208- Courage to Leap & Lead with Richard Boyatzis, part 2

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar.

Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Let's talk now. We see more people in the baby boomers And the generation prior to that living longer.

Yep.

Yet we all know there's a ceiling, right? When you talk about a vision, does the vision get shorter, smaller the older you get? And, and is there a time where you just say, Yeah. It's not worth having a vision anymore. There's no room.

That's a very powerful question. There are 2 parts to it. First, when I open up my course in the executive doctorate, the average age is about 49-ish. And the first assignment they have in my course, even though they've had to write all these essays about why they want the doctorate and what they're going to do to contribute to society and all that, But I have them develop a personal vision statement and then the, each of them and I go back and forth with it individually. And I say to them, you're looking out 10 to 15 years. And I said, given that you're, you know, I mean, the average age here is just under 50. Let me eliminate something. I don't wanna see anybody say, well, in 15 years I'll be retired. 'Cause that's, that's a bullshit concept.

Okay, hold on, Richard. My dog is outside in the heat. Okay, she wants to come in. What is it? Oh, I thought she was outside. She was whining. Okay, come here. You want to say hi to the audience? Okay, you can say hi. Come here. Okay, jump up. All right.

By the way, petting a dog is one of those things that stimulates the renewal process. Really?

She— I knew—

Could also be petting a cat or a horse or a monkey, but it's the petting, it's the stroking anyway.

And she wants plenty of that. Okay, so go ahead. So 15 years. Yeah.

So what I always said was, look, it, you know, because people flying from different countries, I said, is it safe to assume that most of you started your full-time work around the age of 25? You know, because people graduate later in Europe and then in other countries they have required military service. And they all said, yeah, that's okay, that's safe. And I said, and in this day and age, unless you physically suffer from some disease, you're going to keep working full-time till you're at least 75 or 80. I said, so you're halfway through. Now, You may not work in one organization. You may do what we call a portfolio career. You may decide to— where you do several things part-time. You may decide to do certain of those things for not— for no compensation. I said, so there— I'm not saying there aren't changes, but the idea that you work one job, you know, continuously for a really long time, it just isn't—

Right.

what's happening today for those of us who are fortunate enough to have all these options. And, um, I mean, I'm 77, I'm still going strong, I'm still full-time professor, and, you know, nobody except my wife wants me to retire yet.

Yeah.

Um, and, uh, so at any rate, so I think the issue is first We're leading lives of potential meaning, and those of us who have the resources and have had the background, the education, and the preparation to continue giving back to society and doing what we do, we're not going to stop, you know, unless something physical happens to either us or our partner or something. And that's one issue. Okay, the second, let me Yeah.

Okay.

Let me say the second part. The second part is, how do we talk about it? Because, you know, some of my— the folks I work with do this in hospitals where sometimes you're talking to terminal patients, right? Then the vision changes to not be, what do you want your perfect life to be in 15 years, but what kind of person do you want to be?

How is that different? Because you've already been that person. Do you have time to be a different person?

Yeah. If, if you wanted to, you could change aspects of your life or your behavior in a month. And if you said, you know, I've been so driven, I don't take the time to smell the roses, I don't take time to smile at people, but I don't want to be that person. And, you know, you, you've got 2 years left to live. Well, why don't you become that person?

Mm-hmm.

So the combination of either shifting from the holistic image to what kind of person you want to be, or the idea— and the holistic is life's a lot longer than people thought about before— those 2 things say to me that, you know, there isn't really a limit. Again, for those of us who have been fortunate enough but have worked hard enough to get ourselves into positions where we've got the education, the resources, and the mental, you know, freedom to choose. But it's not just a social class issue, because one of my teams of master's students decided to test parts of these theories with people working the automotive production line. It was in Youngstown, Ohio at the time. And they came back with stories that blew me away about how people didn't change jobs or careers because they stayed on the production line and kept earning their wages and their health benefits and all that. But they very often did the things that we some of us would do professionally for variety, they do it outside of work. So these people had very active roles in community organizations, whether it was Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or their church group or temple. And one fellow, um, lived in Youngstown. He wasn't near Lake Erie, that near, but he loved sailing. So he not only got into sailing, but then he decided he wanted to build his own sailboat. So he was building his own concrete hull, which is an innovative design, sailboat in his backyard.

Wow. Wow.

