The Website of Dr. Mark Goulston

It is well known by now how much a fan President elect Obama is of Abraham Lincoln building a Team of Rivals and a fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book of the same title.

Sadly, most of us are a little confused by this because for so long political administrations have built teams (companies and organizations) based more on gathering like minded people together or returning political favors than on selecting people for their experience, competence and expertise in the area for which they are being chosen.

Happily however is that by most political analyst’s accounts (i.e. David Gergen et al) Obama is doing all the right things to build a strong and capable team. Still, most of us are left wondering exactly what Obama will do beyond putting together such a team.

What he’ll clearly need to do is perform the equivalent of a “front end alignment” after he builds his team.

If you don’t get the wheels for your car balanced and aligned, they’ll pull to the left or right and wear out faster. Evidence of that is how many of us have had to replace our tires with the tread on one side okay, while the other side was bald. A faulty balance or faulty alignment and you may not finish the journey.

Front end alignments are not just about automobiles and road trips. They are critical to successful Presidential administrations. Former head of strategy at Texas Instruments during its heyday, creator of Peat Marwick’s California consulting practice, advisor to President Carter on Zero Base Budgeting and Productivity Measurement, industrial engineer turned management consultant and founder/owner of Los Angeles based Management Overload Ward Wieman has developed a Triaxial Model™ to do for teams what your car mechanic does to keep your car on track.

His model also works for Presidential administrations and appears to be the one that President elect Obama, whether he knows it or not, is following to build and direct his.

Before you can take Wieman’s model for a ride, your company, organization or your administration needs to pick a destination. Obama has responded to questions about selecting older, experienced team members when he was the candidate of change by saying that he will gather input from his team, but it will be his responsibility to develop and articulate a compelling, convincing and consistent vision of a future that the American people will want to be part of and make a reality.

Now that he has built his team, Obama will most likely intuitively implement Wieman’s Triaxial Model. It is presented here to make it explicit for the reader and the American people in the hope that the more we understand how and why Obama does what he does, the calmer and more confident we will feel. And if you haven’t noticed, calmness and confidence are in short supply these days.

X Axis – What’s important? Wieman has set out 14 key functions that most business leaders would agree are essential to the success of any enterprise. Similarly a Presidential Cabinet and other departments are usually selected as the key functions that the Executive branch needs to optimally function. After the Cabinet posts and other key advisors are selected, Obama will most likely lead them independent of their particular areas of expertise towards a consensus of what are the most urgent and important functions to prioritize in order to get the United States back on track and be successful in a global community. This will probably include, but not be exclusive to, the economy, job creation, the war(s) we are in and will need to engage in regarding continuous terrorist and other threats, health, education, and our international alliances. Gathering this information will immediately tell you two things: 1. What people view as the most important and critical functions to focus on; and 2. Who’s on the same page.

Y Axis – How good are we at those things? After arriving at a consensus regarding top priorities that are mission critical to success, do an assessment of how good your team and in this case, America, is at them. This type of assessment approach has the wonderful advantage of preventing your administration from becoming distracted by people’s fiefdoms or personalities; rather, it’s about making sure that there are only strong links in the chain. It’s not personal, it’s about performance that will lead to success.

Z Axis -How do we align America to get good at what we need to be good at? This is about getting the right groups of Americans in the right jobs doing the right things, realigning others who might not be a fit, and retraining others to participate in building a future that serves everyone well.

I’ve personally seen Wieman help companies and organizations run like a swiss watch using this model for fifteen years. And the way it looks, we will hopefully watch President elect Obama use a similar model to lead America into a glorious future as co-leader of not just a “New Deal,” but of a “New World” in which people are “judged not by the color of their skin or their nationality or their religion or their gender or their generation or their sexual orientation, but by the content of their character and their commitment through actions to create a rising tide that lifts all Americans, all nations and all peoples.”

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As a psychiatrist and medical doctor it would be improper to diagnose Bernard Madoff without interviewing him directly and having him take various psychological tests.

 However what is not off limits and just as relevant is not what his behavior says about him, but what it says about us.  What is there about human nature that makes some of the smartest and supposedly shrewdest financial minds ignore red flags and abandon judgment?

