Ep. 141 - Performance, Pressure, and the Last 8% with Bill Benjamin

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the leadership window podcast with doctor patrick jenks each week through a social sector lens patrick interviews leaders and experts and puts us in touch with trends and tips for leading effectively patrick is a board certified executive coach a member of the forbes coaches council a best selling author award winning photographer and a professional speaker and now here's doctor patrick jenks. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Hi everyone welcome to episode one hundred and forty one of the leadership window i am excited about this conversation today we are going to talk about performance and some other things but we're going to talk leadership and this is a show about leadership bill benjamin is my guest today he is a leadership expert guru he's an emotional intelligence specialist you've heard a lot of emotional intelligence content on this show he is a partner at the institute for health and human potential i just love the name of that organization and want to know a little bit more about that he's got a background in mathematics and computer science i know you're already going okay and this is a leadership conversation yes it is bill brings a unique analytical lens to the human side of leadership he helps high performing teams and technical leaders navigate pressure build trust have the difficult conversations that most people avoid which is probably the number one challenge i find myself coaching leaders on is the ability to have those conversations and the skill at having them he co developed a framework they call the last eight percent and we are definitely going to get into that concept on the show today but it's a science backed model for courageous leadership he's worked with elite elite organizations from the us marines to nasa google the nba people who take leadership pretty seriously and who work under pressure a lot bill is also he's a sought after speaker he's known for blending data storytelling and vulnerability to create practical high impact learning experiences i will tell you this now and i'll tell you at the end of the show more information is at ihhp dot com ihhp as in the institute for health and human potential ihhp dot com to learn more and the book for this with this partnership with he and his partners that is already out is called performing under pressure the science of doing your best when it matters most i've already read just a just a slight bit of that and there's an interesting and unique take i think we'll talk about but i also want to make sure we talk about the last eight percent culture so with that let me say howdy bill from chicago if i'm not mistaken thank you for joining. [00:03:12] Speaker C: Us today howdy patrick great to be here and i loved your intro whenever i hear myself described as an emotional intelligence expert i always think not according to my teenage daughters yeah i know. [00:03:23] Speaker B: I know it sounds a little like you know presumptuous to say i'm an emotional intelligence expert but there is the understanding of the framework and helping people understand what it is yeah it makes you expert in the field for sure i certainly want to dig some of that expertise out so what did i miss in my introduction that you want to tell the world what's your mission what are you helping people do the. [00:03:47] Speaker C: Most i mean we're really helping them understand how to be high performing how to show up in their most difficult moments not avoiding them but also not making a mess finding that middle ground where they can push through the discomfort take a risk make a tough decision have a tough conversation yet do it skillfully that's some of what i've learned in the last twenty four years of doing this and it's really helped me in both my work and personal relationships. [00:04:21] Speaker B: You'Ve already got me wanting to dig right into something as you say that there is a term that is used a lot in the organizations i'm working with you've heard it a million times you may have heard shared it and taught it a million times and it's the term psychological safety here it a lot that leaders are supposed to create psychological safety in their environment and i've come to recently challenge that concept a little bit and we can talk about that but i'll just share kind of where i'm headed with this and get your take on it you know the the ability to have these conversations and and to be comfortable working through conflict and challenge as you just talked about requires what people would say requires psychological safety which means if i'm going to challenge leadership or peers or cross sector stakeholder groups i got to feel like i'm not going to have to pay a negative price for it there's not going to be a consequence what's the word the hr word repercussions i'm not going to face any of that for speaking up and so i don't feel psychologically safe and in some of the work that i've done with some cohorts i've been in with doctor peter hawkins and others we've challenged that term psychological safety because it implies that i'm responsible for your psychological safety and when you really think about that for five seconds it's like yeah really though and so the term i've started using is psychological maturity of an organization and its culture in other words are we mature enough not only to recognize that we want people we want to open space but we're also mature enough to be able to take the known risks of speaking up there's risk no matter no matter how much psychological safety a leader can give to you so we can talk a little bit about that if you want i'd love your take on how do you help leaders navigate that when you can't really guarantee someone else's psychological. [00:06:25] Speaker C: Safety yeah and you're right i think the term is overused i still think it's important because if you want to create a culture and a team where people show up and perform a specific set of behaviors have a specific attitude there's really two pieces to it the research is really clear on this there's their own internal capabilities do they feel comfortable taking risks to speak up do they have the skills to do it well that's the internal but that's only fifty percent the other fifty percent is the external environment so if you