Advancement Archives - Page 6 of 12 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

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

Marc Effron
My pleasure Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m happy to have you as well. The first thing I need to hear all about is you and Thai boxing. How did this come about and what’s the story here?

Marc Effron
Yeah, Pete. Muay Thai boxing, I fell into this probably no more than about five years ago. Short story is I’ve always been a gym rat and was in the gym one day and saw these guys doing boxing training over in the corner. I said, “Hey, that looks like fun.” Talked to the trainer, turned out that he’s actually a Muay Thai master.

I had no idea what Muay Thai was, turns out it is a boxing style that the Thais came up with when the Burmese were trying to invade them hundreds of years ago. It was actually kind of a creative way that they discovered to repel the invaders, but now it’s essentially a form of mixed martial arts and turned out to be a heck of a workout.

But also turned out, I found, to be a really good parallel for life and business in that – a very short story – the first three months or so that you train at this, you’re just – you’re kicking, you’re hitting and it’s pretty fun. Like all beginners you think you’re getting pretty good. Then about three months in your trainer takes a swing at you and hits you. You quickly realize, hey, all that kicking and hitting, that’s all theory. When they swing back, that’s practice.

This reminds me of the Mike Tyson quote, “Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face.” It feels like that’s a really good metaphor for high performance. It’s all theory until you have to go out there and actually compete. But love it. It’s the best workout I’ve ever had.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. Does it also enable you to repel attackers? Have you had a cause to use it under intense circumstances?

Marc Effron
If I find hoards of marauding Thais in my office I will – or marauding Burmese I will use it as best I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, you’re all set. Let’s talk about your office for a bit. Your company is called the Talent Strategy Group. What are you about? What do you do there?

Marc Effron
Sure. This is firm I formed eight years ago when my last book came out, One-Page Talent Management. We help large global companies, the Google’s, the Starbucks, the McDonalds of the world help their teams and their leaders to be higher performers. We work all around the globe. We do a lot of performance management work and training work and all great stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, fun. I want to hear about your latest here, your book, 8 Steps to High Performance. What’s the big idea here?

Marc Effron
The big idea is helping individuals to understand that the path to high performance is actually pretty well proven and that there’s a lot of noise out there that distracts folks, but if we go back to the core science about performance, there’s a pretty clear set of steps. If they follow it, anyone can be a higher performer.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well could you in rapid fire format unveil to us what are these eight steps?

Marc Effron
Sure. First one, step one, set big goals. Just what it sounds like, a few really challenging goals. The most powerful science out there says that bigger goals stretch our performance.

Second step, behave to perform. We all want to behave like good citizens, but there a few ways of behaving that are actually going to elevate your performance faster than others.

Step three is grow yourself faster. It’s great to be a high performer, but if you’re going to move forward, you need to become better at what you do and better at the things that you want to do going forward. There are some scientifically proven ways of getting there faster than the techniques that you might normally try.

Step four is connect. This is actually the step that I personally have the most challenge with. Connect is forming great relationships inside and outside your company. Again, the science is really clear. People who do that better are going to be higher performers and move further in their careers.

Step five, maximize your fit. Keep this saying in mind. Companies change faster than people change. Companies change faster than people change. That means that your company’s going to evolve very quickly and the needs that the company have from you are going to change over time. You’re going to need to pay really close attention to where’s my company going and what are the different needs it requires for me to be a high performer going forward.

Step six, and this is the one where we hear a lot of noise is fake it. Fake it means that the genuine you, the authentic you, might not always be the you that your company needs to see and that sometimes you might actually need to fake some behaviors you don’t fully feel comfortable with in order to be successful.

Step seven, commit your body. There is great science behind a few things that we can do around sleep primarily, but also we’ll talk a bit about exercise to make sure that you are primed for a high performance.

The final step, step eight, avoid distractions. What we mean by avoid distractions is there is a lot of noise, a lot of fads out there, think of them as the get rich quick schemes for high performance that sound too good to be true. They are. We call out in the book some of the most common ones you should avoid.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. Now that’s – so many of these are so intriguing and it’s – I’m thinking about prioritization. Maybe I’ll give you the first crack at it. Which of these steps do you think provides kind of an extra leverage or disproportionate bang for your buck or return on the effort you put into trying to take the step?

Marc Effron
Sure. It really is step one: set big goals. Now as fundamental as that may seem, there are a few things that are helpful to know.

One is there is incredibly strong science that says things like bigger goals deliver bigger results, meaning we’re hard wired to respond to more challenge with more effort. Pete, if you say, “Marc, jump a foot in the air. I’ll give you a dollar.” I’m going to try and jump a foot in the air. If you say, “Marc, try and jump two feet. I’ll give you two dollars,” I’m going to try that. If you say, “Three feet, three dollars,”

I’m going to keep trying to do more as long as the reward seems to equal the challenge, so If you say, “Jump four feet, but you still only get three dollars,” I probably won’t do it or I’m too physically exhausted to respond to the challenge. Bigger goals actually do motivate us to perform at a higher level. That’s step one.

But then focus those goals. You can’t have 20 big goals. You’ll kill yourself. But you certainly can have three. Especially at work, the key thing is to understand what are the few things that really, really matter to my boss, not to me, to my boss. What are the three big things that he or she really wants to see me deliver this year and align your goals with his or her priorities.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. I think some bosses would have a hard time limiting themselves to three. They’d say, “I want 15 things from you, Marc. They’re all super important.”  Then some, I’m thinking about our previous guest, Bruce Tulgan, with the crisis of under management, I think some might not really know in terms of “Well, we’ve got to keep things moving and going and operational.”

Any pro tips in terms of having those conversations effectively with your boss to really land upon the big three?

Marc Effron
Sure. Well, let’s say your boss goes too high, meaning “Hey, Pete, you have ten things to do, why are you asking me about three?” “Well, boss, I’m going to get all ten done. Don’t you worry about that. But if there were three that you think I should really, really get done to the highest level possible, which would be the three that you think are most important this year?”

Any type of prioritization at all, reassuring your boss, “Hey, I got it. I’m going to make sure everything gets done.” But your boss very likely has a few things that she or he wants you to ace this year, mainly because it’s going to make them look better. Reassure them that you’ll get them all done but ask them for some prioritization.

If they go too low meaning they say, “Well, Pete, show up and do a good job and work hard,” then ask questions like, “Hey, I’m absolutely going to do that, Marc, but what are you working on this year? What are the few big projects that are on your goal list?” “Cool. Are there any things that I’m doing right now that I can align better with the big goals that you have to achieve?”

Now this also gets into a bit of step four, which is connecting well with your boss. There’s nothing wrong with making your boss look good and goals are a great way to do that. “Boss, what are you working on? Hey, I want to make sure you ace those few things, how can I best help you to do that.”

If they go too high, ask them to help you to prioritize. If they go too low, maybe start with what’s most important to them given what they’re working on.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s helpful there. You talk about making promises in this section of the book. Is there a distinction between a goal and a promise and how to think about that?

Marc Effron
Yeah. It’s easy to dismiss that as kind of a cute word trick, but I do think there’s a different emotional component between the two. I can say “Hey Pete, yeah, I’ve got a goal for this year. I’m going to try and do X.” That’s much different than saying, “Pete, I promise you by the end of 2018, I will have achieved this.”

