I spoke with a priest, Father Alex Steinmiller, recently and we talked about human behavior. Most harmful behaviors, we already know are harmful. Yet why do we do them? Lack of information?

People know they should exercise…. But they don’t, even if they want to.
People know they should eat healthy… but they don’t, even if they have good intentions.

We have unlimited information on most subjects, so it’s not that. Are we just not disciplined enough to change our own behavior? My mom always says that most “people would rather die than change”…. Even when they want to.

Father Alex told me, that if we want to change our behavior we need to analyze and eliminate the lead-up actions that trigger the undesired behavior. What situation, people, events, or patterns trigger this undesired behavior? Eliminate the lead-up actions that trigger the undesired behavior.

Analogy: If you don’t want to eat junk food, don’t have it in the house.

This makes sense, as Dr. Robert Cooper says, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Relying on our own discipline to change our behavior is nearly impossible if we keep following the same routines and patterns. This might mean altering where we spend time and who we spend our time with, ect. But it gives us a significantly better chance of making the behavior change we desire.

When I graduated from college, I decided to go graduate school to get my MBA. I made this decision primarily because my friends from business school were doing this, so I thought this was the path I supposed to take as well.

After getting my MBA, the expectations of “What I Was Supposed to Do” continued. Because I had an MBA, I believed I should go into fields like banking, investment services, investment banking, even accounting roles. So guess what, I did all of them. I bounced from job to job, field to field, never staying very long. I learned a lot of skills but the path I was following was very narrow. I never really considered many of my options outside of “What I was supposed to do”.

Eventually I became the CFO of a publicly traded food company before purchasing my first company at 37 years old and becoming an entrepreneur. I’ve been that ever since.
Reflecting back, I never even considered being an entrepreneur. I believe that a big part of that was the pre-conceived beliefs about what I was “supposed to do”. My MBA and my college degree were great tools, but I believed that they limited my choices. Of course, the actual degree did not do this, but I limited my own choices and my own beliefs because of these things. My mindset about what was possible and what other options might exist.

I think many people go through life this way. As they get tools or have experiences, they limited their mindset about what is possible. They start in one career path and somehow their identity is tied to it. They don’t consider anything else. “I have a MBA, therefore I must work in this field forever.”

We should work to strip away these pre-set beliefs and stay open to possibilities, instead of doing “What You’re Supposed to Do.”

“The Disease of Me” is a term I first heard basketball player, coach, owner, and general manager, Pat Riley use.

Just like basketball, Life is a team sport. Families, work teams, friendships, and society are all made up of a collective group of individuals that function and work together. In a perfect world, everyone contributes and as the team does better, the individual does better as well.

“The Disease of Me” describes when a person becomes focused on their own success or difficulties. Their wants and their needs take precedent over the rest of their team. Selfishness, bad body language, assessing blame, making excuses, and overall negativity are symptoms generally associated with “the disease of me”.

Coach Tom Desotell used to say that in every environment there are “Energy givers or energy takers. Lifters or leaners.” Energy givers leave everyone around them better. They bring authentic excitement and care to their team. They lift up those around them and help make others the best versions of themselves. This is who we need to strive to be and who we want to surround ourselves with.

Energy takers are the complainers and negative nellies of the world. Their attitude sucks the excitement and enthusiasm out, like an energy vampire. We all know people like this. It can be exhausting to be around them.

The very best leaders that I’ve observed spend a lot of time with their teams and their families talking about these sort of concepts. Avoiding “The Disease of Me”, being an energy giver not an energy taker, focusing on great communication and body language, as well as creating an environment where we lift each other up. It would be a wise practice to ask ourselves these questions regularly:
1. Am I being a lifter or a leaner?
2. Am I being an energy giver or taker?
3. Am I avoiding the Disease of Me or have I become too focused on my own wants and needs?

No matter how brilliant or talented someone may be, if they are suffering from the “Disease of Me” they need to be cured or removed because they will hurt your team.

*This article was written by Brad Binversie from the Exclusivia team, using the insights and teachings of Thomas Desotell.

“Not seeing Your Eyes Doesn’t Whisper, It Shouts”-Thomas Desotell
How often do we discuss body language with team members at work or family members? Probably very little is my guess, but the best leaders make this a priority.

In my brief time with Coach Tom Desotell, I learned more about the importance of body language than anywhere else. One of his points of focus was the eyes of the people.
Coach would always say that a person needs to listen with “Hungry Eyes.” Listening and communication are active processes. Both the speaker and the listener must be active participants. “Hungry eyes” means that the listener is actively giving eye contact and responding to the conversation with their eyes and body language.

“Listen with your eyes.”

In a world of increasing distraction and noise, this is something that needs to be spoken about more often. In the professional world, work from home and remote teamwork is increasingly more common. Do we discuss the importance of all team members are practicing good body language and listening with their eyes on zoom calls? Or do we skirt around the issue and allow people to dial in passively?

I’ve given training and mentoring sessions where the participants did not even turn on their camera. Reflecting back, I have no idea if the content they received was valuable, if they were buying in, or if their attention was focused elsewhere. This is not something I will not let happen anymore.

