CHAPTER 3

TRICKING YOUR BRAIN TO OPEN YOUR MIND

When I was twenty-eight, I quit my job and started my first business. I began on my own, offering marketing and communications consulting services to the D.C. area’s then-burgeoning technology market. Within a year I had a partner, several employees, a solid client base, and a real office. I was young, ambitious, naïve, and hardworking, with the benefit of great timing as the market grew. I also had one more quality that I felt contributed to my success: I loved to solve problems.

As an entrepreneur—and especially an inexperienced one—the world is one problem after another. You have to find clients, keep clients, and get employees on board when you have little to offer. You have to set up an organizational structure, manage cash flow, and figure out how to limit your risk. Regularly, a client asks for something you’ve never done before—something you may never have even heard of. In a client service business, and especially a high-visibility one like public relations and marketing, you have to manage a host of political and ego-driven client issues.

Actually liking to solve problems helped me feel excitement and accomplishment in an otherwise stressful environment of unknowns. As I solved more problems and they began to repeat, I got better at it. I could solve problems faster, and attack larger ones. My team members brought me more of them—even ones they could be solving on their own. We established ways to handle common problems, and rather than recreating the wheel we tried to institutionalize solutions.

Everything seemed great; we were cooking. Then about two years in, cracks began to appear. We hit a wall around innovation. We weren’t providing fresh ideas, and clients began to complain about it. Thinking that new people equal new ideas, we hired new people. But those new hires quickly learned to fit into our model by following our set processes and kicking the problems up to the partners to solve.

You can probably guess the culprit—me. My love of problem-solving was limiting the company. It wasn’t that we lacked new ideas. We had plenty of talented people, but there was no way for innovation to take hold. The more problems I experienced, and the more repetitive they became, the fewer new ideas were getting into the system. Sure, I got faster, but the range of possibilities shrunk—exactly the opposite of what a company that’s trying to grow and innovate wants. My mind was narrowing, and because there was no incentive for other people to bring fresh ideas, we were stagnating. (We eventually fixed this, but it took a major overhaul of our roles.)

I’ve seen this dynamic play out repeatedly with other entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. Perhaps people self-select into these leadership roles because they do love the challenge of solving problems. At first, they bring a trove of new ideas and solutions. Once they get to a place of competency though, without an intentional effort to continually expand their range of thinking, their own success ends up limiting them.

Or as the playwright George Bernard Shaw put it: “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

We’d like to believe that our thinking expands with experience and age. Isn’t that what the elusive wisdom is all about? In fact, opening our minds gets harder as we get better at things. Our thinking calcifies with success and experience.¹

Researchers at Loyola University in Chicago tested a phenomenon that they called “earned dogmatism.” According to the earned dogmatism hypothesis, people who believe they are experts become less open-minded and more dogmatic in their thinking. In one experiment, the researchers had study participants answer political questions. One group got the easy questions like “Who is the current president?” and one group got the harder ones, such as “Who was Nixon’s original vice president?” Those who had the easy test were told they aced it, while those with the difficult test were told they performed poorly.

Then all participants were asked to rate themselves on a series of statements to measure open-mindedness such as, “I am open to considering other political viewpoints.” The participants who had the easy questions were more close-minded and certain when asked about their political beliefs.

The findings were replicated across six studies, of varying topics. When participants were made to feel they were experts, they overly invested in their own opinions. They were more likely to believe they were right and less likely to admit they didn’t know an answer.

This fascinating study shows that not only do true experts narrow their thinking, but so do those whom researchers just made to feel were experts. When people believe they have the right answer, they stop considering any other alternatives.

Think about how this plays out at work. Many leaders have risen to a position of success, then are surrounded by people who praise them for their judgment and results. Just like in my own example, the more we think we know, the less we listen and consider alternative viewpoints. We close our minds, and the dynamic becomes a trap.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS AND BEING PRESENT

As the name implies, our open-mindedness shows how open we are to the thoughts and presence of others. We’re more present if we’re more open-minded. And if we’re more present, we’re more inspiring. In my research on inspiring leaders, I heard repeatedly that those who inspire us are right there with us, not judging, not pushing, but trying to understand where we’re coming from. Even if they are experts, they don’t force their advice on us, but help us to make our own decisions. They guide, but they don’t dictate.

Sounds like a great person to know or be, right?

