Sébastien Page explores how great leaders navigate failure, conflict, pressure, and purpose.
You’ll Learn
- How agreeableness holds you back
- How to know whether a goal is still worth pursuing
- How to make stress work for you
About Sébastien
Sébastien Page is Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He has more than two decades of leadership experience and has done extensive research on positive, sports, and personality psychology. He currently oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in Assets Under Management.
Page has written two finance books: Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know, and the co-authored Factor Investing and Asset Allocation, and he has won six annual research-paper awards: two from The Financial Analysts Journal and four from The Journal of Portfolio Management. He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, and in 2022 was named a Top Voice in Finance by LinkedIn. He has been quoted extensively in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Barron’s. His latest book, The Psychology of Leadership, is on sale now from Harriman House. Page lives in Maryland with his wife and kids.
- Book: The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless principles to improve your management of individuals, teams… and yourself!
- LinkedIn: Sébastien Page
- Website: PsychologyofLeadership.net
Resources Mentioned
- Book: Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins
- Book: Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within by David Goggins
- Book: Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
- Book: Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke
- Book: The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
- Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey
- Past episode: 727: How to Start Something New and See it Through with Michael Bungay Stanier
Thank you, Sponsors!
- Strawberry.me. Claim your $50 credit and build momentum in your career with Strawberry.me/Awesome
Sébastien Page Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Sébastien, welcome!
Sébastien Page
Thank you. I’m very excited to do a podcast. I don’t get to do that many, and it’s a lot more relaxed than what we usually do on live national TV when we talk about markets.
Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Well, it’s funny, you talk about markets a lot, but you got a book about The Psychology of Leadership. What’s that about, Sébastien?
Sébastien Page
You know, I get that question a lot, “Why would a finance guy write a book about self-improvement and high-performing leadership?” I’ve been a leader myself for about 25 years in business. And, to me, I started working on this because, myself, I felt very stressed at work, and I was beating myself up for being stressed. So, I was stressing about stressing.
And, Pete, I talked to a sports psychologist who introduced me to a lot of fascinating research, and that was the beginning. The first time I met him, he had this story because the sports psychologists, it turns out, is a pro-athlete as well, 40 national titles in the sport of handball. And so, that’s the sport that looks like squash but you smack the ball with your hands. Forty, four-zero, national titles, and he’s a sports psychologist. His name is Dr. Daniels Simmons.
This is the origin story of the book, “Why would a finance guy end up writing a book on self-improvement and leadership?” He tells me the story of his best match ever, and it’s a match that occurred 10 years ago but he remembers everything about it. He remembers every point, where he was at every point, where the ball was. He has a tear in his eye. At some point, he’s on his knees, he makes an extreme impossible shot.
And then, Pete, it’s an absolute letdown because he goes, “And then I lost the next two points.” And I go, “What? You lost the game?” And that’s the mindset of a sports psychologist, where you have 40 national titles, and your best match ever is one that you happen to lose, but that’s not really relevant. To him, that day he realized he could play at a higher level because he was playing a stronger opponent.
So, I became fascinated with this mindset of sports psychology. So, that’s how the book started. And then I just dug into the research.
Pete Mockaitis
So, it was it his best game ever in terms of his own performance or his delight in it because he realized that he had achieved at a higher level?
Sébastien Page
It was mainly the latter. It was the realization that he could play at a higher level. And, to me, it was the realization of a mindset, which, by the way, relates to money management as well. You can’t get everything right in money management. Sometimes you lose. It was an illustration of that mindset and how you handle it.
But, for him, it was, “Look, I’m now a stronger player. It doesn’t matter that I won or lost.” It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about winning. It’s just a different way to approach uncertainty and failure.
Pete Mockaitis
No, it’s a good one. One of our guests, Michael Bungay-Stanier, who wrote The Coaching Habit and others, said his favorite quote is, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by ever-greater things,” or some of that notion of ever-greater things.
Sébastien Page
I like that.
