Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is the 4th and final excerpt from Mirabai Bush‘s webinar with Jeremy Hunter, from the Peter F Drucker School of Management. It’s focus- multitasking. An aspect of modern working life which many people find to be frustrating and disruptive. Hunter has found that addressing it can be a good way to introduce mindfulness to the workplace.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

In this episode we’ll revisit Mirabai Bush‘s Webinar with Dr. Jeremy Hunter, who incorporates mindfulness into the courses he teaches at the Peter F Drucker School of Management. Hunter has seen mindfulness inspire major positive changes in his students’ work lives, and some examples came up during the conversation. Today we’ll hear a couple, but, first, an explanation of what Hunter calls “directing attention,” and “transforming attention.”

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

This episode features another excerpt from Mike Sjostedt’s recent conversation with George Kohlrieser, who, has worked as a hostage negotiator in the past. Here, he talks about some of what he learned from that experience.

Kohlrieser spoke with Daniel Goleman for the series Leadership: A Master Class.

Professor of Leadership and organizational behavior George Kohlrieser returns to the podcast, as we feature a portion of his recent conversation with More Than Sound’s Mike Sjostedt. During this excerpt, which ranges from the work of Paul Eckman to animal trainers, the two discussed the importance of body signals in negotiations.

Leadership: A Master Class is Daniel Goleman’s first-ever comprehensive video series that examines the best practices of top-performing executives, and offers practical guidance for developing emotional intelligence competencies. The eight-part video collection includes more than eight hours of research findings, case studies and valuable industry expertise through in-depth interviews with respected leaders in executive management, organizational research, workplace psychology, negotiation and senior hiring.

Learn more about the series here.

The discussion with Professor Kohlrieser focuses on his experience of applying mindfulness methods to promote calmness and compassion during negotiations and difficult conversations.

Listen to the Working with Mindfulness CD here.

Learn more about leadership and negotiation from George Kohlrieser in Daniel Goleman’s Leadership: A Master Class

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

In this episode, we’ll revisit Mirabai Bush‘s Working With Mindfulness webinar discussion with Jeremy Hunter of the Peter F Drucker School of Managemant, and pickup the conversation just after Bush has asked for an example of a practice that he teaches in his class.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Befriending Your Mind, Befriending Your Life: Mindfulness and the Endless Adventure of Growing into Yourself – Jon Kabat-Zinn

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is the first in a series of excerpts from Mirabai Bush‘s Working With Mindfulness webinar discussion with Dr. Jeremy Hunter. He is professor of practice at the Peter F Drucker School of Management, and his courses there seek to clarify how attention training practices and cultivating quality of mind can enhance productivity and performance.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Watch the full webinar here.
Learn mindfulness methods for the workplace with Mirabai Bush’s CD Working with Mindfulness.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter. 

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode features a second excerpt from Daniel Goleman‘s conversation with Dara O’Rourke. By establishing a grading system which scores the health, environmental, and social impact of many products found on store shelves, O’Rourke’s program, Good Guide, makes it easier for consumers to make informed decisions about the products they buy.  As more consumers use the program, it’s providing clues about buying preferences which O’Rourke hopes can lead to changes in the marketplace.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter. 

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

According to Dara O’Rourke, surveys have shown that up to 75 percent of americans consider themselves to be environmentalists, and, as Daniel Goleman learned while doing research for Ecological Intelligence, this increased consciousness amongst consumers can provide great opportunities for companies. But as O’Rourke discussed with Goleman for the audio feature The Radical Horizon, the way many companies are marketing their supposedly green products has made it difficult for consumers to really know what they might be buying. His program, GoodGuide, endeavors to make that easier.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Both Peter Senge and Daniel Goleman have written about the value of focusing on sustainability, as companies look ahead and prepare for the future. They sat down to explore the synergies of views laid out in their books, The Necessary Revolution and Ecological Intelligence, and to discuss the roles that organizations and individuals must play in the creation of a sustainable world. This edition of the podcast features an excerpt from their full conversation.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

On a recent episode of the Knowledge at Wharton podcast, in which Mirabai Bush was the guest, Katherine Klein raised an issue that can feel quite common when it comes to mindfulness- simply finding the time for it. In response, Bush shared a few examples of how little time it can actually take, and some overlooked ways in which people can incorporate mindfulness, and its benefits, into their busy lives.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Working With Mindfulness creator Mirabai Bush has said that, when she returned to the United States after years of living in India, she wanted to live a life and create an environment that would be informed by buddhist wisdom. Much has come from her effort to do so, and she recently spoke with Ted Meissner about the history and focus of some of her projects on an episode of the Secular Buddhist Podcast. One of them is the Center For Contemplative Mind in Society, which she cofounded.

Welcome to the More Than Sound Podcast.

During each of the webinars we host here at More Than Sound, participants have the opportunity to ask questions. When Being At Peace With Food creator Brandt Passalacqua hosted, he found that many of the questions addressed to him had a common theme. This episode of the podcast is our third and final installment of excerpts from that webinar, and in it Passalacqua addresses some common challenges, and successes, experienced by people working to establish a better relationship with food.

Welcome to the More Than Sound Podcast.

Regular listeners will recall hearing, from a few different guests, about the importance of breath, and it’s relation to different practices. In Brandt Passalacqua’s More Than Sound webinar, he explained how integral it is to the process of being at peace with food. This episode features that portion, and concludes with a short exercise. If you’re unfamiliar, or uncomfortable with breathwork, you may find lying down to be the easiest position to try this particular practice.

You can find more exercises designed to help you be at peace with food on Passalacqua’s new CD, Being At Peace With Food.

Welcome to the More Than Sound Podcast.

Coinciding with the release of his new CD, Being At Peace With Food, Brandt Passalacqua conducted a webinar with More Than Sound. To him, the CD is intended to help you develop a method to find your way out of whatever sticky situation you may find yourself in with food. In the webinar, Passalacqua lays out how best to aproach that process. In this podcast we’re featuring his introduction to the material, and it concludes with a brief exercise.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is part 3 in a series of selections from Mirabai Bush‘s third Working With Mindfulness webinar. She was joined by Daniel Goleman for this discussion, and the two answered questions from webinar participants at the end of the session. This podcast features some of those questions, and wraps up with Goleman leading a short relaxation exercise. So find a comfortable place to listen.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Mirabai Bush, co-founder of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and a key adviser to Google’s Search Inside Yourself curriculum, hosts a free, monthly one-hour webinar series called Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations. Presented by publisher More Than Sound (www.morethansound.net), this webcast features a discussion with neuroscientist and author Dr. Richard Davidson, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Topics for this installment of the series includes:

- Dr. Davidson’s research on meditation as it relates to happiness, distraction, neuroplasticity and recovering from negative information;

- Discussion of key findings from his latest book The Emotional Life of Your Brain.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

In this episode we’ll revisit Mirabai Bush‘s third Working With Mindfulness webinar, for which she was joined by Daniel Goleman to discuss mindfulness, attention and relaxation in the work place. The webinar was the most recent of many collaborations between the two. This podcast features an excerpt in which they discussed the time period during which they met, and revealed how it shaped both their studies of mindfulness and their professional paths.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Welcome to the More Than Sound Podcast.

Brandt Passalacqua is an author and speaker who discovered yoga and meditation after struggling with his weight, food and substance addiction, and serious illness. Since founding Peaceful Weight Loss™ Through Yoga, his personal journey has served as an inspiration to countless others looking to make peace with food. His new CD, Being At Peace With Food, presents a collection of proven, easy to practice meditations and contemplations designed to help you develop a healthy relationship with food, and with yourself. This episode features a short exercise from the CD, so while Brandt introduces it, find a comfortable place to sit or stand, then practice along.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

For the third edition of Mirabai Bush‘s Working With Mindfulness webinar series, she was joined by Daniel Goleman, and the two discussed different methods of stress reduction. The excerpt featured in this episode of the podcast includes a conversation about the role of mindfulness in remaining focussed and attentive, and and exercise useful for increasing focus. So find a comfortable spot tot listen if you can.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

This webinar is an overview of Brandt’s work and personal experience on finding peace with food. Our ‘Being at Peace with Food’ CD includes easy-to-practice meditations and contemplations to gently help you develop a healthy relationship with food, and yourself.
Brandt Passalacqua is an author, speaker, and the founder of Peaceful Weight Loss™ through Yoga.

