social-brain dot com

there are many different kinds of stress, some can actually be good for us in small doses, however on the whole stress hurts people.

Stress, it affects every single one of us whether we like it or not. Stress can stem from a variety of things: work, play, love, family, and the list can go on for miles. Anything that we’re emotionally invested in, directly and even indirectly, has the potential to cause us stress in our lives and often does. You cannot avoid stress. Eventually it will seek you out and hunt you down. So if you can’t avoid stress, you might as well be armed to better deal with it.

Like, are we Talking Good Stress or Bad Stress?

Actually, not all stress is the same. For anyone who has ever played a sport you’re probably familiar with butterflies, and I’m not talking about the animal formerly known as the caterpillar. What I am talking about is that queasy feeling that you get in your stomach right before the big game. However, a small dose of stress, like butterflies, can go a long way. Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, openly admits to having had butterflies before big games, but that didn’t sop him from performing at amazing levels through out his career. It may have actually helped fuel him.

A stark contrast to butterflies is aversive stress. This is a serious form of stress that is debilitating, and can significantly hinder our performance. This type of stress manifests itself differently in every single person. In fact, neuroscientists struggle to link a single set of universal physiological responses to aversive stress because every person perceives stimuli differently and therefore reacts differently. Dogs may not frighten me; however dogs may scare the hell out of one of my friends leading to a stressful response. This is the type of stress I want to focus on in this post, aversive stress.

Defining Aversive Stress

University of Washing professor and author of Brain Rules, John Medina, describes this negative form of stress as having three main attributes.  1. There must be an aroused physiological response detectable by an outside party.  2. The stressor must be perceived as aversive, meaning if you had the choice of avoid the situation all together you would. 3. The person must not feel in control of the stressor.

A Stressed Brain is a Useless Brain

In relation to stress there are two key hormones at work in our brains, adrenaline and cortisol.  At low levels cortisol helps our brains function optimally by facilitating thought and cognition. In response to a stressor soaring cortisol levels paired with a boost of adrenaline can literally paralyze the brain’s critical abilities. In this stressed state we no longer focus on the task at hand, but instead we shift our focus and attention to the stressor which results in sub par performance of our task. In addition to how we respond, prolonged stressful states can actually negatively affect the way we learn and intake information. Furthermore, stress lowers our body’s ability to fight off illness because our immune systems weaken with our hormonal surges.

Control Freak

Stressors that are perceived as out of our control often do the most damage to our brains and bodies. When we perceive to have little or no control over a situation the hypothetical negative outcomes we tend to focus on are knock out punch. It’s simple. Human beings don’t like the unknown. In relation to stress, human beings hate the unknown, especially when the unknown is almost certain to result in a negative outcome. Our current economy is a prime example. There is no telling how bad our economic situation may continue to get, but because the future is unknown and laced with negativity it gives many people a reason to stress.

On the flip side having too much control leaves us too emotionally (hormonally) invested in things that may not be of actual concern to us. It’s important to learn what you can and cannot control in your life and more importantly accept it; by doing so you can deflect potentially stressful situations. This is easier said than done and often requires you to pull away from your emotions in a heightened state to examine your response from a logical stand point.

How we deal with stress has a lot to do with our biology. Some people are just biologically better at dealing with stress than others. In fact, men, on average tend to be better at coping with stress than women. I will note that this does not make men more capable than women, because on average women are much better at perceiving other’s emotional states. It’s a give and take of social intelligence that balances out in the end.

Stress at Work

Whether you’re an entry level employee or an executive you’re face to face with stress every single day in the work place. Stress is a trickle down effect from the very top of our organizations that can permeate the entire culture of a company. There is, and always will be, constant pressure to improve and hit our marks. Sometimes this pressure is enough to cause aversive stress, and for some it does.

Leaders and bosses should be extremely mindful of stress formation and stress reaction amongst their employees. The pressure of constant improvement coupled with negative outbursts from a boss can be disastrous for professionals. Stress, like our emotions, is contagious. If the tone of management has become increasingly negative or perceived as hostile, you can rest assure the quality of work will suffer in the long run unless changes are made. For this reason bosses should make a conscious effort to focus on how they choose to motivate and communicate with their staff. If you’re in the unfortunate situation of working in a job that causes you great amounts of stress my best advice is to get out. There is no telling the toll that the stress may be taking on your brain and body.

I love quotes. There’s something about summing up a grand theory in one or two sentences just resonates with so many people. It’s amazing to think that a few sentences can become the mantra for your life or completely make you rethink your perspective on, well, anything. Quotes are often so memorable because they elicit an emotional response. It’s the reason why they stick with us.

A few weeks back I was sitting the lobby of a charter school that I work with. As I was waiting to be called in for my meeting I was looking around at the bulletin boards and admiring the artwork and signs. “Prom tickets on sale now!” “Don’t forget to order your 2009 year book!” “Class of 2009 we will miss you!” Amongst all of the clutter on the board there was a quote written on a piece of paper. It said:

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. ”           – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow was a wise man that obviously lived prior to the invention of the razor

After I stopped giggling at the author’s name it set in how outstanding this quote really was. This quote, to me, summed up the entire essence of social intelligence. I spent some time researching the meaning of this quote and as it turns out it is part of the action/intention debate which asks ourselves, how come we judge ourselves by our intentions when we judge others by there actions?