One sounds a lot more serious. Hey, we try to achieve goals, but how many people like to break their promises? Part of it might be a bit of a Jedi mind trick, but it really is just kind of increasing the emotional component of what you’re saying around those goals.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. It’s interesting it almost sort of – yeah, there’s definitely more sort of commitment or intensity, almost anxiety. It’s like, “Oh crap, what if I don’t do deliver. Ah.” It’s kind of spooky when you use the word promises.

Marc Effron
Exactly. You don’t want to disappoint someone by not delivering on a promise, but goals, we almost think, well, yeah, of course you make some goals, you don’t make some goals. Well, hopefully you deliver on most of the promises that you make.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so then your suggestion is that you articulate that verbally or do you write it in the performance management system or a document or review between boss and direct report or how do you recommend these get kind of captured and worked upon.

Marc Effron
Yeah. First of all, if your company has a way of doing it, start there. A lot of those ways are bureaucratic and annoying. If your company doesn’t have a way of doing it, then write them wherever you’re going to see them. Write them on the front of your desk, put them in your phone, wherever it’s going to stay in front of you that there are three big things that I’m trying to get done.

Again, you’re going to have many, many distractions. You have 100 things to get done during the year, and you’re going to need something that helps to reinforce for you, “Hey, these are the three big things that I promised and that are likely going to differentiate whether I’m seen as a high performer at work or not.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious then, yeah, when it comes to selecting them, we talked about making the boss looked good, aligns to what’s most important to them, and then makes you look great in terms of it distinguishes you in terms of you being perceived as a high performer.

Any other pro tips in terms of dos and don’ts for selecting these goals? I guess one of the tricky things with goals or promises here is that often there’s – your control is somewhat limited. You have to rely upon other collaborators internally or consumers/customers/clients responding favorably in a marketplace. How do you think about that angle of the promises?

Marc Effron
Sure, I think there’s a fine line between challenges and excuses. Customers come and go, economies get better and worse, people cooperate and don’t cooperate. I think part of it is when you’re setting that goal, identify what are the few key things I’m depending on – that I depend on will happen to allow me to achieve that goal.

It might mean that Suzie needs to deliver on project X in order for me to complete that. Okay, cool. Then you’d better help Suzie get project X done. It could be just a big assumption. “Hey boss, I’m assuming that client Y is going to continue buying our product as they always have. If they don’t, we’ll need to come back and renegotiate that goal.”

Part of it is just understanding what are the variables that are going to either allow you to make that goal or to make that goal challenging. The ones that you can control, put a plan in place to control them. The ones you can’t control, then it’s fair if they change to go back to your boss and say, “Hey boss, I was supposed to sell a hundred widgets to that company. That company doesn’t exist anymore. Let’s talk about what my new goal should be.”

I think it’s a line of saying, yeah, there are lots of bad things that can happen, probably best to identify those things that you can control in advance and work hard to control them and just be aware of the other ones as early as you can.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, excellent. Thank you. I’d like to get your take then on behaviors. What are some of the – real quick, some of the best and the worst?

Marc Effron
Sure, well I think that there’s a challenge for a lot of leaders who hear either through books or through their HR group that great leadership behaviors are what makes somebody successful.

Well, the scientists claim great leadership behavior makes somebody a great leader and that’s cool. But there’s also really good science that says there’s a set of performance driving behaviors that doesn’t mean that you act like a jerk, but it means you don’t necessarily spend as much time kind of engaging with your team. It’s all about how do I get higher performance.

Each of those styles might be appropriate at different times. If you are with a company owned by a private equity firm, they have extremely high demands for how your company is going to grow and perform, you might just need to drive high performance. Many people respond very positively to that.

On the other hand, if you’re maybe with a more long service organization, has a more gentle culture, you might really need to spend a lot of time in the care and feeding of your staff.

Either of those are perfectly fine ways of behaving but each of those is more appropriate for one situation than another.

The first step would simply be look at the situation that I’m in, what is the company valuing most from me? Do they value that I get things done the most? Do they value that I am a great leader, grow my teams, support the culture most. First step is really understanding what does my company need from me.

Ideally, your company can tell you, “Hey, we either have a leadership model or a behavior model that give you some guidance.” The challenge with those is they tend to be eight or 10 or 12 things that are all lovely behaviors, but don’t give you a lot of focus.

If your company does have one of those models, I really think it’s helpful to go to your boss or talk to high performers in your company and say, “Yeah, these are eight or 10, 12 really cool things, but what are the two that really, really matter around here? What am I going to get noticed for if I do or in trouble for if I don’t do?”

Again, focus is going to be a key theme on high performers, that’s focus on the big promises, but also focus on the few behaviors that matter most.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re saying then that this really varies organization by organization. Have you zeroed in on some universal best practices associated with driving performance and results?

Marc Effron
There are a few things that are going to make you successful in every environment. One is building the quality and performance of your team. Quality meaning are you increasing the capabilities of the people on your team. Are they more skilled and more capable at the end of the year, than they were at the beginning of the year due to the assignments and the experiences and the challenge that you’ve given them?

You can certainly have people deliver great results and learn nothing. That doesn’t add a lot of value to the company.

Step one is are you building the quality of those leaders by giving them big, juicy challenges that are a bit scary, that stretch their skills that cause them learn so at the end of the year, you have a team that is higher quality than others. Developmental behaviors are going to be ones that are going to be valued everywhere.

To the theme we’re talking about, just classic performance driving behaviors. All of the things that we talk about in the book applying to yourself, are you applying those to others, especially starting with those big goals. Are you challenging your team members to do more, but in a focused way?

So not simply I need ten percent more than last year, but what are the few most important things and how can I stretch you to what we call your maximum theoretical performance.

We introduce this concept in a book. It actually comes from weightlifting. Very simple concept. If you go to the gym and you’re going to lift some weights, what would be the theoretical maximum amount of weight that you can lift if everything was perfectly aligned, meaning if you had been actively training, if your diet was great, if you felt good that day, the gym was the right temperature, if everything was perfect, what would your theoretical maximum performance be?

Now average Joe or Jill goes into a gym, they can lift about 60% of theoretical maximum performance. If you’re a bit of a gym rat, you’re there all the time, you’d probably do about 80% of your maximum performance. Science says that Olympic athletes typically do 93 – 94% of their theoretical maximum performance.

Apply that same concept to work. Most of us show up, we do a really good job, we put in a lot of effort, but what would your theoretical maximum performance be. What would you have to do to perform at that level that is just optimum, that you know that you are giving everything that you have in both performance and behavior standpoint?

A good manager is going to work with their team members to say, “Hey, I know you’ve got more in you. Let’s figure out how we can help you be an even higher performer and have a very clear plan around that.” All the way back to the beginning, more quality, more performance.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious to know both for weightlifting and for professionals doing knowledge work, how does one establish what the theoretical maximum is?

Marc Effron
Well, I – I think there are a few ways of doing that. One is if you follow the eight steps that we talked about earlier, you’re certainly going to be going in the right directions because each of those is scientifically proven to make you a higher performer.

