Why Some Leaders Don’t Learn From Their Mistakes

In prepared remarks before the panel investigating the roots of the financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan blames the subprime crisis on foreign investors, nonbank lenders, the spread of securitized mortgages and financial firms for failing to manage their risk. The one person he did not blame was himself, or his institution -- the Fed.

- Shahien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post, reporting on Greenspan’s testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on April 7, 2010

Despite the fact that the Federal Reserve, as the nation’s largest bank, did not take any significant action to curb the reckless lending that precipitated the Great Recession, Alan Greenspan seemed to apportion blame everywhere but to himself.  At one point in his testimony, he even appeared to blame the fall of the Berlin Wall.  (His logic:  seeing the truly awful job the Soviets were doing running their economy brought about distrust of “central planning” of any kind.   So evidently, the excesses of Capitalism are Communism’s fault.)

Alan Greenspan was instrumental in determining U.S. financial policy for 19 years, but he doesn’t feel that he was responsible for the failure of the policy he helped create, or that it’s failure was to some extent avoidable.  Is he crazy?  Actually, no.   Did he consciously and willfully mislead the Commission (and the rest of us)?  Very probably not.  Without actually being Alan Greenspan, I can’t say for sure, but the odds are good that he really does believe he’s not to blame.  And as much as we might like to think otherwise, many of us would feel the same way if we were in his shoes.

Psychologists call this the self-serving bias – the tendency to see ourselves as responsible for our successes, but to see other people or the circumstances as responsible for our failures.  We reason this way to protect our self-esteem, and to protect our image in the eyes of others.   We also do it because it really feels right.  Think of an actor on stage – as a member of the audience, you are focused on what he is doing, but if you’re the actor, you see everything but yourself.  You see your fellow actors, the scenery, the audience, but you can’t actually watch you.  Because of what’s called the actor/observer difference, it’s easy for Alan Greenspan to look back over his 19 years at the Fed and see all the factors that played a role in screwing things up, and harder for him to see his own role in it.

Psychologist Tony Greenwald’s 1980 American Psychologist article on this topic cited some very amusing examples of the self-serving bias, taken from a San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle article on the explanations drivers gave to their insurers after an accident.  You’ll notice that some of these people went to remarkable lengths to deflect blame:

As I approached the intersection, a sign suddenly appeared in a place where a stop sign had never been before.  I was unable to stop in time to avoid an accident.

The telephone pole was approaching.  I was attempting to swerve out of its way when it struck my front end.

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.

Studies show that in fact, nearly us fall victim to this kind of bias (though we tend to think that only other people do – yet another example of the bias at work.)

The upside of all this self-protection is that we don’t feel so bad when things go wrong, and can stay optimistic about our future chances for success.  The downside, particularly for the leaders on whose judgment we must rely, is that we don’t learn anything from our mistakes if we don’t recognize that we made them in the first place.  How can you do a better job next time if you won’t even admit you did a bad job this time?

From a motivational perspective, the best way to handle a failure is to look honestly at how your own actions contributed to the outcome, emphasizing what you can change so that your performance improves from now on.  And even though, in his mid-80s, Alan Greenspan is unlikely to serve a second round as Fed Chairman, he would probably like to get an accurate handle on what went wrong – something he will never do unless he admits that he was actually driving.

How Long Will This Take? 3 Steps to Being a Better Judge of Time

From my Fast Company blog:

Every Saturday morning, while my husband JD is eating his cereal and attempting to fully awaken, I ambush him with the list of household chores and errands I’ve been making all week (and saving for when he’ll be home to help me.)  Every single time, an argument ensues.  At its core is JD’s unshakeable belief that any task, no matter how complex or difficult, can be completed in about 15 minutes.  “Let’s go out and have some fun, “ he’ll say, “and we’ll tackle that stuff when we get back this afternoon.”  “But there won’t be enough time!” I reply, with mounting frustration.  “It will be fine,” he says.  More often than not, he is wrong.

As much as I enjoy giving him a hard time about his total inability to judge how long something will take, the truth is that most people aren’t much better at it.  In fact, human beings are generally pretty lousy when it comes to estimating the time they will need to complete a task.  Psychologists refer to this as the planning fallacy, and it’s an all too common problem – one with the very real potential to screw up our plans and keep us from reaching our goals.

Studies show that the planning fallacy can be attributed to several different biases we have when estimating how long it will take to do just about anything.  First, we routinely fail to consider our own past experiences while planning.   When my husband tells me it will take him 15 minutes to vacuum the carpets, he is ignoring the fact that it took him an hour to do it last time.   And as any professor can tell you, most college seniors, after four straight years of paper-writing, still can’t seem to figure out how long it will take them to write a 10-page paper.  We just don’t take our past into account the way we should when thinking about our future.

Second, we ignore the very real possibility that things won’t go as planned – our future plans tend to be “best-case scenarios.” So running to the store for a new vacuum cleaner might take 15 minutes – if there is no traffic, if they carry the model we’re looking for, if we find it right away, and if there aren’t long lines at the register.

Lastly, we don’t think about all the steps or subcomponents that make up the task, and consider how long each part of the task will take.   When you think about painting a room, you may picture yourself using a roller to quickly slap the paint on the walls, and think that it won’t take much time at all – neglecting to consider how you’ll first have to move or cover the furniture, tape all the fixtures and window frames, do all the edging by hand, and so on.

