The Unlocked Leader by Hortense le Gentil & Caroline Lambert
Juan Carlos Zambrano
Gerente de Finanzas @ Tecnofarma Bolivia | Coaching ontologico
Introduction: The Fear of Being Human
As an executive coach, I have worked with many such superhero leaders. These smart, goal‐oriented, and successful executives are masters at leading with their heads. Yet there is something many of them are now realizing they should probably know but don't: how to lead with their hearts and souls, too. Hiding behind their superhero leader fa?ade, they're not sure how they can connect differently with people at work. They don't know how to be vulnerable, authentic, and empathetic in a way that unleashes the best in others. In short, they don't know how to be human leaders.
This is a problem of global proportions—for these leaders themselves, but also for people around them, their companies, and by extension, for the world at large. Why? Because the multiple global challenges and crises we're facing have highlighted that superhero leaders are no longer what companies need
This traditional approach to leadership is not what is most effective today because the world has changed, and so have employees' expectations
A New Business Environment and New Expectations
The world, and therefore the business environment, has become increasingly more volatile, complex, and unpredictable. In 2019, for example, few people would have predicted that a new coronavirus was about to sweep through the world with devastating consequences. We're facing an unprecedented combination of complex socioeconomic, geopolitical, and climate challenges. To survive, companies must be increasingly fast and agile—and expect the unexpected
In addition to navigating a fast‐changing and unpredictable environment, business leaders must also address new expectations and needs—starting with employees and, increasingly, shareholders. To give the best of themselves, employees want to feel respected, listened to, and inspired. They want to be seen, understood, and valued for who they are as individuals. Employees ponder over not only when, where, and how they want to work but also why they work
Perhaps you think that these are soft, nice‐to‐have considerations rather than real business imperatives. But failing to pay attention carries a cost that may feel invisible but directly affects employees' loyalty and engagement, and therefore the company's bottom line
In addition to being respected, seen, and valued, employees also seek leaders who feel human, not distant and perfect beings with whom they can't connect. There is clear evidence that members of a group consider as their leaders the individuals who put the collective interest before their own, work hard to make other people's good ideas happen, and are strongly perceived as one of us rather than someone striving to stand out from their peers. In other words, team members who are more concerned with getting things done than having their own way are the ones who emerge as genuine leaders. Why? Because they have more influence on the group than people who think of themselves as leaders and display the dominant behavior traditionally associated with it
In a context of changing expectations from employees and shareholders, as well as the demands of today's business environment, the traditional model of the seemingly unflappable, infallible, and fearless superhero leader doesn't feel like a great match. We don't need another hero, Tina Turner was already singing in 1985. We need leaders who want to be a lot more like coach Ted Lasso of the Apple TV original series—the unassuming Midwestern football coach who transforms a struggling and fractious British Premier League club by bringing hope, joy, kindness, and an indomitable team spirit
The most effective leadership today—at all levels, from the C‐suite to small teams at the bottom of the corporate pyramid—isn't about technical expertise and having all the answers. In addition to articulating a compelling vision, it's about the ability to connect with people, understand their needs, and unleash their potential
Empathy is not often a word that comes to mind when thinking about business strategy and performance. It isn't often the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about successful business leaders, either. But a growing number of companies and business leaders are indeed realizing that the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes—whether a colleague, a customer, a supplier, a competitor, or a shareholder—and see the world the way they do has become a business imperative. Take Microsoft. In 2014, the company was losing ground. The tech giant, whose culture back then was known as brash and aggressive, had missed several fundamental technology shifts toward cloud and mobile computing. Then came a reboot. Over the following years, the company's fortunes turned, pushing the stock price up. Central to Microsoft's success has been a cultural revolution led by Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella. What was that cultural revolution? Embracing empathy.
Empathy increasingly appears in job listings from mainstream employers such as strategy consulting firms, banks, or tech firms.7 Understanding customers' needs, including the needs they might not articulate, is central to innovation and customer service
In short, to be most effective in today's environment, leaders must be human leaders
Yet despite countless success stories and hard evidence advocating for leadership based on empathy, many leaders still cling to the good old superhero leadership approach
So why do human leaders seem to remain the exception rather than the norm?
Because, as the saying goes, the longest journey we'll ever travel is the 18 inches between our head and our heart. Shifting from superhero leader to a more human approach is hard for several reasons. First, we are creatures of habit, relying on what we know. And many leaders have built their success on being goal focused. Over time, the specific brain network that focuses on setting and achieving goals has grown very robust. The tricky part is, when this specific network in our brain gets activated, the people‐focused network—which helps you understand and connect with people's emotions—gets weaker. Effective leaders need to be strong in both, but few are.8 So for leaders who for years have been so focused on goals, rebalancing their leadership approach takes effort and time. Because they've done well, why invest this time and effort? It's tempting and comfortable to keep doing the same thing
Leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith, for example, might have chosen that path were it not for a conversation with a mentor, which, he says, changed his life. You're too good at what you do, his mentor told him. You're repeating the same day over and over again, and you're very successful. You will have a good life if you keep doing this. But you will never be the person you could be. Marshall realized that his mentor was right and learned a valuable lesson, which he's been sharing with the very successful leaders he coaches. It's easy to think about the importance of unlocking your potential when things are going poorly, he says today. But it's also good to think of this unlocking when things are going well and you're not under pressure. Because the temptation is ‘I'll write this book someday, or I'll do this research someday,’ but someday never gets here.
There is a second reason why becoming a human leader is not easy. Seemingly fearless superhero leaders striving to become human leaders are facing one sizable obstacle, whether they realize it or not: their own fear.
The Sum of All Fears
When thinking about human leadership, many executives who spent their careers striving to be superhero leaders feel like the ground under their feet is no longer solid. I was educated and trained to never show my feelings and vulnerability at work, one CEO recently told me. Now you're telling me I have to? This is a real revolution.
Their fear typically manifests in three ways:
Raise your hand if any of these fears—fear of connecting with our own emotions, fear of chaos, fear of failing—sound familiar
Where do these fears come from? And how can we change in spite of them?
Although much is being said about why cultivating empathy and being a human leader is a good idea, very little is on offer when it comes to how. This leaves many leaders locked in their old approach
How to Become a Human Leader
Finding my own path to a different kind of leadership convinced me to help others find theirs.
So how can you become an effective human leader?
I have developed this road map based on my own journey, as well as my exploration of neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality, and years of coaching successful executives and entrepreneurs to become even more effective by leading differently.
Although this book focuses on leadership at work, each of us is a complete individual, not a sum of separate, isolated parts. As such, the process presented in this book applies to all areas of your life. The journey from superhero leader to human leader is one of deep inner transformation, because genuine and authentic empathy comes from within. It isn't about applying a few tricks and parroting the right words, which comes across as neither genuine nor authentic. To be able to profoundly understand and connect with others, we must first understand and connect with who we are and step into the fuller, truer version of ourselves. To do so, we must remove old beliefs and expectations that no longer serve us—what I call mindtraps. Part 1 will help you understand and identify these invisible mindtraps that hold you back from changing how you lead. Part 2 describes the process I use to help my clients create a mindshift to move past their mindtraps. Finally, Part 3 is about mindbuild—how you can build and anchor a new perspective and new practices that unlock the human leader within you. In this book, the journey from mindtrap to mindshift and mindbuild is presented in a sequential and linear fashion, to the extent possible. In reality, this journey typically isn't that perfectly sequential and linear—just like the earth isn't flat, even though it is often presented as a two‐dimensional map
PART 1 Mindtrap: Identify Your Lock
To become human leaders, we must be able to lead not only with our heads but also with our hearts and souls. Cultivating empathy starts with ourselves: to connect to and understand other people's perspectives and emotions, we must first connect to and understand our own. Over time, we have formed beliefs and perspectives that shape our view of ourselves, others, and the world. Our journey toward becoming a human leader requires identifying which among these beliefs and perspectives have become obstacles to leading with empathy—our mindtraps
CHAPTER 1 When the Keys to Past Success Get in Your Way: How Mindsets Become Mindtraps
How do the beliefs and outlook that get shaped in our brain over time become obstacles that stand in our way? In other words, how do mindsets turn into mindtraps? And why is it so difficult to see them in ourselves?
The Birth of a Mindtrap
Many of the beliefs, mindsets, or perspectives that our brains concoct are meant to serve us well. In fact, this is precisely why they take shape in the first place. Initially, these beliefs earn us approval, love, admiration, or acceptance. Who doesn't want all that? These instinctive pulls are almost impossible to resist, particularly at a young age, and they influence our behavior and our choices. Children instinctively strive for their parents' love and protection because it is vital for their survival and proper physical, psychological, and emotional development
As we grow up, we typically want to feel that we belong to a group of like‐minded friends or allies, who provide protection, collaboration, and understanding
This instinctive need to belong extends far beyond family, friends, and colleagues. Our often‐unconscious quest to fit in results in our absorbing collective beliefs and world views, such as social, cultural, national, or religious norms. Like the air we breathe, these norms are all around us, and they rule many aspects of our lives, from gender or family roles to work behavior. Whether we want it or not, they shape us by influencing our view of how we are supposed to behave or what it means to be a good friend, neighbor, parent, colleague, or leader
So, on the one hand, these mindsets we adopt are useful. They bring us love, recognition, a sense of belonging or the drive to succeed, among many other things. On the other hand, they can also bind us. The problem arises when our mind behaves like the horse in the fable at the beginning of this chapter. We, too, can get stuck, bound by invisible fences of our own making that prevent us from moving forward. This is when a mindset becomes a mindtrap
Why does it happen? How can something that initially helps us become an obstacle? Whether suddenly or slowly, in big or small ways, everything and everyone changes—ourselves, others, and our environment. We become older; we change jobs; a new colleague joins our team; a pandemic spreads across the world; someone becomes sick or dies; children are born, grow up, and make their own lives. Yet the mental constructions that live largely in our unconscious do not always adjust. We keep thinking and behaving in the same way, or we cannot let go of old emotions. This is how mindsets that have outlived their purpose become mindtraps. What once served you no longer does. I'm good at this or This is how I've always done it turns into It no longer works.
As top executive coach Marshall Goldsmith puts it: what got you here won't get you there. In fact, he has listed what he calls the 20 bad habits of leaders—behaviors that often contributed to their success but are getting in the way of their becoming better leaders. These include traits like the need to show people how smart we are, not listening, blaming everyone but ourselves, the need to win at all costs and in all situations, or exalting our faults as virtues
Cul de Sac
How can we tell when a mindset has become a mindtrap? There are many symptoms. Sometimes we clearly feel locked or stuck in our own lives. We realize we've reached a dead‐end and that something must change, but we don't always know how to move forward
In many instances, however, we are not aware that a mindtrap is keeping us back
Mindtraps may also crop up as arrogance or, alternatively, as imposter syndrome. Can you think of people who come across as full of themselves? People who rarely miss an opportunity to remind everyone that they've graduated from a top university, for example. People who never ask for anyone's opinion and, whenever it is offered anyway, won't listen. When encountering setbacks or delays, they are quick to become frustrated with their team and to blame others. Yet, this fa?ade often hides deep insecurity and can easily crumble
Other common symptoms of mindtraps include burnout, unhappiness, or even depression
So whether we know we're stuck but can't see what stands in our way, or we don't even see that we're stuck at all, why are we often so blind to our own mindtraps?
