I would like you as a favor to all of us to do one thing stand up please stand up I know you have a lot of things in your lap but it's important to stand up and now it's important to sit down thank you the reason is this the human body was not designed to sit still for two hours straight and I don't want you to fall asleep while I'm talking I'd like also to know to whom I'm talking how many people here are in business oh okay how many educators okay people in human resources
or HR uh-huh coaches consultants okay how many people have had some experience with mindfulness oh okay good how many people are not carrying a cellphone right now that's the problem you see the one person - okay so you've heard about the difficulties that this new technology creates I met a fellow who actually was on the team at Apple who when they're designing the first iPhone he actually he now lives in France or the french-speaking part of Switzerland I can't remember but he said this it's very important he said we tried to make it as seductive
as we could and then he said and now I'm the father of two kids and I really regret that so this is our dilemma the leader needs to have focus this is one of the main points of my talk but three kinds of focus one is an internal focus focus on yourself self-awareness this is what mindfulness helps with immensely the second is focused on other people and mindfulness can help there because the mindfulness can help you be more present the third is something else entirely it's a systems awareness awareness of the larger surround the forces
that your organization operates in for a business person it would be the technological shifts that are coming the economic trends the social trends cultural trends all of that is going to help you figure out what strategy will you use going into the future but let me start with the first part with the topic that most people have been addressing so far which is the internal focus attention as you've heard is under seas there's some data that suggests that today people get about five times more information than was true 20 years ago and there's a saying
in cognitive science that what information consumes is attention so a wealth of information means a poverty of attention that's the dilemma we get lots and lots of information but then how do we weed through and how do we curate it for ourselves what's most important what's salient there was a study done at Harvard University recently about attention in daily life stop me if anyone has said this before talked about this study it's a study in which they gave people an app for their phone and the app rang them that random times of day and it
asked two questions what are you doing right now and what are you thinking about if those two things don't match up then your mind is wandering so it was a study of mind wandering the article that was published on it in science for the preeminent journal was called a wandering mind is an unhappy mind because they found that mood went down was sad more sad depressed and so on the more the mind wandered one of the reasons is that there you know two kinds of distractions to classes technically speaking one is sensory you know you're
trying to focus on something in a cafe and that person in the next table is very loud that actually is the easiest kind of distraction to ignore the hardest kind of distraction is the emotional distraction the thoughts that keep coming back to us the thinking about what went wrong in that relationship why did that person say that to me those are the kind of mind wandering which makes most trouble in our lives so what the study found was that the mind is wandering on average 47 percent of the time more interestingly it's wandering 90 percent
of the time in three situations when you're commuting to work when you're sitting in front of a video screen your computer and so on and I hate to tell all you people who are in business at work the mind wanders 90% of the time on average at work it wanders the least here in France you should understand this during romantic moments but then who would answer an app at a moment like that I'm not sure I believe that data but it's only 10% they say so the mind wanders that's that's the human condition but it's
wandering more because our devices our technology is seducing us more and more so this makes a main task of leadership more difficult that task is to direct other people's attention the leader is the the one who determines what's important here what should we be attending to what's our strategy going forward from that unfolds how HR or marketing or R&D should be paying attention each in their own way to what is mattering to our company most so there are those three kinds of attention inner outer and other and I'd like to call your attention also to
some other research which is fundamental for understanding how emotional intelligence intersects with mindfulness and that has to do with what are called competence studies you may have know the term I had a professor years ago when I was in graduate school who was one of the founders of the field he said way back then when this was like a radical idea he said if you want to hire the best person for a job any job don't look at their academic record don't look at their personality profile instead look in your own organization at people who
have held that job or hold it now and by whatever metric whatever measure makes sense for that job identify the star performers that top 10 percent and then compare them with people are only average mediocre and do a systematic analysis and determine what did the stars the best performers have what capacity are competence do they display that you don't see in the average then hire people who look like the stars identify high potentials who look like the stars help people develop those particular competencies that's what's going to give you the best performance so after I
wrote the book emotional intelligence I had access to or more than a hundred confidence models from all kinds of organizations and I just looked at one thing these are abilities organizations companies themselves have identified as what makes someone to start performer here so I a granade all of that data and these are independent studies by the way they're their proprietary studies they don't you you do this for competitive reasons you want to know what should we look for and the people we hire and promote and develop and so on so I I looked at how
