Eduardo Briceño on the Performance Paradox: When Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

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Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host Dr. Chris Stout. To succeed in a fast changing world, individuals and companies know they must create a culture of growth where experimentation and feedback are encouraged and learning is integrated into the everyday. Yet we often get stuck in a well worn pattern of habits that don't move us forward. Why is that? How do you get better at something? You do a lot of it. The 10,000 hour rule practice makes perfect, right? Well, maybe not. What if our only on our focus only on performing doesn't lead to the hoped for improvements and instead our performance suffers? Well, there's a strange phenomenon that runs counter to what most of us would think is a key ingredient to improving our performance. That is, if we spend all of our time performing, we actually hinder our performance. Worse yet, this applies to us as individuals, to our teams and to our organizations and it's called the Performance Paradox. Eduardo Brissino knows a lot about this phenomenon and he's written a new book on how to recognize it and what to do about it. The book is aptly titled the Performance turning the power of mindset into into action and is published by Random House. He and I will be doing a deep dive into his new book in this episode. But first, a bit about Eduardo. He's been a featured speaker at over 100 organizations, many of them Fortune 500 companies. His TED talk, How to get better at the things that you care about and his prior TEDx talk, the Power of Belief, have garnered more than 9 million views. He was shortlisted by Thinkers50, what the Financial Times refers to as the Oscars of management Thinking, for their Breakthrough Idea Award, given to thinkers who have ignited eureka moments in management and offer radical ideas that have the potential to reshape the future of business. He is a co founder of MindsetWorks and Growth How. Prior to this, Eduardo was a principal in the venture capital arm of Credit Suisse in Silicon Valley as part of their technology and healthcare investment teams. He's also served on several for profit and nonprofit boards. Eduardo is an Aspen Global Leadership Network Fellow and an inductee in the Happiness hall of Fame, which I'd like to learn more about. Eduardo originally hails from Bogota, Colombia and moved to the US for college. He holds bachelor's degrees in economics, finance and Chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and an additional Master's degree in education, also from Stanford. Welcome to the show, Eduardo. It's great to have you on.

Thank you Chris. It's great to be here.

So before we do that deep dive into the book like I mentioned, I'd like to learn a little bit more about your origin story. Can we talk with Bogo, talk about Bogota and then the shift into college?

Sure. I am actually from Caracas, Venezuela.

Where'd I get the Bogota?

Oh my gosh, there's all kinds of different information in different places. So. But yeah, I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and I did, you know, my, I, I always thought I would just live there my whole life because everybody I knew lived there their whole life. I have each of my parents has is one of six siblings and I have 30 first first cousins and my life was there. I, I also didn't know any entrepreneurs and my, my dad worked in the Same company for 30 years and you know, I just figured I would grow up and probably become an engineer like my dad and, and work at a company for a long time and when I was in high school my, my dad worked for the kind of oil company Venezuela, it's called Peresa and he was transferred for his work to Tulsa, Oklahoma for two years. And it just happened that it was toward the end of my high school years in Venezuela, like K to 12. The K to 12 system is 11 years there. And so when I came to Tulsa, they said, okay, like the school that I was going into, they said, all right, well we could put you either into your. I was going into my last year of school in Venezuela. They gave me a choice of either going into my last year of school here, which was 12th grade, or. Or into my 11th year here, which was where I was going in Venezuela, 11th year. And I chose 11. I chose to start as a junior because when I learned about the school, I learned that I could choose classes. And I never had the option to choose classes in my schooling in Venezuela. Each person in my school sat on the same desk and teachers kind of rotated in and out of the classroom and mainly kind of talked at us through lecture. So school was very boring for me. It was very irrelevant. I was not into it. But learning about my new school, I was like, wow, there's actually, there's theater here. There's like all kinds of things that I can choose. That's incredible. And so I want. And it was also a way for me to kind of restart and reset because I wasn't that engaged and interested in particularly anything in Venezuela. I was kind of an okay student, but I knew I could do a lot better. And I thought, okay, I'm not happy or satisfied with any part of my life. At least I think I can do well in at least school if I work hard and if I do two years of it instead of one, maybe I can kind of show what I can do here and maybe go to a better university than I would otherwise. And so that's, that's what happened. And I ended up getting into a good school, but I didn't have any particular interest in any particular subject area. So I went for kind of skills that I thought would give it give me a job in times of a recession or in down economic times. So I studied chemical engineering and finance. Again not, not particularly because I was interested in it, but because I didn't have any better idea for me. And I ended up working in like just. So when I, when I graduated college I just went for like high paying jobs. I didn't have a particular purpose or passion or interest. So I studied, I worked in, in investment banking in New York City for two years and then in venture capital for five years in Silicon Valley. And at the time I thought, wow, you know, this is incredible. I never thought I would live outside of the US and outside of Venezuela. And all of a sudden I'm here kind of working in Park Avenue in all these fancy buildings with mahogany desks and in, like, Sandhill Road and Menlo park, and meeting with all these entrepreneurs that are changing the world. And so it's an interesting time, but after a few years of it, my body broke down. I got sick with a repetitive strain injury called myofascial pain syndrome. I started not only being in pain, but also being less and less able to use my hands for things like using the computer or opening doors or brushing my teeth or driving. And I met people who had the same condition who couldn't use their hands for more than 10 minutes a day.

Wow.

So I realized, wow, you know, like, I. I can't take my hands for granted. I can't take my ability to do things for granted. And I don't think I'm doing anything particularly useful or worthwhile with my life. And so I went through what I call a quarter life crisis. And I realized I need to figure out, you know, how to change how I'm living and how to change the root causes of whatever is causing this condition for me. So I need to learn a lot and heal, but I also need to change my trajectory. And so I went to grad school. I was also inspired by my wife, who became a teacher and clearly found her purpose. And that was very. You know, she showed up as a different person every day, and that inspired me to try to figure out what that was for me. So I went to grad school to. To change and pivot. And there I met Stanford Professor Carol Dweck, whom I co founded Mindset Works with. And that. That put me in the path that I'm in right now.