So while we all tend to be prone to the planning fallacy to some extent, some of us fall into its trap more often than others. People in positions of power, for example, are particularly vulnerable, because feeling powerful tends to focus us on getting what we want, ignoring the potential obstacles that stand in our way.  A recent set of studies by Mario Weick and Ana Guinote shows that such a narrow focus does indeed turn powerful people into very poor planners.

In one study, half of the student participants were made to feel powerful (by being told that their opinion would influence the course requirements established for future students).  Next, all students were asked to estimate how long it would take to finish an upcoming major assignment.   Everyone was overly-optimistic, but the powerful ones were significantly more so.  Powerful students estimated that they would finish their assignments 2.5 days before they actually did, while the control group was on average only 1.5 days late.    So feeling powerful makes you think you’ll take a whole day less to complete the assignment than you would have guessed had you been feeling a little more ordinary.

A second study induced feelings of power by having some of the participants recall a time in their past when they felt very powerful, and this produced a similar result.  Powerful participants estimated that it would take them only 4 minutes to complete a proofreading task that actually took 9 minutes, compared to the control group’s estimate of 6.5 minutes.

In a third study, participants who were made to feel powerful thought it would take them less time to write an essay, get ready for an evening out, shop at the supermarket, and prepare a 3 course meal, than the control group.   Importantly, these effects completely disappeared when powerful participants were explicitly told to recall how much time these activities had taken them in the past, and use that information to make their estimates.  So when powerful people are forced to focus on all the relevant information, their planning is far more accurate.

When you’re making a plan and estimating how long it will take, be sure to stop and 1) consider how long it has taken you in the past,

2) identify the ways in which things might not go as planned, and

3) spell out all the steps you will need to take to get it done.

This is particularly important when you are in a position of power, so make sure that there are safeguards or reminders in place to help you to consider all the information you should.  Otherwise, you may fall victim to the everything-takes-15-minutes kind of optimism that can lead to disaster.

Why Chewing With Your Mouth Open Can Make You Seem Powerful

When A Little Bad Behavior is a Good Thing

(From my Fast Company blog)

Powerful people often act as if the rules don’t apply to them, or that even if the rules  do apply, they don’t really care.

Research shows that when people feel powerful, they are more likely to act according to their own goals, rather than what’s best for the group.  They are less sensitive to what’s happening around them, disregard input from others, and ignore social norms.  They are more sensitive to their own internal states and feelings, and  care less about what others may think of them.

(And this happens even when the experience of power is new or temporary -there’s something about power that seems to immediately turn our vision inward).

The net result is a lot of bad behavior – not necessarily illegal, but certainly obnoxious.  Powerful people are apt do all sorts of socially inappropriate things.  They interrupt more frequently, invade personal space, take credit for other people’s ideas, make insulting remarks, and are more likely to engage in sexual harassment (ok, that last one actually is illegal).

One study actually showed that powerful people are even more likely eat with their mouths open.  I had noticed that one myself in graduate school.  It often seemed like the more prominent and well-regarded a professor was, the more unpleasant he was to share a meal with.

One of the great ironies of all this bad behavior is that while we may find it personally offensive, breaking the rules of good conduct actually makes these people seem even more powerful.

New research from psychologists at the University of Amsterdam shows that when someone violates a social norm, we assume, often unconsciously, that they are somehow free to do what they want.  In their studies, men and women who took someone else’s coffee, brushed minor mistakes under the carpet rather than correcting them, put their feet up on the table, or flicked cigarette ashes on the floor, we judged as more powerful than those who were better-behaved.

Despite being seen as rude and somewhat unpleasant, the rule-breakers were seen as more influential, more likely to hold a leadership position, and more able to “make life difficult for others.”

I hate to be an advocate for bad manners, but since so much of any individual’s success depends on how they are perceived, it’s worth taking a moment to think about how a little strategically bad behavior might raise your profile.  Eccentric is better than offensive, because eccentricity is about breaking the rules in relatively harmless ways, and keeps ill will to a minimum.

Being able to project an air of indifference, to make it seem like you don’t really care what other people think (even if you really do) and are free to do whatever you want, will leave others with the impression that you are a force to be reckoned with.    Just do yourself a favor, and however you decide to break the rules, keep it legal.  And seriously, don’t chew with your mouth open.

The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010

The end of 2010 fast approaches, and I’m thrilled to have been asked by the editors of Psychology Today to write about the Top 10 psychology studies of the year.  I’ve focused on studies that I personally feel stand out, not only as examples of great science, but even more importantly, as examples of how the science of psychology can improve our lives.  Each study has a clear “take home” message, offering the reader an insight or a simple strategy they can use to reach their goals, strengthen their relationships, make better decisions, or become happier.   If you extract the wisdom from these ten studies and apply them in your own life, 2011 just might be a very good year.



1)  How to Break Bad Habits

If you are trying to stop smoking, swearing, or chewing your nails, you have probably tried the strategy of distracting yourself – taking your mind off whatever it is you are trying not to do – to break the habit.  You may also have realized by now that it doesn’t work.  Distraction is a great way to resist a passing temptation, but it turns out to be a terrible way to break a habit that has really taken hold.

That’s because habit-behaviors happen automatically – often, without our awareness.  So thinking about George Clooney isn’t going to stop me from biting my nails if I don’t realize I’m doing it in the first place.

