Ed Batista

Primates Wearing People Masks

Primates take...a mass of social information into account, and are so finely attuned to the moods and intentions of others, that it has been speculated that their high intelligence evolved in order to deal with an increasingly complex group life. This idea, know as the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, may also apply to the enormous brain expansion in our own lineage.

In this view, technical inventiveness is a secondary development: the evolution of primate intelligence started with the need to outsmart others, to detect deceptive tactics, to reach mutually advantageous compromises, and to foster social ties that advance one's career. Chimpanzees clearly excel in this domain. Their technical skills are inferior to ours, but I would hesitate to make such a claim with regard to their social skills.

~Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics [1]

If you're a leader navigating the challenges of organizational life, it's useful to bear in mind that human beings are really just a special type of primate, and this has significant implications for how people behave in groups. We sometimes focus on our special qualities as a species--our capacity for logical reasoning, our facility with tools, our extensive use of symbols--and imagine that we have little in common with our evolutionary cousins. But then we encounter some curious behavior in a group setting, or we find ourselves perplexed by our own behavior in a group, and we may question just how evolved we really are.

This is where it's important to remember that humans are "primates wearing people masks." We put on clothing, adorn ourselves, and employ any number of symbolic artifacts, from wedding rings and Swiss watches to job titles and even our very names. But these accoutrements don't extinguish our underlying identity as primates. So what are the implications of all this for organizational life?

We're Social Animals

Most people are aware that our success as a species is in some way related to the size and complexity of the human brain, but we often mistakenly assume that our evolutionary advantage was derived from our enhanced cognitive abilities as individual problem-solvers. Instead, research suggests that the greatest benefit of a larger brain was our social intelligence--the ability to conceive of and operate within a vast network of interpersonal relationships. [2]

As a consequence, group experiences loom large in our mental landscape, and the social dynamics operating within any group have a powerful effect on its members. This is sometimes overlooked in contemporary Western culture, given our emphasis on the individual. [3] We readily acknowledge the impact of groups in extreme circumstances, such as when a crowd becomes an unruly mob [4], but we often miss the pervasive influence of groups in everyday life.

We're not herd animals, and another defining human characteristic is the ability to wrestle with and overcome our primal impulses, but we remain acutely sensitive to group dynamics and highly motivated to abide by prevailing norms. This can be dysfunctional at times, causing us to censor ourselves or ignore our better judgment. [5] But as with so many confounding aspects of human psychology, it's a feature for the species that occasionally acts like a bug.

So a starting point in organizational life is simply recognizing that people are are profoundly social and keenly sensitive to the impact of group experiences, for better and for worse. Groups aren't merely collections of individuals (although they are that), but can also take on a life of their own, exerting tremendous influence on individuals' judgment, perception, choices and behavior. Countless leaders have exploited this aspect of human psychology to others' disadvantage in dictatorships, cults, street gangs--and some companies. But group dynamics aren't necessarily nefarious, and thoughtful leaders can harness them in ethical ways. [6]

We're Emotional Animals

Psychologists disagree on whether the affective responses we observe in animals should truly be called "emotions" [7], but it's certainly the case that non-human primates display a wide range of such responses that are analogous on some level to human feelings and which serve as a form of "social information" that enables them to co-exist in groups, as the eminent biologist Frans de Waal notes above. The human experience of emotion may be substantially more complex than that of other primates, but in this sense there's a parallel: group experiences always have the potential to evoke emotions, and this "social information" plays a valuable role in organizational life.

Given the nature of coaching, I often talk with leaders about group experiences gone awry as the result of negative emotions. As a consequence it can be tempting to conclude that emotions are a "problem," and being called "emotional" generally carries a stigma in professional settings and suggests a lack of clear thinking. But this misjudges the nature of emotions and their function.

The idea that emotions are antagonistic to reasoning is a popular misconception, one that's exacerbated when we believe that emotions are some sort of base instinct. But neuroscientists have known for decades that emotion and logic work together in concert, and our feelings are vital inputs in reasoning. [8] Emotions allow us to process massive amounts of data very efficiently in a short period of time. In comparison, logical reasoning is a slow and resource-intensive process.

This doesn't mean our feelings are always reasonable or justified, of course. [9] They're a "quick and dirty signal," as noted by neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. [10] But we rely on emotions to make sense of dynamic, data-rich environments--and that's exactly what occurs in any group setting. Other people are our most vital resource and, potentially, our gravest threat. It's of the utmost importance that we understand their thoughts and intentions, but explicit communication is often insufficient, particularly when we have concerns that our counterparts might lack sound judgment or be untrustworthy.

Emotions fill in those communication gaps by enabling us to rapidly perceive and interpret a host of factors--tone of voice, eye contact, facial expressions, body language--while simultaneously assessing what we know or can surmise about the other people involved. So we shouldn't view emotions as unerring guides to right action, and it's essential to observe and correct for any patterns in which emotions--both positive and negative--repeatedly result in mistaken conclusions or counterproductive behavior. But we should expect that groups will reliably trigger a host of feelings, and we should heighten our ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express them in order to make most effective use of them.

Simultaneously, we must also expand our capacity for empathy, which can be defined as the ability to see the world from another person's perspective, understand their feelings, suspend our judgments about them, and communicate our understanding. [11] All this entails substantial effort, made easier when we remember that people in groups will reliably trigger emotions in each other, those feelings are potentially useful data (and occasionally misleading), and our "people masks" aren't always accurate indicators of who's feeling what and why.

We're Competitive Animals

As noted above by biologist de Waal, humans' social intelligence differs from that of other primates not in kind, but in degree. One of the most significant differences is our capacity to operate in relatively large social units, and it was the development of advanced social capabilities that enabled early humans to form groups much larger than their evolutionary rivals. Work by anthropologist Robin Dunbar sets this number at roughly 150 people, and a group of that size contains more than 10,000 one-on-one relationships. [12]

A group of 150 people is a powerful force, capable of securing resources and food, fighting off predators, and coping with environmental challenges. Our ability to operate within such large groups is what has enabled us to become the dominant species on the planet, but this advantage also carries some costs. As UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman has written, "The downside of larger groups is that there is increased competition for food and mating partners within the group. If you are on your own and you manage to find food, it's yours. The larger your group, the more likely it is that one of the others in your group will try to poach it." [13]

More fundamentally, survival depends on one's ability to remain a member of the group. Although bands of early humans came to dominate their environments, individuals were defenseless on their own, vulnerable to attack and the elements. Being left behind or expelled was a death sentence. As a result, we evolved to be acutely sensitive to our social standing and our relative status in the group. [14]

But evolution has solved for the survival of the species, not for our individual happiness or peace of mind. So this heightened awareness of our relative status keeps us collectively striving toward greater accomplishments, while simultaneously being the source of much personal misery. The key for a leader in organizational life is recognizing that our predisposition to social comparison will reliably trigger status contests and power struggles [15] on a near-constant basis, fueled by the unhappiness people feel when they perceive themselves to be "behind" in some way. [16]

Managing these competitive dynamics among employees is one of a leader's primary responsibilities. This is obvious when it comes to issues such as compensation [17] and titles. [18] But it also applies to more subtle forms of status, like the communication patterns within a group. [19] A common theme in my practice is the surprise many clients express at the range and persistence of the interpersonal competitions they're compelled to oversee. But in addition to managing these dynamics among others, we must also bear in mind that we are subject to them ourselves.