For one overarching reason: we don't know ourselves as much as we think we do
How Well Do You Know Yourself?
Do you know yourself? If or when someone asks you this question, what do you say? Most of us are highly confident we do. We know what we like and don't like. We're confident we know how we'd react to specific situations. We feel we have a good grasp of our major strengths and weaknesses—both personality traits and skills.
The problem is, we don't see ourselves as well as we think we do. In fact, organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich points out that, although 95% of people she surveyed said they were either somewhat or very self‐aware, we often are deluded.5 In reality, we all have blind spots about who we really are and how others see us. One of my clients, for example, firmly believed she was terrible at math, even though she'd graduated from a top university known for its demanding math curriculum. Conversely, have you ever had a colleague or a boss who was convinced that they were excellent at their jobs, even though they weren't as good as they thought? My guess is you have
Why don't we see ourselves as clearly as we think? For three main reasons: self‐awareness is not always comfortable, we're blind to our unconscious, and change is not easy
First, seeing ourselves clearly is not always pleasant or comfortable. Most of us have no problem admitting to our strengths, but it is less comfortable admitting what we could do better, especially in areas that we value. Even if we've been told about growth mindsets and learning from failure, many of us still consider these areas of potential growth as baked‐in weaknesses or shortcomings, particularly if they don't fit our own ideals and values
Second, we're blind to our unconscious, and we grossly overestimate how much we control our own selves. Our minds are like icebergs, a small fraction of which is visible while the rest remains hidden under water. Many of our beliefs and perspectives, particularly those that we've held for a long time, have become so automatic and part of who we are that, like the submerged part of the iceberg, we don't see them. This means that most of our mindtraps live in our unconscious, away from the glaring spotlight of our own awareness. Not only are we unaware of their control over us and our actions, often we've also forgotten how they even formed in the first place
Do you remember what happened when you were a baby? I don't, either. Yet the way our brain develops during the first seven years of our life greatly influences the way we socialize, interact, and communicate with others later in life, including our ability to empathize.6 During these early years, millions of neural connections are created, based in part on how our parents and caregivers respond to us. These connections create the foundation of our brain architecture.7 But there are so many, and they formed so early in our lives, that it is difficult to trace why or how they took shape
There is a third main reason we're blind to our mindtraps. Becoming aware of what keeps us back is the first step toward change, and change is not easy. First, we get used to behaving a certain way, and the more neural pathways get activated, the stronger they become. This makes old habits hard to change
Also, our unconscious survival instinct can make change difficult. Unless the status quo becomes untenable and threatening, it feels safe. Change, however, carries potential but also means uncertainty, and uncertainty means risk. This explains why fear and anxiety often crop up in the face of change. So even if our mindtraps become obstacles, we can unconsciously find comfort in keeping things as they are
Our mindtraps, whatever they may be, are mindsets and beliefs that once served us well. As such, let's take a second to thank them. Yet they're now like guests who outlast their welcome, and they need to go. In this chapter we've identified how to recognize common symptoms of mindtraps, and why we've perhaps not seen that they'd become obstacles. But wait, if we don't know what our exact mindtraps are, how can we remove them to unlock ourselves and move forward? We first need to identify them and understand who has been hiding behind them
CHAPTER 2 Uncover Your Inner Obstacles: Which Mindtrap Is Holding You Back?
Hiding behind the fears described in the introduction—the fear of connecting with our own emotions, the fear of chaos, and the fear of failing—mindtraps come in all shapes and forms. Because they are born out of our unique histories and perspectives, they are as specific to us as our fingerprints. But even though the details are exquisitely unique, these traps often fall within three main patterns or a combination of these patterns:
This chapter reviews what each pattern looks like. Then it examines how they influence the way we communicate with others—a key element of human leadership—distorting how we position ourselves
The Long Shadow of Trauma
What Is a Trauma?
Psychological trauma is what happens when an event or a series of events trigger in you strong and difficult emotions like intense fear, shame, pain, powerlessness, or grief that destroy your sense of safety and overwhelm your nervous system. Seen in this light, an incident that can externally appear as relatively benign can result in psychological trauma, and a situation that can be traumatic for one person might not be for another. Trauma becomes a mindtrap when these initial emotions and the overwhelming fear they unleash are not properly processed. Our brain is unable to shelve traumas the way it does other memories, so they keep casting a long shadow over how we think and behave long after the event or the series of events that triggered the trauma is over
Imagine our brain as a house with distinct rooms. Regular memories are like pieces of furniture that get placed in the proper room: the sofa goes into the living room, the dishwasher in the kitchen, and so on. Now imagine that your car, instead of being parked in the garage, ends up in your living room. So every time you step in to watch TV or sit with your friends, here is your car getting in the way, utterly out of place and impossible to ignore. A traumatic memory is like that car. Until you're able to park it in its proper place, it will at best narrow your perspective, and at worst, make your life difficult
Inherited Trauma
So our own traumas, big and small, can turn into mindtraps. But our mindtraps are sometimes associated with somebody else's trauma. Whether the impact of trauma can or cannot be biologically transmitted across generations through our genes is still hotly debated among scientists. Yet even if our genes are not involved, our parents, teachers and social, national, or religious environment can undoubtedly influence our views and beliefs—including when it comes to trauma
In addition to psychological trauma—whether big or small, our own or others'—the second common mindtrap pattern has to do with identity, or how we see, define, and value ourselves
How Do You Define Your Identity?
When one single area of our lives—whether career, children, cause, or vocation—absorbs an overwhelming share of our time, energy, and attention, it can easily hijack our entire identity. Without a good dose of self‐awareness or planning our next chapter in life, we risk becoming undone
The identity mindtrap works both ways, however: we tend to overly tie our self‐worth to what we've accomplished and what we're good at, but we sometimes limit ourselves where we feel we're not
All the I'm not good/strong/competent/brave etc. enough or I'm far too … are mindtraps following this common pattern. They hold you back if you believe they are innate traits that cannot change and should be hidden. So do identities built on labels, titles, or on how you compare to others: I'm a CEO or I'm an athlete or I'm an engineer or I'm the smartest in the room.
The trap is to invest your self‐value in these identities, so you find it hard to let them go. But what happens when you're no longer CEO or your new job no longer requires that technical expertise? Or when you don't have clear answers to a problem? Or you come across someone smarter or stronger than you? You become afraid to change how you lead, unsure of who you are. So, spend some time reflecting on how you see yourself, and what you value about yourself or would like to change.
What of the third common pattern of mindtraps? In addition to trauma and identity, roles can become obstacles we need to shift to become unlocked.
Are You Wearing the Right Suit?
This type of mindtrap is pervasive in business environments. According to research from the Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion, 61% of employees feel they have to hide part of who they are at work
This is a problem for many professionals in leadership positions, regardless of their background. For decades, the superhero leader model dominated the collective business psyche, sending legions of business graduates and corporate professionals on a quest to become, or pretend to be, an impossible ideal. This has left scores of executives feeling either like imposters for projecting a fa?ade that doesn't reflect who they truly are or inadequate for failing to tick the right boxes
Trauma, identity, role. These three types of mindtraps undermine our potential and become obstacles to being an effective human leader. Why? Because mindtraps greatly affect how we relate not only to our own self, as we've seen, but also to others, which is at the heart of human leadership.
The Consequence of Mindtraps
Mindtraps affect how we communicate with and relate to other people—and therefore how we lead. Throughout our daily life, we automatically—and often unconsciously—step into different parts, depending on whom we interact with. We effortlessly move from behaving like a parent or a child
To be able to shift our mindtraps out of the way, we must first uncover and identify them. Your mindtrap is related to a trauma, to the way you define your identity, or to some idea of the role you're in that no longer fits you. It could involve a combination of all these families of mindtraps. In any case, your mindtrap affects how you relate to other people, locking you into behaviors that weaken your leadership. Having identified the mindtrap(s) that prevent you from stepping into a truer, bigger, and more empathetic version of yourself, we must now uncover their roots—the voice that has planted and fed the perspective that no longer serves you
CHAPTER 3 Find the Source of Your Mindtrap: Whose Voice Is It?
All of us have absorbed and carry within us external voices that have shaped how we view ourselves, other people, and the world. These voices often live in our unconscious, working in the background like the operating system of a computer, influencing our behavior. Although their influence is often positive, they can also feed and perpetuate mindtraps. Once we have identified the mindtrap we want to shift, the next step is to identify and isolate the voice associated with it
There are two main types of voices that influence us
Some voices support us, and others feed our mindtraps. Which voice or voices do you listen to? The good news is, we can choose
Only by first identifying the voice behind our mindtrap can we then separate it from our own to operate a mindshift
The Voice of Authority
Our parents have an enormous influence on us during the first years of our lives, so we often carry their voices
Other authority figures such as teachers, coaches, or religious leaders often shape our minds and our lives through words and actions that, when they no longer serve us, can lead to mindtraps. And more recently, social media platforms, while opening a space where people can find more diverse views and voices, have also created a new type of authority figure: social media influencers, who shape not only fashion and advertising but also perspectives and behaviors
Someone else's voice is not only what they say but also their actions and example
We can also develop mindtraps imitating the actions of people we admire
Our mindtraps can therefore spring from the words or actions of a person in a position of authority or influence. But the voices we carry with us can also be like echoes, reflecting the collective influence of religious, cultural, or social norms
The Power of the Collective
We are essentially social animals. For prehistoric humans, survival largely depended on joining forces with others. Every group functions according to a set of rules and norms. Because of both our instinctive drive to belong and how our brains affect each other, our views and behavior can be shaped by a community—whether our immediate circle of family and friends, colleagues, or a wider group, such as a country or an entire culture. Have your friends and family, with your best interest at heart, ever offered unsolicited strong advice or opinions that influenced yours?
More generally, cultural and social norms create collective voices that can give rise to mindtraps when they're at odds with who we are or undermine our sense of belonging. To belong to a group, we must understand the explicit but also the silent codes of the multiple environments that we navigate, and we must adjust accordingly. The question is, are we able to adjust and still be ourselves, or do we end up bending ourselves out of shape?