So I think this idea of finding fulfillment in your life, although it is better if you have resources, But even if you don't have resources, there are a lot of ways to still give back and to participate in helping others.

So, okay, fantastic. Let's go back now to how can coaches create sustainable change with their clients? Or is it all on the coach? Is it all on the client? Is it a partnership? And then how does it work?

It's a partnership. I mean, you, that's a great word for it. But because it's a partnership and because our emotions are contagious, we now have evidence that we actually set off neural activation in other people around us in thousandths of a second, way below consciousness. And what that means is that if you aren't feeling excited about life, if you aren't feeling renewed, and open as a coach, your client's going to get infected with this, oh my God, it's work. That's why they call it work. So the first thing—

That's the essence of transference.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. Except it's happening below consciousness without your ability to manipulate it. So one of the points I make all the time is that whether you're a coach, or a physician or a teacher or a parent, you have to first tend to your own excitement about life and your own renewal to be able to continue to enjoy your life and what you're doing. When you do that, you're setting the stage for you being able to positively infect your client. Now, the client has to at some point enter into these increased moments. They have to be able to develop a vision. They have to be able to recognize and nurture these caring relationships that also create this renewal process. And that's where, again, the coach needs courage and the client needs courage. If it's working well, then in fact it is a partnership, and you're positively setting this off with each other, like you with your dog. I mean, I, you know, here I was, I knew this in the '70s when I was a psychotherapist.

Mm-hmm.

Toward the latter part of the '70s, my wife and I get married. You know, she lived out in the countryside. I lived in, you know, downtown Cambridge. So, you know, and, and we had a son and, and, and she had 2 dogs and 2 cats. So I, I sold my place and moved in with her. So all of a sudden now I'm dealing with 2 dogs and 2 cats, you know, and a 7-year-old and a house that had 52 windows. And my wife believed that hanging plants is really important, not curtains.

So I'm with your wife there.

And she, she, she grows anything anywhere. She's amazing this way. Well, in no time at all did I start to discover that I shifted from being a night person. I mean, you know, even after this, after I had my doctorate and I was even starting to run the company, you know, I, I preferred living in basements. I put black sheets of pa— of paper, not paper, material over the windows. You know, I, I was a night person. Well, I became a day person. I became a morning person. But the other thing that became clear was very often, and, and we settled into a rhythm, sadly, the, the cats all, you know, got in trouble and died. But we settled into a rhythm of always having 2 dogs, and then we ended up discovering golden retrievers. So we've had 2 golden retrievers since the '80s.

Mm-hmm.

And Very often if I'm working at home in whatever I use as my office or study, and I'm, you know, working at a computer, one of the dogs will come up to me and, you know, kind of nudge me. And my wife made the point to me often that I shouldn't just be annoyed by it because they're interrupting my work. I should stop and recognize them and pet them.

Okay.

So she says this, and I know it in my heart, but I don't start to take advantage of it until I read the article that says petting your dog helps, helps renewal. So there's this moment that we had in our Cleveland Heights home. You know, my office was this beautiful suite on the second floor with this great big window that faced out onto the street. And one day I'm, I'm there and I'm, I was actually trying to react to reviewers' criticism of an article I'd submitted to a journal. So I'm really focused and intent on my computer. And she walks in and she looks out the big window. She says, wow, did you see the equipment the city brought out here to fix this, you know, water problem? And I said, what? And she turned to me and she said, that wasn't very nice. I said, I'm too busy writing about emotional intelligence to show it.

Oh my God, I love your wife. She's fabulous. So is she the PhD in emotional behavior or what?

She's the person who's taught me to be human. I mean, I am a nerd. I am a nerd. And in psychology, we always have this saying that you study the things you have the most difficulty with. And I think my doctoral students will suggest that I, I still haven't quite gotten free from my nerdiness. But, but anyway, to go back to this point, it is amazing how once I got it, and I would— now when one of them come up to me, I stop and say, wait a minute. You know, this dog wants some attention. You know, it's— she loves me. So I stop and I pet her for a while. Well, I start to go into this renewal state, and because they're picking it up, they go into it. So there's a physiological change, and then we're feeding each other in that way. And that's the same thing that happens when we're coaching.

Oh, wait a second. I have to tell you something.