Actions Talk, Very Loudly

As we have discussed in previous posts our actions speak very loudly. In fact neuroscience has proven time and time again that in most cases the delivery is far more important that the actual message it self. In our own brains we think before we act, at least I hope so. Every actionable behavior we take place in is direct result of our intentions, or at least it should be. Most social confrontations stem from a lack consistency in perception between the actions we take and the intentions we have. Here is a prime example:

she's just trying to get from point A to point B alive...

We’ve all been behind a slow driver on the road. For those of us who are in a hurry we find the pain of being forced to drive the speed limit equal to that of being water boarded by Dick Cheney himself. So what do we do? We drive up on the bumper of the slow driver until they turn or the opportunity to pass presents itself. At that point we fly by them and stare them down as if to say “what the hell is your problem?!” Yet sometimes as we pass the car in haste we see that the person driving is a very elderly person and suddenly our anger turns to guilt as we rationalize the situation.

The driver’s action: very slow driving. The driver’s intention: safety.

Often times a simple understanding of the other person’s intentions is enough to defuse a social confrontation before it starts. So instead of getting pissed at the driver in front of us for their slow pace, one could simply ask the question, “I wonder why they are driving so slowly?” Looking at the example above, you can get pissed off at someone for driving slow, however it’s more difficult to get pissed off at someone for trying to be safe.

Where our Intentions Come From

If we examine others’ intentions as we do our own intentions we can begin to optimize our social interactions and understanding. It is a common attribute of the socially intelligent to think outside themselves and understand others for who they are as well as what they do. You’ll begin to realize that intentions are formed from experiences and this will lead to a deeper understanding of whomever it is you’re interacting with.

1. Experience  –> 2. Intentions –> 3. Actions

Most people make the mistake of starting to perceive at stage three in this process. It’s like only reading the last chapter of a book and thinking you got the whole story. It’s wrong.

The other side of this coin is to examine your actions. Sometimes it helps to put your intentions on the shelf while you take a deep look at your actions in a given situation. This will allow you to get a glimpse of how others might perceive you.

Amazing to think a quote on a bulletin board got this post started. What are some of your favorite quotes? Leave them in the comment section. I’d love to read them and share them with other social-brainiacs.

Movers and Shakers 

I have a niece and she is crazy. I mean she is just plain nuts. She is also only two years old, so she is living up to the “terrible two’s” stereotype, if not surpassing it. Now I don’t mean to say that she is a bad kid – and she’s not, she’s absolutely adorable – but she just gets into everything. She is curious, as all children are. If something has her attention she’s going to make a full effort to explore and find out more about it. The need to explore is a human trait and is deeply rooted in our neural evolution. For thousands and thousands of years humans have been very active in exploring planet Earth (and other planets too). Our activity as a result of our exploration has had some pretty profound impacts on our brain development. 

 Humans are made to Move 

notice that all of these people are in motion. that could be you!

Who wants to walk 12 miles with me today? Any takers? Probably not.  It might surprise you to find out that our human ancestors traveled as much as 12 miles a day. They did this to find food, safety and to explore. Thousands of years of traveling did much to improve the brain functions of early man, and it still holds true for humans today. 

 Our brains make up only 2% of our body mass, yet account for 20% of our energy use. That’s an incredible fact considering that if the brain was like the rest of the body is should really account for 2% of energy use. Oxygen is vital to brain nourishment. Activity (exercise) does humans a lot of good. When the body is moving during exercise it pumps blood and oxygen through out the body and especially to the brain. Nitric Oxide is a flow regulating molecule that through exercise creates more blood vessels in the brain in some pretty key areas. This process of neurogenesis helps improve our cognitive ability. 

 Don’t be a couch potato 

I highly recomend this book.

University of Washington Neurologist and author of the book Brain Rules, John Medina, shows that our society gives us a lot of reasons be a couch potato. Things like television, computers, and video games often allow people to sit around for hours upon hours with little body movement. Couple that with fast food and you wonder why America is the world’s fattest nation.  John goes a step further and examined some of our most institutional environments that we created for ourselves and how they negatively impact our brain development and chemistry. I’m talking about classrooms and cubicles, the mainstays of our educational and professional systems. Think about it for eight plus hours a day our children and coworkers are often sitting motionless at a desk or trapped in some fabric-lined neural jail cell. For our brains to function optimally we as humans need to move. 

Active Performance 

It’s important to note that exercise alone will not improve your cognitive ability but repeated tests have shown a strong association to improved cognitive performance. In fact it was found that physically fit kids and adults had faster response times compared to their over weight counter parts. What’s more amazing is that physical activity and exercise were found to decrease your odds of Alzheimer Disease by 60% and stroke by an amazing 57%. 

