Brain Hacks 4 Leadership

Jill Windelspecht, President of Talent Specialists Consulting
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We take neuroscience and social science and make it practical for you so you can apply these hacks/tips to improve your leadership, how you lead others and/or how you can lead your organization more effectively. We all have a brain, and we can help you use that knowledge to make you a better leader!

  1. Shifting from survival to thrival through Neuroemowerment with G. Cole

    09/25/2020

    Shifting from survival to thrival through Neuroemowerment with G. Cole

    G. Cole, founder of Pathwaves. Pathwaves is a realization of over a decade spent mapping studying and balancing brainwave activity with more than 16,000 sessions. And over a million minutes of brainwave recordings to his credit, G is among the world's foremost brainwave experts. He's also the creator of Neuroempowerment, a pioneering science that balances the mind and body empowering people to take control of each day and live consciously in the present. G earned a certification in neurotechnology in 2008, he's trained as a psychological counselor under the direction of Dr. Francis Flynn, Doctor of Psychology, and provided lifestyle and healthy living coaching since 1997. G founded Neuroempowerment through the Pathwaves protocol. He helps you create intentional outcomes and take control by forming new empowered patterns to transform your life at Pathwaves, they spent over a decade fine-tuning, how to use your own synopsis to improve performance. It ends suffering from depression, anxiety, sleep issues, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and more. G's website is https://pathwaveslife.com/

    48 min

  2. 07/29/2020

    Neuroscience of Effective Decision Making with Dr. Bill Crawford

    I am very excited to welcome my guest, Dr. Bill Crawford.  In addition to being named TEC Canada Speaker of the Year in 2016 and Vistage Speaker of the Year for 2019, Dr. Crawford holds a master's degree and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Houston.  He is also a licensed psychologist, author of 8 books, and organizational consultant.  Over the past 30 years he has created over 3500 presentations for organizations such as Sprint, Shell, The American Medical Association, and many others both nationally and internationally. His two PBS specials on stress and communication have been seen by over 15 million people, and he has been quoted as an expert in publications such as The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Investor's Business Daily, The Chicago Tribune, and Working Mother just to name a few.  Website - www.BillCrawfordPhD.com Welcome to another episode of Brain Hacks 4 leadership, really excited to have Dr. Bill with us today. And thank you first off for taking the time to spend time with myself and my listeners on Brain Hacks for leadership. My pleasure. I'm really looking forward to this. I love the title of your podcast - Brain Hacks 4 leadership. I work with a lot with CEOs, and they really seem to like when we talk about that neuroscience and how to actually understand how the brain works in order to really bring those decisions to life. So the neuroscience of effective decision making seemed like a pretty good idea to use as a framework for what we're going to be talking about. Yeah, I think you're spot on. It's often called soft stuff, and then we have science behind it. We can help them, it's got a little more validity, right? Well, great. Thank you so much. And I'm excited about the topic that you're going to discuss. You want to tell us a little bit more about the topic and some of the science behind it? Sure. So when I was getting my PhD, I really wanted to understand the science behind why we think and feel what we think and feel. So I was learning a lot about the psychological theory, but I wanted to know the science. So I actually left the college of psychology and went to the college of biology and took a course called the biological basis of behavior. And in it, I learned that everything we think and feel and do, and say how we react to others, how others react to us all has to do with how the brain processes information. So I've spent the last 30 years of my life creating a system of philosophy, a framework that I call "life from the top of the mind" that basically teaches people how to access their best by accessing a specific part of the brain and how to avoid the stress, frustration, anxiety, the stuff that gets in the way of our ability to make effective decisions by avoiding a specific part of the brain. Yeah. I love that. Well, tell me what is some of the brain science behind the decisions? Where is that, in the brain that, that helps us make good decisions that maybe sometimes stops us from making the best decisions. Sure. And the brains, of course, very complicated, people spend their lives, studying the brain. So what I try to do just to make it as simple as possible, but also to make it understandable by dividing the brain into three parts, I call it top, middle and lower brain. So our lower brains is the brain stem, everybody's heard of that, that's the fight or flight part of the brain. The middle brain is the limbic system. And this is actually what I've learned is the gatekeeper or in today's terminology, this middle brain limbic system serves as the scanner, the processor and the router. So it scans incoming data, processes it, or interpret it, and then either routes it down to lower brain or up to the upper 80% of the brain, the neocortex, what I call the top of the mind, because this is actually where we have access to our interpersonal skills, problem, solving skills, confidence, creativity, et cetera. Some people called these frontal lobes of the neocortex. The executive function part of the brain because, this is where we make those