Elizabeth Thornton - Rethinking the Way You Think with Greater Objectivity

Welcome to the Exit Coach radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on Exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks so much for listening today. Uh, we're going to talk about how you think and changing the way that you think so that you can have more objectivity and our expert is going to be Elizabeth Thornton, and she's joining us from the Global Initiative for Objective Leadership and Babson Executive Education. She's the founder and CEO and professor of management practice. So we're going to be talking about that in the next couple minutes. I think it's going to be very interesting. Grab a notepad, grab a pencil, and let's get into it. Elizabeth, thank you so much and welcome to the show. Well, thank you so much, Bill. I'm delighted to be here. It's my pleasure. It sounds like a very interesting topic. I noticed that you're a speaker for Visage groups and business organizations as well. Absolutely, yes, absolutely. And they're a fantastic organization for our listeners who don't know what Visage is. Visage International is a CEO peer group, and it's a fantastic way for our CEOs to come together. So Elizabeth, tell us a little bit about your background and how you, uh, how you came to uh become an expert in this topic. Well, you know, I, I grew up, you know, in Philadelphia, and I, you know, I went the traditional path and went to corporate America and at some point in my career I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so I, I got involved in this international fruit juice adventure, but to make a long story short, I ended up losing a million dollars. So all my training, all my background, the fact that I did things well, I could be counted on to, you know, have a great solid work ethic, you know, I was smart, I was successful, you know, in my entrepreneurial venture, I Ended up failing because of the way I framed my world. It was because I was not seeing things as they were, and because of that, I started down this path to actually get off the couch, Bill, quite frankly, because when you lose a million dollars and if you have invested everything, right, and a lot of us do that, we put everything into it and then when it fails then we're kind of stuck and so I did that whole movie marathon thing for a while, you know, and but the way I got off the couch was I started to understand. That it wasn't about the business decisions I was making. It was really about my underlying and my inherent subjectivity. I realized that I wasn't seeing things clearly and a result, I didn't respond to changing dynamics in an objective way. And then when I started digging a little deeper into it, it, it, it seemed it wasn't just me. This is what we all do. We are inherently subjective. We overreact to situations, right? Have you ever overreacted to a situation bill? Right, we take things, right, right, exactly, exactly, we take things personally, you know, we judge people unfairly. We actually can read an email bill, you know this you read an email and you perceive tone in that email and what most people do is they respond with the tone that they perceive in that email. And so it was because of these common but avoidable cognitive errors that ultimately was the reason why my business failed so badly. And so I started studying psychology and neuroscience and obviously entrepreneurship and all these different disciplines and developed a course, a class called Principles of Objectivity that I've been teaching at Babson College since, um, gosh, since 2008, and, and I also not only do I teach graduate students at the college, but I work with Batson executive education. And I, you know, I teach corporations, leaders how to see things more clearly because objectivity is our only way of actually evaluating situations clearly, you know, analyzing our underlying assumptions before we make decisions and take action, and it, and it really is being perceived now as a core competency for effective leadership. It's being able to manage our inherent subjectivity and respond to things in an objective manner. Yeah, it sounds like you're you're creating a filter and a method to take process information and then think correctly or in what we perceive as a correct way about it. Let's talk about the difference between the two words. What is subjectivity? You've mentioned that a couple of times. What's that, right? So subjectivity is, you know, the things that we overreact to. It's the cognitive errors, you know, we perceive something through our senses, a person's situation or an event. And in an instant bill we project our mental models, you know, our assumptions about the way things are, our past experiences, you know, our fears, whatever it is, our culture, our background will project all of that onto whatever's going on, and then we respond through that lens, right? And so that's our inherent opportunity. We all do this. This is just the nature of the mind. We all do this. So in order to be more objective, objectivity is about seeing things as they are, stepping back and responding thoughtfully, deliberately and effectively without projecting my background, my experiences, all the things that color our ability to see things as they are. Does that help? Yeah, is counting to 10 somewhere in in the formula there? In other words, in other words, it's, it's processing but not reacting, uh, not reacting first until you've really taken a chance to filter through a lot of the, the, the factors that would go into making an objective analysis instead of a subjective. It sounds like you're not overreacting. Yeah, you put, yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. I mean there's, there's 3 components of my objectivity framework. One is being objective in the moment, and that's about what you say. It's about being aware of your triggers. When I do these corporate workshops, I ask the room, I say, you know what guys, have you, do you know when you're about to lose your mind? Do you know when you're about to overreact? Do you know what it feels like? And, and invariably people will say, yeah, you know, I get hot, you know, I get really tense, you know, my heart starts beating a little faster, you know, I get butter. Lies in my stomach and that's what I call triggers. That's your