Seeking acceptance while developing and maintaining one's own identity is particularly challenging when straddling two very different cultural or social worlds
We all feel the pressure to conform. But how far are you willing to go? Professional
The safety that being part of a group provides therefore comes at a price: its collective voice can drown individuality. Writer Joseph Campbell often told the story of a newborn tiger left among goats after his starving mother died while pouncing on the flock. The flock adopts the baby tiger, who grows up believing that he too is a goat. He grows up meek and skinny, eating grass and bleating, unaware of the strength of his jaws or of his roar. One day, an adult tiger comes across the flock of goats, which scatters at the sight of danger. The adult tiger is stunned to see a young member of his species eating grass and bleating. What's wrong with you? he asks. You're a tiger! The young tiger just bleats that he's a goat. The older tiger takes him to his den. He tells the youngster to take a bite from the half‐eaten gazelle he's kept from the previous day. But I only eat grass! says the young tiger. Unable to convince him with his words, the older tiger shoves a piece of meat down his throat. The youngster gags a little at first, but as he swallows the meat, a newfound strength runs through his body, and he lets out a small roar. And with that, he realizes what his true nature is.
Are you a tiger pretending to be a goat? Are you comfortable with the collective voices of your family, community, and work environments, or are you forgetting who you are? When we listen to voices that keep us from expressing our true nature and fulfilling our own needs, we risk becoming like the hungry ghosts of Buddhism, the creatures with thin necks and big bellies who are never satisfied regardless of how much they eat.
Which Voice Do You Listen To?
Once you've identified the individual or collective voices that have been feeding your mindtrap, then what? What do you do with this discordant cacophony? It's time to create some distance and make space for your own voice to emerge and be more clearly heard
As Yoda says to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, You must unlearn what you have learned. This is what the mindshift is about
How do we operate this mindshift? How can we unlearn? The same way we learned. Step‐by‐step
PART 2 Mindshift: Free Your Voice
In Part 1, we identified the mindtrap(s) that keep us from letting our own voice shine through. We've pulled them from the shadows and into the light of our consciousness. We can see their shape, why they emerged in the first place, and how they now keep us trapped. We understand whose voice they speak—a voice that is not our own.
Part 2 is about how to shift our mindtraps out of our way, so our path of roses emerges. How do we operate this mindshift? We do it in five steps. First by understanding how our brain can change and embrace a new perspective (Chapter 4), then by tapping into the empathy of others who see us from a different perspective (Chapter 5), and third by asking several simple but powerful questions to pull out the roots that our mindtraps have grown in our mind (Chapter 6). Step 4 is making the decision to let go of our mindtraps, as well as the voices and behaviors that go with them (Chapter 7). Only then can we take the fifth and final step: to sever the unconscious attachments associated with our mindtraps (Chapter 8).
With this mindshift, we create space for a truer, bigger, more authentic version of ourselves to emerge, which in turn transforms how we connect with ourselves and with others, becoming a human leader who shines a bright light in the world—the mindbuild covered in Part 3
CHAPTER 4 How We Can Change Our Mindset: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Before we embark on our mindshift, let's crack our heads open and look inside what Charles Darwin described as the most important of all the organs. Why? Because understanding a few things about how our mind works is the first step toward changing it—which is what our mindshift is all about. And it is by fundamentally changing our mindset that we can transform how we lead
Mindtraps are not the truths we believe they are. They are nothing more than stories we tell ourselves. We are, as author Jonathan Gottschall puts it, storytelling animals,1 hardwired to tell ourselves—and each other—stories.
Understanding why and how our brains automatically create these stories gives us the power to rewrite them. This is what this chapter is about. Humans are programmed to construct stories for two reasons
Why does this matter in our journey from superhero to human leader? Because the stories our brains automatically create greatly influence what we do and can achieve.
Finding Order in Chaos
First, our brains concoct stories to organize into meaningful and memorable information the massive number of stimuli that bombard us
The three‐pound mass in our skull that is our brain fits in the palms of our hands, but it is vastly complex and powerful. In fact, neuroscientist Paul MacLean saw it as three brains packaged into one. The reptilian brain is in charge of our survival instinct and other basic functions like eating, drinking, procreating, and fight or flight. The second brain, the limbic system, orchestrates our emotions. And the third brain—the neocortex—is home to our thoughts and rational thinking
Our brain works as a gigantic network. Each of its roughly 100 billion cells, or neurons, connects to between 1,000 and 10,000 other neurons
This complex machinery that is our brain has two main jobs. First, it is the command center that controls our body, our thoughts, and our emotions. Our brain's second main job is to read and make sense of our environment—including people—to identify threats and opportunities
Big jobs for such a small organ! And it is for job number two that stories come in handy
The Master Filter
Our senses are believed to send our brain an overwhelming 11 million or so pieces of information every second.4 How can we possibly make sense of all this? Luckily, our brain is very efficient and helpful: it chooses the 40 or so that are most important at any given moment and leaves the rest out of our consciousness. In short, our brain shows us only a small corner of a gigantic puzzle. It creates a story that makes sense by assembling only the information relevant in that moment, so we can quickly assess and react to a situation
The Meaning‐Making Machine
In addition to filtering signals, our brain also interprets what they mean taken together. It makes connections and, whenever necessary, even fills in the blanks to create something that makes sense. In other words, it creates a story
This is how our lives, what happens to us, what we hear and see, and our environment, all shape our brains and our mental patterns, largely out of our own awareness. Our human brains ask why? and, in their search for answers, make all kinds of associations and inferences, shaped by our experience and memories. Because our experience and memories are unique to each of us, what makes sense to you might not to another person
We each filter, associate, and interpret these dots differently, however. If you ask my mother and me to describe our family holiday in the South of France when I was 12 years old, for example, you'll get very different answers
Besides manufacturing meaning, our brain also transports us across past, present, and future, as well as great distances
The Space and Time Traveler
Thanks to the stories our brain tells us, we can travel through space and time—all in our heads
These brain stories enable us to travel not only in space but also in time
Our brain's meaningful associations also enable us to travel into the future
So, what's this universal and objective reality that we perceive all around us? There is no such thing, even though we're convinced there is. It is merely a construction of our brain—a story our brain makes for us out of selective filtering and interpretation—so we can make sense of our environment and our lives
Why does it matter? It matters because it means that we are the director of our own movie! We can rewrite the stories our brains feed us about ourselves and our environment. In fact, we need to identify and edit some of these stories if we want to evolve, adapt, and change—including change how we lead
Yet this filtering and meaning making is not the only reason our brain can't help but create stories. Stories are also how we read other people and connect to them
The Human Connection
A crucial part of deciphering, filtering, and scanning our environment, one of our brain's main big jobs, is the human ability to read other people. This brain mechanism is meant to help us not only understand other people's motivation, feelings, and character but also anticipate how they will behave. For leaders, this is a powerful asset: we are, after all, social animals, whose impact greatly depends on collaborating with other humans. Tens of thousands of years ago, avoiding predators, finding enough to eat and drink, and finding shelter defined success. In our modern societies, success depends far more on our ability to influence and get along with others
But how do we do that? In two ways: by picking up external cues, and through our brain‐to‐brain connection
The Gap Between Who We Are and How We Are Perceived
Without even thinking about it, we get cues from other people's facial expressions, their tone of voice, their body language, or even what they wear. We hear what they say and observe how they behave. Based on that information, and informed by our own experience and personality, our brains automatically draw quick conclusions on who they are—something known as theory of mind. In fact, it takes one‐tenth of a second for our brain to get a first impression and decide whether someone we've just met is competent, likable, trustworthy, aggressive, and attractive—just from their face. This instinctive desire and ability to read others is at the heart of why we humans connect through stories
Just like it does when assessing the environment, our brain makes shortcuts and inferences when reading people. What we gain in speed, we lose in accuracy, and we often misjudge other people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior
All of us have experienced the gap between how others perceive us and who we feel we are. Anyone who has ever had a performance assessment or a 360 review knows that feeling
So the story we tell ourselves about other people, and the story they create about us both shape how we relate to each other. Yet they are often inaccurate. But realizing it is a story gives us the power to change it.
The Gandhi Neurons
Besides constructing stories to read people, our brains also help us connect with each other through stories. For the social animals that we are, this human connection is instinctive and vital, and our neurons are engineered to help us do this
This is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with stories and human connections? And why should you care? Mirror neurons matter for two reasons. First, they make us able to imitate—or mirror—others. This is crucial for learning. Any mother and father spooning vegetable puree to a baby, for example, open their mouth without thinking to encourage their six‐month‐old to do the same. Mirror neurons underscore how leaders can become role models and influence others, their actions reverberating in the mind of others like sound waves
Stories crank up the intensity of this connection. When you listen to someone telling you a story, your brain is activated in the same places and in the same way as the storyteller's. This usually happens with a slight delay, as you absorb and comprehend the information your interlocutor has shared with you. But even more extraordinary, your brain activity sometimes precedes the storyteller's, when you anticipate and predict what's coming. And the more you understand the story, the more your brain syncs with the other person.11 When the story is emotional, then your brain reacts by activating areas involved in processing emotions
So like trees in a forest are all connected via an invisible underground fungal network, our human brains are able to connect directly with each other. We now understand why and how our attitude, mood, beliefs, and behavior can influence people around us, but also why and how theirs influence us. Have you noticed how being around positive people helps lift your mood?
Conversely, you've perhaps noticed that it is harder and takes energy to stay upbeat when everyone around you is struggling
Now, we know why telling ourselves and each other stories is a biological imperative. It is through stories that we not only make sense of our environment and our life but also best read, connect with, and influence each other. We can't help it, even if we try. The stories we tell both ourselves and each other shape how we see ourselves, others, and the world—our attitudes, our outlooks, and our beliefs, including our mindtraps
The good news is, because these mindtraps are only stories that our brains have concocted, we have the power to change them. Why does this matter? It matters greatly, because by rewriting the stories that are our attitudes, outlooks, and beliefs, we can influence our results. This is the core of football coach Ted Lasso's approach in the TV show of the same name. One of the first things he does as a new coach is to step into the locker room and stick a handwritten poster on the wall that reads Believe. Believe in the vision. Believe in everyone's potential. Believe in yourself. Mindtraps rob us of this belief in what's possible
Just like our lives shape our brains through our experience, our brains in turn shape our lives. What we believe is possible influences the outcome. And this plays a fundamental role in any change we want to make, particularly when it comes to changing ourselves
So if you want to change your outcomes, first examine your beliefs. And if you want to change how you lead, then shift your mindtraps out of the way. Your perspectives and mindset, especially those we've been nurturing for a long time, may be deep‐seated, but they are not set in stone. Our brain and our neural connections change. Unused pathways disappear and new ones are made
This is what the mindshift described in the following chapters is all about.
