Daniel Goleman's Blog, page 9

Daniel Goleman: The Secret to Breaking Bad Habits

With the new year comes an opportunity to reboot our habits – drop the negative ones and start better ones.

It doesn’t matter if the habit in question is for your health – say eating better – or getting on more effectively with folks on the job – say, listening better. The basic steps are the same.

The first fact to face is that our habits are largely invisible to us. That is, though we may know we need to eat or listen better, our repertoire of habit resides in a part of the brain that is ordinarily off-limits to our awareness. The home of habits is a structure deep in the bottom of the brain called the basal ganglia.

Our brain stores our habits there so we don’t have to pay conscious attention to the countless good habits that keep us going – everything from how to brush our teeth to what not to say to your boss.

That works well ordinarily. The brain needs to conserve energy this way, and it would be overwhelmingly distracting to have to figure these sequences out each time. But the problem comes when certain habits don’t work for us. Those are the ones we want to target for change.

Freedom from Self-Defeating Habits

As Tara Bennett-Goleman specifies in her book Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom From Self-Defeating Habits, the first step in changing them has to be noticing them in the first place. That means not letting them just go by on automatic, but becoming mindful of them. You can do this in two ways: getting familiar with the triggers that start the sequence, and noticing the way the habit operates.

This sounds easy, but it requires a particular way of paying attention: mindfulness. As Tara and I will demonstrate in our upcoming workshop, mindfulness lets us notice parts of our mental life that typically go by invisibly – especially our habits.

Once we bring these into awareness, we can decide how to change them as they are occurring, or are about to. Mindfulness de-automatizes habits – while we used to reach for that soothing candy bar after an upsetting call from that person who drives us crazy, with mindfulness we can spot the habit trigger the moment our caller I.D. tells us who is ringing.

And finally, we can replace that dysfunctional habit with something that works better for us. Instead of hours immobile in front of a digital screen, we can take those healthy one-minute exercise breaks. Rather than cut off what a direct report tells us and impose our own agenda, listen fully to what she has to say, and then respond.

Recognize the Trigger Source

Here’s the big secret to all this: Different states of mind make us more or less susceptible to triggering our bad habits. When we’re in an anxious mode, for instance, we’re most likely to eat that fattening bag of chips or cut off that other person. Recognizing how these states, or modes of being, take us over can help us track our habits better.

So the three simple steps are:

Bring mindfulness to the mode and habit.
Replace the bad habit with a better response.
Practice at every natural opportunity.

Shifting habits works better with a fuller understanding of the brain systems underlying both our habits and how mindfulness helps us manage the brain – and how to rewire.

May the new year be full of your best habits.

Register for the upcoming workshop Mind Whispering: A New Path to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habits here.

View the SlideShare presentation.

Additional Resources:

Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations

Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence

Being at Peace with Food

Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills

The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights

Podcasts:

Sensory Focus Guided Exercise

The Leader's Mind

The Connection Between Attention and Health

Negotiating with Yourself

Videos:

Daniel Goleman: The Secret Antidote to Apathy

My recent post about apathy in the workplace struck a nerve. So let’s look more closely at the leader’s role in motivating a team or organization.

Self-awareness drives self-management. If you’re tuned out, you can’t manage your internal world well. Self-awareness also drives empathy. If you don’t attune to yourself, you won’t be able to attune well to others.

These competencies allow a leader to create resonance and move people with a compelling, authentic vision. A shared common purpose makes work exciting and engaging.

The Power of We

I spoke with Dr. Dan Siegel for my Leadership: A Master Class series about the importance of community in organizations. Dr. Siegel says, ”We’re not meant to live in isolation. Our connectedness creates the self.”

So many leaders seem hapless about why people aren’t motivated. They go about trying to motivate them in the wrong way—which is either to punish them or offer them more external rewards. But a real, long-lasting motivator is internal. They’re engaged by the sense of “we.”

Studies of happiness and well-being show that when you’re a part of a community, you thrive. A leader who is aware of the importance of relationships will create an environment in the organization that engages the worker to put their best foot forward for the common good.

