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MARY KATE: Hello, and welcome to Authors at Google.
I am super excited to be here today
to introduce "Profit from the Positive."
And I'm not just saying that because I read the book
and learned that it's best to start with a sizzle.
I'm saying that because the book is actually quite excellent.
I am a researcher here at the People and Innovation lab
at Google, where my job has defined
new ways to use social science to create one of the best
places to be a creative worker.
And in my role here, I am constantly
looking for new Google-y ways to make our company
a more amazing place to work.
And it is my pleasure to be introducing this talk,
because this book is full of ideas on how to do just that.
Senia Maymin, an executive coach and founder of two startups,
and Margaret Greenberg, founder of the consulting and coaching
practice, the Greenberg Group, have scoured the research
and come up with concise answer to the question,
how can we get people to perform at their best?
And their answer is by identifying, cultivating,
and using their strengths every day.
Creating roles, work relationships,
and organizations where people can
do that while under intense pressure to innovate
is not easy.
And this book isn't the silver bullet.
But it does offer a silver lining.
Creative new ways of approaching day-to-day management
challenges by focusing on what drives employee engagement.
I look forward to learning more.
Join me in welcoming Senia and Margaret.
[APPLAUSE]
SENIA MAYMIN: Hello, hello.
Hello, Google.
We're very excited to talk to you about the book.
And specifically, to give you three tools
that you can walk away with.
As you see in the subtitle of the book,
we have Boost Productivity, Transform Your Business.
So you're literally going to walk out of here with tools
to help you amp up your productivity
and your influence.
The book has a few different components
that you may have already heard about.
But basically, it takes the latest research,
just like Mary Kate just said.
And it uses over 30 practical tools.
And one thing that you'll see throughout,
and you'll see throughout what we're telling you,
is that there are real life case studies.
Both what Margaret and I have experienced
as we've been executive coaches and have
worked with people who want more productivity, who
want more influence.
And as an aside, we actually often find
that the people who want to be most productive
are those people who already are.
So when we ask people, what do you really want to do?
The ones who say they want more productivity,
they tend to already be more productive.
As an example of the real-life case studies,
you'll see that in the book, in Chapter Five,
which is the hiring chapter.
The first part is what you can do for yourself.
And the second part of the book are
common problems, common issues, such as hiring,
how to bring out the best performance reviews.
So you will see that we featured Google highly in the hiring
chapter.
What other company has a term like Google-y?
That is just really neat that you
think about hiring in a specific way that's
very specific to you.
The other example of a very strong company that does that
is Zappos.
And for them, the word is "more weird."
More weird is what's important to them.
But not too weird, not too little weird.
So it's very important to think about culture.
And you'll see that in the Chapter Five section.
Today, what are we really talking about?
We're talking about getting more done, but without necessarily
working more hours.
So what can we do?
Before we do this, I want to tell you
a little bit about what is this thing that
is our time pressure to succeed.
Americans work eight hours more per week than Germans,
but we are no more productive, unfortunately.
If you look around the room, 7 of the 10 people around you
will tell you that work is a major source of stress.
Maybe not here, maybe not at Google,
as there are a lot of people working on it.
But this is a national statistic.
There has been a time diary study
done by sociologists since 1965 that literally has measured
what do people do and how do they spend their time?
And from 1965 until today, we have only one additional hour
of free time.
Now, how great or not great is that?
We have great technology.
We have multiple ways that we can get more time.
But we're not getting that much more time.
So if you liked listening to music in 1965,
and you like listening to that same music now,
you only have one more hour to do it.
This is a major concept that Margaret and I
talk about with every single company
that we have worked with.
Which is flip-flop costs.
You may be more familiar with the term as multitasking.
We all do it.
I do it.
You do it.
Everybody multitasks.
The part about multitasking that you may not
know about is multitasking can be fine,
but it's the switching cost, that flip-flop cost.
So flipping from one project to another.