want to create a culture where people speak up but senior leaders are shooting their ideas down people aren't going to speak up so what we're really working with organizations on is having both where there's that safety where leaders are a modeling it and b being open when somebody's pushing back and then when somebody's speaking up so it really is both yeah. [00:07:19] Speaker B: And that reminds me a little bit of some conversation that we've had with with folks lately around vertical development versus horizontal development yeah there's a skill set required to have these conversations which is a competency but there's also a maturity necessary to have these conversations which is a capacity and oftentimes we you know we diagnose wrong we try to teach the competency when the capacity is not there or someone has the capacity but they just don't know the skills for that so it's kind of double edged. [00:07:49] Speaker C: Yeah we're trying to teach both i mean the other thing that we know from how the brain works is that it's actually the culture is established people's feeling of whether it's safe or not to speak up is actually established in the difficult moments now we've defined that through a research study of thirty four thousand people that on average people feel that they leave seven point five six which we rounded up to eight percent they leave eight percent out of a difficult conversation they get ninety ninety two percent of the way there it starts getting tense it starts getting difficult and they step back they avoid they don't say that final last eight percent and the reason that that last eight percent is so important is because of the cortisol effect and the cortisol effect is that when there's tension when there's pressure when there's conflict and certainty cortisol gets released into the brain and one of the things that does is it causes memories to sear in so people remember how you showed up in that difficult last eight percent moment they don't remember what you're doing in the ninety two percent of moments when everyone's getting along and the deadlines are being met so culture is really established psychological safety is established in those tough moments so we're really helping teach the skills for people to again push into that discomfort of approaching a tough moment yet doing it skillfully and either modeling it or being open to creating that psychological safety but especially in the tough moments because that's. [00:09:15] Speaker B: What people remember so you just opened up a whole bunch of questions for me how did you arrive at eight percent what's the calculation what's the so. [00:09:24] Speaker C: There were there were a couple of questions but one of them was you know when you're in a difficult conversation you know do you say everything that you need to say when it gets difficult and then what percent do you feel that you leave out so there was a number of questions and it actually came out at seven point five six percent is what people you know claim that they are said that they feel they leave out of a difficult conversation and so we rounded that up. [00:09:48] Speaker B: To eight percent so it's self reporting and right off the bat i would i would my brain wants to challenge that eight percent and say i bet. [00:09:56] Speaker C: It'S twenty eight and you're not wrong it's just a metaphor i know i know i love it it's not meant to be an exact science you're for some people it's you know and again in a last eight percent moment there's there's two default behaviors and this and this is also self reported but people identify that they either and in our research sixty eight percent of people they avoid they don't say that last eight percent yeah the other thirty two percent and i can fall into this category i'm in that difficult conversation someone's getting upset rather than avoiding i'm stepping in and coming on too strong and now i'm making a mess we talk about people either being avoiders or make a mess or so good and so it's really whether it's eight percent or thirty two percent or four percent it's really about can you again push through that discomfort yet do it skillfully whether it's eight percent or thirty two percent yeah. [00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah no i totally get that i think that's right and the percentage is you know it's a range i'm sure my point is that my guess is that most people think they're good at it but others aren't and so you know yeah like if i'm being honest i i might say eight percent yeah leave about eight percent on the table i bet it's more than that if i really dig deep you know what i mean like what i'm saying is that's a conservative number is what would. [00:11:15] Speaker C: Be my guess i think you're right you know particularly for the sixty eight that are avoiders yeah now for the thirty two percent that are making messers that are just going to blurt it out and say it and get angry and upset you know they're getting all eight percent out they're just doing it unskillfully both have a negative impact both affect performance and so that's why we're focused both affect the culture what i. [00:11:41] Speaker B: Do like about the eight percent is it's doable you know it's like if i'm leaving eight percent on the table it's not that much more to finish the con to complete the cycle to to strengthen the culture and the trust just takes another eight percent that i'm. [00:11:57] Speaker C: Leaving on the table yes except that your brain is working really hard not to say that eight percent because we are all wired to default to protection not risk so the brain doesn't want the other person upset at you the brain doesn't want them to not like you so the brain is trying to keep you from saying that last eight percent so it sounds easy but that's where you have to understand the brain science of what's happening to you emotionally so that you can then either push through it to say that last eight percent or do it skillfully so that's where the brain science comes in we. [00:12:34] Speaker B: Have some psychological maturity live polls that we do with teams they're anonymous but they show up on the screen and questions like does everyone feel comfortable challenging peers even leadership and does everyone feel comfortable with conflict and all these things and oftentimes the leaders are surprised by the lower by