But I’m also a fan of simply saying double your standard. Whatever that standard is for great, what would double that standard look like? Doubling that standard probably takes you from about the 50^th percentile to closer to the 100^th percentile.

That means looking at things like “Hey, I had a great year last year, what would it actually take for me to double that performance? What would it take for me to double what I’ve delivered? What would it take for me to double how quickly or how much I develop? What would it take for me to double the engagement of my team members?”

It feels like a very unreasonable standard, but back to the science around setting big goals, it is amazing how much clarity you will get and how much you will stretch your mind around your own performance if you simply ask yourself that fundamental question. What would it take to deliver twice as much as I do today? The answer can’t be work twice as hard because that probably actually won’t get you there.

But thinking across between my goals, my behaviors, my network, even my sleep, what else could I do differently that would actually allow me to get to that point?

Pete Mockaitis
You’re saying that doubling is a pretty good benchmark rule of thumb for that is likely in the ballpark of possible and the maximum theoretical there?

Marc Effron
Yeah. I think what it’s going to do is it’s going to – if you say double, you’re probably defining your theoretical maximum performance. Is it possible that most of us can double in a year what we did the last year?

It’s going to be a pretty stiff challenge, but it’s going to really clarify your thinking around “Well, what would I have to do to move my performance most aggressively in a better direction,” because you’re not going to think about incremental solutions like, “Oh, I could take a class or maybe I’ll meet a few more people and network.” But really what would the big steps be that are going to have a meaningful difference on your performance?

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. I find it – I guess in a way it’s somewhat arbitrary, but if you think about it, a 5% boost, that’s like “Oh, I’ll just work an extra 23 minutes or whatever in a day,” versus I hear people talk about 10x’ing it, which sounds really cool and exciting, but it just sort of often just leaves me frozen, like, “Wow, I have no idea how I would 10x it.”

But doubling, I don’t know, it’s working for me because I think it sparks ideas for me, like, “Oh, well, I’ve got to stop wasting all this time with this,” or “I’ve got to find a way to automate or outsource or delegate that particular thing which is low value, but to free up more time for this other thing.” Then suddenly it’s like, “Oh, well, that’s not so impossible. That just requires X dollars and a great person and away we go.”

Marc Effron
Yeah. Focus drives performance. It is amazing. I think you really seized on a great point. If I’m going to double what I do, there’s a bunch of stuff I really enjoy doing that I might need to stop doing. That’s part of the tradeoff of being a high performer. I have stuff here at work that I love doing and my team looks at me and says, “You really shouldn’t be spending your time on that.” I guarantee you, I would be a higher performer if I stopped doing some of those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell us what are some of those things?

Marc Effron
Oh, I like to think I have a sense of graphic style and I annoyingly provide helpful advice to my team about how email should look and graphics should look and decks should look. They’re so appreciative of my constant advice to them, but they’ve told me that maybe I could dial that back just a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh sure. Yeah, I …. Cool. Talk to us a little bit about the faking it notion, presenting a different version of yourself deliberately and what that’s all about.

Marc Effron
Sure. Here is the challenge. People respond very negatively when you say, “Hey, you need to kind of fake things at work,” especially because there’s been such a trend over the past five years or so to be our authentic selves and our genuine selves.

That’s lovely, but the science says that showing up as your genuine self all the time is probably not going to be the right strategy for high performance because the people around us actually need to see different you’s at different times. If your primary concern is how can the genuine me show up 24/7, you’re likely going to miss a lot of opportunities to interact with people in the way that they actually need you to interact with them.

Plus, what we find is that if you say, “Hey, I’m always going to be my authentic self and never change,” there are actually opportunities, there are times in our life when we’re going to need to show fundamentally different behaviors that we just might not feel comfortable with and faking those behaviors until either you become comfortable or just faking them to be successful are going to be critical.

An example, leaders tend to exist in one of two states meaning we start to off by being what we call an emerging leader. An emerging leader is somebody who needs to really show that they are there. They need to wave their hand around a bit. They need to call attention to their work because if they don’t do that, no one is ever going to understand that they’re a high performer or a potential high performer.

Some people are decidedly uncomfortable calling attention to themselves. They believe good work stands for itself. I’ll get noticed eventually. Well, no, good work doesn’t automatically get noticed and people don’t know people who quietly do good work.

If you are uncomfortable doing that, it’s important to recognize science is really clear if you don’t call attention to yourself, you’re not going to get noticed. Fake it for a while. Again, you don’t need to be an arrogant jerk, not that extent of faking it, but there’s nothing wrong with raising your hand in a meeting and offering a suggestion. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out to your boss the high quality work that you’re turning in. You might need to fake that behavior.

The other side of being an emerging leader is being an effective leader. Effective leaders are more established. They are – they have their team. They are a little bit more mature in their career. Effective leaders are going to empower their team, they’re going to be good managers, a bit more humble.

If you’re someone who loves calling attention to yourself, you might need to fake that. You might need to sit on your hands instead of always raising them in the meeting. You might need to cover your mouth instead of being the first person to respond to every question.

Being – faking things a bit allows you to be the ideal person to show up in each situation, to show up as you’re needed, not as who you think you should be. Faking might sound bad because we think, “Well, I’m authentic and that would be being inauthentic.” Well, no, what it means is you’re going to behave in a way that is most appropriate to be a high performer in that particular situation.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. The examples that you’re using there for faking it really don’t feel so frighteningly inauthentic. I guess adapting to circumstances and challenges as they emerge and doing what’s necessary is just kind of part of the game. It didn’t even occur to me that that would be being inauthentic.

I think I’ve had to fire someone before and that was very uncomfortable. I don’t like that. I like to believe in people and their possibilities and their growth and development. Then at some point it’s like this really isn’t the right fit and okay, here we go.

I guess I didn’t think of that as violating myself or being inauthentic. It was just more like, “Hm, what is required now is not something fun and comfortable for me.”

I guess – I think other people think about authenticity in terms of like if they want to have purple hair or a huge beard or almost like fashion expression sensibilities. Yeah, could you maybe unpack some extra examples of things that we might need to let go of when you’re expressing our genuineness or common places where it’s needed – it’s necessary to adapt?

Marc Effron
Sure. I would say on the look and how you present yourself, my view is that’s a great place to be authentic because I think that shows your personality.

But let’s take an example of oftentimes I’ll speak with people who will need to be up on stage in a presentation and they’re nervous. “I’m just not that person who gets up on stage and does that. I just can’t turn on being” – so their genuine you is very afraid being kind of a public speaker.

I tell those folks, “Look, I am a massive introvert, but you know what no one wants to see up on stage? Someone staring at their shoes.” I have to fake it up on stage and I’ve got a lot of good people that are in my mind when I’m faking being an extrovert. Is it the genuine me? No, it is not the genuine me, but guess what? I fake it pretty well.

For a lot of folks it’s simply recognizing that you don’t have to restrain or constrain what you do because there is some authentic you that sets boundaries around how you can behave.

You can say, “Hey, you know what I’m going to do at that next party even though I’m a massive introvert? I’m going to fake extrovert. I’m going to walk into that room saying, ‘I’m the biggest extrovert in the world.’ What would a big extrovert do in this room right now?”

