G. Cole, founder of Pathwaves. Pathwaves is a realization of over a decade spent mapping studying and balancing brainwave activity with more than 16,000 sessions. And over a million minutes of brainwave recordings to his credit, G is among the world's foremost brainwave experts. He's also the creator of Neuroempowerment, a pioneering science that balances the mind and body empowering people to take control of each day and live consciously in the present. G earned a certification in neurotechnology in 2008, he's trained as a psychological counselor under the direction of Dr. Francis Flynn, Doctor of Psychology, and provided lifestyle and healthy living coaching since 1997. G founded Neuroempowerment through the Pathwaves protocol. He helps you create intentional outcomes and take control by forming new empowered patterns to transform your life at Pathwaves, they spent over a decade fine-tuning, how to use your own synopsis to improve performance. It ends suffering from depression, anxiety, sleep issues, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and more. G's website is https://pathwaveslife.com/

Brain Hacks 4 Leadership

Shifting from survival to thrival through Neuroempowerment with G. Cole, E:17

Neuroscience of Decision Making with Dr. Bill Crawford, E:16

Tapping into the Power of Vision to Achieve the Life & Business You Want with Dr. Tamsin Astor, E:15

Stepping Forward Into Growth - In Spite of Fear - E14

ROI of Coaching as part of your Leadership Development Strategy with Dr. Ellen Van Oosten - E13

From Overwhelm to Under Control! with Josh Davis, PhD & Author of Two Awesome Hours, E:12

Becoming a Resilient Leader at Work and Home– Strategies from Dr. Jennifer Savitski, E:11

Hack your Creativity to become more Innovative and Agile with Dagný Valgeirsdóttir, PhD, E:10