trigger that there's there's a disconnect between your expectations and reality and you're not, you may not respond in a way that you'll be happy with. And so being aware, being mindful, which just means being aware of your triggers, understanding when that's about to flare and then creating the space, the distance, the space between that reaction and then choosing a different response. Now some people will, you know, do the count to 10. Right? So there's, there's a lot of different tools that you can use, but the first step is being aware of your triggers and then creating the space. Sometimes it's as simple as don't hit send when you craft that email because you perceive tone. That's something you can do. You can just make sure, oh no, I don't want to send this email. In other cases you can't get away, right? You don't have the time to analyze why you might be getting angry, but what do you do in that moment? Counting to 10 is 1. But sometimes that seems a little awkward. What a lot of my leaders have learned to do is have a like a tool kit of questions, you know, so, so if you're, you're being confronted with someone and they have an issue that you're uncomfortable with and they're triggering something in you instead of. Lashing out just have your tool kit of questions such as, you know, let me make sure I understand what you're saying here. Could you, could you repeat what you just said? I wanna make sure I'm I'm really clear about what you're asking me or, or maybe it's about timeline. Oh, I understand what you want. Can you give me an idea about timeline or it's something to just diffuse where you are but just have that automatic question to be able to calm the situation so that you're responding more objectively. The trick is being able to. The trick really is to be able to get to that trigger or understand that trigger right away because if you, if you wait too long, you don't have time to pull yourself back. So it's really important to be aware of your triggers and then stop and reverse your tendency in that moment. And for a lot of people that starts with just a basic understanding of how the human brain is wired, the fight or flight reactions that come up as a result of something that we're uncomfortable with and and understanding that's. Yeah, you're not, you're never going to get rid of that. That is built in since the, since humans were, were, you know, start the human race was started and before that it was built in as a defense mechanism. So it's more managing, managing what's going to happen and understanding, right? Right, that's exactly right. But and and and you say about being what's hardwired. See, we have notions. And beliefs about everything, every role we play, we have an idea of of how we should play that role. We have, I call it as seen on TV. You know, so for being a leader, for being an entrepreneur, for being a father, being a mother, for being a sister, for all the roles that we play, we have mental models or beliefs about the way things are and the ways they ought to be, and those notions have been hardwired in our neural net. Our automatic behaviors have been just hardwired that the way that we automatically respond when we get to work every day, for example, so much of what we do has become automatic. You know, by the time you get up in the morning, you hit the alarm button, you take a shower, you're not even thinking. You're just doing. You're going out the door, you're getting in your car, you never even watch the lights, but you're you're driving, you get there, you sit down, you have coffee. It's just so automatic, and those patterns become hardwired and we get very comfortable with those patterns. So sometimes when something gets triggered in us, which causes a less than objective reaction is that it's, it's something different. It's something different than our expectation. So it Really important in addition to the objective in the moment, is to understand our underlying mental models, the way we frame our world as leaders, right? And my research has revealed that there are some common mental models that we have that kind of color our response to situations because we're always filtering it through certain lenses that have been hardwired in our neural net. But the wonderful thing, Bill, is, which is what got me so excited about this topic, and I think it's why it's a The book just got published and there's just a lot of interest in this now. It's because of the, the advances in our understanding of the brain, right? There's a concept called neuroplasticity, for example, and neuroplasticity pretty much says is that the brain can change with new information, right? So every single time you interrupt your automatic response and you and you don't overreact and you interrupt that response and you choose a different response, you're actually rewiring your neural net. You're loosening the connection. Between that that thought and that response that gets you in trouble and you're losing that connection and every time you respond differently you're actually training your brain to respond in a different way and and what the which is so fascinating and you know the thing I get a little excited about this bill, so um the what's so fascinating is that I think human beings, we just as a species, you know, you were talking about the fight or flight thing, and we get that, but the thing is we are not a victim. Of our thoughts, our emotions, our fears, we're just not a victim of any of it. We can actually step back, create the awareness, and then choose a different response, right? It takes practice. I'm not saying you can do it overnight because you're right, it has been hardwired it's how we've been socialized. It's definitely difficult to do, but you can stop your automatic responses. So for example, if I had a leader who is a perfectionist, right, and and sometimes being a perfectionist serves you. Really well because I know a lot of perfectionists that are very high performing individuals, right? They're always achieving at a very high level, but the negative side of that sometimes can be is that they're maybe impatient with people, right? Uh, they could micromanage, for example, because they want everyone to do it the way they do it. And so, so the interesting thing, so let's just say you have a perfectionist mental motto. You