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Ming: Hi, good afternoon my friends and friends on Youtube.
My name is Ming.
I am the Jolly Good fellow of Google, and my day job is developing personal growth curriculum
for Google.
A few years ago, when we set out to create a corporate university in Google, we wanted
to go beyond just teaching people to do things.
We wanted to develop Googlists as full human beings, because we believe that leaders are
everywhere in Google, and the best leaders develop themselves holistically.
And one of the people whose writings informed and inspired us towards the direction that
we chose is our honored guest today, Dr. Annie McKee.
Annie is one of the world's top leaders, one of the world's top advisors on leadership.
She was named one of 100 best leaders by Business Week in 2005. Business Week called her the
"High Priestess of Executive Coaching."
[laughter]
I'm not worthy.
Annie is the founder of Teleos Leadership Institute, a consulting for firm with a mission
of developing value based leadership and resonant organizations.
She has co-authored best selling books on leadership including "Primal Leadership" with
Danny Goleman and Richard Boyatzis.
Annie is someone whom I feel truly understands the inner dimension in leadership and organizations.
And, in person, I found her to have an energy that is exciting and inspiring and at the
same time gentle and compassionate.
And it is an honor to know, to know Annie.
And my friends, please welcome, Dr. Annie McKee.
[applause]
Annie McKee: Hi everybody, how are ya?
Ming, Ming, and Alana, I want to thank you for bringing me here today and for helping
get everything set up so we can have a good hour or so.
I really am delighted to be here, because it seems that, you know, the last year or
so have brought a lot of changes to the world. I don't need to tell you that, but I just
want to set the stage a little bit, for what I am going to talk about today.
Things have changed dramatically not only in terms of technology but in terms of the
way we relate to one another around the world and along with that come great challenges
for us individually about how we communicate, how we relate to one another, how we connect.
And also organizationally -- how do we work and live inside our organizations in a way
that we take ourselves and our companies forward?
It's not the same as it used to be.
It really truly isn't.
When we look at the models of organizations that exist frankly in most companies today
and have existed for the last 3-4-5 hundred years, they're modeled on the Catholic Church
and the military.
They are pyramids with somebody at the top, in the case of the former, somebody who has
a direct link to God.
That's not the way it is anymore in many companies, and people are struggling, and companies are
struggling about how to live, work, and lead inside these new organizations.
So that's what I want to talk about today.
I want to make it really personal; I want to make it about you.
In fact, I'm going to do something a little unusual in a few minutes and break the action,
have you guys talk to each other.
Really get into the topics, and try to make them your own.
Will you go with me on that to have a little bit of fun?
Cool. Alright.
Let me set the stage about what I would like to talk about.
It's good.
If you looked at any of my writings, you know I'm going to talk about emotional intelligence.
I really do believe emotional intelligence is at the core of effective leadership today.
Why is that?
Because we need to relate to people differently than we have in the past.
We need much more self-awareness to be able to manage ourselves, the stress and strain
of today's work places, to dig deep and find our special talents and make sure we can bring
them out.
We have to manage our own emotional responses, to what's going on in our lives, in our work,
in our relationship, etc., and we also have to be engaged with other people in a way that
allows them to be as effective as they can.
Now what's exciting about this is that people have been saying that stuff forever.
I mean it is so obvious.
It is almost silly, but the reality is that there's science behind it.
So, I'm going to talk a little bit about that.
I'm also going to talk a little bit about kind of a holistic approach to leadership,
mind, body, heart, and spirit.
And if you can imagine me sort of presenting that to my publisher, Har--which happened
to be Harvard, and saying, "No, really, spirit's part of the deal."
If you can imagine that conversation, and how it went, but it's really true.
I, I, obviously for our mind, you are recruited for your minds, so I have been told.
So unless one of you snuck in the backdoor, you're all pretty smart.
But that's not what makes the difference in great leadership.
I mean, that sounds strange maybe, but that's not what makes the difference in great leadership.
Maybe it makes a difference in becoming a great engineer, but it does not make the difference
for great leadership.
What does is what I am sort of facetiously calling 'heart' up there, emotion and emotional
intelligence.
And I have the word 'body'.
Okay, what do I mean by that?
Does it mean that you have to be strong and big and rough and tough.
Well, no, but it does mean you need to be resilient, physically and psychologically
resilient, and by the way those two are intertwined.
