107 - The Most Effective Strategies for Improving Executive Performance and Decision-Making with think2perform's Doug Lennick

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Doug Noll, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the co-founder— yeah, you're the co-founder and CEO of Think to Perform, which can be found at Think2Perform.com, and that's a 2, numeral 2, not a—

Yes, yes, it's the number 2, the word think, the number 2, the word perform.

Excellent.

We basically think it helps to think to perform.

Probably a pretty good idea. Tell us a little bit about your backstory, a little bit about your background, and we'll get into it.

Well, my background, you know, I started my career, I'm, you know, as of this date, I am 71 years old. And I'm kind of from that era. Of course, I, I grew up— I was born in 1952, so I grew up in the '60s. A lot going on in the '60s, as everybody knows from history, people being assassinated all the time, you know, the war going on and so on. And I entered my college life uncertain about what would happen with my draft status. Eventually, the draft ended just before I would have been drafted. That was the summer between my sophomore and junior year when I was prepared to enter the military. I wasn't joining, but I would have accepted as a draftee or, you know, it wasn't acceptable in my family to not do that. So I would have participated.

I remember those days. I'm 2 years older than you are. Born in 19—

Okay. All right. Well, good.

I remember those days well.

Yeah. Well, then you remember when it ended and Johnny Nash did his song, I Can See Clearly Now. And that rang true for me. I could see more clearly now that I don't— now that I know I'm not going into the military, I can start doing some other things. So I'm kind of an entrepreneurial hippie. From, from that era. And so, so I started company, my, uh, I started a telesales business. I got into the financial services industry my senior year in college. I was supposed to be an accountant and I left school to start my, uh, career as a financial advisor, essentially with a quarter to go in my degree. So I was a quarter short of a degree in accounting. I will say though, Doug, in my defense, I did eventually graduate, not with an accounting degree, but at age 57, I did get my undergraduate degree post my executive career. So I am now fully qualified to do what I was paid to do. I now have a degree that says I'm qualified.

Wow. Okay. Well, it only took you 57 years to get there, right?

Well, I, I thought it was a 40-year degree.

Ah.

And that I was finishing a year early.

Ah, very good.

But it was a 4-year degree and I was 35 years late.

There you go.

There you go. That's it. That's the backstory. But, but I, I started with IDS. IDS got acquired, uh, by American Express. I had the good fortune of being involved in that, uh, the process when American Express was examining us, kind of the, due diligence of it all. And so I was fortunate. I was one of the people in our field organization. I was a district manager at that time. That was in 1982. I started my training in the fall of 1973. I became a— what was called a registered rep in 1974. And then this acquisition stuff, uh, started up in the early 1980s. And so that's when I got to meet all the executives at the time. And it was later I got to read about some of the stories, some of the meetings that I was in, in various books written about the company. So, but I was just this young guy, didn't know anything, undereducated. I got, I was very fortunate and had a great opportunity and American Express bought the company. Ultimately, I was able to move forward in field leadership positions and kind of even ended up running the retail distribution business for what became American Express Financial Advisors. So that was a really great opportunity, and I learned a lot, and I hope I made a difference. I think I did.

And you've got, uh, Think to Perform now, which is a high-level executive coaching firm, if I understand it correctly.

Well, yes, we do executive coaching, we do business strategy. We're basically a performance enhancement organization, uh, and so, and I'm a very vision, mission, values kind of guy. So our vision And everybody who works here, you know, for obvious reasons kind of buys into it. So not everybody buys into the vision in the world, but not everybody works here, but everybody that works here buys into this vision. And our vision is to enhance the world through improving the decision-making and performance of the individuals and organizations we touch. Our mission is to make a positive difference every day And our values are people, integrity, growth, excellence. And what I try to do, Doug, is really tie everything, uh, back to that. And so executive coaching and consulting, keynote speaking, you know, we do a variety of kinds of things. And in order to focus on the human behavior, we've had to understand it. So we, really look at the science of it, the neuroscience, which is the brain, and then the psychology of it all, which is the mind, which for some people can get confusing right away. We're talking mind and brain, aren't they the same thing? Answer: no. You know, so, so it's kind of fun. And then we mush that together with real live experience, like we really did this, you know, so And as you know, us old adults and young adults too, but adults learn experientially. Most of our learning comes from what we do, 70% from learning experientially. You know, 10% we get out of the classroom and books, and then 20%, you know, comes from mentoring. And if we get a great mentor, it's the, you know, the great multiplier because the mentor helps us understand how to use the 70%. You know, how do— what should I experience? Because I'll learn either way, but wouldn't hurt to be pointed in a good direction.