much of this is based on purely cognitive abilities IQ technical skills versus how much is based on emotional intelligence by emotional intelligence I mean simply how we manage ourselves how we handle our relationships that's the basic definition and what I found was that for jobs of all kinds of in the competencies that distinguished stars from average emotional intelligence is about twice as important as purely cognitive skills now for those of you in education and those of you who have spent years and years getting an education all of that matters but it doesn't matter in terms
of what makes you a star performer at work it helps you get in the game helps you get the job once you have that job what's going to determine whether you're an outstanding team player emerges a leader there is this other skill set your people skills your personal skills so the higher you go in the organization the more it matters for top leadership positions we found 80 to 90 percent of the competencies are based on emotional intelligence abilities you don't need technical skills because you're managing people you're leading people who have those skills your job
is a leader is a relationship management job primarily there's this one ability though cognitive ability that shows up over and over which is very important sometimes it's called pattern recognition or systems thinking or big-picture thinking it's the ability to recognize how a decision here today will matter in five years or how a decision that we make will ramify through a complex organization and matter not just here but over there so this kind of thinking is a cognitive skill in fact it's the third focus it's the system's understanding seeing the big picture but once you have
that understanding you can articulate a strategy here's what we should do going forward you can't get there without people you have to what you have to persuade you have to communicate you have to influence you have to listen all of those are emotional intelligence skills so once you have your strategy that's well and good but to execute the strategy you're going to need the help of your people here's what I mean by emotional intelligence there are four parts self-awareness self-management those have to do with the first focus the inner focus the second set the empathy
the social awareness and the relationship competencies those have to do with the other focus the second focus the third focus is it on this map it's the one I was just talking about the system's understanding so a leader needs all three of those but these two are particularly important because they allow what a positive impact positive leadership is the name of this meeting to be to have a positive impact you need to have these abilities and in fact if you think about the worst boss you ever had or ever knew about it's invariably someone who
lacks this skill set in some way the best leaders are leaders who have these abilities and can influence people positively now based on these there's a set of competencies that nest within each of these domains and I'll talk about these in more detail but just so you get the idea there's for example in self-management there for particular ways this manifests as competencies and the best leaders for example are able to display oh you know six or eight of these twelve the worst leaders just one or two so it's extremely important if your interest in this
after there's going to be a reception and we're going to make available a set of primers that explain in much more detail each of these twelve competencies so I have a question for you I'm going to ask you to evaluate your own IQ and I'm going to count down from which is really high two nine eight and so on highest next time next next next and please raise your hand how many people in terms of IQ are a ten nine eight seven six I'm not going any lower don't worry now the question is emotional intelligence
how many people in terms of emotional intelligence are ten nine eight seven six okay that's it actually that's the wrong question the better question is in what way are you emotionally intelligent because if you look at this you can have strengths and limits across this maybe you're very good at adaptability its self-awareness but not so good at persuasion or conflict management we it's it's like going to the doctor and getting a physical and you have you know ten ways to look at your blood cholesterol lipids different you know different ratios and so on it's the
same with emotional intelligence so really want what you want to know as a leader or in HR or as a coach where do I or where does this person stand in terms of strengths and limitations across the entire spectrum of emotional intelligence because then you know where you need to work and where you need not to bother so let me bring and another level of this because my model of emotional intelligence is actually based in an understanding of kind of fundamental understanding of neuroscience and you did here already some neuroscience but I want to emphasize
two brain circuits or sets of circuits one is the prefrontal cortex which is the executive center of the brain it's like the leader of the brain this is where this is where the circuits for mindfulness are for the most part this is where the circuits for comprehension for Ellis's for learning are it's right behind the forehead but in the middle of the brain is are the emotional centers and the emotional centers are actually what the brain was designed the prefrontal area the top of the brain the neocortex in evolution was an afterthought that's an added
app an accessory if you will and this becomes clearest when you understand that the brains function is for survival and the emotional centers have been fundamental for that the emotional centers particularly the amygdala there Migdal a is part of this circuitry in the emotions which is the brains radar for threat right now your amygdala and my amygdala your amygdala is asking one question am i safe if the answer is no if the Emidio thinks there's a threat to safety it can capture the rest of the brain it has a privileged position it can take over
