Beyond Boundaries: Exploring Group Flow with Dr. Torrie Higgins and Steven Kotler

What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before? What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to achieve paradigm shifting? Nothing is ever the same again. Breakthroughs.

Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance. Access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance. So you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Ryan Dorris, and together with bestselling author Stephen Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio.

Welcome to Flow Radio. I'm Ryan Wicks, Chief of Staff at FRC, and this month we're exploring the contrasting nature of relationships, how they can hinder flow through negative interactions and foster it through well-supported social connections. To kick off the month, longtime friend of the collective and peak performance psychologist, Dr. Michael Gervais, joined us to discuss one of the most insidious of all flow blockers. Other people's opinions. Today, Stephen and Dr. Tory Higgins sit down to discuss the more general topic of other people and flow proneness, going deep into the opportunities and challenges that are tucked within all of our relationships, focusing on everything from feedback, using other people's opinions as a flow trigger, to distraction management, managing our relationships so they don't destroy the laser focus required to enter and maintain a flow state.

All right, Stephen, so we're talking flow, we're talking people, and I think right off the bat it's important to preface our conversation about how social relationships influence peak performance, um, that we're actually talking about two types of flow here. We're talking about individual flow, which as we all know, our optimal state of consciousness where we perform and feel our best, but we're also going to be talking a little bit about group flow. And I think that's a surprise to many people that flow is not always a solitary endeavor. It's often not a solitary endeavor. So I think for the people tuning in who might not be familiar with this concept, let's just start out with how does the science community actually define the concept of group flow?

So I got to start historically, which is funny. This was the first version of flow that was ever studied was the collective group flow version of it. So there's a shared collective version of flow. The catch-all term we now use is social flow. Which sort of stands at the top of an umbrella that includes group flow, team flow, interpersonal flow. I'll add definitions to these things in a second. But the idea is there's individual flow, me in a flow state, right? So this is me achieving optimal performance. Or there could be group flow. In the case of me and you, it'd be interpersonal flow. That's two people talking. And this is a team or a group or two people performing at their very best. So it's just the same thing extended out. The earliest research was on the largest version of group flow, what's known as communitas, which is sort of group flow at a giant scale. This is what happens when people go to a rock concert and you all kind of merge with the band and lose yourself in the sound, or what happens at a political rally. The earliest research They were actually looking at essentially what became German Oktoberfest festivals, like drunken Dionysian festivals, Goethe and Nietzsche. And they were, they were looking at what happened to people at those festivals. And that was sort of where flow research started in the 1870s.

I love that. I think to highlight there that these are also events where people feel part of something bigger than themselves. It feels good to be a part of something like that.

Yeah, I mean, it's Yeah, I think that's a— in fact, that's maybe where we should have started. Ken Fullerton did this work. I want to say UC— no, Ken blanking Ken's last name. It was done at UC Fullerton, not Ken Fullerton. Anyways, they were looking at what are people's favorite experiences on Earth, and flow always tops the list. And we've known this. This is why flow is baked into the definition of happiness. At the psychological level. But what he discovered is that people much prefer group flow to individual flow. So it's, it's our favorite actual experience on Earth, which actually makes a lot of sense if you think about flow from kind of an adaptive survival perspective. One of the things I always, I always think about with flow is flow. I like to say it provides 360-degree creativity, meaning you're performing your very best. So whichever direction you're choosing to go in that moment, however creative you want to be in that moment, you're going to bring your best to that moment. With team flow, because obviously a team forming together is capable of so much more than an individual from an adaptive evolutionary problem-solving point of view, it makes sense that group flow is our favorite activity on Earth because it's where we're most suited to solving kind of the challenges of survival when in group flow.

Yeah, and I think that's what surprises in a delightful way. So many people that come to FRC to train, they come for individual peak performance because being in a flow state obviously feels incredible. That's when we operate at our best. But then they learn that actually this is something that we can access with a whole group of people and being able to operate in flow with others in pursuit of something that feels purposeful is far superior to individual.

One of the things I find surprising about that is if you're trying to— so two things. One, going all the way back when Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Bound Father Flow Psychology, was doing his original research on flow, one of the things he discovered is that not only is flow more common at work than at home, right? So flow at work showed up a lot more frequently than flow during leisure activities. It was middle managers in conversation. That was the most common example of flow at workplace. And this isn't surprising, shouldn't be surprising to anybody because we all have those great conversations where we lose ourselves in the conversation and our sense of self sort of diminishes. A couple of hours go by and we don't notice. That stuff happens to us at work quite frequently. And those are all examples of group flow. So really common in our lives. Really delightful, obviously, in our lives and really fundamental to how we perform at work.

Well, and like, let's also not forget that it absolutely enhances performance. So, you know, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study back in 2013, they talked to 1,100 executives, and what they found is that senior executives who were on the most collaborative leadership teams were actually in the top quartile of revenue and innovation across our organization. So not only does it feel amazing, we feel part of something larger than ourselves, so we feel more purpose, but we also just tend to perform and innovate better.

