Ed Batista

Jonathan Knee on Sales, Analysis and Operations

In Must I Bank? on today's WSJ Opinion page (I'm not sure how long that link will remain outside their paywall), Jonathan Knee of Evercore Partners and Columbia Business School astutely narrows down the career options faced by MBAs (and by extension to most business professionals) to three primary paths: Sales, Analysis and Operations:

Like all service professions, investment banking is fundamentally a sales job. Individuals who feed on human interaction, and have natural empathy (sales is about putting yourself in your customer's shoes), do well in sales. Being good with numbers, often assumed to be the key to banking success, will be of little use in getting a big office with a view if you do not have sales aptitude.

Private equity, like hedge funds and other investing jobs, is essentially analytical. These are solitary professions, and one is judged on the quality of the analysis produced. The quality of this analysis is in turn assessed on highly quantifiable metrics – like whether the stock you recommended went up or if the investment in a private company you sponsored turned out well. If the classic sales person is a deeply social being, the typical analytical person is a bit of a loner.

Working at a start-up or any other company is an operational job. Operators must communicate and "sell," both internally and externally, to effectively function in their positions. Operators must also be "analytical" enough to attain the domain expertise needed to achieve credibility in their operating role.

But the defining characteristic of the operating role is a commitment to a continuing level of involvement with the organization's objectives. A sales person makes a sale and moves on. Analytical people make a call or do a trade, and reap whatever rewards that insight yields. Operators are in it for the long haul.

Most jobs fall into one of these three categories: sales, analytical or operational. The odds that the same person would prosper equally in more than one of these environments are low. The personal qualities that each position draws upon are simply too different. Some...introspection in order to identify which category would likely yield the greatest personal satisfaction is an excellent investment.

...Dedicating oneself to any profession...should not be undertaken lightly. Doing so would ignore the unique gifts that each of us has to offer. It would also meaningfully reduce our chances of ultimate personal fulfillment.

You could argue that Knee's three-headed framework is an oversimplification.  But what I find useful is how many career paths can be boiled down to one of Knee's three options and how the framework's simplicity forces us to ask whether we truly understand the essence of a given profession.

I also think Knee's observation that banking is actually a misunderstood sales field (in which analytical skills are helpful but not sufficient) is a comment on our business culture's habitual failure to appreciate the importance of sales (and the interpersonal and relational skills that make a successful salesperson).  As an MBA working in a business school, I see this attitude reflected in how we develop future business leaders--strategy and finance are held in the highest esteem, while sales is something of an afterthought.

In my experience as an organizational leader, I found that operational and analytical skills were useful, but sales skills were essential.  The organization's effectiveness was impacted by my ability to analyze options and to execute operational plans, but its very survival depended on my ability to sell--to build relationships and convince others to invest their time, energy, faith and money.  As we grew, I hired people whose operational and analytical skills were stronger than mine would ever be--but everything started with that ability to sell.

I benefited greatly from the operational and analytical education I got in business school, but I suspect I would have been a better leader after graduation had there been a greater focus on sales, relationships and interpersonal skills, i.e. "soft" skills.

Someone who really gets this is Tom Peters.  From a November 2007 post (his first-ever in all caps, apparently, reflecting his rage):

BOB WATERMAN AND I, IN 1980, DEVELOPED A MANTRA IN THOSE DAYS OF YORE WHEN "STRATEGY [STRATEGIC PLANS] WAS EVERYTHING." WE SAID:

HARD IS SOFT.
SOFT IS HARD.

THE READILY-MANIPULABLE NUMBERS ARE THE TRUE "SOFT STUFF."

THE RELATIONSHIPS-LEADERSHIP-"CULTURE"-"ACTION BIAS" [OR NOT] ARE THE TRUE "HARD STUFF."

I'm hopeful that Stanford's new curriculum and its emphasis on experiential education and leadership development (soft stuff) is a step in the right direction.

Scott Ginsberg on Asking Questions

What kinds of questions do you usually ask people?  We're often drawn to yes/no questions--they're simple and direct.  But when simplicity and directness aren't our only goals, yes/no questions can be problematic.  They surface a minimum of new information because they don't invite the other person into a dialogue and they constrain the boundaries of the conversation.

When we do move beyond yes/no questions, we tend ask why? questions, such as "Why did you do that?" or "Why did you do it that way?"  But why? questions can be heard as "What the hell were you thinking?" and provoke defensiveness.