That's amazing. And how. How health. How is your health these days, if I may ask?

It's great.

Yeah.

No, so it took a long time. I. But I'm. I'm fully recovered, but I had to learn a lot, and, you know, could talk a lot about that, too. But, um, I. I did things like stretching for an hour and a half every day for three years. I used speed. I used speech recognition software for three years. I. I went to Washington, D.C. for six weeks to get treatment every day. Something called dry needling.

Sure.

Obviously changed the way I eat. I. I did so many changes in my life, including, you know, figuring out kind of some. Some purpose and. And how I could contribute to people. But, yeah, now I am not healed, but I am in A much, much better place. And at the time when I was going through this tempest, I thought, wow, you know, for a 27 year old, this is such a horrible thing to be happening that I'm risking, you know, becoming disabled. But looking back, it was such a, such a blessing, such a gift, because not only did I end up in a much healthier place, you know, if I hadn't gone through that, I might be going through things like, you know, a heart attack at this point in my life.

Yeah.

But I also, like, I'm, I'm having such a, you know, more full and fulfilling life because of what I learned and how, how I grew it from it.

Wow, that's, that's quite inspiring in a variety of different kinds of ways, both psychologically and emotionally and, and you know, physically, et cetera. What. Let me just circle back real quick to one other thing. What was it like to go from Caracas to kind of a. I presume is maybe even a rural kind of area of the United States, culturally for you?

Yeah, it was very different. In fact, I would say Caracas is more similar to New York City than, you know, New York City is to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I would say so.

But, but for me, it was an adventure and it was exciting because it was different. It was a different world. I, I wanted change. I was not happy in my life. And there were things that I appreciated very much about the culture in Tulsa and in the US More broadly. In, in Venezuela, I felt a big pressure to conform to the social norm. You know, if something like a particular way of dressing, particularly as a teenager and as kids. But you know, if there's, there's a particular types of shoes, like everybody had pressured to wear those shoes or to speak in a particular way, or to have your hurt your hair in a particular hairdo. And so I feel like in, when it came Tulsa, I saw people that were very different and, and there's in a way more diversity in how people wanted to be and live their lives. And there was respect for the individual. So that's something that I really loved about it. And, and just, but you know, it was hard. I, I only understood about 50% of what people said. So, you know, I, in a way I, I kind of learned a little bit to just go with a conversation, even if I don't understand the full conversation and that, that has pros and cons, sometimes I could benefit from asking more questions and if I don't understand something, but sometimes that's disruptive to conversation. So I'm still learning about, about Some of that as well. But it was, it was exciting and an adventure more than anything.

Wow. Did your family go back to Venezuela or where's, where's everybody else?

Yeah. After two years, my dad went back to his job in Venezuela and, and my sister went back with them because she was, she's younger and they are still living there in Caracas. We're in the same apartment where I grew up for, you know, since I was a baby.

Oh, my gosh. Wow. Do you get back very often?

I don't. It's, it's been difficult for the country. It's gone down a lot and, and it's not quite safe. So my parents come about once a year and they spend a couple of weeks here.

Oh, nice. Nice. Well, that's good. Well, thank you and thanks. I apologize for the Columbia kerfuffle there. I need to double check my research, I suppose. So. Good to get that clarification. I was actually in Caracas. I gave a talk there. Oh my gosh. Eduardo is probably at least 15 years ago. And I know that there's been kinds of ups and downs with governments and whatnot there. So it's nice that you can keep in touch with, with family and that they can come visit you. That makes it nice for everybody. So.

Yeah. And no worries about Columbia. Columbia is like, they're siblings to us. They're right next door. The culture, culture and the food is very different. So Colombia is close to my heart.

Yeah. Good. All right, well, good. Thank you for that save. So I want to shift into your book. We talked about this before we hit record about kind of doing a deep dive into it. I very much enjoyed it. But before we do, I want to kind of tee it up and say what some notable others have said about your book. Angela Duckworth, New York Times best selling author of Grit, said, more than anyone I know, Eduardo has devoted himself to bringing academic research on mindsets to the everyday lives of learners of all ages. His passion and optimism are contagious and in every interaction, I come away inspired. Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times best selling author of a number of books, said, if you're tired of running in circles and not making any meaningful progress towards your goals, the Performance Paradox is the book you need to read. Eduardo's writing and stories are engaging, insightful and provide the practical advice you need to break out of your rut and start making real change today. And Chip Connolly, who probably a lot of these listeners know, a New York Times best selling author of emotional equations and wisdom at work, said, the Performance Paradox is a Go to playbook for developing thriving workplaces and lives. This gem of insightful, useful and absorbing and filled with captivating stories and examples of how top performers drive growth. Whether you're starting your career, a contributing manager or a senior executive, this book will equip you and your organization to write your story in a world of constant change. And one more thing, it was also selected as a must read by the Next Big Idea Club that's curated by notable Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Daniel Pink. So Eduardo, bravo on all counts and personally I very much enjoyed reading it too. Congratulations.

Thank you, Chris.

So this is kind of the basic 101 of talking with a well known author about a wonderful book. What spurred you to write it after all the other kind of work that you had done?

