It’s (past) time to get strategic about DEI

It’s (past) time to get strategic about DEI

Companies have committed to being more diverse, inclusive, and equitable, but many struggle to make significant progress in these areas. Here’s how they can meet DEI ambitions—now and in the longer term.

Many organizations have long been engaged in efforts to make their workforces and communities more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, companies ramped up those efforts, and the world saw an unprecedented explosion of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments.1

Since then, however, the pace of commitments has slowed, and business leaders, employees, and other stakeholders have expressed frustration with the lack of significant progress that well-intentioned leaders are making on their DEI pledges.2 For instance, there is still a lack of gender parity when it comes to workplace advancement. McKinsey’s 2022 Women in the Workplace research, conducted with LeanIn.Org, showed that for every 100 men who are promoted from entry-level to manager positions, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted. The same body of research also revealed that women leaders, particularly women of color,3 leave companies at a much higher rate than White men.4

What accounts for the shortfall in progress?

Our work with hundreds of companies seeking to launch or transform DEI strategies points to several common failure modes that organizations and leaders tend to fall into—particularly regarding initiatives aimed at improving DEI internally.5 Some launch DEI initiatives without establishing a clear baseline: Where has the company been, where is it going, what resources does it need to create DEI impact, and how will it know that its DEI strategy has succeeded? Some companies take an incremental approach to change, which can end up wasting teams’ and individuals’ already scarce time and energy. Others are inconsistent about measuring outcomes from their DEI initiatives, often missing opportunities to build on what is working or to change course when initiatives aren’t faring well.

By contrast, the companies that have begun to fulfill their internal DEI commitments take a systematic approach to establishing their DEI strategies. They set a bold but achievable DEI aspiration linked to the company’s overall mission and strategy. They use quantitative and qualitative analytics to establish a baseline and determine what DEI interventions are most needed. They develop a plan for which DEI-related initiatives will be rolled out and when, based on the company’s overarching strategic objectives. These organizations mobilize the resources and capability building that’s required to deliver on DEI initiatives. And they establish routines for monitoring progress over time; in this way, leaders can hold people accountable for desired outcomes while scaling and sustaining momentum on DEI initiatives that are working.

In our experience, these five steps, taken together, are critical for setting and achieving a robust internal DEI strategy.

Five steps are critical for setting and achieving successful DEI strategies.

  1. Aspire. Align on the vision.
  2. Assess. Build the fact base.
  3. Architect. Develop the plan.
  4. Act. Mobilize capabilities and resources.
  5. Advance. Measure progress to scale and sustain momentum.

By no means do they constitute a simple recipe for success, nor can they ensure that change will happen overnight. Getting these steps right will require collaboration among leaders across business units and functions, as well as frequent communication with employees, board members, and other important stakeholders.

But the leaders and companies that adopt a systematic approach to DEI strategy development will be better able to create near-term improvements in employees’ everyday experiences at work while making steady progress on longer-term DEI objectives.

Step 1: Set a bold but achievable DEI aspiration

While DEI continues to be a controversial, often-politicized topic, there is increasing evidence that when organizations are diverse, inclusive, and equitable, everyone benefits. One study, for instance, showed that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were more likely than less-diverse peers to have above-average profitability.6

But even when individuals and teams agree on the importance of DEI efforts, they may struggle to balance DEI-related activities with other day-to-day priorities. What they need is a bold but achievable DEI aspiration that inspires, offers clear direction, and demonstrates that DEI isn’t an isolated priority. As one pharmaceutical leader told us, “DEI is the right thing to do, but it also enables us to achieve our broader mission to serve more patients and their communities. We should always talk about DEI as it links to our ability to achieve our vision for patient outcomes.”

