Adelaide's Ghost - How the COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on my family's experience with a diphtheria epidemic 90 years ago

Today's commonly shared COVID-19 experience is a crucible for better understanding others, even family members

By Linda Pickard

Updated May 12, 2020


One Microcosm of an Epidemic’s Effects

Every April, we were reminded by my mother that it was the month of “Adelaide’s birthday”. Sometime in the early 1930's, my eight-year-old aunt Adelaide passed away from diphtheria in a Liverpool hospital. My five-year-old also sick mother in a nearby bed survived. The trauma affected her entire life sometimes positively but more so negatively. 

Over 91 years, depression, paranoia and social behaviour that swung erratically between caring and insensitivity characterized my mother’s life. Critical decisions made by my maternal grandmother and the U.K. government at the time, significantly altered the trajectory of her life. Instead of experiencing a joyful childhood followed by a relatively happy adult journey, she became a victim of what we now call post-traumatic syndrome. It never departed.

Lodged deeply in her psyche was the belief her mother expressed to her that “the good one died”. Her five-year-old fast developing brain stored the guilt, the shame and the lack of sensitivity to her feelings. In today’s context, this “moral injury” mirrors what some soldiers returning from war experience. Health workers may also suffer from the loss of a colleague or certain patients. Perhaps for my mother, there were significant others around bringing comfort and solace. Her despair was likely too strong to take in such healing messages.

The key to improving my aunt’s chance of survival was a vaccine which was available at the time. She did not receive it. Why my mother survived without a vaccine may be due to a variety of factors. One such factor may have been her body’s ability to build its army of antibodies to fight the virus. That she lived into her 91^st year despite her mental anguish may reflect the mystery of a strong constitution.

Some History

Similar to COVID-19, diphtheria, at one time, was a worldwide epidemic mainly affecting industrialized countries. Running rampant in the 1920's and 1930's, it was known as “the strangling ‘angel ‘of children”. It made breathing difficult.  In Canada during 1924, there were nine thousand cases of diphtheria. It was the number one cause of death in children under 14. Then as now, the diphtheria bacterium (not virus) is transmitted through close contact with an infected individual usually through respiratory secretions spread through the air.  How governments responded to this crisis literally affected who would live and who would die. Herein is the source of my mother’s lifetime of sorrow.

Science and Advocacy

Like many diseases for which thankfully we have vaccines, diphtheria has a long history dating back to the 1600's. Advances in its mitigation accelerated in the early twentieth century through the collaborative efforts of scientists worldwide. Pioneering work in a number of countries paved the way for a vaccine. For example, the United Kingdom and France developed an antitoxin for diphtheria. In Canada, the University of Toronto established in 1914 an anti-toxin laboratory (Connaught Laboratories) under the able leadership of Dr. John G. Fitzgerald, a tireless advocate for public health safety and well-being. 

A team of scientists at the Connaught Laboratories forged ahead in “Slaying the Dragon” with clinical trials across Canada. Approximately 36 thousand children participated in carefully controlled studies between 1926 and 1929. These trials proved that a diphtheria toxoid reduced incidence of the disease by about 90% if given in three doses. By the 1930's a vaccine was available for children in Canada, perfect timing for my mother and her older sister. But its safety was not to be for them.

Deadly Travel

My maternal grandmother despite coming to Canada on her own as a 17-year-old to seek a better life yearned for her homeland – Liverpool, the later home of the Beatles. Periodically, to satisfy her discontent, she would gather her children, book passage on a ship and head to Liverpool for a visit. In about 1931, she unwittingly took them smack dab into a raging diphtheria epidemic. Both my mother at age five and her 8-year-old sister became infected with the diphtheria bacterium. One lived, one died.

My aunt, who was born in 1933 at the height of the depression to “replace the lost child”, recently told me that the cost of vaccinating her sisters was about $5.00 each. As my grandmother relayed to my aunt, she could not afford the cost of vaccinating her children. But there is more to the story whether or not cost stood in her way. Had my mother’s mother remained in Canada, Adelaide might have lived because of what we now call the “herd effect”.  That is, there are enough children inoculated to prevent the spread of the disease to those who have not been vaccinated.