executive decisions and those purposeful decisions. And so what I like to do is help people understand how and why this middle brain and the lower brain gets triggered. And then I give them a model that actually spells brain that shows them when they get triggered, when they're experiencing stress or frustration or annoyance or anything that gets in the way of their clarity, how to actually shift from the lower brain up into the upper 80% of the brain. So they can access those qualities and skills and decision making abilities that help them be most effective. I love that this is great because like you said, the leaders, executives, you're working with one of the critical roles that they play is making decisions and the types of decisions they make, how quickly they make them, how they're thinking through decisions, not only impacted them, but impacts hundreds, thousands of people that are working for them as well. So, yeah. So I'd love to hear how you have applied this in the executives that you coach, how they really, taken these concepts and put them in place. I do a lot of work with Vistage. Vistage is an organization of CEOs and they bring in a speaker on a regular basis and I'm one of the speakers. And so when I'm talking to these leaders, number one, they don't have a lot of people to bounce things off of. So they're kind of, if you know, the whole lonely at the top thing is, is important. And this is really one of the reasons why this just works so well because it gives them an opportunity. Not only to learn things from speakers like myself, but to have a group of people that they trust and can bounce things off of. So I will start by making sure I understand what gets in the way of their effective decision making. So I'll ask them a question, what are the things that trigger? What kind of situations or people have kind of stressed you out or got under your skin? And they'll say things like man, you know, difficult people and not enough business and angry customers and people who don't listen and traffic and, you know, there's all kinds of stuff I'll say. Okay, great. So when we're dealing with all of that stuff, how have we found ourselves reacting in the past? And they say, Oh man, I get stressed and I get frustrated and I get annoyed and I get angry. And I say, okay, so now we understand what I call - "the what" I like to talk about the what the why and the how so the what is the fact that this situation has triggered this response, but it's not just that it triggered a response. It's just, it's when it triggers this response, we try to use the response to deal with the trigger. So when we get stressed or frustrated or annoyed, we try to use that to deal with a difficult person or a difficult situation. And we can't because that actually is a lower brain response. So the stress, the frustration, the anger is a wonderful response in a fight or flight, dangerous situation, but it's a terrible response or an ineffective response, in real life because it actually keeps us from being effective. We don't know that and therefore we try to use that stress to deal with the trigger and we can't, and that makes the trigger seem worse, which triggers another reaction. And that makes it seem worse. And we get caught in a cycle. So in terms of the what, the why, and the how the, what is the cycle, it's not just that we get triggered it's that we get caught in the cycle. The why is the brain. So I teach them the three parts of the brain and I show them how these lower brain responses of stress, frustration, or anger, or just this middle brain interpreting some negative situation is dangerous and throwing us into that part of the brain. So once we now know what that is, we now know that in order to be effective in life and make effective decisions, we got to get to this clear, confident, creative part of the brain. So I teach them a model that spells brain that's about breathing, relaxing, asking questions, like how would I rather be feeling, what would I teach to someone? I love imagining being that way, because in the image we hold in our mind triggers a corresponding chemical effect in our body and then noticing a change. So it's B R A I N Breathe, Relax, Ask, Imagine, Notice. So that gets people to the top of the mind. Once they do the brain model, they are now in the top of the mind. Then I talk about, okay, now that we are there, let's talk about how to stay there. Let's talk about how to live there. Let's talk about how to rewire the brain. So we talk about neuropathways, we've got some old neuropathways that are going from my middle brain down to the lower brain. And what we want to do is create new neuropathways going from the middle of the brain, to the neocortex, the upper 80% of the brain. And then, and so what I do is I show them how to begin to rewire the brain and give them something to practice that if they'll practice every day, they will have rewired their brain within two to four months. So that's the second part of the model. Then the third part of the model is okay, when you're dealing with a person who is stuck in their lower brain, how do you actually get them to shift from their resistant brain to their receptive brain? Because one of the jobs of leaders is to deal with people around them, inspire people around them and to deal with people who disagree with them and to get them into what's called a solution focused conversation. So the CEOs really love that because they're always dealing with people who aren't listening to them. And so the idea that they can actually get someone to shift from that resistant brain to the receptive brain is pretty exciting to these folks. Oh, I love that. I love that, that whole methodology around how you're getting them to really think about their reactions and then the things that they can do and put in place, and then getting them to shift from resistance to

