According to psychologists, talking to strangers can be taxing on the brain, and even small talk can seem stressful, tiring and cognitively demanding.
On the flip side, talking to strangers is a kind of workout that boosts our mental performance.

Talking To Strangers

Talking to strangers is worth it, as it offers a certain profound joy, a real communion. If more people start talking to strangers, our broken society can be healed.<ul><li>The hardest thing about talking to strangers is the initiation of the conversation.</li><li>One has to approach with confidence yet provide an assurance that they are safe and don’t have any ulterior motive or agenda.</li><li>Older people initiate conversations more than younger ones.</li></ul>

Triggering Conversations In A Suspicious World

Most of us are laughably bad at striking up good conversations with strangers, and can hope to improve ourselves if we learn what all is lacking to break the ice.The conversation is mostly initiated by small talk, the opener that gets everything started. Most people hate small talk, but one cannot talk to strangers without initiating the conversation with something familiar and reassuring.

From Really Bad To Okayish

Many people hate it when the small talk is of the weather, but fail to understand that it is actually a kind of code that helps people overcome their inhibitions and be ready to actually talk to the other person.Once the person who has been approached feels comfortable, real talk can happen.Everyone is interested in a really deep, engaging conversation, but they will not show it, and it is up to us to discover the same.

Talking About The Weather

We use scripted conversations to be on the safe side, as we fear that saying any unscripted word can trigger something unwanted in the other person.While scripted conversations are efficient, they deny us the actuality of the other person, the stranger who may be just a friend we haven’t met yet.By talking off-script or replying in a unique, unheard of manner, we make it comfortable for the stranger to mirror us and say something similar.

Going Unscripted

Asking something specific and humorous to a stranger is a risk, but if the timing is right, one can give a great first impression about being complex, empathetic, humourous and human.Once the stranger recognizes you as a human, a bond is created and real conversation can start.

Being Human

<ul><li>When at a party, don’t ask ‘What do you do?’, instead, ask ‘What do you really want to do but cannot?’ or ‘Has your day lived up to your expectations?’</li><li>When a store clerk asks you ‘can I help you?’, reply with ‘can I help you?’</li></ul>The point is to be different and vulnerable so that you sound intriguing and yet do not come across as a psychopath!

How To Be Different At Starting A Conversation

<ol><li>Proximity: Suddenly meeting a stranger and asking something will almost certainly fail. One has to be in the proximity of the stranger for a while to be accepted.</li><li>Don’t Make It An Interview: Being too interested in the other person can backfire. You need not lean forward, ask questions quickly or interrogate them.</li><li>Statements: Use statements instead of questions to sound non-threatening.</li><li>Surprise: Be genuinely interested in learning something new and try to gain a fresh perspective.</li></ol>

Helpful Techniques To Talk Better With Strangers

The main reason we don’t talk to strangers is simply because we don’t talk to strangers. People are simply not supposed to violate the norm of leaving other people alone at back alleys, parks and subways.The trick is to acknowledge this handicap and pre-frame the negative thoughts of the other person by reassuring them that you know you are breaking the norm.

Why We Don’t Talk To Strangers

<ul><li>Asking more questions, especially follow-up questions, is more than just for gathering information.&nbsp;</li><li>They help create deep, emotional bonds and make the other person feel better as they are being listened to, understood, validated and cared for.</li><li>Most people don’t ask enough questions about the other person as they are egocentric and are ready to fill in their two cents to the ongoing talk.</li></ul>Most people sound despicable because they just keep on talking about themselves.

The Stranger On The Subway: Asking Questions

<ul><li>While talking to strangers, we need to signal our engagement by summarizing or paraphrasing what the other person has said, to show that we were listening attentively.</li><li>We need to amplify our visible engagement with eye contact and nodding, as the other person does not know us at all, and is relying on the cues we send out.</li></ul>

The Art Of Listening

Another way to signal your attentive listening is to simply echo what the other person is saying.Example:The Stranger says: At that moment, I felt frustrated.You: You were frustrated.

The Art Of Listening: The Echo

Listening can be for:<ul><li> Information</li><li>What we know about</li><li>What we want to experience.</li></ul>We need to work more into the deep levels of listening for motivations, values and feelings.

Listening For A Higher Purpose

Entrepreneurs must become experts at connecting with anyone-and with a few simple strategies, you can. Here's what happened when I tried them myself. 

Stashed ideas

A couple of years ago, I started to talk to strangers.

That’s not to say I hadn’t talked to strangers before that, because I had. I’m the son and brother of highly social <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/small-business-owners" rel="follow">small-­business owners </a>, and I’m a journalist, so talking to strangers has been both a way of life and a livelihood for me. And yet, a few years ago I noticed I wasn’t doing it much anymore — if at all. Between balancing a demanding job and a really demanding small child, I was often tired, distracted, and overscheduled. The prospect of striking up conversations with random strangers in coffee shops, or bars, or on the bus started to feel daunting. Eventually, I just stopped doing it.

This was a coping strategy, of course. I was overwhelmed, so something had to go. And talking to strangers can, as it turns out, be taxing. Psychologists have found that just making <a data-ga-action="/topic/small-talk" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ai-metadata" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/small-talk">small talk </a>with a stranger can be cognitively demanding, tiring, and even stressful. That makes sense. You don’t know the person, you don’t know where the conversation is going, so you must pay closer attention than you would if you were talking to someone you know well. But psychologists have found that talking to a stranger actually boosts your mental performance — for that same reason: It’s a workout. I was saving myself a bit of effort, but I also noticed that my life was becoming less interesting, less surprising, maybe even a little lonely.

After my epiphany, I got to wondering: Why don’t we talk to strangers more, what happens when we do, and how can we get better at it? It turns out, many researchers are asking the same questions. I started flying around the world to meet them: psychologists, evolutionary scientists, historians, urban planners, entrepreneurs, sociologists, and — you guessed it — a ton of fascinating strangers I met along the way. They all taught me that talking to strangers can not only be fun but also enhance our sense of well-being, make us smarter, expand our social and professional networks, and even help us overcome some of our most intractable social problems. (I detail this all in my new book, <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.amazon.com/Power-Strangers-Benefits-Connecting-Suspicious/dp/1984855778" rel="follow">The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World </a>. )

And as I researched the book, I kept coming back to the implications talking to strangers could have for entrepreneurs. Because I come from a family of small-business owners — and for a while served as executive editor at this magazine — I have seen firsthand how beneficial it is for businesspeople to hone those social skills. I have also spoken to a lot of college professors who lament that their students struggle to make the sorts of serendipitous social <a data-ga-action="/topic/connections" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ent-tags" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/connections">connections </a>that will serve them so well once they start their careers. And , like all of us, I’m coming out of a year spent in relative quarantine. I’m rusty on these skills and need to get used to the sorts of fun, fruitful, and, yes, sometimes difficult freewheeling social interactions we were deprived of for more than a year.