In the Leadership Coaching class I'm involved with at Stanford, we encourage our students to ask questions that are designed to get the other person actively involved.  Such questions can be challenging and even blunt, but they're also open-ended and compel the other person to reflect before answering.

Scott Ginsberg recently posted a list of 62 useful questions, along with a one-line explanation of why they work.  It's an incredible resource, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, but as I expect to refer back to it regularly, here are the 20 I found most valuable:

10. How are you creating…?
Proves that someone has a choice.

13. How could you have…?
Focused on past performance improvement.

14. How do you feel…?
Feelings are good.

16. How do you plan to…?
Future oriented, process oriented, action oriented.

17. How do you want…?
Visualizes ideal conditions.

18. How does this relate to…?
Keeps someone on point, uncovers connections between things.

19. How else could this be…?
Encourages open, option-oriented and leverage-based thinking.

23. How might you…?
All about potential and possibility.

27. How much time…?
Identifies patterns of energy investment.

28. How often do you…?
Gets an idea of someone’s frequency.

29. How well do you…?
Uncovers abilities.

30. How will you know when/if…?
Predicts outcomes of ideal situations.

31. If you could change…?
Visualizes improvement.

34. If you stopped…?
Cause-effect question.

37. Is anybody going to…?
Deciding if something even matters.

49. What are you doing that…?
Assesses present actions.

50. What are you willing to…?
Explores limits.

53. What can you do right now…?
Focuses on immediate action being taken.

57. What did you learn…?
Because people don’t care what you know; only what you learned.

60. What else can you…?
Because there’s always options.

Notice the structure of these questions.  They're almost all how? or what? questions, which encourage the other person to take a moment and look inside before answering.  They can certainly be challenging--"What can you do right now?" is hardly a softball--but they're also non-judgmental, which minimizes any defensiveness.  Perhaps most important, they're not leading--they don't suggest that there's a "right" answer--which encourages the other person to answer thoughtfully and honestly, rather than framing an answer to please you.  Many thanks to Scott for sharing his insights.

Photo by Erik Charlton.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

The Value of Journal Writing

Most of the work I do as an executive coach (particularly at Stanford) involves asking clients and students to keep a journal.  In some cases this is a structured (and graded!) class assignment, and several times a year my academic duties include reading and commenting on students' journals while they're taking our experiential "Interpersonal Dynamics" class.  But even if someone's journal is just a series of informal, private notes, the purpose is to insure that the learning doesn't stop at the end of the coaching session or the class exercise.

My empirical experience as a journal-reader, as a coach working with journal-writers, and as an occasional journal-keeper myself has convinced me of the value of this practice, and this fits with my conceptual understanding of experiential learning cycles.  But I'm still left wondering why it actually works: What are the underlying processes that make journal writing a meaningful activity?

The work of neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux suggests some answers.  Ledoux's work has focused on memory, emotions and cognition, and he talked about memory with the Edge "World Question Center":

Like many scientists in the field of memory, I used to think that a memory is something stored in the brain and then accessed when used. Then, in 2000, a researcher in my lab, Karim Nader, did an experiment that convinced me, and many others, that our usual way of thinking was wrong. In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible. In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it.

So journaling 1) compels us to access our memories of an experience, 2) creates another, more recent memory of that experience, and 3) creates a physical record of those memories to which we can return in the future.

But Ledoux's work on emotion and cognition suggests an even more powerful reason for the value of journaling.  A key theme for Ledoux is the distinction between emotional memories, which he defined in an Edge interview with John Brockman as "implicit, or procedural memories that are in the brain's systems, but not reflected in consciousness" and cognitive, or explicit, memories, which he defined as "the kind of memory we usually have in mind when we use the word memory in everyday speech."

Some coaching sessions and experiential learning activities evoke intense emotions in the participants, but as Ledoux told Brockman...

[T]he brain can produce emotional responses in us that have very little to do with what we think we're dealing with or talking about or thinking about at the time. In other words, emotional reactions can be elicited independent of our conscious thought processes. For example, we've found pathways that take information into the amygdala without first going through the neocortex, which is where you need to process it in order to figure out exactly what it is and be conscious of it. So, emotions can be and, in fact, probably are mostly processed at an unconscious level. We become conscious and aware of all this after the fact.