If you want to have a more confident leadership presence, improve your ability to handle conflict, make better decisions, be a more confident speaker and become a better listener – start focusing on your breathing.  About my Guest: Jim Smith, PCC, The Executive Happiness Coach®, is a global executive coach, author, speaker, and change strategist.  Jim’s passion is to create a Happier world and workplace, one Leader at a time. Jim has coached leaders from 30 countries and six continents to build greater leadership effectiveness and presence. He is a co-founder and past president of ICF Cleveland, and serves as a Mentor coach for two coaching schools in the US and Singapore. Jim lives in a multi-generational compound and dances a little every day; he worships Dark Coffee, Dark Beer, and Dark Chocolate... and deeply believes that Happiness is a Decision, not an Event! Podcast Transcript: Jim, thank you so much for joining us today and really looking forward to hearing more about your topic. So tell me a little bit about the brain science behind the hack that we're going to share with us. The brain science is about creating neural patterns in your brain, which I'm sure you're hearing from a lot of folks when you talk about brain hacks. Your brain is your body and your body is your brain. A lot of people think of them as being separate items, but try having your brain do anything while having no access to any of the sensory input from the rest of your body. Touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, right? I mean they're all one in the same. They're very connected. What you think shows up in things that happen in your body and what you do with your body flows back and affects what happens with your brain. So that is the neuroscience part of what I'm going to be sharing with your listeners. It's about recognizing that you can actually affect your brain by first working with your body and what you do in there then can affect the way your brain approaches a situation or how your brain is feeling, so to speak. Okay. Well tell me a little bit more about that. What is the hack that we can use behind this brain science that the brain is the body and the body is the brain. They're all interconnected. The hack that I had mentioned to you was breath. The use of breath on purpose. We're always breathing. How often do you think about how you're breathing? One of the things that I predict is that anyone who's listening to this, as soon as I mentioned breathing probably turned their attention for just a moment to their own breath, and in that moment something shifted. For many people, it might be just that their breasts got a little bit deeper or they slowed it down just a little bit simply because in that moment they were paying attention to it, and anything that’s watched gets changed. How can focusing on breathing help us become better leaders or leading ourselves better? First, let me offer some context for why breath is important. Every emotion that you experience shows up in the body in multiple ways. It might be energetically, our emotions affect our perspiration, our heart rate, they affect how our body moves. You know, some emotions make us smaller, some causes us to contract and pull away. Some emotions move us to go forward and emotions also affect our respiration or our breath. When you are feeling anxious, for instance, your breast tends to get very high in your throat and you breathe more rapidly. When you're excited, the same kind of thing happens when you're very relaxed. Your breath flow, when you are sad, when you are happy, you have different breath patterns. Sometimes it's shallow, sometimes it's deep. All right, so that's what happens when you feel an emotion. The reason I called breathing on purpose, a great leadership hack is because if you want to really focus on having a more valid confident leadership presence, you need to be able to manage your emotions. You need to look ahead and determine how do I need to show up in this space? How do I need to be on stage or what emotion do I need to be in or what emotion do I need to infect the room with for this meeting I'm about to be in? Having control over your breathing can help you shift into that emotion and just on a very high level. The simplest example I can give is to notice your breath right now and allow your breath to just drop deeper in your body breathing until you can feel your breath reaching your deep belly and notice how when you breathe deeply, your voice dropped so you come across as more authority. Your center of gravity shifts to the middle of your body so that you actually appeared in front of other people as being more centered. You create the emotion of calm or confidence. You tend to slow down. You're speaking when you're paying attention to your breath and breathing deeply and that lends more credibility to your speaking as well, and the very fact that your calm puts you in a place where you are more capable of making a better decision or at least a more calculated decision where you will be a better listener when you are more grounded, so there's a connection to leadership, so with noticing our breath as leaders, obviously we're in situations where we have to be able to handle conflict or maybe surprises and so when we do notice that our breathing. Let's say when we get excited and we can feel that breath high up, what can we do from a breathing perspective to get ourselves into that state that you just talked about where we're more centered and focused? Yeah, that's a great question and that really is what the hack is about. In most cases, we are not walking around feeling very calm and then suddenly wanting to be in anxiety or stress. It's usually the opposite, right? We find ourselves worried about something that's coming up. We want to slow down and really be present for a difficult conversation or we're going on stage to do a talk. Our heart is racing and racing and our palms are sweating in most situations. What we're trying to do, what we really want to do with breath is to slow ourselves down and bring ourselves to be more present and more calm, so it's all about simply slowing down the breath and breathing more deeply into the body while also grounding our feet, which is something else that will support a more grounded leadership presence. Does that make sense? It does. So just tactical question here. If I'm wanting to slow down my breathing, is it breathing through the nose? Is it breathing