The great news is that you don’t have to run marathons to benefit from exercise. All you have to do is walk about 20 minutes a day three days a week and be more conscious of your dietary intake. It really doesn’t take much. It should also be noted that balance is key to exercise. Overdoing workouts will negatively impact your brain function. So be fit in a manner that comfortably works best for you. Walk when you can and breathe deep and often because Oxygen is so important your brain’s health and development. 

 We have the same brains our early ancestors did that walked 12 miles a day. So be active and make the most of your brain. I’ll leave you with this quote from John Medina that sums up why humans are made to move.  

“We were not used to sitting in a classroom for 8 hours at a stretch. We were not used to sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours at a stretch. If we sat around the Serengeti for 8 hours – heck, 8 minutes – we were usually somebody’s lunch.”

I am a firm believer that everybody sees the world uniquely. All of us have our own lens in thru we perceive and experience the world around us. For example, two people may walk through the same building and perceive two different experiences: The artist may see shapes and shadows of the architecture of the lobby. The musician might hear the subtle harmonies and melodies of the crowd of people as the move about. This diversity of perception is amazing and beautiful and I believe all should better understand it.

 It has been said that anyone can draw – I mean physically draw – however, the difference with artists is how they see what it is they’re drawing. Have you ever tried to describe the lens in which you see the world?

 Neuroplasticity: What makes us different from each other?

 Neuroplasticity is defined as the changing of neurons and the organization of their networks through the function of experience. A persons brain is uniuqe unto themselves. It’s like a fingerprint. No ones brain anatomy is the same and no two peoples exeperiencesare exactly the same. Our brains are highly efficient meaning that they are highly responsive and adaptable to our environments and experiences. Recently I was listening to neuroscientist Michael Merzenich speak on the very topic of neuroplasticity and he said a really funny thing. He discussed how we come into this world, and that as babies we’re born stupid. Now I admit it’s kind of an abusrd thought to think babies are stupid, but he is actually onto something.

bahaha just kidding!

 A baby cannot walk, it cannot talk, a baby cannot even hold an object in its hands. This baby isn’t stupid, it’s just a neurological blank slate. As the development of the child begins it’s brain will develop in a way that best fits the environment that it’s being reared in. This first phase of neuroplasticity is involuntary and it’s called the Adaption Phase and takes place early infancy. The neurological development of the child is dependent on the environment and the stimuli around them. People, sounds, smells, lighting, and even emotions fill this environment and the child is at the developmental mercy of the stimuli around them. As our brains adapt to our world the ground work for how we perceive is being laid.

 The next phase of neuroplasticity is one that we’ll spend the rest of our lives in. This phase of neuroplasticity is completely voluntary as we are in control of actions. It’s called the Specialization Phase. It’s called such because our brains, in the process of remaining efficient, have trimmed our perception to very specialized processes. The plasticity of this phase is slow moving, unlike the adaption phase, and requires a great deal of repetition and practice.

 Neurodiversity: Deficiencies or Differences?

Now, most people’s brains may be adapted to different stimuli, however the process of plasticity for people is very much the same. In certain cases though the process of plasticity can deviate from the normal course. Autism is a prime example of this. Though much about Autism remains a mystery, meaning it’s still unknown if the cause is environmental or biological factors, the most recent studies show plasticity related problems. In the adaption phase of Autism the neurons of the brain wire themselves haphazardly rewiring the brain in a new fashion different from most people.

five year olds drawings. girl with autism on the left and a standard girl on the right.

If the talent of an artist is how they see this is a telling comparison of a two five year-old’s drawings. The drawing on the left is that of a autistic girl and on the right  a typical girl’s drawing. Because the wiring of the brain is different in the autistic girls she is able to see a horse differently. The girl on the right sees the entire horse. The autistic girl on the left sees all of the greatly detailed parts of the horse rather than the horse as a whole. We know this because when most people draw a human or an animal they start with the head or the face, when most autistic people draw they start with other detailed parts of body. The girl on the left started her drawing with the horse’s hooves and then the rider, and as she went along connected the pieces of the horse to complete this sketch. In fact most autistic people lack common social skills because they have difficulty reading emotion and people’s facial expressions. This is not surprising given what we’ve learned about how the image of the horse on the left was drawn.

 I firmly believe that these neural differences are not deficiencies. We just have to better understand how others see the world, how they experience the world. The old ideals of science was to study universals of people, however this is becoming outdated. Rather than study how we are all alike we should study how we are different and embrace it and learn from it. I have been fortunate to work with several autistic children through sports and observation and all of them have shown me how unique and amazing our differences really are. Artist, autistic or not, we have a lot to learn from each other. With unlimited ways to see the world diverse vision and understanding is the only way to see the entire spectrum of human possibility.

Every person has some sort of desire to better themselves in some form or way. Being the social creatures that we are we almost always use social benchmarks to gauge our growth and development. I’m talking about awards, promotions, elections, friendships, fame, and love. Striving to become successful is important in personal and professional relationships. In order to get where we want to go we make goals for ourselves, and if everything works out in the end we reach our goals and hopefully become a success story. 