Leaders, particularly the CEOs who comprise the majority of my practice, are shielded from aspects of social comparison within their companies, in part because of the status and autonomy that they enjoy as a function of their role. But that very same role puts them in competition with other leaders outside their companies. Sometimes these contests are direct and explicit, as when two companies are going head-to-head in the same market. But more often such competition is symbolic, as when a leader compares their accomplishments to those of friends, classmates, role models, and even historic figures.

As a leader you're almost certainly making such comparisons, and they stoke your competitive fires. [20] Learning how to harness and manage this drive within yourself is one of your most important tasks. The challenge is that the good feelings that accompany success and the flush of victory are inevitably fleeting. And while you'll put certain concerns and anxieties behind you with each new level of accomplishment, new perceived needs will emerge. It's unlikely that you'll switch off this drive, nor is that necessarily desirable--it has undoubtedly contributed much to your ability to generate value for yourself and others. But it also has the potential to render you permanently dissatisfied, competing at ever-higher levels for ever-scarcer prizes. The key is coming to terms with your fundamental nature as a primate in competition with other primates, while determining for yourself what constitutes enough. [21]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, pages 38-39 (Frans de Waal, 1982, 2nd edition 2007)

[2] "Our social nature is not an accident of having a larger brain. Rather, the value of increasing our sociality is a major reason for why we evolved to have a larger brain." From Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, page 33 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013).

[3] "No civilization, as far as I know, has given more scope to individual expression and initiative than the West. Non-Western civilizations have generally tended to subordinate the needs of the individual to those of the collective. Despite important exceptions, including Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hegel, the prominence of the individual is one of Western civilization’s distinguishing marks. This individualism, as Colin Morris puts it in The Discovery of the Individual, is 'an eccentricity among cultures.'" From A Brief Primer on Individualism in Western Intellectual History (Tamer Nashef, Areo, 2018).

[4] "In a group the individual is brought under conditions which allow him to throw off the repressions of his unconscious instinctual impulses. The apparently new characteristics which he then displays are in fact manifestations of this unconscious, in which all that is evil in the human mind is contained as a predisposition." From Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego , page 9 (Sigmund Freud, 1921).

[5] "We frequently fail to take action in an organizational setting because we fear that the actions we take may result in our separation from others, or...we are afraid of being tabbed as 'disloyal' or are afraid of being ostracized as 'non-team players.'" From The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement, page 6 (Jerry Harvey, Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1974). Also see The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management (Jerry Harvey, 1988).

[6] I discuss how leaders can effectively leverage group dynamics in Loyalty Oaths and Kicks in the Ass.

[7] As a devoted dog owner, I believe that animals' affective responses can be characterized as emotions, but for more on the opposing point of view, see Lisa Feldman Barret's How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Chapter 12: Is a Growling Dog Angry? (2017).

[8] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[9] The Tyranny of Feelings

[10] The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, page 163 (Joseph LeDoux, 1998)

[11] A Concept Analysis of Empathy (Theresa Wiseman, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 1996)

[12] Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates (Robin Dunbar, Journal of Human Evolution, 1992)

[13] Lieberman, page 34.

[14] In addition to Lieberman's Social, see the following:

• Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (Randolph Nesse, 2020)
• The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)
• Status Anxiety (Alain de Botton, 2004)

[15] Power Struggles Among Nice People

[16] Learning How to Fall Behind

[17] Culture, Compensation and Negotiation

[18] Very Cheap, Then Very Expensive (On Job Titles)

[19] Group Dynamics: Very Loud (and Very Quiet) People

[20] "Most of the time, it's impossible not to compare ourselves with others... Social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly." (Sonja Lyubomirsky, The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 131-132, 2014)

[21] The Trap of Competition

 

Photo by Brecht Bug.

When You're on Thin Ice

I don't work with clients who are being forced into a coaching engagement against their will. In those situations coaching is usually viewed as a last-gasp desperation measure or as a way to mitigate legal risk, and in either case the odds of success are low. But it's not uncommon for a new client to have sought coaching in response to a major setback that has jeopardized their professional future, or for a current client to unexpectedly encounter a similar situation. They haven't yet lost their jobs, or their company, but they're on thin ice. If you are, too, what should you do?

1. Slow Down

If you're in this position you've likely experienced a great deal of success up until now. This may be your first serious professional setback. In these circumstances it's common for events to speed up--or to just feel that way. You may sense an urgent need to take action in some form, to right a wrong or clear your name or do something. But as I've noted before, "The impulse to hurry should often be interpreted as a signal to slow down." [1]

This is particularly true when you're on thin ice, in part because you probably haven't spent much time here during your career, and your past training may not serve you well. In my experience successful leaders and executives often have a high need for power and a low need to be liked [2], a desire for control [3], and a degree of comfort with conflict. [4] If you identify with any of these characteristics, it's possible that the very factors that contributed to your previous success may have also fueled your recent setback. Rather than forge ahead, it may be most useful to pause and reflect on how you got here.

2. Get the Right Help

This is one of the primary benefits of coaching in these circumstances. Being on thin ice often involves a lot of stressful meetings with senior management, HR, attorneys and others who have a wide range of motives and obligations that may or may not align with yours. In contrast with these other events on your calendar, a coaching conversation will proceed at its own pace, leaving ample room for reflection. 

And unlike these other figures, a coach is there to help you set your agenda, focus on what's most significant to you, make sense of what's happened, and learn from the experience. Note that this will also involve surfacing your assumptions and preconceptions, questioning your interpretation of events, and challenging you to take responsibility for your contributions to the situation. Coaching begins with empathetic listening, but it doesn't stop there. [5]

All this said, it's understandable if you have some skepticism or uncertainty about coaching, particularly if you're being encouraged to pursue it as a result of this setback. It's important that you feel sufficient autonomy in the selection of a coach, convinced of their competence, and a personal connection. While your organization may recommend that you choose from among a roster of coaches, you should expect to be able to have a discovery conversation with several to find the best fit, and come prepared with questions for them, just as you would with any other candidate for a mission-critical role. [6]

Specifically, be sure to discuss confidentiality with a prospective coach, and clarify under what circumstances, if any, they will be interacting with anyone else in your organization. [7] Without knowing this in advance, it will be hard for you to know what is safe to share with your coach, and it will be equally hard for them to know what is safe to share with anyone else, making it far more difficult for you both to build trust with each other.

3. Hope for the Best

Recovering from a serious setback doesn't happen overnight. Making your way back from the thin ice will likely be a multi-stage process, and it's helpful to set realistic expectations. In many situations your first goal is professional survival--retain your position, keep the company alive, avoid any catastrophic outcomes. And as someone who's experienced a great deal of success, you may feel impatient or even desperate to put this episode behind you.

Here the sense of urgency and bias for action that may have served you well in the past are unlikely to be as useful. Your setback has probably put you, your performance, and even your behavior under a spotlight--or a microscope--and you're now subject to careful and ongoing scrutiny. This is no doubt unpleasant, especially if you believe that you're the subject of unjust accusations. [8] But in this situation taking forceful action can easily be labelled "defensiveness," and note that you don't get to make that determination--the people around you do. [9]

I'm not suggesting that you meekly accept what's happening and seek to avoid giving offense. You may need to apologize, but that may also may be inadvisable. [10] Nor am I suggesting that mere survival is the best you can hope for. It may well be possible to find your way to solid footing and not merely survive, but thrive. And yet that will undoubtedly take time, just like any recovery from illness or accident. In particular, be prepared for some vestige of this episode to cling to your reputation, and to face repeated reminders, implied or explicit, that you were once on thin ice.