Either you’re going to be at least moderately successful, if not maybe a bit more, and you actually might get a really good round of practice in at being more of an extrovert and find that you’re building some skills around it.

Part of authenticity is stop putting boundaries on your own success by saying, “Oh, that’s just who I am.” No, who you are is whoever you feel like being at that moment. Learn how to fake it. It’s amazing how much progress you can make.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot in terms of rejecting the constraint of “That’s just not who I am,” and being able to adapt there. And I liked the instance of you imagining what being extrovert is like.

We had Srini Pillay talk about what he called psychological Halloweenism, which is quite a turn of a phrase, which is just that, like “Hey, I’ll just put on a costume. I’m going to be this person and see how that goes because it will be very helpful to be this person in this context.”

Marc Effron
Part of is just our fear of risk, our fear of embarrassment, but again, most of us really overestimate how much people pay attention to us. We write about that in the book. Most of think that everyone is always looking at us and always judging us, but actually  we’re noticed far less than we think.

The odds that if we go to a party and we have one awkward conversation with one person, that that’s somehow going to spread like wildfire through our social community, probably not the case. You can probably take a risk.

The science is also very conclusive that people are pretty tolerant of us failing in social situations in ways that others have failed in social situations, so people essentially empathize.

Yeah, it’s tough to walk up to somebody new and have a flawless and fluent conversation. If that person isn’t doing that perfectly with me, I’m not going to think “What an idiot.” I’m going to think, “Hey, they’re kind of getting used to being a bit more of an extrovert.” People are actually largely forgiving in those situations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, now I saved the most controversial for last. I want to get your take on your final step there was avoiding the distractions of what you call unproven fads and in that category you put grit, power poses, emotional intelligence and strengths. Now, a lot of people love this stuff. What’s your take on this overall?

Marc Effron
Well, here’s the challenge. There are – and we outline in the book – there are really clear scientifically proven steps that will make you a higher performer.

The challenge is that as consumers of information, which I’m sure the folks on the podcast are, you get information thrown at you every day that says you can be a higher performer if only you do this. Because most folks aren’t industrial or … psychologists, they probably aren’t sorting those marketing claims through a very skeptical lens and so something that sounds pretty easy and pretty straightforward, they may be likely to do.

The challenge is some of those things will kind of do no harm, but most of them are going to really waste your time and distract you from doing the things that actually will drive higher performance.

Some of my favorites are focusing on your strengths. Don’t focus on your strengths. Here’s the challenge. Gallup has sold millions and millions of books. They have sold I think 18 million strength finder assessments.

Focusing on your strengths is a great way to continue to be good at things that you’re already good at. If you say, “Hey, I’m in my job, I just want to be really, really good at this job. I don’t want a different job. I don’t want to move up,” in that case, cool, focus on your strengths. You’re going to be great.

But the challenge is that the strengths that we need over time will change in our career, so if all you do is focus on today’s strengths, you are never going to have the strengths necessary for the next job and that there’s really great science that says things like we don’t have as many strengths as we think we do.

If you define strengths as being in the top ten percent of something, actually most of us don’t have that many strengths and a lot of science that says the strengths that we do have don’t necessarily align with what our company needs.

Something like focusing on your strengths sounds really easy, “Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I do that? I’m good at some stuff and the stuff I’m not good at, it’s really annoying to work on, so wow, it feels like there’s a really easy path to success. I’ll just focus on my strengths.”

Unfortunately, the science is clear that the people – people who advance most quickly in organizations, are the ones who actually trim the negative tails. “Here are the things that are actually holding me back. My strengths will take care of themselves. It’s the things that I don’t do well that are going to drag down my career.”

The challenge is we have things like that that sound really attractive, that are presented in a compelling way, and there’s a bestselling book, but there’s just no science that says that it works and there’s lots of science that it probably won’t work as well as other techniques.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. When it comes to the strength stuff, I think this kind of reminds me of maybe any number of sort of health and fitness claims in terms of you can broadly declare something as good or bad, but really I think there’s more sort of nuance to it.

You look to the strengths approach in terms of trying to find how that compares to or correlates to rapidly accelerating, climbing, being promoted, and rocking and rolling in an organization. You say that the data just aren’t there to support the strengths.

However, Gallup will say – I’ve got it up here – people who use their strengths every day are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life, six times more likely to be engaged at work, 8% more productive, and 15% less likely to quit their jobs. None of those results are climbing rapidly into bigger realms of responsibility. 8% more productive is nice.

That’s intriguing. I’m kind of putting together what you’re saying with what they’re saying and it seems like strengths have some value, but it ain’t necessarily getting you to the top of the pyramid quicker.

Marc Effron
Absolutely. I guarantee you and completely agree with Gallup that if you focus on your strengths, you will be happy at work. Absolutely. If your goal is to be happy at work, focus on your strengths. Great solution. If you want to be a high performer at work, then it’s probably not the right way to go. You probably want to focus on big goals, changing your behaviors, and the other eight steps that we outline.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool, thank you. Tell me, Marc, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Marc Effron
I think we’re on a roll. Let’s keep going.

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Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well tell me about a favorite quote, something that inspires you?

Marc Effron
Let me go high and let me go low. I’ll give you two. One, we’ll start with Wolfgang Goethe, the German philosopher. He had a quote, “Doubt grows with knowledge.” “Doubt grows with knowledge.”

I think that we should all become more skeptical the more we know about something because you’ll probably find that a few things in whatever area are true and to what we’re just talking about, when things come along that sound too good to be true, they probably are. The high end quote would be “Doubt grows with knowledge,” Wolfgang Goethe.

The low end quote would be from the famous philosopher Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson who said, “The wolf is always at the door.” I think that is a high performer’s mindset, “The wolf is always at the door.” You have to have this mindset that everything could hit the skids tomorrow, so what am I going go to do today to make sure that I’m extremely well prepared for success.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Marc Effron
Not to bore the listeners too much, but I’m a big fan of setting big goals. There’s great research out there, classic stuff by two really brilliant professors, Gary Latham and Ed Locke, about how goals drive performance that we talked about earlier. Just really kind of rock solid science, not light reading, but rock solid science.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Marc Effron
Marshall Goldsmith. Many of your listeners probably know him. You might have even had him on a podcast. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Bestseller New York Times, Wall Street Journal.

Just a great book to help all of us understand that we’re going to need to evolve and change through life and at the moment we rest on our laurels we’re dead. What Marshall does wonderfully is just kind of pick apart all of our wonderful excuses for why we behave, how we behave, and really convince us that it’s probably smart to let go of those excuses and figure out a more successful way to behave across your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Marc Effron
I had trouble thinking of this. One – a big fan of all my hardware and software, but I probably use – this is not a plug – the Delta airlines app more than anything else. I’m on the road 70% of my time and that app is open almost every single day, so they do a good job for me and that’s probably my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about a favorite habit?

Marc Effron
Favorite habit. I found out many years ago that working Sundays is very productive for me. It started off because I was in business school and doing worse than 98% of people and realized I needed to put in some extra effort and so started hanging out in the library from 9 AM to 9 PM on Sundays and realized you can get a lot done when nobody else is around.