All of which is to say, I decided that I needed to become an expert at talking to strangers. How? I signed up for a class unlike anything I’d ever taken before and bought a plane ticket to London.

Our journey begins on a bright day in a small classroom at Regent’s University. I’m sitting on a chair, limp with jet lag, clutching my third cup of coffee. There are four other people there, too. They appear to be functioning at a higher level than I am, thankfully. We have come to this classroom to learn how to talk to strangers.

Our teacher is an energetic 20-something named Georgie Nightingall. She’s the founder of <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.triggerconversations.co.uk/" rel="follow">Trigger Conversations </a>, an acclaimed London-based “human connection organization” that hosts social events and immersive workshops aimed at helping people have meaningful interactions with strangers. Since she founded it in 2016, Nightingall has done more than 100 events and many training sessions — with strangers, companies, communities, universities, and conferences, both in London and around the world.

Nightingall has learned that, for a lot of people, the hardest thing about talking to strangers is initiating the conversation: approaching someone, making them feel safe, and quickly conveying the idea that you don’t have an agenda, that you’re just being friendly or curious. She found that older people are much more likely to initiate a conversation, for instance, whereas younger people require a little more assurance. But she also found that in all her own attempts to speak to strangers, the vast majority of those interactions were substantial, and many went great.

She came to believe, too — and this is important — that making a practice of talking to strangers could offer more than a jolt of good feeling for an individual. There was joy in it, profundity, real communion. If practiced widely enough, she believed it could help repair a fracturing society. “We’re not just talking about a few individualized things,” she says. “We’re talking about a different way to live.”

Nightingall stands before our class, bright, engaging, and articulate, and walks us through what to expect over the coming days. She wants to take us “from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, and from conscious competence to unconscious competence,” she says. In other words, we are currently bad at this and we’re unaware of why or how. We will learn what we are lacking. We will improve on it. And we will, hopefully, become so proficient that it will become second nature to us.

Our first lesson is small talk. A lot of people hate small talk, which is understandable, because a lot of small talk is deadly boring. Nightingall concedes the point. Yes, she says, small talk can be dull. But that’s because most people don’t understand what it’s for. It’s not the conversation. It’s the opener for a better conversation. It’s a way to get comfortable with one another and cast around for something you want to talk about. That, she says, is why it’s important to be aware of your response when someone asks something like “What do you do?” You are failing to understand what that question is really asking, which is this: “What should you and I talk about?”

Nightingall came to this insight via a couple of sources. She had done improv comedy in the past, and in improv, you start a sketch with something familiar to everyone in the audience — something relevant, timely, or present in the room — to bind the room together. Only then can you really take the audience on a ride. That’s small talk. But Nightingall has also followed the work of social anthropologist Kate Fox, who has studied, for instance, the seemingly inexhaustible English desire to discuss weather. While some critics have pointed to this affinity as evidence of a listless and unimaginative people, Fox argued that weather wasn’t the point. Instead, it is a means of social bonding, a greeting ritual. “English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our natural reserve and actually talk to each other,” Fox writes. The content is not the point — familiarity, connection, and reassurance are. Once those are in place, a real conversation can happen.

When you recognize that small talk is just a door to a better conversation, Nightingall says, then it can be useful, because it’s structured in a way that naturally leads you toward common ground. We have all experienced how these conversations, if given the time, can move in ever-tightening circles until you both zero in on something you have in common and want to talk about. With that in place, you can wander, get a little personal, go deeper. But it’s probably on you to take it there, Nightingall says. “Everyone is interesting, but it’s not up to them to show you — it’s up to you to discover it.”

The best way to discover that interesting stuff, Nightingall says, is by “breaking the script.” That means using the techniques of small talk, but resisting the temptation to go on autopilot. For example, you go into a store and say, “How are you doing?” and the clerk says, “Fine; how are you?” and the conversation contains no information and goes nowhere. That’s a script. We use scripts to make interactions more efficient, particularly in busy, dense, fast-moving places like big cities. But in doing so, we deny ourselves the chance at a better experience and maybe a new contact, and we wall ourselves off from all the benefits that can come from talking to strangers.

So how do you break those scripts? With specificity and surprise, Nightingall says. For example, when someone says, “How are you?” she doesn’t say, “Fine.” Instead, she says, “I’d say I’m a 7.5 out of 10.” She briefly explains why she’s a 7.5, asks them how they’re doing, and then just waits. This is when mirroring kicks in; it’s a phenomenon where people naturally follow the lead of their conversational partners. If you say something generic, they will say something generic. If you say something specific, they are likely to as well. Thus, because Nightingall gave a number, her partner is likely to give a number themselves. If they say they’re a 6, Nightingall will ask, “What’ll it take to get you to an 8?” This specificity creates a light atmosphere and makes it harder for the other person to maintain the <a data-ga-action="/topic/belief" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ai-metadata" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/belief">belief </a>that you’re of a lesser mind, because it instantly demonstrates complexity, feeling, and humor: humanity, in other words. “Straightaway, they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re a human,’ ” Nightingall says. “You have that bond, and then, naturally, things open up.”

Here are other ways Nightingall suggests breaking a script. When a shop clerk asks, “Can I help you?” you can reply, “Can I help you ?” Or instead of asking people at a party what they do, ask them what they’d like to do more of, or what they don’t do. Or instead of asking someone how their day went, ask, “Has your day lived up to your expectations?” All these things require a certain measure of confidence to pull off, Nightingall says. But they work. And when they do, they will reveal a little nugget of what it’s like to be that person. That is meaningful, because that nugget is indicative of what is beneath the surface. “How you do anything is how you do everything,” Nightingall says. That nugget tells you where to go next in the conversation.