What you need to do instead is focus on stopping the behavior before it starts (or, as psychologists tend to put it, you need to “inhibit” your bad behavior).  According to research by Jeffrey Quinn and his colleagues, the most effective strategy for breaking a bad habit is vigilant monitoring – focusing your attention on the unwanted behavior to make sure you don’t engage in it.  In other words, thinking to yourself “Don’t do it!” and watching out for slipups – the very opposite of distraction.   If you stick with it, the use of this strategy can inhibit the behavior completely over time, and you can be free of your bad habit for good.

J. Quinn, A. Pascoe, W. Wood, & D. Neal (2010) Can’t control yourself? Monitor those bad habits.   Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 499-511.

2) How to Make Everything Seem Easier

Most of us have grown accustomed to the idea that our moods, and even our judgments, can be influenced by unrelated experiences of sight and sound – we feel happier on sunny days, more relaxed when listening to certain kinds of music, and more likely to lose our tempers when it’s hot and humid.  But very few of us have even considered the possibility that our tactile experience – the sensations associated with the things we touch, might have this same power.

New research by Joshua Ackerman, Christopher Nocera, and John Bargh shows that the weight, texture, and hardness of the things we touch are, in fact, unconsciously factored into our decisions about things that have nothing to do with what we are touching.

For instance, we associate smoothness and roughness with ease and difficulty, respectively, as in expressions like “smooth sailing,” and “rough road ahead.” In one study, people who completed a puzzle with pieces that had been covered in sandpaper later described an interaction between two other individuals as more difficult and awkward than those whose puzzles had been smooth. (Tip:  Never try to buy a car or negotiate a raise while wearing a wool sweater.  Consider satin underpants instead.  Everything seems easy in satin underpants.)

J. Ackerman, C. Nocera, and J. Bargh (2010)  Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgments and decisions.  Science, 328, 1712- 1715.

3)  How To Manage Your Time Better

Good time management starts with figuring out what tasks you need to accomplish, and how long each will take.  The problem is, human beings are generally pretty lousy when it comes to estimating the time they will need to complete any task.  Psychologists refer to this as the planning fallacy, and it has the very real potential to screw up our plans and keep us from reaching our goals.

New research by Mario Weick and Ana Guinote shows that, somewhat ironically, people in positions of power are particularly poor planners.  That’s because feeling powerful tends to focus us on getting what we want, ignoring the potential obstacles that stand in our way.   The future plans of powerful people often involve “best-case scenarios,” which lead to far shorter time estimates than more realistic plans that take into account what might go wrong.

The good news is, you can learn to more accurately predict how long something will take and become a better planner, if you stop and consider potential obstacles, along with two other factors:  your own past experiences (i.e., how long did it take last time?), and all the steps or subcomponents that make up the task  (i.e., factoring in the time you’ll need for each part.)

M. Weick & A. Guinote (2010) How long will it take? Power biases time predictions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

4) How to Be Happier

Most of us tend to think that if we just had a bit more money we’d get more satisfaction out of life, but on the whole, this turns out not to be true.   So why doesn’t money make us happier?  New research by Jordi Quoidbach and colleagues suggests that the answer lies, at least in part, in how wealthier people lose touch with their ability to savor life’s pleasures.

Savoring is a way of increasing and prolonging our positive experiences.  Taking time to experience the subtle flavors in a piece of dark chocolate, imaging the fun you’ll have on an upcoming vacation (and leafing through your trip photos afterward), telling all your friends on Facebook about the hilarious movie you saw over the weekend – these are all acts of savoring, and they help us to squeeze every bit of joy out of the good things that happen to us.

Why, then, don’t wealthier people savor, if it feels so good?  It’s obviously not for a lack of things to savor.  The basic idea is that when you have the money to eat at fancy restaurants every night and buy designer clothes from chic boutiques, those experiences diminish the enjoyment you get out of the simpler, more everyday pleasures, like the smell of a steak sizzling on your backyard grill, or the bargain you got on the sweet little sundress from Target.

Create plans for how to inject more savoring into each day, and you will increase your happiness and well-being much more than (or even despite) your growing riches.  And if you’re riches aren’t actually growing, then savoring is still a great way to truly appreciate what you do have.

J. Quoidbach, E. Dunn, K. Petrides, & M. Mikolajczak (2010) Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect of wealth on happiness.  Psychological Science, 21, 759-763.



5) How to Have More Willpower

Do you have the willpower to get the job done, or have you found yourself giving in to temptations, distractions, and inaction when trying to reach your own goals?   If it’s the latter, you’re not alone.  But more importantly, you can do something about it.  New research by Mark Muraven shows that our capacity for self-control is surprisingly like a muscle that can be strengthened by regular exercise.

Do you have a sweet tooth?  Try giving up candy, even if weight-loss and cavity-prevention are not your goals.  Hate exerting yourself physically?  Go out and buy one of those handgrips you see the muscle men with at the gym – even if your goal is to pay your bills on time.  In one study, after two weeks of sweets-abstinence and handgripping, Muraven found that participants had significantly improved on a difficult concentration task that required lots of self-control.

Just by working your willpower muscle regularly, engaging in simple actions that require small amounts of self-control - like sitting up straight or making your bed each day – you can develop the self-control strength you’ll need to tackle all of your goals.

M. Muraven (2010) Building self-control strength: Practicing self-control leads to improved self-control performance.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 465-468.

6) How to Choose a Mate

What role does personality play in creating marital bliss? More specifically, is it your personality, your partner’s personality, or the similarity between the two that really matters when it comes to being happy in your marriage? A study of over 10,000 couples from three countries provides us with some answers.