Pete Mockaitis
And that you can feel good about that, in terms of “Okay, hey, I still lost but, wow, my golly, look at what it took to take me out. I’m really getting better. That’s awesome!”
Sébastien Page
I like that a lot. And I often think back on Roger Federer’s commencement address that went viral about six months ago. He was speaking to students. And Roger Federer is one of the top tennis players of all time, and he goes, “I’ve played 1500 matches in my career. I’ve won 80% of them.” But then he asked the students, “What percentage of points do you think I won?”
What do you think, Pete, is that percentage, percentage of points that Federer won in his career? Not to put you on the spot.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I don’t know how tennis scoring works. I was going to wildly guess, 61, Sébastien.
Sébastien Page
So, you’re not far. It’s 54%. So, Roger Federer, top tennis player only won 54% of the points. And then he looked at the students, and he said, “Whatever game you play in life, you’re going to lose.” Effortless winning is a myth and it’s your mindset when you lose. You actually learn more in sports psychology, from losing than from winning.
In fact, I write this in The Psychology of Leadership, sports psychology is not about winning at all. It’s about losing and what you do with that loss. And I really liked what you said earlier about losing to ever-greater things or ever-greater opponents. That’s exactly the conversation that sparked my interest in sports psychology and how it can apply to leadership, to business management, and to money management as well.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I was thinking about money things as well. It might’ve been Mark Cuban, who said, “You only have to be right once,” in terms of, like, your entrepreneurial career. Yeah, you can fill many things but your one big win, and, whoo, you’re doing awesome.
Sébastien Page
Yeah, that’s an analogy in venture capital, and it’s the same idea. You have to accept the fact that a lot of your bets are not going to work. As long as there’s one that goes 10X, you’re going to be a successful venture capitalist.
But in terms of self-improvement, we don’t like losing, and we have to kind of get over that. As leaders, when you look at business environments, accepting that you’re going to have setbacks, and just focusing on what you do with those and how you move forward. That’s where the mindset shifts.
And, look, I think, Pete, in general, sports psychology is greatly underrated. I wrote the book also because the positive side of psychology is kind of still on unexplored in business. If you go on Google Scholar, and you searched for articles in clinical psychology, you’ll probably get about the same number of articles as in positive psychology. To me, that’s fascinating. The business world has only scratched the surface here of the positive side of psychology.
Let me give you an example. Does the name Felix Baumgartner ring a bell?
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, he got the red ball really high up stunt.
Sébastien Page
Yes. Here’s the stunt. He goes on a helium balloon, up 24 miles to the edge of space, he steps out of his capsule, and he skydives for 10 minutes, four minutes in freefall. The first human being to break the sound barrier. I mean, it’s amazing what he did. But what most people don’t know is Felix Baumgartner was coached every step of the way in preparation and through the day of that skydiving from space stunt by a sports psychologist.
So, I used this sometimes as an introduction to, yeah, psychology is super important to treat clinical anxiety and depression, but it’s also really important for ultra-high performance. And that’s where the business world hasn’t really come around to this much yet. And it just brings so much tools to deal with setbacks and the stress that comes with high performance, because it’s stressful to deliver high performance in any area of life.
Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, you’ve got a number of really cool principles that you put out in your book, and I want to jump into speaking about these bits, about mindset. You said we should identify and manage our core beliefs. Tell us, why and how is that done?
Sébastien Page
So, a core belief is the way you interpret the world. Think of it as rules of thumb. They might not be entirely conscious but it’s how you interpret events, and how you tend to make decisions. In the research in psychology, it’s often about a traumatic event that changed your core belief.
So, imagine someone who was betrayed in a major way in their life. They might’ve developed a core belief that everybody is out to get them, and that’s how they’re going to interpret situations and go through life with that core belief.
Now, in business, we have core beliefs. “The consumer is always right,” is a popular one. In money management, we have core beliefs, “The trend is your friend,” or, “Buy low and sell high.” And the thing about core beliefs in business, in leadership, for yourself, is that they’re, oftentimes, unexamined.
