Reigniting a Standard of Values-Driven Leadership

your ego will get in the way. Am I putting myself first here at the expense of my team or even the mission? Anyone that rises to a position of authority believes in their own ability to make things better, which is ego. The great leaders I've seen are also knowledgeable of when they need to follow and get out of the way of the people who are doing the job. Welcome to Lessons Learned. My guest today is Dr. Britney Looney. Britney's the founder of Elite Cognition and for the past 20 years has been a performance psychologist to everyone from professional and Olympic athletes to special operations forces and first responders. For 14 years, Britney worked with our United States special operations forces and helping them to make better decisions and perform in high pressure environments. I'm excited to have Britney on the show because her work has been featured in everything from the Harvard Business Review to national conferences and she's spent a great deal of time thinking about how we make decisions and how we perform in high pressure environments. Britney, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. So, why don't we start with just kind of a background of what Elite Cognition does. So, it's brainbased human performance and we work on helping people optimize their brain for whatever it is that they want to do. uh and what's given us I guess some specificity was high pressure environments and high dynamic environments so people can operate better in terms of decision- making performing under pressure situational awareness observation skills uh really anything that helps them gain self-control in those environments. So without going into a lot of detail because I know a lot of the stuff that you've done for the government is not something we need to talk about on a podcast. um in a special operations environment, what are the challenges with cognitive performance? The high pressure environment uh self-control, it's already a volatile environment and we want to reduce the inner volatility so that the person can think clearer in those situations. Uh there's ambiguity as well. So it's reminding them that they still have things that they know. uh that not everything is ambiguous even when things feel very out of control and chaotic. So I'm I'm going to guess in the time you've been doing this you've also spent a lot of time with some amazing leaders. Yes. What I'd like to do today is kind of capture your lessons learned on leadership. Absolutely. So why don't we start with what from your perspective what makes for an effective leader? I think it's about the demonstration of values uh the virtuous leader uh moral charisma moral excellence uh just this investment in being a great follower as well often times people focus so much on being this great leader that sometimes it becomes an egocentric suit and the great leaders I've seen are also knowledgeable of when they need to follow uh and get out of the way of the people who are doing the job. So I I think probably especially as a young leader, it's very easy to get caught up into, you know, trying to be right. Not necessarily trying to do the right thing, but trying to be right. And and what I'm hearing you say is that it's more important actually that you're doing the right thing conspicuously. Yeah. showing up uh with your values and being the right person uh versus feeling like you have to have all the right ideas, the solutions. Uh many times it's about listening and knowing which solution is going to be the best one to accomplish the task. And being right is putting the ego at the center. To be right, you're going to prove you're right. You're going to justify that you're right. To be effective, sometimes you need to be wrong. for the whole team to be effective at the end of the day someone has to be wrong on the way there and then ultimately the whole team is better because you're able to admit when you are which is very challenging extremely right it's it's it's much easier to say I'm in charge and you know I'm making the decisions than it is to have your thinking challenged to have your you know decisions challenged yes I if I'm if I'm trying to be a good moral leader how am I demonstrating that morality It's making decisions according to your values and having a clear idea of what your values are and the priority of those values. Uh we don't enter an ethical dilemma if two of our values have not come into conflict with each other. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a dilemma. It would simply be you know what to do and now you just have to do it. The ethical dilemma is when those two values maybe it's loyalty and integrity are now in collision. Which one is going to win out? And that should be thought of prior uh what your clarity is and if these two values come into conflict which one do I hope I would choose in this environment and you do this through various case studies talking through these things even looking back on some uh moral scars that you may have that has since you want to be in the future. So a lot of clarity around values and prioritization of those values and then do you live them even in the small things and what you recognize in each other. So give me an example of living your values. So if I value humility, uh it would be that you can see that in how I live that I'm going to put others first. It's and humility is not a lack of confidence. I think a lot of people think humility is simply a lack of confidence or not being arrogant. Humility is putting others p before yourself. Uh it's being other focused. And you can see that in how somebody lives their life. Uh, it could even be as simple as I would really like to get this position, but I think that, you know, things are better served if I'm not in that position or if I'm not having that role in this environment right now. The team is better because of that. Yeah, that's a really tough order, especially in a modern self-centered everybody look at me kind of environment, isn't it? Extremely. Extremely. But I think that's where the root of uh immoral uh leaders kind of comes from is when you have this passive acceptance of unethical decisions that maybe aren't rising to the occasion of uh