We encourage you to get the book. Here is an excerpt:

I investigate myself. A man’s character is his fate. -Heraclitus (c. 540-470 BC)

Most books and teaching about leadership are descriptive and prescriptive. Describing how to dance doesn’t make a good dancer. Prescribing how to lead doesn’t make a good leader. It gives no portal into being a leader. Most of us didn’t listen to what our mother told us to do (had we, it would have saved a lot of time). Why? Our actions don’t come from what we have been told, read, or know, but from what we are committed to. Simple, but profound. To develop power as a leader, get committed to something that requires this.

Take on something big. Put your stake in the ground for what others (and perhaps you) have said is impossible, and find a way to do it. Heraclitus said “Your character is your fate.” Conversely, your fate, or future, is your character. I don’t mean the future when it happens (certainly this will affect you)—I mean right now, what is your future? It shapes and defines you and what you must do. A leader develops her character by taking on something big, seeing what is needed to accomplish it, and letting it form who she must be.

Barry Pogorel authored the Leadership chapter in

THE Book on…Business from A to Z:
The 260 Most Important Answers You Need to Know

Buy it now on Amazon.com

An Interview with Ken Cox, NASA engineer

Dr. Ken Cox is an engineer, technologist, scientist, futurist, and change agent that has worked for NASA for more than 40 years  beginning in l963.  He served as the Chief Technologist for the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Other management assignments in the past have included (1) Technical Manager for the Apollo Primary Control Systems in 1967, (2) Space Shuttle Technical Manager for Guidance, Navigation and Control in 1974, and (3) Chief of the Avionics System Division in 1987. In 1990, at the direction of the NASA Administrator, he created the Strategic Avionics Technology Working Group (SATWG), a NASA industry academia interface and networking organization to facilitate an open dialogue between government, industry, and academia concerning space technology issues and futures planning.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

^{-John F. Kennedy,
May 25, 1961} 

Frontiers

Barry: Ken, I’d like to discuss the source of the breakthrough or breakthroughs that made Apollo 11 possible. What attracted the people who came to work on Apollo 11?

Ken: My favorite books as a kid were written by Jules Verne—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and From Earth to the Moon. I could envision doing something that hadn’t been done before. That’s what drew all of us.

I believe that the long range evolution of humanity is tied to frontiers. This is important for us as humans—it excites and inspires us. An inherent background question that we don’t get into very often asks: “Are you concerned about the future of humans? We may use up the resources of the earth.” It would be better for us if we had a broader perspective for the extreme long term of humanity rather than thinking only about the present.

I am not saying Apollo 11, or exploration in this way, is some kind of Noah’s ark. But it allows us as humans to not just be reactive, but proactive about our future.

Barry: So perhaps you could say Apollo 11 wasn’t about reacting out of fear, but rather about something like wonderment. And perhaps this is the best of being human. So answering the question, “What was the source of this breakthrough we call Apollo 11,” part of it was that people were called to something that inspired them about the future, something they saw as possible that had never been done before.

Bold Promises

Ken: Yes, and there’s more. We went to the moon in 1969. We kept the promise we made. That was part of it too.

We did not play the traditional game the military, civilian, and government agencies play: “It doesn’t matter if we over-run (on costs or time frames)—we’ll come up with an explanation for why (we’ve over-run), someone will buy this excuse, and we’ll get more funds and more time as requested.”  In this way, people intentionally do not work for a breakthrough. They are protected against the risk and demands of a bold promise, like putting a human being on the moon and back to earth in a decade. They are protected by the bureaucratic system. Apollo 11 operated completely outside this traditional game.

Barry: You are saying that part of the source of this breakthrough was a promise made and kept. That was the promise Kennedy made, that our government made, that everyone who worked on Apollo 11 made: to send human beings to the moon and safely return them to earth before the end of the decade. This was different from how NASA operated before and after Apollo 11, wasn’t it?

Ken: Yes. We didn’t have a follow-on to Apollo 11’s performance.

Barry: No new vision or possibility that inspired people in that way? And no real promise, no commitment, to fulfill that vision.

Ken: Yes. Bureaucracy began to do what it always does: you end up with people who fight each other, destroy the unity of all the energy that could be between them. During Apollo 11, we were in a hurry to do something, and whether or not we believed we could do it didn’t matter; we were going to try. We were inspired. We were inspired to make and keep that promise. We weren’t just excited about the science of it: it was about frontiers, which included science.

The Art in Organizational Breakthrough

BP: Part of the breakthrough was organizational as well, right?

Ken: That was more important than anything else. It was nip and tuck whether Apollo was going to be run by the military or a civilian agency like NASA. Science did have something to do with it: Sputnik and so on. But there is a misread, a misunderstanding by historians: the scientists were already working together from all over the world– Russians, Americans, others. There was lots of dialogue going on between them, regardless of nationality. You’ve got to understand two important factors that affected us:

First, we faced the outcomes of World War II, one of which was that the War gave us the ICBM’s (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and the ability to put things in space. The German scientists developed a propulsion ability. Werner von Braun was a German scientist involved in the development of the ICBM’s. After the war, he came to the U.S. and worked on our missile programs. We’re talking about the scientific abilities we developed out of the War.

The competition with the Russians (to explore outer space) was due to the cold war and the politicians, not due to the scientists because the scientists did work together. So we have to look at the Apollo Program in the context of World War II.