through the mouth? Does it matter at all? Any attention to the breath usually slows it down. At least in the moment. A lot of data tell us that breathing through the nose is going to have a more powerful effect. Anyone who is familiar with yoga or the yoga breath, which are you breathing, are, knows that it is a powerful breathing in and out through the nose. That very much calms the body and brings the energy down. What we know from brain science is that we've also got some physicality going on here. When you breathe in through your nose, you are pulling in outside air, which is generally cooler than your body temperature. You're pulling in outside air, across the Amygdala, your emotional center in your brain, which is located just above your sinus cavities. In the center of your brain. The amygdala swells with blood and engorges itself as emotions become more intense and as emotions decrease in intensity, where calm is the center of your emotional place the amygdala cools down and discourses that blood, so when you breathe in cool air through your nose, very much on purpose, you add to the physical cooling of the Amygdala and so that also contributes to your feeling – and there is the brain science. Thank you. I know that you work with a lot of executives in coaching -  can you share an example of an executive who has used this hack and how they've used it? I guess I can give you many examples, so let's just focus on a couple. I was working with a client who came into coaching because the board of his company wanted him to create for himself and his office, much more of an outside presence. You have an introvert, very much active and beloved inside the organization, but the board wanted him to be more of the face of the organization, so they came to them and the feedback they gave him was, you need to be more presidential. He sought me out. He says, what's that? Use My language, right? He uses different language. What the hell does that mean be more presidential and you know, when we dug in, what we found out was he was going to be expected to be doing on camera interviews to be the first person who talked to the organization onstage at public events and this is a guy who absolutely freaked out at the thought that he might have to be on stage somewhere, let alone when he actually got on stage and he would fumble over his words. People wrote him scripts and he would hang onto the script like a life raft and just deliver it in a very wooden fashion because his heart was literally in his throat. Same thing happened on camera. He was just a horrible interview, so he was an extreme example in one of our very first sessions. I watched him just telling me what was coming up and I could see him getting all uptight just at the thought of just telling me the story of what he had to do and I asked him to stand up and I said, where are you breathing? Like when you breathe, where's that breath going? I could see what was happening. I was trying to help him notice it. He says, I don't know. He literally had no awareness of himself below his chin. So long story short, by the end of that session, I actually had him laying on the floor of his office with his hands on his tummy, working with trying to raise and lower his stomach. Using his breath to pull that breath down into his body. He actually started that – he would lay in bed as he was falling asleep and he would practice breathing, he would be breathing on purpose. Now, just learning how to breathe, didn't suddenly make a great speaker. There were many, many other skills we had to build here, but that was the most fundamental because that became his go-to practice. When he was about to go on stage or when he was in the green room ready to go on for an interview, he always came back to that piece which was slow down my breathing, put my hands on my stomach, you know, just slow myself down, slow my brain down, slow my blood racing through my head down, and it took him a couple of years, but he has become quite a spokesmodel for his company and he continually credits that original coaching with helping him learn how to master himself as a tool. Right. The body is a tool. Wow. That's a great example. In public speaking, I think that's the number one fear people have. Right? Like they say, people would rather be in the casket than delivering a eulogy. Yeah, exactly. Wow. I hadn't heard that one. That's pretty good. So how about personally yourself? How do you use this hack? Breathing on purpose yourself? Can you give us some examples of how you've used it, how it's helped you? I find that breathing really calms my mind. One of the unique features of a breath is that it only exists right now. You can't accumulate future breaths and you can't save up past breaths, but when you focus on this breath, you are present. You are right now and most stress that we experience is manufactured by obsessing over things we've done in the past or worrying about things in the future that don't exist yet. So being in the moment is one of the most powerful ways to destress. And as a coach it's where I need to be in order to do really good coaching. So breathing on purpose for at least a minute or two is something that I do prior to any coaching I have. Even if I'm running a little late, I would rather show up on a video chat 30 seconds late than show up on time, but out of oxygen. I use this a lot for myself as a calming element before going on stage. A few years ago I was speaking at a Disrupt HR conference and Disrupt HR is a movement. It's kind of a Ted Talk format, where you have 20 slides and they automatically advance every 15 seconds. So it's a five minute talk. You have to have it down pat, like you have to be rehearsed to the second because the slides will advance no matter what you do. I remember I was about halfway through the program and it got closer and closer to my set and I could see how people were struggling with this format, you know, I found myself going, oh my God, this can be a disaster. I can't do this. I haven’t rehearsed enough. I should have more material. And literally the guy before me was talking, I took my own pulse and I think my ten second pulse, who was like 28, I mean I was, I was like at 90 percent of my maximum heart rate and I was doing this all with obsessing in my head. I'm like, God, I can't go on stage like this. I'm going to explode. So I just shut my eyes and just started breathing. And at first I'm telling you I could not breathe