Five Provocative Ideas about Leadership & the Brain

I'm reporting live from Boston, where about 250 neuroscientists and leadership experts are gathered for the 5th annual NeuroLeadership Summit.  The crowd is a heady mix of folks who are equal parts charismatic and nerdy, and there is a palpable excitement about this growing field.  Here are five ideas that captured my imagination on the first day of this 3-day gathering. 1.  Group brainstorming can stifle insight (Jonathan Schooler, UCSB) Conventional wisdom says that the best way to generate lots of ideas is to bring a group together and ask them to brainstorm.  Schooler's research shows that group conversation can actually disrupt creative solutions.  Once a team member projects his or her interpretation onto the situation at hand, it is very hard for the others to see outside of the construct their teammate has created.  For maximum creativity, ask people to first solve the problem on their own, and then bring them together to share their individual ideas with the group.

2.  The essence of charisma is mindfulness (Ellen Langer, Harvard) Mindfulness is nothing more than noticing new things as they occur.  Sounds simple, but we spend much of our lives in mindless autopilot, assuming that the situation in front of us (whether it be our commute, our coffee, or our colleague) is the same as every situation that's come before.  This kind of mindless state is not lost on others; it is readily perceived by children, adults, and animals alike.  Mindfulness cannot be faked.  This is why leaders register as charismatic when they are mindful: actively engaged in the present, visibly invested in the uniqueness of the person before them, curious and ready to learn.

3.  Expanding your emotional vocabulary can change how you feel (Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College) Changing what you think about what you are feeling can change how you experience emotion. (It's okay, read that sentence again.)  Our feelings don't just happen to us.  In fact, both the emotional and decision-making parts of the brain are involved in how we experience our feelings.  The better we are at to pinpointing and labeling our exact emotions, the better able we'll be to shift our experience of how we are feeling.  For example, rather than settling on "angry" to describe how that encounter with your coworker made you feel, try to figure out if the feeling is really "embarrassed," "inadequate," or even "sleep-deprived."  This will change your experience of the situation that made you "angry" in the first place.

4.  Sometimes the best choice is not to choose at all (Sheena Iyengar, Columbia) We are bombarded with choices everyday.  Iyengar's research shows that the more choices we have (and the less meaningful the distinction between our choices), the worse we are at making a decision that we will be happy with.  Overwhelmed with choices, we end up either not choosing anything, or making a choice we later second-guess.  Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to opt out of choosing altogether.  It's okay to decide that the time we'd spend deliberating over this widget or that one is ultimately distracting us from our end goal.  (Incidentally, this is why I don't have TV, much less cable -- too many choices.)

5. Why we get bored of our spouses, but not our kids (Ellen Langer again) Situations/jobs/people are neither inherently boring nor inherently interesting.  It's our experience of these things/people that makes them so. Attending to what's different (what's changing) is what makes the world seem engaging.  The more we notice, the more interesting the world is.  A person will complain that she is bored in her relationship with her spouse of 20 years... but the same person would never say that after 20 years of parenthood, she is bored with her kids. This is because we expect our children to change. Our spouses - not so much.

There are many more thoughts from the day captured on my Twitter stream from the conference. Signing off for tonight.

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Three Questions for Better Team Meetings

Few aspects of organizational life are the source of as many complaints as meetings: too many meetings, pointless and unproductive meetings, meetings that take time away from "real" work.  But the reality is that much organizational work is done in teams, and teams need to meet.  So why not try to meet better? Team members need to understand why they are meeting, know that their valuable and limited time will be well utilized, and feel that everyone will be held accountable for taking action on the issues discussed.  Here are three questions that I've used to whip team meetings into better shape. Question #1:  What is the purpose of our meeting today? For a meeting to be successful, the team must be able to fill in the blank: "The purpose of today's meeting is to..."  In fact, it is probably a good idea to start meetings with an explicit statement of purpose.

"The purpose of today's meeting is to brainstorm elements of an ideal diversity policy" is different from "The purpose of today's meeting is to finalize the organization's new diversity policy."  Make sure everyone is clear on why they are in the room today.

