Crack The Behavior Code

What makes us who we are? What drives our behavior? These questions are key when we want to change a repeated and ineffective behavior pattern in either ourselves or in someone we care about.

Since behavior is driven by beliefs and identity, how do we change--or upgrade--both?

As a neuroscience-based executive coach I’ve invested 30 years of my life studying this, and helping leaders at all levels to modify their behavior in order to get what they want, grow their businesses, have happier more productive teams and more fulfilling lives.

How do you understand your experiences?

First, we need to understand how humans have experiences, and how human experience is structured. Here’s how it works:

What we call “thinking” is actually a series of pictures, sounds, and feelings that go by at light speed in our brains and create meaning.

We see the world around us as we experience it and then we internally store these pictures, or images, to craft our experience. Think of your favorite place in your home. Chances are good you just called up a picture. We’ll call these Visuals, or Vs, in neuro-shorthand. Sometimes our brain distorts the stored picture (V) to give it a different meaning. Maybe we don’t want the intensity of a stored picture so we store it in black and white rather than color, or our brain wants to scare us from repeating a dangerous situation so we store it in lurid color.

Additionally when we have or recall an experience our brains hear sounds, which can be tones or words and can be either outside of ourselves (existing in the environment) or inside of ourselves (talking to ourselves, hearing an old soundtrack…). Think of the last time you made a mistake and internally said “I can’t believe I did that! Sheesh!” That’s an internal soundtrack. Think of the sound of a rotary phone ringing, that’s a tonal memory. We’ll call these sounds Auditory input, or As, in neuro-shorthand.

The visual and auditory experiences lead to feelings, or kinesthetic (Ks in neuro-shorthand) responses. From these Vs, As, and the generated Ks, we make meaning about the world, other people, situations and about ourselves. The decisions we make about these experiences formulate beliefs. Beliefs about ourselves are called identity.

How Does Behavior Happen?

Our beliefs about the world, others, situations and ourselves drive our behavior.

Let’s say you walk into a conference room you’ve never been in before to do a high stakes presentation, and the phone on the table rings. Your brain already probably has conference room pictures and you instantly associate that ring tone (trigger) with a stored picture of another conference room (different time, different place) where you totally rocked a presentation and your boss happened to call midway through (the ring tone) and was thrilled to hear about it. The external trigger (hearing the telephone in the conference room) created a whole series of stored internal Vs and As that lead to a whopping great positive K and the belief “My boss is awesome! I am awesome too!” So you’ve never been in that room before, and you were a little nervous, but all you know is now you feel great and you really like that phone.

The sound of the telephone in that setting is an “anchor” for you to experience confidence and create positive meaning for yourself.

Vs (image of phone in conference room) + As (ring tone) = Ks (confidence)

Leads to -> Beliefs (“My boss is awesome!”) -> Identity (“I am awesome” is a belief about self so leads to an overall confident and competent professional identity.)

What makes this really interesting is that we can create those reference experiences and associate them with something (anchor them to something—a space, a sound, a touch…) and create the meaning we would like to create.

Cool huh?

Why  Do We Repeat Behaviors--Both Bad and Good?

Every day, all day, we are having experiences, creating meaning and forming new or reinforcing old beliefs, forging a new or reinforcing our current identity. And we are doing this with the people in our lives too.

Let’s experience this. In a moment I want you to close your eyes and recall a positive memory, a time when you had a positive experience. Do this now, and open your eyes when the experience is super clear…

In your positive memory what did you see? Hear (outside or inside yourself—like yourself saying “This is awesome!”)? Feel? What did you decide (believe) about the world/others/situation? What did you decide about yourself (your identity--beliefs about yourself)?

Example: perhaps you recalled a recent team meeting:

• In it you saw [Vs] everyone gathered around the table, excited, alert, ready to roll.
• You heard people [As] making suggestions, brainstorming, making commitments. Inside you said “this is great—I love meetings like this. We’re making progress.”
• You felt [Ks] powerful, optimistic, positive.
• You believed these are the right people in the right roles.
• Your identity that you were successful, you were a good leader, you were adding value was reinforced.

Note that the Behavior can also start first—for example an external trigger (flame email, etc.) happens then you launch into a behavior routine (getting irritated OR choosing to feel compassion for the angry person) and a reward follows (feeling self-righteous OR feeling proud of your ability to not get sucked into their anger).

For the next week please start to notice what associations you have with places and people. What feelings (Ks) do you get from certain sounds (As) and certain visuals (Vs). What meaning do you make from the experience of the resulting positive or negative feeling (K+ or K-) and what does that cause you to do?

Resources Mentioned:

• VAK Anchoring Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/vak-anchoring/

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Maslow was right.

As you probably know, once we have food and shelter, but before we can seek self-actualization—the Smart State—we must feel safety, belonging and mattering. Without these three essential keys a person cannot get in their Smart State—they cannot perform, innovate, feel emotionally engaged, agree, move forward.

What Do You Crave?