Once you’ve established a little connection, what do you do? I normally start asking questions. Which makes sense: I’m showing an interest in the other person, and I demonstrate my interest by indulging my curiosity. But one paradox about talking to a stranger, Nightingall explains, is that while curiosity is indispensable, a barrage of questions out of the gate can feel like prying, or an interview. They don’t quite know where you’re coming from yet, and they don’t know if you have some kind of agenda. Even one personal question asked too early can create an uncomfortable dynamic because you’re asking something of someone. You’re making a demand.

Nightingall suggests that statements, not questions, can be a better way to open a conversation. A question compels an answer, whereas a statement leaves it up to the other person to decide whether they want to talk. It’s not a demand; it’s an offer. You notice something about your shared surroundings, offer an observation, and leave it to the other party to respond. If they do, you respond with another statement that builds on what they said.

These observations should ideally not be moronic — “I noticed that the sun came up today!” — but they can be simple. Like weather talk in England, the point is to indicate a shared experience. Nightingall has found that proximity helps, too. If you are at a museum, walking right up to someone looking at a painting and blurting out “What do you think?” is very different from making an observation about a painting after standing next to them for 30 seconds looking at it. That’s because you have been in their proximity. They have adjusted to your being there, and you have demonstrated a measure of self-control. Then you can speak. It feels less like an invasion.

One day in class, my fellow students and I pair off to practice our technique. I’m partnered with “Paula,” who tells me that one of her favorite things is making a cup of good coffee for herself on the weekends and just sitting alone. I try to remember Nightingall’s advice about opening with statements, not questions, but now we’re in a groove — so I dig in. After four questions, Paula is talking about how resentful she is at having to work for other people. I’m obviously quite pleased with myself as I trot back to Nightingall with this pheasant in my mouth. But she is less impressed. She delicately explains that while “it’s clear you’re a person who asks questions for a living,” everything about my <a data-ga-action="/topic/body-language" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ai-metadata" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/body-language">body language </a>suggested I was looking for something to pounce on. I asked questions too quickly, she said. I was leaning forward. This wasn’t a conversation; it was an interview. Possibly an interrogation.

Nightingall suggested asking simpler and more open-ended questions. Instead of saying, “Do you think this was because you were a control freak?” just echo, or say, “Why do you think that is?” That is the opposite of what I usually do, but it’s what I must learn to do. In a good conversation, you must relinquish control. Your job is to help your partner arrive at their own conclusion and surprise you, not to ferret out whatever it is, slap a bow on it, and go, Next! There’s a powerful lesson there: If you’re interested only in things you know you’re interested in, you will never be surprised. You’ll never learn anything new, or gain a fresh perspective, or make a new friend or contact. The key to talking to strangers, it turns out, is letting go, letting them lead. Then the world opens itself to you.

Why don’t we talk to strangers? The answer I heard, over and over again from experts, is simply that we don’t talk to strangers. In many places, for many reasons, it has become a social norm, and social norms are really powerful. That is why Nightingall uses what she calls a foolproof method to not just violate the norm — but to openly acknowledge that you are violating the norm.

She asks us to imagine riding mass transit — which, as we know, is the last place anyone ever talks to a stranger. There is someone who strikes us as interesting. We can’t turn to that person and say, “Why do I find you so interesting?” because if you said something like that to a stranger on the subway, they’re going to assume this is the initiation of a chain of events that will ultimately conclude with their becoming crude homemade taxidermy. So Nightingall suggests something called a pre-frame. It’s an idea based in the field of neurolinguistic programming, which coaches people to “reframe” the possible negative thoughts of others — ­­in essence redefining their expectations for the interaction to come. Ordinarily, we might be wary if a stranger just starts talking to us. We don’t know who they are, or what they want, or whether they’re right in the head. What a pre-frame does is reassure them that you know all this .

To do it, you acknowledge out of the gate that this is a violation of a social norm. You say something like “Look, I know we’re not supposed to talk to people on the subway, but…” This demonstrates that you’re in full possession of your faculties. You’re not erratic, disturbed, or otherwise off in some way. It helps alleviate wariness and opens the possibility of a connection. Once that is established, Nightingall says, you follow the pre-frame with your statement — “I really like your sunglasses,” for instance. Then you follow that with a justification: “I just lost mine and I’ve been looking for a new pair.” The justification eases the person’s suspicion that you have some kind of agenda and allows you to talk a little more openly.

That’s when questions become more important, Nightingall says. Questions serve a multitude of functions, which is why, as I learned in my exercise with Paula, they can be so complicated. Yes, questions help you obtain information. And yes, on a deeper level, they help your conversational partner clarify the point they are trying to make. But they also help us emotionally bond with other people. In a series of studies in 2017, psychologist Karen Huang and her colleagues discovered that “people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners.” Those who ask more questions, the authors found, are perceived as higher in responsiveness — which is defined as “listening, <a data-ga-action="/topic/understanding" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ai-metadata" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/understanding">understanding </a>, validation, and care.” In other words, people like us because we are interested in them.

And yet, the researchers noted, people tend not to ask a lot of questions. Why? Several reasons. “First,” Huang writes, “people may not think to ask questions at all…because people are egocentric — ­focused on expressing their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs with little or no interest in hearing what another person has to say. Or they may be so distracted by other aspects of the conversation that they do not realize that asking a question is an option.” Even if a question does pop into someone’s head, they may not ask it, because they worry it’ll land badly and be “perceived as rude, inappropriate, intrusive, or incompetent.” In these cases, people will probably just talk about themselves, which studies show they do twice as often as they talk about other matters — ­which, ironically, makes people like them less. (Good work, everybody.)

But what’s a good question to ask? Nightingall has us complete an exercise in which we are given banal statements — the sort commonly offered in small talk—and tasked with coming up with good questions. For instance, one student says she ran along the Thames yesterday. There is almost nothing in the world less interesting to me than running, and usually I’d take this as my cue to begin plotting my escape. But, working from the idea that small talk is the means, not the end, the class brainstorms good questions to ask that might lead to something more personal or interesting: “Do you run every day?” “Is that a passion for you?” “What would you do if you couldn’t run every day?” I suggest, “What are you running from?” which is meant as a joke, but the class seems to go for it.