The DEI aspiration might be a sentence, a list of commitments, a diagram, or a few paragraphs. The format matters less than the message it conveys—that moving the needle on diversity, equity, and inclusion will positively affect the organization’s mission and stakeholders. The DEI aspiration should highlight the outcomes the organization wants to achieve, not just the activities it will take to get there. The pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example, set the following DEI aspiration: “Through a culture of inclusion, we create an agile and responsive work environment where the diverse experiences and perspectives of all our employees help to drive innovation and transformative business results.”

The DEI aspiration should also be linked to objectives that are specific, measurable, forward looking (think several years out), and grounded in data. One agricultural company, for instance, sought to create gender parity in the organization by 2030. Leaders conducted a comprehensive analysis of retention and advancement trends and realized that to meet this bold ambition, 80 percent of the company’s new hires over the next few years would need to be women. Given existing and projected demographics in the industry, leaders realized such a goal would be tough to meet, so they revised the aspiration to be more realistic—although still a stretch goal.

A diverse set of stakeholders should be involved in creating and pressure testing the DEI aspiration. One healthcare company solicited input from business and functional leaders and employee resource groups about its DEI aspiration. The feedback from these stakeholders helped to shape the language of the statement. Their input also ended up influencing how the company implemented the DEI initiatives that followed, as these conversations unearthed important nuances in the rollout and several potential pitfalls.

Step 2: Build a quantitative and qualitative DEI baseline

Many companies launch DEI initiatives without a clear view of the problems they are trying to solve, the interventions that might work best, or how they will measure success. One consumer-packaged-goods company, for instance, celebrated the fact that 85 percent of its employees said they felt “a strong sense of belonging” at the organization. But when leaders were asked about perceptions and needs among specific groups of employees—for instance, Black women, neurodiverse employees, and veterans—the leaders admitted, “We have no way of knowing.”

To gain more clarity on where the organization stands and where it’s going with its DEI-related objectives, leaders must take time to establish a quantitative and qualitative DEI baseline.

Quantitative analysis

Companies can use internal people data to understand how diverse their pipelines are. They can then benchmark those results against industry data, as well as local talent-market data, to identify the biggest areas of difference.7 Does the representation of employees within a specific demographic meaningfully drop off from one level to the next? Such an analysis should capture talent inflows and outflows—for instance, historical trends in hiring, retention, and advancement for each demographic group (exhibit).

Indhira Arrington, chief DEI officer at private equity firm Ares Management, suggests keeping things simple: “For me, it’s a + b – c: recruiting plus promotions minus departures. Cut that by a diversity dimension and by job title, and you can clearly see at any point what your representation looks like. It’s a nice way to start mapping out which people you need to spend time with and which processes to evaluate to understand how we got to where we are.”8

Qualitative insights

Through focus groups, interviews, and free-text responses on anonymous surveys, organizations can surface additional insights that can complement their quantitative analyses. If there is enough psychological safety in an organization, employees’ animated stories and open sharing can bring the quantitative data to life for senior leaders. At one investment bank, for instance, leaders conducted a series of focus groups and interviews with Black, Hispanic, and Latino employees to better understand how to meet the needs of these demographic groups. The company had made progress on gender representation, but through these discussions, it learned that Black, Hispanic, and Latino employees needed different support—specifically, more explicit allyship, stronger accountability, and more equitable performance management.

Step 3: Set a plan for how and when DEI initiatives will be rolled out

Once they have set a clear aspiration (with associated objectives) and built a comprehensive baseline, organizations and leaders will be better equipped to architect a strategic plan for DEI. Having such a plan in place is critical—yet, in their haste to show impact, many organizations act first and assess later. A 2022 survey of HR and DEI practitioners, for instance, found that less than half of respondents had a strategic plan for DEI in place.9

The planning starts with leaders building a list of initiatives that will support the bold DEI aspiration and that will address any challenges raised during the baseline analysis. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to developing this list. Leaders can take inspiration from others,10 but ultimately the list must be grounded in the company’s unique goals and starting point.

