Aussie Rules

This is my final blog about people who spoke at the Mind & Its Potential Conference in Sydney in early December 2009.

Greenfield is a leading researcher on brain physiology, particularly the aetiology of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, but she is best known as a populariser of science. She is a striking speaker and as a result of her talk I bought her latest book ID: The Quest for Meaning in the 21st Century.

The book is not an easy read but it does raise some stimulating ideas. It also provides a useful up-to-date summary of the current state of neuroscience and the role played by the emotions. One key concept is that the biological basis of the mind is the personalisation of the brain by the development of neural networks as we mature. Children have not yet formed these networks and the neural networks of adults can be severely damaged by drugs, schizophrenia or dementia.

Another suggestion by Greenfield is that current technology via screens and the internet is dramatically changing how we are developing our neural networks. Previously in a book-based culture there were many questions and few answers and people searched for authoritative content. Now in the screen/internet culture process has become king and truth is assembled by many interactions. Many young people now have short attention spans, are very sensory, lack the ability to think abstractly and have reduced empathy.

Greenfield predicts this technology may lead to people following one of three scenarios:

In the “Someone” scenario people become gain a sense of identity by what they own and what they do. This is the route being followed by most of the Western bourgeoisie. One interesting suggestion by Greenfield was that our individuality arises by how much we submit to the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Such people do become individuals but lack fulfilment.

In the “Anyone” scenario people subsume their individuality to a mass collective mindset, typically revolving a David and Goliath story. The Nazis believed there was a Jewish world-wide conspiracy while Al Qaeda thinks the same about the US. Group members generally all behave the same and lack individuality. On the other hand they are generally emotionally fulfilled, content within the group but angry and contemptuous of outsiders.

In the third scenario, the “Nobody” people put the notion of self on hold and are no longer “self-conscious”. They abandon themselves to raw sensation either drug induced or in front of a screen playing a computer game. The sensory triumphs over the consequences; “Nobodies” lack the ability to delay self-gratification. These people lack both individuality and fulfilment.

In case you get too depressed Greenfield does finish her book on a more optimistic note hoping that one of major benefits of the new technology will lead to people becoming more creative, calling this the “Eureka” scenario.

My next blog will be in about six weeks. I am off to Qatar to deliver a seminar and then going to Central America for about a month.

I have always wanted to hear Paul Ekman live since I first read Emotional Intelligence in the mid-1990s. In his book, Daniel Goleman posed the question as to whether there was a theory of core emotions. Goleman wrote he did not have an answer but said he was sure one existed due to the work that Paul Ekman had done recognising emotions in pre-literate societies. Finally at the Mind & Its Potential conference I heard Paul Ekman speak and post the conference I attended an intimate half-day workshop along with 1000 other people.

Paul Ekman originally focused on “nonverbal” behaviour, particularly concentrating on the expression and physiology of emotion by the face. He has developed a model of seven core facial emotions: Happy, Sad, Surprise, Anger, Contempt, Fear and Disgust. His research and writings on this topic are extensive and he must be regarded as the world’s leading expert in this area.

His second interest is interpersonal deception. His book Telling Lies was first published in 1985 and the fourth edition in 2009. The book is the basis of the Fox TV series Lie to Me. In this book Ekman expounds his theory of micro-expressions as revealers of emotion. When people deliberately try to conceal their emotions (or unconsciously repress their emotions), a very brief — 1/15 to 1/25 of a second — facial expression often occurs. Using this model, Ekman has developed training tools and a workshop which is what I attended at the conference.

The workshop comprised a pre-test of trying to recognise some 20 micro-expressions, training, followed by a post-test to measure your improvement. My first problem was that I did not realise that we were trying to recognise micro-expressions in the first test so scored poorly. However post the training I simply could not pick up the micro expressions in the post-test and scored a 0. Statistically I had gotten worse! My only consolation was that around me a dozen or so people were saying they were unable to pick the micro-expressions as well.