Open-mindedness is seen as a universal virtue. No one sets a New Year’s resolution to become more close-minded (unless they want fewer friends to celebrate with next year). Having an open mind is equated with approachability, friendliness, and being nonjudgmental. Most of us would say we are open-minded—and we’re quick to point out when we think others aren’t.

If only open-mindedness were that easy. Unfortunately, our brains are rigged against us. It’s not just success that gets in the way of an open mind, but our basic brain functioning.

WHY YOU NEED A CROWBAR TO OPEN YOUR MIND

We have heard lovely stories about how much horsepower we have sitting on top of our necks, if only we could use it fully. Our brains are described as powerhouses and supercomputers, with an amazing capacity to take in data, retain it, and find connections between disparate concepts.

While it may be true that our brains are highly capable, neuroscientists and behavioral economists have spent the past decade also proving that we are “cognitive misers.” Because the brain’s primary goal is efficiency, it creates a myriad of shortcuts for us to simplify our thinking so we can reduce our energy burn. This is terrific news when we’re driving to work, as we barely have to think about how to get there. But it’s not so good when we make knee-jerk assumptions about Bob in accounting without even knowing that we’re doing it.

One of my favorite thought leaders on this topic is Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University professor, renowned researcher, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and author of several books including, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman brilliantly condenses and simplifies what is happening to us when we attempt to understand and make decisions (thus making his readers’ brains happy). It says a lot that Thinking, Fast and Slow, clocking in at nearly 500 dense pages, was a New York Times bestseller. The book describes our complicated brain functioning in a way that’s incredibly accessible and useful for anyone.²

Kahneman breaks down our thinking into two functions: System 1 and System 2:

System 1 thinking is automatic and quick, requiring little to no effort. It happens without our even realizing we’re thinking. This is how you know how to read, or to jump out of the way of an oncoming car. System 1 adapts from experience. Once you know how to count, you can’t unlearn it.

System 2 thinking takes effort. It’s associated with concentration, decisionmaking, and analysis. It requires attention, and when that’s taken away, System 2 is disrupted. If you were studying for a test or writing a speech, you’d be using System 2 thinking. Though both systems are always at work, in general, System 2 takes the suggestions of System 1 without challenge. It’s only when System 1 has a problem that System 2 jumps in.

This interplay allows us to function in a way that’s not overly taxing. System 2 takes energy, and even makes us blind to other factors. When all of our attention is on one thing, then we miss everything else happening around us. An episode of the Nat Geo show Brain Games demonstrates this perfectly, by asking viewers to focus on counting the intricate movements of dancers. All the while people in outlandish animal costumes are walking back and forth on the stage. Viewers are so focused on the dance steps that they don’t even see the costumed people until the slow-motion recap. (This is similar to the 1999 study many have seen on inattentional blindness, where viewers focus on basketballs being passed and miss a large gorilla. The research led to a book by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons called, aptly, The Invisible Gorilla.)

System 1 is fast, but it’s far from accurate. It’s filled with biases: cultural, personal, and learned. It also can’t be turned off. The only thing we can do is understand what’s happening in our thinking, and prompt System 2 to boot up when we need it. This is essentially why Kahneman wrote the book—to take our unconscious conditioning and teach us how to make conscious choices.

We have a host of unconscious biases that gum up our thinking and cause us to react in often close-minded ways. Here are a few that occur frequently in typical business settings:

Anchoring: We rely too much on the first piece of information we receive about a person, a product, a number, or just about anything—and then judge subsequent interactions in relation to that first judgment. This is why those who throw out the first number in a negotiation are more likely to get closer to what they want, and why first impressions are hard to overcome.³

Confirmation Bias: We seek out information that confirms what we’re already thinking. In essence, we are using System 2 to bolster System 1’s first impression. This plays out in hiring, when we inflate the qualifications of someone who seems most like us, or has come recommended from a friend.

Arbitrary Coherence: Related to anchoring, but perhaps even more troubling, even data that’s entirely irrelevant to what we’re determining can influence our decision. Duke University professor Dan Ariely performed a study where he asked people to write down the last two digits of their social security numbers, then write down what they’d be willing to pay for a number of consumer items. Participants with higher two-digit numbers submitted bids that were 60 to 120 percent higher.⁴

Recency Bias: We overvalue information from the recent past, and assume that it will continue in the future. This is a common complaint about performance reviews, where evaluators rely on the near past to explain an employee’s performance over the course of an entire year. Overcoming this is of particular importance in financial markets, where traders can rely on a stock’s last move, and overlook larger trends.