What made the difference given that many countries around the world were joining the “Slaying the Dragon” movement? In Britain, a number of barriers intervened - government reluctance, concern about efficacy, lack of effective organization in the U.K. and what we now call “anti-vaxxers”. People opposed to experimenting on animals vocalized their resistance to a vaccine too. Local governments in the U.K. at the town level did their best to provide protection against the diphtheria epidemic. They struggled for funding in the absence of a coordinated country approach to vaccinating children. It was not until World War II that the British became serious about the widespread availability of a diphtheria vaccine followed by many others for children. Finally there was “buy-in”!

Nevertheless, diphtheria outbreaks still occur. Nations experiencing social disruption and conflict and reluctance to vaccinate are key reasons for the fluctuating number of global cases up to the present time. Constant vigilance is a must.  

  

Lessons for COVID-19

The COVID-19 journey combines lessons learned from past experiences and new ones we are creating in search of good solutions.

Universal health care and government support

Let’s count our blessings now for the level of government support and public health interventions that are leading us in “slaying” COVID-19. Heroes long forgotten in our collective memories such as Tommy Douglas (Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather) along with many advocates brought us universal health care, a necessary tool for fighting on the front lines. 

Innovation

Courageous and curious infectious disease researchers such as John Fitzgerald’s team and many that followed him nationally and globally to this day shed more and more light on the nature and prevention of infectious diseases. Collaboration abounds across the world and within nations.

Bill Gates and other wealthy funders through their respective foundations have worked together for years with the World Health Organization (WHO) along with numerous local health organizations globally to increase vaccination rates and improve the living circumstances of the most vulnerable. Science and leadership are our saviours for which I am most grateful.

Safety, connection and kindness - precious gifts of COVID-19

My mother suffered from a lifelong distrust of hospitals, doctors and fear of sickness. Whenever I or my two sisters became ill, she would sit by our bedsides for hours ensuring herself that we were going to be OK. She sought the best medical support available for us even for our teeth! But, for her ailments, she was a difficult patient often embarrassing us with her rude antics when in the presence of anyone in the medical profession. We were mystified. A second near death experience (sepsis after childbirth) likely explained much of her behaviour.

Everywhere she saw “the enemy”. It became a family “dragon” we were neither able to slay nor understand. How could her family as we were lucky recipients of the prosperous decades in the late twentieth and twenty-first  centuries? Despite periodic psychiatric counselling, the world to my mother was not a safe and kind place. 

Nevertheless, she managed to create a number of positives in her life. As an avid reader with wide-ranging interests, she could always contribute well-thought out views in any conversation. She worked part-time over many years to add to the family income, something that gave her purpose and enhanced her well-being. Mid-life the call to upgrading her education beckoned. Having only a grade 11 education as a foundation, she managed to gain entry to the University of Toronto’s continuing education program for older adults, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. 

Later, when she and I embarked on a road trip from Toronto to Los Angeles, the unhappy mother I knew turned into an enthusiastic, happy and curious traveler, content to sight-see and meet interesting people at our rest stops. Ironically, her passion for politics was well-served. Our road trip coincided with the immediate after-math of Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States in 2008. We gained first hand insights into the thoughts of Americans at each stop of the way. She was in her element! 

It is clearer now, thanks to COVID-19. Safety, connection, kindness and purpose were the drivers of my mother’s periodic happiness. These are the same qualities that are surfacing more in our collective struggle to win the battle over COVID-19. All cultures yearn for these not just during a crisis but always. But, will they fade post-COVID-19 by the pull back to tribalism and ‘us’ versus ‘them’?

The way forward

COVID-19 is a global transformational experience. For example, it is helping me better understand my mother, and, by association – others. That means then that going back to the same-old, same-old is not possible. The path forward will be different not only for me but for many. Will we be more divided? Less divided?

We know from a vast amount of behavioural science research that a more prosperous, fairer world has a greater probability of coming into being with inclusiveness. It will not be easy to make that happen. The virus has rattled us, making us more protective and more wary of others not like ourselves, not part of our "in" groups. We innovate less from that stance, often finding less satisfaction.  It will require considerable effort by each one of us to opt instead for a higher level of “inclusive fitness”. One that embraces not rejects the simplicity and reward of the diversity bonus. We are simulating that world mindset currently through our shared COVID-19 immersion. It is life-changing. For that reason we might find working with our differences for the greater good easier than before the pandemic.

