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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
Hello leaders,
Just over a week ago I wrote a post exploring why our perceptions of vulnerability change depending on if we are thinking about ourselves or someone else. Specifically, when we think of others being vulnerable we view them as courageous and bold but when we think of ourselves being vulnerable view ourselves as weak and incompetent. I explore this in-depth in my latest book, Leading With Vulnerability.
Why is that the case?
You can see that full post below and it’s essential to read that post before this one.
I ended that post with the following:
When we observe a physical object up close we get more clarity, depth, and information around it. But when we emotionally observe ourselves up close the picture is fuzzy, shallow, and the information is inaccurate as we exaggerate the negative things while ignoring the positive ones.
That’s what today’s post is all about, how do we create that emotional distance?
To answer that question we have to start with something known as King Solomon’s Paradox.
Thousands of years ago King Solomon ruled the land of Israel. He was considered a wise man and people from afar would come to him to seek his counsel and advice. His insights and judgment were the best in the land. However, when it came to his own life, it was filled with problems. He was obsessed with self-indulgence and flaunting his wealth, had over 1,000 wives and concubines, and was not able to properly raise his own son to be heir to the throne.
How is it that some leaders are so great at being objective and giving other people advice and guidance, yet they struggle when it comes to their own lives? We all struggle with this, especially leaders, because we are so immersed in a situation and experience.
One of the brilliant researchers that I interviewed for my book, Leading With Vulnerability, is Dr. Ethan Kross. Dr. Kross wrote the best-selling book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It and he teaches at the University Of Michigan.
He discovered something fascinating about how we talk to ourselves, which is very much related to what Dr. Bruk discovered about vulnerability in the previous post.
When people become stressed or emotionally uncomfortable, they tend to zoom in on their problems, like a scientist with a microscope who’s trying to spot every detail. We get tunnel vision to the point where the only thing we can see are problems and challenges. This is something I have struggled with for a long time whenever I make a mistake or when something doesn’t go my way…my default inner voice is negative but I’ve been working on fixing that.
To help manage this and get more emotional control, stability, and promote wise thinking, Dr. Kross discovered that a crucial skill is being able to create distance. There’s no single way to distance yourself.
For example, meditation can be a useful tool for distancing where you try to separate yourself from your thoughts. You might imagine your thoughts as clouds in the sky that are drifting around or disappearing or perhaps you might see your thoughts as different types of children playing in a field.
Many years ago I gave a talk for a large telecommunications company. I thought I did a pretty good job. People laughed at my jokes and I received some great questions and compliments. A few days later I received an email from one of the leaders at the company telling me how disappointed they were in my presentation. They thought I didn’t spend enough time customizing the talk, understanding their business, or focusing on the people in the room.
Immediately my internal chatter started, “I gave a talk to this great company and I totally screwed it up. How could I do something so stupid and why was I so lazy? Maybe I should just stop this whole speaking thing.”
But what happens if I had changed “I” to my name? I should have said, “Jacob gave a talk to a telecommunications company and he thought he did a good job but received some tough feedback. Jacob shouldn’t beat himself up, we all make mistakes and even though he was upset he learned an important lesson from that experience that he can bring to all future speaking engagements.”
I was so immersed in the situation and the experience that I couldn’t see clearly and I just kept beating myself up. But had I approached it as if I was talking to my friend Jacob, my advice would have been more compassionate, objective, and helpful.
According to Ethan, when we use our own names to advise ourselves and think through a problem, we turn on our mental machine of thinking about other people, we change our perspective. In other words, we create distance.
However, as Ethan cautioned me when we spoke, this tool allows you to give yourself the best advice you’re capable of giving, but this doesn’t mean that advice is always going to default to “be vulnerable,” in some cases the advice you give yourself may be, “don’t be vulnerable.”
Creating distance is also not meant as a guise for avoidance. There’s a fine line between trying to ignore and not acknowledge emotions or reflecting on them without getting sucked into the vortex of negativity.
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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
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