So journaling after emotional experiences allows us to process them when we can understand them cognitively and (in some cases) consciously for the first time.

But, of course, many otherwise valuable coaching sessions and experiential learning activities don't evoke strong emotions; is it helpful to journal in these cases as well?  Again, Ledoux's work suggests that it is.  From an interview with Ledoux conducted by the Dana Foundation:

There is both an upside and a downside to the fact that emotional states make memories stronger. The upside is that we remember our emotional experiences to a greater extent than non-emotional ones. The downside is that we remember our emotional experiences to a greater extent than non-emotional ones.

So journaling after non-emotional experiences bolsters our memories of these experiences and helps to insure that they're not lost among our more powerful and long-lasting emotional memories.

One final thought--Ledoux also discussed with Brockman the potent and even destructive power of emotional memories:

Many people have problems with their emotional memories; psychologists' offices are filled with people who are basically trying to take care of and alter emotional memories, get rid of them, hold them in check.

I'd never suggest that journal-writing is a substitute for psychological care, but I do wonder if the experience of cognitively processing emotional memories in a journal entry might have some transformative power, allowing us not only to better understand those memories but also to better manage and make use of them.

(Perhaps surprisingly, given my general fondness for technology, I'm a big fan of journaling with pen and paper.  The downsides are manifest--not searchable, not archivable, and the stuff does tend to pile up.  But the upside is that it's a lot less tempting to edit and re-write, and I just get my thoughts out and move on.  A sentence today is worth a page tomorrow.   I'm not picky about pens--I prefer cheap blue Bics--but I truly love Moleskine notebooks.)

Thanks to Mark Oehlert for refererring me to Ledoux in the first place. Photos by Del Far and culture.culte.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

William James on Experiential Learning

A few months ago I read Robert Richardson's William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, and I'm still absorbing the lessons to be learned from this incredibly rich intellectual biography.  In the book's penultimate chapter, Richardson quotes from James's Some Problems of Philosophy:

The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substituting a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.

The profound meaning of this quote for me is rooted in the fact that my work hinges upon the unique ability of experiential learning to expand both our self-awareness and our behavioral repertoire, and (by extension) upon the inability of conventional modes of instruction to achieve the same results.  Richardson continues:

For this aspect of his later thinking, James has been called anti-intellectual.  A better description of his real position would be anti-abstraction; best would be to recognize it as the culmination of a lifelong protest on behalf of experience.  This is not a new position for James, of course.  It is the same clear opposition to Plato, who denigrates perceptual knowledge as mere sense impressions, and contrasts them with ideas, which are true and eternal.  Jame's life work had been to reverse this polarity, to answer Plato.

From Wikipedia (as of today, anyway):

Plato...argues...that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives their account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives their account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because these forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them.

I appreciate Plato's appeal to the instructor: If real knowledge is based on constant universal truths and unaffected by individual sense-impressions, the process of imparting knowledge suddenly become much more efficient.  As an instructor, all I have to do is tell you what you need to know.  And I can tell everyone the exact same thing.

But that model is much less useful in a field where there are few (if any) universal truths, which is the case in my areas of expertise: executive coaching, leadership development and group facilitation.  I can't tell anyone anything and have confidence that real learning will occur.  I can disclose my own sense-impressions, but the choice to view them as relevant and meaningful remains in the hands of the learner.  Ultimately all I can do as an instructor is act on hunches, ask questions, and make observations, and hope they register with the learner as lasting sense-impressions and that the learner infuses them with meaning.  And that meaning must be created out of their own, personal experiences as a leader or in a group.

I don't want to overstate the case against Platonic ideals; after all, I propose pseudo-universal truths all the time with the intention of using them as teaching tools.  But I realize that the map is not the territory, and the purpose of these tools is simply to help us better understand and make meaning of our own sense-impressions, our own experiences.

Howard Gardner on Influence

As I continue to think further about influence and power, Howard Gardner's Changing Minds offers an extremely helpful conceptual framework, one that I see as a counterpart to Cialdini's "Weapons of Influence".  From Gardner's 2006 edition:

[W]hat...factors might cause an individual to shift his or her perspective[?]... I have identified seven factors--sometimes I'll call them levers--that could be at work in these and all cases of a change of mind...

