I Could Take Over the World . . . but Why?

I'm guessing I'm far from unique in this, but if I was a coach I would want to emulated Ted Lasso (more on why below).

There's a scene in the latter part of season 1 where he tells someone to "Be Curious, Not Judgmental." He attributes the phrase to Walt Whitman, which it turns out is wrong, but the wisdom of the concept is true nonetheless. Not only will you be more connected to others with that approach, you will understand them (and everyone else) better because of it. It's a motto I try to live by.

All them fellas who used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything figured out. So they judged everything. And they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me, who I was, had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious, they would have asked questions.

Speaking of Ted Lasso, here's my review of Why Motivating People Doesn't Work . . . and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging by Susan Fowler:

It was only this week I finished watching the first season of Ted Lasso. I'm arriving late to the show, but am loving it as much as expected--from both all the praise it's received and the little I knew about its premise. One of the areas it's exceeded my expectations is Ted's approach to coaching. In case you don't know, Ted is a top American football coach who takes a job as a British football (soccer) coach. He knows nothing about the game or culture he's jumped into, but he's completely confident in his ability to succeed because he knows something even more important: what motivates people. He doesn't coach by focusing on the details of the game, but by watching his people, figuring out what they need, and giving it to them. After that, the rest takes care of itself.

I mention that because this book, as well as any I know, is a manual for those wanting to learn how to lead like Ted Lasso does. Or maybe Ted read this book and learned how to apply it to his situation. Either way. From the concluding chapter of Fowler's book:

Executives tend to pursue results by focusing on what they want from people. They have it backwards.

When you focus on what you want for people, you are more likely to get the results you want from people.

And from the chapter before that:

The nature of human motivation is not about making money. The nature of human motivation is in making meaning. . . .

Definitive evidence shows that organizational vitality measured by return on investment, earnings by share, access to venture capital, stock price, debt load, and other financial indicators is dependent on two factors: employee work passion and customer devotion. It does not work the other way around—organizational vitality is not what determines customer devotion or employee work passion. . . .

What [leaders] want for their people is a positive sense of well-being. At the heart of what leaders hope for their people is the satisfaction of their psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

In other words, the key to a successful business or organization is making sure that people find their psychological needs met by their work, because if they do then the work they do will be excellent. People don't need to be motivated by external factors, they need to feel autonomy, relatedness, and competence, and then they'll be intrinsically, authentically motivated to do their best in response. Leaders shouldn't focus on motivating them, but on creating an environment in which they motivate themselves.

Fowler does an excellent job of presenting this information and making her case, succinctly, directly, and with plentiful examples. I recommend it for everyone.

An additional quote I didn't include in my review:

The bottom line is that power undermines people’s psychological needs. It’s not just your use of power; it’s people’s perception that you have it and could us it. Your power demands that people need to exert more energy self-regulating to internalize a workplace where they experience autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

It's good advice for supervisors, coaches, parents, and any relationship with power; and good advice for any relationship at all.

Earlier this year, in Empathy Works: Respect, Dignity, Humanity, I wrote about Ryan Dowd's book The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness. I follow him on Facebook and get his weekly emails. Here's part of one from a couple of weeks ago, The raccoons were messing with me all night!

8:00 am.

A beautiful spring day in Aurora, Illinois with full sun and a slight breeze.

I got out of my car and headed for the front door of the homeless shelter, eager to start the workday.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running in my direction.

I turned to see Michael. He wasn’t running, though. He was sprinting. Right. At. Me.

Michael has been homeless for a few decades.

Michael is twice my size.

Michael had leaves in his unkempt hair and his clothing had fresh mud.

When he got within 30 feet of me, Michael started screaming, “The racoons were messing with me all night!”

I immediately knew what was happening:

• Michael had obviously been asked to leave the shelter the night before.
• He had slept outside (with racoons, apparently).
• Now he wanted to complain to the Executive Director about last night’s staff.

I knew—from screwing it up in the past—that the next five seconds were crucial.

I turned to face Michael.

I made eye contact.

I smiled.

I put my hand out to shake his hand.

I said, “Good morning, Michael!” in my most welcoming voice.

Michael stopped five feet short of me, a look of slight confusion on his face.

“Uh, good morning,” he said at half the volume of a moment earlier.

He shook my hand.

“Ummm… Do you have a minute to talk about what happened last night?”

You could almost see Michael’s Prefrontal Cortex regain control over his Amygdala.

Neuroscience Recap

Two weeks ago, we talked about how de-escalation is all about helping the other person’s Prefrontal Cortex to regain control over their Amygdala.

