Comedian Ben Gleib offers approaches for making mundane work feel a little less stuffy through humor.
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Comedian Ben Gleib offers approaches for making mundane work feel a little less stuffy through humor.
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Everyone knows the pain of feeling left out, but fewer discuss the dread of needlessly being left in. This is what we at the NeuroLeadership Institute call over-inclusion, and the downsides are massive. In the rightful pursuit of lifting up diverse voices and opinions in recent years, leaders have started over-correcting. In order to reach a happy middle ground, they must pay attention not just to moments of exclusion, but over-inclusion — cc’ing more people than necessary in emails, jam-packing meeting rooms, and creating multi-armed project teams. According to our research, the way to create that efficiency is through a careful process of expectation matching. Swinging into the danger zone At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we think of inclusion as a pendulum. It can swing from under-inclusion, where people fail to loop in the right team members in meetings, projects, and emails; to optimal inclusion, where the right people know the right info at the right time; to over-inclusion, where people sit in meetings wondering “What am I doing here?” We recently discussed this phenomenon in a Quartz article entitled “It’s possible (and dangerous) to be over-inclusive.” Most people know from personal experience that over-inclusion is possible. But the science of why it’s dangerous is perhaps less well-known. Research has shown that humans naturally want to empathize with others, which is why we do our best to be fair and include everyone. The downside is we may unknowingly burden their cognitive load and create decision fatigue, leading them to develop an unhealthy, “always-on” attitude toward work. Getting everyone on the same page We find the solution to over-inclusion is thoughtfully excluding. It’s about leaving people out of meetings and emails because you recognize their time and energy are better spent on other things. Based on the leading brain science, we contend the way to do that is through expectation matching. When we run into something that violates our expectations, it causes our brain to do some heavy lifting. With a finite amount of cognitive resources at our disposal, the more those expectations are violated, the less focus and thought we can give to other matters. Leaders who want to thoughtfully exclude can follow the wisdom of science by laying out expectations ahead of time. They can explain who needs to be involved and for what purposes. If everyone is on the same page around those priorities, those who are left out will better understand why. The certainty and fairness will feel rewarding, and they may even thank you for excluding them, as they can now use their cognitive surplus for more productive ends.
Peter Glick is a psychologist who studies benevolent sexism — the paternalistic belief that women are pure, fragile flowers in need of men’s protection. Benevolent sexism, unlike hostile sexism, feels positive and well-intentioned. But Glick and his colleagues have found that it actually undermines women’s careers by excluding them from challenging assignments and depriving them of honest, critical feedback. We reached Dr. Glick at his lab at Lawrence University, where he’s the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor in the Social Sciences, to ask him what insights he’ll be bringing to the NeuroLeadership Summit. NLI: At the Summit you’ll be talking about your work on benevolent sexism. Tell me about that work. Peter Glick: It’s collaborative work I started with [Princeton psychologist] Susan Fiske on reconceptualizing sexism. Prior to our work, when you talked about sexism, people immediately thought about hostility toward women. I mean, that’s how we define prejudice. And sexism is a form of prejudice. Right? Historically, and even today, men have more power and status. But they’re intimately interdependent with women, if they’re heterosexual. So this theory is rooted in the idea that heterosexual intimacy is part of it, combined with the power and status difference. I call this the “Central Gender Relations Paradox.” It’s a very weird situation when you start to think about it! You’ve got a group that’s more powerful and has more status. And when groups have more power and status, they like to maintain their privileges and tend to view themselves as superior. But at the same time, this powerful group is intimately interdependent on the subordinated group! NLI: And what’s the effect of that? PG: It creates this ambivalence toward women. On the one hand, men want to maintain control over them and keep women in their place. But at the same time, they want to maintain positive relationships in intimate relationships with women. So how do you resolve this paradox? The power difference creates hostile sexism that demeans women, but the intimate interdependence necessitates “benevolent” sexism, which is this paternalistic, protective attitude toward women. Because