of people, or any audience, for that matter, the best ones are inherently collective, meaning when they speak, you can tell they see the big picture? They have a grasp on the gravity of this issue, they see the whole, not just part, they see the whole, and yet, as they communicate, you get the feeling they’re talking to you. They’re deeply personal in their language.

So, I can think of great speakers I’ve heard before. You hear them talking, you go, “Man, he gets it. She gets it,” but then they start telling a story, and you go, “Oh, my gosh, did he read my mail last week?” that sort of thing, “How did they know I was feeling that right now?” So, I think this ability we need to develop of being inherently collective but yet deeply personal is brilliant.

My case study on this one was Mother Teresa. So, most people have heard her name, she’s now a saint in the Catholic Church. But Mother Teresa was a great leader. She started this order The Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, India, and it became the largest order of its kind, thousands and thousands and thousands. And she didn’t start thinking, “I’m a great leader. I’m going to build the biggest company.” She didn’t do that.

But what she did was she grasped a big-picture issue, there were people living in poverty and dying on the streets, and she thought, “I’m going to address that issue. We’re going to do it one life at a time so I can stay personal to the needs. And when I go to a donor, I’m going to have a story to tell, not, ‘Well, did you know that 53% are actually dying?’” She didn’t do that.

So, she would talk to people that would say, “Don’t you think a government program would be more effective than a bunch of nuns and Catholic Church?” And they would say, “This is going to destine your plan to fail,” and she would say, “No, it’s going to destine us to scale.” Ain’t that brilliant? And the reason she said that was you scale when people see you setting an example but you’re not leaving the personal touch, and people go, “I know that’s how life ought to look.” In customer service, we don’t want to lose the personal touch.

And so, she was doing it so beautifully, people just kept joining and joining and joining. So, she’s in Calcutta, then there were men and women, then there were this group and then that group, and now there’s groups all over the world. I think the brilliance of it is it is counterintuitive. She never lost sight of the big picture. This is huge. But she never ever, ever lost the touch.

Let me tell you one cool story from her life that might be a cool thing for your listeners to hear. One day, she’s in Calcutta, on the streets, even though she’s heading up this huge thing. She’s wiping the leg of one of the people that are living in poverty. She’s wiping the leg because it’s leprous. They have leprosy and it’s pretty gross. Well, there were some business people that were touring the building, and they saw her on the ground wiping this leg that’s just “Aargh.”

And one of the men turns to the other man next to him, and says, “Aargh, I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” Mother Teresa looks up, and says, “Neither would I.” Her point was, “That’s not my motivation.” And it’s moving to me but I’m just thinking, “I never want to lose why I got into this gig in the first place, which is to serve these people. And I need to feel what they’re feeling, and so when I address them, they don’t feel like I’m in some ivory tower that can’t be touched, and I’m some lofty guru now that’s written a bunch of books or whatever.” I don’t want to lose that touch.

So, yeah, Mother Teresa is my great example on that, and, one, I feel like that’s an aspiration that I want to have – collective and personal. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is powerful and quite beautiful, indeed, that in having the personal touch and such, in this case, compassion or…I guess there’s many virtues or dimensions of excellence, just depending on your flavor and vibe and organization that you’re working with, when done at an exceptionally high-caliber level, inspire and touch and motivate. And that is hard to quantify exactly what impact that it has but it is vastly greater than the one, even though your focus is on the one. So, I’m picking up what you’re putting down with regard to the word paradox here.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, it really is weird. It’s almost oxymoron kind of what it feels like until you dig, and go, “Oh, I see. I see how those two can go together.” So, yeah, it’s really fun. Okay, so let me…let’s see, what am I missing? Oh, two more. Is that right?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Tim Elmore
Okay. So, one of the paradoxes is one that I think we’ve all said to ourselves at one point, “I need to be both a teacher and a learner.” So, Angela Ahrendts is my example on this one. Angela Ahrendts was asked to leave the United States and take over Burberry coats in London, this high-end fashion coat, plaid coat that usually was purchased by rich old ladies back in the day, back in 2006 when she took over. When she came in, the brand was on a decline, not an incline. They were losing money, and they thought, “Oh, my gosh, we may be on our way out.”

So, Angela comes in, and her job, the board said, was to save this brand. The first thing she does after she meets her fellow executives is she meets with the youngest team members at Burberry, I mean, 20 somethings, interns were in the room, and she says, “I want to learn from you. What do we need to do different that will build the brand again and start reaching your people, your colleagues, your peers?” They weren’t reaching the millennials. And at the time, it was the millennials that were the new adult consumer.

