Ed Batista

Risky Business (When Commerce and Compliance Clash)

July 6, 2024

My clients are senior leaders whose businesses invariably face a wide range of risks. Some of them must deal with literal threats to life and limb in medicine, pharmaceuticals, construction, manufacturing, or other industries. All of them have to consider the risk of financial losses, technical failures, legal action, or damage to their reputation should things go wrong.

Risks are mitigated by various forms of compliance. Companies in the industries listed above must comply with various methods and procedures to ensure the safe provision of their goods and services. And businesses in every sector protect themselves against unacceptable risk not only by complying with legal and regulatory obligations but also by following recommended best practices.

We take on risk for the promise of a reward, and even as these businesses seek to maintain compliance they do so in pursuit of commerce. I often work with leaders whose companies are taking a novel approach in their field, which usually means that the commercial potential is large but is by no means guaranteed, while the risks they run are uncertain and hard to predict.

In these businesses there's often a tension between the recommended or required compliance and the prospective commercial opportunity. There isn't necessarily a zero-sum relationship between the two, but in any given situation there may be competing priorities, and so a balance must be found. If a company can't provide its goods and services safely and profitably, it won't be around for long.

Many roles in a company are either compliance-oriented or commerce-oriented. This doesn't imply that the people primarily responsible for compliance don't care about profits, or that the people primarily responsible for commerce don't care about safety or quality. But many professionals are educated and trained in disciplines that emphasize one side or the other, and at scale companies are typically organized along functional lines that foster sub-cultures which do the same.

In good times this state of affairs offers an important advantage. Individual employees and their respective functions have distinct incentives that are aligned but not identical, creating a system of checks and balances. This ensures that the demands of compliance and commerce are met with neither side predominating.

But such harmony can be difficult to maintain, particularly in the face of competition, financial pressures, customer churn, outside scrutiny, or legal threats, among many other factors. In these circumstances executives who've previously operated as allies may find themselves at odds, advocating for more stringent compliance or a more vigorous approach to commerce.

And even in good times some leaders must understand and advocate for both sides rather than championing one over the other. This is particularly true for the CEOs who make up the majority of my practice, but a leader at any level of an organization may be called upon to do the same. So if you're a leader who's caught up in such a dispute or who feels stuck in the middle of one, what can you do?

Question Assumptions and Labels

When the commerce vs. compliance divide turns rancorous, among the first casualties are charitable interpretations of the other side's behavior. People leap to conclusions about what's happening and why, and in the process often label their counterparts in ways that reinforce the schism. David Bradford, one of my mentors at Stanford, has noted that professional conflicts tend to escalate in stages:

1. Annoyance at having to adjust our style to accommodate the other person's.

2. Feeling alienated from the other person as our annoyance builds over time.

3. Making unfounded assumptions about the underlying cause of the difference.

4. Viewing the other person as "the problem" (or worse) that's preventing us from working effectively. [1]

David was making an observation about differences in what he called "work style," but this framework is equally applicable to conflicts that result from goals and incentives. The key is recognizing when we've begun to label our counterparts as "the problem" and working backwards to understand what assumptions we've made about their motives and intentions.

Typically we have only a partial understanding of their perspective. Sometimes this is a function of limited access to information or insufficient time to explore the data that is available. But as the great psychologist and communication theorist Paul Watzlawick has noted, "It is gratuitous to assume not only that the other has the same amount of information as oneself, but that the other must draw the same conclusions from this information." [2]

So while improved information-sharing can help, there's often a more fundamental gap in worldviews with regard to risk. People in commercial and compliance roles are trained, acculturated, and incentivized to view risk differently. It's necessary to recognize that all parties are not only acting in accordance with their respective incentives and goals, but also see the situation through a very different lens.

Bridge the Emotional Gap

Once we've stopped labeling our counterparts as "the problem" and begun questioning the assumptions we've made about their motives and intentions, we may still find ourselves viewing them from across a divide. We know more about what they're thinking and why, but we find their conclusions unreasonable.

Such a gap between people in commerce and compliance roles is often heightened by the emotions that are readily evoked in stressful circumstances: Anxiety and fear that we won't achieve our goals. Frustration and anger directed toward any perceived obstacles. Such feelings, while unpleasant, can be useful: negative emotions serve an essential function by warning us of potential threats or the loss of potential opportunities. But emotions are very noisy signals, in part because we're predisposed to overreact to our concerns. This is a reliable feature of human psychology described by physician and evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse as "the smoke detector principle":

Most of the responses that cause human suffering are unnecessary in the individual instance but still perfectly normal because they have low costs but protect against huge possible losses. They are like false alarms from smoke detectors. The occasional wail when you burn the toast is worth it to ensure that you are warned early about every real fire. [3]

Yet in a commerce vs. compliance dispute it's likely that both sides believe that their perception of risk is accurate and the negative emotions they feel as a result are justified. And as many of us have learned the hard way, it's unhelpful to tell someone who's upset that they "shouldn't" be upset. The key here is empathy, and as I've noted before empathy isn't agreement:

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. Just as we can empathize with someone without sympathizing [i.e. feeling sorry for them], we can empathize with someone while disagreeing with them and considering their perspective inaccurate and their emotions unwarranted. [4]

In practice this means withholding our judgments about the other person's thoughts and feelings, and actively expressing our understanding in a way that registers with them. The idea isn't to feign agreement, but to lower the emotional temperature and help everyone be more dispassionate in assessing risk–because ultimately a decision must be made about how to proceed.

Decide How to Decide

A common problem in professional disputes is that people jump immediately into advocating for their point of view on an issue without first agreeing on a decision-making process. Management thinker Jurgen Appelo has identified "7 Levels of Delegation" to help groups determine how a given decision will be made:

1. TELL: Leader decides, no discussion.

2. SELL: Leader decides and convinces.

3. CONSULT: Leader seeks input and decides.

4. AGREE: Leader and group decide together.

5. ADVISE: Leader suggests and others decide.

6. INQUIRE: Others decide and inform leader.

7. DELEGATE: Others decide with no further discussion. [5]

(Here's an illustration.)

There are several factors to consider in a commerce vs. compliance dispute: Who has information about the nature of the risks involved? What role should they play in the decision-making process? How will we ensure that this information is explored thoroughly and efficiently? And perhaps most importantly, what are the sources of power and authority in this situation?

I emphasize that last point because in many settings the person with the ability to unilaterally make a decision is in a commerce role or a compliance role, or their training and experience derives from one side rather than the other. In such cases it's essential that they correct for potential biases and are perceived as even-handed, without allowing the process to become bogged down.

Invest in Cross-Cultural Relationships

Once a given dispute has been resolved, continued work over time will help ensure that subsequent disagreements are less heated and resolved more easily. A key in this effort is ensuring that people in commerce and compliance roles don't merely retreat to their respective sub-cultures, but actively maintain cross-cultural relationships with their counterparts.

This need not entail de-emphasizing these sub-cultures or pretending they don't exist. It's a natural human tendency to form cultural sub-groups within a larger population, and this can have beneficial effects, as former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson has written:

Humans are social creatures; we fall readily into group loyalties. We instinctively divide the world into "us" and "them" and treat others very differently according to which category they’re in… In the 1970s the social psychologist Henri Tajfel gave us the concept of social identity–the understanding that an individual’s identity is powerfully shaped by group allegiances… Researchers since have shown that when people in a work setting have a strong sense of being an us, morale and productivity rise…

Many workplaces default to a version of kinship based on function. A group’s shared identity reflects a common characteristic of its members–everyone’s an engineer, or everyone’s a radiologist. Doing similar work under the same conditions is enough to make an "us." But it doesn’t provide much impetus for the group to align its energies and take bold action. [6]

Commerce and compliance sub-cultures within an organization typically form an "us," what Halvorson calls "a version of kinship based on function." But there also needs to be what I've called "a greater us," a larger organizational identity that encompasses both of these sub-cultures (and any others as well). [7] This can take on symbolic forms in logos and corporate swag, but it also occurs via interpersonal experiences.

So whether you're in a commerce role or a compliance role–but especially if you're a senior leader tasked with overseeing both functions–look for opportunities to bring members of these tribes together so they will recognize each other as fellow inhabitants of the same village. The goal isn't simply to establish connections, but in so doing to amass a store of social capital that will contribute to greater empathy and trust the next time there's a disagreement over risk.

Footnotes

[1] Work Style Differences

[2] Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes, page 95 (Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, and Don Jackson, 1967)

[3] Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry, pages 40-41 (Randolph Nesse, 2020). For more on this concept, see The Smoke Detector Principle (Why We Overreact).

[4] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

[5] The 7 Levels of Delegation (Jurgen Appelo, 2015). For more on this concept, see Leadership, Decision-Making and Emotion Management.

[6] Getting to "Us" (George Halvorson, Harvard Business Review, 2014). For more on social identity theory: Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination (Henri Tajfel, Scientific American, 1970) and Social Identity Theory (Gazi Islam, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, 2014)

[7] Startup Leadership: A Greater Us

Photo by Rhys Asplundh.

Transcendence in Everyday Life

June 28, 2024

The term “transcendence” can evoke some sort of inaccessible mysticism, but it also has a very straightforward meaning: a state in which we look beyond our present concerns, heighten our awareness of the outside world, and feel a greater sense of connection as a result. This definition of transcendence is highly relevant to my work with coaching clients, and to understand why we first need to discuss how people respond to goals and achievements.

While I strive to help clients accomplish ambitious professional goals, it’s important to bear in mind that evolution has solved for the adaptation and survival of the species, not for our fulfillment as individuals. As a consequence, the fulfillment we enjoy upon achieving even our most significant goals is invariably fleeting, a process known as “hedonic adaptation.” [1] We acclimate so readily to improvements in our life circumstances that we soon take them for granted, and they lose their potency as sources of fulfillment.

This isn’t to say that the aspirations we imagine will be sources of fulfillment once achieved are meaningless illusions. They may matter a great deal, and some of them will have a profound impact on the material condition of our lives. But goal pursuit is not the result of a purely rational calculus. We pursue ambitious goals because we want to feel the flush of success, and we want to overcome our fears and anxieties, and we want these emotional states to last.

So it can be something of a cruel joke to accomplish an ambitious goal and realize that the human mind doesn’t work this way. We do feel successful–but it’s never as comprehensive or sustained as we thought it would be. We do feel at peace–but our fears and anxieties come creeping back with shocking speed. So what can we do about this state of affairs? There are no permanent solutions, but there are steps we can take to ease our discontent, and one of the most effective is what we might call “everyday transcendence.”