Exactly. So what gets you excited in the morning, gets you out of bed and gets you into the office?

What gets me going?

Yeah, what gets you— what makes you excited? Get— what's—

I, I genuinely really love making a difference. I, I'm a Personally, I have had the good fortune of spending time with Richard Leider. And Richard Leider wrote the foreword to our book, Don't Wait for Someone Else to Fix It. And he's also the bestselling author of The Power of Purpose. And with his help in, when I was in my 20s, so we're talking a long ago, with his help, I authored a purpose statement which has lasted. My purpose, the reason I'm here, is to help myself and others achieve our highest and greatest potential.

I like that.

That's my life. That's what— and so I live on purpose. I try, you know, so that's my story.

That makes a huge difference. You know, my purpose is to serve others.

Yeah, same concept.

Right. And I do that, you know, at a variety of different levels, whether I'm working in maximum security prisons, training murderers to be peacemakers, or at the Congressional Budget Office training senior analysts how to de-escalate members of Congress. Yeah, it is all about helping others. So, yeah, that's amazing.

I remember talking, doing some work at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and Talking to them about why otherwise smart people do dumb things with their money.

Yeah.

So I'm sure you and I have some very fun stories that could be a whole nother show. We could trade stories. The Doug and Doug Story Show.

There you go. So what do you, as you sit here at 70, you're 71 years old now, right? 71.

Yeah, 71.

What is it that you think is unique about you that you bring to the table that people really look at and value?

I don't know if it's particular, you know, the thing that I think I didn't realize was unique about me early in life, unlike so many people, I very early in life decided what to think about.. And, and I decided what to think. And, and I discovered early in my leadership career that most people don't. I'll share with you an example. So I'm this young district manager in the company at, at that time, IDS, Investors Diversified Services, which changed its name to IDS Financial Services, et cetera, ultimately became American Express. Financial advisors, but IDS Financial Services. What, uh, when we looked at, at us as a company, and I wanted— what's the point I want to make about it is I found out early on that most people, as a leader, I had a meeting and I was asking everybody on your way to the meeting, because we would start the week I would kind of wave the checkered flag and my group would start the week with a district meeting at 8:15 sharp. There were various reasons I wanted it to start at 8:15 sharp. And we did start it at 8:15 sharp. Not everybody was in their chair, but we didn't wait for this. Yeah, but we started and we did fun things with that. But, but one day I asked everybody, on your way to the meeting today, what did you think about? And, you know, and I didn't have a huge group at the time. I'm gonna say maybe a dozen people, and only one person could remember. I said, what? And, and I realized most people don't decide what to think. So the best advice I can give people, and this is, it's almost unfair.

It is.

It's, it's, it's totally free, but most, and it's your most useful asset. And possibly because it's free, you don't value it, but you have this free asset, your mind, which operates within your brain. And you get to decide what you want your brain to think about. Your mind gets to decide. And when you decide what to think, it physically changes your brain. And if you do it on purpose, that's called self-directed neuroplasticity. Isn't that cool?

And as an old dog, you can learn new tricks.

Absolutely. They now know guys in our 70s like yourself and me can keep learning. And I am so excited. Oh, my new mantra that, you know, I am really big on, there is no end to better. I, you know, I can't wait to get older, not to get up, not to be older, but to enjoy getting older.

I agree. I tell people, stop learning, start dying.

Yeah, I don't worry, you'll die successfully. I, I listened to, uh, you know, there's this tape that, that my, my wife gave me a week before my mother died as a result of a car accident in 1996. The tape was by an exiled Buddhist monk from Tibet, Sogyal Rinpoche. It's called Living Well, Dying Well.

Yeah.

And he basically says, if you live well, you'll be able to die well. But he says, when it comes to dying, don't worry about it. You will die successfully. He said, even the people who hang on, they die successfully too. So the question, the question isn't, will you die? The question is, what will be your state of mind as you die?

Right. Right.

And I hope mine is going to be welcoming to whatever's next.

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I feel like if you live a life of service and you hold a beginner's mind all the time, so you're always learning and you're never afraid, you're never afraid of taking risks and new challenges that are appropriate, then you're going to live a good life. And so far it's been, I've lived that and I have been very happy with the outcome.

Yeah, I mean, you feel all right about oneself. You know, on my wall behind me that you can see, there's a painting, a print of a Goya print, and it's on a prenda, and it's basically saying, "And yet I'm still learning." And on my grandfather's, my grandfather's, my father's gravestone, he was cremated, buried next to my mother who was not cremated. But he had me put the words, he said, Doug, if I predecease you, I would like you to have on my gravestone the words, and yet I am still learning. And so that's what's on his gravestone. And so to me, I figure, you know, there's no end to better, progress, not perfection. All I have to do every day is progress, and there's no end to better. So I don't have to worry about, you know, am I going to hit the wall? There is no wall.

