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Mindfulness: Multiply Productivity Through Undivided Attention

Mindfulness can empower you to replace knee-jerk reactions with more conscious — and ultimately more efficient — behaviour.

By Alberto Ribera and J.L. Guillén

GENERAL MILLS IS NOT JUST A LARGE NORTH AMERICAN food corporation with more than 41,000 employees, $17 billion in net sales and over 100 brands under its umbrella. It is also a pioneer in executive education and leadership training, thanks in part to its 2006 adoption of a ground-breaking program aimed at cultivating ‘mindfulness’ — a state of heightened awareness and attention — in its workforce.

After participating in the company’s mindfulness training programs, employees testify to enhanced listening capacity, clearer decision making and higher productivity. Other leading companies have since launched similar programs, including Google, Procter & Gamble, Apple, Yahoo! and Unilever.

Meanwhile, the latest research in the fields of Psychology, Neuroscience and Management has begun to lend scientific credence

to the notion of mindfulness, which until recently was derided by many as pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo.

In this article, we will explain how mindfulness can strengthen a broad set of executive functions to boost productivity, improve decision-making and enhance well-being, based on research and coaching experiences we have undertaken in designing and delivering programs for multinational corporations.

The Antidote to Attention Deficit

In this age of multitasking, instant messaging and constant connectivity, the fact that people are finding it increasingly difficult to focus their attention on one thing at a time hardly comes as a surprise. Every day we are bombarded with stimuli, distractions, rotmanmagazine.ca / 3

The capacity to focus your attention substantially improves your emotional balance, so that you can avoid impulsive responses.

interruptions and growing pressure to do more with less, with negative repercussions on our productivity and well-being. The result: disordered minds, reactive behaviour and unduly high levels of stress and anxiety.

We recently surveyed 1,000 executives to measure the impact of this attention deficit on workplace performance.

We used two recognized temperament scales — ‘exploratory excitability’ and ‘impulsiveness’ — both of which are related to hyperactivity, disorderliness, a propensity to seek out novel experiences and an intolerance for monotony and routine. In the first test, 72 percent o f participants exhibited high o r very high levels of ‘exploratory excitement’, suggesting heightened levels of novelty-seeking behaviour. In the second test, 45 per cent showed high or very high levels of ‘impulsiveness’, implying a lack of control of automatic responses and an unwillingness to focus in-depth on issues at hand.

Given such findings, any tool or practice t hat serves to relieve mental overload and helps people devote their full concentration to the task before them seems warranted. This is exactly what mindfulness aims to do: it helps you stop functioning on autopilot and engage more consciously and proactively in your work. In addition to giving your full attention to the present moment, acting deliberately or mindfully also helps you detach yourself, making you less prone to emotional prejudices and whims.

Our ability to manage external stimuli and our response to them depends on the degree to which we allot our attention.

Mindfulness allows us to develop a broad set of cognitive and executive functions, raises self-awareness levels and facilitates emotional regulation, empowering individuals to substitute knee-jerk reactions with more conscious—and ultimately more efficient be haviour. It is wort h underscoring th e difference be-tween mindfulness as a technique and mindfulness as a state of mind: the former is just a means, but it is important to keep the latter — the true end — in sight.

‘Cultivating our attention’ is one of the key aspects of prac-ticing mindfulness. The good news is, we can train our minds to do this, just as we firm our muscles when we do physical exercise. As psychologist Daniel Goleman explains, “Attention is a men-tal muscle, and can be strengthened with the right practice. The basic move to enhance concentration in the mental gym: put your focus on a chosen target, like your breath. When it wanders away (and it will), notice that your mind has wandered. This requires

mindfulness—the ability to observe our thoughts without getting caught up in them. Then bring your attention back to your breath.

That’s the mental equivalent of a weightlifting rep.”

The effort we make to refocus our attention on what is most relevant has a reward: in sharpening our mind, we are effectively helping it to rest. There are a variety of techniques to achieve this state of sharpened attention and full awareness, but all have one thing in common: the establishment of an ‘anchoring point’ to return to when your attention begins to wander.

An ideal starting point is the most internationally-renowned mindfulness program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). First developed in the 1970s by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts, MBSR was initially tested in a clinical setting and later applied to the real world of business. Its positive effects on the brain — the general feeling of well-being and effective management of emotions and impulses — have been rigorously evaluated in multiple studies and are extensively documented.

To achieve the desired results, the practice of mindfulness must conform to the following requirements: • Non-judgmental observation: being able to step back from your emotions in order to be free from distorted judgments; • Renewed attention: deactivating the autopilot response so as not to be dulled by routine; • Anchored to the present: living and embracing each moment in a fully conscious way; and • Equanimity and composure: experiencing emotions, but without getting carried away by them.