I mean, not that we're petting, because that would be against HR issues, but—

I have to tell you something. The dog knew that you needed a break. Dogs are like so scary. I tell you that when I had, I had a dog, which I had to put down this past November.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you. And I discovered he was my 3rd Karen that, and each one of them did this. When I was going to be sick, A week before, they would come and sit on my foot. And I thought, this is just— it's my imagination. And I started to pay attention to when I got a sinus infection or a cold, and I would make a note about when the dogs sat on my foot. And it was always within 5 to 7 days.

Right.

So when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, I said, I have a dog, but he needs his dog. And I bought him the Westie that you just saw.

Ah.

And as an infant, he— she fit in his hand.

Yeah.

He started taking care of him immediately. When we went to pick her out, she saw my husband and I, and she was with another little Westie. She broke loose and ran to us.

That was the sign.

And he said, that's the one. She has taken care of him ever since. I walk in the room and she'll growl at me to protect him. And she'll wiggle her tail while she's doing it. But, and each time he came home from chemo, she was there. And so there is— they have a healing power if you let them. Your dogs were telling you you needed a break, right? Right.

Yes. How's your husband now?

Knock on wood. He's through the—

great.

And, um, we take it a day at a time.

Yeah.

Doesn't mean less, but yeah, right, right. But so, so I firmly believe if you are in tune with your dog, they are in tune with you, and they'll let you know.

Yeah. And, and it turns out that this is true in a relationship between people and their pets, but in particular if they can stroke the pets. So it works just as well with monkeys, cats, and horses. It doesn't work with fish. Because, you know, you shouldn't pet them.

Oh, yeah.

That would be bad for them. Fish in an aquarium can induce a mindfulness state, which allows you to enter this zone. It's kind of like meditation. But, you know, there are all sorts of other animals that it doesn't quite do that for. But it's the same reason why a lot of parents end up trying to help their younger children stabilize their behavior by having them get a pet because they have to care for something.

Yes.

So caring for someone or something ends up being another one of these basic emotions like hope, which is what vision does. Well, compassion is really the key to eliciting gratitude. And that's why this partnership relationship that you mentioned with the coach and client is so important that you have a mutuality of caring, not just instrumentality. See, one of the places coaches get in trouble is if they accept very often what the organization, if the organization is paying them, as is the objectives of the coaching.

Hmm.

Because then all of a sudden, They're not helping the individual. They're not coaching the individual. They're coaching— they're trying to manipulate the individual to fit into what the organization wants them to do. Uh, so that's what Melvin Smith and I, since 2003, have called coaching for compliance, not coaching with compassion.

Ah, I love it. Okay, so what's the best advice, or 3 pieces of advice, Because I don't want you to spill the whole book, that you can give a coach that will help them strengthen their relationship with a client and ensure sustained change?

Yeah, I was going to say eat vegetables, wear sunscreen, and— but, but okay, seriously, um, one is It's not egocentric to tend to your own renewal and excitement.

Mm-hmm.

And although some people have labeled it self-compassion, that sounds a little too narcissistic to me. But it's, it's because of this contagious effect. So that's one issue. And make and It's one place where actually COVID, by moving most coaching to online, to Zoom or whatever, has really helped coaches. Because now you can coach for an hour in an hour. You don't have to spend 3 hours— an hour getting there, an hour there, an hour getting back. Um, but it also raises the issue of how many people can you coach in a day and still feel excited about coaching?

I was going there next. I was going to sustained branding and energy as a coach. But let's, let's finish this.

No, but that's, that's, that's a part of this first tip is, um, you have to pay attention to that. Therapists do it better than some, but not always well. Um, physicians have to worry about it, and dentists, because they're put on a clock that's— that pushes them too much. Um, but, you know, I have the luxury that I make sure I don't have to coach somebody more than 3 people in a day because beyond 3, I start to forget who I said what to.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so tend to yourself and your excitement about life and why you're doing it.

Mm-hmm.

Second, Relationships are the agar agar in the petri dish of life. It's the medium. Agar agar is the culture that people in laboratories grow bacteria or seeds or anything. And I think relationships are the context for life, not only change, but everything we do in life. As you mentioned early on, my sense is the, the highest state of being for a human being is to be in love, not to be productive. Um, so—

How does that relate to coaching?

It tends to the quality of the relationship with your clients, that the relationship should be filled with shared vision. And we have research On this showing the power of it. It should be filled with shared compassion and caring. And a thing you just mentioned, shared energy. We also have explored in certain cultures— not every culture can do this because of sexism and gender interaction effects— but if the culture allows it, shared playfulness, joking around, teasing, things like that. That if— and the recommendation is that if you're coaching someone, but there's some nagging feeling inside that you don't really like them, refer them to somebody else.