below my throat. My heart was pounding so hard, I couldn't even get in there. And I kept doing it and I kept doing it and it took me several minutes. But because I've practiced this, I was able to slow down and slow it down, and I went onstage and I was so calm. I watched the video afterwards and I was like, oh, I nailed it, Jill. And I know that if I hadn't been conscious of myself and I had gone on in that overexcited obsessive stressed out state, I would have totally bombed that talk. But as it was, I nailed it. I mean like literally the last slide clicked off and I said my last word and I give a lot of the credit to the fact that I was able to find my center before I went onstage. That is a great example. Great Story. So how long does it take and did it take to do this because it sounds like you can change fairly quickly using breath. You can teach your body and your brain to do that, to get to that place is not something you can do overnight. Remember I told you that story just a few minutes ago about a client who literally worked on it. He claims nearly every night during those two years that became his habit for how he went to bed, was to focus on his breath and he would do it at other times of day and so on, and it takes deliberate practice over an extended time to change any habit and certainly something as fundamental as how you're breathing. I've been practicing breathing on purpose as a way to center now for probably a decade. Really doing it with great attention on a regular basis to the point where I can literally control my emotional state and thus my thinking through half a dozen breaths and I can get there. Boom, I'm there. For someone who hasn't practiced yet - when you're in a place of stress and you don't know how to get to calm - that's not the time to start the practice. As with any habit, what you have to do is you have to find ways to practice this new thing regularly over time, and I'm sure you're hearing this from other people in your series, when you talk about hacking the brain, if you want to change a pattern in your brain, you have to do that new thing a thousand times before your brain goes, oh yeah, I know where I'm going. This is familiar. No problem, but up until you hit a couple hundred or a thousand repetitions of whatever that new thing is, your body wants to go back to the old way it did it, which is the pattern you have now. So it takes practice - Practice with a capital p, so for those that are listening would like to give one thing that they can do immediately afterwards- so it's not just great information, but something that they can put into practice right away -  to start really getting better at using breath and breathing and purpose. What would you recommend that they do right away? Well, because we're breathing anyway, a new breathing habit is fairly easy to integrate because it's not like you have to clear time on your schedule for breathing today like you do yoga or something like that. From my experience watching other people, I've found that one of the best ways for people to build expertise in Breathing on Purpose very quickly is to attach to something that they do multiple times every day anyway and then simply add this. So here's a couple of examples of things that I have seen clients do that has really helped them accelerate this. I had a client who made this her practice. Every time she went through a door, she would take a Breath on Purpose. So wish you would come into the building in the morning, coming into the office, anytime she was going into a meeting, as she put her hand on the door handle, she would pause, take a breath, feel her shoulders drop, feel her breath drop into her belly, and then she would just proceed. I've had other clients who've attached to things like answering their phone every time the phone rings. I mean you've got two seconds between rings. Yeah. And if. And if it rings a third time, no one's going to die, right? Right. So the phone starts ringing, that's time to take a breath, drop into their body, sit back and then answer the phone. So they don't have to create anything new, they just have to make it a habit that's attached to a phone call. And what they're doing is they're very under the radar, retraining their body to find calm and center very quickly. So those are two recommendations that I make. Just attach it to something you do everyday. It could be when you're washing the dishes, it could be when you're brushing your teeth. So twice a day you ground your feet, focus on your breath for just that moment. Whatever works for you. Thank you Jim so much. This is really helpful. I think Breathing on Purpose is important. I've used this type of approach with some of those that I work with as well and personally have used breathing to get myself in the right state, so I appreciate you sharing the brain science behind that and how we can start putting that into practice right away. You're welcome my friend. We look forward to hearing from you for another podcast as well because I know that you do a lot of work around this, so anything else you wanted to share? Just a reminder that being in a calm, centered place is also an awesome energy from which to be a better listener, a not just a speaker, so there's a, a bonus that when you are more centered yourself, you give more space to other people - and that's what leadership should be doing. Listening. Okay. Thank you Jim. Very much. You're welcome. So, to recap, if you want to have a more confident leadership presence, improve your ability to handle conflict, make better decisions, be a more confident speaker and become a better listener – start focusing on your breathing.  Breathing on Purpose is a simple hack that you can use to center yourself.  It takes practice but focus on attaching it to something you do already, like before you enter a meeting, before you answer the phone or when your doing any routine tasks will help to make this a powerful habit.  Over time, you will be able to quickly get yourself in the best state to handle whatever situation you are going to face.  We are breathing all the time anyway, we might as well Breathe on Purpose. If you interested in learning more about how coaching can help you improve your productivity, your communication and your leadership skills, please reach out to me, Jill Windelspecht and schedule a free consultation here https://bookme.name/TalentSpecialistsConsulting.  You can find me at www.TalentSpecialists.net

