We often live out the pattern graphed above--at least I do, and many of my coaching clients and MBA students do as well. If our initial attempts are unsuccessful when advocating for (or against) a position or when seeking to influence others to do (or not do) something, we'd like to steadily and evenly escalate our assertiveness and emotional expressiveness as time progresses (i.e. the dotted blue line).
What we actually do can look quite different. Early in the process we tend to underdo it--we do escalate, but verrrrrrrrry slowly. "That's OK," we say, "it's not that big a deal"--even as our frustration builds. But eventually a switch gets flipped, and our levels of assertiveness and expressiveness increase much more rapidly. Soon we're overdoing it; we're unable to control our frustration, and we act too assertively--even aggressively--and we say or do things we later regret (i.e. the solid red line).
So if we do see our own experience reflected in this graph, how can we make sense of what's happening?
First we need to ask why we're so slow to assert ourselves in this particular context or relationship. It's likely one in which we're at risk of experiencing a social threat--an interpersonal situation that we perceive as threatening in some way. David Rock's SCARF model reminds us that we tend to experience social threats when dealing with people of higher status or from different social groups, in conditions of uncertainty or diminished autonomy, or when our sense of fairness has been violated. [1]
All of these circumstances tend to cause us to act cautiously--and so we underdo it. But that initial reticence makes it more likely that our efforts at advocacy or influence will fail--and so the situation persists as we keep trying the same (cautious) approach. Eventually our impatience overcomes our caution, and we start to escalate.
But by this point our capacity for mental and emotional control, always limited, is running out, and our ability to finely calibrate our behavior or choose our words has been undermined. [2] A misstep on our part or the other party's can easily trigger a threat response, and soon we're experiencing a full-blown "amygdala hijack," which Daniel Goleman describes as follows:
When [neural] circuits [in the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in processing emotion,] perceive a threat, they flood the body with stress hormones that do several things to prepare us for an emergency... Attention tends to fixate on the thing that is bothering us... That means that we don't have as much attentional capacity left for whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing or want to be doing. In addition, our memory reshuffles its hierarchy so that what's most relevant to the perceived threat is what comes to mind most easily--and what's deemed irrelevant is harder to bring to mind. That, again, makes it more difficult to get things done than we might want. Plus, we tend to fall back on over-learned responses, which are responses learned early in life--which can lead us to do or say things that we regret later. It is important to understand that the impulses that come to us when we're under stress--particularly if we get hijacked by it--are likely to lead us astray. [3]
In the graph above this is when we hit the inflection point in the solid red line--our levels of assertiveness and expressiveness shoot skyward, and suddenly we switch from underdoing it to overdoing it.
So what can we do about this? Four suggestions:
1. Assess the situation.
What's the context? What's the relationship? What's the likelihood that we might perceive some dynamic in the situation as threatening? Here Rock's model can be tremendously helpful: look at every situation from the perspective of each party's status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and sense of fairness. When any of those factors are undermined, there's a potential social threat.
2. Recognize our "tells."
Although these biological processes are universal, we consciously experience the stress of a threat response in uniquely individual ways. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, or my hands get sweaty, but you may feel a tightness in the back of your neck or a shortness of breath or a sense of tunnel vision. Just as poker players scan their opponents for "tells"--signs of fear or overconfidence--these physical and emotional signals are the signs that we're in the grip of a threat response.
3. Question our responses.
As Goleman points out, when under stress we tend to revert to responses that we learned early in life--and those responses aren't necessarily helpful when seeking to influence others or advocate for our position effectively. It's essential to determine when our habitual behavior under stress--which probably feels quite natural and familiar to us--is preventing us from achieving our goals and needs to change.
4. Try NOT to underdo it.
I suspect that we eventually overdo it in part because we underdo it at the start. Our reluctance to be more assertive and expressive at the outset ultimately contributes to our over-assertiveness and hyper-expressiveness later on. By being so cautious at first, when we have the greatest capacity to manage our emotions and calibrate our behavior, we miss a critical opportunity to influence and assert ourselves more effectively. I'm not suggesting we should compete aggressively right away in every interaction--we're likely to be much more effective with a soft startup. I am suggesting that by being slightly more assertive at the outset--by aiming for the dotted blue line above--we may actually lessen the risk of finding ourselves in a counterproductive confrontation.
Much of my work as a coach involves helping people wrestle with an important decision. Some of these decisions feel particularly big because they involve selecting one option to the exclusion of all others when the cost of being "wrong" can be substantial: If I’m at a crossroads in my career, which path should I follow? If I’m considering job offers, which one should I accept? If I’m being asked to relocate, should I move to a new city or stay put?
Difficult decisions like this remind me of a comment made by Scott McNealy--a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and its CEO for 22 years--during a lecture I attended while I was in business school at Stanford. He was asked how he made decisions and responded by saying, in effect, It’s important to make good decisions. But I spend much less time and energy worrying about "making the right decision" and much more time and energy ensuring that any decision I make turns out right.
I’m paraphrasing, but my memory of this comment is vivid, and his point was crystal clear. Before we make any decision--particularly one that will be difficult to undo--we're understandably anxious and focused on identifying the "best" option because of the risk of being "wrong." [1] But a by-product of that mindset is that we overemphasize the moment of choice and lose sight of everything that follows. Merely selecting the "best" option doesn’t guarantee that things will turn out well in the long run, just as making a sub-optimal choice doesn’t doom us to failure or unhappiness. It's what happens next (and in the days, months, and years that follow) that ultimately determines whether a given decision was "right."
Another aspect of this dynamic is that our focus on making the "right" decision can easily lead to paralysis, because the options we're choosing among are so difficult to rank in the first place. How can we definitively determine in advance what career path will be "best," or what job offer we should accept, or whether we should move across the country or stay put? Obviously, we can't. There are far too many variables. But the more we yearn for an objective algorithm to rank our options and make the decision for us, the more we distance ourselves from the subjective factors — our intuition, our emotions, our gut--that will ultimately pull us in one direction or another. And so we get stuck, waiting for a sign--something--to point the way.