Correspondence Bias: We assign meaning to people’s behavior in an automatic way, and assume that the behavior can be explained by someone’s personality or character. If a colleague turns in work late, then he’s lazy. If your student fails a test, then she isn’t smart enough. If your date doesn’t call you again, then he’s a player. Now here’s where it gets interesting. When we look at our own behavior, we attribute it not to character, but to the situation. Our work is late because we were overloaded. If we fail a test, then the questions were unfair. If we don’t call a date again, it must have slipped our mind. In reality, research psychologists tell us emphatically that people’s behavior is a poor predictor of their intent, so we’re jumping to a lot of erroneous conclusions.⁵

Psychologists have identified many more such biases. All this is to say, that System 1 has some serious bugs. In fact, none of us are open-minded. If we want to grow in this area, we have to make an effort to understand our thinking, and then to challenge it. We’re better off going into a situation knowing that we’re prone to knee-jerk, unconscious reactions. Then we can begin to institute some new approaches, and train our brains to think differently.

LET’S NOT FORGET ABOUT INFLUENCE

Now that we’ve tapped into the forces inside of us that limit our ability to think expansively, it’s worth spending a few paragraphs discussing the external or social factors that also influence us. Just like System 1, these factors prey on our unconscious, and gently sway our behavior without conscious control. Perhaps the most well-known source on influence is Robert Cialdini, psychology professor, researcher, and author of Influence: Science and Practice.⁶ In Influence, Cialdini breaks down the six elements of influence that drive our behavior:

Reciprocation: We feel compelled to respond if someone has done a favor, whether real or perceived. If your colleague sticks her neck out for you, you’re more likely to be influenced by her in the future.

Commitment and consistency: If we commit to an idea, especially in public, we’re more likely to act in alignment with that commitment. This is why stating goals out loud to others, like a plan to lose weight, influences our behavior to stick with it.

Social proof: We conform to the behavior of those around us. If your colleagues don’t seem to care about getting expense reports in on time, you won’t either. This is also why peer pressure gets people in trouble.

Authority: We act in accordance with those we deem to be in positions of authority, such as our bosses. You can see this in the effectiveness of advertising featuring fake doctors wearing lab coats.

Liking: We’re more persuaded by people we like, and who seem similar to us. This explains all of the bias research around hiring people who look like us and come from similar backgrounds.

Scarcity: If we believe something is running out or may go away, we’re more likely to act. This explains one-day-only sales and why there’s never any bread left in supermarkets just before a snowstorm.

It doesn’t take much to recognize these forces at work in us. We fall into these logic traps repeatedly and unconsciously. Sometimes they serve us, but often they work against us. Certainly no one sets out to be a close-minded automaton guided by cognitive biases and social influences. Yet, we often are that bound by automaticity.

Luckily, we can kick in our trusty System 2 at any time and start questioning our thinking. Being able to understand, examine, and even counter the influences on our thoughts and behavior enables us to expand our thinking and our range of motion. We can’t do what we can’t see. Being open-minded means being able to broaden our lens, so we can see a fuller picture of others and ourselves.

INSPIRING WITH OPEN-MINDEDNESS

Inspire Path conversations require us to engage consciously at a deeper level, with presence and open-mindedness. We all know how to do it. We simply need to choose to show up in a different way.

Many leaders feel that people come to them every day, all day, looking for clear, direct answers. There are times when this is the right approach. Make a decision and move on. But more often, leaders need to inspire action in others, and help influence another’s thinking. Just as in the story about starting my own business that opened this chapter, if we do all the thinking, then we’re not creating a space for others to add their own marks. And we certainly don’t want to reinforce a dynamic that narrows an organization’s thinking by an overreliance on a few key people.

Therefore, as you read these next suggestions for how to be more open-minded, be sure to keep your own mind open! Think about all the conversations you have where you want to motivate, inspire, connect, and encourage. Those are exactly the times to consider how you might incorporate some of these approaches.

