From time to time I enjoy looking at the website of the Royal Society for the Arts (http://www.thersa.org/) which boasts a wide variety of stimulating presentations. Some of my favorites are the RSA Animate presentations, edited talks supported with professional whiteboard graphics. I find that since leaders need to be effective at understanding human interaction, there is a lot to be learned here. This week I ran across two more presentations dealing with the subject of language that I thought you might find interesting. And I have added a third book you may find useful.

Steven Pinker gave a presentation called The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature in which he explores why we don't say what we mean and what the consequences would be if we always spoke our mind unambiguously. Since social scientists have known for a long time that conversation simultaneously performs two functions:

To convey information, and
To define relationships.

How person A addresses person B is dependent upon the perceived relationship between them both. There are things I would tell a friend that I wouldn't tell a casual acquaintance. And the way I relate to my boss or other person who has power or authority over me can be quite different from how I treat peers or subordinates. If I mix up these can be quite awkward.

Pinker points out that there are three kinds of relationships: dominance, communality and reciprocity. The consequences of treating somebody as if the relationship were other than it is can be embarrassing or worse.

He also explores the difference between individual knowledge and mutual knowledge, the former being that which I know but which I do not know whether you also know it. Mutual knowledge is knowledge that not only do we both possess but we each know that the other possesses it.

Pinker is a Canadian-born experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author. He is a Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and thecomputational theory of mind. Pinker's academic specializations are visual cognition and psycholinguistics.

The animated talk is definitely worth the 10 minutes you need to watch it. You can do so at the RSA web site or at http://youtu.be/3-son3EJTrU.

The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty

The second presentation I ran across from RSA is by Dan Ariely, an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He teaches atDuke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight. Ariely's talks on TED have been watched 2.8 million times. He is the author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which becameNew York Times best sellers.

His talk is called The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty, an exploration of his view that we are all stuck between a desire to do what is right and to do what benefits us in the short term. Most of us prefer to see ourselves as honest, moral individuals and therefore we mostly do what is right. But most of us also excuse ourselves for doing little things which are not right, like taking office supplies home from the office. According to Ariely we all have the capacity to do bad things and we all have the capacity to justify or rationalize our actions, like downloading music illegally.

He sees some interesting applications here for encouraging better behavior from our politicians and bankers -- and maybe from ourselves. Have a look at the white board presentation of his talk at the RSA here.

Shine

Here is another book that might be of some interest to you -- this time on a management theme. When I saw the title of Edward Hallowell's book “Shine” I was immediately reminded of a favorite film of mine from the 70s, "The Shining" starring a crazed Jack Nicholson who terrorizes his family while they are all marooned in a resort hotel which is closed and they are snowed in for the winter. There is absolutely no connection between the two. I just wanted an excuse to show this iconic photo of Nicolson.

Hallowell is a psychiatrist who graduated from Harvard and began his writing in the field of attention deficit disorder (ADD). His latest book carries the subtitle "using brain science to get the best from your people".

He begins from the premise that today's workers are overwhelmed and disconnected, but that they don't have to be. Recent research in psychology and neuroscience gives manager new tools to help their staff members. He proposes a five step science-based "cycle of excellence” to manage people better.

Help people find the job that's right for them.
Help employees connect with those around them.
Foster creativity by encouraging Lane in the workplace.
Help people identify their most crucial work and focused diligently on it.
Recognize staff members for the hard work they have done.

He believes that each step lays a foundation for the next and therefore must be achieved in sequence. Each step builds on the previous steps scientifically and synergistically, to lift people's spirits, generate creativity and raise productivity.

I would like to share a few selected quotes from the book:

"Smart is overrated. Talent is overrated. Breeding, Ivy League education, sophistication, wit, eloquence and good looks -- they matter but they are all overrated. What really matters is what you do with what you’ve got."
"Bringing the best out of people today requires that you create harmony."
"When the match between employee and task is wrong, everything that follows, no matter how diligently pursued or fervently desired, suffers."
"Working hard in the wrong job is like marrying the wrong person: it will involve lots of hard work but few happy days."
"Disconnection is one of the chief causes of substandard work… But it is also one of the most easily corrected."
"All people look bad when they have chosen the wrong dream."
"Play is what humans can do and computers can't. Play is the activity of the mind that allows you to dream up novel approaches, fresh plans."
"We all bring transference, this simmering kettle of old relationships, with us wherever we go, and it shoots up out of us suddenly without warning."
"In the absence of connection, fear usually rule's. Fear is the great disconnector. It is rampant in modern organizations."
"People avoid thinking by being too busy to think."
"Excellence occurs in direct proportion to necessary software, but in inverse proportion to unnecessary suffering or toxic stress."
"If you are managing others, they will perform better if you yourself are happy and show your joy."
"The manager who can encourage play, who can model imaginative engagement and encourage others to do so, is the manager brings out the best in…people."
"The more a manager can help the people who work for him or her to shine, the greater that manager will be, and the greater the organization as a whole."

I hope you will have a chance to read the book. But even if you don't, some reflection on his five points and on the ideas I have quoted from his book may be an inspiration for you as a leader. There is also a video available online of a one-hour talk by Hallowell. See it here.

- Herb

- Herb Nestler