How Madoff was able to do it is can be explained by social psychology and why he was able to do it can be explained by neuropsychology.

Social psychology is the study of how people and groups interact.  Robert B. Cialdini is a social psychologist, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University and author ofInfluence: Science and Practice..   He is one of the leading researchers in the field of influence and persuasion.  His work is compelling, convincing and so powerful that he vigorously decries it use in any exchange that lacks integrity and ethics.  Unfortunately too often, people with impure motives have learned to apply this effective approach to their impure ends.  I don’t know if Madoff was a student of this approach, but his behavior indicates that he followed all of Cialdini’s principles.

Cialdini’s six “weapons of influence”:

* Reciprocation -People tend to return a favor. Thus, Madoff’s offer to clients to be part of an exclusive list of wealthy clients and institutions, caused clients to be grateful for this special invitation and return the favor by investing more money than common sense would dictate.

* Commitment and Consistency – Also referred to as “confirmation bias,” if people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment and be inclined to keep saying, “Yes” to reinforce their believing they have made the best judgment call to begin. With Madoff, the more that people originally invested, the more they continued to invest and the more they invited their friend to invest. This all served to reinforce their believing they had made the best decision to begin with. Finally, this also caused people to overlook or negate any facts to the contrary and made them all too willing to take a “don’t ask (Madoff), (Madoff) don’t tell” position.

* Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing.  So when people discovered that others who they thought were smart and wise were investing, that increased their confidence that it was safe for them to do so.

* Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform suspicions or even objectionable acts. Madoff was a former Chairman of the NASDAQ and philanthropist.  So it was assumed that if anyone could understand the potential opportunities and risks of younger growth companies, it would be him.

* Liking - People are easily persuaded by and buy from other people that they like. It was easy to confuse Madoff’s sly smile as a shrewd one.  Also we tend to like people who demonstrate swagger and exude confidence.  They trigger swagger and confidence envy in others who would also like to possess those qualities.

* Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand.  Madoff’s reserving his offering for elite investors and by invitation only, made more people want to be part of his exclusive club.

Neuropsychology is the applied scientific discipline that studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors and may explain why Madoff was able to trick us.  One area of neuroscience that has generated a great deal of interest and study in the past two decades is the discovery of an area in the premotor and parietal cortices referred to as the mirror neuron system.

In the late 1980’s this region of neurons was discovered in Macaque monkeys. These neurons which were first referred to as “monkey see, monkey do” neurons were activated when a monkey watched another monkey perform a behavior and when the first monkey performed the behavior that it saw.  When the discovery was also applied to humans, the region also fired when a person imagined doing that activity in his mind’s eye.  So when a golfer imagines the flight of a ball before he hits it, this part of the brain actually thinks it’s hitting the ball.

Further research including fMRI scans (which show what is happening to the brain as it is thinking or doing an activity) have indicated this site might be the prime location for where imitation, learning and empathy develop and when dysfunctional, a possible site that might lead to autism.

The significance of this discovery is that people not only have a reaction when they respond/react to the people around them; they also have a very positive and satisfying reaction when people are mirroring them or “getting where they’re coming from.”  That is why many people cry and feel disarmed when someone is kind to and understands them without it being solicited.

This neurological region may be the underpinning for why Cialdini’s “weapons of influence” are so powerful, i.e. applying them causes the other person to feel empathized with and understood.  When people feel that way, they lower their guard and lean into the relationship and trust it more. In essence when people really feel that you get where they’re coming from, they’re much more likely to trust you to take them where you’d like them to go.

Just as guns do not kill people, people kill people empathically mediated persuasion techniques do not manipulate people for evil, people do that.  Hitler and Osama bin Laden were both extremely empathic in that they both knew all too well how terrorizing people can almost paralyze them with fear or at least completely disrupt their ability to function.

What it comes down to is a person’s values.  It’s their values that determine whether they will use persuasion and empathy in the best interest of their clients (as medical doctors who are sworn to “first do no harm” do with their patients) to do good or to greedily exploit their fears, insecurities and yes, their clients’ own greed to violate ethics and morality.