Some important skills to cultivate in this context include resilience and emotion regulation in the face of perceived threats [11], the ability to make the most of this experience as a learning opportunity [12], and a view of failure as a source of potential growth. That last point doesn't mean you should passively tolerate failure, but, as I've written before, "Whenever we're pursuing something ambitious--in the business model, the strategic plan, the investment, the hire, the career step--we will fail, repeatedly. But in the process we are also ruling out possibilities as we seek to understand what works." [13]

4. Prepare for the Worst

Even as you work toward a recovery in concert with your colleagues and other stakeholders, you may also need to be prepared for the situation to take a turn for the worse. Assess the extent to which you can rely upon in-house or corporate counsel, who may have obligations that conflict with providing you with the best possible guidance. If there's a risk of legal action directed against you, or if you may need to take action to protect your interests, you will want personal counsel to advise and represent you.

You may be reluctant to obtain counsel because it feels premature or unnecessary. But thin ice can break, and you don't want to be researching your options when you're in the water. At the very least, interview several prospective attorneys who specialize in representing individual executives and get a feel for their approach and communication style so you'll know who to call if needed. Some attorneys are very comfortable with antagonistic litigation, while others prefer mediation. There's no universal best practice, but it can be useful to consider who they'll be facing should legal action be necessary.

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Importance of Slowing Down

[2] McClelland and Burnham on Power and Management

[3] Authority and Control in Organizational Life

[4] The Warrior and the Sage

[5] Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)

[6] How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

[7] Duty of Confidentiality and Duty to Disclose

[8] Staying Sane When You've Been Falsely Accused

[9] Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[10] Should You Apologize? It Depends.

[11] Ignoring Bandits and Building Resilience

[12] Learning How to Learn

[13] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

 

Photo by Owwe.

A Working Relationship Curriculum

A common theme in my practice is the difficulty a client is experiencing in a working relationship. Below is a set of articles that I've written over the years that comprise a curriculum organized around the following themes:

• FOUNDATIONS: A "starter kit" on a set of fundamental topics, from dialogue and coaching tools to empathy and cognitive biases.
• COMMUNICATION: Why our efforts to communicate often go astray and what to do when that (inevitably) happens.
• EMOTION: How to regulate (rather than suppress) the complex feelings that relationships evoke, and why this matters so much.
• CONFLICT: Sources of conflict, from style differences to competitive threats, and a potential path to resolution.
• FEEDBACK: What feedback is (and is not), how to deliver it, how to respond, and why it can hurt.

Note that feedback comes last, and that's by design. Rushing into feedback conversations before both parties are prepared is a reliable way to make difficult relationships even worse. While it's important to get to the point where feedback can be delivered with skill and received with grace, it may be necessary to take some time to get there and to practice a number of interpersonal skills along the way.

If you're having difficulty in a working relationship, optimally you can invite your counterpart to explore this curriculum together. While that may feel daunting, merely expressing your interest in improving the relationship can be a step in the right direction. But even if that's not possible, I hope you'll feel encouraged to make use of these materials on your own until your counterpart is able to join you.

 

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1. FOUNDATIONS

1.1. Better Working Relationships

An issue that comes up frequently in my work as a coach and teacher is how to improve a working relationship in which one person feels disappointed, irritated, or upset with the other. In my coaching practice this typically involves a pair of co-founders or two members of an executive team. While my comments here are by no means comprehensive, they lay out a set of steps you can take to begin to address a working relationship that's faltering or didn't get off to a good start.

1.2. How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize

Coaching is about connecting with people, inspiring them to do their best, and helping them to grow. It’s also about challenging people to come up with the answers they require on their own. Coaching is far from an exact science, and all leaders have to develop their own style, but we can break down the process into practices that any manager will need to explore and understand. Here are the three most important.

1.3. The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

We typically associate empathy with agreement, and we act as though empathizing with someone entails endorsing their perspective and their feelings, but this need not be the case. Understanding someone’s perspective and their emotions while suspending our judgments about both does not necessarily imply that we agree with that perspective or believe that the resulting emotions are justified. It simply means that we comprehend their perspective and emotions, and we are able to envision ourselves experiencing that perspective and those emotions under similar circumstances.

1.4. Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

One of the most significant cognitive errors is what Daniel Kahneman calls What You See Is All There Is, or WYSIATI, which is shorthand for the fact that we find it very difficult to envision missing data. Even when faced with massive gaps in information, we tend to focus on the information at our disposal and rely on it to construct a narrative, as flimsy as it might be. A corollary to Kahneman's WYSIATI might be called WYDSDE: What You Don't See Doesn't Exist. And as a result we're typically overconfident in the validity and coherence of our explanatory narrative.

 

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2. COMMUNICATION

2.1. Learning to Yield (Navigating Tough Conversations)

What does it mean to yield in our relationships? My client was careful to distinguish "yielding" from "capitulating," and I want to emphasize that distinction: I'm not talking about simply letting others get their way, or avoiding conflicts, or being nice. Instead, I see yielding as finding the right balance between deference and assertiveness, between inquiry and advocacy. So what does this look like in practice?

2.2. Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

If it feels risky to say, it's important. If it wasn't important, it wouldn't feel risky. And that sense of risk is a critical piece of data, a sign that the conversation is a meaningful one with larger implications.

2.3. Intent vs. Impact (When Communication Goes Awry)

When our efforts to communicate go awry, one of the most common causes is a failure to distinguish between intent and impact. When delivering a message we typically imagine that these two concepts are aligned--it may not even occur to us to view them as distinct. Our intent is transparent to us, so we assume that it's equally clear to others and that our message is being received in that same spirit.

2.4. Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)

Asking evocative questions, ensuring the other person feels heard, and actively conveying empathy remain the foundations of coaching. But there's certainly more to the process, and here's a sequence of steps that I employ frequently in sessions with clients that you may find useful if you're seeking to integrate coaching into your managerial style.

 

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3. EMOTIONS

3.1. Talking About Feelings

My work as a coach often involves encouraging clients and students to talk about their feelings--a process known to psychologists as affect labeling--in order to manage difficult emotions more effectively. Experience tells us that this is a useful practice, but why? How does talking about feelings make them easier to manage?

3.2. The Tyranny of Feelings

I don't believe that acknowledging the importance of emotions requires us to think like children, nor must we always privilege our subjective emotional experience in order to realize the benefits of a deeper understanding of emotion and enjoy a broader range of emotional expression at work. So what can we do? Here are some concepts I find useful to bear in mind.

3.3. You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)

Saying that someone else "makes us feel" an emotion suggests that they are responsible for our emotional state, and that's highly problematic. When another person's statements and behavior trigger an emotional response in us, it's inaccurate to presume that the other person is the responsible party and that we're an innocent bystander.

3.4. Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

A theme in my practice is defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback. When it arises as a topic I'm usually working with a client who's figuring out how to deal with a defensive employee or colleague, but occasionally I have a client who's been accused of defensiveness and is wondering what to do in response.

 

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4. CONFLICT

4.1. Whether or Not to Fix a Broken Relationship

A theme in my practice is the leader who's struggling to repair a damaged working relationship with an employee. In most cases we start with the assumption that a better relationship is possible and that even a long-running conflict can be resolved. This usually entails the following steps in some form.

4.2. Work Style Differences

We all have our preferred ways of working, and sometimes when we're locked in a conflict with a colleague it's the result of incompatible work styles. When we work with people who share our work style it may feel more comfortable, but homogeneous teams can have blind spots and be prone to groupthink. Teams whose members have a diverse range of styles can be more effective if they develop the ability to manage conflict successfully.