'Spirit', okay, I'm not talking about religion, although for some people, that's the way it
plays out.
I'm talking about beliefs and values, and how you live them, and how you stand up for
them even when things get tough.
And again, there's some science around this that I'm going to share just a little bit
later on.
Resonant leaders truly look out for themselves in a positive and professional and powerful
way and they also look out for other people.
Resonant leaders take in everything in their environment and mix it like soup until it's
perfect.
Just the ingredients go in one by one until they are perfect and the ingredients are personal,
the ingredients are professional, and the ingredients are group oriented, because if
you -- if you ever were taught or believed, that organizations are successful because
of one or two people at the top, or wherever, it's not true.
They're successful because of us as a group.
So with that in mind, I want to take you through a little bit of a reflection.
I said I was going to make this personal and here we go.
I'd like you to look at the pictures that I'm going to show over the next two minutes
or so.
And I want to just, you just to think about who these people are.
Some you will not know.
The images will evoke things for you and just stay with it for a minute and then I'm going
to ask you to talk about them.
[silence]
Annie: You know what?
Before I ask you to talk about them.
I want to tell you a story to bring home how powerful each one of us can be, even if we're
not personally connected with another person or another human being.
The story I'm going to tell you, despite the picture up there, is not actually about Nelson
Mandela.
Okay?
It is about one of the people that he touched.
Now, I happened to be very fortunate, in that we've done quite a lot of work in Africa,
and my husband is Zambian so we go there a lot, and we've been able to do a lot of work
with people from all over the place.
And in fact, we were working with the U.N., and when you work with the U.N., they take
security very, very seriously.
So, you get off the plane in South Africa for example, and the driver meets you, and
it was not until the second trip that we realized that the driver was really a security guard
and was not going to let us out of his sight, and there was a gun under the seat and all
the rest of that.
So these are highly trained professionals and we were doing this work for 3 or 4 or
5 years.
So we would go all over South Africa in one of those white Range Rovers with our driver,
who was called Philemon.
And you get to know each other, and you find out a little about each other's lives, about
kids, about all that sort of thing, because you're sitting in a car for hours on end.
So, somewhere around year 2, we started getting close, and I remember this one trip.
We were driving up Limpopo Province which is very remote, you might know.
And Philemon told us his story of how he came to be the person he was.
We did not ask him -- it just sort of came out.
You all remember Apartheid in South Africa, of course.
And, you may or may not know it, but Pretoria was a white only city during those years
-- meaning that Blacks could not live there; they could only live on the outskirts.
Now, obviously, it was a full and vibrant city, so it required everybody to work.
And people were, black people were literally trucked in to Pretoria and trucked back out
to these god-awful townships every single day.
Well, one day, Philemon got home; his wife rode a different truck, and she didn't come
home, and he got the neighborhood looking for her, and all the rest of that.
She just didn't come home, and they didn't find her the next day or the next day, until
they finally found her 3 or 4 days in – dead, still on the street, shot by the police
because she had been out after curfew trying to make her way home.
So Philemon told us what that did to him, and I think you can imagine.
He was filled with rage and hatred, and all of the thing you can possibly imagine --
for years.
He said it became his blood -- that was the way he described it.
And his two small boys, who were 12 or 13 when their mom died, also became to be that
full of hatred and resentment and fear, too, and they all in their various ways joined
part of the movement that were pretty violent.
So fast-forward a few years, and Nelson Mandela is out of prison, and he is traveling the
country, talking about truth and reconciliation and peace and no Civil War.
Somebody dragged Philemon to one of these great big rallies of 10,000 or more people,
and he said he sat on the side; he sat on the edge of the crowd, not interested in this
truth and reconciliation and peace.
He wasn't interested, he said, but he started listening to the man and listening to his
story about what he had experienced and his children, etc.
And he told me," I don't know what happened that day, but at a certain point in time,
I felt that the man was speaking to me and me alone. All of those people disappeared.
It's almost like a cloud came over and took them away, and it was only me and him, and
he was talking to my experience, my losing my wife and what I felt afterwards, and what
my life was going to be like if I kept on the path that I was on, and what it could
be like if I chose a different way."
And he said, "I don't know what happened, but I changed. That very moment I changed.
And I got up off that rock and I walked into a different life."
And in fact, he did.
He went to school, and he got connected with the U.N., and he ended up being in this good
job, and on and on and on.
And his kids also became very successful.
