Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

by Eric Barker

Studies show people with attention deficit disorder (ADD) are more creative.

If you’re more of an outsider, an artist, an unfiltered leader, you’ll be climbing uphill if you try to succeed by complying with a rigid, formal structure. By dampening your intensifiers, you’ll be not only at odds with who you are but also denying your key advantages.

research shows that many of the more fundamental aspects of personality don’t change. Traits like verbal fluency, adaptability, impulsivity, and humility are stable from childhood through adulthood.

Research by Gallup shows that the more hours per day you spend doing what you’re good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you’re being treated with respect.

You’ve got to pick the environments that work for you . . . context is so important. The unfiltered leader who is an amazing success in one situation will be a catastrophic failure in the other, in almost all cases.

Is flattering the boss effective? Research has shown flattery is so powerful that it works even when the boss knows it’s insincere. Jennifer Chatman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, did a study to see at what point flattery backfired . . . but she couldn’t find one. Pfeffer says we need to stop thinking the world is fair.

Time to get of the bossess?

The lesson from cases of people both keeping and losing their jobs is that as long as you keep your boss or bosses happy, performance really does not matter that much and, by contrast, if you upset them, performance won’t save you.

Eighty percent of our evaluations of other people come down to two characteristics: warmth and competence. And a study from Teresa Amabile at Harvard called “Brilliant but Cruel” shows we assume the two are inversely related: if someone is too nice, we figure they must be less competent.

Research shows some negative traits can actually make you more likely to become a leader. The managers who moved up the ladder quickest—and were best at their jobs—weren’t the people who tried to be team players or who focused on accomplishing tasks. They were the ones most focused on gaining power.

ass kissing results in a reduction of workplace stress, improving happiness as well as physical health.

work teams with just one bad apple experience performance deficits of 30 to 40 percent.

Why no arse hole rule is important

As Peter Leeson writes in his book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, pirate life was orderly and honest.” You may be a pirate at heart yourself. Ever get tired of a bully of a boss and think about striking out on your own? Think everyone should have a say in how the company is run? Think a corporation is obligated to take care of its people? And that racism has no place in business? Congrats! You’re a pirate.

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Pirate ships were very democratic places. All rules needed to be agreed to unanimously. Captains could be deposed for any reason, and this turned them from tyrants into something closer to servants. The only time a captain had total authority was in the midst of battle, when quick decision-making was a matter of life and death. Pirates ended up forming a “company” you might be very happy to work for. Since the boss could be fired at any time, he was quite focused on taking good care of his employees. Captains’ wages weren’t significantly larger than anyone else’s. As Leeson explains, “The difference between the highest and lowest paid person in this pirate crew was thus only a single share.” And he didn’t get ridiculous perks. Pirate captains didn’t get a bigger bunk on the ship or more food.

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When you take a job take a long look at the people you’re going to be working with—because the odds are you’re going to become like them; they are not going to become like you. You can’t change them. If it doesn’t fit who you are, it’s not going to work.

bad work environments can make you a bad person and can make you unhappy.

the people who surround us often determine who we become. When we see others around us perform altruistic acts, we’re more likely to act altruistically ourselves.

At that next job interview find out who you will be reporting to. Ask to speak to that person and do some research on them. Studies show that your boss has a much larger effect on your happiness and success than the company at large.

Cognitive biases prevent us from understanding cognitive biases.

Optimists told themselves a story that may not have been true, but it kept them going, often allowing them to beat the odds. Psychologist Shelley Taylor says that “a healthy mind tells itself flattering lies.” The pessimists were more accurate and realistic, and they ended up depressed.

As Harvard professor Teresa Amabile discusses in her book The Progress Principle, meaningful work is the number-one thing people want from their jobs. Yup, it beats salary and getting promoted.

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Meaningful doesn’t have to be saving orphans or curing the sick. As long as your story is meaningful to you, it has power. So how do you find your story? There’s a really simple way to do it: just think about your death.

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Why isn’t your job fun? The answer is quite simple, really: work, as we know it today, is a really lousy game.

we are designing offices as if we were machines—but we’re not. Jane McGonigal, a researcher and game designer, argues that by its very nature, efficiency entails removing game mechanics from the design of labor. In other words, we’re taking the fun out of it.

When you remove people’s emotional connection to their labor and treat them merely as machines that produce effort, it’s soul killing. Can we put those emotional elements back? Sure. Frankly, it’s not that hard.

The tyranny of Taylorism

Research shows that a feeling of control kills stress. Even when you just feel you have control, stress plummets. On the other hand, the office often feels like a game that’s not winnable. You don’t feel you have control. You don’t feel like what you do makes much of a difference. Who wants to play that game? Research by Dan Ariely showed that when we feel like what we do is futile or pointless, motivation and happiness plummet. We become like the dogs in Seligman’s study. But you can fix this.

Csikszentmihályi’s research showed that flow was most reliably and most efficiently produced by the specific combination of self-chosen goals,

FAST Agile enables self-chosen goals!

Good games have that 80 percent failure rate to inspire you to keep working, but the office doesn’t like failure. Zero failure means zero fun. And there’s so much busy work that offers no challenge at all. How is that engaging?

We crave ease, but stimulation is what really makes us happy. We try to subtract at work, do less, check out. These are signs of burnout. We don’t need to subtract; we need to add novel challenges to create engagement.

to make work fun, add challenges. For something to have meaning, you ultimately have to make your mark, to be engaged. If your game is winnable, if you have control, if it challenges you—without being overwhelming—you’ll enjoy it more.