In our experience, it is best to target a few large, mutually reinforcing DEI initiatives rather than pursue many smaller, stand-alone initiatives that will compete for resources and leaders’ attention. Leaders in larger, more global organizations should also think about designing their DEI initiatives so that they can be tailored for different cultures and for local business and social contexts; such initiatives may resonate differently for employees in different parts of the world. Leaders should consider this and other factors when drawing up their DEI road map (see sidebar, “Charting a course for DEI initiatives”).

Leaders at the gaming company Activision Blizzard (AB) did just this, identifying the initiatives required to fill critical talent gaps and boost diversity at the company (and in the industry). There can be up to 50,000 open positions globally in the gaming industry, yet women still make up only about one-quarter of the industry workforce11 and Black employees just 5 percent.12

Leaders at AB used advanced analytics and employee interviews to identify the most critical roles, skills, and experiences necessary to address their recruiting needs. They found 14 skills commonly cited in engineering role specifications that weren’t broadly predictive of success. These data have significant implications for the gaming industry: companies that use these criteria could erroneously screen out otherwise qualified candidates or even deter those candidates from applying altogether. The company also looked at the findings through a different lens: What does matter but most limits the company’s potential labor market? Leaders at AB saw that while game development experience was critical to success, it constrained the talent pool by 99 percent, excluding nearly four million potential workers who had all the other technical expertise needed to succeed at AB.

As a result, the team implemented an approach to hiring that emphasized both skills and experience. AB established Level Up U, a three-month engineering program designed to recruit and develop a more diverse set of employees. The composition of the inaugural class was 45 percent women, 40 percent underrepresented ethnic groups, and 14 percent existing employees who were reskilled through the program.13 According to leaders at AB, the program has contributed to a 25 percent year-on-year increase in development head count, and the company plans to continue scaling up Level Up U for targeted roles across other parts of the organization.

As they architect and execute their DEI plans, leaders may identify existing initiatives that should be stopped, either because they have been ineffective or no longer match the company’s reframed DEI priorities. Leaders at one not-for-profit education organization, for instance, paused an antiracist training initiative after employees finally shared that the trainings weren’t changing behaviors or mindsets. The organization had hoped that if board members and employees attended the trainings and gained more knowledge about the systemic challenges affecting their communities, they would be better prepared to design programs and systems to serve under-resourced students. But it turned out that the organization was wasting limited resources on interventions that weren’t making an impact. No one had raised concerns about the trainings previously because they didn’t want to be perceived as objecting to the organization’s DEI efforts. Once employees spoke up, however, leaders listened. They engaged a different training partner that could facilitate the small-group discussions and community engagement that employees had requested.

Step 4: Mobilize the capabilities and resources required to deliver on DEI initiatives

To make meaningful progress on DEI initiatives, companies need to support them with the appropriate capabilities and resources.

Capabilities

In our experience, organizations need a mix of DEI experts, business leaders, and change champions who are passionate about improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in their workplaces. Organizations often overindex on only one of these three groups. They expect leaders without DEI expertise to manage DEI initiatives on top of their full-time jobs. Or they bring in DEI experts who don’t have sufficient business context. In both cases, DEI initiatives end up stalling.

The DEI council at one manufacturing company, for example, was struggling to sustain its momentum after several years of programming designed to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion at the company. The problem? The council included plenty of business leaders who were passionate about DEI, but it lacked anyone with experience in successfully designing and implementing a DEI strategy. Additionally, the executives on the council were doing this DEI work on top of their other responsibilities, with limited capacity, so they failed to make much progress between monthly meetings.

Another company avoided this dynamic by bringing onto its DEI council several people who understood both DEI strategy and industry context. Council members were expected to provide feedback, share DEI success stories, and champion DEI initiatives within their respective business units. And the company redesigned the roles of those people responsible for delivering DEI initiatives, so they had more time for DEI work. The company also made these individuals more accountable by linking their work on DEI initiatives to their performance reviews.