Now, I don't know that people change in a minute, in an instance, but I do know people
change.
And I do know they change, because somebody touches their hearts.
Somebody really goes in deep and finds just that spark of hope, that spark of magic that
releases talent and potential, and a belief in a better future.
So, I want you guys to turn that in on your own lives for just a few minutes.
Think about the people in your life; it probably isn't Nelson Mandela.
It might have been an uncle or an aunt; it might have been one of your children -- who
allowed you to open up and see your life, a different way.
Somebody who saw something in you, who relied on you for something, or who really saw what
you could be if you gave yourself a chance.
So, I'll time it, but for the next 3 minutes just turn around and talk to each other about
whoever that person is for you.
[audience talking.]
Annie: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Listen.
The reason I wanted you to do that wasn't only because I wanted you to connect with
what it means to be in contact again with whoever that person was because it was probably
a pretty good experience.
It's actually related to the topic, "How do people change?"
And I want you to keep this in mind, as I go through the rest of this material today.
People change when they want to, period.
I don't care if you've got the best leadership development program in the world.
I don't care if you have the best teachers in the world or that your bonus is going to
increase.
People change because they want to, and they usually change when they're moving toward
something that's really powerfully and positively attractive to their whole lives, right, not
just their work.
And the other thing about this is that, generally speaking, when people feel positive emotions
– I'll get into this more in a bit -- positive emotions, like excitement and energy
and hope, right – we're more willing to engage in the hard work of change.
On the other hand, when we're feeling things like judged, unfairly evaluated or, kind of
the incredible, along with the incredible highs at work, those incredible lows that
you don't understand, that is when people don't change.
That's when it becomes really hard for people to change fundamental habits such as those
that are related to emotional intelligence.
So I want you to keep that in mind because a lot of people will say, "We can't really
develop leadership – you're born with it.
You can't really develop emotional intelligence because it's so deep -- things like self-awareness
and empathy.
I don't believe that.
I fundamentally believe that people like change.
But they've got to be touched or sparked in a certain kind of way and as leaders here,
-- and I hear everyone is supposed to be a leader around here – that's what you need
to learn to do for other people, touch them in a way that they want to go forward in a
different kind of way.
Now it's really common sense what I'm talking about.
Resonant leadership is emotional intelligence – it's using your mind, your intellect
well, it's using your presence, your physical appearance, and your resilience, and it's
sticking to your values.
There's nothing brand-new about that message.
What's new about it is that we know these things can be learned and we know which aspects
of them are really going to change the way you show up as a leader.
So let's look at some of those.
If it's true that resonant leadership is commonsense, why is it not common practice?
We've gone around and looked at leaders thousands and thousands of leaders around the world.
And I hate to say it, but probably only about 10 or 15% would, in my mind, be considered
great.
And even if I used some of the research and measured them up to benchmarks, etc., it's
really low and that's just not right, because people get up in the morning intending to
do a good job with the people who depend on them.
And a lot of us just plain don't or if we do, we fall down along the way.
So, why is that?
One of the reasons I think is that we operate on false assumptions about what it means to
be a good leader.
A lot of us have that old fashioned model that we tell – and somebody does, okay
-- that we should leave our emotions at the doorstep of the workplace.
That's all hogwash; it's not true.
It simply isn't and the research tells us that.
We need to bring our whole self to this thing called 'leadership', and we need to let go
of some of these false myths that we hold about what it means to be great.
Myth #1: Smart is good enough.
If you're a really good technician and if you're a really good individual contributor,
you're going to make a good manager.
No, you're not.
Otherwise, we'd see a lot of better managers out there.
The studies that we've done and our colleagues have done have shown that competencies related
to emotional intelligence make the difference -- self-awareness, self-management, social
awareness, and relationship management statistically differentiate great leaders from their more
average peers.
Now, you could spend your whole life being an average manager or director, and you're
not going to get kicked out of your job.
You're not going to get fired.
You're just going to be average, which, I don't know about you, but that's not good
enough.
Myth #2: Emotions don't matter at work.
Well that's stupid. People are emotional beings.
We bring our emotions wherever we go.
We can hide them.
We can try to mask them.
We can ignore them or deny them or whatever, but they're still there and they affect us
and they affect other people.
The recent neuroscience talks about how our emotions, in fact, can open up our minds or
close our minds down to get back to why this is important at work.
Myth #3: You're a superhero.
I mean, you can take anything that the world or work dishes out.