CHAPTER 5 See Yourself Differently: A View from Outside the Frame
Knowing that we can shift our mindtraps sets us on the road to do so. Yet often, there is only so far we can go by ourselves. We typically need an external trigger or an outside perspective—sometimes both—to help us engineer a mindshift. This chapter examines the following questions
Hitting the Wall
Embarking on a mindshift does not have to be so dramatic, however. An external perspective, sometimes from a few words, a book, or a movie that resonates, or the example of someone else that inspires us, can also make us realize not only that we've been stuck but also that it's time to get unstuck.
The Gift of External Perspective
This is where an outside perspective can help. When it comes to seeing a mindtrap at work—these beliefs and perspectives that have become obstacles—and shifting it out of the way, a bit of distance often provides a better view. Where can we find that external perspective to help us with our mindshift? We typically find it in three places:
Your Immediate Environment
People closest to us are well positioned to see—and say—when a mindtrap is at work.
Watching someone else's behavior and actions can also help shift our own by providing a powerful alternative perspective and mindset. For Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, for instance, that someone else was his wife. When their first son was born with cerebral palsy, Satya Nadella's life changed. All the plans and thoughts he'd had went out of the window. Why is this happening to me? he initially thought. His wife, however, adopted an entirely different attitude. From the moment she recovered from the birth, she decided she wouldn't go back to work and instead drove their son to every possible therapy to give him the best chance she could.
Watching her naturally care and connect with their son over the following couple of years, Satya Nadella then realized that nothing had happened to him; instead, something had happened to their son. This mindshift enabled him to see the world through the perspective of his child. As I figured it out, it changed me, both obviously as a parent, but also who I am today and how I approach everything, he says. He credits this change for teaching him the importance of empathy, which he considers essential to business success, and has transformed the way he leads.
More generally, there is great value in considering external perspectives to help us widen or shift our own
The Power of Words
Friends, family, and peers are not the only source of external perspective. Good books, movies, plays, talks, or podcasts too can help trigger some awareness and help shift our mindset. Have you ever felt that words on a page, on screen, on stage, or coming through your earphones profoundly resonate within you? Although these words are spoken by a stranger or a fictitious character, they feel like they are specifically meant for you. Suddenly, you can see clearly something that had so far been obscured or incomprehensible, which deepens your understanding of yourself, others, or the world
Books, plays, and movies can also reveal that it is time to offload unacknowledged baggage
Crises and external perspectives can therefore help us see and shift our mindtraps. The examples just described illustrate that, if we pay close attention, these alternative perspectives can be found in many places and in many people.
Yet it is much easier to travel from mindtrap to mindshift and mindbuild with the sustained help of a skilled and trusted guide
The Professional Guide
To help you identify a mindtrap, operate a mindshift, and then engineer a mindbuild to become an effective human leader, a guide—whether a coach, a counselor, or a spiritual teacher—should ideally have three main qualities:
How can you determine whether someone meets the first criterion? Here are a few clues. Do you feel they listen to you carefully, or talk too much, trying to impress you? Do they ask questions about you, your goals, and who you are, and do they seem genuinely interested in your answers? How did you feel after your first meeting? Energized or discouraged? Inspired or lost? Sad or happy? Confident or skeptical?
Now, about the second quality: an effective guide must be able to help you connect some dots
Effectively guiding others, however, also requires the ability to connect with what they're feeling and thinking—or empathy
When looking for mindtraps and then working to defuse them with external eyes and ears in the room, we also flex our mirror neurons, which enables us to feel what others are feeling—in short, to empathize—and recognize others' emotions and intentions by matching their brain activity
The ability to remove oneself, however, is just as essential as the ability to step into someone else's world, connect with their feelings, and profoundly understand them. An effective guide cannot help anyone if they get lost in other people's feelings
Helping someone connect some dots to see and shift their mindtrap also requires effective and honest communication, whichever form this may take
What of quality number three? To be effective, a guide must be like a camera that captures and projects a clear picture, not one that distorts shapes and colors by applying a filter. One's own emotions, history, and beliefs are like a camera filter, and they're not helpful when guiding someone else to find their own path. When I step into my coaching role, for instance, I prepare myself not only by going over my notes but also by emptying my mind so I can listen, watch, and become fully attuned to my clients' thoughts and emotions while leaving my own out of the room
Yet an external perspective—whether from someone close to you, a story, or a professional guide—can help shift your mindtrap only if you're ready and able to change.
Open Your Ears, Eyes, and Mind
Getting an external perspective to help you shift a mindtrap requires opening up to someone you trust and a willingness to revisit your own perspective. Do you confide in anyone—whether a coach, a friend, a relative, a mentor, or a colleague? Do you have an emotional support system? A recent survey highlights the rise of loneliness, particularly among US men, who have fewer and fewer close friends and are often raised in a way that does not encourage emotional connection in male friendship.10 At the minimum, it means being open to, and seeking, different perspectives. We can all gain a fresh outlook from a book, a movie, or a TED Talk only if we are open to challenging our mindset
To benefit from an external perspective, we also must be willing to hear and take on board what might be uncomfortable truths
Being prepared to hear uncomfortable truths and then act takes courage
If we open our eyes, ears, and minds, a trigger—a crisis or an external perspective that touches a nerve or resonates—can help set in motion a mindshift. Chapter 6 deepens our mindshift by asking key questions to uproot the mindtraps standing in the way of our inner human leader
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CHAPTER 6 Challenge YourBeliefs: Is It True, Relevant, or Helpful Today?
Once we've identified our mindtraps and the individual or collective voices associated with them, understood that they're only stories that our brain has created, and perhaps gotten an external nudge to embark on a mindshift, how do we break free? Unearthing these voices from our unconscious and bringing them into our awareness already drains some of the power they hold over our mind—just like sunlight neutralizes germs that would otherwise fester in the dark. So being aware of our mindtraps and the voice—or voices—that feed them is a good start.
Yet it's often not enough. To operate a mindshift, we must challenge these voices head on and make space for our own voice and perspective to emerge. How do we challenge the voices and create that mental space? By working our way through several critical questions:
These are deceptively simple but powerful questions that shine an even brighter light onto the external voices that we carry with us, thereby further loosening their grip on our mind and our actions
Truth Be Told
To answer the first question, we must decide whether our mindtrap is grounded in our reality today or whether evidence suggests there is space for an alternative perspective
Is It Relevant?
But what if the voice is true for you? What if you genuinely agree? Then put the external voice that has been feeding your mindtrap to the test of an alternative question: Is it relevant?
Is It Still Helpful?
This brings us to our next critical question: Is the voice behind your mindtrap still helpful? In other words, does it benefit you more than it costs you?
Is it true? Is it relevant? And is it still helpful?
These questions are meant to challenge our mental constructions, so we can first decide whether to keep them or not. Then we have a decision to make: Are we ready to let our mindtraps go? Because to shine our light in the world, sooner or later we need to live according to who we really are, and not who we think we should be
CHAPTER 7 Challenge Your Fears: Three Strategies to Do It Anyway
Having challenged the voice that keeps your mindtrap alive through questions, you now have a decision to make. Are you ready to release it? Are you ready to leave behind the baggage that has been weighing you down?
You might be wondering why you need to answer this question at all. Why go through all this mindtrap business if not to move past it? But taking a moment to make this decision is a crucial step in the mindshift process. Consciously drawing a line in the sand opens our mind to what follows. It is a signal to our brain that we give ourselves permission to move forward. When we send that signal, we start noticing different things around us. We typically used to focus only on the people, events, and words that kept our mindtrap alive, but now we can see and hear around us what used to pass us by: people, events, and words that support our mindshift
Having challenged our mental constructions does not mean that letting them go is always easy. Sometimes it is, and some mindtraps, once uncovered, drop like overripe fruit from a branch. But to successfully and durably shift our most challenging mindtraps, there are obstacles to be removed and objections to work through. First, change is intimidating, and the fears outlined previously—fear of your own emotions, fear of chaos, and fear of failure—are likely to rear their heads with a vengeance, keeping you in what you know. Our brain finds comfort in the familiar, and although change brings opportunities, it also carries risks and costs. No mindshift is possible until we acknowledge these fears and, as psychologist Susan Jeffers puts it, feel the fear … and do it anyway.1 How do we do it anyway? How do we feel our fear and still decide we can let go?
Think of your decision as a scale: on one side is the status quo and on the other is change. Our brain weighs each side according to one main measure: What can I gain from it? On the side of the status quo is some sense of safety associated with what's familiar, but also dissatisfaction and limitations. On the side of change is the cost of what we're letting go and the risk of the unknown, but also the potential of something better. When any or several of these ingredients change, so does the balance of the scale. The good news is, there are several things we can do to help us tilt the scale toward change
See the Gift in Crises
How do we get that kind of clarity? We often don't, until life throws us a curve ball that hits us in the face. Chapter 5 describes how crises can help reveal our mindtraps. But crises sometimes carry more than one gift: they can also give us the courage to change
This is the gift of crises: they tilt the status quo versus change scale, making it easier for us to decide to let go of what's holding us back
Luckily for us, we don't face existential crises like major illnesses, a worldwide pandemic, or the death of a loved one all the time. So, short of events that force our hand, what can we do to make sure fear doesn't stop us from deciding to let go of our mindtrap for good?
Organize Support
It takes courage to face our fear, but the more confident we are, the less afraid we become. How can we give our self‐belief a shot in the arm? Like the man in the perforated coin story, we borrow that confidence from something or someone. Finding a helping hand is critical to build and sustain confidence when we're afraid. Who believes in you at times you might not believe in yourself? Who has your back? Who can help you navigate the change you need to make? Chapter 5 argues how the right people can help you identify and shift your mindtraps. The same is true for confidence. That helping hand can be a coach, a spouse, or a friend. It can be a role model who has successfully traveled that same path before you. It can be a tribe of like‐minded people who can help you bridge the gap between who you are as a leader and who you want to be, and who can walk by your side as you step into the unknown.
Many school sports teams have their boosters—supporters who promote the team and/or make financial contributions. So, as you contemplate whether you're ready to embark on a change, find your own boosters. Think of people close and far who can inspire and support you as you do so. Even one person can be enough
Take One Step at a Time
Tackling obstacles in increments feels less intimidating than going for a big bang
In Joseph Campbell's parable of the baby tiger and the goats introduced in Chapter 3, the baby tiger is ready to let go of the idea that he's a goat only when a grown tiger insists that he belongs to the striped feline species and then gives him some gazelle meat to eat. But what would have happened if the baby tiger had tried to eat the entire gazelle in one go, after all he'd eaten for years was grass? He would probably have choked to death. He first ate one bite and felt how his change in diet gave him some strength he didn't know he had.
Change doesn't have to happen all at once, especially when it comes to big changes. We sometimes must break it down in smaller, more digestible chunks. Remember the wise words attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: Each time we face our fears, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing. We all learn to walk one step at a time by putting one foot in front of the other—not by trying to run a marathon from day one. The question is: Are you ready to take that first step?
