Want to Defeat the Truth? Then Start Arguing!

In recent articles, I've described the way in which champion athletes manipulate their beliefs across the performance cycle.  In order to prepare their minds for success, they must instill in themselves a consciously irrational belief in their own invincibility.  Yet at the same time, they need to step outside of themselves and objectively view their performance so they can correct any flaws.

The maintaining of these two mindsets presents a paradox, since it requires a person simultaneously to believe both that he cannot fail and that he can (and must) improve his performance if he does fail.  I think this tricky mental balance perfectly illustrates a famous quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

I derived the "manipulating beliefs" point from the book Bounce, by Matthew Syed.  Syed was writing about competitive athletic contexts, but, as a recent Newsweek article by Sharon Begley reveals, a similar psychological dynamic may also be at work in another competitive arena: Arguing.

Begley says that, when we want to strongly proffer a certain point of view, we commonly use a mechanism called the confirmation bias - "seeing and recalling only evidence that supports your beliefs."  The confirmation bias helps us remain firm in our commitment to our arguments by keeping us from dispassionately analyzing our beliefs against empirical data or subjecting them to a plausibility test.  As she says, if we want to argue that women are bad drivers, we will only remember (and mention) those times when we saw a female driver going 40mph in the fast lane.

Begley observes that this tendency to ignore counter-evidence constitutes a form of irrational thinking, much like the athlete's belief in his own invincibility.  And the confirmation bias serves much the same purpose for an everyday disputant as the "invincibility" belief serves for the athlete.  As Begley says:

"The reason we succumb to confirmation bias, why we are blind to counterexamples ... is that these lapses have a purpose: they help us 'devise and evaluate arguments that are intended to persuade other people,' says psychologist Hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania. Failures of logic, he and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber of the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris propose, are in fact effective ploys to win arguments.

But Begley then makes an observation that shows the difference between the typical verbal warrior and Syed's champion athlete:

"Arguing, after all, is less about seeking truth than about overcoming opposing views. So while confirmation bias, for instance, may mislead us about what’s true and real, by letting examples that support our view monopolize our memory and perception, it maximizes the artillery we wield when trying to convince someone that, say, he really is 'late all the time.'” (emphasis added)

The typical arguer commonly fails to apply the second part of the "manipulating beliefs" equation: the recognition that he could actually be wrong.  By ignoring the holes in his own position, an arguer becomes like the athlete who convinces himself of his indomitability but overlooks the often glaring evidence that tells him where he's falling short.  When both verbal combatants fail to acknowledge their own fallibility, the typical argument becomes (as Begley says) "less about seeking the truth than about overcoming opposing views" - or, to use another combat analogy, an attempt to batter the other with one's position until he submits.  Whichever party "wins" such a battle, the truth is usually the real loser. 

Contrast this with the more productive outcome that can result from both parties' applying the And Stance, which I described earlier.

Maybe the typical arguer would do well to take a page from the champion athlete's playbook and entertain the possibility that he - and his positions - could stand further self-scrutiny.  If both parties were to do that, then their interaction could be less a competitive exercise and more a joint search for truth.

Getting There Is Half the Fun - Part Two

Last time, I described the mechanisms involved in one’s experiencing of a work of art. The enjoyment of the work doesn’t consist merely of the end-state, the basking in the emotion that comes after the work has been experienced. Rather, as described in the old advertising slogan “Getting There Is Half the Fun,” much of one’s appreciation comes from “having experienced” the work.

In other words, partaking of the structure of the work (the “how”) is as important as reflecting on the message conveyed by the content of the work (the “what”).

I think the same distinction between the “what” and the “how” is becoming increasingly important in pursuing and achieving results in an organizational environment. A leader might successfully achieve an outcome (the “what”) – a deadline, a cost savings, a revenue-generator – that provides benefit to the organization. Yet if he does it in a way (the “how”) that crushes morale, fails to develop his people, or violates ethical principles, then the question can well be asked: How successful has he really been?

A person can ask the same thing about the personal toll a goal-achievement can wreak. She might devote years of struggle and toil to attaining a goal – but if she ignores other important aspects of her life along the way (health, relationships, personal values), then she may fairly ask herself: Was the “what” worth the “how”?

Ultimately, I think, the issue boils down to a distinction I previously made in my article on Three Dog Night drummer Floyd Sneed:

“It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it!”

What this deliberately paradoxical observation is getting at, I think, is that the “what” and the “how” are really inseparable in judging the success of any artistic endeavor, in either a performance context or an organizational context.