4.3. The Trap of Competition

While our social orientation is critical in enabling our success as a species, it also poses a substantial challenge for each of us as individuals. We must navigate in-group competition, which becomes even fiercer in larger groups. We're hyper-aware of our relative social status and our shifting position within group hierarchies. And in order to accomplish these tasks effectively we're constantly scanning our interpersonal environment for potential threats and opportunities, which necessarily involves comparing ourselves to others.

4.4. Resolving a Protracted Conflict

When we're locked in a protracted conflict with another person, there's one critical step that's usually necessary to reach a resolution in which both parties feel a sense of trust and remain committed to the relationship: The higher-status person must express vulnerability first.

 

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5. FEEDBACK

5.1. Feedback Is Not a Gift

Feedback is a gift. We've been told this over and over, as if it were gospel. I've even preached it myself. But I stopped using this phrase because it fails to acknowledge how difficult the experience of receiving feedback can be. The problem is compounded when we view feedback as inherently true, inscribed on tablets of stone and delivered from the mountaintop. But if feedback isn't a gift, what is it? It's data.

5.2. Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful

We need to recognize that receiving feedback is inherently a stressful experience. As Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone of the Harvard Negotiation Project have written, "Even when you know that [feedback is] essential to your development and you trust that the person delivering it wants you to succeed, it can activate psychological triggers. You might feel misjudged, ill-used, and sometimes threatened to your very core."

5.3. How to Deliver Critical Feedback

If we want our critical feedback to be truly useful to the recipient and not merely an exercise in self-indulgence, we owe it to our colleagues to be more thoughtful and intentional in how we deliver it. A valuable model in this context is known as "supportive confrontation," developed by David Bradford and Allan Cohen and discussed at length in their book Power Up.

5.4. Four Responses to Feedback

It's important to be open to feedback, even--and especially--when you disagree with it or find that it disconfirms prior assumptions. But being open to feedback doesn't necessarily mean that you should simply accept it. So when you receive feedback, whether it's in a formal performance review or an informal chat, here are four potential responses.

5.5. Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What to Do About It)

As with all data, feedback is comprised of both signal and noise. Even the most hurtful feedback usually incorporates some signal--valuable information that presents you with an opportunity to learn and grow, challenging though it may be. But there is almost certainly plenty of noise--unhelpful or irrelevant information that should be ignored. The key with any painful feedback is ensuring that you don't miss the signal while filtering out the noise.

 

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FOR FURTHER READING

Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being (Linda Graham, 2013)

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler, 2002)

Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, 2000/2010

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time (Susan Scott, 2002)

Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2011)

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (Edgar Schein, 2013)

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, 2015)

 

Photo by Thoroughly Reviewed via Flickr.

Four Responses to Feedback

If feedback isn't a gift, what is it? It's data. About our impact on a particular individual at a particular point in time. And while it may be "true" in the sense that the feedback-giver is accurately representing their perspective, that doesn't make it The Truth. Because feedback always says as much about the giver as the recipient. It's filtered through their reality-distortion fields, reflecting their personal values and priorities. [1]

It's important to be open to feedback, even--and especially--when you disagree with it or find that it disconfirms prior assumptions. But being open to feedback doesn't necessarily mean that you should simply accept it. So when you receive feedback, whether it's in a formal performance review or an informal chat, here are four potential responses:

1. Express appreciation for the positive. We almost always overlook positive feedback and focus immediately on the negative. This is an understandable response--negative feedback has the potential to pose a threat, which makes it likely to generate a strong emotional response and capture our attention. [2] But this is a missed opportunity to acknowledge the full range of feedback you've received and make the conversation more productive for all parties. So be sure to pause, acknowledge any positive feedback, and articulate what you'll continue to do (or do even more of) as a result.

It's harder to determine how to respond to negative feedback, but you don't need to agree with it all or treat it like a set of obligatory duties. That's a sure path to overwhelm and resentment. But it's essential to avoid responding defensively or to reject it out of hand. [3] Instead, recognize that every piece of negative feedback contains a request for change and that all change carries a cost. With that as a guideline, you can distinguish among the following:

2. Easy changes you're happy to make. At least some of the negative feedback likely involves certain behaviors or aspects of your working style that you're not attached to and can modify without undue effort. Remind the feedback giver that we all have blind spots, and they don't need to wait for a formal process to give you similar feedback in the future.

3. Hard changes you're willing to attempt. There's probably also some negative feedback on behaviors or aspects of your style that feel more deeply rooted or will be more difficult to change. Invite the feedback giver to partner with you in this process, by offering help, support and understanding, and possibly by taking some responsibility for their contributions to the issue.

4. Changes that will be too difficult or costly to undertake. By no means should you feel compelled to accede to all of the negative feedback you receive. Some of the changes your feedback giver is asking for will either impose an intolerable burden on you or will prevent you from accomplishing your goals. But bear in mind that they're requesting these changes because these behaviors or aspects of your style are imposing a cost on them. You need not grant their request or agree with their point of view, but you can empathize with it.

In addition, note that it may be useful to respond to feedback not only one-on-one, but also in larger groups, particularly if you're a leader and the feedback is derived from multiple employees and other stakeholders:

• One-on-one: If possible, meet individually with each of your feedback providers. This may require a significant investment of time, but it will be the best way to separate the signal from the noise, because it will be easier for both parties to speak candidly. These conversations may feel risky, but that's actually a reason to have them. [4]
• In a small group: Also consider meeting jointly with a subset of your feedback providers, typically your direct reports. This may also feel risky, even daunting, but it will be a unique opportunity to model how to respond to feedback, which will make it easier when you have critical feedback for them. [5]
• In larger settings: Finally, it may be advisable to share some remarks with a larger group that includes people who didn't provide feedback but still have a stake in your performance in some way. If you're a CEO or a functional leader this could be at an all-hands or an offsite, which is one of the most effective ways to build a feedback-rich culture. [6]

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What To Do About It)

Adapted from Your 360 Report Is Ready.

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Footnotes

[1] Feedback Is Not a Gift

[2] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[3] Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

[4] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[5] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[6] Building a Feedback-Rich Culture

Photo by Nicolas Vigier.

The Fifth Reunion is the Hardest

For the GSB's Class of 2019, particularly the 108 members who I was privileged to have as students in The Art of Self-Coaching, but hopefully relevant to anyone who's obtained a competitive graduate degree in pursuit of your professional goals.

Having worked with over 1,000 MBA students during my career at Stanford's Graduate School of Business [1], I've had countless conversations about reunions, and I've concluded that the fifth is the hardest. Why? Because during business school you were artificially compressed into the uniform identity of "student," and this often yields a set of unrealistic expectations about subsequent life paths. And a few years after graduation differences in professional accomplishments become more visible, resulting in a heightened sense of social comparison. [2] The bad news is that this can be a significant source of stress and anxiety at a fifth reunion--but there's good news, too, over the long run.

The shared identity of "student" can become all-encompassing, particularly at a place like the GSB where you not only invested countless hours in group projects and interactive coursework, but also likely spent a great deal of social time together. As a result you may well have perceived yourself as a member of an egalitarian cohort. The GSB enhanced this perception by the school's de-emphasis of intra-class competition for grades. As a faculty member I generally appreciated this aspect of their policies. The primary guideline was that the average grade for all students in a section could not exceed a certain quantitative standard, which prevented grade inflation.