Linda Pickard, Ph.D. is an award-winning educator and designer of leadership development experiences. She is also an executive coach and specialist in the neuroscience of diversity and inclusion. She is currently working on a new book on the latter topic with a colleague. 

What Do the Muppets and Goldilocks Have in Common With Today's Diversity and Inclusion Dilemmas?

Muppet Bert cleans up Cookie Monster’s crumbs, relishes routine, enjoys hobbies such as collecting paper clips, dresses neatly and provides reality checks to Ernie, his roomie. Muppet Ernie likes to experiment with fanciful ideas, creates mayhem, is a non-conformist and lives for new experiences. Which one finds it easier to be inclusive?

As Michele Gelfand, distinguished professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland explains in “Rule Breakers, Rule Makers”, culture is at the heart of Bert and Ernie’s differing behaviours:

Bert’s “Tight” Cultural Experience: Let’s imagine that Bert grew up in a place that for millennia suffered from economic uncertainty driven by frequent invasions, civil wars, weather-related catastrophes, food shortages, few natural resources, poverty, rampant disease and very crowded communities. With that kind of background, Bert’s ancestors, full of fear for their futures, would have naturally worked hard to bring order out of chaos. Their goal was to reduce risk to make life more predictable and safer. That required less personal freedoms, more coordination and lots of rules and regulations created by “strong” leaders.

Ernie’s “Loose” Cultural Experience: On the other hand, Ernie and his ancestors evolved from a more secure, peaceful geographical location relatively safe from chronic invasions, blessed with plentiful natural resources, less disease and only occasional weather-related disturbances.  Although Ernie and his ancestors did struggle to survive and adapted as the conditions dictated, they had less disruption to their lives than did Bert’s family. As well, they were blessed with fewer people and their country was a haven for a diversity of refugees seeking refuge from Bert-type countries. 

In summary, the vastly different environmental experiences of Bert and Ernie shaped the social norms they valued, in effect unconsciously programming their brains. The reasons were similarly practical - to navigate through choppy waters and to make progress – but, the different behavioural reactions are rather polar opposites due to the level of pain and suffering wrought by their respective environmental challenges. Is one set of behaviours better than the other?

General Stanley McChrystal weighs in on this conundrum from a leadership perspective as described in “Leaders, Myth and Reality”. After examining the stories of thirteen well-known leaders from a range of eras and fields, he concludes that “leadership is intensely contextual and always dependent upon particular circumstances that change from moment to moment and place to place.” The effectiveness of their style in particular was a function of place in time. An example was Winston Churchill – a great war-time Prime Minister (tight circumstances) but considered less of a fit in peace time (loose environment). Different behaviours and strategies were required.

 In effect there are trade-offs. Bert’s tight culture is better organized and more efficient than Ernie’s. People in Bert’s environment have a strong desire to avoid mistakes yet are skillful at impulse control according to Gelfand. But, Bert’s culture is less innovative and generally less tolerant of the rights of women, gays, disabled and homeless people, immigrants and others in the “out-group” than Ernie’s.

On the other hand, Ernie’s world is chaotic, not as efficient and people are more impulsive (less attentive to social norms). Unlike the extreme of Bert’s community, Ernie’s society is more inventive and risk-taking, more comfortable with ambiguity and disorder, and more welcoming of all different types of people.  

What would Goldilocks make of this? Not too much (constraint or freedom), not too little, just right. Economists speak of our tendency to migrate to the mean for finding the best-balanced solutions to our complex problems. Stanley McChrystal’s historical leadership research underlines that bending style/decision making to best fit the context is key. And, that adaptation to shifting circumstances is vital.

We’re in the midst of a recalibration of our social norms worldwide. Factors such as globalism, widening inequality, demographic disparities interfering with sustainable prosperity, the rule of law encompassing the rights of all and more are challenging us to seek the Goldilocks sweet spot over and over again.

Do We Equally Value Warmth and Competence in Leaders?