• De-Escalators are things you do that help the Prefrontal Cortex calm the person down.
• Escalators are things you do that trigger the person’s Amygdala to be in fight or flight.

Last week we talked about how trauma can cause the person’s Amygdala to be hyperactive and the person’s Prefrontal Cortex to be suppressed.

This can make de-escalation harder (and even more essential).

The First Five Seconds

The first five seconds of conflict is absolutely crucial.

• If you do a lot of De-Escalators in the first five seconds, the person’s Prefrontal Cortex regains control more easily. Everything after that five seconds is MUCH easier.
• If you do a lot of Escalators in the first five seconds, the person’s Amygdala gets fired up even more. Everything after that five seconds is MUCH harder.

None of the De-escalators I used with Michael were rocket science:

I turned to face Michael.

I made eye contact.

I smiled.

I put my hand out to shake his hand.

I said, “Good morning, Michael!” in my most welcoming voice.

They were neuroscience, though!!!

How you can use this

Oftentimes, we are busy or overwhelmed (or tired or hungry or whatever) and thus we don’t pay much attention to the first five seconds of conflict.

We accidentally do Escalators in the first five seconds.

The rest of the conflict is much harder then.

Put extra attention into the first five seconds and the rest of your day will go better!

If you want to learn more about specifically what you should focus on in the first five seconds, check out our next live training (information below).

Have a fantastic week!

Ryan

Ted Lasso is a master of friendly, inquisitive, disarming greetings; he's a master at leading with de-escalation.

Someone else I follow is the Kansas Leadership Center, which focuses on civic leaders and civic engagement. A recent article in their journal focused specifically on journalists and journalism, but the approach is good with any situation:

What Does It Mean to Complicate the Narrative?

We live in hyper-polarized times where exacerbating conflict and oversimplifying issues has become a tried-and-true way to command attention. Journalists are not the only civic actors who contribute to this problem. Ripley uses the phrase “conflict entrepreneur” to describe fire starters who exploit disagreements to advance their own interests. Even if they are not trying to, journalists too often fan the flames rather than dampen them.

Complicating the narratives is a framework for changing that emphasizes two key things.

First, it calls on journalists to ask different kinds of questions, questions that help get below the surface of what’s driving conflict. The current list includes 22 questions amplify contradictions and widen the lens and get to people’s motivations. They also encourage more and better listening. Questions can be used to expose people to the other tribe, in hopes of countering confirmation bias, that tendency to look for information that confirms beliefs we already have.

But the key is not just asking questions, it is also listening to the answers. Ripley recommends a conflict resolution technique called looping, in which you summarize what you have heard back to the person to whom you are talking. The practice helps in two ways. First off, it lets you check to see if you are in fact hearing correctly. Journalists, like people in general, can be more awful at listening than they realize, and looping gives them a chance to double check their understanding.

The other thing looping does is show the interviewee that you are listening. They end up feeling heard. They know you are listening because you have repeated back what they have said in a succinct and compelling way. As a result, it also invites them to go deeper and tell you more. And if there is a caveat they disagree with, they can clarify and help you understand the nuances of their thinking.

"Widen the lens and get to people’s motivations." Be curious, not judgmental.

This seems related and helpful. Plus it showed up in my feed the same day as the article above. A guide from Psyche:

How to Have Better Arguments

• The need for argument is unavoidable. Hostile or unproductive exchanges can make arguing seem hopeless. But it’s vital because it holds the potential to answer important questions and change beliefs.
• Arguing is inherently complicated. The very nature of belief and the selective ways we regard evidence can make it challenging to approach arguments with an open mind.
• Decide whether arguing is worth it, case by case. Consider engaging in argument with someone if you are reasonably well prepared and it seems likely that you will hear each other out.
• Approach argument with humility. Remember that everyone tends to think that their own beliefs, and the reasons for them, are correct. Be ready to hear someone else’s reasons.
• Anticipate that arguments will feel like attacks. Being argued with can feel as if someone is saying you’ve failed at reasoning. Try to accept the discomfort that arises, knowing that the experience could be worth it.
• Seek to understand the alternative view in addition to your own. To argue well, you’ll have to give reasons that the other person sees as good reasons. So, explore how they think about the issues at hand.
• Be prepared to argue about arguing. You may have to point out when there is an error in someone’s argument – and clearly explain why that’s the case.
• Aim to argue justly. ‘Owning’ someone with unfair tactics or bad reasoning is hardly a victory, and ‘losing’ a fair argument has its benefits.

Be curious, not judgmental.