Dr. Siegel adds, “Your brain can actually make a map of “we” so that when you participate in a professional community you realize that you’re on a journey with your teammates. It’s not just what I do for a job. It’s actually my identity. When a leader doesn’t have this in his brain, he may be thinking, ‘Okay, I’m an individual. That worker is an individual. We’re all just individuals participating in this company.’ You can feel the deflation of that. There’s no engagement. Leaders need to realize that relationships are an entity unto themselves. And a company can be a source of fulfilling relationships regardless of departments, job titles or other perceived barriers. It’s like the saying: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Integrate to Motivate

One way to create a sense of community is to integrate the various moving parts of an organization as best you can. Acknowledge that we’re in this together. We’re not in competition with one another. Recognize that each person brings something to the table to enhance the whole organization.

When you start to see the different workers and departments as part of a whole, you’re better able to link them together. They’re not just disparate elements. Just like a choir singing in harmony, a company that’s integrated will generate a vital, energized way of being.

When a company is not integrated it’s going to move either into rigidity—staleness, lack of productivity and innovation—or it’s going to move to chaos, where things are confusing, and there are abrupt, unpredictable shifts.

How do you create a sense of community in your organization? Share your experiences in the comments.

Image: Mibba

Additional Resources

Transform: Habits of Superior Managers

Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide

Resonant Leadership: Inspiring Others Through Emotional Intelligence

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

Daniel Goleman: Big Idea 2015: More Companies Can Do Good While Doing Well

In this series of posts, Influencers and members predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2015. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #BigIdeas2015 in the body of your post).

The Dalai Lama recently spoke with a group of CEOs about “positive capitalism." This concept illustrates companies who move forward but also make it possible for others to move forward.

“The global economy is like a roof over all of us," said the Dalai Lama. "But it depends on individual pillars for support. Business needs a sense of responsibility to work together more cooperatively. We need positive competition: if I progress, they should too so they are not left behind.”

For-Benefit Corporations

There are several examples of businesses that are doing good while doing well.

The Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, NY, hires, trains, and houses people who are facing difficult life circumstances. The employees learn how to bake, and pick up personal and professional development skills along the way. Greyston even supplies a brownies to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory in Vermont. The company’s motto: “We don’t hire people to bake brownies; we bake brownies to hire people.”

In Easthampton, Massachusetts, Prosperity Candle trains recent immigrants how to make candles, and keeps them on as employees. They go from being on welfare, to supporting themselves and their families. And that's the point. Says Prosperity's founder, Ted Barber, "We are a for-profit company with the heart of a non-profit." [1]

Doing Good While Doing Well

“B Corporations” have a double bottom line; they benefit society while making a profit. This double mission alerts shareholders that they will pursue their social mission even if it means a lull in return on investment.

For example, Patagonia, the American maker of sports clothing, has long been a B corporation. This allowed them to conduct years of research to invent a rubber derived from a desert shrub, not petroleum, to use in their products. [2]

Buy your eyeglass frames from Warby Parker. They give a pair of glasses to a person in the developing world for every frame they sell.

These companies recreate business models to be meaningful, not just profitable. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh was one of the first to adopt this approach by giving micro-loans to help people in poverty start their own small businesses. The rate of repayment has been so high that they have been able to re-loan the funds over and over, creating thousands of entrepreneurial small businesses.

Other organizations are shifting their business-as-usual missions to include a more conscious capitalism approach. As part of a larger sustainability goal, Unilever plans to give technical aid to small farmers in developing nations so they can join the company’s supply chain as dependable sources. Huge companies like Unilever can take a social mission to scale. Their goal: a half million small farms. [3]

My book, A FORCE FOR GOOD: The Dalai Lama's Vision for the World, will be available in June 2015.

Share examples of organizations who "do good and do well" in the comments.

[1] Ted Barber in Hannah Wulkan, “Easthampton-based business aims to provide marginalized people with gainful employment,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, June 23, 2014. page C1.

[2] Diane Cardwell, “Bottom Line: Earth,” The New York Times, Thursday, July 31, 2014, p. B1.

[3] Consider the arc of history at Unilever, with its roots in a margarine conglomerate in the Netherlands. As the grand-niece of one of that Dutch company’s founders told me, at the start of the 20th century, Margarine Unie was a bully, ruthlessly elbowing competitors in this new business niche (the formula for margarine, a lower cost butter substitute made from palm oil, was a fairly recent discovery) to take them over. In the 1930s Margarine Unie merged with another intensive palm oil user, the British soap maker Lever Brothers, to form Unilever. Fast-forward to the start of the 21st century, when Unilever is about to acquire Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. One of those at the top, an insider’s word has it, hopes compassionate DNA from Ben & Jerry’s idealism will infect the rest of the company. And lo and behold, a decade later I hear the new CEO, Paul Polman, announce a major business goal, to source raw materials from a half million Third World small farmers.