Employees often spend countless hours on DEI initiatives only to be told during performance discussions that their efforts are great as a “passion project” but that they need to prioritize core business activities. This is particularly true for women, who often take on a greater share of DEI-related work without requisite rewards and recognition.14 Instead, these employees should be recognized for their leadership on DEI initiatives through the organization’s formal performance management processes and through informal rewards and public accolades.

Resources

Too often, employees and DEI leaders are tasked with delivering widespread improvements in diversity, equity, and inclusion without an adequate team or budget. The resource gap is likely unintentional; senior leaders often don’t realize the amount of investment required to help employees change their behaviors. A survey of HR and DEI practitioners, for instance, found that only 34 percent believed their organizations had sufficient resources to execute DEI initiatives.15 Again, quantitative and qualitative analyses can help leaders to understand the degree of changes they are expecting across the organization and, therefore, the resources that may be required for a successful DEI transformation.

A regional power company eager to build a more inclusive culture planned to do so through a three-part series of diversity training workshops, each lasting 60 minutes. Some data analysis and candid conversations among DEI and HR leaders revealed the limited scope of this approach.16 The company instead launched a capability-building experience with several hundred managers that included interactive workshops, small-group discussions, pre- and post-assessments, and small experiments the managers could try with their teams. The program required many more resources to implement, but it was integrated into a larger culture change program where it was seen less as “DEI training” and more as leadership development.

Through this revised framing, the program attracted a broader group of leaders, all of whom were prioritizing behavior changes that would help them to become more inclusive leaders. The program was piloted with 100 leaders, and before the pilot was over, the company began rolling it out to 300 more employees after finding that 100 percent of participants recommended it to others, and 84 percent reported already using the skills they had learned in their current role.

Step 5: Measure and monitor progress and hold people accountable for DEI outcomes

As with any other component of an organization’s strategy, progress on DEI initiatives must be tracked with clear metrics, and leaders should be held accountable for results. To facilitate accountability, some companies use DEI scorecards and set milestones for completing specific DEI goals. A European consumer brand, for instance, created a dashboard for its CEO and senior managers to track representation, hiring, promotion, attrition, and inclusion, which helped leaders stay more engaged in the work. Some organizations monitor both leading indicators (for instance, an increase in applications from underrepresented demographics) and lagging indicators (for example, an increase in diversity representation across different levels of an organization). Other organizations incorporate inclusive behaviors into their leadership models or performance management criteria.

For example, leaders at Nike set specific, measurable DEI goals for 2025 and connected them to the company’s executive compensation. In its 2021 impact report, Nike president and CEO John Donahoe called the targets “a call to action—with clear goals, strategies, and accountabilities.”

Transparency can help bolster accountability: DEI and business leaders should share progress on their bold DEI aspirations often—at board meetings, in town halls, at industry association meetings, and so on—to encourage further engagement and commitment. Detailed HR data should, of course, be held in confidence; not everyone needs to know everything. But sharing ambitious objectives, progress made, and success stories can help to educate and inspire employees.

Step by step: Achieving progress on DEI initiatives

When organizations consider their DEI strategies systematically and take the five critical steps we have outlined, they can make meaningful progress against DEI objectives. Consider the evolution at one large hospitality company.

Step 1: Aspire

Leaders at the company stated their aspiration to “go big” on DEI. They committed to building a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable organization for employees, guests, and other community stakeholders. They set ambitious but achievable objectives that were linked to each element in their DEI plan. For instance, one commitment was to have women hold half of the positions at each management level within five years, a significant jump from their current leadership representation. Other commitments included having 50 percent of their leadership roles held by people of color, becoming a leader for disability inclusion, and hiring more veterans through a successful reskilling program.

Step 2: Assess

Leaders conducted both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the company’s talent pipeline to gauge overall representation at each level and to determine which factors were having the biggest effect on the company’s ability to develop diverse talent—for instance, external hiring and attrition at early tenures—and used this analysis as a dashboard to monitor progress.

