Leadership and Social Skills

You can make more friends in two months by becoming really


interested in other people than you can in two years by trying


to get other people interested in you. Which is just another


way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.

—Dale Carnegie


Being Loved Is Good for Your Career

Two renowned leadership scholars, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, offer the following research conclusion:


researchers looked at a number of factors that could account for a manager’s success. [They] found one, and only one, factor significantly differentiated the top quartile of managers from the bottom quartile … the single factor was high scores on affectionboth expressed and wanted … the highest performing managers show more warmth and fondness toward others than do the bottom 25 percent. They get closer to people, and they are significantly more open in sharing thoughts and feelings than their low-performing counterparts.

… All things being equal, we will work harder and more effectively for people we like. And we like them in direct proportion to how they make us feel.1

To those of us in the corporate world used to the idea that the most effective way to get things done is to act like a jerk, this study offers a refreshing and inspiring possibility of a better approach. You do not necessarily have to get things done at the expense of being liked; it is possible to have both. You can have your cake and promotion too. In fact, being liked may be the most effective way to get things done in the long term. This possibility is also reflected in the study of U.S. Navy commanders we quoted in Chapter 1, which showed that the most effective naval commanders are also the ones with higher emotional intelligence and who are most liked.

“You know, Lord Vader, you’d be much more effective if you were more likable.”

In this chapter, we will explore some emotional skills that will help you be liked and also be successful at what you do. Some people buy books that teach them to be liked, others buy books that teach them to be successful. This book teaches you both. You are so lucky.


Using Kindness to Grow Friendship from an Ugly Situation

Even in difficult situations, it is sometimes possible to make important things happen while still creating happy friendships. It requires a kind heart, an open mind, and the right social skills.

Many years ago, I had a friend and co-worker named Joe (names have been changed, again to protect me). Joe was never on my team, but his work involved building systems used internally in the company, so in that sense, I was Joe’s customer and a very satisfied one. A new manager, Sam, joined the company and took over Joe’s team, and within a few weeks, Sam called Joe into his office and told him his performance had been very unsatisfactory and dismissal procedures would soon be initiated against him.

Joe was devastated. I was very unhappy too. As a customer of the team, I considered Joe one of its best performers, so I was angry that Joe would even be evaluated poorly, let alone dismissed on performance grounds. I was determined to help him.

I was an influential person in that company, so if I had confronted Joe’s new manager, Sam, the potential for things to become really ugly was obvious, even to an engineer like me.

Fortunately, I already had years of meditation and compassion practice, so I had the right tools to deal skillfully with this situation. I calmed my mind with mindfulness and used the Just Like Me meditation (see Chapter 7) to put myself into Sam’s shoes. I quickly realized that there must be something important I did not know about the situation and which I needed to understand before I judged. I was missing important data. My mind quickly shifted from anger to an eagerness to understand and engage with kindness and curiosity.

I wrote Sam an e-mail introducing myself, sincerely welcoming him to the company, and then explained my concerns about Joe and my eagerness to help him. Part of the e-mail read:


I understand that we are all reasonable people, so that decision must not have been made lightly. However, I hope to be able to understand the reasons behind that decision, so that I can figure out how to better help Joe.

Will you be comfortable if I schedule some time with you so that I can listen to and learn from you about this case? I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, so please feel free to say no.

Happily, Sam, though understandably a bit uncomfortable, engaged me with reciprocal kindness and sincerity. We sat together, exchanged personal stories, and then talked about Joe. We both learned a lot in that conversation. From Sam, I learned that Joe had created issues for his team, such as taking on too much from his customers in an undisciplined manner that caused him to neglect some important team goals. On the other end, Sam learned from me how much Joe’s customers valued him for all those extra miles he had gone for them. Sam and I both acquired important missing data.

Soon after that, Sam and Joe talked again, established a better understanding of each other, and figured out how they can work effectively together. Dismissal proceedings against Joe were dropped. Sam and I established a great friendship that is still strong to this day.

What could have been an ugly drama instead became the starting point of a long friendship. This is the usefulness of emotional skills used in a social setting.

There is an old Chinese Zen saying: “The small [meditation] retreat is in the wilderness, the medium retreat is in the city, and the great retreat is in the emperor’s court.” Like most Zen sayings, this one is both absurd and true. All the emotional skills you learn in this book are useless if they cannot be applied in the real world, including a setting as seductive and dangerous as the emperor’s court. Conversely, the real world is the best place to sharpen your emotional skills. The real world is both your dojo and your zendo, from which you will get your mojo. Yo?

In this chapter, we will learn three essential social skills: leading with compassion, influencing with goodness, and communicating with insight.


Leading with Compassion

Compassion is known in every faith tradition and numerous philosophies as a great virtue. It is not just a great virtue, however. Compassion is also the cause for the highest level of happiness ever measured, and it’s a necessary condition for the most effective form of leadership known. Amazing stuff.