Reason

A rational approach involves identifying of relevant factors, weighing each in turn, and making an overall assessment.  Reason can involve sheer logic, the use of analogies, or the creation of taxonomies.

Research

Complementing the use of argument is the collection of relevant data... But research need not be formal; it need only entail the identification of relevant cases and a judgment about whether they warrant a change of mind.

Resonance

Reason and research appeal to the cognitive aspects of the human mind; resonance denotes the affective component.  A view, idea or perspective resonates to the extent that it feels right to an individual, seems to fit the current situation, and convinces the person that further considerations are superfluous.

Representational Redescriptions (Redescriptions, for Short)

A change of mind becomes convincing to the extent that it lends itself to representation in a number of different forms, with these forms reinforcing each other... Particularly when it comes to matters of instruction...the potential for expressing the desired lesson in many compatible formats is crucial.

Resources and Rewards

[T]he provision of resources is an instance of positive reinforcement... Individuals are being rewarded for one course of behavior and thought rather than another.  Ultimately, however, unless the new course of thought is concordant with other criteria...it is unlikely to last beyond the provision of resources.

Real World Events

Sometimes an event occurs in the broader society that affects many individuals, not just those who are contemplating a mind change.  Examples are wars, hurricanes, terrorist attaches, economic depressions--or, on a more positive side, eras of peace and prosperity...

Resistances

[W]e develop strong view and perspectives that are resistant to change... [A] mind change is most likely to come about when the first six factors operate in consort and the resistances are relatively weak.

Taken together, Gardner's "seven levers" and Cialdini's "six weapons" form a reasonably comprehensive conceptual model of influence--the central "layer" in my Influence Pyramid.  If these models are our starting point for understanding not just how influence works but also how we as individuals can be more influential, we can then move "down" the pyramid to consider 1) our self-awareness and our impact on others and 2) our internal beliefs about power, or "up" the pyramid to 3) translate these strategic concepts into tactical tools and 4) test them empirically.

Note that by focusing on Cialdini and Gardner, I don't mean to imply that their conceptual models are the only ones worth studying, but they're the most compelling ones I've encountered to date.  (And to Gardner's comments on redescriptions above, they also both translate well into different formats--in that regard, they're even more...influential.)

T-Groups, Balance and Boundaries

If "work-life balance" is an illusion, what's the practical alternative? My former colleague Michael Gilbert recently explored this issue in a two-part series that I found compelling.  From Part One:

Although I am firmly allied with the mission and spirit of all the professionals and organizations who use the term "work-life balance" as something to strive for, I've come to the conclusion that it's fundamentally flawed, a dangerous trap, an all-around bad idea...

The fact is that work is a part of life, not in opposition to it. The fact is that what we all seek is joyful work-life integration, not some sort of painful detente. The fact is that work-life balance is the sad refuge of those who have decided that work is not worth saving.

I agree--but the response Michael received required further clarification in Part Two:

In regard to this exploration of "work-life balance," what's clear in our discussion is that we have been using the word "balance" when what we really seem to mean is "boundaries." Boundaries keep things in their place. Balance suggests the same amount of two things on either side of a scale. Boundaries keep one of those things from oozing past the edge of its platter and taking over the other side...

Boundaries and integration go together. Maybe it's just the biologist in me, but it seems that good boundaries are what make integration work. Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives. Bad boundaries lead to either being overwhelmed or withdrawal. Good boundaries lead to wholeness and synergy.

I still agree--but how do we put these notional boundaries into practice?  In my own experience, T-groups have been extremely helpful in allowing me to develop practical skills in this area.  It's impossible to participate in a T-group without feeling some frustration and anger.  At the same time, it's impossible to NOT feel caring and compassion for the very same people who are making us frustrated and angry.  The challenge of a T-group is that the experience compels us to hold on to--and express--both sets of feelings simultaneously.

And coincidentally (or not), this is textbook-perfect practice for learning how to best identify, express and sustain boundaries in our working relationships.  If we're doing work that's meaningful to us, we tend to feel caring and compassion for our colleagues and managers--and at the same time, we also feel frustrated and angry with them on a regular basis because of the professional demands that continually pull our lives out of balance.

