CIMBA October 2010 Newsletter

During the summer, I had an opportunity to catch up on my reading. I found an interesting book I had tossed on my "I will get to it eventually" pile and realized I should have read it much sooner. On its face, the book, Henry L.

Thompson's The Stress Effect: Why Smart Leaders Make Dumb Decisions -- And What To Do About It had looked to be yet another book on decision-making. The selection and use of KT here at CIMBA (now, for more than 10 years) has convinced us of the clear advantages of explicated rational process tools and techniques. I have seen a discernible pattern in those "decision-making" books that has led me to conclude they are all converging in the direction of a such an explicated tool or technique like KT as their "solution." Taking a comparative look at KT (along with the improvements and additions we have made by incorporating neuroscience and related research) against the solutions proposed in this seemingly endless stream of "decision-making" books has provided a continuous confirmation of KT's applicability and usefulness. Beyond neuroscience extensions, we have found few, if any, additional insights or advancements in thinking flowing from those "decision-making" books.

However, much to my surprise, I discovered that The Stress Effect is not one of those typical "decision-making" books. Thompson is, by training, an organizational psychologist and, by profession, a leadership consultant. The typical "decision-making" book (the best of those, by the way, is Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell's Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep It from Happening to You) has an all too predictable theme: seemingly at the root of every flawed decision is a leader who has made an error of judgment. The leader's current decision process then fails to reveal the error, and the authors have a solution that is usually a poor imitation of KT or, at best, an application of the very logic behind KT (which Ben Tregoe and Chuck Kepner delivered into this world more than 50 years ago). In his book, Thompson focuses his attention not on the decision-making process but rather on how a leader's emotions can impede effective decision-making. Importantly, while making it clear he understands that everything from informational shortcomings, to inexperience, to inefficient decision making processes can lead to ineffective decision-making, Thompson places his greatest energy on the impact of emotion on a leader's ability to make good decisions. Given that at CIMBA we have already fully embraced KT as our process solution, we have turned our attention to assisting students in understanding emotion and how a failure to regulate emotion can significantly impact performance. Although coming from a slightly different perspective, the book touches upon the essence of our emotion-behavior-cognition-performance "process," making it a good background read for those interested in staying abreast of what is going on at CIMBA.

Let me give you a few illustrations of other similarities and differences. At a crucial juncture in the book Thompson asserts: "Anything that interferes with processing in a brain region, and with communication among the regions, especially when the PFC is involved, will degrade the overall decision-making process." We are in complete alignment with Thompson in this regard, but would go further and state that not only is decision-making thinking impacted but also, importantly, so are our more general abilities to think -- specifically, to think at higher levels and/or be creative. In fact, we have been testing this basic notion in our LIFE programs with consistent statistical results. At another point in the book, Thompson does a very good job of laying out the neuroscience intertwining emotions and decision-making. As CIMBA alums, I want you to read and then generalize his discussion from leadership "decision-making" to leadership "thinking." Like most "decision making" authors, Thompson does not distinguish between "decisions" and "issue resolution" (mixing decision-making issues with situation appraisal, problem avoidance, innovation, and problem solving issues -- all of which involve some shared, but are mostly different and distinct, neuro-networks).

At another juncture, Thompson states: "A primary function of the PFC is to control emotional responses, but such responses can be transmitted so quickly that they sometimes bypass the PFC, and emotional hijacking takes place as a result; a leader goes from having emotions to being had by emotions." In bringing the reader to this thinking, Thompson does a very good job of sorting through the literature on emotional intelligence, again another good reason to take a look at this book. A primary difference between his thinking and ours is that we are very much concerned with individual differences in abilities to "control emotional responses" -- self-regulation, and self-discipline, impulse control. Later in the book, he suggests leaders "practice" a response to such "hijack" situations (we would say work to "hardwire" a more effective response, in order to defeat a currently-wired, ineffective habitual response). In reality, this is consistent with the solution offered by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz in his book Brain Lock, from which the fundamental thinking driving our coaching implementation theory was taken (by the way, Jeffrey is an active member of our board of advisors, and I encourage you to be on the lookout for his new book It Is Not Your Brain, which should be in stores in early January -- you can be assured we will be reviewing it here). Additionally, we would propose that a leader work hard to enhance self-awareness for the purpose of increasing self-regulation. In this way, the leader is better prepared for a broader array of "stressors" that he or she will almost certainly confront but not necessarily be able to predict, and therefore "practice," in advance.

Let's take a moment and consider this latter notion with specific regard to what is currently taking place at CIMBA. As part of their self-awareness, self-regulation training at CIMBA, the MBA students have been wearing their SUUNTO personal performance measurement instruments, which wirelessly measures heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rates, and other neuro- and bio-feedback variables. Being able to watch and observe them become more and more cognizant of their physiology as they confront typical day-to-day MBA activities is making CIMBA a very interesting place to be this fall. And to all of you MBA alums: yes, they do wear the watches during class time with color-coded heart rates for each student projected on the wall. When a student "disappears" mentally to "Tahiti," the professor and the class know it immediately by the color code being projected. As you can well imagine, the personal performance measurement instrument is having interesting impacts on individual and group dynamics. Later this month, they will go through their first emotion elicitation experiences where, in addition to the personal performance instrument, they will also be wired to measure both skin conductance and EEG. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you; they also wore their personal performance measurement instruments during the high-ropes program with the typical heart rate at the top of the pole (you fulltime MBA alums do remember the 30-foot pole, don't you?) being in the 175 range. Every day is a new learning experience as CIMBA students travel the most holistic MBA leadership development learning path on the planet. Be proud!