Additional Reading

Wise Leaders Focus on the Greater Good

The Key Ingredient to Happiness

Starting a New Career? Consider Good Work

Find Your Organization's Rudder

Additional Resources

Resonant Leadership: Inspiring Others Through Emotional Intelligence

Leading the Necessary Revolution: Building Alignment in Your Business for Sustainability

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

Daniel Goleman: The Number One Demotivator at Work

Apathy in organizations is often a result of a disconnection between what matters to the person and what they’re asked to do. Yet apathy isn’t always easy to gauge at work. A team member’s performance may not be up to snuff for any number of reasons: personal stress, burnout, office strife, etc.

Sometimes the best way to gauge if someone isn’t engaged is to simply ask: Do you enjoy what you’re doing?

Moods Matter at Work

There’s still a dated mentality around work: it’s not supposed to be “fun.” We have a job to do. But after speaking with Dr. Daniel Siegel for my Leadership: A Master Class, I would argue that enjoying a task can boost performance and encourage employee engagement - and retention.

Siegel says: “There’s a circuit in the emotional areas of the brain that’s involved in playfulness. It actually promotes plasticity of the brain. It engages creative combinations of things that can really benefit a worker. Too often we separate work from play. Yet incorporating more joy in our work life is a great thing to do neurologically.”

One of the very positive leadership styles is called the affiliative leader. This type of leader knows that having a good time together is not a wasted effort. They recognize that it builds positive energy and social and emotional capital. Dr. Siegel explains why enjoyable activities are important for a well-functioning brain.

Rethink Reward Systems

“Play is associated with a release of dopamine. It creates a reward system. Those rewarding feelings encourage exploration, which is crucial for a productive worker.”

This is also where innovation comes from — the moment that allows for creativity to emerge. It’s exciting and motivating. Every organization needs that energy from their workers if it’s going to be survive.

When you become familiar with a task it becomes routine. That person may become very efficient at their job, but where is the motivation to learn something new if the task is so set in stone? Anything that’s routinized doesn’t allow for creativity.

Secure Base

For innovation to happen, you really want to have people step out of the familiar and take joy in making new combinations. That requires vulnerability. A person has to feel like she’s in an environment that respects that when she steps out of the familiar, she’s going in to territory where it may not work out. And that’s okay.

A teacher, for example, needs to create an environment in the classroom where kids feel that they can make mistakes and learn from them. They should know it’s good to explore new ways of combining knowledge. Organizations need to create the same kind of positive attitude for innovation and exploration.

Empathy Goes a Long Way

Two of the leadership styles that have a very negative effect on organizational climate are the command-and-control leader — “Just do it because I’m the boss, and I say so.” And the other is what’s called the pace setter, who’s often someone with a very high internal standard for performance. He’s a solitary performer. He drives himself. However, when he becomes the boss, he doesn’t draw on any of the leadership styles. He leads by example. “Do it the way I do.” And he looks at other people through this same internal lens of excellence, giving only F grades — no A grades.

This approach lacks empathy and leaves the other person feeling misunderstood, disrespected and disappointed. Hardly the mindset you want a productive team member to have on a regular basis.

What Can You Do?

How can you help bring more enjoyment and meaning to your team’s workday while still getting the work done?

Start a conversation around what they’d like to accomplish in the next 3 or 6 months. Ask them to focus on something they enjoy, or have always wanted to try.
Show your team that what they’re doing matters. Are they making circuit boards to use in heart monitors? Give examples of how their work positively impacts the lives of others.
Doing something good for others naturally increases ones’ own happiness. There are dozens of local organizations that could use a helping hand in some way from your team. Or offer to pitch in to help another department that's snowed in with work.
Mix it up. People can get sloppy and careless when their tasks become too routine. Find new ways of performing a job. You may even discover a more efficient approach.

Quick Glance

Skim through the SlideShare deck for an overview and quick tips.

Share Your Ideas

How do you keep your team engaged and motivated? Share your experiences in the comments.