Somewhat miffed I bought Telling Lies. The book is full a number of interesting insights and Ekman is a thorough writer. For example, he has identified 18 different types of smiles and rigorously goes through each one. He also spends considerable time on the two errors that can trap “lie-catchers”. One error is to believe someone is lying when they are telling the truth. This Ekman calls the “Othello” error. The other is believing someone is telling the truth when they are lying. (Not named by Ekman but I will call this the “Iago” error.) According to Ekman, the police and other law enforcement people he has tested generally start from the position that everyone is lying and consequently commit the Othello error repeatedly.

Now I had the background, I paid up and did the METT training to see if I could improve. In the pre-test my score was 20 percent and after doing the training lifted my score to 55 percent. Ekman says you should get to 80 percent but I was so pleased to register a significant improvement that I decided to quit while I was ahead. I think there are easier ways to detect serial liars but I have covered that issue in earlier blogs.

As I said in my last blog I am posting observations about various people that I heard speak at a conference held in Sydney in early December: Mind & Its Potential.

Today the spotlight falls on Dr. Martin Seligman, widely regarded as the founder of Positive Psychology, who was on the dais with the Dalai Lama.

I was very interested in hearing Dr. Seligman as there is has been a very interesting discussion in the Linkedin Emotional Intelligence Network about the link between Positive Psychology and EQ.

Probably the most useful of Dr. Seligman’s comments was his definition of Positive Psychology which he defined in four steps.

Positive Emotions
Those who are optimistic do not think like pessimists who tend to see problems as permanent, pervasive and personal. Rather than saying ” I’m doomed”, “Everything’s finished.” “I’m no good”, “Global warming will kill us all.” Optimists see a way out; they confine the problem and do not take it personally. They do not indulge in catastrophic thinking. “Man will adapt to climate change. Global warming means happiness for mankind. There will be better days. Belief and hope is half the battle won.” Perhaps the core belief of the positive psychology movement is that you can learn to be optimistic and doing so will make you a better person. I must confess that I have found the Candidean optimism of some public speakers tiring on the other hand I remember my first sales manager telling me to never forget that the only thing more contagious than enthusiasm was the lack of it.

Positive Meaning
Dr Seligman’s message was that your life will be definitely be improved and you will be much happier if you use what is inside you to serve greater whole. One of my mentors, Charles Handy, advocated that you spend 10 percent of your time in voluntary activity for groups which is a principle that I have tried to follow in my life. All I can say it that it works and you do truly reap what you sow.

Positive Relationships
We all know that relationships are fundamental to the happy life but Dr. Seligman put a spin on it that I had never heard before. He said that a major problem is many relationships is that people fail to celebrate the good times. They tend to focus on the problems and wallow in recriminations. Far more important is to participate in celebrations such as marriages, births, promotions. I think that is one of the reasons for the happiness of Latin people is that they do indulge in celebrations and they do it in groups.

Positive Accomplishments
The Chinese say the secret to a happy life is to get a degree, have a son, and write a book. The implicit meaning is that one should aim at becoming educated, raise a family and leave behind knowledge that other people can use. However thinking about it some more achieving all three of these are significant accomplishments.

In conclusion, I very much enjoyed listening to Dr. Seligman and he did make me think.

Last week I spent 2.5 days along with at least 3,000 other participants at a conference titled “Mind and its Potential”. Topping the list of speakers was the Dalai Lama but there were some other heavy hitters there including Dr. Martin Seligman, Paul Ekman, and the Baroness Susan Greenfield. Over the next couple of weeks I will provide some comments about the more interesting speakers.

The Dalai Lama
This was the first time I have ever seen him in person. We had to spend an hour going through security and I must confess that while waiting I started to wonder that if you are firm believer in re-incarnation (which the Dalai Lama freely admitted during his time on stage) then why would you be worried about assassination? However, His Holiness is definitely a shrewdie, driven in part by his history and also by personality. The best story about him that I heard began by noting that the Dalai Lama is one person who is on everyone’s list of of the living who they would invite to a dinner party. Accordingly His Holiness was asked whom would he invite to his dinner party? This is a tricky question as the answer would be bound to make few happy and alienate many. His reply was ingenious: “As a monk, I have a light breakfast in the morning and then meditate for three hours. I then have a reasonable lunch but no proper monk eats dinner. Thus I could not invite anyone to dinner.”