The second factor affecting us was the Information Age. Apollo 11 was a digital system, which was possible due to the information age—that is, digital computing.

Barry: Why was this important?

Ken: Because when you are working on an unknown, unanswered problem, you need to face a lot of uncertainties. Digital services can take two months to resolve, to rebuild, if you have a problem. With an analog system, though, the same problem takes three years to rebuild. When you do something you never have done before on a scheduled that is constricted, you need to be able to make changes, corrections, rapidly.

Going from the Mercury and Gemini space systems (before Apollo) which were analog, to Apollo being digital was a major shift we’d never done before. Without it, Apollo 11 would not have been possible within the given timeframe.

Barry: So these advances, computing digitally and the new propulsion ability, created the opportunity for the breakthrough. They did not produce the breakthrough. They were not the source of the breakthrough.

Ken: Yes, that’s accurate. It was not just engineers, scientists, and so forth doing technical computations and constructs, reconfiguring existing knowledge.  There was a need for the artists: for those who paint what they’re doing. Who said, “Hey! Look at that! A new frontier!”  The creation of something new that inspires us. Hearing Kennedy declare going to the moon and back, reading Jules Verne as a 10 year old. Art. Creating what had never existed before.

What’s Missing for Breakthrough Performance

Barry: Ken, go back to the before and after of Apollo 11: what was and is currently missing in our space programs that was present with Apollo 11?

Ken: There was no effective follow up. Many of my closest associates left because they didn’t come to work for NASA, they didn’t come to work for an organization. They came to work for the program.

Barry: I hear you saying that they came to fulfill the vision. No one generated the next possibility, the next vision. So they left.

Ken: Yes. You can’t find out what was missing by looking at an organizational chart.

Barry: When people looked back at Apollo11, they said that particular organizational form, that set of solutions, must be the way to go forward. But you are saying that was not “the answer” and completely misses the source of the breakthrough.

Ken: There was no precedent for how you take something like this and continue it, learn from it, the lessons to derive from it. I want to get past this “whose at fault” business–it’s not enough to say a bunch of bureaucrats or idiots are at fault. This was something they never understood—few ever understood—that  maybe we should give some consideration to. Really, how did we do this? Lessons certainly came out: how to operate better, how to get program management to operate with fewer mistakes, how we do ops better, how do we do engineering better.

Barry: But not, “How do we produce the next breakthrough for humans.” It’s perhaps simpler than all the explanations, solutions, structures, procedures, policies, etc.

Ken: I chuckle when I hear NASA, or at city or state levels, people asking how you learn from what you did last time. In general we don’t do all that bad at deriving lessons, at learning from the past, for normal, business-as-usual things. But in this case, with respect to Apollo 11, it was a completely new thing—something never done before—from a government standpoint, from an organizational standpoint. We were so successful, people thought “the answer” was “just get the right people, and run the thing.” Or “get the right bureaucracy, the right organization, in place.” Then we’d do it all again.

Organizations Lose Compelling Purpose

But bureaucracies, and organizations, over time have certain tendencies. We think we really change. We do change this or that aspect of a system, but we’re not changing the total system. It’s not like anybody’s dumb. These are good, well-meaning people. We’re changing all these things, putting in this system and that structure. And yet, we leave out the most incredible, fundamental piece: how did you get everybody working together in the way they did during Apollo 11?  I believe that bureaucracies are such that the only way to deal with them effectively is every so often you’ve got to uproot them. Transform them. But the very idea that you’re going to close an army base or a NASA center! “We don’t talk about those things around here, son!”

Here’s the real question that must be dealt with: When does an organization become a bureaucracy? When does it tend to choke off creativity and new things that you haven’t done before?

Barry: What I hear you saying, Ken, is that when you don’t have a vision that inspires everyone that the organization is in service of realizing, then the organization becomes a bureaucracy in service of itself, of it’s own survival.

Ken: That’s right. Its not that someone is bad. It’s the nature of this that we’re talking about.

Barry: Why is it that we don’t look at the issue of breakthrough performance in this way, at the source of it?

Ken: Look at health care now, or any issue of national importance. Because we have people all over that come from different points of view and backgrounds who are more interested in solving their individual problems than the collective problems of the country. It’s inherent.

Barry: With Apollo 11 they weren’t there to solve their individual problems, then.

Ken: No! That’s the whole point. What’s in it for me, versus what’s in it for the country. Even more, what’s in it for the world? What’s in it for humankind? Is there a disconnect between what’s in it for humanity and what’s in it for me. By and large there are deep rooted prejudices that all humans on this earth are not equal. Are we improving? I don’t want to go off on are you a Republican or a Democrat? or is this group right is that group right. In some cases, neither.

Barry: Because this is really beyond politics, beyond opinions.

Ken: Reality with a heavy dose of vision; humans are so important. Let’s keep on the path of the positive rather than destructive aspects of human beings. I don’t think they’ll ever be a day we don’t have wars. The thing one would hope is that we work to avoid them or have less.

The Future History of Humans

Barry: I hear something profound in what you are saying now, Ken, about being human. Like what’s possible for humanity, for human beings.