In Improv, Getting There Is Half the Fun!

Back in the heyday of oceanic travel, the Cunard Line (which built and operated the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, among other famous vessels) used an advertising slogan that endures in the language to this day:

Getting There Is Half the Fun!

Cunard's hope, of course, was that passengers would think of the ocean passage as being the first half of the fun (and would spend that half on a Cunard ship), with the destination being the second.

Denis Dutton, in his fascinating book The Art Instinct, makes a similar point about our experiencing of artistic works of any sort, but particularly performance art.  The emotional end-state of an audience member's viewing of the work, he says, is not the real aim of attending.  Springboarding off a scene in Woody Allen's Sleeper in which people of the future step into a phone-booth-size cylinder that provides instant sensual gratification, Dutton says:

"Imagine [a machine called] an 'aesthetetron.' Step into it, push the correct button, and you can achieve a pleasure-moment of a kind produced by Sense and Sensibility or Lucia di Lammermoor without having to actually read the book or sit through the opera. What makes this joke funny (if it is) is the absurdity of trying to imagine that there exists any particular pleasure state ... that a work of art produces. Every great work of art is, like climbing a mountain, about the specific process of experiencing it - it is not about inducing some momentary pleasure that results from experiencing it." [Emphasis added]

I think this observation goes double for the experiencing of an improv performance. The structure of a novel or an opera does provide some pleasure in and of itself, but ultimately the greater pleasure is in a "final result" - the emotional content of the work that is carried by the structure.  In improv, by contrast, a transcription of the content of the improvised scene might provide some enjoyment on its own to a person who later cozies up with it by a warm fire.  However, an audience member's real engagement with the work comes from the process of its creation - i.e., the realization that the scene is being created totally off the cuff, in the moment.

Throughout The Art Instinct, Dutton describes how content and process (I'll call it the "what" and the "how") go hand-in-hand in our experiencing and assessing of a work of art.  Next time, I'll connect this observation with another art form: The creating of results in an organizational environment.

What Do Good Bosses Believe?

A friend of mine (thanks, Kat!) recently forwarded an intriguing Harvard Business Review article titled 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, by Robert L. Sutton.  I found this to be a refreshing departure from many such lists about "best practices" for leaders, many of which I believe to be fairly obvious in their recommendations.

I would like to focus on three of his 12 items in particular:

4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.

6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.

7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.

I was immediately struck by the way these three items echo some of the paradoxes I've been discussing in recent articles:

• Matthew Syed's observations about the need for an athlete to be utterly convinced of his eventual success while also being aware of his shortcomings so he can improve his game;
• The need for a leader to be both influential and influenceable;
• The need for a leader to be confident in his course of action yet also flexible enough to course-correct if events so require.

And I'll also cite a fourth item from Sutton's list:

10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

"Bad is stronger than good."  Hmm ... it seems as if we've seen that one before. 

Famous Daily Improvisers: Ted Williams

In my recent articles, I've noted Matthew Syed's descriptions (in his book Bounce) of the way in which champion athletes adopt an almost irrational confidence in the inevitability of their success on the playing field. As I read Syed's accounts of the ways in which athletes mentally prepare themselves for matches, I was immediately reminded of a story concerning one of the greatest baseball players of all time, Ted Williams.

In his 1970 book Ball Four (one of the best and most influential baseball books of all time), ex-pitcher Jim Bouton describes an anecdote related by a teammate who had played with Williams on the Boston Red Sox.  (Note: Since this is a family blog, I've cleaned up some of the language.)

"In the bullpen tonight, Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams ... would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there."

"He'd go into the [batting] cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, 'My name is Ted Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball!'"

"He'd swing and hit a line drive."

"Then he'd say, 'Here comes Jim Bunning! Jim Bunning and that puny little slider of his!'"

Wham!

"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that junk!"

Blam!

"I'm Ted Williams!"

Sock!

Williams - or "Teddy Ballgame," as he used to refer to himself -  was a two-time American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) winner who led the league in batting six times. He had a career batting average of .344, with 521 home runs, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. He is the last player in Major League Baseball to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941).

Hmm ... well, maybe in his case, his confidence wasn't so irrational after all!

Mindsets: "Fixed" or "Growth" - or Both?

Let's consider two different attitudes that an athlete might adopt as he approaches a competitive match:

1) "I am great, the greatest performer in this field, the greatest performer in the history of the world!  There is no way anybody else is going to beat me! I am absolutely incapable of failure!"