Safety, belonging, and mattering are essential to your brain and your ability to perform at work, at home, and in life overall. The greater the feeling of safety, both emotional and physical so we can take risks; the greater the feeling of connection with others, or the feeling that we’re in this together and we belong together; the greater the feeling that we personally matter and make a difference and are contributing to the greater good; then the greater the success of the company, the relationship, the family, the team, the individual.

In every communication, in every conflict, we are subconsciously either reinforcing or begging for safety, belonging, mattering or a combination.

It’s neurological… it’s primal… there is nothing you can do to override or change this subterranean subconscious programming as much as you may try.

Safety means creating an environment where we can take risks and stretch and grow. Is it safe to take risks at your company?

Belonging means creating an environment where we all feel like a tight-knit tribe, we’re all equal and we’re rowing in the same direction to reach our goals. Think about gangs—where people will literally kill to stay in the tribe. That’s how powerful this stuff is.

Mattering means each of us contributes individually in a unique way. We all make a difference. We’re appreciated and publicly acknowledged. Does your company culture work this way?

As a leader, and as a human, you must identify whether it is safety and or belonging and or mattering that is most important to the people in your life… and then do everything you can to satisfy that subterranean subconscious need.

Safety + belonging + mattering = TRUST.

This means leaders must behave in ways that make employees feel that they are safe, that they belong, and that they matter. Doing so will help shift them out of their fear-driven Critter State (where all decisions are based on what they perceive will help them survive) and into their Smart State (where they can innovate, collaborate, feel emotionally engaged, and move the company forward).

This isn’t just true of employees. It’s true of clients, associates, spouses, friends, children.  At our emotional core, we all want safety, belonging and mattering. To influence anyone, we must influence emotionally.

The art (and science) of influence is more complex than can be fully explained here. However, I can share a few insights that may help you better open people up to their Smart State.

How can you get it?

How do you boost the experience of safety, belonging, mattering within your company? Do what my super successful clients do--deliver safety, belonging, mattering through your behavior and communication. Here are behavior examples:

• Engaging Mission, Vision, Values – draws people together for a greater cause, helps us see where we’re headed together, sets our “code of conduct” as a tribe
• Individual Development Plans – shows how we matter and belong here, how our company sees us as a long term investment (we’re safe)
• Cultural Rituals: Rock Star, High Fives, Shout Outs, Public Appreciation – reinforces mattering and tribal customs (safety, belonging)
• Transparency: Accountability Structures, Open Communication, Fairness – we’re safe, belong, matter since we know where the performance “bar” is and how to jump over it

Here are communication examples. These are especially helpful when a person is in their Critter State and we want to help them feel safe enough to shift out of it. For this we use three influencing phrases:

1.   “What if”: When you use this preface to an idea/suggestion, you remove ego and reduce emotion. You’re curious—not forcing a position, but scratching your head and pondering. This enables someone to brainstorm more easily with you.

2.   “I need your help”: We call this a dom-sub swap, because when the dominant person uses it, they are enrolling the subordinate person and asking them to rise up and swap roles. This is an especially effective phrase when you want a person to change their behavior or take on more responsibility.

3.   “Would it be helpful if”: When someone is stuck in their Critter State and spinning or unable to move forward, offering up a solution will help them see a possible course of action or positive outcome.

Do you see how all three reinforce safety, belonging, mattering?

Every employee, every family member, can be happier and more effective if you simply identify which of these three needs are programmed into their subconscious so powerfully that they literally crave them. Which do you crave? Which do the most important people in your life crave?

Resources Mentioned:

• SBM Decoder Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/sbm-decoder/
• STI Maslow pyramid: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5lmh2lrfh2ezzgw/STI%20Maslow.jpg?dl=0
• STI Feedback Frame Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-feedback-frame/

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Here’s the counterintuitive secret of developing more executive presence. Stop worrying about how you are perceived. Take the focus off yourself, your image and put it on what’s important in that moment. Focus. Increase your ability to listen, to really be with who you’re with (no matter what) and to get on their map. Increase your sense of purpose and use it to keep your High Value-added Activities (HVAs) prioritized.

Focus, it’s that simple. You know what’s great about this secret? It’s skill based. And that means anyone can learn it. The first step - seek first to understand.

Think about being with the worst teacher you ever had. Most likely they stood at the front of the room and lectured. One of the worst teachers I had used to spend the class time writing her outline notes on the blackboard and reading them as she wrote in a monotone voice. Seriously. She spent the entire class with her back to us. Influential? I think not. Unless you count having the class learn to hate history.

Now think of the best teacher you had. Chances are they engaged you in the subject. They asked you questions and made you think. One of my best high school teachers used to act out passages from the novels we were reading and engaged us in his mini-dramas. He risked looking like an idiot and ended up looking like a genius. We all vied to participate in his class and students who hadn’t liked English Literature before that year suddenly blossomed into literati.

Who had more executive presence, your worst teacher or your best?

I’m guessing it was the best teacher. Executive presence is not a term I would normally ascribe to teachers, but a teacher who does seriously dorky things to get their students fired up about a topic is going to be exuding purpose and passion. Their focus is on their students, calibrating their learning and understanding by the questions they ask. The worst teachers are too afraid of how they’ll appear to do anything risky. They focus on their own need to feel smart and they focus on their own content output rather than how the information is received and where the student is.