Peter Senge introduced his book The Fifth Discipline, over two decades ago, and in the years since then his concept of learning organizations has been embraced worldwide. A conversation between Senge and Daniel Goleman is included as a bonus in More Than Sound’s Leadership: A Master Class box set, and in this episode of the podcast we feature an excerpt from it in which the two discuss the role of moral development in learning organizations.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter. 

Mirabai Bush’s Working With Mindfulness audio CD is available in the More Than Sound online store.

New York University professor Clay Shirky explores the intersection of social networks and electronic networks. Previously on the podcast, we featured an excerpt from his CD Socially Intelligent Computing in which he and Daniel Goleman discussed how the very structure of the internet supports behavior such as flaming, and inhibits users’ ability to connect. In this episode, the two discuss ways that structure could be improved, challenges that groups of users face in the meantime, and the important role emotion plays in bridging the gaps.

Questions? Email us here.

Richard Boyatzis is a Case Western professor who, over the course of decades researching competencies, leadership, and management, has authored six books and over 100 articles on the subjects. His CD series, Resonant Leadership, offers tools to help leaders practice effective, emotionally intelligent leadership. That practice depends on a base understanding of great leadership which his research won’t establish for you, but listening to the excerpt featured in this weeks podcast will.

Recently, we featured Daniel Goleman and Bill George, a Harvard Business School professor, and former Medtronic chairman and CEO, discussing ethical leadership. For this episode of the podcast, we’ll revisit that conversation, the entirety of which can be heard in the series Leadership: A Master Class, to learn more about authentic leadership and the “True North Leadership” concept.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Most of us find it difficult to be fully present in the moment when we’re driving; we focus on our destination instead of our journey. With her CD Awake At The Wheel, Vipissana meditation teacher Michelle McDonald has created a path to transform the distracted, frustrated driving experience, and take advantage of the rich space it provides for mindfulness practice. This episode features an exercise from Awake At The Wheel so, if you’re able, load this one onto your .mp3 player and take it with you on your next drive.

Daniel Goleman’s research at Harvard focused on methods that counter the impact of stress. He drew on this experience to develop Relax, a 45-minute audio program that can help listeners learn to naturally reduce stress. This week’s podcast features one of those methods. So find a comfortable place to listen, as Goleman leads you through his auto suggestion technique.

Goleman will be discussing this and other techniques with Mirabai Bush during a webinar next Wednesday, December 19th, at 4:00 pm. You can sign up to join the free webinar here.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is the third installment in a series from Mirabai Bush‘s recent webinar with Dr. Richard Davidson. Bush and More Than Sound have begun conducting monthly webinars exploring mindfulness in the workplace, and beyond.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode features a second installment from Mirabai Bush‘s recent conversation with Dr. Richard Davidson. The conversation took place during one of More Than Sound and Bush’s monthly webinars exploring mindfulness in the workplace, and beyond.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Mirabai Bush has made several appearances here on the podcast, and she’s partnered with More Than Sound to conduct monthly webinars exploring mindfulness in the workplace, and beyond. This episode, features a portion of Bush’s webinar with Dr. Richard Davidson, and is the first of a series in which we’ll share excerpts from the discussions.

To learn about future webinars, be sure to like our facebook page and follow us on twitter. Buttons on the upper right of this page will take you to both.

If you’re a regular listener you may remember Daniel Siegel discussing his concept of “mindsight” here on the podcast. Siegel spoke with Daniel Goleman once more for the Leadership: A Master Class series, and this episode features an excerpt of their conversation in which Siegel makes some connections between emotional intelligence and his research of the pre-frontal cortex.

Warren Bennis is a scholar and professor who’s been described as a pioneer in the field of leadership studies. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from his discussion with Daniel Goleman, featured in Leadership: A Master Class, which centers around the importance of noticing.

Many people view negotiation as something they might only encounter when it’s time to sign a contract, or ask for a raise. But according to Erica Fox, a Harvard Law School lecturer and part of the school’s Project on Negotiation, it’s much more than that. Fox sat down with Daniel Goleman to discuss how widely used negotiation is in its basic form, and what styles serve business best. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from their discussion Getting Beyond Yes, from the series Leadership: A Master Class. 

We introduced Howard Gardner‘s concept of Good Work here on the podcast a few months ago, with an excerpt from Wired To Connect. For the series Leadership: A Master Class, Daniel Goleman spoke with Gardner once more. This excerpt from that conversation explores the Good Work concept, from the perspectives of business leaders and employees, in more depth.

Creativity in the workplace has been a focus Teresa Amabile’s research for over three decades. For his series Leadership: A Master Class, Daniel Goleman sat down with the Harvard Business School professor, and this episode of the podcast features an excerpt from their conversation.

This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from Daniel Goleman‘s conversation with global hiring expert Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, from the series Leadership: A Master Class.

George Kohlrieser is a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at IMD in Switzerland, but his path to teaching at a business school was an unorthodox one. His expertise is drawn from his training as a clinical psychologist, and prior work as a police psychologist and hostage negotiator. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from his discussion with Daniel Goleman for the series Leadership: A Master Class.

Harvard Business School professor, and former Medtronic chairman and CEO, Bill George is one of the experts featured in the new series Leadership: A Master Class, hosted by Daniel Goleman. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from their conversation about ethical leadership. At the beginning of this excerpt, Goleman references “True North Leadership,” a term George has embraced to describe leading from ones own moral or internal compass. 

This week’s episode features two excerpts about the process of writing professionally from Naomi Wolf‘s Non-fiction Book Proposal Writing Class, a three disc set in which Wolf, the author of several books, including The Beauty Myth and the just released Vagina: A New Biography, shows you how to put your vision and passion into an engaging, readable, and highly marketable non-fiction book proposal. 

Research has shown that our emotions are directly linked to physical responses we cannot control. In the audio release Knowing Our Emotions, Improving Our World, Paul Ekman spoke with Daniel Goleman about how understanding these links can enhance our lives. Goleman included part of the discussion in the enhanced version of The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights, and this week, we feature it in the podcast.

Despite the many ways technology can connect different branches of large businesses, Clay Shirky says in the CD Socially Intelligent Computing that there is no substitute for face to face contact. Daniel Goleman included part of his discussion with Shirky in the enhanced version of his book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights. This week, we feature it in the podcast.

In almost any aspect of life, be it career, home, or even sports, an important ingredient for success is positive visioning. Richard Boyatzis discusses the concept in his CD set Resonant Leadership, and Daniel Goleman included part of that discussion in the enhanced version of his book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights. This week, we feature it in the podcast.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is the fourth, and final, in a series of excerpts from a conversation between Daniel Goleman and Mirabai Bush, developer of the Working With Mindfulness trainings. They sat down to discuss questions raised during training workshops she lead at Google. Today, we’ll feature part of their discussion ranging from adapting to change, to the importance of a positive outlook, to recognizing an increase in ones emotional intelligence.

This episode features an excerpt from the Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Susan Kaiser-Greenland’s keynote, The Mindful Child: Teaching The New ABC’s Of Attention, Balance, And Compassion. 