I believe the path to getting unstuck when faced with a daunting, possibly paralyzing decision is embedded in McNealy's comment, and it involves a fundamental re-orientation of our mindset: Focusing on the choice minimizes the effort that will inevitably be required to make any option succeed and diminishes our sense of agency and ownership. In contrast, focusing on the effort that will be required after our decision not only helps us see the means by which any choice might succeed, it also restores our sense of agency and reminds us that while randomness plays a role in every outcome, our locus of control resides in our day-to-day activities more than in our one-time decisions.
So while I support using available data to rank our options in some rough sense, ultimately we’re best served by avoiding paralysis-by-analysis and moving forward by:
Paying close attention to the feelings and emotions that accompany the decision we’re facing.
Assessing how motivated we are to work toward the success of any given option.
Recognizing that no matter what option we choose, our efforts to support its success will be more important than the initial guesswork that led to our choice.
This view is consistent with the work of Stanford professor Baba Shiv, an expert in the neuroscience of decision-making. Shiv notes that in the case of complex decisions, rational analysis will get us closer to a decision but won’t result in a definitive choice because our options involve trading one set of appealing outcomes for another, and the complexity of each scenario makes it impossible to determine in advance which outcome will be optimal.
Two key findings have emerged from Shiv’s research: First, successful decisions are those in which the decision-maker remains committed to their choice. And second, emotions play a critical role in determining a successful outcome to a trade-off decision. As Shiv told Stanford Business magazine, emotions are "mental shortcuts that help us resolve trade-off conflicts and...happily commit to a decision." Going further, Shiv noted, "When you feel a trade-off conflict, it just behooves you to focus on your gut." [2]
This isn’t to say that we should simply allow our emotions to choose for us. We’ve all made “emotional” decisions that we later came to regret. But current neuroscience research makes clear that emotions are an important input into decision-making by ruling out the options most likely to lead to a negative outcome and focusing our attention on the options likely to lead to a positive outcome. More specifically, research by Florida State professor Roy Baumeister and others suggests that good decision-making is tied to our ability to anticipate future emotional states: "It is not what a person feels right now, but what he or she anticipates feeling as the result of a particular behavior that can be a powerful and effective guide to choosing well." [3]
So when we’re stuck or even paralyzed by a decision, we need more than rational analysis. We need to vividly envision ourselves in a future scenario, get in touch with the emotions this generates and assess how those feelings influence our level of commitment to that particular choice. We can’t always make the right decision, but we can make every decision right.
[3] "Do Emotions Improve or Hinder the Decision-Making Process?" (Roy Baumeister, Nathan Dewall and Liquing Zhang, Chapter 1 in Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decisionmaking?, edited by Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister and George Loewenstein, 2007)
Originally published at Harvard Business Review, this post is an updated version of an earlier post on this site. Thanks to Stanford's Baba Shiv and Florida State's Roy Baumeister, whose research has heavily influenced my thinking on this topic, and to Scott McNealy, whose seemingly offhand comment 15 years ago pointed me in this direction in the first place. And continued thanks to Tim Sullivan for his guidance and encouragement.
As an executive coach and an experiential educator, every day I collaborate with or observe people giving and receiving feedback. In a number of settings I work with groups whose purpose is improving members' leadership and interpersonal skills, and the primary tool we use is feedback. And a common trait shared by almost every one of the hundreds of people I've worked with over the last eight years is a desire to hear direct, candid feedback. I literally hear people say "Give it to me straight" in almost every group.
But this simple request turns out to be more complicated than it sounds at first. Feedback is one of the most powerful—and one of the fastest—ways to learn how to be more effective in our interactions with others, particularly when it’s honest and straightforward. But effective feedback doesn’t happen spontaneously; it’s critical to learn how to give—and receive—feedback in a way that’s effective in a particular context.
What “Give it to me straight” actually means in practice will vary widely from one relationship to another, and will change within every relationship over time. And an irony I’ve observed over thousands of feedback conversations is that when we first say “Give it to me straight,” we think we’re talking about negative feedback because we imagine that criticism will be painful to hear, but it turns out that truly heartfelt positive feedback can be equally hard to handle. Many people I’ve worked with are actually more uncomfortable receiving direct, candid praise than being criticized.
Giving and receiving feedback effectively are learnable skills, and while the five concepts discussed here may serve as helpful guidelines, it’s important to recognize that we can improve our facility with these skills only by actually trying them out. We can—and should—start in low-risk situations, such as an experiential role-play, a coaching engagement or a friendly relationship. But real growth will require us to get out of our comfort zones and to risk making mistakes when the stakes are higher.
1. Feedback and Social Threat
Most of us find the prospect of a feedback conversation daunting at the best of times, even in the context of a friendly relationship. Hearing someone say “Can I give you some feedback?” is almost guaranteed to elevate our heart rate and raise our blood pressure. These are common signs of a threat response, a cascade of neurological and physiological events that occur when we encounter a situation that we perceive as threatening. Neuroscientists have determined that we respond to threatening social situations in the same way that we respond to actual threats to our physical safety and have coined the term “social threat” to describe these experiences. David Rock is an executive coach who’s made an extensive study of recent neuroscience research to understand its implications for organizational life, and he developed the SCARF model to characterize interpersonal situations that are likely to trigger a social threat.
SCARF stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness (i.e. the extent to which we perceive others as members of our social group) and fairness. Whenever our status, certainty, autonomy or perception of fairness is diminished, we're more likely to experience a social threat. And an encounter with someone we perceive as unrelated is also more likely to trigger a social threat.
Given these factors, it’s unsurprising that a feedback conversation can be so stressful. Someone presuming to give us feedback is (at least momentarily) occupying a high-status position, and we may feel “demoted” as a result. We don’t know what feedback we’re about to get, so we’re immediately put in a state of uncertainty. Despite our discomfort, we’re likely to feel obligated to listen, so we have less autonomy. These factors are at play in almost every feedback conversation, and if we feel less connected with the other person or if we don’t believe their feedback is fair, then we’re certain to experience the conversation as a social threat.
A threat response predisposes us to act quickly on limited information, and while this classic “fight or flight” behavior is well-adapted to literal threats to our physical safety, it often serves us poorly in interpersonal situations that we perceive as threatening. When we’re in the grip of a threat response, our ability to understand complex information and respond to it thoughtfully is seriously compromised. We seize on what we believe to be the most important data and take action on that basis. While this set of responses surely served us well in our evolutionary environment, it undermines our ability to safely navigate challenging interpersonal situations—such as feedback conversations.
