Introduction
- August 5, 2010 deep in the Chilean desert. Men were trapped underground for 69 days. Luis Urzua. He designed a way to involve all the men in escape experiments. He prayed with each man every day. He designed escape experiments where they worked together as a team. He went up the shaft last. “It’s been a bit of a long shift.”
- Do leaders think differently?
Brain Patterns of Leaders
- Research found with a 92% ability to predict if you can lead effectively based
- Great leaders excelled at emotions. Good leaders focus on planning, metrics, revenue. Great leaders focus on those things but they focus on connection, emotions.
- Leaders can get trapped in logistics, small talk, metrics.
- How do leaders connect?
Three Levels of Human Connection
- Researcher Dan McAdams – found that each of us as humans use three levels of connection.
Level 1 – General Traits
- Occupation, home town, family status.
- What do you do? Where are you from?
- Our brain goes into a social script.
- It’s impossible to connect on autopilot.
Level 2 – Personal Concerns
- Goals, worries, values, motivations, personality traits.
- You know what keeps them up at night and what gets them up in the morning.
- Science of People did an experiment where we took 500 speed networkers. We gave everyone 6 conversation starters. We asked them to track their connection.
- Lowest rankings questions were: how are you? What do you do?
- On a chemical level, they did not work either. Dopamine is the chemical that makes us feel good and it makes you more memorable. It makes you want to act. It gives you energy. It creates a mental post-it note.
- Highest ranking questions: what was the highlight of your day? What personal passion project are you working on? Have anything exciting coming up in your life?
- The first challenge for today: I want us to go on a “What do you do?” diet. Be a leader with the very first question that you ask. You are gifting people when you ask good questions.
- What’s your story? It almost broke my data. People either rated it a 5 or rated it as a 0. It revealed if you were an introvert or extrovert. It feels personal. It starts to dip to level 3.
Level 3 – Self-Narrative
- Our self-narrative is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
- It creates how we make sense of our journey and purpose through life.
- I’m fascinated by self-narrative.
- Three common self-narratives: hero, healer, victim
- Hero – think of them as obstacles, mistakes that with hard work they can overcome.
- Healer – Dedicated themselves to a life of service. They are giving, compassionate. They tend to pick professions with their self-narratives. Doctors, teachers, nurses, homemakers.
- Your self-narrative can create the same mistakes over and over again. Healer self-narrative can suffer from burnout since they put themselves second.
- Victim – They have faced obstacles, challenges but have not been able to overcome them. They don’t think they can overcome it. They struggle to get out.
- First question to discover your self-narrative: Are you lucky?
- Dr. Richard Wiseman – if your belief in your own luck could change your luck. Handed them a newspaper. Count every image in the newspaper. Every lucky person saw the trick. Almost none of the unlucky people saw the trick. Your own perception of your luck changes your luck. They create more opportunities for themselves.
- Self-narratives are self-creating.
- List the names of the five people you interact with most. What level are you at with them? Circle one name. The person you most want to level up with.
Questions for Level 1
- What was the highlight of your day?
- What personal passion project are you working on?
- Have anything exciting coming up in your life?
- Have any fun plans coming up this weekend/vacation/holiday?
- How’s (hobby/family member/project)? *moment that lit them up in the past. Great leaders remember the light up moments.
- Problem: We often get stuck in autopilot with our families.
- Swan effect: Swan going across the lake looks smooth. Underneath they are furiously paddling. Most of us struggle with the swan effect. On the surface we are calm, cool, collected. Underneath the surface, it is dark and murky. We don’t show people the hustle.
Questions for Level 2
- What’s your biggest goal right now?
- Are you learning anything right now? (When we ask this, we trigger growth in people.)
- What book, tv, or movie character is most like you? (You are asking how they identify. We’re getting close to level 3.)
- What’s weighing on your heart or mind? And can I help you with anything?
- What’s your story? (It’s the construction of their self-narrative.)
Questions for Level 3
- Level 3 questions break autopilot
- We can ask great questions but we must listen. Mandarin character for listen made up of characters of you, eyes,
- How do you feel most misunderstood?
- What’s something most people don’t know about you?
- What forces shaped your personality and made you who you are?
- Who’s your hero?
- What’s the proudest moment of your life?
- Part of my self-narrative is that I’m a recovering socially awkward person. I have social anxiety. I struggle with imposter syndrome. I have a fear of failure.
- Behind every success I have had is a failure. THe more I talk about the dark, the lighter it feels.
- It takes courage to both ask and answer these questions.
- Make a commitment to ask level 2 and level 3 questions.
- Don’t just plan. Connect.