An additional excerpt can be seen in the video below.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is the third in a series of excerpts from a conversation between Daniel Goleman and Mirabai Bush, developer of the Working With Mindfulness trainings. Today, we’ll feature part of their discussion focusing on social skills, including social awareness and mindful listening.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

This episode is the second in a series of excerpts from Daniel Goleman’s recent conversation with Mirabai Bush, developer of the Working With Mindfulness trainings. Today, we’ll feature part of their discussion focusing on self awareness and self regulation.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Working With Mindfulness, the new audio release by Mirabai Bush, is a collection of mindfulness trainings for the workplace. Bush has led trainings at organizations including Hearst Publications, Monsanto, and Google, and was a key contributor to Google’s Search Inside Yourself curriculum. This episode of the podcast features a guided practice she designed to help people cope with change at work. Find a comfortable place to listen as Bush leads you through the technique.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Fresh off her experience bringing mindfulness training to Google’s Search Inside Yourself program, Mirabai Bush sat down with Daniel Goleman to address some of the questions her students asked about emotional intelligence. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from their conversation.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Nimrod Sheinman’s breakout session, Bringing The Soul Back To School: Lessons Learned From Over 15 Years Of Teaching Mindfulness And Mind-Body Health In Israile Schools.

Welcome to the More Than Sound podcast.

Emotional connection is vital for effective communication, yet the channels for sending and receiving emotion are absent from the basic framework of virtual exchanges. For his Wired To Connect audio series, Daniel Goleman sat down with Clay Shirky to discus how these channels can be restored to online groups, and how social intelligence is changing the face of group interaction online. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from their conversation, Socially Intelligent Computing.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Randye Semple’s breakout session, Introduction To MindfulnessBased Cognitive Therapy For Children.

Welcome to the more than sound podcast.

Many of us seek Good Work – work which is excellent, personally meaningful, and ethical.  Our challenge is to forge these elements into a rewarding, profitable career. For his Wired To Connect audio series, Daniel Goleman sat down with Howard Gardner to discuss tools that can help us turn our ideals into reality, and connect who we are with what we do. This episode features an excerpt from their conversation, Good Work: Aligning Skills And Values.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Gina Biegel’s breakout session, Mindfulness For Professionals Working With Adolescents.

Welcome to the more than sound podcast. Traditional classroom models have been shown to inhibit learning and disengage today’s students from the joy of education. For his audio series Wired To Connect, Daniel Goleman sat down with George Lucas to investigate project-based curricula that utilize high technology to excite and motivate students. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from their conversation, titled Rethinking Education: Educating Hearts and Minds.

George Lucas:   I’m a very big believer in entry points, which is how we used Young Indiana Jones and now Star Wars. We have a museum show, Science and Star Wars, which was developed by the Boston Museum, which allows students who are excited about Star Wars to say this actually applies to the real world and applies to all those classes I go to and I can relate to these things.  You get something they are interested in and then you broaden it out and say this actually relates to all these other things.  I think it is a very powerful tool and we are trying to push more of these programs where there is entertainment value or game value so that there are other ways that students can be engaged into the academic setting.

Daniel Goleman:  We know that there is some research that looks at the strongest teachable moments in the classroom, when everyone is inspired, focused and energized and it seems that you are creating and analog of that, in which you are focused on the student and what is energizing to the student and capitalizing on that. The story of Indiana Jones or Star Wars and then unpack it in terms of the lessons embodied in that.  What would be an example of how you would get to a philosopher from a moment in Star Wars?

GL:            Well, in that particular book what they’ve done is gotten a lot of philosophy professors around the country who are Star Wars fans and one will do an article about stoicism and Yoda and why he is stoic and explain stoicism and how that reflects in his character.  There is an unlimited supply of philosophical ideas in Star Wars.  The people who have done that book have done philosophy and South Park, philosophy in all kinds of popular culture to try to bring a rather esoteric academic subject into the everyday world so that younger people can see that it relates to their world.  The philosophy isn’t just from some person who lived thousands of years ago, but is actually a real issue.  It’s trying to bridge the gap between the academic world and contemporary culture and trying to put them together.  I have other strong feelings about communication skills and the fact that we should treat painting and music as communication as well as as an art form.  You can teach it as an art form, but it is also a very big communication device.  Music is the primary communication that not only all babies understand but animals understand it also.  Even though they teach you how to read music and play an instrument, they don’t really focus for every student on issues like what does a minor chord make you feel like?  How do the elements of music communicate feelings and ideas?  You can use music to aid people in pursuing a particular idea.  What kind of a drum beat do you use?  What kind of tonality do you use?  More and more kids are beginning to speak in multi media not just the written word.  With cinema, the basic grammar isn’t taught. Screen direction is like understanding punctuation.  More people are communicating in other forms.  Painting and graphics:  the whole world of advertising comes down to graphics.  What does red mean?  What does blue mean?  How does a diagonal make you feel?  If you are trying to convince someone to do this or that, what do you use?  What kind of design do you use to express that idea?  Most people experience graphics as communication.  They experience it in everyday life more often than in a museum; in a magazine or on a sign when they are driving down the street.

DG:            This reminds me of the theory of Howard Gardner, the Harvard educator who talks about multiple intelligences and how people can be good at the usual academic intelligences, like math and verbal abilities, but also how there is a spatial intelligence, a musical ability, a visual modality.  It seems to me you’re really talking about educating people within those domains of ability.

GL:            What I’m saying is that there is more than one form of communication and the written word, or verbal communication has so dominated that we have lost sight of the fact that these other forms of communication that we have now relegated to the esoteric world of art, are much more than that.  They are necessary forms of communication that you must learn, just like you must learn how to construct a sentence, and learn grammar, and use a capital letter.  You must learn the same things in graphics and in cinema and in music and part of it is how it works.  Mathematics is the least emotional form of communication:  it’s mostly logical.  The word is logical, but can be used in emotional ways.  Graphics, which gets to be much more emotional and unconscious, is something that works on a different system than when you are reading words.  Cinema is graphics and motion.  Motion relates to dance and other forms of movement.  How do you communicate using motion?  And then with music you communicate with sound and how do you get people to understand certain ideas using sound.  Music is the most emotional form of communication.  There is hardly any intellectualism in real music.  It is all emotional.  But it is communicating very important ideas and feelings to you, but in ways that math which is not emotional and is very precise doesn’t.  The wonder of it is that music and math are the same thing.  So when you make a circle that goes from the least emotional to the most emotional,  you end up with a circle right back where  the most and the least emotional, the most intellectual and the least intellectual are actually the same thing  It is a kind of duality of opposites.  That’s why it is so wonderful but I do think they should teach communication in toto, not in these little bracketed things where you go to art class to learn about perspective, you go to the music school to learn about notes, chords, and phrases, and you go to the math class to learn about being precise and explaining theory, or the English to do this or that:  it should be more integrated into one class where you are learning to express yourself and communicate ideas to another human being, whether they are completely emotional or completely intellectual or somewhere in between.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Pamela Siegel and Chip Wood’s keynote, Courage In Schools: Connecting Hearts And Minds In The Adult Community.

Welcome to the more than sound podcast. Daniel Goleman’s audio series, Wired To Connect, features is a collection of in depth conversations with some of the worlds leading thinkers. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from Better Parents, Better Spouses, Better People, an insightful exploration in which Goleman and Dr. Daniel Siegel explain how our relationships shape our emotional habits- and the brain itself.

Daniel Goleman: Mindsight means what?

Daniel Siegel: Mindsight is a term I had to invent because in English we didn’t seem to have a word that embraced the idea of insight into your own mind and empathy for understanding another person’s mind. We just didn’t have one word so when I was writing a book called The Developing Mind I invented this word mindsight, meaning you see the mind.

DG: You know in my model of emotional intelligence there are four domains. The first and the fundamental is self-awareness, which is mindsight into your own mind. The second is using that to manage your emotional world or inner world well. The third is empathy or in your terms ­– mindsight for someone else. Then the fourth is putting that all together in effective relationships. So it’s interesting to me to see that we’re talking about the same territory here from slightly different angles.