numbers that are lower than they hoped or thought yes because the leader thinks they're creating an environment they say they want the openness but for whatever reason there's people feeling like yeah you say it but we don't feel it and so they're often surprised by some of the results in the room and they go really you know what what's what's wrong i mean i thought we had an open an open thing so i'm saying all that to just ask you this question in your experience in your research does this really come down more on the leader not realizing that they're not creating that safety and they think they are but they're. [00:13:32] Speaker C: Not sometimes that yes sometimes that's the answer sometimes what they don't recognize though is you know people come to work and they have their previous experiences and so they may have been in a culture and environment before them where it wasn't safe to speak up where they were reprimanded where there were negative repercussions well the emotional memory the cortisol effect then affects them so even though that leader themselves is open people never step in because they've had that previous experience so as a leader you have to work even harder to have that conversation and one of the things we do when we work with teams is talk about you know what kind of culture do they want to have what does it look like to be a high performing team and what happens when someone feels they need to point out a mistake or or challenge the status quo or name an inconvenient truth that's actually in our assessment the question that typically teams score lowest on is we name inconvenient truths difficult to discuss issues on our team because that's hard because you're calling someone out someone might get upset but we all know what happens when inconvenient truths aren't named then the issue doesn't get resolved then there's a meeting after the meeting to talk about the thing that wasn't said in the meeting and so it's incredibly incredibly unproductive yet it's just so hard for people to. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Do it is hard for people to do it's harder for people to get it back when it goes off the rails though like you say if you let it go and it becomes toxic and dysfunctional and all that it's so hard to reel it back in then at that point because it's all about trust you know in relationships yeah yeah. [00:15:07] Speaker C: Yeah in our again we did another research study where we looked at you know what are the two kind of key factors pillars in a high performing culture and this is backed up by some of sarah sewell's work at stanford and there's really two there's connection which is people feel they have a voice people feel valued psychological safety they feel cared for the second is courage the ability to do difficult things to name an inconvenient truth to have an accountability conversation to speak up you know when they don't think something's right and so a high performing culture does have both however we say that connection comes before courage because and that's that trust piece patrick if i know that you have my back and i know that you believe in me and you give me some difficult feedback i'm way more open to it than if i'm like i don't know where patrick's coming from i don't know who he is you know so that whole trust connection piece is what enables the courage and accountability and the risk taking to happen that is. [00:16:08] Speaker B: So true and even though you trust the person and you have a good relationship with the person it always stings a little you know it's like you hear something no one wants to hear somebody else say hey you know you didn't show up quite the way i would expect you to show up and i know that's not you but i just wanted to share it's like. [00:16:28] Speaker C: One of the examples i always use is i want you to imagine you get some feedback in an email and i'm not advocating feedback and email right it's a metaphor but you're going to get an email you get two of them and they're going to have exactly the same words and feedback but one comes from a leader who you admire who you respect you know has your best interest and one comes from a leader who you don't like is toxic are you going to react differently to those two emails completely differently one hundred percent. [00:16:56] Speaker B: You are one hundred percent why that. [00:16:58] Speaker C: Whole idea that that connection that trust that knowing somebody cares about me that as a leader you know you demonstrating that you do care and have somebody's best interest is critical to then unlocking that ability to give feedback to hold people accountable to make decisions that someone doesn't agree with because that's always hard. [00:17:18] Speaker B: So to cut ahead a little bit and we can we could never cover this in an hour podcast but to get to the eight percent what's the path what are the tenets that you teach that help people covered the last eight percent yeah so if you think. [00:17:36] Speaker C: Of those two things i described the fifty percent that each are fifty percent the culture and the environment that's about a team having open discussions about what i mentioned is what kind of culture they want to have how they're going to show up when they need to challenge each other how they're going to so so it's it's it's there's some tenets that the team agree to and so that's really clear individually then how do you ensure that there's that empathy and care and that courage that's where the emotional intelligence work comes in that's where the performing under pressure work comes in because it's actually the emotional brain that gets triggered and jumps in and says nope not safe don't speak up don't say that or don't make that decision don't take that risk so that's where people really need to learn about their emotional brain in order to both do empathy and care and take risks. [00:18:29] Speaker B: Man we're doing some very similar work bill it's really cool it's affirming we did a full day culture mapping workshop with the team the other day and my partner one of our coaches he made the statement in the beginning he said look we're going to design today we're going to do some culture design literally articulate the way you want the culture to be but that's the small small small small part of this you then have to execute on it which means everybody has to