Compassion Is the Happiest State

Earlier in this book, we talked (and joked) about my friend Matthieu Ricard, the “happiest man in the world.” When Matthieu’s brain was scanned and measured with fMRI, his measure of happiness was extremely high. He was actually not the only person to register that extreme level of happiness—a number of Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters (people we consider the “Olympians” of the meditation world) were measured in the same lab, and more than one registered extreme levels of happiness. Matthieu was the first subject whose identity was unintentionally leaked to the public, which earned him that nickname. Another subject whose identity recently became known is Mingyur Rinpoche. Mingyur is similarly nicknamed in the Chinese-language press as the “happiest person in the world.”

These folks are, by far, the happiest people ever measured by science. Which leads us to a question: what were they thinking when they were being measured? Something naughty, perhaps? There is something about monks and their monk-y business, you know. Actually, they were meditating on compassion. This must be mind-blowing to many people because many of us consider compassion to be an unpleasant mental state, but here is scientific data showing precisely the reverse—that compassion is a state of extreme happiness.

I asked Matthieu about it. His own first-person experience confirms the data. In his experience, compassion is the happiest state ever. Being the engineer I am, I asked him the most obvious follow-up question, what is the second happiest state ever? He said, “Open awareness,” a state in which the mind is extremely open, calm, and clear. I don’t know about you, but as a practicing meditator, I found that insight stunning. As meditators, we train the mind toward profound calmness and clarity. As our practice deepens, we become increasingly happy, and since this deepening happiness does not require sensual or mental stimulation, some of us fall into the danger of withdrawing from real life (as usual, the Zen folks have the funniest description; they call them “Zen bums”). It turns out that even when you perfect that practice, the most you can achieve is the second happiest state.

The happiest state can only be achieved with compassion, which requires engagement in real life with real people. Hence, our meditation practices cannot be perfected outside of real life; there has to be a combination of seclusion from the world (to deepen the calmness) and engagement with the world (to deepen the compassion). If you are a deep meditator, remember to open your door and go out once in a while.

When I first read about these studies done on Matthieu (which was before we knew each other in person), it became one of the pivotal moments of my life. My dream is to create the conditions for world peace, and to do that by creating the conditions for inner peace and compassion on a global scale. Learning about Matthieu gave me a new angle for looking at my work. The insight that compassion can be fun changes the entire game. If compassion is a chore, nobody will do it, except maybe the Dalai Lama. But if compassion is fun, everybody is going to do it. Therefore, to create the conditions for global compassion, all we have to do is reframe compassion as something that is fun. Wow. Who knew saving the world would require fun?

Happily, compassion is not just fun. It has very real business benefits as well, especially in the context of business leadership.


Compassionate Leadership Is the Most Effective Leadership

The best definition of compassion I know comes from the eminent Tibetan scholar Thupten Jinpa. Jinpa is also the longtime English translator for the Dalai Lama. He has a charmingly mellow and gentle voice, so the Dalai Lama mischievously makes gentle fun of it every now and then (“See, I have deep booming voice, but this guy, his voice so soft,” the Dalai Lama would say, and they would all laugh out loud).

Jinpa defines compassion as follows:


Compassion is a mental state endowed with a sense of concern for the suffering of others and aspiration to see that suffering relieved.

Specifically, he defines compassion as having three components:


1. A cognitive component: “I understand you”

2. An affective component: “I feel for you”

3. A motivational component: “I want to help you”

The most compelling benefit of compassion in the context of work is that compassion creates highly effective leaders. To become a highly effective leader, you need to go through an important transformation. Bill George, the widely respected former CEO of Medtronic puts it most succinctly, calling it going from “I” to “We.”


This shift is the transformation from “I” to “We.” It is the most important process leaders go through in becoming authentic. How else can they unleash the power of their organizations unless they motivate people to reach their full potential? If our supporters are merely following our lead, then their efforts are limited to our vision and our directions.... Only when leaders stop focusing on their personal ego needs are they able to develop other leaders.2

The practice of compassion is about going from self to others. In a way, compassion is about going from “I” to “We.” So if switching from “I” to “We” is the most important process of becoming an authentic leader, those who practice compassion will already know how and will have a head start.

But wait, there’s more. I found the work of Jim Collins, documented in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t,3 to be even more illuminating. I tell all my friends that if they only read one business book in their entire lives, the one to read is Good to Great. The premise of the book is itself fascinating: Collins and his team tried to discover what makes companies go from good to great by sifting through a massive amount of data. They started with the set of every company that has appeared on Fortune 500 from 1965 to 1995, and they identified companies that started out merely as “good” companies that then became “great” companies (defined as outperforming the general market by a factor of three or more) for an extended period of time (defined as fifteen years or more, to weed out the one-hit wonders and those that were merely lucky). They ended up with a set of eleven “good to great” companies and compared them to a set of “comparison companies” to determine what made the merely good companies become great.

Being a data-loving Google engineer, I find the premise of the book and its heavy reliance on data fascinating. I find equally fascinating how well its findings seem to work in real life. Many of the principles from the book felt remarkably similar to what I experienced at Google in its early years. A casual observer who has read Good to Great and who is also familiar with Google’s history might mistakenly think all of us early employees at Google knew the book by heart. So, if you want to found the next Google, I recommend you read Good to Great.

