How to Create Lasting Change in Your Life and Career With Richard Boyatzis

Speaker A: M hey, all. Welcome back to another episode of Breaking Work. This is the place where we break down and break out of that default view of work that holds us back from our dreams. So if you want to reimagine and redesign the concept of work and what it could be for you, then you, my friend, are in the right place. So I know everyone listening wants to change their career in some way, but the majority of us, we don't quite do it. We don't get over the hump. Or at least we don't until maybe we're forced to. Maybe we experience a bad performance review, a maniacal boss, or a layoff that literally forces us to take the steps we've been thinking about for years. Why? Why is it so hard for us to intentionally make changes? This question has been on my mind for a really long time. And that's why when I found out about Richard Boyazi's work, I knew I had to have him on. Richard is, I would say, the preeminent researcher on the science of intentional change. He's a distinguished university professor at Case Western Reserve University and a professor in the departments of Organizational behavior, Psychology, and Cognitive Science. He has a B.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, and he's got a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard. Guys. He has written 10 books, including the international bestseller Primal Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee, helping people change with Melvin Smith and Ellen Van Oosten, and the new one, which is the one I've been digging into. The science of discovering sustained, desired change from individuals to organizations and communities. Richard, thank you so much for being here to help us advance our ability to make these intentional career changes and unlock the lives we all want.

Speaker B: Thank you, Michael.

Speaker A: So to start this conversation out, I think it's really important. And you make this. I mean, you talk about this distinction between kind of blanket change, right? Like, change is all over the place. It's inevitable. And this idea of intentional change. So can you walk us through sort of like the. Just the differences or how you see the differences and maybe why it's so difficult at this intentional level?

Speaker B: Uh, change is all around us in the sense that from the cellular level in our bodies, all the way up to countries and cultures, if we don't change on a regular basis, we atrophy and die. So our cells have to go through a rebuilding of them, every one of them, almost every seven years. And when they don't, um, we get diseases. The same thing with our lives, the same thing with our relationships, the same thing with our families, our organizations, etc. So if change is so necessary, on the whole, why are we so bad at it? I mean you stop and say, you know, when you use the word change, right away what comes to mind? Somebody's saying to you, well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or that's not the way we do it here. Or you know, you're sitting there, you know you've got a decent job, but you're feeling restless and you're not hearing the music of life and you start to say something to somebody and they say, what are you griping about? You've got a good paying job. So again, what happens is we are bombarded with what I would call regressive forces. These are forces that hold us back from change and innovating. So on the whole humans don't change. We, we don't um, change our behavior or actions in terms of a normal distribution. What's often called a Gaussian or Bell curve. We actually, those of us who do change change almost like a power curve. So there are almost, there are very few people who actually change and the change is desired and the change holds for more than three months. So I study sustained desire change because look, there's enough crap that happens in life. I don't need to study the bad stuff. I also don't need to study when change is forced upon you, you know, you're in a terrorist act or on, um, hurricane. What I want to study is how do people make their lives better and how do they do it not just for themselves, but in their families, organizations, communities. And that's what I've been studying really for the past 60 years, almost 60 years. Um, and I talk about sustained because anybody who's made a New Year's resolution knows that the durability of most personal change aspirations is two to three weeks. It's abysmal how little people change. I mean the evidence from how much are people changed on things that predict effectiveness in life ever four years of college or university. It's horrible. I mean if you look at it, you'd say better to go in the military or just babysit for four years. Um, and then you look at, not just that, but even graduate school, uh, MBA programs are notorious. They're supposed to be developing managers and leaders. Well the very characteristics, the emotional and social intelligence behavior that predicts effectiveness in leadership and management at all levels for profit, not for profit government sector. Most above average, top 20, even MBA programs have a 2% impact on that. And Then after a number of months, it drops off to zero. I was a part of a set of research studies with some colleagues in some other organizations that showed that in fact, many above average MBA programs reduce people's social intelligence. They have less of it when they graduate than they did when they entered. So, um, you know, and then we look at treatment adherence. You know, how much do people do what their physicians or nurses say that they should do to get better? And they after a disease or a surgery, at best it's 50%. At worst, I mean, my cardiothoracic surgeon students tell me it's about 20% for people who have coronary bypass surgery. So why, uh, why is it. Okay, first we get bombarded with messages that we shouldn't. Two, on the whole, a lot of us get seduced into or sucked into defensive postures. Oh God, my life sucks, or you know, my boss is a real ass, Um, I feel stuck, you know. And what do we do when we get into that? We blame somebody else. So I'm going to blame the, you know, left wing Democrats or I'm going to bring blame the white, uh, right wing Republicans or uh, I'm going to blame the immigrants, the illegal immigrants, or I'm going to blame whomever. Mhm. But as soon as you get into that, you're being defensive and defensiveness holds people back. Third, humans are social animals. We don't want to stand out. We actually want to fit in and belong. So there is a natural tendency for, for us not to innovate. Because if you innovate, people are going to criticize you. And like, who wants that? Right? And then there's another factor which is many of us don't like uncertainty and we try to do things to move towards reducing uncertainty. All of that conspires to the fact that we don't change. Uh, look at the individual level. We've got 80% of the people with full time jobs in the United States who aren't engaged in their work. That is horrendous. That says four out of five people who have full time jobs. Their bodies may show up at work, but not their hearts or their minds. Right? It's a motivation crisis. We now know that 50% are reporting extraordinarily high stress at work compared to ever before. We now know that 30, 35% are reporting being profoundly lonely at work. All of that says, you know, if people are going to a quote unquote job, I don't know what part of them is, you know. And then on top of that um, we've got all this other data that says people would just as soon do something else. Um, and as you were describing your audience, I would say we add to all of that stuff that goes on. Plus in the current environment, there's a lot of things that tell us to be scared or defensive. But we add to that the fact that as humans, every seven to 10 years we get bored and we go through one of these, what's called in life cycle or career cycle, um, work. We go through a midlife crisis. And that means that, you know, if you resolve it constructively, you go get some training or a new degree or start a positive hobby or you start a new job or career even. Well, a lot of times people don't do that. So they have affairs and they get divorced or they start skydiving or they do things that make things worse. Um, the average age of my graduate students is 44 and has been for the better part of since 2007. Uh, they fly in from different cities and countries for programs. And whether they're surgeons or mayors or deputy, uh, mayors or heads of companies, one thing is clear that by the time they get to our master's or executive doctoral programs, they're desperate for change. Yeah. And to their credit, what they've done is some research to say, okay, I'm going to go get a graduate degree that will not only satisfy my need for something new and different and I'll be learning some things, but I'm picking one that might help me set the stage for either going into a whole new career or jump shifting on the one I have. Right.