There is no wall. As Carol Dweck says, we keep a growth mindset at all times.

Yeah, we just keep growing. So that's why I was so excited to hear that you wanted me to be on your show. So thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. It's always nice to interview somebody who's like-minded.

That's a confirmation bias. You know, I personally prefer people who agree with me.

So I'm not saying I agree with you, but I'm just saying—

No, no, no, but I like my bit. Yeah, yeah, I like that. That's a good way, good clarification.

Big difference. I mean, yes, you do agree.

There is.

I probably do agree with you on a lot of things, but—

Right, but no, exactly right. We are like-minded, you know. And, you know, I was, uh, we were looking at some— I'm kind of— I enjoy the Socrates, Plato, Aristotle chain. And, you know, Socrates— and I won't get this exactly right, but he basically says, you will basically know you know something when you finally know that you don't know anything. And, you know, and I like that, you know.

Absolutely, absolutely correct.

Yeah. So the more I know, the more I know I don't know.

That's right. And that, that's the basis of knowing, is knowing that you don't know, which is a humongous amount.

There's a whole, whole world that I don't know than I do. Oh my goodness, my goodness, so true.

So this show is called Listening with Leaders for a reason, and that is, I don't— my background is a former trial lawyer and now a peacemaker, um, to To me, listening is a foundational skill, and I've learned that listening is a foundational skill of leadership. And I like talking to leaders like yourself and people who work with leaders and to get your take on, on listening and, and how you see it and how important is it. What do you think?

Critical. I mean, I think, you know, and again goes back to when I, when we wrote the book, Don't Wait for Someone Else to Fix It, the subtitle is 8 Essentials to enhance your leadership impact at work, at home, and anywhere else that leads you. And, and one of the essentials is the linkage. I used to, in my previous work, I had these broken apart, empathy and compassion. So I look at empathy as an emotional competence, and I look at compassion as a moral principle. And I differentiate between the two, but I do believe one needs to be empathetic to be compassionate. But not all people who are empathetic are compassionate. So compassion is actively caring. Empathy is I understand, and that requires listening. So I seek to understand. So I had the good fortune of learning from Stephen R. Covey and Stephen M. Covey, his son, endorsed our book. But Stephen R. Covey and I had a good relationship and I really, really believe this notion of you seek to understand and when you understand, you achieve empathy. Understanding is I understand how you feel, I understand But, and then someone might say, and I really hope, Doug, that someone does something about your plight, but I really feel for you.

Right.

That's empathy without compassion.

So let me, let me, let me go a little more nuanced on that because I, I study, and I study neuroscience too. There are, I have determined that there are two types of listening, type 1 listening and type 2 listening. Type 1 listening is what you're talking about. It's, it's you, we seek to understand, we seek to gain information. And so we do that by asking questions. Occasionally we'll paraphrase to make sure that we understand what somebody else is saying. That's Type 1 listening, and that's what most people think is listening.

Yes.

The empathy you're talking about, if you're really going to a deep level, is what I call Type 2 listening. And in Type 2 listening, the frame of reference is on the speaker, what the speaker's words, intended meaning, and emotions are. And when we are engaged in Type 2 listening, we are there to pick up on words, meaning, and emotions and reflect those back to the speaker for the purpose of validating the speaker and making the speaker feel deeply heard and listened to. I call that listening other people into existence.

I love that.

And in my experience, when you engage in Type 2 listening, the emotional component is called affect labeling. And it's been—

I love that—

great brain science coming out of Matthew lab at UCLA that shows that what happens in the brain when you label emotions for somebody else.

Yeah.

But when you do this, what my students and clients, uh, discover is that compassion comes automatically.

Yes. Well, if you—

yes, once you start recognizing and validating somebody else's emotion, you automatically— and by the way, you're right, that kind of empathy, it's called cognitive empathy, is, is the, is the, is the cornerstone of all emotional intelligence. And emotional competency.

Yeah.

Once you feel, the compassion comes automatically.

Yeah.

Automatically.

Yeah. Well, and see that, you know, when Covey and I would talk, you know, because the alignment model that Chuck and I talk about in our book is to align the real with the ideal and achieve goals. It parallels the first 3 habits. And what Covey and, you know, totally, and I talked about, and you sound like this, something would make sense, is if you practice the first 3 habits, the next 3 just fall over, right? You know, similar to what you're describing, right? Because compassion is in the second 3 habits. That's the public victory. The, you know, the private victory is me dealing with me. Right. And if, and if I get that, I can't not.