The first and perhaps the most important finding in the book is the role of leadership. It takes a very special type of leader to bring a company from goodness to greatness. Collins calls them “Level 5” leaders. These are leaders who, in addition to being highly capable, also possess a paradoxical mix of two important and seemingly conflicting qualities: great ambition and personal humility. These leaders are highly ambitious, but the focus of their ambition is not themselves; instead, they are ambitious for the greater good. Because their attention is focused on the greater good, they feel no need to inflate their own egos. That makes them highly effective and inspiring.

“I said great ambition and personal humility.”

While Collins’s book convincingly demonstrates the importance of Level 5 leaders, it (understandably) does not prescribe a way to train them. I do not pretend to know how to train Level 5 leaders either, but I am convinced that compassion plays an essential role.

If you look at the two distinguishing qualities of Level 5 leaders (ambition and personal humility) in the context of the three components of compassion (cognitive, affective, motivational), you may find that the cognitive and affective components of compassion (understanding people and empathizing with them) tone down the excessive self-obsession within us, and thereby create the conditions for humility. The motivational component of compassion, wanting to help people, creates ambition for greater good. In other words, the three components of compassion can be used to train the two distinguishing qualities of Level 5 leadership.

Compassion is a necessary (but maybe insufficient) condition for Level 5 leadership, and therefore, one way to begin training Level 5 leaders is compassion training. This is one compelling benefit of compassion at work.


Training Compassion by Multiplying Goodness

We can train compassion similar to the way we train loving kindness, by creating mental habits. The premise is the same: the more you think about something, the stronger the neural pathways conducive to that thought become, and the easier it is to have that thought. Eventually, that thought becomes a mental habit and arises frequently and effortlessly. The mental habit that we are going to use for training compassion is something powerful yet pleasant at the same time: goodness. We increase the ability of the mind to perceive and increase goodness, both within ourselves and toward others.

For this practice, we’ll also employ another powerful mental tool: visualization. Our brains devote a substantial amount of resources to processing visual perception, so in theory, if we can make skillful use of the visual perception system for any mental task, we can take advantage of a lot more of the brain’s computational resources. In practice, I find that if I can visualize something, I can make it stick better. So, in this meditation, we will use visualization as a way of increasing the effectiveness of creating the mental habits for compassion.

The practice itself is very simple. When we breathe in, we visualize that we’re breathing in our own goodness, we visualize multiplying that goodness by ten in our hearts, and then when we breathe out, we visualize giving all that goodness to the world. After that, we breathe in the goodness of other people and do the same. If you want, you may visualize the goodness as white light.

Try doing this at home.


MULTIPLYING GOODNESS MEDITATION


Resting the Mind

Start with 2 minutes of resting the mind on the breath. Multiplying Goodness

Now, let us connect with the goodness within ourselves: our love, compassion, altruism, and inner joy. If you wish, you may visualize your good-ness radiating out of your body as a faint white light.

(Short pause)

When you breathe in, breathe all your goodness into your heart. Use your heart to multiply that goodness by a factor of ten. And when you breathe out, send all that goodness out to the whole world. If you wish, you may visualize yourself breathing out a brilliant white light representing this abundance of goodness.

(2-minute pause)

Now, let us connect with the goodness within everybody we know. Everybody we know is a good person, possessing some goodness. If you wish, you may visualize their goodness radiating out of their bodies as a faint white light. When you breathe in, breathe all their goodness into your heart… (Repeat above.)

(2-minute pause)

Finally, let us connect with the goodness within everybody in the world. Everybody in the world possesses at least a hint of goodness. If you wish, you may visualize their goodness radiating out of their bodies as a faint white light. When you breathe in, breathe all their goodness into your heart… (Repeat above.)

(2-minute pause) Closing

End with a 1-minute rest of the mind on the breath.


This practice develops three useful mental habits:


1. Seeing goodness in self and others

2. Giving goodness to all

3. Confidence in the transformative power of self (that I can multiply goodness)

The first habit (seeing goodness) strengthens the affective and cognitive components of compassion. When you instinctively and habitually perceive goodness in everyone, you instinctively want to understand and feel for them. Even in difficult situations, instead of simply dismissing the other person as a jerk and walking away, you want to understand that person because there is at least a hint of goodness in him that you can see. If you do this a lot, eventually, you become one whom people trust because you understand and care.

The next habit (giving goodness) strengthens the motivational component of compassion. When you instinctively and habitually want to deliver goodness to the world, pretty soon, you become the person who always wants to help others. Eventually, you become one whom people respect, sometimes even admire, because they feel your heart is in the right place.

“I want to deliver goodness to the world, but the world keeps requesting crap.”

The last habit (confidence in the transformative power of self) strengthens self-confidence. When you become comfortable with the idea that your heart can multiply goodness by a factor of ten, your emotional brain soon becomes comfortable with the idea that “Yes, I can benefit people.” Eventually, you may become one who inspires. And then maybe you will become a Level 5 leader.