Speaker A: So you describe some of the regressive forces that are, that are.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Constantly bombarding us. And this is, I assume, you know, a lot of external societal, um, programming, parent, parental programming. What is success look like all of these things.

Speaker B: And you've also mentioned this feedback from your in laws.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly right. Um, and then you've, you've also mentioned this kind of defensive posture. Can you explain a little bit about what you mean by that and how that sort of limits, I guess, our field of vision, if you will, in terms of looking out further at our future, what's possible for us.

Speaker B: That's exactly right. And I would suggest that the baseball glove behind you and the baseball, several baseballs suggest that, you know, uh, you've either played or um, still do. One of the things that happens is when we experience a moment of stress and it could be mild, like your cell phone drops a call, or acute like Covid, your body goes into a defensive posture to protect itself. And you start to secrete various endocrines that move blood. So you're ready to fight or flight. The classic stress response. Well, you also secrete a bunch of corticosteroids that help to block any damage to muscles. But the combination of the epinephrine, norepinephrine that gets secreted moves blood away from about one seventh of the blood flow in your body. So that means you have the same amount of fluid. You've just cut a seventh off of the distance. Guess what? The pressure goes up. So your blood pressure goes up, your pulse rate goes up, your breathing gets faster and more shallow. When cortisol enters your bloodstream, it turns off your immune system. Now you are more vulnerable to all the bugs and germs out there and the ones that are dormant in your body. And that's when neurogenesis is shut off or stops. That's the conversion of stem cells to new neurons, which you have to do. I mean, today you're going to lose 85,000 neurons. They're going to die. Now, before you start looking for a tall building to jump off of, I would suggest that you start with a few billion. But the challenge is that if you don't start to replace them at a regular rate, by the time you're in your 40s, your brain starts to create holes, little spongy like qualities. And it's what we see in autopsied Alzheimer's or dementia patients, because what happens is you're losing gray and white matter density, and what's replacing it is these little gaps that are just replaced by fluid. Uh, so all of that's going on, and you don't feel on top of your game, right? So somebody says, hey, Michael, where's that report that's due Friday? You feel, if you don't say, what's it to you? Which outside of New York City, is a defensive response? So what you have is a whole classic syndrome that the body does to protect itself, but that's a defensive posture. Your body is literally kind of hunkering down to protect it. Now, we know that, uh, when that happens, you are cognitively impaired. You cannot think as well or as clearly or as creatively as you could otherwise. We know that you're perceptually impaired. You talked about field of vision. Literally, one study showed the normal peripheral vision, which is about 180 degrees under a dose of this stress hormone, goes down to 30 degrees. That's all you can see. So you're not going to see all the other stuff happening out there. And we know you're emotionally impaired because your emotions are kind of on edge, and you're shutting off other people as well. So all of this stuff goes on, and you start to see threats that may not be there. When Covid started, those of us who are psychologists noticed something that everybody was having. Whatever the neuroses they had or managed were amplified.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: And as that happened, for a lot of people, between the social isolation and staying at home and realizing that, you know, going to work really sucked, um, that what was happening is people were literally withdrawing as Covid unfolded. You know, by a year later, we had vaccines that were on their way. We, uh, understood how it was transmitted. So it wasn't just, you know, people weren't washing the cereal boxes before they brought it in their house anymore. But in the process, people got into the habit of being by themselves. And it turns out, a few years later, some of the FMRI data shows that if people have been hospitalized or have long Covid, there's a marked deterioration in their density of their gray and white matter in a number of parts of the brain, but one in particular, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which is the key part of the brain that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, the only antidote to stress in your body. It also is a key part of the neural network that allows you to interact with others. So if because of COVID you're isolating, and now because of your increased neurosis or fears, you're isolating even more, not going out. What ends up happening is if you did get Covid and you've suffered a bit from it, it's hurting parts of your brain that enables you to interact with others or renew. Now, we have data to show that people can rebuild those parts of the brain, but they have to be going out and interacting with other people. They have to be having fun. They have to be caring for others. So what we saw, that some of us predicted, is that there'd be huge mental and emotional health problems resulting. I mean, not from the horror of the disease, but from the consequence of what we. How we, in a sense, had to react around the disease because we didn't know what was going on. So all of that is what I call this defensive posture. Now, stress is necessary. Don't, uh, let me be Pollyanna about this. Without stress, you wouldn't have woken up this morning. You wouldn't be able to decide if you want Chinese or Italian food for dinner. So you need Stress to figure things out. We need stress to change. But stress is necessary but not healthy, because even in mild, uh, levels, we're compromised. The antidote are these things called activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which for shorthand I'll call renewal. We know from a lot of published medical research, meditation helps, Yoga helps. Tai chi helps. Prayer helps. If it's to a loving God, exercise helps. If it's modest, feeling hopeful about the future helps. That's why we say you should read the news, don't watch it on tv. It has a different, uh, emotional effect on you. Helping. Being, uh, in a loving relationship helps. Um, you know, and don't find. Not finding somebody for the weekend doesn't make up for that. We're talking about more stable, loving relationships. And, uh, helping people less fortunate helps. Helping the elderly helps. I tell my graduate students all the time, helping your elderly professors will get you closer to heaven. Having a dog or cat or horse or monkey helps because when you stroke them, you go into this response. Well, it turns out that playing music helps. There have now been a number of public studies. I don't mean listening to it, I mean actually playing it or dancing. And we know that laughter, joy and playfulness helps. A walk in nature helps. So those are the things that have been shown to work whether you're male, female, white, black, any color, any ethnicity, any faith, there are probably things that work for certain people. Um, but those are the ones that we know about. So part of the message ends up being when you get increasingly defensive and you start to withdraw, it's harder for you to break out. Right, uh, sorry the pun for your show, but it's harder for you to break out. And, but what we've been showing in our research over the last 30 years is that when you help people with, um, even 40 minute or 30 minute doses of what we call a positive emotional attractor, this renewal syndrome, especially if these doses are spaced out over the day, not all at once. You really help people become open to new possibilities. And that's what we're after. What your typical viewer who's in a liminal period, they're in between things, they're restless, they want change, they may or may not know what they want. That's when you are the most concerned. The person being open, not defensive.