Breathing on Purpose to build Confidence, Competence and Presence, Jim Smith, PCC, The Executive Happiness Coach® E:9

Building and Sustaining High Performing Teams through Trust and Vulnerability with Paul Zak, “Dr. Love” E:7

The Science and Strategy of Decision Making with Annie Duke, Decision Strategist and Speaker, E:6

Improve your ability to plan, learn, solve problems and make decisions through data with Jason Howlett, Co-founder at Manpremo, E:5

Do you care about getting more engagement from you team?  Do you want to know how you can create an environment where your team works collaboratively, reduces conflict and supports each other and your organization?  Are you focused on retaining and attracting talent?  Are you struggling to build more inclusive teams?  If so, this is the podcast for you.  My guest,  Jay Van Bavel, will highlight the importance of group identity in building high performing teams and share simple things that you can do right away to get your team moving in the right direction. Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science with an affiliation at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations at New York University where he teaches one of the largest courses in the university. Jay completed his PhD at the University of Toronto. Jay conducts award-winning research on how collective concerns—group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—shape the brain and behavior. He has published over 60 academic papers on implicit bias, diversity and inclusion, group identity, team formation, cooperation, motivation, and the social brain. Jay has written about his research for the public in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American. He has appeared on Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and NBC News, been interviewed on WNYC, Bloomberg News, and NPR, had his work profiled in international media and been cited in the US Supreme Court. Jay has given a TEDx talk at the Skoll World Forum as well as invited talks at many of the top Psychology Departments and Business Schools in the world (Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Oxford, Stanford). He has also given featured talks at international conferences and numerous organizations (e.g., Uber, Amazon, Reed Smith, Canadian Space Agency). Podcast Recap: Human nature makes it easy for us to identify with groups.  Go to any culture in the world and people form groups.  It is a human universal.  Jay’s research looks at how you activate that in people’s minds -   how you change that way their brain processes information once you put them in a team. Researchers have found it as simple as flipping a coin and putting people on the red team or the blue team.  This gets them to automatically and quickly identify with their group.  They are willing to give more to their group, engage with their group more and show them more trust.  So, the first step in creating a good team is creating an ‘us’ an a ‘them’.  The hard part is identifying the right ‘them’. You don’t want people to be competing with other members of other groups within the organization or you can get sabotage or conflict, people retreating to silos, lack of collaboration and cooperation.  There is certainly an art to it and identifying the right ‘out group’ is often a key element. The other element that is key is creating an element of a distinctive group.  The groups that are stickiest, that they identify with the most, are ones that fulfill a sense of belonging, that make them feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves and at the same time creating a sense of distinctiveness.  That they feel that there is something special about being in this group, that is hard to get into and different from other groups.  This is referred to as the Velvet Robe Effect.  If you run a club and there is a long line outside and a velvet rope with a bouncer, even if you get inside and no one is there, you feel from the outside looking into it that it a special club, something hard to get into …..or as Groucho Marx famously said, he would never want to be part of a club that was willing to admit him! We like to be a part of groups that are exclusive and distinctive.  This is why fraternities and sororities have initiation rituals and why big corporations like Apple are able to hack the psychology.  If you walk down anywhere in Manhattan and you walk by a coffee shop, 90% of the people have their MAC books open or their iPhone open, and yet most of these people feel that they are unique, and that their MAC is part of their unique distinctive identity.  The reason for this is Apple has been triggering the psychology in people for decades.  It started in the most famous commercial of all times in 1984 during the Superbowl, they aired an ad of someone speaking as if they were the famous book 1984, droning on and people were blindly watching it.  Then this woman representing Apple came and smashed it and so the message is that you are anti-authority and anti-big brother if you use Apple.  Another example with Apple is when Steve Jobs came back and started the Think Different campaign, which was about all these scientists and leaders, from Einstein to Gandhi, throughout history who stood out and were different and challenged convention.  Apple is now more conventional and one of the world’s most recognized brand in the world, but now when you have one, because of all the advertising over the years, it creates a feeling among it’s users that there is something special or distinctive about them.  So, leaders who can create this within their groups that you are part of ‘us’ and we are different, are the ones who are able to create the most distinctive, compelling and sticky group identities.  This can directly correlate to higher engagement and discretionary effort given to the leader and the team. If you care about engagement or care about reducing absenteeism or presenteeism, this is a good strategy.  When people are engaged and committed to their group, they don’t want to let their team down.  They don’t want to fail because they actually care about the group and it’s success.  This is useful if you want to retain your best talent or recruit other talent to your team, to give them a sense that there is something special about them, is one powerful way of triggering this very basic psychology in the mind. As a CEO or senior leader, what should you be thinking about?  One is to create a shared vision and/or common goal.  Another thing that you can do is create a sense of history, and this is where distinctiveness can really be articulated.  If you have this very unique story or history that everybody knows, they feel part of that connection and they feel like they are part of something bigger than them.  Leaders could do more to articulate and remind people where they have come from, what their story is and finally where they are going.  Finally, another thing is, and this turns out to be key to getting people to contribute, is making everybody feel like they have an important role to play, even if it is a little one, and that their role is essential.  Letting them know that we can’t succeed unless you do this little thing.  That is something that really increases engagement and is a very helpful way to deal with diversity in teams.  