Well, it's been a lot of not just a book, but what I do in my career has been a lot of unexpected twists and turns in my career, in life. But part of that became I, you know, in, in meeting Carol Dweck. She's a Stanford professor and she coined the term growth mindset. She led the research on it. I became really passionate about helping myself and others uncover kind of the, the mindset that helps us be motivated and effective learners, but also kind of the strategies and the habits that help us drive our own growth as individuals, teams and organizations. And so I started working with organizations, with leaders and with others in organizations, professionals, teachers, to help them create kind of the personal habits and the cultures to foster growth. And in, in, in that journey I learned from lots of people. I co created with lots of other people like I built in other people's ideas and, and I create a bunch of different frameworks and, and one framework in particular. When I was kind of working with people in workshops and trying to help them generate and help myself generate kind of insights, I came up with this distinction between what I call the learning zone and the performance zone. The learning zone is when we leap beyond the known. The performance zone is when we do things as best as we know how. And I realized that we, I was confused in my career and a lot of people have kind of this vague sense that if we, if we want to succeed and if we want to grow, what we have to do is to work hard. And, and I realized that that that's a little bit vague and, and it kind of causes us to just work hard at doing the best we can, trying to minimize mistakes. And the research shows that this is something that leads to stagnation. It leads us to continue doing the same thing with the best intentions. And when, when, when I kind of started introducing to people this different. Two different forms of effort, one to execute and perform and one to grow and to learn and improve. That really like, lit people's eyes. And, and it led to great insights and great conversations and great alignment and clarity on how people wanted to collaborate with each other, not only to get things done, but also to grow. And so once that I saw how useful this framework was, I started incorporating more and going deeper into workshops. Eventually, I did TEDx talk on it, which became a TED talk, and it's featured at TED at work. And so I went deeper and deeper over the years in working on this. And just because it's a useful concept that helps people better pursue their goals, then eventually, frankly, I did not have the goal or, or the intention to write a book because I didn't think that I was ready to write a book. But one of the people you mentioned, Chip Conley, he very graciously and, and generous, generously offered to speak with me, and he's become a mentor since. But he, he suggested that I write a book, and he connected me to people who were in the book world who might be interested. And, and I, I thought, wow, you know, if I could write a book about this topic, it would be a way for me to learn. I mean, I interview over 100 people on this topic. I did a lot more research on it, but it would also be a way to, to contribute again back to kind of how I was feeling during my, my crisis. You know, what I felt at the time in my crisis is that if I, if I got hit by a bus the next day, like, I wouldn't have mattered. My life would not have made a dent in anybody else's life. And what I wanted was to get to the point where if I get hit by a boss, I feel like I have lived life well and I have made it, made a contribution. So the book was a way to continue to, to make another contribution about my life's work that people find helpful. So, so the opportunities kind of came to me, and then I, I dropped other things to work really hard on it and to. And to create something of value.

I'm so glad you did. I'm so glad you took Chip's advice, too. So I also, I'm a book nerd when it comes to design, and I really. I want to talk about just maybe the structure of it. Then we can get into the content and the meat of it. But I like how you structured it into the three sections and I want to deconstruct those in order in just a couple of minutes. But I also like, I think your education background starts to show through the design of this because at the end of each chapter you included like questions for the readers to reflect upon. And then you also include like a look forward prompt to help identify, you know, where there might be knowledge gaps or to help readers prepare, get the most out of, you know, what's coming next in that next chapter. And then you also have the, the big idea that starts each chapter. So I, I just, I really enjoyed that. I found that very unique. I found it very helpful as a reader of, of the book. How did you develop such a great design approach to that? It, it seems of all the, I mean, I read a lot and that I thought was a very clever way to do that. How'd you come up with that?

Thank you. It was through a lot of iteration and testing and feedback. We went through so much, so many iterations. And I collaborated with people who are experts on books like, you know, Nick Childs is most, my collaborative writer. He's written, you know, New York Times bestsellers. He has a Pulitzer. You know, Mary Rennix, my, my editor at at Random House, you know, was incredible at helping structure and figuring out the chapters and you know, she. Chapters from one place to another, which I wouldn't have thought of, which worked really well. You know, others like Sarah Raynon and, and Doug Abrams. But those things that you talked about are things that, that I push more for, as you said, from, from a learning science standpoint. Either that or I heard from readers and got feedback from. So, so specifically the, the looking forward question which you mentioned at the very end of each chapter, it asks the reader to reflect on the topic of the next chapter. And one thing that I've learned from one of my mentors, his name is Ron Berger, is that it's really helpful to have learners grapple with something before you get into the content, before you get into the lesson. And that helps us learn more deeply. So for example, in my workshops and keynotes, often when people have a sense of growth mindset, and a lot of people do, I ask them to write down, you know, in my own words, what does growth mindset mean? And people write that down and then we go into what growth mindset means and doesn't mean. And, and I find that they, they get a lot more clarity that way because growth mindset is easy to distort. Growth mindset, you know, when I When I ask people to write down what a growth mindset means, they might write down things like being open minded or working hard or persevering or believing anything is possible. But a growth mindset is none of those things, you know, and I mentioned that a growth mindset is the, that people can change, that our abilities or qualities are malleable. And that explains why that belief helps those other things be true. And so, so the looking forward question is similar. It's a way for people to think about their current understanding so that then when they read the next chapter, they can compare their current understanding to things that they hadn't thought about when they generated ideas from, from their own mind. And that also gets to kind of the difference between generation and recognition. When we read something, we rec, we might recognize it because we might have heard about it before, we might have read about it before. And that gives us the impression that we knew it, that we knew this information. Oh yeah, I knew this. But when we realized, when we try to generate that from inside our mind and we don't generate it, even if we have read it or heard it before, then we realize, oh, you know, like, I didn't quite know this as much as I need to know it in order to actually use it in my life. Right? Because if we want to use knowledge in our life, we need to be able to generate it from inside us at the right time and place when it's useful, rather than, you know, ask Google or try to figure out where this information is. And so that's, that's that example of the looking forward question. The reflection questions are something that again, like at the end of each chapter helps people think about, maybe discuss these ideas with other people. But the big idea question, the big idea at the beginning of each chapter came from feedback from one of the people that I had kind of read the book and give me feedback on. This particular idea came from Tomer Cohen, who is the chief product officer at LinkedIn and he's a friend. I've known him for a long time. His, his wife, Liz Cohen was an early employee at Mindset Works and, and she leads a great organization called the Becoming Lab, which is for parents who want to foster a growth mindset in their families and their kids. But Tomer, what he said is these reflection questions at the end of each chapter are really, really helpful to me. I would also love to have some key takeaways at the end of each chapter so that after I've read the book or after others have read the book, we can quickly remember what the key takeaways are. And so then I went to my collaborators and I said, I love this idea from Tomer. I think this would be really useful. And I saw this in a recent book that I read, no Rules Rules by Reed Hastings, and I think this would be great. So my collaborators, who are book experts said, this is too much. At the end of each chapter, we can't have key takeaways and reflection questions and looking forward questions, so let's not do this. And then after sleeping on it and a few iterations, I thought, okay, maybe we can have, instead of key takeaways at the end of the chapter, let's have one big idea at the beginning of each chapter. And they love that. And that helps frame the chapter and differentiate each chapter from the other. So that worked really well. So as an example of how through feedback and iteration, we got through the structure that we have now, I love