DS: Absolutely, yeah. And I think the words we can find like the ones you’re talking about those four points or mindsight would embrace this incredibly important process that some families are’nt aware that is important for them to develop and the really exciting thing is that its never too late to develop mindsight. I work with people as old as in their nineties and they can learn this skill of mindsight.

DG: Well, what does it look like? Can you give an example of someone learning it?

DS: Sure. Well, this one particular person is a woman in her nineties who grew up in a home where no one really recognized her emotions they never addressed them. They didn’t have what’s called mental language or language that talked about the mind.

DG: When you say mental language, what kind of words are those?

DS: Well, for example: thoughts, feelings, attitudes, intentions. What are you believing? What are your hopes? What are your dreams? Those are all words, language that reflect the mind. So mental language means, does a family actually talk about the mind. A term I use is reflective dialogs. Do they get into a dialog with their children that reflects on the internal nature of our lives?

DG: Dan, what would such a dialog sound like?

DS: Well, it would be something like this, this ninety-year-old woman, let’s talk about her. If she had had this as a child, this is what it would have been like and this is actually what I said to her in our sessions. It would have been something like: You’re really hoping to be in the school play and I hope that your audition works out. She comes home, she’s very sad because she didn’t make it in the audition.

DG: This is something that happened to her?

DS: This is actually something that happened to her and a family with mindsight would say, “You’re really sad. How did the audition go?” And she would say, “Oh, I didn’t get it.” And they could say, “That’s really disappointing because you were really hoping to get the part and you didn’t get it and let’s talk about what you can do next time or let’s do something with your sadness.” Instead in her family, she would come home sad and she would be punished for not being more upbeat. She would be given chores to do because she was crying and they would say, “Stop crying.” So, everything was focused on behavior.

Now what’s interesting is that what we do as parents to focus the mind of our child on certain things like behavior verses mind plus behavior can determine the kind of perception that a child develops. So in her case, when I saw her for the first time in therapy as a ninety-one-year-old, She really didn’t have much vocabulary of the mind. She was a really good person focused on behaviors, had accomplished certain behavioral things had raised her children and interacts with her grandchildren about their behaviors so its not like she’s just not social but she’s only focused on the behavioral side of reality, the physical side of reality not the mental side of reality. So that’s what teaching her required was that in our sessions together I needed to talk to her about her mind and what’s interesting is we’re then entering the whole world of subjective experience, which raises lots of fascinating points of view about what’s the relationship between one’s inner world and what’s going on in the outer world. How’s the mind related to the brain? All these things, which actually came up in our sessions, and I can tell you by the end of the year of therapy, she had developed an awareness of her body that she didn’t have before. That is the subjective sensations inside. She developed a vocabulary of mental language to actually put words to her inner world which is actually a fundamental part of something called mindfulness. This ability to label and describe in words the inner life of your own mind. She really developed this at ninety-one-years of age.

DG: That’s astounding at ninety-one.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012. Chris McKenna is speaking in this excerpt from his and Sam Himelstein’s breakout session, Teaching Mindfulness to Urban & At-Risk Adolescents.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012. Rick Hanson is speaking in this excerpt from a panel discussion with conference presenters Susan Kaiser-Greenland, Amishi Jha, Pamela Seigle, and Chip Wood.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from  Joe Klein’s breakout session, Sex, Drugs, Facebook, and Ice Cream.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Megan Cowan’s breakout session, Integrating Mindfulness Into The K5 Classroom: Lessons Learned From Teaching Over 13,000 Students.

This episode features an excerpt from the  Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Susan Kaiser-Greenland’s keynote, The Mindful Child: Teaching The New ABC’s Of Attention, Balance, And Compassion.

This episode features an excerpt from the Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth Conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from  Amy Saltzman’s breakout session, Still Quiet Place: Proven Practices For Teaching Children And Teens The Skills For Peace And Happiness. The podcast contains a practice from her 8-week Still Quiet Place curriculum, so find a quiet place yourself, and then hit play.

This episode features an excerpt from the Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth Conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Amishi Jha’s keynote, From Dazed And Distracted To Attentive And Calm: What The Neuroscience Of Mindfulness Reveals.

http://youtu.be/QnE4VAdu20s

This episode features an excerpt from the Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Gina Biegel’s breakout session, The Race To Right Here, Right Now: An Introduction for Utilizing And Disseminating Mindfulness With Adolescents.

This episode features an excerpt from the Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth conference, developed by University of California San Diego’s Center For Mindfulness, along with Stressed Teens. The conference was held in San Diego, in February of 2012, and this excerpt comes from Rick Hanson’s keynote, Managing The Caveman Brain in the 21^st Century.

http://youtu.be/Ozk7c9es0b0

Anthony Gell- You’ve got a whole section in your new book on primal leadership, and the importance of emotion and sort of tapping into people’s emotions. So could you just tell me a little bit about what you mean when you say emotional leadership?

Daniel Goleman- It’s leading at the level of emotions, through emotions, and the best leaders do this naturally. So when you speak heart to heart you’re moving people but they’re sensing that you’re moving yourself. It’s genuine. And the medium through which leadership is relational, it is emotional. And now we know the brain centers that are involved. There is a new discovery in neuroscience called the social brain, its circuitry. We didn’t even know it existed ten years ago, but it turns out that when we’re face to face, when we’re on the phone even your brain and my brain are locked together and there is an invisible channel that’s passing emotions back and forth. And the best leaders help other people get and stay in the best emotional state to work at their best.

AG- So I assume then that they themselves, if the brain’s locked to some extent and this contagion occurs, then they themselves have got to be in relatively good moods most of the time.

DG- Well you’ve got to start by managing yourself, you’ve got to lead yourself first.

AG- So lets talk about that, because you’ve got a great chapter in there talking about the correlation between good moods and bottom line and there’s a direct correlation, so if a leader comes to work and they read your books and they understand the contagion principle, then how do they get in a good mood, if they are in a fundamentally bad mood?

DG- Let’s start with the data first. I think you’re referring to a number of studies that show if the leader on a team or in a group is in an upbeat mood people in that group catch that mood, and performance goes up. Decision making gets better, creativity improves. If the leader is in a downbeat mood, critical, angry, frustrated, people pick that up and performance goes down. So there’s a direct relationship between leader’s mood, group team’s mood, and performance. Once you understand that you see that a leader must start by leading by managing himself or herself first, because it’s going to affect everybody else.

AG- Exactly. And you mention there about authentic leadership, people will be able to tell the difference if you’re trying to get to peoples’ emotions but you’re just faking it.

DG- Well, you know, we have radar for that, and it’s built into the brain. If it doesn’t ring true it’s just not gonna work.

AG- Is there such a thing as a personality type that’s just a grouch? And if that is the case have they got any chance at leadership?

DG- Well there are types of grouches, and some grouches are lovable grouches. You know? I mean they seem tough on the outside but they’re soft on the inside, and people pick that up. There are some grouches who are actually hostile people who criticize, who express contempt and disgust, which is very damaging in any relationship. But in a leader to follower it’s terrible because it alienates people, you’re going to lose people.

AG- So can you tap into self mastery for a little bit and tell us how you actually can manage yourself if you come into work and you’re in a horrible mood, and you know that it’s very important that you’re in that leadership role?

DG- Well, first of all, notice that you’re in a horrible mood. It takes what we call mindfulness, which is a variety of self-awareness. You have to tune in to yourself. You can easily go through the day in a horrible mood, alienating everybody else and upsetting them, and not even know. So step number one: notice. Step number two: pause. Reflect on this, “Is  this useful? Is it not useful?” Step number three: “Is there something I can do to change my mood?”

AG- Daniel, if you’re observing a group of ten peers, would you, do you think, just by observing them, be able to identify the sort of natural leader in that group of ten people? And if so, what do you think are the sort of attributes you’d look for?

DG- Yeah, I think that they would be listening, observing, and noticing what the unspoken need of the group is, and taking the first step toward fulfilling that need. That’s how leaders emerge. They sense what needs to happen and they make it happen.