A useful description of this concept can be found in the work of Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, two of the most prominent figures in the positive psychology movement. In the early 2000s they convened a diverse group of thinkers to document and categorize “the strengths of character that make the good life possible,” and the result was the monumental volume Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. [2]

The book identifies six universal virtues, i.e. “the core characteristics valued by moral philosophers and religious thinkers: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence,” as well as 24 character strengths, “the psychological ingredients–processes or mechanisms–that define the virtues. Said another way, they are distinguishable routes to displaying one or another of the virtues.” [3]

The virtue of transcendence encompasses five of these character strengths, all of which, Seligman and Peterson note, involve a form of connection:

The common theme running through these strengths of transcendence is that each allows individuals to forge a connection to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning to our lives… The prototype of this strength category is spirituality, variously defined but always referring to a belief in and commitment to the transcendent (non-material) aspects of life–whether they be called universal, ideal, sacred, or divine… Appreciation of beauty is a strength that connects someone directly to excellence. Gratitude connects someone directly to goodness. Hope connects someone directly to the dreamed-of future. Humor–admittedly the most controversially placed entry–connects someone directly to troubles and contradictions in a way that produces not terror or anger but pleasure. [4]

The sense of connection fostered through these activities will not switch off our drive to succeed or our attachment to ambitious goals–nor would we want it to. But the cultivation of “transcendence in everyday life” can help us maintain perspective. Drawing on the work of philosopher Simone Weil, theologian Eric Springsted has observed that human beings are subject to a distorting illusion: “It appears to us as if we were at the center of the world. We thus appear as terrifically important, and what else is of value can be ranked by its proximity to us.” [5]

As I’ve written before, “We can readily grasp why evolution has selected for the center of the world illusion–viewing ourselves from this perspective, we typically put our subjective needs and desires above those of others, making our own biological success more likely.” [6] But this only heightens our discontent not only when our achievements inevitably lose their savor, but also when we fall short of our aspirations, as all ambitious people must.

And this is precisely where transcendence can serve an eminently practical purpose. The connections we experience through spirituality, appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, and humor remind us that we are not the center of the world and that every other human being is facing challenges of their own, including many that make ours seem trivial. We may find support in unexpected places, perhaps in the mere knowledge that we’re not alone. We may even take a step further and see ourselves as part of a larger whole and find comfort in community, or humanity, or the universe itself.

Spirituality: “Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort.“ [7]

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And a compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

~David Foster Wallace [8]

Appreciation of Beauty: “Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.” [9]

A bee

staggers out

of the peony.

~Matsuo Bashō [10]

Gratitude: “Being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks. [11]

I’m alive. ☐

I’m not in pain. ☐

I can think clearly. ☐

I can see, hear, and walk. ☐

I’m warm and well-nourished. ☐

I’m protected from the elements. ☐

I was born to parents who loved me. ☐

I’ve built a loving relationship with a partner. ☐

I feel known and cared for by a number of people. ☐

I derive a sense of meaning and purpose from my work. ☐

~Gratitude Checklist [12]

Hope: “Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.” [13]

While I certainly wasn’t in denial about the difficulties I might have to face, I knew that I had the capacity to face them. In short, I never lost hope, and not because I told myself a fairy tale that everything would be fine, but because I believed that no matter what happened I could cope with it. We sometimes confuse hope with unfounded optimism, but that’s just a form of magical thinking, a sandcastle waiting for the tide to turn. True hope is more robust, rooted not in a wish that things will go our way, but in a confidence that we’ll adapt even when they don’t.

~On Pain and Hope [14]

Humor: “Liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes.” [15]

~Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen [16]

Footnotes

[1] For more on hedonic adaptation:

The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014): “Human beings have the remarkable capacity to grow habituated or inured to most life changes… What is particularly fascinating about this phenomenon, however, is that it is most pronounced with respect to positive experiences. Indeed, it turns out that we are prone to take for granted pretty much everything positive that happens to us.” [pages 18-19]
The Laws of Emotion, pages 353-354 (Nico Frijda, American Psychologist, 1988): “One must, I think, posit a law of hedonic asymmetry, the law of asymmetrical adaptation to pleasure or pain: Pleasure is always contingent upon change and disappears with continuous satisfaction. Pain may persist under persisting adverse conditions… The law of hedonic asymmetry is a stern and bitter law. It seems almost a necessary one, considering its roots, which, theoretically, are so obvious. Emotions exist for the sake of signaling states of the world that have to be responded to or that no longer need response and action. Once the ‘no more action needed’ signal has sounded, the signaling system can be switched off; there is no further need for it. That the net quality of life, by consequence, tends to be negative is an unfortunate result. It shows the human mind to have been made not for happiness, but for instantiating the blind biological laws of survival.”
We Won’t Be Happy WHEN. We Could Be Happy NOW.
Pain, Suffering and Hedonic Adaptation
Stop Trying to Be “Good Enough” by “Getting Better”

[2] Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, page 4 (Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, 2004). For more on Peterson and Seligman’s work and its application, see the VIA Survey of Character Strengths.

[3] Ibid, page 13.

[4] Ibid, page 519.

[5] “Will and Order: The Moral Self in Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio,” page 92 (Eric O. Springsted, Augustinian Studies, Volume 29, Issue 2, 1998). This essay is also available as a chapter in Springsted’s The Act of Faith: Christian Faith and the Moral Self (2015).

[6] We’re Not the Center of the World (But We Think We Are)

[7] Character Strengths and Virtues, page 30.

[8] This Is Water (David Foster Wallace, 2005)

[9] Character Strengths and Virtues, page 30.

[10] Bashō was a Japanese poet and essayist in the 17th century, recognized during his lifetime as one of the greatest masters of haiku. I highly recommend his Narrow Road to the Interior, a book I discussed in my June 2022 newsletter. Here’s a sample of his work.

[11] Character Strengths and Virtues, page 30.

[12] Gratitude Checklist

[13] Character Strengths and Virtues, page 30.

[14] On Pain and Hope

[15] Character Strengths and Virtues, page 30.

[16] Broad City, Episode 1 (written and created by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen, 2009)

Photo by Chaval Brasil.

The Problem with Hot-Swapping (On Exec Transitions)

June 14, 2024

A CEO attempting to hot-swap an exec.*

A theme in my practice is the CEO who's concluded that one of their executives is under-performing and must be managed out. Sometimes the CEO holds out hope that the transition will be perfectly seamless, with no disruption to operations, no awkwardness, no mess. A client once called this "hot-swapping," referring to technical components that can be replaced without powering down the system. What would this look like in practice?

The CEO conclusively determines that the incumbent exec is under-performing and incapable of improvement. There's no question that they need to be replaced.
In the absence of an obvious successor, the CEO runs a confidential search. News of the search never leaks to the incumbent, and prospective candidates aren't dissuaded by the secrecy.
After a successor is identified and closed, the news is broken to the incumbent. They take it with grace and accept the severance package, with no threats of legal action or negative publicity.
The successor is introduced to the team, who welcome their new colleague and eagerly assist in the onboarding process.
The team wishes the departing exec well, who reciprocates. All loose ends are tied up, and the departing exec has left clear and thorough documentation for their successor.

It's not that things never turn out this way, but it's rare. There are multiple points where this neat and tidy plan can go awry. There's not just one problem with hot-swapping–there are many. So if you're a leader in this position, what challenges are you facing, and what might you do about them?

Making the Decision

You know the incumbent exec is under-performing, but you may not know the extent to which their performance is a function of situational factors that would hamper anyone in the role rather than personal shortcomings. If the incumbent hasn't been provided with sufficient critical feedback, you may not know whether they're capable of improvement. And if you leap to conclusions prematurely, you'll not only squander potential talent, you'll also miss opportunities to advance your own growth and development as a leader.

As CEO it's your obligation to replace under-performing execs when necessary, and yet you don't want to create a climate of fear on your team. You also don't want to cycle through multiple execs because you keep setting them up for failure in an untenable position. So consider…

Are there structural or contextual factors beyond the incumbent's control that you might address?
Have you provided them with sufficient critical feedback on the factors that are within their control?
If so, how have they responded? Are they open to learning? Or are they defensive?

Run a Search? Or Break the News?

If you decide to proceed with a transition, unless you have a successor at the ready you face an important choice. One option is to run a confidential search and break the news to the incumbent later in the process. This poses several risks: If the incumbent learns about the search second-hand, they may feel betrayed, and the relationship will be damaged, making an amicable transition more difficult. To maintain confidentiality you'll need to limit exposure to the team, which will prevent them from providing input and may deter some prospective candidates. And you won't get the benefit of any insights from the incumbent, who may be in a position to tell you why they struggled.

In some circumstances you may feel obligated to identify a successor before breaking the news. You may lack faith in the incumbent's ability to handle the news. You may worry that they'll become a source of disruption once informed. Or you may have concluded that their poor judgment renders their insights less useful. But an alternative to the above is to inform the incumbent that you'll be replacing them and then reach agreement on a transition plan. This isn't always preferable before you have a successor lined up. But in my experience CEOs over-estimate the risks of this option and under-estimate the risks of a hot-swap. The key is recognizing that there's no risk-free path. So consider…

You don't owe an under-performing exec a permanent role, special treatment, or a debate. But how might you treat them with honesty, fairness, and dignity?
If you're concerned about a break in continuity, what's behind your fear of the empty chair?

Breaking the News…Again

However you proceed, at some point various stakeholders will need to be informed about the transition. This includes your other employees, such as the departing exec's direct reports, their colleagues on the executive team, and potentially the entire company. It may also include Board members, customers, and other external partners. The key element is the explanatory narrative, the rationale for the transition that helps these parties make sense of what's happening and why. Here hot-swapping poses a dilemma, because an exec who's been summarily terminated is unlikely to be a willing partner in this process. Even if they're induced to play along, the transparency of the charade is usually evident, which breeds cynicism and mistrust.

It isn't always preferable to hear from the departing exec. In cases of malfeasance, toxic behavior, or gross incompetence it may be preferable or even necessary to simply announce their departure. But barring such factors, it's likely that all parties will benefit from some form of joint participation. The departing exec is afforded an opportunity to say their goodbyes, minimize the loss of face, and leave with dignity. Other stakeholders gain clarity and reassurance, which increases their trust in your ability to manage difficult situations.

While the participation of the departing exec can be advantageous, I'm not suggesting that you obtain it by misleading people. Explanatory narratives rarely include "the whole truth," yet they must be truthful to be plausible. In an effort to help the departing exec save face you need not pretend that their tenure was an unqualified success or that anyone else is at fault for their shortcomings. So consider…

What factors will influence your ability to create a plausible, truthful shared narrative?
What information should be shared as a part of that narrative, and what should not?
If you haven't yet chosen a successor, what role, if any, do you want other employees to play in the hiring process?

The Transition

Once you've identified a successor, you now have to implement the actual transition. Some parameters will have been fixed in the process of making the decision and breaking the news, while others remain open. Here, too, attempting a hot-swap can be counter-productive in multiple ways. You can leave the under-performing exec in the role for too long, or they may quit abruptly before you're prepared to make a change. If you've managed the process effectively, you still retain a great deal of flexibility at this point–and if you haven't, you may be locked into a suboptimal course of action.