USE A “PRE-MORTEM”

Often, conversations in which we need to inspire come with high stakes. We hope to sell our vision to a room of investors, or convince a customer to buy our product. We want to turn around a challenging employee, or get a team to work harder. These interactions can trigger stress and make us lose our composure. One of the ways we can keep ourselves in a calm, open-minded stance is to assume ahead of time that we’re going to be triggered and our thinking will get cloudy—and prepare with what neuroscientist Daniel Levitin calls a “pre-mortem.”⁷

We’re already good at doing postmortems. Who hasn’t bungled an important conversation and then afterward ruminated on what went wrong? The pre-mortem idea is to know yourself well enough to understand what biases will kick in, what triggers could flare, what influences you’re susceptible to, and what you’ll do ahead of time to remain present, focused, and open-minded.

For example, a client of mine knew that whenever he spoke to the board he would get overly nervous and deferential to authority, which would get in the way of being able to deliver tough information confidently. By knowing this ahead of time, he was prepared with a plan while his thinking was still clear. In the meeting, when he could feel himself starting to go down that hole, he knew to take a deep breath and focus on providing short, direct answers rather than rambling in an effort to curry favor.

ASK OPEN QUESTIONS

If you want to have an open mind, and open the minds of others, learn how to ask open questions. Most questions that we ask are close-ended fact-finders starting with “Why . . .” or “Did . . .” Primarily, they elicit right-or-wrong answers, and they come across as judgmental. When someone asks us why we did what we did, we go into defensive mode. If I were to ask you, “Why did you buy this book?” you’d probably feel like you have to explain yourself. (Thanks for buying it, by the way.)

On the other hand, open-ended questions encourage minds to wander. Coming from a place of curiosity about the other person, they can be illuminating for both sides of the conversation.

When we feel judged we shut down. When we feel someone is genuinely interested in our thinking, then we open up. As a plus, when we ask open questions, and listen closely for other people’s thought processes, we learn a great deal about them and the situation. See the examples below of typical closed versus open questions:

CLOSED QUESTIONS	OPEN QUESTIONS
Why are you here?	What brings you here?
Why did this happen?	What factors led to this place?
Who was responsible?	How did this come about?
Did you consider trying it this way?	What would you do, if you could do anything?
Do you see the problem?	How is the view from your vantage point?
Do you know what you’re going to do?	What’s possible?

When you’re in Inspire Path conversations, your job is to open your own mind, and to help the other person expand his as well. Even if you have an opinion of what you want him to do, you’re more likely to get a commitment if he feels ownership of the idea. We’re most influential when we’re creating the space for others to create their own insights.

USE THE NATO APPROACH: NOT ATTACHED TO OUTCOME

In our culture, we try to control just about anything we can. We equate control, stress, and effort with desire. If we want something badly enough, then we’ll work hard to make it turn out the way we want. On the flip side, we hate being controlled by someone else. If we’re in a conversation where we feel manipulated, we lose trust and get protective fast.

When someone listens to us without trying to game the outcome, it feels like a gift. This is why executives hire coaches—we’re often the only people in their lives who don’t have a stake in their decisions.

In conversations that matter to us then, our first impulse can be to control them in order to achieve our desired outcome. The larger the audience, the more effort people usually put into preparing—whether or not the communication event is actually more important. Certainly for any Inspire Path conversation, we care about what happens! However, we can achieve more if we loosen our grip on the outcome, and give the conversation space to play out in its own way.

I love the acronym NATO, for not attached to outcome, which is loosely based on a Buddhist concept that the origin of suffering is attachment to our desires. NATO is a little playful and memorable, and gaining some renown, even finding a spot in the Urban Dictionary. But there’s great power behind it. When we want something badly enough, we hold onto it tightly. And that limits our range of motion. When we can let go of a particular outcome or expectation, it can free us up to be open and to create more opportunity.

We usually can’t control the entire outcome anyway: That’s an illusion. When human beings interact, anything can happen. All we can control is our reaction to the outcome. That doesn’t mean that we don’t care, shouldn’t try our best, or shouldn’t prepare. It means that we do all that we can, leave room for possibilities, and accept that the cards will play out as they will.

There’s an ancient Chinese saying: “Come with an empty cup.” In other words, we can’t learn if our cup is already full with our own answers. If we come with an empty cup, we empty our minds of what should happen, and provide room for what can happen.

EMBRACE “I DON’T KNOW”

From our youngest days, we are rewarded for having the right answers. We raise our hand first in school, and the teacher praises us. Then we go to work where we get recognized for our fast responses and quick thinking. If we continue to rise, sooner or later we get into a position where we’re asked something that we don’t know. This is inevitable, as we’re responsible for a wider span of activities, with more complexity, and we can’t possibly know everything.