Read my full conversation with Dr. Daniel Siegel in the new ebook compilation, Transform: Habits of Superior Managers. (Available on Kindle, Nook and iTunes.) You can also watch our discussion in the Leadership: A Master Class.

Additional Resources:

Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide

The HR and EI Collection

The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

Photo: Flickr/Steve Kay

Daniel Goleman: Research: The Key Ingredient to Genuine Happiness

We would all like to be happier in our personal and professional lives, even those of us who already love what we do, or are content with personal accomplishments. As the year comes to a close, we often become more introspective: what do we want to do more/less of next year? What worked, and what didn’t?

Richard Davidson of The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds is a research pioneer on the benefits of meditation. One positive outcome of meditation that’s piqued his interest is happiness.

Mirabai Bush spoke with Richard for the series Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations. Davidson talked about his research with long-time meditation practitioners. His findings helped him piece together what may be important ingredients for genuine or enduring happiness.

“When we're talking about genuine or enduring happiness, we're not talking about the transient change that you experience when you eat a good meal. Or when you buy a new product, after which you rapidly return to your set point. We're talking about an enduring change that persists across contexts.

Based on our findings, one of the key ingredients seems to be compassion. This is something that His Holiness the Dalai Lama talks about very often. He said one of the best ways to promote one's own happiness is to be kind to others, to be generous. There's good experimental research to support that.

In one study, participants came into the lab in the morning and were given $100 each. They were told to spend the money on themselves.

Another group was given the same amount of money but were told to buy things for other people and give it to them. The only restriction: you can't use any of the money for yourself. At the end of the day, guess which group reported much higher levels of happiness?

The givers.

We see this repeatedly. The evidence is beginning to grow that adopting a stance that is focused on other as opposed to self is something that really helps to promote well-being and happiness.

Another study found that 47% of the time the average American is mind wandering and not paying attention to what they're doing. What are we thinking about? The mind wandering is typically self-focused. And when they are self-focused, they report most of the time that they are in a relatively negative mood. They're not happy.

One of the conclusions from that study is that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. I think that if we can direct our thoughts toward the well-being of others, it actually will help in promoting a more enduring, genuine kind of happiness.

In the long-term practitioners we studied we noticed that they practiced compassion so much that it becomes an automatic response. They're always focused on the well-being of others and not on themselves.”

What do you think?

Can you remember a time when making someone else happy enhanced your own well-being? Share your experience in the comments.

Now available in print: Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations. Follow Working with Mindfulness:

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Listen to Mirabai Bush's guided exercises to use at work here.

You might also find these Working with Mindfulness podcasts helpful:

Finding Time for Mindfulness

The Importance of a Positive Outlook

Image: Chill Hour

Daniel Goleman: The First Step to Success? Admit Failure

When former Medtronic CEO, Bill George, interviewed leadership candidates, he was interested in learning about both their failures and successes. After all, everyone has made mistakes on the job. But in George's mind, the best leaders are humble enough to recognize that they messed up, learn what not to do in the future, and develop resilience.

I spoke with Bill in my Leadership: A Master Class series about authentic leadership. Below is a portion of our conversation about the benefits of getting leaders to discuss and grow from their failures.

Daniel Goleman: There’s a kind of norm that you’re valued for telling a story of success about yourself, and yet you value someone who was candid about their failures.

Bill George: Right. In fact, I say, don’t promote someone to a high-level position until they’ve actually confronted themselves and said, “I failed.”

DG: What’s the lesson there?

BG: Because I now know, that when tested by limits, I know that failing is not the end of the world. I can come back. I started a company that failed. I took the lessons from that and started another company. I became successful only because I knew what caused me to fail before.

DG: Failure is an ideal opportunity to learn resilience.

BG: Absolutely. What if you don’t have resilience? What if you’re not adaptable? What if you’re just going to stay the course, and you hit a detour? You hit a block in the road? You have to adapt, but you have to have the resilience to come back and fight another day.

DG: How do you train and encourage resilience?

BG: By getting people to talk honestly and openly about the challenges they face and how they’re going to deal with them. People need to know they have the support from their family, friends or colleagues – especially their supervisor. I also encourage investigating introspection tools. When I feel pressure, I go off and meditate. I process. Over time and with practice it’s become a valuable cleansing experience. After quiet contemplation, I notice that I start to say things such as, “Well, it’s not that big a deal. We’ll just go figure out how to deal with it. It’s not the end of the world.”