Yeah, so there was a recent study, it came out of Karina Pfeiffer's lab. She's a great flow researcher, and they were looking at flow in startups. The paper is called Founders Flow, They were looking at the benefits that flow and team flow brought to startups. And in this study, they found there were 13 different benefits and they— everything from better progress to better results to better team spirits to collective efficacy, right? So even little things like how efficiently you function as a group, flow and group flow seems to, seems to solve for.

Yeah, and so I think this is precisely why we wanted to spend a month on this topic, just to highlight the importance of it for performance. And then also, obviously, we're going to get into how exactly can people engineer their teams, the way they give feedback, how they relate to others to actually get into flow. But before we do that, I want to— yeah, I'm worried that people might be feeling left out here if they don't operate in a team, in a team space. So I want to highlight here that Team Flow or Group Flow isn't for people that only operate explicitly in team environments. It's also something that people who are solopreneurs, people who are creatives can leverage. And I know that's certainly been the case for you. So can you highlight a little bit about how Group Flow has showed up for you in your work as a writer?

Yeah, I always— so when people— when I talk, when I think about the importance of Group Flow, what I think about the most is the role— I've had the same editor. I've had this I've been incredibly lucky as a writer, and I've gotten to work with the same editor, my friend Michael Warden, for, I think, going on 30 years at this point, which is an incredible amount of time to work together. And obviously, one of the things we've gotten very, very good at is dropping into group flow. We have some ridiculously high, like 95% of the time that we do phone calls and we meet twice a week every week. To review pretty much everything I've written that week. And I want to say 95% of the time we get into group flow and that, which isn't the point of the question you asked, but I want to start there and say that as a result of that, I'll give you a simple example. One of the things I know, and I should point out that there's a level of really clear and open communication. That's really important for group flow. And Michael and I, I think we take that a lot, like much, much farther because we've known each other for so long and we have very, very thick skin. And also, Michael, one of the things I love about him as an editor is if I'm writing badly, he has a colossally bad reaction. It's not minor. He'll just start screaming out of nowhere. Yeah, it's wonderful. So a part of like one of the things people always talk— ask me is, God, you've written 14 books, you write 11 of them or something. We're reading in about a 10-year period of time. And how did you do that? Right. That it's a track record of productivity that a lot of people ask about. And part of the answer is group flow with Michael, which produces much better quality editing and writing and all that stuff. But the real, I think the real truth is that group flow is so addictive that I will go really far out of my way during those solo writing sessions when I'm facing the blank page to work extra hard to make sure the writing is extra crisp, cuz I want that group flow experience. Now, mind you, I get into flow a lot as an individual writer, but the motivation, I often say that like, yeah. My books are essentially written for one person. They're written for Michael. If I can crack him up or blow his mind during an editing session, I've won. That's the goal. So in a sense, then that's something that tends to happen in group flow. So in a sense, me chasing group flow in these couple of editing sessions is probably one of the biggest reasons why I've written so many books in such a in such a short period of time. It's such a boost in motivation.

And so I think, look, you just said a lot of important things that I want to just shine a spotlight on for people listening in case they didn't pull it all out. So not only are you leveraging that social relationship in your individual flow sessions, right, they serve as motivation. You get addicted to the feeling of group flow, right? So it really, it feeds the process forward in the creation of bestsellers, right? But also you talked about you have created an environment where you know how to give one another feedback, right? You, you have a style of communicating that really works. Um, and you know exactly what feedback from Michael to attend to. If you can make him laugh, you're on the right track, right? So you're getting that dopamine release.

Yeah, it's actually funnier than that or subtler than that, Tori. And this is one of the things I love. We've been working together so long from a feedback, and we'll talk about the importance of feedback in a second for flow. But I can tell by the— if he's stumbling over words, I didn't write in a, you know, it's not clean. I didn't write in rhythm. Like, I can tell in just like the tone and how he's reading the words and things like that, which is phenomenal because, as you pointed out, if you're looking for group flow triggers or individual flow triggers, feedback is foundational. When we talk about flow triggers, right, flow follows focus. It shows up when all of our attention is right here, right now. All the triggers drive focus into the now. Feedback. We have a foundational need to want to, like, do a good job at the things that we do, right? Which is why the voice in our head is always sort of monitoring everything I do and course-correcting and all of that. So when feedback is immediate, right? In sports, feedback is immediate. In tennis, you're either going to serve into the front court or it's out. It's that simple. It's immediate feedback, right?

Yeah.

So when Michael's tone changes, that's immediate feedback. I know in real time, how am I doing? My attention doesn't wander. It's right there. So I always talk about, in flow for writers especially, determining exactly what is your minimal feedback for flow, because this is something people screw up a lot, right? I'm sure you've seen this a lot where they don't— where they just give me your feedback. I'm open to feedback. Well, no, you're really not.

No, no.

You want very, very specific things, and you gotta, through trial and error, essentially working with— I always say get a feedback buddy if you can't, if you're not getting the kind of feedback you want at work, if it's quarterly reports or annual reports, and that's not the kind of feedback you need for, for flow. You need sort of regular feedback. Find a feedback buddy and set really clear rules. When you talk about setting rules for feedback buddies, what do you talk about, Tori?