The principle is the same in leading a business.

The key is to getting on other people’s maps. It turns out that taking the time to listen and build rapport by meeting people where they are is the most influential thing you can do.

Your executive presence will increase dramatically when you focus on staying in inquiry mode even, or especially, when you think you know the answer. And no leading questions either, stay curious.

How Can You Start Leading On Purpose?

Who do you know that’s on fire? Who do you know that really embodies your ideal of leadership?

What do they stand for? I’ll bet you know immediately or can take a pretty accurate guess.

Prioritizing is a lot easier when you know what you stand for and are excited about your purpose. It’s easier to delegate when you know that you’re freeing your time for something that only you can do, your High Value-added Activities (HVAs). It’s easier to delegate also when you’re clear on the HVAs of your team. Remember, your Low Value-added Activity (LVA) is someone else’s HVA.

• What do you stand for?
• Where do you draw boundaries of what you will and will not do–how you spend your time and with whom?
• How does that contribute to fulfilling your organization’s mission, vision, and values?

Take a few moments to really answer those questions.

Clarity of purpose is the embodied state that allows you to effectively stay in inquiry mode and be present. Clarity of purpose is the most effective criteria for deciding what is an HVA and what is an LVA. Clarity of purpose creates focus, and focus creates executive presence.

Go to it!

Resources Mentioned:

• HVA/LVA Tutorial: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8vf7300q09vhi9/HVA%20and%20LVA%20Tutorial.pdf?dl=0
• 15 Phrases That Make Leaders Look Weak infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/15-phrases-that-make-leaders-look-weak/
• Energetic Weight infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/energetic-weight/

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Do people respect you?

Respect is often defined as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. The key word is elicited. Our actions and the outcomes we create are directly proportional to the amount of respect we think we should have and the amount of respect we think we should receive. While you can’t control or make your boss respect you, you do have the power to work towards earning that respect based on the outcomes you achieve, your attitude and other elements that I will discuss here shortly.

When working with my executive coaching clients, the subject of respect comes up frequently. Either they are challenged with not feeling respected or they feel that they have been disrespected by an individual higher up on the organizational chart. We discuss what respect means to them, how they feel it should be demonstrated and break down what meaning they are making around their boss’ words and actions. If they are looking to stand up, stand out and earn the respect of their boss, I walk them through six proven ways that will ensure they gain and keep respect in their organization.

1. Communicate Effectively And Often: Communication ensures alignment and connection. Any challenge can be resolved with authentic heart-felt communication. When in doubt, over-communicate so that your boss knows what’s going on and everyone knows what is expected and what is needed. Concise communication raises your status, saves everyone time, and moves the ball forward. Communication creates visibility and transparency—both of which help your boss make better decisions.

2. Model Integrity: Make your word your bond. Honor confidentiality. Keep your commitments, communicate in advance if you are going to be late and always be a reliable trusted team member. Ensure that your boss doesn’t need to check in on you by consistently delivering on time and per your commitment. Walk your walk and talk your talk. Focus on details and deliver accurate work.

3. Reflect Consistently: Make time to reflect on yourself, the clients, the company so that you learn how to improve and serve others best. Identify behaviors you want to shift and seek the support you need. If things aren’t going as you want, look into how you created the breakdown. Then fix it. Lessons are when we learn once. Mistakes are when we continuously repeat the same blunder. Avoid this at all costs.

4. Be An Active Contributor: You are here to make a difference, to be of service to all you interact with, both inside and outside of your company . Be proactive, take initiative, bring solutions and never wait for someone to tell you what to do – anticipate and make a difference. Add value far beyond the scope of what you are paid for. The result? You’ll be a valued tribe member and get promoted. Again and again.

5. Continuously Learn And Raise Your Bar: Be a continuous learner. Be committed to growing and stretching into new definitions of yourself and your capabilities. Accept feedback as an opportunity to grow, and then implement the learning you have received. Get excited about what you could do and become with new skills that you take action to cultivate.

6. Be Optimistic And Energetic: Bring great energy and passion to your work. Don’t think of your position as a job, think of it as a mission, an opportunity to transform and support people who support and transform others. The result of your passion is a better world/company/experience for all. If you continuously demonstrate that making a difference in the lives of others is important and meaningful to you you’ll go far.

The key is to model the above behaviors consistently, this isn’t a “one and done” formula. Your values and your efforts will be recognized in your organization and by your boss. Remember, you can’t make someone respect you. You can make consistent effort to earn respect and at the end of the day, the person whose respect you need the most, is your own.

Resources Mentioned:

• Outcome Frame Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/outcome-frame/
• 6 Phrases For Better Communication Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-6-phrases-for-better-communication-skills/
• 15 Phrases That Make Leaders Look Weak: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/15-phrases-that-make-leaders-look-weak/
• STI How To Build Your SmartTribe Roadmap Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-smarttribe-roadmap/

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“What’s your greatest fear?” I asked Bill Gates one night, over Tom Yum Gai.