Compassion Training for the Brave

The traditional practice for developing compassion is something known as Tonglen, which in Tibetan means “giving and receiving.” It is a lot like the Multiplying Goodness practice, except instead of breathing in goodness, you breathe in suffering (of self and others), and transform it within yourself. When you breathe out, you radiate love, kindness, and compassion.

This practice turns out to be very hard for novice meditators because it requires you to breathe in and receive pain and suffering. You do not have to do this, but if you are brave enough, please feel free to try it out. Here are instructions you can use:


TONGLEN MEDITATION


Pre-Meditation Script

In order to master social skills, we have to clear out the emotional gunk—anger, fear, confusion, and even physical suffering, and our resistance to it all. Tonglen is a practice designed for this effect, centered on awareness of breathing.

Tonglen literally means “giving and receiving,” willingness to receive the suffering and pain of others, and giving relief, well-being, and peace in return—thereby experiencing our ability to be transformers.

By breathing in negativity, we can use the heart as a filter. Breathing out, the dark clouds can pass through us, and transform into acceptance, ease, joy, and light/radiance. When we experience this, we strengthen the resolve that nothing can totally overcome us, which establishes deep confidence. This gives us a strong foothold to stand up for the well-being of ourselves and others, thereby building the foundation for compassion. Settling In

Let’s begin by becoming aware of our bodies and our breathing, noting sensations all through the body and gently focusing attention on the ebb and flow of the breath.

(Pause)

Now take a deep breath and imagine on the out breath that you feel you are a mountain.

Take another deep breath and imagine you are viewing life with an elevated perspective. Tonglen

And with another breath, let’s start Tonglen practice, by beginning with ourselves.

With the generosity of an open heart and mind, imagine you can see yourself sitting in front of you. Look at your “ordinary self,” with its suffering—whatever might be troubling you lately.

Breathe this in as if it is a dark cloud of gunk, and let it disperse and transform.

Breathe it out as rays of light. Repeat this breathing cycle for a short time.

(Pause)

Notice if you feel more tenderness, understanding, and warmth for yourself.

(Pause)

Now let’s practice for others:

Imagine you see in front of you someone in your life who is suffering.

With an in breath, feel how open you can be to his or her experience. Perhaps you can feel a strong intention arising to relieve this person of his or her difficulties.

Breathe this in as a dark cloud and feel it entering your heart, where it dissolves any traces of self-interest to reveal your innate goodness.

Breathe out rays of light, setting your intention to alleviate suffering.

Let’s spend some time breathing in and out like this.

(Pause) Closing

For the last few moments, you can bring your hand to your chest and just breathe.


Tonglen is a very powerful practice. The Dalai Lama is said to do this every day as one of his main practices. The first time I did this practice (under the guidance of Zen master Norman Fischer; the script above came from him), I experienced profound change. In those few minutes, I experienced a permanent strengthening of my self-confidence. I realized during the practice that a lot of what was holding me back originated from my fear of pain and suffering, and once I found myself capable of breathing in the pain and suffering of myself and others, and comfortable radiating kindness, love, and compassion, a lot of the fetters holding me back dissolved away.

“There’ve been complaints about who you’ve gotten to help breathe in your pain and suffering…”

We taught Tonglen during the early iterations of Search Inside Yourself, but we soon discovered it to be too hard for many participants. The near-consensus among Search Inside Yourself instructors was to take it out of the curriculum, but I strongly dissented. Tonglen is such a powerful and useful practice, I insisted that we needed to keep it. We eventually came up with a great solution that addressed everybody’s concerns by creating the Multiplying Goodness practice, which is useful and easy for novices to pick up, and it also allows a sneak preview into Tonglen. That is why you will likely not see that Multiplying Goodness practice described as a traditional practice for another hundred years or so, by which time I will be quite old, I think.

My suggestion to you is to start by practicing Multiplying Goodness, and once you feel more confident in your own practice (perhaps after a few weeks), give Tonglen a try. It may change you in profound ways.


Influencing with Goodness

The first rule of influence is that we all already have it. Everything we do or don’t do, and everything we say or don’t say, has an effect on other people. The key is not to acquire influence, but to expand the influence we already have and to use it for the good of all.

Understanding the Social Brain

I find that the most important first step to expanding our influence is to understand the social brain well enough to skillfully navigate it.

According to neuroscientist Evian Gordon, the “minimize danger and maximize reward” principle is an overarching, organizing principle of the brain. The brain is a machine that primarily approaches reward and avoids threat, as illustrated in the diagram below.

Notice that the “Reward (Approach)” arrow is much smaller than the “Threat (Avoid)” arrow. The difference in size illustrates the important insight that our brains respond far more strongly to negative experiences than comparable positive ones. We all experience this every day. For example, if I walk past Jim in the hallway and smile at him and he smiles back, it’s a very minor positive social experience for me and it affects me only very slightly. Most likely, the experience would fade out of my mind in a few moments. However, let’s say Jim does not smile back, he just looks away slightly grim-faced and continues walking. Objectively, it’s roughly comparable in magnitude (in the negative direction) to him smiling back at me, but subjectively, I am likely to react much more strongly. I might go, “Whoa, what’s up with that? What’s wrong with that guy? What did I do to him this time?” Instead of a few moments, this one might last many minutes, perhaps even longer. Negative experiences impact us more strongly and last much longer than positive ones do.