Do We Equally Value Warmth and Competence in Leaders?

December 11, 2018

This question sparks great debates in my leadership classes. Many argue that competence is critical to “getting the job done” so as a skill it must edge out warmth. Others rebut that without warmth, do we really want to work with that leader? After all, leaders can’t get much done alone. So, warmth plays an important part in the mix to the extent that it must be an equal partner. Or, is it more than equal?

Warmth as Giving

In his book, Give and Take, Adam Grant (Wharton University) describes researcher Shalom Schwartz’s findings on the values and principles that matter most to people cross-culturally:

• ·         Helpfulness (working for the well-being of others)
• ·         Responsibility (being dependable)
• ·         Social justice (caring for the disadvantaged)
• ·         Compassion (responding to the needs of others)

In Grant’s view, these behaviours together reflect an orientation toward giving. In the many case studies he describes, such influencing behaviours are contagious in groups and teams. They create an environment of reciprocity which in turn boosts collaboration and productivity.

Warmth as the Conduit of Influence

Harvard University’s Amy Cuddy in her book Presence concurs that warmth is the conduit of influence –the medium through which trust develops and ideas travel. We seem to have a built in survivor and belonging sense that consistently picks up words and signals linked to warmth faster than to competence. Yet we tend to evaluate ourselves on competence first but others on warmth! According to Amy Cuddy, if we put competence first, it undermines relationships, the necessary bonding essential for real teamwork. Thus, the balance is toward a genuine caring for others (warmth) that fuels a strong partnership with competence. 

Grant characterizes this as powerless communication used by great coaches in various sports arenas and successful leaders anywhere. Why? It sparks the sharing of ideas, innovations and ultimately group performance. The skills show up as asking for advice, showing vulnerability (not being a know-it-all with a big ego), and being genuinely interested in learning from and supporting others. Those who also study leadership effectiveness echo Grant, using the terms humility and curious to describe how warmth impacts others.

Will AI Supplant Warmth?

As we move increasingly toward an AI era of robots, self-driving cars and big data management in general, how will the balance of warmth and competence play out? Columbia University’s Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an International guru on leadership development, predicts that the soft skills will become even more crucial. In his view, AI will increasingly take care of the raw cognitive processing of facts and information. The agile parts of leadership - curiosity, emotional stability, humility, adaptability, vision and constant engagement (with, for example, front line workers who likely know more than you do) will supplant an “I am the decider” leadership. 

The Tango

What’s the take away then? Of course competence is critical. But without being leavened by warmth, competence will have less opportunity to grow and be in sync with what people want and need to bring their best selves to any challenge.

Perhaps the warmth/competence relationship is like dancing the Tango. It is a partner dance with diverse influences from African, Native American and European cultures. The Tango’s origins - musical gatherings of slaves and the lower classes in Argentina and Uruguay in the 1880s – speak to the need for belonging, inclusion and community. To this day great Tango dancers entertain, inspire, lift spirits and bring people together. Prowess at the Tango for its best effects thus is essential. But, without a huge dose of warmth, how could anyone competently dance the Tango? 

Linda Pickard is an organizational psychologist, experiential educator and coach.

Can One Positive Person Turn a Dysfunctional Team Around?

The Team Battle

No matter what havoc Nik wreaked, one group he was part of did not go down in flames. The other members kept their eye on the goal eventually succeeding with flying colours on the task. But, when he tried the same tactics in other groups, they struggled. What was the magical juice of the first group?

Negativity is highly infectious. It travels fast below our level of consciousness affecting behaviour in all realms of our lives, shutting down the relationship parts of our brains. In any team or group environment, one negative member can “infect” teammates with the same vibe. Productivity suffers. Trust plummets. Tribalism takes over because it is no longer safe to be in the group. This is a common story that most teams struggle with either all the time or occasionally when team membership changes.

But is the opposite true? Can one positive team member resuscitate the team’s culture despite the pervasive negativity? In that the root cause of “culture” is derived from the Latin word ‘cultus’ which means care, team leaders and members alike know intuitively that constant negativity is a detriment to success. Better to have a ‘caring’ or benign environment at the least because it is less stressful, more relaxing. This switch from fight or flight to rest and relax allows members to listen to each other and dare to share. Positivity literally and automatically opens up our connecting minds stoking idea flow and creativity.