“You either coach it, or you allow it to happen.”
Body language and actively listening are crucial to building trust and effective communication. In the busyness and blur of today’s world making this a priority might feel “unimportant” or like a small detail, but I believe it’s never been more important to a business, family, or any group that needs to work together in a meaningful way.

*This wisdom was written by Brad Binversie from the Exclusivia Team in coordination with the teachings of Coach Thomas Desotell.

*Transcript from the Video

I like to encourage the young men that I work with to have a plan a life’s plan. I believe that if you have a goal, you’ll get there quicker. And I think most people will agree with me, and we all know that if you write your goal down on paper, you’re exponentially more likely to achieve it than not.

And so I’ve thought about this. Just about everything you buy today has an operating system and it has an operating manual. You buy a washer and dryer, it comes with a manual troubleshooting guide, et cetera. You buy a, new set of speakers that they come with an operating manual. Life doesn’t come with one. And I think that’s really interesting. I think that the operating manual is, Really something that is inherently taught through your family, through your community, through your relationships. And in that operating manual, there are a lot of wrong answers. There is a lot of bad advice.

The intention is often good, but not everyone has it all figured out. I think that’s important to know. Nobody is perfect the advice that we give is done with the best intention. But it’s not always the right answer and it certainly is not always executed upon. But the mentor-mentee relationship is one again, of judgment but yet uplifting advice, encouragement, and sharing of best practices. And so I always encourage the young men that I’m working with to have some type of a plan.

You get in the car and you start driving, you’re gonna end up at a beach most likely, I’m assuming. No flat tires, breakdowns, et cetera. No detours. But which beach are you going to? We have a beach called Corpus Christi. Well, it’s not the finest of sand, and the water’s not clear and blue and magical.
But if you were to travel a little bit further onto, let’s say, Destin, Florida, it’s like a paradise, right? And so if you want to go to the beach figure out how many hours it’s gonna take you to get there. If your vehicle’s ready to go how much gas it’s gonna take, you have to stay overnight and just plan that out.

If you wanna show up at the beach and you wanna show up at the right beach, have the best experience, you have to lay it out and life’s a lot that same way.
And it’s okay to get.In the car and realize you want to take a, detour and go over to, new Orleans on your way, or that you decided the weather didn’t hold out. So you’re gonna end up going to a museum or a concert or maybe in a different location. But just have a plan.

Why does this matter? Especially with our long to-do lists and the constant feeling that we’re each so busy…

The hard-wired brain mistakes “being busy”–the feeling of non-stop effort–with making more progress on priorities. Unfortunately, that “progress” can be mostly an illusion. It”s easy to get lost in this cerebral and sensory swamp of automatic and mostly mindless “doing.”

Let’s interrupt this pattern. Glance at today’s schedule. Commit to completing one specific task or meeting today five minutes earlier than planned–and devote this time to creatively streamlining and the remainder of today and tomorrow so that you can make greater measured progress on your top priorities… Note: Devote the final minute of these five minutes to reviewing and re-committing to your “To Don’t List”–which can matter even more than your To-Do List.

I think we could build a case that the biggest difference between the most successful highest performers in the world and everyone else, is that they have learned to individualize the changes they make and the improvements that they set in motion.

They are also different in the way they learn and how they instinctively want to apply the learning. That’s a huge difference between the best performers and all the rest. They link learning and initiative. The rest of the world seems engulfed in information.

The illusion we have is that information is knowledge and that is growth. It’s neither knowledge nor growth. As we’re learning things, we have to make these things our own. In what ways might they improve our life? our difference making? How could they uplift the people around us in the bigger world? We have to be testing that. We’re pilot testers and almost all human beings miss that.

We are each a one of a kind human being. There’s never been another you, and there never will be again. That neuro individuality or bio individuality needs to be honored. So just because something worked for someone else, doesn’t mean it will work for you.

There’s a lot of noise and information about one size fits all programs and strategies. An example of this might be diets or fitness programs as well as countless others. Do this, do that, and it worked for this person therefore it must work for all…. It might have worked for someone else as an individual, but programs are often promoted as if they will work for all of us the same way, and it doesn’t.So it increases the frustration.

We have all kinds of slippage and failures along the way. But if only we pause to adjust these ideas and strategies to our unique goals, our unique temperament, drive, purpose, missions and life priorities; then we might make it fit to us. Adjust it. Test it. Sense, “Is this better for me?”

All the the highest performers and teams across all kinds of industries and professions, do this testing and tailoring of everything. In moments, they just become more curious, how might this work for me? Where might I be able to test it first? How would I know if it’s working or not?

If you track through a busy day of the highest performers in the world. They are making breakthroughs and succeeding at measurably higher levels than everyone else. They make it look easy, and everyone observes and questions how they do it.

A big part of it, is they move through every single day with this awareness and this curiosity about what is possible here. What is possible in this interaction? this choice? this moment? this day? this week? This type of curiosity in neuroscience is so powerful. We call it the need for cognition.

