Taming Ego and Leading with Empathy in the Corporate Jungle

High Stakes

You sit back down in your comfy boardroom chair after giving a big presentation on a project you’ve been working on for the past 3 months.

You’re with senior leaders and key stakeholders. And you nailed it. You remain cool and collected, but just under the surface your beaming with pride.

One of the key leaders begins to speak up. You’re sure they are about to sing your praises and shower you with complements…

What comes next sparks a total chemical highjacking of your rational mind.

“Thanks for the presentation…

The overall flow was good, but here are a few things I was hoping to see and was expecting from you in this project…”

Your leader proceeds to read you a list of shortcomings they observed in the work you have done for the company. Depending on the person this comes either gently or like a hurricane – either way, your interpretation is that you missed the mark…”

Fight or…

Your blood starts to boil.

You feel you are being falsely accused of an egregious crime.

Immediately your mind flips into high gear, thinking of all of the ways that leader failed to support you during your project.

“if you had only supported me with this initiative…

if you had only given me feedback at this point…

if you had only paid more attention when giving me approval here…”

And you, yes you, have already lost.

Building Our Walls of Jericho

The paradox is that we justify this animalistic reaction as self defense – building a wall of evidence that will keep the bad guy out…

In reality, we’re building a wall around ourselves – blocking the paths to transparent and productive exchanges.

A ‘quicksand’ moment.

Our primal reaction when sinking in quicksand is immediate: fight or flight. Do whatever I can to escape the danger. Kicking and flailing our intention is to protect ourselves by getting out of as fast as possible. Of course we all know this is counter intuitive to survival. Instead, taking a deep breath, remaining calm and resisting the urge to get our guard up is the first key to our best shot at getting out alive.

Despite feeling the fight or flight blood pumping when you receive challenging feedback, it is our mindfulness to remain calm, open and receptive that opens to door to managing a successful exchange.

Photo credit: Mikael Kristenson

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Bigger Than the Moment

And this isn’t just a ‘white-collar in-the-boardroom self-preservation-survival-strategy’.

The mindfulness you summon will actually change the trajectory of your learning, your relationships, and ultimately your ability to shine as a leader in your community.

By receiving criticism without acting on the gut-reaction to defend we are able to separate the emotional-humanistic nature to fight from the empathy we possess to learn from each other and  every experience life offers.

Leveraging this empathy in the moment of truth gives us the lens to justify criticism as a way to learn, grow or observe versus a feeling the burden of a personal attack.

This provides us the opportunity to remain rational and collected, but more importantly it disconnects us from the negative storytelling pattern of resentment our egos would happily have us settle into with the primal threat in question.

Next Time, Keep in Mind

There is a thread of animal and a thread of empathy pulsing through every conversation…

Which are you choosing to embrace?

Are you building up walls and locking yourself down, or opening up your arms accepting of a new opportunity to grow?

I hope to see you on the other side.

image credit: elizabeth lies

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    Sometimes I think we overcomplicate things in life. I find that when I live in tune with the hypothesis below, I am happy, fulfilled and feeling as if I’m doing my best work in the world. 

    I am at my best when striving towards a pursuit that intrinsically motivates me, is aligned with my values in life and challenges me beyond my comfort zone. 

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    How We Learn: The Present and the Future 

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    Had I not spent the time to intentionally sit down and think, reflect, journal, meditate and mentally deconstruct my experience – that learning and growth would remain trapped in my subconscious and eventually lost. 

    In a world that increasingly is too distracted, addicted to devices, ego driven, and without foundational framework or guide for living – we are losing sight of the art of learning. 

    Now let’s take a look at what we’ve learnt from the science. 

    Learning and The Conscious Brain

    Our brain’s are incredible. 

    They are the reason we are here, standing upright, talking with others, and the dominant species on this planet. The brain has adapted and evolved over millions of years to help us thrive in this world. 

    Kevin Simlar and Robert Hanson, authors of “The Elephant in the Brain” make an argument that it is in fact this very ability to learn “post-experience” that has differentiated us from all other species on this planet. As we developed this capability  hundreds of thousands of years ago to store and analyze past experiences we could update our set of actions to better optimize for survival. More on this shortly. 

    The facilitator of this capability for conscious thought and decision making is called our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). Whenever you are engaged in active thought — focusing on a new task, considering a set of decisions —  this is your PFC at work. Unbeknownst to us, our brains have already done a lot of work in the milliseconds leading up to us forming a conscious thought. The main task is the parsing and prioritizing of millions of raw data points being collected by our brain via the brain stem at any given point in time. Before that conscious thought takes place our brain has already culled and stored 90% of the data it received and formatted the remaining 10% for our conscious processing in the PFC. 

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    how to learn through reflection

    So, what happens to the 90% of information we don’t consciously get access to?

    Accessing the Iceberg of our Subconscious

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    Reflection & Inquiry

    While we are only just beginning to understand the neuroscience of our brain’s processing of subconscious information, we have intuitively known the art of reflection tens of thousands of years how to access this information. The answer is simple and as a result is often overlooked.

    Pause. Be still. 

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    Find Flow. 

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    Reflect. Inquire.

    Slowing down, stillness, a quiet mind

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    Non-Performance Flow States

    Finding ‘Flow States’, or more specifically the act of being fully immersed and focused on a task that is intrinsically motivating, engaging, challenging and rewarding is another way to stimulate our subconscious processing. Inherently, Flow States are partially subconscious by nature (to access a Flow State you must have practiced the activity enough for our brain to have laid some “unconsciously competent” neural wiring) and don’t need to be performing a sport at an Olympic level. For example the walk described above (walking and general navigation being two of the activities with “unconsciously competent” wiring — can provide the right person with a Flow state). When it comes to using Flow States as a vehicle for subconscious processing I think it’s important to make the distinction between Performance Flow (intentionally using Flow to access a Peak Performance state) and Non-Performance Flow (fully immersed and engaged in an activity without the intention or requirement of Peak Performance). 

    Sleep 

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    Reflection & Inquiry  

    Iceberg metaphor as it relates to conscious and unconscious learnings

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    Where to from here?

    If you want some help establishing your foundation, upon which you are able to jump into the Deep End, I would recommend taking some time completing this free Human Performance Assessment I have developed as part of the Human Performance Project. 

    Once your direction is set and you are up the High Dive or off into the Deep End, it’s important to build in intentional reflection time at different periods. 

     



     

    I founded The Human Performance Project to equip humans, teams, and groups with the roadmap and tools required to pursue audacious goals, dreams and aspirations in the Deep End of life.

    You can learn more about this work here.

     

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