Ken: I get to the point where I don’t want to debate anybody. Somehow in the process, if I had to write a book title to this dialogue I’d call it, The Future History of Humans. How do we not only learn from the past, but project ahead in terms of where humanity really has some potential of going that is broader than where we are today. I am into a dialogue with George Robinson who worked for the Smithsonian, and is probably the best lawyer regarding space exploration anywhere in the world. He’s written a number of books. He’s greatly concerned about the future of humanity–he feels it needs to always do exploration, do things it’s never done before–not just to make money, but because it excites us. It unites us. That what we do in space will eventually have a strong influence on what we do, on humanity as a whole.

Now let me extrapolate: I think that what George and I are suggesting is that there is a subject called “frontiers for humanity.” What are they? Going to outer space is not the only one. Art, music, science. That sort of thing never ends. It’s not a question of getting the ultimate goal for humanity. It just doesn’t work that way. I look upon our dialogue that says: how do we improve as we go along, as we explore, endlessly—as opposed to an end point where it all turns out. There’s no end point. And you can get into a discussion about humans and other living things. I’ve got a wonderful relationship with my two cats, but they haven’t learned to speak English and they don’t care about exploring new frontiers.

Above all, when one gets into such serious discussions, one has to maintain one’s sense of humor.

Barry: Ken, as I look over this whole conversation, you didn’t ever give “the five action steps” or “the nine process phases” to achieve a breakthrough. Why?

Breakthrough Are Not Prescriptive

Ken: For a breakthrough like Apollo 11, you can’t be prescriptive. Like I’m the doctor, and if you take these 5 pills, then…I don’t think I know it all. It’s not about knowing the steps. That’s nonsense when you’re talking about doing something that’s never been done before. You have to approach it differently from the way you approach the day to day, the achieving of normal goals: go climb that hill for the purpose of achieving some goal, or because we’re going to win this game. No–it’s a different framework, this thing about breakthroughs. The underlying principles, in this case, get beyond just “what was the event that happened, what were the actions we took” and then doing that again. Achieving something like Apollo 11 doesn’t mean that the next step up the new hill is based on what you did on the last hill. But it does mean this: climbing a really difficult hill you never climbed before gives you insight that you wouldn’t have had if you didn’t do that climb. It’s a progressive process. Rather than, “Decide ahead of time for the next climb and figure it out based on what you learned from the last climb…” It’s more like, “Get on a path, start climbing, get started.” It’s not any easier or more predictable or less scary, just freer.  Now we’re into the realm of possibilities, versus, “I know which path to take.”  Remember what I said about painting and creating?

Barry: I am wondering, Ken, why another vision as powerful as Apollo 11’s hasn’t been created since then?

Ken: Remember what I said about bureaucracy and that people who came to work for Apollo didn’t come to work for NASA—they came to work for the program—the vision. Bureaucracies are about themselves staying alive, not about visions being realized.

Barry: So now you have this bureaucracy, with the problems that all bureaucracies have. They talk about reinventing NASA like CEO’s talk about reinventing their organizations. How do you reinvent NASA, or any organization, so you have a condition that supports creativity and exploration, and that shapes itself to realize a vision—rather than to maintain its own existence?

Ken:  There are levels of bureaucracy—maybe we see more in the governmental, public sector. But it occurs in every organization that’s ever been formed. It’s foolish to say there are the good guys and the bad guys, and blame someone. The problem is beyond this. NASA is doing the best it can. The only way to deal with bureaucracies is you have to uproot them and start over again.

Barry: This takes tremendous courage. It’s very bold.

Ken: If you don’t, the organizations become about themselves, their own persistence, rather than fulfilling a real vision. And to uproot an organization, to reinvent it so it can make a vision happen, is that someone who has the power, like a vice-president or president, has to state the vision and begin the uprooting. It’s got to be someone above the bureaucracy, the daily organizational level, because you’re talking about politics and human issues, like people protecting their jobs. Some high authority has to start the uprooting.

Barry: You need a new vision to demand the reinvention of the organization.

Ken: You need to state a vision, a purpose, that speaks to people’s humanity, that speaks to them personally. That inspires. And who states it is important. It’s got to be someone above the bureaucratic, daily organizational level, and be said by someone who has the power to say it and enact it, like a vice-president or a president. Because you’re talking about humanity, politics, and individuals’ lives: human issues. You need someone of a high enough authority to start the uprooting. And this is where the courage comes in: they won’t know how to do it! Kennedy didn’t have a clue how we were going to get to the moon and back. But he started it. Someone has to start it!

Michael “Shorty” Powers was a “hell on wheels” kind of guy.  His adventures appeared to have ended in 1969 when a car accident killed one of his friends and paralyzed Shorty from the waist down.  Shorty felt grief and depression at the sudden loss and the sense that life as he had enjoyed it was over.

As Shorty will tell you, when faced with such a dramatic change of circumstances, you have a choice—give up or live fully.  Shorty has always been committed to living life fully, which for him means being competitive in athletics and taking on other challenges.  Rather than give up, Shorty looked for a sport in which, despite his lack of useful legs, he could compete on equal terms with ABs (the “able bodied”^[1]).  He discovered fishing.  Thus began 30-plus years of fishing-tournament wins.

But that is just background to the real story.

Turning POINT

Imagine for a moment how you would get around your house in a wheelchair, and what you would go through emotionally, knowing this was how the rest of your life was going to be.  Shorty had experienced the depression and the battle for mobility faced by a person who has lost the use of limbs.