 Success, however, is not what it seems. It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a man’s character by how he deals with hardships, but you can tell more about a man’s character by how he deals with success. Success can take many forms and is the aspiration of many, but success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance will always lead you to failure that could have easily been avoided. Success is the kiss of death. Don’t believe me? Take these organizations for example: The Roman Empire, The Soviet Union, Enron, General Motors, Michael Jackson, and the list goes on. I believe that we have to fundamentally change our view of success in this country so that we can weather the storms of success that the future may bring. To do this we’re going backtrack and take a look at goal setting.

 The American Nightmare

 In a recent survey of 18-25 year olds conducted by The Pew Research Center that focused on “the American Dream”, 81% said their dream was the become rich, and 51% said their dream was to become famous. This is a far cry from the American dreams of our parents and grandparents. They once dreamed of owning a house of their own and providing for their family. Here we are some 40-50 years later and our dreams have been stretched to absurd wealth and fame. Alarmed? You should be Gen Y is our future. I’m nervous and I’m only 24. I’m in the thick of this mess, but alas I have not yet been perverted by dreams of wealth and paparazzi. 

success can lead to this...

Whenever I work with college classes I always talk about this survey, because when you hear it sounds really absurd.  What I try to explain to the students is that it’s okay to want to be successful but you have to understand that just wanting to be successful isn’t enough to actually achieve it. Many people believe that attributes like wealth, fame and success are goals themselves when in fact they are actually byproducts of hard work, growth and development.  Michael Jordan was famous because he was the best at basketball, Dave Matthews is famous because he’s a dedicated and talented musician, and Gandhi was known the world over because he was a person who strove to be the pinnacle of morality and righteousness. Their fame was secondary to their talent and hard work.

 Goals and Objectives

Goals and success are just concepts. Objectives, however, are very real. The only true way to reach the level of success you desire is to set obtainable objectives in your life. If your goal is to get an A in a college course then make your objective to read every chapter. If your goal is to become a better baseball player make your objective to take 100 ground balls after every practice. Are you getting the idea? Objectives are what bridges the gap between where you’re at now and where you want to be. Objectives put you in motion; they ensure you’re moving towards your goal by breaking it down in to manageable chunks. Set goals in your life, but more importantly set objectives and stick to them. Objectives will get you where you want to go in life.

 Most people who reach success have done a great job a sticking to their objectives to get them to that point in their life. However, one of the most difficult things is to stick to your objectives once you’ve reached your goal. Most people welcome in the arrogance and forget what got them to that point in their life. Never forget your objectives.

 The Great Ones

these two sport giants understand the true meaning of success

 The great ones are the people who have continual consistent success. Michael Jordan won his first three NBA Championships by working hard to become one of the most explosive players in the game. His second three championships were won late in his career after he’d lost a step in his speed. He reset his objectives and focused his game around a new shot, the “fade-away jumper” and dominated the competition in a completely new way.

 Tiger Woods is another prime example of continual success. After winning more major tournaments in his young career than most golfers win in their life times he decided to set a new objective to correct his swing. This wasn’t easy because Tiger struggled for a few tournaments, but all the while he remained committed to swinging his clubs the correct way knowing that it would make him a more consistent golfer in future tournaments. The end result was more major tournament wins including winning the US Open with an injured leg. Most people would be happy with a single major victory but Tiger knew that to keep winning majors he needs to set objectives to develop all aspects of his game.

 Success is Dynamic

 Many people have the misconception that success and leadership are the end result of our objectives, but that’s simply not true. With each success in your life you’re stepping through the door for another challenge. Success is dynamic and like you it’s always changing. Understand your talents, identify your weaknesses, create your goals, and follow through with your objectives that will lead to success. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Always repeat.

You’re Going to Fail

You are going to fail. It’s that simple. You are going to fail. Now it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but at some point down the line you’re going to mess up.  And it’s not going to be some little screw up either. It’s going be really bad. For some of you, you’re going to see it coming. For others you’re going to get blindsided. Some of you, bless your hearts, are going to do everything right and then guess what, you’re still going to fail. Some of you probably all ready failed. Have you gotten the hint yet? Everyone fails in some form or way in their lives, be it professional or personal. But one thing is for certain, there’s no getting around it. So you might as well embrace it, because failing isn’t as bad as you think.

Why We Fear Failure

A student fearing failure is a student handicapped by outdated educational ideals.

Now as you read that first paragraph your stomach probably turned a little bit and some thoughts started flowing through your head about things that could fail in your life right now. Maybe is that deal waiting to close? Maybe it’s that first date?  We as a society fear failure. We are terrified of it. Through our educational development we’ve been conditioned to fear being wrong. Failure is stigmatized in our educational systems. It is the reason why when a teacher asks a question in a kindergarten class all the hands go up and when a professor asks a question in a college course only a handful of hands go up. At some point along the way we as learners begin to think that being wrong is the worst possible outcome, and we run our business like this too.