Your own personality is in fact a powerful predictor of your marital satisfaction.  People who were more agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable reported being significantly happier with their spouse.  That spouse’s personality was also a reliable, though slightly less powerful, predictor of relationship satisfaction.  Keep these same traits – the “Big 3” for happiness in a marriage – in mind when you are seeking Mr. or Ms. Right.

Finally, there’s personality similarly - which, as it happens, doesn’t seem to matter at all. The extent to which married couples matched one another on the Big Five traits had no predictive power when it came to understanding why some couples are happy together and others not.   This is not to say that having similar goals or values isn’t important – just that having similar personalities doesn’t seem to be.

So if you are outgoing and your partner is shy, or if you are adventurous and your partner doesn’t really like to try new things, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a satisfying marriage.  Whether you are birds of a feather, or opposites that attracted, you are equally likely to live a long and happy life together.

Just try to be generally pleasant, responsible, and even-tempered, and find someone willing to do the same.

P. Dyrenforth, D. Kashy, M.B. Donnellan,  & R. Lucas  (2010) Predicting relationships and life satisfaction from personality in nationally representative samples from three countries: The relative importance of actor, partner, and similarity effects.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 690-702.

7) How to Feel More Powerful

In the animal kingdom, alphas signal their dominance through body movement and posture.  Human beings are no different.  The most powerful guy in the room is usually the one whose physical movements are most expansive – legs apart, leaning forward, arms spread wide while he gestures.  He’s the CEO who isn’t afraid to swing his feet up onto the conference room table, hands behind his head and elbows jutting outward, confident in his power to spread himself out however he damn well pleases.

The nervous, powerless person holds himself very differently – he makes himself physically as small as possible: shoulders hunched, feet together, hands in his lap or arms wrapped protectively across his chest.  He’s the guy in the corner who is hoping he won’t be called on, and often is barely noticed.

We adopt these poses unconsciously, and they are perceived (also unconsciously) by others as indictors of our status.  But a new set of studies by Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap reveals that the relationship between power and posing works in both directions.  In other words, holding powerful poses can actually make you more powerful.

In their studies, posing in “high power” positions not only created psychological and behavioral changes typically associated with powerful people, it created physiological changes characteristic of the powerful as well.   High power posers felt more powerful, were more willing to take risks, and experienced significant increases in testosterone along with decreases in cortisol (the body’s chemical response to stress.)

If you want more power – not just the appearance of power, but the genuine feeling of power – then spread your limbs wide, stand up straight, and lean into the conversation.   Carry yourself like the guy in charge, and in a matter of minutes your body will start to feel it, and you will start to believe it.

D. Carney, A. Cuddy, and A. Yap (2010) Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance.  Psychological Science, 21, 1363-1368.

8) How To Tell If He Loves You

“If he really loved me, then he would…”

Everyone who’s ever been in a relationship has had thoughts like this one.  If he loved me he would bring me flowers, or compliment me more often, or remember my birthday, or remember to take out the damn garbage.    We expect feelings of love to translate directly into loving behaviors, and often judge the quality and intensity of our partner’s feelings through their more tangible expressions.  When it comes to love, actions speak louder than words, right?

Well, not necessarily.  According to new research by psychologists Lara Kammrath and Johanna Peetz, romantic feelings like love, intimacy, and commitment reliably lead to some loving behaviors, but not others. In their studies, love predicted spontaneous, in-the-moment acts of kindness and generosity, like saying “I love you,” offering a back rub, or surprising your partner with a gourmet dinner – the kinds of loving actions that don’t require much in the way of forethought, planning, or memory.

On the other hand, love does a lousy job of predicting the kinds of “loving” behaviors that are harder to perform, often because they have to be maintained over longer periods of time (e.g., remembering to do household chores without being asked, being nice to one’s in-laws) or because there is a delay between the thought and the action (remembering to buy your wife a gift for her birthday next week, keeping a promise call home during your conference in Las Vegas.). When it comes to the harder stuff, it’s how conscientious you are, rather than how much in love you are, that really matters.

So if you’re trying to get a sense of how your partner really feels about you, the smaller, spontaneous acts of love that occur without much forethought are a much  better indicator of the depth of his love than whether or not he remembers your birthday or to take out the trash.

L. Kammrath & J. Peetz (2010) The limits of love: Predicting immediate vs. sustained caring behaviors in close relationships.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

9) How to Make It Easier to Cut Your Losses

Sometimes, we don’t know when to throw in the towel.   As a project unfolds, it becomes clear that things aren’t working out as planned, that it will cost too much or take too long, or that someone else will beat you to the punch.  But instead of moving on to new opportunities, we continue to devote our time, energy, and money to doomed projects (or even doomed relationships), digging a deeper hole rather than trying to climb our way out of it.

Why?  The most likely culprit is our overwhelming aversion to sunk costs - the resources that we’ve put into an endeavor that we can’t get back out. We worry far too much about what we’ll lose if we just move on, and not nearly enough about the costs of not moving on  - more wasted time and effort, and more missed opportunities.

But thanks to recent research by Daniel Molden and Chin Ming Hui, there is a simple way to be sure you are making the best decisions when your endeavor goes awry:  focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you have to lose.

Psychologists call this adopting a promotion focus. When Molden and Hui had participants think about their goals in terms of potential gains, they became more comfortable with accepting the losses they had to incur along the way.  When they adopted a prevention focus, on the other hand, and thought about their goals in terms of what they could lose if they didn’t succeed, they were much more sensitive to sunk costs.