So first of all, I mean, the who is very important, right? So who— and this is something that Michael Gervais talks about in his recent book as well, right? So actually having kind of a roundtable of trusted advisors or people whose opinions you actually give a shit about, right? So, and I think that you need to— that's going to be individual in terms of what criteria does a person need to kind of check the boxes for to be able to sit at that table for you. That should be, I think, based on how they communicate, your trust in their experience, their perspectives, maybe their domain knowledge as well. But I also think that, you know, staying true to one of our central tenets of Zero to Dangerous, right? We always want to separate strategy from execution. So once you've selected your feedback buddy, also, what, what pieces of feedback do you actually care about? How can you filter out the noise so that you have a true signal that's going to direct performance and help you get into flow?

And I think it's also, it's worth emphasizing here, even if you get that roundtable right, feedback. It's a huge— this is skill that you get better at over time. And one of the things writers— this is something I've always done. It was interesting. I just read a wonderful book on being a novelist, and he says the exact same— he makes the exact same point. So when you're writing, very often I always say if a reader— forget even an editor, just a reader— somebody asks, has a comment about a paragraph or they don't like this line or this paragraph, I always say, you definitely have to rewrite that line in that paragraph. Something's wrong there. Chances are it's not what they think is wrong.

Yeah.

So I don't trust their opinion at the why at all, but I trust that they got kicked out of the book at that point and pointed and said, something's broken here. I had a bad time as a reader. That's essentially what that That is, right?

And I think, and I just think that that speaks though to your experience in learning how to leverage feedback effectively, right? That the fact that they didn't like it is the important data point, not that you have to, you know, exactly to the letter fix the thing. It's, I need to be curious now about this. There's probably an opportunity.

Different people. So. If I go to my wife for a book read, no matter what else is true about the book, I'm going to get a feminist critique because that's my wife. There's a part of her brain that reads from that perspective, and she's going to speak to me from that perspective no matter what. And it may have nothing to do with what I'm doing, and I may not need that at all. So I have to like You know what I mean? And so I filter that out. It's gonna come anyways, but I've worked with her for long enough to go, okay, this is her thing. It's very important to her. She's certainly gonna talk about it cuz she can't not, but that I, this is the chunk that I don't have to really pay it, worry about that much. I have to pay attention to the other, right? Those sorts of things. That is, I, again, that comes with a lot of time.

That comes with practice, which, um, But I think that, I think that if you do the work, the strategy work ahead of time, when you're thinking about how, who do I want feedback from and what type of feedback am I looking for? What are the gaps I'm trying to fill? What, what data do I need to collect from them to feel more confident in what I'm doing or, you know, help shine a light on maybe what I'm missing, et cetera. I think that setting up that criteria in advance will help you filter out what you don't want. And it's okay if it's not perfect the first time around, but it's going to give you something to anchor off of and recalibrate as you, as you practice. I think leveraging feedback super effectively.

Yeah, I completely agree. I completely agree. And thinking about it ahead of time, the only thing, the only thing I get worried about a little bit is the functional fixatedness with that where you've set up standards for feedback and so you fixate on those particular things. And you miss the things, things slightly around it. So I think you want to set up those, those filters, but you have to be a little open to interpretation because otherwise you could anchor too much off of them and it could end up becoming a blind spot.

I think that's super fair. I think that's a great insight. And perhaps I would add to my maybe feedback system a debrief question of what feedback came across that was surprising, or how can I be curious about the feedback that maybe wasn't part of my criteria, and do I need to recalibrate in any way or add that? Right. So you don't—

Yeah, it's one of the— I mean, it's the difficulty with systems is once something's outside your system, you no longer pay attention to it. Yeah, right. So I think it's always important when you're setting up systems, even if they're flow feedback systems, to just put— to protect against, against, against the systems you're creating in a sense.

Yep. Yeah, I think that debrief question would take care of that so that you don't get too fixed and married to it. Yeah. So before we jump into some of the neurobiology behind social connection and how it fuels flow, I also just, I want to, something that we didn't kind of touch on that I want to is that your role as a writer, many people think that you're creating something from a solo perspective, but your relationship with Michael really highlights that many effective solo creators have created a cooperative or a network of people. So it's, it's still, even, even in an individual creative pursuit, there is collaboration that's happening behind the scenes where group flow can play that I think a lot of people miss out on or underestimate. Wouldn't you agree?

I think that's true, but I don't think it's just, I think it's very true for creatives. I also think it's true. In entrepreneurship.

Sure.