Think about it this way. All of us spent the first 18-22 years of our lives being told that failing is wrong. The truth is that academic life is geared around your success. In most cases if you get a C in a course that is the pretty bad, when in reality its average. Failure in the real world is much different because anything goes and you need to take chances to succeed. If you consistently got a 4/10 on your college quizzes you would probably get an F in that class. However, if you were a professional baseball player and 4/10 at bats you got a hit you would be going to the All-Star Game.

The Other Side of Failure

Hypothetically failure is horrible, but in retrospect failure is often essential to success.  So why is failure essential to success? Well there are two main reasons that I can think of: The first is because only through our mistakes and failures we can truly begin to learn and develop. The other reason is that failing over time begins to make us resilient to aversive conditions.

Michael Jordan said it best. He said, “I can accept failure. What I can’t accept is not trying.” That is what I am getting at. If you try, if you really give it all you got you’re going to get something out of the process of your attempt. So the end result is that you goofed or things didn’t go according to plan. The odds are that if you truly gave your best effort you’re going to walk away knowing something that you didn’t before.  That is what matters most.  Ask any great champion or stand out in their field and they will tell you the same thing. Failure leads to success.

What Juggling Can Teach Us about Failure

In my senior year of college I heard Curtis Zimmerman give a speech. Curtis is a tall large framed man who slicked his brown hair back and wears thin wire framed glasses. Curtis is a world renowned entertainer and circus performer. He can swallow swords, eat fire and juggle like it’s nobody’s business. The culmination of his speech is to have a person come on stage who can’t juggle and learn how to juggle in front of the entire audience, and best of all he guarantees they will learn to juggle, and the person, nervous as they always are gets it every time. Curtis then puts on a juggling show where he’s juggling three, four, and five balls in different patterns and ways that people have never even seen before and he’s getting really into it he says, “Do you know why I am able to do this so well?… Because I’m not afraid to do this.” And he lets all of the balls fall on the floor. “The reason I can juggle so well is because I have dropped the balls more than any other person in this room. My past failures are the reason for my current success.”

The First Penguin

The late Randy Pausch PhD, author of The Last Lecture and former professor at Carnegie Melon, gave out a First Penguin award each year when he was teaching to the biggest failure in trying something big and new because he thought this should be celebrated. The idea came to him because First Penguins are the ones that risk their lives to jump into water first even though it might be filled wih predators.

Behold the glorious First Penguin. This penguin is the first to dive into the water. That water might be filled with predators or that penguin might get first dibbs on all the tasty fish in the ocean. Take the risk.

My best advice is if you’re not the first penguin find someone who will make you the first penguin, find someone who will push you into the frigid waters below. When I first started my job right out of college I was fortunate enough to have a boss who embraced failure and taking chances. Believe it or not I was scared to make phone calls to clients because I was scared I might mess up and fumble my words on the phone and sounds dumb. So my boss sat at my desk with me and made me make some calls. I was so nervous I messed up a lot at first, but then I realized that this wasn’t so bad at all. After while my initial fear wore off and I became quite good at the phones. Now I start off every phone block session with a random call to a business in a phone book just to get my goof up out of the way. I used to be that little penguin on the edge of the iceberg looking into the water, scared to jump. Today I’m still that little penguin, but now I’m doing back flips into the water and give it my best effort every time I jump.

Be that first penguin. Celebrate your attempt even if it ends up in failure, because odds are you’ve learned something important along the way. Good luck.

Some quotes and media on failing that you might like.

“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

                                                            - Batman’s Dad

 

“Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.”

- Carl Jung, Psychologist

 

“My reputation grows with every failure.”

                                                            - George Bernard Shaw

 

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

                                                            - John Dewey

“If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.”

We are in the midst of one of the most unique situations that American society has ever been in, and I’m not talking the economy, as bad as is. I’m speaking to something bigger than our fluttering monetary system, something that is so big and vast that most people are unaware that it affects their behavior every single day.  I’m speaking of course to the loss of our creativity and in some cases humanity in today’s society. I understand that this statement might seem over-the-top, but I have been fortunate enough to come across numerous lectures, articles, and books that solidify this as truth.

I want to focus on two segments of society where the structure that we’ve created over the past generations simply will no longer suffice to have our society become successful in the future: I’m talking about our educational system and our business system. Now you might be asking, where does social intelligence come into play with all of this? Social intelligence has a lot to do with the success of our future and more importantly managing the present situation we’re in to ensure we can see ourselves through these dismal times.

In a previous post I showed how emotions guide our decisions, and that being aware of the process of how we make decisions and actions (feel à think à act) can make a difference in managing yourself and others. This post is similar in the hopes that I can provide you a map for where this society has been as a result of our actions and where it is going so that you, the socially intelligent, are poised for success.

Education: “How intelligent are you? Never mind that question, what we should be asking is “How are you intelligent?”