the prefrontal cortex but it does this well first of all it was some information about the amygdala how many people here remember when television had something called static like a fuzzy picture this was way before digital am I the only one that had static you can say okay so what the amygdala sees is like static it gets a very small portion of all the information coming into the senses most of it goes to other parts of the brain but the amygdala has a decision rule I'd rather be safe than sorry so it makes very quick
decisions on very poor data and the reason and not only that it compels us to act immediately and it favors things that we have done over and over and over again so that for example things that we did early in life childish behaviors are more likely to occur when the amygdala is running the show the amygdala also does some important things to the prefrontal cortex it makes our attention fixate on what it thinks the threat is so if the threat is oh and here's another thing the threat is usually in modern life this was designed
for you know a saber-toothed tiger that was going to eat us but in modern life the threat is some complex social reality why did she send me that text that upset me so much not only do you think about it immediately you think about it when you wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning that's a sign of the amygdala running the show there's another thing the amygdala when it takes over the prefrontal cortex can shift and shuffle the hierarchy of memory this means that if you're having a fight with the person that you
love the most your marital partner or whomever at the peak of that fight it is very hard to remember the answer to one question the question is why am i with this person don't try to answer that question at that moment I have a friend who studies marital fights at the University of Washington he says what you should do is separate for 20 minutes at least and let the amygdala calm down and then think about it and then you can start to answer the question so I don't know if in France if if it was
a very big story in America is a very big news story Elon Musk the founder and CEO of Tesla has been having a terrible time getting tests the cars produced one thing is they over automated and the and those robots and so on keep breaking down he finally ended up sleeping in on the floor of the factory spending time day and night trying to get things going trying to solve problems and he basically had I think an amygdala hijack the amygdala hijack there are three signs you have a very rapid emotional response it's typically very
negative like fear or anger and you do something that impulsive that you regret later I don't think this happens here in France does it of course it does happens to all of us Elon Musk's amygdala hijack was a tweet that he sent where he claimed that he was going to take the company private and that he had financing well that had such ramifications for the stock value of Tesla that the governmental organization the SEC fined him twenty million dollars and made him step down as head of the board of directors of Tesla they let him
remain as CEO in other words it was a big slap big punishment so that's an amygdala hijack if you have an amygdala hijack the odds are you'll do or say something that you later wish you had not and I would also say that anytime someone has an amygdala hijack at work it's bad for business so the amygdala works this way let's say the amygdala thinks I'm not being treated fair this guys are not being fair to me then the amygdala thinks like a child that you know the the logic of the amygdala is the logic
of a dream or poetry or a novel so anything can happen and it's very childish so the amygdala thinks this guy's not treating me fairly and it sends an impulse let's slug this guy okay if you're lucky that impulse will go from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex which will draw together other information very important like this is your boss so I'm not gonna slug him I'll smile and change the subject right so emotional intelligent is the smooth integration of the logical prefrontal centers and the emotional centers there's another way to look at this this
is a function that's been known in psychology for hundred years it's between performance in any domain that's the vertical the high or the low and then the horizontal this is actually levels of cortisol a stress hormone you need some cortisol to get going in the morning but disengagement that the lower-left there is a very huge problem in workplaces disengagement means I'm going to be doing this video game at work but when the manager comes in I'll hit a button and then a spreadsheet will instantly appear in other words people who don't care about the work
they're doing what you want to do is help them in one way but also help people at the opposite end that's under stress in another way people are under extreme stress are basically having a big delay hijacks all the time and no time to recover this is called there was an article in journal Science called the neurobiology of frazzle and it means that you're totally ready to burnout and quit so with these people for reasons I'll explain to you in a moment mindfulness is actually very helpful people under stress people who are disengaged at the
other end of the spectrum you want to motivate you want to inspire you want to get them involved engaged any way you can because where you want everybody to be is at the top of the arc the optimal zone this is where people work at their best in neuroscience it's called neuro neural harmony and cognitive science is called optimal cognitive efficiency it means whatever skill or talent you have you're able to demonstrate it at the top there was research done in this at University of Chicago where they asked people in many different callings basketball players