And that's the part that actually
decreases your productivity by 40%.
The book is called "Profit from the Positive."
We want you to profit financially, emotionally,
mentally from these tools that you're
going to walk out of here with.
But what is this positive thing that we have there?
So I'll tell you first what it's not.
I'm going to give you the bartender's
guide to positive psychology.
So when people see the word "positive,"
they often think, oh, smiley faces.
They think this is a rosy-eyed view of the world.
Sometimes people think, oh, that is
and that should be the glass-half-full mentality.
But no.
It's actually the disturbing-the-water part
of the glass.
That's what we think positive psychology is.
Positive psychology is an academic study.
And it's basically saying, OK, glass half full.
There's the water level.
But how can we study that water level?
How can we figure out what really
does make people optimistic, what
really does make people more resilient?
Another thing that people sometimes
say about positive psychology is,
oh, you mean that kind of thing where
I sit around doing gratitude mantras
and I try to really make lemonade out of lemons?
And we say, no.
Please don't necessarily try to do that.
One of the things that you may very well want to do
is you may want to take just part of that lemon,
and squeeze it into a lime drink.
Do something totally different.
So not necessarily that positive means smiling and always good.
One thing that you will not walk out of here with
is you will not walk out of here with this attitude
that, I now feel more positive about my productivity,
and therefore I am.
That's not what's going to happen.
So now that I've told you all these things
that positive psychology is not, what is positive psychology?
It's basically the study of what's right.
What do I mean by that?
It's the study of what's right in relationships,
in personal fulfillment, in business, in productivity.
And it's when you look at those things that are working.
So let me give you an example.
Take off your Google hats for moment,
and put on your architect hat.
So pretend that you are a British architect.
And you are out to make the best bridges that you can possibly
make.
You have at least two different things that you can do.
You can look at all the bridges that have fallen
and collapsed, and are not standing,
and the suspension has gone wrong.
Or you can look at all the bridges that
have withstood the test of time, that have been standing
for decades, centuries, maybe thousands of years.
Now, one thing we're saying is don't not
study the bridges that have collapsed.
That's a very, very important thing to do.
We're good at problem solving.
That's an important thing to do.
But also look at the bridges that have
withstood the test of time.
Why?
Because you're not going to learn
the same lessons from both.
So researchers in social psychology
have studied bad marriages.
And they found that in bad marriages
there are a lot of arguments.
So you might make the conclusion that you
might want to not have arguments in order
to have a good marriage.
But researchers have studied good marriages,
and they found that in good marriages
there are a lot of arguments.
It's just, how do you get past the arguments?
How do you resolve them?
So what we're saying is, also study the strong bridges.
These three tools.
I'm going to give you a shortcut,
and they won't mean anything to you right now.
But at the end, they'll mean everything to you.
Trick Yourself.
FRE, which is actually free.
And that means Don't Be an Expert.
Let's start with Trick Yourself.
This is what we hear as executive coaches.
We hear our clients, who are already
highly successful people, saying to us, I'm stuck.
I'm not sure how to start.
Or saying to us, it's important.
I know this thing is important.
But I just get too busy working on other things.
So what do we tell them to do?
One of the things that we try to put into their toolkit is this.
Imagine.
Imagine that you are in an experimental room,
and a social psychologist has come up to you and has said,
this is how we'll run this experiment
that you've agreed to participate in.
I'm going to give you 20 activities, one by one.
Each one of them will take about three to five minutes.
And I want you to do them as I bring you new ones.
So I might ask you to make a puzzle.
I might ask you to make a clay figure.
Say I'll give you some yellow and brown clay.
I might ask you to fold the cardboard box.
I might ask you to do some different activities.
Now, unbeknownst to you as you start this experiment,
at some point, the experimenter will come in
and will actually interrupt your activity
and tell you that it's time to go on to the next one.
So it might be that you're doing an anagram,
and experimenter comes in and says, OK, that's enough.