Dr Charlie Teo
It is fair to say this was the hit talk of the conference. Dr Teo began by showing a picture of a stunningly beautiful 25-year-old mother with a three-year-old daughter that he said was taken some three years ago. He then showed a picture of the same woman 13 months ago. She had put on least 70 kilos, was grossly obese and looked miserable because she had developed a dramatic eating disorder. After many false diagnoses including blaming her mother for poor parenting, brain scans revealed a minute tumour about the size of a blackcurrant on the hippocampus.

The next stage was a video of Dr Teo carrying out the operation to remove the tumour. He went though patient’s nose! You saw the camera searching for the tumour and then the cutting out and removal of the patient.

Then Dr Teo showed a picture of the patient taken some 9 months after the operation. She had nearly regained her original weight and about 90 percent of her former attractiveness. To say the audience was gobsmacked was an understatement. He received a standing ovation.

However, then he gave the zinger. The next slide showed a brain scan of patient with a benign tumour about the size of a grapefruit in the frontal lobes which were crushed up against the skull. We then saw a video of the person who Dr Teo said was a doctor (GP) still practicing with no emotional or intellectual impairment!!

Dr Teo finished by saying to that to him the brain was an organ of infinite wonder. A tumour the size of a blackcurrant can cause unbelievable changes in personality while another the size of grapefruit has no effect and he had no explanation why this is the case.

Fortune magazine has just named Steve Jobs as the CEO of the Decade.

The edition features a number of stories about Steve Jobs including this wonderful article about the 21 Jobs-related books that have been published. Besides a terrific quote “He would have made an excellent king of France” by a former colleague, the author defines the books as falling into one of three genres:

1. Genius: when he is developing some new product.
2. Creep: discussing his personality flaws when he was ousted from Apple by Scully.
3. Creepy Genius: when he returns to Apple and releases the iPod and iPhone.

However the question I am trying answer is what is Steve Jobs’ EQ?

If the first step in EQ in understanding your core emotions it would appear that Steve Jobs has invested considerable time and effort is trying to work himself out. Whether he has succeeded or not is moot. The Fortune article quotes Larry Ellison as saying Steve has never been motivated by money yet on the other hand being enormously proud that Apple is now the most highly valued company in Silicon Valley. Steve is regarded by many observers has having poor self-control of his emotions, which the second stage of EQ.

In her excellent article The downside of being nice. Fiona Smith describes Jobs as screaming, crying and making threats when the colour of new NeXT vans did not precisely match the colour of the exterior paint of the new manufacturing facility. Managers had to spend precious hours and thousands of dollars getting an exact match.

On the other hand Steve Jobs does appear to have a terrific ability to attract, hire and motivate high quality people. In my previous blog I related the famous story of his recruitment of John Scully at MOMA: “Do you want to change the world or sell sugared water for the rest of your life?”

I also said what made Steve Jobs interesting is that his personality seemed combine the conflicting components of stubbornness and flexibility. His very keen focus on what is visually attractive and practical, combined with dismissal of customer research make me think that he is an Artist-Hustler with low Normal. The two components that have the most empathy with other people are the Artist and Hustler and being strong in both these components makes Jobs particularly good at working out what makes people tick and a terrific interviewer. In addition his ability to communicate a vision combined with ability to change tack means that he will be good at relationships. Thus in summary his social EQ is extremely high while I would rate his personal EQ as probably average due to his low self-control.

What kicked off this blog was a excellent article by Fiona Smith in the Australian Financial Review (16 November 2009): The downside of being nice.

The thrust of the article was that while every management book in recent years has stressed the importance of workplace harmony, there is a counter argument personified by Steve Jobs. Fiona quotes how Bob Sutton describes Steve Jobs as the successful archetypal asshole in his book The No Asshole Rule. I then went on to google Bob Sutton+Steve Jobs and got this great post.

Also I discovered that Bob Sutton was the same Robert Sutton who is a co-author with Jeffery Pfeffer who I have already blogged about.