The transition shouldn't be too lengthy. The departing exec will rapidly lose power and influence, and it will be difficult for them to remain motivated to give best effort. Organizations reliably solve for optionality, which often leads to excessive transition periods. This is one of the primary rationales for hot-swapping in the first place–CEOs often over-estimate the risk of a gap in continuity, and under-estimate the risk of leaving an under-performing exec in place.

In the circumstances noted above–malfeasance, toxic behavior, gross incompetence–the transition will be brief. Even if a severance package is contractually obligated (or advised by counsel), there's no need to retain the outgoing exec's services. But in most cases there are benefits to a longer, more orderly process. The departing exec has time to wrap things up, and the incoming exec is able to do the same as they conclude their previous role. The team can prepare to help onboard the incoming exec and will be better positioned to do so with sufficient notice and clarity on the narrative. So consider…

How will this transition–the departure and the arrival–affect your executive team?
What does the incoming exec need to know about the existing culture?
How might you benefit from their fresh perspective?

This is Hard. What Helps?

If you're tempted to hot-swap an exec and you're anything like my clients, it's not because you're callous, but because you're human. The process I've outlined here necessarily entails having an ongoing series of difficult, awkward, even fraught conversations. In some cases you may be understandably obligated to prioritize other efforts. If your company's in the midst of a crisis, you simply may not have the time to invest in managing an under-performer, and you're justified in taking the most expedient route.

But even when that's not the case, you may still be reluctant to lean in because those conversations will be hard work, and you may feel that you lack the skills to conduct them effectively. While I obviously recommend working with a coach, here are some relevant resources to help you manage, offer feedback, communicate, and hire and fire more effectively:

Management

Feedback

Communication

Hiring

Firing

* If you don't get the reference from the movie still above, see this clip from Steven Spielberg's classic 1981 film, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

We Won’t Be Happy WHEN. We Could Be Happy NOW.

June 1, 2024

The truly awful thing about success is that it's held up all those years as the thing that would make everything all right. And the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you're talking about.

~Eve Babitz [1]

A theme in my work with senior leaders is the expectation that some future event will result in a profound surge in positive emotions and a sustained state of well-being, a process often described as "I'll be happy when…"

I launch the company / sell the company / go public.
I get the job / quit the job / don't need a job.
I'm earning [$] / have saved [$$] / am worth [$$$].
I buy the house / sell the house / pay off the mortgage.
I write the book / host the podcast / teach the class.

You probably have your own versions of these scenarios–I certainly have mine–and I'd like you to consider the possibility that your happiness need not be contingent on some external event that may or may not occur. I'm not saying that these events are irrelevant, but I am suggesting, first, that happiness derived from external events is inevitably unsustainable, and, further, that we have a degree of agency and choice in determining our sense of well-being whether or not we achieve our aspirations.

Happiness Isn't Just "Happiness"

Much of what we know about the science of well-being derives from the positive psychology movement, a widespread effort beginning in the 1980s by researchers, clinicians, and educators in a range of fields to understand and promote mental wellness, in contrast to psychology and psychiatry's prior focus on mental illness. [1] Positive psychology has sometimes been dismissed as mere "happiness studies," but in part that's a function of the limitations of language. In English we use "happiness" to describe a broad range of emotional states, including superficial and fleeting pleasures.

But positive psychology is really about the study of what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia, which is more accurately translated as "flourishing" or "fulfillment" and differs from mere pleasure. A foundational text in positive psychology is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, one of the first Western guides to good living, which makes this distinction clear: "Happiness does not lie in amusement…but in virtuous activities." [2]

But I use the term happiness here rather than eudaimonia or flourishing or fulfillment for several reasons. Happiness lends itself to misinterpretation because it is so familiar and accessible, but those qualities also have their advantages. There's also a useful connection with unhappiness, another often-misunderstood word that serves as shorthand for a range of valuable emotional states. [3] Finally, I'm inspired to defend happiness from those who view it with suspicion.

Happiness is not the exclusive province of the naive, the childish, or the willfully ignorant. Pursuing happiness need not entail minimizing or discounting our pain and suffering, or viewing reality through rose-colored glasses. If anything, sustainable happiness requires us to let go of our illusions, starting with the idea that happiness is a function of external events.

What We Think Will Make Us Happy Won't (For Long)

I'm not suggesting that achieving our goals has no impact at all on happiness. It's clear that greater happiness is associated with a host of positive life outcomes–see below. But a reliable feature of human psychology is that our achievements rarely make us as happy as we think they will, and the happiness they generate never lasts as long as we want it to, a process known as "hedonic adaptation." Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky explains this dynamic by noting that emotionally significant events change our expectations by shifting our reference point, and that we habitually adapt to our new circumstances, thus diminishing their impact over time:

Human beings have the remarkable capacity to grow habituated or inured to most life changes… What is particularly fascinating about this phenomenon, however, is that it is most pronounced with respect to positive experiences. Indeed, it turns out that we are prone to take for granted pretty much everything positive that happens to us… We obtain an immediate boost of happiness from the improved situation, but the thrill only lasts a short time. Over the coming days, weeks, and months, we find our expectations ramping upward and we begin taking our new improved circumstances for granted. [4]

Like many confounding aspects of the human mind, hedonic adaptation is a feature for the species that as individuals we often experience as a bug. It's essential to remember that evolution has solved for the ability to pass on our genes by adapting to a changing environment, not for individual happiness. In this context, the late Dutch psychologist Nico Frijda described the unbalanced nature of hedonic adaptation as one of the "laws of emotion":

One must, I think, posit a law of hedonic asymmetry, the law of asymmetrical adaptation to pleasure or pain: Pleasure is always contingent upon change and disappears with continuous satisfaction. Pain may persist under persisting adverse conditions… The law of hedonic asymmetry is a stern and bitter law. It seems almost a necessary one, considering its roots, which, theoretically, are so obvious. Emotions exist for the sake of signaling states of the world that have to be responded to or that no longer need response and action. Once the "no more action needed" signal has sounded, the signaling system can be switched off; there is no further need for it. That the net quality of life, by consequence, tends to be negative is an unfortunate result. It shows the human mind to have been made not for happiness, but for instantiating the blind biological laws of survival. [5]

So our distant ancestors who took their accomplishments in stride and continued to exert themselves were more likely to adapt and survive relative to their contemporaries who felt a greater sense of fulfillment and took it easy in response. Multiply this over 200,000 years and some 10,000 human generations, and we arrive at the present, where I talk with leaders on a daily basis who are surprised when the happiness they expected to feel after a long-awaited accomplishment is neither as strong nor as sustainable as they'd hoped. As one client who toasted just such an achievement with a colleague noted, "The feeling was over before I'd even finished my glass of Champagne."

Yet Happiness Still Matters

Accepting the inevitability of hedonic adaptation doesn't mean that happiness isn't worth pursuing. As noted above, a host of positive life outcomes are associated with greater levels of happiness. For example, happier people earn more, and people who earn more are happier. [6] And happier people live longer, and people who live longer are happier. [7] The list goes on, as discussed by psychologists Shigehiro Oishi, Ed Diener and Richard Lucas:

Researchers have begun to systematically examine the consequences of happiness beyond simply feeling good. Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of 225 papers on diverse life outcomes in the domains of work, love, and health and found that, in all three domains, happy people did better on average than did unhappy people. For instance, happy people receive higher job performance assessments from their supervisors (Cropanzano & Wright, 1999) and have more prestigious jobs (Roberts, Caspi,& Moffitt, 2003). In addition, happy people earn higher incomes than do unhappy people, even many years after the initial assessment (Diener, Nickerson, Lucas, & Sandvik, 2002). Happy people are more likely to get married than are their unhappy counterparts (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2003), and they are also more satisfied with their marriages (Ruvolo, 1998). [8]

Of course, the arrow of causality isn't clear. We know that there's an association between happiness and these positive life outcomes, but we don't know if people who attain these outcomes become happier as a result, or if happier people are more likely to attain these outcomes. I'm disinclined to wait until researchers can provide us with a definitive answer, largely because I don't believe they ever will. So even as we acknowledge the impact of hedonic adaptation and the complexity of the relationship between life outcomes and our sense of well-being, I believe the pursuit of happiness remains a laudable goal.

But Can Happiness Be Pursued?

For the late Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who can also be viewed as one of our greatest philosophers, the answer to this question was clearly "No":

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. [9]

Frankl's work has had a profound influence on my approach to coaching and my own life [10], and while I don't entirely agree with his perspective here, I believe he makes an essential point. I don't think it's necessary to "not care" about happiness, or that it must be an "unintended side-effect" derived from adjacent pursuits. But Frankl's fundamental premise is consistent with positive psychology research, not in conflict with it.

One of the most important findings from positive psychology is also the most widely misunderstood: Our level of happiness appears to derive from a combination of life circumstances, a genetic set point, and intentional activities. This finding is often represented by a "pie chart" that is the cause of most of the misunderstanding, and for that reason I'm choosing not to reproduce it here, although I've discussed it at length elsewhere. [11] What's the nature of this confusion, and how might we better understand the implications of this research?

Life circumstances matter, but perhaps less than we think.

Our conventional narratives around happiness view it as primarily a function of life circumstances, such as income level, professional accomplishments, or relationship status. The research shows that such factors do play a meaningful role, but differences in life circumstances explain less of the variation in happiness across a population than we might expect, given these narratives. This is often misinterpreted as "life circumstances are irrelevant," or that they contribute to some predetermined percentage of an individual's happiness. But the research can't tell us anything about the impact of a particular life circumstance on any given individual.

This is where Frankl's guidance and positive psychology are in agreement: It's not possible to guarantee happiness by pursuing it through the achievement of a particular set of life circumstances. This is both because the extent to which any such circumstances contribute to happiness varies widely across individuals, and because hedonic adaptation ensures that the positive impact of these achievements will diminish over time.

Genes aren't destiny.

Genetic differences appear to explain a relatively large amount of the variation in happiness across a population, but, again, this doesn't mean that genes account for a certain amount of any given individual's happiness. The research does not–and cannot–provide such insights at the individual level. And while our genes are obviously fixed, our individual "set point" for happiness is not, due to the impact of formative experiences and our environment on which genes are expressed and how. [12]

Consider the role of genetics in height and weight. Our genes influence both aspects of our physiology, and across the population at large height is understood to be more heritable than weight, which is more heavily affected by environmental factors and individual behavior. Our set point for happiness also appears to be a heritable trait, albeit even less so than weight. [13] Genes influence but don't determine our weight, and the same appears to be true for our sense of well-being. We have agency.

Intentional activities matter, and perhaps more than we think.