write down and you look at the behaviors that it causes that that are helpful to you, that are conducive to you achieving your goals, right? And then you look at the areas where it, the behaviors that it causes that, that kind of get you in trouble, that's not conducive to you achieving your goals, right? And then. For those situations where that mental model is not serving you, you can, you can think about a different response, and then it becomes practice. They call it attention density, so you just be aware of when that situation comes. Oh, here's my employee that I seem to judge too much and I overcriticize. Oh, let me not do that. But instead I'm going to ask that person a question. Instead of jumping and criticizing, I'm going to step back and ask. And if I'm mindful and aware and I really want to shift that mental model because that's what's going to get me ahead in the organization, my ability to lead people in a positive way and develop my talent, then yes, I'm going to be very mindful every time someone comes in my office instead of judging Oh, I'm going to stop that and I'm going to ask questions. Oh, help me understand how you arrived at that conclusion. Oh, I like the way you were thinking here. Lead me down your thought process, and you have that in your tool kit and then it's a matter of practice because again, the science says every time we do something differently than our old pattern, we introduce a new pattern in our neural net. So the first is identifying and making sure that you're clear on where, where, well, understanding you're going to have these reactions and you specifically need to analyze where you have some of these reactions and then have a methodology in your pocket so to. Speak or in your mind as to what's going to happen the next time that happens and then it might be like you said having some some basic questions already established that you're going to go through a filter, a filter you're going to put things through um and so for a lot of people, for instance, they get nervous if they have to give a speech. So there's something right so before they do that they there's there's a little pattern of things they can talk themselves through. To to redirect that uh the feeling they're going to get they're they're gonna get it. I mean they're gonna get that feeling it's just what are you gonna do with that energy when it happens so first it sounds like uh uh identifying that we all have this issue so it's a universal, it's a universal there's nobody that doesn't have some kind of a a response that that could be, could be altered in a positive way, right? I believe that's true because I, I believe that we can and what we haven't been socialized to do is to own our cognitive appraisal process, and I think, and I think we just have underestimated the power of the mind. You know there's this guy named Daniel Amen who I just love his work, uh, and he's a psychologist and he does brain imaging and he talks about thoughts, you know, and how thoughts are real and have physical properties, but thoughts often lie, but we can change, we can talk back to our thoughts and change our response to the thoughts that are coming through our mind. We have that capacity, right, even a fear-based response. Oh my, I'm feeling really fearful right now. Do I want to lash out in fear? So before that amygdala hijack takes over, before my prefrontal cortex gets shut down and there's no rational thought available to me, you know, you want to stop, create the distance so that you can choose a different response, and we do have the power to do that. We've just been socialized to think that anything that comes through our head or anything we feel, we automatically respond to. We do respond to it, but we can be aware of it and choose, we do react to it, yes, but we can choose a different response to what we're experiencing. Now Elizabeth, it seems to me like I'm thinking about, OK, the caveman. Didn't have the quite the variety of things that can approach us trivial or otherwise, the caveman's things, I mean some of those threats were real and immediate, and they needed to take quick and decisive action. So the filter was a bad thing. The filter these days, a lot of the things that we bring on, we probably could have taken time to to build a filter or to think it through so that it didn't create a reaction in the first place. Uh, so I can understand the concept of short term filters, but how about long term filters when you're thinking through if I do this and this happens and that happens, then there's going to be a reaction at some point that's going to be good or bad. How does it fit into long range thinking? Well, long, long range thinking or long range objectivity really is about understanding your mental models, how you frame your world, and going through a process of transforming them. So as you say, it's not driving my responses at all. You're actually changing the way you respond or or the, you use the word filter. I use the word mental model. And so what's interesting about mental models is that they also are so powerful in that they drive our perception. Of and responses to situations, right? And so, so the way that you view the world, the way you think things are, and the way that you think they ought to be, that's driving your perception. So for example, let's just say for some women, let's just say there was a mental model that there was a glass ceiling for women. Let's just say that because I'm a woman. There was a, I had a perception years ago that there might have been a glass ceiling for a woman. And that's my mental model. That's how I frame my world. That's my understanding of women in business. OK, so, so, so here I am, I'm sitting in my VP job somewhere and then I find out through my network that there's a senior vice president position available for which I think I'm uniquely qualified. What will my thoughts tell me if my mental model is that there's a glass ceiling and women can't ascend to the SVP level? My thoughts will tell me, oh my God, don't even bother. My mind will come up with scientific data. To to support my mental model that you know that there's a glass ceiling for women, right? So that's the power of the mental model. So I have to shift that mental model because so that I'm not perceiving things through that lens. Do