Anthony Gell- You’ve got an audio cd out, which is Relax: Six Techniques To Lower Your Stress. Can you, for me and anyone else out there who gets in a stress state, give us some insights as to how we can manage that?

Daniel Goleman- Well, I did this audio instruction on six ways to manage stress. It goes back to some research I did years ago at Harvard, which showed that people really differ in what works for them as a relaxation modality. One thing doesn’t work for everybody, and so one way to relax if you want a method, and I recommend that people have a method and the reason is this: What you’re doing is training your brain to relax, even under pressure. You don’t want to learn this under pressure, you want to practice at home when things are quiet and calm, And you can try out a method and do it daily. Because you’re going to need that method in the heat of the day, during your frazzle, or approaching frazzle, moments, and if you haven’t practiced your brain won’t be able to do it. So one of the methods, for example, it’s very simply paying attention to your breath and letting go of other thoughts. Turns out that that’s very effective for many people as a way to both lower your metabolic state, which is to say get more relaxed, and to focus, to develop more concentration. One of the big problems today is staying concentrated amidst all the distractions. But for other people for example, a deep muscle relaxation will work better. That’s why there are six different methods.

AG- OK, so we’re just going to get the CD. But you, I’ve read, actually do it first thing in the morning.

DG- Yeah, I like to do a meditation first thing in the morning. I’m a writer, so I’ll have breakfast, then I’ll have a meditation session, then I’ll do writing, because I’m in a very focused state.

Anthony Gell- We all know that you sort of create your own habits and then your habits create you, they define you, so how would you go about hard wiring a more healthy or positive habit? And is it possible to replace habits that may be hardwired into you?

Daniel Goleman- Well this is really the basis of improving leadership abilities, changing habits. Because one of the common colds of leadership is not listening, just saying what you think. You know, someone comes into the office, they start to speak, just like when you go to the physician. You start to say, well, “Doctor, I’m having this, and this, and this,” and you have three things you want to talk about. Well, in 18 seconds they’ll take over the conversation, steer it where they want it to go, and you’re out the door. And you asked one half of a question! And it’s the same with bosses, it’s the same with leaders.

So, how would you get over that bad habit? The answer is there are simple steps. The first is: notice it. Realize, “Oh, I do have this habit, and it would be better for me as a leader if I could change.” Second step: care about it. If you don’t care, you’re not going to get anywhere. Third step: think. “Well, how could I intentionally counter that habit?” I could have a contract with myself that when someone comes into my office I’m going to stop, pause, listen to them, and then say what I think. It’s that simple. But to do that you have to overcome years and years of another habit. And then the fourth step is to practice at every naturally occurring opportunity. And if you do that you’ll reach a neural landmark where you do it well without having to think about it.

AG- Got you, yup. Because I love the bit in your book Leadership: The Power Of Emotional Intelligence where you’ve got a list of attributes of good bosses and bad bosses, so you just choose the good ones and build them to habits.

DG- Well, yeah! And by the way that list is universal. Wherever I go in the world I get pretty much the same list. We all know what that bastard of a boss looks like.

AG- That’s right, a lot of nodding heads!

DG- Exactly.

Anthony Gell- Empathy, lets pick up on that for a second. Daniel, in your first book you mentioned about empathy and how important that is and obviously there’s different types of empathy. But talk about the spectrum, if you’ve got on one level of the spectrum you’ve got the sociopath and on the other one you’ve got somebody that’s just absolutely besotted by other people’s feelings, is it important to have a balance? Obviously you can be too far toward the sociopath spectrum, but can you be too far [the other] way?

Daniel Goleman- Yeah, you see that in people for example in the helping professions- nurses, say- who are taking care of people who are suffering, who are in pain, who are angry. Who pick up those emotions and can’t metabolize them. It changes their internal state instead of them changing the patients’ state, because of, you could say, this too empathic stance. What’s missing there is self-management, self-regulation as we say. That is to say, the people who are most effective don’t tune out in order to protect themselves, and turn off to other people. They stay open but they’re able to pass that through, to manage their own inner state at the same time as they’re being receptive. That’s the best.

AG- OK, that’s great. So you can be in an empathetic situation but not allow it to be to heavily on your shoulders, take it too personally.

DG- It’s more than that. It’s that you don’t let it change your state. You stay stable in the positive state you need.

AG- And therefore you wouldn’t be as stressed as you would be.

DG- Yeah, so it rolls off.

Anthony Gell- Everybody out there in the world has decisions to be made. And whether you’re managing yourself or whether you’re a subordinate and just managing your own day you’re still making decisions. All the way through to vc guys or ceos making massive multi billion pound decisions. Do you have any advice? In your book, The Brain And Emotional Intelligence, you talk about the neocortex and the subcortex. No matter how big the idea be, should you be making the decision with the gut? What’s your advice?

Daniel Goleman- My advice is both, actually. There’s some interesting data on that. There was a study done of California entrepreneurs who built businesses from nothing, into huge amounts. And they’re asked, “How do you make your decisions?” And they all said essentially the same thing. They were voracious gatherers of data. They had very broad nets, things that other people wouldn’t think might be relevant. They delve into the numbers, they look into everything, and then they’d check it against their gut feeling. And what that means is that the first swipe is cortical: the part of the brain that thinks in words and numbers. And then you check that against your gut feeling and the reason that’s a good idea is this:

There’s a primitive part of the brain, it’s actually in the brainstem, that as we go through life, gathers decision roles. “When I did that, that worked well. When I said that, that really didn’t work.” And as we face a decision point it summates your life experience relevant to the topic, and it sends you a message. The problem is it has no connection to the part of the brain that thinks in words. It sends the message to the gut. The GI tract. So when you say trust your gut, it’s actually literally true. Because you get a felt sense. Feels right. Doesn’t feel right. And all the entrepreneurs said “I check it against that. Even if the numbers look good. If it didn’t feel right I wouldn’t go ahead.”

Anthony Gell- If we could start now with a topical question. And that is, with all your collected wisdom about leadership and CEO skills and what makes people be successful, if we can talk about Steve Jobs. Obviously, back on October 6^th we lost Steve Jobs, and people like Barak Obama said the world has lost a visionary. So, can we ask you, what is it you think that made Steve Jobs such a great CEO and even icon?

Daniel Goleman- Well, he was a leader, he wasn’t a manager. In fact he wasn’t very good at managing. He knew that. But he was fantastic at inspiring people. And motivating them and setting a direction. Not only a direction, a visionary direction. What was remarkable about Steve Jobs is that he pushed the boundaries. He didn’t take things as a given. He looked at the system and reinvented it. So we got the iPod the iPhone the iPad, and that takes great vision. So he had all of the elements of someone who can change things permanently. He was able to see what other people couldn’t, he was able to understand how to get there and he was able to move people to make it happen.

AG- I mean, his products are world famous and how do you think he’s been able to get such a cult following? Both internally and also externally? Do you think he had a great emotional intelligence?

DG- haha, I think like everyone else he was a mixed picture. And think some people some people found him not so emotionally intelligent and some people saw that he was superb. And by the way, Emotional intelligence is not one thing. It’s a spectrum of abilities, from self awareness to managing yourself to empathy to relationship management and within each of those domains there are several abilities. So Steve Jobs was fantastic at inspired leadership. He was fantastic in his ability to vision and to share that vision. He wasn’t fantastic in every other way, but you don’t need to be. That’s the good news.

AG- What would you say are the attributes or characteristics –putting Steve Jobs aside for a second- but just generally the top 1 or 2 percent of leaders, the star leaders, if you like.