Let's go on to the next one.
Or it might be that you're doing a crossword puzzle or LEGOs,
and the experimenter comes in and says, let's move on.
Now, here's a question for you.
At the end of the experiment, the experimenter
will ask you, which ones do you remember?
So he'll actually say, do you remember the ones
that you were interrupted?
He'll say, which ones do you remember?
And I want you to list them.
So my question to you is, do you think
you're more likely to remember the interrupted ones?
And let's say the jigsaw puzzle, the little giraffe,
and the anagrams are the interrupted,
and the other ones are the completed.
Or do you think you're more likely to remember
the completed ones?
AUDIENCE: Interrupted.
SENIA MAYMIN: Interrupted.
So let's get some comments.
Why did somebody say "interrupted?"
Why?
AUDIENCE: Your brain is still working on it.
SENIA MAYMIN: Your brain is still working on them.
What else?
AUDIENCE: More disturbing.
SENIA MAYMIN: More disturbing?
How disturbing?
AUDIENCE: Disturbing that I'm not done yet.
SENIA MAYMIN: Not done yet.
I want to do something else.
Your brain is working on them.
It's more disturbing.
Who has a comment on the completed ones?
That you spent more time on them?
This room votes interrupted, yes?
This whole room is entirely right.
The interrupted tasks were remembered so much so
that they were-- the room is high-fiving each other, just
for the record.
They were remembered so much so that they were remembered
90% of the time more than the completed tasks.
Now, that's a little bit funny.
I know the room doesn't think so.
But it's a little bit funny.
Because you actually had the chance
to spend more time on the completed tasks.
What's happening?
It's exactly what the two people here in the front said.
It's that when you leave things unfinished, really,
the way that the experimenter described it,
is there's a tension.
There's a tension in your head.
That's unfinished, how do I get back to it?
It's still rolling around in your head.
Now if you're at a cocktail party
and you want to be really snazzy,
this is called the Zeigarnik Effect,
for the researcher who created it.
So the fact that you want to come back
to things that were unfinished.
Let's take you to a different place-- car washes.
Who needs to go to a car wash?
I needed to last week.
Car washes.
Suppose you have one of these two sets of car washes.
You've gone to a car wash.
You've driven by, you've gone to a car wash.
And you think, OK, I got a car wash here.
And at the end, the person at the car wash
gives you a coupon.
The person gives you either this coupon.
So this coupon has eight little places
that you have to stamp before you can get the ninth free car
wash.
Or the person gives you this coupon,
in which there are 10 places to stamp
before you get the 11th car wash.
But notice that the first two are stamped out.
Another question for you.
In which one of these do you think you would go all the way
and go to, in effect, nine car washes
to get your free car wash?
The one with--
AUDIENCE: Two stamps.
SENIA MAYMIN: With the two stamps.
Why?
AUDIENCE: Because it's that they already give us something.
SENIA MAYMIN: They give you something.
Almost like something free?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, they give something with the [INAUDIBLE].
SENIA MAYMIN: OK.
AUDIENCE: I agree, but I think the reason that I would say,
because the process already started.
So leaving the second one would feel
like wasting the two car washes.
SENIA MAYMIN: So there's a comment
that it feels like you're wasting the two car
washes that you didn't actually do,
but that you may be wasting.
Did you have a comment here?
AUDIENCE: Similar.
SENIA MAYMIN: Similar comment.
And what did you want to say?
AUDIENCE: I think also, you don't
need to get over any mental hurdle,
because the decision has been made for you already.
SENIA MAYMIN: The decision has been made for you.
You don't need to get over any mental hurdle.
You guys are right on.
So either you've read the book, or you're right in line
with the thinking of the psychologist.
Basically, 300 people-- about 150 in each group--
went through 19% of that group where
they had to get eight stamps to get the free ninth one.
19% of that went all the way through.
Of the other group, 32%.