that you really had kind of a dream team of experts, but then also kind of doing some testing and whatnot with reading audiences. I love that. I think, I hope listeners will take that as great advice. It's time consuming, but I tell you, the payoff of doing that is just huge, again, for the learning capacity of the audience, being able to read that, the readership of that. So let's go into the book and how I teed this up in the intro of the performance paradox. I mean, we hear a lot of stuff about the cliche is practice makes perfect in 10,000 hours and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So can you maybe deconstruct that concept? How can it be that the more we practice to make an improvement in performance, it actually can work again against us and that, you know, what's the difference between hard work, you know, working, you know, paradoxically against that better performance versus supporting a better performance?

Sure. So, you know, we might think that the way to become a great at something, say, for example, an athlete, like a great, you know, tennis player, the way to become great at tennis is to play a lot of tennis. If you, you know, if you say you play 10,000 hours of tennis, you'll become a great tennis player. But what the research shows is that if you just go, say that you want to start playing tennis, you might go out on the weekends and just play games with your friends. And when you don't know anything about it and you do get better, if you just go and play games, you'll start hitting the ball more and having more balls going to the court because we, we're so Bad that we don't need great learning strategies in order to improve when we are novices. It also is, is it is a good thing to just kind of go and play and, and try to do the activity at the beginning so that we can explore whether we would enjoy the activity? Right. It's a more kind of playful starting point. But once we become proficient, then just going out and playing games is not a way to improve. We don't get substantially better just from performing the activity. We need to do different strategies in order that are designed for improvement, not designed for performance, in order to continue to improve. And so, for example, in things like sports, deliberate practice, it's a very powerful strategy. It's a strategy that was coined by Florida State professor Anders Erickson, who passed away a couple of years ago. And deliberate practice is where you, you take a sub skill, a particular move, for example, a particular skill, and you, you focus on that skill so you, you repeat that skill. Say, for example, the, the top spin backhand. You're going to try that and, and, and it's going to be at a level of challenge that is above what you can currently do. You're going to be challenging yourself something hard that you can't do, you know, great yet. And you're going to get feedback from each iteration so you'll, you'll hit the ball and it'll go too much to the left, right? So you'll adjust your movement too much to, so that. To. And then you might overcompensate and through, through different, through repetition and adjustment between each iteration and feedback. Right. In that case, the ball is telling you where it's giving you feedback on what you need to adjust. You might be working with a teacher or coach who might also be giving you feedback, saying, hey, put your feet in a different way. Try that. And that's an example of an activity that's designed for improvement, random performance. And we grow and learn a lot more that way. So what happens in. And so, for example, when you think about great tennis players, they spend a lot of time practicing and doing things like deliberate practice. And even, you know, Venus Williams and Serena Williams are great examples of people who actually didn't play in juniors tournaments, which was very, very common at the time to play lots of tournaments, to get lots of experience before you turn pro. They actually spent years without playing in any tournament. They were just focused on improvement before they turned pro. But what happens in work and life for a lot of us in different aspects of work or different aspects of life, is that we get stuck in chronic performance just trying to get through our to do list as best as we know how, just trying to minimize mistakes all the time. And that leads to stagnation, you know, and in a complex and fast changing world, and we need to figure out how do we alternate between the learning zone and the performance zone, or how do we integrate the two so that we can get things done in a way that's also going to lead to improvement, so that we are working smarter over time and generating insights and new strategies that can help us better pursue our goals.

I like that. It reminds me, just recently I heard too someone talking more about the athletic side of things that in the States it seems like a lot of, not to be pejorative or anything, but a lot of parents maybe that have adolescent children who show some ability and proclivity to doing well in a certain kind of sport, say tennis or soccer or baseball, whatever, that back in the day, 20 years ago, if a child was that way, they would, you know, they'd probably be on the tennis team during tennis season, they'd be on the soccer team during soccer season, they'd be on the baseball team, you know, whatever. They would kind of have these different sports and different activities. And there's some, I think exercise physiologists and sports medicine folks and physical therapists are saying, seeing adolescents now that are moving into their 20s that have just played like year round, whatever their sport was, with the idea of, you know, turning pro or developing, becoming better at whatever it was. And now they've sort of atrogenically developed all these repetitive stress, kinds of aches and illnesses and pains, and needing surgeries at age groups in populations that never needed them before because of this repetitive use issue. And it also makes me think of like David Epstein with range, kind of getting out of that mindset of being so ultra specific and super specialized, but looking at all the benefits that individuals can have, be it athletic or intellectual or whatever. So I really, I like that idea of being able to break out of the chronic performance aspect. That makes great sense to me.

Absolutely. And range, I love that book. And in range, David Epstein, Epstein kind of contrasts Roger Federer, who was much more of a broader range athlete than Tiger woods, who was much more specialized in golf from a very young age. So, so you can get to success through both of them. But the, the, the idea of range really resonates with me and I, I like to kind of go deep in, in a broad set of areas and, and have different interests and also tinker and go narrow in some things and explore things that I have never thought about before. And I find great value. Right. And connection in. Well, a lot of innovation comes from connecting the things that have been previously disconnected, whether in your mind or, you know, in anybody's mind. And so, yeah, that applies to sports. It applies certainly to intellectual and collaborative work and innovation work. And so that one. One learning strategy, as an example, is to explore beyond what. What you know and beyond different domains. And there. There's a. There's a kind of person by name of Robert Lang, who was a physicist but also nurtured a childhood interest in origami. And eventually he blended the two and he came up with things like how the James Webb telescope folds. It's informed a lot by, you know, origami art. And so, yeah, when you connect the previously disconnected, there's. There's so much value to that.