Do you know, Pete, what your core beliefs are, how you tend to react under pressure, how you tend to interpret the world? Not necessarily. You might have core beliefs that you haven’t realized you’re using to make important decisions.
So, in that principle, I encourage people, for themselves, for their teams, for their company, to write them down, examine them, discuss them, “What do we believe in? How do we interpret the world?” And here’s the key. Some of them, you’re going to want to get rid of. Other ones, you’re going to want to foster within your team or within your organization. And that’s where you start managing core beliefs, and it’s incredibly powerful in setting the right culture for high performance.
I had a core belief earlier in my career, my boss used to say that I heard high frequencies, and this was about corporate politics. What he meant was, you know how dogs hear certain noises that humans don’t hear?
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. I’m thinking about the Superman movie with Gene Hackman, and that dog with high pitch thing. But Superman and the dogs could hear it.
Sébastien Page
Yes. So, he would say, “You hear high frequencies, like you’re hearing political noise, or you’re worried about things that are really just high frequencies.” And he would remind me of this every time I get worried. And my response was usually, “Well, it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.” That’s kind of a famous quote that people use sometimes, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.”
But that was a bad core belief. It was a bad core belief to think that, to not assume good intentions. And I kind of managed and replaced that core belief with, “Start by assuming good intentions.” It’s just a good starting point, even if you’re wrong. It’s a better way to start when you’re managing team dynamics and corporate politics.
So, that’s an example of examining core beliefs, changing it for a better one.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you walk us through the practice in terms of how you identify a hidden core belief, and then if you see it, you say, “Ah, actually, I don’t like that. That’s not so helpful”? How do you jettison it? Because I imagine that’s perhaps easier said than done.
Sébastien Page
So, people in clinical psychology, when they might have really unhealthy core beliefs, they just go to therapy, and that’s a way, through discussion and through the therapeutic to identify your core beliefs but I think you don’t need to go to therapy to identify your core beliefs.
I think, as a team setting, say in a business environment, what you want to do is observe how people behave, think, make decisions, interpret events during moments of high pressure, during moments when it’s tough decision, and there’s emotion in the room. That’s usually where we default to some core beliefs.
And then what you do is you discuss these. Let’s take money management. Markets are crashing, “Are we prone to just sell and panic or buy more or sit tight?” And there’s probably a core belief behind that. And so, you identify those moments of pressure, and then you see how they come out, they surface, during those moments.
It’s also often written down in a company’s founding or there’s a lot of companies that will write, “We believe…” statements. And those are usually a bit cheesy and motherhood and apple pie, and they sit on a PowerPoint somewhere, and they’re cliché, and we don’t really read them or believe them. But you know what? These things really matter day to day.
Not necessarily the curated PowerPoint, but, “What do we believe as a team?” whether it’s a sports team, whether it’s a family. You’re a leader in your family. You don’t have to manage people in a business to be a leader. So, in The Psychology of Leadership, I give some examples of company core beliefs or team core beliefs, and just writing them down is very helpful.
Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s hear a real belief, written down, that’s powerful and has a galvanizing real impact on a team.
Sébastien Page
So, for us in business, if we’re disagreeing on something, the best way to win the argument, say it’s a product development or an investment decision, is to make the case on behalf of our clients. So, there is a core belief that everything we do, everyday we go to work, is to make money for our clients so they can get better retirements, pay their bills, put their kids through college.
That’s the mission of a money manager. You go to work and you want to make money for your clients. So, that’s a core belief. We write it down often, we talk about it, and we resolve disagreements with them, is that we’re acting as fiduciaries for our clients.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And then you also have a principle about “Be disagreeable sometimes.”
Sébastien Page
So, in personality psychology, we all know whether we’re introverts or extroverts, and that’s actually popular in the business world nowadays to talk about introversion, but there are these other traits, and agreeableness is one of the traits that I talk about in The Psychology of Leadership.