DG: You get a larger picture of what’s going on, instead of that narrow, hyper focus on what’s wrong, or what you perceive to be wrong.

BG: Yes, you’re not so caught up in the moment. You’re not worried about all those little things. We’ll deal with it. I won’t say it’ll pass, but we’ll deal with it. That mindset then allows you to think more clearly. You’re less reactionary. You make better decisions, such as ask for help. That’s the wave of the future, by the way. Collaboration. Teamwork. It’s not, “I can do it myself. I’ll come back with a solution by tomorrow.” It rarely works. Not in business at least.

Weigh in: How did you handle an interview question about your past job failures? Share your insights in the comments.

Put these ideas into practice with Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide. Each module offers individual and group exercises, self-assessments, discussion guides, review of major points, and key actionable takeaway plans. The materials allow for instructor-led, self-study or online learning opportunities.

Additional resources:

Self-Improvement Begins with Self-Reflection

The Art of Moving On

How to Hear Your Inner Voice

The Power of Positive Planning

Photo: GK Hart/Vicky Hart / Getty Images

Daniel Goleman: Do you perform better in high-pressure meetings?

People are often pressured in meetings to come up with incredible solutions on the spot. Some high-performing teams thrive in that environment. It’s also a good approach to stimulate new thinking.

However, a constant dose of pressure-cooker meetings can stifle creative, thoughtful employees from contributing valuable insights. Perhaps they’re reacting to the tension in the room, or are fearful their idea will get publicly – and aggressively – shot down too soon. Some of you might say, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” That attitude may apply to some, but why set up a potential star performer to fail? And burnout is a very real condition that can derail even the best employee.

How can a leader find the right balance in a high-stakes meeting – or when to call one? I spoke with my colleague, Teresa Amabile in my Leadership: A Master Class video series about ways managers can foster a creative team. Here’s what she had to say about generating the best ideas and solutions during meetings.

“Our research showed there's only one very particular set of time pressured conditions that actually lead to high-level creativity. It’s called being on a mission. People have to feel that what they're doing is truly important and is justifiably urgent. It’s not that somebody has placed an arbitrary deadline on us, it’s that we're doing something that really matters. It’s either an urgent need that the company has to address before it can move forward on something important, or because a competitor is about to scoop us. Or because a customer desperately needs our help. It could also be because society has a serious need for a solution to a problem.

A great example of really meaningful work under pressure is the Apollo XIII story. While the space capsule was on its way, the air filtration system malfunctioned. The astronauts were in danger of asphyxiation. 'Houston, we have a problem' indeed! Mission Control was scrambling to find a solution.

The engineers who were focused on that problem were completely freed up from doing anything else. They got whatever help they needed from others. They were able to actually solve that problem, because they focused on it, they knew it was urgent, and they understood how very important it was.

While that’s an extreme example, businesses can do something like that by putting people in the situation where they understand the urgency and they're protected from distractions. They’re on a mission. But even when on a mission, people can’t operate under high pressure for very long periods of time and continue to be creative. They have to get a break, or they're going to burnout.

Get off the treadmill

Unfortunately the most common type of time pressure in organizations is what we call being on a treadmill. You feel that you're being constantly distracted by crises erupting around you. We found that under these conditions, people are not able to focus on truly being creative in their work. They may end a day feeling that they got a lot done. ‘I worked for 14 hours, and I solved 14 different problems.’ Yet they don't have that sense of satisfaction that they’re working on the most important piece of their work. They can go many days on the treadmill without doing anything creative. So that's one of the most important things managers can give to people – is the time and the focus to do creative work."

Weigh in: How do you respond in pressure-cooker meetings? Do you thrive, or just barely survive? What would you change about intense meetings? Share your insights in the comments section.

Put these concepts into practice with the new Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide.

Email mike@morethansound.net for a sample guide.

Additional Resources:

How Leaders Can Overcome Obstacles for Change

The Active Ingredients for Innovation

Three Must-Haves for Team Creativity

Bonding Creates High-Performing Teams

Photo: Mark Evans / Getty Images

Daniel Goleman: Why Self-Improvement Begins with Self-Reflection

When people feel a need to transition into a new phase in their lives, they often think the shift needs to be external: new job, new house, new relationship. While those changes are often warranted, I recommend taking stock of your inner world to help guide your decisions. You may discover that you don’t need to change jobs; you just want to move to a different division. Or you would prefer downsizing into an apartment versus owning a two-family unit.