practice it and be mutual account mutually accountable for it and there's a third piece you have to believe you can do it i mean there are there are people in these culture mapping workshops that they they go through the motions and they'll yeah i'll be here my boss told me to be here i'll put some good things on the flip chart but i don't believe we're ever going to get there yeah and so you know you you gotta you gotta imagine it then you have to practice it and you have to believe it and let me. [00:19:20] Speaker C: Add all of that yes and you have to practice it in the difficult. [00:19:24] Speaker B: Moments oh that's where yeah that's it that's where it shows up because that's. [00:19:27] Speaker C: What people remember but that's the place where it' hardest to show up with curiosity when someone's challenging something that when you think you're right yeah you know and so that's so it's it is all so yes define the culture define the values divide but then you actually have to have the tools and skills to practice it in what we call the last eight percent moments in the. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Difficult moments so good i mean it's easy to practice it in the in the happy times the other thing the flip side of that is we tell people that their culture map is a is a mirror they should be holding up to each other yeah and but in but but in the good and the bad moments yeah so what people will often do is they'll they'll hold it up when they see somebody not following and they'll go we said this what leaders often neglect to do not purposefully but just consciously is hold it up when they do see it functioning the way okay this was a even in the difficult moments hey i just want you to know bill that meeting this morning was tough the way you navigated that with respect and empathy and you listened and you just stayed quiet and let that person really that was culture map point number four to the t you modeled it thank you for that so that sort of mirror not only when it's going bad but when it's going good that's when it's important it's that positive reinforcement is what does good look like you got to recognize it when you see it yeah and. [00:20:50] Speaker C: By the way i love that because the other question that organizations typically score really low on is i feel valued for the work that i do people don't give enough feedback they don't get enough positive reinforcement in fact we actually had a meeting internally so my business partner and i jp we run the company we've hired a president to manage the training consulting part of our business and there's a tough decision that needs to be made and we literally asked him in a meeting yesterday why haven't you made this decision yet and he sat and he thought he's very reflective he said you know i don't know and jp was great he said i so appreciate you you could have tried to make up an answer you just you just owned it you just said i don't know and so we really reinforced that vulnerability that not having to be perfect that you know not have not not having an answer and being able to say i don't know so yes that validation of the positive behaviors. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Is also missing absolutely yeah and you're you're reminding me of some of brene brown's work around vulnerability and to be the ability to be authentic and say i don't know you know i'm i'm struggling with that you know i'm grappling. [00:22:00] Speaker C: With it and if you're like me and you got promoted because you were you know good at your job and relatively high nine cue and technical skills you assume then well i got promoted because i have all the answers and i write all the time and then you run around feeling like you have to be right and you can't say i don't know or you can't say i need help because that's not why you got promoted and so i really struggled early in my career with that i thought you had to be the smartest guy in the room and i've learned that's exactly the opposite you want to be the dumbest guy in the room and have a lot of really great smart people around you. [00:22:34] Speaker B: We have we have centered on a word in our work lately i have centered on a work lately on a word in my work conversations and i keep i'm finding myself just coming back to dude that's the solution i was at i did an employee engagement workshop with an organization up in virginia and at the end of the workshop we did the thing where we said hey you know anyone have any final takeaways or aha moments that you want to share and this young lady in the back said yeah i have something and i said sure and she says throughout this workshop i've written down a word about a dozen times or more i said what word is it she looked at her paper and she said conversations and i said what about them she goes have them have them it's those conversations we're not having that this stuff ain't just gonna fix itself it's only gonna get worse and worse and worse so so have them and we talked about it a little more and you know sort of organically came on yeah there's two things one we have to have them two we have to have them well yes we have to know how to have them yes and but i'm finding more and more bill i don't want to oversimplify it but i'm finding more and more and that's what all this ninety five percent of the challenges that i see in the in the workplace when i'm coaching leaders and teams is people aren't having the right conversations at the right time with the right people in the right way it's conversations yeah. [00:24:15] Speaker C: I have two things to say about that number one you're absolutely right i mean at the end of a session or in coaching the number one thing people struggle with is they come to me i have to have a difficult conversation with my boss my peer my employee my spouse my daughter right and so that is absolutely the number one thing that we struggle with that's the thing that is is most relevant for people the thing that we've added that we hear now so much that require that is required for high performing teams is also the tough decisions and that ability to take risks so it isn't only the conversations because if we're not trying new things or we're not taking risks we're not going to be innovative we're not going to be entrepreneurial and so that whole decision risk taking i mean that's going to be a whole