So there's something about having started.
There's something about that.
We'll give you an example of something
we see in our coaching.
We see that when somebody needs to put a presentation together,
or put a report together, sometimes they'll just start
and then step away from it.
So literally plan that they will step away from it.
They kind of trick themselves.
Or something that's in the book is one of our clients
writes a to-do list, but she writes the first two items
and immediately crosses them off.
It's a little funny, right?
It's like you're very, very physically tricking yourself.
So now a question for you.
And I'll give you the very specific ways
that you can approach the question.
This is my favorite page in the book.
It's page 17.
It's 5-1-smallest.
It's just like all the things that you've described.
But there are really three questions
to be able to get yourself to that trick-yourself state.
5-1-smallest.
What can I do in five minutes?
What can I do to move the project forward by 1%?
And what's the smallest action I can
take for the biggest impact?
They're very simple questions, but sometimes simplicity
can make us take a step forward.
I'd like you to look around the room
and choose somebody who you didn't walk in with,
and to turn to that person.
And I'm going to give you about a minute and a half per person.
And to turn to that person and to tell
them, what is a project-- Ideo tends to do this.
They tend to really, really trick themselves
into getting started.
Let me just give you this.
Today is Tuesday.
For everybody watching online as well, today is Tuesday.
It will always be Tuesday when you watch this presentation.
This week, on what project do I need
to trick myself into getting started?
So you already know what that is.
So tell a partner what that is.
And ask yourself, and have the partner ask you,
how can I apply this five minutes, 1%, smallest action
principle?
Please go ahead.
And both ways.
You and then the other person.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
SENIA MAYMIN: OK, let's come back.
Who would like to share a trick-yourself example?
So either the project or what you've
thought of that you can do to trick yourselves.
So I would love a couple of volunteers
to share their project and what it
is that you thought to trick yourself in.
Five minutes, 1%, or smallest thing.
MARGARET GREENBERG: OK.
SENIA MAYMIN: This is Margaret.
MARGARET GREENBERG: I'm Margaret.
Hi.
One of the things that we did is we wrote every Friday.
We had a meeting at one o'clock Eastern.
I'm on the east coast.
SENIA MAYMIN: Margaret's in Connecticut, I'm in California.
MARGARET GREENBERG: And so we had this meeting every Friday
by phone.
And what I would do is I would send Senia
an email on all that I accomplished that day.
Whether I rewrote a chapter, or did a piece of research.
But when did I write the email?
I wrote it first thing in the morning
at 7:30, as if I had already completed all those things.
And then I hit the send button at five minutes before one.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
SENIA MAYMIN: Wonderful.
The comment is he was trying to do
yoga and meditation every day, and he
found it hard to commit to 90 minutes.
So he told himself and started doing
one minute per day, 60 seconds.
You've done it for months now?
Fabulous.
There's some research that if you're
trying to get into the habit of flossing your teeth,
you really should just floss one tooth.
It gets you started.
This was trick yourself into getting started.
And now we're going to move on to FRE.
And here's Margaret with that.
MARGARET GREENBERG: Thank you Senia.
Thank you.
So here we go.
FRE-- Frequent Recognition and Encouragement.
And guess what?
It really is free.
And what we're talking about here
is not formal recognition programs
that most companies have.
It's the informal recognition, the expression of appreciation.
So what do we know about that?
Well, I'll tell you a little story first.
There was a company that I was coaching the president--
actually, here in California now that I think about it.
And they had just acquired another company.
And so we brought together the leaders from both companies.
And we wanted to do an inventory of all the management practices
that both companies had.
And so he asked the head of HR from the other company,
so what kind of management practices
do you have to improve the performance of your employees?
And the head of HR said, we have a progressive discipline
process.
So you can imagine, I nearly fell off
my chair what I heard that, right?
So I thought to myself, well, imagine
if we had a progressive feedback process.
What might that look like?
So we got curious.