Closing the circle got me thinking how much EQ does Steve Jobs really have?

In the late 1980s I read Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple : A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future by John Scully. The part I really remember was how Steve Jobs recruited Scully to be CEO of Apple. After several meetings Scully and Jobs went and spent several hours looking at paintings at MOMA. According to Scully no work was discussed except right at the end when Jobs turned to Scully and said: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” If EQ consists of being able to both analyse someone’s core emotions and then gain their co-operation through this knowledge, one could only conclude that the EQ of Jobs is very high indeed. It was a perfect pitch.

In the book Scully goes on to describe how he orchestrated Jobs’ firing after a power struggle in 1985. And in his memoir, Sculley dismissed Jobs’ vision for the company. “Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company,” Sculley wrote. “This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.” As so often occurs with predictions, 100% wrong. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. The company was on its knees. He then went on to launch two of the most successful hi-tech consumer products ever: the ipod and the iphone. Fortune Magazine in its 23 November 2009 edition has just named him the CEO of the Decade. So what does make Steve Jobs tick?

Part of the answer can be found in this long and carefully researched article: The Trouble With Steve Jobs.

Two quotes stand out. This by a former employee:

Often Jobs would suddenly “flip,” taking an idea that he’d mocked (maybe your idea) and embracing it passionately — and as his own — without ever acknowledging that his view had changed. “He has this ability to change his mind and completely forget his old opinion about something,” says a former close colleague who asked not to be named. “It’s weird. He can say, ‘I love white; white is the best.’ And then three months later say, ‘Black is the best; white is not the best.’ He doesn’t live with his mistake. It evaporates.” Jobs would rationalise it all by simply explaining, “We’re doing what’s right today.”

The other was by Apple director Levinson, describing the time when Jobs discovered he had pancreatic cancer in October 2003. For nine months he tried alternative treatments before finally submitting to successful surgery. Of course this was a major issue for the Apple Board, knowing the news would cause a major drop in the share price. Levinson and another director, Bill Campbell, tried to persuade Jobs to have the surgery. “There was genuine concern on the part of several board members that he may not have been doing the best thing for his health,” says one insider. “But Steve is Steve. He can be pretty stubborn.”

How do you reconcile flexibility and stubbornness in one personality? Does this help or hinder your level of emotional intelligence. I will try an answer this question in my next post.

I was recently invited by Phil Taylor of Goal Achievers International to join his LinkedIn network. At 65 I have achieved most of what I have wanted in life but as I skimmed his website, much of what he said resonated with me particularly about the importance of writing down your goals.

My introduction to formal goal setting was in 1979. I was a general manager of a division in an Australian multinational (suffering I admit from a mid–life crisis) and a young graduate I had hired suggested that I should consider a career as an investment banker. As I was 35 I dismissed the idea as impossible but then in a moment of serendipity came across a book by Robert J. Traxel, The Manager’s Guide to Successful Job Hunting, in a management library. Two quotes from the book leapt out:

• “If you think you are in a rut, remember a rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. The best way to get out of a rut is to change careers.”
• “If you want to change careers forget going to a head hunter. All they are interested in is commission, and all they do is see you as piece of fast moving stock. They will convince you to stay in the same industry and switch jobs. I know — I am a head hunter.”

Instead, Traxel laid down a plan in his book that I followed assiduously.

Step 1. Goal Setting
Write down of piece of paper a date nine months away which says on that day I will choose between two job offers in a new industry, stick it on the bathroom mirror and read it every day.

Step 2. Discover who you are
Go to 10 people who know you well and ask them frankly to tell you what they think is your biggest strength and biggest weakness. The answers are quite revealing and unlike the vast majority of 360 feedback sessions you may this time get some truth. This is a good first step to developing EQ.

Step 3. Work out whether you can do the job
The simplest way doing this now is to go a reputable organisational psychologist do the battery of intelligence and personality tests and then ask them to assess whether you are suitable for the industry and position you are seeking. For example unless you have a numerical IQ in the top 5 percent there is no point seeking a position as an actuary.