How many positive experiences does it take to balance out a comparable negative experience? It depends on who you ask. In Chapter 6, we mentioned the groundbreaking work of psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, which suggests the ratio to be 3:1. She discovered that “experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio with negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.”4 Famed psychologist John Gottman, however, found a different ratio in a different context. He found that for a marriage to succeed, there must be at least five times as many positive interactions in the relationship as negative ones, a 5:1 ratio that Gottman dubbed the “magic ratio,”5 more commonly known as the “Gottman ratio.” This ratio is such a powerful predictor that Gottman reputedly can accurately predict if a marriage will end in divorce within ten years just by scoring the positive and negative interactions in a fifteen-minute conversation between the couple. He jokes that this is why he does not get invited to dinner parties anymore.

If you put these two ratios together side by side, you immediately understand why marriage is so tough. We demand an unreasonable 3:1 positivity ratio for all our daily experiences, except in our marriage, from which we demand even more. In that sense, we all behave like over-demanding jerks toward our spouses, and we judge them far more harshly than we judge mere acquaintances. Maybe if we understand that, we could give our spouses a little bit of a well-deserved break, and maybe marriage would not be quite so tough.


The SCARF Model for the Social Brain

In Your Brain at Work, David Rock describes five domains of social experience that the brain treats as primary rewards or threats. In other words, these five domains are so important to you that your brain treats them in the same way it treats survival issues. And because they are so important, each is a major driver of social behavior. These five domains form a model which David calls the SCARF model, which stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.6

Status

Status is about relative importance, pecking order, or seniority. People go to great lengths to protect or increase their status. Status is so important, it even predicts longevity, both in humans and in primates. Status threats can also be triggered very easily. For example, just talking to your boss can activate a status threat. When a co-worker asks to give you “feedback,” that too can trigger a status threat.

The good news is there is a good way to increase your own status without harming others, and that is what David calls “playing against yourself.” When you improve a skill (such as improving your golf handicap), you activate a status reward relative to your former self. This is perhaps why mastery is such a powerful motivator (see Chapter 6). When you gain increasing mastery over something that matters to you, you activate a status reward, at least when compared against your former self.

Certainty

Our brains love certainty. Uncertainty generates “error responses” in the brain that cannot be ignored until they are resolved. In other words, uncertainty takes away valuable brain resources. Larger uncertainties can be highly debilitating. For example, if you do not know whether your job is secure, uncertainty will probably occupy most of your mind and you may not be able to do much else at work.

Autonomy

Autonomy is the perception of exerting control over one’s environment. According to Steve Maier, “the degree of control that organisms can exert over something that creates stress determines whether the stressor alters the organism’s functioning.”7 In other words, it’s not the stress itself that gets to you; it’s the feeling of helplessness in the face of that stress. There are many studies that give strong evidence to this. One study, for example, shows that low-level British civil servants have more stress-related health problems than senior executives, even though the latter are known to be under a lot more stress.

Relatedness

Relatedness is the perception of whether another person is a “friend” or a “foe.” It makes sense for relatedness to be part of our primary reward/threat circuitry, since our very survival used to be almost entirely dependent on other people in our own tightly cooperating small tribes. In fact, relatedness is so fundamental, some research shows that the one and only experience in life that makes people sustainably happy over time is the quality and quantity of social connections. (They did not study accomplished meditators, so while I agree with that finding, I suspect there is a little bit more to that story.) Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, demonstrated that he understood the power of relatedness when he said, “When you get to my age, you’ll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That’s the ultimate test of how you’ve lived your life.”

By default, the brain labels someone a foe unless proven otherwise. For example, strangers are usually labeled as foe (or at least, labeled as “approach at your own risk”). Fortunately, in many situations, it is not hard to switch people from foes to friends. For example, all it usually takes is a handshake and a pleasant conversation. Many practices in this book, such as Just Like Me and Loving Kindness can greatly ease and accelerate this process.

Fairness

Humans are the only animals known to voluntarily injure their own self-interests to punish the perceived unfairness of others. Other primates are known to punish unfairness, but not at the expense of their own self-interest. For example, say we are in a game (known as the Ultimatum Game) in which person A (the “proposer”) is given one hundred dollars, which he must distribute between himself and person B (the “responder”). If person B accepts the deal, they both pocket the money as distributed by A, but if B rejects the deal, they both go home empty-handed. If person A distributes ninety-nine dollars to himself and one dollar to B, objectively, B has no reason to reject the deal. If B accepts the deal, he gets a dollar, and if he rejects it, he gets nothing. There is only one economically rational course of action for him. Yet many people in the position of person B will reject the deal out of being offended by unfairness. In contrast, a chimpanzee playing a similar game (using raisins as the object of value rather than U.S. dollars) will rarely reject that deal.8 To a chimp, forgoing raisins is just silly. The moral of the story is to never underestimate a person’s sense of fairness; it is overwhelming enough that he often may sacrifice his own self-interest for its sake. (The other moral of the story is to never count on a chimpanzee giving you a fair deal. Nor an elephant, for that matter.)

