Category Archives: Thinking

Cognition

Developing a SMARTER Mindset for Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 2

Carol Dweck

Stanford professor Carol Dweck distilled Salvador Maddi’s three mindsets into two mindsets in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

She differentiated:

• Fixed Mindset – Belief that personal capabilities are given, fixed, limited to present capacities.
This “nature” mindset can lead to fear, anxiety, protectiveness and guardedness.

• Growth Mindset– Belief that personal capabilities can expand based on commitment, effort, practice, instruction, confronting and correcting mistakes. This “nurture” mindset enables teamwork and collaboration.

K. Anders Ericcson

Research by K. Anders Ericsson demonstrated that highly skilled experts in nearly every field are distinguished from their talented peers by practice.
Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell asserted that expert performance comes after 10,000 hours of practice.

The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games

Expert Performance in Sports: Advances in Research on Sport Expertise

Although mindsets consist of relatively stable beliefs, they can be modified by reinforcing, praising, and rewarding performance strategy and process, not the resulting outcome.

Cynthia Kivland

Cynthia Kivland introduced a practice of “vetting emotions” using a three step process to investigate and manage emotions

• Validate – Name the emotion
• Explore – What is the broader context?
What are the familiar reaction patterns?
• Tolerate – Transform limiting emotions into information and intelligence to move forward

“Cognitive appraisal” refers to evaluative elements of thoughts, and can provoke emotions.
This type of appraisal is based on three factors, outlined by eminent researcher

Martin Seligman

Martin Seligman in his book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

• Personalization of cause, responsibility: Internal control vs External control
• Pervasiveness of event and impact: Specific vs Global
• Permanence of event and impact: Temporary vs. Continuing

Kivland suggested that mindsets and related attitudes can direct individuals to either of two paths:

• Surviving Path, based on reactive, fearful protecting from anticipated danger

• Hope Path, proactive, thriving, growing, able to let go of fears, observe emotions as information for decision-making rather than as unpleasant experiences to be tolerated

Kivland, Dweck, Maddi, Ericcson, Seligman, and other advocates of Emotional Intelligence practices suggest benefits of the Hope Path.

Dweck model and the mindset of positive psychology

Dweck’s Brainology software for students

-*What “mindsets” help you achieve optimal performance in work and life activities?

©Kathryn Welds

Developing a SMARTER Mindset to increase Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 1

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Cynthia Kivland

Cynthia Kivland, author of Smart2Smarter: How Emotional and Social Connections Bring Humanity into the Workplace: Seven Skills Every Smart Person Needs, reviewed research-based models that suggest ways to increase resilient attitudes and behaviors.

Her “Smart to SMARTER” model is based on interviews with “smart and competent” people in a variety of fields.
Kivland developed a mnemonic device highlight important elements of Emotionally Intelligent or “Emotionally Smart” people:

S – Self – Optimize strengths via self-efficacy
M – Mastery of emotions
A – Attraction – Positive energy, optimism, confidence to attract the best to self, others
R – Resilience – Adapt, reinvent oneself to overcome setbacks
T – Tolerance of emotional experience, changing circumstances, diverse people and beliefs
E – Evolve – Innovate, improve new ways to manage emotions, reactions, behaviors
R – Reciprocity – Lead, be lead; teach, be taught, give, receive

She noted that positive psychology research demonstrated that positive emotions help people endure and grow from life’s changes and adversities.

To help cultivate positive emotions, she suggests three practices:
• Emotional engagement
Schedule fun, enjoyable experiences and opportunities for positive emotions
• Emotional responsiveness
Be present, attentive, and engaged during pleasant moments
• Emotional savoring
“Evolve” by intentionally enjoying positive moments and emotions of joy, contentment, satisfaction, and carrying positive memories into future situations

Salvatore Maddi

“Mindsets” consist of attitudes that can facilitate or impede executing these three recommendations, based on early workplace research by Salvatore Maddi, who studied people affected by organizational change.