And from yet another weekly email I receive, "Brain Food" from Farnam Street, related to Ted Lasso, relatedness, and meaningful motivation:

Laurie Santos on what makes us happy:

"We’re happier when we do nice things for others. We’re happier when we are focused on our healthier habits, things like improving our sleep and getting more exercise, we can really see the effects of this stuff, and often quite profound effects.

One of my favorite most profound effects is the effect of taking a little time for gratitude, the simple act of counting your blessings. There’s evidence that in as little as two weeks, the simple act of writing three to five things you’re grateful for down on a piece of paper can improve your well-being, and significantly improve your wellbeing.

There’s also evidence that expressing gratitude to other people, like writing a detailed thank you note to someone that you’ve always wanted to thank but never got a chance to, the act of doing that, at least in Marty Seligman and others’ data, can improve your wellbeing not just significantly immediately but can give you an improved wellbeing effect that lasts for over a month, right, which is crazy.

If I was like, “There’s this pill that you can take that will improve your wellbeing significantly for over a month,” you take one pill, and months later you’re feeling good, you’d be like, “Man, I’m going to do that.” The simple act of writing a thank you letter can do that.”

— Source

I've only listened to one of the podcasts so far, but I might have to give this one a try.

Ted Lasso gets called "optimistic," but I don't think that label is quite right. He's relentlessly cheerful, and underneath that is kindness, generosity, curiosity, and compassion. It's not about seeing the best of the future, it's about seeing the best in others to help them see it in themselves.

To shift gears a bit . . . not long ago (in Really Good at Rolling in It), I shared a few selections from Michael Kleber-Diggs' book Worldly Things. One from the book that I did not share is Gloria Mundi. It recently came across my feed and I was struck in particular by a few lines:

 . . . keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live 

well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned 

to a period, a place, a people. Remember me 

in stories—not the first time we met, not the last, 

a time in between. Our moment here is small. 

I am too—a worldly thing among worldly things . . . 

They remind me how everyone is situated and can't be known apart from context, and that we know each other through the stories we tell ourselves. Here's the whole thing:

Michael Kleber-Diggs

GLORIA MUNDI

​

Come to my funeral dressed as you 

would for an autumn walk in the woods. 

Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission 

to be late, even without good cause. 

If my day arrives when you had other plans, please 

proceed with them instead. Celebrate me 

there—keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live 

well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned 

to a period, a place, a people. Remember me 

in stories—not the first time we met, not the last, 

a time in between. Our moment here is small. 

I am too—a worldly thing among worldly things—

one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still. 

Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed, 

compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful, 

wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow 

and decay, let me be lovely yet 

temporal, like memories, like mahogany.

It is both true and lovely.

Barely related, but I wrote a long review and captured some long quotes, so I'm including it to preserve. Of Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness by Charles Foster:

This is the second book in row I've read, by happenstance, to argue that humans were more in touch with our true selves--and lived happier, more meaningful and fulfilling lives--as hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric era. That the advent of agriculture, domestication, settlements, and civilization tapped into our worst elements and we've been dissatisfied ever since. The ability to store resources led to the hoarding of resources; the need for organized, coordinated communities led to the hoarding of power; and hoarded resources and power have led to fighting, greed, selfishness, and many other ills that didn't exist before. So goes the argument.

Foster takes a unique approach to making his case: he lived it. He identified three broad eras of human existence, ways of living that led to different modes of thinking and being, and did his best to live in each manner. Upper Palaeolithic hunting and gathering; living off the land in the wild with no modern tools, finding food and shelter as he went. Neolithic farming; in the traditional ways. Enlightenment; modern life. He reports on each experience, alongside reflections drawing insight from academic work in a range of subjects.

Foster is a skilled and entertaining writer, and his book is fascinating.

I would have rated it higher but for two reasons. First, he claims from the start that he is exploring different modes of existence and reporting on them, but really he is looking to confirm his beliefs with his experiences. His enterprise was based too much on proving his points and not enough on learning. Second, I listened to the audiobook, often as I was doing things with my hands (whittling, painting, crafty things) so my attention was always a little bit divided. From that perspective, I found his style a bit too rambling and hard to follow. I think if I had been reading exclusively, with more attention to headings and titles and the ability to reread and create more context inside the book, I might have felt differently. Is it fair to base my rating on my engagement with the book? Probably not, but it's all I have to go on.

A fascinating, if not entirely convincing, read.