For Shorty, living life fully also meant contributing to others who could benefit from his experience.  Twenty-five years ago he founded Turning POINT (Paraplegics On Independent Nature Trips) to support paraplegics (“paras”) as they go through the emotional aspects of loss and assist them to see that they can build new lives, just as exciting and fulfilling as the old, using fishing and other outdoor activities. Symbolic of the organization is a poster showing four empty wheelchairs parked at water’s edge.  A sign on the chairs reads, “Gone Fishing.”

Climbing Guadalupe Peak

After founding Turning POINT, Shorty could have just kept things going as they were.  However, his life is a demonstration of, “It’s only a limit if you think so.”  He looked for other breakthroughs to demonstrate to paras “that they can do a whole lot more for themselves than everybody, including themselves, thinks they can.”  Guadalupe Peak is Texas’ highest mountain.  At 8,751 feet, it looms more than 3,000 feet above the surrounding desert.  In 1982 Shorty inspired five of his friends to take on the challenge of climbing it.  No ABs were allowed to help.

Adding to the challenge, the six committed to the climb before they figured out how to do it or even did any research concerning the conditions with which they would have to deal.  They committed to producing the breakthrough, then figured out how to do it.  I’ll return to this later.

It turned out that the 4.2-mile stony trail to the summit crosses dry streams with rocky beds.  It’s difficult hiking even for those who walk.  ABs can step over the rocks and the tree trunks laid across the trail to prevent erosion; for wheelchairs, each one was a major obstacle.  During the hike, rainy days turned the ground to mud.  Sometimes it took Shorty and his friends six hours to cover the same ground ABs could traverse in 20 minutes.  For five days they made their way along the rocky trail, crawling most of the time, pulling their wheelchairs with ropes held in their teeth.  (“We had no idea it was going to be that rocky,” Shorty said later.  “But we didn’t let that stop us.”)  Three made it to the top.

Joe Moss (left), Dave Kiley (center), and Don Rodgers (right) at the summit monument of Guadalupe Peak, Texas (2)

You are starting to get a sense of the man.  And that still is not the story I want to tell.

Turning POINT Nation

When I first met Shorty, Turning POINT was a collection of relatively independent chapters scattered across the country.  Shorty was committed to the organization being able to deliver services nationally and having the clout to cause change.  How to accomplish that was unclear, and there wasn’t even agreement on the goals (some chapters liked their independence).  I was hired to facilitate the Board developing a strategic plan, starting with creating the national organization’s vision/future and working backwards to the present (just as Shorty and his friends figured out how to get to the top of Guadalupe Peak after committing to do it—what we call, in the discipline of transformation, a true breakthrough).

The planning sessions took place between ports during a Caribbean cruise.  The process was successful, resulting in today’s Turning Point Nation organization (www.turningpointnation.org).

The Cruise: a Lesson in Freedom from Limitations and Constraints

I always believed, as I imagine most heterosexual people do, that I needed to be physically able and good looking to attract the opposite sex.  The first night out that assumption was destroyed.  Their wheelchairs didn’t stop the Board members from getting out on the disco floor and dancing, sometimes on two wheels.

That was impressive enough, but then I noticed that ABs (including some very good looking ABs) were lining up to dance with Shorty and his colleagues.  There they all were on the floor—moving with the rock music, sweating, flirting, having a great time.  The wheelchairs were simply not relevant.  That did not fit what I “knew” to be true.  I started to suspect that because their physical situation was irrelevant to them, it was irrelevant to others as well.  Shorty and his fellow board members were in wheelchairs, but they weren’t stuck being guys and gals in wheelchairs, with the obvious (to me) limitations that come along with that.  Instead, they were fully expressing themselves, unconstrained and uncontained—playful, sexy, funny—totally alive and, as a result, enormously attractive.  I thought to myself how much we are all suppressed by our own thinking.  We let ourselves be victims when we could be free, powerful, alive.

During the entire cruise, despite obstacles such as getting from the ship to small shuttle boats and negotiating the cracked streets in a Jamaican city, the Board members never let anything stop them from enjoying any activity.  Their physical condition was as relevant to them as their height or hair color—things you might have to take into account, but nothing that would stop you.  They were a joy to be with because they were so completely authentic and alive.

What I Learned

Instead of paying attention to our circumstances and using those as reasons why we can’t have what we want, we can— like Turning Point Nation members—make a commitment and then figure out how to fulfill it. We can have our circumstances rather than allow our circumstances to have us.

As Shorty says, “It’s only a limit if you think so.”

[1] When I worked with the Turning POINT board, I was in a distinct named group, the ABs (“able-bodieds”), while everyone else, in this instance the paraplegics, had no group designation.  Maybe there is an insight here: we ABs consider ourselves “normal” and thus not in need of group identification, and we assign group names to those we view as different in some way from ourselves.

[2] For a video of the news story of their climb go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW8KjSrFI1w.

How the Brain Goes from “No” to “Yes”

What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because that’s the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.

—MALCOLM GLADWELL, AUTHOR, THE TIPPING POINT

I think like a doctor, so I loaded an earlier draft of this chapter with drawings of brain parts and discussions of how the brain works. When I finished, I showed it to Ellen, my editor, thinking she’d say, “Wow. That’s great.” Ellen quickly glanced over all the brain stuff. And then she said, pointedly: “Ick.” I got her point. Most people reading this book don’t care about neurons and neurotransmitters and gray matter and white matter. If you’re one of them, you just want to learn how to reach people. You don’t care what happens inside their brains when you do.