Actually another colleague of mine, Dana Arakawa, who
also went to UPenn with Senia and me,
we got curious and decided to conduct a study.
But think about it.
Progressive discipline.
That's like-- do we have any golfers in the room?
That's like hiring of golf pro who says just
before every swing, don't miss!
Don't miss!
Don't miss!
Right?
So we said, there's got be another way.
So we wanted to conduct a study.
So there was a company, another high technology organization,
part of a large financial services company.
The CIO was curious, too.
Was there any link between giving
frequent recognition and encouragement
and the performance of that particular individual in team?
So one of the things we often get
from clients is they'll ask us, how
do I get the most out of people?
And we actually suggest that they
ask themselves a somewhat different question.
Not a question and that sounds like you're
trying to squeeze every last ounce out of an employee--
how do I get the most?
Instead, we suggest that they ask this question.
How can we bring out the best?
Now.
You probably all know about some of the Gallup research.
One of the ways to bring out the best
is really to understand and know your strengths
and get to use them every day.
How many people have actually taken
some kind of strengths assessment?
OK.
How many people actually consciously apply
their strengths every day?
Great.
OK.
Keep working on it.
Well, another way that you can really bring out the best
is by giving frequent recognition and encouragement.
And again, it's free.
So this study was at a financial services company technology
department.
About 900 technology employees, about $100 million budget.
And so we decided to see if there
was any link between these positive practices,
like frequent recognition and encouragement, and the results
that they got.
So what did we find out?
Well, one of the things-- and you probably know this,
working here at Google-- technology people
love to measure everything.
In fact, I like to say if you can't measure it,
it doesn't exist.
They'll tell me, if it doesn't fit
into a spreadsheet, Margaret, it doesn't exist.
I'm like, well, maybe not.
So we were curious.
So we conducted this study with about 155 IT folks.
Some of them were project managers, architects, BAs,
et cetera.
And we wanted to see what the connection was.
And the cool thing is they had nine performance measures
that we didn't even have to come up with.
Performance measures such as were they on budget?
Were they on time, on schedule?
And what about quality, the number of defects?
And they had another handful of other performance measures
as well.
So we took a look at that.
And we created a survey.
And we asked questions such as, my manager regular
recognizes project milestones?
And how frequent does your manager recognize performance?
And some other follow-on questions as well.
In fact, this particular survey is actually
in the book in the appendix that you can take yourself,
and can also have others take it.
So what did we find out?
Well, we took the employees' answers
to those questions and others.
And we were able to actually rank the responses,
from those managers that received really high scores
on frequent recognition and encouragement
and those that scored really low.
So we put it into the quartiles, high to low.
And guess what we found?
We now have the data.
We actually saw a 42% increase in the team performance
by those managers that scored in that top quartile
for giving FRE than those that scored in the bottom.
So it made a big difference-- 42%.
So why don't we do, then?
Why don't we do either peer-to-peer more often,
or manager direct report?
Why don't we do more of it?
Well.
There's a couple reasons why.
One.
We've been taught that there are other productivity tools.
Are you familiar with Lean Six Sigma and tools like that?
That to improve productivity, you
have to measure the work, the process.
Now, I wouldn't want you to walk out
of here thinking that Senia and I aren't
in favor of improving process.
We are.
In fact, I spent a good part of the '90s
doing process re-engineering.
So I'm intimately familiar with it.
| you're missing out on a big part of the results equation
when you don't also look at the worker.
How can we improve performance through some of our practices?
Negativity bias.
That's a term psychologists use to describe
why we don't do certain things, why
we tend to look at the glass as half empty.
Some evolutionary psychologists believe
that for early man to survive, he
had to be on the lookout for that saber toothed tiger, not
a beautiful sunset.
So we are often keen to finding fault.
We are more apt to catch people doing things wrong than we
are to catch them doing things right.
Think about, you're all probably familiar with those customer
service stats.