publicity. But when you let those go when the big decision comes, it's easier and easier to justify why you have not acted in accordance to your values. You know, one of the things that I've I've noticed is some of the best leaders that I've I've ever worked with or or ever met have a unique ability to exemplify their values with having, you know, they're not preachy. They just seem to do the right thing and they seem to focus. You talked about focusing on others. They seem to focus on you. Um I don't know. It's it's strange people that have a thousand things on their calendar, but when you're talking to them, you feel like you're the only person in the room. Yes, that's the best leaders that I've uh had the privilege to work with. I remember being in their offices and these are, you know, three and four star generals and I'm in the office and I'm thinking, "This person has so many things to do. I'm probably a burden on their time." But they made me feel like I was literally the only thing on their schedule that day. And I know I wasn't. But the way in which they can compartmentalize what's just happened, what's in the future, and all the other things that you think could be racing through their heads, they have this really amazing ability to be fully present in there with you. Do you think that's I mean to me that that feels like it's rooted in humility. I believe so because they're putting everything else aside that is on their schedule to be present with you. So yes, I definitely believe that's rooted in humility. Yeah. It's this it's this feeling that um people are more important than things. And you know it's I I feel like um one of the things that I've talked about when I'm I'm teaching cultures and leadership is in interactions with people who are really effective leaders. I always walk away tired because I feel like they pulled all the knowledge out of my brain. And it is that like it's it's a very humble you know make me smart kind of attitude. Yeah. It's all about learning and growing and they're looking at every person they come across. One, this is about them and their experience. Uh, you know, whether it be in their office or you're out in the field with them, but they are also not assuming they already know everything and that you're privileged to be in their presence. They act like they are privileged to be in your presence and that they have a lot to learn and gain from you. So, I've I've heard you use the word radical humility. What do you mean by that? It's really truly the demonstration of and not accepting the fact that uh your ego will kind of get in the way, but it's knowing exactly when it does and having the self-awareness to pull yourself back in of is this how I truly want to be? Uh am I putting myself first here at the expense of my team or someone else or even the mission? Am I putting myself first? So, it's I think this relentless commitment to checking one's ego. And it doesn't mean that there is no ego because we're all human beings. We're going to have one. It's for self-preservation. We need to have one. But it's knowing when it's starting to impact our decisions and impact those that we're leading. Yeah. Ego is always an interesting topic because, you know, years ago I had somebody tell me like you, you know, you don't start a business because you don't think you're better than everybody else. You don't you don't lead other people because you don't think you have a better idea, right? Like to to some degree, anyone that rises to a position of authority believes in their own ability to make things better, which which is ego. Uh, it's just this balance between that and understanding that I guess the only way to put it is like believing you have the right the right way to solve the problem but realizing you could be wrong. Uh, I actually look for the people who aren't gunning for the leadership positions as well. Many of the leaders that I've worked with, they weren't gunning for the position. They were put in the position because they had the right character to be in that position. And many times they don't want that spotlight that's on them. Uh but they know that's part of I mean that aspect to be able to put yourself aside. I don't like this spotlight but I'm going to take it anyway. Uh that is humility because you know there are many leaders who don't want that spotlight who are put in these positions because they were the right person to be there. I think when you have the person who's gunning for the promotion, gunning for the position, the status, I think that's a lot of ego driving that. And for me, that wouldn't be the person that I would pick to be in those type of positions where you need uh an ethical underground. And sometimes uh suspending your self-preservation because if they got there through their ego, they have seen the reward of their ego and they will continue to make decisions in alignment with their ego versus maybe what's best for the mission and the team. Yeah. You you talked a little bit about kind of prioritizing your values and and the the cognitive dissonance that occurs, right? The conflict that occurs when I believe one thing but I'm acting in a different way. The the leaders you've seen that are effective at that. How are they prioritizing those things? Like how how do they how do they do that? So there's a great book by the Arbinger Institute called Leadership and Self-Deception and it really brings awareness to how we tend to act when we act out of alignment with our value system. And this can be in really small ways. A situation unfolds uh and let's say we'll go a simple uh explanation with you're on an airplane and you value kindness. And let's say you're on an airline where you have open seating and you can pick and you've already sat down and you start to try to mo make your seats next to you look less attractive because you don't want anyone to sit there. But you're a kind person, right? Uh in that that's a very small act of self- betrayal. What we do is justify why that was okay. Really small justification. I'm tired. I have a big meeting once I get there. All these other things that make it okay so you don't experience cognitive dissonance. And then we go into justifying why those small things were okay. And then