A bit from his Author's Note that opens the book:

We are materially richer than ever before. We have abolished many material ills. And yet we are ontologically queasy. We feel that we're significant creatures, but have no way of describing that significance. Most of us abjure the crass fundamentalisms - both religious and secular - that give us cheap and easy answers to the question 'Why am I alive?' No Upper Palaeolithic hunter, looking up at the sky, would demean the gods by thinking that they could be constrained within the terse formulae of conservative Protestantism.

We are laughably maladapted to our current lives. We eat in a single breakfast the sugar that an Upper Palaeolithic man might eat in a year, and wonder why we're diabetic, why our coronary arteries sludge up and why we're tense with unexpended energy. We walk in a year what an Upper Palaeolithic hunter would walk in a day, and wonder why our bodies are like putty. We devote to TV brains designed for constant alertness against wolves, and wonder why there's a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. We agree to be led by self-serving sociopaths who wouldn't survive a day in the forest, and wonder why our societies are wretched and our self-esteem low. We, who work best in families and communities of up to 150, elect to live in vast conglomerations, and wonder why we feel alienated. We have guts built for organic berries, organic elk and organic mushrooms, and we wonder why those guts rebel at organophosphates and herbicides. We're homeotherms, and wonder why our whole metabolism goes haywire when we delegate our thermoregulation to buildings. We're wild creatures, designed for constant ecstatic contact with earth, heaven, trees and gods, and wonder why lives built on the premise that we are mere machines, and spent in centrally heated, electronically lit greenhouses, seem sub-optimal. We have brains shaped and expanded, very expensively, for relationality, and wonder why we're unhappy in an economic structure built on the assumption that we're walled islands who do not and should not bleed into one another. We are people who need stories as we need air, and whose only available story is the dreary, demeaning dialectic of the free market.

-----

I don't explore here what is to be done. I am no seer, sage, shrink or sociologist. But it will involve radical kindness, waking up, and old stories. All humans are Scheherazades: we die each morning if we don't have a good story to tell, and the good ones are all old.

And a sample from the content, part of his reflection in response to joining some friends for an autumn equinox celebration:

In the hunter-gatherer world the dark inched in; no day was much shorter or longer than its neighbours; each season gave enough, in many different ways, and it was the daily enough that was daily celebrated, not the filling of barns.

In the modern West we have barn-filling celebrations: harvest festivals. We love them. It's good for us to be grateful, even if we can't coherently say to whom the gratitude is due. Harvest festivals seem appropriate. I wonder.

'We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,' sing the children at squirrelling time. (Well, no they didn't, but let's let that point go.) The hymn is rather self congratulatory. We made the right agricultural choices, we put in the graft and so we're going to have a full belly this winter, and a great knees-up in the village hall next week.

There's a show of humility in the next line: 'But it is fed and watered,' we inform God, 'By thine almighty hand'. It doesn't wash. God is simply a partner in the project that we have conceived and, in the traditional economy, he and his priests might be entitled to a small cut - say 10 per cent, the tithe - for his pains. We're to be clapped on the back, too, for backing the right God, and for having appeased him in a way that's evidently worked. It's very Neolithic, and very un-Palaeolithic. Upper Palaeolithic thanks are constant, trembling and directed towards the animal or plant that's given itself up. And they can't, unlike Neolithic thanks, be redirected sycophantically to the earthly ruler who is God's deputy, who has directed that the seed be sown, on whose beneficence you depend and who is sitting in the padded pew in his best suit, ready to receive with an avuncular smile the grateful tugging of your forelock as you file out of church.

Foster makes the case that we need to use our Enlightenment minds to learn a new appreciation for the Palaeolithic mindset and perspective. Everything has value and a soul. Everything is equal and we are an integrated part of things. Constant gratitude to the world for providing for us. Relatedness to everything. Radical kindness. Especially when you consider it along with that other book,* it seems to make the case for more of a Ted Lasso world.

*(Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman from You Are a Group Project. In brief: His research has led him to conclude that people are instinctively cooperative and social, well-intentioned and compassionate, and most interested in the general well-being of everyone. So he believes that if we could change our outlook and expectations and the way we structure our cooperative ventures in line with that framework, we would act and experience each other much differently.)

We know each other through the stories we tell ourselves. Tell curious (not judgmental) ones.

“All humans are Scheherazades: we die each morning if we don't have a good story to tell.”

Finally, to circle back, there is a section of Fowler's book on motivation about the “Power of Why” technique. I had to laugh when I read it, because she gives an example that is almost the exact same conversation that is a picture book by a favorite author of mine.

First, a chunk of Fowler's book:

Susan: Sonny, there are no right or wrong answers. I am hoping you feel curious about the difference in the rankings rather than feel judged. You claim that money is what gets you up to go to work every day. No one else in your group had money as his or her number one motivator. Would you be open to investigating that?