    31 min

  3. 02/24/2020

    Tapping into the Power of Vision to Achieve the Life & Business You Want with Dr. Tamsin Astor

    My guest today is Dr. Tamsin Astor.  Tamsin helps busy executives and corporations organize their habits and their mindset so they have time for what they want and need and time for fun. Welcome to my new podcast, Brain Hacks 4 Leadership.  I am Jill Windelspecht and I have spent over 20 years working with leaders around the world, helping them to apply neuroscience and social science to help them advance towards their goals.  I want to bring extraordinary value to you as a leader by brining the latest thinking about the science, but more importantly I want to provide you with practical ways that you can apply this to yourself, those you lead and your organization.   My guest today is Dr. Tamsin Astor.  Tamsin helps busy executives and corporations organize their habits and their mindset so they have time for what they want and need and time for fun. Women are the self-driven nurturers who rarely make their needs a priority.  All the other voices demand immediate attention and leave little time for personal care.   We make 35,000 decisions every day leading to Decision fatigue. Dr. Tamsin Astor, your Chief Habit Scientist, helps women to create the necessary connections between their daily habits and routines in order to clear the path for more personal time & energy. Tamsin Astor holds a PhD in neuroscience and psychology and a post-doctorate in education. Also, certifications in yoga (RYT500, Yoga Ed.), Ayurveda (Living Ayurveda, Yoga Health Coach), Mindset & Executive Coaching.   Dr Astor is a published author of Force of Habit: Unleash Your Power by Developing Great Habits. She is a mother of three, an immigrant and a lover of dark chocolate, coffee and travel!   Well, Tamsin, we are so happy that you're here with us today and I've had a lot of opportunity to get to see you speak and spend time with you and I've just always grown. Every time I hear you talk about how you have impacted your own life and impacted others lives by applying the neuroscience in what it is that you do in your coaching and consulting and speaking and so really happy that you're going to share that our listeners here today. So Tamsin tell us the neuroscience and what you're going to be sharing with us today. Well, hi Jill, thank you so much for interviewing me today. I get very excited about talking about the brain and neuroscience and how we can, you know, hack this amazing brain. You know, what I call the goal achieving machine between our ears. What I want to talk about today was vision and I'm very interested in how we can harness our brain's ability to create the life and business that we want, the home we want, the relationships we want, the engagement habits that we want in our business. The employee commitment was recently, I was reading a Gallup poll that said that only 34% of employees are engaged, which costing the U S economy somewhere between like $200 and $450 billion a year, which is a real issue. And I think part of that is connecting to the vision of what a company is looking for and whether that matches to the vision of the individual employee. I mean, I think this is a real issue that we struggle with is connecting our visions. And one of the things that we now know with the brain is that it's plastic, which means that we can change it. You know, we used to think, you know, 40 50 60 years ago that the brain would, you know, stop devolving at a certain point. But we now know that the brain can continue to evolve as we move forward and understand the connections in between the neurons. And one way, if you can think of this is like neurosculpting. Like when you see those great shows of people cultivating a bonsai tree, right? Or pruning a beautiful Rose Bush, you know, you have to cut and prune the connections or the growths that are not serving the overall whole. And that's the way that I like to think of what's going on in our brains. That we are creating the connections that are positive, right, that are nurturing the full goal. And when we've never done something before, we don't have the neurological connections. We don't have the Synaptic connections to get us there. So part of the way that we have to work to create the vision that we want, the life we want, the business, we want the engagement habits, all of these parts in business, right, is to start talking about it, writing it, seeing it, and you know, looking in the direction we want to go. I love that. What do you think gets in the way for people to do that? So I think often we get stuck with our goals. We have these goal deadlines. We have to meet tasks, we have to complete things that we have to check off. And the problem with goals is that it's very energetically exhausting, right? You know, we, you know, we make 35,000 decisions every day. And when we're sitting there and looking at these to do lists and trying to get stuff done, we just need it. It can be really exhausting and particularly if we are not bought into the vision, if we are feeling like we're just having to do stuff and get stuff done rather than really believing in it and buying into it. And one of the great ways to shift that is to cultivate the energy of creativity. And when you crawl, cultivate the energy of creativity, you release dopamine, right? So when you start to shift out of the fight flight, sort of overwhelmed, burned out stress situation that so many people, so many employees are in, so many entrepreneurs are stuck in the sort of the hamster wheel, right? You cultivate dopamine, which is boost your energy and boost your creativity. And one of the best ways to do that is by shifting into offering questions. Okay, Tell me more about that. And especially, I would love to know, I know that you coach leaders around this as well. And so how have you seen leaders apply this? Well, I'll give you a concrete example of a client of mine who when I first started working with her, she was in a state of, you know, massive, overwhelm. She was working for an organization working really long hours, feeling like she wasn't able to be present for her clients who wasn't able to present for her husband and their children and the way that she wanted to. She just felt torn in all these places. And one of the things that she really started to dive into as we work together, we were looking at what was she doing on a daily basis, what I call the microscope, what was she looking at every day and how was she connecting it to the telescope, to the life she wanted? Right. So she had in mind, but she hadn't really allowed herself to articulate it of this vision of the kind of life she wanted, the, the direction she wanted to go and terms of how she showed up for her clients, how she showed up for her husband, how she showed up for her children. And then she wasn't able to initially connect that to what was she doing on the daily basis to tie those two together. And so as we work together, she really started to think about what kind of relationship she wanted with her clients, what kind of relationship she wanted with her children and her husband. And she realized that she really wanted to take her children to go and live in a different country for a little bit of time and to experience different way of, of being and living. So she and her husband and the children went and lived in Africa for six months and she was able to massively shift how she showed up and what she did by creating a new vision of her life and looking at the daily habits and connecting those in a way that shifted her brain. Right. So she used her mind to change her brain. Wow, that's quite, quite a big shift moving across the world into another country to really change your mindset. How did that change when she came back? How did, how did she stop from going back to those old habits and old thoughts and stress and anxiety? Well, what she realized is it's possible. It was possible to create a life which tied the vision that you want, feel like to your daily habits. So keeping that front of mind and thinking about, okay, so you know what's really important, right? So often one of the things that people find when they do something is they realize that they don't need as many belongings, for example. And you know, we spend a lot of time caring and managing for things in our personal space, right? So she realized that that was one thing that she could create a big change around. She realized that the things that she and her family did when they lived in Africa was very nourishing to her. You know, family dinners, regular yoga classes, things that really shifted the day to day interactions that produce, you know, a happier feeling and more productive life. A feeling like she was living the life that she wanted to live. Right? Keeping that front of mind on a regular basis and committing to the vision. This is the vision that's important to me and what am I doing on a daily basis? What daily habits am I doing to keep that vision going? Yeah, I love that. And I work with clients quite a bit as well to really help them first get clear on their purpose and, and get clear on that vision. Tell me what is it about the brain that, that makes this so critical that really it, that makes it important for people to say, okay, you know, get beyond those tasks and those goals. How are we naturally wired that when we align them with our vision, it makes us more effective and have more energy? So what's really fascinating about the brain is that it doesn't distinguish between reality and imagination. So there was a really interesting study done at Harvard looking at piano players and they looked at what was going on in their brain when they played a piece of music and then what they found when they imagined the same piece of music. Imagine playing the same piece of music, was that the same parts of the brain were active, that implies that the brain does not distinguish between reality and imagination. So what that tells u