Where when we have poor service, we tell 13 people.
But what we have seller service, we only tell five.
So we're hard-wired to look at what's wrong.
So giving positive feedback doesn't come easily
to some people.
And then lastly, we've heard just
about every excuse in our coaching practices
on why people don't do it.
And here are a couple of our favorites.
"I'm too busy." "That's what they get paid to do."
"I don't like encouragement or need it to do my job."
Then we show them the data.
"It's too early to celebrate." we hear this all the time,
especially from technology organizations
that have these multimillion dollar multi-year projects.
We don't know if it's implemented yet,
so we've got to wait.
No, don't wait.
And then lastly, this is really one of our favorites.
"It'll go to their heads."
Come on!
So the question is, how do you encourage
more positive feedback, when it may not be part of the culture?
And one of the things we talk about
in "Profit from the Positive" is how
to become a positive deviant.
And the fact that you're all here today, right here,
probably tells us that you probably
waiver on that positive deviant slide anyways.
So our recommendation would be to just start doing it.
There is something called in psychology the contagion
effect.
And it can work both positively and negatively.
So the more we do it, it creates this contagion effect.
Now, we'll get into in a moment, you
have to make sure it doesn't backfire.
And that's what this slide is.
You want to make sure that the frequent recognition
and encouragement, there's some parameters around it.
So this is our backfire slide.
Do we have any car enthusiast in the room?
So first, one way to prevent it from backfiring
is make sure that you're giving process praise rather than
person praise.
So Carol Dweck, who some of you know from Stanford,
has done a number of research studies around this.
And what we mean by that is person praise
is when we recognize someone with really general statements.
Like Rebecca, you're really smart.
Or Fay, great job.
The interesting thing that we've found, or that Carol has found,
is that people that give person praise,
it actually can create a sense of helplessness.
And that they're afraid to lose that distinction.
If we have anybody in the room that has kids, remember that.
I wish I knew this earlier in my motherhood.
The second.
Think about it this way.
Process praise is when we praise someone
by actually describing the process or the strategies
they used in completing that particular project
or whatever it is you're giving them feedback on.
So that's an important concept.
To say, I really appreciate that you did that project for me,
or analyzed those reports for me,
because I know you put in a lot of time and a lot of effort.
And you have a lot of other things on your plate,
so I really appreciate that
So whether that's peer-to-peer or manager to direct report,
remember, process praise, not person praise.
Second, are you familiar with the term absent presence?
Absent presence.
It's what you do-- some of you might be doing it right
now if you're on your iPhone.
Taking notes.
That's OK.
It's when we dial into that conference call
and then we put the phone on mute and we catch up on email.
Or it's when you're out to dinner
with your spouse, lover, partner, friend, whoever
and you're texting while you're across from each other,
and you're really not present.
You're physically present, but you're mentally absent.
So when it comes to delivering FRE, to your point,
it has to be genuine.
Yes, it has to be specific, but it needs to be genuine.
And one way to be sure that it is
is that you're really present.
You give eye contact.
Even if it's feedback you're giving remotely to somebody
in another location or another country,
stop whatever you're doing, turn away from your computer
if you're on the phone, and really deliver it.
You can tell when people aren't present even over the phone,
even over the computer.
And then lastly, praise to the back.
This is a term that we learned from one of the guys
we interviewed for "Profit from the Positive."
He's actually the co-founder and president
of EverFi, who Google actually did early funding for.
So EverFi is a DC-based web-based curriculum
for students-- both middle school,
high school, and college-- where they teach kids
financial literacy skills and some other life skills,
anti-bullying kind of thing.
And one of the things he talks about at EverFi
is it's easy to give people direct feedback in an email
or face-to-face.
But oftentimes, we forget about praising to the back.
When you're in a meeting and you talk
about somebody who isn't there.
And it reverberates.
It comes back to that person.
Hey, I was in that meeting.
they were talking about you, that you
did this really great job on XYZ project.