men are intimately interdependent on them. It’s basically, “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.” Benevolent sexism is this view that women are wonderful, pure, fragile flowers in need of men’s protection and provision and being cherished and adored. There’s this classic Motown song that goes, “I would kiss the ground she walks on, cause it’s my word, my word she’ll obey.” NLI: “It’s my word she’ll obey”? Wow. PG: We have some fantastic research that documents the many surprising and insidious ways in which benevolent sexism undermines women’s equality and undermines women — sometimes more than hostile sexism. It’s harder to get a handle on too because subjectively it’s really nice. This is not some plot men hatched. It’s just the natural, almost inevitable outcome of this heterosexual interdependence coupled with the power difference. We found that across nations, benevolent sexism and hostile sexism go hand in hand. They tend to go together. They’re not conflicted. Hostile sexism and benevolent sexism go hand-in-hand. It’s the carrot and the stick. Hostile sexism is the stick. If you get out of line, the hammer comes down. But if you stay in line, we’ll take care of you. NLI: Can you give me some examples of beliefs that characterize each? PG: For the hostile sexism scale, there are anti-feminist items like, “Feminists are demanding too much of men,” “Women complain about things at work,” “Women use sex to manipulate men and gain power over men.” So that’s about all the “conniving” ways basically that women “try to gain power over men,” or the idea that women compete with men in ways that aren’t fair. This is the modern version of hostile sexism. If it were 200 years ago, it would have been, “Women are incompetent and stupid.” But things have changed, so hostile sexism now is subtle hostility in an environment where there’s more competition. Whereas with benevolent sexism, you could translate it into Ancient Greek and Homer would have recognized it. It’s stuff like, “Women are more pure and moral than men,” and “Women deserve and need men’s protection.” NLI: You were saying that hostile sexism and benevolent sexism go hand in hand. PG: Right. The hostile sexist nations are also the benevolently sexist nations. But if you compare men’s and women’s scores on benevolent sexism, we don’t find as big a gap. Because benevolent sexism sounds really nice — and it is, by the way, subjectively positive on the part of men who hold these attitudes. They’re not being sneaky. Their mom told them, “Don’t ever hit a girl,” and, “You’ve got to protect women.” Romantic scripts tell them that! Benevolent sexism and romance are very hand-in-glove too. So they’re feeling like, “Hey, I’m treating the ladies like they need to be treated.” It’s a very subjectively positive thing. Yet we find these objectively negative outcomes. NLI: When you say that women score high on benevolent sexism — they’re scoring high on benevolently sexist beliefs about women, not men, right? PG: Right. It’s “Women should be cherished and protected by men, do you agree or disagree?” Women can say, “Oh yeah, men should cherish and protect women, for sure.” “Women are more pure and moral.” “A man needs a woman he can adore.” “He’s not complete without a woman.” Women can endorse that stuff as well. I’m not real militant. In romantic relationships, you’ve got to figure out what you want. But when it comes to work, we’ve found that benevolent sexism is related to things like not giving women challenging assignments — because maybe it will be too stressful for them or too demanding. But challenging assignments are how you get promoted! And how you develop your skills! Women often get softer feedback. It’s, “Oh, you’re so wonderful,” and often that praise is on more feminine dimensions, like “Clients love you because you’re so warm and nurturing.” But then when it comes to promotions
In a recent pop up survey on NeuroLeadership.com, we asked visitors one question: What does it mean for a person to have a “growth mindset”? From the 208 responses we received, we learned that, given a few options featuring the most common meanings attached to growth mindset, the vast majority of participants identified the right one: 89% of survey participants correctly identify growth mindset as the belief that a person’s abilities can be improved (correct) 9% think that having a growth mindset means to be positive and optimistic (incorrect) Only 1.4% think that it relates to striving for business growth (incorrect), and 0.5% don’t know what it means (unfortunate) These results basically reflect the findings from our recent industry research on growth mindset. As HR and talent teams work hard on clarifying and communicating the correct definition throughout the organization, they mostly succeed. Once in a while, though, they may encounter individuals or teams that hang on to misinformed and false ideas of growth mindset. We recently explored this trend in an article called “5 Mistakes Companies Make About Growth Mindsets” for the Harvard Business Review. Simply put, don’t mistake growth mindset for endless optimism. We at the NeuroLeadership Institute define