Reaping the Personal Benefits

The habitual and sustained practice of mindfulness has a notable impact at the neural level. The plasticity of the brain makes it possible to alter its structure and functions. Mental training can alter the patterns of activity, modifying or deactivating established neural connections and allowing for the creation of new ones. Research points to a host of positive effects this can have in three areas.

COGNITIVE EFFECTS. A broad body of research shows that mindfulness enhances attention, memory and a number of executive functions. Some models hold that attention involves three neural networks with distinct functions: alertness, orientation and

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conflict management. Mindfulness helps to develop all three by forcing us to focus our attention on just one element. It does this by making us avoid analyzing or judging our thoughts, sensations or feelings, and returning our attention to our breathing each time an unwanted stimulus intrudes on our thought process, making our minds wander. It also significantly improves ‘working memory’, which is necessary to keep valuable information in mind as we perform complex functions such as understanding, learning and deliberating. As for executive functions — by which we must regulate thoughts in order to confront problems, strategize, form concepts and make decisions—mindfulness notably improves cognitive flexibility, allowing us to better navigate uncharted waters.

PSYCHOSOMATIC EFFECTS. Mindfulness has a positive influence on both physical and mental well-being. Of particular note is its impact on one’s capacity to manage stress. Stress not only undermines our ability to work, it can also be extremely costly for organizations in terms of health care, sick leave, absenteeism and staff turnover. Most stress management and prevention methods focus on external factors, leading companies to try to redesign their workplace environment and dynamics. Mindfulness, by contrast, seeks to change not the reality itself, but the way in which the individual perceives and experiences it. It also reduces the brain’s levels of cortisol, a hormone related to stress and makes it easier to concentrate, and several studies have shown that it can relieve insomnia and boost the immune system.

EMOTIONAL EFFECTS. The capacity to develop and focus your attention substantially improves your emotional balance, so that you can avoid impulsive responses. Richard Davidson, a professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of WisconsinMadison and a leading expert in the field of mindfulness, has found that cultivating full attention and a conscious response has a direct, positive impact on six key emotional dimensions:

• Resilience: rapid recovery in the face of negative life events; • Outlook: commitment, optimism and sustained energy levels, even in difficult circumstances; • Social intuition: empathy, compassion and emotional intelligence in social situations; • Self-awareness: knowledge of your own feelings and emotions;

• Context sensitivity: knowing how to interpret the external environment and acting accordingly; and • Attention: maintaining focus, awareness and feelings of control, even in adverse situations.

Positive Effects in the Workplace

The above effects transcend the individual and can benefit the entire organization by raising productivity, enhancing decisionmaking, boosting creativity and improving social relations and the workplace atmosphere. Let’s examine each in turn.

PRODUCTIVITY. Mindfulness raises productivity in a number of ways. Full attention in the present moment leads to a state of improved concentration, allows practitioners to reduce the extent and frequency of their mind wandering, and enables them to maintain focus for longer periods of time. These effects are especially notable in workplaces where multitasking is the norm.

Constantly shifting your attention between multiple tasks has been shown to slow down performance and contributes to making more mistakes.

A recent article in the Financial Times quoted several highprofile executives from the world of finance extolling the benefits of mindfulness practices, including Philipp Hildebrand, vice chair of BlackRock and a former head of the Swiss National Bank, who said, “In a world of screens, texts, cell phones — information all over you — spending 20 minutes purposefully not thinking about anything is a pause that refreshes. In some ways in the financial world, it is a must.”

Not letting yourself be ruled by every sensation, emotion or feeling that wells up in the course of a day saves valuable time and energy. Why? Because it avoids unhealthy rumination — chewing on things that perturb you over and over. By not dwelling on things, you reduce your levels of emotional fatigue, which means you can devote more of your energy towards performance, rather than sweating the small stuff.

Collectively, adopting a positive outlook, refusing to react automatically, and consciously choosing to accept situations strengthen resilience, which translates into a greater capacity to adapt to challenges as well as recover more swiftly when things don’t go as planned. Furthermore, employees who are able to immerse themselves completely in their work activities display more commitment and willingness to contribute to the productivity of the organization. As such, mindfulness positively

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influences three aspects of productivity: vigour, dedication and loyalty.

The productivity benefits of running a workplace mindfulness program have been demonstrated by a number of organizations. In the case of General Mills, 83 per cent of those who participated in its Mindful Leadership at Work course said they subsequently took time each day to optimize their personal productivity, compared with 23 per cent who said they did so before the course. In addition, the number of people who made a conscious effort to eliminate tasks or meetings with little productive value increased from 32 to 82 per cent.