2) "I need to be hyper-aware of how well I'm doing so that, if I fail, I can pinpoint my deficiencies.  Then, before my next competition, I can devote whatever amount of purposeful practice it takes to improve my performance!"

The first attitude reflects what Carol Dweck calls the Fixed Mindset.  A person with a Fixed Mindset focuses on what he "is," as if his skills and capabilities were unchanging and inalterable.  His regard for himself is thus completely dependent on maintaining and defending this facade of infallibility.  It follows that a person with a Fixed Mindset cannot allow himself to admit his deficiencies - to himself or to others.  And if he can't admit them, then he can't correct them.

By contrast, the second attitude reflects the Growth Mindset.  A person with a Growth Mindset focuses not on what he "is" but on what he can become.  He believes (and Dweck cites research to support this belief) that a person's potential is boundless, limited only by the amount of passion, toil, and training he brings to developing his skills.  To a person with a Growth Mindset, achieving performance excellence requires a continual awareness of the gap between where he is and where he needs to go.

Dweck sets up these two mindsets to be mutually exclusive - that is, you can have one mindset or the other, but you can't have both.

Or can you?

Well, recall my prior article on Matthew Syed's book Bounce, in which he notes how champion athletes can - and in fact must - deliberately hold two seemingly contradictory beliefs at the same time: One that focuses on his invincibility (so he can "enter into battle" with the complete confidence that he'll succeed) and one that acknowledges his shortcomings (so he can identify where he needs to improve).

The implication of Syed's observations about "manipulating beliefs" is that a performer must maintain both a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset throughout the performance cycle if he wants to reach the top of his game!  He has to focus both on what he is (call it "saying affirmations" or "psyching himself up") and on what he has yet to become.

So, again, what seems like an inescapable dichotomy can be resolved by the Daily Improviser through the application of the Improv Mindset, which seeks to find the seamless connections between apparently irresolvable contradictions.

"I Am Invincible (I Think)!" - The Daily-Improviser Leader Manipulates His Beliefs

In recent articles, I've been describing my quest to resolve (seeming) contradictions. In doing so, I've been drawing on one of the central components of the performance improviser's art: The integration of incongruous elements (as pitched by the audience) into a seamless whole.

To illustrate a real-world application of resolving contradictions, I cited the example (from Matthew Syed's book Bounce) of an athlete who must absolutely convince himself that he'll succeed while simultaneously noting his performance gaps if he fails so he can correct them later. As Syed notes, an athlete must be able to "manipulate his beliefs" across the performance cycle - even to the point of maintaining contradictory beliefs of invincibility and fallibility at the same time - if he ever wants to reach the top echelon of performance.

I can see the same effect at work in an organizational setting. Vance Packard once defined leadership as "the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done." To achieve this, the leader has to project absolute confidence in the vision and the course of action he sets before his intended followers. Yet at the same time (as scores of historical examples show), if the leader turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to all signs that suggest a need for a course adjustment, he'll quickly lose touch with reality (and, except for the most rabid true believers, will lose most of his followers as well).

So, to borrow an old cliche, if she wants people to follow her through a brick wall, the leader must first approach the wall with complete certainty that she'll break on through to the other side. Yet, rather than continuing to bang her head against the wall if she fails, she better also be looking for the doors.

It seems, then, that to be truly effective across the performance cycle, a world-class leader must take a page from the champion athlete's playbook and learn to "manipulate his beliefs" to alternately shape reality and respond to it. If you want to grow as a leader, you must develop the capacity to both "influence and be influenced" - sometimes doing one, sometimes doing the other, often doing both simultaneously.

And here, I think, is where we can resolve another seeming contradiction I described in an earlier article. I'll reveal this next time.

John Wooden - 1910-2010

Last year I wrote an article about the famous Hoosier basketball legend John Wooden.  It is with sadness that I note that Coach Wooden passed away yesterday at age 99.

I can't think of a life more fully lived. For all his achievements, he never focused on the standings or the final score - his credo was, "Do your best, that is success." He may be known primarily for his great UCLA teams, but Indiana will always claim him as its own - as a player, a coach, and an example of the power of living one's values.

Should We Focus on Problems or Solutions? - Part Two

In a previous article, I noted the seemingly contradictory advice given by some prominent change experts regarding where to place focus when influencing others through organizational change. On one hand we had William Bridges, who essentially said, “Sell the problem!” On the other hand, we had Chip & Dan Heath, who said, “Sell the solution!”