So creatives and founders, which are two incredibly challenging endeavors, right? Both endeavors, you're creating something from nothing. They're very similar. There's a lot of overlap. Trying to figure out how to get paid as a creative, as an entrepreneur, it's a startup. You're creating a startup. It's a startup of one maybe, But it's the same kind of game. But I think what happens in both scenarios is it helps to have a healthy ego. You're going to take a lot of blows. You're going to get knocked down. You need a healthy ego. I think that's a part of it. The thing is, I think people get hung up, especially, Sue, with creators, the point you made. I learned a really long time ago that I needed a lot of feedback for my writing. I can write really fast. I can write really, really well. But the difference between having a reader read my stuff, Michael, who I paid for a very long time to read my stuff twice a week and give me feedback two different weeks, and not having somebody like that, I'm 5% as productive. It's— I mean, it's a huge, huge blow because I start getting confused in this hall of mirrors of where I am and what I'm— what am I doing, that sort of thing. So I realized it was a collaborative effort, but I also It's not— it's a collaborative effort. When I'm writing a book, I'm collaborating with a whole lot of people. I'm collaborating with, like, my wife who's feeding me and taking care of the dog. Like, you know, I do this in partnership with a family who loves me and, you know, picks me up when I fall down. And, you know, there's all— there's all that stuff. I also think I'm in this historical partnership with anybody who's ever written a book that's sort of— that I'm drawing from stylistically, or I'm drawing on their information, right? I don't— it's— I'm— however I think about my brain and the thinking I'm doing and the problems I'm trying to solve, I'm somewhere in a tradition and I'm reading other writers or I'm doing science and I'm reading other thinkers and other scientists. And, you know, in science, it's very clear that you're part of a tradition because it's, it's cumulative and there's a bunch of names on the science paper, right? When I write a novel, there's one name on the novel, but it doesn't change the fact that I've read all those same scientists or whatever. Right. So it's a very much a collaborative effort, both in time with people I know, out of time with people I don't know, you know, that sort of stuff. And I just, I think it's helpful to remember, uh, I find that it's helpful to remember that because it keeps my ego in check a little bit, but I also think it helps me sort of frame up what it is that I'm trying to do. It doesn't— I'm not blinded by it.

I think so. I think that your point that it's not just true for creatives but entrepreneurs as well is massive because I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs come to FRC for training and they have this belief that as solopreneurs they haven't scaled up to have a team just yet, that they have to do it all on their own and they're desperately underestimating the power of feedback and the need for feedback, because feedback plays an absolutely crucial role in innovation, right? Keith Sawyer talks about it in his book Group Genius, that innovation takes time. It's incremental, and we are much, much better at it when we're doing it with other people, right? Because that's— you have no one to yes and with if you're just trying to do it all by yourself. And that yes and component of having to build upon someone's idea, it expands that belief spotlight of what's possible. Progresses the idea until it's something successful. And I think trying to do that on your own is such a detriment and it massively slows down progress. So finding people that are going to do that with you, even if they're not on the payroll yet, vital.

I think that's very, very true. I also, there's an inverse here, um, uh, which is, you know, in peak performance in general, forget, forget flow for a second. People, the role of other people is so crucial from a, you know, blockers to peak performance to additives to peak performance. You don't even have to go anywhere near group flow to get there. And I, you know, I'll put out, let's go on the flow blocker side. Um, because this is some weird, uh, not weirder, but like quieter stuff that people don't think about. But again, it came out of that recent Karina Pfeiffer paper and it just popped at me. Keith Sawyer, who you just mentioned, talked a little bit about a version of this, but they were talking about how in a startup, one of the largest blockers to flow, team flow and individual flow, was people who had— who were working at different paces, right? You've got somebody on the team who's slow, you've got a bunch of people who are really, really quick. And, um, and I'm sympathetic to this because I am somebody— I always say that I am Uh, if you want me to solve a problem for you, I have to sleep on it. Like, I'm not, I'm the wrong guy to like come to in the room and expect me to solve it instantly. That's not how my brain works. That's not how I solve a problem. So I absolutely have to sleep on it overnight kind of thing. And so I've been on both sides of this. I've been somebody who's dragging the team down, and I've also been somebody kind of chomping at the bit waiting for the team to catch up to me. And both sides are really, really complicated. And I found it really just interesting that of the things that, that, you know, when in their look at Founders Flow and in talking to 21 different startups, this was one of the 3 or 4 things they highlighted as really critical. And, you know, as you pointed out earlier today, Keith Sawyer has a version of this, right?

Yeah. And I think that what that speaks to, what I fear, that, that is that high skill integration, right? Everybody has to be coming in at Ideally, everyone is contributing in an equal way in order to access team flow. So, I mean, off the top of your head, what do you think that means? I mean, you're, you're the leader of an organization. What does that mean when you're recruiting and bringing in team members? How do you think about this?

Yeah, this is one of the— this is skills integration is one of the most challenging things. And, um, and it's interesting. So, you know, in working with like the Navy SEALs, an organization we both worked with, they solved this by spending years drilling the same skills into the— drilling skills into teams. And, um, they— because they can't do their job without group flow, it's foundational to, to how kind of elite, uh, special operators function. But this is— they solve for this by overtraining everybody at a ridiculous level. Well, which is interesting because you really— it's a— this is a real challenge with companies where you have high turnover, you're bringing in new people and you need this tight group that's all functioning at the same skill level. And suddenly you have to onboard new members. And I'll give you an example. Right now we're looking at this. We've been doing a bunch of research, as you know, into flow in emergency medicine and emergency rooms and So this is surgeons. You have young nurses, young doctors, interns on the team, and suddenly there's somebody there who's literally there to learn and perform and help, but they don't have the skill level of everybody else on the team. And big challenge. And they, you know, and they've got all kinds of systems and structures in place to solve this challenge. Um, whereas companies, they don't even think about it, right? They don't have long internship programs. You don't go to med school and volunteer at your company for 2 years. You just get thrown in. And I mean, we do it too, right? Yeah, I, I— it's really funny. Um, Ryan Wicks, my chief of staff, and who's on this podcast a lot, I've heard him do this, but he'll talk about people coming into FRC, joining the company, And he'll— first thing he says is, look, it's not for everybody. We go really fast. If you don't want to move that fast, you don't want to work here. It'll— you'll go crazy. Yeah, it won't be a fit. Right. And we know— we know this at all. And the company itself will just like sort of kick you out.