Well, maybe you can.
The people in this room are probably pretty resilient; you're also recruited for that.
Okay.
And in fact, people who are good leaders are very resilient.
But even those of us who're really good, even those of you who are at the top of your game
at leadership, at leading others, at influencing others, at inspiring them sooner or later
the pressures of the world of work that we're facing today can get the better of us and
bring us down.
And take each one of these a little bit more directly.
Why is emotion important?
Well, to simplify the science greatly, we feel before we think.
It is a survival mechanism.
It is the fight, flight, nurture, and comfort response.
When we're faced with stimuli, we process it first in the limbic brain, the thing they
call the 'primitive brain'.
It's been with us a long time.
It's what got us out of the way of the saber tooth tigers and all the rest of that.
It's still with us. You walk into your space some morning and you look over across the
hall, and you see a couple of people who are having an argument, maybe a polite argument;
you know it's an argument.
You are going to bristle up because you're human and emotions are contagious and you
pick them up.
You're going to start feeling the way people around you feel, just as they pick up on your
emotions.
So here's the worst-case scenario.
You feel and you react.
Now let me say that differently. You feel and then you act and then you think.
Who among us hasn't done that?
What we really want to do is to try to feel and then think and then act, which is a skill
that you can learn and it's a skill called self-awareness and it's another set of skills
called self-management.
Emotional attractors.
Of the many emotions we feel, I put a few of these up here.
This piece of information is based on the study of Chaos theory and applying Chaos theory
to the interaction of human beings and how emotions impact us.
Positive emotional attractors hope, joy, excitement.
It could also be that edgy kind of excitement.
It's not just good feelings.
It's kind of like "Yeah, I got it".
Those enable us personally to literally open up our cognitive categories -- the way we
process information, how we perceive situations, and think more clearly, think more broadly,
take in more information, and come up with better answers.
Positive emotional attractors, which let me say this again, doesn't always feel good.
Sometimes it's really edgy.
Sometimes it's a little bit urrrr.
Negative emotional attractors on the other hand -- hate, fear, anxiety, extreme chronic
stress which, oh by the way, a lot of us feel today even though we don't really admit it
-- we do.
Those on the other hand close us down.
They close down our cottic, cognic, cognitive categories.
They put filters over our eyes and our ears and our nose and whatever else.
So, less information gets through, resulting in worse decisions, hiding out, bad behavior,
and generally an unpleasant person to be around, which by the way is again contagious.
So, when we talk about emotional intelligence, we're talking about something specific. And
let me say that there are a number of people studying E.I., and we come at it slightly
different ways.
I'm not one of those people who says, "Our way is the best way." or "Their research isn't
great."
I just don't go there.
I believe the various camps -- and there are about 3, including ours, who are studying
this thing -- are all doing the good work of trying to figure out what it is that links
emotion to our behavior.
We do it with competencies.
Competencies are skills with intention behind them based on our preferences about how to
think, believe, and act.
There are probably dozens and dozens of studies around the world as well as about 40 years
of studies here in the US about competencies.
They are observable behaviors that allow you to be more effective at work – period.
And our set allow you be more effective as a leader.
Self-awareness: It's obvious.
I know myself.
I understand my emotions.
I know what I'm feeling, I know their impact on me, and I can manage them.
That's number 2.
I can manage my emotions for good.
So I can draw deep down inside me when I'm having a pretty bad day and find that glimmer
of hope that I know is there in me, and that I need to spark in other people.
I realize that my energy transfers to other people, so I use it a certain way -- you can
do the same.
Social awareness: I want to hone in on one of these, which is empathy.
Okay.
I don't mean the psychological term, or the -- you may know the name of this psychologist,
the Carl Rogers, "Oh, I know how you're feeling."
No, okay. I mean understanding deeply what motivates other people, what touches them,
what makes them move, what gets them up off the couch.
It's a critical skill in leadership, much underestimated.
And then finally, relationship skills: The kinds of things you probably think about more
often when it comes to leadership -- inspiration, teamwork, etc.
All very important, but not possible without the other 3.
You can go to 10 workshops at Harvard or Wharton or wherever and study negotiation or influence
or whatever, and you're not going to be any good at it unless you're self-aware, you manage
yourself well, and you understand other people.
You just aren't.
Okay, this is fun.
I recently have been writing for some of your younger colleagues who are still in college.