Having agency doesn't mean that we can simply will ourselves into a state of well-being. While that may sound like a wonderful way to live, it would actually be quite disastrous, as the late social psychologist Daniel Wegner has noted:

It is clear that emotion should not be very susceptible to willful control. If we could turn off all our emotions, feel no pain, never laugh, not be gripped by fear or despair, stop being excited, and so on, we could easily end up dead… The priority of emotions over will is important for our survival because it allows our plans to be interrupted by the immediate pressures of reality. [14]

Here, too, Frankl's guidance is aligned with positive psychology research. We can't pursue happiness like a like a prize to be won in a contest. But we can intentionally engage in a set of activities that research shows are associated with increased well-being. And unlike large-scale life circumstances, which can be difficult to engineer and may take years to achieve, these intentional activities can be conducted on a daily basis, in many cases with ease. Again, the research can't tell us the extent to which any of these activities will affect the happiness of a given individual. But they explain more of the variance across individuals in a population than our conventional narratives about happiness would lead us to expect, suggesting that we have more agency and choice than we realize.

Creating the Conditions for Happiness

Frankl counsels us to "let happiness happen" through dedication to a cause or a deep connection with another person, and while I certainly agree that these are potential paths to well-being, there are others. Lyubomirsky's research identifies a set of intentional activities associated with increased happiness. These are by no means surefire strategies that will be equally effective for everyone, but by identifying the ones most likely to work for each of us as an individual, we may well create the conditions in which "happiness happens":

Counting your blessings
Cultivating optimism
Avoiding overthinking and social comparison
Practicing acts of kindness
Nurturing relationships
Doing more activities that truly engage you
Replaying and savoring life’s joys
Committing to your goals
Developing strategies for coping
Learning to forgive
Practicing religion and spirituality
Taking care of your body

Lybomirsky's work indicates that our responses to each of these activities will be contingent on a set of personalized factors. Activities that feel natural to us, are intrinsically enjoyable, and are aligned with our values and identities will have a greater impact on our happiness. Activities that we might pursue out of a sense of guilt or obligation will be less effective. (Lyubomirsky has developed a simple diagnostic tool, which I link to below, to help people choose the activities that will likely be the best fit. [15] She also defines each of these activities in greater detail in her first book. [16])

We Won't Be Happy WHEN. We Could Be Happy NOW.

I close by returning to the wisdom of the late writer Eve Babitz: "The truly awful thing about success is that it's held up all those years as the thing that would make everything all right. And the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you're talking about." I see this in the lives of my clients on a regular basis, and I experience versions of it myself. We absorb the conventional narratives starting at an early age, and we come to believe that happiness will be a function of a set of objective, external accomplishments. I'll be happy when…

If we're sufficiently smart, dedicated, hard-working, and lucky, we begin to accomplish those goals and experience success. And while winning is better than losing in any number of ways, we ultimately learn that success does not, in fact, "make everything all right." As my client once said, "The feeling was over before I'd even finished my glass of Champagne." And even if the happiness we derive from any particular accomplishment lasts longer than that, our sense of well-being will inevitably fade as we come to take its benefits for granted. The hedonic treadmill never stops.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we should stop striving toward these goals. Winning beats losing, and there are many benefits to be derived from objective, external accomplishments. But we should not allow our happiness, our sense of well-being, our sense of self-worth, to hinge upon whether or not we attain these goals. I won't be happy WHEN.

And yet even as we continue our striving, we can exert a degree of agency and choice. We can't simply will ourselves to be happy, nor would we want that capability. But we can create the conditions in which we're more likely to experience eudaimonia. We can choose to focus on what we lack, or on what we have. In recent years I've become much more grateful for things I always took for granted–life, a relatively pain-free body, a clear-thinking mind–in large part because I know my time in this existence is finite. [17] I take seriously these tongue-in-cheek lines from outdoor writer Tom Stienstra:

The odds of being born, according to one legend, are the same as if you were to throw a life ring on the open ocean, and at that exact moment, a blind sea tortoise poked its head through the ring. The odds of dying, on the other hand, are 100 percent. [18]

This isn't a recipe for permanent bliss, and I'm as subject as anyone else to fears and anxieties, fits of pique and frustration. But I can also slow down, be present, and feel a sense of gratitude for this existence, and all that I possess as a function of simply being alive. That feeling won't last indefinitely, nor would I want it to–my yearnings and dissatisfactions not only keep me driving forward, they also make me human. But from time to time I remember: I can be happy NOW.

Footnotes

[1] Slow Days, Fast Company (Eve Babitz, 1974)

[2] The most comprehensive volume on positive psychology I can recommend is Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, 2004), which the authors have called a "manual of the sanities," a counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which categorizes the various forms of mental illness. (This book and the research it represents forms the basis for the VIA Survey of Character Strengths.) Here are some other texts that I've found particularly useful in exploring positive psychology and related developments from fields such as neuroscience, in order of the date of publication:

The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (Joseph LeDoux, 1998)
Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions (Victor Johnston, 2000)
Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (Martin Seligman, 2004)
Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (Antonio Damasio, 2005)
The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2007)
- Lyubomirsky's work is easily misinterpreted, and here's my attempt to clear up those misunderstandings: Understanding "The Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2008)
Coaching with the Brain in Mind: Foundations for Practice (David Rock and Linda Page, 2009)
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (Daniel Siegel, 2010)
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking (Oliver Burkeman, 2012)
The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live–and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)
Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology (Christopher Peterson, 2013)
Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being (Linda Graham, 2013)
Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (Matthew Lieberman, 2014)
The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, But Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, But Does (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)
The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It (Kelly McGonigal, 2015)
Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (Randolph Nesse, 2019)

[2] Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 6 (Aristotle, circa 335-322 BC)

[3] For more on unhappiness, see The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 7: UNHAPPINESS

[4] The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 18-19 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

[5] The Laws of Emotion, pages 353-354 (Nico Frijda, American Psychologist, 1988)

[6] For more on the relationship between wealth and happiness, see Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year (Matthew Killingsworth, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS], 2021) and Myths in the Science of Happiness and Directions for Future Research (Ed Diener, Chapter 24, pages 493-507 in The Science of Subjective Well-Being, Michael Eid and Randy Larson, editors, 2008).

[7] For more on the relationship between lifespan and happiness, see Subjective Well-being and Longevity: A Cotwin Control Study (Michael Sadler, Christopher Miller, Kaare Christensen and Matt McGue, National Institutes of Health, 2011).

[8] The Optimum Level of Well-Being: Can People Be Too Happy?, page 347 (Shigehiro Oishi, Ed Diener and Richard Lucas, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2007)

[9] Man's Search for Meaning, pages xiv-xv, from the Preface to the 1992 edition (Viktor Frankl)

[10] Viktor Frankl on the Meaning of Suffering

[11] Understanding "The Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness

[12] Revisiting the Sustainable Happiness Model and Pie Chart: Can Happiness Be Successfully Pursued? (Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2019)

[13] Genetics scholar and journalist Razib Khan provides a helpful explanation of heritability and genetic effects:

When someone tells you that height is 80% heritable, does that mean:

a) 80% of the reason you are the height you are is due to genes
b) 80% of the variation within the population on the trait of height is due to variation of the genes

The answer is of course b. Unfortunately in the 5 years I’ve been blogging the conception of heritability has been rather difficult to get across, and I regularly have to browbeat readers who conflate the term with a. That is, they assume that if I say that a trait is mostly heritable I mean that its development is mostly a function of genes. In reality not only is that false, it’s incoherent. Heritability is addressing the population level correlation between phenotypic variation and genotypic variation. In other words, how well can genetic variation work as a proxy for phenotypic variation? What proportion of the phenotypic variation can be accounted for by genotypic variation? (Genetic vs. heritable trait, Discover, 2007)

[14] White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control, page 123 (Daniel Wegner, 2nd edition, 1994)

[15] Lyubomirsky Person-Fit Activity Diagnostic

[16] The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2007). While I value Lyubomirsky's work immensely, note that this book is the primary source of the "pie chart" that has been the cause of so much misunderstanding, which I seek to clear up here: Understanding "The Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness.

[17] Gratitude Checklist

[18] Cliff collapse shows it’s best to heed nature’s warnings (Tom Stienstra, SFGate, 2015)

Photo by Andrew E. Larsen.

Primates Wearing People Masks

May 30, 2024

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]

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.

The Mythical COO

May 16, 2024

A theme in my practice is the CEO whose company has reached the point where there are substantial gaps in leadership capacity, succession planning, and operational rigor, and sufficient resources to attract senior talent. In some cases these gaps are best addressed through a series of executive hires, but it's common for a CEO to envision filling them all at once in a single stroke. They're dreaming of that mythical creature, the Chief Operating Officer.

I'm not suggesting that COOs are figments of our imagination. I've had a number of them as clients over the years, and many of my other clients have hired one or worked alongside one. What's mythical about the position is the all-too-common fantasy that there's a pool of candidates whose experience as COO fits a company's needs and the CEO's vision. The reality is that there's no single job description for "COO," and it can mean something wildly different from one company to another:

CEO-in-waiting, i.e. the designated successor.
A capable successor to the CEO, i.e. emergency backup.
A potential successor to the CEO on an extended tryout.
An "operational CEO" who manages most (or all) internal functions, while the CEO handles external duties.
The "first among equals" on the executive team with higher status than others.
The CEO's "right hand" who tackles special projects.
A glorified VP Ops who may not really merit a C-level title.
A co-founder who lost the power struggle for CEO.
Any combination of the above.

And while a COO may have fit one of these descriptions when they started the job, it's quite possible that their role evolved into something entirely different over the course of their tenure. So when a CEO determines that it's time to make this hire, it's far more difficult than with other executive positions to find someone who's done the job before. Yes, a candidate may have "COO" on their resume, but what does that really mean? Which of the jobs above have they actually done? What job are they doing now? And what job do they want?

The first step in resolving this challenge is for a CEO to fully clarify just what needs they want a COO to fill, and, if at all possible, to reach agreement with current executives, Board members, and other stakeholders who may have their own understanding of what a "COO" does. Achieving this alignment not only makes the search process more efficient, because everyone has a shared understanding of what they're looking for, but it also minimizes the risk that a newly-hired COO will face divergent expectations from different parties.

Obtaining this buy-in from existing stakeholders can itself pose a substantial challenge, however. Other members of the executive team will be worried about a loss of power and influence, whether or not the CEO envisions the COO as their successor. This anxiety will be heightened if the CEO is planning to level one or more current reports under the new COO. And this is often the case, both because the CEO is hoping to free up time and attention, and because experienced COO candidates will expect to have a sufficiently broad managerial scope.

There's no simple solution, but timing is key. It's unhelpful to announce the intention to hire a COO too soon, as that can unsettle the executive team, and the search is usually a lengthy one. It's equally problematic to announce the hire too late, particularly when execs have concerns about their ranking in the new hierarchy. I advise clients to err on the side of transparency. If someone is going to resist being levelled or become a flight risk, it's generally better to know sooner rather than later.