You have a decision to make: Are you now ready to let go of your mindtrap and the voice associated with it? Are you committed to adopting a new perspective and nurturing it so it grows solid roots in your mind?
If you are, then let's proceed to weeding out the unconscious roots of your mindtrap to make space for your new mindset
CHAPTER 8 Let It Go: Three Ways to Make Peace with the Past
Now your rational self is ready to let go of the mindtrap that is keeping you from becoming an effective human leader. But this is not enough. Why? Because you cannot only think your way out of it. Letting go of an old perspective and replacing it with a new, more helpful one also requires accessing your unconscious and intuitive self
Think of mindtraps as weeds. It's hard to grow anything in the garden of your mind if it's overgrown with weeds. Thanks to our mindshift, they're no longer visible above ground. But unless they've been properly rooted out from our unconscious and replaced with seeds for new plants, they'll choke these seeds and grow back quickly. Making sure your unconscious no longer carries the remnants of your mindtraps is the last step in your mindshift.
The remnants I'm talking about here are what renowned psychiatrist and author David Hawkins has described in his book Power vs. Force. He has mapped emotions on a spectrum based on whether they expand or drain our energy. At the lowest‐energy end of the spectrum is shame. On the highest‐energy end is enlightenment. Courage sits somewhere in the middle, separating the emotions that drain us of energy—like those often related to fear such as guilt, grief, anger, or pride, as well as fear itself—from the emotions that uplift us—think acceptance, love, joy, or being at peace
Mindtraps are associated with low‐energy emotions. However, a sustainable and productive mindbuild, when we adopt and strengthen a new perspective that supports new behaviors, can only grow amidst high‐energy emotions. So we must make sure that the low‐energy emotions typically associated with our mindtraps have given way to high‐energy ones. Otherwise, they will keep us tethered to the very thoughts and external voices that we've decided to shift out of our way, and as a result, block the profound transformation needed to become a genuine and authentic human leader.
How do we access our unconscious and intuitive self and make sure our old mindtraps are no longer taking emotional space? We cannot tap into that part of ourselves through rational thinking. We must communicate with it indirectly, through visualizations, stories, and metaphors
There are multiple ways to cultivate your unconscious in a way that replaces the low‐energy feelings associated with your mindtraps and the people behind them with love, respect, and gratitude. Following are three of my favorite exercises. Whenever you're ready, let's work through them
Have you ever played tug‐of‐war? You hold one end of a rope, your opponent holds the other, and you both pull in opposite directions. As long as you both keep pulling, you can't move much, and the game continues—until someone lets go of the rope. The same goes with challenging feelings—they keep us stuck in place—so I like to use this tool with people whose mindtrap is connected to a specific person or several people. Don't worry, there are no actual ropes in my office: I'm talking about an imaginary game. When used properly, such a visualization helps create a healthy distance and rebalance relationships, which helps substitute emotions such as anger, grief, or guilt with acceptance, gratitude, and peace. The idea is not to settle scores, abandon or hurt anyone, and it isn't to resolve anything for anyone else or understand their behavior, either. The objective is to free ourselves from any voice, baggage, experience, or perspective that does not belong to us—and any challenging emotions associated with them—in a spirit of love, respect, and gratitude so they no longer burden and limit us. The goal of this exercise is to bring us closure and peace, so we can spread our wings, be more of ourselves, and follow our own path unencumbered
Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Whenever you're ready, visualize yourself on one side of a river pulling on a rope. Across the river and pulling on the other side of that rope is the person or people related to the mindtrap you've decided to drop. It could be the person whose voice stands in your way. It could also be something or someone that represents the stereotype or social norm that keeps you stuck. Each one of you is pulling, so you're locked in a tug‐of‐war. Then, imagine yourself suddenly letting go of the rope. If guilt, shame, or grief leaves you worried that whoever's on the other side may get hurt falling backwards, let's add an imaginary sandpit or even a soft mattress behind them. Imagine everything that unfolds after you drop the rope. What happens to you? What happens to the other person? What do they do and say? What do you do and say? How do you feel? Then once every draining or heavy emotion is gone, imagine yourself walking away on your side of the river.
Rewrite Your Story
Imagining events in your life unfolding in a positive way is a particularly effective tool to substitute challenging feelings related to your mindtrap with more positive ones. To put this into practice, let's go to the movies. This is a particular kind of show, however. First, you're not going to the movies literally but, you guessed it, in your mind. Second, you're wearing multiple hats: not only will you be watching the movie from your seat in your imaginary theater but you'll also be the main character, the director, and the screenwriter. The idea is to step out of yourself and take a step back. Being both on the screen and in the theater allows you to imagine any situation and conversation from a distance, as if it is happening to someone else, which makes everything possible and gives you a different perspective.
This tool is particularly effective when dealing with unresolved grief or loss
Start by sitting comfortably somewhere silent and close your eyes. Select which person or people at the root of your mindtrap you want to include in the cast. These are people related to these challenging feelings we've been talking about. Choose a title and the set for your movie. Ready? Now imagine you're walking on the plush carpet of a movie theater, heading toward your own private screening. As you push the door, visualize the dark screening room, with its rows of empty seats and its big screen. No one is there. Choose a seat and settle in. Feel the arm rests supporting your elbows, the soft cushion at your back. Perhaps you've brought some popcorn? A soda? Whenever you're ready, start the projection. Watch the title appear on the screen
Visualize the setting you've chosen. Where does your story take place? What does it look and sound like? The main character appears. It's you, so you watch yourself on the screen from your seat. Perhaps your name is the same, or perhaps your character is called something different. It's up to you. What is the protagonist wearing? What is he or she doing? What does he or she feel? Early in the movie, the protagonist—you—is going to meet the character who still triggers some unresolved feelings. What are they doing? What do you as the protagonist want to say? And what does the other character say in response? How does the scene end?
This type of tool can be adjusted if writing works better than visualizing for you. If grief or anger, for example, still ties you to someone else, consider writing them a letter, telling them everything that has been left unsaid. Remember, as said previously, that the objective is not to settle scores or get answers but to free yourself from burdens that are not yours to carry. Don't overthink it, just let your hand move or your fingers type. The letter that Claire wrote her father after he'd died, for example, helped her let go of the anger and hurt she felt that he hadn't prioritized his health and his family over his work, and that he'd left her a financial mess to deal with. Alternatively, you could write down a dialogue, instead of visualizing a movie. Externalizing your emotions by giving them voice helps to let them go. To create even more distance, you can burn your writing or leave it somewhere meaningful to you
What can you do if the draining emotions that keep you tied to your mindtrap are not specifically related to someone else, however? Then you can travel in time
Travel Through Time
Whenever we confront challenging situations, fear and anxiety are natural responses, and old and familiar mindtraps might sniff the opening and attempt to sprout again. Will we be able to go over the hump? Will we succeed? Do we have the expertise? Surely everyone will realize soon that we're imposters who don't belong in positions of leadership. What if everything falls apart? What if we fail? Our stomach contracts, and our mind narrows. Traveling far enough into the future to calm and peaceful waters, past the storm of a crisis or the fog of uncertainty, helps snap us out of a contracted and energy‐draining state. It helps inject confidence that we're able to survive and thrive, even if we don't yet see the path forward. The idea is to substitute fear and anxiety, which snuff out any creativity, with positive emotions such as calm, confidence, and gratitude, which can open the door to new ideas
What if things don't turn out well, though? After all, you might be thinking, not every situation has a happy ending. A variant of the time travel exercise is to travel in the future along two different paths: one where the current challenge you're facing is resolved positively, and the other, the worst‐case scenario. Go through the catastrophic scenario step‐by‐step and imagine at each step what you do next. Go far enough into the future until you realize that you can survive crises and adjust to new situations, and that there is hope. From that place of hindsight, what would you say to today's you? If you prefer, you can also write down this dialogue with yourself. As always, the objective is to create some distance with whatever immediate challenge we're facing and realize that, regardless of the short‐term outcome, we have the inner resources to rebound and thrive again.
This communication with our unconscious to weed out anything that might keep us tethered to old mindtraps and make space for new perspectives is best thought of as a process, not a one‐off exercise. These are tools to keep with you, accessible any time you may need them. Any good gardener doesn't weed out their path of roses once, but regularly. Think about how long you might have held the perspective you've worked on shifting. This is how long your neural pathways have developed, strengthened with every thought or event confirming your perspective. It takes time to weaken these pathways so others can be built. The stronger the energy‐sapping emotions have been connected to our mindtrap, the more work and perhaps time it takes to replace them. I typically take my clients through not one but several of these exercises, and not just once but several times. I still use these tools for myself. With time, they work faster.
Sometimes, we also weed out in phases, like peeling the layers of an onion
Now that we've learned how to clear weeds from our path of roses, what will we plant in it? What new perspectives and behavior do we want to grow in the space we've freed for our mindbuild?
PART 3 Mindbuild: Lead with Empathy
Becoming a human leader is a journey, not a destination. Part 1 was about understanding what a mindtrap is and identifying your own, as well as the voices behind it. In Part 2, you learned to shift your mindtrap out of the way. Now in Part 3, you need to adopt and maintain a new perspective and put your human leadership in practice—what I call mindbuild.
Think of mindbuild as your own unique path of roses. You've now found the beginning of it. But how would you like your path to look? What kind of roses would you like to plant? Which color and scent? And how many? It's up to each of us to create our own. Rose bushes also need to be carefully looked after to thrive. We need to care for them according to the seasons: sometimes we plant, sometimes we feed the seeds, sometimes we observe and protect the developing buds, sometimes we prune, sometimes we admire the roses' beauty and enjoy their scent, and sometimes we prepare for the new season, based on what we've observed and learned during the last one. We keep moving and changing, as life itself.
CHAPTER 9 Define Your Identity as a Human Leader: Two Ways to Build a Truer Version of Yourself
Let's take a few seconds to look at the road you've just traveled. You've identified what mindtrap has been holding you back and standing in your way of becoming a more human leader and where it comes from. You've shifted it out of the way, first by understanding that mindtraps are only stories our brain created and then by taking a look at yourself from a different perspective. You then challenged your mindtrap through a series of simple but critical questions: Is it true, relevant, or helpful today? You've also decided to let go despite some fear. And finally, you've done some spring cleaning in your unconscious to shift any lingering unhelpful emotions that might keep your mindtrap alive.