But here’s the thing: When you understand something about how the brain moves from resistance to buy-in, you’ll have a huge edge—because no matter what your message is, you need to talk to the brain. That’s why I teach a little brain science to hostage negotiators, CEOs, managers, parents, and anyone else who needs to reach difficult people.

However, I heeded Ellen’s wise advice and took an axe to my first draft. Gone are the brain drawings and dry anatomy lectures. What’s left? Three crucial concepts that will empower you to see what’s happening behind another person’s eyes when you’re trying to get buy-in. Understand all three—the three-part brain, amygdala hijack, and mirror neurons—and you’ll know all you need to know about the brain science behind reaching anyone.

The Three-Part Brain

How many brains do you have? It’s a trick question, because the answer (as you probably know, if you took college biology) isn’t one but three.

Your brain has three layers that evolved over millions of years: a primitive reptile layer, a more evolved mammal layer, and a final primate layer. They all interconnect, but in effect they often act like three different brains—and they’re often at war with each other.

Here’s how each of your three brains behaves:

• The lower reptilian brain is the “fight-or-flight” part of your brain. This region of your brain is all about acting and reacting, without a lot of thinking going on. It can also leave you frozen in a perceived crisis—the “deer-in-the-headlights” response.

• The middle mammal brain is the seat of your emotions. (Call it your inner drama queen.) It’s where powerful feelings—love, joy, sadness, anger, grief, jealousy, pleasure—arise.

• The upper or primate brain is like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock: It’s the part that weighs a situation logically and rationally and generates a conscious plan of action. This brain collects data from the reptile and mammal brains, sifts it, analyzes it, and makes practical, smart, and ethical decisions.

As we evolved, the newer regions of our brains didn’t vanquish the older parts. Instead, like the rings on a tree, each new region overlays the more primitive ones. The middle brain overlays the lower brain; the upper brain overlays the middle brain. And all three have power over how you think and act every day. To a small extent, these three brains work together. To a greater extent, however, they tend to pull apart and function independently — especially when we’re under stress. When that happens and the reptile or mammal brain takes control, the human thinking brain is eclipsed, and we shift into primal brain functions.

What does all of this have to do with getting through to people?

Simple: To reach someone, you need to talk to the human upper brain—not the snake brain or the rat brain. You’re in trouble if you’re trying to gain buy-in from someone who’s feeling angry, defiant, upset, or threatened because, in these situations, the person’s higher brain isn’t calling the shots. If you’re talking to a boss, a customer, a spouse, or a child whose lower brain or midbrain is in control, you’re talking to a cornered snake or, at best, a hysterical rabbit.

In this situation, your success hinges entirely on talking the person up from reptile to mammal to human brain—a technique I’ll teach you later. For now, however, let’s look at why the primitive brain can take over, canceling out all those centuries of evolution.

The key: a region of the brain called the amygdala.

Amygdala Hijack and the Death of Rational Thought

Your amygdala, a small area deep in your brain, flies into action if it senses a threat to you—for instance, if a stranger approaches you in a dark parking lot. This threat doesn’t always need to be physical; “fighting words,” a financial scare, or even a challenge to your ego can light it off as well.

Your frontal cortex, the logical part of your brain, also goes on alert in situations where you sense a threat. However, this higher brain region wants to analyze the threat, and you don’t always have time for that. That’s why your body gives the amygdala the power to throw a switch, either directing impulses to or diverting impulses from the frontal cortex.

Sometimes when you’re really scared, your amygdala instantly shuts out your higher brain, causing you to act on primitive instinct. Most of the time, however, the amygdala sizes up a situation before making its move. To understand this process, picture the amygdala as a full-to-the-brim pan of water on a stove. Heat this pan of water gently, and it can simmer gently for hours. Crank the heat up to high, however, and eventually the water will boil over catastrophically. Similarly, as long as your amygdala stays on “simmer” and isn’t pushed into boiling over, you can continue to access your upper brain, which empowers you to pause, reflect, consider options, and make smart choices. When your amygdala hits the boiling point, however, it’s all over.

We call this boiling-over point amygdala hijack—a term first coined by psychologist Daniel Goleman, the originator of the concept of emotional intelligence. The term “hijack” is appropriate because at that point (if you’ll forgive me for detouring momentarily into another metaphor), your brain‘s intelligent and sensible pilot—the frontal cortex—is no longer in control. Instead, the snake is flying the plane. Your ability to reason drops drastically, your working memory falters, and stress hormones flood your system. Your adrenaline rush will keep you from thinking clearly in the next minutes, and it may take hours for the full effects to fade. Goleman no doubt was keen on this concept because when you undergo an amygdala hijack, your emotional intelligence goes out the window.

If you’re trying to talk facts and reason with a person who’s in full amygdala hijack, you’re wasting your time. But intervene before the amygdala hits the boiling point, and the person’s higher brain can stay in control. (Think of this as adding salt to water as you heat it. When you do that, you raise the water’s boiling point, and it can take more heat while staying at a simmer.)

Many of the techniques I’ll teach you for dealing with angry, fearful, or resistant people do just that: prevent an amygdala hijack. When you do that, you’ll be talking to the human brain, and your words will get through. One expert at preventing amygdala hijack was Earl Woods, the father of golf great Tiger Woods. Earl Woods might have been the best dad who ever lived, and he was certainly one of the greatest coaches.