growth mindset as the belief that skills and abilities can be improved, and that developing our skills and abilities is the purpose of the work we do. But we have also learned something else in our research: people in organizations attach various, personalized interpretations to the idea of growth mindset — something we highlighted in our recent webinar Growth Mindset 101. Getting the idea of growth mindset right matters. This powerful concept will be increasingly important for individuals and organizations who need to adapt to the ongoing changes posed by digital disruption. Given the many interpretations of growth mindset that are out there, clarifying what it means — and what it doesn’t mean — is a crucial step in creating a growth mindset culture. What really makes a difference is when organizations are able to weave the concept of growth mindset deep into their people’s everyday behaviors and their organizational processes. In order to do that, organizations first need to be clear on what growth mindset means to them. Send your thoughts, feedback, and criticism to Andrea Derler, NLI’s director of industry research. [action hash=”6cd538cd-54dd-4b69-a152-d85ebcd24518″]
Feedback is essential for organizational (and organismal) growth, but what’s the best way to give it? Typical feedback conversations are painful and extremely stress-producing. Managers who try to avoid offending their employees risk over-correcting, giving feedback that is polite, but ultimately unhelpful. Billions are spent each year in an attempt to solve these feedback problems. A recent feature story in strategy+business could hold the key insight: Asking for feedback, rather than giving it unprompted, may be the smartest way to develop a growth-oriented culture. “We’re not promising it’s going to feel good right away, but it will be better for you in the long term,” says NYU psychologist and NLI senior scientist Tessa West. Putting the brain in the right state West and her colleague Katherine Thorson, also of NYU, recently ran a study at a major consultancy that tracked people’s heart rates during mock negotiations. Afterwards, each participant took turns giving and receiving feedback. Certain groups were instructed to ask for feedback, while others gave it unprompted. The findings showed giving feedback was just as anxiety-producing as receiving feedback. However, when people received feedback that wasn’t asked for, their heart rates jumped around erratically. (Equivalent spikes have been found during some of the most stressful events, such as public speaking.) Our brains suffer in these moments of duress. Stress causes a decline in cognitive function and a narrowing of the senses, limiting our ability to think critically or learn. To serve their crucial function of helping employees improve and grow, feedback conversations should avoid this threat response. Based on her recent study, West believes asking for feedback could hold the power to make discussions less painful. When people know to ask for feedback, they feel in control, West says. They feel psychological rewards of autonomy and certainty. They can steer the conversation wherever they choose and feel confident about which topics will get discussed. Givers also feel more certainty, because they no longer have to guess what kind of information will be most useful. Creating the habit of asking To make an asker-led culture a reality, West says to start small. “It’s like going on a diet,” she says. “You don’t want to cut out everything that’s delicious. You have to gradually replace the unhealthy with the healthy.” Leaders can take the first steps by asking for feedback themselves — perhaps about the temperature in the last meeting. Gradually, West says, people will feel safer asking for feedback if they know the resulting discussion will be productive, not threatening. Over time, organizations that take up the strategy should expect to have regular feedback conversations more often, which means avoiding errors earlier and innovating more rapidly. SEE ALSO: How Microsoft Transformed Its Approach to Feedback
Since 1998, when Lisa Rock and I launched a coaching business that would become the NeuroLeadership Institute, we have been passionate about identifying language that helps people be more effective. In 2008, when we launched NLI formally, we went even bigger. For the last decade, we have been on a mission to develop a new language for leadership, culture, and learning. Today, our work is impacting millions of people in hundreds of the world’s largest companies — 30% of the Fortune 100, to be specific — always with the desire of making workplaces more fundamentally human. That’s why I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Your Brain at Work, NLI’s official blog for all things neuroleadership. It’s a chance for us to pull together, in one place, the many ideas and insights we have been developing over the years. We’ve already got some amazing content we think you’ll love. Here’s just a sampling. In The Biggest Myth About Growth Mindset, we present a major finding from our recent industry research project in 16 international corporations showing how managers may be