The WAY to WOW Shows
Developing Success Mindsets
May 4, 2021
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[0:00] today i'm gonna make a mocktail so no alcohol but this mocktail is based on a cocktail that's pretty common what we would have done earlier uh which is a riff on a mule so a mescal mule instead we're gonna sands alcohol and it's it couldn't be simpler when you are effective leader you're not somebody that other people feel like they have to follow you're somebody that other people want to follow so really i interpret your question is how do i become somebody that other people want to follow how do people see failure i think some people see failure as a bad thing

[0:35] because if we fail then that means other people are going to see us as a failure but there's other people who see failure as a great thing because there may be no better opportunity to learn and grow than from failure who are you and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel it may seem that the nine realms are each separate but in truth they work

[1:12] together within the three pillars of attainment play makes for a healthier life and a more fun family life learning improves our finances and helps us develop better relationships how does mindset help us on the way to wow professor ryan gotfordson is going to address that topic for us but first dean quinones is going to mix up a cocktail for us with a little twist it's going to be non-alcoholic right that's right [Music]

[1:49] hey guys thanks for having me back here again i really enjoy making cocktails for you guys today i'm going to make a mocktail so no alcohol but this mocktail is based on a cocktail that's pretty common what we would have done earlier which is a riff on a mule so a mezcal mule instead we're gonna sans alcohol and it's it couldn't be simpler again it's the same build so you don't have to shake you don't have to mix too many things and not over complicate it so you're just gonna take your glass fill it with ice all the way up to the top

[2:24] all right and then we're going to take a ginger beer so it says ginger beer but it's actually non-alcoholic this just is a more spicier generally has sugar already added to it so again you want to try it and taste it and if you want more sugar you can add a little bit of simple syrup here i don't think we really need to so you're just going to top up your cocktail mocktail with your ginger beer and then we're gonna add fresh lime so again if you don't have a squeezer like i've got you can just squeeze it by hand that's fine as well

[3:02] you just want to get the lime and the ginger so the lime is going to make it really nice and tart you can add some sugar if you like i don't think you need to here i think it's just right then you're going to take some stir bitters so this is a digestive it helps with digestion um and it adds color so you're just going to go and put a couple drops on top so that's going to make it look the cocktail mocktail part and then you're just going to take a little sprig of mint wake it up put it in and garnish with some lime once again

[3:40] voila cheers cheers indeed oh these are these look fantastic okay thank you thanks so much you're welcome so diane made these for us this is a non-alcoholic mule looks great yeah right they throw me on oh yeah that that ginger taste is so good she hit the spot i like it a double sipper

[4:22] so professor yes kevin i can't do it no i have to how are gil again and marianne i have no clue i think he does doesn't know the reference i don't that's okay rick will cut that out or he'll embarrass me and leave it in so ryan gotfordson i'm going to read your bio so people know a little bit about you and i want to make because i want to make sure i get in all the good points all right so you hold a phd in organizational behavior and human resources that you got from indiana

[4:57] university uh and you are a leadership professor at the college of business and economics at california state university fullerton so just really just down the road from us can i can i add a point there please we just broke a record so we are now the second largest business school in the country student population wise really yeah and who who who do you have left to overtake i think it's central florida is the best okay wonderful so you're an author a researcher a consultant all at the cutting edge of leadership development and i know from following you on

[5:34] instagram and i think i see you on linkedin too perhaps so you talk about something called vertical development and we'll we'll talk more about that you also wrote a best-selling book success mindsets the key to unlocking greater success in your life work and leadership which fits in right with what we're doing here on the way to wow show because we're looking at life through a holistic lens so thank you so much for coming to to talk to us yeah i want to start real basically

[6:11] so we hear this term leadership thrown around all the time and i'm not sure people really understand what is leadership today so so define for us what is this concept called leadership well i think you're right i think there's hundreds of definitions out there on leadership and i'm not going to state the claim that i have the right definition of leadership but the way that i like thinking about leadership is leadership is about having a positive influence on a group of people in such a way that we're directing them toward goal achievement and i like this

[6:47] perspective because it focuses on influence as opposed to position so i think that somebody can be in a formal leadership position and if they can't positively influence those that they are leading then i don't think that they're a very effective leader also somebody might not be in a formal leadership position but they could have a huge positive influence on the group that they're working within so i think leadership at its fundamental core is about having a positive influence and i don't know about you but i think that that's a concept that everybody can resonate with yeah you

[7:22] know it's interesting because people think about the military and they think about military leadership and they well you know the general says go from point a to point b and and and and everybody does it does not work that way at all i mean the best military leaders are the ones who have really almost inspired their people to follow them and then in the marine corps they have this idea of what they call the strategic corporal it's the first level of non-commissioned leadership but it's so pivotal because he's leading