there's a slip that tends to happen. Well, if you can justify the small thing, you get better and better at justifying, you know, maybe a moderate thing and then it could end up being a large thing. So even though you haven't acted in alignment with your values, you've developed the justification to still believe you are uh but you're really not demonstrating the values. And the best leaders I've seen can notice when they're starting to justify their values even in really small ways. And they've trained themselves to be able to get outside the box. In that book, they talk about getting outside the box. And we have once we've justified our actions so much that we start to have these boxes that become uh characteristic of us. So sometimes we can get in a better than box where we start to see ourselves as superior which makes others inferior. So you start to treat them as such. uh in very subtle ways, worse than boxes. Uh you're still at the center, but now you see yourself as inferior and everyone's superior to you. So you actually start to treat other people different because of that. And it's not always in a good way. Uh and then must be seen as box where you're doing things for the impression of versus the actual demonstration of a value system. Uh and then the I deserve box would be some entitlement. I've done all of these things. I deserve, you know, reality to be a little bit different than it is for me. And those are the four common boxes. And it's having this awareness of when you enter that box and you've started to treat people as irrelevant, as obstacles or uh as things that are just better than you and now they become an obstacle because you see yourself as worse than. It's funny that the worst unbox digression here, but um before becoming a girl bad, I did not recognize how inclined we are to say he's a leader, she's bossy. And having a daughter gave me an entirely different perspective on the way we indoctrinate our kids into their belief systems as to like, well, you know, you deserve this. you're, you know, you're better than these other kids or well, no, you know, that's that's a boy's job. Yes. Right. And and it's, it's funny because it has made me extremely sensitive to the way we speak to our girls and and that, you know, my the ongoing joke with my daughter and I is, well, you're a girl, you you know, you don't you wouldn't understand, which usually leads to a gesture. But, um, it is this you're setting up this kind of value system in in our brain. And as a leader, then you have to step outside is what you're saying and recognize like, oh man, I I'm I'm inherently inclined to think this way about myself or about other people and try to overcome your own biases. Yes. Uh I think that's a huge part of the self-awareness is recognizing when you are biased because I think really effective leaders acknowledge that they are. Um, and there's been research done on bias. When people do not admit that they are biased, they do not put counter measures to work against that bias, to neutralize it. When people admit they are biased, they take active counter measures to try to keep that bias from impacting their decision in a way that would be ineffective. And you do see that with gender, you see that with race, you see that with age, you see that with a lot of factors, backgrounds, where people came from, what school they went to. And sometimes you would think some of the biases can be positive. But when you have this expectation for somebody and it could be in a positive sense and they don't live up to it, sometimes we treat them worse because they didn't live up to our expectation because we had this positive bias of how they should be as well. Yeah. that I guess it's I mean we are all biased about everything right we all have opinions we all have experiences that that roots our thinking in you know whatever it is if you you've only had negative experience with Cubs fans then you tend to think that Cubs fans are bad people um and and I think that you know going rooting yourself back more in that moral leadership and that values-based leadership it is this kind of looking at I want to be this kind of person and that means means that I need to look at my own guidance. You know, I need to look at the things my own biases, my own beliefs, my own actions objectively and forever. Uh a lot of times people think you you build these attributes and at some point you can stop thinking about them. It gets easier. You go, you know, more habits and you build these habits around uh your values. But I always say right when you think you've summited the values is right when you slide right back down the hill. Same with bias. I've been checking my biases my entire life. If I'm now objective, you will never be objective. You are a human being. We have built-in heruristics, which are biases, for a reason. It's helped us survive. There's a lot of information out in the world, and our brain needs these shortcuts. But we also need to know when these shortcuts actually start to become ineffective in our decision- making, whether that be decision- making about personnel or decision making about tactics or uh strategy or anything along those lines. I think, you know, it's it's also relative, right? Like, you know, would you steal? No. Would you steal to feed your kids? 100%. Yes. So, so, you know, we do have to recognize where we are in our lives, where we are in our, you know, in the people that we lead and where the people we're leading are in their lives and in their worlds all play into that kind of moral leadership. Yes. And I'm glad you mentioned that because there's also values in excess. Usually, we think of things having a deficiency and that is bad. Uh but all of our values have this shadow side that usually comes from seeing them in excess. Uh so something like you know if it's integrity we always think of more is always better. What if it's so much so that you are hurting every human being you come into contact with because you can't just say something. Uh let's say you know your wife asks you how does this dress look on me and you can't lie. Uh and you're like well I'm going to have integrity and it looks horrible. uh you're probably less likely to do that than just be like, "Oh, it looks all