But finding clarity takes some effort. It requires asking the right questions that invite us to consider what really matters to us. And our answers encourage us to pursue new possibilities that are more aligned with our true values and goals.

Based on my Leadership: A Master Class video series, HRD Press and More Than Sound developed a solid personal inventory in one of the modules for coaches, trainers and HR professionals to guide their teams through a self-exploration exercise. Below is an excerpt from the survey* to give you a sense of the types of clarifying questions to ask yourself, or work on with a coach or mentor.

There are 10 descriptions of major life purposes or primary motives covered in the sample worksheet.

For each category, read the description and place a capital “P” at the scale position that best describes your present estimate of self.
Then place a lowercase “p” at the scale position that best describes your past, where you stood five years ago.
Finally, mark “F” on the scale to indicate your goal aspirations for the future, where you want to be in the next five years.

Click on the image below (or here) to open a .pdf of the survey. Print it out or grab a sheet of paper to tally your responses.

After you have completed each scale, review the entire set of dimensions to evaluate where you have been, where you are now, and where you want to be in the future.

For further reflection, identify some areas from the list in which you would like to change and enumerate some strategies for achieving personal change.

Areas that need improvement
Obstacles to overcome
Strategies to achieve goals

Positive Planning

Now that you have a better sense of your primary motives, brainstorm some methods for achieving your new goals.

“Talking about your positive goals activates brain centers that open you up to new possibilities. But if you change the conversation to what you should do to fix yourself, it closes you down,” says Richard Boyatzis, a psychologist at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve.

Boyatzis argues that focusing on our strengths positions us to be open to new opportunities. On the other hand, concentrating only on our flaws only results in feelings of negativity and guilt, which ultimately stifle growth.

“You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive,” says Boyatzis. A positive outlook can sustain the pleasure of learning and growth at work. This is often why many professional athletes and performers still actually have fun when they practice.

This willing attitude also applies to coaching, Boyatzis notes. Spotlighting a person’s hopes—whether you’re a parent, teacher, or boss—offers a very enjoyable knowledge exchange. This type of exchange may also extract actionable goals, help determine how to achieve such goals, and then distinguish which capacities should be developed to arrive there.

Take the complete self-inventory and other useful surveys in the new Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide.

Additional Resources:

Video with Bill George - Authentic Leadership

HR and EI Collection

Resonant Leadership: Inspiring Others Through Emotional Intelligence

Additional Reading:

The Brain Science Behind Gut Decisions

Does Intuition Affect Decisions

A Self-Aware Leader is not a Self-Obsessed Leader

*The complete self-inventory in the Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide contains 21 questions. The self-inventory is adapted from 20 Reproducible Assessment Instruments for the New Work Culture by Philip R. Harris.

Photo: XiXinXing / Getty Images

Daniel Goleman: Three Ingredients for Sales Success

“We have a brilliant systems analyst, but we’re afraid to put him in front of clients,” an IBM executive told me. “He’s rude and arrogant. The minute he sits down he starts telling the client what he thinks they need – never asks what they think, or even listens.”

As anyone in sales will tell you, the best sales people take the time to listen to what a customer or client needs, and then offers a solution. That takes a combination of IQ and emotional intelligence.

Any effective sales person needs enough basic smarts to understand what she is selling – psychologists call this a “floor effect” for IQ. If her IQ is not high enough, she will fail. On the other hand, a high IQ alone is not enough to succeed in sales – you need social skills, particularly empathy.

Cognitive neuroscientists tell us there are three kinds of empathy, each grounded in a different system in the brain. All three play a role in sales success.

First, there’s cognitive empathy – understanding how the customer thinks about the problem. This means perceiving their mental models of the world, taking their perspective. This kind of empathy, I’m sure, correlates highly with IQ, but goes beyond – you’ve got to listen and ask the right questions.

Then there’s emotional empathy – sensing how the other person feels about what you are saying and doing. That’s where that IBM systems analyst flunked. Emotional empathy holds the key to rapport – being on the same page emotionally. It tells us, for instance, when a sales pitch is falling flat, or what excites – or scares – a customer.