Agreeableness is a great trait to have. It just means that you like to get along, you’re a good listener, you tend to not confront people head on, but like any personality trait, it has downsides. If you’re too high in agreeableness, you’re a people-pleaser and you’ll put other people’s needs before yours, and that might not be productive for your own career and even for the benefit of the team.
So, some people score high in agreeableness, some people score low. In The Psychology of Leadership, I actually publish my own scores. I’m tempted to put you on the spot, Pete, to see if you would score yourself high or low in agreeableness.
Pete Mockaitis
I’m too agreeable, it’s a problem. I need to, sometimes, not give a “Good God, gosh, golly” about other people’s perspectives in order to do what’s optimal, yeah.
Sébastien Page
You hit the nail on the head. If you want to be a good leader, an effective leader, you can’t spend your days just trying to build consensus and making everybody happy. You’re going to have to make some decisions where you’re going to have to be disagreeable.
And I say 10% of the time in The Psychology of Leadership, this is a book that’s full of research. All the principles are research-backed but the 10% is my intuitive recommendation, know when to be disagreeable at the right moment, when you need to put your foot down. Only then you’ll be an effective leader.
You can’t just go through your day-to-day as a leader just constantly trying to make everybody happy. It’s a desirable thing, though. That’s why I say 10%, right?
Pete Mockaitis
Wel, it’s true. And as I think about, if you hear the stories of great leaders through history, there are often those moments in which all or many of the advisors around them are pushing them in one direction, and they say, “No, absolutely not. That could result in nuclear annihilation. So, we’re not doing that. We’re doing the opposite,” and they firmly, with backbone, go ahead and do the thing. And we’re still alive today, so thanks to good leadership backbone.
So, I guess the hard part, Sébastien, is how do we know, “When is that 10%?” How do you know, “You know what? I am, indeed, putting my foot down, and the perspectives I’m getting are incomplete or just plain wrong. And so, we’re going my way this time”?
Sébastien Page
Well, let me give you two cases. One is you, as the leader, have information because you’re connected to the board of directors or the clients. You might have information that you can’t share for one reason or the other.
But there’s an information asymmetry and you know what the right decision is, or maybe you have a unique talent, and only you. But be careful with that because that can turn into arrogance. But you have an edge in making the decision. Like, in your example. You’re going to be disagreeable.
The other part of it, number two, is that the job of the leader, often, is to resolve conflicts. And you’ll have people come at you with recommendations that disagree. So, one person wants the organization to go left, the other person wants the organization to go right, “Leader, what are we going to do?” It can be absolutely exhausting and counterproductive to just try to create some kind of consensus or keep everybody happy. If the organization needs to move fast, you have to use your 10% right there.
So, you use your 10% when there’s an information asymmetry or really convince you have the right decision and others don’t, and then you use it when, and maybe a bit more often, when you need to help resolve disagreements. Because if you don’t, over time, it builds, and it builds, and it builds, and it becomes your full time just dealing with the disagreements because they fester, they just keep going.
Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, by taking a stand and resolving it, we sort of nip it in the bud.
Sébastien Page
Yes. And remember also, I talk about goal-induced blindness in the book. And with goal-induced blindness, people lose sight of what’s not related to their goals. They just focus narrowly on the goal, and they might sacrifice their health, their family, or their sense of ethics. So, they’re, famously, companies, business leaders, or sports leaders and athletes, that cheat because they have goal-induced blindness.
And so, when you as a leader, you really have to put your foot down, and say, “Okay, you need to go home and rest. This is perhaps a disagreeable way. I know you want to stay here and keep going,” or, “This is an ethical grey area and we don’t go nowhere near that. And, therefore, I’m putting my foot down.”
So, exercising leadership is a lot about inspiring people, is a lot about building consensus, is a lot about being agreeable, but 10% of the time, and that’s my own rule, 10% of the time it’s not, and that’s a crucial part of the job.
Pete Mockaitis
Goal-induced blindness is a fun turn of a phrase. And I’m curious if there are any early-warning signals you look for to see, “Uh-oh, it looks like we are starting to tip-toe into blind territory.”