The teams that feel like everyone contributes are more likely to be inclusive and will choose to solicit the input and support of other team members and so you actually create the kind of situation that promotes the success of diverse groups and diverse organizations. What is going on in the brain that is causing this connection?  The moment we flip a coin and put you on a team, your brain starts to process how you see in group and out group team members differently.  You automatically start seeing people of your own group more positively.  This activates early brain circuits like the amygdala and also changing the visual system, so it also suggests that the way you are seeing faces is changing in real time.  You are starting to see people that are part of your team more as individuals and you are more likely to remember who they were.  Basically, this is engaging a more careful attention and concern about who is with you.  It does this amazing this because if you care about your identity, this group you belong to, and you see other in-group members get a reward, the same parts of the brain that respond when you are getting a reward get triggered.  So, it is almost as if you were getting a pay increase or benefit.  That is only for people who care about the group, otherwise you can get jealousy and conflict if you see others get what you wish to have.  Identify solves that problem and it can reduce jealousy and conflict over things like that.  This is also what is known as basking in the reflective glory.  For example, this is when you go on social media and brag about a friend of yours or a colleague winning an award and you say that you are really proud of them.  This means that your bragging on their behalf.  You are getting part of the joy that they are getting because you care about them and feel you have a shared purpose with them.  We have also found that pattern of activation in the brain when people are thinking about in-group members who are getting a reward.  They don’t show that same pattern when an out-group member gets a reward. Jay personally applies this to the team he leads at his research lab at NYU.  Their lab is over 30 people who range from first year student volunteers to people who are post-doc and already have their PhD and are top researchers from other countries, so he cares a ton about identify.  Every year he gives a talk to the whole lab about the vision, goals and their past. This meeting marks their progress and he shows graphs showing how many publications they have had over the years, and how it has grown, so they can see that they are getting better and stronger over time -- they are part of that.  He also points out all the accomplishments of all the people in that lab that year – people who have graduated or won awards, became professors or had a break through with a method in the lab.  He makes sure to call out all of them in front of everybody so that there is a shared identify that if you contribute to the team you are going to be celebrated as part of the team in this annual  state of the union. Another thing Jay does is creating symbols of identity, doing little things like creating coffee mugs with the lab logo on them and once you start doing research with the lab you are part of the in-group and you get a mug.  This year he is taking images of everyone’s brain and will be creating pop-art, Andy Warhol type of art in the brain.  He plans to frame it and put it around the lab – highlighting all the students who got their PhD in the lab.    This is the highest and hardest level of accomplishment. He is finding ways to constantly remind them that they have a shared identity, showing a sense of history and highlighting all the individuals who came before them who have been part of this culture.  The other thing is I get my student’s advice before I hire anybody so they all have a voice in insuring they have a culture of people who care about the group and are cooperators who aren’t just self-interested people. I take that as seriously as somebody’s credentials when I am deciding who to bring into the group.  I care about who is going to be a good group member.  That  doesn’t mean just blindly going along with me or the other people.  In fact, often during his meetings, when they have presentations, he tries not to speak too quickly because he doesn’t want to create group-think where everyone has to agree with him.  He is very conscious of not creating the negative parts of groups like group-think because there is a pathology that comes if you mis-manage a group with a strong identify.  So that is also part of it, giving your team a voice so they have a feeling of commitment and shared ownership over where the group is going. What is one thing I can do right away to get the group dynamic right?  The simplest thing is creating a shared vision, but I would go one step further because most people know that.  First of all, your shared vision needs to be simple and you have to be able to say it all the time, so everybody knows what it is, but the second thing and the trickier thing is connecting it to your history.  Showing where you came from and where you are going has everyone under the shared vision but also creates a sense of distinctiveness, so there is something special and unique about this group and about your organization. Jill works with a lot of leaders and finds that communicating a compelling vision is a challenge and often find that they don’t talk about it enough to their team and their organization.  They feel that everybody understands it when often that is not the case.  Connecting the history is great because you will always have people coming in and out of your organization.  This allows them to feel like they are joining something that is bigger than them, reminds them and keeps it fresh for them. One last thing, if you think of a team as a delicate ecosystem - if you add in one or two bad elements the team can unravel.  I like the philosophy  of the New Zealand men’s Rugby team as they are the most successful team in any sport.  They have a number of rules, but the most important rule is a simple one.  They have a policy of No Dick Heads!    When you think of the world’s best team you think of the best talent. When you think of the best talent often you think of prima donnas, and that this is what the best talent looks like.  They say no…no one is above the team and no one can put their interests above the team.  As they leave the field at the end of each game, they all help to clean up the mess at the bench.  They act like no one is above the team and that is the single sentence that describes the model.   It helps them create a sense of tribe, family and friendship and nothing supersedes that.  One of the keys to creating a good team is also not allowing anyone to put themselves above it.  As leaders that rule starts with you! I hope that you have enjoyed this and can start using some of these great techniques to create more cohesive teams.  Make sure to subscribe to be alerted to ongoing podcasts. I work with leaders and their teams to apply these concepts, grow themselves, their teams and their business.  Schedule a free 30 minute consultation here to see if I can help you, your team or your organization.  You can reach me, Jill Windelspecht, directly by email at jillwindel@TalentSpecialists.net and visit my website at www.TalentSpecialists.net.