Very powerful. Yeah, very powerful. Thank you.

That was the second.

Mm-hmm.

Third, um, the big picture of any one of us is our dreams, our vision, the possibilities. And I think that's the context for helping people explore, contemplate, and pursue learning and change. So each of those 3 things, I'm not just recommending as somebody who spent almost 6 decades studying this process. I'm also saying it— we've got research data showing those things. But, and they're not overly complicated. It's just that there's a lot of stuff around us You know, and this is what drives me crazy when people say, well, let's get another SMART goal.

Yeah.

You know, let's, let's build more metrics onto their dashboard. You know, what you're doing is you're now cramming a person, you're cramming a round person into a square hole, and you're precluding their engagement. No wonder engagement numbers are so low. You're precluding their innovation, coming up with new ideas. Without innovation, as I said, or adapt— and adaptability, we atrophy and die. Individuals, organizations. So what do we require for innovation? Well, the first thing is we need diversity of thought. Now, and this is why— one of the two reasons, not just social justice, which is important, of course, but I think the diversity movement is so important— is because we need diversity of thought. But if we aren't interpersonally open, if we don't have the skills to talk to and listen to each other, then having a diverse group of people sitting around a table doesn't help.

Mm-hmm.

So It's not just being in a situation where there is diversity of thought, but it's being open to the variety of ideas and people and the thoughts. What helps you be open to people? This positive emotional attractor, this renewal state that I was talking about.

You know, I often talk about my times growing up in New York, in Greenwich Village, and the The discussions in the coffeehouses.

Right.

Where you walked away so rejuvenated. It did not mean that you agreed with the people at your table. It meant that you were open to hearing new aspects of what you were thinking about. And then that sort of triggered you to say, okay, my belief, where's it going with all this new information? Am I staying in place? Never. Am I expanding? Yes. Am I expanding in their direction? Not necessarily. I'm just expanding my world.

Yeah.

And, and the same thing that I experienced when I was a student at the New School for Social Research. You never accept what you saw in front of you. You never accepted what you heard. You were taught to think. Drop the mic on that.

Oh, and I— that is such an important set, the pair of those memories. And the fact is that actually a very prominent epidemiologist, now his 2 adult children, when he passed on, passed away, they have kept up the work. They produced a book called Factfulness, which is marvelous because He showed, and he did every time he gave a lecture anywhere in the world, he would ask some simple questions like, in how many countries of the world are women open to getting a higher education? And people would guess, you know, he'd give them 5 choices and they'd guess, and they were almost always way under. You know, they would think it's a lot worse than it really is. And then he would give them the statistics on what the real is. And then when people would go and check back with those people a few months later, they're still believing the same thing they believed before. So even when faced with really clear data that says, um, what I would— the belief I was holding wasn't right, people Typically don't change their mind, and I think it's because of what you and I are talking about right now, CB. When when you were in those coffee houses, you went in with the mindset of not you're going to convince all these people to you know shave those damn beards and you know and dress like an adult. You went in looking forward to an interesting conversation, or I wonder what these folks would think of X. And that, that's a, it's a property which, um, I highlighted actually in the very closing statement of my new book, which is curiosity. Yeah, I, I had this thing early on where I was talking about Lieutenant Bouchard. Lieutenant Bouchard was a lieutenant in the French army. And in 1799, he had a small squad. It was in the desert in Rashid, Egypt, and they uncovered, um, a block. And I always wondered whether or not Lieutenant Bouchard was thinking at that moment, ah, damn, another thing, and General Napoleon is going to want us to pack it up and ship it back to Paris, you know, when it's hot here and it's all this sand. Whether or not he was thinking about that, or whether or not he was struck with the curiosity of, wow, I wonder what this is, because his discovery opened up the ancient world to us. We call it the Rosetta Stone.

No. Fascinating.

And I think, I think those moments— I, I used the word in the first chapter of my book that when we, um, are involved in change, a change we want, when we have a discovery as a part of that process, it actually feels Like a moment of awe. And it's not just transformative, it's transcendent.

Yes. I always remember the exercise we got for writing a paper at the New School, and it was take a hard-boiled egg Put it in front of you and write an essay on what you saw.