Sébastien Page
You’re going to start seeing it through people getting exhausted, through morale, through customer feedback, but let’s just define goal-induced blindness clearly. It’s well-researched in psychology, and let me give you an example, Pete.
I was in front of about a thousand students, giving a talk, about two months ago. And I asked the students the following question. I’m going to ask you, too, although I think I know what you’re going to answer. Imagine I give you a bowl of a hundred gummy bears. Four of them are poisoned and they’re going to kill you. So, you have a 4% chance of dying.
And my challenge to you, Pete, is would you eat one gummy bear for $100,000?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d have to run all the numbers but I’m guessing no because it would take vast sums for me to think it’s worth trading my life, and our numbers aren’t good enough here, Sébastien.
Sébastien Page
So, look, I offered the students, hypothetically, a million. That was my opening. And I saw 15-20% of the room raised their hands. And in surveys, when you ask Millennials, for example, there are good surveys on them, 81% of them say that their life goal is to become rich, which, by the way, is not a bad goal. Go for it. Like, measurable goals, traditional goals are motivating, go for it.
But the caveat about goal-induced blindness is that, I mean, what? Eating one of those gummies is complete goal-induced blindness. Like, no amount of money is worth doing this. And here’s why I used four gummies that are poisoned out of a hundred.
The literature in psychology refers to Mt. Everest deaths. If you want to summit Everest, you have a 4% chance of dying in the process. And when you read about psychology and goal-induced blindness, there are lots of examples of people who die on Everest because they have the summit in their sight, and they lose sight of everything else, the risk they’re taking.
So, at the end of one of my principles, I go, “If you’re going to take any advice from this entire book, take the following. If ever you feel like climbing Everest because it’s there or some other reason, my advice to you is ‘Don’t.’”
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny because Everest, we think about money, I suppose my frame of reference for even entertaining the gummy bears is that if I think about my life as a gift or contribution to family, nonprofit, others, like, “What is the impact I would like to give? What’s the impact I would like to create by putting my life in service of folks? And then what might be the comparable impact of a vast sum of funds going to, you know, starving or whatever, folks in need?”
So, I guess that’s how I’m thinking about it. Because we might say, “Would you eat a gummy bear if it meant you’d save many lives in the neighboring room?” And so, I guess that’s how I’m thinking about it. Whereas, Everest, yeah, I mean, one, I’m not that into mountain climbing, even though it’s kind of fun.
You’re right, I think that’s excellent to think about goal-induced blindness, is you just want it really bad, and you’re excited about it, and to heck with the risks.
Sébastien Page
Look, you found the perfect counterargument to what I was saying, which is you might have altruistic goals that you are behaving in a way that looks like goal-induced blindness but it’s a completely different framework, it’s to do something good. And there, we get philosophical. And there’s the theory of utility, and “How do you achieve the greater good for the greater number of people?”
Psychology is not much about philosophy. My son is 17, happens to be really interested in philosophy, so we talk about these things. But, Pete, you gave a really good counterargument there. My general recommendation is to pursue goals, go for it. Like, measurable goals work. They work. They motivate. We take people to the moon. We want to go to the moon. That’s the goal. And it works. And it’s okay to want to make money.
And I think, even better, if you want to make money for altruistic ends because, in that case, also research in psychology, in positive psychology, shows that that is much more likely to make you happy, Pete, to help others than making more money per se. And there’s a lot of research about “Does happiness increase with money?”
If you’re in poverty, it definitely does, but then it does not much after a certain level. That’s also well-published research. But the problem with goal-induced blindness is that it happens. So, I’m arguing for having goals, for being aggressive in pursuing them, but for being mindful of “Are you still taking care of yourself? Like, are you healthy? Are you sleeping? Are you eating okay? Are you exercising? And don’t cheat, ever. It’s not worth it. Yeah, you’re playing a long-term game.”