    35 min
  4. Stepping Forward Into Growth - In Spite of Fear

    01/28/2020

    Stepping Forward Into Growth - In Spite of Fear

    Roddy Galbraith is a Professional Speaker, Coach and Master Speaker Trainer, having worked 1-to-1 with around 10,000 different speakers from all over the world over the last 13 years. John C. Maxwell (#1 New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker) describes him as the "best speaker trainer he has ever seen, anywhere in the world". Roddy believes that we are all speakers, whether we realize it and accept it or not, because we all interact with other people, all the time. He firmly believes that the best thing any of us can do for our business success, our career success and our life success is to become a better communicator, because it will do more for us than any other skill we can develop. He has spoken around the globe and worked with, shared the stage with and developed programs with some of the very best speakers in the world including Les Brown, Robert Cialdini, Bruce Lipton, Bob Proctor, Wayne Dyer, Bonnie St John, Seth Godin, Nick Vujicic and John C. Maxwell. He has a genuine passion for helping people find their voice so they can stand up and speak out in every different area of their lives. As you'll tell from his accent, he's English but now lives in Jupiter Island, Florida with his wife Susan, and their 4 beautiful children. You can connect with Roddy on Instagram @roddygalbraith and find out more at  www.SpeakerPro.com. So Roddy, thank you so much for being with us. You've really made a big impact on me over the last several years and working with you I've been able to apply your teaching not only to myself but to others that I'm coaching as well. So I'm really excited to hear what you're going to share with us today. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to you Jill and share a message with you and your listeners. So very excited. I thought today what I'd speak on, I have been thinking about this, I think the key to success and happiness really is growth. I think growth is important to one of those things. I think it's particularly true for leadership or anything really, but one of the problems with this is fear often stops us from engaging in the growth promoting activities that we need to do in order to get in the growth. And so if we want to be successful, we have to find ways really. We have to find ways to face the fears or any emotions that might hold us back and get in the way of that. So that's why I wanted to share with you today. Simple process for facing fear, stepping forward into growth in spite of the fairs. I love that. I hear that so many times that what stops people, I'm afraid to fail. I'm afraid that something might go wrong. I'm going to look bad and it perfectly right, which means why. Right? And it stops and it's with everything. So it's not just at work, but it happens at home. So I'm really excited to learn a little bit more. So tell us a little bit more about that. Well, let me start with the words of the German philosopher Johann von Goethe, I'm sure you have heard of many of your readers will have heard of. He said that "if you treat a man as he appears to be, then you make him worse. But if you treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, then you make him what he should be." You know, as a leader, I think our job is to our team, isn't it, amongst other things? So this quote is particularly true for other people, but I think is never more truer than for ourselves. We need to think about this for ourselves and I think it's far easier to put a 10 on the head of everyone in our team or everyone we meet or everyone, everyone else. We can treat them as if they have already fulfilled their potential. But it's much more difficult to do it for ourselves, isn't it? It's so true, isn't it? I think very often we believe in the potential of other people more than we do for ourselves more than you know, we see our own potential and I think if we think about this Jill, well, I use you as an example. If you imagine someone else taking the actions that they need to take to move forward into growth and to ultimately, that will lead them to being successful.  It doesn't really change the way you feel when you do that, does it? You just kind of consider it intellectually. Maybe you think about it for a moment and that's it. But if you imagine yourself taking the actions that you need to take, you know, to grow in order to lead to being successful. When it's you, then it's very different because that forces you to come up against yourself and all your baggage. And so it's a very different situation, isn't it: I fully agree with you that it is so true in the work we do, helping other leaders do this and grow and see themselves in that different light. I don't get the butterflies in my stomach when I'm helping them visualize themselves much further but when I do it for myself, I get those butterflies. Exactly that you've hit on it. Exactly. I think that's it. So we use speaking as an example now I know you, you enjoy speaking, but the lots of people that don't know, and as a leader, I think this is one of the best ways, the fastest ways that you can define your leadership with within an organization. If you can stand up and speak convincingly and appear comfortable and look very natural and at home, even if it's only for a minute or two, people will see you as a leader and you maybe you only need one or two moments like that a month, a few times a year to really define yourself as a leader within that organization, in the minds of other people because they'll see you as a leader if you can do that. But if speaking is a growth area for you, even though it's a great skill to develop, I think probably the most important skill for a leader or anyone really to develop no matter what you do. But if speaking is a growth area for you and you just think about speaking, then you're probably going to experience some doubt, or the butterflies that you were just talking about maybe you're going to experience strong emotions of fear and anxiety and unworthiness and you don't get those feelings when you imagine someone else doing it. But you do get them in it yourself. And, and actually we, you know, we can look at other people and we think, yeah, you should do it. I know you can do it. And if you do it and you keep going, you keep doing it - I know you're going to get better and better and better. So you should do it. But it's very different when it's us. It's very different with us. And then when we experienced the fear, so the fear is a problem. And I think probably the biggest problem with the fear is not the experiencing it in itself - is because it tends to lead to avoidance tends to lead to us kind of running away, doesn't it? Well, I mean, what do you do when you experienced those butterflies often you kind of think of ways that you can avoid doing whatever it is. Is there any way any kind of outlet, any way to escape? So now avoidance, it's really worth thinking about because it's avoiding the thing, like let's say speaking in this case, but actually it's really the feeling that is the issue. It's the feeling you want to avoid. We think it's the thing, but it's not. It's how we feel about it. And so we want to avoid anything that means that the feeling will stop. And I think most people miss this Jill, the importance of it. The feeling is not the facts that we fear. It's not the information that we fear, its the feeling. And this does take a little bit of thinking about, but what's something that you fear like flying or dogs or spiders or snakes or is there anything that you fear? Oh, spiders! I will scream!  Spiders is a great example.  Would spiders for you be worse than speaking? Oh yes, yes. Isn't that interesting. Now commercial flight I think is, uh, is a great example. So spiders, I'll come back to in just a moment, but I've got an interesting statistic for you. I suppose commercial flying is the safest way to travel on a commercial flight because it's so regulated is very, very safe. If you look at the U S census data, then it puts the odds of a dying as a plane passenger about one in over 200,000. There's some, depending on the statistics and how it's interpreted, they come out slightly differently. But for these purposes, one in 200,000 the chances of dying as a cyclist, they say about one in 4,000 so I look at the difference between those two. Cycling is like 50 times the risk, but people aren't scared of bicycles are they? People are scared of a bomb going off five miles up in the air and being hurled into the screaming darkness to their death because it's much more emotive. The fear of drowning is one in a thousand, chances of dying in a car crash are around one in a hundred according to this, one in 24 for stroke, one in five for heart disease. But we're scared of the emotive things. We're scared of the scary things, irrespective of the logic - we're scared of speaking and what the chances of dying when you're speaking?  Very slim, very slim. We're scared of bears. We're scared of alligators. We're scared of sharks. About one person a year in American dies from sharks, about one person dies in America. It's about one person that dies from bears.  About 58 people die from hornets. More people are scared of hornets, admittedly, more than bees and wasps. But the biggest number of deaths from animals is deer in America. 120 people die from deer in America, whereas one from sharks. But people are scared of deer, they are scared of sharks.  So we're scared of spiders and its about 0.24 I think in America people die a year. But your scared of them.  Terrified, terrified!   I run out of the room screaming, I can't take it. Yeah. This lesson is for you then actually by the time we get to the end! So it doesn't matter what the fear is, it's not logical, the fear is not logical, but that doesn't matter. The body isn't reasonable like that. Emotions aren't reasonable, its kind of learned programs and so they're lying to us.  B

    46 min
  5. ROI of Coaching as part of your Leadership Development Strategy with Dr. Ellen Van Oosten

    07/26/2019

    ROI of Coaching as part of your Leadership Development Strategy with Dr. Ellen Van Oosten