And I came across some really good research on the link between emotion, thinking, and
creativity.
Really good stuff.
Okay, so, if you think about creativity as having a knowledge domain, you know enough
to be messing around with whatever you're messing around, and sometimes that's really
hard work and an emotional domain.
Some people call that intuition; it's not.
Okay, scientifically it is how we process emotion and link them with our thoughts.
There are kind of four ways of looking at it.
First, deliberate and spontaneous is one dimension; you get that.
And then there is cognitive and emotional.
Creativity isn't something that always just occurs to us or happens in our sleep.
Sometimes it's a very deliberate process of going back into our long-term memory and understanding
what's there and linking it with kind of what, again, most people call 'intuition'.
I think I need to go this way.
That's emotional.
Sometimes it is spontaneous and your emotions just burst on the scenes like 'I know exactly
what to do; now let me go understand what other people say about this and see if I can
come up with something.'
So if you look at this, you've got deliberate and emotional.
You've got deliberate and cognitive, right?
That might be sort of the way the light bulb was developed.
Test after test after test after test, years of research, okay?
Then you've got spontaneous, both emotional and cognitive.
This is interesting stuff.
You should get this the, there is a whole stream of study coming out about this, and
I highly recommend you go look at it.
All right, here we go into the fun stuff again, all right?
I've been talking about people.
I would really love you to walk out of here thinking, "Yeah, I could do this emotional
intelligence stuff a little bit better. That is cool."
But that's not enough and that's because we work in groups.
We don't work alone, and you can perfect your E.I., but if you never use with other people,
you're sunk.
It doesn't help.
We're mammals; we sidle up to each other and we share ideas and we share feelings.
In fact, we share feelings even when we don't know it.
Emotions are contagious – literally.
There are these great studies that had started in Rome, have now been taken up all of the
world -- looking at what they are calling 'mirror neurons', 'mirror neurons'.
They are physical structures in our brain whose purpose seems to be, sole purpose I
should say, seems to be to mirror the emotions of other human beings.
So it isn't just reading body language' it's scientific transmission of feelings among
and between people.
It's an explanation for what we actually know we do.
Now this is particularly important when it comes to leadership.
Why is that?
We're mammals – I'll say it again – we're mammals.
We look up to the stronger, more powerful beings in our group and we pay a heck of a
lot of attention to their emotions, because they can affect our lives.
They have power over us, even if we don't like to say that, they do.
And it's a dance -- you know this dance.
When you first met somebody and you're sitting down, there's all that's said, unsaid conversation
that's going between us.
Like I said, and it's not just reading body language.
It's a transmission of emotion, a transmission of understanding, and it can be beautiful.
Half of the time it is. I believe the greatest inventions have come out of that kind of communication,
among and between people.
But it can also be dangerous.
Dissonant leaders, positioned leaders or informal leaders -- it doesn't matter.
Dissonant leaders wreak havoc in our organizations.
They hurt people -- they really do.
And you don't have to have a formal manager or director position to be in this kind of
situation where you potentially are harming other people.
You walk in as a team member in a morning and grumble and groan about something that
happened to you yesterday.
Add that little conversation then 10 minutes later you bring it up again; you're pinging
somebody off the drawing board there.
Okay, what happens?
A lot of people say, "Well you know, if they didn't do such and such, I wouldn't be having
such a hard time. I wish that they'd change."
Do you know I have heard CEOs say things like that.
It's crazy how people want to look up and find somebody to blame, but the minute you
become a victim, you stop being a leader, and other people know it.
So if you want to have impact, find another way of explaining what's going on.
Either take responsibility, right, or start helping to fix the problem.
Now for me, that's not all that easy.
It's much easier said than done.
Because if you step up and take responsibility for fixing the problem, people are going to
be pointing at you, and calling you "them", right.
But it's the right thing to do.
It's your choice -- "resonance" or "dissonance".
It's your choice; it really is.
You may say you can't affect things, and people are stressed out, you can't get through to
them, or maybe you don't have time.
You could say all those things, but it's really your choice.
You have a lot of impact on the people around you.
If you just take between now and noon tomorrow, and just watch how people respond to you,
you will see how much impact you have on the people here and the people in your life and
people at work.
So, let's say for a moment that you actually get it -- you are emotionally intelligent,
you have a lot of commonsense, you know how to apply it to work, but you start to realize
that you might be part of the problem around here.