Speaker A: Right. I think about this as like, the analogy I use is like the, it's like the Grand Canyon. Like, you start your career and you're, you're a little, you know, uh, trickle flowing, flowing downhill. And as you continue to take, um, on the stresses and continue to do the thing right in front of you and with all of the programming around you. All of a sudden you're in the. You're 1,000ft deep in the Grand Canyon, and, and you're defensive there because you can't see over the cliff to, like, what's. What's out there. So I think what you're saying is that, like, step number one, for someone who is very stuck and in this defensive posture, doesn't know what to do, is very stressed out, and this is really counterintuitive. But, like, step number one is basically like, you have to work on this renewal stuff to even have a shot at exactly what you're saying.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And no, not only am I saying that, but I'm. I'm saying it cubed is that the only hope you have is to get into a renewal state. Because if you don't, you're just going to get. Sink more into this quicksand. So here's a technique that we've been showing in our various, uh, neurological and hormonal studies, behavioral studies, and we've been doing it with mostly folks in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Um, one thing is to dream about your ideal life. We call it a personal vision. I mean, 58 years ago, I published a study saying, setting goals helps change. Thirty years ago, it became clear to me I was wrong. Setting specific goals inhibits change because you get defensive around trying to prove it. What we now know from the studies, uh, quite a few of them that are published, is that when you talk to people about their vision, the big picture, the why. So here's the question a person should ask themselves. If my Life were fantastic 10 to 15 years from now, what would it be like?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you want to emphasize that, uh, everything is perfect. You want it 10 to 15 years. You want to break with reality. You don't want to forecast. Now, once you get there, you start to ask yourself, well, where might I be living? So you want to visualize it. Who, if anybody, would I be living with? What kind of a relationship do I have with family or romantic relationship? Uh, what am I doing for my hobbies or interests? What am I doing to contribute to the community? What am I doing for my work? So you're asking yourself all these things, but again, in an ideal, you're not saying, what might I do? What would I love to be doing? Right. Uh, it turns out that when you set that in motion, you arouse all of this physiological renewal pro stuff. And you activate parts of the brain that enable you to be open to new ideas. Now, if you're having trouble because the more down you are, the less likely you are to be able to dream, um, then I would say a more playful way to open the door. Small dose. You just won $80 million after tax in the lottery. How does your work or life change? I mean, and let's be clear, 80 million after tax, you invested in a diversified portfolio at Schwab or Fidelity, and it's going to kick off four and a half to five million a year. I mean, that's the level we're talking about. I mean, we're talking about you can buy your own boats or planes. So the question is, and sometimes when we do this with folks, if they're feeling emotionally stuck, the playful way opens the door.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We also have another question that very often helps to introduce this more positive, what I call the pea tipping, uh, point is to think about others. And the question that we ask specifically is, who helped you the most in your life? Who are the people, not just one person, who helped you in your whole life, become who you are and think about them and then think about key moments with them in which you learn something. I've done that exercise on all seven continents. Yeah. Including Antarctica and about 75 countries. It doesn't matter whether you're in Ashtana, Kazakhstan, or Milan or Cleveland, Ohio, people react with a high degree of gratitude, um, thankfulness, inspiration, excitement, serenity, hope. And then very often, that helps them again. Because when you're, when you're at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, to think you're going to have to climb to the top of the rim just looks impossible.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I mean, assuming you're not Spider Man.

Speaker A: Right. You got to have. You got to have some hope. You got to have some. Some nugget, create that feeling. And then the steps after that are about, how do I find pathways? How do I use?