[7:57] that small group right and and and the whole battle plan can fall apart if the corporal you know can't exercise effective leadership so i think yeah i think you're right it crosses all all boundaries so if you know working from your definition of leadership right how then does one lead effectively have that that influence rather than the you know coercive style yeah so and you brought up the great point that effective leadership or when you are effective leader you're

[8:32] not somebody that other people feel like they have to follow you're somebody that other people want to follow so really i interpret your question is how do i become somebody that other people want to follow absolutely and i think something that really helps me think about this is understanding there's two different types of development so there's one type of development that's called horizontal development this is enhancing our knowledge our skills our capabilities and this is really important we surely need to do that to become somebody that other people want to follow but just to kind of drive home the point

[9:07] of this form of development is if we use the analogy of an ipad well horizontal development is adding an app onto that ipad what it does is it expands or broadens our functionality and this is great but this isn't the only form of development when it comes to leadership development the second form is vertical development this is enhancing our worldview such that we're seeing the world in more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated ways so to use the ipad analogy this isn't adding an app onto the ipad it's actually upgrading the ipad's

[9:43] operating system so it runs more effectively it can do more things more quickly more efficiently and so my experience working with organizations and developing their leaders is that at least 95 percent of organizations primarily focus on horizontal development broadening their functionality through knowledge skills and capabilities but i think that the thing that sets apart great leaders from not as great leaders is their altitude of vertical development their degree the degree to which they can see the world in more cognitively

[10:18] and emotionally sophisticated ways so peel that onion for us a little bit i mean you hear this term you know cognitive development um and i'm not sure beyonce i'm not sure i exactly understand what that means so kind of flesh that out for us if you would yeah let me give you an example how would you say most people typically react or respond to receiving constructive criticism well if it's positive constructive criticism they probably are act pretty well and if it's negative constructive criticism right they i think a lot of times people you know

[10:53] they get upset or right they they block it out they don't want to hear it right yeah so when i ask groups of people this question i would say the majority of them say that they get defensive after they receive constructive criticism so that's one way of seeing and responding to constructive criticism there's other people i would say maybe the next level up they would say well it depends on who delivers it and how they deliver it that's great well then there's i think there's another level and what we're doing is we're moving up this vertical development hierarchy and at the top level is

[11:28] regardless of who delivers it or how they deliver it we see that constructive criticism as a gift so each of these different levels represents a more developed way of seeing constructive criticism and because how we see that constructive criticism then is going to influence how much value we take from that constructive criticism and we when getting to that top level is not easy because what it takes is it takes that we have to become good with being told that we're bad and it takes a lot of cognitive and

[12:04] emotional sophistication to get there but that's hopefully an example that helps us identify different levels of vertical development so you know it's it with with you it's nothing is really new so there's a i wish i could remember which rabbi said it probably like somebody like hello but he said um i love my enemy because he shows me how to be a better me that's a you know not an exact translation of the hebrew but so it sounds like that's kind of what you're you're saying is we should we should love the not only the

[12:40] person who criticizes us which we're supposed to do anyway but love what they tell us because in the end it's going to make us a better person or or a better leader or whatever it is we're trying to get better at it is that does that sound yeah for sure let me give you another example so let's take failure how do people see failure i think some people see failure as a bad thing because if we fail then that means other people are going to see us as a failure but there's other people who see failure as a great thing because there may be no better opportunity to learn and grow

[13:16] than from failure and so this is actually getting at a foundational mindset that we have that we distinguish between a fixed mindset or a growth mindset and somebody who has more of a growth mindset they operate at a more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated level because they could be okay with failure because they see it as an opportunity to learn whereas those who aren't able to do that they end up stunting themselves in their progress so how do we develop that that or how do we develop vertically how do we develop that greater cognitive and emotional

[13:52] sophistication yeah great question and the key is is and i've mentioned it just a couple of times in the definition of vertical development and that the word is world view so we've got to now inspect our world views how are we seeing and interpreting our world well another way of talking about our world views well that's our mindsets and i like to define mindsets as the mental lenses that we wear that shape how we view the world and what our mindsets do is they cut they allow us to filter in specific information and interpret that information

[14:27] in unique ways and based upon the information we take in and how we interpret it then we're going to think learn and behave differently such as if we fail do we see that as a bad thing or do we see it as a good thing and depending upon how we see it is going to affect how we respond to that situation when i was in the real estate business i took a it was called a boot camp from a guy by the name of tommy hopkins he was very well very well known real estate sales trainer at the time and he made us memorize certain phrases and one of them was i never see

[15:03] failure as failure but only as the opportunity to learn how to do it better next time right and and it sounds like that's is is is is that along the lines of what you're talking about spot on so that's a growth mindset and the what i love about that it obviously this is something that's wired within you right well i learned that you know it's got to be more than 20 years ago it's it's just stuck with me so it's perfect because what our mind i think a lot of people talk about mindsets as being attitude you got to have a positive