They were really talking about how valuable
you are to the company.
So praise to the back.
A couple other things.
Some companies that we interviewed for the book
and have told some stories around.
EverFi is one.
Zappos is another, out in Las Vegas, that Senia visited.
And jwi-de-- jwi-de-- de va?
Joie de Vivre.
I'm better with my Spanish.
Another, we interviewed Chip Conley for the book,
as well as Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
And probably, maybe Google, too we may add to this list.
And this is a quote that we love from one of the people
that we quote in the book. "Using recognition
is the best way to build a high-energy, fun culture
and reinforce the behaviors that drive results.
Why be selfish on the one thing that matters most to people?"
So with that, who have you been meaning to give a FRE to?
Think about it for a moment.
And again, turn to the person next to you.
Who have you been meaning to give a FRE to?
It could be a peer.
Do we have any managers in the room?
If you manage, it might be somebody on your team
that you want to give feedback to.
Maybe someone in another department.
Someone you've been meaning to give a FRE to.
So this one I'm only going to give you 30 seconds.
And remember, the process.
What was the process?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
MARGARET GREENBERG: How many people
are actually going to now deliver that FRE when they
go back to their desk after this talk?
That they'll actually deliver it?
OK.
You can do better than that.
OK?
All right.
I'm going to turn it back over to Senia
then, who's going to introduce us to the third tool.
Go ahead.
SENIA MAYMIN: So literally, in the book
we talk about it as Don't Quit, Just Quit Being an Expert.
And it's really when we're hearing from our clients,
this project is extremely stressful.
I'm frustrated at my own results.
I've been really trying.
Or, for example, in sales, I've gotten six nos.
And now I'm about to make a seventh call.
What mental state should I be in?
This was not a good week.
So we all have these.
I have these.
You likely have these.
What do we do?
This is Jeff Bezos of Amazon saying,
"if you want to be inventive, you
have to be willing to fail."
He doesn't just say this.
He says this in every interview that he gives.
And if you talk to people at Amazon--
and we did for the book-- they say this is his main mantra.
To encourage a culture of failure.
But failure means trial and failure, trial and error.
What do we mean by all this?
Let's think about the two different ways
that you can face the world.
You can have a performance mindset,
or you can have a learning mindset.
A performance mindset is when you're thinking, all right,
this is what I'm going to demonstrate.
I'm going to demonstrate mastery.
I'm going to demonstrate competence.
A learning mindset is when you're
going to learn mastery and learn competence.
It's a completely different way of figuring out
where you're going.
Now, as I show you the next quote, which
is another of my favorite pieces of the book,
just because it's so implementable--
think about it in terms of yourself,
when you can say something like this yourself.
And think about it in terms of when you can say something
like this to somebody that you're
working with together on a project.
As you're working together on a project,
you can describe a project this way.
These are exact words that our researcher used.
"You'll probably learn a lot, but you'll probably
make a bunch of mistakes, get a little confused,
and maybe feel a little dumb at times."
Now, I'm actually asking you this question.
What does that make you think of,
either when you say to yourself or when
you get this kind of instruction from somebody?
What kind of mindset does that put you in?
What?
AUDIENCE: Relief.
SENIA MAYMIN: Relief.
Why relief?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
SENIA MAYMIN: You can't mess up much worse than that.
Anything else?
AUDIENCE: Freedom to take risks.
SENIA MAYMIN: Freedom to take risks.
That's how I feel about it as well.
And what happens if you don't say this to somebody?
It's just not implied.
That's what I'm getting at.
There's nothing implied about this kind of attitude
if you don't actually say it.
At Joie de Vivre, Chip Conely's company,
one of the things he did is he had a mistake-of-the-month
club.
So he actually would reward people
who had the biggest learning from a mistake.
Who does this?
A lot of companies do this.
You do this.
37 Signals, which is a super company, does this.
Amazon really, really invigorates their people
to do this.