you understand what I'm saying? So the long term it's about transforming mental models. It's about understanding the ones that serve you well, and most of them do, you know, the, your listeners are probably very capable people doing, doing wonderful things in the world, and so most of their mental models are serving them well. But if they find themselves getting in situations where they're overreacting or they have strained relationships at work, they're getting fired, you know, they're getting reprimanded, they have strained relationships at home. It could be that there's an underlying mental model that's driving their perception and response to those experiences. So then it becomes a matter of really looking at that and then going through a process of trying to transforming it, transform that mental model so their perception of and understanding and response to situations will be different. So I'm thinking instead of instead of the mantra of choose your battles wisely and don't engage if you don't see a good outcome, it's instead rethink your battle plan and maybe think about, think more objectively about, you know, this is, this is achievable. There's maybe instead of shutting down and not engaging, I just need to rethink my battle plan. Exactly, exactly, or yeah, how I see my world, right? And the thing that I say all the time is that the world is in your mind. And we just have not really understood that we can't control the things that happen to us day to day, but we can control 100% our response to them. And so we have the power to change our life and our experience just just by how we are responding to things and with the lens through which we are perceiving and responding to things. We do have that power. So how can somebody become more objective? We talked about a couple of ways of having these, these mental models and being ready for them. What, what are the steps that people go through? Uh, well, the, well, the first, OK, so the first step, you know, my one of my classes started and, and the first thing I have people do is to reflect on a situation where they were less than objective. And it, you know, and it's hysterical, Bill, because I do this everywhere in all my workshops and all my classes, and you know I put them in pairs and I ask people to share with each other a situation where they were less than objective and the whole room buzzes because everyone can think of a situation where they look back and say, oh man, I could have responded a little better, right? And so then I ask people to start there is to deconstruct that and my book actually takes people. through step by step, chapter by chapter with exercises in the back how to do this. So the first one is looking at that situation and and really looking at well what was I thinking at the time, what was I what was actually going on and what I think was going on and what did it cost because that's very, very instructive. And then the second step is to really try to understand or really think. How you think about yourself. Your self concept has a lot to do with how you frame your world. So writing down what you think about yourself and what you think others think is really important. And then the third step is to really understand like for as a leader, what is my leadership mental model? What, what do I think will make a good leader, constitutes a good leadership. And really start to in the roles that you're playing where, where you're spending a lot of time and focus and, and it's part of your passion and, and what you're doing in your life. Look at how you're framing your world around that particular, around that particular role. You know, my problem was I called myself the fruit juice lady because I was involved in the fruit juice venture. So when I was that attached to the role that I was playing, I couldn't be objective. So it's important to be able to sit down and really look at how you're framing your world around the mental model. So what these and then the fourth thing is your data points. You look at your fears, what, what your fears are, what you expect, and what you think will happen if what you expect doesn't happen. And so with those 4 data points, it's that's the long term strategies of thinking, oh, you know what, that idea that I have or belief I have gets me into trouble cause this is what happened over here and it's and it's not consistent with actually how I feel about myself, so it's a belief I have and it's not serving me well. So what's another way of thinking about this? This is, how do I rethink the way I've been thinking about this more objectively? So that's the long term. Strategy in the short term, as we talked about, it's all about managing your trick of being aware of and creating enough space distance between your reaction and your response to be able to respond appropriately. If you can't say excuse me, I need to run to a meeting now. Can we get back together in like 20 minutes or can I send you a calendar invite if you can't do that, have your little handy questions, your little tool kit of questions to be able to. Quiet the whatever the dynamic is so that you can respond in a more objective way and and and in all cases just don't hit send when you're responding to what you perceive the tone in an email. Elizabeth, your website is Elizabeth Thornton, right? T H O R N T O N dot com. And can our listeners find the book, find your book there and on Amazon.com, yes, and the objective, yep. It's called the Objective Leader how to leverage the power of seeing Things as They Are. It is fantastic information you shared with us. You've given us a lot of great tips and ideas, and I hope our listeners will take advantage and and um buy your book and and learn about this or take a course from you um but uh I think we just scratched the surface. What do you think? I mean, there's a lot to this yeah you got a 7 week course you got a 7 week course in about what, 20 minutes? Yeah, I'd love to have you back on so we can talk about some of these step by step and get into this. That's our time for today, but thanks so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much, Bill. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. You're listening to Exitoachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. 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