Step 4. Carry out the preliminary interviews
Meet with the CEOs of the top 20 companies in the industry you have targeted. My telephone cold call went like this.

“I need your help. I am a graduate of the London Business School and currently a divisional general manager with…. A graduate I recently hired suggested that I consider a career as an investment banker. Could I have 20 minutes of your time to discuss whether this is a good idea?”

No one turned me down. At the start of the interview, after thanking them for the meeting, you say you are carrying out a survey of 20 leaders in the industry and ask two key questions:

• You are obviously a success in your industry, what are the three reasons you think you succeeded?
• Of all the industry players who are the three you most respect?

For most people, especially CEOs, their favourite topic is themselves so the answer to the first question generally took an hour.

What absolutely critical is not to talk about yourself. When the conversation inevitably turns to the CEO saying to you to describe who you are, you politely say that you have not made the decision to join the industry and that will only come when you complete the survey. Instead you thank them for their time and walk out. Traxel says that if you do that they will never forget you. However if you accept the offer to describe yourself you will lose authenticity. My own personal experience totally vindicated Traxel’s argument. The one interview where I broke this rule turned into a disaster.

All the other CEOs who I met subsequently at industry functions all came rushing up to me saying how they never forgot that interview, worked out what I was doing, and all said “You know if I was going to switch careers I would use your approach.”

Step 5. Draw up your product profile
You now have a list of the strengths you need to be successful. You then write a letter along the following lines:

I have completed my survey. I have concluded that there are seven characteristics you need to be a successful investment banker and list the seven. (In passing never have more than seven items in a list, the limit of short term memory). Then you conclude your letter by saying that if you look at my enclosed CV by some amazing coincidence I appear to have all seven!

Step 6. Send off the letters and start the interviews
You also know from your survey who the four heavy hitters in the industry are. You send off the letters to the CEOs marked private and confidential. I got three replies asking to meet me. (By now it was six months since I had started the process but I was still reading the message on the mirror every day.) I later discovered the other CEO had become seriously ill and the letter was unopened for two months.

Step 7. Accept the position
On the day I had set nine months earlier I accepted my new position. Never again did I question the power of writing down your goals.

In “The Humm Handbook: Lifting Your Level of Emotional Intelligence” there is a chapter on leadership that defines and discusses the three necessary core emotional drives of the successful leader. For those familiar with the Humm, great leaders have high H, M and P drives. President Bill Clinton is a good example of such a personality.

One innovation I introduced in my 23 years as a venture capitalist was to obtain a psychographic profile of our prospective entrepreneurs. Initially we were seeking mini-Bill Clintons. Unfortunately, over time we discovered that while these people are great at running large organisations, they were poor entrepreneurs.

We had forgotten that critical piece of Australian advice: “A good builder of a mine is rarely a good operator of one”.

On the other hand when we looked at the profiles of entrepreneurs who had generated the best returns, we discovered that we were seeking the wrong people. Our best performers were builders rather than operators. They saw building a business as an engineering project, and were very task focussed. They wanted to build a business and then sell it. The process was all consuming and they spent a lot of time planning the next steps and closely monitoring the progress. They all had a high E drive.

The other common factor was a high H drive. These people were shrewd with people and shrewd with money. They knew it was important to build a team of people in order to get the job done, not just an exercise in team building. If there were individuals who had joined them at the start but had reached their level of competence, the successful entrepreneurs were able to either keep them in their former positions and temper their expectations or be ruthless enough to fire them.

The other interesting discovery was that the successful entrepreneurs had a high level of numeracy. To be successful, entrepreneurs need to be good communicators and everyone we tested (around 3 percent of the prospective applicants) had a high verbal IQ. Again we thought we could compensate for the poor numerical IQ of what we thought were outstanding prospects by hiring a good CFO. We were wrong. In nearly every case a business led by a CEO with a poor understanding of numbers performed below expectations.

Unless the entrepreneur has an understanding of the numbers, he or she never gets the intense focus necessary on how the business actually makes money.