He distilled effective coping skills he observed among affected employees as three “Emotional Hardiness” Mindsets:

• Commitment vs Alienation – Active involvement with people, life events
• Control vs. Powerlessness – Persistence in trying to improve life situations
• Challenge vs Threat – Viewing change as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and craft a fulfilling life

In addition, Maddi found that these employees demonstrated two Emotional Resilience Skills:
• Community vs. Isolation – Engaging with others to mobilize social support, feedback
• Proactive Coping (Thriving) vs Reactive Coping (Surviving) – View adversity in context to deepen awareness

Kivland’s Resilience tools

See Part 2 of this post

-*What practices and “mindsets” help you cultivate “emotional hardiness” in your work activities?

©Kathryn Welds

Career Resilience in Managing Job Loss, Unexpected Changes

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Mary Lynn Pulley

Mary Lynn Pulley, a Center for Creative Leadership adjunct faculty member and author of Losing Your Job – Reclaiming Your Soul: Stories of Resilience, Renewal, and Hope, shares practical recommendations to respond to change or hardship:

Resilience enables people to recover from adversity and is characterized by some of the same attributes as Emotional Intelligence:

• Flexibility
• Durability
• Optimism
• Openness to learning.

The flipside of resilience is burnout, fatigue, malaise, depression, defensiveness and cynicism.

Pulley asserts that resilience can be developed by modifying thoughts to broaden personal outlook and adapt to change.
The second step is modifying actions based on modified attitudes, beliefs, and concepts.

She suggests developing resilience by:

Embracing continuous learning
• Learn and apply new skills to more adapt more quickly during changes
Finding purpose
• Develop a “personal why” to provide meaning and context to work
• Take responsibility to direct your personal and career development
• Separate who your self-definition and core identity from your work tasks and job title. “Who you are is not just what you do.”

Cultivating relationships
• Maintain personal and professional relationships for support and feedback, to develop perspective, achieve goals, deal with hardships

Questioning and modifying self-definition and career
• Reassess awareness of personal skills, talents and interests, and personal narrative
• Consider new work opportunities to align with current skills
• Practice new behavioral competencies to align with current situational requirements

Re-thinking money
• Live within your means to remain flexible during unexpected change

Keeping a journal
• The Center for Creative Leadership suggests that writing in “learning journals” or “reflection journals” enables reflection, self-awareness, learning, adaptability, and insight.

Three recommended journal sections include:
1. Event or experience
Describe the occurrence in factual, objective, quantifiable terms:
Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

2. Reaction
Describe your reaction to the event in factual, objective, quantifiable terms. What did you want to do in response to the event?
What did you actually do?
What were your thoughts?
What were your feelings?

3. Lessons
What did you learn from the event and from your reaction to it?
What did the event suggest as a development area?
What common reaction patterns occur in similar situations?
What different reactions patterns have occurred in the past?
What do these different reactions suggest about progress in developing resilience?

The Center for Creative Leadership suggests that learning comes “reflecting on the doing,” and not just on the “doing” of specific actions.

-*Which of Pulley’s recommendations seem most applicable and feasible to rebound from unbidden changes, like job loss?

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©Kathryn Welds

Crash Course on Innovation, Creativity

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Tina Seelig

Tina Seelig, Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University’s School of Engineering, and the Director of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), offers a “crash course” in creativity.

She summarized her recommendations in her book, inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity, and explored factors that stimulate and inhibit creativity in individuals, teams, and organizations, including framing problems, challenging assumptions, and creative teams.

She introduces six interdependent elements of the “Innovation Engine”:

• Internal
o Information that becomes knowledge (fuel),
o Imagination (a catalytic converter that transforms knowledge into new ideas),
o Attitude (a spark that ignites the Engine, setting it in motion).