DECISION MAKING. While we like to think that organizational decision-making is a rational process, in reality we know that our

thinking and reasoning are unavoidably shaped by unconscious, automatic impulses and biases. This is not always a bad thing: when time is of the essence, such impulses allow us to act quickly, without taxing our cognitive abilities and resources. However, if cognitive shortcuts become the norm, this can lead us to act impulsively, neglect important details and ignore alternative ways of approaching a particular situation.

With a mindful attitude, we broaden our field of vision and are able to identify and adopt alternative ways of doing things. With our autopilot deactivated, our decision-making processes gain in terms of perspective and scope. This is particularly relevant to dynamic, fast-changing environments, where uncertainty rules. Some suggest that mindfulness can also boost ethical decision-making. This is not to say that devoting your

Go With the Flow: Finding Joy in Your Work Renowned Psychology and Management Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term ‘flow’ to describe the overwhelming pleasure that people experience when they fully immerse themselves in a task they enjoy. Though it is frequently applied to people engaged in creative or sporting pursuits, many people, regardless of their occupation, describe peak moments when their work just seems to flow effortlessly — when their actions and consciousness are perfectly aligned.

The benefits of flow are immediate and clear. At the individual level, they include better performance, increased motivation and a positive spirit. At the corporate level, this positive attitude and maximum commitment translate into a collective willingness to work together for organizational success. Flow starts with individuals empowered to boost their own effectiveness and with managers offering helpful suggestions and constructive criticism. Everyone supports each other so that the organization performs at its best.

Flow encompasses eight dimensions, but we advise managers to take special note of the first three, as these are considered prerequisites for flow in the workplace.

Give immediate feedback. Commitment comes in large part from

Balance challenges with skills. This is the first rule of flow: people must have a reasonable chance of accomplishing the tasks set before them. Of course, the tasks should present varying degrees of complexity, so there is room for the person’s skill levels to be elevated. Each person’s outlook will condition the extent to which a particular activity is found to be gratifying.

Loss of self. There is no longer any room in the consciousness

Set clear goals. People won’t be able to immerse themselves in an activity if they don’t know which task to undertake. Objectives must be clear, for both the short and long term. Too often, people miss the opportunity to experience ‘the moment’ because their focus is on an end goal at some distant point in the future, instead of enjoying the process of getting there.

a sense that what we are doing has some larger purpose and is of value to the rest of the organization. This means that for people to devote themselves to an activity, they need to know if they are performing well or not. Feedback can come from colleagues, supervisors or clients — in tandem with our own personal benchmarks set for ourselves.

When challenges and skills are well aligned, goals are clear and feedback is relevant, we are ready to experience the remaining five dimensions of flow, summarized below.

Intense concentration. Our mind is orderly and fully focused

on a task at hand.

Effortlessness. On entering a deep state of concentration

on the task, we do it almost without effort, pressure or tension.

Control. We have the feeling of controlling the activity and the

fear of failure disappears, giving way to a feeling of empowerment.

for insecurity or frustration stemming from social comparison; we become our stronger selves.

No sense of time. When we surrender our physical and mental

being to the moment, time either flies or seems plentiful. Once you finish the task, you discover the final dimension of flow: a profound sense of fulfillment and achievement that is a reward in itself; and a desire to do it all over again.

-A. Ribera and J.L. Guillén

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Mindfulness positively influences three aspects of productivity: vigour, dedication and loyalty.

full attention necessarily makes you more ethical; however, it does free up the mental space needed to ensure that decisions are approached from all angles — including an ethical one.

Returning to the General Mills survey, 80 per cent of the participants in the company’s course on Cultivating Leadership Presence reported a positive change in their ability to make better decisions with more clarity, and another 89 per cent noticed an improvement in their listening capabilities. This is further evidence of a positive relationship between mindfulness and decision-making that is more conscious and strategic.

CREATIVITY. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have yet established a direct relationship between mindfulness and workplace creativity, but there are indications that such a link exists. Harvard researchers, for example, have demonstrated that mindfulness can be a useful tool for promoting greater creativity, flexibility and use of information in an educational setting. Given that at a neurological level, the cultivation of attention promotes new connections and the development of lateral thinking, it stands to reason that organizations with mindful leaders would be more inclined towards creativity and innovation.

One of the world’s most cutting-edge companies, Google, obviously believes that promoting mindfulness among its workforce could reap such benefits. It has been running its popular Search Inside Yourself program for several years, divided into three stages: attention training; self-awareness and self-mastery; and the development of useful mental habits. Those who have gone through the program give it high marks, and it is always oversubscribed. Many claim it has changed their lives. Google’s Richard Fernández told The New York Times how the class transformed his own work behaviour: “I’m definitely much more resilient as a leader. I listen more carefully and with less reactivity in high-stakes meetings. I work with a lot of senior executives who can be very demanding, but that doesn’t faze me anymore. It’s almost [like having] an emotional and mental ‘bank account’. I’ve now got much more of a buffer there.”