We need more of it every single day. So we can sense deeper to be able to see what other people don’t and see what might be possible uniquely for us to make more of a difference, to have a better life along the way. Yet, too often, we miss it.

So set that reminder to pause ahead of each decision and each interaction, to ask “What is possible and what truly matters?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of incentives and how they shape our behavior and the world around us. I’ve been asking myself, what is the incentive behind (person,system, decision) ect? Just asking this question let’s me think about things a bit more rationally and clearly if I have an understanding of what is shaping the behavior of those around.

Rational decision making is vitally important, yet we are anything but rational. If we look deeply at human pyschology and behavior, we can see that the power of incentives is one of the largest driving forces shaping the world around us and even impacting our own thinking.
“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” – Warren Buffett

Incentives are incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous because of they shape systems or influence our own thinking in ways that not easily detected, difficult to predict, and almost impossible to change once the system is built. It can cause us to rationalize immoral behavior that in a stand along situation would thought to be grossly misguided.
The goal of this piece is to highlight how incentives are at work and by providing some examples. Perhaps by peeling back the layers and exposing incentives at work, we can understand how and why human behavior is how it is.

Corporate and Business Incentives
Incentive: Leaders of publically traded companies are judged by how well their stock performs. Stock performance is based upon the company’s ability to make money, which is reported in quarterly earnings. Seems like a logical incentive structure, encourage CEO’s to have their company do well on a regular basis. Good CEO’s and good company’s will be rewarded
Unintended Consequence: This can create the incentive for CEO’s to focus short term, neglecting long term investment necessary for the future of the business. It can also create intense short term pressure to “meet the numbers” quarterly, which might lead to questionable accounting practices or other immoral behavior… See Enron, GE, or any number of corporate cases where the numbers didn’t quite match reality.

Sales
Incentive: Salespeople are paid commission for the sale of products. They are motivated to make money and thus work hard.
Unintended Consequence: Can create the incentive for immoral behavior. Some examples: Wells Fargo employees opening fake accounts to meet their sales numbers. Countless cases of immoral Insurance salesmen on everything selling bad companies with higher commission to taking advantage of the elderly, ect.

Political System
Incentive: Politicians need to get re-elected repeatedly in the US or any democracy. This allows citizens to vote out bad politicians.
Unintended Consequence: It makes it difficult for politicians to make meaningful, difficult, long-term decisions because they are always involved in a popularity contest for their job. Would you do anything difficult or unpopular if your livelihood would end in 2, 4, or 6 years? This incentive creates lifelong politicians who do not accomplish much.
Politicians are also responsible for allocating tax dollars, if you had to win a popularity contest might you be tempted to allocate money to the causes that might help you win that popularity contest. Like a 6th grade class president candidate who promises unlimited recess and ice cream for lunch.

Investment and Finance Space
Incentive: Managers of Private Equity, Venture Capital, Mutual Funds are paid fees based on assets under management.
Unintended Consequence: Investment Managers are not incentivized to invest well, they are incentivized to “gather more assets”. More assets=more fees for the manager. This creates very average performance on the whole so customers don’t pull their funds and buy index funds to settle for averages. It can also encourage risky or reckless behavior because you get the money and are being paid to invest, whether you have a good investment idea or not.

Media
Incentive: Reporters need access to high profile people.
Unintended Consequence: Are they going to fair in their assessment? Or do they want to keep getting access to the high-profile people? They might not if they’re overly critical (even if it’s true).

Legal
Incentive: Attorneys are usually billed by the hour.
Unintended Consequence: Are they incentivized to conclude legal proceedings as quickly as possible? Or is the temptation to drag out billable hours?

We could exemplify any number of systems that horribly influenced by the power of incentives: Healthcare, Education, social services, …..Bottom line in systems is people show conscious or unconscious bias to those who employ, pay, or feed them. “Who’s bread I eat, his song I sing.”

On an Individual Basis
This also happens to us on the individual level. Incentives can influence our behavior and thoughts without knowing, or worse we rationalize it to ourselves. Examples:

-Instead of seeking truth. Most people spend the majority of their life, looking for information that rationalizes what they already believe to be true.

-The salesmen who sells a low-quality product, might justify it in his mind. Even believing that it’s a great product, when in truth it’s poor. “To the man with a Hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

– We look for reasons to justify the outlandish behavior of the candidate of our aligned political party. “He’s only doing that because the other party is so evil….”

-We talk ourselves into foolish financial, professional, or business decisions because we simply want them to be true. “Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”- Demosthenes

-The person who behaves slightly immorally, will justify it to themselves to reach their incentive. “I’m entitled to the money, I embezzled.” “Everyone does this in corporate accounting.” “Everyone cheats on their homework and tests.” “All men behave this way….”

We should all take a step back and analyze what is the incentive behind this person, or system? Not all incentives are bad, but it’s incredibly important that we take the time to analyze them so we can approach decisions as rationally as possible.

When I was with the Imagineers at Disney, we used all kinds of different ways to stimulate creativity. These were incredibly important to the culture of the organization.