Then we move on to the flip side of question-asking: It is listening. When people do start talking, you must listen, make eye contact, and generally show you’re engaged. We know this, of course. But we are not always good at showing it. Two effective techniques to signal engagement are paraphrasing what people have just said — “It seems like you’re saying…” — and echoing — which is simply occasionally repeating things your partner just said—both of which are commonly used by therapists and hostage negotiators to foster connection and build trust. For instance, if they say, “I guess at that point I was frustrated,” you say, “You were frustrated.” This seems deeply weird and unnatural, and feels awkward to do, and if you overdo it, your partner is going to think something’s wrong with you. But I am here to attest that, done well, it is extremely effective. It’s like a magic trick. Researchers have concluded as much. According to the French psychologists Nicolas Guéguen and Angélique Martin, “Research has shown that mimicry…leads to greater liking of the mimicker” and helps create rapport during a social interaction.

Nightingall breaks down listening into three levels. There is listening for things you know about. That’s the most superficial level. That’s when someone says something about baseball and you jump on it and start talking about baseball. Then there is listening for information — you show curiosity about someone but your questions are about collecting factual data. That’s also more about you and your interests. And then there’s the deepest level of listening: listening for experiences, feelings, motivations, and values. That kind of listening is more than simply hearing, or self-­affirmation. It’s paying attention and endeavoring to understand. It is demonstrated with eye contact, echoing, and paraphrasing, and it can be deepened by asking clarifying questions —­ Why? How? Who?  — that help the person get to the heart of the matter.

In other words, at this level of listening, you are not simply listening for something you want to talk about, or offering advice, or trying to think of something smart to say in response. It’s not about your agenda. It is a level of engagement that is about helping your partner get to what they really want to talk about, and you going along for the ride. You still want to talk about yourself a bit, Nightingall says — to give a little, and not leave the person feeling like you’ve just rummaged around in the bureau of their personal life and made off with a watch. But you want most of the focus to be on them. It is, again, a form of <a data-ga-action="/topic/hospitality" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ai-metadata" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/hospitality">hospitality </a>. You are hosting someone. You are surrendering a measure of control. You are giving them space. You are taking a risk. That risk opens you to the potential rewards of talking to a stranger.

During lunch and after class, I try out some of these techniques around London. I ask a 20-something bartender at a pub if the day has met her expectations, and she confesses with very little prompting that yes, it has. She’s about to quit her day job. She feels she’s been sold a bill of goods about the merits of a straight corporate career, and she’s going to empty her savings and travel the world. She hasn’t told anyone this yet, she says. But she will soon.

At lunch at a Lebanese takeout restaurant, I ask the owner what <a data-ga-action="/topic/menu" data-ga-category="autotag-linking" data-ga-label="ai-metadata" dir="ltr" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/menu">menu </a>items he’s most proud of — because that’s what I want. He starts taking bits of this and that and dropping them into my bag. I tell him I grew up in a white neighborhood, and when I was a kid, a Lebanese family moved in behind us and used to hand us plates over the fence of what was at that time very exotic food. Since then, Lebanese food has always been among my favorites. Curiously, when I eat it, I think about home. This, as Nightingall instructed, was me opening up the conversation with a statement, not a question. The owner tells me that in Lebanon, that kind of hospitality is a big deal; people always make a lot of food for visitors. While he talks, he keeps dropping more food into my bag. When he’s done, the bag weighs about five pounds and he charges me for maybe a third of it.

At the end of the final day of class, Nightingall tells us that practice will be everything. Some encounters will go poorly, she says, and some will be great, but in time, we will get more comfortable with doing this as we internalize the techniques we have learned. We will be able to get a little bolder or more playful. Our confidence, tone, and body language will alleviate people’s wariness at the flagrant violation of a social norm of long standing.

Indeed, Nightingall is something of a wizard at this. She once started a conversation with a man on the tube just by pointing at his hat, smiling, and saying, simply, “Hat.” She will randomly high-five people in the street, she says. She smiles at people going the opposite direction down an escalator just to see if they’ll smile back. She doesn’t order an Americano; she orders “the best Americano in the world.” And people respond. During a break one day, I walked into the campus Starbucks to get more coffee. Nightingall was already in there, talking animatedly with a barista she’d never met before. When she and I walked out, she told me he gave her the coffee on the house.

Nightingall’s free coffee, my Lebanese meal — these were not coincidences. As I learned repeatedly while testing techniques of talking to strangers, I’d often be rewarded with free food. There are, of course, far more fruitful, meaningful, and valuable reasons to talk to strangers. But the food stuck with me. Then I realized why: When you start a good conversation with a stranger, it’s like you’re giving them an uncommon gift. And more often than not, they want to give you something in return.

How to Become a Master at Talking to Strangers

Leaders, employees, customers, shareholders, and citizens are looking to achieve new levels of success that is wider, deeper, and more sustaining.
This creates an uncommon opportunity for companies that don&#39;t operate by default - they don&#39;t continue in the tried-and-tested or dabble around the edges. With clarity and intention, companies can design their future.

A unique generational opportunity

Leadership

A first step is leaders&#39; intent toward something greater than personal success. The intent may result from an intrinsic motivation to leave a positive legacy, or they may be compelled by investors, employees, or outside pressure such as governments.
But intent is not enough. Issuing a new purpose, sympathy, and compassion are only helpful if a company proactively designs the future they want to work toward. Given that futures will be bleak if design continues to ignore the environment, more companies should consider a planet-centred design.

What it takes to design the future

Companies prefer to plan for the next quarter or year. This leads to minor improvements of 3% or 5%.
The liberating thing about future design is that companies can try on multiple futures. Each future design should be a fully rounded picture of what the company is doing, how it&#39;s operating, how it works with communities and the planet, and how shareholders benefit.

Design for the next quarter century

<ul>
<li>Instead of considering immediate needs, identify higher-order needs as they will always be relevant and lead to more comprehensive solutions.</li>
<li>Devise a description of the world the team wants to create, rather than creating a financially oriented five-year plan.</li>
<li>Align action with intention. Run a collaborative design sprint with key stakeholders. Instead of using the sprint to create new products or features, use it to arrive at new futures.</li>
<li>Build a shared mission.</li>
</ul>

Future design requires a new kind of process

To move beyond purpose, companies must proactively design the future they want to work toward.


Career

Leaders, employees, customers, shareholders, and citizens are all looking for futures that achieve new levels of success. Success that is wider, deeper, and more sustaining. This globally synchronized intent to “build back better” creates a unique opportunity for the world.