“Easy—not getting smarter.”

Bill then laid out his plan to ensure he’d always be surrounded by super smart people.

Maybe he didn’t know about myelin. 

What’s The Smarter Secret?

Let’s assume “smarter” means making better choices, getting more of what you want and less of what you don’t. Let’s assume “smarter” means learning things faster, having more “ah ha” moments, breaking through mental barriers swiftly and with deep fulfillment.

Here’s how it works.

Roughly half of your brain is made of grey matter (where neural pathways are forged and reside) and the other half is made of white matter. More on this in a moment. First it’s key to know that neurons that fire together, wire together. This means to learn something new, to set a new habit in place, repetition is required. When you practice something deeply, intentionally, and with some element struggle a neural pathway is formed. Neurons are now firing together in a new sequence, and thus are wiring together as a collective. Repeated firing signals that this neural pathway is important. Repeated firing with deep practice and either struggle or ecstasy, alerts oligodendrocytes and astrocytes that this pathway needs to be upgraded, or insulated, and the process of myelination begins.

The newly forged and repeatedly fired neural pathway is then insulated like an electrical wire wrapped in a protective coating. This pathway (grey matter) is strengthened via the myelin (white matter) insulation and it is transformed from the equivalent of dial up to broadband. Heavily myelinated neural pathways are up to 300 times faster—they’ve been optimized for speed and efficiency. They’ve also become the default behavior, as the brain will choose the most highly myelinated pathways (because clearly they are the most important). This is how we form new automatic behaviors, also known as habits or habitual behavior choices.

What Einstein Did

When Einstein’s brain was autopsied in 1984 record amounts of myelin were found. Does it mean he was smarter than most? Not necessarily. Does it mean he persevered, failed, keep pushing forward with deep focused practice? Yes.

I’ve been using the understanding of myelin and the myelination process with my executive coaching clients for the past year. The results have been remarkable:

Anxiety Removal: The COO of a $500mil consumer packaged goods company did 3 neuro-coaching sessions over a period of 6 weeks. Then I gave her myelination homework. One month later she no longer suffered debilitating anxiety. It’s still gone 6 months later. This high-functioning CEO had suffered in silence for 47 years.

Managing Emotions: A senior partner at a Fortune 100 financial services firm regularly got triggered by backstabbing and political maneuvers when dealing with some difficult partners that he couldn’t avoid. He would get highly irritated, affecting his ability to be present, collaborative, and to lead the team to the best outcome. We did 4 neuro coaching sessions on this topic, plus myelination homework. He now navigates shark-infested waters with ease, diplomacy and even a little humor.

Increased Vision and Innovation: The head of an R&D lab was stuck. He hadn’t had a good idea in ages and the pressure was on, which only made matters worse. Three months of coaching and a few weeks of myelination practice and he has now designed three new products, with one already having pre-orders exceeding $100mil.

Now you know the secret: let’s start myelinating. To myelinate properly you must do 3 things:

1. Persevere through the uncomfortable part of learning/stretching to try a new behavior

2. Do it repeatedly in intense (and short is ok) bursts. Repetition is key—myelin is living tissue: if you stop firing a pathway for 30 days the myelin will start to break down.

3. See, hear, feel yourself doing the new behavior. Really get into it. Feel the good feelings, be totally in that desired state. Remember what Einstein said: “Imagination is everything—it is the preview of coming attractions.”

Imagination results in firing, repeated firing results in myelination. Observing someone who is excellent at a behavior you want to acquire/grow also helps myelination.

Innovators and thought leaders refuse to be socialized into reasonableness—don’t you cave either!

Neuroscientists worldwide are increasingly studying myelin and its amazing impact on rapid learning, mastery, neuroplasticity.

Keep your circuits strong with deep focused practice—myelination requires quality vs quantity. I ask clients to do the myelination practice I design for them for 5 days in a row, 5 times per day, for only a few minutes each. For a gold star they can do it for 10 days. What I find in coaching some of the top performers on the planet is that forging new—or turbo charging existing—pathways that are heavily insulated (myelinated) and which then become the default behavior pathway is what matters.

What new behaviors would you like?

Resources Mentioned:

• Myelination Graphic found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2014/11/07/the-truth-about-how-your-brain-gets-smarter/#3cd5aa4719bc
• Guarantee Growth: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2013/12/04/pleasure-profit-thrill-your-team-and-guarantee-growth-infographic/#623033eb5395
• Myelination Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/myelination-practice/

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When we stop our thoughts, we stop the world. When we stop the world we experience peace and mental clarity.

According to the research of Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University, a human being has approximately 60,000 thoughts per day—and 90% of these are repetitive!

60,000. Wow.

90% repetitive. Wow. Wow. Wow.

All that mental noise... if even 10% of it were stopped, what could you create, understand, see, more clearly?

Let’s find out.

We have repetitive thoughts because we haven’t trained our minds to be still. When we do we’ll see results quickly, and when you stop your thoughts you will find all of the answers you seek.