SOCIAL RELATIONS AND WORKPLACE ATMOSPHERE. As indicated, by improving an individual’s sense of well-being, mindfulness promotes positive emotions, reduces stress and increases empathy.

Not surprisingly, this has a direct and positive impact on social relationships, which in turn has a contagious effect on the wider workplace atmosphere. Active listening also enhances commu-

nication and collaboration, and reduces interpersonal conflict.

Mindfulness seems to be particularly effective at promoting positive emotions when an individual’s psychological capital — their hope, optimism and resilience — is low. In other words, it appears to help those who need it the most.

In closing

The discourse on what needs to be done today to develop effective leaders has changed markedly. Globalization and constant technological change have created volatility, uncertainty, chaos and ambiguity, which in turn have generated unprecedented levels of stress among executives and the organizations they lead.

Mustering resilience in this context requires tapping new reserves of physical and mental energy. For this reason, more and more companies are deciding to launch their own mindfulness programs to bolster their employees’ resilience.

In the words of mindfulness practitioner and former Medtronic CEO Bill George, now a Harvard professor: “Mindful people make much better leaders than frenetic, aggressive ones. They understand their reactions to stress and crises, and their impact on others. They are far better at inspiring people to take on greater responsibilities and at aligning them around common missions and values. As a result, people follow their mindful approach, and their organizations outperform others over the long run.”

Alberto Ribera is a senior lecturer at IESE

(Barcelona) and academic director of the IESE Coaching Unit, following a 15-year career with the World Health Organization, the European Commission and other multilateral organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a degree in Medicine and is a trained specialist in preventive medicine. J.L. Guillén is the founder of Social Ventures, a management consultancy based in Madrid. This article originally appeared in IESE Insight (ieseinsight.com), published by IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Barcelona. rotmanmagazine.ca / 7

Questions for: Robert Steven Kaplan

Q &A

The former chairman of Goldman Sachs describes how to become a more reflective leader.

Interview by Karen Christensen

You believe the key difference between successful executives and those who are less successful is the way they deal with periods of confusion and uncertainty. Please explain.

Some people are under the impression that highly-successful leaders enjoy a smooth path, but that is not the case.

Every executive — no matter how successful — goes through difficult periods: they experience adversity, failure and disappointments. The trick is not to avoid those things completely, it’s to learn how to deal with them. And the best way to deal with them is not to pretend that you have all the answers. You have to be able to step back on a regular basis and ask questions — the right questions — and reflect in order to get yourself back on track.

You have found that when leaders struggle, there is often a mismatch between how they are spending their time and the most pressing needs of the business. Why does this happen?

In the chaos of things, people often fail to take a step back and ask two key questions. First, What is my vision for this organization? A vision is a clear articulation of what you would like your enterprise to be if you succeed. How does it add value to its constituencies? What service or benefit does it provide? Related to that, what is its distinctive competence — what is your company truly great at? It pays to ask these questions regularly, because the world is constantly changing, and the way you added value two or three years ago may not be relevant today.

The second critical question is, What are your top threeto-five priorities for achieving this vision? I always try to bring people back to these questions, because when someone is struggling, it is very likely that they are unclear about these two things.

What’s the best way to go about matching one’s time with organizational priorities?

People fail to manage their time well for a variety of reasons.

They may be disorganized or scattered, but I often find that rotmanmagazine.ca / 8

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they simply fail to decide in advance how to spend their time. The way to do that is, as indicated, to first identify your vision and the resulting top three-to-five priorities. I suggest putting these up on your wall — somewhere where they are highly visible to you, so that as time passes you can regularly ask, Is my time expenditure matching up with these priorities? And, if not, why not?

You’ve also come up with a simple way for leaders to ďŹ gure out if they’re in the wrong job. Please describe it.

I say to people, whatever job you are in, what are the two or three most important things that a person has to do really well to be great at that job? And my next question is, do you like doing those things? If the answer is no, you have to face up to the fact that you might very well be in the wrong job.

You have noted that many smart people spend too much time being ineffective. Why is that?

Again, it’s probably because they aren’t intentional enough about articulating their vision and priorities, and as a result, they’ve gotten into bad habits: they do what they’ve always done, and respond to things as they come at them. If you don’t identify your vision and priorities regularly, your 76 / Rotman Magazine

activities are going to be driven by external forces and people coming in and pulling you in different directions.

The best leaders exert some discipline over that.

Talk a bit about the importance of delegation to achieving optimal leadership.

If you’re not willing to delegate, it is going to be very difficult to match up your time with your priorities. The fact is, if there are really only three or four top priorities, why are you spending so much time on all these other things that are not priorities? You should be delegating most of those things to someone else. For a lot of people, it’s a control issue: they think they will always do the task better themselves, and they fail to realize that delegation is the best way to train and develop people. This is one reason I always say that leadership must be learned, because delegating does not come naturally. If you’re the smartest person in the room, why would you ever delegate anything? I try to get people past that — to realize that their priorities should heavily dictate how they spend their valuable time.