Further, although the members of the top ten percent of your class were designated as Arjay Miller Scholars, and some selective firms made it a priority to hire "Arjays," most prospective employers weren't particularly interested in business school grades, only the fact that you attended a program like the GSB. All of this made it less likely that you and your classmates viewed each other as rivals, which fostered a sense of openness and collegiality in the classroom. But a downside was a degree of obfuscation about the real differences in students' relative capabilities and performance.

Once you left graduate school and returned to the working world these artificial constraints were removed, and as early-career MBAs you began to experience an increasingly divergent range of professional outcomes. Almost all of you enjoy an extremely high standard of living relative to the population at large, but that's not how social comparison works, particularly among ambitious and competitive people. Humans measure ourselves against a comparison set consisting of people we view as similar to us, and how we stack up against others who aren't members of that group isn't all that salient.

I'm certainly not suggesting that our professional accomplishments should determine our sense of self-worth, nor is there a sharply defined and well-understood relationship between, for example, material wealth and well-being. [3] But our predisposition to rely on markers of career success as a source of social status is an impulse with deep roots in evolutionary psychology that can't simply be wished away because we find it problematic. As I've written before,

While our social orientation is critical in enabling our success as a species, it also poses a substantial challenge for each of us as individuals. We must navigate in-group competition, which becomes even fiercer in larger groups. We're hyper-aware of our relative social status and our shifting position within group hierarchies. And in order to accomplish these tasks effectively we're constantly scanning our interpersonal environment for potential threats and opportunities, which necessarily involves comparing ourselves to others--as UC Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky writes in The Myths of Happiness, "Most of the time, it's impossible not to compare ourselves with others... Social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly." [4]

Changes in relative status as a function of professional accomplishments take some time to emerge, so these distinctions were probably less evident at your first reunion, when you and your classmates may have largely related to each other merely as former students. But in the years since graduation the effects of different professional paths have likely become much more pronounced. Some of this divergence is a function of your individual talent and effort, and some is a function of your industry and your organization. And much is a function of random chance, which is something we hate to admit to ourselves. [5]

I've talked with many GSB alumni who observed this shift in the social dynamic at their fifth reunion and found it challenging. Some felt awkward about the success they had achieved, while many felt the opposite, that they were failing to measure up to expectations somehow. What makes it worse, of course, is the pervasive sense that none of this can be discussed or even acknowledged. Here the GSB's idealistic vision of an egalitarian cohort finds itself severely tested by the realities of intra-elite competition.

As I noted above, there's bad news and good news. First, some more bad news: Intra-elite competition never ends. The status games available to you are infinite, should you have the good fortune--and the desire--to continue playing. When you were accepted into the GSB, you undoubtedly felt that you had "made it," and you enjoyed the status and exclusivity that differentiated you from your then-peers, some of whom may well have been bitterly disappointed by their rejection. And for a while membership in your GSB class was all that was needed to maintain that status. Five years after graduation, that's no longer sufficient, and the inevitability of social comparison and the corresponding need for status distinctions will be keenly felt--although hard to describe with much precision--at your fifth reunion.

But here's the good news: Somewhere between the fifth and tenth reunion, something changes for most people. The status games won't end--they're truly infinite, and some people will feel compelled to keep score as long as they live. And most of us continue to play in one way or another, if only because the prizes are so tempting--but even as we do, we realize how much more there is to life beyond these status games, and that they truly are games, no different from those played by children.

The causes of this shift in perspective vary widely. Some people achieve a lifelong dream, like financial freedom or fame in their field, and find that the sense of fulfillment is far more fleeting than they expected. Some people find professional accomplishments less meaningful in contrast with their experience as parents or caregivers. Some people suffer great setbacks or health problems that lead them to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for existence. Whatever the cause, the alumni I've talked to who felt uneasy or distressed at their fifth reunion uniformly felt much lighter at their tenth. They felt less competitive with their classmates and more connected--not necessarily with everyone, but with the people who mattered most to them.

I'll close with some recent remarks inspired by my work with clients, who must also decide whether and how to play the various status games available to them, and what really matters to them in this life, even as they pursue tremendously ambitious professional goals:

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you give up your ambitions or settle for achievements that feel insubstantial. Winning offers many benefits over losing, and I want you (and my clients) to win, by any definition you choose. But in the process you're going to have to face a fundamental reality: The more you win, the higher you climb, the tougher the competition. If your definition of "winning" rests upon your ability to obtain "more" than the people around you in order to feel "ahead," you will eventually, inevitably lose.

I'm also not suggesting that you should opt out of conventional competitions and live like a monk--my clients haven't done so, nor have I. And yet it's important to recognize that the yardsticks most readily available to assess your accomplishments--net worth, job title, social prominence, where you live--serve many valid purposes, but they do not, and cannot, measure your sense of meaning and purpose, the depth of your relationships, the feeling of a life well-lived. [6]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Thank You, Stanford, and Goodbye!

[2] For more on social comparison, see the following:

• The Trap of Competition
• Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" by "Getting Better"
• The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 8: SUCCESS

[3] For more on well-being and happiness, see the following:

• Myths in the Science of Happiness (Ed Diener, Chapter 24 in The Science of Subjective Well-Being, Michael Eid and Randy Larson, editors, 2008)
• Understanding "The Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness
• The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 5: HAPPINESS

[4] The Trap of Competition

[5] Significance Junkies

[6] Learning How to Fall Behind

 

Photo by Gerry Dulay

Superpowers and Shadow Sides

My clients often have one or more superpowers. They may be charismatic leaders who readily inspire confidence. Or they may be gifted storytellers who convey a compelling vision of the future. Or they may discern patterns in technical or financial data that escape most people. Or their laser-focus and eye for detail may enable them to catch even the slightest error. Or they may have a seemingly endless capacity for work. The list goes on.

These superpowers have been important factors in my clients' success, and in some cases even form an integral aspect of their identity. But despite the benefits a superpower can confer, they almost always have a shadow side. We see this in most superhero stories--their fatal flaws are invariably intertwined with their incredible gifts. In practical terms a superpower's shadow side can take several forms:

Hubris

One of the earliest "superheros" was Achilles, the greatest warrior among the Greek forces in the Trojan War. According to legend his mother dipped him in the River Styx as an infant, seemingly rendering him impervious to injury. But she held him by his heel, which never touched the mystical waters. Years later, as the Greeks were about to claim victory in Troy, in large part due to Achilles' heroic efforts, he was slain by an arrow that found his one vulnerability. [1]

Today an "Achilles' Heel" might refer to any number of potential flaws or shortcomings, but in all cases there's a degree of hubris that increases the risks they pose. Management consultant and researcher Graham Robinson has studied hubris in business and political leaders and has concluded that it involves "arrogance, unmerited self-belief and self-confidence, an unwillingness to seek or listen to advice, and a readiness to enter domains that are 'the reserve of the Gods,' suggesting a loss of touch with reality." [2]

The antidote to hubris is humility, of course, but that quality becomes harder to obtain the more it's needed. By the time we've fallen victim to our own hubris, it's too late. An important source of humility to cultivate early in our career and sustain over time is a relationship with a trusted ally who can keep us grounded. Robinson describes such a figure as "a mentor, an independent 'friend-at-court,' a jester, or what President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to as a 'toe-holder'--someone not afraid to tell him when he was going too far." [3]

Other sources of humility that I've seen leaders benefit from include: The study of literature and history, replete with examples of leaders blinded by hubris who paid a steep price. [4] A spiritual practice or religious faith that puts professional success and material rewards in perspective. The transcendence that can be realized through exposure to the wonders of nature and great works of art. And a heightened awareness of mortality, which reminds us of the fleeting nature of this existence and the impermanence of all our accomplishments. [5]

Blindness

Because superpowers are so effective they become the tools we reach for reflexively in the face of difficulties. This works under predictable conditions, but it can break down when we fail to appreciate subtle changes in the environment or are surprised by unexpected circumstances. Then, suddenly, the previously reliable intervention fails to yield the desired result or is actively counter-productive. I first heard this dynamic described years ago by Carole Robin, one of my mentors: Our weaknesses are often overused strengths. The challenge is that repeated reliance on a particular set of tools can blind us to alternatives, and we imagine that those superpowers are our only powers.