Because you've resisted the temptation to speed through the mindshift (or perhaps even skip it?), you've established a solid foundation for your mindbuild. Becoming a human leader requires a genuine and lasting inner transformation so we can show up as a fuller, truer version of ourselves. And it is that fuller, truer self who becomes the source from which we are then able to lead differently. Shortcuts, tempting as they typically are, are like building a house on sand or trying to upgrade the software on your computer or phone without upgrading the operating system: it's not going to work for long, if at all
Now, what about this mindbuild business? We start with two steps
How do we do this? We flex our imagination. And flexing our imagination happens to bring extra benefits that also make us better and more effective human leaders
Understand What Drives You
Why is understanding our personal why such a fundamental building block to becoming an effective human leader? In other words, why invest some of your precious time in clarifying what drives you? First, because it acts as both a compass and an engine, guiding you and pulling you forward. And second, because to be effective, human leaders must be able to inspire that same pull in others. And that ability can only spring as an extension of their own why
How does a strong sense of personal purpose act as our compass and our engine? Keeping sight of what is important to us and why we do what we do is our most reliable guide when we face tough choices and decisions, as Ralph Lauren's story illustrates. How do we chart a way forward in unprecedented situations, complex challenges, and extreme uncertainty—today's world? When there is no playbook and limited information, our only guide is purpose. It gives us a clear sense of direction
In addition to being a compass, a sense of personal purpose is also our engine: by telling us why we do what we do, it motivates, energizes, and propels us through hard times, fear, boredom, or any challenging circumstances and emotions when it is so easy to get derailed. It keeps us on track.
This is something Bronnie Ware knows a lot about. In the early 1990s, she left a banking career in her native Australia, first to work in a bar on a tropical island and later in England, then in palliative care. During these years tending to the dying, people shared their regrets with her as they faced the end of their lives. And she noticed that most people—men or women, regardless of their walk of life—kept expressing the same five common regrets:
Research has confirmed that, when looking back at their lives, most people regret what they didn't do far more than what they did do. And within the things they didn't do, their biggest regrets are not so much about unfulfilled duties and obligations, but rather about not living up to their ideal selves
From Personal to Collective Purpose
In addition to guiding you and keeping you on track, being clear about what drives you is a prerequisite for creating an environment in which others are inspired and able to do the same. In other words, it is an essential component of being an effective human leader. Why? Because the best way to unleash other people's potential and energy is to understand what drives each of them and channel it toward a common vision
Of course, a personal why, by itself, does not a successful business or an effective human leader make; it also takes a lot of hard work, skills, and persistence to get there
Only leaders who are clear about what drives them and are able to connect that personal sense of purpose with their companies' can help their teams do the same
So what drives you? What are the most important things to you? What do you want to accomplish in your life? How do you want to be remembered? Perhaps you already have crystal‐clear answers to these questions, in which case, your mindbuild is off to a solid start. But, even if you do, the rest of this section gives you a chance to check in with yourself so you can confirm, refine, or adjust your outlook. It might also give you a fresh perspective that will surprise you
There are multiple ways to help us do this. In The Heart of Business, for example, former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly explains how he gained clarity on his own purpose from the spiritual exercises of Ignatius de Loyola.6 For former Medtronic CEO Bill George, crucibles—the challenges that shape us—are key to defining and understanding what drives us, what he refers to as our True North.7 I use a variety of tools to help my clients connect with their own why, some of which I go into details in another book
But there is one exercise that I find particularly effective: writing your eulogy.
Write Your Eulogy
What would you like it to say? What do you want your spouse, partner, siblings, and children—if you have any or imagine having any by then—to say? What about your friends and your community? And the people you worked with—your peers, your team, your boss, your board? The purpose of this exercise is meant to stretch your imagination forward and give you the benefit of perspective. The idea is also to look at all aspects of your life—not just your professional life—because we are whole individuals, not perfectly compartmentalized beings like in Severance, the TV show in which characters have their memories surgically divided between their work and home lives. But if the thought of your eulogy fills you with a sense of dread, then imagine your future self at a ripe old age instead. You're watching a documentary or reading a biography that has just come out about your life. What would you like the people around you to say about you when interviewed? Make sure you still cover family, friends, and colleagues. How do you feel about it? What is the older you saying about your own life and what are you most proud of? What emotions go through you when you are saying it?
Now come back to the present. Take time to write down your experience—a sentence or a paragraph to keep the essential. Or if you find this too difficult, even just a word that sums up the most important. Take time to digest. Writing my own eulogy helped me understand what fundamentally drives and motivates me: to listen to other people and help them see light, hope, and potential in themselves, in their own story and journey, and in others. I want to be remembered as someone who made a difference in people's lives by believing in them and helping them uncover and liberate who they truly are. Understanding and articulating what drives me is the reason I became a coach: it feels more directly aligned with that why than being an entrepreneur.
How do your ideal future self's qualities, behavior, and achievements align with who you are and what you're doing today? If they don't align, what changes do you want to make? By having you look at your life from that viewpoint, this exercise shines a light on what really matters to you and what drives you—in short, on your why.
It's now time to move to another foundation of your mindbuild: a more detailed vision of your future self
Imagine Your Future Self
Now we're creating a vision of what the fuller, bigger version of yourself in general—and as a human leader in particular—looks, sounds, and feels like. Why? Because what we first imagine, we can be. As a wise man said, I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do, all that thought reveals in me, I can become.9
Back to the Future
Visualize your future self. We are time traveling again, but for a different reason: the point of the exercise is to flex your imagination muscle to the fullest, unconstrained by today's circumstances and obstacles, so you create a vision of yourself that acts as a magnet and pulls you to become that version of you.
First decide which parts of your life you'd like to focus on. If you could wave a magic wand and anything was possible, what would you change? Transport yourself into the future so you can see, hear, and feel what it is like. What are you doing? Who are you with? What do you look like? Where are you and where do you work? You can also imagine specific situations. What are you saying and how are you behaving? How do you feel through these situations? Visualize it or write it down in detail. Notice any word, image, or behavior that resonates with you: these are critical clues of the self you want to unleash and the direction you want to go, and who you are as a human leader
This exercise is particularly helpful when you feel stuck, unable to see past your current circumstances
What if nothing comes to you when you try this exercise? What if you're unable to imagine your future self? No problem. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, considered among the greatest directors of all times, often doesn't know ahead of time how exactly he's going to shoot a scene. You can create a vision the way a spider weaves its web: thread by thread. Each thread is something that resonates with you, whether images, words, sounds, places, or situations. If you were a song or a movie, which would it be? Or a tree? A color? And most important, why? What did you want to become when you were a child? Our child's brain, unconstrained because of its undeveloped frontal cortex, does this naturally, and everything feels possible. As we grow older and our rational, analytical abilities develop, our imagination recedes, and we get bogged down in the can't and should. Imagination is a muscle: the more you flex it, the stronger it becomes. In any case, this is not a sprint. It can take time to figure out who you truly are and what you deeply want. So, pay attention to that resonance within you. Follow its lead, for it gives you clues that like breadcrumbs guide you home toward a truer, purer version of who you are and what you want.
Identify Your Role Models
Another way to identify who you want to be, particularly who you want to be as a leader, is to identify your role models and why they inspire you. As designer, writer, and coach Ayse Birsel points out, these are qualities you can embrace and develop in yourself.11 So imagine being more like your role models. What would it look like in the context of your own life? What would it feel like? What can you do today to manifest these qualities?
Identifying who inspires us and why helps us define the kind of leader we want to be and what actions we can take today to be that person
So flex your imagination muscle. Step into your future self to pull your present self forward. How does that work? It works because of how your brain works. When you imagine the future in vivid detail, your brain reacts as if you were living that life, triggering a cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones. It creates a memory of the future, which in turns affects your perspective and behavior today, spurring you into action.
In addition to pulling you forward onto your path of roses, flexing your imagination in this way carries multiple other benefits.
The Other Benefits of Flexing Your Imagination
Multiple studies have confirmed that people who flex their imagination toward specific future scenarios tend not only to be more optimistic but also less likely to feel anxious or depressed. How come? Without imagination, hoping for a better future isn't possible. Practicing EFT helps us control and channel our imagination so that it is neither too vague or inexistent, which is associated with depression, nor stuck in overdrive, which is related to anxiety. In addition to strengthening our mental health, training our ability to imagine future scenarios in detail also has cognitive benefits. A decline in that ability has been associated with conditions such as dementia, traumatic brain injuries, and post‐traumatic stress. So exercises and games to improve that skill are being used in clinical environments.15 Third, spending time training our brain to imagine our future vividly has also been shown to boost our motivation to do things today that carry long‐term benefits—the pull factor discussed previously in this chapter. And finally, studies have shown that participants who were asked to imagine a situation in the future performed a lot better in creativity tests afterwards
In short, flexing our imagination helps us become more resilient to future shocks, but also be more creative in the present—all skills and qualities that make us better, more effective human leaders. It gives what is typically referred to as our right brain, or the neural pathways associated with intuition, creativity, and emotions, space to expand—not literally of course, but figuratively—and taps into its natural ability to generate solutions that seem to appear out of nowhere
Our imagination is our most powerful tool for change. When used properly, it helps clarify what's important to us, who we truly are and can be, and how we want to incorporate this into how we lead. By helping us understand and connect with what drives us and the kind of human leader we want to be, this part of the mindbuild creates our compass and the engine we need to keep walking on our path of roses and stay on track. If this were not reward enough, it is good for our health, too, and teaches us to prepare and plan for an unpredictable future. We'll see in Chapter 11 how exercising our brain in this way also helps us connect with others differently, which is at the heart of human leadership
Vision without action, however, is nothing more than daydream. Now that you've built a clear vision of the kind of human leader you can be, it is time to turn this vision into reality
CHAPTER 10 Empower Your Inner Leader: Four Practices to Better Connect with Yourself
After shifting your mindtraps (Part 2) and adopting a new outlook, you're now on your path of roses. In Chapter 9, you decided how you want it to look and smell like. This is only the beginning, however. You need to keep walking and stay on course. And as you do, you need to care for it, keep the weeds out, feed the soil, and water the roses you've chosen. Mindbuilding requires the same consistent and regular approach so the new neural pathways you've now created can strengthen over time
Bestselling authors Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen tell the story of two teams of explorers that raced to the South Pole in 1911. They had similar experience and skills, had equivalent distances to cover, and faced similarly brutal conditions. The team led by explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole first and returned home safely. The second, led by Robert Falcon Scott, arrived 34 days later to find their rival team's flag already planted, and they perished on the way back. The difference? Discipline and consistency. Amundsen's team walked 15–20 miles every single day, regardless of conditions: they pushed on through blizzards, but also stopped at 20 miles on good days when they could have walked more. The other adopted a different approach: when conditions were favorable, they marched until exhaustion, but on days when conditions were bad, they stayed in their tents.1 The story illustrates the secret of reaching our objective in any journey, whether to the South Pole or toward becoming a human leader: work on it every day
Strengthening new thought patterns and behavior takes adopting new habits, which require consistent repetition and practice. Building these consistent and daily habits is therefore the only way mindbuilding can be sustainable and lasting
Unlike racing to the South Pole, however, a human leader's mindbuild is an ongoing journey and evolution with no finish line. It is a consistent and regular practice
But what do these mindbuilding habits for human leaders involve exactly? They involve two things: learning to better keep in touch with ourselves, which is what this chapter focuses on, and learning to connect with others, which is what Chapter 11 is all about
Our mindbuild's first practice is to maintain a daily check‐in with ourselves for two main reasons
There is a good reason why airlines ask passengers to first put on their own mask before assisting anyone else: we cannot help anyone, at least not for very long, if we can't breathe. The same is true with leadership. We cannot effectively lead others unless we properly lead ourselves first
Staying on the Right Path
In Chapter 9, you clarified what drives you, which serves as your inner compass. You also identified the kind of leader you want to be, and how you want to behave. Yet staying in touch with your inner compass and whether your behavior aligns with who you want to be as a leader doesn't happen by itself. Staying in touch requires spending time with yourself daily. If the word meditation conjures up images of sitting in the lotus position or standing on your head, don't worry. All you have to do is take a few minutes every day to step back, remind yourself what matters to you most, how you've decided to change your behavior and why, and take stock of how you're doing on that score
There are many ways to check in with ourselves, as the examples of leaders' own daily routines illustrate. Among these many ways, one I find particularly helpful is the practice of daily questions. How does that work? Remember the behaviors you've decided to keep, add, or drop, as well as the actions you've decided to take, to become who you want to be. Write them down, and at the end of each day, ask yourself whether you've done your best to behave and act accordingly. Just read the short list and answer yes or no, or give yourself a grade from 1 to 10.