Finally there’s empathic concern – caring about helping the customer. Studies by companies themselves of their star sales people find that the most successful don’t just make a sale – they manage the relationship so that the customer comes back again and again. That means building trust, not just rapport. It means actively helping the customer solve problems – becoming a consultant to them, so they feel you have their best interests at heart.

That’s why I’m unconvinced by an academic study that claimed emotional intelligence accounted for only one percent of sales success, while IQ alone made all the difference. These researchers should consider questioning the assumptions, relevance, and soundness of their measures – the findings fly in the face of what so many in sales know works.

Take, for instance, how a leader in healthcare IT responded to that same LinkedIn blog: “After a career lifetime of working with programmers, engineers, and even some sales people who were very bright but possessed the social skills of a set of car keys, I have come to look for and value people who can really listen, are sensitive to social cues, and can honestly put themselves in a customer’s shoes.”

And as an engineer at Microsoft put it, “The study only shows how production results correlate to emotional and cognitive intelligence. I would be very interested to see how the career advancement correlated. Do a study of these people and look at their advancement over time. My personal observation is that you might find the roles reversed even in fields like engineering.”

Ditto to both.

How we connect with people makes a crucial difference not just in sales, but in leadership, teamwork, negotiation – and in life. I’ll be joining a group of experts to detail the basic tools for connection – and if you could use some practice – or know someone who could – come connect.

Additional resources:

American Management Association's Course Developing Your Emotional Intelligence

The Chemistry of Connection Conference

Resonant Leadership: Inspiring Others Through Emotional Intelligence

What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters

Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide

Photo: Everett Collection / shutterstock

Daniel Goleman: The Chemistry of Connection

Two European telecoms had an agreement to jointly develop a new product. Each had its teams of engineers working hard on the project, and they coordinated by email.

But something went wrong. The emails degenerated into heated “flame wars,” and the project stalled.

A consultant was summoned, and came up with a remedy: he asked both teams to get together for a weekend offsite, just to get to know each other. Soon there were no more heated emails.

“We couldn’t connect.” You hear that simple explanation over and over for why a relationship failed – at work, dating, just about anywhere.

Other people naturally gravitate to a person who connects easily. These magnetic people function as the emotional glue on teams or in an office, and are more likely to emerge as leaders. They are the bosses people love to work for.

Their secret is simple: rapport.

Researchers at Harvard have identified the three ingredients that can give a conversation, a presentation, even a negotiation, a personal touch.

The three signs:

First, there’s full mutual attention. That sounds simple, but has become increasingly rare in this age of constant digital distraction. We are all plugged in to devices that pull our attention away from the person we’re with, and impose some other agenda on the moment.

There was an article in the Harvard Business Review on the “human moment,” admonishing us to put down our smartphones, turn away from digital monitors, and pay full attention to our colleagues and friends.

Second, there’s physical synchrony. This seems to happen naturally once two people pay continuous attention. If you watched a video of two people with rapport talking, and turned off the sound to just observe how their bodies move, it would look as though they had been choreographed. This is not imitation, but rather a physical responsiveness: as one body moves this way, the other moves that way – at the right time and in a harmonious fashion.

It’s a nonverbal conversation affirming simpatico.

The third sign: it feels good. Rapport’s emotional signs are pleasant emotions. Such rapport often occurs during routines people perform together at work, like joking baristas in a bustling coffee joint.

Being in an upbeat mood, researchers find, indicates a brain state where you can work at your very best: energized, creative, ready for any challenge – in flow.

The most obvious signal of good feeling: laughter.

Researchers at Boston University studied a group of leaders whose business performance led their organizations to nominate them as “stars.” Their interactions with direct reports at work were filmed, and compared to similar interactions with leaders whose performance was just average.

The most striking difference: there was laughter three times more often with the stars than with the average. It’s not that they were telling jokes. The laughter signified an atmosphere of relaxed connection – rapport.

The best leaders create an atmosphere of trust and safety, the milieu in which rapport grows best, and good work gets done.

For some practical tools and the basics of connection, join us at Garrison Institute near New York City November 21 to 23.

Additional resources:

Put theory into practice with the Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide. Each module offers individual and group exercises, self-assessments, discussion guides, review of major points, and key actionable takeaway plans. The materials allow for instructor-led, self-study or online learning opportunities. Includes over 8 hours of video footage with George Kohlrieser, Bill George, Teresa Amabile and more.

Illustration: Bryant Paul Johnson