That's right. That's right.

Yeah, I love, I love your insight on that. Thank you for sharing that. You're welcome.

And that, I mean, that is the secret. And when we talk about, for example, emotional competency, which is emotional self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy, what I've learned is that when I can teach people cognitive empathy, teach them how to affect label, for example, they automatically develop emotional self-awareness and emotional self-regulation. Their emotional intelligence just naturally grows. By this Type 2 listening skill. I mean, it's phenomenal to observe.

It really is. If you really are trying to understand, and what a lot of people do, as I'm sure I'm— oh, I'll ask you, have you experienced like I have that it seems that a lot of people are listening to rebut? They're listening to catch you You know that. I know this. Don't take no offense, but I take that to be the little lawyer in us.

That's right.

Where did you— Yeah, you didn't dot the i right. You didn't cross the t right. I gotcha. So, you know, we listen to gotcha. I got you now. And that's not what you and I are talking about. We're talking about actually, no kidding, listen to understand.

That's correct. You know, understand, and not only understand from our perspective, but to know that, to show from the speaker's perspective.

Well, that's exactly the key.

You understand what the speaker is saying and feeling, and that's the goal.

Now, are you familiar with Helen Ries' work on empathy?

Helen Reese?

Helen Ries.

No, I'm not.

Helen with an H and R-I-E-S-S. She has a great TED Talk called Empathy. And, uh, and she has a book that she wrote on empathy. She's at Harvard University, but she took the word empathy, and just like you can teach old lawyers and old guys like me, a non-lawyer, new tricks, you can teach old doctors new tricks because they— the data say that there's an inverse relationship between medical experience and empathy.

That's right.

And furthermore, there's an inverse relationship between empathy and malpractice lawsuits. And so non-empathetic people get sued. And that's also true in business, by the way. So all of you executives that aren't empathetic, wait for your lawsuit. You know, because empathetic people don't get sued very often.

That's right. But well, in leadership, I think it's even more important. This, you, I'm sure you're aware of the Google study that came out 2 years ago about The importance of psychological safety for high-performing teams. And, and, uh, yes, so the dress code does great work on that. Amazing. And so the, the question then is, how do you create psychological safety? And the way you create it is through empathy.

Yes.

If you don't have empathy, you cannot create psychological or emotional safety. You're going to have— you're not going to have a high-performing team.

Doug, you'll appreciate this. We have a— we have this meeting that we do in our company with those that are interested. We call it Dialoguing with Doug. Who would have thought of that? And, and one of the sessions, uh, we were talking about, um, psychological safety and the importance of that in a growth-oriented organization so people can feel safe. And, and one of the people in the meeting says, I don't even know what that means. And then somebody else says, that's what it means. He says, what do you mean? He says, you're safe enough to say that.

I like that.

That's what it means. Because if you weren't psychologically safe, you would never say, what the hell are we talking about? You would sit there and bluff your way through the meeting, which a lot of people do.

That's right.

They don't have psychological safety. I love this conversation. We don't have enough time. This should be a 2-hour show.

Well, we are kind of running out of time.

We probably didn't get to anything you had in mind. I'm sorry.

Oh no, this is great. This is the way these conversations always go.

Oh good. I didn't want to disappoint right away.

No, no, I have, I have kind of a vague outline in my head of what I want to talk about, but I'm really more interested in exploring, just as we've been doing, kind of what your thinking is and how you see things and Because that, that to me is what's really interesting. I care less. Yeah.

Well, you know, and the other thing, since we're talking about emotions and deciding what to think, I would say this to, to our viewers and listeners is, you, you know, the beautiful thing is understanding once I get really good at deciding what to think, I will realize how I can change my emotions from the inside out. Because as you know, Joe Ledoux did in his work at New York University, when we're stimulated from the outside in, we're stimulated emotionally first.

That's right.

Yeah. But, but if you get good at deciding what to think, if you get good at that, all of a sudden you, you have much more influence over your emotional state.

That's emotional, that's emotional self-regulation. And I was going to say it was Ledoux and Damasio and all these guys really influenced my thinking. Today when I teach, the first mindset shift I tell people is we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Get rid of this idea that we're emotional being, that we're rational beings. Because once you start seeing that we are emotional, not rational, that doesn't mean that we don't have, we can't engage in critical thinking. And it doesn't mean that we can't engage in problem solving. It just means that at the root, at the synapse, the decision is being made, is this pleasure or is this pain? And that's emotional. And every decision is an emotional decision at some level. And when you recognize that, then you begin to see the power of emotions. And then you begin to understand, for example, in high-conflict situations or where there's strong emotions or fights and arguments, can't solve that with logic and reasoning. Well, with emotions.