The Magic of Positivity

Daniel Coyle’s most recent book, The Culture Code, describes an experiment in which an actor with the pseudonym “Nick” deliberately plays three different roles in up to forty small groups:

•         Jerk – aggressive, defiant and argumentative
•         Slacker – a with holder of effort
•         Downer – negative type

The group is tasked with developing a marketing plan for a start-up. In the majority of the groups, performance drops 30% to 40%. Team member energy, interest in the task and caring about succeeding take a hit. In almost every group, Nick’s negativity is picked up by everyone as evident by various signalling such as heads on table, crossed arms and other negative non-verbal behaviours. But, in one group, despite Nick, team members stay engaged and the group overall does well. Why?

The researchers solve the mystery by viewing the video of the outlier group. One group member (assigned the name “Jonathan”) always deflects Nick’s negative moves with body language that conveys warmth making the “unstable situation feel solid and safe”. He asks “simple” questions to elicit viewpoints. He smiles, listens closely and acknowledges the ideas. The result is higher energy levels, riffing with the ideas cooperatively and eventually achieving a quality outcome. 

The Win-Win Bonus

Decades of research on social conflict point in the same direction. For example, when group members who play the prisoner’s dilemma game eventually ‘get’ that sharing in the bounty creates a win-win for all, they see the limitations of win-lose (tit-for-tat). By dialing up a group mindset of inclusiveness, prosperity for the many overtakes prosperity for the few or as economists put it – win-win instead of zero-sum. In an organizational environment, this also applies to sharing and communicating among teams. The positive culture helps people to cooperate leading to higher quality decision making.  This is a universal effect.

If the “secret juice” is positivity, what are the ingredients? According to MIT’s Alex Pentland, two factors are critical:

Switching out status or power differentials, even temporarily, creates an atmosphere of  equality (everyone matters)

Social sensitivity, especially positive signaling, as our ancestors did before language emerged, kick starts mutual sharing and the vetting of ideas. The vibe of “it’s safe to say something” permeates the team. All ideas are worthy for consideration.

Positive “social physics” according to Pentland and his book of the same name, generate higher performance returns by enhancing the flow of ideas and by association the “collective intelligence” of the team. Special Ops teams in the military know this well.

Two-Way Street

Team conflict has a healthy and unhealthy side. On the healthy side, differing opinions enable an environment of challenging assumptions and digging deeper. But non-respectful conversations simply escalate bad feelings. The good news is that one person can make a difference one way or the other.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, page 54, Daniel Kahneman explains how “simple, common gestures” “unconsciously influence our thoughts and feelings”:

If you “act calm and kind…you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and kind.”

Consider this - every member of a team imagines this mindset in advance of each team meeting and during tumultuous times in team meetings. Even visualizing a positive scenario seems to help!

Tips for building positive conversational intelligence in a team:

·         Be curious – ask lots of open-ended and clarifying questions.

·         Watch your non-verbal signaling – no rolling of eyeballs, crossing your arms in disgust or defiance, ignoring other members, glaring and checking your smart phone.

·         Convey respect in both your verbal and non-verbal signals– inject humor, laugh appropriately, smile, acknowledge good ideas, give your full attention in the moment (as if you are in an improv class).

·         Guide the group to dig deep, challenging conventional wisdom and assumptions.

·         Let go of being right.

  

The Rage of Bias and the Hard Work to Tame It

What does it take to be a great leader?

I have been fascinated with this question since my teen years. But, I had no clue about the origins of greatness and how one becomes “great”.  I knew intuitively though that some people well-known and unsung rose above the fray to lend morale support and guidance during good times and bad times. How come?

During the start of my career as a clinical dietitian and public health nutritionist, the mystery deepened because I could not understand why some people enthusiastically and diligently scooped up my expert advice on lifestyle change, but most did not. Was there a connection to my enduring question about greatness? This time though it was about me. My efforts were hit and miss. My quest became more serious. The “eye of the beholder” mystery deepened.