It was terrific to see Juan Martín del Potro beat Roger Federer in the US Tennis Open and provide some much needed relief to the Argentinean psyche. My wife and I have just spent two weeks in Buenos Aires on holiday and the Argentineans were in a state of despair. Far and away the topic dominating the television was the impending football match against Brazil.

The rivalry between these two giants of South American football is perhaps one of the fiercest in the world. After a particularly rough game in 1946, no match was played between the two countries for ten years. The balance of results is roughly equal (24 draws, Brazil 37 wins, Argentina 34 wins) and while Brazil has won the World Cup five times to Argentina’s two, Argentina has won the Copa America 15 times to Brazil’s 10. Adding spice to the competition is the constant argument by fans over who has been the best player of all time, Pele of Brazil or Maradona of Argentina.

Diego Maradona has been one of the game’s most controversial players. Brilliantly talented and scoring what is known as the Goal of the Century, he is considered one of the sport’s most controversial and newsworthy figures. He was suspended from football for 15 months in 1991 after failing a doping test for cocaine in Italy, and he was sent home from the 1994 World Cup in the USA for using ephedrine. Although he had little previous managerial experience, he became head coach of the Argentina national football team in November 2008.

In the lead up to the Brazil match, Maradona predicted Argentina would win because it had the better players. Even if true, for a coach to make such a comment is a terrible blunder. Besides the story being pinned up on the wall of the Brazilian team, it breaks one of the fundamental rules of team building.

A champion team will always beat a team of champions.
By promoting the individual talents of the players rather than focusing on developing a cohesive team Maradona committed a major coaching mistake. Brazil ended up winning 3-1 away. While there were some brilliant individual touches by the Argentineans including a dazzling 40 metre goal by Datalo it was the teamwork of the Brazilians which was impressive. They made their few chances pay with brilliant passes while Argentina squandered the majority of possession. That night was probably the quietest in Buenos Aires for years.

Argentina was now in desperate straits with the possibility it may not qualify for the World Cup. The following week, the team had to travel to Paraguay and had to win. Unfortunately the score was 1-0 in favour of Paraguay.

As we left Buenos Aires, people were marching down the 9 July Boulevard (a daily occurrence). This time the banners they were carrying were pictures of a coffin inscribed with Maradona’s name.

One of the great benefits of living in a democracy like Australia is that you can see and read about the actions of political leaders and learn from their mistakes. We have just seen Malcolm Turnbull, the leader of the Opposition, because a fatal flaw in his personality, shoot himself dramatically in the foot.

Malcom Turnbull, before becoming a politician, was a successful lawyer and merchant banker. He is exceptionally intelligent but his personality is dominated by the desire to win. Unfortunately, he lacks the self-restraint which is so necessary in politics. To those overseas readers unfamiliar with the issue, Turnbull was supplied an email by a public servant, Gordon Grech, which implied that Labor Prime Minister Rudd and Treasurer Swann had acted corruptly. Gordon Grech worked in the Treasury and it has transpired had provided other information to the Liberal party and while the Liberals were in power was trusted advisor.

It turned out the email provided by Grech was a fake. However instead of simply admitting he made a mistake and apologising to the Prime Minister, Turnbull turned on Grech and destroyed him in a 17-point rebuttal. Grech is now a seriously ill patient in a psychiatric ward in Canberra driven to poor health by overwork, stress and political pressures. The popular reaction to Grech’s actions is that while he has betrayed his public service principles and is clearly partisan he was a minor player.

This fatal flaw in Malcom Turnbull’s personality of so desiring to win without any self-control reminds me very much of the first feedback I received after completing my first personality test. Expecting compliments, the first comment from the consulting psychologist was that you have a serious problem as a manager.

Because you are bright you will generally be right. However when there is a discussion your strong desire to win means that not only will you not give in, you will stubbornly crush any opposition in excruciating detail. That is not the way to win friends and influence people. People who become successful CEOs learn this lesson early.

I was a lot younger then but I have to confess I never forgot those words and it was start of my journey in gaining emotional intelligence. Unfortunately for Malcolm there is nobody around to give him the necessary feed back.

My wife and I are off to Buenos Aires and will return on September 10. Until then blogging will be replaced with the tango. Hasta luega.