You have said that many of your most stressful experiences at Goldman Sachs occurred in connection with the bi-annual round of partner promotions. Why is that?

In a professional services firm, people are your most important asset: you train them, coach them and nurture them.

Basically, you guard them with your life. The promotion process is a positive aspect of that, because some people get promoted; but unfortunately, a lot of people don’t, and you don’t want to lose them. You can’t promote everyone, so you have to consider, What is our vision? What are our priorities?

You’re making brutally-tough choices between great people — so you better make choices that fit with the organization’s vision and priorities. Doing this is not easy; and I lost a lot of sleep over that.

Many people confuse the terms coaching and mentorship. Please summarize the important differences between them.

In my experience, mentoring involves an individual telling his or her mentor a story, and the mentor giving advice based on that story. The problem is, the advice given is only as good as the story that is told. How often do you tell a story about a relationship issue to somebody who wasn’t there, and based on how you tell it, the person says, “Oh, you definitely did the right thing�; whereas if they had been there, they might have had a completely different reaction.

Coaching is very different from mentoring in that it requires direct observation. It’s about getting advice from someone who directly observes you. We all need coaching rotmanmagazine.ca / 9

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because we all have blind spots: the way I perceive what I did and the way you observe what I did may not be the same.

That’s why I always say to people, “You have a mentor?

Great. But that is not a substitute for getting coaching.�

Coaching is likely to involve a greater degree of confrontation. How should managers prepare for this?

Many people who are otherwise very effective are not good coaches, and part of it is because they fear confrontation.

Sometimes they just don’t know what to say. I advise people that coaching must be skill-based. It needs to be specific, and it needs to be actionable; giving someone vague generalities is not good coaching. I advise people to prepare, so they can go into a coaching session with two or three skillbased observations and be willing to give the person actionable advice about how to address the issues.

Coaching takes a lot of time and preparation. Sometimes people have too many direct reports or they’re spending time on other ‘priorities’, so they don’t make time for it.

But I would argue that if you’re a leader, attracting, retaining and developing superb people will always be one of your top three-to-five priorities, and you need to spend time on this accordingly.

You have said that successful enterprises ‘treat talent differently’. How so?

It’s not just about how companies treat their ‘best people’.

I would argue that outstanding firms strive to treat all employees fairly — which means coaching people and giving them feedback. The fact is, you don’t actually know who your best people are going to be when they join the organization. You may think you know, but sometimes it takes years, and people develop at different speeds. In a big organization, there may be a multitude of different jobs that a particular individual could fit into; your job is to assess your people, coach them, understand what they’re interested in and see if you can match them to the jobs in your firm. That’s how to build a great organization.

Another of your recommendations for leaders is to ‘create space for reection’ in their lives. What does this entail?

It basically means that you can’t be going full throttle all the time. You need time to think. As I’ve indicated, you ought to be thinking about your firm’s vision, distinctive competencies and top priorities, and whether the organization is aligned to achieve these in its current state. You can’t do this all by yourself, so you might think about having an off-site or giving a group of your top people an assignment where you engage them by asking these very questions. That’s what I mean by reflection.

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Too many leaders don’t make time for this. They don’t engage with people, and they aren’t open to learning. They think they are, but they’re not. My goal is to help people overcome the isolation that can come with leadership and give them a roadmap for how to keep learning. You don’t need to be Superman or Wonder Woman, but you do need to be open to learning and asking questions.

Robert Steven Kaplan is Senior Associate Dean and a professor of

Management Practice at Harvard Business School. He is also co-chairman of Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm and author of, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). Prior to joining Harvard in 2005, he was vice-chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. rotmanmagazine.ca / 10

QUESTIONS FOR

Adam Grant

Q &A The Wharton professor and author talks about the differences between Givers and Takers in the workplace.

Interview by Karen Christensen

You believe that every time we interact with someone at work, we make choices around ‘reciprocity’. Describe how ‘Givers’ and ‘Takers’ differ in their behaviour.

Takers view interactions as a way of extracting value from other people and approach colleagues with a mindset of, ‘How can I get as much as possible from this exchange?’ At the other end of the spectrum, Givers come to an interaction trying to figure out, ‘What can I contribute here? How can I add value?’ That usually means looking for ways to be helpful, without any strings attached. It might involve sharing knowledge, providing mentoring, making introductions, or just showing up early or staying late to help someone out.

You have found that there is a third type of ‘reciprocity style’: Matchers. Please describe them.