Investors and other stakeholders can be skeptical about a CEO's plan to hire a COO, and sometimes this is well-founded. They've likely seen COOs fail to fulfill expectations for any number of reasons. A presumptive successor can lack the capabilities to step into the CEO role. A heavy-handed leadership style or interpersonal issues can lead to a failure to integrate with the executive team. A lack of clarity on the job description can cause frustration on all sides. Or an inexperienced candidate can convince a CEO to give them an opportunity, but they may never grow into the C-level title.

This isn't to say that a CEO should simply defer to these concerns. The CEO knows more about the evolving needs of their executive team than anyone else, and, unless the Board has approval over executive hires, they're not the CEO's boss. But a CEO who's facing skepticism about a COO hire is well-served by ensuring that such concerns are aired and addressed, even if agreement isn't achievable. Because the goal isn't simply to fill the role, but to ensure that an incoming COO is set up for success. And what's the rush? It will almost certainly be a long search.

Questions to Consider

To what extent do we have clarity on the various needs we expect a COO to fill?
Where might our respective expectations be out of alignment?
Is the COO is a factor in CEO succession planning? If not today, might that change in the future?
Does the CEO's relationship with the COO differ from their relationship with other executives?
What is the relationship between the COO and other executives? What is their relative status?
How do other executives feel about this relationship and their relative status?
How might any of this change as the COO's capabilities and ambitions evolve?

For Further Reading

The Fine Art of Levelling

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 3 (On Attrition)

Conform to the Culture (Just Enough)

The Evolution of the Executive Team

Not Your Friends. Not Your Enemies. Not Your Boss.

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 2 (On Hiring)

Photo by Carole Raddato.

Loyalty Oaths and Kicks in the Ass

May 15, 2024

I don't care what the people outside say. Do you agree with me?… Let me ask you this: Are you in it? Let me ask you this again: Are you in it to win it?

~Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan at a company forum [1]

Pointed questions like these, when posed by a leader to employees, are a type of loyalty oath. There's only one acceptable answer, and it's not "Let me think about it." When a client tells me they're thinking about taking this approach to rally their team, I'm reminded of psychologist Frederick Herzberg's classic work on motivation:

The surest and least circumlocuted way of getting someone to do something is to administer a kick in the pants–to give what might be called the KITA. There are various forms of KITA, and here are some of them…

Negative Psychological KITA. This has several advantages over negative physical KITA…If the employee does complain, he or she can always be accused of being paranoid; there is no tangible evidence of an actual attack. Now, what does negative KITA accomplish? If I kick you in the rear (physically or psychologically), who is motivated? I am motivated; you move! Negative KITA does not lead to motivation, but to movement. [2]

The problem is that sometimes a loyalty oath is nothing more than a "negative psychological kick in the ass." And just as a kick in the ass generates movement but not motivation, an oath can yield an affirmative response without generating actual loyalty. It's entirely appropriate and even admirable for an organization to seek to build a culture in which the freely-given answer to such questions is, "Hell, yes!" But all too often these questions are posed in such a way that the desired answer is not freely given, but, rather, coerced.

So if you're a leader who'd like to hear employees say, "Hell, yes!" while knowing that such fervor is heartfelt, what can you do? How might you cultivate meaningful loyalty without resorting to kicks in the ass?

Safety

The concept of "psychological safety" has gained currency in recent years, in large part due to the work of Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. [3] But it's often misunderstood as "No one's feelings can get hurt," which creates an environment in which people are fearful of causing offense, stifling open discussion. In such a setting the most hypersensitive person who's least able to regulate their emotions dictates the culture for everyone else. What is actually meant by psychological safety is something quite different, as I've written before:

To be very clear: Psychological safety entails candid and direct communication. It requires asking and answering hard questions. It does not mean "being nice." It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or fraught topics to ensure that no one experiences distress. To the contrary, a setting in which people are reluctant to be candid and direct for fear of triggering any distress in others is psychologically unsafe. [4]

The value of safety in building genuine loyalty is that in a safe environment people feel free to raise doubts and concerns, rather than obliged to keep quiet. This isn't to say that as a leader you should simply defer to such anxieties. But in an unsafe environment those concerns and doubts don't disappear because they're not expressed. They may well get worse, and failing to discuss them is a missed opportunity to alleviate them. [5]

It's not the case that the use of social pressure to evoke loyalty is always illegitimate–see the final section below. There's ample evidence that groups have a substantial effect on individuals' attitudes and behavior, and this has the potential not only to foster a strong sense of group identity, but also to render the group unsafe for dissenters. [6] Companies aren't cults or street gangs, and you have to utilize social pressure responsibly, not to stifle disagreement. Again, the key is ensuring that people feel free to voice a wide range of views.

Reciprocity

Loyalty is ultimately a matter of influence. An oath can be extracted under duress, but coercion doesn't yield sustainable change–true loyalty is given, not taken. And influence is reciprocal: Employees are open to your influence to the extent that you're open to theirs. The leading scholar on the subject of influence is psychologist Robert Cialdini–more on him below–and he's written about the important role played by reciprocity throughout human history:

One of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us [is] the rule of reciprocation. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us… A widely shared and strongly held feeling of future obligation made an enormous difference in human social evolution, because it meant that one person could give something (for example, food, energy, care), to another with confidence that it was not being lost. [7]

So when seeking to inspire loyalty among employees, you must show loyalty in return. This can take many forms, from company-wide initiatives to personal gestures. At the organizational level, employees will certainly assess your loyalty to them as a function of how vigorously you strive to retain them through periods of difficulty. Layoffs are sometimes necessary, and I've coached many leaders facing this challenge in recent years. But even then you can demonstrate loyalty by taking steps to make the process less painful. [8]

At the personal level, you can show loyalty by expressing support to a direct report who's struggling. This does not mean tolerating under-performance, but, rather, providing clear and direct critical feedback [9], offering resources such as coaching [10], and, should a transition become necessary, conducting it with honesty, fairness and dignity. [11]

Commitment

The affirmative response generated by a loyalty oath is a form of compliance. [12] Compliance is useful and even necessary under certain circumstances, but it's less useful when leading highly-skilled knowledge workers. [13] The pressure to comply will hold such people in place temporarily, but over time the most talented will leave, seeking an environment that affords them more agency and choice, including the freedom to respond to a loyalty oath with questions and concerns.

The alternative to compliance is commitment, a far more robust expression of loyalty, but one that also takes more work to establish and maintain. Rather than merely obtaining compliance by administering an oath, building commitment requires an open dialogue, additional efforts to gain influence, and the cultivation of a set of norms.

In an open dialogue, as the leader you must be willing to engage in tough conversations. This doesn't mean you have to defer to anyone who raises questions and concerns, but a free-flowing exchange of views in which disagreements are welcome will enable you to surface and address those issues, rather than suppress them. This process will present you with extensive opportunities to exert influence.

In addition to reciprocity, Cialdini has identified a set of principles through which we reliably influence others, including several that are relevant in obtaining commitment. [14] We're more open to the influence of people who are both authoritative and likeable, so it's important to strike a balance. Your grasp of the facts and logical reasoning will make you a credible authority figure, but your tone and demeanor are equally significant. Far too often leaders emphasize the former at the expense of the latter, missing opportunities to build influence through warmth and personal connection. [15]

When employees are committed, their loyalty is reflected in a set of norms, which I've defined as "social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave." [16] Note that employees who are merely compliant haven't adopted loyalty as a norm–they're responding to pressure. And when the pressure's off, their loyalty will vanish with their compliance.

When Loyalty Oaths Work

If loyalty oaths don't always yield loyalty, why do leaders employ them? When do they actually work? When you've built a foundation of safety, reciprocity and commitment, then you've created the conditions under which employees are far more likely to respond to a loyalty oath with a heartfelt "Hell, yes!" This is the result of two additional principles of influence identified by Cialdini:

Social Proof: "One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle [of social proof] applies especially to the way we decide what determines correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it." [17]

Consistency: "Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision." [18]

This is why loyalty oaths are often administered in public, and why leaders repeatedly remind employees that they have previously "made a choice or taken a stand." But bear in mind that there are no short cuts here. The leader who resorts to an oath without taking the time to create safety, demonstrate reciprocity, and earn commitment is really just delivering a kick in the ass. And "if I kick you in the rear, who is motivated? I am motivated; you move!"

Footnotes

[1] Howard Schultz Is Back-Seat Driving Starbucks. That’s a Problem for His Successor. (Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2024). In fairness to Narashimhan, he's clearly under an immense amount of pressure as his predecessor Schultz takes to social media to publicly air concerns about the company's performance, and there's no indication that Starbucks employees resented these questions–but there's also no indication that employees rallied enthusiastically as a result. I suspect the effect was neutral at best.

[2] One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review, originally published 1968 / republished 2003)

[3] For more on Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety:

Make Your Employees Feel Psychologically Safe (Martha Lagace interviewing Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2018)
How Fearless Organizations Succeed (strategy+business, 2018; excerpted from Edmondson's book below)
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (2018)
Building a psychologically safe workplace [11:26 video] (TEDxHGSE, 2014)

[4] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[5] Talking About Feelings

[6] For more on social pressure, group identity, and loyalty:

Social Conformity and Group Pressure (Jessica Schrader discussing the work of Solomon Asch, Psychology Today, 2023)
In-Group Loyalty and the Punishment of Corruption (Hector Solaz, Catherine De Vries, and Roosmarijn de Geus, Comparative Political Studies, 2018)
Social Psychology of Gangs [PDF] (DaJung Woo, Howard Giles, Michael Hogg, and Liran Goldman, The Handbook of Gangs, 2015)

[7] Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, pages 17-18 (Robert Cialdini, 1993)

[8] Making Layoffs Less Painful

[9] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[10] Getting Coaching for Your Team

[11] Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

[12] This passage is adapted from Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change).

[13] What Peter Drucker Knew About 2020 (Rick Wartzman, Harvard Business Review, 2014)

[14] Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001). In addition to the book cited above, this classic article provides the best overview of Cialdini's work.

[15] Connect, Then Lead (Amy Cuddy, Matthew Kohut and John Neffinger, Harvard Business Review, 2013)

[16] Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

[17] Cialdini 1993, page 116

[18] Ibid, page 57

Image: Oath of the Horatii (detail) by Jacques Louis-David, 1785. Photo by Steven Zucker.

Lessons from Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna

May 10, 2024

I’m skeptical of glowing CEO profiles. When we put leaders on pedestals, we often set them up for a fall. That said, Ben Cohen’s recent Wall Street Journal piece on Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna offers some interesting insights. [1] While it would be a classic example of the fundamental attribution error to give Vigna too much credit for the company’s stellar performance, he’s clearly made a meaningful contribution since taking on the role in 2021. [2]

Respect for tradition, with a fresh perspective.