So when we’re preparing to give someone feedback, it’s critical to avoid triggering a social threat. Pay keen attention to the potential for any aspect of the conversation to impact the other person, including such factors as timing, duration, physical location and proximity.
2. Just Enough Emotion
Despite the risk of triggering a social threat inherent in any feedback conversation, one reason interpersonal feedback is such an effective way to learn is because it has the potential to evoke meaningful emotions in the first place. While the strong negative emotions that result from a social threat have the potential to inhibit learning and block communication, emotions play an essential role in our reasoning process. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote in his influential book, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain,
[H]uman reason depends on several brain systems, working in concert across many levels of neuronal organization, rather than on a single brain center. Both "high-level" and "low-level" brain regions...cooperate in the making of reason. The lower levels in the neural edifice of reason are the same ones that regulate the processing of emotions and feelings. Emotion, feeling and biological regulation all play a role in human reason. [p xvii]
In addition, emotional experiences resonate more strongly with us and stick more effectively in our memories. As neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux notes, “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 while we have to guard against the risk of triggering a social threat when giving feedback, it’s essential to make effective use of emotion in any feedback conversation, and this means expressing just enough emotion ourselves to trigger sufficient emotion in the other person without going too far. If we express too much emotion, we may trigger a social threat, provoking a hostile or defensive reaction, and ending the dialogue or damaging the relationship. But if we fail to express enough emotion, we significantly diminish the impact of our feedback, resulting in an ongoing cycle of ineffective conversations.
The right balance of emotion is highly situational and will differ widely not only across interpersonal relationships but also according to the issue under discussion, the timing of the conversation, and many other factors. Our ability to find the balance that’s right for any given conversation will depend on our understanding of the other person and our relationship with them as well as on our ability to regulate and express our emotions effectively.
3. Build the Relationship
As noted above, when we feel less connected to another person, an interaction with them is more likely to trigger a social threat. When we need to give feedback to someone who differs from us—not only according to demographic categories, but also as a function of our respective roles—it’s important to be able to establish a sense of relatedness with that person to minimize the risk of social threat. And this work is much more effective when it’s done over time, across a series of interactions, rather than in a desperate—and transparent—attempt to soften the blow before delivering critical feedback.
John Gottman, a social psychologist who’s one of the world’s leading researchers on marriage and relationships, notes that the likelihood of a successful conclusion to a difficult conversation is critically dependent on what he calls “the quality of the friendship” in the relationship, and he defines friendship by the existence of seven factors:
1. Feeling known by the other person.
2. A “culture of appreciation” that nurtures mutual fondness, admiration and respect.
3. Sensitivity and responsiveness to even the most minor bids for attention.
4. The degree of mutual influence.
5. Accepting that some problems are intractable and can’t be solved right now.
6. An awareness that inside those intractable problems is often a deeply personal dream, and a willingness to share those dreams.
7. The creation of shared meaning.
Gottman’s research focuses on married couples and others in committed partnerships, and I’m not suggesting that our working relationships need to rise to that level of intimacy to be successful. But I am suggesting that Gottman’s guidelines for gauging “the quality of the friendship” apply to any relationship, and that they can direct us in our efforts to connect with others, particularly when we’re working across role boundaries and other dimensions of difference.
Finally, Gottman’s research also shows that the ratio of positive to negative interactions in a successful relationship over time is 5:1, even during periods of conflict. This ratio doesn’t apply to a single conversation, nor does it mean that we’re obligated to pay someone five compliments before we can criticize them. But it does emphasize the importance of positive feedback over time as a means of building a successful relationship. (Note that we can run into problems with positive feedback as well.)
4. Play Fair
A certain way to derail a feedback conversation is to trigger a social threat (and a subsequent defensive or hostile reaction) by providing feedback that the other person perceives as unfair or inaccurate. The difficulty is that the concepts of “fair” and “accurate” are inherently subjective. In Chapter 2 of The Interpersonal Dynamics Reader, David Bradford and Mary Ann Huckabay use the metaphor of “the net” to explain this dynamic:
Most of us act like amateur psychologists in that we try to figure out why others act as they do. If you interrupt me (a behavior) and I feel annoyed (the effect on me), I try and understand why you would do that. So I make an attribution of your motives (it must be that you are inconsiderate)…
As common as this attribution process is, it also can be dysfunctional. Note that my sense-making is a guess. That is my hunch as to why you act the way you do. I am “crossing over the net” from what is my area of expertise (that I am annoyed at your behavior), to your area of expertise (your motives and intentions). My imputation of your motives can always be debated, (“You don't listen.” “Yes, I do.” “No you don't.”) whereas sticking with my own feelings and reactions is never debatable. ( “I felt irritated by your interruption just now.” “You shouldn't feel that way because I didn't mean to interrupt you.” “Perhaps not, but I feel irritated nonetheless.” ) [pp 4-5, emphasis added]
As Bradford and Huckabay make clear, by “crossing the net” and guessing at the other person’s motives and intentions, we succeed in creating a plausible explanation that helps us understand their behavior, but we run the risk of being wrong. Even if we guess right in most circumstances—and we typically do—the challenge in the context of a feedback conversation is that the cost of being wrong is triggering a social threat in the other person and derailing the conversation.
The solution identified by Bradford and Huckabay is to “stay on our side of the net” and stick with what we know for certain—our response to the observed behavior—and avoid making any guesses about the other person’s motives and intentions. This minimizes the risk that our feedback will be perceived as unfair or inaccurate.
5. Give It To Me Straight?
While an increased emphasis on interpersonal feedback in many groups and organizations can provide us with more opportunities to test and improve our abilities to give and receive feedback effectively, it can also have some unintended consequences. A “feedback-rich” culture can be one in which people feel compelled to participate in feedback conversations even when they’re not truly prepared to do so. Feedback givers can feel an unjustified sense of authority and objectivity, failing to realize that feedback says as much about the giver (what we notice, what we comment upon, how we say it) as it does about the recipient. Feedback recipients can feel obligated to change in response to critical feedback, even when it conflicts with their better judgment.