Speaker B: How do I find people that I can work with? How do I. Yeah. How do I find.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ways to get closer to that dream? See, very often people make the mistake around changing their life. They think about something that they're not doing well.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And you think, well, I have to fix that. Well, that's why we're among the most obese nations in the world, because we have an awful lot of fat people who are trying to lose weight, which means they never will. So it doesn't work that way. Uh, what you need to do is to flip the story and to say, what would I Want out of life. How could I get closer to that?

Speaker A: Yeah, by using what I ha. Like, what's available to me, what I'm good at, the strengths, the positive parts of that whole, the whole thing.

Speaker B: Now I know that's traits and your key relationships. And then you ask, okay, do I need some other training? Decades, um, ago when I was doing job forecasting projects for governors of uh, different states, uh, and one of the things we discovered is that uh, in a non union state, we did one of these projects for then Governor Clinton. In Arkansas, which is a non union state, the only entity at that time in the 80s that had a union was the telephone company. And we tried to have panels of engineer painters or plumbers and we couldn't find them. So finally somebody said, we met somebody who was in one of the trades and we said, well, how come we can't get some of you, you know, 12 of you to come and meet with us for an hour and a half? He said, well we don't think that way. And I said what? So all of a sudden we changed it and we said multi skilled people, we filled our rooms and I said, so tell me what this is all about. They said, well, I'm um, a certified electrician and plumber and painter. I'm never going to be without work. Mhm. And I don't want a union or anybody representing me that's going to protect my job. I want somebody who's going to help me learn all these other skills. So I've always got work. And the only union I ran into in those days that was actually taking that position was the Communication Workers of America out west. Uh, they thought that their job was not job security, it was um, member development.

Speaker A: Interesting, interesting.

Speaker B: And that's why graduate school's around. I mean an amazing number of graduates. I don't know about online programs. You have to be very careful as to whether or not they're worth it. I mean I'm taking a bunch of online courses now on jazz guitar from the Berklee School of Music. But I vetted them very carefully before I started taking the courses and they are, you know, some of the best in the world at this stuff. Um, so I mean there are online schools that are credible, but a lot of programs are out there that are designed for people who are working who want to be able to go to school part time. And matter of fact, at the graduate level we're finding more and more of that. But even at the undergraduate level, um, you know, in terms of community colleges and Colleges. And what most people don't fully appreciate is that it may look daunting to say, well, you know, I'd really love to be a social worker, but I don't know if I could do the two years master's program. Well, if you did it part time, it might take you three years. And you know what, if you started working on it, um, in September, this month, three years go by like that. Now all of a sudden you sit for the exam, you get licensed, and you got a whole new career.

Speaker A: Right? So we talked about this vision piece, and I think that's another one of those sort of counterintuitive or very difficult things about this entire change process for people to wrap their head around because they feel it's woo woo. A lot of times it gets sucked into trying to be realistic, which you have to guard for and all of that. But you know, what else is out there that's sort of counterintuitive about this process or that are just myths about change? I know, uh, we all kind of, I've heard you say this before, like we all kind of have an idea of how we would like change to occur. But so much I think of what you have discovered over the course of 60 years is this counterintuitive nature. And that really gets me going because I like to think about how things work differently. So. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker B: You're right, Michael. One of them is, it's not goals and it's not focusing on the problems. It's focusing on the vision, the big picture, the sense of purpose. A second one that we have plenty of data, supported, published data, is that you don't do this alone, right? You've got to be with other people. And that's where you have to have the right kind of relationships. If you're in a relationship with somebody who berates you because you're a piece of crap, you're not going to change. You need what we call resonant relationships. Relationships where you have some shared vision, some shared sense of purpose, some shared compassion or caring, and you're, you know, vibrating on those same tune or frequency. So it's amazing how many people can develop what we call peer coaching groups or study groups. But if you develop some of those with people that are toward your vision, it's going to help you. But if you hang on to one of those groups that you had in your old life, guess what? They're going to be holding you back. So having and nurturing the quality of relationships that will help you move toward your dream ends up being pivotal. Second, counterintuitive. You don't do it alone.

Speaker A: Right. Are there types of, of peers or groups that are more, more potent? I mean obviously we could always say like, I, uh, can lean on my parents or my spouse to have a nurturing resident relationship. But you know, if, well, if they haven't, if they haven't experienced what I, what I'm trying to go ahead.

Speaker B: Sorry.

Speaker A: No, that's fine. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker B: Half of the people, half of the people in this country wouldn't get divorced every year if they had, if they could depend on their spouse or partner. So let's assume that if you have a good relationship, then yes, of course your spouse or partner is one person. But you have to ask, is it a good supportive relationship? Um, parents may or may not. I mean actually more people have more difficulty with their parents or one, if not both of them are overly judgmental or perfectionists. And those are recipes for disaster. More often than not it's peers, I. E. Friends. Mhm. People you've run into that have some comparable or similar experience that you do or one of the reasons that sometimes we call these support groups. Now some people don't like to join support groups because it makes them feel they're being weak. But believe me, I spent eight or nine years doing therapy with alcoholics and drug addicts and believe me, very few people would get sober and stay straight if it wasn't for aa.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, an AA is a group of people with a, with a shared experience who are trying to help each other and finding that. So where do you find that? Sometimes people find it through, ah, a local sports club. Sometimes people find it through a church or temple or mosque. Sometimes people find it by taking um, a course at a local community college and finding some other people who like carving, um, you know, wood ducks, you know, for blinds, uh, for people hunting. So there are a lot of different places, but again, you have to put yourself out there to try to find them. Uh, and the mistake people often make is they think they'll find it with their existing relationships. They may not because their existing relationships may be very wedded in them not changing. Right.