Warmth Matters as a Start

An experience in one of my leadership development classes illustrates our collective struggle at recognizing greatness. The task was to rate various leaders on “warmth” and “competence”. Across most cultures, but not all, we are drawn to “warm” leaders, like a moth attracted to light. Such leaders connect well with people, we intuitively trust them. “Competence” stills matters such as appropriate expertise, follow through and getting things done. According to Harvard’s Amy Cuddy and others, warmth is the “conduit of influence”.

As I passed one group wrestling with Justin Trudeau’s warmth level, a female millennial made a face and exclaimed, “I can’t stand Justin Trudeau”! She could give me no reason. That’s how she felt, full stop. This was a visceral response that surprised me as her classmates overall gave Mr. Trudeau a seven to eight out of 10 for warmth. On competence, Prime Minister Trudeau faired less favourably because his track record is still in the making. But, not surprisingly, she and her group, as well as the class as a whole, gave Nelson Mandela top marks for warmth and competence. Was it because we know more about Mandela, his struggles and eventual redemption - the whole story?

Warmth and Competence Matter in the Long-Run

Stories are still in the making during the marathon race for becoming the next president of the United States. The debate around the world is palpable. Hillary Clinton, despite her considerable track record of achievement (competence), elicits vitriolic loathing among a sizeable portion of Americans, many with legitimate concerns about their well-being opportunities. Her likeability level (warmth) is more or less tied with Donald Trump’s – both low. Why? Well, “she’s cold”, “can’t trust her” and so on.  When asked to explain, people’s voices trail off or they name the recent email scandal or some other situation about which she was investigated for the nth time in her lengthy career. 

For many, the jury’s out on Trump too, particularly his competence. His extreme views on how to govern a liberal democracy and his tendency to be self-aggrandizing are concerning in a world where collaboration more than ever before is required. Throughout history great discoveries and innovations have almost always resulted from a process of working together. Winning wars too depends on a network of partnerships. “Liking” each other” is not always possible. The shared goal though is what matters.

Bias Can Mess Us Up or Grow Leadership Greatness

What’s going on?  It’s complicated. It’s always in the eye of the beholder. Many factors come into play, typically below our awareness:

It’s a social, it’s about survival – when we view another as “warm”, that can mean he or she cares about us, has our back, pays attention to the issues that are holding us back, will keep us safe, make our lives better. Trump seems to be hitting that note with his supporters. But so is Hillary among hers. The lines are blurred here. The truth is elusive.

It’s tribal like in-group/out-group – we effortlessly relate to people like us. It is harder to embrace and include someone we don’t know, who is different, who challenges our beliefs, what we think we know. That elicits fear for our well-being and can be an affront to our identity. 

It’s linked to family upbringing – political ideology, and the values it espouses, is strongly influenced by our parents, grandparents, teachers, and where we grew up.  

It’s an automatic emotional response – instead of treating ourselves as ongoing growing experiments, we default to just “believing” what we think and “know”. A person, data or a situation generates a response, negative or positive, outside the context of critical thinking. We made a decision a long time ago about these and they have been encoded in our minds as reaction recipes. While many of these recipes help us navigate life on a daily basis, thus are helpful and good, with the changing world, others are in need of scrutiny. Not all of us embrace the rigor of challenging what we know as do, for example, scientists and others undertaking research.

Openness Can Tame Blind Bias

Then, how do we square reality a bit better instead of staying stuck, even if we are not researchers? How do we get beyond “the rage of bias”? How do we tame it so we don’t block progress in our personal greatness journey?

There is one way that can give greatness a boost toward fact-checking what we automatically see. Dale Carnegie’s book on “How to Win Friends and Influence People” alludes to it – "be interested rather than interesting". 

MIT’s Alex “Sandy” Pentland and many collaborators have corroborated Carnegie’s observations naming the concept as “social physics” and the top skill as “social sensitivity”. High performing teams are very good at this. The personality trait individually and collectively is “openness”. The process is one of respectful, equal opportunity debate that challenges us to examine our assumptions.

Taming the rage of blind bias is hard work. Without feedback from others, blindness can persist. With others who see reality through a different lens, we can test out the validity of what we know and believe. We can open our minds and mindsets to an information flow that might shed more light on reality.

