“Accomplishments?” “Successful repetition of any endeavors?”

To me, Confidence is comfort:

• Comfort in knowing that we are playing a game of progress and not a game of perfection.

• Comfort that comes from the accumulation of experiences where I survive my own failures.

• Comfort in our own skin.

I try to apply this to how I want my team to feel.

• I want them to know that we are playing a game of progress.

• I want to create an environment where they can be in their own skins.

• I want them to accumulate experiences where we survive our failures.

Life is choosing; Leadership is deciding

At the core, life is a collection of moments of decision making. These decisions can be how you react to something someone said. These decisions can also be which button to press when a zombie shows up on your video game screen.

The same is true with leadership- leadership is about how you choose and react to situations and people. These decisions can be how you react to what your boss say about you. These decisions can also be how you react to your team missing a target.

Therefore the most important thing to figure out, in life and as a leader, is to press the right buttons, to respond appropriately.

Once another monk asked Yunmen, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?”

Yunmen said, “An appropriate response.””

雲門文偃, Yunmen Wenyan, a monk in China during the Tang Dynasty (864–949).

The Gap Between The Trigger and The Reaction

In order to press the most appropriate buttons on the “game controller of our lives,” we need to give ourselves enough space between the triggers of our reactions and how we actually react. We need to create enough space for ourselves to understand the situation and to choose and press the appropriate button.

Let’s look at an example:

When my daughter whined during her violin practice, I had a choice to make and I needed to respond. When we slowed things down, a few things would emerge:

1. There was a mess of emotions triggered by her whining:
   • “She was disobedient and did not respect me”
   • “I felt ashamed that she had no perseverance”
   • “I was a bad parent”
   • “I was angry because she sucked at playing and that made me look bad”
   • etc.
2. I could actually choose how I wanted to respond to these emotions
3. There were actually more than one response to choose from. There was more than one button to choose from:
   • Button A: Yell at her
   • Button B: Groan loudly
   • Button C: Passive aggressively question her
   • Button D: LOL
   • etc.

Essentially, if we could slow time down every moment in life, we would see that these steps were sandwiched between the trigger and our reaction. Let’s explore a moment in the workplace:

“Employee did not appear to be paying attention to me during a meeting”

1. Mess of emotions:
   • “I feel disrespected! You ignored me!”
   • “She is slow”
   • “Argh I suck. I must have been too verbose”
2. I could actually choose how I wanted to respond to these emotions.
3. There was more than one response to choose from. There was more than one button to choose from:
   • Button A: “Repeat what I said”
   • Button B: “Call her out for not paying attention”
   • Button C: “Convey the same thing again, but differently”
   • Button D: “Do nothing”

Practice Choosing

Meditation was the most effective intervention to help me slow down. Meditation allowed me to practice pausing and noticing. It gave me the time and the “training space” so then I could strengthen the mental muscles of pausing and noticing:

• How often did I pause and notice during my one on one chat with my boss?
• How did I choose when the audience was not engaged?
• What were the emotions when the other side counter-offered?

It was an on-going effort to remember to pause. It was an on-going effort to battle overwhelming and novel emotions. It was an on-going effort to remember what buttons were available for me to choose from. Meditation created a highly controlled environment so I could practice continuously. It allowed me to work on paying attention to the most subtle movements and changes. Meditation gave me techniques to notice the quietest emotions and the most hidden thoughts. Meditation allowed me to strengthen the muscles inside my brain to discern the signal from the noise inside my head.

Another wonderful thing about meditation was I got to work on my ability to magnify even the most subtle feelings. For example, metta meditation trained me to trigger and resonate specific emotions on demand. When I got good at manipulating emotions, I became more agile in creating the appropriate emotional state to respond.

When I first began meditating back in 2012 when the meditation app “Headspace” was launched, I did not think it would have anything to do with how I led. Throughout the years, meditation and I were on an on-and-off relationship, until 2018, when I discovered Sam Harris’ Waking Up App. It fundamentally changed how I understood meditation. It opened doors to how I could apply this new way of living and leading. The app turned meditation into a practice of a lifetime.

Why? Well, often we need to move goalposts in order to get after the why.

Giving context is a good way to justify goalposts moving to our teams.

What’s the difference between giving the why vs giving context?

When we explain the why, we tend to miss the context around the why.

That’s why.

Plus, context is more inspiring and liberating.