“With Judge Bonzo presiding, we might have to revisit our initial projections about the success of your case.”


Expanding Your Influence

You can influence people most effectively when you help people achieve what they want in a way that also helps you and simultaneously serves greater good. That is why the SCARF model from the previous section can be so valuable. By understanding the neuroscience of the social brain, you can better understand how your actions can increase the SCARF factors for self and others, hence you can figure out how to help people in ways that also align with your own interests. For example, if you take the time to know those you work with at the human level, you raise their Relatedness reward. Thereafter, even technical disagreements can be more easily resolved because they see you as “friend,” not “foe.” If you are generous in acknowledging good ideas from people, you raise their Status reward and you may then find yourself on the receiving end of many other valuable ideas and solutions. If you are the boss and go the extra mile to be fair to your people, you raise their Fairness reward and they become much more willing to work for you. Thus, skillful use of SCARF factors for the good for all creates a win-win situation for everyone and expands your influence.

Based on the insight above, here is a four-step plan for expanding the magnitude and reach of your influence.


1. Know that you already have influence. You already affect people. It is a simple matter of improving what you can already do.

2. Strengthen self-confidence. The more you are aware of and comfortable with your own strengths and weaknesses, the more confident you become and the more effectively you can influence people. Emotionally, people gravitate toward confidence, especially the type of self-confidence based on kindness and authenticity. The mindfulness practices in Chapters 2 and 3 and the self-awareness practices in Chapter 4 will help you with self-confidence.

3. Understand people and help them succeed. You can influence people more effectively if you understand them and try to help them achieve their goals in ways that also help you achieve yours. The empathy practices in Chapter 7 plus the compassion practices earlier in this chapter will help you with understanding and helping people. Your knowledge of the neuroscience of the social brain learned from the last section will also help you greatly.

4. Serve the greater good. While remembering to take care of your own self-interest, never forget to go beyond just serving self-interest. Act also for the good of the team, or the good of the company, or the good of the world. Inspire the same in others. When your goodness inspires others, you can influence them more effectively. The practices in Chapter 6 on motivation, and the compassion practices in this chapter, will help you develop your instinct for serving the greater good.

If there is a single word that summarizes all the practices that help expand your influence, I think that word is goodness. Goodness is very inspiring, and it inspires in a way that changes people. That is why, for example, Mahatma Gandhi was and still is so influential.


How Goodness Can Change a Man’s Life in Ten Minutes

One touching example of how goodness can change a man’s life was a personal story told to me by famous psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman.

Paul has had a very successful career as a psychologist. In fact, he was named by the American Psychological Association as one of 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. Paul, however, suffered a very difficult childhood, so he grew up to be a very angry adult. He told me that every single week of his life, he experienced at least two episodes of explosive anger that led him to do or say something he would later regret.

In 2000, Paul was invited to speak at a Mind and Life Conference held in India in the presence of the Dalai Lama. Paul was reluctant to go because he did not take Buddhist monks seriously; he thought of them as a bunch of funny bald men in robes. His daughter, Eve, had to convince him to attend.

On the third day of the five-day conference, something very important happened to Paul. During a break between meetings, Eve and Paul went to sit with the Dalai Lama and spoke to him for about ten minutes. For the duration of that conversation, the Dalai Lama held Paul’s hand. Those ten minutes had a profound impact on Paul. He said he experienced an abundance of “goodness” within his entire being. He was transformed. By the end of those ten minutes, he found his anger completely fading away. For many weeks after that, he did not experience any trace of anger at all, which for him, was a huge life change. Perhaps more importantly, it changed the direction of his life. Paul was planning to retire, but after those ten minutes of holding the Dalai Lama’s hand, he rediscovered his deep aspiration to bring benefit to the world, which was the reason he entered psychology in the first place. After some slight prodding from the Dalai Lama, Paul canceled his retirement plans and has since been giving his experience and wisdom to scientific research that may help people improve emotional balance, compassion, and altruism.

Goodness is so powerful that even experiencing it for just ten minutes can change a man’s life. It does not even matter that the experience may be entirely subjective. In Paul’s case, for example, the Dalai Lama claimed he did not do anything special, suggesting that the goodness Paul experienced came more from what Paul himself brought to the situation, with the Dalai Lama being merely a facilitator. Either way, the lesson is unmistakable: if you want to influence people, there is no greater power than goodness.

(Confession: I am comfortable using the word goodness only because Paul uses the word himself. If the word goodness is good enough for Paul Ekman, it is good enough for me.)

“Okay, now try projecting influence without using the Jedi mind trick.”


Communicating with Insight

Empathy is a necessary ingredient for effective communication, but empathy is not always enough. I have seen even empathetic people get themselves into very frustrating conversations. The missing element is insight, specifically insight into the often hidden elements of a conversation, such as the identity issues involved and what impact was caused versus what was intended.