Standard operating procedure in most organizations is to sweep those negative feelings under the rug until they get expressed in unproductive ways (at work or elsewhere.)  That's clearly not helpful--but what's also lost in that process are the positive feelings we have for our colleagues and managers.  Note that these oppositional feelings don't cancel each other out.  The frustration and anger we might feel at our colleagues and managers is just as real as the caring and compassion we also feel for those same people.  We have to hold on to, honor and express both sets of feelings, as contradictory as they might be.

I'm not suggesting this is easy--far from it.  It's incredibly hard work, which is why specialized training like a T-group can be so useful (and that's just one reason why I'd love to see T-groups adopted more widely.)  But even if you never set foot in a T-group, I believe strongly that there's substantial value in substituting "boundaries"  for "balance" in your efforts to make work that you're passionate about more sustainable.

Photos by bionicteaching and lemoncat1.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

The Influence Pyramid

My last post on the nature of interpersonal power coincided with some thinking I've been doing on influence (which, of course, isn't quite the same thing.)  That work resulted in the model shown here, which is an attempt to understand not the conceptual basis of influence, a la Robert Cialdini, but a larger process that begins with a decision to influence, concludes with an actual attempt to influence, and is layered throughout with Argyris-style learning loops.

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I. Foundations of Influence

The ability to influence 1) starts with a choice to be powerful, 2) builds upon an awareness of our strengths, weaknesses and capacity to change, 3) relies upon an understanding of conceptual models of influence 4) which we translate into specific tools and techniques that 5) must be tested empirically and repeatedly:

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II. Influence Learning Loops

Practical experience leads to learning at ever-deeper levels: 1) refined execution of tools and techniques; 2) strategic application of conceptual models; 3) a more accurate sense of self via feedback and reflection; and ultimately 4) a belief structure that supports our choice to be powerful:

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Here's a 3-slide PowerPoint file of the graphics above (49 KB).  This model is a rough work-in-progress, to be sure, and I'd be grateful for any feedback and critiques.  That said, I do like the way it integrates A) a deeper sense of personal empowerment (or lack thereof) and beliefs about power that support or inhibit our efforts to be influential with B) a more cognitive awareness of our interpersonal impact and the concepts, tools and techniques that underlay contemporary "theories of influence."

Continued thanks to Patricia Day Williams, whose "Self-Empowerment, Awareness and Choice" in the Reading Book for Human Relations Training got me thinking about all this at a much deeper level.

Reading List

I was recently asked by a colleague to recommend some books on executive coaching, and the process of drawing up that list got me thinking about all the books that have had a major impact on my professional development.  This list isn't exhaustive--and by focusing on books per se it omits many articles, papers and chapters that have had an even greater impact than some of these books--but it hits many of the high points.  I may return later to add items or make comments or to sub-divide the list into categories, but at the moment I find that an alphabetized list strikes a nice balance between order and (seeming) chaos:

The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters, Peter Block

Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell

Changing for Good, James Prohaska et al

The Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke et al

The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business, James Hunt and Joseph Weintraub

Co-Active Coaching, Laura Whitworth et al

Comfortable with Uncertainty, Pema Chödrön

The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Kerry Patterson et al

Exuberance: The Passion for Life, Kay Redfield Jamison

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time, Susan Scott

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge

The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, Peter Senge et al

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, Peter Block

The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion, Peter Block et al

Getting Things Done, David Allen

Harvard Business Review On Managing Yourself

Harvard Business Review On Women in Business

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini

The Inner Game of Work, Tim Gallwey

Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Peter Drucker

The Masterful Coaching Fieldbook, Robert Hargrove

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey at Harley-Davidson, Rich Teerlink and Lee Ozley

The Neurotic Behavior of Organizations, Uri Merry and George Isaac Brown

The No Asshole Rule, Bob Sutton

The Organizational Behavior Reader, Joyce Osland et al

Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership, David Bradford and Allan Cohen

Reading Book for Human Relations Training, Alfred Cooke et al

Start Where You Are, Pema Chödrön

Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton

The Substance of Style, Virginia Postrel

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges

What Should I Do with My Life?, Po Bronson

When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes (free download), Andy Goodman

Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones

The World According to Peter Drucker, Jack Beatty

Work Matters: Women Talk About Their Jobs and Their Lives, Sara Friedman

Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

Photo by joguldi.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Talking About Feelings

Much of my work involves encouraging people to talk about their feelings--a process formally known as affect labeling--which can happen in a free-flowing coaching conversation or in a structured environment like a T-group.  Experience tells me that this is a useful practice...but why?  What happens when we talk about our feelings?