unknowingly burning out their employees. In The Smartest Teams Embrace the ‘Diversity Paradox’, an excerpt from a Corporate Membership piece reveals the hidden challenge associated with diversifying a workforce. Research on power and voice forms the foundation for a thought-provoking piece called What Airline Pilots and Nurses Can Teach Organizations About Decision-Making. Leaders who hold regular performance reviews may be sending the wrong signals or making premature decisions, according to Why the Typical Performance Review Is Overwhelmingly Biased. Click here to check out the rest of our content that showcases research on culture and leadership, performance, diversity and inclusion, and more. The field of neuroleadership is only getting more exciting as the years go by, and we can’t wait to go on the journey with all of you. Thank you for reading! SEE ALSO: The Hidden Leverage of Feedback
Chris Pirie isn’t putting the future of organizational learning in the hands of gut feelings. He’s relying on hard brain science. In a recent interview with Singularity Hub’s Lisa Kay Solomon, Pirie, the general manager of worldwide learning at Microsoft, explained how companies will begin infusing research into their development processes. “We’ll start to know what it looks and feels like to pay full attention and which social and physical conditions can accelerate or throttle the learning process,” Pirie said. “Organizations like NeuroLeadership Institute are codifying the research into workable models that help [learning] designers to leverage those brain chemistry process and biases.” In addition to neuroscience, Pirie speculated that data science and social science will also inform how learning experience designers create their internal programs. “The learning scientists are coming!” he said. “Within corporations, we’re going to see a fundamental rethink of the role and responsibility of learning in organizations and the creation of a new type of learning organization.” Pirie has plenty of experience applying research to organizational habits: For the past two years, Microsoft has partnered with NLI to change its culture with the help of brain science. In mid-2016, the tech giant debuted its three leadership principles company-wide: Generate energy, Create clarity, and Deliver success. Simple as they may seem, a great deal of research suggests they put Microsoft in the best position to achieve its goals. For instance, as Pirie points out in his interview, scientists are making great strides in understanding how knowledge moves from short- to long-term memory. Specifically, we have seen the benefits time and again of making learning “sticky,” or memorable, by chunking bits of information into easily digestible pieces. We also minimize the amount of work required of the brain, since humans can’t juggle more than four or five ideas at a time. Microsoft’s leadership principles rely on that set of insights. Each principle is easy to remember, but so is the trio as a whole. We call this “coherence,” as it’s near impossible to remember one leadership principle without thinking of the other two. These strategies don’t just get people excited about making a change; they actually change behavior. As Pirie explains, this is one of the hallmarks of neuroscience-based learning initiatives, and what will propel the field into the future of learning. “I believe we will soon see diagnostic tools to help evaluate costly corporate learning programs against such standards,” he said, “and tools to help learning experience designers design for maximum impact.” SEE ALSO: The Smartest Teams Embrace the ‘Diversity Paradox’
Growth mindset has gained a lot of popularity in organizations over the past decade, now standing as many leaders’ favorite buzzword for boosting productivity. But there’s still one myth that widely persists among companies — at the risk of employee and organizational well-being. Contrary to what many leaders believe, growth mindset does not refer to a person’s limitless capacity to get things done. For the past three months, NLI has interviewed HR practitioners at more than 20 major organizations around the world, as part of an industry research project. Our goal was to find out what, exactly, leaders were doing when they implemented growth mindset around their organization. We found a range of interpretations. Some thought growth mindset was purely a focus on business growth. Others saw it as the belief that any achievement was possible, no matter how unrealistic the goal. In fact, our working definition of growth mindset is: the dual belief that skills and abilities can be improved, and that developing your skills and abilities is the purpose of the work you do. On occasion, managers who hadn’t quite grasped this concept thought employees with a growth mindset were happy to take on projects endlessly. If they claimed their plate was full, they were seen as having a fixed mindset — a scarlet “F” around many offices. The trouble with this line of thinking is that everyone, at some point, faces issues of “capacity,” or the brain’s limit for cognitive function. There is only so much thought people can devote to their various tasks