Well, this group of people came up with a bunch of ideas, these were young professionals. One of the ideas they came up with is the Art of the Trench, and they said, “Let’s, on our website, put a place for our customers to put pictures of themselves in our coats, which will prompt them to buy our coats.” Now, it sounded kind of funny but it worked. In fact, the Art of the Trench is a page on their site. You scroll through it, there’s all kinds of pictures, mostly of young adults, young professionals, in a very nice coat. The brand began to take off, tripled in size, it was crazy.

But, Angela, if she were here today, she would say this, “I had to be a teacher and a learner. I, obviously, went in as a teacher. I had to lead the way. I had to run point on saving this brand, but I knew one of my first jobs was, if we’re going to reach new customers, I got to talk to some people that understand them, and say, ‘Here’s what you need to know.’” So, it’s just…I actually have found that most leaders will confess to me, “I’m either one or other. I’m either really good at learning,” or, “I’m really good at teaching but not learning.” And I think this is one we have to kind of juggle together.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And uncommon leaders are both timely and timeless.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, the last one is timely and timeless. This would probably make sense. I have found that, in today’s world of rapid change, this is cliché, but we have to be timely, meaning we’ve got to keep up with the times. We need to read the culture before we lead the culture, so we need to be relevant with technology. We need to be on the cutting edge with our offerings, our products and services, but, at the same time, I think the best leaders are also timeless, meaning they don’t leave behind those timeless skills and values that made the company what it was when it first began in 1901, maybe.

So, Walt Disney is my brilliant, brilliant example, I think, here. If you think about it, if you walked into Disneyland in Anaheim, California, the original theme park, you look to your left, it’s timeless. You see Frontierland, Adventureland. He looks back at the past, and says, “Here are the heritage of our nation. Here are the virtues that built us into a great country, integrity and honesty.” But you look off to the right, there’s Tomorrowland. He was fascinated by science fiction and technology and science and animatronics.

So, Walt Disney was this leader that said, “I’m going to use cutting-edge technology to message timeless virtues that we dare not leave behind as we progress into the future.” So, I think great leaders jump on a swing set. They swing backwards in order to swing forwards. Swinging backwards is what enables a swinger, a person on a swing set, to swing forward. A swinger, that’s right.

So, I think we need to say, “What was our beginning? What problem were we trying to solve? What was the mission? Why were we doing this in the first place?” And then swinging forward, “Does that need still exist today? How can we repurpose our mission? Are there changes that we need to make?” So, I think that timely and timeless, I saved it till last because I think it’s so important that we master both being pioneers along the way as well as originators. Let’s hold onto the foundation that we built ourselves on.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s really interesting, you talked about the Walt Disney example and timely and timeless because, as we speak, I’ve got two toddlers at home. And so, they went through a bit of a Frozen phase, which I guess most American toddlers have, it seems.

Tim Elmore
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And then I just noticed at the end that it was based on…the whole story was based on the fable, like the Ice Prince, or Ice Princess, by Hans Christian Andersen, or one of those, or not them, but it’s like Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen. Then, at the same time, we’ve got these books of like Aesop’s Fables and fairytales and just sort of books like these classics, like Jack and the Beanstalk, and all these things, and then you see Pinocchio.

And what’s fascinating, it’s like many of these stories are like old, like centuries old, and yet we’re bringing in the most cutting-edge storytellers, musicians, designers, animators, to make something like Frozen happen. And, sure enough, it’s like if you just really sit with some of the emotions and some of the songs, it’s kind of like deeply moving, “Oh, my gosh, this person feels so isolated. Whoa.”

And then if you open up and get vulnerable, and think about the ways you feel isolated, that can really be moving. So, Tim, look, you and I are both tearing up in one interview.

Tim Elmore
I know.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you’re like, “This is a child’s cartoon. What is going on here?”

Tim Elmore
I know. I know. Well, can I volley back really quick, Pete? I think one of the shows that Disney+, speaking of Disney, just put on their channel was Hamilton, you know, the Broadway play. Hamilton is such a great example of this. It’s a rags-to-riches story that is timeless, the story of Alexander Hamilton, and they’re doing rap music, they’re hip hop on the stage. So, here’s a timely medium to share this story to kids you might not want to read in a history book but you’ll go to a stage show.