Step 3: Architect

Based on these data, leaders at the organization drew a road map to meet their five-year objectives. The road map included a mix of enterprise-wide initiatives (for example, strengthening its analytics around diversity and standing up equity councils to increase accountability and mobilize business leaders) as well as a series of smaller pilot programs that business units could select from to best address their local challenges (among them, sessions on capability building for inclusive leadership, sponsorship, investment in employee resource groups [ERGs], and allyship for men).

Step 4: Act

The mix of initiatives proved successful. Within eight months, the hospitality company realized a greater than 5 percent improvement in the number of women across leadership levels. Additionally, more than 95 percent of the top 300 leaders reported having new tools and skills to support them in addressing unconscious bias. Three years later, the organization was on track to meet its representation goals, and leaders updated the goals so the targets were more of a stretch. Additionally, the organization was named a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion.”

Step 5: Advance

To sustain this momentum, the organization used DEI dashboards to track progress against leading and lagging metrics and linked their DEI outcomes to leadership incentives. Successful pilots launched in the first year from the “menu” of initiatives were rolled out in subsequent years to other relevant parts of the business (for example, an inclusive-leadership program was brought to more people managers through a train-the-trainer approach). The equity councils and change-management plans established in the first year helped sustain attention on DEI initiatives as competing priorities arose.

Meaningfully improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in an organization requires time; it can take companies several years to see widespread, significant progress. It also requires collaboration. Leaders must ensure that employees from a range of identities and organizational levels have opportunities to provide candid feedback—whether through ERGs, focus groups, one-on-one discussions, or employee town halls. While not all feedback will necessarily be incorporated, it is vital that employees feel—and are—a part of the process.

Above all, meaningful progress requires dedication; the DEI strategy should be continually refined as pilot projects deliver results, lessons are learned, leaders and employees develop new skills and awareness, and the business’s overarching strategy evolves. All of these are critical for achieving longer-term DEI aspirations.

Original story published on mckinsey.com

Warren Buffett Says He Became Filthy Rich Because He Played by 1 Simple Rule of Life

Warren Buffett Says He Became Filthy Rich Because He Played by 1 Simple Rule of LifeWarren Buffett believes this rule is essential to building success.

Warren Buffett believes this rule is essential to building success.

Warren Buffett is widely considered one of the most successful investors ever. Yet despite his immense wealth and status, Buffett measures his success in a unique way – through his ‘inner scorecard.’

Buffett’s inner scorecard is a set of personal values and principles that guide his decision-making and behavior. Unlike many people who measure their success by external factors like money or fame, Buffett believes that true success comes from living up to your own values and principles. 

So why does Buffett place so much importance on his inner scorecard? It’s because he believes that when you measure your success based on external factors, you become more focused on what others think of you rather than what you truly value. By focusing on his values and principles, Buffett has made decisions that align with his vision of success rather than society’s.

Build your inner scorecard

For Buffett, the most important values are integrity, honesty, and generosity. He believes these values are essential to building success and are the foundation of a strong personal and professional reputation. Perhaps this is a good starting point to build your own inner scorecard. Let’s expand on each:

1. Integrity

Living and working with integrity has numerous benefits, both personally and professionally. When you work with integrity, people trust you. They know you are reliable, ethical and won’t cut corners. This can help you build stronger relationships with colleagues, clients, and customers. Also, when you work with integrity, you are more likely to have a positive reputation, which can open up new opportunities for you and help you advance in your career. Buffett once said, “In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first one, the other two will kill you.”

2. Honesty

When you work with honesty, you can feel good about yourself. You know that you are not deceiving or misleading others, which can give you self-respect and self-worth. You’re also more focused on your work. You’re not worried about covering up mistakes or being caught in a lie, which can help you be more productive and efficient. Finally, being honest leads to better communication. When you are honest in your interactions, you can avoid misunderstandings and conflicts. 