Right.

Because— because, you know, that lack of speed blocks team flow. And, you know, everybody here is really sensitive to that. But I don't—

Stephen, just so you know, my— when I'm recruiting new coaches, I say if a relentless pursuit of excellence, if that phrase doesn't immediately excite you, if it makes you a little bit nervous, this is probably not the place for you.

Yeah, it's probably—

keep it moving. Yeah. Well, so I just think that this is a great point and I think that it speaks to a few different things. If you're the leader of an organization and you want to be mindful of high skill integration because you want your team in flow, I think that you need to be thinking about a few different things. First of all, recruitment, right? So hiring with, you know, what we call in Forever Dangerous batteries included for the most important thing. People that you're recruiting should have done the most important thing you need them to be doing coming in. Maybe not all of the things you need them to do, but the most important thing. And then I also think that there's just this tendency for when people, when people get onboarded, it's like, well, there's this super long onboarding process where people have to learn where all the things are. And get acclimated to all the people. And right, I think that in order to expedite team flow, to really navigate folks to that high-skill integration, we, we want to, as leaders, train people on just the top 1 to 3 most important functions of their job where they can start to integrate with the team, focus their lens on those rather than let them get dispersed. And then as the leader, give them really tactical feedback on those things specifically, right? So they can get deliberate practice, get reps in and calibrate to the team as rapidly as possible. Worry about the less important, more tertiary things later. Otherwise they won't stick around, right?

I think that, I think, yeah, I think that's an excellent point. I completely agree with it. The only, the yes and that I have is people can be macroscopic learners or microscopic learners. Microscopic learners want all the individual details and then they build that up into the big picture. Macroscopic learners, you've got to give them the big picture first. And then all the little details of the ornaments. And I'm a macroscopic learner, so I'm sensitive to this. And school is built microscopic to macroscopic, not macroscopic to microscopic. And so I was completely backwards in school and I was lost forever until I could basically be in charge of my own learning. But the only thing I agree with is it's also worth for the macroscopic learners, just giving them the big picture of the organization and how it all slots in. But yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think you want to, you know, you want to microfocus people in that way. And I also think it's if you're trying to onboard something like culture and values and things like that, you want to give people like, here's a really small task and I need you to perform this task in alignment with this culture, these values, like all that stuff. It's a lot easier. People talk a lot about how culture is one of the hardest things through in a company and how do you do culture and that sort of thing. And one of the things I think they go wrong with is right here, right, is your point that they give them too much to do. And one of the reasons that you can focus people on a couple of tasks is you can teach them to do it in sort of a very specific way. This is, by the way, like, it's funny to use— the military does this in how you make your bed, right? Like, that's— things like that. That's where, you know, that's where these, these lessons are conveyed in the, like, most basic, this is the stuff you do every day kind of way. That's where those sort of values get instilled. And I'm not saying we want to run our companies like boot camps. I know who would stick around. But I am saying there's a, there's a logic to that. There's a reason for that.

I couldn't agree with you more. When, when I'm coaching leaders on recruitment strategy, I always coach to hire first for mission values alignment, then experience. Right. So and I think that what you're speaking to is that's going to— that, that assessment whether it's a trial task, whether it's questions that you ask in an interview, is going to— they're going to look and feel a little bit different depending on the flavor of your organization. But I think that it's really, really important to be thinking about because without that mission values and then skills alignment, you're going to be locked out of team flow. You're not going to have someone in the seat that's intrinsically motivated to perform on the team and, and do their role on the team. So look, I think we were just talking about one of the conditions for group flow with high skill integration, and we've talked a little bit about how some of that high skill integration is reliant on how people are being given feedback, right? Given feedback to actually elevate their skills to become integrated in the group. So I think we have to talk a little bit, and I'm a little nervous to even throw this out there with you, but I think we need to talk about one of the buzzwords. It's also precondition for, for group flow, which is psychological safety. And I know how much you love all things safety related. So what are your thoughts on psychological safety and team flow?

So I love what is sort of meant by psychological safety. I think that the term is trying to do a lot of good in the world. It really is.

Yeah.