If you examine the public schooling systems of the world you will notice that there are a plethora of similarities. The reason schooling systems share a lot of the same attributes is because all of them were designed to meet the needs of the industrial revolution.  Sir Ken Robinson, leading creativity expert, focuses on this outdated educational structure through out his speeches and writings. He submits that everywhere you go there is the same hierarchical ranking of subjects: Reading, Writing, Math, Science, and then you have the step children of education music, art, and dance. The reason why school systems were invented was because they wanted people to get a decent education to get a job.  In fact people were steered away from the arts on the basis of “You’ll never get a job doing that.”

The smart kids were pegged as the kids who excelled at the core hierarchical subjects. However, over the years we developed an extremely narrow view of intelligence and only recently of the past decade we’re coming to realize how wrong we really were.  Ours schooling system was designed to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. There’s just one problem, there is no more industrial revolution. Never the less, we continue to drive the core hierarchical subjects while bastardizing the arts in our schools, the subjects that foster emotional learning. For that reason our schools are killing creativity. But we can change.

No one knows what the future is going to be like years from now, but creativity is paramount to navigating the unknown. We need to educate our children to think nimbly and flexibly so that they can take their knowledge and apply it to whatever challenge is in front of them. We need transform our educational system to foster creativity and that is done primarily through actively communicating our knowledge.  Robinson’s book examines this current situation on a more grand scale. It’ called The Element: How Finding your Passion Changes Everything. He describes the element as when your talent and skill meets your passion. It’s a great way to examine your personal goals in life and for the future.

Business: “During the industrial revolution machines replaced the human back, today machines are replacing the human mind.”

I focus on the industrial revolution because it permeates every outdated educational and operational strategy in our society.  Like education, our business structure is affected by the same loss of creativity and sometimes the loss of humanity. The reason I say there has been a loss of humanity is because if you look at the current economic crisis it has a lot to do with greed, and placing profits before people. Sadly, this is true for a lot of businesses in the world however in our economy a lot got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and are now folding and going bankrupt.

Where Sir Ken Robinson writes and speaks on education, Daniel H. Pink focuses on where our business structure is heading. He submits that right-brainers (creatives and emotionally attuned people) will rule the future.  His New York Times Best Selling Book, A Whole New Mind, examines the trends of abundance, Asia, and automation as the main contributing factors that are drastically changing the landscape of business in this country.  Here’s a short summary. Abundance: there are so many products and services today that competition has driven price down and all of these goods and services are relatively the same leaving creativity and design as the only differentiating factor. Asia: There are a lot of smart capable people over there that can do the same jobs as our traditional thinkers in this country such as accounting, IT, and computer programming, etc. however, they do it at a fraction of our salaries so kiss those jobs goodbye.  Automation: Computers are better than humans at crunching numbers, running programs, and nearly all things that relating to static knowledge; the only thing a computer is not good for is creative thought and design.

Now that was a crude summary, however you can see where the opportunity lies in our future for success amongst the creative and emotionally and socially intelligent.  Education illustrates where are society has been, Business illustrates where our society is heading and it’s up to us to get in line and hone our unique talents and intelligences to be at the forefront of this change.  Personally I have taken the lessons of these books to heart. Understand and develop your unique talents and intelligences in life and pursue your passion. So many of my friends that I went to college with got degrees in the fields they did because it was what they felt they should of done to get a good job rather than what they wanted to do. Sadly some of my friends have been let go by there former employers however through moments of clarity they’ve come to realize that it has been a blessing in disguise because they now have the opportunity to pursue their passion.

This changing world is our oyster.

A Personal Perspective

I am the youngest of four boys in my family by nearly a decade. As a result of this I am the 24 year old uncle of my brothers’ combined nine nephews and nieces.  It has been so intriguing to watch all of the little rug rats grow and begin to take on their own personalities.  In addition to this I have been able to see the different parenting styles in which my brothers and sister-in-laws raise their children.  The other day I was at my brother’s house and his wife and him got in an argument regarding their oldest son, who is five, and how his crying is becoming an issue because it’s affecting his ability to make friends.  Now this particular nephew of mine has always been a crier and often times he cries in situations that he really shouldn’t; for example if he drops a toy or piece of food, or if the DVD player starts skipping during his favorite movie.

Being from a family of predominantly boys, we all noticed the crying from a young age, but at the same time we are highly respectful of each other and do not press the subject of “this is how you should raise your child”. Now during the argument that my brother and sister-in-law had I happened to be sitting in the room.  My sister-in-law asked me what I thought about the situation and I gave my assessment from a social intelligence – neuroscience perspective.

In this particular case my nephew resorts to crying because there is a swell of negative emotions that runs through him do to an event, such as dropping a toy. It’s important to remember that young children are feeling a lot of these emotions for some of the first times in their lives and processing these emotions takes time to understand even at a basic level. Additionally while children are growing they are getting surges of hormones that could effect emotions. The one thing I noticed about my nephew is that when he starts crying his mother takes immediate action to correct the situation to stop his crying, like picking up the fallen toy. The crying stops because the toy has been picked up but that doesn’t actually correct the situation in the long run.