But companies will miss this generational opportunity if they operate according to the default (either sticking to the tried-and-tested or tinkering around the edges). Unfortunately, many are doing that: issuing statements of purpose, sympathy, and compassion but fundamentally running the business as it’s always been run. Capitalism is at an inflection point. <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redefines-the-purpose-of-a-corporation-to-promote-an-economy-that-serves-all-americans" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Business Roundtable </a>and the <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/" rel="noopener noreferrer">World Economic Forum </a>have stated their intention to evolve toward stakeholder capitalism. But for many companies, this may be more an act of feeling good than doing good.

With clarity and intention, companies can design the future they want to see.

The first step is leaders’ intention. This may arise from an intrinsic motivation to leave a positive legacy, or it may be compelled by investors (like <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter" rel="noopener noreferrer">Blackrock’s Larry Fink) </a>, by employees (like <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/12/976141488/high-stakes-at-a-warehouse-amazon-fights-against-alabama-union-drive" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amazon’s workers </a>), or by outside pressure (particularly from governments, customers, or activists). Without leaders’ intent toward something greater than personal success, not much is possible, and a company is left to ride its luck, stumbling into a future that may or may not be kind to it.

Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, provides a case study in both sides of this equation. Under the Trump administration, the company was <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-28/automakers-trump-emissions-california-lawsuit" rel="noopener noreferrer">fighting future emissions standards </a>—struggling to maintain its default technology and hold the entire market in stasis. One week into the Biden administration, the company surprised many by abandoning its default trajectory, and instead designing a future with <a dir="ltr" href="https://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/home.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2021/jan/0128-carbon.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">carbon neutrality </a>by 2040, “working to establish a safer, greener, and better world.” Its prospects look much better in designing a future than in trying to hold back the tide.

But intent is just the first step. The vogue of company purpose statements looks a lot like a fresh coat of paint on default business. To pick one terrible example: Facebook <a dir="ltr" href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/22/bring-the-world-closer-together/?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACCuO0L0oi7hpNlYG7JV84prl2rX5OP6Izk2AJmGmmnEVsmcVfFZlGfqLDgMEEwhJ343LIIuOWrs2MYUOzSjfOHiy3hNQ7nmF8SEVzgmuTOK9eXxHmEnCni4RrBHnSEusuRgKNWfE_rp-4CzzOgudxkouPq58lceREC9Pxb9OOol" rel="noopener noreferrer">unveiled a new mission statement </a>, “to bring the world closer together,” but made only partial changes to its business when <a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Facebook_ad_boycotts" rel="noopener noreferrer">more than 1,000 advertisers boycotted the company </a>.

To move beyond purpose, companies must proactively design the future they want to work toward. This should be beyond human-centered design to at least community-centered design, because designing for individual gratification may well lead to “negative externalities” for all the stakeholders ignored. And given that most futures will be pretty bleak if design continues to ignore the environment, more companies should consider planet-centered design.

Far from distracting companies from value creation, we’ve witnessed the business and personal impact of starting with a planetary agenda in Tesla’s success. Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, didn’t just set a lofty goal (“accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”), he designed the future and, unusually, published his design in the <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me" rel="noopener noreferrer">top-secret master plan </a>:

Build sports car Use that money to build an affordable car Use that money to build an even more affordable car While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

Despite seeing a clear future design, most of the rest of the automotive industry stubbornly clung to its default practices; nearly 15 years elapsed between Musk publishing his future design and Barra’s statement in January.

We all know companies love to plan for the next quarter or, at best, the next year. This leads to minor iterations on what’s gone before: 3% better here, 5% better there. With the perspective of a complete career, these almost always seem inconsequential—too many people spending too much life energy tinkering with the default. One example of many: Before the pandemic hit, Marriott <a dir="ltr" href="https://marriott.gcs-web.com/static-files/c51380b7-8752-4920-8181-fe7553e01ca9" rel="noopener noreferrer">framed its strategy </a>to investors as 1% to 3% annual growth. It’s hard to argue that’s much of a design for the future, certainly not one that’s likely to energize its own people, let alone create the world we all want to see. Meanwhile, Brian Chesky of Airbnb was designing a radically different, long-term future of travel with a societal vision for communities and cities. Airbnb is now more than twice as valuable as Marriott. Future design pays off.

Here’s a wonderful and liberating thing about future design: Companies can try on multiple futures and see how they feel. Each future design should be a fully rounded picture—a plan for what the company is doing, how it’s operating, how it works with communities and the planet, and how shareholders benefit. Future One might be a more conservative option; Future Five might be radical. The very act of engaging in these conversations is energizing, and is a shortcut to substantive conversations between teams about what success really looks like; it’s a fundamental conversation that’s <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90547133/our-definition-of-success-is-holding-business-back-its-time-for-a-new-one" rel="noopener noreferrer">often overlooked. </a>

At Enso, we have found this approach works for companies at moments of inflection.

Finding what’s needed: Instead of determining immediate needs (“share photos more easily”), identify bigger, more enduring needs (“create greater belonging with others”). While people’s immediate needs may change rapidly, designing for higher-order needs will always be relevant and lead to more expansive solutions.

Exploring what’s possible: Rather than creating a financially oriented five-year plan, create a narrative description of the world the team wants to create. The dialogue needed to arrive at a shared vision is often revealing, unifying, and sometimes cathartic. Knowing what each other views as a successful life or career creates stronger cultures than just agreeing to KPIs for next year.

Align action with intention:  Instead of a siloed strategy team developing a plan of action behind closed doors, run a collaborative <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.gv.com/sprint/" rel="noopener noreferrer">design sprint </a>with key stakeholders—but rather than using the sprint methodology to arrive at new products or features, use it to arrive at new futures.

Building a shared mission: Depending on the futures envisioned, the process then turns to making, measuring, and evolving. This likely affects multiple teams in a company, or every team, because creating new futures is not as simple as creating a new process, ad campaign, or product feature—but it may well include all of those things, and require external collaborators.

The past year has been incredibly challenging for so many, but, more than ever, the future’s not predetermined, it’s there to be shaped by leaders and companies willing to put forth a compelling design for the world. The multiple crises of 2020 have raised the stakes: The default will not hold, and the companies that make a mark will be those that proactively, bravely, collaboratively design the future.

Sebastian Buck is a cofounder and partner at <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.enso.co/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Enso </a>.