Vigna cares deeply about the Ferrari tradition of excellence, dating back to his childhood when he was a devoted fan of the company’s Formula 1 racing team. But his training in the semiconductor industry gives him a new perspective on the brand: “It’s a luxury company where, contrary to other luxury companies, technology plays an important role.”

There’s a noteworthy contrast here with Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer. Founded in Seattle in 1916, Boeing may have been seeking a fresh perspective when they relocated their headquarters to Chicago in 2001. But in the process they seem to have lost their traditional focus on engineering, laying the groundwork for a host of serious production problems today. [3]

Cultural evolution.

Respect for tradition doesn’t mean no change at all. Vigna was dismayed to find an unnecessarily complex and multi-layered organizational structure, and he took steps to simplify it:

The problem, he discovered, was that Ferrari was being weighed down by its “bureaucratic mass index,” his name for the excess layers of an organization… At one point, Vigna counted nine levels of employees in a cybersecurity meeting and noticed that only the lowest-ranking person had anything useful to say. He restructured groups and reduced the number of organizational levels.

But these changes appear to have been measured, not sweeping:

When you change the culture of a company, it’s never a revolution. It’s an evolution. If you have a revolution, you will have a lot of passive resistance and you will be inefficient. You will was a lot of energy for a small gain.

A freer flow of information.

When Vigna became CEO, he was concerned that the company’s structure was preventing important information from reaching him. He began his tenure by interviewing 300 employees from throughout the company, and he didn’t stop there:

Vigna also sought out the people who had spent the most time in Ferraris: the test drivers… He bumped the test drivers from six levels below the CEO to three with the goal of accelerating the flow of information. “They cannot be nested under the engineers,” Vigna said. “Otherwise it’s like asking the server how is the wine.”

While I thoroughly enjoyed Cohen’s piece on Vigna, this post is also just a good excuse to share not only the gorgeous photo above–possibly a 225 Sport Spider from the 1950s–but also one of my favorite videos of all time:

Footnotes

[1] He Loves Speed, Hates Bureaucracy and Told Ferrari: Go Faster (Ben Cohen, The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2024)

[2] Roberto Fernandez, one of my best professors in business school, described the fundamental attribution error as “ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation.” The original research was also conducted at Stanford in the 1970s: The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (Lee Ross, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, L. Berkowitz, editor, pages 173-220, 1977)

[3] Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago (Bill George, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, January 24, 2024)

Photo by Bill Abbott.

Leader as Referee

May 5, 2024

A theme in my practice is the leader with a team of employees who are consistently embroiled in internal conflict. While purely interpersonal factors may contribute to this state of affairs, there are usually additional contextual or structural issues that transcend individual personalities. [1] For example, these teams often operate in an environment with variable compensation plans, such as sales or investing.

These teams are typically less interdependent than operating teams that win or lose as a unit. Team members may even view their nominal colleagues as direct competitors. [2] And there may be ambiguity surrounding individual responsibilities or "swim lanes." Sales organizations can allocate business by deal size or geographic territory, and investment firms may subdivide along industry verticals, but these boundaries aren't always clearly marked (and some parties may benefit from a lack of clarity.)

My work with clients who are leading in these circumstances involves mitigating the effects of interpersonal conflict, to be sure. [3] But it's also important to recognize that conflict probably can't be eliminated, and that may even be a counter-productive goal. There's a tendency today to idealize friendly and collaborative relationships among colleagues and to downplay the utility of internal competition, and in many settings that's entirely rational: teams that win or lose as a unit usually underperform when they view colleagues as antagonists. [4]

But in the right circumstances internal competition fuels superior performance, and the leader who's too quick to stifle conflict will miss opportunities to succeed and may even destroy value. To be entirely clear, I'm not suggesting that organizations should foster cutthroat attitudes among colleagues in order to achieve business goals. There's evidence that excessive internal competition can contribute to undesirable turnover and create perverse incentives to game the system. [5]

One option for a leader facing this dilemma is to envision their role as a referee. Just as a ref in a sporting contest must ensure that competitive behavior doesn't impede fair play, a leader in this situation must assess the costs and benefits of internal competition and determine how to respond when conflicts occur. They can start by predicting likely scenarios and the appropriate consequences.

What's aggressive but fair play?

Some conflicts generate rancor and friction, but in the leader's estimation no lines were crossed. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and a leader should make an effort to get the perspective of all parties involved. But it's not necessarily the case that the leader must defer to anyone whose feelings have been hurt. People need to take responsibility for their emotions, not merely view their response as a function of others' behavior. [6] And while the leader-as-ref-can promote fair play, it's also true that not everyone is cut out for competition.

What merits a penalty?

Tolerance for a degree of internal conflict doesn't mean "anything goes," and the leader has an obligation to respond to behaviors that cross a line and merit some form of penalty. Barring legal and regulatory requirements that supersede a leader's latitude to determine when a line has been crossed, this is a subjective assessment that's highly dependent on what's normative in the cultural context. Behavior that's unremarkable in some cultures is a minor faux pas in others and a major violation in still others. The nature of such penalties can vary widely, from a mild rebuke or some critical feedback [7] to a formal censure or performance improvement plan. Here it's incumbent on the leader to be consistent across individuals and from one incident to the next, or risk creating perceptions of unfairness or favoritism.

When do you take someone out of the game?

Referees have the ability to declare a player no longer eligible to participate in a given contest. A leader might consider some form of this option in situations where a more severe penalty is called for and a cooling-off period could benefit all parties. In the moment, someone might be asked to leave a meeting or drop off a call. If problems persist, they may be removed from a deal or a project team. Even further, they may be assigned to a new role or levelled. [8]

When do you cut them from the team?

Leaders aren't merely "referees," of course. Most of my clients also function as a "general manager" or "team owner," with the ability to determine who's on the roster. And in some cases a violation is so egregious that the person loses their job. Occasionally this is the result of a single episode, which usually entails legal or regulatory issues that compel the leader to act. More commonly there's been a pattern of behavior that has persisted over time, and here's where many leaders who are comfortable with conflict make a misjudgment: They fail to take early action to call a penalty, and what begins as an "aggressive but fair" culture turns increasingly toxic as "hard fouls" go unpunished.

This may be justified on the basis of financial performance. Organizations routinely make exceptions for bad behavior when people make their numbers. But cultures are slow to change, and when an organization allows toxicity to fester because the assholes are hitting their targets, the "cultural debt" won't be paid down automatically if they're fired when they falter. As I've noted before, "Invest in the culture you want, or get the culture you deserve." [9]

Footnotes

[1] The Layer Cake of Working Life

[2] What Kind of Team Are We?

[3] A Working Relationship Curriculum

[4] Startup Leadership: A Greater Us

[5] For example, the competitive dynamics engendered by "rank and yank" management systems can have a range of intended and unintended effects:

Forced distribution rating systems: When does “rank and yank” lead to adverse impact? (Gary Giumetti, Amber Schroeder and Fred Switzer, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2015)
The return on investment of rank and yank in a simulated call-center environment (Dennis Adsit, Warren Bobrow, Peter Hegel and Ben Fitzpatrick, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 2018)
A New Hope for Rank and Yank (Jamie Mulligan and Rebecca Bull Schaefer, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2011)

[6] You Make Me Feel… (On Language and Responsibility)

[7] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[8] The Fine Art of Levelling

[9] The Accumulation of Cultural Debt

Photo by Football Schedule.

8,000 Coaching Sessions

May 1, 2024

I’ve kept careful records since launching my coaching practice in 2006, and an hour ago I conducted the 8,000th coaching session of my career. This only includes formal coaching sessions: 6,936 with private clients to date, and 1,064 with MBA students at Stanford from 2007 through 2020. It does not include countless informal conversations with clients and students over the years. As a solo practitioner I’ve learned that it’s incumbent on me to be deliberate about learning from experience and to organize my own celebrations, so this post is a bit of both.

For many years coaching was a central focus of my professional life, but it was just one of a number of activities I pursued. In my practice I worked with organizations on change management efforts and conducted workshops and offsites for leadership teams and groups of founders. In my role at Stanford I helped to launch the Leadership Labs and Leadership Fellows program, facilitated 1,500 hours of T-groups in Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely) and later taught the course myself, and started my own course, The Art of Self-Coaching.

But over time I found myself drawn to one-on-one coaching more than any other activity. In my practice I stopped taking on consulting projects or facilitating other events. In 2016 I resigned from my full-time role at Stanford to focus on my private practice, although I continued to teach Interpersonal Dynamics and The Art of Self-Coaching one day a week. In 2017 I resigned from the Interpersonal Dynamics faculty in order to teach The Art of-Self-Coaching year-round, in part because my course allowed me to work more closely with students on a one-on-one basis. In 2021 I taught The Art of Self-Coaching for the final time before taking a year off, and last year I resigned from Stanford entirely.

So for the past seven years one-on-one coaching has been my primary professional activity, and for the past three years it’s the only thing I’ve done. I enjoy working with groups, and I’d probably still be teaching The Art of Self-Coaching at Stanford if it weren’t for the pandemic, which triggered a host of changes in my life. And I may work with groups again in the future–for example, I’ve been thinking about doing some small weekend retreats–but it’s clear that one-on-one coaching is and will remain my primary passion. So what have I learned after 8,000 coaching sessions? Half-a-dozen lessons come to mind:

1. Initial Conditions Matter

I first learned this from Carole Robin, one of my most important mentors and later one of my colleagues on Stanford’s Interpersonal Dynamics faculty. In our work with groups she encouraged me to expand my awareness of a host of factors, often unstated or implicit, that influence a group’s development, which I later defined as follows: “Every group is rooted in a set of initial conditions that form the foundation for all subsequent aspects of the group experience. How and why were we gathered together? What will our first meeting be like? What will we discuss there?”

Initial conditions are equally important in a one-on-one coaching engagement, and it’s necessary for me to understand something about a prospective client’s interest in coaching in order to determine whether I’m going to add value. But I prefer not to over-determine their responses by means of a complex or detailed discovery process. So when I’m meeting with a prospective client I tell them that I have just three questions: Why coaching? Why now? What are your hopes and expectations for a coaching relationship? I’ve found that how people choose to answer these questions tells me a great deal about the initial conditions for the potential engagement.

If you’re a prospective coaching client: How would you respond to my questions above: Why coaching? Why now? What are your hopes and expectations for a coaching relationship?

If you’re a current client: What led you to seek coaching initially? What were your hopes and expectations for the relationship? How have those factors influenced the trajectory of your relationship?

If you’re a coach: How do you learn about a prospective client’s initial conditions? How do you determine whether you can add value? What factors lead you to decline a prospective engagement?