Maybe it's at home, maybe things are a little stressed out at home.
You say, "Hey geez, maybe it's me, maybe I really need to look at what's going on with
me."
You say, "How does this happen? I don't get up in the morning trying to cause people pain,
or make them feel like I don't care about them. But somehow those words just came out
my mouth in this group meeting, and I have just kind of derailed the group."
You see it.
How could this happen?
Especially if you really are a good leader.
Well, I'll tell you how it happens.
We often expect ourselves and our leaders to be superheroes, to take anything and everything
the world gives us and just shed it off like Teflon, and we're not like that as human beings.
We need coping mechanisms, and we need to know how to handle it, okay.
What happens for us is that, especially for good leaders, especially for those who are
really good at this thing called 'leadership', you just take on the responsibility more and
more and more.
And you like it, which is a good thing, right?
But put that against the backdrop of a stressful world, that's changing a lot.
With balancing everything you can think of from your life outside of here, to a team
that you're not particularly attached to, to a project that seems to be heading in the
wrong direction and multiply that month after month after month.
You can start to find yourself really sinking under the burden, no matter how strong you
are, no matter now strong you are, and you can really end up feeling this thing called
power stress, month after month, to the point that you know what, you just don't have enough
to give any more.
You just don't feel you can be at your best as a leader or even as a professional.
It's a pretty crummy feeling.
We call it the 'Sacrifice Syndrome'.
Effective leadership, daily crises, the world behind us, etc, ends up with us feeling like
we we're really giving too much, and we're not able to be our best -- when in fact, we
can and could.
I know you're all smart enough to be good leaders.
Chances are you wouldn't even be in this room if you didn't understand some of the things
that go into being really effective in groups and teams as a leader.
So I know you can do this.
We've looked at a few ways that can help people – okay and I mean really practically help
people.
Stay in the zone of resonant leadership.
Avoid that place we called the 'Sacrifice Syndrome'.
Make sure you can sustain your effectiveness even when things are tough.
There are a lot of ways of looking at that.
Our choice has been to look at three particular aspects, experiences really, human experiences
that affect us both neurologically, psychologically and then cognitively.
Mindfulness, hope, and compassion.
Let me talk about them because they're a little bit unusual topics to be discussing about
business leadership.
What do we mean by the 'mindfulness'?
Well, we've borrowed from two fields -- aone is cognitive psychology.
Cognitive psychology is the study of how we take in information, how we perceive stimuli,
how we organize it in our brains, and then what we do with it, alright.
The researchers in this arena claim, based on very good research, that the extent to
which we can clearly understand how we take in information, how we organize it, and how
we use it -- helps us to be more effective when we learn, when we try new things, when
we're creative, when we're innovative.
Cognitive psychology allows us to understand what to do with information.
Moreover, this stream of research tells us, that if we're able to do this, the work, if
you can understand the segue, the work of taking in information becomes less, it becomes
easier, because our systems are more open.
That's one side.
We've also borrowed from certain aspects of Buddhist philosophy which as some of you know,
much oversimplified once again, is the ability to clear and calm.
It is the way I think if it -- clear your mind, calm your mind.
So put those things together, understanding how your mind works and being open to new
information, clear and calm.
You've got the basis for understanding what's going on around you and not getting triggered
by your emotions quite as much as you would normally.
You've also got the basis to, if I can use this word, manipulate your emotions so they
work for you as opposed to beat you down. You also have the basis for determining how
to face situations so you can both neurologically and psychologically remain resilient, which
brings me to the idea of mind, body, heart, and spirit.
Mindfulness allows you to pay attention to your whole being which in our research and
our perspective is the foundation for good leadership.
You need it all.
There's no segmenting this thing. Mind, body, heart and spirit together, informed by mindfulness,
allows us to have our feet on the ground and know where we're going, and understand how
to deal with the situations that we, that we can then embrace.
Hope, wow, it's a powerful thing.
Any of you who've experienced a loss or a natural disaster or a tragedy in your life,
you know what gets you through.
It's hope.
That belief that the future will be better than the past.
That if I put one foot forward, as hard as it is, I'll get there.
Or we'll get there.
Well let me tell you, it's not only about how it makes us feel.
The experience of hope changes our neurophysiology.
The exercise I had you do in the beginning about talking about somebody who helped you
probably stirred up some feelings of good energy, and probably hope.
When we are experiencing hope, a key is turned and our parasympathetic nervous system, which
regulates how we respond to emotion etc., is turned on.