The science of group identity and how to create more cohesive teams with Jay Van Bavel, E:4

Have you ever wished you or your team could be more creative?  Would you like your team to come up with different ways to solve problems?  Do you think that only certain people have that kind of creativity?  Would you like to ‘turn a dial’ and become more focused or creative?   My Guest: Balder Onarheim, CEO of PlatoScience If so, this is the podcast for you.  Balder Onarheim, CEO of PlatoScience, will break down how to tap into your creativity and the creativity of your team.  The good news is that it is not magical – everyone has the ability to be creative. Balder Onarheim is a serial entrepreneur and former associate professor in creativity at the Technical University of Denmark. He is the founder of the Copenhagen Institute of NeuroCreativity and CEO at PlatoScience: making the world’s first creativity boosting headset. Balder’s expertise lies within a neurologically based understanding of creativity, and methods to use this understanding to make people better problem solvers. He is a popular speaker with talks at prestigious conferences and universities around the world, and more than 300k people has seen his TEDx talk “3 tools to become more creative Podcast Highlights: Balder has been working with Neurobiologists to understand what creativity is and how it works from a neuroscience perspective so that they can help all of us be more creative.    We all have creativity, it is everywhere – the secret is learning how to tap into those abilities. The first step for leaders is to acknowledge the importance of creativity, as simple as that sounds.  When leaders have a mindset that some employees are creative, and others are not, they treat employees differently and can miss out on the creativity of their whole team.  Realizing that creativity is a basic human skill that we all have is important.  It is a matter of nurturing it, training it and using it for the right purpose in the right point in time.  By doing this you can make creativity part of your everyday work. After you acknowledge that creativity is a crucial skill, using it every day in small ways is important to create that habit.  How many little ways can you encourage creativity?  For example, setting up rules like ‘we need one bad idea for every good idea’.  When you use this approach across the whole organization, it can help people re-analyze the way they solve problems.  There are 5 cognitive traits associated with Neurocreativity, they are: Priming Cognitive Inhibition Remote Associations Fixation Incubation The first is priming, setting the stage for what you want,  on a management level it could be asking the team for alternative solutions and setting that expectation to think differently.  Avoid giving your own idea first or an example of an idea because it can lead people to only think of that type of solution for the program.  The key is to mix it up, keeping it random.  A few ideas to get yourself to think more creatively: Go to Wikipedia and select Random Article on the navigation, which can spark creativity because you will get a piece of information you would not normally have read. (Balder explains more about this in his TedX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-YScywp6AU )  Take a different route back and forth to work. Grab a random book off your bookcase, flip to a page, have a short read and then go back to what you were doing. The information we take in shapes the ideas we will have.  Shaking it up allows you to have new thoughts that allow you to think creatively. The second trait is cognitive inhibition – it is a controlling system in our brain to keep us from being overloaded with information.  It works to restrict the amount of information you get access to, keeping us sane!  For most of us it works overtime and the downside is that it can get rid of new information that can lead to new ideas.  Remote associations is the third cognitive trait associated with neuro-creativity.  The associative network is where all our thoughts and memories are stored.  Think of it like the internet as a whole that can link to multiple websites, everything is connected, it is just a matter of how many steps are needed to connect it.  For example, if I say ‘dog’, your brain will most likely bring up the concept of a cat, it is closely associated.  Creativity is a lot about finding those remote associations, so the strategy is to find any method you have to get to those remote associations that can help you think more creatively about the problem you are working on.  Creativity is about combining things that are normally not related.  So, how can I be more creative?  The more you simply understand neuro-creativity, the more you can apply and tap into it.  Awareness is the key and the first step.  Understanding what creativity is and how it works, then training yourself to use that knowledge through practice. Fixation is the fourth cognitive trait and we have all experienced this.  For example, when you can’t get your head off a certain topic or a certain word.  It is the ‘tip of the tongue’ effect when you are trying to remember the name of someone and you get it close….but not right.  Suddenly it becomes impossible to get the right word because your brain gets fixated on this other name which is close but not quite there.  You are zooming in on this part of your associative network and therefore you can’t see the right word.  The more you associate one thought with another, the stronger connected they become.  When you get fixated, the best thing to do is to stop thinking about it and think about something else, take a walk or clear your head another way.  This is the last trait – incubation. Incubation – these breaks we discussed are necessary for you to tap into the remote associations that allow you to be more creative.  Step away from the problem you are working on and start thinking of something else.  We can’t be creative all the time – the key is to be intentional about when you want to be creative and then using these concepts and acting differently to get the creativity.  As a leader, as yourself ‘Do we need to emphasize creativity right now?’  If yes, what are the best methods for you to do so?   If you are trying to be creative think about how you are setting up the environment. How often do you need these breaks?  Studies range from 20 minutes to one hour before needing a break and starting to think about something else or just shifting tasks. What do you do on that break?  It goes back to priming, ask yourself what sort of priming will help you get to the next stage?  If you or the team is getting fixated, get up physically, go outside if you can, do some exercises.  Balder does squats with his team to get some circulation going when this happens.  The key is doing something or thinking about something differently.  These can be social breaks where you are checking in with a spouse or talking to your peers about other outside interests. We all have the ability to be creative and as leaders we can create environments that will unleash it for our teams.  Once you get started, creativity can be addicting, and your team will continue to be creative if you continue to encourage it.  The key is to GET STARTED!! One thing that you could do today – acknowledge the importance of habits for yourself at home and in the workplace.  We tend to be single minded about this if we are allowed to do so.  Be conscious about the importance of breaking some of these habits when you want to be more creative.  For example, do you always search the same websites or resources when looking for answers to a problem?  Think about your team meetings, if you always have them in the same room, in the same seats, looking in the same direction with the same agenda and order of speaking, these influence you and your team.  If you want to be more creative, change something up here.  So, the starting point for creativity is to acknowledge the importance of random inputs and changing habits. Quick tip – the direction you look out from your desk has an impact on your creativity scores.  Just by turning the chair 90 degrees and looking in a different direction can help stimulate creativity.  It can be that simple. What are the technological advances you are working on?  They have been working on ways to get to your brain from the outside for the last three years by sending weak electrical impulses through the brain which allows you to slightly change the brain’s ability to perform  a task in a certain region of the brain, essentially trying to hijack a brain function.  They have over 150 products in the market today that you can use.  Customers range from programmers, lawyers, students, engineers, management consultant, etc. who want to focus on being creative using one of their unique headsets.  The way it works is that you use the app to pick the thinking style you would like that would be most beneficial to the task you are working on and the headset will replicate the balancing of the brain for that type of task.  If you want to know more and get your own headset go to https://platoscience.com/platowork/ What are some things that leaders should do when they are planning to have these leadership off-sites focused on being creative?  There are two ways that Balder and the team have worked with numerous organizations to accomplish this: Assumption Dumption – bring out all the assumptions people have about the problem you are trying to solve out in the open. Most of these are unspoken and would not be shared any other way.  Discuss them and sort them by truth, relevance or those things that need to be just kept in mind.  Scrap those assumptions that are outdated or just rumors.  This helps to eliminate thoughts that limit their take on the problem – getting rid of the old ghosts! Negative Brainstorm – flip the problem around and ask people to come up with diverse possible solutions that they think are bad ideas. This brings some humor into the meeting and you will find most of the bad ideas can bring something useful to the table.  You take the absolutely worst ideas that come up and analyze them – what makes them bad as well as what are the positive elements.  Challenge people to remove the bad things and keep the good things and you end up coming up with a good idea that comes from a terrible idea.  It is fun, gets people to think about the problem in different ways.  It always brings out new good ideas that you would normally never dare to bring up if you were asked to come up with only good ideas.  NEXT STEPS FOR YOU! I hope that you have enjoyed this and can start using some of these great techniques to become more creative and create the right environment for your team.  Make sure to subscribe to be alerted to ongoing podcasts. I work with leaders and their teams to apply these concepts, grow themselves, their teams and their business.  Schedule a free 30 minute consultation here to see if I can help you, your team and/or your organization.  You can reach me, Jill Windelspecht, directly by email at jillwindel@TalentSpecialists.net and visit my website at www.TalentSpecialists.net. Resources: PlatoScience - https://platoscience.com/ 3 tools to become more creative - TedX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-YScywp6AU PlatoWork Headset - https://platoscience.com/platowork/  

NeuroCreativity: How to tap into the creativity of yourself and your team with Balder Onarheim, CEO of PlatoScience, E:3