ballerinas chess champions neurosurgeons tell us about a time you out yourself even you were surprised at your performance and it didn't matter what the specifics were but each person was describing the identical internal mental state phenomenologically it was a state of absolute focus and of course mindfulness is a way to enhance focus full concentration is one of the elements of this optimal state ease and flexibility is another you feel that no matter how challenges change you can handle them you have natural confidence not in a boastful way you just feel I'll know I'll be able
to handle whatever comes up and very important it's a pleasant state it's kind of a joy it feels good to be able to perform at your best so this is sometimes called flow the research at Chicago used that term but it's important to realize that this is a capacity that mindfulness can enhance now I have to confess I'm a very early adopter of mindfulness in India I studied with a monk in Sri Lanka who at the time had wrote the only book that had the word mindfulness of the title in the English language jnana Panico
and I got to know the kind of first generation of teachers who brought mindfulness to the West and I've been an advocate ever since in fact I was I went back to Harvard and I said you know I think mindfulness is very important I'd like to do my dissertation research on it and they said that's like the stupidest thing we've ever heard they back then there was huge resistance to it now it's very very different of course at any rate last year I published a book which I think is in French is it in French
if did you find out altered traits is the English title not in French yet if there's any publishers in the crowd it's not in French at the the in the UK they published it under the title science of meditation which is actually more accurate we looked at by now when when I did my dissertation at Harvard when I was in graduate school in ancient times there were two or three published studies we could cite about anything related now they're more than six thousand my partner in writing the book who is a neuroscientist at University of
Wisconsin went through those had his team go through six thousand studies and identified sixty that are state of the art and we looked at those sixty to see given that these are in the top journals the best design studies what really are the benefits the effects of meditation of mindfulness and one of the things it's very important to know is that my friend Richard Davidson and I also are very old friends of Jon kabat-zinn who is mr. mindfulness now in the world Jon kabat-zinn developed what's called mindfulness based stress reduction which is the most well
researched variety of mindfulness it was originally designed for pain patients in a medical center at University of Massachusetts but now it's used in hospitals and clinics around the world and in businesses because it's been well documented that it works however Richard Davidson and John II did a study where they had people learn mindfulness and then they also had another group randomly assigned learned something called the health enhancement program this was a program and exercise and nutrition and the people who taught it were very enthusiastic about it just as the people who taught mindfulness were very
enthusiastic and the bottom line is that there was no difference in positive benefits between those two guru on any self-report measure what that means is if you're looking at a study of mindfulness and the only data is from what people say the question is did they have what's called an active control like the health enhancement program and if so was there a difference the real differences and there there are many differences have to do with brain effects and biological effects so when it comes to mindfulness the first aspect of what's improved is attention well of
course mindfulness is direct training and attention if you're being mindful of your breath does anybody use breath as a basis for mindfulness some people do well what's the the next thing you do you put your attention on your breath and then your mind wanders somewhere else that's the way the mind is wired then the question is when do you notice that your mind wandered and then do you bring it back to the breath that is the basic repetition in mindfulness it's like the neurological equivalent of going to a gym and lifting a weight and every
time you do a repetition this muscle gets that much stronger every time you bring your mind back we think the neural circuitry for paying attention for concentration for dealing with distraction gets that much stronger that's why mindfulness is such a useful tool in modern life and in resisting all of the flood of distractions that everyone leaders and not only leaders everybody faces today so one of the things you heard that multitasking is kind of a myth because there's a bottleneck and attention but still you know you're doing that important thing that you have to get
done today and you're really concentrated and then I got a text so you look at what's the text and then when while I'm looking I look at my email and I'll make a phone call that's what we call multitasking it's actually sequential tasking but still it's distraction then you go back to thing you were doing that important task and where your concentration was up here ordinarily it's now down here and you have to build it up again except if you did ten minutes of mindfulness that day research from Stanford suggests that mindfulness allows you to
go not lose concentration when you go back to that important thing where your concentration is needed another's this was a surprise they taught mindfulness and when I say taught mindfulness usually it's MBSR the kabat-zinn model because it's been so called manualized there's a standard way to teach it the basic course is about a half hour a day for a month that this is what they're studying when they did it at university of california they found that students had taken mindfulness as a compared to others did much much better on their graduate school entrance exam in