right. Maybe you don't have to make a huge deal about it on the positive side." Uh but all of our values have a shadow side. One of my biggest values is excellence. I mean, I wouldn't get into this field if I didn't believe in excellence and wanting to grow and optimize human beings. But sometimes when that goes in excess for me, I start to hold people to a standard that is not my standard to hold them to. uh it's their job to hold themselves to whatever standard and value system that they have and being okay with that. Yeah. I think one of the things that I've learned getting older and and leading people as long as I have is you don't know who they are. You don't know what's going on in their world. And so it's very easy for you to apply your moral cannon. You know, well employed, happily married, great kids, life is wonderful. Oh man, I can't believe you did that. Is is not the same as single mom working two do two jobs with a drug habit and a sick kid, right? Like it's we kind of have to take people where we find them and and I think that kind of brings up this notion of like servant leadership, right? And I've heard you talk about that. What do you mean by that? It's looking at what you can do for your team, not just what your team does for you and why you brought them in. Uh, and I think often times I've seen leaders uh, get into this cycle of like my team's here for me uh, and my mission. Well, if you want your team to help with the mission and there for your purpose, probably should look at what you can do for them as well. And also realize, you know, someone's working for your dream, they're working for your dream. And that's especially like in the corporate world uh less so probably in the military world but it should also be a two-way reciprocal street on how can I serve them uh since they are here helping to serve my purpose and my mission. So let's let's dig into decision-m for a second because that's obviously you spend a great deal of your time working on decision- making. Not only the ability to make, you know, difficult decisions quickly, but the ability to harvest your cognitive abilities in high stress situations. I want to kind of look at what what you view as kind of the key lessons learned for decision making. I like to split it into two aspects, proactive and reactive. Uh proactive would be getting clear about your value system and when those two things two values collide, how will you navigate that? Uh also looking back on the moral scars and how will they inform how I operate in the future, but being very deliberate about going through this and we actually do uh ethics type of workshops that help people work through those things. So that would be more on the proactive side of having a very well-defined value system that you can refer to in the moment. Reactively, it's a lot about self-control. Uh we often say mastering the black box. Uh between stimulus and response is a black box and our control resides within that black box. And we look at several different ways to control it. One aspect would be the physiological. So, is your neurohysiology where it needs to be for you to think very clearly? And there's different ways that you can help someone get to the right neurohysiology. Then the emotion piece. Your emotions will impact your decision-m no matter what you think. Uh, a lot of times people say, "I never let my emotions interfere." Well, okay, what have you done to mitigate the emotions effect? Well, nothing. Well, then it's interfered most likely. Uh so we look at okay how do we help people acknowledge what emotion that they're experiencing and what is that emotion telling you because emotions are signposts signposts they're information so if I fear something my subconscious is telling me to avoid something what is it telling me to avoid and why and should I avoid it and taking just that deeper look of what the emotions telling you anger is saying someone has trespassed against me okay who has trespassed and is that true do you know that to be true And that helps diffuse and distance yourself from the impact that emotion will have. So there's the emotion piece as well and then the thought aspect and that is stripping your narrative from the situation itself. There's observable facts that happen in every situation. But often times we'll connect those facts through our inferences and that becomes our narrative. And sometimes those facts should be connected. Other times they have nothing to do with each other. They just happen concurrently. And we think because they happen concurrently, our brain puts them together. What fires together wires together. So we'll look at helping people control their thought piece and stripping the narrative, the emotional piece, which is simply seeing emotions as signposts, and then the physiological aspect as well. And then seeing what impact does self-preservation have in this decision right now, if any. and uh helping the person just acknowledge, hey, this would be the decision for self-preservation. This would be the decision that is best for the mission and the team. Sometimes they'll coincide, but sometimes they won't. Yeah. When and when they conflict, which way are you going to go? Yeah. That's that's when it gets ugly, right? Is is when you are in that conflict. So, let's just push on those for a second. So, physiologically, you know, you you talked about being like physiologically hijacked in a situation. What does that physiological hijack do to our ability to think? So in terms of how the brain uh experiences the blood flow when we're under a high state of stress would be you know that amydala hijack the blood flow is going to our survival parts of the brain. It is actually getting stripped from the thinking parts of our brain the prefrontal cortex and all the uh cortex related uh processes and it's going more to the survival piece. So we actually lose some of our ability to truly analyze uh and that means more methodical approach the logic all of that and we go more to what's called a system one response which is uh fast-paced thinking intuition habit uh sometimes if it's really well trained and you know it's like a no shoot or shoot no situation and you have trained yourself to be able to identify a threat then it