Since that time I have worked not every, but three-quarters of Sundays in the year. One because it’s really quiet and my brain needs that to get stuff done, but also, if I’m working six hours a week more than other folks, that’s probably going to add up over time into something good.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with listeners?

Marc Effron
Probably two things. In fact I was looking at on the Kindle copy of the book things that have been underlined the most. Two things seem to stand out.

One was just the definition of a high performer because that’s probably never been put out there before. I define that as “a high performer is somebody who’s performance and behaviors are sustained at the 75^th percentile over time against your peers,” meaning you are always better than 75% of other smart people doing the exact same thing that you do. That’s one.

The other is just this concept we talked about earlier of theoretical maximum performance. How good could you be if everything was working in perfect concert?

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

Marc Effron
I would send them to our website. They can start with The8Steps, that’s The8Steps.com. It talks all about the book. Or if they want to learn more about our organization, TalentStrategyGroup.com, tons of articles, videos, lots of other cool resources.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Marc Effron
I would go back to what we talked about earlier. Just think about what would it take to double your own standard for great performance. A know a lot of your folks listening right now think, “Hey, I’m a pretty good performer.” I’m sure that’s true. What would it take to be twice as good as you are now? I guarantee you that will give you focus and motivation to do much more than you do today.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Marc, thanks so much for taking this time. It’s been a lot of fun. I wish you all the best and much success and high performance as you do what you do.

Marc Effron
Thanks Pete. I enjoyed the conversation.

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

Eric Barker
Oh, it’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I got a real kick out of playing around and looking at your website. The domain or URL is, if I’m saying it right, bakadesuyo.com, which has an interesting translation. Can you tell us the story here?

Eric Barker
Yeah, basically my last name means idiot in Japanese. Barker, basically, the Japanese syllabic system doesn’t have r’s, so Barker becomes Baka. Baka means idiot.

When I was first starting the blog like nine years ago and I was doing it on a lark. I didn’t even know where this would end up going. I was just like, “Hey, let’s play with this.” My URL – basically it emphatically states that I am Barker. It also says I’m an idiot because me introducing myself is – those are the same sentence…

Me introducing myself and me calling myself a moron are the same sentence in Japanese, so I have never had a Japanese – I’ve been to Tokyo three times. I’ve never had a Japanese person forget my name.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. It’s fun. It shows some humility, self-effacingness because really I would assert that I don’t think you’re an idiot. I think you have some pretty insightful things to share. You’ve got the book and blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Can you orient us a little bit to what that’s all about?

Eric Barker
Yeah, basically the blog’s kind of evolved over the years, but basically I wanted to look at – I wanted to get some real answers. When I first created … I was at a big turning point in my life and I wanted to get the best answers that I could, so I started looking at peer-reviewed scientific research, books, then I started interviewing experts.

Basically, I found that a lot of the questions – there’s this great William Gibson quote I love, where he says, “The future is already here, but it’s not evenly distributed.” I think that’s true with a lot of questions that we have about life is there is a lot of research and information, good information, about the questions we all ask, but they’re in dusty journals or they’re locked in the ivory towers of universities.

I’ve tried to just get good answers to how can we basically live a great life, so in terms of relationships, in terms of productivity, happiness, all these kind of things. The internet is filled with so much kind of junk information or unverifiable ideas that somebody came up with over lunch to at least get something that has some backing to it.

Then for the book basically after a number of years of doing the blog, the book is basically looking at the issue of success. We all grew up with these maxims of success we hear, like, ‘nice guys finish last’ and ‘it’s not what you know; it’s who you know.’

Pete Mockaitis
You’ve got to work hard.

Eric Barker
Yeah, and we don’t know where they came from. We don’t know if they’re true. We don’t know if they used to be true, but they’re not true anymore.

Basically I decided to play myth busters and each chapter of the book is one of those maxims. I go down the rabbit hole looking at the research, talking to the experts, and basically giving each one of these their day in court looking at both sides of the issue and trying to tell some fun stories and have a good time along the way.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Now, you say myth busters, I didn’t see anywhere on your blog, maybe I missed it in which you filled a pig’s stomach with pop rocks and a carbonated beverage, is that there somewhere or did I overlook that?

Eric Barker
I don’t want to talk about my personal life, but you know. No, that’s not on the blog, but I do have an appointment later today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. I knew I would like you.

Let’s dig into some of these things. I’m particularly interested from sort of a career and personal development vantage point, you say that much of what we know quote/unquote, if you didn’t hear that, there’s air quote all over that, about success is totally wrong. Can you expand upon that?

Eric Barker
Yeah, again, specifically I address these maxims, where they’re very black and white, you know, ‘nice guys finish last.’ It’s not as clear-cut as that. There’s many facets to the question, but most specifically I would point to Adam Grant, who is a professor at Wharton, and his research shows that nice guys do finish last, but they also finish first.

When you look at the results from a number of different careers, you find that the most altruistic people, the results are bimodal. They are actually at the bottom and the top of success metrics.

If you think about it, that may sound confusing, it actually makes sense because we all know somebody who is just a martyr, who gets taken advantage of. They’re just too nice. They don’t look out for themselves. But we all also know somebody who is just awesome, supportive and giving and everybody loves them, everybody feels indebted to them, and everybody goes out of their way to help this very giving altruistic person.

We’ve got these overly simplified black and white concepts of success and when you dig into it, you usually find that it’s a little more nuanced than that and in some cases a lot more nuanced than that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’d love it if you could unpack a couple of these maxims. ‘Nice guys finish last,’ that’s a great one to think through in sort of a career or work context. What are some others that leap to mind?

Eric Barker
One of the other things I talk about is the issue that ‘It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.’

When you look at the research in terms of extroverts/introverts what you see is that across a number of metrics, extroverts do do better. They have bigger networks. They’re more likely, in most situations, to become leaders. They generally make more money. In fact, there’s a very significant amount of research that shows they’re happier.

However, what you see is that introverts have their own kind of superpower as well. That is that introverts are far more likely to get better grades. A disproportionate number of PhD holders are introverts. A disproportionate number of top athletes are introverts.

What you’re seeing there is basically that while extroverts derive enormous benefits from having big networks and knowing lots of people; introverts often take that time that they don’t spend socializing and use it to become experts in the field.

Rather than simply saying, ‘It’s not what you know; it’s who you know,’ it depends on your career. If you are in business development or sales or something, hey, being more extroverted, having a huge network can benefit you. But if you’re something like a computer programmer or maybe even a blogger or an author, being an introvert is beneficial because your skill is going to be more valuable, in general, than your network will be.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s my excuse for having a poor quality podcast and writing on AwesomeAtYourJob.com is that I’m so extroverted. I can’t be held responsible. I’m just out and about socializing all the time, Eric.

Eric Barker
The key meta point I make about success in the book is the idea that what is really critical is alignment. Know thyself, the old classic maxim. Knowing thyself and then picking the right pond. Basically really having some information, not just theories: who you are, what you’re like, what you’re good at, what are your signature strengths, what are your intensifiers, and then finding an environment that rewards those.