If you make a deliberate effort to refocus yourself prior to making your decision, reflecting on what you have to gain by cutting your losses now, you’ll find it much easier to make the right choice.

D. Molden & C. Hui (2010) Promoting de-escalation of commitment: A regulatory focus perspective on sunk costs.  Psychological Science.

10)  How to Fight With Your Spouse

Having a satisfying, healthy relationship with your partner doesn’t mean never fighting – it means learning to fight well. But what is the best way for two people to cope with their anger, frustration, and hurt, without undermining their mutual happiness?

Thankfully, recent research by James McNulty and Michelle Russell provides the answer.  The best way to deal with conflict in a marriage, it turns out, depends on how serious or severe the problem is.  Did your spouse drink too much at the party last night, or is he drinking too much every night?  Did she splurge a little too much on clothes last month, or are her spending habits edging you closer and closer to bankruptcy?  Did he invite his mother to dinner without discussing it with you first, or did he invite his mother to live with you without discussing it first?  Little problems and big problems require very different approaches if you want to have a lasting, happy marriage.

When it comes to minor problems, direct fighting strategies – like placing blame on your spouse for their actions or expressing your anger – results in a loss of marital satisfaction over time.   Flying off the handle when he forgets to pick up the dry cleaning yet again, or when she spends a little too much money on a pricey pair of shoes, is going to take its toll on your happiness in the long run.  You really are better off letting the small stuff go.

In response to major problems, these same direct fighting strategies predict increased marital satisfaction!   Expressing your feelings, blaming your partner and demanding that they change their ways will lead to greater happiness when the conflict in question is something significant – something that if left unresolved could ultimately tear your relationship apart.  Issues involving addiction, financial stability, infidelity, child-rearing, and whether or not you live with your mother-in-law need to be addressed, even if it gets a little ugly.  Couples who battle it out over serious issues do a better job of tackling, and eventually resolving those issues, than those who swept big problems under the carpet.

J. McNulty & V.M. Russell (2010) When "negative" behaviors are positive: A contextual analysis of the long-term effects of problem-solving behaviors on changes in relationship satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 587-604.

Why Creative People Get Kept Out of the Driver's Seat

From my Fast Company blog:

Two candidates are being interviewed for a leadership position in your company.  Both have strong resumes, but while one seems to be bursting with new and daring ideas, the other comes across as decidedly less creative (though clearly still a smart cookie).  Who gets the job?  And who should?

The answer to the question of who gets the leadership job is usually the less creative candidate.  This fact may or may not surprise you – you may have seen it happen many times before.  You may have even been the creative candidate who got the shaft.  But what you’re probably wondering is, why?

After all, it’s quite clear who should be getting the job.   Creativity – the ability to generate new and innovative solutions to problems – is obviously an important attribute for any successful business leader.  Research shows that leaders who are more creative are in fact better able to effect positive change in their organizations, and are better at inspiring others to follow their lead.

And yet, according to recent research there is good reason to believe that the people with the most creativity aren’t making it to the top of business organizations, because of a process that occurs (on a completely unconscious level) in the mind of everyone who has ever evaluated an applicant for a leadership position.

The problem, put simply, is this: our idea of what a prototypical “creative person” is like is completely at odds with our idea of a prototypical  “effective leader.”

Creativity is associated with nonconformity, unorthodoxy, and unconventionality.  It conjures visions of the artist, the musician, the misunderstood poet.   In other words, not the sort of people you usually put in charge of large organizations. Effective leaders, it would seem, should provide order, rather than tossing it out the window.

Unconsciously, we assume that someone who is creative can’t be a good leader, and as a result, any evidence of creativity can diminish a candidate’s perceived leadership potential.

In one study conducted by organizational psychologists Jennifer Mueller, Jack Goncalo, and Dishan Kamdar, 55 employees rated the responses of nearly 300 of their (unidentified) coworkers to a problem-solving task for both creativity (the extent to which their ideas were novel and useful) and as evidence of leadership potential.  They found that creativity and leadership potential were strongly negatively correlated – the more creative the response, the less effective a leader the responder appeared.

In a second study, participants were told to generate an answer to the question “What could airlines do to obtain more revenue from passengers?” and give a 10-minute pitch to an evaluator.

Half the participants were asked to give creative answers (both novel and useful, e.g. “offer in-flight gambling with other passengers”), while the other half were told to give useful but non-novel answers (e.g., “charge for in-flight meals.”) The evaluators, unaware of the different instructions, rated participants who gave creative answers as having significantly less leadership ability.

Even though it is a quality that is much-admired, there is a very clear unconscious bias against creativity when it comes to deciding who gets to be in the driver’s seat.  Organizations may inadvertently place people in leadership positions who lack creativity and will only preserve the status quo, believing they are picking people with clear leadership potential.

The good news is, the bias can be wiped out – in fact, reversed - if evaluators have a charismatic leader (i.e., someone known for their uniqueness and individualism, like a Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, or Carly Fiorina) rather than an effective but non-charismatic leader in mind.   In the airline-revenue study, when evaluators were asked to list 5 qualities of a “charistmatic leader” prior to the idea pitch, the participants with creative solutions were instead perceived as having the most leadership potential.

Taking the time to remind yourself (or, if you are the applicant, remind your interviewer) that creativity is essential to effective leadership rather than at odds with it, is the key to making sure your company has the very best people behind the wheel.