As you know if you play golf, there’s a huge mental component to performing well. When most golfers feel stressed, their amygdala starts to boil over—and as a result, they choke. But not Tiger. Watch him when he’s under stress, and you’ll see that instead of becoming distressed, he becomes determined and more focused. When other golfers go from stressed to distressed to choking, Tiger goes from stressed to alert to determined. Even Tiger, however, can approach amygdala hijack on a bad day.

One of my favorite sports stories of all time occurred after Tiger had shot a 40 on the opening nine holes of the first round of the 1997 Masters. It was his first time playing in a major tournament as a pro, and the wheels (and brain) appeared to begin to fall off. Apparently, he went over to his dad in a panic and said something like, “I don’t know what’s going on.” His dad paused, looked into his eyes as Tiger looked back, and said: “Tiger, you’ve been here before. Just do what you need to do.”

At that point, not only did the wheels go back on, but Tiger went on to win the tournament by a 12-stroke margin, shooting 18 under par, two records that have never been equaled. A few simple words by his father at just the right time prevented amygdala hijack—and turned a potential disaster into one of the greatest sports victories in history.

Mirror Neurons

You cringe when a coworker gets a paper cut and cheer when a movie hero gets the girl. That’s because for an instant, it’s just as if these events are happening to you—and, in a way, they are. Years ago, scientists studying specific nerve cells in macaque monkeys’ prefrontal cortices found that the cells fired when the monkeys threw a ball or ate a banana. But here’s the surprise: these same cells fired when the monkeys watched another monkey performing these acts. In other words, when Monkey #1 watched Monkey #2 toss a ball, the brain of the first monkey reacted just as if it had tossed the ball itself.

Scientists initially nicknamed these cells “monkey see, monkey do” neurons. Later they changed the name to mirror neurons, because these cells allow monkeys to mirror another being’s actions in their own minds. The new name is more accurate, because we’re finding that humans, just like macaques, have neurons that act as mirrors. In fact, studies suggest that these remarkable cells may form the basis for human empathy. That’s because, in effect, they transport us into another person’s mind, briefly making us feel what the person is feeling. In a 2007 article titled “The Neurology of Self-Awareness” in Edge, V. S. Ramachandran, a pioneer in mirror neuron research, commented, “I call these ‘empathy neurons,’ or ‘Dalai Lama neurons,’ for they are dissolving the barrier between self and others.” In short, these cells may prove to be one way nature causes us to care about other people. But look at mirror neurons from another angle, and new questions emerge. Why is it that we often tear up when someone is kind to us? Why is it that we get a warm feeling when someone understands us? Why is it that a simple caring “Are you okay?” can so move us?

My theory, which my clinical findings support, is that we constantly mirror the world, conforming to its needs, trying to win its love and approval. And each time we mirror the world, it creates a little reciprocal hunger to be mirrored back. If that hunger isn’t filled, we develop what I refer to as “mirror neuron receptor deficit.” In today’s world, it’s easy to imagine that deficit growing into a deep ache. Many of the people I work with—from CEOs and managers to unhappy spouses to clinically depressed patients—feel that they give their best, only to be met day after day with apathy, hostility, or (possibly worst of all) no response at all. In my belief, this deficit explains why we feel so overwhelmed when someone acknowledges either our pain or our triumphs. That’s why many of the most powerful techniques I’ll teach you involve mirroring another person’s feelings—even if you don’t agree with them.

Here’s an example from my own practice that illustrates the surprising power of this approach. It involves Jack, a highly intelligent paranoid patient I saw several years ago. Before coming to me, Jack had seen four other psychiatrists.

“Before we start talking,” Jack said right off the bat, “I need to tell you that the people living above me keep making noise all night long, and it’s driving me crazy.” He said this with a wry grin that seemed odd at the time. “That must be exasperating to you,” I responded empathetically. Smiling mischievously as if he’d caught me in a trap, Jack added: “Oh, I neglected to tell you that I live on the top floor of my apartment building and there’s no access to the roof.” Then he looked at me with a smirk reminiscent of a comic looking to get a rise out of an audience.

I thought to myself: “Hmm. I could say ‘and so?’ and trigger a confrontation. I could say ‘tell me more,’ and have him go into even greater detail about his paranoid delusion. I could say ‘I’m sure that the sound appears quite real to you, but a part of you knows it isn’t’ . . . , but that’s probably what the other four psychiatrists said.”

Then I asked myself, “What’s more important to me? To be a calm, objective professional giving him yet another of the reality checks that he’s already received from my profession? Or, to try to help him, even if it means letting go of reality?” I decided on the latter. And with that conclusion, I let go of what I knew to be the truth and said with full sincerity: “Jack, I believe you.”

With that, he looked at me and paused for a moment. Then, startling me. He started crying, making the sound of a starving feral cat out in the night. I thought I’d opened up a real can of worms and questioned my judgment, but I just let him cry. As the minutes went by, his crying lessened, sounding less animal and more human. Finally, he stopped, blotting his eyes with his sleeve and wiping his nose with a tissue. Then he looked at me again, seeming ten pounds lighter as if he’d just relieved himself of a tremendous burden, and offered me a wide, knowing grin. “It does sound crazy, doesn’t it?” We smiled together at the insight he’d just gained, and he took his first step toward getting better.