The alignment between those is critical. Like you’re saying there, it’s kind of like if you know, “Hey, I’m extroverted. I’m really conscientious,” then say what roles, what jobs, what companies or institutions reward those, that’s the path to success.

Actually what the research shows as well is that as opposed to doing what you love, very often what studies show is that when you do what you’re good at, you actually grow to love it. Finding out what you’re good at and passionately devoting yourself to that actually ends up making you happier.

By starting with knowing yourself, aligning yourself with an environment that supports that, that’s a really good path to success. Like you’re saying there, self-knowledge applied is really powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. When it comes to signature strengths, we’ve talked previously on the show about strengths stuff with Lisa Cummings or Scott Barlow, but the word intensifier, can you unpack that a little bit?

Eric Barker
Yeah, this is a concept that was put together by Gautam Mukunda at Harvard Business School. Signature strengths is an idea that – this research is done by Martin Seligman University of Pennsylvania.

Signature strengths, not only obviously does it make you good at your job to apply things you are naturally and uniquely good at, but also makes you happier. There’s tons of research showing it has a range of benefits when you use the unique skills you have.

However, most of those are usually these kind of generally good things, like if you’re agreeable or if IQ, you’ve got positive – things that are just universally well regarded. That’s where the concept of intensifiers comes in.

What Gautam Mukunda realized is when looking at leaders, many great leaders had qualities that were negative at the mean. In other words, on average these qualities were considered a negative, but they had aligned themselves with a context where that quality actually became a positive. It became a superpower.

In other words, in general if I said you were argumentative, most people would consider that an insult, in general. At the mean, argumentativeness is considered a negative quality. However, if you were to decide to become a litigator, being argumentative might be an essential part of your job and might advance your career.

Some people might say you’re stubborn. Okay, well, stubbornness again, in your interpersonal relationships can be a huge negative, generally considered a bad quality. But, if you’re an entrepreneur, you have to be stubborn. You’re going to face rejection. You’re going to face difficulty. Stubbornness might be almost indistinguishable from grit and persistence.

Intensifiers are understanding the negative at the mean qualities you possess and then finding that, “Hey, I’m stubborn, but I’m going to be an entrepreneur. I’m argumentative, but I’m a litigator. That even my negative qualities are being put to good use because of the career choices I’ve made.”

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well said. I dig that. It’s very potent synthesis and distillation of this stuff. I love it. I’m just going to keep going for it. You also unpack a little bit and explore why is it that valedictorians in fact rarely become millionaires. What’s the story behind this one?

Eric Barker
Basically, this was research by Karen Arnold at Boston College. What she found is that valedictorians, they do well. They do very well. They generally go on to prosperous careers. They often get graduate degrees. They live good lives.

But in terms of going on to being the people that shape the world, lead the world, they very, very rarely do. That is because of the nature of – we think of valedictorian almost as – we give it this kind of halo effect where it just means you’re awesome in general.

Pete Mockaitis
Ahh.

Eric Barker
Exactly. It’s not that. What it usually is is a strong sign of conscientiousness. The big five personality trait of conscientiousness, which means you’re good at following rules. People who are good at following rules, they show up on time, they do what they’re told.

Those people do very well in school, in high school and college because a big part – once you reach a certain minimum IQ threshold, grades actually are not a very good measure of IQs. Standardized tests are a very good measure of IQ. Grades are actually a good measure of conscientiousness. Do you do what you’re told? Do you play be the rules? Show up on time? Cross your t’s, dot your I’s?

That means that means that these people who are conscientious get very good grades. However the world is not just like schools. School has very clearly defined rules. The world does not have very clearly defined rules.

When there’s not a very strict playbook, you check all these boxes and you get an A plus, the enormous success of the valedictorians starts to break down. Like I said, overall they do very well, but they’re not going to be the people who change the world because they’re actually followers.

They’re people who do what they’re told very well, but they’re not the ones who generally go out and try and reinvent the playbook, who innovate, who change things. They usually will check all the boxes, which means someone else has to create those boxes.

To do well in school, also generally means you have to be a generalist. You have to – even if you’re passionate about math, you need to stop studying math to make sure you get an A in history and English. It requires you to be a generalist.

Whereas, as we all know, once you get into the workforce, you are generally rewarded for a singular skill set. If you are an amazing programmer and you don’t know anything about history, Google is still going to hire you. They don’t care about those other qualities.

Again, you are actually penalized in high school and college for too singular a focus, yet what is often rewarded in the work place is expertise in a singular focus. Once again, something that benefits valedictorians in high school and college can be a big negative when they go out into the working world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s really interesting, Eric, because I am a valedictorian. It’s really connecting that conscientiousness element when I’m getting into some territory that is sort of ambiguous because one of my strengths is input.

I like to collect a lot of different perspectives from folks and then sort of synthesize that and say, “Okay, given all that I know from the experts and my research and the data, it really seems like this is the best course of action.”

But it gets really tricky for me when I’m doing something new and then I’ve got five totally different voices saying totally different things. I go, “Ah, well shucks, now what?” I found myself in my entrepreneurial journey getting a little bit stuck in those zones.

It’s like, “Well, I guess it’s unclear and maybe I will have the presence of mind to push through and find the audacity to chart a new course, but other times it just takes way longer than it should to blast past that ambiguity.

Eric Barker
The thing about all of these personality traits like conscientiousness is that much like the overarching theory of success I have in the book, where it’s knowing yourself and then picking the right pond, it’s always it’s interaction with the environment. There’s not a singular this is always good and this is always bad.

Conscientiousness is a very powerful personality trait in most spheres in terms of earnings, in terms of successful marriages. Conscientiousness, being steady, predictable, consistent is very powerful. Yet, we can all imagine situations where we, perhaps in the arts, in media, in much more creative professions, where being a little too stickler or the rules probably would not benefit you as much.

All of these traits, whether they’re good or bad, and that’s going back to the issue of signature strengths and intensifiers depends on context.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm, I’m with you there. I also want to get your view here, when I’m exploring all this stuff in terms of where you fit best and maybe not so great a fit when it comes to the whole confidence game. What are your takes from the research in terms of sort of bad advice for boosting your confidence versus the evidence-based advice?

Eric Barker
The issue with confidence – first and foremost, it’s a very tricky – it’s a tricky issue to discuss because they don’t write a lot of books on reducing your confidence. Most people don’t say, “My confidence is way too high. How can I bring it down?”

It’s so one-sided in terms of everybody wants to boost their confidence and anything that you see written on the subject is talking about increasing your confidence. It’s a little one sided. It’s only one side of the court room actually has an attorney arguing for it.

But basically it’s interesting because there are strengths and weaknesses on both sides. We’re usually not aware of them because like I said because it’s often a one-sided conversation. Too much confidence is a bad thing. Overconfidence is not a compliment, nor is narcissism and hubris.

When people get too confident, the research basically shows that a) they don’t listen to anybody. They think they have all the answers to a very unhealthy, unproductive degree. Also, they become a jerk. They just don’t listen to anybody else and they generally don’t respect people. And they’re actually more likely to cheat and lie.