Here are some practices I’ve shared with countless executives over the past three decades. To date, one of them has resonated with every person I’ve met. If you are the exception, let me know, and I’ll offer more practices.

All of these practices are helpful for insomnia too. Simply do them in bed, instead of staring at the ceiling, as you are lying awake.

Pre-Practice Prep

Turn off all phones/noise makers. Ensure your family/colleagues/etc. cannot disturb you. Sit up straight, whether in a chair or cross-legged. You may want to set a timer for 5 minutes. If you simply do silence practice daily for only 5 minutes you will see and feel a difference in mere days.

Practice #1: News Feed

Imagine a news feed across the bottom of a TV screen. There’s a bit of news, then some white space, then more news, and so on. Your thoughts are like the news. There’s always more! Now consider the white space between the thoughts. In Japanese, the word ma is loosely translated to mean pause--the pause between notes, the pause between breaths, the pause between sentences, the pause between thoughts.

Close your eyes. Place your inner focus on the constant stream of thoughts scrolling across the TV of your mind. See the scrolling thoughts floating in space or across a TV screen, whatever image works for you.

Don’t pay attention to the thoughts in detail. Let them scroll by. Do not cling to them or reject them. Now focus on the space between the thoughts, the ma, the pause. As you focus on the white space between the thoughts you’ll find it getting wider, longer, bigger. In time you’ll see mostly emptiness, with few if any thoughts.

Focusing on ma, pause, emptiness, is a nice practice during the day, too. Stop and notice open space as conversations pause, as music pauses. We are surrounded by pauses. That’s where some of the best stuff is. We often fill our minds and schedules out of fear of emptiness. Yet emptiness is where true peace and connectedness and happiness and love can always be found.

Practice #2: Light Shower

Close your eyes. See yourself with your inner vision. You’re sitting exactly where you are, dressed as you are. You are watching yourself. Move your focus to the top of your head. See a shower of white light pouring down over your head, covering your body gradually. Keep watching it pour over you as it covers you entirely, covers your outfit, your fingers, your face, your shoes or toes. It covers your front and back sides.

You can no longer distinguish your features, you simply see an image of you made of white light. This is the light of the Divine, the Universe, whatever term or energy resonates with you. This light is always available to you, all you need to do is remember to tune in to the light shower.

When thoughts arise, let them pass, do not cling to them or reject them. Simply focus on the light shower covering you completely. Now see it soak into every cell of your body.

This is a terrific technique to do midday if you feel tired or upset.

Practice #3: Heart Opening

Say “me” and touch your chest. If you do this a few times you’ll notice you always touch the same area. This is the position of your spiritual heart, or your heart center (or chakra).

Close your eyes. Place your inner focus on your heart center. See a rose bud there, choose whatever color you like. Now see the petals slowly unfolding in your heart center. This rose bud has an infinite amount of petals. See them unfolding as the rose gets bigger and bigger, filling up your chest. Keep focusing on the rose unfolding.

When thoughts arise, let them pass, do not cling to them or reject them. Simply focus on the rose unfolding.

Practice #4: Brain Dump

Back in the mainframe computing days a “core dump” was when the memory and all buffers were “dumped” or emptied. The result was pages and pages of gibberish as the buffers were flushed.

Doing a “core dump” of your mind can be helpful when you have a constant swirl of thoughts. Here’s how to do it:

1) Get in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Turn off phones/etc. Have a piece of paper and pen ready.

2) Light a candle and ask for the highest good for yourself and all beings.

3) Set a timer for 20 minutes.

4) Now start writing about any issue you are obsessing about, want to clear from your mind, want to understand or be free from, have a question about. Just write, unedited and unpunctuated. When the sheet is full, turn it over, then on upside down, on its side, etc. You will not be reading this later, so there’s no point in using more than 1 sheet of paper. The only purpose is to keep writing until the timer sounds.

5) When the time is up, either burn the paper or tear it up and flush it down the toilet. Wash your hands and change your physiology (jump up and down for a moment, roll shoulders, etc.).

Practice #5: Watch Kung Fu Panda 2

Seriously, sometimes you just need a movie to learn about the value of inner peace. Watch this one. It's fun, colorful, and teaches the importance of inner peace!

Every highly accomplished leader I know learns to stop the world and to stop their thoughts, on command. This is one of the best ways to make key decisions, to determine if a competitive action is truly a threat, to see future products, to assess the current state of a person who is struggling.

How do you stop the world?

Resources Mentioned:

• Beyond Your Brain Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/beyond-your-brain-infographic/
• Dr. Fred Luskin: https://vpge.stanford.edu/people/fred-luskin
• Link to previous podcast episode: Why Mindfulness & Meditation Matter In Leadership: https://shows.acast.com/crack-the-behavior-code/episodes/mindfulness-meditation-leadership

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What if 20 more minutes of sleep could boost your work performance 2-3x?

Would you get it?

Everywhere I go people tell me they’re not getting enough sleep. As an executive coach it’s key that I help my clients perform at their peak—sleep deprived or not. Recently I met with Dr. Jessica Payne, Cognitive Neuroscientist & Assistant Professor at Notre Dame. Payne specializes in sleep and how it affects stamina and our ability to perform. Here’s what I learned.