Yeah, I think I've also had some designers and other creatives on the show, and I think that whole aspect of having kind of a, you know, cornucopia, bullyabaise of past experiences that might seem very tangential to what a person might be doing, you know, in their current, you know, work or creative life, but then take inspiration or have certain kinds of processes informed by those kinds of things, I think makes a huge difference in the aspect of being able to, you know, have innovative ideas and innovative designs, kind of no matter what, if it's, you know, from. From leadership and business to, you know, to. To the arts. So is. Is that a method to get out of what you talk about in terms of a fixed mindset? Is that one of the tools to do that or what. Maybe just share with the audience that haven't read the book yet. Like what. How do you define a fixed mindset? And what are some of the ways to kind of get out of that?

Yeah, so a fixed mindset is kind of the opposite of a growth mindset. And a fixed mindset is when we view human abilities or qualities as static, as things that can't change. So, for example, if we think that great leaders are great leaders because they're natural leaders, that's something that's fixed in them. That would be a fixed mindset about leadership. Or if we think that people are either empathetic or not and empathy is something that is fixing people rather than something that every. Any of us can continue to further improve, to become more empathetic. So if we see it as fixed, that would be a fixed mindset. If we see our own empathy as something that we can Continue to develop. That would be a growth mindset about empathy or the ability to work with numbers, or the ability to work with words or to have deeper relationship with our loved ones or any ability or quality. We can see them as things that are malleable and can be developed or things that are static or anywhere in between. This is not binary, it's more of a spectrum. So this belief that we can improve, called a growth mindset, is really necessary, but not sufficient in order for us to be motivated and effective learners. But in addition to the belief that we can improve, we also need to understand how to improve. What are effective strategies to improve? Right. If, if, if just working hard at playing, at playing games of tennis or chess or anything else, if that's not an effective way to improve, then what is an effective way to improve? And it is by, by understanding how learning works and how we can accelerate our growth and our developments, individuals, teams and organizations, then that's necessary in order to actually grow and improve. And that, that, that supports a growth mindset. Right. The more that we understand how to improve, the more that we can believe and understand that we can improve. And so you need both of those things and yes, so, so asking questions and exploring and reading things that, whether they are deeper in, in our domain or in other domains, those are effective strategies to develop our skills. And so therefore they, they promote a growth mindset and also they promote actual growth.

So in that context, then one of the things you also talk about in the book is the plateau of latent potential and that some of us at different points are different positions in our work or whatever may be on that plateau. What winds someone up on that bad plateau of latent potential? And what are some of the ways to get off it, to break through it? It?

Yeah, well, you know, sometimes I there growth is not, you know, it's not a straight line. We can experience moments of breakthrough where we have a, an insight or, you know, our body finally understands something at a deeper level and, and we might experience kind of fast growth at some area or there may be other areas where we have, have a project that we just need to get done and we need to emphasize more performance and kind of, kind of lean into performance for some periods rather than learning to then go back, go back and lean into learning afterwards. We can alternate a bit between those two. So for different reasons, we can have, you know, what we can call plateaus. And that's okay, that's normal. But if we are trying to, and not making progress, trying and not improving, you Know, at some point what we need to do is to change strategies, right? If the strategies that we're using right now are not leading to the results that we want, then we need to change strategies rather than just kind of double down and do more of the strategy and lose sleep and work harder. Which, you know, hard work is useful. But we also need to think about, are the strategies that I'm using to learn and to perform effective? Or if not, then, you know, are there other strategies that I want to try? And maybe I can, you know, if I'm not coming up with ideas or I'm not sure that I know an effective strategy to develop a particular thing or to solve a particular conflict that I'm having with my spouse or with a colleague, then I can ask, right? I can ask a friend, I can ask a colleague, I can ask a mentor, I can ask my supervisor. I can ask like artificial intelligence to come up with ideas. I can do a Google search, I can listen to a podcast. And so coming up with a different thing, what different habit or strategy can I use in order to get through this plateau.

I like that. It reminds me, as you say, that back when I was doing clinical work, I was a child and family therapist. And I found that a lot of times in relationships, be it parent and child or be it partners and spouses, that they would do something. And historically it had worked. And so they could, okay, here's the. You know, this is the tool that I need to, to make this situation work for me. And then something would change in the family dynamic or some. One of the relationships or something, and they would do what they had always done and it didn't work. So they would go back and they would do what they'd always done and it still didn't work. So then they thought they didn't look at it systemically. They looked at it, it with themselves in this tool that they're probably pretty happy with, you know, and comfortable with as well, too, because it had worked for them. And then, you know, there's probably, you know, good, good goodness of fit with that. So then they would do it more or they would do it louder or they would do it more forcefully, you know, and at least for me, I could kind of, you know, blow the timeout whistle and kind of observe that, learn about it, what had been going on in this dynamic, and be able to shed light on it and be able to talk about alternatives like you're talking about ways to, you know, get off that. That plateau and a variety of things. So I mean, for me, in a clinical situation, in a therapeutic situation, working with other people that were there, you know, open to change, you know, to want to do that, you know, I totally get that and can relate. How do you coach someone that's a founder or a leader in an organization when they see that in, you know, one of their C suite staff or one of their employees or one of their co founders that doesn't quite have that insight yet, where they're still sort of blind to it and they're still on the plateau in that phase of, well, my tool always works. It's the situation that needs fixing. I just need to amplify my tool versus I need to go find a different tool. How would you coach someone through that in terms of helping them help that person get that insight?