But the benefits of confidence, obviously, it makes us feel good, confidence. Nobody likes feeling uncertain. Also, confidence has an enormous, it’s undeniable that it has an enormous effect on how other people perceive you.

One of the studies I site in the book is that given a choice between a person with a great track record, who doesn’t seem very confident, and a person with a mediocre track record, who seems extremely confident, study subjects pick confidence over a great track record. They actually picked just the way the person conveyed themselves.

Basically like picking a stock trader who lost money, but seemed really confident versus somebody who consistently made money, but didn’t come off as confident. People trust confidence over expertise. On the flip side-

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, so you’re saying we’ve got multiple studies across multiple domains and stock picking is one example where the majority of folks-

Eric Barker
I was using stock picking as an example for clarity, but my point is that there’s research showing that people will choose the confident speaker with an inferior track record over the less confident speaker with the superior track record.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. In terms of you’re going to hire somebody for a role and – that is striking. Wow. That’s –

Eric Barker
Yeah, I think we’ve all seen examples of this where, “Hey, he didn’t have the greatest grades, but we really clicked in the interview,” or, “He really made an impression,” or, “She really just came across well,” that kind of ….

On the flip side, less confidence obviously doesn’t – clearly doesn’t make a very good impression on people and doesn’t make us feel good. However, it helps us learn. We’re far more open to new ideas. We’re far more likely to listen, to explore possibilities, and to grow when we don’t think we have all the answers.

The problem is that there’s benefits – there’s strengths and weaknesses to both sides. You see some people succeed by a form of double think, which there is no system to incorporate double think. But some people are great, like thinking about the athletes who can be completely deferential to their coach, work hard in training, and then when they show up on game day, they are 110% sure that they’re going to do it. If you can balance that, great.

But in looking at the research what I found actually was the best answer was that the entire confidence paradigm is actually problematic at its core because it puts us on this constant up and down, where we often feel like we need to prove ourselves to support our self-esteem.

What seems to be a superior answer was actually an ancient Buddhist concept which has been scientifically validated by Kristin Neff at the University of Texas at Austin called self-compassion, where instead of building ourselves up to this superhuman ridiculous level where we will inevitably fail, basically to try and see the world as realistically as possible, but to be forgiving with yourself when you fail, to be very realistic, but to be very compassionate toward yourself.

Actually, that allows you to see the world for what it is. You’re not overconfidently deluded. But on the other hand, you’re not punishing yourself when you fail and you’re open to new ideas because you’re not being unrealistic. Self-compassion actually seemed to be a better paradigm than self-confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that. This reminds me of – and I don’t know – you can tell me if there’s a scientific name for this concept, but it really seems related to this confidence matter.

I’ve seen it in myself and in others in terms of let’s say you do something the first time and you’re really concerned, like, “Okay, I’ve never done this before. I’ve really got to make sure,” I guess that’s my conscientiousness, “I really want to make sure that I nail it and I do it just right. I’m going to look very carefully at all of the instructions and the best practices, and research-based insights to do a fantastically good job.”

Then I do that thing. I’m thinking about putting on a leadership seminar once. I did that. I was in my role as the chairperson. It went great, so good, good, good stuff.

Then the next year, I did it again, but this time I had a completely different attitude or mindset, which was, “Oh yeah, we rocked this last year. This should be no problem.” Then I put in less effort and had less curiosity and less diligence associated with doing all the stuff and then actually had in some ways an inferior result in that event that I put together.

I’ve seen this in other people. The term I’ve coined for it is second-time syndrome. You’re doing it the second time and through overconfidence or any number of factors, you do it worse than you did the first time despite that experience would suggest we should have a superior outcome. Is there a name for that in science?

Eric Barker
I don’t know if there’s a name specifically for that, but I think basically what you’re talking about is the development of overconfidence. Is that your initial success was attributable to a great amount of effort and diligence, but then subsequently, you didn’t do the great amount of effort and diligence. You attributed it otherwise. Then without the handwork and diligence, you didn’t get the same result.

There’s actually a similar study that Dan Ariely did that shows that we’re prone to just that sort of thinking, where basically they did a study where they gave people a test and they actually deliberately made it easy to cheat.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah. This one, huh?

Eric Barker
They made it easy to cheat on the test and they didn’t let people know that they would be monitoring this. They were able to monitor who cheated.

Anyway, they gave the test, some people cheated, some people didn’t. Obviously those who cheated did very well. Then they surveyed them after the fact and they said to people, “How do you think you would do on another test on this same subject matter?” The cheaters rated themselves as saying, “Oh, I think I would do great.”

What you’re seeing here is that they succeeded because of cheating, yet they somehow rationalize this into believing, “I’m actually good at this.” That’s something that I think is common.

It’s kind of like the example you’re positing, where you succeeded due to a lot of effort, diligence, and perhaps a fair amount of fear, and that really motivated you to work hard. Then we have this natural human instinct to be like, “Oh, well I must be like a like natural.” Then we don’t do the hard work and we find out that, well, actually it was the hard work that was responsible for the success.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. That was interesting. Netflix has a documentary that prominently features Dan Ariely.

Eric Barker
(Dis)Honesty or something like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that sounds right, yeah. I loved the scenes where it showed the fake shredders that only shredded like the fringes of the answer sheets they were turning in. I thought that was a brilliant little experimental maneuver there. It’s like, it sure looks and sounds like that thing has got shredded, but it wasn’t. I just thought that was awesome. Cool.

Maybe the last question perhaps. You unpack a bit of the secret ingredient how Navy Seals find that grit. Can you share what’s the master key to this?

Eric Barker
Yeah, this was – Navy Seals basically go through BUDS, which is Basic Underwater Demolition training. That’s the vetting process for Seals. After the tragedy of 9/11, the US military wanted more special operations troops like Seals, but obviously they didn’t want to lower the standards because that would defeat the purpose.

They had to commission a study basically to find what was it that separated psychologically those who got through the training versus those who didn’t because frankly, they didn’t know.

One of the key four things that really kept them going was positive self-talk, was basically we all have this voice in our head. We say hundreds of words to ourselves every minute and if those voices are positive, we tend to persist and if they’re negative, we tend to quit.

This aligns perfectly – I pointed at the Navy Seals as an example, but the underlying research that basically lines up with it pretty well done by Martin Seligman at University of Pennsylvania is that optimism is probably the strongest element of grit and resilience as we know it, having an optimistic attitude.

It makes intuitive sense. If you think things are going to work out, if you think you’re going to win at the roulette table, you keep playing. If you think you’re not, then you stop playing.

If we believe optimistically things are going to go well, we persist even when things are tough, even when it’s difficult, we keep going. Basically optimism and an optimistic attitude is probably the strongest predictor of whether people will be resilient through difficult challenges.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d like to get a little bit more precise when you talk about defining optimism. I’m thinking about Viktor Frankl’s work, Man’s Search for Meaning, in which there’s a bit of a distinction as opposed to, “Hey, we’re going to be rescued and saved out of this concentration camp next week, next month.” Then they’re disappointed and it falls apart.

Versus when you say optimism it sounds like you’re maybe in the ballpark of self-efficacy in terms of “I have a conviction that I will be successful in this endeavor,” is that fair.