Question #2  How will we use our limited time together today? After all, we don't have all day. How many meetings have you attended where the group decides to get the small items "out of the way" before moving on to weightier matters -- only to find that there are ten minutes left to discuss the most important issue on the list?

Question #2 speaks to the need for a well-designed agenda.  Agendas should be planned ahead of time, ideally with group input, and should have time limits attached to each topic.

Create an agenda that suggests realistic time frames for each item ("Planning Staff Development Day - 20 minutes") and in my experience, the group will police itself into compliance.  Since everyone wants to get out of the meeting on time, most people will keep one eye on the clock and another on the agenda.  Agendas can be flexible but to avoid time creep, deviations must be acknowledged, not ignored.   Adjustments to the agenda should be verbally agreed upon if the group's time is to be used differently than originally planned.

Question #3 What's the next action here, and who is responsible? There is nothing more frustrating than discussing an issue at length at a meeting, only to have the same conversation again at the next meeting because nothing was ever done.  It is not enough to meet and discuss -- group members must be accountable to one another for outcomes.

So you've just spent twenty minutes talking about a new ordering procedure for toilet paper.  Great!  What is the next action, and who is responsible?  Ditto the intense brainstorming conversation about a new mission statement.  What is the next action and who is responsible?

I suggest asking the next action question repeatedly throughout the course of the meeting. You will sound like a broken record, but that's okay.  Keep track of the next action list and read it aloud at the end of the meeting.  Afterwards, email the next action list to the participants; send it out again the day before the group's next meeting.  Then, start the next meeting with a quick run-through of the next action list, crossing off or carrying over each action.  It usually only takes one round of this ritual for participants to learn that they don't want to show up at the meeting without completing the next actions to which they have committed.

I've used each of these questions to positive effect in teams I've worked with. What questions have you used to make meetings more productive?

To Manage Workload, Right-Size Your Goals

A great takeaway from the Selah/Rockwood refresher training I attended yesterday: Workload = Goals / (Timeframe x Resources x Efficiency)

If your workload is unmanageable, the best way to tinker with this equation is to right-size your goals.

Why?

• The timeframe available for our work is often externally mandated.  We have to get the report done by the date of the board meeting, or the RFP is due on a certain date.
• Resources are something we also often have limited control over.  We only have $100,0oo in our budget, one part-time staffer to help with the event, etc.
• Efficiency is a place where many of us love to tinker but actual gains are modest.  Our ability to be more productive or efficient certainly helps move work along (and can greatly improve one's mental state), but doesn't really reduce workload if we have taken on too many commitments.

Our goals are where the biggest shifts are possible. How much are we committing ourselves to do?  Do we have three strategic goals for the year or seventeen? If our goals are unrealistically ambitious from the get, it is unlikely we will be able to make sufficient alterations to our timeframe, resources, or efficiency to regulate our workload.

Right-sizing goals can be hard -- especially for us social change folks, who have such big and long-term goals.  But we all know the alternative: burnout, disillusionment, and reduced effectiveness.  To be able to sustain ourselves as change agents over time, we need to make sure we are regulating our workload, and that means being more realistic about the goals we set for ourselves and our organizations.

Your Brain on Feedback

Last month I praised Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's head-on approach to giving and receiving feedback.  I never said that what she did was easy. A commenter, M., responded to the post by articulating just how hard it has been for him to open himself up to feedback.  M. wrote:

For a long time, it was enough for me just to be able to hear criticism without getting incredibly defensive and shutting it down – actually soliciting feedback where there was a risk it wouldn’t be entirely positive was tantamount to masochism for me.

M. is not alone.  Who among us wants to invite criticism that makes us feel bad?  In fact, there are both psychological and physiological reasons why asking for feedback is so hard. Organizational theorist Chris Argyris says that our aversion to negative feedback is why it is so hard to teach smart people how to learn.  Smart people are accustomed to getting positive feedback for their behavior, and lack practice in dealing with their own failures. As a result, Argyris says, smart people "become defensive, screen out criticism, and put 'blame' on anyone and everyone except themselves.  In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it most." Sound familiar? (Argyris quote from this book.)