The amount of sleep you need is highly personal, and ranges between 4 and 12 hours per night, although the average is 8. Most of us fall asleep within about 20 minutes. During the first part of the nightly sleep cycle is where, we get most of our Slow Wave Sleep, which is deep, physically rejuvenating, and hard to wake up from.

We need both SWS and REM for the proverbial “good night’s sleep.” Yet our REM state gets short-changed when we have to wake up too soon—and what I call REM Rip Off occurs. And this, my friends, is where the trouble begins.

What Happens When Your REM is Ripped Off?

Here are the signs of REM Rip Off: irritability, excessive focus on the negative/inability to see the positive/glass half empty/general crabbiness and less ability to enjoy life.

Why? Because your Hippocampus and Anterior Cingulate Cortex (part of the Prefrontal Cortex where creativity, planning, problem solving, innovation reside) are more active during REM. These essential parts of your brain put the brakes on, and regulate, emotions. So in REM Rip Off, these parts of the brain can’t do their job very well. The result is your Amygdala becomes overactive (since the emotional brakes aren’t on) and you’re more grumpy, unhappy and prone to only remembering the negative.

A full night’s sleep improves your ability to regulate emotions. Period.

The Solution = Stamina Boosters

Here are three strategies:

1-Get 20 More Minutes Sleep

Payne suggests that adding a mere 20 minutes more sleep per night can boost performance at work 2-3 times. Wow. How can you get 20 more minutes? Go to bed earlier, sleep later, take a 20 minute power nap, or perhaps even use what she calls a “sleep proxy” (mindfulness practice/meditation, reflective walking or another offline period during restful wakefulness). A 10-20 minute nap is tremendously effective too--just be sure to stop at 20 minutes to avoid sliding into Slow Wave Sleep (where you’re in deep sleep and will feel groggy upon waking).

2-Moderate Stress

Chronic stress results in your body cranking out cortisol, which is toxic to brain cells. Excessive stress may also shrink your Hippocampus and make your Amygdala hyperactive (grrrrrr). In escalated stress we focus on negative memories too. One solution is to activate your parasympathetic system with a 5 minute visualization (check out the link in the show notes to see one our favorites) or relaxation exercise, short walk, burst of exercise, or breathing exercises. All are likely to build neural tissue.

3-Boost Positive Emotions

More positive emotions will boost your stamina too. Watching funny movies, frequent laughter, doing nice things for others, all help. Here’s a quick way to forge a positive neural pathway around gratitude through our Gratitude Process. 

Close your eyes. Focus on a blessing in your life… something you are thankful for. See an image of this blessing in your mind’s eye. Offer a silent “thank you” to the person or object of your blessing. Relax into the feeling of gratitude. Take a deep breath. Feel more gratitude.

Brain research (from UCLA) shows that six doses of feeling 30 seconds of gratitude daily (a whopping 3 minutes!) will enable your neurons to fire together and wire together around gratitude within a mere 2 weeks. This means you’ll more easily and frequently access the feeling of gratitude.

I did this process for 2 weeks and found I was internally saying “thank you” as I awoke each morning. So if you must be sleep deprived, use one of Payne’s strategies above, and bask in the benefits.

Resources Mentioned:

Vision+ Gratitude Process combined video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BPjPLWNfHk

Got Inner Peace? https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2012/04/04/got-inner-peace-5-ways-to-get-it-now

Beyond Your Brain Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/beyond-your-brain-infographic/

Get Horizontal Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/get-horizontal/

Dr. Jessica Payne: https://psychology.nd.edu/faculty/jessica-payne/

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As a leadership and culture coach, I’m often asked: what is the hardest part about being a CEO? Although as a CEO you get to shape a company in your image, hire people to work with you, and receive recognition for your accomplishments…

…It’s also incredibly lonely.

CEOs claim the biggest leadership challenge they face in their roles is not having anyone to confide in. Given the overwhelming responsibility and pressure to appear calm for employees, to consistently deliver results and to be where the proverbial buck stops, it’s no wonder CEOs have a tendency to isolate themselves.

And it’s a problem.

The Loneliness Dilemma

According to the Harvard Business Review, half of CEOs express feelings of loneliness, 61% of which believe loneliness hinders their job performance. The office environment is intense enough… But then there’s the media.

CEOs are now seen as public figures, more so than they ever used to be. In 2015, Fast Company published an article comparing the best and worst leaders, with CEOs making both sides of the list. Then Business Insider joined the conversation and detailed the worst American CEOs of all time.

Unfortunately, technology has blurred the lines between private and public life. Feeling a strong lack of privacy contributes to deeper feelings of isolation… And that’s not good for the brain. 

Loneliness can make you sick. How? It’s been proven that social isolation affects behavior and brain operation. Isolation and loneliness trigger that fight-or-flight response, which can lead to ill health and even death. Loneliness can affect your sleep patterns, stress hormones, and even the production of white blood cells. It’s crucial to learn how to overcome these feelings of loneliness at work so you can be healthier and work more efficiently.