What happened to allow Jack to begin to give up his craziness?

He felt mirrored by me. In his experience, the world required him to mirror and agree with it, whether it was a doctor saying, “You need this medication,” or a psychiatrist saying, “You realize that these are delusions, don’t you?” In that scenario, the world was always sane and right, and Jack was always insane and wrong. And “insane and wrong” is a heck of a lonely place to be. My accurate mirroring helped Jack to feel less alone. As he felt less alone, he was able to feel some relief. And as he felt that relief, he was mentally able to relax. As a result, he felt grateful and, with that gratitude, came a willingness to open his mind to me and to work with me rather than fight me. Now, you’re not likely to deal with many paranoid schizophrenics in the course of your daily life unless you’re a psychiatrist. But you will deal, every day, with people who have “mirror neuron receptor deficits” because the world isn’t giving back to them what they’re putting out. (My guess, in fact, is that this is a nearly universal condition of humankind.) Understanding a person’s hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you’ll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.

The hunger to be mirrored can go well beyond one-on-one conversations. I’m reminded of an incident 20 years ago. In it, I watched an unassuming and even bland speaker not only get through to an audience of 300 people, but be more effective at it than his charismatic copresenter who possessed a much more powerful personality.

I was attending a two-day conference on an intensive and highly effective form of brief psychotherapy. The meeting featured two speakers, a Canadian psychiatrist and a British psychiatrist who were copioneers in that field. Each would speak, present videotapes of sessions with patients, and then elicit comments, questions, and discussions. Right out of the gate, it was clear that the Canadian speaker was powerful, focused, hard driving, and easy to listen to. In contrast, the second psychiatrist, although equally clear, was calmer, low key, and British, and it took more effort to pay attention to him. But over the two days, a curious thing happened. The Canadian speaker launched into his presentations like a 747 zooming down the runway to takeoff. The British guy was more like a twin-engine Piper Cub making its way down the runway at a more leisurely clip. The Canadian’s enthusiasm caused him to always exceed the allotted times for his presentations, running well into the times allotted for breaks. This caused the meeting staff to shorten breaks and urge us to get back in time for the next presentation. The fact that a significant number of members of the audience were becoming restless, looking at their watches, and rushing through snack breaks had little impact on the Canadian. He was going to finish what he had to say, whether or not anyone listened or cared.

In contrast, the British psychiatrist began his talks by tapping on the microphone and asking if everyone could hear him in the back of the room. He was also acutely attuned to any clues that the audience’s attention span was drifting significantly. At those moments, he demonstrated one of the most dramatic instances of mirroring I can remember—and he did it with a large audience, no less. He would literally be in mid-sentence, stop himself, and say:

“You’ve heard enough for now. Let’s take a break and resume in ten minutes.”

At first these episodes seemed a bit off the wall, but by the end of the conference, the audience had clearly shifted from being wowed by the charismatic but rather full-of-himself Canadian to deeply appreciating and listening to the Brit who’d taken the effort to accurately mirror them. The British doctor had won over a whole roomful of people, and he’d done it effortlessly.

From Theory to Action

The brain science I’ve outlined in this chapter comes with an asterisk attached: it doesn’t apply to everyone. On rare occasions, you’ll meet people who are stuck in their reptile or mammal brains and can’t think logically no matter how much you try to help them. (Many, but not all, fall into the category of “mentally ill.”) And you’ll meet some people who don’t give a damn if you mirror their feelings or not, because they’re sociopaths or narcissists who only care about you doing what they want—which is why this book also includes techniques for dealing with bullies and jerks.

In almost every case, however, the people you’ll meet are willing to be touched if you can just break through the walls they’ve erected to keep from being hurt or controlled. In the following chapters, I’ll tell you how to effectively mirror the emotions of these people, redirect them to their higher thought processes, and keep them from undergoing an amygdala hijack—all by putting a few simple rules and techniques into play. And I’ll tell you how to keep your own brain under control, so you can stay cool and say the right thing instead of melting down under pressure.

When you can do all of these things, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to reach people—and you’ll be amazed at the difference it will make to your job, your relationships, and your life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Goulston is a psychiatrist, business consultant, executive coach, and a hostage-negotiation trainer for the FBI.  A bestselling author whose books include Get Out of Your Own Way and Get Out of Your Own Way at Work, he writes a column on leadership for Fast Company as well as a syndicated column, “Solve Anything with Dr. Mark,” for Tribune Media Services.  Frequently called upon to share his expertise with the media, he has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, and Reuters; has offered commentary on NPR, CNN, and Fox News; and has appeared on the Oprah and Today shows.  He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Here are links where you can purchase this book:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble

Published in Optimize Magazine, an InformationWeek Resource for Business Technology Executives. Used with permission. CMP Media LLC, Optimize January, 2002.

As a veteran of the hospitality industry, I often think about those who have assisted in shaping the person I’ve become. Sure, college taught me the mechanics and theory of leadership, while practical experience provided a reality. Examination of one’s “being,” however, never seemed to be part of the learning process. Yet that’s what it took to make my successes in IT reach fruition.