• External
o Resources (a community’s assets),
o Habitats (physical locations within which the Engine functions at peak performance),
o Culture (shared beliefs, values, and behaviors of the given community).

inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity also discusses models and tools that can be applied to class projects:

o The “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving” or TRIZ (the Russian acronym) methodology (Pages 50-51)
o A two-by-two creativity/pressure matrix (106-108)
o Habitats that simulate or inhibit creativity (128-131)
o Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” model/exercise (128-131)
o Creating a habitat that encourages and supports risk taking and experimentation (160-163)
o Tapping into and activating strong emotional engagement (179-180)
o Précis: Knowledge, Imagination, and Attitude (185-189)

Seelig was awarded the 2009 Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, recognizing her as a national leader in engineering education, and the 2008 National Olympus Innovation Award, and the 2005 Stanford Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
She earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University Medical School and has written 16 popular science books and educational games.

Another of Seelig’s books is What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World

-*What “Innovation Engine” components have been most effective in generating creative solutions in your organization?

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©Kathryn Welds

Three Factors Affecting Women in Corporate Leadership

Six Neuropsychologically-Based Emotional Styles

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Richard Davidson

Richard Davidson, professor at University of Wisconsin’s book, The Emotional Life of your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way you Think, Feel, and Live–and how You can Change Them suggests that people favor one of six “brain styles.”

• Resilience – speed of recovery from adversity

• Outlook – duration of positive emotion

• Intuition – accuracy of decoding others’ nonverbal signals of emotion

• Self-awareness – accuracy of decoding internal signals of emotional reactions: heart rate, breathing, sweating, muscle tension

• Context – modulate emotional response tailored to environmental demands, constraints, options

• Attention – ability to focus, modulate emotional stimuli

These categories represent interacting elements that form an integrated cognitive-emotional processing pattern, rather than a discrete “style” as Davidson suggests.

He offers a quick assessment of your “brain style” via these surveys and other resources on his website and related locations.
———–
Related Post:
“Contemplative Neuroscience” can transform your mind, change your brain

-*Which Emotional Style is most prevalent is your work organization?
-*Which Style is more effective in your workplace?

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Making Magic Meaningful as a Life Metaphor

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Kim Silverman

Kim Silverman is Principal Research Scientist at Apple, and holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Cambridge University.
Before his academic credentials, he sharpened his skills as a magician and cultivated an appearance similar to that of Hogwarts’ Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
He is a president of the Society of American Magicians (Palo Alto), and a Magician Member of the Academy of Magical Arts.

He describes his “hobby” as “performing magic in a meaningful way that gives people something they can take away with them, to make them feel better about themselves and their lives, and thereby thrive more effectively.”

Silverman believes that magic can change the way we think about our lives:

-Things that seem impossible may be possible
-Things that are separated and broken may be rejoined
-There is always a way
-We can get free from something that holds us back
-When we feel trapped by a problem, it is just an illusion.

He asserts that magic provides a change of perspective from negative thoughts, and provides a broader perspective.
He acknowledges that suffering is an intrinsic part of human life and that it brings us together, and through it all, we can experience magic through our relationships.

Silverman concludes that things might not be as they appear, so there is hope, and this is an idea worth sharing.

-*How can the metaphors of perceptual illusion accelerate problem-solving in complex situations?

©Kathryn Welds

“Zooming” to Shift Strategic Thinking Perspective

Leadership “From the Inside Out”

1 Reply

Kevin Cashman

Kevin Cashman provides a leadership development frame that complements Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence concepts and Jim Collins’s delineation of Level 5 Leadership, in his book Leadership from the Inside Out.

He is Senior Partner, Korn/Ferry International, and his research and experience indicate that leadership effectiveness originates in the individual’s personal character.

If individuals wish to develop leadership skills, they must apply “learning agility” to acquire new perspectives and skills, then deploy them under new business circumstances.

Cashman reviewed the four elements of “learning agility”:

• Mental agility, characterized by questioning solutions, consulting others, demonstrating openness

• Interpersonal agility, based on effective, precise listening, using questions to elicit clarification

• Results agility, or developing new approaches to achieve results, incorporate new ways to resolve problems

• Change agility, which includes flexibility and adaptability

Cashman found three steps in leadership development, common across many approaches, and recommended these elements in any leadership development program:

• Building Awareness – Self-discovery of strengths, development areas

• Building Commitment – Developing emotional engagement to act on developmental needs and to apply strengths

• Building Practice – Undertaking new actions such as journaling to build awareness, commitment and reflection on learnings.