In the majority of our interactions, most of us operate by the principal of matching. If you’re a Matcher by default, your instinct is to try to maintain an even balance of give-and-take in your interactions. You try to keep fairness and a sense of quid pro quo in your dealings with others; if you do someone a favour, you expect an equal one in return.

Who is most likely to end up at the top of the success ladder: Givers, Takers or Matchers?

This surprises many people: it’s the Givers, but interestingly, they are also most likely to sink to the bottom — and I love that paradox. Let’s talk first about the Givers who don’t succeed. This happens because they are too self-sacrificing, to the point of becoming doormats. They try to help out all of the people all of the time, putting others’ interests so far ahead of their own that they often burn out. While successful Givers also put other people’s interests first, they don’t do so to their own detriment. Their stance is more like being on an airplane and securing their own oxygen mask before coming to the assistance of others.

Successful Givers proactively block out windows of time to get their own work done, then dedicate separate periods to be helpful to others. Also, instead of being ‘generalists’ in helping people with any request that comes up, they rotmanmagazine.ca / 11

Givers can be too self-sacrificing, to the point of becoming doormats.

are more like specialists: they find ways to help that they are uniquely good at. This way, the act of giving is energizing to them rather than distracting and exhausting.

In their interactions, successful Givers look for ways to expand the ‘pie’, so that everybody around them can be better off. Part of what makes them so successful is that they find greater meaning and purpose in their work because they feel that they truly make a difference. They make it clear that their colleagues really matter to them, and as a result, they end up building deep and broad relationships with people who often become sources of creative ideas and open doors to new opportunities.

The Taker’s Focus

The Giver’s Focus

Wealth (money, material possessions)

Helpfulness (working for the well-being of others)

Pleasure (enjoying life)

Responsibility (being dependable)

Winning (doing better than others)

Compassion (responding to the needs of others)

Each year, companies spend billions of dollars assessing and evaluating talent, but you believe that this approach is flawed. Please explain.

The war for talent tends to focus on finding people with ‘raw ability’. Yet wonderful books — like Mindset by Stanford’s Carol Dweck and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle — have shown that talent isn’t just born: it is also learned, honed and developed.

The Taker’s mindset is, ‘I’m going to hire the best talent possible so that I win and everybody else loses’; and failed Givers promote talent in a way that they themselves lose out. Successful Givers try to promote talent so that it’s a win-win for all. They spend time and effort figuring out how to bring you to the best of your ability, and they do this in a way that’s good for the organization and for them.

In one major study, Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues tracked world class athletes, musicians and chess players, among others. He found that the vast majority of them were not that special in their early lives: they didn’t win all their competitions; they didn’t have the fastest times as swimmers or the best track record as tennis players; they weren’t playing Carnegie Hall by age seven. Basically, they seemed to be average. The question was, how did they become so great?

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell showed that a major factor in success is deliberate practice — that highly successful people have to put in a certain number of hours (around 10,000) to master their skill. But what motivates people to become so dedicated in the first place? Bloom found that they often had a first teacher or coach who made the activity fun for them. In my opinion, those coaches and

teachers were all Givers. They might have said to their young student, ‘Look, I’m not going to sit you down and make you drill away at the piano for hours; instead, I’m going to make a game out of this, so that you really enjoy music and you become intrinsically motivated. As a result, you will put in the time and energy and practice required to develop this skill’.

That’s an example of how Givers think about talent differently. They look for the potential in everyone, and they set challenging goals for the people they work with. As a result, they tend to uncover ‘diamonds in the rough’, and more often than not, they’re able to bring these people to higher levels of potential than anyone thought possible.

Tell us a bit about ‘powerless communication’, and why it is so powerful.

Powerless communication entails communicating in such a way that either makes others more powerful than you, or raises your own level of weakness and vulnerability. There are lots of ways to do this: it might involve speaking tentatively and expressing doubts about your ideas or your expertise; asking people questions, instead of giving answers; and seeking advice instead of telling people what to do. It might also involve admitting the times you’ve made mistakes or weren’t as successful as you’d hoped.

In many cases, people think this type of communication is dangerous, because it essentially exposes the ‘chinks’ in rotmanmagazine.ca / 12

Takers tend to pursue the ‘dominance path’: they try to earn respect by being assertive and controlling things. your armour. But the research in this area shows that whenever you work interdependently with others, the first thing they consider is, Does this person care about my interests?

At the outset, people are trying to figure out whether you are going to try to take from them or give to them. When we communicate powerlessly — when we hesitate, reveal our weaknesses or share doubt — it actually signals that we are concerned about others and that we’re willing to, if not defer to them, at least give their ideas and goals some consideration.

It becomes a signal that we are Givers, and when you’re working with people in a team, they are much more likely to listen to you once you’ve been human and open with them.

Research shows that there are two traditional paths to influence: dominance and prestige. How do these paths apply to Givers and Takers?