before their output begins to plateau, or even decrease. Managers who keep overloading their employees with work actually inhibit, not propel, long-term progress. What’s more, by making a judgment on people’s ability to handle more and more tasks, managers risk damaging employees’ sense of status. What initially may have been a point of pride could turn into shame over poor productivity. For the sake of employee and organizational health, leaders should align on the true definition of growth mindset. Saying your plate is full isn’t a sign that your thinking is flawed. In fact, it may be the opposite — a sign that in order to develop your skills, the most important thing you can do is pause, and focus on the job at hand. [action hash=”6cd538cd-54dd-4b69-a152-d85ebcd24518″]
The human brain can think about objects and events at various “levels of construal” — from the abstract, high-level, and conceptual all the way down to the low-level and concrete. Marlone Henderson is a psychologist who studies how level of construal affects problem-solving. Among other surprising findings, Henderson has shown that physical distance can lead negotiators to more successful outcomes by prompting them to think about the big picture. We reached him at his lab at the University of Texas at Austin in advance of the NeuroLeadership Summit in October, where he’ll be speaking. NLI: Let’s do a tour of your work on construal and negotiation. Marlone Henderson: When I was coming out of grad school, I was interested in understanding how people’s cognitive style would impact how they would approach problem-solving and negotiation. One of the big issues you deal with in negotiation is when parties have differing priorities. Negotiators tend to come to the table trying to fight out and hash out every little thing, trying to get everything they want, without realizing they may be able to identify key trade-offs where they can sacrifice things that are less important in order to gain things that are more important. I showed that if you push people to think in a more abstract manner — to take a step back from the details and look at things in a broader, more inclusive manner — they’re able to focus on what’s more important to them. When people do that, it increases the likelihood they’ll deal with multiple issues at the same time. When you’re dealing with one issue at a time, it’s harder to recognize that one is more important than another. But if you deal with multiple issues at the same time, you’re more likely to see how different priorities emerge. When you push people to think more abstractly, they’re more likely to deal with multiple issues at a time, and that increases the likelihood that they’ll recognize where different priorities lie. And that then increases the likelihood that they’ll trade off on things that are less important and ultimately come up with more win-win agreements. NLI: What are the implications for organizations? MH: It’s possible to think about this in terms of personality. There are certain people who just naturally think more abstractly. Those might be your more gifted negotiators from the get-go. So the lesson would be, maybe hire people who naturally think more abstractly. But even if you’re not that kind of person, there are situational variables that will push you to think more abstractly. The two variables I looked at were time and space. First, there’s time. If people are negotiating over issues that are more distant in the future, that increases the likelihood that people will construe the issues more abstractly — which will then foster more win-win agreements, through considering multiple issues at a time. The other variable is space. I showed that when people are negotiating with someone they think is physically farther away from them, it works the same way as time: People are more likely to identify areas where they have trade-offs, and therefore recognize they have different priorities, and are more likely to come up with win-win agreements. NLI: What if I’m negotiating with somebody face-to-face — we don’t have distance — and negotiating about something that’s happening now, not distant in time? Is there a way for me to trigger them to elevate their level of construal? MH: That’s a good question. I published one study where we directly manipulated people’s level of construal. Before people start negotiating, we show them the issues they’re going to be negotiating about. With one group, we have them look at the issues and think about how to categorize them or think about them in a broader context. Let’s say you’re negotiating over salary and vacation time. We might say, “Well, if you think about those issues, what do they really represent if you had to think about a bigger category?” They might respond, “They both deal with my lifestyle satisfaction.” With the other group, we have people take the issues and come up with specific examples. We found that when you have people take the issues and lump them together and think about them in a broader category, as opposed to generating specific examples, it works the same way as having people think about distant time. Even though they’re getting ready to do that