    Do you want to accelerate your leadership development?  It starts with gaining self-awareness and leveraging a coaching relationship that adds value and magnifies your results. My guest, Dr. Ellen B. Van Oosten will share critical elements that you need to have in your coaching engagements to amplify your impact and growth.  She will also share the data and science that demonstrates the ROI of coaching as part of your Leadership Development Strategy.  Learn how move across the continuum of telling to inspiring as a leader through coaching. Podcast Transcript: Hi, this is Jill Windelspecht. Welcome back to another episode of Brain Hacks 4 leadership. I'm really excited about today's episode. (jillwindel@talentspecialists.net) I'd love to welcome my guest Ellen B. Van Oosten, PhD, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Faculty Director of Executive Education at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.  Dr. Van Oosten is also Director of the Coaching Research Lab. Her research interests include coaching, leadership development, emotional intelligence, and positive relationships at work.   Directs the Coaching Research Lab, which she co-founded in 2014 with Professors Richard Boyatzis and Melvin Smith Co-Author of Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth (available through Harvard Business Review Press in September 2019) 24 years experience as an executive coach Well, Ellen, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Really looking forward to your topic. It's something that's near and dear to my heart, so why don't you introduce the topic. Sure. Thanks so much, Jill. I really am delighted to be with you and your listeners today. The topic that I thought might be of interest to a lot of individuals and organizations is coaching for leadership development and I know you've done a lot of work around that, so tell us what is some of the science that you've applied? Sure. We've known each other for a lot of years and even going back to the early days when we were doing some work together. A lot of my experience over the past 25 years has been in helping organizations develop their leadership talent and that space has been one that I've not only spent time with organizations designing and delivering programs, but served as the bridge to pull together different faculty and instructors to create customized leadership development experiences. Most recently in the last seven years, I've added to that some focus in the space of research and that's what I'm excited to share with you and your listeners. Some of what we're understanding and learning in terms of how coaching can really help. That's great. What I love about what you're doing with yourself and your partners is not just saying coaching works, but measuring it in a very systematic way to demonstrate the benefit. Yeah. That's something we feel really passionate about and are very committed to do at the Weatherhead School of Management. One of the activities that helps us organize ourselves around that and make it a priority is called the Coaching Research Lab. It is a collaborative between industry practitioners and faculty at the Weatherhead School and Organization Behavior and so through the Coaching Research Lab we conduct a number of different studies - including one that I'd be happy to share with you that supports or is interesting to our overall topic of coaching for leadership development. So this study that I'd like to share with you, it started a number of years ago where we had an opportunity to conduct a leadership development program for a financial services firm in the Midwest and this particular organization was interested to break down some silos between various areas of the business and were challenging their senior leaders, the top 300 or so leaders in the organization to collaborate in new and different ways. The way they thought to go about it was to equip the leaders with some new knowledge and some new skills. And through that experience worked with us at the University to design a leadership development program. And as part of it, we included 360 feedback and coaching. So that's the backdrop. So the study looked at two things, primarily does emotional and social intelligence of leaders have any bearing on desired outcomes, and those desired outcomes at the organization level were job performance, which is kind of the gold standard. Very difficult to get that data. But if you can do it, it's really compelling. And then also we looked at some more subjective outcomes including work, engagement, career satisfaction. And then also the extent to which the leader could create a personal vision. So here's what we found through this study. Emotional and social intelligence had a positive direct effect on job performance and also we found that when you add a coaching relationship to the mix, it has an amplification effect on other outcomes including work, engagement and career satisfaction as well as personal vision. So let me unpack those a little bit more. A lot of organizations always want to look at the return on investment for leadership development and that is especially true when we consider what a lot of folks in organizations consider to be soft skills such as emotional and social intelligence. It's just really hard to measure it in a lot of cases. In this program, individuals received 360 feedback on their emotional and social intelligence and the organization was able to provide me access to annual job performance ratings. Those sets of data along with surveys that the individual leaders answered allowed me to triangulate the data so that we could look at the interrelationships between emotional and social intelligence and those competencies and outcomes such as job performance and others. The fact that we're able to show through our analysis that definitely emotional and social competencies led to increased job performance was really important for this particular organization and I think a lot of organizations, but then also what was interesting is when you added a coaching relationship that the individual perceived to be high quality to the mix. It had this incredible effect of amplifying what the leader reported around working engagement, career satisfaction and personal vision. So that's really compelling when you think about the decisions and investments that organizations make to develop their leaders and it was definitely something that this particular organization found very gratifying and helpful to their leadership development. That's great. You said it wasn't just the self awareness around their own emotional and social competency, it was the coaching on top of that, when they saw the coaching is adding value, that amplified their job performance and engagement. Did you find anything specific around the coaching relationship? One or two things that when they were present people saw it as a more beneficial to them. The main thing is that a coaching relationship is really important and has a lot of benefits to the individual and to the organization. So that is really kind of one of the big takeaways from this particular study and the implications of that extend at a number of different levels. For individuals working with a coach that's important to know that the relationship and the connection that they have together in the work that they do together is as important and often a big catalyst for their particular work. So taking some time to think about and maybe get to know your coach to make sure you're working with somebody who for you is a good fit and somebody feel really comfortable with is important. Another would be for professional coaches, but also for internal managers who are seeking to develop their own coaching capabilities, so they can develop their individuals and teams in the organization in expanded ways. This really points to the importance of developing a relationship and being able to have relational skills. And then for organizations who have coaching, either provided through internal coaches or who are hiring external coaches to understand the importance of coaching relationships in the mix. Yeah, that's an important piece. I agree. As a coach myself, I often have chemistry meetings first just to make sure that I'm a good fit for them. They're a good fit for me. And I think that's a really important piece because coaching is really personal, but the outcomes can really be tremendous. Yes, exactly. Yes. And I know, right? Yeah. So Ellen, how have you applied this to yourself? So for me, I'm, since I've been in this space of leadership development work for almost 25 years now, it's really personal and it's personal in a couple of ways, it is validating to the work that so many of us are doing with organizations that we see so many intangible incredible outcomes. Right? Just like you said, so many amazing benefits are often part of the experience and it's hard to measure it. So we see it, we know it, we can speak to stories and stories are definitely powerful. But when an organization needs to commit a couple hundred thousand dollars for a leadership development program, or even just five or $10,000 for coaching for a leader or whatever, the amount that becomes a business decision. And so being able to provide some evidence about the benefits and the value to the organization, but also to the individuals is something that I feel really excited by. And then for me as a coach, as I also been coaching and still do a lot of executive coaching, it's a great reminder for me of the importance of establishing a good open relationship with the people that I'm working with. So being able to come to that fully present, fully able to engage in an effective way as a coach is something that is important to me and what I take away from it. Yeah, that's powerful. So Ellen, what are o

    43 min
  6. From Overwhelm to Under Control! with Josh Davis, PhD & Author of Two Awesome Hours, E:12

    05/15/2019

    From Overwhelm to Under Control! with Josh Davis, PhD & Author of Two Awesome Hours, E:12