How do we resolve this apparent lack of agreement among the experts?

I think the answer lies in a common model called the Change Cycle. The Change Cycle reflects the idea that we experience change in much the same way we experience grief, as set forth by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying. Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance) track very closely to the stages of the Change Cycle as set forth by Bridges and others. In essence, people who experience change must first go through a process of relinquishing the past before they can start looking ahead to the benefits the change might bring in the future.

When people first enter the Change Cycle, they often try mightily to keep things the way they are, to maintain the status quo. If allowed to, they’ll quickly rush back to the old ways rather than cast their fate to the promises of the (uncertain) future. To move across the starting line, they need a good answer to the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) question. At the early phases, then, “selling the problem” is usually more effective than “selling the solution,” since people are not yet convinced that anything needs a “solution.”

However, as the Heaths point out in their book Switch, once people have been prompted to move across the line, a steady drumbeat of problem-problem-problem will only serve to scare them, demotivate them, and wear them down. This might work fine for changes that require quick, specific, short-term action. Yet most organizational changes are bigger and more complex, requiring (as the Heaths put it) “creativity and flexibility and ingenuity.” To do this, you have to enlist people in the search for ideas and implementation strategies.

In fact, these organizational needs track well with the typical progress of people through the Change Cycle. As they work through the initial process of letting go of the past, they become more open to the possibilities presented by the future. At this point, “selling the solution” becomes a more effective way to inspire and motivate people to commit to the change so that they’ll lend their hearts and minds to sustaining the change over the long haul.

So rather than constituting another “either-or” choice, the question “Do we focus on the problem or on the solution?” can really be seen as a matter of not whether to do one or the other but when to do each.

Can You Manipulate Your Beliefs?

I’ve been reading the fascinating new book Bounce, by Matthew Syed, which investigates the science behind the success of people who have achieved mastery in their fields. Focusing particularly on world-class athletes at the peak of their games, Syed explores the physical and mental preparation that goes into the making of champions – both in the world of sport and in non-sporting contexts.

I was particularly struck by the chapter on the mental self-manipulation that top athletes engage in when preparing for key matches. Syed (himself an Olympic table tennis player) notes that no athlete can achieve the pinnacle of success without “surgically removing doubt from the mind.” To elaborate, he cites the words of Arsene Wenger, a top soccer club manager:

“To perform to your maximum, you have to teach yourself to believe with an intensity that goes way beyond logical justification. No top performer has lacked this capacity for irrational optimism; no sportsman has played to his potential without the ability to remove doubt from his mind.”

But how can a performer improve his game and make necessary adjustments if he ignores weaknesses and “irrationally” focuses on nothing but positives – which, as Wenger notes, are often amplified in the performer’s mind “beyond logical justification”?

What happens, says Syed, is that top athletes are able to “wield different beliefs as part of a cycle.”

“In stage one, the athlete ‘takes the positives’ to protect self-belief; later, when training, he incorporates the insights gained from the negative aspect of the previous match to strengthen weaknesses; then, when the next match is looming, the focus returns to building self-belief once again, so that doubt is eliminated at the point of performance.”

Syed then quotes an extraordinary observation by Wenger:

“Unless you have the ability to manipulate your beliefs over the performance cycle, it is difficult to perform well at anything, sport or otherwise.” (emphasis added)

In sum, Syed and Wenger are saying that a top performer must be able to control his thinking in order to entertain two seemingly contradictory mindsets at the same time: An unshakeable confidence in his own abilities to succeed and an objective evaluation of his actual current situation so that he can course-correct as needed. It’s the type of attitude that leads a champion golfer to feel dead certain about making a putt – while also making sure he hits it so that it won’t roll too far from the hole if he misses.

It’s also the type of attitude that the Daily Improviser needs to adopt in order to resolve the (seeming) contradictions that continually confront her in life! Throughout this blog, I’ve noted several examples of situations where the performance improvisers and Daily Improvisers must keep paradoxical thoughts in simultaneous suspension, including:

• The Stockdale Paradox – “Confront the brutal facts, yet never lose hope!”
• The And Stance – “I’m right and you’re right!”
• The Yogi Berra Paradox – “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

And next time, I hope to apply this concept of “manipulating beliefs over the performance cycle” to resolve the paradox I posed last time: In times of change, how can we focus on both the problem and the solution?