How can all of us use these findings from social psychology and neuropsychology to be more fortified against the charming manipulators and psychopaths in life?  First, go into any meeting with any person who is pitching you knowing explicitly what you want and need from them. When you don’t know these, the charm of these people can cause you to be vulnerable to their persuading you to need and want what they are offering.  Second, make certain that whatever they are offering makes sense, feels right and seems actually doable.  Third, realize that whatever they’re offering is a good deal for them, so push them to tell you why it’s a good deal for them.

Finally, be prepared to walk away, no matter what they say.  If they say, “Take it or leave it,” leave it. If it feels too good to be true, it is.

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Have an underperforming J.H.S., H.S. or college kid?
Maybe they’re just lazy…maybe not.
When logic and convincing doesn’t motivate your child
from the outside in, stop doing it…
then try understanding them from their inside out.
One lousy semester, does not a failed year…or life make.

Stop reacting from your frustration

take a deep breath

and read what follows below…

Does it sound like someone you know?

If so, ask them to read it,
ask them which line(s) speak to them and how,
listen, hear and care,
don’t interrupt or give advice unless they ask
and if you’re lucky
and if you haven’t hurt or angered them too much…
they might let you in.
If they do, tell them: “I’m sorry, I never knew you felt so bad,”
Let them get angry at you until they get it out
let them cry and keep crying until they’ve cried themselves out.
Then they might even let you help them
if you ask them the best way to do it
and then you just listen, hear and care…

Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a thousand masks that I am afraid to take off
and none of them are me.

Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me, but don’t be fooled,
for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give the impression that I am secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game;
that the waters are calm and I am in command,
and that I need no one.

But don’t believe me, please.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask.
Beneath this lies no complacency.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed.
That is why I frantically create a mask to hide behind;
a nonchalant, sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
My only salvation. And I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love.
It is the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself,
that I am worth something.

But, I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I am afraid to.
I am afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love.
I am afraid you will think less of me, that you will laugh at me,
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate game,
with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
And so begins the parade of masks, and my life becomes a front.

I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that is really nothing,
and nothing of what is everything,
of what is crying within me.

So when I am going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I am saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.
What I would like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say, but I can’t say.

I dislike hiding, Honestly!
I dislike the superficial game I am playing, the phony game.
I would really like to be genuine and spontaneous, and me,
but you have got to help me. You have got to hold out your hand,
even when that is the last thing I seem to want.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes that blank stare of breathing death.
Only you can call me into aliveness.

Each time you try to understand and because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings.

With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding,
you can breathe life into me.

I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be the creator of the person that is me if you choose to.
Please choose to.

You alone can break down the wall
behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask.

You alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty;
From my lonely prison.

Do not pass me by.
Please… do not pass me by.

It will not be easy for you;
a long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach me, the blinder I strike back.

I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that
love is stronger than walls, and in this lies my hope.

Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands,
but with gentle hands–for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well.
For I am everyone you meet, I am me and I am you.

– Charles C. Finn

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Wealth is what you take from the world;
worth is what you give back.

One of the best ways to build team spirit and intimacy in all your relationships in these last days of ’08 is to ask everyone you know a big question:

“What are you planning to do - no matter how large or how small - to make the world better in 2009?”

Great and generous minds think alike.  On the same day, my business associate, Keith Ferrazzi, offered this question as one of his Tips of the Week, two other of my fellow members of Provisors (a high level networking association in California), Philippa Kennealy and Deborah Rodney asked this at a networking meeting of high level lawyers, financial advisors, CPAs, and consultants. At that meeting, something very interesting happened; people could recall, almost to a person, what others said their 2009 mission would be. Meanwhile, after having been together many years in this group, they still had trouble remembering what people exactly did in their profession! Elevating the conversation to something that truly inspired them connected them in a way that professional small talk never could.

Try it yourself! Sharing your ideas will not only be uplifting, but motivating. Focusing on how to make a difference on a grand scale makes us want to do everything better, from being a good friend to being a good family member to being a good team member at work.

Take another step and have everyone explain how and why they chose what they chose, and watch each person’s commitment deepen further.

Check out what people in the Greenlight Community are making their mission.

Happy Holidays to you all and thank you for being part of the Usable Insight community.