In the next section, we look at a framework from Harvard for conducting difficult conversations that will help us develop the necessary insight.


Difficult Conversations

Difficult conversations are conversations that are hard to have. They are often important, but because they are hard, we would usually rather avoid them. Two classic examples of difficult conversations in the workplace are asking for a raise and giving a valued employee critical feedback. It does not always have to be so drastic, however. Sometimes, even something as minor as asking your neighbor to not bring out the trash on non-trash days can be a difficult conversation.

Conducting difficult conversations is a skill, an extremely useful one, indeed. According to the authors of Difficult Conversations, who make up part of the Harvard Negotiation Project, there are five steps to conducting a difficult conversation. Here is my brief of those steps:


1. Prepare by walking through the “three conversations.”

2. Decide whether to raise the issue.

3. Start from the objective “third story.”

4. Explore their story and yours.

5. Problem solve.9

Prepare by Walking Through the “Three Conversations”

A powerful first step in improving our ability to conduct difficult conversations is understanding their underlying structure. In every conversation, there are actually three conversations going on. They are the content conversation (“What happened?”), the feelings conversation (“What emotions are involved?”), and the identity conversation (“What does this say about me?”). The identity conversation almost always involves one of these three questions:


1. Am I competent?

2. Am I a good person?

3. Am I worthy of love?

This step involves understanding the structure of the three conversations and preparing for them. Sort out what happened as objectively as possible, understand how this is impacting you and the other party emotionally, and identify what is at stake for you, about you.

Decide Whether to Raise the Issue

What do you hope to accomplish by raising this issue? Is it a productive intention (for example, to solve a problem, to help somebody develop themselves) or is it a nonproductive intention (for example, just wanting to make someone feel bad)? Sometimes, the right thing to do is not to raise the issue at all. If you decide to raise the issue, try shifting into a mode that supports learning and problem solving.

Start from the Objective “Third Story”

The “Third Story” is the way things happened from the perspective of a disinterested third-party who is aware of the whole situation. For example, if Matthew and I are having an argument, each of us will have our own version of what led to this argument. The narrative from our co-worker, John, who knows everything that happened but is totally uninvolved, is the third story.

The third story is the best one with which to start a difficult conversation. It is the most objective and the one with which you are most likely to form a common ground with the other party. Use this third story to invite the other party to join you as a partner in sorting out the situation together.

Explore Their Story and Yours

Listen to their story. Empathize. Share your story. Explore how you each perceive the same situation differently. Reframe the stories from one of blame and accusation to one of learning about how each contributes to the situation and the emotions involved.

Problem Solve

Invent solutions that meet each side’s most important concerns and interests. Find ways to continue keeping communications open and taking care of each other’s interests.


Insights and Exercise for Difficult Conversations

Happily, if you have been working hard on all the practices in Search Inside Yourself, you have already acquired most of the skills you need to conduct difficult conversations. The only thing you need is to acquire two key insights.

The first key insight is that impact is not the intention. For example, if we feel hurt by something somebody said, we may automatically assume that the person intended to hurt us. In other words, we assume that the impact is the intention. Usually, we judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by the impact of their behavior because we do not really know their intentions, so we subconsciously infer their intentions based on the impact of their behavior. In many situations, however, the impact is not the intention. For example, when Henry’s wife told him to stop and ask for directions, he felt belittled, but she honestly did not set out intending to belittle his sense of manhood; she merely intended to arrive at the party on time. Her impact was not her intention. Let her know the impact on you, Henry, but do not start a fight with her. She meant no harm. (True story, though the name has been changed to protect every husband in the world, except Henry.)

The second key insight is that beyond the content and emotions in every difficult conversation, there are, more importantly, issues of identity. Very often the identity issues are the most hidden and left unsaid, but they are usually the most dominant. For example, if my manager wants to talk to me about the slow progress of my project, the thing that will bother me most is not the content of that conversation, or my feelings of anxiety, but my self-doubt concerning my own competence. In other words, the thing that will most bother me is the identity issue of “Am I competent?” Recognizing this, a skillful communicator makes sure she is aware of the identity issues and addresses them when appropriate. For example, being the skillful communicator that she is, my manager may begin the conversation by assuring me that she has full confidence in my competence; the thing she really wants to understand is what additional resources I may need. By addressing my identity issue skillfully right at the beginning, the entire quality of the conversation changes.

These two key insights are most relevant for Step 1 of the difficult conversation framework: prepare by walking through the “three conversations.” If you have been doing your Search Inside Yourself practices, you should already be quite comfortable with all the other steps. Hence, we only need to pay extra attention to Step 1.

The best way to prepare for a difficult conversation is to talk to other people. That is because having people to talk to gives you the opportunity to verbalize and rehearse key parts of the difficult conversation beforehand. The best people to talk to are those you can trust, such as a best friend, a mentor, or a trusted peer at work. If you prefer to work alone, you may do it as a writing exercise instead.