When We Know Another Better, Blind Bias Has Less of a Chance to Rage

Globally, we are witnessing the difficulty of the hard work of reality-checking as the United States’ electorate ponders the nation’s next commander-in-chief.  People are working out their thinking, their views of each candidate to lead nationally and internationally. They are becoming more aware of Senator Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s personal and professional stories past and current. As a result, voters’ clarity of judgment has a chance to emerge with a more nuanced foundation. In turn, seeing greatness in a new light may have a chance.  

What the Marshmallow Test Teaches Us About Following Through on New Year’s Resolutions

Self-control is the master empathy ability – build it and your life improves

If you could imagine what you were like as a four-year-old, would you have resisted the temptation to eat two marshmallows on the table in front of you for about 15 minutes? In the 1960s at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School, some, not all, pre-schoolers were able to exercise enough self-restraint to wait for two marshmallows instead of one right away. They used all kinds of distractions to extend their ability to put off instant gratification.

Over the ensuing longitudinal study by Stanford through various life stages the high will power four-year-olds as adolescents, for example, thought ahead more, were goal-focussed, not easily side-tracked by setbacks and when under stress did not go to pieces as much as low delayers did.  Follow up brain scans of adult alumni confirmed that high delayers more actively used their “cool” executive functioning (EF) centres. The low delayers activated parts of their brains related to desire, pleasure and addictions. Scores of other researchers have confirmed these findings.

So it seems that if we find ways to improve our self-control, we are by association building our executive functioning. We are developing our higher order thinking skills. In turn, by improving our self-control we are in effect gaining ground on our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and others in a positive way. That shows up in less reactive, more measured behaviour, leaving more room for mutual creativity and problem solving.

You are not doomed by your social or biological history

So are you doomed if you were a low delayer four-year-old? No, you are not. Fortunately the high delayers have provided us with bountiful ideas for strengthening our will power, thereby decreasing or protecting us from our vulnerabilities while increasing confidence. Walter Mischel eloquently describes in his book, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control, that there is hope for us all.

You can learn to turn the on switch to your cooler self when faced with hot moments or triggers that may take you down the wrong path in relationships, stressful situations and when faced with non-technical decisions that have no clear answers. Meditation is a classic way to build such capability. But if that is not your thing, then the “if, then” or “when, then” strategy is worth a try. It’s a great mind tool for bringing New Year’s resolutions into reality.

The key is to plan ahead how you will deal with specific “hot” situations

Here’s how it works – prepare an implementation plan in advance for a hot stimulus situation that stands in the way of a better habit. For example, “If I feel myself becoming impatient in the grocery checkout line (the hot stimulus context), then I will take a few deep breaths and scan the magazines (the cool stimuli).” Another example – “When the dessert menu is offered, I will not order the chocolate cake; instead I will order the sorbets and share with my dinner partner.” Or, in the work situation context, “if so-and so snaps back at me during a team meeting, then I will ask open-ended, neutral questions to explore further her point-of-view, to better understand where she is coming from.” These examples might seem frivolous; however, the self-control strength building from particularly vexing and specific contexts expands to other areas simultaneously. The benefits snow ball. The key is to choose the times and places or cues that trigger your hot responses and then to implement your cooling down, self-control plan.

The lesson for all of us is that self-control is more than determination or an annual resolution. It needs an infrastructure – a plan or strategies – to thrive. The lessons learned as the “If, then” or “When, then” plans are executed reinforce or add new ideas for the new habit-building journey. It is the essence of deliberate practice used by those aspiring to elite status in their respective fields of endeavour. Eventually the new habit becomes automatic. There is no going back to the way we were, for the most part. In this era of many distractions fueled by technology, the insights from the marshmallow and related experiments may be just the antidote for us to recapture the present moment and sustain our grit. 

Billie Beane 'got it' - the behaviours that lead to desired outcomes. Any lessons here for the rest of us?

In the late 1990s, the Oakland Athletics baseball team startled the baseball world.  It was the poorest team in baseball. Yet, the Oakland As won more regular season games than all but one of the other twenty-nine teams, the Atlanta Braves. The baseball commissioner chalked it up to “an aberration”. But, it was not. Two men with Bill as their first names changed the course of baseball history.