Speaker A: So you mentioned the positive emotional attractor, um, earlier. And I think this is really key. So I want to, I want to, I want to make sure we, we nail this part for people because that, that's your term and I want, I would love for you to talk to us about, we've kind of hit on like, why that's important, but like what Are the mechanisms at play there? And then also it's, it's um, it's tied to the word renewal, which you use because a lot of us think like we just need to rest for stress. But, but there's really this concept of, of are you being renewed here? So, uh, can you explain why, why that is such a. The pea is such a central part of your theory?

Speaker B: First, you're right, Michael, about rest. And now the people who study this claim it's not seven hours or seven and a half hours most adults need, it's eight. So. And we now have very detailed evidence to show why if you don't get a requisite number of hours of sleep each night, you're not going enough with your rhythm into deep sleep, REM sleep. And you're not able to, um, detach stuff you need to let go of in your brain and then add new things. Plus your hormones can't readjust. So I want to underscore the importance of rest. But rest isn't the same as renewal. It's necessary but not sufficient. Renewal are these moments in which, like if you watch a baby laugh or you watch a golden retriever puppy roll in the grass, in which literally, as you just did, you start to smile. And the smile you do is actually of the 18 designated smiles, it's the only genuine one, the Duchenne smile. Um, and that's the one where it has this positive effect on your body. So when I talk about this positive emotional attractor, it's a force that draws you to it. Inside part of it is the parasympathetic nervous system, the endocrine hormonal antidote to stress. Part of it is activating certain neural networks. In particular one, uh, called the Default Mode network, or Professor Tony Jack in case calls the empathic network Work makes. Helps you be open. And the other is just thinking in positive terms, positive affect rather than negative. So, and, and the negative is there all the time. As I said, we need it. But the problem is it's so strong, it overwhelms us. And to find some balance, we often have to over sample the positive in each day. I mean we, we did published a set of a, uh, paper on a set of studies about four years ago showing finally. I've been saying this since the 70s, but finally we got the data to show it that it's better for you to have six 15 minute moments of renewal spread out in the day than an hour and a half in the middle. Why? Because everything around us is pulling us back into this negative stress state. And we need a break. We have to get a break from the hormones and all the stuff it's doing. So, um, oddly enough, those are the three components and what they do is they enable your body to, in your mind and if you want to think this way, your heart to be open to a new idea or person. Because when you're scared or defensive, you're not open, you're not considering something, right?

Speaker A: And so the, I hate to use the word, but like the goal of, of PEA is, is to create, continually create that state of openness to options that are cut off from your field of vision about what, in this case, in our conversation, what you can do about your situation, who you can become. And it's that tie to that, to that vision. And, and I'm assuming, I mean, this is a habit, right? Like, this isn't just a you do this once type thing. This is a, this is a constant habit that you have to build into your day to day in order to have the chance and opportunity to make one of these intentional changes.

Speaker B: And, and it's an issue of, it's not, it's not as much creating it as bringing you back into it.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: Because without some balance, I mean, you, you basically go so scared you, you shrivel. Now, some people find it through loving relationships, through caring. Um, some people find it through their faith. Uh, there's nothing like a faith that you share with some other people to have a shared vision, um, one that is hopeful and caring. So, um, you know, there are a lot of different ways people can get there. The sad thing is that the more you feel down or cut off, the more restless or liminal, caught in between, you feel, the less likely you are to naturally think outside the box. Because you can't see the box, right?

Speaker A: So if you were gonna prescribe, uh, like a protocol for people to increase that pea, maybe in a stair step basis or whatever, I mean, what are the, what are the three to five? Like, must have, you know, you got, you got three to four five minute periods during the day, right? Like, what are, what are some of the tactical things that really do that you found really affect the PEA without alcohol or drugs? Absolutely.