2. Support and Challenge

As I wrote in 2017, “A client once told me, ‘It feels like you’re always in my corner, but you never hesitate to challenge me.’ It was some of the most gratifying feedback I ever got because it precisely describes my intended approach to the process. My clients need to feel supported by me in a number of ways… My clients also need to know that my support will not prevent me from challenging them.”

And as I noted just a few weeks ago, “[Coaching will] 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.”

When I challenge a client, I want them to know that I’m doing so with their best interests at heart, and when I’m providing support, I want them to know that I’ll always be candid and direct. This by no means a skill I’ve “perfected,” because the right balance between the two is always dynamic, varying not only from one client to another, but also from one coaching session to the next. But I pay close attention to what a client might need in a given moment (and may ask explicitly), while observing whether we’re emphasizing one mode at the expense of the other.

If you’re a prospective coaching client: How do you prefer to receive support? How do you prefer to be challenged? How do these preferences serve you? How might they get in your way?

If you’re a current client: How does your coach express support? How does your coach challenge you? How do you feel about the balance between these modes in your relationship?

If you’re a coach: How do you express support for a client? How do you challenge them? How do you sense when you’ve found the right balance for a given client, in a given session? How do you sense when the balance might be off?

3. Many Teachers, No Guru

I’ve had so many different teachers over the course of my development as a coach. When I was considering coaching as a path I spent the better part of a year under the mentorship of Joe Murphy, who was training a friend to join his practice and invited me to work with them while I documented his methodology. I read voraciously in the process, and the single most impactful book was Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations, although I’d later add Coaching with the Brain in Mind, by David Rock and Linda Page. (Here are lists of the other books and articles I’ve found useful.)

Before launching my practice I talked extensively with a number of coaches about the discipline and the field, most notably Andrea Corney, Rebecca Zucker and Ricki Frankel. (Two decades later I continue to talk with fellow coaches frequently, a series of conversations I’ve been documenting over the last three years in this thread.) And the decision to quit my last role in management and launch my practice was catalyzed by a T-group facilitated by Barbara Brewer and Dietmar Brinkmann.

Six years after earning my MBA I returned to Stanford to serve as a teaching assistant to David Bradford. I was later accepted into the school’s Group Facilitation Training Program, where I worked closely with Mary Ann Huckabay, who was previously my teacher and coach (and is still my coach today!) I was then invited to join Evelyn Williams‘ team that established the Leadership Fellows program and offered coaching to our second-year students. I also served on Carole Robin‘s staff in the Leadership Coaching and Mentoring course, which drew heavily on the Co-Active Coaching model, and I later helped to integrate that class’s coaching curriculum into the revamped version of the Fellows program. I would also work repeatedly with Carole, Scott Bristol, Gary Dexter and Richard Francisco on their staff in Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely).

I could mention even more but am mindful of taxing a reader’s patience. Every one of these teachers contributed something unique to my growth as a coach–and yet no one has been my guru. I deeply value the relationships I developed with my teachers, particularly Mary Ann and Carole, and yet I believe I’ve grown the most by integrating the lessons I’ve learned from all of them into an approach that reflects not only their influence, but also my independence. I serve neither myself nor my clients by remaining on any one teacher’s path for too long.

If you’re a prospective coaching client: What would you like to know about a potential coach’s teachers and influences? How might this inform your selection of a coach?

If you’re a current client: What do you know about your coach’s teachers and influences? How do these factors show up in your coaching relationship? How might they get in the way?

If you’re a coach: Who are your teachers? How have they influenced you? How have you integrated their lessons into your approach? What have you discarded?

4. Master the Playbook. Throw It Away.

Coaching involves a continuous and cyclical process of learning, unlearning and relearning. Those of us who are drawn to coaching as a profession have often played a “coach” role in prior stages of our personal lives, and that was certainly the case for me. I learned how to connect with people, how to be a good conversational partner, how to offer advice that would be perceived as helpful. This behavior was entirely genuine on my part, but it was also intentional and motivated. In a rudimentary sense, I “mastered a playbook” that enabled me to navigate interactions with a degree of effectiveness.

And yet when I began studying interpersonal dynamics in earnest with the goal of becoming a coach, I realized that I had to “throw out the playbook” and unlearn any number of conditioned responses. A little small talk could help initiate a connection, but too much would keep the discussion at a superficial level. Filling an awkward silence might ease the other person’s anxiety, but it might also block a breakthrough. Volunteering advice would allow me to feel useful, but it might also prevent the other person from accessing their own wisdom. I had to relearn how to interact with people–and do so in a way that felt (and was perceived as) fluid and natural.

But coaches don’t go through this process once–we repeat it countless times over the course of our careers. All of the teachers noted above had playbooks of their own, sometimes made explicit in formal texts and programs, but also embedded in the implicit norms of their practice and method. My goal was always to learn as much as I could from each new playbook, unlearn practices from prior playbooks that were now getting in the way, and relearn how to apply this accumulating body of knowledge. In order to remain constantly open to learning, I must also feel free to throw away what I’ve learned at any time.

If you’re a prospective coaching client: What would you like to know about a potential coach’s training and experience? How might this inform your selection of a coach?

If you’re a current client: What do you know about your coach’s training and experience? How do these factors show up in your coaching relationship? How might they get in the way?

If you’re a coach: How has your training and experience influenced your approach to coaching? What playbooks have your mastered? How is your mastery of an old playbook getting in the way of new learning?

5. Power Dynamics

The longer I coach, the more I appreciate and value the work of Jeff Pfeffer, who I view as our leading scholar on power. I didn’t take his course when I was an MBA student, but I included his work on my syllabus when I taught Interpersonal Dynamics years later (and as far as I know I was the only Touchy Feely faculty member to do so.) Jeff’s approach is often mischaracterized by the naive as Machiavellian or unethical. In truth, Jeff is a deeply ethical person with strong opinions on right and wrong. But he’s also equally pragmatic about the importance of understanding how power works and learning how to wield it, no matter what your goals are.

I don’t know Jeff well, but I consider him a colleague, and last year I shared this line with him, from the anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker: “If you are wrong about power, you don’t get a chance to be right about anything else.” He found it striking, and I think it’s an apt headline for his body of work. It’s certainly one of the most common themes I’ve observed in my practice over the years. People who are seeking coaching have typically found, in one of countless possible ways, that they have been wrong about power.

This isn’t to say that obtaining power is necessarily an explicit goal of theirs, although that’s not uncommon. But whatever their goals, if the client is to succeed, typically they must recognize how they have misunderstood power and how it works in their particular context. They must improve their ability to engage in and win power struggles, and as I’ve written before, “We often think of a power struggle as a rancorous, zero-sum battle between bitter enemies, but that’s just one version, and it’s relatively rare. Far more common are the everyday efforts noted above: influencing others, wielding authority, maintaining status.”

It’s also important to consider the power dynamics within the coaching relationship. I take great care to emphasize to clients that our relationship must be a partnership of equals, and I say explicitly, “‘I’m not an authority figure, nor am I a subordinate. We’ll work together as equal partners in this process and share responsibility for its success. If we ever feel that we’re not acting as partners, we’ll say so.”

If you’re a prospective coaching client: How might you have been “wrong about power”? How might this be preventing you from achieving your goals?

If you’re a current client: What are you learning about power through coaching? How are you applying these lessons? How would you characterize the power dynamic between you and your coach?

If you’re a coach: What role does power play in your coaching? How do you incorporate an understanding of power dynamics in your approach? How do you manage the power dynamic between you and your clients?

6. It’s a Journey

A coaching relationship is a type of journey, each one unique, but collectively possessing some similar features. As I learned many years ago, it’s the client’s boat: “Coaching inevitably involves helping a client reach a destination, and as a coach it can be easy to fall prey to the illusion that it’s my boat, I’ve invited the client on board, and after we’ve reached our destination they’ll step ashore. But that gets things exactly backwards: it’s the client’s boat, they’ve invited me on board, and after our work is done I’ll go ashore while they continue on to the next leg of the voyage.”

While a journey should be a meaningful experience, the coaching process must also be normal: “Coaching…must challenge established norms, from clients’ internal mental models to the surrounding organizational culture. But even as we’re challenging these norms, coaches and our clients must also find ways to work within them. In a word, for coaching and other interventions to achieve their goals they must be perceived as normal–stimulating and thought-provoking, certainly, but also applicable under everyday conditions. But too often coaching and related services are perceived as special—applicable only under unusual circumstances or too far beyond everyday norms to be practical or sustainable.”

On this journey client and coach rely on each other as traveling companions, which entails a degree of intimate distance: “Meaningful coaching is always an emotionally intimate experience, no matter what’s being discussed. In part this is a function of the context: two people talking directly to each other with no distractions… Intimacy in a coaching relationship also results from a willingness to ‘make the private public’–to share with another person the thoughts and feelings that we usually keep to ourselves… And yet an essential factor that makes such intimacy possible is a clear set of boundaries defining the relationship, which create an inevitable and necessary sense of distance… The relationships I have with my clients are warm and friendly ones, and yet it would be inaccurate to say that we’re friends–they need me to be their coach, not their friend, and we do the relationship a disservice if we confuse the two.”

If you’re a prospective coaching client: Where are you going? How might coaching help you get there? What are you looking for in a traveling companion?

If you’re a current client: How would you characterize the journey to date? How are you assessing progress? In what ways does coaching feel “normal,” i.e. applicable under everyday conditions? In what ways does it feel “special,” i.e. impractical or unsustainable? How would you characterize your coach as a traveling companion?

If you’re a coach: Whose boat is it? How do you know? How do you make coaching applicable under your clients’ everyday conditions? How do you make coaching a practical and sustainable experience for your clients? How are you showing up as a traveling companion for your clients? How are your clients showing up for you?

Thank you to my clients and students over the years. It was and continues to be a privilege to accompany you on a stage of your journey.

For Further Reading

Connect, Reflect, Direct…Then Ask (On Coaching) (2023)

Self-Care for Coaches (2023)

Work with Whatever Shows Up (2022)

Coaching and Emotion Management (2018)

Deference Kills Coaching (2018)

Three Paradoxes (Another Coaching Manifesto) (2017)

The Six Layers of Knowledge and Better Conversations (2016)

Tips for Coaching Someone Remotely (2015)

How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize (2015)

How to Find (and Choose) a Coach (2013)

Coaching and the Cult of Done (2012)

In Defense of Normal (A Coaching Manifesto) (2012)

Coaching Is a Journey (2011)

Hammering Screws (Bad Coaching) (2011)

Gestalt Coaching (2009)

Image via Wikimedia.

When You’re on Thin Ice

April 23, 2024

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.

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

April 12, 2024

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

March 25, 2024

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:

Adapted from Your 360 Report Is Ready.

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.

What Do You Need When You Don’t Need the Money?