3. Generosity

Generosity may not directly lead to wealth, but it can contribute to overall success and financial well-being in various ways. Being perceived as generous can build goodwill, lead to new business or career opportunities, and help you build a strong network of contacts and mentors. Additionally, the concept of karma suggests that being generous can attract positive outcomes, and generosity can contribute to emotional well-being and a sense of purpose. According to one study report, people are happier when “spending money on others than on themselves, and this happiness motivates them to be generous in the future.” Other studies show that generosity can release endorphins in the brain, creating feelings of happiness and joy. Giving can also help to build and strengthen relationships. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, participants who were asked to give to others reported feeling more connected to those individuals and had more positive interactions with them.

In conclusion, Warren Buffett’s inner scorecard is a unique measure of success. You can succeed in your career and personal life by living up to your values and principles. It’s a valuable lesson for anyone looking to find true success and fulfillment.

Read on INC.com

Curiosity Has Two Faces

Curiosity Has Two Faces

By Annelise Jolley

We’re born with an insatiable appetite for new information. This hunger, which we call curiosity, is a universal trait, though people possess it in varying degrees and express it through different behaviors. Curiosity is widely considered a virtue, being closely linked to other traits we value: creativity, intellectual humility, and empathy. Curious students achieve at higher levels in school. Curious members of a group help create common ground. Recent scientific study has even linked the trait to more satisfying intimate relationships and greater perceived meaning in life. 

Yet not all curiosity is created equally, something humans have long intuited. Its potential danger has deep roots in our myths and stories. Curiosity killed the cat, as the old saying goes. Eve’s hunger for knowledge led her to eat the fateful fruit. The Roman philosopher Cicero, who defined curiosity as “our innate love of learning,” theorized that it wasn’t the Siren’s sweet voices in The Odyssey that wrecked ships but rather “their professions of knowledge …it was the passion for learning that kept men rooted to the Sirens’ rocky shores.”

Recently, a quartet of researchers confirmed the hunch that not all types of curiosity lead to virtuous behavior, along with a number of other exciting discoveries. The team is made up of Daphna Shohamy and Ran Hassin of Columbia University, Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth, and Jonathan Schooler of University of California Santa Barbara. With funding from the John Templeton Foundation, the researchers spent the last several years investigating the role of curiosity in learning, creativity, and social connection. 

Curiosity’s two faces

“It’s important to emphasize that there are different kinds of curiosity,” says Schooler. Of these expressions, the team focused their research on two kinds: general interest curiosity and deprivation curiosity. General interest curiosity celebrates a lack of knowledge as an opportunity to gain more knowledge. People who exhibit this trait are motivated to learn for learning’s sake. 

As Schooler puts it, general interest curiosity takes “delight in the fact that we don't know everything and that there’s so much wonderful information to graze out there.”

This expression stands in awe before mystery and accepts all that we do not—and cannot—know, which means it’s closely linked to intellectual humility. 

Deprivation curiosity, on the other hand, functions in a utilitarian way. Rather than an exploratory desire to learn, it wants an answer to fill a gap in knowledge. Deprivation curiosity stems from an aversion to not knowing something; its motivation is to squelch the discomfort of uncertainty. Because deprivation curiosity clamors for information as a way to avoid unknowing, it’s linked to a lack of intellectual humility. This drive to find an answer isn’t always bad, says Schooler. “We do think it’s likely to be an important complement to general interest curiosity. You can easily imagine that when Einstein was pursuing his passion for understanding relativity he had a sense of, ‘I must get to the bottom of this—I won’t sleep until I do!’” 