Well, I think it starts with setting the culture and setting the stage, setting the, the clarity around what we all want to be doing, you know, every day. And, and that is to continue to grow and evolve and, and develop ourselves, which means we have to be changing, you know, change. Our changing ourselves needs to be the default, right? Because without change, we can't improve. You know, if we haven't changed, we are, and we probably become less effective because the world has changed and we haven't. And so that's, that's why a growth mindset is so important, is that the growth mindset, the understanding that we can change and that's so important because change is necessary to improve. And so, you know, for I, I think for, for a leader in particular, but for anybody we can think about, are we clear with the people around us that, that yet we're coming into our work for a purpose that we, you know, we, the work that we do has an impact on the people that we serve. And that's important. You're performing that and creating that impact is important. But part of what we also do together is work to, to change ourselves and to grow and to learn together. And, and, and so change is, is the default. Change is what that we are all doing all the time. And so kind of having those conversations or how do we want to show up with each other and what kind of habits and strategies and systems are we going to use in order to continue to learn and to change different strategies? And so if we are always doing the same thing, there's no way we can improve. We always need to be, you know, changing and iterating. And so I would kind of go into, is, is the team clear on this intention? Is a team embracing these systems and Habits that we have agreed are important for us to always continue to iterate and to change and to grow. And so have people bought into that? Are they actually doing it? Are they doing it in collaboration? And this particular person. So once you have that kind of team clarity and not as a top down thing where you are kind of dictating, this is what we're going to do. But really starting the conversations, right? You know, maybe starting by sharing like a video or an article about these concepts and starting a conversation, hey, do we want to, you know, habituate the learning zone or growth mindset in our organization? How are we doing? Where are we doing this? Well, you know, what are opportunities for improvement? What do we want to work on first and getting that alignment up front. And what we find is that the vast majority of people really like, like sometimes everybody in a team, often everybody in the team, they, they want this, right? And they might see challenges of, you know, yeah, but I really want this, but we're so busy, where are we going to make the time? So try to. That might take some time to figure out. It's not about getting lots of time for this, but it's about shifting where we pay our attention and what, how we work and always changing something. And so once you get to alignment and people buy into it and you're having this open and honest conversations, if there are people who are kind of not taking to it or maybe taking longer, I think it's helpful to continue those conversations, but really work with the people who are more excited and more ready and in collaboration with them because sometimes and often there are people who are going to come later. They might need more evidence that leadership is really serious about this and they're not going to be penalized or that, you know, sharing what we're unsure about or, or trying different strategies and failing is okay in this organization, they might need to see that, that, that is actually true before they actually take the risk. And so, so rather than get, get tied up on the people who are not ready yet or not taking to the behaviors yet, I would say, you know, work on, on the strengths and the people who are more ready. Show the evidence of how this leads to lots of innovation and deeper relationships and collaboration and innovation and then continue inviting the other people and, and showing role modeling, right? So acting as a leader, acting as a learner, talking about what you are working to improve, what you're learning along the way, the mistakes that you're making, soliciting feedback. And what we find is like then other people tend to also then buy in because people want to grow. And sometimes there are, you know, very few people. Sometimes there are people who, like, for whatever reason, they, they don't, you know, they, they don't embrace the new behaviors. And at some point, after trying different strategies and having conversations and persevering, it might make sense to part ways. But what we find is that the vast majority of people want to do this, and the vast majority of people can do this, you know, if you set the stage and support it.

Man, I really, I really like what, I like that. I mean, it makes such good sense in the context of saying, you know, role modeling. I love that walking the talk, so to speak, and saying, you know, because I think some people may, you know, organizations are varied. Some people, maybe when something new comes along, there may be an issue of, you know, is this just the. The latest, you know, new management approach and, you know, until the next, you know, someone else's next book comes out, this is what, you know, will be the. The. And that we will follow until the next big thing. And they may test it to really see, well, is this legit? Do they really mean this? And they may just kind of harrumph and cross their arms and test it out. But I think the aspect of saying this is who we are, clearly identifying these kinds of things, showing as a leader, showing as a manager, showing as a team, these kinds of aspects and the benefits that they can have makes perfect sense and I think can help get through kind of thaw the ice on some folks. That may be a little. When prior organizations maybe didn't have a whole lot of trust or had some bad experiences that they've taken with them to the current place they're at. So I think that really helps establish and I think there's a solution, But I think it also establishes sort of a meta aspect of trust and authenticity, that this is how we roll. This is the approach we use from leadership to any other aspect of the organization. You mentioned this in the book, but when you were just saying this too, reminded me of Peter Senge and his whole. The concept of learning organizations and then having that kind of going through a process. You don't just flip a switch and then automatically it's this way, but that there may be needs to experiment with it and to demonstrate it. So I really like that. So one of the other things you talk about is stretch goals and the importance of individuals and organizations, et cetera. And people probably know, audience members probably know what a stretch goal is. And talking about that But I guess my question is, how is it that are there ways or are there things that you've seen that have been successful where individuals, let's say, rather than organizations in this question, find the right balance between setting challenging goals but not falling off the cliff with burnout or excessive stress that sometimes can go along with having those kinds of challenges us, even if they're self, self imposed.

Sure. Yeah. So, so stretching and setting stretch goals is, is a way to create the conditions for growth and learning and development. If we're just doing what we already know, we, what we have already mastered it, it can get boring. But also is, is not going to lead to as much growth. But at the other hand, as you, as you infer, as you imply that if we set stretch goals that are way outside what we're prepared for, we might get burned out, but we also might very easily kind of fail, which is okay, you know, we don't, we don't know what, you know, how far or near what we can do to set those goals, but we learn from that and we iterate. Right. But, so when we set stretch goals that are kind of too far, one of the consequences might be that we create damage. You know that. So, so Tomer Cohen, who I mentioned earlier, he, he, he thinks about kind of a concentric circle where in the middle is kind of what you already know and, and what you already can do. You kind of be the pure performance zone where you execute and there's a circle outside of it, which is, we might, he calls it like the stretch zone. In some of the academic literature we can think about the zone of proximal development, which is a bit further from what you can already do, but it's going to require kind of you're learning new skills and then there's a third bigger circle beyond that, which Tomer calls a danger zone. But that's kind of outside of your zone of proximal development where it might be like too far to work on right now. You might not be effective at actually learning because it's just way outside of what you can do. And so we want to be in that zone of proximal development, in that stretch zone. And we might need to kind of experiment and iterate and in different parts of our lives that can be kind of broader or narrower. But we, yeah, so sometimes when we are trying something that's way too far, that's way too hard for us right now, we might realize that we're struggling, we are failing. We are not, not, we're not making Progress. Right. Even though there's fine because we learn from failure, but we're failing in a way that is not leading to improvement and to progress. And so we can either decrease the level of challenge or chunk it into smaller pieces so that we can work on something that's more kind of narrow and focus more so that we can make progress in that area, then kind of take a different area to grow on. So those are some things to think about in terms. In terms of when we're thinking about our stretch goals. And sometimes we also need to think about our energy. Right. And I think rest, for example, is a really important part of both learning and performing. We see that the people who learn the most and who become the best at the world at what they do. Like, for example, in research on violinists, the most skilled violinists sleep more than other people, both at night.