probably will work for you. If it is a situation that requires to you to actually think clearly and engage in a type of thinking of an experience you've never gone through before and you don't have some uh pre-written code for that then you would need blood flow to your cortex to actually be able to do that clear thinking. So we would want to restore blood flow there and that is simply by reducing the actual stress response. like like taking you know for lack of a better term taking yourself down a notch uh physiologically with with box breathing or you know removing yourself giving yourself time those kinds of things. Yes. Yeah. Breath control is one thing that we really uh help people find their optimal micro reset and the micro reset is simply a three breath reset. Breath one, recognize. Simply recognize where you're at currently. And then breath two would be to actually use the breath to relax. And breath three is to reorient on what is the most critical thing that you need to pay attention to now or the most critical thing you need to do to put yourself in a better position to do whatever it is that you need to do. And then within that, the breathing cadence will vary for the individual. And we use a lot of BOF feedback equipment to help people figure out what is the be best breathing cadence for you. Uh and some people have actually found like they've been doing box breathing their whole life and then we get them hooked up to BOF feedback and that tends to be a suboptimal pattern for them. And I just chose box breathing uh as the example. Not to say it's bad uh but the BOF feedback really helps to say this is what the breathing technique is doing to your physiology and then this is the effect on clear thinking. So, I mean, you know, obviously in a special operations environment, that makes a lot of sense. Kind of everything they do is going to be physiologically hijacking, right? You know, jumping out of an airplane, confronting an adversary, all of those things you can see where they'd be physiologically hijacked. Talk to me a little bit emotional aspect of that. What is what is that emotional component? First, it would be away from the situation. We have taught people what their emotions actually mean and how to recognize them quickly. So, this isn't something I'd have someone just stop and do if they were in a dynamic environment and people are shooting. Uh, this would be something we've trained them to be able to do. And let's just say it's not a environment where they're going to potentially be able to be killed in that moment. It's a boardroom. Yeah, it's a boardroom. Uh, in that situation, it would be consciously checking in of why am I angry right now? or why am I fearing this or why do I want feel like I want to get out of the room or what's going on with me physiologically and why is that happening and actually labeling what the emotion is and what that emotion tells them uh that they want to do and checking just is that the appropriate response uh for this situation and I think it's become acceptable to have anger and almost think about that as not having an emotion like you know emotions are only the ones where someone's crying at the Uh because I've seen this happen a lot where oh I don't get emotional but many times I've seen that person get the most angry I've seen people get. Uh and why is that not also considered an emotion when we talk about decisionmaking? Because honestly it's one of the ones that has one of the greatest impacts because in anger we want to attack and usually what people will come up with in terms of solutions would be to attack. Sometimes that will be the right solution, but we should step back to really see is that right for this situation right now. And then give me one little like thought on the thought aspect of so we talked physiological, emotional, but the thought I would say it is really thinking about what are the facts here and are there alternative explanations aside from my narrative and inference. Uh, and there are a lot of different ways we could go on that thought piece, but uh, for this context, I would say that's the most critical one. And sometimes I've even written it down on a sheet of paper in front of me as I'm going through of, you know, here's where my brain's going in this narrative. I'm going to write down the facts and then I'm going to write down my inference of the facts. And then I'll even save space on the paper. What are some alternative explanations for these same facts? And that helps really neutralize a lot of the emotion as well. because now I've checked my thoughts that brought me to that emotion. So, so I mean to kind of sum up our time together, like what you're seeing in the best leaders is that they have very clear values. Yes. that that are grounded and and they make their decisions rooted in that. They're they're focused on others and and and humble, but are also innately ability or are trained to control the physical, emotional, and thought aspects of making decisions to not allow them to get hijacked and and and forced into doing something that is reactive rather than proactive. Yes. And I would say that it's a trained ability. Uh whether it was formally trained or not, uh that can vary. But uh every leader that I've seen with, you know, this clear decision-m uh that I really admire, they have taken measures to distance themselves uh from the I guess stakes of the moment to be able to think more clearly. They have something in place. Uh, one of the leaders I worked with, uh, we developed a bathroom break for him because the only time that he could get away from people to be able to clear his head was in a bathroom stall. So, we actually developed a routine. Here's this quick reset that helps him between meetings. And then also, if he finds that he is getting amped up or just in a suboptimal place during that meeting, he'll go take a quick bathroom break, come back, clear head, boom. Yeah. reset yourself emotionally. Britney, where can people find your work? Elite-cognition.com is my website. Don't forget the dash. Uh, and yeah, that would be the best place to find me and my work. Awesome. Thanks so much for doing this with me, Britney. It was great to have you. Thank you. It was an honor to be here.