section in our in our upcoming book conversations is also going to be a section but it really is both and sometimes you know i think there's too much focus on the conversations and not enough on am i making decisions that you know where i'm not avoiding getting in trouble or looking bad or failing right am i making decisions where i'm taking smart risks i love it i. [00:25:27] Speaker B: Don'T think they're i don't think they're two completely different things i mean i would i would think that in decision making conversations are a big part of being able to do that well and do that right you know who's who's involved in the decision how do we at least communicate the decisions we're making even if we know you're not going to like them so they overlap i. [00:25:48] Speaker C: Think i mean i'll give you an example of a decision i made to avoid a tough conversation so when i was working at a computer software company i was a vp of sales i had two very hard charging very loud salespeople who had both contributed to a large complex sale and they both felt they earned the one hundred percent commission and i knew i knew that the right thing to do was to actually split the commission but i did not want to deal with either of them getting upset or angry so i went to my boss and i lobbied to pay them both and it was about thirty or forty thousand dollars dollar difference and this was thirty years ago i remember to this day i still regret not having the strength to go to each of them and say hey this is the decision i've made you both contributed fifty percent versus you know giving in and costing the company money so to me it is i mean that was avoiding a tough conversation but it was the decision i made not to. [00:26:47] Speaker B: Take that risk i've experienced almost the exact exact sort of scenario bill many years ago back in a former life i worked in a sales role where we had a commission structure set up for the month and we blew it out of the water my team blew it out of the water and my director came back and said we didn't expect numbers this high and we don't have the budget for the structure and the percentage that we set and i said man i'm really sorry about your budget but we we want our money like i want mine you know i want my bonus for this that's what this you know this was the thing and and she told me she goes she was super vulnerable and honest with me she said she said patrick i can't go to my director i just i can overspend i just i can't do this and so my ability to have a conversation with her that was difficult to say no you figure it out in the budget this was the deal my people worked under this construct her inability to have a conversation with her boss about hey you know what they out they blew away our expectations and we're gonna have to eat a little bit of this and you know in the future we'll look at a different structure but she couldn't do that and she ended up writing me a personal check for the difference wow talk. [00:28:17] Speaker C: About costing you personally that's how much. [00:28:19] Speaker B: She was unwill to have the conversation. [00:28:22] Speaker C: That literally cost her what we like what we like to talk about is the idea of pushing into the discomfort in order to avoid long term regret it's either the short term discomfort anxiety or long term regret and thirty years later i still feel the regret of not having pushed into the discomfort of that decision we've all had that experience so yeah sometimes it is a decision about having a conversation that we're making but it can also be i had a ceo who they wanted to do an acquisition and he felt like he needed to get more information and by then they lost the opportunity because he spent too long analyzing too long and it ended up somebody else ended up acquiring that company and it was a really good acquisition he said i lost that opportunity to acquire that company because i waited too long i wasn't willing to take the risk and so there is a pure decision risk part of our jobs that also drives performance yeah. [00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah absolutely well let me shift since you use the word performance let's segue into that term for a minute sure and again i've done a lot of work recently on what i call a value creating continuum which is yes you want high performance but you can be high performing and not creating the value your stakeholders are looking for from you right so there's there's there's busyness and then there's productivity and then there's high performance and then there's value creation i like that and and you're you're this book i want to talk a little bit about this in particular performing under pressure and i think one of the first things i read in the book was that people don't perform better under pressure even though they'll say they do there's a myth i want to know. [00:30:16] Speaker C: More about that yeah no there's a myth that under pressure we suddenly develop new capabilities but that actually doesn't happen if you look at michael jordan he had better he was a better three free throw percentage shooter in the fourth quarter than everyone else but it was still he was still less than his previous three quarters he was just less worse than everyone else so he performed up to his capability and that kind of takes the pressure off you go into a high stakes situation you don't have to suddenly perform and be someone you're not you have enough you just have to perform up to your capabilities and so that was one of the key tenets of that book is that don't put that pressure on yourself to suddenly become somebody you're not yeah that. [00:31:04] Speaker B: That'S good i do believe there that clutch is a real thing like i think there are some athletes and some other performers who who there really is this clutch i mean they make a they make a reputation out of it that in the bottom of the ninth inning or with two outs and you're behind this is who you want at the plate they're just clutch they just they just somehow they get in a zone what is it they they get in a zone or they have the ability to calm themselves or whatever they're just clutching and clutch has to do with being under pressure meaning i need you i need a hit now more i need more i need a hit more now than i've ever needed you to hit and the michael jordans are clutch the tiger woods were clutch the you