The cyclical nature of the hospitality industry allowed for spectacular results during prosperous years, while mergers and acquisitions dominated troubled times as management teams struggled to survive. These cycles and the leaders who endured them have made a lasting impression on me. Included among some of the greatest hotel business leaders—such as Steven Bollenbach of Hilton, Peter Boynton of Caesars, John Kapioltas of Sheraton, and Bill Marriott of Marriott—are Fred Kleisner and Ted Teng, Wyndham’s chairman/CEO and president/COO, respectively.

Both of these men exhibited their talents in Sheraton, Westin, Starwood, and now Wyndham International. I was exposed to their leadership indirectly during my tenure with ITT Sheraton during the late 1980s and early ’90s and again in the late ’90s as CIO of Caesars World, a subsidiary of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Back then, Kleisner was president of Starwood’s Americas division and Teng was president of Asia Pacific. One of the most amazing professional accomplishments I’ve observed occurred with the consolidation of management during the Starwood-Westin-Sheraton merger.

Achieving synergy is the holy grail of mergers. While those in the hospitality industry watched from the sidelines with predetermined outcomes in mind, the small Westin management team led the Sheraton conglomerate into a newly organized Starwood hotel structure. I often pondered how that small, inconspicuous “David” of a leadership team at Westin conquered the “Goliath” of Sheraton, which seemed altogether invincible as a hotel conglomerate. Little did I know that I’d have the opportunity to discover that formula and team in my own future. As it turns out, Kleisner and Teng are now my bosses at Wyndham International.

Shortly after I was hired in April 2000, Kleisner described his vision and strategy for the company—and my role in making it happen. First, Wyndham’s rocky relationship with an outsourced IT services company required a new strategy and leadership. Wyndham also wanted to turn a troubled real-estate investment trust into a newly defined branded hotel operating company. All would require breakthroughs in technology so that Wyndham could compete with the “big boys,” including Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood.

I began to realize what motivated these leaders and provided their strength and confidence after attending several executive leadership training sessions conducted by Barry Pogorel, a Southern California leadership consultant. I began to understand even better through a path of ontological discovery—that is, a metaphysical approach concerned with the nature of being. I developed an entirely practical plan for achieving breakthrough results from the knowledge gained during those sessions. This simple plan, outlined by precepts of transformational leadership, would let me achieve the same type of breakthroughs as my mentors.

As I define the formula, it invokes the power of “being” through the following tenets: Identity—what you define yourself to be; commitment—being true to your word; possibility—what becomes reality through conversation; and enrollment—communicating and listening to others in such a way that they take ownership of a possibility and take action. While observing the tenets, I repeat the question Pogorel asked me during that session: “Are you willing to sacrifice what you are (your identity) for what you could become (a new identity)?”

I first brought the IT function back in house and closely observed the team. A formula of long hours, standards, controls, policies, procedures, and development methodologies provided incremental technology advances. The formula, however, wouldn’t produce the major results required to achieve the “impossible” task asked of us. For that, the team and I had to sacrifice all that we had been for the possibility of becoming something much greater. We threw out the standards, controls, policies, procedures, and methodologies, and started over.

What I learned in those sessions included a way to achieve the impossible—or what seemed impossible—by designing a game of sorts. It’s defined as something that motivates you; is bold (not a continuation of the past); requires enrollment; holds you accountable; and requires you to work at extreme levels from the day you declare it.

Wyndham IT identified several impossible games: integrating our channel distribution systems to provide a single depleting inventory in less than a year; enabling wireless reservations through integrated distribution and guest-loyalty systems within 90 days; and deploying centralized property-management systems in less than a year.

Wyndham IT had declared an impossible game, and I made a commitment to achieve it. I had to put Pogorel’s ontological methods to work immediately. Enrollment through conversations with each member of the team was challenging. I had to obtain the commitment of each person to win the game without conditions or excuses. I had to let each team member work outside of the existing identity of policies, procedures, controls, and methodologies. Team members nervously began employing their skills without their previous identity and traditional rules of engagement. Then disaster struck.

In May, Wyndham cut staff because of economic deterioration in the travel industry. I cut the size of the team by 37%. We had no choice but to declare a complete breakdown. But we had committed to win and had to discover another way to achieve the impossible.

The ontological method had outlined the steps for declaring a breakdown as follows: Declare that a breakdown has occurred; distinguish the psychological assessments that are present (right/wrong vs. “what is”); declare the commitment made; have a conversation for possibility (create ideas); have a conversation for opportunity (feasibility of the ideas); and have a conversation for action (make requests and promises). I understood what had happened and why, and began developing even stronger relationships among the remaining team members. We developed a new identity as defined by each member of the team. That new identity let us develop a plan we truly believed in and remained committed to executing. We made requests and promises that demanded the utmost integrity and trust from everyone. We accomplished the impossible by delivering on all the promises we made to each other.

Wyndham’s IT group won the game. We achieved breakthroughs through innovative processes and technology for the hospitality industry. In September, InformationWeek selected Wyndham IT as one of the top 500 companies for innovation in technology strategy, and in October, Hospitality Technology magazine chose the company as IT operator of the year.

Pogorel’s ontological mentoring, further supported by mentorship from Kleisner and Teng, allowed me to take my David of an IT team to slay its own Goliath of impossibility by leveraging our willingness to sacrifice what we were for what we could become.

MARK F. HEDLEY is senior VP and chief technology officer of Wyndham International, which owns, manages, or franchises 242 hotels in the Americas and Europe.