    Do you feel overwhelmed and think that if there were just more hours in the day you could get it all done?  Instead of managing your calendar, manage your energy.  Learn how one minute can save hours with my guest Josh Davis, PhD and author of the international best-seller, Two Awesome Hours. He is Sr. Director of Research and Faculty at the Institute for Personal Leadership.  He is a trainer at the NLP Center of NY, and teaches The Art of Public Speaking.  He received his doctorate from Columbia University, then joined the psychology department at Barnard College of Columbia University, prior to working in leadership development.  His writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Fast Company, Huffington Post, strategy+business, Training + Development, People & Strategy, Psychology Today, and others. He or his work has been mentioned in the Times of London, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other major media sources. Well. Josh, thank you so much for joining us today. I really look forward to what you're going to be sharing with us on the podcast. My pleasure. It's really nice to be back with you. Well, Josh, why don't you tell us - what is the science that you're going to share with us today? I'm looking forward to sharing something about how the brain works that we can leverage in order to get ourselves out of that state of overwhelm when we're stuck at it being like, oh my God, it's just so much to do, right? That kind of a state and instead be able to get us to a place where we're putting our efforts into the things that really matter. I love it. That's something I hear all the time with the executives I work with. They're overwhelmed. There's not enough time in the day and this is definitely something that is going to resonate with a lot of people. Excellent. It just seems to be getting worse. Actually. There's more and more on everybody's plate is no longer a nice to have and I think it's becoming clear to many people that it's not going to be possible to solve this problem by trying to cram everything into the calendar. I don't know. Some of your listeners may have already come to that conclusion, but if they haven't, that's also something that I'm going to suggest. That's great. Why don't you share some of the hacks that you have around how we can become less overwhelmed and really be more effective with our time? Okay, so first of all, I think it's helpful to draw a contrast between what many of us do and you don't have to admit publicly that you do this, so you may recognize this behavior in yourself from time to time that you know when we get overwhelmed, what we tend to do is to just think like, well look, there's so much work to do. I just have to keep myself working constantly. I've got to work every minute. I've got to work more hours. How else am I going to do it? And logically, it makes a lot of sense. It's simple math, right? Do you have a team? You get them to do more work as well and have no downtime as much as you can. That would be a fantastic solution if what you were talking about a factory where you get the exact same output every time you run the machines and then you should just keep that thing running. But human beings are not anything like a factory. Yeah. When it comes to this, we are different in a really important way, which is that we can be phenomenally creative, productive. We can make clearheaded decisions, we can map out plans, we can think about how to influence others, all of the things that are so key to knowledge work. We can do these things just exceptionally well at times and very quickly. You could have a morning where you're just hitting it out of the park. You're taking care of everything that was on your list, and then at other times, if you're anything like me, you can spend three days where you're, you're practically worthless. So the solution is not going to be that what would seem obvious if we were thinking about something where you get the same output every time you run it. Instead, what we need to do is to work with the way that human brains and bodies work now because we can be so quiet, impressively productive and creative at certain times and not at others. It means there are certain conditions that helped to set that up and when you turn to the research you can learn what some of those conditions are. Some of them have to do with things like rather than trying to manage your calendar, you can be trying to manage your mental energy. You can be trying to manage your attention. There are times in the day where if you've just been through a really tough meeting, you might be highly emotional. It's actually harder to think clearly in those contexts that in those moments you actually are not as capable and you may not realize it of making good clear decisions or making them as quickly or even taking into account the same information you would under different circumstances. If it's later in the day and you've been making a lot of decisions, it has been shown with judges, for example, that they tend to make worse decisions as the day goes on and now these are decisions that have major implications for people. Parole decisions for example, that are made later on in the Judge's day, or this side or that side of lunch, they tend to be either better or worse for the people seeking parole - that what happens is when the judges are more fresh, they are capable of and motivated to take into account more information. Now the judges are not aware of doing it differently. They still think they're doing the best they can and being very fair. Right, right. This is all happening often outside of their awareness, the brain is simply operating differently. Once you have accumulated a certain amount of mental fatigue, it is just simply harder to make those kinds of decisions. The thing is, we can take this stuff into account. Now, you can take it into account when you're about to start an important task. You could take it into account when you're planning ahead, you can say, look, this is going to come late in the day. Then the really important negotiation, I'm going to create a space for myself to be able to refresh before that. Get a little exercise, take a nap, something like that. But Carl Icahn, famous billionaire, he is said to have scheduled frequently his really challenging negotiations in the afternoon because he knew that the other lawyer he'd be interacting with would be fatigued and then he would schedule a nap beforehand. I mean, the thing is, it's evidence. So simple. You might say, well yeah, of course I'm fresher. Of course I'm better, but yet you know what the science says you are so much fresher than you realize, the difference is extraordinary in terms of making that an incredibly productive and effective time period or not. Now you can also in the moment, when you're about to sit down to do something, say, is this the right time for it? And now you might say, well look, I'm tired all the time. As time goes on. If you're focused on setting up these periods of time when you can be at your best and the most important work, you will find that you started doing things that enable you to not just be tired all the time, that it actually starts to lead to greater work life balance and what happens is not that you're doing everything on your list, but you're getting to that elusive goal of saying no to the things that are not as important because you're able to think more clearly about it. So I'll pause here for a moment. I've been weaving together a few different pieces. Yeah, I really liked the fact that you talked about not managing your calendar but managing your attention and managing that calendar is something that I struggle with and other leaders struggle with. What are the things from a leadership perspective that you would recommend be on the calendar earlier in the day when you're fresher to really be more effective leading yourself and leading others? Yes, I do have an answer for that. That I think is really an essential piece. We have to step back for a moment and think about what's really important to do day-to-day. And if you're a successful person, you could probably, you know, if we're having a conversation over beers and we were just on the weekend, at some point you could tell me, well look, these are the things that are important for me to do. You know, there's certain relationships I want to build. There's this new marketing platform I want to invest in. These articles I want to write, whatever it is, the important stuff. You could tell me that and then I could ask, how do you spend your time? How long have you been saying to yourself - that's the important stuff, right? So you know what the important stuff is usually from time to time, sure it may not be clear, but you know what the important stuff is usually. And then we find ourselves saying, how did I just spend three hours on that, on these forms or these things that I should have outsourced that to somebody else? Or you know what? I didn't even need to do some of those , to respond to some of those emails. What, you know, what's wrong with me? Right? Right. And so we, we look at it and say like, my calendar is so packed but back to back. Right? And you know, these kinds of ways of talking to ourselves and yet at the same time we can have these experiences of wasting time feeling like we actually wasted the afternoon. We didn't get to the important stuff. So what I'm going to suggest is that the issue is not a calendar issue. The issue is that we're not finding a way to connect with what's important. Now it's not that you don't know what's important and it's, and you've probably have read Covey and you know that you should be putting x percentage of your time into the stuff that's important and not urgent, right? You know those things. But for some reason you're not doing it well. Here is what's going on. Once you

    33 min
  7. Becoming a Resilient Leader at Work and Home– Strategies from Dr. Jennifer Savitski

    02/27/2019

    Becoming a Resilient Leader at Work and Home– Strategies from Dr. Jennifer Savitski