“Our research inside companies revealed that the best way to motivate people, day in and day out, is by facilitating progress—even small wins.” In fact, the data shows that consistent small wins are even better at producing happiness than occasionally bagging an elephant:

Feature Mapping / Discovery Mapping / Discovery Trees!

Good games keep you going by giving frequent, immediate feedback. But what about your job? You get a review annually.

the superpower of introverts is that they are far more likely to become experts in their field.

Here’s a quote from a study for you: “Extraversion was negatively related to individual proficiency.” What’s that mean in English? The more extroverted you are, the worse you are at your job.

there are successful extroverts and introverts and the world definitely needs both, but chances are, you’re not really either one. Yes, one-third of people are die-hard introverts or 24/7 extroverts, but the remaining two-thirds are what are called ambiverts. They’re somewhere in between. It’s a spectrum.

ambiverts make the best salespeople. Extroverts, who you might think would have the edge here, can be too talky or overbearing. Introverts are good listeners but may lack the social drive. When Adam Grant studied salespeople he found the top performers clustered in the middle of the introversion–extroversion spectrum.

the bulk of us need to know when to turn on our extrovert side and build that network and when to close the door and develop those skills. As Adam Grant told The Wall Street Journal, “Read each situation more carefully and ask yourself, ‘What do I need to do right now to be most happy or successful?’”

Here’s the good news: while extroverts may have a natural talent for networking, it’s a skill any of us can develop, and it doesn’t have to feel gross or fake. As you saw in the research, whether you’re looking for a legit job or trying to sell kilos of cocaine, having a network is something you need.

And what about forming friendships with coworkers? This is another excellent idea. You can’t rely on HR team-bonding exercises; studies show they’re only effective at building distrust.

the best predictor of work team success is how the team members feel about one another. What’s something that improves team communication and effectiveness that you won’t read about in most formal manuals? Joking around with your coworkers.

Research from neuroscience confirms this. When people are riled up about something and you show them evidence that conflicts with what they believe, what does an MRI scan show? The areas of their brain associated with logic literally shut down. The regions associated with aggression light up. As far as their brain is concerned, it’s not a rational discussion—it’s war. The brain can’t process what you’re saying; it’s just trying to win. Your head works the same way unless you make an effort to control it. I’m sure some die-hard arguers are disagreeing.

Being sincere and focusing on emotions, however, leads to effective resolutions. In his research on the subject, Michael McMains found that police made three big mistakes when it came to dealing with crisis incidents: they made everything black and white, they wanted to solve things immediately, and they didn’t focus on emotions. You and I make the same mistakes.

Acceptance, caring, and patience are great to focus on because in many situations with the people we love, sadly, nothing concrete is going to get resolved.

Emotions get people to change their behavior. On his show Crowd Control, Dan Pink tried to get people to stop illegally using handicapped parking spots. When Dan’s team changed the handicapped signs so they had a picture of a person in a wheelchair on them, illegal parking in the spots didn’t go down—it stopped altogether. Seeing a person’s face, thinking about how someone else might feel, made all the difference.

Resolving difficult conversations means we need less Moldova and more Iceland. Here are four quick steps adapted from hostage negotiation and clinical psychology that can help you turn wars into friendly discussions: KEEP CALM AND SLOW IT DOWN Don’t get angry. How do you control your anger? Al Bernstein recommends pretending you are talking to a child.

Narcissists, the despicable kings and queens of confidence, score better in job interviews. One of that study’s authors said, “We don’t necessarily want to hire narcissists but might end up doing so because they come off as being self-confident and capable.” Plus, they’re more likely to reach leadership positions.

Want to know which CEOs will run their company into the ground? Count how many times they use the word “I” in their annual letter to shareholders. This is what financial analyst Laura Rittenhouse discovered when she evaluated leaders and how their companies performed. Me, me, me means death, death, death for corporations.

if you got the most confident people all together they’d be a very strange group. Adjusting for baseline confidence, it would consist of both the most competent and the least competent. Academics call this the “Dunning-Kruger effect.”

The Dunning-Kruger effect is this odd phenomenon of people with the least experience being the most confident because they don’t have the experience to judge just how challenging something is.

Donald Trump - “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”

things change when you find your job meaningful. I’ve mentioned the Terman Study before, which followed people from youth all the way to the ends of their lives. Since this study allowed the researchers to see the big picture, what did they find in relation to hard work in a meaningful career? As the WSJ reports, “Those who stayed very involved in meaningful careers and worked the hardest, lived the longest.” Meaningful work means doing something that’s (a) important to you and (b) something you’re good at. Plenty of research shows that if you do those things you’re uniquely good at (psychologists call them “signature strengths”), they’re some of the biggest happiness-boosting activities of all. A Gallup study reported, “The more hours per day Americans get to use their strengths to do what they do best, the less likely they are to report experiencing worry, stress, anger, sadness, or physical pain.” Imagine what life would be like if your job entailed using your signature strengths all day, every day. Of course you’d work long hours. Who’d want to go home?

having a job you dislike can be even worse than unemployment. According to a 2010 survey by Gallup, people who felt “emotionally disconnected” from their jobs enjoyed their lives less than people who had no jobs at all.