And recognize when you’re slipping into goal-induced blindness. That’s a risk for high performers, not for low performers.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s good to note that, sometimes, as you pursue a goal, we realize the costs are much greater than originally anticipated. And it may be wise to pause, and say, “Hmm, new information has come to light. Perhaps this goal is no longer worth pursuing,” although that is a bummer, and make sure you don’t let your ego get into it, like, “I’m not a quitter.” It’s like, “Okay.”
Well, I think about that with Everest, in terms of folks, they get in that position where they pretty close to the summit, and they realize, “Uh-oh, we’re entering a high-danger situation,” and some folks will wisely turn back even though they were so close to the peak, and those who are like, “Doggone it, I’m so close, I can’t give up. I’m just going to go for it. I’m going for it.”
Sébastien Page
Look, quitting might be the most underrated skill in business. We think of leaders as those that never give up and stick to the goal, but there are plenty of occasions in business when the facts change and the future profits from your project have changed, and you have to quit even though you’ve invested a lot in that project.
Annie Duke has a fantastic book that she titled Quit, and it’s about how quitting is an underrated skill in business. And I refer to her research in The Psychology of Leadership as well. So, I’m glad you bring this up. Pete, the other example I like to use when talking about goals is my friend, Phil. So, that’s the story of my friend, Phil. Phil made a billion dollars.
Pete Mockaitis
Shout out, Phil.
Sébastien Page
Yeah, with his cryptocurrency company, and he decided to give everything away to charity. And the next morning, he was eating his cereal in his kitchen, and an angel appeared to him. So, this is usually where I disclose that it’s not a true story, but it’s illustrative.
Pete Mockaitis
“What an interesting life Phil has had. He earned a billion dollars. Sees angels.”
Sébastien Page
You might’ve been wondering where this interview was going.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I bet, I’m an angel, Sébastien, so, okay, fiction with you.
Sébastien Page
It’s a made-up story but I use it to frame goals. So, the angel said, “Oh, you’re such a good person. I’m going to give you one of the following three gifts. I can give you infinite power, I can give you infinite wealth, or I can give you infinite wisdom.”
So, I don’t know, let’s encourage our audience to think about which one they would choose. Pete, which one would you choose – power, wealth, or wisdom?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m tempted to say, to paint how we define the terms, infinite wisdom may lead you to, if you so desire, infinite wealth and power in addition. So, it’s like a three-for-one deal with the wisdom.
Sébastien Page
Or it may lead you to not desire those things.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Sébastien Page
Who knows? But that was the interesting part about that story, is that Phil chose wisdom. And so, for the first time in human history, someone had infinite wisdom. There was a giant press conference, cameras in his face, lightbulbs flashing. What would the person with infinite wisdom say? We’ve never heard from anyone with infinite wisdom.
And the story goes, Phil said, “I should’ve taken the money.” And this is the frame that I use to talk about goals and long-term goals, and how we think about, “Which goals will make us happy?” And this is where positive psychology comes in.
And Andre Agassi, for example, had the clear goal of being one of the best, or the best tennis player. He was miserable his entire career. His autobiography is one of the best books I’ve ever read, Open by Andre Agassi. He was absolutely miserable. He hated playing tennis. And when he left tennis, I think he became much happier.
So, we set these goals and we don’t take the time to think about “What long-term goal will truly make me happy?” So, positive psychology says, when they followed people for their entire lifetime over 80 years, eight decades, this is a study out of Harvard, and they go, “What makes people thrive over their lifetime? What makes them happy? Let’s ask them, on a regular basis, how they’re doing.” A bunch of questions, “How are you doing? How are you feeling? How’s your life going?”
And then there’s generations of researchers, as you can imagine. There’s no study like this. It’s fascinating. Eighty years running, it’s still running. Robert Waldinger out of Harvard, he’s fantastic, and he’s still running that study.
But what they found was people, during their lifetime, who climbed the social ladder, who were healthy, who made money, were not necessarily statistically happier than those who lost their job, who got sick, who went to prison.
It’s just so fascinating that all these traditional goals did not make people happy. And there was one dimension, though, that showed to be very powerful in people’s ability to thrive in the long run and feel happy with their lives.