    Worklife balance is a fallacy, you can't always balance but you CAN learn to become more RESILIENT.  Becoming more resilient will help you Respond versus React, lead in the right way and build better relationships at work and at home.  My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Savitski, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Cleveland Clinic Akron General and the Medical Director of the PATH Center, a Forensic Nursing Program providing care for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us today on the podcast. Tell us what topic you're going to share with us and the science behind it? All right, so I'm going to be talking about resiliency and why being a resilient person is so important, not only in our day to day lives, but also as a leader. It's important and how we approach things. But you know, talking a little bit about resiliency. So what is the science behind resiliency? Thinking back within the past one or two decades, you know, the concept of work life balance really was being highlighted by major organizations. How could organizations help individuals find this work life balance and how can individuals find this balance to make themselves not only more productive at work, but also happier at home and through those decades? I think what most people found was worklife balance really is a fallacy that you anyways, yeah, you can't balance. You can't have a life where both of those things are completely in sync. There's always something that is the priority or taking up most of our time or our attention at any given time, and that it really is important to give that topic, give that individual, give that situation the attention that it needs for us to deal with it. I found that the concept of resiliency really started to come to the forefront. Now the reality is when you look at psychiatry and psychology, literature and science, they've been talking about resiliency for decades. This is not new by any stretch of the imagination, but as it relates to leadership and specifically what I do in medicine as it relates to the practice of medicine, resiliency is essential. Of course we know that being resilient is the ability to adapt to changes or adapt to adversity and being able to have those skills that show resiliency really help us to better manage the things in our lives that are challenges or adversity or just those issues that are developing that work life balance or inequity by being resilient and having a resilient characteristic is enabling us to do that in a more productive and satisfying manner. Yeah, definitely. Worklife balance, adversity, challenges, opportunities are all over in the workplace today. I work with a lot of executives who really struggle with this for either themselves or their teams. Why is it so important that we are resilient? What will happen if leaders and teams don't focus on resiliency? So we know that people who are resilient tend to be more productive in a positive way. Their outcomes tend to be better. Their ability to manage and lead teams tends to be more effective, especially because you know as you're leading teams there's always going to be challenges. Whether that, you know, issues within the team, external forces that are affecting the team or affecting the project and the more productively you're able to manage those changes and adversities, the better off the output of the team is going to be. So we know just from a productivity standpoint that people who are resilient are more productive and are better leaders of teams. We also know that even from a physical standpoint, individuals who are more resilient tend to have less chronic illnesses. They tend to manage their stress and emotional status in a much more productive manner, and so that does not adversely affect their relationships. We know that people who are under chronic stress and don't deal with that stress well, that that leads to a whole host of medical conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, other chronic illnesses. And some people also feel that that leads to things like cancers. My specialty is OBGYN. We know that chronic stress also increases the risk of preterm labor and preterm delivery, and so by being more resilient, you're actually dealing with those stressors in a more productive manner, and that actually not only gives you better outcomes, but it also physically is better for you as well. Yeah, I think that's a really important concept that it's not just harmony at work, it's not making people happier. This is your life. This is health that is for you and your team. Right? Right. Absolutely. I don't want to say that stress isn't a good thing and we know that stress is really important and stress actually does help us to be productive. I am a procrastinator. I will totally admit that, but I love deadlines because I know as I get closer to the deadline, that stress really motivates me to become more productive, but there comes a point in all of our lives where that stress, you kind of go over that hump of stress and now it starts to become detrimental to your productivity and detrimental to your health. And what resiliency does is it really helps you to manage that stress in a way that is productive so that you're not under that constant and unrelenting stress. You're able to find mechanisms or tools that you can use to control that stress and to face that stress, which really is exhibiting those resilient behaviors. Right. What are the tips that you have around becoming more resilient at work? Yes, so I think that resiliency can really be, you know, this definitely is an oversimplification, but I think for those very high yield tips that I can give you, probably the most important thing is to consider your reaction versus your response. So we know that our reactions to whatever the situation, a person, you know, a stressor, whatever it is, our reactions are based on several things. They're based on a defense mechanism. You know, that concept of fight or flight, something happens to us and we have a knee-jerk reaction because we go into survival mode. We also know that our reactions are based on our past experiences. That theory of what happened yesterday or happened the day before or the month before might happen again in a certain situation. Certainly in our relationships with people. If we have someone who always is a complainer and they always are a downer then our reaction to them is going to be based on that experience. To be Resilient rather than to React is to Respond. So we have an opportunity to respond to situations rather than just letting our gut instincts or our emotions taking control. The key aspects of responding is taking in the situations, taking in all of the information and the data and making a conscious choice and intentional choice of how we're going to behave based on the stimulus or the situation. There's some concepts of what we call behavioral awareness. So we're very much aware of how we're responding to the situation, we are aware of how our response is going to impact that situation and impact the people involved in that situation. And a lot of times our choice to respond really is based on our principles or our values. And I think in the workplace it should be based on what is the mission, what is the vision, what is the goal of the project, the organization, whatever it is. So its that concept of making an intentional response, which really is tied into the theory of emotional resilience. Along with that, really developing that sense that the only thing that we can control is ourselves. We can only control our behaviors. We can only control our responses. We cannot control what other people or other situations are doing to us or are happening around us. And that concept of emotional resilience is really tied into understanding that the control that we have is really over ourselves. And how we choose to act or how we choose to respond really is going to have a big impact on the outcome of the situation. So what is a way that leaders can learn how to respond versus react there? What have you applied personally as a leader to get better at responding versus reacting? Because reacting is, it's so easy, right? Yeah. So you have a stressful job. Yes, there's kind of one quote that I absolutely love and I don't even know who it's attributed to. Basically it's that "logic is easier said than done", right? It's so logical that we should respond rather than react. But really emotions are easier done than said, right? It's just so much easier to react with our emotions. So I think the first, it has to start with our physical states. And I think that a lot of us ignore our physical state. We go through our day to day activities, just kind of doing. And it's really our emotions that cause us to react. So I think that the first thing that leaders should do when they're faced with a situation, you know, it could be very complex or very simple, is to consider your physical state. And what I mean by that is like really like all those things, you know, if you do yoga or if you try to do meditation or relaxation, it's those types of things. So I tell people, you know, first and foremost, soften your face. As soon as somebody hits you with that news or that situation, immediately soften your face. Pay attention to what your facial muscles are doing and just try to relax them. Try to relax your neck, try to relax your shoulder. And then my personal favorite is relax your tongue. I find myself, the more stressed I am, the harder I'm pushing my tongue against either my teeth or the roof of my mouth. And it's amazing that one little thing. If I can, you know, I can feel myself getting stressed out and then I just relax my face. I relax my tongue and it's amazing what a difference it makes for my entire body. And not only that, but the person who's presenting this situation to you or the stimu

    23 min

  8. 01/10/2019

    Hack your Creativity to become more Innovative and Agile with Dagný Valgeirsdóttir, PhD