Takers tend to pursue the dominance path: they try to earn respect and influence by being assertive, controlling things and sort of conveying that they are superior to others. This approach can work well, if you don’t have to depend on other people, collaborate with them or serve them. But as soon as you shift to an interactive scenario, the Giver’s approach is much more effective. It says, ‘Look, I don’t have to be better than you or more powerful than you in order to earn your trust, or for you to see me as somebody who’s competent and worthy of respect’. Givers recognize that they can earn respect by helping people as opposed to controlling them.

Adam Grant is The Class of 1965 Professor of Management and Psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennysylvania. The youngest tenured Wharton faculty member, he is the author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (Viking, 2013).

rotmanmagazine.ca / 13

QUESTIONS FOR

Fred Kiel

Q &A An executive coaching pioneer defines ‘leadership character’, and explains how it affects the bottom line. .

Interview by Karen Christensen

You have noted that there is no widely-accepted definition of the term ‘character’. How do you define it?

I define character in two ways. First, there is the private version, which is the character you think you have, based on what’s in your heart and what your intentions are. The second version is the public version, which is how other people observe you and your behaviour. Abraham Lincoln once said that ‘character is like a tree, and reputation is like its shadow’. It would be wonderful if people judged us based on our intentions, but in fact, people judge us based on our behaviour, which, over time, adds up to our character.

Think about someone you view as a person of strong character. It’s almost certainly because of the way they behave: they tell the truth, they keep their promises, they own up to their mistakes, they show forgiveness and curiosity when other people make mistakes; and they treat people as people, not as objects. When you see someone behaving this way consistently, you admire them and you label them as having strong character.

You have identified four universal principles of ‘leadership character’. Please describe them.

My colleagues and I did an extensive literature review on this subject, and we discovered, from the field of Cultural Anthropology, that there are certain human universal practices and beliefs that are shared by all cultures around the world. We selected four of those traits as being particularly rotmanmagazine.ca / 14

Virtuoso CEOs bring in nearly five times greater return on assets.

The Life Journey’s Two Paths

THE INTEGRATED HUMAN

Success

Jobs

Mentors

Failures/ Mistakes

Mental complexity Worldview

Education

Self-awareness

Influential adult Parents

OUTER JOURNEY

LIFE EXPERIENCES

Character habits

INNER JOURNEY

indicative of character: integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion.

If you think about it, every parent around the globe teaches their children about integrity: they teach them to tell the truth and to keep their promises. They also teach them to be responsible for their actions, and they teach them forgiveness and compassion. These traits are universally-admired, and together, they define ‘leadership character’. We then figured out a way to put some metrics around this and ‘measure’ the character of individual leaders.

Tell us about your findings on the connection between leadership character and business results.

We enrolled over 100 CEOs in our study, and ended up with complete data sets for 84 of them. As a result, we were able to draw connections between leadership character and return on assets over the previous two years. We named this measure the Return on Character, or RoC. What we found is that neither age nor tenure impact the bottom line. But a leader’s character does, and we measure that based on behaviour. We studied the extremes — the top-end ‘strong character’ leaders — and compared them to ‘weak character’ leaders. We called the top group Virtuoso Leaders, and the bottom group Self-Focused Leaders, for obvious reasons. We were astounded to discover that Virtuoso CEOs brought in nearly five times greater return on assets. In addition, they enjoyed a 26 per cent higher level of workforce engagement, and their corporate risk profile was much lower.

Describe the observable differences between a Virtuoso and a Self-Focused leader.

The key difference lies in how they treat people. We ended up with over 8,500 random employee ratings on these 84 CEOs, and the Virtuosos were described as demonstrating all four of the universal principles in their day-to-day behaviour. The Self-Focused CEOs were found to exhibit those characteristics half the time or less, and they were rated as ‘telling the truth’ only about half of the time.

Provide an example of a Virtuoso leader, and explain why they deserve the title.

At the top of my list is the recently-retired CEO and founder of Costco Wholesale, Jim Sinegal. Jim’s employees described him as embodying the four principles and infusing the resulting value system throughout the organization.

If you think about it, everyone who visits a Costco store comes out with a smile on their face, and that’s because employees are very focused on service; they treat their ‘members’ like guests, rather than annoying customers — rotmanmagazine.ca / 15

About 70 per cent of us overestimate the strength of our character as perceived by others.

The Return on Character Matrix

and that’s all because of the culture Jim established.

When the company was founded in the mid-1980s, Jim made three promises. First, he promised Costco members that he would never stock anything but quality merchandise, and he would never mark it up by more than 15 per cent.

Somehow, Costco buyers have found ways to get great deals, and they have stuck to that promise. For example, once they got an amazing deal on 40 or 50 grand pianos, and after the 15 per cent markup, customers were able to buy one for about $8,000 — instead of the usual $40,000.