other words it seems to help students learn so it's strengthened circuitry in the prefrontal cortex so that's one thing it turns out that the same circuitry that it enhances also manages upsetting emotion it manages the amygdala so people become more calm and they're triggered less often and when they're triggered the upset is a less intense those are the two benefits and the another question is what can we do for kids I was in a school in New York City in the poorest part of that city had called Spanish Harlem these are kids who are raised
by you know single moms or on welfare they don't have a job and they're their children of single moms on welfare and it's a very traumatic violent place to grow up these were seven year olds and I went to observe the class and I thought it would be very chaotic but it wasn't they're very calm very focused the teacher said here's why every day we do this exercise where each child takes their favorite stuffed animal finds a place to lie down on a rug puts that on their tummy and watches it on the in-breath and
fall on the out-breath rise onion breath fall on the out-breath this is mindfulness for seven-year-olds it can be taught in any age the function that this strengthens is technically called cognitive control cognitive control is the ability to put your attention where you want it and do ignore distractions to ignore that upsetting feeling and to stay with the task at hand it's essential to job performance it's essential to learning they measured cognitive control in children four to eight in a city in New Zealand every child born in one year more than a thousand kids then they
found them track them down when they're in their mid-30s you can only do this in New Zealand there's no way you could track them down in their 30s in America but they found them and they found something really important children who had higher cognitive control were doing better financially and had better health than children with poor cognitive control this effect was stronger as a predictor than the IQ of the child or the wealth of the family they grew up in in other words it's a way to level the playing field for all children by helping
them develop this capacity and mindfulness seems to be a way to do it there are many schools now I just was at a meeting of schools where they're introducing mindfulness I don't know in France in France do you have one central curriculum it comes from the government yes no yes I'm sorry to hear it the reason is that it's very hard to introduce mindfulness in a school that has a government control curriculum because the people who decide what's in the curriculum will need a lot of persuading so but I I really advocate it and something
teachers can do schools can do on their own so the data says the longer you do it and what I mean is the more lifetime hours you've been a meditator the stronger these benefits get so it's just an argument for meditation let me now look at the particular competencies these are the self-management competencies there's self-awareness and there's I don't like emotional self-control that's what is in English I prefer emotional balance positive outlook adaptability achievement these are what you see in the high performers particularly in leadership and all of these I think are helped by mindfulness
in in various ways I won't go into the details but we do have the the primers if you want to understand they're better let me go on to the second kind of focus a leader needs Leah focus on the other person and this has to do with a different set of brain circuits this is what's called the social brain this is how two brains interact it's a relatively new discovery in neuroscience instead of looking at one brain and one body and one person they're looking at two brains and two people as they interact and they
discovered new circuits the the first discovery actually was totally by accident it was in a lab in Italy there are different versions of this but I'll tell you the one I like they were studying one neuron one brain cell in a monkey that only activated when that monkey lifted its arm didn't do anything any other time and one afternoon the monkeys sitting still and that neuron is firing and nobody knows why then they realised why so hot day in Italy a lab assistant had gone out for a gelato and he's standing in front of the
monkey and every time he lifts his arm to take a lick the monkeys neuron for the same activity fires that was the discovery of what's called mirror neurons the human brain is peppered with mirror neurons they activate inside us what the other person the person in front of us is feeling is doing is intending it helps us keep interactions move harmonious it's not the only kind of circuit there there many circuits another has to do with kind of the chemistry of rapport a rapport is really mutual presence to people who are fully attentive you could
say mindful with the other person that's the first ingredient is full mutual attention and the second ingredient has to do with a different set of neurons they're called oscillators they determine for example when someone extends a hand to shake it how we take that hand how we shake it in football it's how will you you can kick the ball in human survival they're very important think about this at the moment of a first kiss oscillators determine the velocity at which two skulls come together and if they got it wrong it would probably be the end
of the human species I think so oscillators are extremely important and they create a kind of nonverbal synchrony that if you see two people in rapport having conversation and turn off the sound and just watch the bodies it's as though they were choreographed and the third element of rapport is it feels good it's interpersonal flow and it comes from having full mutual presence that's interpersonal mindfulness if you will the another element of the social brain is that it creates a kind of invisible channel for emotions between people they did a study at Harvard Medical School
where doctors and patients were filmed while they interacted and their physiology was measured heart rate and so on and then the patient is asked look at a video of this and tell us when you thought the doctor wasn't listening didn't care didn't understand me at all versus really was listening that had that full presence really understood really cared if the patient said didn't care to physiologies were independent if the patient said she really understood he really cared then it was like two birds flying in formation so we're actually it seems biologically active in the other