DG- Well, I was just going over some data about that with my associates at the hay group. And what we’ve been finding is that leaders who are able to exhibit a high level of competence, like the drive to achieve, or emotional self awareness, or empathy, or relationship building, who are able to excel at a half dozen or more of those emotional intelligence abilities, are also able to exhibit leadership styles that create a very positive organizational climate. That climate in turn predicts 30 percent of business results. So it starts with managing your self and then managing your relationship and then exhibiting the abilities of leaders to set a vision, that is, a vision that moves people, speak from the heart to the heart. Who are also able to help other people get better. Coach them. Who are able to know when to get a consensus decision instead of just top down. Who know that having a good time together isn’t a waste of time. It builds relationship strength so people will be there for each other. It’s people like that who are able to create a climate that drives performance.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, can we talk about the “aha moment” which you talk about? As you said, we’re in a knowledge world, the currency out there is potentially ideas. So how can we manufacture that “aha moment” where we can come up with…

Daniel Goleman- Well the “aha moment” is very paradoxical, you can’t manufacture it. It happens on it’s own. But you can allow for it, you can create the circumstances where it’s more likely, so, for example, if you’re facing a creative problem, we’re rebranding, we have to come up with a new logo or something like that, whatever it may be, first you pursue it as diligently and broadly as you can, and gather whatever information you might need. Really fill your brain with that.

But then the next step is really paradoxical. Then you let it go. And the reason you let it go is that when you’re very focused on “What’s our logo gonna be?” or whatever the problem is, you’ve activated the left half of the brain. Which is task oriented. And there’s two things about the left hemisphere. One is that it excludes other things to focus on the task at hand, the focus at hand. The other is that it doesn’t have many connections to other parts of the brain as compared to the right hemisphere. When you let go and you turn the problem over to the right hemisphere, the right hemisphere day dreams, it’s the source of creativity, and it also has very far flung connections throughout the brain. And the innovative aha arises when original connections are made. And they’re more likely to happen during that reverie state. While you’re in the shower, while you’re walking the dog, doing yoga, rather than when you’re sweating trying to solve the problem. And so the aha occurs when you let yourself go into a reverie, after having pursued the problem.

AG- Mmm. excellent. I can see a lot of people now going for long walks and saying to their boss they’re waiting for the aha moment.

DG- You can’t make it happen but it’s more likely to. Don’t promise your boss ever.

AG- Yeah, one innovative disruptive idea per walk. That’s a lot of pressure. Speaking of pressure, can you put yourself under pressure to come up with an idea by 3:30 this afternoon? Does that really work?

DG- Well of course you can but it may not be your best idea.

AG- OK, got you.

DG- Take a weekend for that.

Daniel Goleman- I think one of the most insidious, insidious realities of work today is how technology is destroying our ability to focus and get things done. Because every time there is a distracter, every time you get an email and feel, “I have to answer that right now,” instead of putting it aside and finishing your task, some studies have shown it can take up to 15 minutes to get back to where you were before in terms of focus. And your BlackBerry, and your email, and your texts, it doesn’t stop. That’s the problem with technology. It’s too easy for it to reach us, which means we have too many distracters.

And there’s a paradox here, which is there’s some brain systems that like to look, because you get a little hit of pleasure from some of these. It’s called intermittent reinforcement. Every once in a while an email is going to make you feel really good. Maybe this is one of those, and so it’s very seductive. That’s what makes us break our train, but once we’ve done it, we’ve lost our train of thought, we’ve lost our concentration, and so on. So, for example, when I write I go somewhere where I don’t get email, or where there’s no phone even. I’m off grid because I want to focus. And there’s some really good research coming out of Harvard that shows that people who’s job is to somehow add value, to be creative or to produce, need a cocoon of time for sustained effort where they are going to get something done. And if you get one thing done during the day you’re going to feel much better about your job, actually, than if you can get nothing done because you’ve been distracted all day.

Anthony Gell- That’s really good, so it’s about identifying the most important thing, and dividing time out in the day, that’s essential.

DG- Well I structure my day so I have protected time. And I really recommend that, and I recommend it for managers, for people who are in a leadership position who are managing knowledge workers. People who’s job is to add value by thinking, by being smart, by being innovative, by being original. They need time where they can get that done in the day.

AG- Daniel, we interviewed Edward De Bono, obviously a great thinker, and he says that not enough corporations or leaders are actually thinking, and one of the cheapest most efficient ways of beating the competition, but nobody’s doing it, is linked to what you’re talking about- it’s carving time out for that.

DG- Exactly.

Anthony Gell- You’ve mentioned this correlation between a very interesting graph in your book talking about the inverse U-shape which has got productivity and stress and the correlation. Could you just talk to us about what you call the sweet spot for achievement?

Daniel Goleman- Ah, the sweet spot for achievement. So what you’re referring to an inverted U and this axis (the vertical) is performance, how well you do, and the other axis goes from low brain arousal to high brain arousal.

It’s a very technical graph, but the sweet spot for performance is at the top of that U.  And this is where people work at their best, think at their best. Neurologists call it a state of neural harmony. It’s a state of, also, maximum cognitive efficiency. That is, we can think at our best. We’re most nimble, most flexible. In sports it’s called the zone. You know, athletes who are superb, when they’re being at their best, are in that zone. It’s sometimes called flow. But if you are at work, or if you’re doing something you really care about, anything, that’s where you want to be. If you’re managing people, if you’re leading people, that’s where you want everyone to be, because that’s where you get the most return.

AG- And on the low side you’ve just got…

DG- Well on the one hand people are completely disengaged, which unfortunately is too large a portion of the workforce on any given day at any given moment. Which means, you know, “I don’t care about this job, I’ll just do what I have to do to keep it. I’m not going to give my best, I’m just going to do enough to hold my position.” And at the other end, you’ve got people who are over stressed. The technical term for that in neurology is the state of frazzle. The brain is actually frazzled. You can’t think straight, you can’t remember, you can’t learn. Forget creativity! So disengagement and frazzle are equally bad for performance. You want people to be in the middle in the sweet spot.

In this episode, Daniel Goleman discusses the value of Social and Emotional Learning for students and educators, with Drs. Shannon Dermer and Deborah Borderlon, of Governerors State University.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, you are an author of many world leading books, including Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, so why did you go on to create an audio series called Wired to Connect?

Daniel Goleman- I’m basically a writer and a thinker. And I like to think deeply about topics. And I got very excited about this new area of brain research called social neuroscience. Which explains that newly discovered circuits in the brain create a very intimate person to person linkage when you’re interacting with someone. This is the super highway for simpatico, for chemistry. For love. For business being effective. It has so many implications, I explored as many as I could in the book Social Intelligence, but I found there was a lot more to say when I was done with the book. This is the problem with writing books. The book ends, but your thinking doesn’t. So I wanted to keep exploring more deeply into the whole range of implications. So I realized what I can do is get together with people whose research fascinated me. Or whose thinking really pushed the edge in this area, and have a deep conversation with them and do it as an audio conversation. So the Wired To Connect series is 6 or 7 of these going into areas that include everything from the various kinds of empathy and how each of them matters or what we can do to enhance the brain’s ability to be socially intelligent. To be emotionally intelligent. And what’s the neuroscience behind creating better skills in this critical set of human abilities. What does it mean to have good work? That is, work that you feel really satisfied by? That’s intrinsically fulfilling? And what are the ingredients of that.

Another one that I found really fascinating was how does the social brain interact with the virtual world, with email, with communicating by phone. Why is it we have of our best interactions face to face, and more disastrous interactions on email? And what does that mean if you’re managing a global team? How can you orchestrate a face to face interaction versus working at a distance so that the team is a high performing team? These were many of the areas that I was able to go into, and I feel really, very satisfied with the series both in terms of being able to extend my work in social intelligence, and also I found a way to explore new ideas without having to write a whole book about it.

You may have heard the theory that creativity is linked to the left side of the brain, but modern neuroscience has revealed it’s not actually that simple. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from Daniel Goleman’s audio book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence, in which Goleman introduces the new understanding of the creative pathways within the brain, and shares ways that that understanding can be applied to support one’s own creative process.