I don’t know if you’d talked about it in your podcast with Robert, but it is those that had the most positive relationships in their lives self-reported the higher levels of happiness over their lifetime. So, relationships are important.
Now, we’re getting into notions of happiness and positive psychology, and here I am, a business guy, talking about these very abstract concepts. What does it mean in business? It means a ton. If you have a bad day at work, it’s probably because of a relationship issue. I would say, nine out of ten times, you’d come home and you just had a bad day at work, it’s probably relationship-related.
If you want to run a high-performing organization, a high-performing soccer team, a high-performing orchestra, a large proportion of the success of the team is going to be the quality of their relationships. And it’s not about being nice and feeling good every time, but it’s trust, it is mutual respect, it’s how you give feedback to each other. Those things are absolutely necessary for strong leadership and strong team performance.
So, we go from this theoretical, positive, nice-sounding positive psychology stuff to really practical business practices in terms of how you give feedback, how you receive feedback, how you talk about culture, why culture matters, how people interact within a team, why trust is so important.
And I say set goals that are longer term, that will generate organizational happiness, set goals for yourself that are positive in nature, and here’s how you go about executing against those goals.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, we talked about agreeableness a little bit. I also want to talk about neuroticism. You’ve got a bit about learning to love to worry. Tell us why and how do we do that?
Sébastien Page
We talked about why I wrote this book, initially, why I got interested, particularly in sports psychology. I felt stressed. And I was beating myself, well, for feeling stressed, I thought, “I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’ve had more stressful jobs. Why do I feel stressed at work?” And there, sports psychology is incredibly helpful because you learn to embrace a certain amount of stress.
I explain in The Psychology of Leadership that optimal performance does not occur at a stress level of zero. In other words, stress can increase performance up to a point of optimal performance, after which, performance decreases, mental health gets impacted, you choke, it impacts your physical health as well.
But this idea of going through life trying to operate at zero stress, first of all, is absolutely impossible. And the top athletes, I guarantee you, speaking to a sports psychologist who trains them mentally, they get absolutely stressed. Now, sports psychologists like to reframe stress as activation or arousal. In the literature, there are different ways to define this.
I’m using the term stress loosely here. But this idea that there’s a curve, that stress to a certain amount, with activation, will improve, not decrease, your performance is super fascinating. And, by the way, those curves, they’ve been studied for almost a hundred years, and they are different for different people. So, your stress curve might be different from my stress curves, and they’re also different for different tasks.
For some tasks, you’ll perform really well when you’re really stressed, when you have the adrenaline pumping. If you’re going to run a 5K, you’re probably going to get your best time with a very high level of activation and some adrenaline coursing and some, yes, some stress before the race. You’re going to perform better.
If you’re going to do archery or something complex or solve math problems, you’re going to need some activation but your optimal performance is going to be at a lower-stress level.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that makes sense. As I think about when I’m really fired up, my hands are kind of shaky. So, precision archery isn’t the best. Well, you got me thinking about biathlon athletes which is the fun-nest sport. The funniest idea for a sport, “Let’s go cross-country skiing, and then pause and shoot, and then do it again and again.” And so, there you have it, they’re playing both games at the same time.
Sébastien Page
I love that example because, to ski, I mean, the technique is pretty straightforward. They got to be pretty activated. And then they need to bring it down really quick for the shooting. So, it combines two stress curves, and the ability to toggle between the two is part of that sport. That’s a great example, Pete.
Pete Mockaitis
I want to hear your piece about thinking about death.
Sébastien Page
So, does that sound positive or negative to you if I just say that?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, there’s some ancient stoic philosophy about the benefits of remembering, thinking about your death. So, yeah, on the surface, it feels a little spooky and unpleasant, yet there could be rich goodness under the surface.
Sébastien Page
Look, Stephen Covey has one of the best-selling self-improvement books of all time, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. One of the habits is “Begin with the end in mind.” And he does talk about thinking about what you want to reflect on at the end of your life.