Four Reasons Why Power Enhances Performance

From my Fast Company Blog:

The people with power in any organization are usually its top performers.  (Not always, I know, but that’s a topic for another post).  It’s natural to assume that the reason they’ve ended up with so much power is precisely because they are top performers.  But in many cases, it’s the other way around – power creates peak performance.

Studies show that powerful people, even when working alone, work differently than those with less power.  Often, their work is simply better.  This is true regardless of how long the person in question has been powerful – in fact, you can bring people into a room, assign one of them at random to be the “leader,” and immediately begin to see the difference.

Psychologists find that power leads to better performance, particularly on complex or difficult tasks that require effort and persistence, for four reasons:

1.     Leaders feel responsible to the group they are leading, and to its goals.  This is an added motivation that followers often lack.

2.     All eyes are on them.  Leaders feel more individually identified and therefore more accountable for their own work.  Because they expect to be noticed by others, they feel pressured to set a good example.

3.     Power stimulates the brain – specifically, what psychologists refer to as the brain’s executive function, which is instrumental when it comes to achieving goals.  When participants in the laboratory are given power over the outcomes of others, we find that they are better able to control their attention, plan future behavior, and take goal-directed actions, all hallmarks of superior executive function.

4.     Power keeps you going. A recent set of studies show that powerful people not only outperform the less powerful, but that they continue to be able to do so even when their energy and willpower has been seriously depleted.

Self-control is a limited resource – like a muscle in your body, it gets tired when you’ve given it a good workout.   Typically, when you’ve depleted your self-control by working on something really challenging, your performance on subsequent tasks suffers.  Powerful people, however, are slower to show signs of depletion – they can keep up their A-game longer, thanks in part to their strong motivation and heightened executive functioning.

It’s worth noting that powerful people don’t always outperform the less powerful. After all, leaders have a lot on their plates – they can’t possibly bring their best to everything.  This raises the question of delegation.  How do they (and should they) decide where to put their effort?

The short and unsurprising answer is that they generally withhold effort when the task in question is unworthy of a powerful person.  In other words, when it seems like the kind of thing an underling would do.  This attitude can and does affect performance. For example, in the studies I mentioned earlier, when the participants were given boring, repetitive tasks like filling out multiplication tables, those assigned to a leadership role performed worse than nonleaders, and complained that they didn’t think it was the sort of task a leader should have to do.

Arrogant as this may seem at times, you have to admit that this attitude makes some sense.  Powerful people approach tasks with greater energy and intensity, but their well of energy and intensity isn’t bottomless.  They need to be selective.

Unfortunately, they don’t always pull it off, which brings us to the serious weakness that comes with power.  Making decisions about what is and isn’t worthy of a leader’s limited resources actually requires resources – when you are overworked, tired, or otherwise depleted, you have a hard time appraising a situation correctly.

Overworked leaders often don’t realize that a particular task is really more appropriate for a subordinate to perform – they end up trying to bring their A-game to everything.  They make bad choices, burn out, and their performance suffers.

So if you are fortunate enough to be given a position of power, it’s quite possible that your best performances lie ahead of you.  Even your brain is primed to rise to the challenge.  But beware of the leader’s Achilles heel – if you are too burned out to make good decisions about what to delegate, you’ll end up squandering many of the performance advantages that your power has given you.

What Makes You (and Me) Act Like a Jerk

Lessons from Good Boss, Bad Boss

I recently finished fellow PT blogger Robert Sutton’s excellent new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss.  In it, he describes not only what the best (and worst) bosses do, but why they do it, identifying the essential beliefs that form the foundation of effective (and ineffective) management.

It struck me again and again as I was reading that so much of the advice Sutton offers on how to be a good boss can also be applied to the universal challenges of being a good and happy person.   I think one of my favorite chapters, “Squelch Your Inner Bosshole,” is a perfect illustration of what I mean.

In it, Sutton points to the some of the forces that turn otherwise decent human beings into rotten bosses.  We would be wise to remember that these forces are often present in the lives of non-bosses as well – who among us hasn’t been a real jerk on occasion?  The good news is, if you can identify the triggers of your unpleasant behavior, and become aware of their influence on you, you too can effectively squelch your inner a**hole.

Here are some of the triggers of bad boss behavior Sutton highlights:

1.     “Power Poisoning.”

Sure, power sometimes corrupts.  But more often, it just turns us into jerks.  Studies show that when people are given power, they become less tuned in to other people’s feeling and needs, paying less attention to what others say and do.   With power, our language and behavior becomes more insulting and inappropriate, and we become more self-absorbed, focusing more on our own personal gain than what is best for the group.

It’s not just bosses who experience the nasty side effects of power.  Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was just a bit too needy and insecure?  Were you surprised to find how cold, selfish, or downright cruel you became in response?  When friends or romantic partners give us all the power, when we find ourselves with too much “hand,” it can lead to pretty callous behavior.

2.     “Extreme Performance Pressure.”

Being under time pressure, or knowing that a lot is riding on what we’re doing, makes all of us less sensitive to the needs and feelings of others.   We’re so busy thinking about what could wrong, and worrying about our own performance, that it creates a kind of tunnel vision.    Feeling anxious makes you irritable – this is why you come home from work after a hard day and yell at your spouse, your kids, or your dog.

3.     “Sleep Deprivation, Heat, and Other Bodily Sources of Bad Moods.”

Sutton points out that a lack of sleep, or uncomfortable temperatures, can disrupt our ability to make good, rational decisions, because tiredness and heat make us irritable and impatient.  Poor nutrition and illness can also leave you feeling unusually jerky.