So while I’m a confirmed believer in the benefits of feedback, I also encourage people to stop and think carefully when stepping into a feedback conversation, particularly before responding to a request to “Give it to me straight.” While it’s important to provide honest and direct feedback in response to such a request, it’s also important to consider the overall context—including the surrounding group or organizational culture—in order to meet such a request effectively.
Postscript
I'm reminded of a recent comment of mine: "At the heart of every piece of critical feedback is a dream of a better way to interact with each other." This helps explain my emphasis on the emotional aspects of feedback conversations--when we're unhappy or upset with someone and want them to change, the purpose of any critical feedback we might deliver is to turn that "dream of a better way of interacting" into reality. But if we simply "give it to them straight" and fail to effectively manage the emotions evoked by the conversation--either by repressing them or by venting them full-force--we're much less likely to achieve that goal.
Thanks to Carole Robin, David Bradford, Mary Ann Huckabay and Scott Bristol for introducing me to many of these concepts and for the opportunity to explore them further while working with them at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
If I were to distill the work that I do as a coach and experiential educator down to its essence, it would consist of helping people perform three tasks:
1) Learn to access our emotions more fully, express emotions to others more effectively, and allow ourselves to become emotionally "flooded."
2) Learn to manage ourselves more effectively, interact productively with others and make better decisions while experiencing strong emotions.
3) Learn to de-escalate strong emotions when flooded and find efficient and healthy ways of soothing ourselves.
There's an obvious arc to this emotional journey, one that involves pushing ourselves to reach new heights, navigating those peaks under difficult conditions, and safely returning to lower altitudes. Looked at from this perspective, coaching (and experiential learning more generally) can be seen as emotional mountaineering. I help my clients and students make this journey by traveling alongside them and experiencing it with them--I suppose I'm an emotional sherpa :-)
This metaphor may make sense if you've done meaningful work with a coach or in an experiential learning environment--and if not, I imagine it prompts some questions:
Why so much emphasis on emotions?
The huge gap between the role emotions actually play and how they're commonly understood would be amusing if it didn't have such negative consequences. The popular view is that emotions are irrational impulses that cloud our judgment, and we need to repress them in order for rational thought to prevail. But recent neurological research has made it quite clear that emotions are an essential element in the reasoning process. As USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote in 1994 in his influential book Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain,
[H]uman reason depends on several brain systems, working in concert across many levels of neuronal organization, rather than on a single brain center. Both "high-level" and "low-level" brain regions...cooperate in the making of reason.
The lower levels in the neural edifice of reason are the same ones that regulate the processing of emotions and feelings, along with the body functions necessary for an organism's survival... Emotion, feeling and biological regulation all play a role in human reason. [p xvii]
More specifically, emotions allows us to make decisions much more efficiently than would be possible through logic alone. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux of NYU notes in The Emotional Brain that the neurological pathways that process emotions are literally twice as fast as those that process cognitions.
This isn't to say that our emotions never lead us astray; of course they do, particularly strong negative emotions such as fear or anger--see below. LeDoux calls the emotional pathways in the brain a "quick and dirty processing system," one whose signals can readily be misinterpreted. But if we habitually repress our emotions we never improve our ability to discern the signal from the noise, to determine which emotional responses are helpful in a given set of circumstances and which are counterproductive.
Feeling our emotions more fully also allows us to express them more effectively with others. Emotions are the levers of influence, and our ability to inspire, comfort, motivate, or threaten is dependent on our ability to tap into and convey the right emotions in the right way at the right time.
All this work is challenging enough when we're calm and reflective; it's infinitely more difficult when we're hurt, angry, upset or excited--this is why it's important to allow ourselves to become emotionally "flooded," so that we can practice these skills under duress.
What do you mean by "flooding"?
"Flooding" is a term employed by the social psychologist and therapist John Gottman to describe the condition of heightened emotional arousal that creates a sense of overwhelm, typically occurring when we're subjected to criticism or feel attacked in some way.
We experience flooding as a host of physiological symptoms--such as rapid heart rate, elevated blood pressure, shallow breathing, or sweaty palms--that result from increased levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, most notably adrenaline and cortisol. These are the biological markers of a "threat response," or what's often called a "fight-or-flight" reaction, that usually accompany strong negative emotions.
Executive coach David Rock has made an extensive study of the implications of recent neuroscience research for organizational life, and his work highlights three findings with special relevance here: First, our brains respond to social situations that we perceive as threatening in the same way that we respond to literal threats to our physical safety. Second, we experience these social threats most frequently at work. And finally, when we're experiencing a threat response our capacity for analytic thought, creative insight and problem-solving is substantially diminished.
This cognitive impairment is one of the primary reasons for popular misconceptions about the role of emotions noted above; we've all made bad decisions while in the grip of a threat response. But rather than seeking to suppress our negative emotions--an effort that rarely works and often leads to higher stress levels--we're much better served by strategies that allow us to both 1) reframe situations so that we experience them as less threatening in the first place and 2) increase our level of comfort with strong emotions and our ability to manage ourselves while flooded.
This is why it's so important to allow ourselves to feel strong emotions and even become flooded in the safe confines of a coaching session or experiential learning environment, where we can step slightly outside our comfort zone without putting ourselves at risk.
So what does this look like in practice?
To be clear, the majority of my conversations with clients and students are upbeat and even lighthearted. I'm a firm believer in the value of focusing on the positive, doing more of what's working, and seeking greater levels of happiness and fulfillment to support our professional effectiveness. And my own effectiveness as a coach depends on establishing a foundation of safety, trust and intimacy, whether on a one-on-one basis in a coaching engagement or among the members of a group in other settings.
But it's important that we also make room for a wide range of emotions in order to be able to do the work outlined above. This means very different things for each of us, of course, and I don't take a one-size-fits-all approach. I try to find the right balance of challenge and support that's called for in every relationship, but a common theme is a willingness to take some risks in order to learn and grow, and this inevitably involves stepping into some stronger emotions--from amusement to elation, from annoyance to anger, from embarrassment to shame, from disappointment to grief.
My experience in thousands of coaching sessions and group meetings over the years is that as we expand the range of emotions we can express in these safe settings, we increase our ability to make effective use of emotion in "the real world," where the risks are higher and the returns are greater. To return to the mountaineering metaphor, by pushing ourselves to new heights we become more sure-footed under stress and increase our trust in our ability to return safely.