Context tells us:

• This is what’s going on. This is what the issues are.
• This is what we are trying to do. This is how we came up with these actions.
• This is what you can do. This is what you need to do.
• This is what I will do. This is why I do what I do.
• This is what success needs to look like. This is why we define success this way.
• …

What are ways to improve this leadership skill?
Develop your methods to answer the following questions:

• How effective am I in giving context in different settings? 1 on 1? 1 to many?
• How effective am I assessing how others understand context?
• How effective am I inspiring actions and ownership from context?

Actually, I did.

A study* found that participants who were made to believe that they were given Nike Golf clubs, required fewer strokes to successfully complete a golf putt, compared to others who thought they were using clubs by Starter (a cheap ass brand).

Similarly, “exposure to the Apple (vs. IBM) brand logo makes people generate more creative ideas, and using a Red Bull car in a video game makes players race more aggressively and recklessly.“

I never measured myself that systematically, but I, like many of you, could most likely recall times where we were able to get ourselves pumped up and motivated just by listening to our workout song, or screaming at ourselves in the mirror.

I used to summon my inner Michael Jordan and I would feel invincible; The well seasoned cast iron pan still makes me believe I could fry fish well, EVEN with the skin on. The thing is, these seemingly nonexistent associations actually have real effects on our performance.

The reverse is also true: our performance could suffer purely because we thought we had an inferior racket, a non-gluten free breakfast, or when the really nice girl we have always liked yawned at our performance.

Inevitably, external triggers are unreliable, and they will create cognitive dissonance to render the whatever positive effect nonexistent. The Lance Armstrong journey was a classic example.

His yellow jacket and his yellow Livestrong bracelet signalled grit, pinnacle performance, and victory over cancer. I had 20+ live strong bracelets and gifted it to everyone. Yet, the moment he admitted that he cheated, the bracelet instantly returned to its true form- a piece of plastic. his super bike was no longer super. It was just another super expensive bike. Our amazing cognitive decoupling mechanism completed shut down- our magic pill was no longer magical, we could no longer turn on our inner Lance Armstrong to get through the 2pm cycling class.

Isn’t it great news that our brain could be tricked so easily? Given what science has shown us about our highly gullible brain, we should find and leverage triggers that we can use to awaken our inner Hulk, without having the risk of these triggers being unreliable or manipulated. We should all work on self talks, rituals, whatever, that could give us that extra edge.

Still not convinced? Read this: “‘The Last Dance’: Why Michael Jordan invented slights for motivation.“

* Chartrand, Huber, Shiv, and Tanner 2008; Fitzsimons, Chartrand, and Fitzsimons 2008; Brasel and Gips 2011. “Performance Brand Placebos: How Brands Improve Performance and Consumers Take the Credit” Aaron Garvey, University of Kentucky, USA Frank Germann, University of Notre Dame, USA Lisa Bolton, Pennsylvania State University, USA http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v43/acr_vol43_1019106.pdf

Be it running a start-up, or climbing the corporate ladder, or trying to order our bespoke almond extra hot coffee.

At the core, we are all trying to get good at working efficiently with other beings.

Sometimes we call this “leadership.”

So no matter how you want to label this, this is something worth honing.

Read some books, find some drills, build some skills.

Or hire a coach. 

After all, this is an investment to let us thrive in the game of our lifetime.

“I guess not.” 

He was respected by many. I found him manipulative. 

He was the kind of bosses who would go full-on “Maya Angelou” and preach, “It’s how you make people feel!”

Yet somehow, I would always feel good after chatting with him, after being in meetings with him, even after being chewed out by him.

I didn’t like to being jedi-mindtricked so predictably. “You cannot escape your destiny. You must face him again.” My ego whispered …

“Do you think about how you want people to feel when they interact with you?” He asked.

“Yes of course.” 

“How do you want people to feel?” He probed.

“Well, it depends, of course, but most of the time, respected, positive, er, hopeful.” 

“What is your process?” 

“Process?”

“Yea, the process of how you manipulate someone to feel the feelings you describe – respected, positive, hopeful.”

“Er …”

“Tell me a tweak you’ve made to improve this process.” He pushed.

“I get it. I don’t actually have a process. This approach sounds so robotic and unauthentic?” I relented.

“Well, we can try a different way, a way that is undoubtedly less manipulative and very direct in conveying emotions. Let me know if that works better or not, cool?” He said.

“Ok.”

“I love you?” He asked. 

“I guess not.” 

#bossbetter

How can we hack a 5 minute break so it feels eternally reinvigorating?

𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽; 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽
Time flies by when you scroll through your social media feeds, or play videogames. This one of the worst traps you can set for your break (and your ). Instead, try taking a “stand up and do nothing” 5 minute break. You can think and move, but stay away from gadgets. Don’t get fancy and meditate. Don’t exercise, no. Just do nothing. (Or knit. I am serious.)