Companies need to design the future—not just react to it

<ol>
<li>Motivation 1.0 - The survival instict: In this situation, the primary things that keep us alive (food, water, shelter) control our actions.</li>
<li>Motivation 2.0 - The stick and the carrot: This system assume workers will have no desire to work unless they are offered an extrinsic reward ( this can mean a punishment too).</li>
<li>Motivation 3.0 - Intrinsic reward: The internal satisfaction we feel from accomplishing something is far more rewarding than stick and carrot motivation.</li>
</ol>

3 Types Of Motivation

Rewards usually offer a short-term boost. But the effect wears off, and the negative consequence of them remain: they reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.
When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity.

External Rewards

<ul>
<li>Extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators (a raise, a promotion, a bonus) do work they are usually doing so in the short-term only. If the motivator is taken away, the behavior stops.</li>
<li>Intrinsic motivation. It is the desire to do something for the internal satisfaction of it. It’s the joy we get from accomplishing something useful, the satisfaction of a job well done, a sense of purpose, pride, belonging.</li>
</ul>

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation

<ul>
<li>They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.</li>
<li>They can diminish performance.</li>
<li>They can crush creativity.</li>
<li>They can crowd out good behavior.</li>
<li>They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.</li>
<li>They can become addictive.</li>
<li>They can foster short-term thinking.</li>
</ul>
The carrot and stick method does work, but it was created for a very different era and totally different circumstances.

Carrots and Sticks: The Seven Deadly Flaws

<ul>
<li>Autonomy: this is the desire to direct our own lives</li>
<li>Mastery: this is the impulse to get better and better at something that matters</li>
<li>Purpose: this is the longing to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.</li>
</ul>

The 3 Components of Intrinsic Motivation

<ul>
<li>Type X (Extrinsic): They are driven by external factors such as fame, status, money etc. They can often be highly successful but also troubled by an insatiable appetite for MORE.</li>
<li>Type I (Intrinsic): Their motivation comes from within – to accomplish something meaningful. Success is measured by the task itself and not by a reward. Type I’s will usually outperform a Type X in the long run.</li>
</ul>

The Two Types Of People: Type X And Type I

It means having a choice in what you do and being-self driven.
People are naturally wired to be-self driven. When they have the freedom to pick what they work on (tasks), when they work on it (time), how they attain it (technique) and who they work with (team), they perform much better due to the sense of autonomy.

Autonomy

The assumption of Mastery is that people wish to get better at what they do as long as they care about it. 
<ul>
<li> Engagement in the task one is pursuing is key to mastery.</li>
<li>To be engaged, you need to reach the state of flow, where goals are clear and feedback is immediate.</li>
<li>For flow, the challenge of a task must be just slightly above your level of competence.</li>
<li>Set “learning goals” instead of “performance goals”.</li>
</ul>

Mastery

Purpose leverage the human desire of being part of something bigger .
We reach purpose while:
<ul>
<li>Doing something that matters</li>
<li>Doing it well</li>
<li>Doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.</li>
</ul>

Purpose: Being Part Of Something Bigger

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people - at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does - and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In DRIVE, he reveals the three elements of true motivation: AUTONOMY - the desire to direct our own lives; MASTERY - the urge to get better and better at something that matters; PURPOSE - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward. DRIVE is bursting with big ideas - the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people - at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does - and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In DRIVE, he reveals the three elements of true motivation: AUTONOMY - the desire to direct our own lives; MASTERY - the urge to get better and better at something that matters; PURPOSE - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward. DRIVE is bursting with big ideas - the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.

Drive

Hedy LaMarr is most known for her roles in the 1940s Oscar-nominated films &#39;Algiers&#39; and &#39;Sampson and Delilah.&quot;
But her technical mind is really her greatest legacy. She filed a patent in 1941 for frequency-hopping technology that became a precursor to the secure wi-fi, GPS, and Bluetooth used by billions worldwide.

Actress and inventor Hedy LaMarr

Money & Investments

<ul>
<li>LaMarr was born in Austria to Jewish parents.</li>
<li>She married her first husband in 1934 at age 19. Unhappily married to a munitions manufacturer, she fled their home by bicycle.</li>
<li>In the lead up to WWI, she emigrated to the U.S.</li>
<li>In spite of her little English, LaMarr managed to win a lucrative contract to act in Hollywood films. She settled into life in Beverly Hills and socialized with, amongst others, John F. Kennedy and Howard Hughes, who provided her with equipment for her experiments.</li>
</ul>

Hedy LaMarr's life story

LaMarr filed a patent with co-inventor George Antheil. It aimed to protect their war-time invention for radio communications to &#39;hop&#39; from one frequency to another, preventing the Nazis from detecting the Allied torpedoes.
She never received any compensation for her ideas even though the U.S. military has publicly acknowledged her frequency-hopping patent and contribution to technology.

To  Hedy LaMarr, inventions were easy

LaMarr&#39;s work as an inventor was barely publicized in the 1940s.
Historically, women have been positioned in the media with a one-dimensional framework created from a males perspective. Women were valued for their physicality, not for their ability to think or invent. LaMarr was beautiful and a brilliant inventor. Her entrepreneurial efforts to produce and direct films in the 1940s were also not encouraged. It has taken decades to give her credit for the inventor that she was.

Hedy LaMarr not given recognition

The patent Lamarr filed aimed to protect her 1941 invention for radio communications to ‘hop’ from one frequency to another so that Allied torpedoes couldn’t be detected by the Nazis. The technology became a precursor to secure wi-fi, GPS and Bluetooth used by billions of people around the world.

Inventor Hedy Lamarr 1938 - ©Diltz/RDA/Everett Collection (00523921)

“The brains of people are more interesting than the looks I think,” Hollywood actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr said in 1990, 10 years before she passed.

The striking movie star may be most well-known for her roles in the 1940s Oscar-nominated films ‘Algiers’ and ‘Sampson and Delilah.’ But it is her technical mind that is her greatest legacy, according to a new documentary on her life called ‘<a aria-label="Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story." data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/bombshellthehedylamarrstory" dir="ltr" href="https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/bombshellthehedylamarrstory" rel="nofollow noopener">Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. </a>’ The film chronicles the patent that LaMarr filed for frequency-hopping technology in 1941 that became a precursor to the secure wi-fi, GPS and Bluetooth now used by billions of people around the world.

LaMarr’s life story is indeed remarkable. Born in Austria to Jewish parents, she married her first husband in 1934 at age 19. Unhappily married to an affluent, domineering munitions manufacturer, LaMarr fled their home by bicycle in the middle of the night.