PREPARING FOR A DIFFICULT CONVERSATION


You may do this as either a writing exercise or a speaking exercise. If you do this as a speaking exercise, you may speak to a friend. Instructions

1. Think of a difficult conversation you had in the past, or one that you intend to have in the near future, or one that you should have had but did not.

2. Either in writing or spoken in a monologue, describe the “three conversations” from your own point of view. The three conversations are: the content conversation (“What happened?”), the feelings conversation (“What emotions are involved?”), and the identity conversation (“What does this say about me?”). The identity conversation almost always involves one of these three questions:


• Am I competent?

• Am I a good person?

• Am I worthy of love?


3. Now, pretend that you are the other person and describe the three conversations from his or her point of view to the best of your abilities.

If you did this as a speaking exercise with a friend, discuss what it felt like for you in a free-flow conversation.


“How about now? Is now a good time to do the Difficult Conversations exercise?”


Mindful E-Mailing

The good news about modern communications is we do not have to do it face-to-face—we can use e-mail. The bad news is we do not do it face-to-face—we use e-mail. Yes, the good news is that we can, and the bad news is that we do.

The biggest problem with e-mail is that the emotional context is often miscommunicated, sometimes with disastrous results. When we talk to another person face-to-face, most of the emotions we communicate with each other are done nonverbally, usually with our facial expressions, tone of voice, postures, and gestures. In other words, our brains get to send and receive enough nonverbal information to do an “emotional tango” (see Chapter 7) that lets us communicate to each other what we are feeling. Most of that communication happens unconsciously. When we communicate via e-mail, however, we lose that entire mechanism for communicating feelings. When brains can’t dance together, feelings don’t get to tether.

But wait, it gets worse. When the brain receives insufficient data about others’ feelings, it just makes stuff up. The brain makes assumptions about the emotional context of the message and then fabricates the missing information accordingly. It does not just fabricate information, however. It also automatically believes those fabrications to be true. Worse still, those fabrications usually have a strong negative bias—we usually assume people to have more negative intentions than they actually do.

For example, when Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, saw me in the hallway, he wagged his finger at me mischievously and said with a big smile, “You, troublemaker.” Since my brain was able to receive all the nonverbal cues, I knew he was just teasing me, so I never worried that he was going to fire me. However, if I had received those same words from him via e-mail, I might already be packing my stuff at the office and waiting for the lady at HR to come, err … discuss an important matter with me. That is true even if Eric had used a smiley in his e-mail.

That is why there is so much miscommunication over e-mail. We frequently get offended or frightened by e-mails that were never intended to offend or frighten. If we are emotionally unskillful, then we react with offense or fear, and then all hell breaks loose. I am not sure if the devil invented e-mail, but I am sure it made his job easier.

This is the key insight necessary for effective e-mail communications: because e-mails seldom contain sufficient information for the brain to recognize the emotional context of the sender, the brain fabricates the missing information, often with a negative bias, and then unconsciously assumes its own fabrication to be the truth.

Fortunately, mindfulness can help vastly improve the quality of your e-mail communications. The original Pali word that gets translated into “mindfulness” is sati. Sati also has an alternative translation: recollection (or reflection). That means that mindfulness is not just a mind of calmness, but it also has a strong quality of remembering and reflecting on insights.

When we engage in mindful e-mailing, that recollecting quality of mindfulness is the main one we rely on. The first thing we recollect is that there is a human being on the other end, a human being just like me. The second thing we recollect is this insight that people who receive e-mails unconsciously fabricate missing information about the emotional context of the sender, so we apply the appropriate care and caution.

Given that, here is the practice for mindful e-mailing.


PRACTICE OF MINDFUL E-MAILING


1. Begin by taking one conscious breath. If this is a particularly sensitive situation, calm your mind with a few minutes of Mindfulness Meditation (see Chapter 2) or Walking Meditation (see Chapter 3).

2. Mindfully reflect that on the receiving end, there are one or more human beings. Human beings just like me. If this is a particularly difficult situation, it may be useful to visualize the receiver or receivers in your mind and to engage in a few minutes of the Just Like Me / Loving Kindness exercise (see Chapter 7).

3. Write your e-mail.

4. Before sending, mindfully reflect on the insight that if the emotional context of your message is unclear, the receiver’s brain will just make something up that is likely more negative than you intended. Put yourself in the receiver’s shoes, pretend you know nothing about the sender’s (your) emotional context, pretend also that you have a negative bias, and read your e-mail. Revise your e-mail if necessary.

5. Take one conscious breath before pressing Send. If this is a particularly delicate situation—for example if you are writing an angry e-mail to your boss or your subordinate—take three slow, conscious breaths before pressing Send. Feel free to change your mind about pressing Send.




Meng’s Magic Mushroom Mantra

Let us close this chapter with a mantra that I created for myself. It summarizes many of my social skills practices. The mantra is:


Love them. Understand them. Forgive them. Grow with them.

Whenever I find myself in a difficult situation involving other people, I silently repeat the mantra to myself. It usually works. It works especially well with children and bosses.

My friend Rigel suggested that my mantra may also apply to magic mushrooms (very funny, Rigel), hence the name of the mantra.


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