Mental health experts Dr. Patricia Gerbarg and Dr. Richard Brown specialize in integrative psychiatry, and are two of the authors of the book How to Use Herbs, Nutrients, and Yoga in Mental Health Care. In a conversation with More Than Sound, Gerbarg and Brown discussed some essential concepts regarding the effects of stress, and methods to reduce it. This episode of the podcast features an excerpt from that conversation, about the importance of breath in the reduction of stress and anxiety.

Anthony Gell- In terms of predicting who is going to be in the top 10 percent of performers, ie: the sort of star performers, you say that EI, emotional intelligence, is a better gauge than IQ. Why?

Daniel Goleman- The answer is very simple. Study after study shows that in order to be in a top profession, in order to get an MBA, in order to get an MD, or be a top executive, you need an IQ that’s about one standard deviation above normal, or higher. That puts you at about 115 IQ. But then studies show there is no correlation between your IQ and actual effectiveness or success in that particular line of work. Whether you’re a CEO, academic, engineer, doesn’t matter. Why? Because that is the IQ level you need to master the technical skills, and is the cognitive capacity you need to handle that profession. But after that, think about it. Once you’re in the field you are competing with people who are about as smart as you are.

Throughout school, IQ is huge advantage for grades. In the workplace, after reaching that criterion level, it has no added benefit and what makes the difference are your personal abilities. How you manage yourself- Do you stay focused? Are you adaptable? Are you self aware? And interpersonal abilities. Can you read other people? Do you know how to get along well? Are you a good team player? Can you be a leader? Those depend on emotional intelligence.

AG- Daniel, I’ve got no doubt that people watching this are sold on your premise of emotional intelligence, but the big question I think they’ll be wanting to ask is, “Once you know your EI level can you improve, or can you become more emotionally intelligent?”

DG- The good news is that you can improve emotional intelligence competencies. These are learned abilities that build from fundamentals. So, for example, emotional self control, being calm under pressure. This is a capacity that can be learned, the steps are quite well known. But you have to want to get better. Listening, listening well, listening deeply is critical, and if you have poor listening habits- the common cold of leadership- then you can improve but, again, you need to be motivated. Why? Because in adulthood you have to undo, at the brain level, over-rehearsed habits, that’s your habitual way of reacting, and build a new one until it becomes more strongly practiced than the old one. Then you’ll do it naturally. And that takes real effort and motivation.

AG- Daniel, talk about self motivation. What’s the core essence of being self driven and motivated to move forward as an individual?

DG- I think motivation has to be true, that you need to align the desire to improve with your own sense of values of purpose, what you really feel is important. What are your dreams? Where do you want to go in life? Is something holding you back? Can you change that for the better. That’s the kind of genuine motivation that helps people really make the change.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, you talk about how important it is to bring consciousness back into emotion, to sort of push time between impulse and action is critical before you react. Is that why emails can be dangerous?

Daniel Goleman- When we’re face to face with someone, part of brain, which I describe in the book Social Intelligence and then more deeply in the series Wired to Connect, the part of the brain called the social brain, is monitoring person we’re with continually, moment to moment, microsecond to microsecond, and telling us, unconsciously, “Well, this person is responding that way to what you just did, so what you should do next is the following to keep things smooth, harmonious, on track, on the same page.” This is what makes interactions go smoothly, this part of the brain. That part of brain, however, is crippled online. When you’re sitting there in front of your video screen there is no feedback loop. All you have is the words you send. However, there is a sort of optical illusion in the mind where you assume that all of your little emotional signals that go with whatever you say or do face to face,  are going along with your email, but they’re not. And there is an actual negativity bias in email where senders think that a message was positive, but that’s because they assume all the other cues went along. It’s an unconscious assumption. Receivers think that positive email was more neutral. When the sender thinks it’s neutral, receivers tend to think it’s more negative. In other words there is a negativity skew to email, generally. That’s baseline.

But then there’s another problem:

Very often in face-to-face interaction you get an impulse to do something or say something and your social brain says, “Uh-uh-uh! That’s not going to be effective.” But that message never comes back to you when you’re sitting writing an email, because there’s no feedback loop. The result is what’s called flaming. Flaming has been known since the earliest days of email. It’s when you’re worked up about something, and you sit down and you furiously type up a message, you hit send. And for a split second you have a feeling of satisfaction, and then this morbid sense of, “Oh my god, why did I do that? Why did I say that?” hits you. That’s a flame. It’s a disaster. And it’s a disaster that would not have occurred face to face, most likely.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, you talk a lot about empathy in leadership and how important it is, and you bring up different types of empathy including cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, etc. Could you give insight as to how empathy is so central to leadership success?

Daniel Goleman- Empathy is one of the critical components of social intelligence and leadership abilities. But in the conversation I did with Paul Ekman, who is a world expert on empathy, in the Wired to Connect series, I realized there are 3 kinds of empathy. Each has strengths that are critical for effective leadership, but in different ways, and some of them have liabilities.

1^st is cognitive empathy. That means I understand how you think about things. I can see from your perspective. That can be effective for giving performance feedback, or communication, because I know how to put it to you in a way you’ll be able to hear, that makes sense to you. That’s the upside. The downside, is the people who only have cognitive empathy and have twisted motivation, if you will, can use it to manipulate people. If you only care about yourself and you don’t care about the other person, you can use that to your advantage. You see that in narcissistic leaders, you see it in Machiavellian types. You see it in outright sociopaths. They use their understanding of the other person to manipulate them because they don’t have the second kind of empathy.

2^nd kind of empathy is emotional empathy. “I feel with you.” If I don’t care how you feel then I don’t mind making you feel terribly. Or I don’t mind taking great advantage of you. But if I feel your distress it’s much harder for me to do that. Emotional empathy is also critical for leadership, for any job where you relate to people. Client management, sales management, teamwork. Because emotional empathy creates chemistry, creates the sense of being in report with other people, creates simpatico. And it’s in those moments when things go at their best. Top performing teams have this sense of harmony and emotional connection with each other, for example. So emotional empathy is absolutely critical. However, downside here, is that if you are the person in HR who has to go around and tell everybody that they’re fired, or you’re a nurse working in pediatric oncology and all day long you are with children who are in great pain, who are going to die, these are powerful situations emotionally and you pick up what others are feeling. If you can’t metabolize that, if you can’t manage it yourself it can lead to an emotional exhaustion which is prelude to burnout. And you feel “I’ve got to get out of this field, I can’t do this anymore.”

The counter to emotional empathy, and what allows you to use it effectively, is emotional self management skills, which is one of the 4 parts of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is self awareness, self management, empathy, and relationship skills. So the different components work together.

3^rd type of empathy is empathic concern. This is the felt sense that when I see that you’re in trouble I spontaneously want to help you out. This actually is what makes leaders outstanding. These are the leaders who, for example, take the time to help people develop further strengths. Take the time to give feedback. They see that, and are concerned about, helping people get better, learn to do better. And that of course strengthens whole organization. It’s also what makes people outstanding organizational citizens. These are the people who aren’t just “me first and that’s all I care about,” but are good team players, willing to help out other people and so on. In a dark time economically, the leaders who will be most effective have all three capacities going at full strength.

Anthony Gell- As part of your Wired To Connect series you have a fascinating discussion with Naomi Wolf.

Daniel Goleman- Well, Naomi Wolf, who of course is best known for her work in women’s issues and so on, also has co founded an Institute for Ethical Leadership. And one of the programs they run there is for early career women. Because they found that many women who are going into professions, going into business, have to overcome early socialization. And that socialization basically is that their role is to be one that keeps things harmonious. To kind of step back and be a supporter, rather than the focal player. And so they tend to feel less self-confidence for example, in a presentation or a meeting. And for that reason she’s developed a program that helps overcome this so that women early in the career can develop the confidence they need to succeed. And by the way, I should say, lots of data on emotional intelligence, converging data, does show that, on average, women, relative to men, have less self confidence in a business setting. Except- and this is quite critical- star performers. Outstanding performers. Top leaders. Women there are just as confident as men in the same position. So what Naomi Wolf’s program is doing is helping women get to the point earlier in their career where they’ll have the self-confidence. And they do it in a few ways.