The goal of these steps is to develop three aspects of leadership:

• Authenticity, characterized by integrity, alignment between words and actions that is recognized by others; continued striving toward authenticity in future potential

• Influence, involving the self-expression and application of personal strengths to create value

• Value creation in work and community

Leadership from the Inside Out outlines seven related pathways to leadership mastery, with related practices.
Many of these recommendations may sound spiritual, philosophical, non-specific, and difficult to translate into specific actions.
One element of self-reflection in Cashman’s process may be to operationalize these recommendations into concrete, measurable actions:

• Personal Mastery, based on developing self-awareness

• Purpose Mastery involves applying talents to serve values and add value through authentic self-expression in leading others

• Change Mastery, incorporates acceptance of uncertainty and impermanence to learn from these changes and demonstrate agility in adapting to new circumstances

• Interpersonal Mastery relates to human connection, the second element of Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. Collaboration is a foundation to create contribution and long-term value

• Being Mastery represents a spiritual dimension, however the individual defines it, to connect one’s depth of character to support effectiveness and contribution

• Balance Mastery refers to building, maintaining energy to foster resilience, effectiveness, fulfillment. It moves beyond time management, a practice to manage a limited resource, to generate and regenerate energy to lead

• Action Mastery practices leading by coaching others and self to create value.

-*What actions have helped develop leadership from the inside out?

Considered “Pursuit of Less”

1 Reply

Jim Collins

Jim Collins in his book How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, outlined how once-successful companies failed, and discovered that one significant contributor was what he labeled “the undisciplined pursuit of more.” It is true for companies and it is true for careers.
“The Pursuit of Less” can be easier after separating “The Trivial Many from The Significant Few,“ as Vilfredo Pareto‘s

Vilfredo Pareto

principle outlines.

Greg McKeown

Greg McKeown, co-author with Liz Wiseman (former VP at Oracle Corporation) of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, suggests the following steps:

Liz Wiseman

Use more extreme criteria:

Do I love this career?
Do I love these career activities?

• “What am I deeply passionate about?“
• “What taps my talent?“
• “What meets a significant need in the world?“

These can be organized as a Venn diagram of Talent x Market x Passion to reveal an intersecting area of optimal contribution.

“What is essential?“
Eliminate the rest

Conduct a life audit.
Eliminate an old activity before you add a new one.

Beware of the endowment effect or divestiture aversion, the self-confirmation bias of valuing something more once we own it.

Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler found that when coffee mugs and pens of equal value were randomly distributed to volunteers, people were less willing to trade the item they were given for the other item.

The researchers concluded that “owning” either the pen or the coffee mug decreased the volunteers’ willingness to part with their objects, contradicting

Ronald Coase

Nobel prize winner Ronald Coase’s economic theorem which predicted that 50% of the objects would be traded.

To break this cognitive bias, Tom Stafford, psychology professor at

Tom Stafford

University of Sheffield and author of Mind Hacks, suggests asking “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay, invest, or sacrifice to obtain it?”

Similarly, McKeown argues for considered minimalism and simplicity in organizations, careers, and life.

-*How are you selective about your pursuits in career and life?

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Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Consulting Organizational Psychologist | Change Consultant | Leadership+Career Master Coach | Coach Supervisor+Mentor Coach |

Category Archives: Thinking

Developing a SMARTER Mindset for Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 2

Developing a SMARTER Mindset to increase Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 1

Career Resilience in Managing Job Loss, Unexpected Changes

Crash Course on Innovation, Creativity

Three Factors Affecting Women in Corporate Leadership

Six Neuropsychologically-Based Emotional Styles

Making Magic Meaningful as a Life Metaphor

“Zooming” to Shift Strategic Thinking Perspective

Leadership “From the Inside Out”

Considered “Pursuit of Less”

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