So, I think that’s the need of the hour. We have some pretty cool principles that our nation was built upon, and perhaps every civilization down through history was built upon, but we’ve got to find new ways for the next generation, your kids, my kids, that will say, “Oh, I can embrace that because you found a fresh way to say it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Tim, I really appreciate the rundown here, the clear ideas that are powerful and vast in their implications along with very clear illustrations, stories, case studies, that bring them to life. So, perfection. Thank you. So, lay it on us, for professionals, maybe they’re not yet leaders or they’re just starting to lead, if you had to boil it down to one starting action that you recommend folks take that gives a big bang for the buck, a high ROI in terms of your time and effort and energy, and the leadership shot-in-the-arm it gives you, what should we start doing or stop doing right away?

Tim Elmore
Wow, that’s a great question. I’ll be honest with it; two quick items are coming to mind. Let me see if I can share them quickly. One is, and, by the way, we’ve done a course, Habitudes for Young Professionals. So, when it’s kind of beginning of the journey, one of them is a principle or an image we call coffee step, and it was built off a story.

We had some interns, when I was working with John Maxwell, that I was overseeing, and one of the gals that was an intern told me this story way later when she became a professor at a university. But she said to me, “I was immediately asked to get the coffee for the executives on the team as an intern,” and she goes, “I was actually kind of put off by that. It was off-putting to me,” because she thought to herself, “Do you not realize I got a college degree? Are you asking this because I’m a girl?” that sort of thing.

And then she said, “I made a decision that I’m going to get the coffee,” and she said, “It was the smartest decision I made. When I was willing to kind of stoop and do that menial task, it got me in the room. I’m meeting the executives. I’m meeting the VPs and I’m starting up conversation. Pretty soon, they asked me to sit down with them and talk. Next thing I know, I’m interacting, they know me,” she starts moving up.

And so, coffee step is simply this challenge. Don’t be afraid to do the small thing even though your talent enables you to do way more than that. If you’ll execute the smallest of tasks, you might be amazed what will enable you to do. Because I think early tasks are not about talent; they’re about trust, “Can I trust you to do what I’ve asked you to do?” So, that would be one.

The other is an image that we call early birds or mockingbirds. And this is kind of cheesy but here it is. I think when people come onto a team at the beginning, they either start becoming a mockingbird, “I’m just going to imitate everybody else. What are you doing? I’ll do it too,” or an early bird, “I’m going to be the first one in the office. I’m going to be the one that sets the pace.”

Pete, you’re going to love this. I had an intern a few years ago, second week on the job, he was an intern, a summer intern, he said, “Dr. Elmore, could I get a key to the office?” I said, “What do you need a key for?” and I didn’t say it but I was thinking, “You’re an intern, you’re going to leave in August.” He said, “Well, I’ve been noticing, I got a lot to do here and I actually want to do a really good job. I may get here before everybody else. I’m going to need a key.” I said, “You’re going to get a key.”

So, my point of that, it seems so simple, but if you’ll be the early bird that’s just going above and beyond, that second mile, that whatever, and then don’t be afraid to do the small thing, it’s probably going to lead to bigger things. That would be what I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
Tim, that’s beautiful. We only have time for a couple of your favorite things, but can you give us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tim Elmore
Being a good parent has been very important to me, and one favorite quote I’ve tried to live by is this, when it comes to the next generation, “It’s better to prepare the child for the path instead of the path for the child.” I think so many parents are trying to pave the way for their children and make it easier. I think we don’t need to make it easier. I think we need to build strong kids that are ready for whatever comes their way. So, prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Tim Elmore
One book I re-read every year is a book called Leadership and Self-Deception. Have you read that one?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, it’s one I re-read probably because I tend to be selfish, and that book just gets me out of the box, that whole thing of…and I think we don’t realize it as leaders but, even though we say, “Well, I’m a leader. I’m about everybody else.” Really, we’re about getting our stuff done, and now we have everybody at our beck and call. So, that book has been so rich for me.

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

Tim Elmore
Well, you can go to TimElmore.com, you can find the book there at Amazon prices, and I do events. But the nonprofit I lead for the next generation is called GrowingLeaders.com, and that’s where you can find me there.

Pete Mockaitis
Tim, this has been a real pleasure. I wish you much luck and fun in navigating these paradoxes.

Tim Elmore
Thanks, Pete. Great to be with you.

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