Stephanie West Allen recently referred me to a post of hers from June 2007 that noted a "flurry of articles...about the neuroscience research showing that labeling your feelings can quiet your brain and increase impulse control."  Stephanie also linked to the original Psychological Science research article by Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger et al, Putting Feelings into Words (PDF), that prompted that flurry in the popular press, and it's fascinating reading:

Putting feelings into words has long been thought to be one of the best ways to manage negative emotional experiences. Talk therapies have been formally practiced for more than a century and, although varying in structure and content, are commonly based on the assumption that talking about one's feelings and problems is an effective method for minimizing the impact of negative emotional events on current experience...

Recent neuroimaging research has begun to offer insight into a possible neurocognitive mechanism by which putting feelings into words may alleviate negative emotional responses. A number of studies of affect labeling have demonstrated that linguistic processing of the emotional aspects of an emotional image produces less amygdala activity than perceptual processing of the emotional aspects of the same image (Hariri, Bookheimer, & Mazziotta, 2000; Lieberman, Hariri, Jarcho, Eisenberger, & Bookheimer, 2005). Additionally, these studies have demonstrated greater activity during linguistic processing than during nonlinguistic processing of emotion in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (RVLPFC), a region associated with the symbolic processing of emotional information (Cunningham, Johnson, Gatenby, Gore, & Banaji, 2003; Nomura et al., 2003) and with top-down inhibitory processes (Aron, Robbins, & Poldrack, 2004). Finally, the magnitude of RVLPFC activity during affect labeling has been inversely correlated with the magnitude of amygdala activity during affect labeling in these studies. Together, these results suggest that putting feelings into words may activate RVLPFC, which in turn may dampen the response of the amygdala, thus helping to alleviate emotional distress...

The results of this study provide the first clear demonstration that affect labeling disrupts the affective responses in the limbic system that would otherwise occur in the presence of negative emotional images...

These data thus suggest that one route by which putting feelings into words may regulate negative affect is by increasing activity in RVLPFC, which in turn dampens activity in the amygdala by way of intermediate connections through [the medial prefrontal cortex]...

In summary, this study provides the first unambiguous evidence that affect labeling, compared with other ways of encoding, produces diminished responses to negative emotional images in the amygdala and other limbic regions...

These findings begin to shed light on how putting negative feelings into words can help regulate negative experience, a process that may ultimately contribute to better mental and physical health.

Lieberman is apparently at work on a new research article dealing with similar issues, a draft of which is also available online: Symbolic Processing of Affect (PDF).  From the introduction:

[T]here is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the process of sharing one's worry, of putting bad feelings into words, can diminish one's emotional distress at least under certain circumstances. This chapter will examine the neurocognitive mechanisms of disruption effects, the process by which putting feelings into words can disrupt the feelings being verbalized.

I'm reluctant to quote further from this work-in-progress--the cover page warns "DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION"--but a cursory reading suggests that Lieberman's latest neuroscientific research provides further evidence that talking about our feelings is an extremely helpful process.

(Note the new "neuroscience" category that I've added with this post.  My recent interchange with Stephanie West Allen--who writes regularly on the topic of neuroscience and conflict resolution--has highlighted for me the importance of integrating a better understanding of current neuroscience research with the rest of my work.) 

Photo by malias.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Steve Martin on Self-Delusion

Steve Martin in the Oct. 29 New Yorker...

Through the years, I have learned that there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

...which strikes me as another (albeit much funnier) way to say, "Perform the acts of faith, and faith will come," distilled from St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.

Whatever we hope to believe in--whether our own creative powers or an almighty Creator--we will at some point be required to suspend our disbelief.  The hackneyed phrase "leap of faith" suggests that this suspension can be overcome in an instant simply by stepping out into the void.

Bullshit.

Faith in anything, particularly ourselves, requires hard work, daily practice, and regular doses of self-delusion that sustain us until the next valid inspiration comes along.

In the wrong hands, that's obviously a dangerous philosophy, and yet I believe the damage done by people who put too much faith in themselves is outweighed by the good left undone by people who don't trust themselves enough to act on their inspirations.

And when we're wrong?  Very well, then--we're wrong.  We contain multitudes.  Apologize, make amends, clean up the mess, and try again.