And, but I think it's challenging for a number of different reasons. And let me start at the most basic, which is so much of whether or not I'm going to have a fearful, anxious, angry, etc. reaction to another human being has to do with my nervous system and where I'm at. And have I been managing my nervous system? And am I doing breathwork? Am I doing a regular gratitude practice? Am I exercising regularly? Is— do I have an active recovery strategy? Have I doubled down on my primary flow activity? Right. Have I maintained robust social connection? These are all the things that you have to do to manicure your nervous system to feel safe. Right. This is what I have to do individually to feel safe. And one of the things I think with psychological safety is that people don't like how they feel on the inside. And so they want to blame the organization. They want to blame the people around them rather than saying, hey, wait a minute, so much of this, not all of it, right? But so much of this is on me. That's the first thing I think you have to sort of talk about. When it comes to psychological safety. The second is a flow point that I think is worth bringing up, which is when we talk about individual flow triggers, we always talk about the challenge-skills balance as the most important trigger. And what the challenge-skills balance tells us is we're going to maximize flow when we're really stretching our skills. Right? So I always say that You know, if you want to do this work on a regular basis, make flow reliable and repeatable, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is I'm unsafe. I don't feel safe. I'm taking risks. I'm scared. So a high-flow environment is perhaps not always an environment that's going to make me feel safe. Now, it's not exactly what people mean by psychological safety. They mean slightly different things. And I, and I get that. But I'm also saying most people aren't that subtle. They're going to feel unsafe, uncomfortable at work, and they're not going to be able to tease it apart that well. And I, I think those two things make the idea of psychological safety challenging. And let me give you a third, because we just talked about it. High skill integration is also really challenging here. Because a lot of the psychological safety means you want— like, it can be interpreted to mean that employees don't want harsh feedback, want to be coddled, want to— and for companies that are trying to do this, you're saying don't give harsh feedback, you're saying treat employees in a specific way. And is that exactly right for a high-flow environment? And Though these are, these are tricky, complicated questions that are going to be much further impacted by your organizational culture as well and what your, what your baseline is and sort of what, what kind of people do you get to work with and those sorts of questions. So I think it's a really important discussion, but I often, I think it's, it's not well nuanced and sorry for the long answer. I've got one more thing I want to add, which is—

I knew you were going to feel passionately about this.

I do. You know, you know this as well as I do. Um, just about the worst thing you could possibly have for performance, for peak high-quality performance, for peak performance, is a victim mindset, because it gives up your locus of control. You're saying, okay, I'm no longer in control of my life. Other, other, other things are charge of it. That's an external locus of control. And once you've done that, your brain won't even like get fired up to meet challenges. It says, oh no, no, you can't control that. Don't— I'm not even going to bother wasting the energy to get up for that fight. Right. It's the same problem with a— it's like a growth mindset. It's the same. It's the same issue. Right. Well, you stop learning from your mistakes. All the— all— they're just a performance disaster. So I don't know how to emphasize psychological safety in the way that people want to emphasize, even though I'm very much in favor of it. Right. I don't—

sure.

I don't want anybody feeling unsafe in my organization or any other organization. I don't, you know, and I'm really— I mean, you've seen this already in me. Like, I'm not nice to bullies. Right. If I like what— like when there are people who have, you know, gotten into the company who are not treating other people well, they're— I think it bounces through them really quickly. And I'm really sensitive to stuff like that. I think— try to be. But it's challenging from a peak performance perspective. And I don't— in this huge HR discussion about psychological safety that has sort of erupted over the past couple of years post-COVID, I think there's a lot of blind spots in this discussion. I think that, you know, I think we're— we have very, very good intentions that are often completely ignorant of human biology.

So I completely agree with you, and I'm glad that you're, you're highlighting this because I think that— I think that we've gotten pulled into this conversation about psychological safety and have only focused on the leadership in the room. And the way I'm hearing you, I still think that that's incredibly important, what the leaders are doing in the room. But I also think that it's vital to think about how everyone else is showing up in the room as well. There's an individual responsibility as well as an organizational responsibility in the cultivation of psychological safety. And so I absolutely agree that if you are coming into a meeting outside of your optimal window of activation, you're underslept, you've had a crappy day, you've got relationship problems going on, it is likely— I think you are at risk to feel unsafe in that interaction. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I, I jokingly, but like, you know, anybody, my wife, you, and if I'm feeling all those things and you call me and you put one more thing on my plate, Stephen, I gotta talk to you for 5 minutes, a really quick problem. I, I may be totally overloaded and now like you're at fault. And because I'm very susceptible to time stress. Yeah. So that could massively overload me and make me feel really unsafe and You know?

Yeah. And I'm hearing two opportunities here. Number one is self-regulation. So having those techniques to, one, be aware that you're outside of that window of activation and regulate yourself back into it using breathing, meditation, wall staring, whatever your special flavor is for downregulation. But I also think it's worth talking about something that, again, Michael Gervais talks about in his book too, which is kind of the internal narratives and stories that have embedded themselves within us, oftentimes from a very early age, that filter how we receive feedback.