know the my my guy that you know albert pujols with the cardinals right he was just known as a clutch like there's a reason i mean. [00:31:59] Speaker C: We we did a lot of research there was no sport or athlete that we could find that actually performed better under pressure than they did when they weren't under pressure they just performed better than others who performed closer to their capabilities and you name them tiger woods albert pujols michael jordan they performed up to their keeper they didn't let the pressure diminish them but they didn't suddenly. [00:32:21] Speaker B: Develop new and better abilities great distinction it took me a second i got it i got it it yeah and so they're better at not letting the pressure make them crumble than their teammates. [00:32:33] Speaker C: Correct and then and then everyone else. [00:32:35] Speaker B: Oh that's really interesting really interesting because. [00:32:39] Speaker C: I talked to him remember the clutch shots michael jordan he said i can't tell you how many fourth quarter shots i've missed game winning shots that's right you don't remember them yeah you know he just hit a lot more than. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Anyone else and so he got a reputation for it and that's so good. [00:32:53] Speaker C: Well and he is literally better than others at not getting diminished so he deserves that reputation it's just the idea that he's actually better in those moments than when he doesn't have the pressure. [00:33:03] Speaker B: Interesting misinterpreted so i read a book recently called the upside of stress and it is new research newish research on how stress is not what's hurting us our relationship with stress is what's hurting us and the upside of stress is some of the research that says stress and this this might challenge what you're saying here but i'm interested it that stress actually does make us perform the stress of of an interview the adrenaline that comes with i'm in a job interview or i'm in a i'm in a tight situation dangerous situation in traffic or i'm whatever it is or i'm i'm in a clutch i'm in the bottom of the ninth with two outs where the stress mechanism if our relationship with stress and our attitude towards stress is healthy it actually does make us perform better but i guess my question would be are you defining stress and pressure synonymously you think those are two different things no what is the relationship. [00:34:11] Speaker C: There'S a whole chapter in the book about stress versus pressure okay and you are absolutely right even back then ten years ago there was research suggested stress can trigger us to take action stress can trigger us to get more focus focused it's just when it's like a continuum when that stress pushes over into anxiety good good yeah that's when our cognitive abilities start to get diminished that's when our motor skills start to get diminished so yes you're right it's that so as we feel that stress we talk to athletes when they start to feel that performance pressure to say to themselves that's my body getting ready to perform it's okay to feel that stress yeah it's when they let that stress overwhelm them and then they start worrying like we worked with a tennis player who said you know whenever i was returning a serve while i was waiting i would be thinking what if i do this wrong what if i'm in the wrong place versus staying present being really like we really coached him to and his return service percentage went up dramatically and so it really is that relationship as you experience the stress how are you processing that what are you saying to yourself how are you managing that that's the key so we're saying the same thing i think do you. [00:35:25] Speaker B: Work with a lot of i mean is that part of your your work is in sports arena because performance is performance and stress and all that and you know do you have to be a tennis expert to coach someone on those kinds of things so how how many how much do you work do you spend in that field so i've. [00:35:42] Speaker C: Only done a little bit of work with athletes and i love it my business partner jp he's done a lot more work with athletes he's worked with olympic athletes he's worked with nba coaches so he's got a lot more experience and so a lot of you know what i know about work with olympic athletes is from his experience yeah but. [00:35:58] Speaker B: The institute the institute that's part of your portfolio yeah that's fascinating because i find i find you know i use sports analogies all the time and a lot of people do and some people are like here comes another sports analogy this is different patrick this isn't sports but there are so many real parallels where it's no different i mean you just said it the the michael jordan it's the ceo of a fortune five hundred company who's you know had profit loss for the last three months and their shareholders are breathing down their throats and michael jordan whose team is behind in game seven of the some of those tenets and the response it it's. [00:36:42] Speaker C: Exactly the same exactly the same sector agnostic ideological system yeah that is responding if if you're selling somebody and the client's objecting and you feel like you're losing the sale that's no different from it's a volleyball team who's down ten three and you feel like you're losing it's exactly the same physiological system which is why we're able to take the learnings from working with olympic athletes and apply them to business people because it's the same part of the brain that's responding and reacting so again with the. [00:37:14] Speaker B: You know much like much like you gave the tenets of how to get to the eight percent the book is performing under pressure the science of doing your best when it matters most yeah what are those several key tenets to help people sort of think about how to be their best at their most. [00:37:32] Speaker C: Pressing times so the second section has twenty two pressure solutions i don't love all of them but there's a couple that are really my go to one is and this is just so obvious is the breathing we just know that the intake of oxygen minimizes the physiological effect of the chemo the stress chemicals the amygdala has released so everybody knows it it's just people forget to do it so the breathing is one another. [00:37:58] Speaker B: One let me pause you there