The first step toward seeing more clearly is obtaining a greater degree of self-awareness and a keener understanding of our preferences and tendencies. This requires some form of reflection, such as journaling. There's ample evidence demonstrating the value of keeping a journal [6], but in my experience most leaders dismiss the idea because it reminds them of a middle-school diary filled with daily ephemera. The point of a journal isn't to document every experience, but to take the swirling, inchoate thoughts and feelings that accompany a particularly meaningful experience and render them more concrete and therefore easier to examine and recall.

Despite the value of reflection, it's essential to gather data from other sources, most notably feedback from people we trust. We need not agree with the feedback, but there's typically something to learn from it, even (and especially) when we find it disconfirming or uncomfortable. [7] The eventual goal is consolidate our own reflections and feedback from others into a set of observations that illuminate our blind spots and invite us to get out of our comfort zones to expand our repertoire of skills. [8]

Fear

Reflexive reliance upon our superpowers can reflect a lack of perspective or imagination--it simply may not occur to us to employ other tools or to look beyond our current capabilities. But in some cases our dependence stems from fear--it's not that we can't envision other possibilities, but that we're scared to try. We may be afraid of change--psychologist and management theorist Edgar Schein described a important barrier to change as "learning anxiety," and, as I've noted before, when we're in the grip of this emotion "our identity and sense of worth are connected to our current behavior, and [we fear that] change will result in a new (and uncertain) identity or a loss of self-esteem." [9]

We may worry that acknowledging limits on our superpowers is an admission of vulnerability, which is often equated with weakness. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston's Graduate School of Social Work, and a popular author on the subject of vulnerability, offers a different perspective: "The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about vulnerability and the most dangerous... To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness... It starts to make sense that we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we've confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities." [10]

Whatever the source of our fears, overcoming them in order to grow less reliant on our superpowers will require a increased capacity for emotion regulation, and to be clear, regulation does not mean suppression. Instead, emotion regulation entails improving our ability to sense, understand, articulate and express our emotions, and we develop those skills by getting closer to our feelings, not by distancing ourselves from them. [11] This enables us to establish a different relationship with our fear, not seeking to suppress it, but no longer allowing it to dictate our choices. At that point we can begin to take some risks, and I'm reminded of some useful guidance from psychotherapist Phil Stutz:

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. [12]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Achilles' heroics (and his hubris) are on full display in The Iliad, and I recommend this masterful translation by Robert Fagles. The story about his heel isn't referenced by Homer, so presumably it was a later addition to the myth.

[2] Because It’s There: Risk, Reality and the 'Hubris Black Hole', page 2 (Graham Robinson, Daedelus Trust, 2017)

[3] Ibid, page 4.

[4] Two of my favorite examples of hubris in literature are Captain Ahab in Moby Dick and Sgt. Croft in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. The Vietnam War was an endless display of hubris by American politicians and military leaders--see Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie and David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest.

[5] For more on mortality:

• The Final Third (On Mortality, Values and Spending Time)
• Three Painful Truths (On Change, Leadership & Mortality)
• Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise)

[6] The Value of Journal Writing

[7] For more on feedback:

• Feedback Is Not a Gift
• Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What To Do About It)
• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Building a Feedback-Rich Culture

[8] Conscious Competence in Practice

[9] Why Change Is Hard

[10] Daring Greatly, pages 33-35 (Brené Brown, 2012)

[11] For more on emotion regulation:

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• Taking the Leap (Dealing with Risk and Uncertainty)
• Emotional Speed Bumps

[12] Hollywood Shadows: A Cure for Blocked Screenwriters (Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker, 2011)

 

Photo by John Williams.

My Appearance with Daniel and Greg at OnGrowth

Serial entrepreneur Daniel Kivatinos and founder and Stanford PhD Greg Wientjes have hosted the OnGrowth podcast since 2017, and I was honored when they asked me to join them recently. It was a really fun conversation that covered a wide range of topics: my career at Stanford as an MBA student and Lecturer, the launch of my coaching practice, the difference between coaching and therapy, challenges faced by leaders in my practice, and what it's like to work with me. Our 60-minute conversation is available on the following platforms:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Spotify

Many thanks to Daniel and Greg for having me, and to the mentors and colleagues I mentioned: Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, David Bradford, Evelyn Williams, Garth Saloner, Mary Ann Huckabay, Rebecca Zucker, Ricki Frankel, Scott Bristol, and Vince Stehle. Thanks as well as the 1,000+ Stanford MBAs I had the honor of working with from 2007 to 2021.

Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

A theme in my practice is defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback. When it arises as a topic I'm usually working with a client who's figuring out how to deal with a defensive employee or colleague, but occasionally I have a client who's been accused of defensiveness and is wondering what to do in response.

The key word in the definition above is "disproportionate." When someone is slightly hostile, anxious or evasive in response to critical feedback, we don't think of them as "defensive." Critical feedback is stressful under the best of circumstances. [1] So when someone responds with curiosity and calm we view that as a sign of maturity and professionalism, but a moderately negative response is normal and expected.

And yet we also expect this negative response to be temperate and short-lived. It's only when the other person's hostility, anxiety or evasion seem excessively emotional or unduly persistent that we label them as "defensive." This is highly contextual, determined by the surrounding cultural norms, our relationship with the other person, and our individual standards. What qualifies as defensiveness is truly in the eye of the beholder. So what are the implications of all this, and what can we do about it?

When You're Dealing with a Defensive Person

Don't call them "defensive."

Don't even use the word, as it will only make the situation worse. Bear in mind that they don't think of themselves as "defensive"--no one ever does--so being labeled as such will feel to them like an unjustified accusation and amplify the negative emotions they're already having difficulty managing. You may be perfectly justified in thinking of them as defensive, but keep it to yourself, at least for the moment.

In the present moment, de-escalate.

Defensiveness emerges in response to unexpected bad news, and you and your counterpart may be facing an immediate crisis. In this moment your task is to help them de-escalate their threat response and regain the ability to regulate their emotions. [2] Slow down--choose your words thoughtfully, make decisions judiciously, be mindful of how you might be contributing to their sense of threat. [3] In some circumstances, encouraging the other person to discuss what they're feeling can help them down-regulate those feelings. [4]

As soon as possible, make it a learning opportunity.

When the sense of urgency has abated--but before so much time has passed that the details have grown hazy--make use of this situation as a learning opportunity for the other person. At this point it may be useful to acknowledge that you perceived their response as defensive, but don't stop there. Offer behaviorally-specific feedback that allows the other person to gain a new perspective on their response and understand why you experienced it as counter-productive. [5]

In the meantime, clarify your own lessons.

There's undoubtedly ample learning here for you as well. Why did this bad news come as such a surprise to the other person? How did you share it with them? If you hired them, why did you fail to identify their defensiveness in the process? [6] How successful were you at de-escalating their defensiveness? Did you inadvertently make it worse, and if so, how? And if you're repeatedly encountering defensiveness over time, that merits a look in the mirror. Just because defensiveness is in the eye of the beholder doesn't mean it's always a fair or reasonable perception.