Speaker B: Okay, so seriously, alcohol and drugs would be false starts, right? So although I'm joking about it, I shouldn't be, um, one of the techniques, no matter what you're doing, even if you're driving to work, to stop and ask yourself, why am I doing this? You say, well, to get to work. Well, why are you going to work Well, I like making a difference. Okay, why is that important? So you start asking to try to get to the meaning of, uh, things. It doesn't take a lot of time. You don't have to go in on a three day retreat and a mountaintop to do this. Five minutes can give you. Wow. That's right. I'm not doing this for the buck. I'm doing this because I like my clients. Yeah, um, that's one. A second technique is similar, but it's a different way to get there. It's a little more analytic. You say, what are my core values? What do I really believe in? So we hear a lot of crap on the news, you know, and depending upon which station you're listening to on television, you know, all of these people are good and these people are bad. And the other station, these people are bad and these people are good. Or if you listen to the BBC, you know, both the Republicans and Democrats are bad because we're Americans. Um, but all of that stuff doesn't really help us. So the question sometimes for us is what do I believe life is about? That's core values. Another is who am I thankful for? Not what, who am I thankful for? And, and the way I said that before was the, the exercises who helped me, because help is a strong word. And when we do it, we, we go to thinking about one of our parents maybe, or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, or a coach, could, um, be a spouse or partner. But to experience that, um, those are some little techniques. The other thing is to think about something funny. So, um, I remember when, when I left running two research consulting companies, one in Boston, one in New York, and took this full time job as a professor at Case in Cleveland. Um, you know, all of a sudden I, well, it's not worth saying, but I went to 20% of my compensation, um, because I want my wife and I wanted a new kind of life, which we got. But all of a sudden I went from having, you know, a room that had a conference room in it and you know, I had my own bar and things like that, to having a room that was, um, I think six by ten as my office and to furnish it, um, the departmental assistant told me just to walk along the corridors and the, the buildings there and find furniture that people put out in the hall. So that's what I did. Um, but after a while, and by the time I got to the second kind of weird office, then I got to one that actually was a decent size, I'm thinking to Myself. This really sucks. I mean, I'm a senior faculty member and I'm living like a graduate student. I'm, uh, putting up with all this stuff. So I finally get to be department chair and I get a big office. Now, I also know that almost everybody who comes into my office is either going to be depressed, anxious, or asking for money. And I have to keep upbeat through this all. So the idea I had was I've always been a photographer since I was a kid. And, um, my wife and I traveled a lot of places around the world. So I decided to take a bunch of my photographs, or ones that my wife took and enlarge them, you know, And I started out with some 5 by 7, some 8 by tens. Eventually I went to some 17 by 22 inch from our various trips and experiences. Now, some of them were of my dogs, some of them were of beautiful flowers, some were of, um, animals, um, giving birth in the wilds of, you know, Africa and other various things. And I, I put them on the wall, on two of the walls. And I did it because at any moment, if, even if I was on the phone with somebody, this is before the Internet, so this is in the mid-90s. I would turn around, I'd see some. I'd focus in on some of the pictures. I'd remember that moment and I'd smile. Yeah. When people came into my office, I discovered they would look at the photographs and say, wow. They would zero in on something that was of interest to them. And then all of a sudden, we had a chance to have a conversation. Oh, where'd you take that? I took that in Botswana. Um, you know, how did you get that shot? Isn't that interesting? What was going on there? And we had a chance to have a human conversation about something that was different than all the angst surrounding why they were coming to my office. Um, our memories are like that. So, you know, having. When I was a kid, it used to be one of these things people would say, well, always have a happy place. You can think about when you go to the dentist, you know, because they're going to be drilling, it's going to hurt like hell. And, you know, if you don't put yourself in a happy place, you're just going to, you know, be crying and in a lot of pain. Uh, this is before dentistry got really good with their, um, Novocaine and other things. But anyway, it actually works the same way right now. I mean, if you think, um, about a moment in which you're just, um, feeling joyful that it's amazing how in 30 to 40 seconds literally your hormones start to shift and your mood shifts. And that's what we need to do. We need to be careful that we don't get sucked into the quicksand of negative thinking. And when we spend too much time trying to focus on a problem, we're getting deeper and deeper into that negativity. Now we have to think about problems, we have to work on them. Um, there is stress that's necessary in life. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying if you don't balance it out, it gets exhausting.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, it's like a toggle switch. Being able to abstract higher and take a more full view of the journey you're on and then toggling back into the narrowness of the problem that you have to solve. We need both. Um, and a lot of people I, I, I agree with you either have one or the other. Most of them have the narrow, solve the problem, hammer the nail, uh, type thing and keep moving ahead.

Speaker B: Um, and they, and they erroneously think that, you know, hard work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Will make you kind of work through it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That actually is not that true. You know, it's just, yeah, that's one of those smart work will, One of

Speaker A: those default societal stories, the hustle culture, the you know, staying up all night writing code, all of that kind of stuff. Um, that turns out to be, yeah, not, not really that true. Um, and not helpful for the majority of people. So what we're kind of building towards, I think is, is the idea what is, what are the set of steps or things or discoveries that, you know, really help us make, make intentional change. And you know, I've been really digesting the book more so on the, the individual level stuff, but you talk about kind of five stages and uh, you even call them discoveries that are, that are prerequisites for change. So I'd, I'd love to walk through them. We've touched on a couple.

Speaker B: Um, sure.

Speaker A: First one up is really this ideal self view which we covered a little bit. But do you have anything to add on, like why that is super, super important that we maybe haven't.

Speaker B: It's the big picture. It's the context of you, like what do you want out of life? What's your purpose, what's meaningful. If you have some glimmer of that, you're eligible for the second part of the change. If you don't, you're stuck, you're not going to change.

Speaker A: So these are like gates. Do you think do you feel like they're gates?

Speaker B: Um, the P, E A NEA tipping points are the gates. These are phases.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: And to move from one phase to the other, you need something that's going to open the gate and that's where the tipping point comes in. So a moment of PEA could help you move from that. The second discovery is how do you come across to others? It's what I call the real self. But it's not what do you think of yourself? Because that's too delusional for most of us. It's how do other people experience you and understanding your strengths, not just your weaknesses, and just acknowledging the fact that although you should work on some weaknesses, chances are most of your weaknesses you're just going to live with. Um, how do you, how do you

Speaker A: go about, how do you go about getting that picture for people who are like, oh crap, I need to, need to really understand like who I am right now, how I come across? Like, what are some of the techniques that, that help?

Speaker B: Well, if you are enrolled in some development program, a leadership program or something like that, uh, you might take what's called a360 assessment and collect a lot of views from people around you. Uh, you might go through an assessment center and do some video based videotaping, um, of uh, simulations. But one of the easiest ones that we recommend in one of my MOOCs that a million and a half people have taken, um, that are on Coursera, is for you to go to 20 to 25 people that you interact with. You know, some at home, some at work, some friends, and for each one, ask them for 15 or 20 minutes and then pose one question to them twice. Can you tell me about a time in which you observed me at my best? And, uh, you just, you write some notes as to what they say, then after they give it to you, usually takes five to 10 minutes to describe, um, a moment. Then you say, can you tell me about another one? Just collect two of them, that's all. And don't go to the negative, just collect two of the positives. If you do that for 20 to 25 people, now you're sitting with 40 to 50 moments in which you are at your best. You don't have to be a scientist to walk to read the overview of these things and look at the pattern and say, you know what? Two thirds of these mention my sense of humor. Yeah, I never thought of that. Yeah, yeah. Now what you're getting is your strengths.