Have you ever wished you could get that moment back when you let your emotions take over?  Do you want to make better choices and better decisions in the moment?  This is the podcast for you! My guest, Dr. Marcia Reynolds, MCC, is fascinated by the brain, especially what triggers feelings of connection, commitment, and possibility. She draws on her research as she helps coaches and leaders make every conversation is a difference-making experience. She has provided executive coaching and leadership training programs in 38 countries. Dr. Reynolds is a pioneer in the coaching profession. She was the 5th global president of the International Coach Federation and has returned to the board as a Global Director. She is also the training director for the Healthcare Coaching Institute at Virginia Tech, and on faculty for the International Coach Academy in Russia and Create China Coaching in China. She is recognized by the Global Gurus top 30 as the #5 coach in the world. She was one of the first to earn the designation of Master Certified Coach. Interviews and excerpts from Marcia’s books Outsmart Your Brain, and The Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations into Breakthroughs, and Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, have appeared in many places including Fast Company, Psychology Today, and The Wall Street Journal. Marcia’s doctoral degree is in organizational psychology and she has two master’s degrees in education and communications. Highlights from the Podcast: Information doesn’t change behavior, just because you ‘know’ something it doesn’t mean you will do it – there needs to be emotion involved.  The first step to being aware is managing your emotions and your energy.  Next you need to be curious because when you are with other people you need to think about how you are showing up with them.  For example, are you partnering with them and helping them move forward OR is your intention to just get them to do what you want them to do? Emotions are just energy moving through your body and it is important information to pay attention to that tells you what is going on in the moment – notice it and accept it.  Don’t label it good or bad, just notice it. Where in your body do you feel anger?  Notice it – it is different for everyone.  One tip to start noticing your emotions is to set a reminder on your phone 2 to 3 times a day to just track what you are feeling at the moment.  This can help make you more aware.  This is how you can start to build Reflective Intelligence – noticing the emotions is the first step. After you notice the emotion then you can go to what you want to feel instead – but you have to feel the shift.  You can’t just tell yourself to be patient – you have to do something to feel more patient.  For example, turn on some music or look at pictures to make you feel calmer.  You have to understand what your triggers are – what are people taking from you that makes you react?  For example, do you feel you are being respected, not safe or now being acknowledged?  The thing about triggers, (which she goes into much more deeply in her book and you can go to www.outsmartyourbrain.com and search for emotional triggers to download the list) is that whatever has made you successful in this life is what is going to be your emotional trigger because you are protecting it.  For example, if you want attention, control, order or accuracy and feel that any of those are being threatened, you will go on the defense.  This happens really quickly and when you realize what is happening you have the choice of (1) asking for that or (2) letting it go.  Being aware gives you more control in your response if you understand your reactions and why they are happening. If something is really important to you, the primitive brain kicks in because the brain is designed to protect you.  When we get defensive, it happens pretty quickly, and we react because we feel like someone is taking something from us or not giving us something we feel we deserve like respect or credibility.  It is a primitive reaction that happens quickly and we either react or shut down, we are either a flighter or fighter.  Now this could happen in the primitive brain, or if it bypasses the primitive brain, then it hits your social brain.  Then we have the social needs where I might feel embarrassed or disappointed or frustrated because I am not getting what I think I need.  This happens in the middle brain where you get defensive, you argue, you shut down or you feel embarrassed or sad.  This affects what you will say or not say and the actions you will take. It doesn’t hit your logical brain until all this other stuff comes into play, which we use to give ourselves great reasons as to why we reacted that way or why we said that thing!  (There is a great example of this in Chapter 1 of Outsmart your Brain). Once you start noticing these emotions – what can you do?  Well, first know that these never go away, just accept that you are human, and this is who you are and they will decrease.  You won’t stop being triggered and there will be certain people in your life that will trigger you more than others.  The more we acknowledge them the less power they have over us and we get triggered but it is not as strong.  There is a 4-step formula to shift your emotions:  Relax…Detach…Center….Focus. Relax – because it is biological, breathe and release the tension in your body, breathing is the quickest way to release the tension.  Do a body scan and relax your muscles. Detach – clear your brain and wipe it clean.  Center – Take a tip from professional athletes that are taught to shift their awareness to their center, which is at the bottom of your breath – the center of your body.  You take a deep breath in and notice the bottom of your breath – that is your center, your core.  When you can move your awareness there, you are more powerful.  Focus – choose the one or two words that represent how you want to feel and then feel those emotions before you speak. This is how you can make better choices in the moment – which leads to better outcomes.  The best part is this not only helps you at work, but it helps you at home. Great resources that you can leverage to learn more about this:  www.outsmartyourbrain.com and her books Outsmart your Brain and The Discomfort Zone. Last thing, people want you to be present more than they want you to be perfect.  Listen to what they have to say, this makes people feel valued and important without any words. I hope that you have enjoyed this and can start using some of these great techniques to build more self-awareness and have better conversations.  Make sure to subscribe to be alerted to ongoing podcasts.  You can reach me, Jill Windelspecht, directly by email at jillwindel@TalentSpecialists.net and visit my website at www.TalentSpecialists.net.  

Learn how to shift your emotions to have more powerful connections and conversations with Dr. Marcia Reynolds, E:2

We take neuroscience and social science and make it practical for you so you can apply these hacks/tips to improve your leadership, how you lead others and/or how you can lead your organization more effectively. We all have a brain, and we can help you use that knowledge to make you a better leader!

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Brain Hacks 4 Leadership

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