When You've Been Accused of Defensiveness

Don't make it worse by rejecting the label.

You almost certainly don't feel defensive, nor is that how you would describe your behavior, and it's unfortunate that the other person has chosen to label you this way. But reflexively responding, "I'm NOT defensive!" will only be perceived as further evidence of your defensiveness. Remember that defensiveness is in the eye of the beholder, and the fact that you feel unfairly maligned has no bearing on the other person's belief in the validity of their perspective.

If you haven't heard this very often, it's a learning opportunity.

It's likely that the behaviors being perceived as "defensive" are the result of your surprise and disappointment at encountering an unexpected setback. If you've enjoyed sustained success in your career, this may be the first time that you've experienced a meaningful failure. And if you've rarely (or never) been called defensive before, you're learning that your responses to setbacks are perceived as problematic by this person at this moment. As challenging as it may seem, this presents you not only with an opportunity to transform setbacks into fruitful experiences [7], but also to accelerate your overall growth and development. [8]

If you've heard this repeatedly, take it very seriously.

Learning opportunities sometimes come at a cost, and being called defensive can be career-limiting if the label sticks. When I'm working with a client who's hiring to fill a role, I encourage them to test for defensiveness in the interview process because defensive people can have such a corrosive effect on company culture, and it's difficult if not impossible to get them to change. [9] If this person has perceived you as defensive multiple times, it's a signal to invest in your working relationship. [10] And if you've been called defensive at multiple points in your career, consider whether a failure to take responsibility is holding you back professionally. [11]

No matter what, it's feedback, and feedback is data.

Being called defensive is a form of feedback, and like much feedback, it can be stressful, confusing and unwelcome. As I've noted before, feedback isn't a "gift" that we should automatically express appreciation for, but it is potentially valuable data that merits investigation to assess its utility. [12] You're not obligated to agree with this feedback, nor are you required to take any particular action in response, but consider the extent to which you trust this person's judgment and value their opinion of you. Should you conclude that they're trustworthy and acting in good faith, thank them for taking the risk to speak up, and ask them to tell you more. [13]

 

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Footnotes

[1] For more on feedback and stress, see the following:

• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What to Do About It)

[2] The Tyranny of Feelings

[3] How Leaders Create Safety (and Danger)

[4] Talking About Feelings

[5] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[6] Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates)

[7] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

[8] Learning How to Learn

[9] Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates)

[10] Better Working Relationships

[11] The Trium Group on Responsibility

[12] Feedback Is Not a Gift

[13] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

 

Photo by West Point.

Learning How to Fall Behind

If you're like my clients, you're a highly capable professional with many accomplishments to your credit. In my experience people with that kind of track record tend to be ambitious--sustained success always involves some luck, but it's rarely an accident. To achieve big things you need big dreams, something Henry David Thoreau knew well: "In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high." [1]

But as an ambitious person you're prone to an occupational hazard: the sense that you're behind in some way. And this is no illusion--the power laws that govern the distribution of socio-economic goods dictate that the degree of inequality continues to increase the higher you climb those slippery ladders. [2] A consequence of this dynamic is that despite your success you may not feel successful, because you're comparing yourself to others who seem even more successful.

This can serve as a useful source of motivation because feeling behind may compel you to get ahead. And yet you must maintain a delicate balance--big goals and ambitious aspirations are necessary spurs to success, but left unchecked they lead to a constant sense of dissatisfaction and inadequacy. As psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has noted, "Immoderate aspirations are toxic to happiness. On the one hand, the more we attain, the happier we become. But, at the same time, the more we attain, the more we want, which negates the increased happiness." [3]

The sense that you're behind is a predictable function of social comparison, the psychological process through which you assess your achievements on a relative basis by comparing them to the achievements of your colleagues, competitors or peers. This is an unavoidable response, Lyubomirsky continues: "Social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly [and have] a profound effect not only on our evaluations of ourselves, but [also] on our moods and our emotional well-being." [4]

So what can you do about this? I suggest learning how to fall behind, and here are two exercises to practice cultivating that capacity:

When You're In the Grocery Store

(Or anyplace with multiple checkout lines.) Perhaps you got lucky, and your line's checkout clerk is the most efficient in the store. Or perhaps you got unlucky, and your clerk is a trainee on their first day. Or, more likely, there's a degree of randomness to the process, and sometimes you feel "ahead" and at other times you feel "behind." Unless there are exceptional circumstances--you're late to deliver a baby!--both of those feelings will be illusions, by-products of social comparison on an utterly meaningless metric.

When You're Stuck In Traffic

Your lane will move more quickly--and then more slowly--than the other lanes. It's unlikely that there's any meaningful difference in the outcome--every lane eventually reverts to the mean--but it will feel different as you watch traffic pass you by, or as you pass other drivers in turn. Again, unless there are exceptional circumstances--you're late to perform brain surgery!--these feelings will be illusory figments of your competitive drive.

In both of these cases--and in countless others I'm sure you experience on a regular basis--the task is to observe your feelings when you perceive that you're "ahead" or "behind" in some way, and to observe your subsequent behavior. The ultimate goal, of course, is to recognize how illusory such feelings are, no matter what the stakes, and to be more deliberate and intentional in your responses.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you give up your ambitions or settle for achievements that feel insubstantial. Winning offers many benefits over losing, and I want you (and my clients) to win, by any definition you choose. But in the process you're going to have to face a fundamental reality: The more you win, the higher you climb, the tougher the competition. If your definition of "winning" rests upon your ability to obtain "more" than the people around you in order to feel "ahead," you will eventually, inevitably lose.

I'm also not suggesting that you should opt out of conventional competitions and live like a monk--my clients haven't done so, nor have I. And yet it's important to recognize that the yardsticks most readily available to assess your accomplishments--net worth, job title, social prominence, where you live--serve many valid purposes, but they do not, and cannot, measure your sense of meaning and purpose, the depth of your relationships, the feeling of a life well-lived.

It's not necessary to stop striving to get ahead to life a good life. But when we're driven primarily by a fear of falling behind we direct disproportionate energy toward activities whose underlying purpose is easing anxiety. We allow socially-sanctioned yardsticks to determine whether we're "ahead" or "behind," whether we're "succeeding" or "failing," and neglect the development of our individual, internal standards of accomplishment. By all means, keep trying to get ahead. But don't live in fear of falling behind.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Walden, or Life in the Woods, page 344 in the Library of America's collected works (Henry David Thoreau, 1854 / 1985)

[2] For example, in the United States in 2021 household income for the top 10 percent was $212,000, while for the top 1 percent it was $570,000. Or in 2016 average wealth for the top 10 percent was $2.2 million, while for the top 1 percent it was $10.8 million, and for the top 0.1 percent it was over $50 million.

[3] The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, page 120 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

[4] Ibid, page 132.

 

For Further Reading

The Trap of Competition

Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better"

The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 8: SUCCESS

 

Photos: Grocery store by arbyreed. Traffic jam by Strolicfurlan.

Zooming Out and Zooming In

A theme in my work with leaders is "zooming out and zooming in." You zoom out to obtain a broader view, and you zoom in to perceive the details. You zoom out to consider alternative means of problem-solving, or whether a problem is worth your time and energy, or whether it's even a "problem" at all. You zoom in to narrow your field of vision, to focus your attention, and to make things happen.