Speaker A: This is so interesting to me because my personal experience, I was massively stuck in 2018. And I was trying to figure out, like, what is the next phase of my life with kids and all of this. And I went immediately to vision, like, what do I want that to look like? And then I came back and I'm like, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on who I am right now, like, at my best. And I, I created a program which I sell online now for myself, like, to figure that out. But one of the questions that I asked people was exactly what you just said. Because I wanted to know who I am at my best. That's what I wanted to. To hone in on, zone in on. And it was so powerful and so effective.

Speaker B: Yeah. My former, um, research consulting company in Boston, uh, started experimenting with that in the late 70s, early 80s as a part of all of our leadership management training at about the same time. In parallel, a group of faculty at the University of Michigan were doing the same thing. The very similar question. So, you know, it's been around for a while. Um, but, yeah, that helps.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So when you have discovery ends up being an agenda.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And the agenda should be framed as, how do I get closer to my vision? Uh, using my strength. Right. That's the big thing. If you think you have to change something, then what? One or at uh, most two things do you have to work on? That's it. If it's more than that, you won't do it anyway. But the focus is not what's the goal I have to accomplish, it's how do I get to my vision, how do I use my strengths? If you have that, then you go into a period where you try things out, you experiment with them. Once you narrow it down, you know, you then practice repetitively, whatever it is that seems to be helping. And at some point, you're building these relationships that help you through all these phases. And then the whole process, you know, cycles again. Yeah.

Speaker A: So the, the stages are really, have the ideal vision, understand your real self, what, how those two play together. Create a learning agenda that is based on laddering up to that vision. And I think that's really important because so many people are like, I can learn anything. I should learn anything. All these skills all the time. But if they are not laddered to that vision, they're moot. M. Like, get rid of those. We don't have to go chase all these shiny objects. I mean, I think that's a really, really important and insightful piece because we're going to be committing time, investing time and Money into learning these things. We need to be learning the right things, um, and then the experimentation and practice. So, yeah, you learn the thing, but you also have to get in the freaking arena. You have to put yourself out there. You have to do. Do the thing. If it's building a business, you have to start taking the steps to do that. If it's changing a career and getting a job at a different company, you have to identify people and go talk to people. You have to get out of the building and do those things. And then folding in and not taking for granted and not discarding the relationships, continuing to compound them over time, and then the cycle starts over again. Is that, uh, pretty good synopsis? Okay.

Speaker B: And the thing that helps you move from one to the other are having more frequent, smaller doses of this positive emotional attractor we talked about.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Because it helps you keep moving.

Speaker A: Because there's uncertainty at each stage, at each discovery. And the only way that you really deal with that well is to move yourself from a negativity bias to a positivity bias. And we have to do real work to do that makes a ton of sense. Um, all right, so that stuff, that's the crux, guys, of what's in this book, um, and how we get. We can manufacture change, but it. It takes. It takes time and it takes work. And I, I think everyone should be reading this book. Honestly, I think it should be required reading in a lot of college.

Speaker B: Bless you, Mike. Bless you, Michaels.

Speaker A: Well, I'm taking. Taking care of my. My elder professors here. Um, but. But really like this. It was so interesting to me, like, looking at how my program is laid out and then. And then digging into this theory and all the research that you've done. Like, a lot of what I do is baked into this, and it's all been by, like, sort of happenstance and my own. Yeah, personal, uh, trial and error, if you will.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker A: But the idea of being in service of this ideal self and that having. Being your anchor point. And it's not a goal. It's not about getting 100 there. It's about illuminating what is possible, finding how you use your greatest strengths of who you are today to get there. Learning the right things, experimenting, putting yourself out there and having everybody around people who are community that can help you. Like, all of that stuff is baked in. And so really, really powerful, powerful stuff. I've got three more questions for you. Quick, rapid fire, um, before I let you go. Um, so one is, who are some of the most influential people in your life that have maybe influenced your thinking, um, that, that the audience should really know about the shoulders that you've stood on or whoever's been really.

Speaker B: I'm not sure that the audience should know about them, but just to acknowledge them.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, and if I, if I go in terms of impact, then I would always have to put my wife first. I mean she continues to be my best friend, my best coach, my uh, source of grounding, uh, my, my perpetual, um, both supporter and critiquer. Uh, but also my playmate. You know, we have a lot of fun together but find a lot of meaning and continue to, as we age, renew and advance our interests. A, uh, teacher I had in high school in East Meadow High in Nassau County, a, uh, physics teacher, Max Boysen was the one who sparked my interest in science and I think began me thinking about being a scientist. Uh, he was an amazing guy, former dive bomber, uh, crew in the war and you know, but was slogging his way through with a family and trying to study for a master's degree while he was working. And just a, a brilliant but emotionally well tuned individual. Um, I get to MIT and the person who helped me discover the field of psychology, David Cole, um, ended up becoming a longtime personal friend and colleague. And we've published a lot of stuff together as well as still spend um, a lot of time here and there talking and uh, staying in touch. Then um, at mit there was Ed Schein and people in the field sometimes know Ed and he was a phenomenal mentor as well. Uh, and then at Harvard it was Dave McClelland was the one who really, um, made me think like a comprehensive social scientist looking at psychology and anthropology and sociology and all of it. And there were a bunch of other professors, you know, at Harvard, uh, Bob Rosenthal, uh, and Freed Bales and small groups and a number of others. And then as I um, was working, I would say Florence, uh, Skelly, who was the president of Yankelova, Skelly and White, where they bought my company. But then I became chief operating officer of their company as well as running mine, um, in the process. But I learned a lot from her about not just market research, but also how to help frame things for people.