because this is really it's fascinating you say that you say everybody knows it i think everybody's heard it breathe don't forget to breathe just said you blew by it fast but i want you to say it again because it's not just a spiritual breathe and collect yourself there was a you gave a biological physiological reality that that is and i want you to say that again about the oxygen and all that because that's what. [00:38:26] Speaker C: People don't know okay so when we are triggered emotionally and our stress hormones are triggered the cortisol that gets released in addition to causing memories to sear in it actually reduces working memory which is where we do our complex thinking so when we are triggered when we are stressed we actually can't think as clearly and by the way we become more judgmental we become more certain that we're right we're not in a good place to perform the intake of a large amount of oxygen acts as the physiological effect of minimizing those chemicals so that you clear the chemicals out of the brain and the body so that you can think more clearly so we always say it's not you know eq or iq it's eq and iq if you can manage your emotions then you can use the best of your thinking. [00:39:13] Speaker B: You made me think of a computer analogy tell me if i'm anywhere near this we have an operating system and we have a hard drive that has lots of stuff on it so we have the abilities we have the knowledge we have the expertise but computers also use what's called ram random access memory and you called it working memory a minute ago correct but that is what we're using right now and that's not hard drive space that's processor and memory capability of handling for example twelve applications open on my computer the breathing shuts down the seven applications i don't really need to be focusing on right now so that the other five work smoother and faster and i don't have latency i mean that's what it sounded like to me when you said it i don't know why that picture came to. [00:39:59] Speaker C: Mind you compare the working memory to ram yeah the other thing that breathing does it also shuts down the app the one that's judging the one that's needing to be right the one that's not listening the one that's in the background listening to confirm their point of view so there's a whole bunch of when we get triggered emotion there's a whole bunch of apps that are not. [00:40:16] Speaker B: Helping and you don't see them you don't see them because they're not open open so you don't even know they're running their process is running in the background and we don't know that these judgments and assumptions and storytelling in our. [00:40:30] Speaker C: Brain is that is going on yep. [00:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah man that that that was that was fantastic i love that that you. [00:40:38] Speaker C: Yeah by the way if the only thing your listeners do as a result of us this conversation is the next time they're in a difficult moment or they have to take a risk or have a conversation they just take a deep couple deep breaths they'll be so much more powerful we will have accomplished something we will have given them something. [00:40:53] Speaker B: Listen i will do it i'm a i'm a huge you're gonna you're gonna love this don't don't don't shut don't disconnect from this call when i say this but my my listeners know i'm an avid lifelong saint louis cardinals fan and there's a we have a rookie pitcher just came up this year that i am loving he just has so much poise and he's already doing really well and when i watch him pitch i've never i've always seen i've seen basketball players at the free throw line take some dribbles and then take a deep breath right i've seen golfers take a deep breath before they putt this pitcher of ours names michael mcgreevey he you can see his cheeks and he's not out of breath he's taking more breaths almost between every pitch he is going to about three times and i'm. [00:41:45] Speaker C: Going right now it's so effective at. [00:41:47] Speaker B: Calming ourselves it is it is and you look at his poise and his demeanor and he gets it he's been he's either been taught this or he's you know following some instruction or he just naturally yeah but but it's noticeable it's a it's a real noticeable thing. [00:42:04] Speaker C: It'S absolutely one of the things we do with olympic athletes is is work on the breathing and executives yeah i want to share one more more strategy but one more strategy from the book that i find so helpful that i know other people do too so when we're facing a difficult moment where we might have some doubts a big presentation or a tough decision or tough conversation we have to have we have two systems in our brain one's our internal activation system so that's when we try to do self talk oh i'm going to be good at this this is going to go great i'm going to the problem with self talk is we have that other little voice no you're not oh this is going to go right no it isn't all these things are wrong so we have that internal critic and sometimes it's really hard to overcome that internal critic so we have a strategy called recall you at your best that actually engages your external activation system where you think about a time when you did something similar something exactly the same you do something similar and you were successful yeah then you start to see yourself and you actually start to feel yourself being successful and so that overcome you start to believe that you can do it that overcomes that internal voice so an example i use is probably four or five years ago i was asked actually much longer than that i wrote the book ten years ago but i was asked to give a presentation to one hundred us marines and i'm not a military guy the most nervous i've ever been was driving over to fort sheridan here in chicago thinking i don't know what marines do when they don't like a speaker but it can't be good and i was imagining all the things that could go wrong my first thought was i should probably use the strategies from the book we wrote about performing under pressure it was a last eight percent moment for me so i remembered the same thing happened to me when i had to deliver this training to surgeons here i'm going to try and describe the brain to people who've dissected it like they're going to disagree with me it was the complete opposite