    Hack your Creativity to become more Innovative and Agile, E:10 When CEOs were asked, "What is the skill you most value in your people?", they said creativity, the ability to solve problems, come up with new solutions, and use brainpower to figure things out. (source)  Learn how to tap into your creativity and run a brainstorming session the RIGHT WAY! My guest today is Dagný Valgeirsdóttir (email is Dagný@neurocreativity.dk).  Dagný has a PhD in enhancing creativity.  Currently she is working at the Technical University of Denmark as a postdoctoral creativity researcher and facilitator who specializes in ways to enhance individual creativity through metacognitive creativity training.  Well, thank you so much for being with us today. Really excited about your topic. It's one that's very top of mind today as we are a society that is moving so quickly and so rapidly that we need to be innovative as much as possible. So tell us about the topic that you're going to share with us today. Thanks for having me first of all.  I am going to talk about a topic that I have been very enthusiastic about four years now and looking into in great depth, which is ways to enhance creativity and I see creativity as the raw material of innovation and of course, we know innovation is very important and that led me to think that will help. Can we actually enhance creativity? Great. I like the way you talked about creativity being the raw material of innovation. So, what is the science behind that that helps you to understand how to be more creative? Through my studies of individuals working in creative processes, I started to notice this tendency of especially experienced designers and engineers, that the more aware of their own processes, so their creative processes, and the more knowledgeable they were of the things that could actually influence their processes, the better they were at facilitating both their own process as well as their teams process. So, the main findings were this concept that I developed called process awareness, meaning that you actually have to know about the things / stuff that can cognitively influence you and your work, and the better you are at actually monitoring yourself and being aware and conscious of your work, the better you become at facilitating it. Yeah, that's powerful. I work with leaders in coaching and focusing on self-awareness is so important. So, what are the things that you do to help these engineers and leaders to really become more aware of their process as it relates to creativity. I actually developed a training program, so it's a one-and-a-half-day program. It's very condensed because, of course, I'm working with practitioners and they don't have a lot of time to spare, so it's a one and a half day training program where I educate them about the things that can affect them, like how they can manage constraints through their work and how they should be aware of how priming affects them and when they need a break and all these practical things that when you're educated about it, you kind of have an Aha moment. Like, Oh yeah, of course I should have known that, but if you don't have the word for those concepts, it's difficult for you to facilitate them. So first and foremost, it's about educating them and then I take them through specifically designed exercises where they actually applied those concepts. They try them out firsthand so that they can recognize them when they are doing their work. So, they see, okay, so is how fixation feels for instance, and this is how it feels when I really need a break. And then finally after having educated them I let them try it out. I give them some advice on how to subsequently react to those situations, so that's the core of my program.  It is called the Know-Recognize-React model. So, it has these three layers know, recognize, and react. You educate them, put them through the experiences, give the Aha moment, and then help them with ways that they can help improve their creativity based on that. Exactly. Great. So, what is the tip or the hack that you want to share with us today based on your experience, what you've seen maybe something that's worked the most effectively with the people within your workshop or organizations that you work with? The one thing that has been a huge eye opener for majority of the participants in my training program is the fact that you should not jump to a solution because there are actually these two concepts called problem space and solution space. People in the modern society today, we've become very narrow minded. We've gone through educational systems that don't really allow for a lot of creativity. We are always in demand of the right answer right now and also when we entered the job market. Then of course, it becomes even more intense because you have a lot of time constraints and so on, so you don't really allow yourself to actually explore the problem. Am I really working with the right problem? Of course. I know that this can be challenging in the real world, but just knowing about the fact that sometimes it's okay to challenge the problem that you're working with and say, okay, maybe I should spend 30 minutes just exploring is this actually the problem that I want to be solving or is it something else? This has been a huge eyeopener for my participants to stuff just jumping to solutions because we're so focused on producing results, but rather explore a little bit before you then start working on the solution and that's my hope. You end up with a much more creative solution then. That's a great point. The conversation reminds me of an executive that I used to work with and this phrase he brought up always stuck with me. He'd say, "What is the problem we're trying to solve?" Because you would see people quickly trying to throw solutions and this really helped us step back and get clarity around that. So, what are the things that you've seen people do or worked with organizations where it's helped them step back into that problem space before they go into the solution space? What is a tip around that? Well, I think first and foremost just to bring it up to people's attention because sometimes people aren't even aware of the fact that they maybe can or should explore the problem. So just for instance, in one of the sessions that I have with innovation practitioners was that they kind of felt that they were equipped with knowledge now that they could bring to their executives. And then that's a conversation opener because a lot of the times there is kind of a misalignment between what the project level wants and what the executive level wants. So this misalignment sometimes ends up in an environment that's maybe not very supportive to creativity, but having this knowledge they felt a bit empowered and then they can at least start the conversation and figure out ways to use this knowledge to their advantage and to advocate for the fact that maybe it would be actually beneficial to explore a little bit before we start solving the problem. And I think you hit on a very common area that I hear and work with executives with all the time as well in organizations where there is a misalignment between what different people believe the problem is or the communication between that. So, in your experience working with these organizations, do you have an experience of when some of these people that you've trained or worked with have helped to step back into that problem space? Yeah, there was actually one very concrete example that I was given after I had done a training program with one of my participants and she actually wrote me afterwards telling me that she was mainly had two responsibilities towards clients.  And the clients might have some design requirements or some requirements for a project that they wanted to have solved and that just bringing this up and actually asking the client, well, would you mind if we actually explored and then having the right arguments for why that is important and that actually helped her to facilitate this discussion which ended up in them actually exploring the problem further. So again, it all comes down to having the right type of knowledge and being aware of how things can influence your process and then you can subsequently manage it a bit better. Yeah, I think that's a great tip.  If we jumped too quickly to solve the problem, we might not be solving the right problem and taking the time to step back. And like you said, with fast paced organizations, it's really difficult to be able to do that at times or we feel like it's difficult to do that. Yeah. So how have you used this personally? Obviously, I, since I'm preaching this all the time, I'm very well aware of all of these things that can influence me, and one of the things that I find most helpful to me personally is the knowledge about priming. That's how you are influenced by stimuli in your environment without even knowing it. And if we become too primed and you're kind of stuck in a rut, then knowing that I might actually be fixated right now and then I know that I actually should take a break or I should switch tasks because that will lead to incubation, which is the, the academic term for taking a break so that your brain can relieve the fixation. And that is something that I use on a daily basis to kind of self-manage and being aware of the fact that I'm not getting anywhere right now - I know that it's because of this and then I can do something about it. And the most interesting thing, I think about incubation or taking a break, is that I often get this skeptical response to that as well. I can't take a break whenever I want to. I'm at work, I have to be productive. But there have been so many studies into incubation and how to take breaks. And one of those studies actually found out that the most effective way to take a break or the most effective way to incubate in terms of beco

    25 min
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We take neuroscience and social science and make it practical for you so you can apply these hacks/tips to improve your leadership, how you lead others and/or how you can lead your organization more effectively. We all have a brain, and we can help you use that knowledge to make you a better leader!

Information

  • Creator
    Jill Windelspecht, President of Talent Specialists Consulting
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2020
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Brain Hacks 4 Leadership