Thanks to Mary Ann Huckabay, Carole Robin and Scott Bristol.
Photo by Mitch Barrie. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
The ability to be aware of--and influence--what we're thinking about is a critical self-coaching skill. We need to focus our attention on what's important and devote less of it to what's irrelevant, a task that's more difficult when we're stressed or tired. And yet efforts to actively suppress thoughts can actually be counterproductive--so what can we do?
The late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner was known for his work on mental control, and in response to the question, "How do people control their own minds?" he responded:
The simple strategy of directing attention can often be helpful, as people can stop thoughts, concentrate, improve their moods, relax, fall asleep, and otherwise control their mental states just by trying to direct their thoughts. These strategies of mental control can sometimes backfire, however, producing not only the failure of control but the very mental states we are trying to avoid. [1, emphasis mine]
Wegner's insights on mental control emerged from his research on thought suppression, a concept he illustrated with the image of a white bear, inspired by a line from Dostoyevsky: "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute." Wegner wrote:
People who are prompted to try not to think about a white bear while they are thinking out loud will tend to mention it about once a minute... It seems that many of us are drawn into what seems a simple task, to stop a thought, when we want to stop thinking of something because it is frightening, disgusting, odd, inconvenient, or just annoying. And when we succumb to that initial impulse to stop, the snowballing begins. We try and fail, and try again, and find that the thought is ever more insistent for all our trying. [2]
Why does this matter so much? Neuroscientist and psychologist Ian Robertson offers a vivid illustration:
We have to inhibit the billions of bits of irrelevant information assailing our senses in order to concentrate on the fragments of information which are crucial for us at a particular point in time.
This difficulty in suppressing the irrelevant causes particular problems with driving in older people. Whereas older people are more vigilant, careful and generally less error prone, they tend to make more mistakes at busy road junctions. At such complicated traffic intersections, everyone--young and old--is faced with a barrage of lights, signals and speeding streams of traffic. Some of this information is critically important for deciding when and what to do next, while much of it is irrelevant. For instance, the roaring trucks on the motorway overhead may be noisy and intimidating, but they...are quite irrelevant to the task of managing to turn here. A young driver will be much better able to "screen out" this irrelevant distraction than an older driver, and so will be better able to focus attention on the lights and traffic which are important for surviving this particular turn. [3]
But the risk of a car crash is just one danger we face if we're unable to avoid distraction and manage our attention effectively. We encounter the equivalent of a busy intersection every day in fast-paced meetings with full agendas and with our devices constantly streaming massive amounts of data in our direction. In these settings how do we focus our attention in order to achieve our goals most effectively?
Inhibition is crucial here--wasting attention on the equivalent of a noisy but irrelevant truck roaring overhead could result in an ill-timed turn. But we can't simply compel ourselves to ignore such distractions, or we may risk becoming fixated on them. And if we're stressed or tired, it will be even more difficult to focus our attention where it's needed most.
So what steps can we take? Health journalist Lea Winerman covered a presentation by Wegner at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association [4], in which he described several strategies for mental control, both in the moment and over time:
Minimize distractions in the moment by...
Eliminating multi-tasking, which diminishes our cognitive load, frees up finite working memory and increases our ability to focus. [5]
Identifying an "absorbing distractor" that will prevent us from becoming fixated on a more problematic focal point.
Build capacity to focus attention over time by...
Address unwanted thoughts in some designated period during the day. (Winerman notes that chronic worriers who set aside 30 minutes during which they were free to worry experienced less anxiety.)
Committing to a mindfulness practice, such as meditation. [6]
A note on mindfulness: Although I can find meditation difficult, I persist in the practice because my own experience is consistent with Wegner's recommendation. For me meditation isn't a means to a stress-free state--it's a workout in attention management, and like any workout it can be taxing. My simple practice is inspired by Jon Kabat-Zinn: Get still, notice what I'm thinking about (and how it makes me feel), let go of that thought (and those emotions) and bring my attention back to what it feels like to breathe. Within seconds, I'm thinking about something else again, and the cycle repeats itself over and over for the duration of my meditation session. It's not easy and not particularly fun, but I'm exercising my capacity for self-awareness and my ability to direct attention, and a consequence of that workout is that I'm better able to focus on what matters and minimize distractions.
Yesterday I had the chance to give a talk on self-coaching to a group at Flixster, and a modified version of my slide deck is above. Thanks to the awesome Hannah Knapp and her colleagues for a great experience--I really enjoyed it.
My colleague Doug Sundheim recently pointed to research by a team of Dutch and American psychologists on the benefits of weird experiences:
Comparisons with various control groups showed that a diversifying experience--defined as the active (but not vicarious) involvement in an unusual event--increased cognitive flexibility more than active (or vicarious) involvement in normal experiences. [1]
I'm always cautious about premature (and potentially spurious) interpretations of brand-new research, and yet practitioners like me can't sit around and wait for the scientists to get everything completely sorted out. At the same time, these findings resonate deeply with my own empirical experience as a coach.
In my work at Stanford and with clients I often lead people through workshops, classes and other experiences intended to expand their perspective and get them thinking differently on a range of topics. Whenever possible, I begin these sessions with some type of exercise that's designed to (gently) shake people up in one way or another.
For example, I'll have the group stand in a circle and ask them to sort themselves by height, with the tallest person on my left and the shortest person on my right. When they're done, I'll ask them to re-sort themselves by birthday, with the person born closest to January 1st on my left and the person born closest to December 31st on my right. And then I'll ask them to, say, re-sort themselves by "blue," with the "most blue" person on my left and the "least blue" person on my right. Someone in the group always asks what I mean by "blue," and I always tell them it's up to them to decide--there's no right answer.
People typically find this a mildly weird way to begin a workshop--not so weird that it's alienating or off-putting, but just weird enough that it confounds their expectations and heightens their interest. (It also gets them up and moving, which I find always helps.)
I think that what happening here is related to Hans Selye's concept of eustress: modest levels of stress improve performance, and weird or unexpected experiences are modestly stressful. [2] Such experiences push us slightly outside our comfort zone, and we can't go on auto-pilot anymore. We're a little nervous, a little excited, and we really have to pay attention to figure out what's going on and what might happen next.