Because deprivation curiosity is linked to intellectual arrogance, it predicts other negative behaviors. “When you lack intellectual humility—when you feel like you need to know everything and you realize there’s something you don’t know—that leads to an uncomfortable gap.” In order to fill this gap and minimize discomfort, people tend to look for answers without discernment. For example, “we see them accepting fake news because they don’t like the feeling of uncertainty that maybe this [news] isn’t true,” Schooler says. In a similar way, deprivation curiosity can lead people to create false memories. When we seek an answer purely to avoid not knowing, in other words, we run the risk of accepting the wrong answer.

Conversational curiosity

Cognitive scientist Thalia Wheatley studies curiosity’s role in relationships. The guiding question behind her research: Do more curious people connect in different ways than less curious people?

In a word, yes. As with intellectual humility, a person’s willingness to tolerate uncertainty plays a significant role. “What we find is that people who are stress tolerant—who have a willingness to sit with uncertainty—are exploratory in their conversations,” says Wheatley. If you were to design a map indicating where curious people travel in conversation, the map would show them ranging further, diving deeper, and covering a broader spectrum of ideas. This kind of conversational exploration and openness is not only predicted by a higher stress tolerance but also by general interest curiosity, or what Wheatley calls “joyous exploration.” 

Conversational curiosity is a critical piece of what connects us to one another. When you consider your closest relationships, this isn’t all that surprising. We feel cared for when someone listens closely, asks questions, and generally exhibits a desire to know more about us. This kind of relational curiosity fosters intimacy between people even across disagreement. “This engagement with another mind—this actual curiosity about what someone else believes and a willingness to hear an alternate interpretation or explanation—is really important for connection,” she explains. 

What is surprising is the team’s discovery that our brains actually change when we practice curiosity in social interactions. In one study, participants watched video clips while lying in a brain scanner. The short clips were played without context or sound, so viewers had to piece together what the scenes depicted. Participants then came together to talk about what they’d seen and to work out what took place in the clips. Once the group arrived at a shared understanding, they returned to the brain scanners and watched the clips again—this time through the lens of other viewers’ interpretations. Among participants who exhibited curiosity during the group conversation, the scanners showed a change in brain activity. The people who listened carefully and asked questions, who were willing to alter their perceptions based on others’ insights, later adapted their own brain activity to match that of group members. 

Curiosity helped to literally change people’s minds and align neural activity within a group.

Wheatley’s study demonstrated that people who are curious about others’ points of view are more likely to create alignment in their group. In contrast, those who tend to dominate the conversation are neurally inflexible and prevent collective agreement. “[Curiosity] really creates common ground across brains, just by virtue of having the intellectual humility to say, ‘Okay, I thought it was like this, but what do you think?’ And being willing to change your mind,” she says. 

In a time of deep polarization and cultural divides, this discovery has particularly urgent and practical implications. The U.S. is experiencing a kind of divide that researchers call “intractable conflict,” in which people’s interactions with those who hold differing opinions become increasingly charged. Curiosity offers a way to diffuse this charge, opening the possibility for deeper listening and more neural flexibility. It helps combat intellectual arrogance and discomfort with ambiguity. Of course, the goal isn’t to get everyone to think the same way. In a group, Wheatley says, “You need these highly central people who are going to create common goals and common ground. But you also need people on the fringes, the quirky, independent voices that are going to cause new ideas to emerge.” But a willingness to listen, change your mind, and incorporate new perspectives could go a long way in bridging some of the conversational divides we face today.

Original story published on templeton.org

Getting to the heart of team culture with Pete Carroll

Getting to the heart of team culture with Pete Carroll

How do you build a team capable of winning the Super Bowl? Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll believes it comes down to strong relationships–ones that extend beyond the field and last for a lifetime. He talks with Adam about taking accountability for failures, the differences between regard and respect, and the rituals he’s developed over years on the job that have helped him create trust and communication in his team. Transcripts for ReThinking are available at go.ted.com/RWAGscripts

How People With High Emotional Intelligence Use ‘the Roy Kent Rule’ to Become Remarkably Successful “I give him love. And as for why he did what he did, that’s none of my business.”