This is easy to describe in the abstract and difficult to put into practice. It's hard to determine the right altitude in any given situation. It's hard to reach the right altitude once you've made that decision. And in the heat of the moment it can be hard to even remember that different altitudes exist. You mistakenly believe your immediate view is the only view, and you forget that you have a choice.

What helps? A starting point is reminding yourself that you do have a choice, that your current view is influenced but not dictated by situational factors, and that you have--and must exert--agency to select the altitude that will enable you to achieve your goals most effectively. In this effort haste and urgency are rarely your friends, which is one reason why the impulse to hurry should often be interpreted as a signal to slow down. [1]

But having paused to identify the right altitude, how do you get there? How do you zoom in and out as needed? There's no single step that works for everyone in all circumstances, but here are some practices to consider:

Zooming Out

Perspective

It's easy to get stuck at a low altitude when facing a challenge. Envisioning a set of circumstances other than your own and locating yourself in that environment can afford you an entirely new perspective. This is one reason to read history as well as fiction--the travails of others, real or imagined, can make your own difficulties pale in comparison. [2]

You can also transport yourself to a future when your current circumstances will likely feel less pressing or even irrelevant. Look out a week, a month, a year, a decade--what do you think your most significant concerns will be at that point in time? Read an obituary and remember that you're mortal. Or simply bear in mind that in five billion years our Sun will become a red giant and engulf the Earth entirely. [3]

Transcendence

You can be so intensely attached to your subjective experience that you operate under the illusion that you're the "center of the world." [4] This aspect of human psychology benefits the species--when the self is so highly esteemed, self-preservation is of paramount importance. But it also makes it harder to transcend the self, to reach outside and beyond yourself in order to connect with something larger. [5]

All spiritual traditions offer a path to transcendence, which is one of the most important functions of a belief structure. [6] Time in nature and exposure to meaningful works of art can also trigger a sense of awe and wonder. But don't wait for a special occasion, such as a holy day, or a museum visit, or a trip to the Grand Canyon. There is magic in the mundane, when we're willing to see it.

Humility

Faced with a given situation, you rapidly construct an "explanatory narrative"--a story that you rely upon to make sense of what's happening and take appropriate action in response. Under most circumstances, your narratives are sufficiently accurate to enable you to make good choices, but not always. This isn't a character flaw--it's a predictable cognitive bias.

When you're feeling stuck at a low altitude, it's helpful to adopt a stance that philosophers describe as "epistemic humility," a heightened awareness of the limitations of one's knowledge. More specifically, remember that your explanatory narrative at any given moment is based on incomplete data, and there's almost certainly more to the story. [7]

 

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Zooming In

Feelings

This refers both to emotions and to literal feelings--the physiological sensations that often precede or accompany your conscious awareness of an emotional state. Feelings aren't always accurate or justified, of course, and in some circumstances they're reliably "noisy signals." But being more attuned to your emotions can help you determine what merits your attention in a given situation and reach the appropriate altitude.

To be very clear, emotions are not unerring guides to right action, but they serve as "discriminant hedonic amplifiers," in psychologist Victor Johnston's phrase, enabling us to identify potential opportunities and threats while filtering out less relevant data. [8] The key is cultivating a capacity for emotion regulation, improving your ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what you're feeling. [9]

Focus

To achieve their intended purpose, emotions act as "attention magnets" by interrupting conscious thought and making it difficult to think of anything else. [10] This is a "feature" for the species that contributed to our ancestors' survival, but as individuals we often experience it as a "bug." Having leveraged your feelings to drop down to the right altitude, the next step is filtering out distractions in order to stay there.

This entails the ability to focus for sustained periods of time. You can enhance your capacity for focused thought by pursuing a mindfulness practice, among other techniques. [11] But it's equally important to observe your working environment, identify sources of distraction, and mitigate them, even if just on a temporary basis. [12]

Progress

As the great management thinker Peter Drucker noted, "Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." [13] Zooming out helps you identify "the right things," while zooming in helps you "do things right." But particularly when you're in a leadership role, zooming in is a costly expenditure of attention, so it's essential to ensure that your time spent at this altitude is productive.

A dilemma is that you may confuse motion with progress, particularly if you're a new leader who was only recently an individual contributor, or if you're leading at scale (or leading leaders) for the first time. [14] Early in your career, or in the initial stages of your company's development, there may have been little difference between motion and progress--you just needed to get busy and keep at it. But eventually progress isn't measured by how many fires you put out, but by how many smoke detectors you've installed. [15]

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Importance of Slowing Down

[2] For example, in Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Richard Henry Dana recounts his time at sea as a common sailor in the 1830s. On a voyage from California to Boston they rounded Cape Horn during the coldest months of the year, and Dana and his fellow seamen had to climb the rigging in the middle of freezing storms to furl the sails:

When we got upon the yard, my hands were so numb that I could not have cast off the knot of the gasket to save my life. We both lay over the yard for a few seconds, beating our hands upon the sail, until we started the blood into our fingers' ends... Mittens, too, we wore on deck, but it would not do to go aloft with them on, for it was impossible to work with them, and, being wet and stiff, they might let a man slip overboard, for all the hold he could get upon a rope; so, we were obliged to work with bare hands, which, as well as our faces, were often cut with the hail-stones, which fell thick and large. [pages 284, 290]

Or consider The Naked and the Dead (1948) Norman Mailer's novel about a island campaign in the Pacific theater during World War II, a story informed by Mailer's own experiences as an Army private. At one point a platoon is tasked with wheeling a set of artillery guns through the jungle by hand at night:

They had reached that state of fatigue in which everything was hated. A man would slip in the mud and remain there, breathing hoarsely, having no will to get to his feet. That part of the column would halt, and wait numbly for the soldier to join them... And they would labor forward a few more yards and halt. In the darkness, distance had no meaning, nor did time. The heat had left their bodies; they shivered and trembled in the damp night, and everything about them was sodden and pappy; they stank, but no longer with animal smells; their clothing was plastered with the foul muck of the jungle mud... [pages 138-39]

[3] Why the Sun Won't Become a Black Hole (Sara Frazier, NASA, 2019)

[4] We're Not the Center of the World (But We Think We Are)

[5] My favorite resource on transcendence is Character Strengths and Virtues, the 2004 volume by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman that encompasses the research underlying the Values in Action Survey of Character Strengths. (See chapters 23-27.) In the VIA framework the overarching virtue of transcendence can be achieved through many different paths: appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor and spirituality:

At first glance, our final grouping of character strengths seems mixed, but the common theme running through these strengths of transcendence is that each allows individuals to forge connections to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning to their lives. Almost all of the positive traits in our classification reach outside the individual--character, after all, is social in nature--but in the case of the transcendence strengths, the reaching goes beyond other people per se to embrace all or part of the larger universe. [page 519]

[6] "A compelling reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship...is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things...then you will never have enough... Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly... Worship power--you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful--it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings... And the so-called 'real world' will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the so-called 'real world' of men and money and power hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self." This Is Water, David Foster Wallace (2005)

[7] Seeing What Isn't There (The Importance of Missing Data)

[8] Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions, page 156 (Victor Johnston, 2000)

[9] The Tyranny of Feelings

[10] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[11] Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

[12] How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work) and The Most Productive People Know Who to Ignore

[13] Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, page 44 (Peter Drucker, 1974 /1993)

[14] Confusing Motion with Progress

[15] The Problem with Fighting Fires

 

Photos: Night sky by GPA Photo Archive. Magnifying glass by Flood G.