However, as Doug points out, "We often think we've gotten out of our comfort zone, when we really have only stretched it a bit." I suspect that there's a neurological basis for this--perhaps we acclimate to the heightened emotions triggered by weird experiences and other sources of discomfort, so we need to readjust what we define as our "comfort zone" (and what we mean by "weird") to re-enact those emotions.
That's certainly been my experience with regard to improv. I wouldn't call myself a skilled improv player--in addition to the brief exercises I use to open workshops, I only participate in an extended session once or twice a year--but I've done enough of it that it's no longer "weird" to me, and it's well within my comfort zone. So if I'm truly going to reap the benefits of the dynamics uncovered by Ritter's reseach, I'm going to have to get much, much weirder. (Burning Man, here I come.)
I'm not a very good meditator--in fact, I'm terrible at it. I say that tongue-in-cheek, knowing full well that striving to be a "good" meditator is an exercise in absurdity--but what I mean is that I find meditation difficult, I regularly avoid doing it, and yet I persist in the practice. Why?
Two of my standing goals are to exercise and mediate daily. I track goals like this using a simple tool called Don't Break the Chain [1], and looking back at the last six months of 2011, I can see that I exercised exactly 75% of the time--138 days of out of 184. But during that same span I meditated just 45% of the time--83 days. See what I mean? Not very good :-)
But in truth I know that my resistance to meditation is an indicator that it's a healthy practice for me, and the fact that it's difficult for me to do it daily is one of the primary reasons I keep at it. I'm not saying I should force myself to do all the things I resist doing. Helping people deconstruct a rule like that--a powerful mental model [2], by the way--is something I do in my coaching practice, and I strive to do the same in my own life.
Rather, I'm saying that there are some specific steps that occur in the meditation process that are valuable for me to experience precisely because of my resistance to the practice. So what are those steps? What happens for me in the meditation process?
I see it as a four-stage cycle:
It starts with Stillness, which sounds easy and yet can be quite hard for me. My mind is always in motion, and I'm constantly thinking and planning ahead. I'm tracking an endless list of ideas and to-dos, and while I find this stimulating, it also creates a lot of noise. The last time I re-committed myself to regular meditation, in early 2011, I described the experience as feeling "mentally itchy"--meditation allows (and compels) me to just be still.
The next step is Awareness. In the stillness I can see where my attention goes and sense what I'm feeling, both emotionally and physically, much more clearly. Note that I'm not saying that I "clear my mind" or "think of nothing" or anything like that. My mind's still working away, and thoughts and emotions continue to rush through me, but I'm much more aware of them.
The next step is Choice. The awareness of my thoughts and emotions that comes with the stillness allows me to be more intentional, and to focus my attention and make use of my emotions in ways that better support my goals. This isn't to say that I'm always seeking to consciously influence my cognitive and emotional processing; that's neither possible nor desirable. But even the ability to simply notice what I'm thinking about and feeling allows me to choose to filter out the noise and focus on more meaningful cognitive and emotional signals.
The final stage of the process is Discipline. And while I use that word deliberately, I want to be careful to avoid the negative connotation that can often accompany it. Jon Kabat Zinn notes that our minds will constantly wander during meditation, just like a puppy wandering away while being paper-trained, and we need to treat ourselves just as would treat the puppy--not harshly, but compassionately, with firmness and with care. [3] Because the cycle described here repeats not just from day to day but many, many times in the course of a single meditation session, and the act of noticing that my mind has wandered and is speeding up again, slowing it down and returning to a sense of stillness is itself a useful form of disciplined practice.
I'm not off to a great start in 2012--I've meditated just 6 times in 15 days. But writing this post has helped clarify the value I derive from the practice and inspires me to do it even more. Many thanks to Bill George, whose discussion of his own meditation practice has been highly motivating. [4]
Two concluding thoughts: First, there's an extensive and growing body of research demonstrating the psychological, physiological and performance benefits of meditation. That's a post for another day, but for now I'll express my continued thanks to David Rock for pointing me in that direction. [5]
And I'm reminded of the master's dictum: If you don't have time to meditate for 30 minutes, then meditate for an hour. I'm all too aware that as I get busier and have less time to meditate, I tend to cycle faster and need to put on the brakes all the more. I'm not saying I live by that credo, but it's an aspiration.
I'm doing a workshop on High-Performance Communication with the executive committee of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, a great organization that supports entrepreneurs and startups. To help the committee members prepare for our session, I've compiled the following series of extracts from my writing over the past few years. Many thanks to the social psychologists, neuroscientists, business thinkers and fellow coaches cited below whose work has informed my own. And thanks to VLAB--I'm looking forward to working with you!
Most of my clients and students are seeking to be more effective and fulfilled as professionals, and a resource to which I've referred people for years is Peter Drucker's Managing Oneself, primarily because of his perspective on excellence:
One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people--especially most teachers and most organizations--concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.
So we need to ask ourselves: What are my strengths? Where can I improve from first-rate performance to excellence? Where should I be focusing my energy, resources and time? Just as important, where am I wasting effort trying to improve from incompetence to mediocrity?
2) Safety, Trust, Intimacy
Every group serves as an implicit learning laboratory in which we come to come to understand how our interactions with others support (or undermine) our efforts to achieve our goals.But some groups are more effective than others at helping the members learn, increase their awareness and adapt their behavior as needed, and the group’s levels of safety, trust and intimacy are key factors in determining its effectiveness in this regard.
Every group's experience is rooted in a set of initial conditions: How and why were we assembled? What will our first meeting be like? What will we discuss there? These initial conditions form the foundation for all subsequent layers of the group dynamic.
The foundational qualities that define a group are the levels of safety, trust and intimacy: Safety = A belief that we won't get hurt. Trust = We mean what we say and we say what we mean. Intimacy = A willingness to make the private public.
When safety, trust and intimacy are established, they support the actions that lead to greater success as a group: experimentation, risk-taking and a willingness to be vulnerable.
When we feel able to experiment, take risks and make ourselves vulnerable, our ability to learn, to increase our self-awareness (and our awareness of others) and to change our behavior in order to achieve our goals more effectively increases dramatically.
The process of building one layer upon another occurs in a unique context—so in addition to asking whether learning and change are taking place, we also need to assess how the group's context supports (or inhibits) the development of the underlying layers in the group experience.
So we need to ask...