How People With High Emotional Intelligence Use the Roy Kent Rule to Become Remarkably Successful’

I give him love. And as for why he did what he did, that’s none of my business.’

BY BILL MURPHY JR.

This is a story about Ted Lasso and emotional intelligence — especially emotional intelligence for leaders. 

Let’s set it all up with a question: Has anything like the following ever ever happened to you?

  • You gather your team for an exciting announcement. You’re sure it will improve their lives better and earn them more money. But your words fall flat, and you can’t figure out why.
  • You see a competitor that beat you recently for a key client. You make a joke of it — and yet, they react with bitterness and anger. Where on earth is that coming from? You have no idea.
  • You call an employee into the office for a tough but important conversation. Instead of listening or agreeing — or doing anything, really — they simply shut down. You have no idea if your message is getting through, or if they even want to work for you.

They’re all frustrating scenarios, for sure. What they have in common is that you say or do something with good intentions, and you get an emotional reaction that’s basically the opposite of what you expect.

People with high emotional intelligence understand what’s going on, and the fact that they do gives them an immense advantage.

To illustrate it, I’m going to use a story from the most recent episode of the Apple TV show, Ted Lasso, a popular comedic drama (or a dramatic comedy?) about a fictional professional soccer team in England.

You don’t need to watch the show in order for this to make sense. (Although, I recommend it.) In short, the most recent episode has two key plot points:

  • First, a star player, Isaac McAdoo, reacts to a fan’s taunting, which includes a gay slur, by charging into the stands and physically confronting the fan — and thus getting himself thrown out of the game.
  • Second, the assistant coach, a former player named Roy Kent, has to face the press afterward and answer questions about what got into McAdoo, and whether the team stands behind him for having run into the stands.

Here’s part of what Roy Kent (played by Brett Goldstein) has to say.

"What a stupid ... question. Of course we don't [condone it]. What Isaac did was awful.   ... [But], none of us knows what is going on in each other's lives. So, for Isaac to do what he did today, even though it was wrong, I give him love. And as for why he did what he did, that's none of my ... business. Next question."

Now, if you watch the show, you’ll understand that two out of the three ellipses above are about me editing out all the F-bombs that normally come up in Kent’s lines; it’s part of his charm. (Video is embedded at the end, but again: same warning.)

But, there’s a lot of wisdom in that line — and we might add, emotional intelligence for leaders. 

Here’s what it comes down to. People with high emotional intelligence understand that sometimes, your words fall flat, or your invitation doesn’t get an answer, or you wind up with a completely different emotional response than you expect–and it has absolutely nothing to do with you personally. You’re often best off just forgetting the whole thing and moving on.

But, leaders don’t get that option, unless they want to abdicate their leadership role.

You can’t simply ignore that your employees aren’t engaged, or that your competitor now seems inexplicably angry, or that your team isn’t enthused by the goals or opportunities you’ve set out. You have to react somehow.

And the way to react is the way the fictional character Roy Kent suggests: You have to find a way to give them love.

  • Maybe it means asking a few questions, figuring out what’s going on behind the scenes, and holding a second meeting with your team.
  • Maybe it means sending another note to that competitor, and making sure that there’s no other fact you’re not aware of that might have created bad blood.
  • Maybe it’s about being proactive, and finding out what’s been going on with the employee whose actions led you to think you needed a tough conversation, and seeing if there are ways you can help him or her succeed.

None of us knows what is going on in each other’s lives. It’s such a key thing to realize in emotional intelligence, and such a simple thing to remember. In honor of the TV show that has now provided us with a pithy way to remember it, we’ll call it the Roy Kent Rule. 

Because, as I write in my free ebook, 9 Smart Habits of People With Very High Emotional Intelligence, I like things that are simple–just because it’s much more likely I’ll stick with them.

Next question. 

Original Story published on INC.com