In some organizations where I’ve worked, people live in abject fear that someone senior to them will ask a question that they can’t answer. You can guess that these are also environments where innovation is an issue—where people are so worried about knowing everything that they can’t take risks or delegate properly. These are not fun places to work.

To be open-minded, we have to admit that there are things we don’t know. Now yes, I’m sure we all agree that’s true. But we also have to act as if it’s true. Embracing uncertainty allows us to be that empty cup that creates room for someone else’s ideas.

Leaders who are unafraid of saying, “I don’t know” invite outside thinking. It shows courage, not weakness. Not having all the answers creates an invitation to others. And it can even start a revolution of innovation.

In her groundbreaking book, MindSet, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has created an entire movement that’s shaping institutions from Fortune 50 corporations to preschools.⁸ Her work is based on decades of research into achievement and success. She found that people are most resilient and successful when they develop a growth mindset—the belief that basic abilities can be developed through effort and hard work. Those with a growth mindset expect to work hard for mastery, and don’t take it personally when challenges arise. The opposite approach, a fixed mindset, is the belief that abilities are based on intelligence or talents. Instead of stretching to grow, those with a fixed mindset play it safe to ensure their intelligence is never challenged—and they wilt in the face of difficulties.

Embracing “I don’t know” encourages a growth mindset. The follow up to it is, “let’s find out.” When leaders are also learners, their teams and organizations benefit because the behavior models a collective growth mindset that says, “Never stop improving.”

IF YOU CAN’T AGREE, ACKNOWLEDGE

It’s easy to forget how the concept of validation is a game-changer in interpersonal relationships. The simple act of saying “I get you” or “I see where you’re coming from” can literally shift the conversation in an instant.

Acknowledgment, however, can be a challenge when we don’t actually agree with what the other person is saying. If we’re trying to inspire a new customer to buy our software product, and the customer feels that the product isn’t as good as the competition, our first instinct is to push back about the reasons that they’re wrong. But in this instance, when we push, they retreat, because we have invalidated their concerns. Another approach is to acknowledge what the customer has said—even if it’s flat out wrong. I understand that, from where you sit, it seems that our product lags behind. I respect your opinion. Or: Many people share your initial impression of our product, as we’ve not gotten our message out there. I hope to gradually change that. When we acknowledge, we create a space to have a different conversation with an open mind, one that feels more on equal terms.

I’ve worked with many clients around this issue of acknowledgment. A few years ago, one client (let’s call him Dave) was about to lose his top employee to a competitor. The employee felt that he didn’t have growth potential at the company. Dave strongly disagreed and wanted the employee to feel that was not the case. They had a few conversations; Dave sold hard, but wasn’t able to get the employee to agree to stay. Finally, Dave approached the employee with an open mind, acknowledging why he might feel that way based on past experience. Rather than a competition of perspectives, they agreed to approach the situation together. With Dave seeking to understand, the employee felt freer to think more broadly. Only then could Dave turn the conversation around. In the end, the employee stayed with Dave’s full support to ensure his future success.

Acknowledging what’s true for someone else—even if it’s not true for you—is a good leadership skill to hone. It makes conversations less confrontational, and gets both parties to the same side of the table.

CREATE SPACE TO LET YOUR MIND WANDER

To end this chapter I’ll go back to the beginning of this section on being present. In our frenetic, connected world we have scant time to be with our thoughts. We have access to more information than we could have dreamed of a few decades ago, yet less time to fully absorb it. Having an open mind requires time to process our thoughts. If we don’t make time for it, no one else is going to do it for us.

If you want to be present in important conversations, you may want to start by being present in conversations with yourself. It’s exceedingly important for leaders—and really for anyone—to have time to let our minds go.

When is your true quiet time to think? How do you contemplate and integrate new information that you’ve learned? Where is your designated space to reflect?

Incorporating even small amounts of reflection time changes my clients’ lives dramatically. The time commitment doesn’t have to be long. Several years ago, I began consciously using drive time to think. I stopped making phone calls or turning on music. I use the time to be in quiet. Now, instead of hating to drive I’ve come to enjoy it as important time. This works for me. Figure out what works for you. Schedule bi-monthly strategy sessions with yourself, get up a half-hour earlier to think through your day, or do a full-week retreat. See what opens up for you when you create the space and allow yourself to step into it. And be NATO about it.