negotiation in a few minutes and the issues are right there, relevant to them at that moment, having them broaden their horizons by categorizing them in a broader way did the same trick. I have not directly tested this, but the implication would be that even if your issues are relevant now, you might see these benefits just by having people —it almost sounds like a meditative exercise — take a moment to envision their life in the distant future. NLI: What if I have a mildly adversarial posture toward my negotiating partner? Say I walk into my boss’s office and I want to ask for a raise. I’m not saying, “Hey boss, if you don’t mind, close your eyes and I want you to meditate for ten minutes.” Is there something I can say to raise their level of construal that would be appropriate in a negotiation context? MH: Good question. That’s something that as far as I know there’s research on. In our studies, we always control the cognitive style of both negotiating partners — and the two people negotiating are always on the same level. NLI: Let’s imagine a specific situation — I’m going to a low-level construal now to talk about it, using an example. Say my boss says, “OK, how much do you want?” And I say, “Well before I answer that, let’s take a step back. Let’s think about the future. Let’s think about the overarching goal. Our organization wants to grow. Ten years down the line, we want to be
Microsoft turned to the NeuroLeadership Institute to enlist our help in designing a new approach to feedback — one grounded in the neuroscience.
Business leaders can learn a lot about diversity from college kids solving fake murders. It was 2009. Northwestern University researchers had just given groups of fraternity and sorority members mock murder cases to solve. Suddenly, each group learned they were getting a new member. Half of the groups welcomed someone from within their frat or sorority, an “insider”; the other half got a rival member, an “outsider.” When the researchers tallied the results, they found the teams that solved the most murders were those with rival members, not people with whom participants already identified. As in, teams with members from rival frats and sororities outperformed those that were all from the same group. Remarkably, this was despite team members in the diverse condition feeling less positive about their interactions, and less confident in their final conclusion, than the homogenous group. Why diverse teams are smarter The business wisdom we can glean from this study is profound, and it holds great importance as teamwork and collaboration become more essential to working life. Let’s call it the “diversity paradox.” It states that diverse teams often make smarter decisions than non-diverse teams, but — crucially — at the expense of having confidence in that decision. The smartest teams embrace this paradox, putting faith in diversity-driven outputs above comfort in consensus. Diverse teams are smarter teams because they rid the air of groupthink, a term coined in 1971 to describe the possible psychological mechanisms that led to the Bay of Pigs Invasion 10 years prior, an event widely seen as a failure of decision-making. Groupthink, in other words, is what causes groups of “smart” people to go along with “dumb” choices. As NLI recently presented in “How Diversity Defeats Groupthink,” having a mixture of backgrounds and experiences is critical for organizations to avoid groupthink. And the 2009 Northwestern study puts an even finer point on the matter. It suggests that leaders must set the right expectations — for themselves and their team members — for how interactions will feel, in order for people to stay motivated when things get tough. Trust the process, not the feeling When teams are more diverse, instead of feeling fluent or smooth, they will often feel disjointed and even a little tense. That’s because diverse teams don’t (and can’t) settle into familiar ways of thinking; people’s ideas and assumptions are inherently at odds, even if in small doses. Every decision requires thought and effort, a collection of point-counterpoint moments until what emerges is a fuller, more bulletproof idea. However, as we’ve found in our research and work with clients, that friction is essential for arriving at the best solutions. When people feel overly comfortable with one another, they may defer to hierarchy, make dangerous assumptions, use illogical thinking, or succumb to pressures of group conformity. Outsiders, meanwhile, shake things up. They put people on their toes and raise everyone’s level of sensitivity, reducing the chances of what Princeton economist Roland Benabou calls “acting colorblind in a sea of red flags.” Decision-making may never be perfect — so long as teams are composed of bias-laden and error-prone humans — but embracing the discomfort of diversity yields far greater rewards than playing it safe ever will.
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In 2007, David and Lisa Rock and their team had been working in leadership development and executive coaching for ten years, when David coined the term “NeuroLeadership.”ef
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