(Interestingly, do you know what doesn’t predict mood?  Day of the week – people aren’t actually reliably happier on Friday and more depressed on Monday.  So if you’re acting like a jerk on a Monday, find something else to blame.)

4.     “Nasty Role-Models” and “A**hole Infected Workplaces”

Throughout Good Boss, Bad Boss, Sutton emphasizes the enormous power of social influence.  We emulate the people around us, often unconsciously.  And as he writes, “emotions are remarkably contagious.”  Anxiety, cynicism, selfishness, and negativity rub off.  So if you are surrounded by cranky jerks, you just might begin to behave that way yourself without realizing it.

Sutton’s solution to the trigger problem is a good one  - make sure you have people in your life you can trust to tell you when you are acting like a jerk.  Give them explicit permission to do so, and make sure you really listen and react without defensiveness.

Then take a good hard look at how you’re acting and ask yourself if that’s really the person you want to be.    If not, start looking around for the trigger.  Is power going to your head?  Are you under too much pressure?  Are you hanging around too many jerks?

If you’re not happy with your own behavior, renew your commitment to noticing and respecting the needs and feelings of the other people in your life.  And if you need one, take a nap.

Feeling Timid and Powerless? Maybe It's How You're Sitting.

In the animal kingdom, the alphas often convey their dominant status through posture.  They rise to their full height, stick out their chests and fan their tail feathers, all to take up as much space as possible and establish their powerful presence.  The weaker omegas, on the other hand, bow down low, tucking in their limbs and tails and signaling their submission.

Human beings are no different.  The most powerful guy in the room is usually the one whose physical movements are most expansive – legs apart, leaning forward, arms spread wide while he gestures.  He’s the CEO who isn’t afraid to swing his feet up onto the conference room table, hands behind his head and elbows jutting outward, confident in his power to spread himself out however he damn well pleases.

The nervous, powerless person holds himself very differently – he makes himself physically as small as possible: shoulders hunched, feet together, hands in his lap or arms wrapped protectively across his chest.  He’s the guy in the corner who is hoping he won’t be called on, and often is barely noticed.

Psychologists have known for some time that powerful and powerless individuals adopt these poses unconsciously, and that the poses themselves are in fact perceived (also unconsciously) by others as indictors of status.  Your posture, like it or not, tells people a lot about you.

But more recent research reveals a new, far more surprising relationship between power and posing – that their influence works in both directions.  In other words, holding powerful poses can actually make you more powerful.

Researchers Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap asked male and female participants to hold two poses, each for one minute.  The poses were either high power (the CEO feet-up-on-the-table pose with hands behind head; standing feet apart while leaning over a table, supported by one hand resting on the table) or low power (sitting with shoulders slumped forward and hands in lap; standing with feet together and arms folded tightly across chest.)

After holding the high power poses, participants not only reported that they felt significantly more “powerful” and “in charge”, but were also more willing to take a   risk when offered the chance to gamble their study earnings for double the money.

The high power posers also experienced significant increases in testosterone and decreases in cortisol (measured by saliva), a neuroendocrine profile that has been linked in past research to dominance, competitiveness, adaptive responding to challenges, disease resistance, and leadership ability.  So not only did high power posing create psychological and behavioral changes typically associated with powerful people, it created physiological changes characteristic of the powerful as well.

Low power posers, on the other hand, experienced significantly drops in testosterone and increases in cortisol – giving them the typical physiological profile of the nervous and risk-averse omega, and leaving them feeling less powerful and less willing to take a chance on a big win.

So, take a look at how you are sitting right now.  Take a moment to think about what you are typically doing with your body when you are at your desk, in a meeting, or simply socializing.  What message is your body language – your posture, your stance, your gesturing – sending to everyone in the room?  And more importantly, what message is it sending to your own brain?  If you sit all curled up in a ball, or stand with your arms wrapped around your chest like battle armor, you are going to end up feeling less powerful and less confident because your brain will assume that that’s what you are.

It’s up to you to make sure your brain is getting the right message.  If you want more power – not just the appearance of power, but the genuine feeling of power – then spread your limbs wide, stand up straight, and lean into the conversation.   Carry yourself like the guy in charge, and in a matter of minutes your body will start to feel it, and you will start to believe it.

Follow me on Twitter  @hghalvorson

Would You Be A Greedy CEO? Here's How To Tell

From my Fast Company Blog:

It’s difficult to open a paper these days (or, turn on your laptop or smartphone, if that’s how you get your news) without reading about a new and reprehensible instance of CEO greed.  Most are tales of golden parachutes received after nearly running a company into the ground, or huge bonuses paid out in a year when hundreds of employees lost their jobs.  Occasionally, there’s a real doozy – remember when John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, spent over a million dollars redecorating his office?  Or when former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski bought a gold-plated trashcan on the company’s dime?

Obviously, most CEO’s do not behave this badly.  But how can we understand the behavior of the ones who do, and anticipate when a leader might be particularly likely to go the Way of the Golden Trashcan?   In other words, when is a leader most likely to be self-serving, rather than focused on what’s best for the company (or, for more mid-level leaders, their group within the company)?  And how can each of us tell which type of leader we are, or might someday be?

The answer is an important one, since self-serving leaders are often ineffective leaders.  By allocating more resources to themselves (pay increases, bonuses, office space, credit and recognition, etc.) and less to their group, and by focusing on their own goals rather than group goals, greedy leaders undermine employee loyalty and motivation. Their self-serving ways have been known, on occasion, to bring an entire company to its knees.