person if we're fully present there was an article in the Harvard Business Review called the human moment which said what we've just heard if you want to have an effective interaction put aside your distractions no cell phone a way to turn away from your screen turn off your internal talk and pay full attention be mindful be present to the person in front of you it's very sad that we need an article in Harvard Business Review to tell us this because if this used to be what people did all the time but there's been a kind
of normative creep for attention and distraction and our tech Deveaux used to be when you're walking down the street and someone took out a cell phone and started talking to someone else the Time magazine had a word new word in English language for that moment they said the word is pizzle you're puzzled and you're kind of pissed off too because that was in 2007 now it's routine nobody blinks that's the creep of attention and distraction so okay I'm told there's 10 minutes remaining so hardened me but I'm gonna shuffle through what I was going to
say forget this forget that no I'll tell you so but I'll do it briefly these are the competencies that are based on the social brain these are the relationship the first one is empathy there are three kinds of empathy there's cognitive empathy or I understand how you think there's emotional empathy I feel with you and there's a third kind which is really important for leadership and for everyone else it's called empathic concern each of these draws in a different set of circuits in the brain empathic concern draws on the mammalian caretaking circuit three which is
to say a parent's load for a child it's really caring about the other person it's not enough just to be able to know how the person thinks and feels then you can be very manipulative you know sociopathy but if you care about the person and the person feels you care about them then you develop trust that's where rapport can blossom that's where the best relationship occurs so empathy is very important organizational awareness knowing how decisions are made in your organization for example and then influencer being able to go to the right person to make the
you know convinced them to make the decision you want and managing conflict and inspiring leadership these are so important the coach and mentor I want to focus on coach and mentor means that leaders understand that you can't just dismiss people as they are today you need to help them develop further strengths and you do that through having caring about the person I'm going to ask a colleague of mine Michele Nevarez to stand up if you're interested in this Michelle and I and another team have developed a way to help leaders in any organization become coaches
also we've developed a whole suite of ways to enhance motional intelligence including a coaching certification for people who are actually professional coaches so if you want to find out more Michele is the person she'll be upstairs at the reception we're about to have so then there are leadership styles and how they matter this data is an evaluation of the leaders style and then how direct reports felt about the climate that leader created and you see there are two very positive Styles one is kind of inspirational being able to articulate a shared goal from the heart
to the heart and this means you can give performance feedback in terms of how the matters for where we're all going and want to go then there's being a coach and a mentor this is having a conversation at least a conversation about not the job but the person what do you want from life what do you want from your career it's a one-on-one conversation how can I help you that's the beginning of the coach or mentor relationship but both of those create very positive emotional climate there are leaders who understand that having a good time
together builds social and emotional capital leaders who understand if you're going to make a decision it's good to get inputs to make a consensus decision because then more people will actually execute on the basis of that decision and then there are two styles that are very common but have a negative impact one is the pacesetter companies are have been hiring pace setters since the 2008 crisis because they're very good at quarterly targets but they hollow out the organization because the most talented people hate them they're only focused on numbers they haven't no ability for relationship
and the talent leaves people you get people who are more more disengaged when you have leaders like that and then there's the old fashioned command and control leader which has you know in this day and age is really not very helpful so let me finish by telling you how you get better at this the first thing is you need to ask yourself or ask the person do I care if you don't care forget it there's no way that you can proceed takes time it takes effort this involves a different kind of learning it's not one-shot
learning I hate to tell you this but coming to an event like this where someone expert like me talks about emotion intelligence what is not going to increase your emotional intelligence at all it may help you understand why it's important but once you understand that it takes work it and the work is very specific and this is very well established the research the second step is that you want to get clear feedback and one way to do that is a 360 many organizations have their own 360s I have one that's on those 12 leadership competencies
called the ESC I 360 I think yeah at the bottom ocean and social competence inventory this is the website don't write it down take a picture it's very long so that's the next step but use try to get other people's view in or that's what the power of a 360 is we have blind spots but that getting input from other people as a way to get a realistic picture and then getting support that's maybe having a coach maybe doing with a learning partner but it helps very much to have someone who you can talk to