Meanwhile, a little part of our brains called the amygdala is taking over at the first sign of threatening feedback.  The amygdala is the walnut sized area of the brain that produces that fight/flight/freeze response that makes our palms sweat, our breath quicken, or our feet want to run out the door at the first sign of criticism.  A leadership training I did likened the triggered amygdala to a fire alarm.  Imagine trying to hold a conversation -- and graciously take in feedback -- with an alarm blaring in your ear. Not the best conditions for a thoughtful response, much less learning.

Consciously avoiding feedback, though, can be even worse.  Commenter M. writes,

What I realized was that in the absence of feedback, I was already filling in the blanks with my very worst fears – that I wasn’t doing a good job, that I was a crappy friend, that I was unfit, incompetent, and so on down the line.  If I don’t ask for feedback, I am assuring that the haters in my head will be the only voices I hear.

Oh, those voices in our heads!  Prolific business book guy Seth Godin says those voices are our overactive "lizard brain" speaking up to intervene whenever we get too close to completing something that could garner criticism or ridicule. (The amygdala is the soul of the lizard brain.) If you have ever asked yourself if you should really submit that article, make that speech, or show that painting for fear of negative feedback, that is your lizard brain talking. A life lived at the mercy of the lizard brain is a life of self sabotage and never-ending self doubt.

So how do we overcome our aversion to learning from failure, our hyper-sensitive amygdalas, and our annoying lizard brains?  That's a topic for another post.  For now, here is how commenter M. finally came around to see inviting feedback as a good thing:

I [think] about it from the perspective of “what would my best self want?” If I’m firing on all cylinders, if I’m being the premium me, as it were – that means that I am someone who is strong enough to hear feedback and make necessary changes, and to have that be a positive and productive experience. Every time I choose to put myself on the line and ask for it, I’m choosing to be the better me and to invest in my own growth.

Pretty smart for a lizard.

Feedback From The Corner Office

Each Sunday, the Business section of the NY Times runs "The Corner Office," an interview by Adam Bryant with a prominent CEO about his or her leadership and management style.  What is striking about this week's interview with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz, is Ms. Bartz's commitment to giving and receiving regular, timely feedback.   Ms. Bartz views herself as talkative to a fault, and admits that sometimes she has trouble listening.  To counter  these bad habits, Ms. Bartz asks for feedback:

I also ask simple questions, like 'How am I doing? What should I do differently?' At first, people are shocked when you ask them that. They won’t answer right away because they actually don’t think you’re genuine about it, so you have to kind of keep probing and make it safe. They eventually will come around and say, 'Well, just this.'

How many of us are this conscious about asking for regular, in-the-moment feedback?  It is an interaction that carries a certain amount of risk for both parties, and can be uncomfortable because it disrupts conversational norms.  But the potential benefits -- including being able to make minor adjustments before  full-blown problems emerge -- are huge.  

Ms. Bartz is also committed to giving regular feedback.  She describes what she calls her "puppy theory":

When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say something right then because you don’t say six months later, 'Remember that day, January 12th, when you peed on the carpet?' That doesn’t make any sense. 'This is what’s on my mind. This is quick feedback.' And then I’m on to the next thing.

If this regular feedback cycle were the norm, Ms. Bartz suggests, organizations could do away with the formal performance review process altogether.  I would suggest that regular, timely feedback is a good way to go but that a performance review focused on the bigger picture, looking backward and forward, can be a useful compliment.  

As for me, while I feel pretty confident in giving feedback that is specific, timely, actionable and relevant (the "STAR" method), I often gloss over asking for direct feedback.  Especially now, as I juggle a number of group projects, I find myself wondering from time to time, "How am I being perceived by my teammates? Am I being a good team member?"  Not translating these worries into an explicit request for feedback is a missed opportunity for growth.

Ms. Bartz's approach is a good reminder that when we find ourselves with questions about our own performance, the best way to address them may be to simply ask them aloud to others.