Here are my top 3 tips for overcoming the leadership challenge of loneliness as a CEO.

1. Join A Support Group

Support groups for CEOs are on the rise. Many of our clients find Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) to be terrific networking communities as well as support systems, as many of them are facing the same leadership challenge of loneliness.

Joining a support group will give you the safety, belonging, mattering you crave in a community of those who are similar to you, and aren’t afraid to give you some tough love and honest feedback. Forming connections with others also strongly alleviates stress. People with strong social ties live longer and have better mental health than those who feel isolated and lonely.

2. Balance Work And Home Life

As a CEO, it can be impossible to ever feel ‘done’ with work. When work begins taking over all aspects of your life, it can be difficult to have time to form crucial social connections. There are a few ways you can cultivate a balance between your work and personal life.

Leave the Office Before Dark: Leaders like Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Spencer Rascoff (Zillow), and Hiroshi Lockheimer (Google) all make an effort to be home for dinner. They say it gives them more time to spend with their families and allows them to create boundaries between work and home life.

Stay Present: Do you ever find yourself not entirely present in the moment? Your mind can wander anywhere, from a business meeting to the family dinner table. Sometimes, creating a necessary balance can be as simple as staying in the moment.

3. Vulnerability Is Actually Strength

What would it look like to allow yourself to be vulnerable? To Swiss Life’s Patrick Frost, the ability to be vulnerable means not being afraid to show weakness. In fact, Frost believes weakness is important in a business setting because it fosters discussion about key problems. CEOs lead by example… Letting your team know you’re open to discussing important issues will make them feel more comfortable coming to you.

Start by being in touch with how you feel at any given time.

Allowing others into your personal world cultivates trust and respect, and is the perfect solution to loneliness. If you’re confiding in others, and letting them really see you, you’re breaking that barrier of isolation that comes with the job title.

The Net-net

It’s lonely at the top — but it doesn’t have to be. Let people in, confide in support groups, and take time to yourself to reconnect with those most important to you.

Resources mentioned:

• Harvard Business Review research: https://hbr.org/2012/02/its-time-to-acknowledge-ceo-lo
• Science Daily research: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090215151800.htm
• Emotion Wheel: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/emotion-wheel/
• Stress/Change/Isolation Infographic:https://smarttribesinstitute.com/stress-change-isolation/
• Excluded Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/what-being-excluded-does-to-your-brain/

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Are any of these phrases familiar to you?

• “You just don’t understand.”
• “How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
• “I can’t tell if you’re distracted, or you just don’t care.”
• 
  

Whether you’re hearing these phrases or saying them, they’re all signs of ineffective listening. And ineffective listening can lead to damaged relationships, inefficient use of time and energy, and silos between key people in an organization.

The conventional advice to improving your listening skills ranges from practicing active listening, walking in someone else’s shoes, echoing back what the other person says, and paying attention to nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions etc.).

Here are three steps to being a better listener.

Step 1: Build Rapport

By building rapport, we make the other person feel safe by giving them the experience that we are the “same as” them. The more safety you provide to another person, the more safety you provide for yourself when interacting with them.

This frees up your attention and energy to listen to what the other party is communicating. It also frees up their attention and energy to express what they are truly thinking. Rapport is about caring, not controlling or manipulating.

There are many ways to build rapport. Here are the two we suggest everyone start with:

• Physical Body Mirroring. By mirroring a person’s posture full body position you step into what it feels like to be them. So for example if someone is leaning back and has his arms crossed, you do the same. Always pause before mirroring so that changing your position isn’t rushed or abrasive.
• Keyword And Gesture Backtracking. Mirroring the words a person uses to describe their experience, and the gestures they use too furthers “same as.” If someone says, “I’d like to go the extra mile!”, while slicing the air with their hand—you can respond by gesturing similarly, and backtracking their keywords, “Yes! Let’s go the extra mile.”

(Note: this does not mean paraphrasing—which does not build rapport. Using their keywords is important.)

Step 2: Use the Meta Model

You’ll often hear people use non-specific phrases such as, “I find this task too difficult”. Often, we assume we understand what the person means by “too difficult.”

For a software programmer, “too difficult” might mean they have been asked to develop a better version of Microsoft Word by themselves. For you, “too difficult” might mean you need more time to complete a specific task. We all have our biases. Without clarifying what someone means, we can’t be effective in supporting them.

Key to clarifying what someone means, is to use what’s called the Meta Model in neurolinguistics. The Meta Model helps us see the world from the other person’s perspective, rather than our own.

The most useful Meta Model questions you can use include:

• “What specifically?”
• “How specifically?”, and
•  “In comparison to who/what, specifically?”

Given the example we discussed, you could ask the person any of the following questions:

•  “What specifically is this task, that you find too difficult?”
• “How is this task too difficult, specifically?”
•  “Too difficult in comparison to what, specifically?”

Step 3: Make It Easier For Them To Express Themselves

Listening is a two-way street.