It's not just feedback, because if you go into— if you just— Keith Sawyer's group flow triggers, open communication, right? Another one. And that shows up in team flow triggers as well. The more modern interpretation of the facts. And I think this is true there as well. I think that you want to work in high-challenge environments if you can for flow. Sure. But you also have to realize that people are going to say stuff, you're going to react to it, and you're not— two points. One, it's one I like to make, which is And it's what struck me so strongly about Mike Gervais' book about other people's opinions. And we talked a little bit about this on that podcast. When you have a voice in your head, right, that's based on other people's opinions, it's time locked to when, like, you were solving that problem. Like when I first read Mike's book and I said this on the podcast, which, you know, is basically about like neutralizing other people's opinions, I was like, well, I care about other people's opinions of a punk rock You know, kid, I've always done my own thing. I've gone my own blah, blah, blah. I like, I'm Teflon. You can't, you can't touch me. And then I realized he wasn't talking to me as an adult. He was talking to like me as a scared 12-year-old kid where it was like unsafe at school and unsafe at home. And at that point, other people's opinions were like the key to not getting my ass kicked. So I cared a great deal about other people's opinions. And so the voice in my head that's reacting to other people's opinions is not Steven, present tense, 56-year-old adult. It's 12-year-old terrified Steven. And I'm confused because the voice in my head doesn't change. Same voice, right? But literally, like, I'm listening to a 12-year-old who hasn't bothered to update any of his beliefs since age 12. And, you know, that's that particular social phobia. And then there's another particular social phobia that's time-locked to 17 or 21. All right. And there's a— there's essentially a cacophony of these older voices in my head that I don't— the time, the fact that they're time-locked and they're older versions of me, that's all invisible to me. I just hear the inner narrative and think I'm making logical sense. You were talking once about the advantage of journaling here, just sort of like writing down what the inner critic is saying so you can just look at it and how shocked most people are when they see it, right?

Yeah, exactly. So I think that so many people, that internal narrative they just take as truth. And I think number one, the recognition that that internal narrator is often shaped in much earlier chapters of our lives and therefore is not a particularly reliable voice.

Not reliable. Exactly.

I don't know about you, but I'm probably not taking advice from 12-year-old Steven. Like, probably not great, great suggestions. So this is a good way to stay alive or in business or have like, yeah, so many broken bones. But so the exercise I usually run with folks is get it out of your head first. When these limiting beliefs come up, when you recognize that you're being closed off to feedback, that you're not entering into these team or collaborative spaces in this more open way, that's really blocking team flow and collaboration, start to get some of those beliefs and thoughts on paper. It creates space so you can more objectively analyze it because it's usually coming from an emotional and therefore more primitive part of your brain. Getting it on paper is gonna allow you to bring logic back to the party. And really, you know, first of all, a lot of times it's like, that's actually not realistic at all. That's not grounded in reality. That's trash. And I could keep it moving. Or there's some important data here that I can tactically start to challenge, right? I can collect data to, to actually dispel these notions and then, uh, come back to the table in a much more open, more curious way.

I'll give you something else that I, I always find is, this is Ellen Langer, uh, who, uh, who will be on our podcast next month, talks about this in and around, uh, habits. And I think it's true around interpersonal habits. One of the things she says is that every time you notice yourself sort of in a habit doing something habitually, which we do all the time in how we relate to other people. She says, just notice 3 new things that you haven't seen before, which sort of breaks you out of that habit space a little bit. It makes you look at things slightly outside and allows you to realize, oh, I'm running a program. Do I— is this the right program or do I want to change the program?

It's that pattern. Pattern.

It's that pattern recognition of— and it's easier to train this up individually when you're dealing with, like, you know, solo stuff. But I've found it very, very useful, um, because a lot of my worst habits are interpersonal habits, right? Old habits, my family habits, in my marriage habits, in work, you know, things that I've been doing a really, really, really long time. And maybe they were effective for some version of me that was 25 or in that situation, but probably no longer effective. So I find kind of practicing noticing the habitual behavior, like when other people are around, is very useful for me.

I think that's an unlocking move. I mean, that's something when I talk to, you know, leadership teams and I ask them what are some of the biggest challenges, they're almost always related to people. People are hard. And I think that recognizing what you're bringing to the table that's making it harder is step one, right? So I want to segue, though, to Now that we talked about what we're bringing to the table, how do we actually structure feedback in a way that people can use? This is something I get asked by leaders all the time, how to effectively design one-on-ones with their team. What are things that they should like really focus on to promote peak performance? What, what do you think about that? What are some areas of focus that you'd recommend?

So one, like especially one-on-one, and so I'm coming off of one-on-one. You said one-on-one. This could, could be 2-on-1, but I always, I want to start really, really simple. One, autonomy. Really, you want to wall the conversation off from the rest of the world. First things first, right? People are so sensitive to other people's opinions. So if you have to say anything hard, right, in that way, it's— nobody else is around, right? You need that autonomy. Need that isolation. This is true for stimulating creativity in a skunkworks. It's certainly true for giving feedback. And it's also— you want it for focus, right? Again, this is— leaders ask this question as if like the answer was about the kind of feedback they were going to give, rather than the really simple stuff like create an environment where you can focus entirely on the person you're with so they know you like give a shit about them, right? Wall the conversation off from the rest of the world. Like really simple stuff. I see, you know, like, come into my office, right? You know, and they come in, the door is open, and you suddenly, you know, giving people harsh feedback. People are walking like, that is not— like, this is stupid stuff. But I see leaders and companies make these mistakes over and over and over again, right? They did. They get the really stupid stuff wrong. The other— the couple inverses here, again, on the, like, really simple basic stuff. What we know from studies of group flow is that in leadership, leaders in flow drive their teams into flow. This is true individually. This is right, interpersonal flow. So one, there is, this is a, this is for leaders. If you're not regularly getting into flow and leading that way, I, you know, should you be giving feedback? You know what I mean? Like, I know you have to, but like, there's something to be said there. And the other thing that is, I think. Equally important and the most important thing in all cases. So, you know, leaders in flow drive teams into flow, and there's an inverse, which is passive-aggressive leaders drive teams into burnout. And so the problem with feedback is you have to be— consistency matters, right? You can't move the goalposts. You have to know exactly what you want. You know what— need to know what a win looks like. All those things really, really matter. Because if you come off as a passive-aggressive leader who's doing any of those issues, you're going to burn your team out. So it's not— feedback done the wrong way can be really, really problematic because you can— it leads right into burnout. So I always— I think about those things more than anything else. Autonomy, isolation. Which is sort of just about respect and dignity at a certain level. Um, leaders in flow drive teams into flow. So, um, if this will also tell you, like, if you're scared giving feedback, if you're not— like, if this can't be a flowy experience for you, possibly problematic.