Speaker A: Excellent.

Speaker B: And then years later it's a bunch of folks that may have started as junior colleagues or students of mine who have become real peers and my coaches, people I turn to when I need help. Melvin Smith, Ellen Ben Osten, Scott Taylor, uh, Angela Passarelli, just to name a few. Um, excellent.

Speaker A: What are you reading right now? Or what topic is like Front of mind for you that you're noodling on researching

Speaker B: right now? Um. Um, I've just started a research project on the ought self, which, you know, is a part of my model.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: But I think it's the thing that very often deflects people from the ideal self. What are the ideals that other people have given you or imposed on you? And I wanted to start a project to measure how that gets in the way. And then I realized I can't even measure it because I don't know to what extent people are consciously aware of it. And especially if you come from a hierarchical culture of India or China. Ah. A lot of times it's so ingrained that you can't break out of it till you're in your 40s or 50s, if you ever do. Yeah. So, um, I've got a project that's starting in October. I've got two colleagues. One, uh, from University of Diveniza and one, um, that is, uh, an advanced doctoral student at. In my school, my program. They'll be working with me on it to try to figure it out. Another one that we're doing, uh, is trying to look at establishing the degree to which the vision becomes a driver of sustained change versus the difference between the real and the ideal self. That discrepancy has been proposed as the major motivator. Well, I'd like to test it to see. Now, I could be wrong. Um, it could be the discrepancy. But until we put it to some empirical tests, it's going to be hard to sort out. So those are a couple of things that are actually, as you, uh, held up, my recent book, the Science of Change. I mean, I listed quite a few different research questions that I thought needed to be asked and studied in the last chapter. So I've got a few of those, um, that I'm working on right now, uh, in. In terms of fiction, which is very important to me. I read one or two books a week. Uh, Dan Silva's new book is just fascinating, uh, that he is such a fluid writer, um, that just has stories unfold with such a natural rhythm. And, you know, because his main character, Gabriel alone is, um, an art restorer who happens to also have had a career with the Mozad. You know, he's got all of the intrigue of understanding what's at the heart of Titian or Tintoretto's brushstrokes, uh, but also can disarm the worst kind of dude there is. Uh, so I'm enjoying that.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: And Then on the, on the music side, while I'm practicing my lessons on the jazz guitar, that I'm, uh, I don't, I'm going back into that, but I, I'm back into studying that after a 60 year lapse. I've finished two years of courses at Berkeley School of Music and studying with one of my professors now. So while I'm rigorously going through, kind of moving all these different chords around and all that, um, I'm, you know, my favorite is, you know, always West Montgomery, has been since the 50s, still is. Uh, but I've got to say there is something about the subtlety of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Uh, I, I heard there was a secret chord, uh, that right now, boy, if I need a lift, 30 or 60 seconds of that, just boom, pea. And then, of course, petting or doing something with my, uh, two dogs, the two golden retrievers, or my wife and I joking around about something we're doing at dinner.

Speaker A: Excellent.

Speaker B: It's more than you asked, but, you

Speaker A: know, love it, love it. Get the man behind, um, behind the research and behind the books. So where can people find out more about you and the work that you do? Obviously I can go to Case Western and a little bit about you, but is there any other place that you would like to send people who want to learn more about you and your work and follow some of these, some of this research maybe that's upcoming?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I guess I have a Wikipedia page. But, uh, I mean, actually as a scholar, you know, my answer is always read my last book. Yeah, you know, it's like when people say to me, well, of all your books, which is your favorite? I said, that's, you know, that's like asking somebody which child is their favorite. I mean, it's always my last one, of course, but I would say if you read my last book or the 2019 book, Helping People Change, I did with Melvin Van Osten, I, uh, mean Melvin Smith and Ellen Van Osten, which is more practitioner oriented around helping that, um, you're going to see a lot of references to existing studies. Uh, and that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is, I guess, through social media. I mean, when, when some of these studies get published, I usually post them on LinkedIn. I'm not really big on other social media sites, so, you know, I keep it simple. Um, we have a lot of programs that people can come in and take for one day or one week, or, um, at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve university, including a master's in leading change that I teach a key course in. And. But a lot of these programs, like I said at the beginning, that are designed for people going through a midlife crisis, are staged such that a person flies into CLEVELAND Once, over 12 months, or, you know, um, twice a semester for a few years, and they get a pretty heavy dose, not just of me, but of other people that are doing related work. So I guess that that would be the full spectrum.

Speaker A: Excellent. Excellent. Well, people can definitely tune into my social media because I'm big into your book right now, and, um, I will be sharing what I. What I learn, uh, from you and from the. The work. So they can always get a dose of that and then explore. Explore on their own the depths of. Of, uh, your work.

Speaker B: So great, Richard. Thank you so much, Michael.

Speaker A: I really appreciate you taking the time. This has been an absolute pleasure, and I look forward to following all of your work and, um, learning from you as we move forward. Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you, Michael.

Speaker A: All right.