One is, first, by setting up situations where people are put on the spot. You know, you’ve got to give a stump speech right now. It doesn’t matter if you’re not prepared, go ahead and do it. But they do that in the context of what’s called a safe haven. A safe haven is a highly supportive emotional environment. Where you’re basically feeling a lot of love and support, no matter what. So you can go ahead, fail, but it’s not going to be a disaster. You’ll get feed back, you’ll learn how to improve and so on. And she finds that that’s a learning environment in which, infact, people can become far more confident.

Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman’s research at Harvard focused on methods that counter the impact of stress. He has drawn on this expertise to develop Relax: 6 Techniques To Lower Your Stress, a 45-minute audio program to help listeners effectively master methods that can help them naturally reduce stress.

This week’s podcast features one of those methods. So find a comfortable place to listen, as Goleman leads you through his deep breathing technique.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, I think success ultimately lies on you being able to move outside of your comfort zone, and you talk about the concept of “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Can you talk to us about what that means?

Daniel Goleman- The principle that one should “feel the fear but do it anyway” is absolutely crucial for success in any domain of life. Even in sports. If you’re held back by your fears you will never get anywhere. You’ll never try the new thing, the golf swing, whatever it is. In order to progress you have to fight through your fear, try out the new thing, practice it until you get better, and so on. That’s why, for example, at Naomi Wolf’s Institute for Ethical Leadership, when folks are feeling a lack of self confidence, they’re told to go ahead and “do it anyway!” Also in setting ethical norms, people may feel uncomfortable about it but once you start to get used to it it becomes the way we are together, and you can form a high performance, collaborative team that way.

Anthony Gell- Do you have any thoughts on what is the difference that makes the difference between a great CEO and just one that’s destined for mediocrity?

Daniel Goleman- You know, there’s only one study that I’ve ever seen that really systematically looked at CEO’s where the data was released to the public and it was done by the us insurance industry, comparing CEO’s of comparable insurance firms, with same products, same size, same market, etc. And they looked at leadership styles that the CEO’s used and they found that if those leaders used 4 or more of the 6 leadership styles effectively and appropriately, their firms had stronger growth and profit, quarter for quarter, than firms where the CEO’s tended to rely on the leadership styles that had negative impact.

AG- Interesting. So if a CEO was more congruent in terms of their natural style and personality with one or two, should they force themselves to focus from self-awareness on the other two?

DG- These are leadership tools, and you need to, as a leader, I would recommend, learn styles you may not be as comfortable with if they’ll have a positive impact, because that’s going to help you be a better leader.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, you once wrote a famous article on leadership after studying companies like PepsiCo. Can you tell us about that article?

Daniel Goleman- I wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review in ‘98 called What Makes a Leader, and it really was an extension of a book I wrote about working with emotional intelligence. The Review asked me to talk about the competencies or abilities that you see in star performing leaders. That article, by the way, has become the number one most requested reprint, I think, in the history of review. It really struck a chord, and I think it did because it articulated something people had sensed, but not been able to put into words. Basically what I argued is that there are 4 kinds of strengths you see in the best leaders.

1^st is self awareness. People have the capacity to reflect on them selves, to monitor themselves. This matters in many ways. One is for making good decisions, it turns out, that you need to capture felt sense of “feels right, doesn’t feel right.” And mix it in with hard data on a business decision. Or in a life decision. Should I keep this job or should I take a risk and take another job? That’s not a decision for which you can make a list of pros and cons, you need to have a gut sense. Because there are un-graspables. Things that you can’t put into words, that part of your brain knows but only can tell you in a gut sense. Literally a gut sense. That’s the way we’re wired. So people who make good and better decisions, business leaders, anyone, have this capacity for self awareness.

There’s another way that it’s important, and that’s as an ethical guide. The answer to the question, “Is what I am about to do in keeping with my ethical guides?” is not one that comes in words, it comes again in a gut sense, and then we put it into words. So this is critical for ethical navigation, both individually and for a company.

2^nd component is self management. How we handle our emotions. Can we keep our distressing emotions from crippling or interfering with our capacity to think well, make good decisions? Can we stay focused and motivated? Positively working toward goals even when things are tough? Are we adaptable, flexible in making responses? All comes from internal self management.

3^rd part of emotional intelligence abilities for leaders is empathy. Do we sense how other people are thinking about a situation? Do we know how they feel? Can we establish report? Do we care? Are we concerned? Do we want to help others? All of those are critical leadership abilities.

Finally there are the relationship skills, the obvious, more visible leadership competencies like effective communication. Can we inspire people? Can we motivate people? Can we articulate a shared mission that speaks to people’s hearts? Are we authentic leaders, able to negotiate, collaborate? Can we model collaboration so people can see and hear that the leader is showing how to be a good team player. All of those are highly effective leadership abilities.

The Best leaders have strengths in 6 or more of those. Any leader can develop them if they have the proper help.

AG- you talk about leadership style and the impact on the workplace, and you mention that there are 6 styles of leadership. Can you just give us an outline of the styles and how each have an impact on workforce?

DG- If you think about it at primal level, the real task of the leader in terms of the brain is to help people get, and stay, in the optimal internal state for working at their best. And many leaders shoot themselves in foot by ignoring the fact that in any human group the most powerful person in the group is the one people pay most attention to, put most importance on. What that most powerful person says and does has the most impact on the internal state, the emotional state of everyone else. So if you’re looking for best results from people that work for you, you’re responsibility is to drive the state that is going to help people be at their best. And to avoid leading in a style that puts people in their worst state for performance.

What are the styles that help? There are 4 styles at least that have the most positive impact on people.

1^st is “the visionary.” Someone who articulates a goal that motivates us all and that creates a very positive state. A very hopeful, forward looking, goal oriented way of working.

2^nd is someone who is a “coach.” Someone who really cares about the people he or she is leading, and helps people get better or get closer to their own career goals. For example, giving them an assignment that will help them grow, learn how to do something that they are going to need along the way. People appreciate that enormously. And that too creates a positive climate.

3^rd is being affiliative. Understanding that having a good time together is not a waste of time. That it creates a kind of social capital that means we can have stronger connections, and will be able to work better together.

4^th is the consensus leader. One who feels that “I may not know the best way to move forward, I may need to ask other people.” All that has a positive impact.

Finally, two that don’t work so well. One is a pace setter. One who just leads by example and is very critical of how other people aren’t as good as they are. And then command and control, a coercive style leader. Someone who doesn’t mind blowing up at people, for example, who thinks nothing of it. Or humiliating them. Those two ways of impacting are the worst possible, because all people are going to focus on after that interaction is how awful it was, how much they hate the boss.

AG- Isn’t there a time and place for command and control style leadership?

DG- Being very strong and just ordering people to do things, under normal circumstances has a very negative impact, but in a genuine emergency it’s quite appropriate.

Anthony Gell- Daniel, you talk a lot about ethical leadership. Can you explore that with us, and tell us what do you mean by that?

Daniel Goleman- One of the implicit tasks of a leader is to set ethical norms. And by ethical norms we don’t mean some high falluting ethical code, we mean how people are with each other day to day. What are the ground rules for our interacting? Are we going to be honest, or not so honest? Are we going to be open with people about problems we have with them or just gossip about them behind their back. If you’re open and put it out on table, and do it in positive and collaborative way, you can settle those differences and get on with the work. If not, if you just start developing little cliques and this person is against that person, it’s a disaster for the working environment. So, in other words, the leader’s ethical task is to be an exemplar, to show how to do this, to model this and encourage others to follow those norms, and to praise them when they do, and draw a line when they don’t.