Night.

And also they tend to take naps more. And that's because when we are focused on improvement, that takes a lot of concentration, it takes a lot of focus, and that tires us. And also when we're sleeping, as you know, we are making new connections in the brain. We're disconnecting neurons that shouldn't be connected. We are also removing toxins from the brain so that we can kind of think better the next day. And both in learning and performing. And so we can also think about not only like alternating our mental states and emotional states, and is the harmony of every day working for me and am I making progress, but am I also enjoying the journey? Am I taking care of myself? Those are things to think about.

I like that. Does that then overlap with. When you talk about smart effort as opposed to just grinding it out and hard work? Work.

Yeah. I mean, we get. That's part of, you know, effort is something that if you actually look at the, say, the top violinist in the world, you might think that for somebody who plays a violin, I would have thought that the best violinist spend the most amount of time doing deliberate practice. They might do deliberate practice for 10 hours a day or 12 hours a day. Day. But depending on the domain in, you know, people who do one thing like that, they spend between two and five hours a day doing deliberate practice. And that's. That's a lot. That's a lot of time. But that somebody who is like, really good at something very specific, like the violin. So. But it's not 10 or 12 hours a day. So, you know, the. The most effective way to improve and to improve our skills is not just to do the most out of one Thing, one strategy that I call that bulldozing. It's not to like, bulldoze your way to skill. It's really to like, to curate and to cultivate a lifestyle and a pace that's going to lead to gradual progress over time and joy along the way.

That's great. I'm just taking a look at the clock. There's a few other kind of highlights I'd like to cover with you, if you don't mind. Are you good for time?

I'm good with time.

Great.

Awesome. So one of the things I wrote in my notes to be sure to talk to you about is in chapter seven, you talk about this concept of a growth propeller, which I really liked. Could you maybe discuss for the audience the key elements of the growth propeller concept?

Sure. So these are the five elements that we can think about when we think about who we want to become and how we want to continue to evolve ourselves, to be effective in whatever area we want to be in our lives, including, you know, how effective we are at incorporating the learning zone into our lives and the performance zone into our lives. And so these picture a propeller with three blades. And at the center in the axis, there are two elements. There's our identity and our purpose. And each of the blades are our beliefs, habits, and community. So the purpose. Purpose is something that I lacked for my early life and early career. But it's so important. I've learned recently that some. Some research suggests that that purpose is the number one driver of longevity, of people's longevity. That's how important it is in our lives, is having, you know, a sense of meaning and that we matter and that what we do has. It matters, and it makes a contribution to other people. And that gives us kind of the energy to. Among other things, it gives us the energy to spend time in the learning zone and the performance zone and to feel like we're doing something useful with our lives and in our everyday. Second is our identity. And sometimes we have a sense of identity that might be too fixed, that we think of ourselves so. So statically. We think that whatever identity we have right now is what we're always going to have. And that can prevent us from. From learning and listening and considering other perspectives and considering other projects and other things that we want to do. But what's. But what's really so. So. So in the book and in that chapter, there are examples of people who shifted their identity over time. Maybe, you know, from being a teacher to a mother to, you know, someone who was kind of learning early in her corporate career and eventually, you know, evolved to being kind of the CEO and the leader of a large organization. And after that, you know, evolved to being a mentor and supporting others. And those are just aspects of her identity that evolve over time, that if she had seen her at any of those stages, like, for example, sometimes we might get attached to being like for people who are leaders to like a leader and a CEO, and that might prevent you from. From evolving, you know, beyond that into other aspects of your life, like being a mentor, for example. But what's really one thing that, that is that, that in the book I talk about, I give lots of examples of people who are fantastic learners and performers. And one thing that they all share in common is that they have a strong identity as a learner, as someone who is always going to continue to learn and evolve over their lives. And so one thing that I do, again, kind of about helping people generate insight in my workshops is early in the session, I have them write down the answer to. To how do I want to be perceived by my colleagues or by the people around me? And they write wonderful things like, like, you know, supportive or authentic or kind. And those are wonderful things. But they very seldom write down I want to be. I want them to perceive me as a learner or as a work in progress. And so, so that's something to think about. Because if we want to build a culture of learning, we. We want to first, like, have a sense of ourselves as a learner, but also being intentional about having other people see us as a learner because then, you know, we. We are again, we're being a model. So that's some, some things to think about. Around identity, then the three blades are beliefs, habits, and community. So around beliefs we talked about, one example of a belief in is a belief that people can change. A growth mindset versus people are either naturals or not a fixed mindset. But there are other beliefs that are important. Like, for example, a belief about transparency, you know, is, is being.

Is.

Is sharing my thinking and my emotions with others, something that makes us stronger and that is desirable and that I want to do. Or is transparency something that. That is risky and that puts me in danger. So our belief about transparency is something that we to think about. And there are lots of other beliefs that drive our behaviors, but there's a set of kind of beliefs to think about, and there's our habits, because most of our behavior is driven by things that we're not consciously thinking about. They're driven by, you know, habits and systems that we've put in place. So thinking about what are those habits and systems in your life and in your work and any aspect of life that are working for you or that you might want to continue to shift so that they support your pursuit of your goals. And then there's our community. You know, who are the people that we are in relationship with? What do they value? Is that in harmony with what I value? And what would I want to be doing, and how do I build kind of trust and collaboration with them, both for learning and for performing in order for us to start to thrive?