 When it comes to emotions it is important to complete the emotion, as in feel the emotion, recognize the emotion, detach and move on. In the case of my nephew it’s clear that he only recognizes the emotion of sadness, but he does not have the opportunity to complete the emotion. His parents will do anything to stop the crying as fast as they can, and by doing so they inadvertently deny his the self processing and understanding of his emotions. Feel à Think à React – never forget this!

I have a niece who is the exact same age as my nephew I just described however, she is not a crier. The reason being is that her parents let her “cry it out”, which means they let her get the negative emotions completely out of her.  This might result in her being put in her room to scream and cry, but it never lasts for long. Now it should be stated that there are times that crying is okay like an injury or the loss of a pet. However, on the whole I am referring to the times when crying is not an accurate behavior to take in regards to an action. One thing I do with my nephew when I am with him that helps him is I talk him through his emotions. I was recently with him at a pizza party and he was playing with his spider-man toy and he dropped it off the table. Naturally the tears started rolling, but I didn’t pick up his toy, instead I asked him, “Why are you crying?”, “Where is your toy?”, and “Can you get your toy and will that make you not feel this way anymore?”  The end result was my nephew was able to understand the emotion he was feeling and understand that he would be able to fix the situation by his actions, such as picking up spider-man.  Overall I hope it makes him more comfortable with future emotions to not result so quickly to tears. It’s obvious that this will take both time and effort from family.

The Big Picture

One of the major cornerstones to mastering social intelligence is accurately understanding the emotions of others around you in addition to your own emotions. What I am beginning to realize is that my nephew is not alone in the way he is raised in regards to his emotions. It’s a growing trend in our society today that we should prevent our kids from feeling negative emotions. Last summer I went to a little league game where there were no winners or losers, and just the other week I spoke to a P.E. teacher who was angry because they [the administration] didn’t allow him to play dodge ball anymore in his classes because kids got sad when their team lost. I agree that kids should be happy but not at the expense of their future. Negative emotions are a part of life. All emotions are; good, bad or indifferent. The goal should not be to keep kids from feeling negative emotions, but rather to help them better understand their negative emotions and to have them learn to deal with them properly.

 It’s important to take the time to work with children to help them understand their emotions and other peoples’ emotions. Help them understand the emotional link between people and by doing so you’re helping them take the proper steps to becoming more socially intelligent as they grow and develop. The most recent research indicates that there is a staggering decline in the social intelligence of America’s children.  After all, would you rather be a four year-old learning to cope with sadness and anger for the first time, or would you rather be a 16 year-old learning to deal with those emotions for the first time?  A bright future relies on producing more socially intelligent children. I only hope parents and teachers are up to the task.

more than likely this woman hates her job. how about you?

Hate Your Job? Join the Other Millions of Americans…

A recent survey conducted by Entrepreneur Magazine suggested that 77% of Americans dislike their jobs.  Most of the people cited that office politics as well as their bosses were part of the reason why they disliked their current occupation. I found it really interesting that it was other people, and not job descriptions, that were given as the main reason for people hating their jobs.

Today’s business world is a fickle beast.  It moves at break neck speeds and demands everything from you and your peers.  In corporations there is a constant sense of urgency as you’re held to quarterly results and expected to reach your growth goals.  I have spent a great deal of time researching the culture of corporate America and it’s scary to see the negative progression of our supposed “productive cultures”. There is a growing demand for results and lessening of support. This current culture crisis in America would be enough to make anyone hate their job, yet most of the negativity is directed at our bosses.

Believe it or not, there are some vestiges where good corporate culture fosters success and growth. It’s really sad that these businesses are few and far between but they do exist and the reason they succeed is because of their management and social intelligence.

Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership

In September of 2008 Harvard Business Review posted an article that tackled this very subject. It was titled Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership and was written by Daniel Goleman, PhD and Richard Boyatzis. If you subscribe to HBR I would highly recommend checking out this article. This article was viewed as ground breaking and cutting edge by the business community.

Goleman, who is the leading expert in social intelligence, looked at management from a social neuroscience perspective.  He focused on the importance of empathy and understanding and becoming attuned to others moods. He stressed the importance of developing a genuine (that is the key word here) interest in and talent for fostering positive feelings in the people whose cooperation and support you need.  As it turns out certain people have a biological predisposition that allows them to be more emotionally attuned and aware. However, it’s important to note that these skills can be developed over time.

In the past it has been common practice to promote a worker based solely on results. In business theory for producing results it seems to make perfect sense up front, however more often than not this decision to promote based on numbers backfires.  Sales are a prime example. I have seen numerous sales reps promoted to managers, and at the same time I have seen a vast majority of them fail in their new position. The reason being was though they could produce sales results they do not have the social intelligence to enable their staff to produce the same results. Sadly most do no understand the nuances of understanding and communicating so they try to force results and goals on their staff and that’s where rifts start to form. Results are important when selecting a manager, but along with results social interactions should be looked at heavily to ensure you’re getting a person who is skilled in understanding and communicating with others.