You might think that power itself is to blame - that more powerful leaders are inherently more likely to hog resources than less powerful ones.  But it’s not that simple.  Recent research suggests that both low and high-powered leaders can make self-serving decisions, but that they do so for very different reasons.

High Power Leaders: Research shows that being in a position of power makes people generally less sensitive to what’s happening around them  (e.g., input from others, social norms) and more sensitive to their own internal states and feelings.

Powerful people care less about what others think of them, and become demonstrably less adept at correctly assessing other people’s feelings and perceptions.  (Interestingly, even people in very temporary positions of power show these same effects – there’s something about power that seems to immediately turn our vision inward).

In particular, research shows that very powerful leaders tend to be swayed by their personal beliefs about what an effective leader is like.

If your idea of an effective leader is someone who pursues their own goals and ambitions at the expense of the group, takes full advantage of their status and perks, and invests little of their personal time or effort into helping their employees, then being in a position of power is quite likely to turn you into self-serving leader.  If you’re fortunate enough to be made a CEO, there is probably some gilded office furniture in your future.  Good luck with that.

If, instead, your idea of an effective leader is someone who is more concerned with whether or not the group is effective, puts group goals ahead of their own, gives up perks, and invests time and effort in tasks that benefit their employees, then power won’t turn you greedy – in fact, you’ll probably be generous and attentive to others.  And the really good news is, your beliefs about effective leaders are correct – leaders who focus on their employees, rather than themselves, understand what leadership is all about and are more successful because of it.

Low Power Leaders: Mid-level leaders, on the other hand, are less likely to use their own beliefs about effective leadership as guides, and are more strongly influenced by external cues, like information about their own and their employees relative performance.  When low power leaders believe they have outperformed their employees, they feel entitled to more benefits, and make more self-serving decisions with regard to recognition, perks, and pay.  When their employees have superior performance, they spread the benefits around accordingly.

Often, it’s only when an individual is promoted from a position of relatively lower power to one of high power that we begin to see their true colors, so to speak.  Only then does their mental image of an ideal leader begin to influence their own leadership behavior in tangible ways.  Corporate Boards would be very wise to try get a sense of a CEO candidate’s beliefs about great leaders, because the behavior the candidate admires is exactly what the Board, and the employees, are going to get.

Rus, D., et al., Leader power and leader self-serving behavior: The role of effective leadership beliefs and performance information, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.06.007

Why Did They Think They'd Get Away With It?

Tiger Woods, Jesse James, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Bill Clinton…. you get where I’m going.   It’s only too obvious what these men have in common.  Each of them cheated on his wife, not once, but (allegedly) many, many times.  And because they are all public figures of one kind or another, each of them was taking a bigger-than-usual risk every time.  The possibility of exposure increases with fame, as do the potential consequences, and no doubt they were all well aware of it.  Whatever you may think of these men – that they are despicable, that they are sex addicts, that their actions might be in some sense justifiable – you really can’t help but wonder how in the world they thought they would get away with it. In the age of 24-hour news, relentless paparazzi, and countless internet gossip sites, it’s gotten awfully hard to keep a secret.   Why did these men think that theirs would be the exception?

The answer, at least in part, may lie in something else that they have in common.  Each man, in his own way, was in a position of significant power when he engaged in his extra-marital shenanigans.  They were all men of influence, whose decisions impacted the lives of many others.  And as we all know, power does funny things to people.  More specifically, feeling powerful can lead someone to engage in riskier behavior than they otherwise would, because power makes you more optimistic about risk.

A series of studies by Cameron Anderson and Adam Galinsky showed that when male and female participants felt powerful, they preferred riskier business plans (with bigger potential rewards) to more conservative plans, divulged more information and were more trusting during negotiations, chose to “hit” more often during a game of black-jack, and were more likely to engage in unprotected sex during a one-night stand (sound familiar?)  This was true whether the participants had a generally higher sense of power (like the aforementioned sports stars and politicians), or were momentarily made to feel powerful in the experiment.

These researchers also found that when in power, people focus more on the potential payoffs of their risky behavior, and much less (if at all) on the possible dangers.  This leads to being overly-optimistic, even about things no one could possibly control (like avoiding turbulence on an airplane, or encountering a dangerous snake while on vacation).

So if power makes you prone to risky behavior, why then do some powerful people seem to be so personally conservative and risk-averse?  After all, not every politician has a weakness for call girls or interns.  Well, it turns out that when being in power is your primary focus, and you believe it’s possible to lose that power, then feelings of power can actually make you more conservative.  Basically, you don’t want to lose the power you’ve worked so hard to attain, so you avoid risks.  If, on the other hand, you feel your power is irrevocable – that no one can take it away from you -  then caution is once again thrown to the wind.

So to those of you in positions of power, I’ve got two pieces of advice.   First, before you make any decision, be sure to give some serious thought to the potential dangers you may encounter.  If things don’t work out as you planned, exactly how bad will that be for you?   Second, remember that in this day and age, no one has irrevocable power.   Make the wrong choices, and you can lose everything.   Is it still worth it?

C. Anderson & A. Galinsky (2006). Power, optimism, and risk-taking. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 511-536.

A. Galinsky, D. Gruenfeld, & J. Magee (2003)  From power to action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 453-466.

J. Maner, M. Gailliot, D. Butz, & B.M. Peruche (2007) Power, risk, and the status quo: Does power promote riskier or more conservative decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 451-462.