it went so well they're like yep that's exactly how the brain works and this stuff really affects me and they loved it so i just saw myself having the success with the surgeons did the deep breathing and man i remember walking up that's being so confident walking up to the stage after being you know the most nervous i'd ever been and it actually ended up going really well so that recall you at your best can be a really powerful strategy when you're feeling anxious or nervous about a high pressure situation. [00:44:34] Speaker B: I have two things to add to that it's affirming to hear you say that and give sort of a little more of a scientific backing for it we have called it i have called it history of success and i'll do this with with individual coaches who are sort of of you know doubting or someone doesn't have the confidence in them or you know is it am i am i feeling imposter syndrome yeah and we'll build a history of success tell me about all your accomplishments and then just no let's list them go ahead just get name some i don't care well i was the you know senior fellow at such and such i graduated top of my class and such and such i won this award i i achieved this in fewer time via all the things and then i have them read the list back and go who are you again some imposter you know so we we call it history of success there's there's for my for my for our listeners and friends of faith out there there is there is scripture around the psalmist david who we all know the story of david and goliath but what david there's a verse that says david was greatly distressed but david encouraged himself in the lord he encouraged himself and what he had to draw back from was the time that he killed a lion with his bare hands and a time when he slew a bear with his bare hands and he drew on those experiences and encouraged himself and so there you know is it scripture behind it for those he didn't. [00:46:02] Speaker C: Know it but he was using the recall you at your best he's building a history of success that's right that's great i love that example yeah man. [00:46:12] Speaker B: Gosh we we could this could this is just another one of those topics we could do you know every episode on now for the we could make this the podcast forever there's so much to unpack here i really do appreciate your your bringing your knowledge it's a unique blend of of knowledge and expertise that you have and i can thank you i've definitely picked up on that in this conversation and learn some cool things bill there's two questions i like to ask all my guests before we wrap a show because i love the stories and the different tenants always pick up a good nugget and the first one i would like to ask you is who comes to mind for you as a leader in your life whether you even know them or not but a leader in your life that you would say has had profound impact or influence on your leadership and your view. [00:47:01] Speaker C: Of leadership and why yeah so probably the very first real leader that i had when i worked at a computer software company his name was peter hamilton and he just he was the president of a company it was a small software company and i was a brand new just fresh out of school he just saw something in me he believed in me he saw more for me than i knew i was capable of so number one he just believed in me but number two he would give me feedback he would and he could be abrupt he didn't always have a lot of time but he would say bill you just messed this up but i'd be like oh my god i messed it up i want to get better because i knew he believed in me so it was that balance of connection i felt valued i felt believed in i felt loved literally i felt loved but he also had the courage to take the risk to give me feedback and so he was just a great example for me of of a. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Great leader that's so consistent with everything you've been saying and even in our pre conversation we had a few weeks ago i wrote this down you said that we have to carry high care and high accountability at the same time exactly and and that's you know those some of us have read kim scott's radical candor you know sort of same sort of thing you can you can care about people and hold them accountable at the same time they're not mutually. [00:48:24] Speaker C: Exclusive yeah overlap with radical candor the the part for us that we add is around that decision making and the risk taking yeah so there's definitely some radical candor elements to it but as i said it's you know life is more than just about having conversations that's right also about taking those risks and having making those tough decisions that's good. [00:48:45] Speaker B: Last question you're at the top of a mountain all the leaders of the world are at the base of the mountain and you got a giant megaphone to give them the the bill benjamin tenet of leadership the fifteen second sound bite that's most important thing for all leaders to keep in mind what are. [00:49:05] Speaker C: You telling them just don't live with regret just step into those last eight percent moments push through that discomfort learn that learn the skills to do it well but push into that tough conversation you know you need to have we know when we didn't say everything we needed to say we know when we're not making the best decision like the one i described and then we live with regret and so just take that risk and you will find huge impact in both your business and personal life. [00:49:37] Speaker B: Beautifully beautifully said folks get the book performing under pressure the science science of doing your best when it matters most and be on the lookout for the next one bill wins it is there do you have a timeline for the eight percent book coming out yeah because. [00:49:53] Speaker C: We'Re going to be going through a traditional publisher it's probably about a year okay so folks are gonna have to be patient but look for the last eight percent there is also a harvard business review article coming up on this subject in the fall so look for the harvard business review article in the. [00:50:07] Speaker B: Fall awesome well well well done man thanks for carving out time and sharing such such great insight ihp dot com again we'll post it on our on our episode page and go man this is one to like go back and listen to it again share it with a friend lead on folks.