How will the group's initial conditions support or inhibit the establishment of safety, trust and intimacy?
At each step of the group's subsequent development, are we increasing or decreasing the levels of these qualities?
What factors in the group experience support the development of these qualities? And what factors inhibit these qualities?
A final point regarding feedback: While excessive delicacy and indirectness inhibit learning, the degree of candor in a group must be calibrated to the group’s current levels of safety, trust and intimacy. Feedback attuned to these qualities can increase their presence in the group by stretching the group’s capacity for direct discussion. But feedback that fails to take these qualities into account can actually lead to less safety, trust and intimacy than before and undermine the group’s ability to learn and change.
3) Happiness
A premise of mine is that organizational success starts with leaders who feel a personal sense of happiness and fulfillment. Not all successful organizations are led by happy people, and not all unsuccessful organizations are led by unhappy people (although I suspect the correlation is higher in the latter case), but I believe that, all else being equal, happy people make better leaders, and happy leaders build better organizations. Research shows that we have a substantial degree of control over our levels of happiness and fulfillment, and we exercise that control most effectively through small-scale, consistent intentional activities, not through large-scale changes in our life circumstances.
Sonja Lyubomirsky is a social psychologist whose research on happiness highlights some surprising findings:
1) Our happiness is affected by a genetic set point inherited from our parents and similar to other genetically-influenced predispositions, such as weight. So those of us with low happiness set points will have to work harder to achieve and maintain happiness, while those of us with high set points will find it easier to be happy under similar conditions.
2) Large-scale life circumstances, such as income and marital status, can have a smaller impact on our happiness than we expect them to, and that impact usually wears off sooner than we expect, a process known as "hedonic adaptation."
3) In contrast, small-scale intentional activities often have a larger impact on our happiness than we expect them to--we might call "happiness strategies." This is the core of Lyubomirsky's research: We can't alter our genetic set points, and changes in life circumstances are often difficult to engineer and have less impact than we expect, but we can increase and sustain our happiness through intentional activities that we can pursue on a daily basis. Lyubomirsky describes twelve "evidence-based happiness-increasing strategies whose practice is supported by scientific research," which include several that involve interpersonal communication:
Expressing Gratitude: Counting your blessings for what you have (either to a close other or privately, through contemplation or a journal) or conveying your gratitude and appreciation to one or more individuals whom you've never properly thanked.
Practicing Acts of Kindness: Doing good things for others, whether friends or strangers, either directly or anonymously, either spontaneously or planned.
Nurturing Social Relationships: Picking a relationship in need of strengthening and investing time and energy in healing, cultivating, affirming and enjoying it.
Learning to Forgive: Keeping a journal or writing a letter in which you work on letting go of anger and resentment toward one or more individuals who have hurt or wronged you.
This section revised May 2021.
4) The SCARF Model
David Rock is an executive coach who for many years has been exploring the field of neuroscience and its implications for management, coaching, and organizational life, and his SCARF Model provides a framework for understanding how our brains respond to perceived threats and rewards. Rock writes:
Two themes are emerging from social neuroscience. Firstly, that much of our motivation driving social behavior is governed by an overarching organizing principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward (Gordon, 2000). Secondly, that several domains of social experience draw upon the same brain networks to maximize reward and minimize threat as the brain networks used for primary survival needs (Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2008). In other words, social needs are treated in much the same way in the brain as the need for food and water...
The SCARF model involves five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.
Status is about relative importance to others. Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. Relatedness is a sense of safety with others, of friend rather than foe. And fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people.
These five domains activate either the 'primary reward' or 'primary threat' circuitry (and associated networks) of the brain. For example, a perceived threat to one's status activates similar brain networks to a threat to one's life. In the same way, a perceived increase in fairness activates the same reward circuitry as receiving a monetary reward.
As this graphic illustrates, threat responses are usually much more powerful than reward responses, and thus we move away from threats more quickly and more vigorously than we move toward rewards. So it's not enough to give equal emphasis to rewards in our leadership, management and communication practices--our brains' disproportionate response to perceived social threats implies that we need to put a much greater weight on efforts intended to generate a reward response, and take great pains to avoid triggering a threat response.
5) Soft Startups
How do you initiate a difficult conversation? Going in with guns blazing rarely results in a successful outcome. Social psychologist John Gottman coined the term "soft startup" to describe the process of initiating a tough discussion gently and compassionately:
1) Start with something positive that conveys your intent to reach a successful resolution--but note that this doesn't mean inventing something nice to say. If you're struggling for words, simply saying that you want to have this conversation because you care about the other person and your shared goals can be helpful.
2) Use statements beginning with "I" that express your perspective and feelings, rather than statements beginning with "you" that focus on the other person. (And don't assume that your perspective is the only possible truth.)
3) Don't make assumptions about the other person's perspective. They may not even be aware that there's a problem, or it may not be their fault--and they may be happy to help solve it if they're approached in the right way.
4) Be direct. State your request clearly, firmly and politely--while being sure to also acknowledge any concessions that are granted.
This is just the beginning of the process, of course, and you'll need a number of additional skills in your communication repertoire to succeed. But Gottman's research shows that a soft startup is a crucial step in resolving disagreements successfully.
We know that talking about our feelings--a process neuroscientists call affect labeling--has a powerful impact on our ability to manage difficult emotions and, in turn, on our relationships...but why? What happens when we do?
Stephanie West Allen has written about "the neuroscience research showing that labeling your feelings can quiet your brain and increase impulse control," most notably a groundbreaking article by Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger et al, Putting Feelings into Words (PDF):
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... [T]hese results suggest that putting feelings into words may activate [brain regions associated with emotional processing], which in turn may dampen the response of the amygdala [a brain region associated with negative emotion], thus helping to alleviate emotional distress...
In summary, this study provides the first unambiguous evidence that affect labeling...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.
What kinds of questions do you usually ask? 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.
Scott Ginsberg has developed a list of 62 useful questions, along with a one-line explanation of why they work, and and here are the 20 I find most powerful:
1) How are you creating…? Proves that someone has a choice.
2) How could you have…? Focused on past performance improvement.
3) How do you feel…? Feelings are good.
4) How do you plan to…? Future oriented, process oriented, action oriented.
5) How do you want…? Visualizes ideal conditions.
6) How does this relate to…? Keeps someone on point, uncovers connections between things.