Truly. And I mean, I think that this is just highlighting the importance of feedback is a major— if, if done correctly, right? It can promote flow across your organization, but it also can be a blocker if you've done it in the wrong way, right? So I think creating that container. I also, I wanna double-click on, you were talking about, um, you know, avoiding moving the goalpost. I think having a very clear definition of what successful looks like for your team members and giving feedback based on those specific targets, that's how you drive dopamine into the task. You know, make it winnable for people, give them a clear finish line. And then give them feedback so that they can calibrate and avoid drift on the way to that finish line as much as possible. I think just one other thing, um, that I would add to that, that, and maybe this is in a monthly or quarterly one-on-one with a team member, but being ultra clear with them about how their personal goals align with the team goals, right? Giving them that sense of mastery. There's also autonomy in there. Um, I think that that's how just being, giving people pristine clarity around how their skills, their experiences are being leveraged in pursuit of the team goal and also how it's contributing to their development and progress as a human as well is how you're just, you're going to, I think, align all of those intrinsic motivators and again, promote flow individually and at a team level. So Stephen, we've been talking a lot about social relationships, flow. In your mind here, what's kind of the overall moral of this story about this relationship?

There is one big moral, but I— there's a couple ideas that come to mind when you, when you ask a question like that. One, people are both the largest flow blocker and the largest flow up— other people— and the largest flow— other flow opportunity. And that's really, really neat. And so with that said, How do you distill that down into something actionable? And I always go back to Keith Sawyer's work and kind of the most important group flow trick, which is yes and, right? Yes and says, I'm not going to, you know, you can criticize when you're playing yes and games. I can say, Tori, you know, I didn't like 80% of what you just said, but this one idea is fantastic and you're yes. Let's build on that, right? Yeah, you can do that a little bit, but I What is difficult, and I think this is really true for leaders when playing yes-and games, is it feels like you're giving up control and you're giving up power. And, um, that can be tricky. And you certainly don't want to play yes-and games if you don't sort of know where you're going, right? With vague targets, it gets a little more complicated. But there's something really amazing about playing those kinds of yes-and games because they're so One, they're way more fun. They generate way more dopamine, endorphins, all the, all the pro-social neurochemistry. But I don't— the way I talk about it is it feels like you're giving up power, and yet you actually maintain way more control. And it's because it's from a simply like mercenary perspective, it's much easier to steer people when everybody wants to come along on the ride, right? It's really hard. It's really hard to steer the boat when people are like, no, no, I want to go to Paris. I want to go to England. I want to go to Detroit. No, no, we're all going to Cleveland. But you're right. I don't want to go to Cleveland. I don't blame you. I love Cleveland. Go Browns. That's the thing. And I see this a lot interpersonally. More so than companies, I see it like people don't want to play yes and games with their spouses because they're really scared to give up that kind of control. Right. They're really worried about what could happen. And it's so funny that when you, you know, in an interpersonal level, there's so much actual— you actually can steer your relationships so much better that way is what I've found. but that's another one of these things like, like feedback where you, you, you only learn that through playing these games and practicing it.

I love that. I love that. I think that you're exactly right. When everyone is excited about getting on the boat and paddling in the same direction towards the same location or thrilled about, you know, getting to that destination, everyone's happier. You're more likely to get there. Um, so I think it's about what do we need to do to create that environment. It's, you know, picking the right people to get on the boat in the first place, making sure they're aligned, making sure their paddling skills are well integrated, etc. And then I think, so it's not, but I want to emphasize here, it's not just about creating that team environment. It's also, as the leader, becoming really aware of the stories that are maybe preventing you from giving up that control. So I think the work, the work is in for the individual and the group, right?

Yeah. And that's the individual responsibility in group dynamics is the thing that gets missed a lot. And I think if there was a moral to our today's conversation, I think that's the moral, is that the individual responsibility in those group conversations.

Agreed. Well, Stephen, I know that we could probably make this about 5 more hours at least. We'll spare the audience. Maybe we'll break it up. Uh, so I just wanna say thanks. Thanks for hanging with me talking TV.

Thanks for hanging with me, Tori. This was super fun.