She emigrated to the U.S. in the lead up to World War II and caught the eye of MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer on the ship from London to New York. LaMarr spoke little English but talked her way into a lucrative contract to act in Hollywood films. The Viennese beauty soon settled into life in Beverly Hills and socialized with luminaries including John F. Kennedy and Howard Hughes, who provided her with equipment to run experiments in her trailer during her downtime from acting. It was in this scientific environment that LaMarr found her true calling.

“Inventions are easy for me to do,’ the Austrian accented LaMarr says in ‘Bombshell.’ “I don’t have to work on ideas, they come naturally.”

Hedy Lamarr

What did not come naturally to LaMarr however, was the notoriety and compensation she deserved for her ideas. The patent she filed with co-inventor George Antheil aimed to protect their war-time invention for radio communications to ‘hop’ from one frequency to another, so that Allied torpedoes couldn’t be detected by the Nazis. To this day, neither LaMarr nor her estate have seen a cent from the multi-billion-dollar industry her idea paved the way for, even though the U.S. military has publicly acknowledged her frequency-hopping patent and contribution to technology.

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LaMarr’s work as an inventor was barely publicized in the 1940s, an oversight that ‘Bombshell’ director and Reframed Pictures Co-Founder, Alexandra Dean, believes fits into the narrow narrative for a movie-star in those days.

“From Hedy they absolutely wanted glamour,” says Dean in an interview in New York. “They wanted somebody to stare at in the movie theaters that would help forget all their troubles.”

Professor Jan-Christopher Horak, the Director of UCLA Film &amp; Television Archive, states in ‘Bombshell’ that MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who first signed LaMarr to a Hollywood contract, saw women as fitting into one of two buckets: they were either seductive, or, they were to be put on a pedestal and admired from afar. A woman being both sexy and admirable was not something Professor Horak believes Mayer was willing to accept or project to film audiences.

“Louis B. Mayer divided the world into two kinds of women: Madonna and whore. I don’t think he ever believed she was anything but the latter,” says Horak in the film, referring to LaMarr.

Dr. Simon Nyeck, the Chair of Branding at the ESSEC Business School in Paris and a previous Fellow at Harvard Business School, agrees that Hollywood categorized women in a binary way. Dr. Nyeck teaches ‘Anthropology of a Powerful Brand’ at ESSEC, and is an expert on the use of female archetypes in advertising and media.

ZIEGFELD GIRL, Hedy Lamarr, 1941

According to Dr. Nyeck, women are positioned as one of three archetypes: The powerful, clever Queen, the seductive Princess, or the Femme Fatale who is a combination of both. He says these archetypes date back to Greek mythology and are still used to depict women in media and advertising today. Dr. Nyeck says that ‘Femme Fatale’ is the category that the beautiful, brilliant inventor LaMarr fit into, and that multi-dimensional women are often seen as very threatening.

“A powerful lady who is sexy, but smart...  It is really scary for most guys,” Dr. Nyeck says. “You just expose how weak we are.”

Dr. Nyeck notes that historically, women have been positioned in the media within an antiquated, one-dimensional framework created from a male perspective. In that framework, multi-faceted women like Lamarr are often only valued for their physicality, and not for their ability to think, invent or create. That narrative about the limited capabilities of women is projected to impressionable audiences around the world.

“The position of the ladies is almost like toys,” says Dr. Nyeck. “They have no say. And that’s exactly the problem.”

Because of this, Dr. Nyeck is not surprised that LaMarr’s entrepreneurial efforts to produce and direct films in the 1940s were not encouraged. Or that it has taken decades for the narrative around Lamarr to evolve to give her credit as the inventor that she was.

“The subject of history for so long had been men,” says ‘Bombshell’ director Alexandra Dean. “And it has been men telling the story of history, they’ve been the storytellers. So, of course, the heroes with all the complexity and the drama, are men, you know. The female subject is often somebody who is just there to highlight the qualities and complexity of the male subjects.”

Director Alexandra Dean at the 'Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story' Premiere at SVA Theatre on April... [+]

The Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California agrees that Hollywood has a powerful ability to not just reflect culture but to shape it. Villagra was a panelist at the UN Women USNC L.A. Media Summit event that I chaired in May 2016. He voiced his concerns about gender discrimination in Hollywood and that there are so few female directors.

“When men are almost exclusively making film and television shows, they're telling predominately male stories,” says Villagra. “They're depicting women through a male lens, through a male gaze. They're reinforcing stereotypes of women, and they're reinforcing male privilege.”

Recent statistics support his case. Just <a aria-label="7% of the 250 highest-grossing US film releases" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2016_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf" dir="ltr" href="http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2016_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener">7% of the 250 highest-grossing US film releases </a>were directed by a woman in 2016, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. Yet the Motion Picture Association of America says that the U.S./Canadian box office generated a record-breaking $11.4-billion in 2016, and that<a aria-label="52% of those moviegoers were female." data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf" dir="ltr" href="https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener">52% of those moviegoers were female. </a>

The success of female-directed 'Wonder Woman' which brought in more than $820-million across the globe in 2017, and Disney's 'Frozen' written and directed by Jennifer Lee that grossed <a aria-label="$1.2-billion in 2013" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=frozen2013.htm" dir="ltr" href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=frozen2013.htm" rel="nofollow noopener">$1.2-billion in 2013 </a>, reiterates that female directors are capable of excelling in the job.

LaMarr’s daughter, Denise Loder, is proud of her mother’s inventive mind and the work that she did throughout her career to push the boundaries of how women are perceived. She notes that her mom and Betty Davis were two of the first women to own production companies and to tell stories from a female perspective.

“She was so ahead of her time with being a feminist,” says Loder in ‘Bombshell.’ “She has never been called that, but, she certainly was.”

<a aria-label="‘Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story’" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/bombshellthehedylamarrstory" dir="ltr" href="https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/bombshellthehedylamarrstory" rel="nofollow noopener">‘Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story’ </a> opens in theaters nationwide in March 2018.

Hedy Lamarr: The Incredible Mind Behind Secure WiFi, GPS And Bluetooth

<ul><li>Consider the Person:&nbsp;think about their strengths and weaknesses and personal style. Think about how they act and the kinds of assignments they’ve handled.</li><li>Consider the Situation:&nbsp;Ask yourself whether the assignment might be dangerous for your team member, the company, or others.</li><li>Consider the Work:&nbsp;Make sure your team member has all the resources he or she needs to get the job done.</li></ul>

3 Variables of Effective Delegation

Use delegation to accomplish great things, to help team members grow and develop, and build confidence and trust. Here are three things to consider.