[15:38] attitude you got to have a positive mindset and not that that's totally incorrect i just think it's a little bit short-sighted because our mindsets are so much more in fact if we were to dive into the neuroscience behind mindsets what we would find is that our mindsets are specific long-range neural connections that integrate our mammalian our reptilian and our human brains so what this means is that in our brains we've got this highway system that is integrating these three different brain levels and we've got a negative mindset neural connection and we've got a positive

[16:14] mindset neural connection and if we ever want to shift from negative to positive which i've had to do myself then what we need to do is we need to activate and strengthen our positive mindset neural connections so that they fire more rapidly and and more freely and so what this means is when you have these sayings like you just said the more and more we say these in our mind those actually serve to activate and strengthen in this instance more of a growth mindset neural connection and as we as we develop that is our dominant mindset in which

[16:49] rely upon then whenever we encounter a failure we respond to it much more positively than if we had more of that fixed mindset so if our attitude toward failure is one of the mindsets what are what are two other crucial mindsets uh i mean you're well you you wrote the book correct success mindset so what are two we'll make a you know a triplet out of them what are two other success focused mindsets we should adopt yeah and so my book success mindsets is a compilation of the last 30 plus years of mindset research and it stems across management

[17:24] psychology education and marketing and in each of these disciplines they've all identified their own kind of pet sets of mindsets so we talked a little bit about fixed and growth and the thing that's unique is across all of these disciplines they've identified this kind of polar spectrum of mindsets so fixed is more on the negative side growth is more on the positive side so a couple of other sets and that we could dive in is into is a closed mindset on the negative side an open mindset on the positive side or a prevention mindset on the negative side and a promotion mindset on the positive

[18:00] side so happy to dive into either of those yeah so um take the first one all right so the difference between a closed and an open mindset is how open our mind is to the ideas and the suggestions of others okay so let me ask you a question why would anybody ever be close to the idea of somebody else um you know frankly they might be prejudiced against the person for you know bigoted reasons um they may be afraid of you know letting letting a new idea in

[18:37] right it might somehow pollute them you know et cetera et cetera um i those are the first two that leap to mind no i think you're spot on and i think at the core of of those things is the idea that what we know is best so when we have a fix a closed mindset we're kind of like this bucket that is filled to the brim what happens if we try to pour something in a full bucket well nothing gets absorbed it just runs off the side and that's the effect of a closed mindset when we have a closed mindset believe that what we know is best then we want to be seen as being right i know

[19:14] it all but to have an open mindset what we've got to do is we've got to leave a little bit of room in that bucket for the idea that we could be wrong and when that happens we're not focused on being right we're now focused on finding truth and thinking optimally and we're more willing to take in the ideas and the suggestions of others so i think one of the things that i've learned for myself that is really critical is that this isn't if we have an open mindset it isn't to say that we have to run with the ideas and suggestions of others we can always have a stiff back we can always take a stand

[19:50] but the key to having an open mindset is to have a soft front to be willing to take in the ideas and suggestions of others not that we always have to run with them but we have to be willing to take them in and it and it takes this foundational belief that we may be wrong and that's a key to having an open mindset well and it's interesting that what you just said that just because we hear an idea doesn't mean we have to adopt that idea or or internalize it i think we have to go through our own internal processing process i know that's redundant but we

[20:26] have to yeah we have to process it process it ourselves does it comport with our values does it come does it really seem like it's going to take us in the direction of our goals right isn't that so so for someone who will engage in that process even if they reject the new idea is that person still open-minded yes and so what one of the keys is is to be seen as somebody that is open-minded we've got to develop skills um around validating the ideas of others and so that's really critical if we want to be a leader

[21:02] who is open-minded but here's the benefit of what happens when we do this and google did a massive research study it's called project aristotle if anybody wants to look it up and what they found is that they were ident trying to identify what was the factor that made their top performing teams top performing and after a two-year search they found that there's one factor that made their top performing teams the very top performing and that factor is psychological safety the belief that you could speak up and take risks without fear of negative repercussion so the only way that we can have

[21:39] psychological safety is if we believe that those around us particularly our leaders have open mindsets so this idea of having an open mindset is critical to to being an effective leader being somebody that others want to follow you're speaking with such clarity i wish we could go on and on and on but but i got that we have to wrap it up uh signal so um you you brought a a thing i did yes why don't we have have you put that up there uh on the collage all right

[22:16] how's that look that looks good yeah see and mastery under pressure you're gonna have to have that in order to get your mindset worked out for sure yeah ryan thank you so much for coming on the way to wow yeah thanks for having me that's our show for this week thinking about what ryan said we need to examine our world views to see if the mindsets the perspectives we have really serve us i really like what he said about having a soft front and a stiff back so take the ideas in but you know don't

[22:54] betray our values sage sage advice courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell [Music]

[23:48] you