Some 40 years ago or so, Bill James was an aspiring 20ish writer who loved baseball. In his spare time as a security guard for a pork and beans cannery, he began laying down his ideas. 

James liked to pose questions:

“Which pitchers and catchers allow runners to steal the most bases?”

He demonstrated the fallacy of many measurements used by the baseball industry to assess the talent of players. Historical measures related to speed and contact such as stolen bases, runs batted in and batting average were the norm. On the other hand, measures of offensive success appeared to fare better in predicting “wins”. They included on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

Bill James developed quite a following among baseball stats 'geeks' by presenting his data and analysis with great wit, insight and frequency. His method described as “Sabermetrics” in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) aroused the attention of many gaining momentum far and wide. He was onto something.

His abstracts, full of in-depth statistics compiled from his study of box scores from the preceding season, were coveted in the 1980s by a huge number of like-minded baseball fans. With James, they debated and challenged each other, in essence forming a kind of Wikipedia on baseball performance. Despite his efforts, James could not convince the baseball league owners and managers that his analysis had merit for gauging and guiding performance.

Meanwhile, around 1997, the new GM of the Oakland As, Billy Beane, set about looking for ways to make his team more efficient. He re-examined everything from the market price of foot speed to the difference between the average major league player and the superior Triple-A one. Sabermetrics was part of his tool kit.

In around 2000 the well-known journalist Michael Lewis decided to investigate. His book called Moneyball was subsequently made into the 2011 movie of the same name starring Brad Pit as Billy Beane. As Brad Pitt says to his young data-mining protégé, “We are going to change the game” and so they did.

More recently Harvard and Stanford examined this “disruptive innovation” in a case study spanning the accomplishments of the major baseball leagues from 1998 to 2013. The Oakland Athletics won hands down for increasing wins while decreasing the cost of the wins. The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox did quite well with wins but were stuck in the expensive realm.

So what are the takeaways for us not in sports but in a range of organizations where we want to progress, be competitive within our industries or domains and when all is said and done – survive?!

Hans Rosling, the “jedi-master” of animating data, provides some clues in his quest to rid us of our incorrect assumptions about the world. In his November 2013 spirited video presentation, Don’t Panic which can be viewed in full on www.gapminder.com , he demonstrates imaginatively and persuasively that a poor family having a bicycle is a critical tool to lift it out of extreme poverty from $1 to $2 per day toward $10 - a significant difference. Granted access to education, clean water, health care and sanitation are vital too. But what if all of those are there but tough to access?

The poor family aided by a bicycle yields insight into where to zoom in to make progress when there are many priorities. Access to transportation enables the family’s daily routines to take less time, such as travelling miles for water, formerly done on foot, leaving more for other creative endeavours.  In metrics terms, from $1 to $10 is the lag indicator (target) and owning a bicycle is the lead indicator (contributes to reaching the target). Put another way, the latter measure (having a bicycle) captures an action that leads to a significant outcome (more money for the family). It compares to on-base percentage in baseball (more people on base increases the probability of home runs).

To arrive at a leading indicator however requires considerable exploration of reality versus the big goals. If achieved, the indicator and its attendant strategies would make a significant difference. Many business authors have written extensively on how to develop “scorecards”. Harvard’s Robert S. Kaplan is one of the most prolific and well-known.

But what if you need a little more hand-holding to sort the wheat from the chaff and not spend a fortune on developing and monitoring a big scorecard?  The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney and Sean Covey is a user-friendly alternative, coaching the reader step-by-step.

The failure to execute strategy well is a chronic problem. But if teams can get their heads around the “how to” via an engaging and inclusive process (taking the high level corporate strategy to the realm of front line in a concrete way), then there is hope to up the gains and lower the failures. 

The magic in the process is to narrow focus and choose only one or two stretch goals while “the whirlwind” of the daily business goes on. Then, create the “yellow brick road” with built in accountability and tracking which everyone excitedly walks. It’s much more manageable and certain than all those spreadsheets with every single goal and objective noted over multi-years. It’s a great way of “busting” silos too and recognizes the iterative or winding journey of plans. We can only imagine and think so far in advance before unexpected change reaches in to disrupt our ideas.