I like that. I really like that. And recently I've been thinking, because I'll add that to my thinking.

Yeah, steal it.

I like how you said it because I, I also believe that at some level, every decision is a values-based decision.

Absolutely.

So, so the question is, which, you know, the, if I've taken the time to, to reflect on my values, the ones that I really, really care about, if I've been thoughtful about that, those are my deep, what I consider my ideal self, you know, aiming to be my ideal self, which is the first essential, uh, that, that helps me understand what I'd ideally like to be. But if I know my real self, the second essential, and I pay attention to myself, I might find in the moment that emotional being is valuing something that this long-term guy would rather not So at that moment, can I recognize well enough what the heck is going on so that I can reflect and reframe my thinking so that I can respond in a way consistent with my deeply held values? And that's the victory.

That's right. And the way you do that, the way I have found to develop that, is again cognitive empathy. Listening to and reflecting other people's emotions.

Oh, I love that.

As you do that, you, you become emotionally self-aware of your own emotions. And then, to your point, you start becoming aware of when you're feeling emotions and how those emotions are going to affect your decision-making. I teach a course at Pepperdine, at Pepperdine Law, called Decision-Making Under Stress and Conflict. And I am—

cognitive empathy.

I emphasize this to my students, that understanding emotions and decision-making is the most critical skill you can learn. Because there's no such thing as an abstract decision. I mean, even, you know, I think that even though Socrates and Plato and Aristotle were great thinkers, I think they got it wrong when they said that— Aristotle said what separates us from other species is our capacity to reason. I don't think that's right. Damasio, I think, is more correct. He said, yeah, right, what separates us from other species are our emotions, right? And so we— and unfortunately, we live in a culture that that makes emotion bad and evil and weak and suspect.

And well, and you know, in my point of view is human beings, part of the human factor is humans are born, we are emotional beings and we are moral beings. So, and I personally think, and I'd be interested in your point of view on this, Doug, but I believe With the rise of the application of artificial intelligence and the pervasiveness of that, soon to be followed really soon by quantum, and quantum is going to leapfrog. If people think AI is fast, wait till they see quantum. Uh, that's going to be blow them away fast. Well, here's, I believe human intelligence has to be better at what Dan Heath would say, solving the problem upstream. We've got to inform this AI and quantum with some collective human awareness so that the world that we live in is not just built for 2 or 3 people. It's actually considers there's 8 billion, maybe there'll be 10, maybe there'll be 20. What are we going to do?

Yeah, so I think that's going to be the major limitation of AI. That is that there's no way to computationally create emotions, right? At least not yet. And I—

not yet.

Yeah, maybe quantum computing will have the power to do that, but the human brain is still a pretty marvelous device.

Yes, it's, it's remarkable, and, and, and it's a blessing, and we have to treat it as such.

That's right.

And, and so I am on a crusade to raise the human intelligence And I hope everybody chooses to think to perform. So, and please buy my book too.

All right.

Yeah, Chuck Wachendorf, my co-author, would like you to buy the book.

Okay.

My publisher, everybody.

You're making a lot of money off of royalties, right?

You know what? You and I both know the deal on that. I will say, right?

I'm doing okay on my fourth book.

I did okay on Moral Intelligence. Moral Intelligence is, you know, been, you know, we've been fortunate. It's been published in 13 languages. It was pirated by the Chinese the first time, which I thought they missed the point. You know, you don't steal a book called Moral Intelligence.

But one more question, I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself, Doug, that we would never know? Unless you revealed it to us.

You would never know that, um, I both learned a lot and had a lot of trauma associated with going to 8 schools in 12 years. My family was not well-to-do. I— we, you know, and, and I don't even know if there was I think there was something called kindergarten for people. I started in the first grade.

Wow.

And my family moved 8 times. I went to 8 different schools in those next 12 years. And every time I moved was both traumatic and confidence building.

Huh.

Because every time I wondered, will I be academically competitive? Will I be athletically competitive? Will anybody like me? And what I found out is wherever I went, I was okay. But I, in the process, I became a bedwetter. I did all kinds of other things that were less good. So my thing is, people should know this about me. My glass, just like your glass, is half empty and half full. Every day, all day.

Thank you so much for your time, Doug. Been a great conversation.

Thank you.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com. Www.dougnoll.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.