particularly when things go wrong and you want to you be prepared for the next time whatever it is that made it made you go off track happens and then practice at every opportunity have a learning plan that's something very specific that you're gonna practice like you want to be a better listener I want to be fully present to people you have to remind yourself to do that I'm going to take more than five minutes to finish I just want to warn you so don't get angry at me please so do one thing please cross your
arms just put down your notepad cross your arms just cross your arms that's what a habit feels like it's very comfortable now cross your arms the other way with the other Armand that's what cultivating a new habit feels like it feels strange at first so this is because the brain has default circuits that are the basis of the habit if you're doing something new you have to be intentional first of all you need mindfulness you need to notice this is a moment I can try that new thing I can cue that new sequence whatever it
may be like forgetting my distractions and paying full attention the person in front of me that's a habit change if you've been a poor listener and data suggests that people in positions of power leaders physicians and so on tend to listen to a person for about 18 seconds and then take over the conversation and steer it in the direction they think it needs to go in other words prefer their poor leadership as ramp poor listening is rampant in leadership so to develop to the opportunity of the possibility of habitually having human moments being fully present
you need to be mindful of the opportunity in the first place so you can then practice doing a new way so you practice at every opportunity and I'd like to finish by talking about the third focus which is the system's focus I'll tell you a quick story there's a place in California called Esalen Institute it sits on a high cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean one day esslyn invited a Zen Archer to give a demonstration and let's say this is the end of the cliff and there's the ocean they put a big target here and the
Zen Archer has his huge bow and he goes way way way back he composes himself in a kind of Zen way then very mindfully pulls back the arrow lets it fly and it goes way over the target and lands in the ocean and everybody's shocked but he says bullseye that Zen Archer was named koban Chino his star student was a man named Steven jobs Schopenhauer says genius is hitting the target others do not see for the Zen Archer it was the process that mattered not the goal for Steve Jobs the ability to create the iPhone
the iPad the I this the I that which were tech devices we never even dreamed of but once we saw we had to have them that was genius there are two kinds of strategic thinking one is exploitation a good example is blackberry blackberry 10 15 years ago captured the market for mobile phones for people in business today does anybody in this room have a blackberry they're very rare blackberry was run by two engineers two co-ceos who kept improving the product they had the security of the system the keyboard and so on they didn't see the
competition they didn't see the iPhone in the eye Android which is what most everyone brings to the office today and they went out of business they were exploiting that was their strategy they had a cash cow and if you look at the brain of someone who's exhibiting the exploitative strategy you see that their circuitry for pleasure it feels good to be making money though that easily that circuitry is activated the other strategy is exploration that's what Steve Jobs was constantly doing if you look at the brain of someone who's using that strategy it takes exertion
it's actually the prefrontal cortex it's effortful to look around it's something new but that's the only way you're going to innovate so those are two strategies and I've finally let me suggest where I think a future jackpot might be for businesses it has to do with the climate and the fact that the human brain is blind to the things we do that are destroying the planet it's a sad fact of our sensory system we don't see immediately the impact of what we do as a result the eight global systems of support life in the planet
are under threat climb you know the co2 climate is one of eight systems that's the tragedy the opportunity is this every child today is growing up with a doomsday scenario of what's going to happen to the planet younger people who are by the way the market of the future are going to be more and more and more interested in the way their parents and grandparents are relatively indifferent to the impacts of what of a company on the survival of the planet that means there will be a premium on not only sustainability but things like biomimicry
by that I mean take styrofoam styrofoam is a horrible thing it's made out of oil and it never dies it ends up in small or - called nurdles circulating in the middle of the the great bodies of water on earth fish eat it and die and so on - students at a tech school invented an alternative which is made out of rice hulls which is the outside of a rice that you have to take off in order to make rice edible and mushroom roots that's all it it's made of and it works just as well
as styrofoam they founded a company eco vation this is a model for the future the innovations that will be most profitable are going to reinvent everything in the material world it's all up for grabs everything in this room is terrible for the planet I'm sorry to say however we don't know of what way it's terrible because we have no idea how it was made if you're in an industry then you have an opportunity to do things in a better way so let me leave you with this that in the next 50 years the greatest economic
opportunity will be in innovating for the planet and finally let me leave you with this thought I wrote a book called force for good with the Dalai Lama it's his vision for the world and he said something that I really endorse he said whenever you make a decision ask yourself three questions who benefits is it just you or a group is it just your group or everyone and is it only for the present or also for the future thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you