See how that feels afterwards. 

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻?
When we let our brains wander, the “default mode network” comes online. This network holds the secrets behind why Eureka moments tend to happen during showers, long walks, or while folding undergarments. 

When we let our brains wander, it gets happy and then creative, fast. 

It is like liberating a group of kids out to a park and let them play freely. They get happy, crazy, and crazy creative, fast.

𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲
If you can hack how you take breaks and rejuvenate, you are likely more productive, less stressed out, and hence, more likeable as a boss. 

Try it! How does it feel? 

Olympian’s Secret 

Michael Phelps was going for the 10th gold medal of his career in the 200-meter butterfly race during the Olympics in Beijing. As soon as he dove in, his goggles started filling with water. 

“I dove in and they filled up with water, and it got worse and worse during the race,” Phelps told reporters. “From the 150-meter wall to the finish, I couldn’t see the wall. I was just hoping I was winning.”

He continued on. He looked comfortable as he swung his arms in perfect motion. With a few meters to go he made one last stroke and then stretched out for the wall at the perfect distance, not being able to see if it was even there. When he looked up at the clock he had not only won the gold medal, but broken the world record.

How did he do it?

Visualization practices. 

Visualization is basically day dreaming, that means we are all born to do this! The challenge we have with day dreaming is its haphazardness. The solution is to systematically and deliberately visualise all sorts of scenarios and your actions in these circumstances. Science showed that you could mentally prepare yourself better by practicing visualisation diligently. 

The Inner Game:

Olymian Apolo Ohna, a legendary eight-time short track speed skating medalist in the Winter Olympics, learned how to skate by “watching and mimicking and copying what I saw, and then applying that in a way that I felt like was natural to my body.”https://www.linkedin.com/embeds/publishingEmbed.html?articleId=8693321768663340561

Babies learn the same way. They intuitively learn how to stand by watching and mimicking, and not by listening to adults’ instructions. Yet, we’ve lost most of the intuitive learning skills because our education systems have taught us out of it. The good news is, this hidden talent, is still within us. 

Combining the two:

1. Feed yourself with high quality presentations. Watch and feel them repeatedly. Michelle Obama, Jack Ma, Ken Robinson, Soong May-ling …
2. Mimic them repeatedly. Mimic a variety of styles and occasions. Don’t be shy now. It’s ok to mimic. We all do that, right?
3. Visualise your next presentations. Plug yourself into different simulations:You are on fire and everyone is laughing at all your jokes. Your PowerPoint fails. Your clicker fails. Audio fails. Obnoxious boss asking you to “go back one slide” repeatedly. You forget to wear your pants. Visualize your actions and reactions, your feelings, your self talks, the color of your shoe laces. Visualise how you go through them. 

Then, begin again.

Bottom line:

This is a method used by many. If you were to give these practices a go, remember to trust the process, and experience what it does to you.

Eventually, the kids would find out that everything was fake, that their parents fooled them.

As years go by, these kids will grow up, find their true love, start their own families.

Then they have kids of their own, and during their kids’ first Christmas, they finally get it. Now it’s their turn to become the Santas to their own kids; it is their turn to replicate the feeling of awe and delight (and exert control.)

As we finally become someone else’s boss, we have the same choice to make- Do I want to be the Santa for my team?

Think about it. A boss needs to create hope out of thin air. A boss needs to make the people feel recognised. These aren’t that different from a parent using the Santa story to get their kids to eat their broccoli. Yep, it’s objectively absurd and undeniably magical.

Bosses, let’s just embrace our destiny, put on that fake white beard, and become our team’s . It’s not that meaningless.

#bossbetter … ?

Let’s start with {Level: 99} Discussion:
How did you feel after having a great discussion?

To get to a {Level: 99} of anything you’ll need something extraordinary. World-class conversationalists, from Chris Voss to Dale Carnegie to Krista Tippett, said that in order to be uncomfortably stretched, we must “edge-ride” on extremes:

(1) STOP TRYING TO FIND COMMON GROUND
A discussion is more than about what we can agree on. It should be about gaining an understanding of why the other side believes what they believe. It is to accept the value in relating to each other without rushing to a common ground.

In fact, the desire of coming to an agreement put pressure on truly understanding each other.

(2) IT’S ABOUT THOSE YOU DISLIKE
Can you imagine the perspective of someone you dislike? A good discussion is whether you can acknowledge what is good in the beliefs of someone you disagree with.

Which level are you? Can you forget about finding common ground when discussing with someone you dislike?