And then Covey argues once you figure that out, it guides your values, and you bring that back to today and it’ll help you make better decisions that are more aligned with your long-term goals and long-term values. So, I love that.
In fact, one of the early titles of the book, instead of The Psychology of Leadership, was “The End in Mind.” I actually wanted to give a nod to Covey.
But so, you’d think about death, it helps you think about positive psychology. There’s a model in positive psychology that spells P-E-R-M-A, PERMA. It was developed by Marty Seligman, father of Positive Psychology. I hate acronyms because we use way too many of them in business, but I love that one. So, P stands for positive emotion, and then ERMA, E stands for engagement, R for relationships, quality relationships, M for meaning, and A for long-term accomplishment.
When you think about your death or when you think about what you want on your tombstone, what you’re going to reflect on has a lot more to do with ERMA – engagement, relationships, meaning, and long-term accomplishments – than what day-to-day you and I and everybody in our audience, we’re all seeking, which is basic positive emotions, a good glass of wine, a laugh, a like on social media. We’re all addicted to the positive emotions.
But if you put this in the context of thinking very long term, think about death, stoicism, the end in mind, however you want to frame that thinking, you introduce notions of positive psychology that are incredibly powerful. We don’t really talk about this in business, but there are lots of ways to think about applications of this in business.
For example, engagement. More than half of employees in surveys in our country are not engaged at work. So, how do you use research in psychology to improve engagement? And you introduce the notion of flow, how you set the goals, how you set the milestones to put people in flow, and so on. Meaning is incredibly important in business, and some are underrated sometimes.
So, I could go on but this whole idea of starting from the end point is a big part of The Psychology of Leadership, of goal-setting, and of executing against goals.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Sébastien, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?
Sébastien Page
I would say, first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast. You know, I mentioned, in my day job as a money manager, I have to go and talk about financial markets in the space of two to ten minutes, and it is high pressure and it’s live national TV. I’m super happy that you got me on here, to have more of a conversation. It was a lot of fun. I hope our audience liked it.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Well, now let’s hear about a favorite quote.
Sébastien Page
Okay. Marcus Aurelius, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.”
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?
Sébastien Page
There’s some research that shows that social comparison is a more powerful motivator than positive encouragement.
So, here you go, Pete. If someone else has a podcast that you feel you’re competing with, and they’re getting more views, better ratings, it should be, theoretically, based on that research, more motivating to you than if I just called you, and say, “Hey, Pete, you’re doing a great job. Keep going.”
And so, it’s counterintuitive. We look down on social comparison but it’s actually very powerful. And if you can gamify it and enjoy competition, it could be a super powerful tool.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?
Sébastien Page
I got to go with David Goggins, either of his books, Can’t Hurt Me or the follow-up. And I read so many books but there’s no author like David Goggins that is going to motivate you to do something about your physical health and exercise.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?
Sébastien Page
Favorite tool in my day-to-day life, very underrated, I feel, is a calorie counter. I think it’s really hard to eat a decent diet. I don’t think we should all, like, try to be perfect. But counting your calories is pretty much, at least in my life, the only way that I could get a decent diet going, is to actually look at it and count it. So, those are, like, really helpful.
Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?
Sébastien Page
This is going to sound unusual, I suppose. It’s important to me to have a streak for exercise, and I’ve basically exercised every day for more than 12 years, for at least 30 minutes. Sometimes, when I’m tired, I just go on a slow jog.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key Sébastien-original soundbite that you’re known for, or people quote back to you often?
Sébastien Page
The most critical lesson in leadership that I’ve learned over the last few years, and I’ve been a leader for 25 years, is summarized in four words, “Talk less. Listen more.” We think leaders have to be outstanding communicators, and that is part of the job, but listening is what is going to really push your leadership skills upwards.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Sébastien Page
PsychologyofLeadership.net or LinkedIn.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome at their job?
Sébastien Page
Set big goals.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sébastien, thank you. This is fun.
Sébastien Page
Thank you. Likewise.