Right.

I'm like, is this professor crazy or what the hell? And before I knew it, I had written like 10 pages. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm just as crazy as this professor. You know what? I so much appreciate having conversation with you. And I'd like for you to show your book so that we could all run and get it.

Okay, hold on. Whoops.

Yeah, you're back.

Yeah, no, let me— you said you wanted me to show the book. There it is.

Okay. The Science of Change.

It's available for preorder now on Amazon.

Okay.

Sorry to be so crass, but—

Oh, you're not at all. Not at all. Is it available in Kindle and audio yet?

Not yet. No, it's The book, they told me that it's going to be available digital in August, but I don't, I think, I don't think they meant the Kindle version, that it's supposed to come out officially in October. I do know from my prior 4 books that when you have pre-orders on Amazon in particular, you tend to get it a few weeks before.

Mm-hmm.

Amazon has a strength of pull to the publishers.

You gotta love it. You gotta love it. Every day I say to myself, you're not going on Amazon today. And I think about, hmm, I could use this. And I start drifting. And before you know it, the site's open. I go, Jesus, CB, you have no control over 2 things, Costco and Amazon. The only thing I have control over is going to the Apple Store. That's because it's an hour away from me.

Ah, right. Right.

Richard, I, I love when you come and visit us, and I know you're going to be doing a fireside chat, so I hope everyone will have a chance to join in. Just contact me for the information. And I can't wait to hear what you research next. It's always a pleasure to peek into your mind.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this book. And, uh, the, you know, one of the things that was a joy wasn't just to integrate, like I said, 58 years of my own work, but to start to pull in all of this research from other people to examine the corners, if you will, around some of these phenomena. So, I mean, I know in one of the things I make a point of is that visualizing is a form of practice. And, and very often we—

Don't tell— you're not getting away with just that. Tell us what that is.

Visualizing. When you visualize, you know, whether it's a golf putt or a great conversation with someone, you're actually creating a neural pathway that you then use when you're in that moment.

So normally I would say to you, with all due respect, that's hogwash. However, I heard somebody say that, and I don't remember what it was I was watching, and I said, okay, you've stopped playing pickleball for a while. Go in with the perspective that you're going to be better than when you stopped. Visualize that you're going to hit that darn ball more than what you did before.

I have data. I have data. People have gathered data. from Olympic gold medalists, and doesn't matter the sport. And the same thing happens with musicians and artists. They visualize, they spend hours before the actual Olympic competition, more hours visualizing than practicing. The gold medal winners.

It works.

So that's an idea. A lot of people think feedback is so important, and I I basically say hogwash. Most of the time people don't want to listen. When they say, tell me what you think of it, they don't really want to know. They put their fingers in their ears. So my point is feedback is only useful under certain conditions. Most of the time it's a form of bullying. And I think that, for example, That when we give somebody else feedback, especially if it's quote unquote constructive criticism, if what we're trying to do is just vomit on them, then fine. If we're trying to write them up to fire them, fine. But if you're doing it because you think it's going to motivate them to change, it's better that you keep your mouth shut because they're not going to pay attention anyway unless they genuinely ask. But genuinely doesn't mean, oh yeah, I'm supposed to ask for feedback. And one of the examples is reminders. You know, when you're trying to do a change thing, it's useful to have reminders. Well, I have a section in which I talk about the difference between nudges versus nagging.

I better read that. Oh, my husband would like that.

Nudges are good. Nagging is not.

Okay. I'll read the book just for that section. Tell us the difference. Tell us, please.

Nudges are reminding somebody of what they wanted to do or why they wanted to do it. Nagging is usually a pejorative piece of feedback that makes you feel guilty. Oh. So as I'm trying to practice my lessons on my guitar, Twice a day. My wife will not say, have you practiced today? Because even though she says in a positive tone, it doesn't feel like nagging, but it could feel— it could make me feel guilty. She'll say, you know, have you learned a new chord or a new scale? Ah, okay.

I'm gonna get some wedding marriage advice from your wife too. Because, you know, those commercials, you're acting like your mom did or your father did. I think I'm picking that up.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you so much. It's been—

Yes, CB, it's great. Great conversation.

You know, audience, I always have such great conversations with Richard, so I hope that you'll watch for the next time when Richard reappears on our show. And I want you to know There, there are very few people that I have on twice. Richard is at the top of that list. We'll see you next week.