3 Variables of Delegation

An oversimplified understanding of what it means to be transparent can prevent your growth and limit your influence. When we feel out of our comfort zone, we can often use authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what&#39;s comfortable.
For example, a promotion into a leadership role can leave you feeling unsure of yourself. If you believe in superficial transparency, you may disclose all your insecurities to your company, and in the process, lose credibility with people.

Authenticity has become a mark for leadership

<ul>
<li>In trying to improve our game, a firm sense of self is a compass, but when we want to change our game, a too rigid self-concept can prevent us from moving forward.</li>
<li>In global business, we often work with people who don&#39;t share our cultural norms. They may have a different expectation for how we should behave than what feels authentic.</li>
<li>In today&#39;s world of connectivity, how we present ourselves is a critical aspect of leadership. We have to carefully curate a persona and that can clash with our private sense of self.</li>
</ul>

Why leaders struggle with authenticity

There are two ways in which leaders develop their personal styles:
<ol>
<li>High self-monitors are naturally able to try on different styles until they find a good fit for themselves. They adapt to the demands of a situation without feeling fake. They care about managing their public image and may mask their vulnerability.</li>
<li>True-to-selfers tend to express what they really think and feel, even when it is counter to situational demands. It may make people question their ability to do the job.</li>
</ol>

Leadership styles

Leadership growth usually means shifting from having good ideas to pitching them to diverse stakeholders. Inexperienced leaders, especially true-to-selfers, often find the process of getting buy-in artificial and political because they think their work should stand on its own merits.
Until we see growth as a way of extending our reach and increasing our impact, we will have trouble feeling authentic when expressing our strengths to influential people.

Selling your ideas (and yourself)

Negative feedback given to leaders is often about style and not about their skills or expertise. Negative feedback can then feel like a threat to their ability.
However, if they rationalize their behaviour and think their style is unchangeable, it may eventually lead to their undoing.

Processing negative feedback

Without the benefit of an external perspective we get from experimenting with new leadership behaviours, habitual patterns of thought fence us in.
<ul>
<li>Learn from diverse role models. We should view authenticity not as an intrinsic state but instead as the ability to adopt elements you have learned from others&#39; styles and behaviours.</li>
<li>Work on getting better. Setting goals for learning helps us experiment with our identities without feeling like a fraud. It motivates us to develop valued attributes.</li>
<li>Don&#39;t stick to who you are as a leader. Instead, embrace how your style changes over time and keep editing it.</li>
</ul>

Ways to gain an external perspective

Why feeling like a fake can be a sign of growth

Authenticity has become the gold standard for leadership. But a simplistic understanding of what it means can hinder your growth and limit your impact.

Consider Cynthia, a general manager in a health care organization. Her promotion into that role increased her direct reports 10-fold and expanded the range of businesses she oversaw—and she felt a little shaky about making such a big leap. A strong believer in transparent, collaborative leadership, she bared her soul to her new employees: “I want to do this job,” she said, “but it’s scary, and I need your help.” Her candor backfired; she lost credibility with people who wanted and needed a confident leader to take charge.

<ul><li><h6><a href="https://hbr.org/2007/01/becoming-the-boss">Becoming the Boss </a> </h6><div dir="ltr">Article </div><ul><li>Linda Hill </li> </ul><div dir="ltr">The struggles new managers face represent the norm, not the exception. </div> </li> </ul>

Or take George, a Malaysian executive in an auto parts company where people valued a clear chain of command and made decisions by consensus. When a Dutch multinational with a matrix structure acquired the company, George found himself working with peers who saw decision making as a freewheeling contest for the best-debated ideas. That style didn’t come easily to him, and it contradicted everything he had learned about humility growing up in his country. In a 360-degree debrief, his boss told him that he needed to sell his ideas and accomplishments more aggressively. George felt he had to choose between being a failure and being a fake.

Because going against our natural inclinations can make us feel like impostors, we tend to latch on to authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what’s comfortable. But few jobs allow us to do that for long. That’s doubly true when we advance in our careers or when demands or expectations change, as Cynthia, George, and countless other executives have discovered.

In my research on leadership transitions, I have observed that career advances require all of us to move way beyond our comfort zones. At the same time, however, they trigger a strong countervailing impulse to protect our identities: When we are unsure of ourselves or our ability to perform well or measure up in a new setting, we often retreat to familiar behaviors and styles.

But my research also demonstrates that the moments that most challenge our sense of self are the ones that can teach us the most about leading effectively. By viewing ourselves as works in progress and evolving our professional identities through trial and error, we can develop a personal style that feels right to us and suits our organizations’ changing needs.

That takes courage, because learning, by definition, starts with unnatural and often superficial behaviors that can make us feel calculating instead of genuine and spontaneous. But the only way to avoid being pigeonholed and ultimately become better leaders is to do the things that a rigidly authentic sense of self would keep us from doing.

The word “authentic” traditionally referred to any work of art that is an original, not a copy. When used to describe leadership, of course, it has other meanings—and they can be problematic. For example, the notion of adhering to one “true self” flies in the face of much research on how people evolve with experience, discovering facets of themselves they would never have unearthed through introspection alone. And being utterly transparent—disclosing every single thought and feeling—is both unrealistic and risky.

Leaders today struggle with authenticity for several reasons. First, we make more-frequent and more-radical changes in the kinds of work we do. As we strive to improve our game, a clear and firm sense of self is a compass that helps us navigate choices and progress toward our goals. But when we’re looking to change our game, a too rigid self-concept becomes an anchor that keeps us from sailing forth, as it did at first with Cynthia.

Second, in global business, many of us work with people who don’t share our cultural norms and have different expectations for how we should behave. It can often seem as if we have to choose between what is expected—and therefore effective—and what feels authentic. George is a case in point.

<ul><li><h6><a href="https://hbr.org/2007/02/discovering-your-authentic-leadership">Discovering Your Authentic Leadership </a> </h6><div dir="ltr">Article </div><ul><li>Bill George et al </li> </ul><div dir="ltr">Leadership emerges from your life story. </div> </li> </ul>

Third, identities are always on display in today’s world of ubiquitous connectivity and social media. How we present ourselves—not just as executives but as people, with quirks and broader interests—has become an important aspect of leadership. Having to carefully curate a persona that’s out there for all to see can clash with our private sense of self.

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