At first, many clients of mine balk at this approach. Doing your best is pointless, they argue. Either you succeed, or you don't. But Have I done my best today to … is not about beating yourself up over the nos or getting 10s across the board. The main purpose of doing this is to quickly remind yourself and your brain that you've decided to think and behave in a certain way, and why it's important to you, so it doesn't get lost in the busyness of daily life. It is also to roughly measure your behavior and give you a sense of progression
If questions don't do it for you, try affirmations specifically tailored to what you've decided to work on to become the human leader you've envisioned. Have you endeavored to become more patient? Then remind yourself every day that you can be. Or have you decided to trust yourself more? Consider I'm enough as an affirmation. for example. What matters most is not so much the specifics of how you check in with yourself, whether you go through your list of daily questions and affirmations, meditate, or just take a few minutes to reflect. What matters is to do this every day, so it becomes a habit. Every day? Who has time for this! you might think. Yes, every day. Why? Remember that our neural pathways are like our muscles: unless they're exercised regularly and consistently, they weaken. Millions of things happen during the day, every day. Unless we build a daily habit of taking a step back, we fall back into the groove of how we've been thinking and operating, particularly when under pressure.
It takes time and persistence to build new habits. As your new neural pathways become stronger and your old ones weaken, these daily check‐ins with yourself become faster and easier. I no longer need to remind myself to go through my own daily questions
So daily check‐ins with yourself, as well as occasional longer‐term ones, are essential to staying in touch with your inner compass and reminding yourself how you've decided to show up as a leader and why. But daily check‐ins are also crucial.
Self‐Care for the Soul
Do you remember the idea of draining versus energizing emotions introduced in Chapter 8? We all experience emotions such as stress, anxiety, or anger, which rob us of our energy. The combination of multiple complex crises, such as geopolitical tensions, social and economic challenges, and disrupted supply chains, have left many leaders on the verge of burnout. Fatigue and anxiety, however, make it difficult to lead effectively. How do you switch gears away from what drains you, and how do you recharge? Do you exercise or watch a movie? Read or meditate? Listen or play music perhaps? Everyone's bag of tools looks different. Following are a few suggestions to explore and expand yours
Draw from a Bank of Positive Memories
In times of stress or fatigue, imagination and visualizations are once again helpful. But in this instance, you're using your imagination to recharge. Create a bank of your favorite places—places that you know and are associated with positive emotions for you. Instead of places, you can create a collection of positive memories. Thanks to your imagination, you can take yourself there any time you want to recharge
Practice Gratitude
There is a very scientific reason behind this practice: many neurological studies have confirmed its impact on our brain on multiple levels, affecting neurotransmitters, stress hormones and even neural structures.5 By helping us release stress and boosting a sense of well‐being, being grateful therefore helps us recharge. Besides having a remarkable impact on our own well‐being, practicing gratitude also greatly affects our ability to lead other people and deliver surprising results
Why do we need to practice it, though? Because our brains are wired to focus on problems and dangers, and therefore are naturally drawn to noticing the negative more than the positive. Correcting this neurological bias therefore requires practice. All it takes is a few seconds to bring our attention to a few things that we're grateful for. These could be as simple as the color of the sky in that moment or a smile from a stranger. The important part is to connect deeply and genuinely with the emotion of appreciation itself, which is what changes our brain structure. So, try to pick different reasons every day to feel grateful, so you have to actively think and remind yourself of something that perhaps you would otherwise not have noticed or remembered, overshadowed by all the small or big challenges that every day brings.
The simple act of smiling helps put us in touch with a feeling of gratitude that uplifts and energizes us. Try it now. Just stretch the corners of your mouth toward your ears. Do it in a relaxed manner, so it becomes a genuine smile, rather than a rictus. Do you notice how your mood changes, just through this simple action?
But wait. Isn't dissatisfaction a powerful motivator? Doesn't feeling grateful risk blunting our own drive? No. Being grateful doesn't mean that we suddenly become blind to problems and what we want to improve. We can be grateful and want better or more at the same time
Another related tool is what is known as empathic joy. Much like practicing to notice things we appreciate to develop gratitude, we can also flex our empathy to notice and connect with other people's joy
In addition to recharging by shifting draining emotions and practicing gratitude, another element of self‐care for human leaders is to make sure that we don't drown in other people's emotions
Learn to Protect Yourself and Recharge
Think of a cup of tea: if you pour milk in it, it mixes in with the hot water. But if you pour oil, it floats on the surface. The objective is for us to float like the oil, so we don't get mixed up and drown in other people's perspectives and emotions
There can be no helpful empathy without self‐protection. Without the ability and time to come back to yourself, being able to connect with someone else to see the world through their eyes and feel what they experience—what I define as empathy—can lead to emotional saturation, particularly during challenging circumstances. That saturation in turn can result in our switching off empathy altogether. This is something doctors, nurses, and other care professionals know well: when faced with too much grief and tragedy among their patients, they risk building emotional walls to protect themselves. But when this protection becomes extreme, they're no longer able to connect with patients, which makes them less effective at their job. It is a question of balance. The best doctors can connect with their patients and understand their pain, but also detach enough to get back to their expertise to diagnose and ease their ailments, as well as protect themselves.8 The best leaders are also able to connect with all their stakeholders and understand them, but also to come back to their role and perspective
Developing our ability to connect with others means that we also risk absorbing their perspectives, moods, and emotions. But this is not helpful to us or to them, because we cannot help from that position. Also, as we've illustrated in this book, this muddles our own voice. So the objective is to strike a fine balance between connecting with others so we can understand them, and also being able to come back to ourselves. But how do we do that? Whenever we need to leave perspectives and emotions that belong to other people with them, simple physical gestures can help. Close your eyes and bring your hands together in front of your solar plexus. Imagine all these external influences—whether words, behavior, or emotions—that have come into your own mental space floating in the space immediately in front of you. Then cut through them by extending your arms in front of you, palms still against each other, and move your arms as if swimming breaststroke, pushing everything that doesn't belong to you to the side and then behind you—and out of our own mental space. That way, you free the space in front of you and you can breathe better. This exercise can be practiced physically, but you can also visualize yourself doing it.
You can also imagine a protective bubble around you, against which these words and emotions bounce off back to their source without reaching you. Make that bubble transparent, so you can still see everything and everyone around you.
Physical exercise is also helpful to come back to yourself and leave behind emotions you might have picked up from other people
Self‐care also means knowing when to get help and where to get it. Whether it is with a therapist, a coach, a group of peers, friends and family, or a spiritual leader, effective human leaders know how to openly ask for help when they need it and explore their emotions so they're able to create and maintain a safe, open, and supporting environment at work for their teams
In this chapter, we've shared tools to build and maintain a daily practice of keeping in touch with ourselves. But this isn't the only element of our ongoing mindbuild practice. The main reason for staying on the path we've set for ourselves and practicing self‐care through the exercises laid out is this: unless we're first solidly connected with ourselves, we cannot properly connect with others, which is at the heart of human leadership
Fundamental to being an effective human leader is learning to better connect with others, which is what Chapter 11 is about
CHAPTER 11 Become a New Leader: Four Practices to Better Connect with Others
In addition to connecting with ourselves, extending our mindbuilding practice to better connect with others takes time and consistent practice, too. Deciding, for example, to be a leader who embraces authentic relationships and unleashes other people's potential, rather than one bent on proving we're smarter than everyone else, does not mean we know how to do this from day one
Think of your own body. How do you become and stay fit? Do you exercise once and miraculously stay strong for the rest of your life? No. To build and maintain muscles and cardio fitness, you need to exercise very regularly and consistently; if you stay immobile, your muscles, including your heart, will weaken. Mindbuilding is like bodybuilding, because your neural pathways are exactly like your muscles: they need to be exercised consistently and regularly to grow stronger over time. In short, it's a case of use ?em or lose ?em.
In Chapter 9, you imagined your future self and identified role models to clarify what kind of leader you want to be. Regardless of the specifics, which are unique to you, being an effective human leader starts with being able to genuinely connect with others. As Theodore Roosevelt pointed out, No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. Following are four practices to strengthen your ability to connect with others:
Learn to Listen More and Speak Last
The most effective human leaders are those who have successfully repositioned their role from quarterback to coach. Their job is no longer to handle the ball and score points; it is to inspire and support the players to give the best of themselves and make sure they play as a team so together they can score points. In other words, leading requires different attributes and behaviors than managing. Learning how to move from one to the other is not easy: early in a career, success often depends on knowing how to be a good quarterback. In a leadership position, however, knowing how to ask questions is more important than coming up with answers. In The Coaching Habit, leadership coach Michael Bungay Stanier offers a framework of seven essential questions to change how we lead.1 Similarly, speaking last is more effective for leaders than volunteering ideas and opinions first. In other words, one of the essential qualities of effective human leadership is knowing how to listen. Becoming an excellent listener is critical not only in itself but also because it underpins other elements essential to being an effective human leader, such as empathy—more on this in a later section
How do we become better listeners?