What that means is, it is countering the effects of our sympathetic nervous system, which is
activated when we're under extreme and chronic stress.
So as lovely as the idea of hope is and as much as it's been used in religions and spiritual
practices, etc., that's not all that's good for.
It actually counters the neurological effect of extreme and chronic power stress.
And finally, compassion.
It's the same thing.
The experience of compassion is endemic to human beings.
We are drawn to feel empathy for other people.
It's natural.
In fact, it may be one of the bases of how our species interacts on the planet; I believe
it is.
There is some new, again new research that is indicating that in fact rather than being
the war mongering, horrible beasts that we are presented as in movies and TV, in the
news and all the rest of that, it may just be that empathy is the driver of most of our
behavior on the planet.
Compassion, like hope, triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which can help you get through
and be the best you can be, even when things are a little bit tough.
Now, practically what does that mean?
Are you Mother Theresa?
No, that's not what I'm talking about.
Little acts, such as, saying, "Hey, how are you?" and then waiting for the response, that's
a compassionate act. Asking somebody, 'How are you today?', letting them talk to you,
and then actually responding, see if you can perk them up a little bit.
That's compassion.
Mentoring somebody – that's a compassionate act, whether it's formal or informal.
Coaching somebody around a problem at work.
Being interested.
You don't have to do much to turn this on at work.
Okay, I've talked about emotional intelligence and contagion of emotions, and how they can
affect us personally.
How they can affect our groups.
And I invite you to take these ideas in, and think about them consciously.
Don't sort of stick them down and say, "Yea, that is great. I'll work on that later."
Think about them consciously; live a little bit more consciously around your emotions
and mindfulness and hope and compassion.
Turn that dial 2 degrees, and you will be a better leader.
You will be a better leader.
Give people the opportunity to learn from you.
Give them hope; show them you care.
These are practical, commonsense, research-based ideas that can help you actually be the change
you want to be in the world.
And I invite you to give me a call in 6 months and see how it worked out.
Thank you very much.
[applause]
I would love if anyone has questions.
I know we're toward the end of our time pretty soon, but if there are some questions, I'd
love to take them.
If you ask me a question, I will repeat it back in the microphone so we can all hear.
Any thought or ideas or comments?
Yea, in the back.
[male voice, inaudible]
Annie: Great question.
Let me just be sure I heard you.
You're asking about emotional intelligence, and it being a differentiator between senior
or exceptional leaders and average.
And how do we assess it?
[male voice, inaudible]
Annie: That is an excellent question.
Okay, so how do you assess emotional intelligence in an interview for example.
It's easy to assess technical capabilities usually.
It's difficult to assess emotional intelligence.
All right, there are a couple of things that you can do.
First of all, you've got to turn on your "empathy" , okay, and be really watchful about the
person's behavior.
And the kinds of things you're looking for are curiosity about you, curiosity about the
situation; are they open to looking at the situation and making sense of it?
Okay, that would be sort of reaching out and looking.
Are they able to express empathy in the form of curiosity?
Are they able to express social awareness by how they showed up and what they're wearing,
and all of the rest of that.
So you can use your own powers of observation.
My favorite way to try to get at the heart of that without a formal assessment is to
ask them to tell me a story, a real story, about a situation in which they were expected
to lead, and the group was very difficult, and what they did.
And then, as I'm listening, I'm coding for the competencies. I'm coding for emotional
self-awareness. Did they fly off the handle?
I'm coding for self-management.
I'm coding for the initiative. I'm coding for the ability to even look at difficult
situations positively.
So, those are some tips, but I want to answer the question in one other way, okay?
Formal assessment, in my belief, in my sort of research background, it's impossible for
individuals to self assess their own emotional intelligence.
Why is that?
If you're not self aware, how can you possible measure your emotional intelligence?
So, we use group level evaluation when we're trying to assess emotional intelligence.
Really, it's other people's opinions, but if you get enough, you've got a hint about
where you're going.
So if you have the opportunity to do the 360, or to get data, that's using emotional intelligence
competencies, you're more likely to be able to see that profile.
But short of that, using what we call a critical event interview, having them tell you about
an event and literally coding yourself helps.
Or you can ask them to write it down ahead of time, before they come in.
And literally, sort of qualitative research, code it.
That was a great question.
Others?
[pause]
Guy in the back? Yes.