Eric Barker
I think you’re making a really salient distinction, which is lying to yourself is not the path here. Merely telling yourself pretty lies is not the path here.

Pete Mockaitis
Tomorrow will be an easier day of BUDS.

Eric Barker
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Bad move.

Eric Barker
Yes. The big thing – the distinction that Seligman makes is basically he says what separates an optimistic attitude from a pessimistic attitude – he refers to them as the three P’s, which is seeing things that are positive as personal, pervasive and persistent.

In other words, optimists, when good things happen, they see them as personal, so I was responsible for this. They see it as persistent: this good thing will continue. They see it as pervasive: this good thing will affect many areas of my life.

However, when people have a pessimistic attitude is because they see negative things as personal, persistent, and pervasive.

What you really need to do is kind of a cognitive behavioral therapy style approach, which is we all have moments where we get pessimistic and we, “Oh, it’s all my fault. This problem is going to keep happening and it’s going to affect every area of my life.”

To actually question those thoughts – because we’ll just accept those thoughts because they’re in our head; they must be true, to actually stop and question them. To say, “This is really all my fault? No, it’s not all my fault. This is going to go on forever? No, it’s not going to go on forever? This is going to affect every area of my life? No, not every-“ To basically really question it.

Instead of saying just Pollyannaish, unrealistic lies to make ourselves feel better, if you look at those negatives, usually the negatives, we exaggerate those and to make those more realistic allows us to be more optimistic because we can say, “No, no, no, the reason I’m so upset, the reason I want to quit is because I’m exaggerating the negatives here and I’m not looking at the positives.” To be more objective and not to be overly dramatic in either direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect, thank you. Eric, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear some of your favorite things?

Eric Barker
No, nothing specific. We can move on to the next phase.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, how about you share with us a favorite quote, something that inspires you?

Eric Barker
One of my favorite quotes is the William Gibson quote I mentioned, where he said that “The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.”

I think that what’s really critical there is just having a little bit of resourcefulness in terms of this resourcefulness is a quality that I really appreciate that people don’t give enough attention to. A lot of the answers are out there, but usually we just shrug our shoulders and we stop.

To realize that usually if you’re asking a question, someone else has asked it. If you spend a little bit of time, you might be able to get the answer or get yourself closer to it. I think that’s something really powerful to think about.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. How about a favorite study? It seems you’ve gotten enchanted by so many. Does one really stick with you?

Eric Barker
I guess something I’ve read recently that really moved me was the idea that if you try to be happier and you live in the United States or the UK and you make a concerted, deliberate effort to be happier, you will fail. The reason for that – however, if you live in Russia, China, Japan, you will succeed.

The reason for that is that so much of what makes us happy is relationships with other people, yet the cultures of the United States and the United Kingdom are very individualistic cultures, meaning that usually when we try to make ourselves happier, we focus on our selves: be yourself, do your own thing, so the efforts we make are usually in the wrong direction, if we live in the US and the UK.

We need to think socially.  We need to think more collectivist countries. Ironically, when people do the usual things to try to make themselves happier in the US and UK, they fail spectacularly. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be happier. It just means we need to think a little bit differently than the concepts that our culture usually promotes.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Eric Barker
Favorite book, there’s so many. There is – I’m trying to think. One that I’ve read recently that I thought was pretty spectacular was – I definitely like Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. I won’t use the full word there.

It is for people who are curious about Buddhism and a lot of the happiness concepts that have come out of that, it is a very accessible way to look at – one of the main ideas Mark describes in there, which I found useful, is basically he says for people to look through the lens of the idea of what challenges, what pain are you comfortable with.

Because some of us there are difficulties that we don’t like to have to deal with and there are other difficulties that we’re – some people are more comfortable with failure, but they have a short attention span and they’re not good with persistence. They’ll be happy to try lots of things and if they fail at 90% of them, but succeed at 10, they’re good.

Other people are really good at persistence, but they hate failure, so drilling down, grinding away for years is an option for them. To realize what kind of suffering are you comfortable with as opposed to saying, “What do I want? What’s my big grand dream?” Well, it’s going to take a lot of work. If it’s a big grand dream, it’s going to take a lot of work to get there.

Then to ask yourself, “Okay, what challenges, what suffering am I comfortable with?” can ask if you really are ready for that challenge or maybe a better challenge would suit you. I think it’s a very interesting perspective to look through.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Eric Barker
Favorite tool. Well that would have to be my Mac Book.

Pete Mockaitis
Not the Pro, not the Air, Mac Book straight up?

Eric Barker
It is a Pro, but I used to love my Air, but now they’re all getting so small and thin, that I’m not sure how much of a distinction there is anymore. I love the Air, but right now I have a Pro. I don’t know. They’re pretty amazing.

But if there’s one tool I could definitely not live without, especially given what I do, it would definitely be my Mac Book.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, and how about a favorite habit?

Eric Barker
Favorite habit, reading. Man, that one’s really paid off for me. I highly recommend – I’m kind of like an athlete saying they like to exercise.

For me, it’s something I love doing. I often joke or half joke that a lot of the work I do is just the exhaust that comes out of my natural habit of wanting to read, wanting to learn and then that machine, which is going to run anyway, happens to produce this exhaust which luckily I’ve found some weird way to make a career out of. I’m very, very grateful for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, we appreciate your exhaust. Thank you for sharing it.

Eric Barker
…. Sorry, I’m destroying the environment.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d also like to get your take, you shared a lot of things with a lot of people, is there a particular nugget or quotable gem that is attributable to you or maybe just even reformulated, restated by you, that really does seem to resonate with folks. They retweet it. They take notes upon it when you utter it. What’s something that really seems to stick?

Eric Barker
That valedictorian study, again, I didn’t do the research, really seems to resonate with people and the self-compassion concept really seems to resonate with people.

The idea of not having to lie, not having to brag, not having to blow yourself up, not having to be a jerk, but emphasizing forgiving yourself. I think that’s a concept that’s really resonated with people, especially lately is the idea that forgiving yourself is more important than blowing up your … to insane proportions.

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

Eric Barker
Given that as we established the URL is hard to pronounce, hard to spell, hard to – not the best marketing choice on my part, happy to grant you that one. If they want to see my blog, there’s a new post every week, which is a deep dive on some evidence-based way to improve your life.

Basically Googling my name, Eric Barker, that will come up and signing up for my weekly email is the best way to keep up with what I’m doing. The book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, is available on Amazon and any of the other major book sellers.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool. Eric, do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Eric Barker
I would point to a piece of advice that a former Harvard researcher and now bestselling author, Shawn Achor, told me that he had done research that basically said when you go into the office first thing, first thing you do, sit down and send an email thanking somebody, showing gratitude.

Simply doing that gives people a boost in happiness and there’s plenty of research I’ve cited on the blog before that shows how you start the day, dramatically affects how the rest of the day goes. The challenge I would give people is first thing in the office, send an email, and send someone a sincere thank you email. Try that for a few days, see if it helps you out.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Eric, this has been such a treat. Please keep generating the great things you produce. The exhaust has a fragrant and a lovely aroma. It’s been a lot of fun.

Eric Barker
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it Pete.