March 24, 2024

I’ve had a number of clients who no longer needed to work for financial compensation. In some cases this was the result of a landmark event, such as the sale of their company. In others there was simply the realization that they’d reached the point where they were unlikely to spend more than they currently possessed. Although chance always plays a role in human affairs, and all of these people could consider themselves lucky in various ways, they didn’t achieve this milestone by accident. They worked hard to get there, typically for years on end, and yet many were somewhat surprised by what they found when they finally arrived.

We have a number of preconceived notions about what it would be like to not have to work, and they’re often some form of “life as permanent vacation.” That’s certainly what some people do when they realize a windfall, and if it brings them joy, then good for them. But that’s not what I’ve observed in my practice. It turns out that many people who’ve worked hard their entire careers have a finite capacity for being on vacation. And even if they deliberately pursued a lucrative path, the realization of financial freedom didn’t necessarily affect the deeper motivations that drove them as professionals. So what do you need when you don’t need the money?

A team of Swedish and American researchers provided some answers to this question via a longitudinal study of a group of workers who were in their mid-60s, concluding nearly a decade later when almost all of the subjects were retired and none were working full-time. [1] Most of my clients who no longer needed to work are younger, and none of them permanently retired, although some took an extended break. But the study’s conclusions are consistent with my clients’ experiences, suggesting that not needing to work has some typical effects no matter what the cause, at least for some subset of the population. So if you find yourself in similar circumstances, consider the following factors:

Obligations

The study of retirees found that some people were surprised to discover that they missed having any external demands imposed upon them by work: “They expected that the lack of such demands would give them more control over their own time. They also anticipated that a lack of demands would make life less stressful and, thereby, preferable… Surprisingly, the absence of external demands among these participants felt like a void in their lives.” [2]

My clients who no longer need to work undeniably value having more autonomy in determining how to spend their time. This includes both the “freedom to” invest in personal pursuits, such as time with family or travel, as well as the “freedom from” onerous professional duties, such as resolving conflicts or…travel. [3] And yet they reliably find that having no obligations at all “feels like a void.” The fulfillment derived from the ability to choose how to spend our time is not unlimited, and in some cases we don’t resent obligations–we require them.

Contrast

Some study participants were also surprised to find that certain activities they previously experienced as rewarding no longer had the same effect: “Before retirement, going [to his summer cottage] allowed him to escape the demands of the workweek and to rest and relax; it was a well-earned retreat before the next period of work. But once he no longer worked, going to the cottage did not feel the same. The joy of relaxing and well-earned rest was, to his surprise, no longer present.” [4]

Many of my clients report a similar shift. Rewarding activities don’t entirely lose their savor, but they’re less reliable sources of pleasure and rejuvenation. This may simply be a matter of insufficient contrast. The relief we experience when we turn away from onerous duties is part of what makes avocations and pastimes rewarding, and should those onerous duties come to an end, those avocations and pastimes now occupy a different space in our lives.

Colleagues

The study results highlight the unique role played by colleagues: “After retiring, some participants came to realize that their relationships with coworkers were of a specific type that could not be re-created in relationships with friends and neighbors… The problem was not that they lacked social involvement, but that the nature of social contact had partly changed, leaving one type of social experience out of their narratives… It came to most as a kind of ‘revelation’ that their previous relationships at work had been quite special and could not be readily replaced.” [5]

My work with clients invariably involves their difficulties with colleagues–it’s not uncommon for that topic to be the primary focus of a coaching session. So it often feels liberating to be less dependent on colleagues or even entirely free of those relationships, at least for a period of time. But eventually this is also experienced as a gap or an insufficiency. Even as my clients enjoy the ability to spend more time with family and friends, they seek to sustain or recreate collegial relationships.

Engaging Occupations

These factors manifest in what the researchers describe as a profound need for engagement: “Here we refer to engagement as something that goes beyond ordinary daily experience. Engaging occupations are those that evoked a depth of passion or feeling… The presence or absence of engaging occupations appeared to be the main determinant of whether participants were able to achieve positive life experiences… Engaging occupations are done with great commitment, enthusiasm, perseverance and passion.” [6] More specifically, engaging occupations possess several distinct characteristics:

Meaning: “An engaging occupation was infused with positive meaning connected to interest (pleasure, challenge, enjoyment), personal causation (challenge, indication of one’s competence), and value (something worth doing, important, contribution to family or society).”
Intensity: “Engaging occupations were typically those that the participant did with some sort of regularity over the week; they were not sporadic. Moreover, engaging occupations were also long term in nature.”
Coherence: “The occupation might have begun as a single activity, but over time it became more intense and involved interrelated activities and projects.”
Duty: “The dutiful nature of such occupations was evident in their descriptions of how not all aspects of engaging in the occupation were pleasurable. In fact, the very nature of duty seemed to be connected to a willingness to fulfill the required duties whether or not one actually felt like it.”
Community: “Discussions about the occupation, planning future involvement, problem solving related to the occupation, and giving and taking advice from others about how to do the occupation contributed to the sense of community.” [7]

It’s clear that engaging occupations are a form of work, although I’m reminded that some years ago I first appreciated the difference between our work and our job:

We often talk about “my work” and “my job” as if they’re interchangeable concepts, but it’s important to distinguish between them. I define “work” as a vocation–a calling or a personal mission that provides us with an intrinsic sense of meaning and purpose. A “job,” in contrast, is a set of responsibilities we fulfill in exchange for various forms of compensation. We get paid to do the job, but the work is its own reward. [8]

In short, when you don’t need the money you no longer need a job, but you still need to work. You need not continue to work in the same capacity, and you may choose to take time away, to work less, to opt out of unpleasant tasks or taxing relationships. But you need an engaging occupation, and the absence of a financial imperative won’t necessarily affect the many other needs that are filled by such an enterprise. Freud himself felt this need keenly, seeing patients until shortly before his death at age 83, even as he was suffering from cancer, and he touched on this theme at several points in his life:

I cannot imagine life without work as at all comfortable; giving my imagination free play and working coincide for me. [9]

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. [10]

Footnotes

[1] Narratives and Experience in an Occupational Transition: A Longitudinal Study of the Retirement Process (Hans Jonsson, Staffan Josephsson, and Gary Kielhofner, The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2001)

[2] Ibid, page 427.

[3] Freedom From and Freedom To

[4] Jonsson et al, page 428.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid, pages 428-429.

[8] The Work and The Job

[9] Personal correspondence from 1910, translated and cited by Walter Kaufmann in Discovering the Mind, Volume 3: Freud Versus Adler and Jung, 1980, page 160. Cited in Apocryphal Freud: Sigmund Freud’s most famous “quotations” and their actual sources, page 15 (Alan Elms, Annual of Psychoanalysis, 2001). This sentiment is often expressed as “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness,” or something similar, but there is no evidence that Freud ever wrote or said this. In 1950 Erik Erikson, who trained with Freud’s daughter Anna, attributed a similar line to Freud but provided no documentation and later admitted it was possible that he mistakenly invented it (see Elms, page 13).

[10] Civilization and Its Discontents, page 80 (Sigmund Freud, 1930 / 1961 edition). Also cited in “Apocryphal Freud.”

Photo by VisitGrosMorne.

The Fifth Reunion is the Hardest

March 12, 2024

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]

Footnotes

[1] Thank You, Stanford, and Goodbye!

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

[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.

Locke

February 25, 2024

The 2013 film Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight and starring Tom Hardy is a masterpiece–and one that's particularly relevant to anyone who occupies a stressful leadership role.

Most reviews include spoilers that diminish the film's impact, so if you haven't yet read any I recommend avoiding them. (The only exception that I'm aware of is by Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post.) All I knew when I first saw it is that almost the entire film is set inside Hardy's BMW, and he's the only character who appears onscreen, and I'm glad I went in knowing so little.

I don't think it hurts to add that the plot involves profound personal and professional challenges, and that Hardy's portrayal of a conscientious man who's striving to fulfill his obligations is deeply compelling. If you're in the midst of a crisis Locke may not be easy viewing, and yet it's also an opportunity to observe a flawed but sympathetic protagonist facing several crises of his own.

You can stream Locke on these platforms:

Superpowers and Shadow Sides

February 22, 2024

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]

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:

[6] The Value of Journal Writing

[7] For more on feedback:

[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:

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

Photo by John Williams.

Jennifer Ouyang Altman on “Empty Questions”

February 17, 2024

All too often our questions aren't truly open and honest inquiries. They may be loaded questions, freighted with biased assumptions. They may be leading questions, guiding the respondent to our preferred answer. Or they may simply be statements in disguise, efforts to appear open and honest that are anything but. The problem with these pseudo-questions is that they're never as clever or well-hidden as we think they are. To a respondent they feel hokey and theatrical, like an unwelcome pop quiz with all-too-obvious answers.

My colleague Jennifer Ouyang Altman has some outstanding guidance on how to avoid this and actually convey curiosity: Ask "empty" questions:

Every interaction is an opportunity to become more–or less–connected. You know what people find disconnecting? Perceived manipulation, which is especially offensive in the form of questioning, as if people can't see right through it. Shields go up.

How do we ask better questions? The goal is to be empty. What does that mean? It means releasing preconceived notions of what the answer is, having a relaxed curiosity, swinging freely. It means not forcing an agenda, not trying too hard, not fixing, saving, or correcting.

What kinds of questions stem from being empty?

Empowering questions that don't have a solution stuffed in them.

Stuffed: Should we send an email out?
Empowering: How do we get everyone up to speed?

Expanding questions that develop someone's thinking rather than constricting it.

Constricting: Can you do that?
Expanding: What would it take to do that?

Elevating questions that rise up above the trees to see the forest rather than staying in the weeds.

Weeds: How do we backfill this role as quickly as possible?
Elevating: Is this still the role we need?

Our questions can have the same intention, yet the impact of an empty question is radically different. Rather than ask, Why would we do that?, we can ask: What options have you explored? How did you choose this path? What issues do you see here?

By asking better questions–and truly listening to the response–we learn far more about other people's attitudes, motives, worldviews, values, and emotions, all of which enables us to forge stronger relationships. When I was sick earlier this year, the question that made me feel most heard, valued, and invited was the emptiest: What has it been like for you?

Adapted from the August 2023 issue of Jennifer's newsletter (which I highly recommend), with her gracious permission.

For Further Reading

Scott Ginsberg on Asking (Better) Questions

Compasses and Weathervanes (30 Questions for Leaders)

Questions for a New Leader

The Six Layers of Knowledge and Better Conversations

Connect, Reflect, Direct…Then Ask (On Coaching)

How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize

Photo by Lyza.

I’m alive.	☐
I’m not in pain.	☐
I can think clearly.	☐
I can see, hear, and walk.	☐
I’m warm and well-nourished.	☐
I’m protected from the elements.	☐
I was born to parents who loved me.	☐
I’ve built a loving relationship with a partner.	☐
I feel known and cared for by a number of people.	☐
I derive a sense of meaning and purpose from my work.	☐

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