But the part of it that you may not think about it as often--
So even if you have thought about these kinds of concepts,
how can I get into a learning mindset?
If I'm messing up, how can I think about it as learning?
One of the ways that we most love to think about this
is, how can you carve this kind of boomerang for others?
How can you make others, by saying something like that,
or by giving them the permission and the freedom,
think about this kind of mindset?
We're giving you one more exercise.
And it's the last one.
And why are we giving you these exercises?
We told you you'd walk away with three tools,
and we want you to practice them.
Even though we're only giving you 30 seconds to two minutes.
But please, turn to the person next to you and let's
talk about when taking on a learning mindset for yourself
or for someone you work with would be helpful.
30 seconds per person.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
SENIA MAYMIN: OK.
Learning mindset.
You and the learning mindset.
What is something you heard from your partner
that you might be able to implement?
Or what's an insight that you have
in terms of how you can get into the learning mindset?
So the comment is, for example, in this presentation,
just coming to it and having more of a learning mindset
rather than critical thinking.
I find that too, especially if you practice
a sport or a hobby-- So I really love ballroom dancing.
And sometimes I'll go to a beginner class.
And it is somewhat beginner.
But I can have that critical mindset.
Like, oh, that's boring, or that's boring.
Or I can say, what else can I learn?
So questions?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Earlier you mentioned something about that there
was a big difference between managers [INAUDIBLE].
MARGARET GREENBERG: We don't know which way the arrow goes.
But one of the things we will tell you is we
had to throw out a whole piece of the data.
We also had the managers take the assessment and say,
I give frequent recognition and encouragement.
And what happened was we then compared it
with the employees' response.
And they didn't match up.
So the employee said, no, I'm not getting much.
And the manager was saying, I give frequent recognition
and encouragement!
So really, we tossed out the manager feedback.
Because when it comes to frequent recognition
and encouragement, whose opinion matters most?
It's the receiver that's receiving it.
So just a quick recap on the tools.
There's 31 tools in "Profit from the Positive."
We gave you just three in this last hour.
Trick yourself into getting started.
FRE.
And then don't quit, just quit being an expert.
OK you're in perf season, right, here at Google?
Yes?
Well, guess what?
We've heard that performance reviews are really painful.
We've heard it from managers.
We've heard from employees.
We've heard from HR folks.
So we devote a whole chapter, actually,
to performance reviews.
We call it "Change 'Em or Chuck 'Em."
And one of the tools within this chapter is called Preview,
Don't Just Review, Performance.
And this really borrows from sports psychology
around visualizing success.
So if you're curious on how to make the dreaded performance
review less painful, definitely read Chapter Seven.
And then one other tool that we didn't get to do
is Increase Your Odds.
There's some research around when and where.
Those of you that rely on others.
You might be an individual contributor,
and you don't necessarily have people that report you,
but you rely on others to get your work done.
You need things from them.
You're more apt to get what you need and get
what you want if you give the person a triggering event.
And tell them where and when you'd
like that piece of work delivered.
So if I say to you, Rebecca, will you
please get me that analysis tomorrow?
Twice as likely if I say to you, Rebecca,
can you give me that analysis by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning?
In fact, even if you can email it to me
or bring it to my office on a flash drive, whatever.
Twice as likely to get what I want.
So a couple other free tools we just snuck in there
if we had time.
So here we go.
This is our website, ProfitfromthePositive.com.
There are a lot of free tools.
This is someone that definitely has a learner mindset.
She's going to be the next, maybe, CEO.
Google maybe?
She'll break that glass ceiling maybe after all.
But a lot of free tools there.
We also have a Facebook page by the same name.
And we'll also stay here, answer any other questions.
We're going to be here for a while.
We'll also be happy to inscribe your books for you.
And really, thank you.
It's been such an honor to be here today.
We can't tell you.
Thank you for having us.
[APPLAUSE]