The second promise Jim made was to his employees: that they would be treated with respect and paid a living wage. The average warehouse worker earns almost double what they pay at Sam’s Club, their closest competitor. They also close early on holidays and Sundays, so that their employees can enjoy their family lives. As a result, Costco enjoys a remarkable retention rate that is amongst the best in the retail industry. It also has a very low ‘shrink rate’ — the term used for spoiled, lost or damaged goods. Most shrink in the retail world is due to of employee theft; but Costco hardly has any of that, and they have built a culture where employees will report it if they observe it.

The third promise Jim made was to investors: that he would do his best to deliver a good return; however, that would not be the focus of the business. The focus would always be on customers and employees. For the smart investors who saw the wisdom of this approach, a USD$1,000 investment in Costco when it went public in 1985 is worth $60,000 today. That’s an annualized compound return of 16.5 per cent.

Is it possible to judge one’s own character?

People are actually very limited in their capacity to accurately judge their own character. All 84 of the CEOs in our study rated themselves as being people of very strong character, when in fact, only about 30 per cent of them were accurate. Overall, Virtuoso CEOs rated themselves a little lower than their employees rated them — indicating a certain level of humility and self-awareness. But the Self-

HEAD

HEART

INTEGRITY • Telling the truth • Acting with principles, values and belief (i.e. ‘walking the talk’) • Standing up for what is right • Keeping promises

FORGIVENESS • Letting go of one’s mistakes • Letting go of others’ mistakes • Focusing on what’s right versus what’s wrong

RESPONSIBILITY • Owning one’s personal choices • Admitting mistakes and failures • Expressing a concern for the common good

COMPASSION • Empathizing with others • Empowering others • Committing to others’ development

Focused CEOs rated themselves 30 points higher than their employees rated them, and higher than the Virtuosos rated themselves.

This tends to be true of people in general, and it means that about 70 per cent of us overestimate the strength of our character as perceived by others. We all tend to live in our own version of reality, and I suspect that as much as 70 per cent of us don’t have an accurate view of the strength of our own character.

Talk a bit about the traditional Economic model of human behaviour versus the newer Integrated Model, and how they relate to leadership.

Classic economic theory assumes that all people are totally rational and self-interested. The problem is, this is an inaccurate view of human nature — and all sorts of bad results come from assuming that people are 100 per cent selfish.

Neuroscientists, geneticists and psychologists have come up with a much more complete view of human nature. This rotmanmagazine.ca / 16

view agrees that we are all born with a certain degree of selfconcern, but it also says that we are born to connect, to cooperate and to be in relationships with other people.

We all have this dual nature of being both very selfconcerned and very ‘other-concerned’, and Virtuoso leaders are able to keep those in balance. It’s not that they sacrifice themselves totally, but they are also focused on other people and contributing to the common good. These ‘integrated beings’ are curious about the world and open to learning. This ‘updated’ view of human nature is much more complete, and it should be embraced widely.

Millennials represent 60 per cent of the global population and are on the cusp of supplying leaders to every corner of the globe. What is your message to them in terms of building character?

fore you engage with others, you don’t consciously think about how to act: you just engage in a way that feels natural to you, and that is based on the habits you’ve learned for interacting with people.

We all know someone who doesn’t treat other people well. But once you become aware of your own habits and how others really see you, you can make changes. Neuroscience is making great headway in understanding how to help people change their habits. My colleagues and I are incorporating these findings into our work, and we’re looking into using gaming as a way of taking people through simulations that provide tools for strengthening their good habits — and weakening bad ones.

I think very highly of Millennials. All of the in-depth studies of them show that they’re not going to follow the path of Baby Boomers or Gen X. As the first generation of ‘digital natives’, they’re much more connected: the average Millennial has 250 friends on Facebook, and many of those are global. So, there’s this new generation of people who see themselves as part of a global community, rather than being focused on one particular culture. As a result, they will be much more focused on the common good.

They are also known to be very mistrusting of big institutions — and rightly so. They’re motivated to make those institutions change, and as they get into leadership roles, I believe they will. Of course, there are going to be some bad actors, as well as outstandingly good actors; but as a generation, they are more highly-educated and optimistic about the future than previous generations. I’m putting all of my hope for the future on them, and I will do whatever I can to empower them and educate them about the importance of character — and how to hold other people accountable to their standards.

Can character be learned?

It can, because as we discovered, the way you treat other people is a matter of habit, and habits can be changed. Be-

Fred Kiel, PhD, is a founding partner of KRW Internationals and a

pioneer of the field of executive coaching. Called ‘the global dean of CEO coaches’, he is the author of Return On Character: The Real Reason Leaders and Their Companies Win (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015). rotmanmagazine.ca / 17

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