Sonny: Sure.

Susan: Okay, then I am going to ask you a series of ques tions to explore your motivation. If it gets to be too much, just let me know. Why is money what gets you going each day?

Sonny: I just graduated from college and I'm broke. I need money! That's why I went into sales--to make money.

Susan: That's understandable. Why is the money so important to you?

Sonny: Because I need to buy things!

Susan: Why is buying things so important to you?

Sonny: Because I need things, like a new car.

Susan: Why is the new car so important?

Sonny: Because the one I have now is old and run down. It doesn't scream success. I need a new car to impress people.

Susan: Why is it so important for you to impress people?

Sonny: Because I want them to see me as successful.

Susan: Why is it so important for people to see you as successful?

Sonny paused and, full of emotion, shared that he was the first and only person from his family to ever attend and graduate from college. His parents had sacrificed and worked multiple jobs to support him through those four years. He wanted to be successful as a testament to their sacrifice and caring. I asked questions to clarify whether Sonny was feeling an imposed or aligned motivational outlook, such as, Do you think the reason your parents supported your college education was so you could make lots of money? Do you think your parents have expectations tied to your making a lot of money? Do you think your parents will be disappointed if you don't make a lot of money? Do you think your parents might love you less if you didn't make lots of money?

This is when Sonny got it. He realized that his interpretation of success was making lots of money. But his real goal was not making lots of money. The real reason he worked hard every day was out of gratitude for parents who had so selflessly given to him, out of an appreciation for the opportunities before him. It was not about payback, obligation, or duty. It was about relatedness.

A big aha for Sonny was that the money and car he wanted might be by-products. He still wanted them! But he got in touch with how doing meaningful work tied to important values and a noble purpose was a far more rewarding reason for getting out of bed each day. Sonny wondered aloud, What would get him up after he got the car? He concluded that love was more fulfilling than grasping for "things."

Asking someone--including yourself--the question why is a mindfulness tool. This shifting technique peels away the layers of distractions and junk-food urges to connect people to the heart of their motivation--their psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

And now, Why? by Adam Rex. It begins with a supervillain bursting into a shopping mall and threatening everyone to do as he says or else. The entire book that follows is a dialogue he has with a little girl, who only ever asks "Why?" in response to everything he says.

Why?

by Adam Rex

"Go ahead and run, puny fools! No one can withstand the power of Doctor X-Ray!"

"Why"

"Because of my x-ray blaster and because my battle suit is indestructable!"

"Why?"

"It's made of mysterious meteor metal!"

"Why?"

"Because a meteor landed on my carport last year."

"Why?"

"I believe it chose me! Chose to bestow on me unimaginable power!"

"Why?"

"Because it is my destiny to rule the world!"

"Why?"

"Because . . . because the world has been very unfair to me!"

"Why"

"I want things but I don't always get them."

"Why?"

"I don't know. My dad says I should try harder. But I did try. I put my heart and soul into that yarn store. It just didn't work out."

"Why?"

"I guess people don't knit as much as they used to."

"Why?"

"Exactly! Why? WHY?! Knitting is amazing! And soon they'll see just how amazing it is!"

"Why?"

"Because if they don't I'll zap them with my x-ray!"

"Why?"

"Because . . because none of them understand me! Even my dad doesn't understand me. He wanted me to be a doctor. A real one."

"Why?"

"Because he was a doctor."

"Why?"

"Because his dad was a doctor. And his dad's dad was a doctor. That's how it is in my family."

"Why?"

"Because we all just did what we were told! So now it's my turn to tell people what to do!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to take over the world!"

"Why?"

"Because I deserve it!"

"Why?"

"Well, all right, maybe I don't deserve it but I want it!"

"Why?"

"Because I want it! I want it I want it I WANT IT!"

"Why?"

"Because then maybe my daddy will be proud of me!

"I'm the bad guy, aren't I. I thought I was the hero."

"Why?"

" . . . because everyone thinks he's the hero."

"Why?"

"Because . . . because everyone's battling something. Everyone wants to win. And that's what hero stories are about, right? Winning. You gotta have winners and losers."

"Why?"

"Good point."

"By, look at me--I don't even rule myself. Thanks, kid--you've given me a lot to think about. I could take over the world . . . but why?"

Asking someone—including yourself—the question why is a mindfulness tool. This shifting technique peels away the layers of distractions and junk-food urges to connect people to the heart of their motivation—their psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

See the best in others to help them see it in themselves.