That's great. I think it's such a synthetic kind of model. And, you know, as you deconstruct and as you write about it, and even with the graphics in the book, I think it's a very easy to understand and grasp kind of perspective on that. So thank you again. I think that was great. I want to talk about the final part of the book. You discuss about how to apply the lessons and to move from individual transformation to global impact, which is something that I have a keen interest in. I do a lot of work. I have a nonprofit that we focus on global health and global kinds of issues. And you wrap up with the final section that you entitled Paths to Purpose, and you end your book with what I found. Honestly, Eduardo was very striking and powerful for me. So I'm just going to quickly just read. Read a quote of it. So you said when we grow older and get closer to the end of our life, we want to look back and feel proud of the life we have crafted, the person we became, the contributions we made to others to make sure this happens. It is worthwhile for us to pause now and reflect on our identity and purpose. Who am I? Who do I want to become? What do I care about most? What purpose do I want to pursue? And how can I grow my effectiveness so that I can feel great about how I am spending my precious time on Earth? And so that relates back to what you were saying just now about purpose. And, you know, Eduardo, I'm hosting a show called Living a Life in Full. So those words really resonated with me. Could you perhaps share how you would answer those questions for yourself?

Absolutely. And first, Chris, thank you for your important work through the center for Global Initiatives and Humanitarian Work. It's really inspiring. And also, through everything you do, including this podcast, you're helping us live our lives more informed. So for me, you know, one thing that I do is we were just talking about habits, the habit that I most treasure is the first thing that I do every morning. Because the first thing in the morning, nothing has distracted me. I have not, you know, checked email or anything else. And so I do a few things to live my life proactively rather than reactively, you know, and that helps me live my life more in full. Right. And so one of the things that, and that starts with gratitude. That's the first thing that I do. But one of the things that I do is remind myself of kind of my, my, what I think of as my three missions in life. And so one of them is to generate and radiate love, joy and kindness. And I feel like life is ultimately about the emotions that we experience and the emotions that other people experience that that's what makes life and I think that any of us can generate. So when before my quarter life crisis, I felt that my happiness and my emotions were a product of the circumstances that I was in. So I would work hard to get a promotion and to, you know, to be in a good situation so that then I would be happy. But one of the things I learned is that actually happiness is an emotion that we can produce that from within ourselves. So I remind myself of that every morning. And those emotions make me behave in different ways and radiate those emotions to the people around us. And I think that any of us can continue to do that, and that makes the world a better place. My, my second mission is to kind of help inspire a world of learners. And that's what we've been talking about today. That's what my work is. I help organization develop cultures of learning. And then the third one is to catalyze radical imagination. I think that if we want to get to much better futures and different futures, we need to radically imagine because we take so much for granted based on our past experiences. And so it helps me for that to think about the distant future, like 100, 200 years from now. What could life look like? And rather than start with what the present is, just forget the present and think radically about what a very different civilization could look like. And that dinner, that's a different kind of problem solving and innovation strategy that leads to different solutions. And some of those solutions can be applied to the present, but also, you know, it can, it might be some of those solutions might help us kind of inform some of the moments of radical transformation that our societies might go through. I think that we, we need to have more models of what the future civilization could look like so that, you know, when there's opportunity to shift our civilization we have kind of more ideas to draw from.

Wow, those are great. Thank you. Eduardo, this has been a great conversation. We've covered a lot of territory. But is there anything that we've not discussed that you'd like to add before we wrap up?

I would just add, you know, in that last chapter, one of the other ideas that I share is that as this, backed by research, is that when we incorporate the learning zone into our lives and our work, not only does it let us kind of perform better. Right. And innovate more and achieve more, which is important, but it also makes the process more joyful. Right. We are exploring more, we're asking more questions, we're getting to know each other better, we are generating more insight and more aha moments and all of that, that makes life better. So it's not just about the destination, but it's also about the journey when we incorporate this into our lives.

I like that. Thank you. So what's. What's next for you? Still book promotion kinds of things and consulting or what's. What's 2024 look like for you?

Well, I am a public speaker, so I. The main thing that I do for my work is I help organizations build cultures of learning. So that often is sort of say leadership off sites where organizations hire an external speaker in order to introduce these ideas and to help them reflect on how they want to lead or how they want to work and collaborate with each other. So I'll continue doing that as the majority of my work. I also have a couple of projects that I'm working on. I am developing an app app that is a digital flashcard app because again, we talked about generation versus recognition. Flashcards are a really effective way for us to put into our long term memory the things that are important to us so that we can generate that information from inside our brain whenever we need it. But there are, you know, I, I tried to find some flashcard apps that would be good for teams and organizations, not just individual. And I couldn't find one. And so I'm, I'm in the late stages of, of putting that out. And also just for me, I, I worked really hard for the last three years in the book and I want to also like, like it was very, very intense. I want to decrease the intensity a little bit more, prioritize my family and personal life and taking care of myself more and then creating a little bit more space to reflect on, on what the next chapter will look like as well. So I have some reflection to do around your question.

That sounds Great. That sounds great. So for listeners that would like to learn more about you to perhaps have you come out and do a keynote or do some consultation at their organization's Ways to Connect Learn more Get your book and newsletter what are some of the best ways to do that? We'll put it in the show notes.

Sure. My website is briseno.com my last name b r I c e n o dot com and they have a monthly newsletter and there's a kind of a PDF download with five strategies to build a growth mindset. I'm also active on LinkedIn and the book is called the Performance Paradox. It's available wherever books are sold.

Awesome. Eduardo, I want to thank you again for all you do, your work, your book. You are an inspiration. Thanks for sharing your time with us today my friend.

Thanks for all you do Chris, and it's great to speak with you.

Living a Life in Full is a

production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout. To learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile.

Thanks and until next time.