What we say to someone can make it easier for them to express themselves and feel heard. Key is to first understand the root causes of why ineffective listening and communicating occurs: a lack of the three key emotional experiences of safety, belonging, and mattering.

1. Lack of safety. If the persons in communication do not feel safe, they’ll likely be in Critter State. This can lead to defensive behavior, aggressive interactions, and conflict avoidance. Rather than telling each other openly what they mean—a lot of their attention is directed to making sure they aren’t being harmed emotionally (or physically).

2. Lack of belonging. Without sufficient belonging, people will not care to share what they want to say. And they won’t care to listen to what others want to share either. People want to feel connected to and supported by the people they belong with (colleagues, industry peers, friends, and family).

3. Lack of mattering. If two people communicating don’t make each other feel they are important, and they matter—it’s difficult to feel heard, understood, and respected. People want to know they count, that they make a difference, and are contributing to the greater good.

Safety, belonging, and mattering are essential to your brain and your ability to perform at work, at home, and in life overall. In every communication, we are subconsciously reinforcing or reaching out for more safety, belonging, and mattering.

To truly be a great listener, we attempt to step into what it’s like to be the other person.

Try the three above steps and you’ll find your interactions will be more fun and more fulfilling too!

Resources mentioned:

• SBM Decoder Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/sbm-decoder/
• 6 Phrases For Better Communication Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-6-phrases-for-better-communication-skills/ 
• Connection Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/connection-infographic/

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We all want to be included, to belong to the tribe. Our brains are constantly scanning our environment and our interactions to determine if we “fit in” or not. That’s why the “like me” bias is so prevalent—because we feel most comfortable (most safety and belonging) with people that are similar to us.

Who’s Special--And Thus Included?

I’m not going to talk about diversity here, as I’ve done so before. Instead, I want to urge you to look at your organization, and to notice who is being excluded and why. Sometimes it’s easiest to first look at who is included, or who’s in the “in group” (yes, just like in High School!). Ask yourself:

• Who receives the high profile assignments/projects?
• Who receives frequent public praise/is held up as an example of positive performance, attitude, etc?
• Who receives promotions?
• Who has lunch/is invited to play golf with the key leaders?

Chances are really good that you thought of a smallish group of people. And I’ll bet they all have things in common with the leaders that offer them the above benefits. We’ll call them the “in group”. That’s the “like me” cognitive bias at work, and beneath it, we’re subconsciously just trying to mitigate risk. Everyone else is the “out-group”.

Your brain has three to four times as much real estate devoted to identifying threats versus identifying opportunities and rewards. Since we are all naturally biased, there’s no need to feel ashamed of it. However, there’s a very profound business case for becoming more aware of exclusion and how it damages our performance, emotional engagement, health and happiness at work and in life overall.

Your Brain On Exclusion

You’ve been left out of a group before (think back to Junior High or High School, or the last round of promotions you weren’t part of or the special meeting/project you weren’t included in, you get the idea). You know how emotionally painful it feels. Our belonging is threatened when we are ostracized or excluded, and we dive into Critter State (fight, flight, freeze). Now our brain literally cannot function the way it does when it feels safe and is in Smart State.

When we’re excluded, our brain will release an enzyme that attacks the hippocampus, which is responsible for regulating synapses. As a result, our brain does the following:

• Reduces the field of view and focuses only on a narrow span of what it must do to survive. Myelin sheathing increases on existing neural pathways, and we are less likely to consider or try new solutions.
• Shrinks its working memory, so that it is not distracted by other ideas, bits of information, or stray thoughts. This means we can’t problem solve optimally. Think of students panicked by a pop quiz: the information is there, but they cannot access it.
• Is less creative. With less gray matter and modified synapses, we experience fewer ideas, thoughts, and information available to “bump into each other,” so our capacity to create is reduced.
• Increases cell density in the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for fear processing and threat perception, making us more likely to be reactive rather than self-controlled.
• Is less likely to connect with others. Fight, flight, freeze, or faint is not a “sharing” type of activity. When the synapses have been modified in this way, we appear grumpy and unsociable.

Bring The “Out” Group “In”

What would change if you started including the “out-group” members more? You’d witness:

• Increased safety, belonging, and mattering
• Increased collective intelligence
• Greater innovation from diverse points of view
• Easier and more diverse recruiting
• A culture of meritocracy that creates empowerment

As leaders, we must promote everyone’s Smart State by not just hiring diverse team members but including them. If your not-like-you team members don’t feel included, they’ll end up in Critter State, where no one wins.

The Net-Net

• The brain is profoundly impacted when a person feels excluded—and the person, their performance, their emotional engagement, and the organization overall suffers as a result
• Leaders must raise their awareness to identify who’s being excluded and why---then include them
• The ROI of inclusion is high

Resources mentioned:

• What Being Excluded Does To Your Brain infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/what-being-excluded-does-to-your-brain/
• Cognitive Bias/Decision Making infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/decision-making/
• Ways To Bring More Diversity To Your Organization: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2018/08/11/5-ways-to-bring-more-diversity-into-your-organization

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