7) How else could this be…? Encourages open, option-oriented and leverage-based thinking.
8) How might you…? All about potential and possibility.
9) How much time…? Identifies patterns of energy investment.
10) How often do you…? Gets an idea of someone’s frequency.
11) How well do you…? Uncovers abilities.
12) How will you know when/if…? Predicts outcomes of ideal situations.
13) If you could change…? Visualizes improvement.
14) If you stopped…? Cause-effect question.
15) Is anybody going to…? Deciding if something even matters.
16) What are you doing that…? Assesses present actions.
17) What are you willing to…? Explores limits.
18) What can you do right now…? Focuses on immediate action being taken.
19) What did you learn…? Because people don’t care what you know; only what you learned.
20) 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. Just as 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.
Positive feedback frequently fails to have the desired impact and can even make many of us feel uncomfortable. But isn't praise supposed to make us feel good? What's going on, and what can we do about it?
When we have bad news to deliver, we often try to soften the blow by beginning and ending with something positive, a practice that I distinguish from the "soft startup" principle discussed above. Soft startups begin with a positive statement that conveys our intent to reach a successful resolution and helps avoid triggering a threat response in the other person. In contrast, "sandwiching" critical feedback between superficial praise eventually causes people to hear anything positive as a hollow preamble to the real message. Rather than feeling genuinely appreciated, they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. So while I do advise beginning difficult conversations with a soft startup, those comments must be authentic and relevant to the issue at hand.
Like any currency, positive feedback can become devalued or can be perceived as counterfeit. Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes have noted that praise can be a "'dissatisfier.' Like a salary, it is less likely to motivate when it's given out than demotivate when it's expected but withheld." So the solution isn't to withhold praise--when it's expected (or even just hoped for), it's absence can be a powerful corrosive. Rather, we need to insure that the positive feedback we do deliver is consistently perceived as meaningful, authentic and heartfelt.
Finally, we need to take some responsibility as feedback recipients. We often resist the validation that comes with positive feedback precisely because we want it so badly. The depth of that desire makes us incredibly vulnerable--so much so that we're willing to avoid any validation in order to insure that we're never embarrassed by our hunger for it or--even worse--by falling prey to inauthentic validation from manipulators or phonies. When we say we want candid feedback, we typically expect that it's going to be hard to hear criticism--and it can be--but it can be even harder to hear (and truly acknowledge) real praise. If we blindly react to praise with (in Peter Vajda's words) "skepticism, dis-belief, arm's-length appreciation,and/or embarrassment," that's going to make the giver feel awkward, if not resentful, and it's going to keep us from developing a stronger relationship. As always in interpersonal communication, it's a two-way street.
9) Taking Risks
Phil Stutz is a psychiatrist based in Hollywood who has mentored and collaborated with therapist Barry Michels, and in a recent interview Stutz discussed the pair's innovative approach to helping their clients overcome obstacles by embracing risk:
The risk you take has a feedback effect on the unconscious. The unconscious will give you ideas and it wants you to act on them. The more courage you have when you act, the more ideas it will give you.
In my own experience, when I've quelled my fears and pushed myself to take meaningful risks, the reward has been a renewed sense of passion, a clearer sense of purpose, and a deeper connection with life. This concept evokes for me the feeling of standing at a cliff's edge, anticipating the thrill to come if I take the leap, but held back by fear--of a crash landing, of unanticipated difficulties, of the shame that would accompany failure. But Stutz's framing encourages me to see that my fear--and my courage--can be self-reinforcing through their influence on my unconscious, and that taking a bold leap can be a powerful way of breaking fear's grip and unleashing my courage.
Recent work on setbacks and mindset [1] as well mental models [2] triggered some further reflection on just what we mean by mindset. The definitions below aren't mutually exclusive--each one simply provides another way of looking at and making effective use of the central concept:
1. Thoughts and Perceptions
First, mindset refers to the overarching idea that what we think--and particularly what we think about ourselves--influences how we perceive the world around us and how we experience that world. Our thoughts and perceptions--and the resulting emotions--shape our reality. A perfect example of this is the placebo effect: Research has shown that "A particular mind-set or belief about one's body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision." [3]
2. Cognitive Biases
A second definition of mindset is the process of understanding cognitive biases and principles of neuroscience in order to leverage them and turn them to our advantage, rather than be buffeted about by them. For example, awareness of the cognitive bias known as the "fundamental attribution error"--ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation--and its impact on our mindset can allow us to cope more effectively with setbacks. A host of other heuristics can also lead us astray, such as availability bias--"the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind"--and affective errors--"the tendency to make decisions based on what we wish were true." [4] Recent research on neuroscience and brain function provides additional insights into why we act the way we do, and one of the best examples is David Rock's SCARF model, which "captures the common factors that can activate a reward or threat response in social situations." [5]
3. Mental Models
On a more personal level, another definition of mindset is an awareness of our existing mental models, beliefs and assumptions, many of which are the result of past learning experiences and which may not have been re-examined or updated in the interim. Such awareness allows us to see how these concepts influence our actions and, if we choose, to update them to reflect our current circumstances and subsequent learning. In turn, this process allows us to make different choices based on more recent information and better suited to current circumstances. In recent months I've revisited the impact of my self-image as a public speaker: "I had trapped myself in my own mental model: believing I was a poor speaker led me to avoid speaking opportunities, which prevented me from ever improving. Today I still get nervous before a speech or presentation, but I view that response simply as a manifestation of my desire to do well, not as damning evidence of my ineffectiveness." [6]
4. Growth vs. Fixed
Finally, a very specific and highly useful definition of mindset is the idea at the heart of the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who sees a pivotal distinction between a "growth" mindset and a "fixed" mindset. As Dweck has noted,
In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They're wrong.
In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. [7]
Again, these definitions obviously overlap--my goal here isn't to distinguish them as separate concepts but rather to get sufficient clarity on the threads and themes woven into the concept of mindset in order to make use of all of them more effectively.
Most of my clients and students are seeking to be more effective and fulfilled as professionals, and a resource to which 
Every group's experience is rooted in a set of initial conditions: How and why were we assembled? What will our first meeting be like? What will we discuss there? These initial conditions form the foundation for all subsequent layers of the group dynamic.
Photo by 
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