Like anything else, changing behavior starts with intention and mindset: adopting a learn‐it‐all mindset rather than a know‐it‐all attitude, to borrow Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's words, goes a long way in helping shift our behavior from speaking to listening. Showing how much we know typically involves speaking; wanting to learn, however, shifts our behavior toward asking questions and listening. A learn‐it‐all mindset, coupled with the ability to listen, also helps human leaders own and acknowledge their own mistakes
Speaking last helps leaders become better listeners, too. This is what I often advise my clients who struggle to stop themselves from jumping in to fix problems that others are perfectly capable of handling if given a chance: turn your tongue in your mouth six times before speaking or count to 10
As trite as it may sound, we learn to listen by speaking less, too, in addition to speaking last
Learning to listen also means learning to be mentally present. Whenever we're thinking about our last meeting or the next one, or checking our phones, we're not properly listening, even if we don't say a word. Learning to listen to others, really listen to them, requires complete focus. How can we do that when the human brain automatically produces a constant tsunami of thoughts? It takes practice. Mindfulness—in other words, being fully present—has been shown through countless studies to help us quiet our mind—and a quiet mind is a listening mind. This doesn't have to be complicated: I often advise my clients to practice what I call the close the door and open the door exercise: at the end of each meeting, conversation, or activity, resist the temptation to jump straight into the next one. Instead, take a moment to close the door on what you've just done, so you don't carry on thinking about it as you start your next conversation or undertaking. Closing that door could mean jotting down a few notes and thoughts or scheduling some time to think about it more so you're able to set it aside and empty your mind. Or it could mean doing nothing more than taking a few seconds or one minute to bring your mind into the present, interrupting the flow of thoughts about what did happen or will happen or should happen.
Staying present and truly listening is also easier when we're able to let go of our own agenda. For many leaders, letting go of our agenda means letting go of the noble and understandable, but at times counterproductive, desire for every conversation to be productive. By productive, I mean conversations with a predetermined agenda that not only gets tackled from the get‐go but also discussions that produce a decision, whether some kind of fix or at least next steps. I'm not saying that time management and focus aren't important; they are, of course, particularly when days are packed and time is precious. What I mean is learning to relate to colleagues as people is equally important and a productive use of time: people who don't feel heard at work don't feel respected and included so they typically don't invest much of themselves into their job and, of course, aren't the best version of themselves. It is about finding a balance. What about taking a few minutes at the beginning of a meeting to check in and find out how people are doing? What about spending a little time just catching up, with no agenda and without wanting to fix?
This is not easy. It takes practice and patience to know when to stop ourselves from rushing
In addition to letting go of our agenda, suspending our own judgment also helps us become better at what is known in Buddhism as deep listening. As soon as we react to what someone else is saying, even if only in our head, then we can no longer truly listen
Leaders who keep practicing becoming better listeners develop deeper and stronger connections with their teams, which in turn contributes to boosting their engagement and performance. Learning to listen better, however, is only one aspect of deepening and strengthening these connections. A second critical element, which in fact builds on listening, is to cultivate empathy
Cultivate Your Empathy
The entire journey laid out in this book so far has already exercised the empathy muscle. Remember what I mean by empathy: the ability to connect to other people's emotions or experience. Being able to stand in someone's shoes, see the world through their eyes, and feel what they experience isn't about learning and applying a few party tricks. To be authentic and genuine, empathy must come from within. Think of it as in‐pathy. Identifying your mindtrap(s), shifting it or them out of the way, and building and maintaining your new mindset creates an inner transformation that makes this in‐pathy possible. In short, by traveling the mindtrap‐mindshift‐mindbuild journey, you've already upgraded your inner operating system, so your empathy function runs better
So why bother with this section, then? This section is about how you can strengthen your empathy muscle, now that you've done the inner work required for that muscle to work at all. As surprising as this idea might sound at first, empathy is not a fixed attribute but a quality that can be learned and strengthened over time—just like learning to play piano or tennis. Except for a small minority of people, our brains are all wired for empathy. And even though we each start in life with varying levels of natural wiring, we can all build up our empathy neural pathways over time—with proper practice
What does this practice look like, in addition to listening properly? Studies based on brain imaging have shown that regular practice of a specific type of meditation focused on empathy strengthens and activates the areas of the brain used to detect emotions and feelings.10 So does looking for areas we have in common with someone else—rather than focusing on how different they are from us
Another tool, in addition to becoming a better listener and meditation, is to practice hearing what is not being said. How? One very effective way is to practice communicating without words
Cultivating empathy also means remembering that its power runs both ways. In other words, it means understanding, when in a position of leadership, how your words, but also the tone of your voice, your body language, and your actions, affect your connections to the people around you. The people around you are not only the members of your immediate team but also, through them, the members of their immediate team. So, if you're in a position of top leadership, the people around you means everyone in the company. Therefore, once you observe and understand the impact of your words, your body language, and your actions, your empathy practice also includes adjusting what you say, how you say it, and what you do accordingly. This is why communicating in person or at least via video message is preferable to, say, email, which offers none of the nonverbal cues that are critical to human connection
Every individual is exquisitely unique—what drives them, what they need, what they want, and how they react—and so is every moment of every day. Sharpening your empathy is about deploying emotional energy and focus toward learning to adapt to every individual and every moment
Empathy shouldn't be confused with some touchy‐feely, mushy sentiment. Being able to connect to someone else and experience the world from their perspective doesn't mean accepting or excusing everything they do or say. Empathy doesn't exclude showing tough love whenever necessary. Consider what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told 150 company executives, for example. Once you become a vice president, a partner in this endeavor, the whining is over. You can't say the coffee around here is bad, or there aren't enough good people, or I didn't get the bonus. To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in a pile of shit. You are the champions of overcoming constraints
Practice and Role‐Play Conversations
Practice is about developing and reinforcing new habits
Changing how we connect with people at work might feel awkward at first, even intimidating. More granular practice, role‐play, and guidance help make it easier over time
I often role‐play conversations with my clients—particularly conversations they expect to be difficult—or specific situations
Role‐playing various scenarios eases the anxiety of the unknown and makes it easier to react in the best possible way in the heat of the moment
Practicing and role‐playing are also helpful when learning to show appreciation. Most leaders agree that showing appreciation is central to keeping people motivated; few people are happy to invest their time, effort, and creativity in an environment where their efforts and contribution go unnoticed
Over time, as we become more experienced developing and maintaining more human connections at work, we no longer need to practice in the same way, as we can automatically tap into the deep well of our memory instead.
Learn to Set and Maintain New Boundaries
She reminded him that, although being vulnerable and authentic is indeed extraordinarily powerful for leaders, there is one critical caveat: vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability. If he genuinely felt in over his head, she added, he should indeed tell someone. But his investors and employees were the wrong people to talk to
A lot has been said, written, and argued about why being authentic and vulnerable fosters genuine human connection. If we want to truly connect with other people, we must be ready to let them peek into our head and into our heart and encourage them to do the same. We must be ready and able to show who we truly are. This is where the power of authenticity and vulnerability lies for leaders: they are essential ingredients of human leadership because it is by creating and maintaining human connections that leaders can most inspire and motivate others. This is the payoff and why it is worth the risk and effort for leaders to learn to become more vulnerable and more authentic.
Opening a door so people at work can peek into our head and our heart, however, doesn't mean sharing all our emotions and all our thoughts with everybody. It also doesn't mean abandoning our privacy or forcing colleagues and team members to let go of theirs. This is a common perception among my clients, who worry becoming more vulnerable at work and encouraging others to do the same will turn a professional environment into a giant group therapy session. Indeed, without setting proper boundaries, vulnerability and authenticity at work are neither powerful nor productive, but exactly the opposite
So, where are these invisible lines when it comes to human leadership? How and where should human leaders set boundaries?
These boundaries look different for each one of us. Here are several questions to help you find yours:
This chapter is the culmination of all the chapters that have come before. The inner work you've done—identifying your mindtrap(s) (Part 1), shifting these inner obstacles out of the way (Part 2), and building new habits to better keep in touch with yourself and your new mindset (Chapter 10)—has set the foundations for showing up as a new kind of leader: an authentic human leader not only willing but now also able to lead with empathy. Building on this inner work, this chapter has given you tools to better connect with people around you so you can lead from that place of human connection.
The tools in this chapter don't offer a shortcut: they don't by themselves magically transform a superhero leader into a human leader. The ability to lead with empathy comes from within, so applying these tools without the proper internal foundation invariably comes across as pretending to be a human leader, rather than being one. Conversely, inner work by itself is self‐help, not human leadership. It becomes human leadership only when we learn and practice how to translate it into better connecting with others. Human leadership is born out of the combination of both these inner and outer dimensions—like an operating system and software working in tandem.
Although this is the last chapter of this book, this isn't the end of your journey as a human leader. In fact, this is only the beginning. As I tell the executives I coach, the mindtrap and mindshift parts of the journey can happen quickly; mindbuilding, however, is a practice. And as such, it is meant to happen for the rest of your life
Conclusion: The New Leader
The journey from mindtrap to mindshift and mindbuild has a profound impact on those who undertake it, unleashing a deep and lasting transformation on multiple levels
In the introduction to this book, we talked about superhero leaders who approach their role as being infallible, unflappable, and fearless. These are not true heroes, however; like the magnificent statue in the Bible story, they look powerful and indomitable, but their head of gold rests on feet of clay. Identifying your mindtrap, deciding to shift it out of the way, and then embracing a mindbuild, however, makes you what writer Joseph Campbell defines as a hero: someone who embarks on a journey into the unknown, where they successfully overcome obstacles, before coming home transformed by the experience. But what then? What does this mean for the rest of the world? The hero, Campbell writes, comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.1 As such, becoming a human leader is precisely the kind of transformative adventure that makes those who undertake it the heroes whom Campbell is talking about. True heroes are those who dare to leave their comfort zone to embark on a very human journey and learn along the way. They also dare to embark on a journey with no end, for life keeps unfolding, and each day is an opportunity to grow and evolve. They are not afraid of change; in fact, they embrace it. Neither are they afraid of their own and others' humanity; they treasure it. This is how they become the best possible version of themselves and make their mark
Human leaders also find meaning and immense satisfaction in working toward something bigger than themselves. This mindtrap‐mindshift‐mindbuild journey, besides changing the lives of leaders themselves, also makes a profound and lasting difference in the lives of people around them and the organizations they lead. Only leaders aligned with their own humanity are willing and able to discern other people's unique potential, understand what drives each one of them, and both unleash and channel this potential and drive toward a common purpose. Not only are they willing and able to do so but also helping others grow and transforming individual potential into collective power gives them immense satisfaction. Like ripples on a pond, human leaders' empathy and emotional intelligence reverberate throughout and beyond their organizations. By first transforming themselves, they change how they lead people, who in turn affect the people around them—other employees within the organization, but also customers, suppliers, shareholders, and entire communities. This is the extraordinary power of empathy, which leads to surprising results.
The ripples extend even further. Human leadership doesn't start and stop at the office: it happens everywhere and in each moment. It also happens at home, and those who've embarked on the journey can attest to the enormous difference it has made in their personal life. Leadership happens in the wider world, too
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