A Happy Boss is a Great Boss

Research suggests that top performing leaders elicited laughter from their subordinates three times as often as mid performing leaders. A reason for this is that being in a good mood helps people take in information effectively and respond nimbly and creatively.  Laughter is paramount to social intelligence. It’s been said that when communicating with another person laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

There is a line though when it comes providing a positive environment. There are strict bosses out there and conversely there are bosses that are not strict enough. A good manager and leader will know how to handle that line because they will have understood how to interact with each employee to get the most out of them. Leaders have to be demanding but in ways that foster a positive mood. The carrot on a stick method doesn’t make neural sense.  If you want to succeed in the long run you need to break away from the trite management strategy that would have you threatening your staff and scaring them into results. It might produce some short term results but it comes at a high price in the long run – the loss of trust from your staff. Become a socially intelligent leader; genuinely understand the strengths, weaknesses, goals, and talents of your staff and yourself. Enable your staff for long term success and have fun while doing it. Accomplish this and the results might surprise you. After all, research in the past decade has confirmed that there is a large performance gap between socially intelligent and socially unintelligent leaders.

No matter your profession knowledge is being passed around each and every day.  The sharing of knowledge is an extremely vital part of growth and development.  From account analysts, to managers to teachers – we all communicate our knowledge in some form or way. I have a close friend who is a mathematics teacher at Eastern Illinois University and upon reading a few of my posts has taken a sincere interest in the role social neuroscience and social intelligence can play in education. Dave, this is for you buddy.

Have you ever been bored to death by a class? Have you ever skipped a college class because you anticipated it was going to be a snooze fest? Conversely, have you ever been a class that you really enjoyed? We have all had boring classes and we’ve all had really fun engaging courses. The reason we enjoy certain classes is because of the way knowledge is communicated. Yes, the course work has us initially engaged but the professor is the driving force behind our excitement for the course.

I like to focus on college professors because I believe on the whole most college students are emotionally disengaged in the classroom. So why is this? To understand why college students often show great disinterest in their courses we’ll have to go back to when you six years old. When your first grade teacher asked a question all of the hands in the classroom went up. There was probably even that one kid who was dieing to be called on – the kid who was using his free arm to hold up the arm he had raised and was waving like a battle flag.  Now think about any one of your college courses.  Out of a lecture of 100 people less than 10 hands might go up when the teacher asks a question.  So what the hell happened from the time you were six to now?

The reason so few hands go up in college classrooms is because you have been conditioned to fear failure. When you were younger teachers called on you to give opinions and thoughts. You were young, you were care free and you were not scared of being wrong.  But over time your teachers stopped calling on you for your thoughts, feelings, and ideas. They started calling on you for answers, and answers only have two outcomes: right or wrong. With 50/50 odds you don’t want to look like a fool, so you decide to sit this one out. What they don’t tell you is that those feelings, thoughts and ideas you used to have are paramount to retention and learning. Failure is stigmatized in today’s education and students suffer each and every day. So how do we change this? We shake things up.

Mental Energy

“Mental energy is not a fixed substance. Mental energy rises and falls with our passion and commitment to what we are doing.” – Sir Ken Robinson, PhD.

At the root of our mental energy is our emotion.  In a previous post I discussed that to optimally perform our emotion has to be at just the right balanced level – like the heat gauge on your car’s dashboard. This is especially true for learning.  The truth is that most students are not immune to education; they’re immune to how it’s communicated, how it’s taught, and even the classroom they’re in.  College students have been conditioned to resist trite lectures, lesson plans and power points. Nearly every class has the same format in the same type of room. Yeah, the chairs and desks might change but they know what’s coming. To actively communicate knowledge you need to gain the emotional buy-in of your class.  You shouldn’t talk at them. You should genuinely communicate with them.

Randy Pausch, PhD., the author of The Last Lecture, used to start one of his college courses at Carnegie Melon by breaking a VCR with a baseball bat. Talk about emotional buy-in. Imagine sitting down for what you think is going to be just another class and then your teacher comes in and beats the hell out of a VCR. Different, right, and maybe now you’re thinking this isn’t a normal class so you pay more attention. That experience has just taken your emotion response level from barely present to right there and ready to learn.

Apply Social Intelligence

Most teachers focus on dispensing knowledge. Instead of being concerned with what they’re going to say I suggest teachers should be more concerned about how their message is going to be perceived and understood. Maybe then they would realize that every student understands differently and in different contexts. Break away from power points and lectures. Utilize all of the media mediums for communicating knowledge: movies, sound clips, documentaries, role playing, art, music, skits and the list go on and on. Shake things up and present it in new angles. Look at the same old ideas and theories in new ways. Your class might begin to buy-in emotionally because your lesson itself is salient and fresh, and who knows, you might even learn something new yourself. 

Teacher, professor or professional, this is game plan we can all use to aid in our growth and development.  As a teacher you’re a leader. You’re a pace car for emotion and contrary to popular belief; you can go down any road you choose. It’s okay to change lanes and explore new exits. It might lead to places you never knew existed.  Don’t just teach, actively communicate.