[pause]
Could you come out, so I can hear you?
[inaudible]
Annie: Good question, yep.
[inaudible]
Great. That's a great question.
Okay the question was about the emotional intelligence, competencies, mindfulness, hope,
and compassion.
That's really a tall order.
You know, you can't just turn the key and have those things part of your being.
And that's absolutely true, absolutely true.
There's two answers to this, okay.
The first one is more macro.
How do people learn?
Okay, so the first step in the learning process is to make sure that you actually care about
learning, and you want to.
That's the first step.
You've got to attach it to something bigger.
I'll give you a quick example.
There's this one executive I was working with in Italy.
Actually. I was coaching him, and he had a problem with empathy.
I mean, he was just tearing his team apart.
He was the Deputy CEO, slotted to be the CEO, but he wasn't going to get there unless he
fixed this problem.
He'd been told, "You either stop destroying teams or it's over."
And he was like, "Empathy? How can I learn about that? I don't really care about it,
anyway."
[laughter]
Through the coaching process, he didn't, he really didn't.
Through the coaching process, not quite sure how it happened because I did not ask him
about his family.
That's sort of the line in coaching.
It came to him that this lack of empathy, was actually interfering with his relationship
with his wife and most importantly his 14-year-old daughter.
This light bulb went off in this guy's head, and he was like, "Okay, I'm getting a handle
on this thing. I'm going to do it."
And so we went through some processes, which will bring me to the second part of the question
of helping him to see when he needed it, and how to practice it, okay.
So, number one you've got to figure why you want to change this thing.
Second you're absolutely right.
It takes practice.
It doesn't happen overnight.
You need to become almost like a helicopter over yourself, viewing your own behavior and
emotions consciously.
And checking when you're going off the path, okay.
You also need some understanding of how you can create experiments for yourself and to
improve slowly over time.
And note those markers on some sort of mental map, and usually that doesn't happen easily,
unless you've got some help.
You need somebody -- a friend, your partner, whatever, you need somebody to be in it with
you giving support, because it's not that easy.
And then last but not least, especially when it comes to mindfulness.
It's a daily practice.
Let me give you some very practical ideas, okay.
If you're trying to deepen your capacity for mindfulness, you really think that's probably
the first place to start, which for most people I believe it is.
You can do some really simple things.
You don't need to meditate 4 hours a day or take 16 weeks off and go to wherever in meditation
patient retreat.
You really don't.
You really don't need to do yoga every day.
If you do these things, more power to you.
What it takes is just a little bit of time, every single day.
Where you're not doing the stress routine, you're are not making the to-do lists, you're
not worrying about what's happening at home.
You're not worrying about the project that's running off the rails or whatever.
You're quiet.
I mean, literally 10 minutes in bed before you get up.
Emptying your mind, breathing deep, oxygen affects all this, you all probably know that,
makes a difference.
Twenty minutes walking from one building to another without anybody else, by yourself,
not fussing about what's happening next.
It sounds so trivial, but those little things make a difference.
And as you become accustomed to this habit, you can turn it on instantaneously.
Before I get up and do a talk I will go over for 5 minutes and sort of, whew, get rid of
whatever is there, and then I'm back to sort of a nice, resilient place again.
I don't want to over simplify this, but if we try to make it complex, none of us are
going to do it.
Get out on your bike, go for a run, go for a walk, get away from people, focus on clear
and calm.
Good question.
Others?
Anybody else?
Yes.
[inaudible]
Annie: Good question.
How do we interact with the people who aren't at this talk?
Who do not have emotional intelligence, or at least don't use it?
The first thing I would say is what was on one of the slides, don't be a victim, and
just don't go there.
Secondly, build some good fat walls around you.
So they don't hurt you.
Don't let these people hurt you.
They're trying to hurt you in some cases, and in other cases they don't know, but in
either case don't let them hurt you because they can really damage your self-esteem.
Then the third is don't do it back.
If you do it back, you're just facilitating the growth of a beast inside your group.
So don't be a victim, boundaries, and don't do it back.
And go do good where you can.
Fourth, fourth, right the fourth and final suggestion -- if it's like that chronically,
get out.
Just get out.
It's not good for you.
Thanks.
Okay, we're at our time.
I would like to thank Alana and Ming once more.
If we could give them a hand.
Thank you.
[applause]
And I wish you all a good day.
And I hope to see some of you later and again.
Bye.