The Success Zone
5 Powerful Steps to Growing Yourself and Leading Others
by Andrew Mowat, John Corrigan & Doug Long
Smashwords Edition
Published by Andrew Mowat for Group 8 Education on Smashwords
All the information, techniques, skills and concepts contained within this publication are of the nature of general comment only and are not in any way recommended as individual advice. The intent is to offer a variety of information to provide a wider range of choices now and in the future, recognizing that we all have widely diverse circumstances and viewpoints. Should any reader choose to make use of the information contained herein, this is their decision, and the contributors (and their companies), authors and publishers do not assume any responsibilities whatsoever under any condition or circumstances. It is recommended that the reader obtain his or her own independent advice.
First Edition 2009
Copyright © 2009 (Group 8 Education) Andrew Mowat, John Corrigan & Doug Long
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Mowat, Andrew, 1959-
The success zone: five powerful steps to growing yourself and leading others
Other Authors/Contributors:
Corrigan, John, 1956-
Long, Doug, 1943-
1st ed. ISBN: 9781921630132 (pbk.)
Dewey No: 303.34
Published in hard copy by Global Publishing Group PO Box 517 Mt Evelyn, Victoria 3140 Australia Email.info@TheGlobalPublishingGroup.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Three Brains, Two Minds
Chapter 3: Your Mind Zones In Action
Chapter 4: A Brain For The 21st Century
Chapter 5: Powerful Questioning
Chapter 6: Re-learning Listening
Chapter 7: Observational Listening
Chapter 8: Optimistic Listening
Chapter 9: Conversations For Growth
Chapter 10: Beyond Basic Conversations
Chapter 11: Leadership For A New World
Glossary of Terms
References, Resources And Further Reading
More About The Authors
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1:
Introduction
Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed,
My spirit and senses amazed!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (from Faust, 1808)
Cancer. Illness. Business failure. Relationship failure. Redundancy. The three of us have experienced many of life’s great challenges. Together we run three organisations: Group 8 Management, Group 8 Education and emergent•blue. Our vision? To create a world without fear, where anxiety is not a driving influence, where people can use the best of their brains.
Matt Church, Sydney-based entrepreneur, public speaker and author would say that leadership is all about turning fear into confidence, creating clarity from confusion and mobilising people in the pursuit of a better future. This, then, would be a fitting description for our work, and this book.
We, John, Doug and Andrew, as authors, have been shaped by our diverse journeys:
Doug’s Introduction:
I was 57 when it happened to me.
I had forgotten a truth I had heard many years before: “The very things that made you successful in the past are what will probably cause you to fail in the future”.
I couldn’t believe it. Denial caused me to make more bad decisions and the situation worsened. I became angry. Very angry. The people with whom I spoke sought to apportion blame. Many of those I had considered friends seemed now to be unavailable when I phoned or emailed.
On the surface I was calm and positive. Underneath I was seething – mainly at myself and my own stupidity. I ceased to trust other people.
A year passed. I met a person who showed me a different manner. He saw beyond my anger, guilt and cynicism to the person underneath. He accepted me unconditionally. Inadvertently I opened up a little. Without being asked, he opened a door and I was invited to speak at a major conference in Japan – it even paid a good fee as well as all expenses.
It was as though I had been reborn. Rebuilding could now commence.
Andrew’s Introduction:
I still remember the anxiety, as a nine year old, of whether I would wake up in the morning or not. For a small period of time, falling asleep was plagued by a fear of not waking, of dying without me knowing. My prefrontal cortex had developed to the point of both feeling amazed that ‘this is me, really me’ and that ‘this me’ will end one day. In so doing, my brain replicated a process that we all go through, consciously or not, a process that seems unique to the human condition. The realization of our identity and the some-day end of our identity begins the tug-of-war in the brain between the prefrontal cortex and the reptilian brain, between the architecture of knowing our future and of survival instinct.
This battle of ‘minds’ was to be repeated with far more energy and immediacy. The memory of the moment I was told I had cancer has never left me. Friday June 16 1995. If I immerse myself in the memory of the moment, the flood of anxiety and fear flowing from the pit of my stomach down though my legs is easily recalled. The double hit of “its melanoma and it has metastasized to your lymph system” that caused my world to stop more than momentarily remains within easy cognitive and emotional access. Yet, as a memory, it is one I rarely recall.
While this is not primarily about my recovery, a part of my approach to healing my cancer had a profound impact on both the restoration itself and on my life ever since. One tactic in dealing with my multitude of fears - fear of death, fear of not seeing my then two year old daughter grow up amongst others - was to develop a deep meditation technique triggered by evocative music. While this was by no means unique or earth shattering on its own, the twice-daily exposure to such meditation changed my brain. This change was long lasting and significant for the capacity it has given me since.
Interestingly, neither is this experience unique. Many cancer survivors have a living sense of having conquered, amongst many things, fear of death. For this ‘victory’ over fear, such people are often calm, flexible and highly adaptive in their post-cancer lives. Indeed, they often attribute this new capacity to the experience of cancer, and say that they are better for it.
John’s Introduction:
My wife is Colombian, from one of the hottest parts of South America, and we moved to England after five years of marriage so that she could learn English (since leaving Colombia we had learned Italian together!). She hated the climate - amongst other things - from day one but our eldest daughter was 2 weeks old so she had a lot to do. We bought a house and I remember vividly the day we moved in thinking, is this it? Is this all there is? Over the next seven years we had two more children, consequently we kept ourselves busy. By 1995 I had the nagging feeling that I really had to find a place to live with a hot climate for Amparo and the sorts of professional opportunities that would interest and challenge me.
I was made redundant and my first thoughts were about finding another job - what with five mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay. I started the grind of looking. Completely by chance, I met three people in one week, all in London, who said “…why not go to Australia?” Even though I thought it would lead nowhere I felt a niggling need to follow this up. I emailed and called a raft of head hunters and consultants – no-one was particularly interested – but I managed to set up three appointments. I then thought I had better get a ticket and go although it seemed like a lot of money with little likely to show for it.
In Sydney I got on the phone and called everyone who had turned me down and I got a few more appointments. I ended up having 22 business meetings in the 5 working days I was there as I got referrals from the meetings that I had set up and, as I was only in town for a few days, people would squeeze me in. I flew home and two days later I received a job offer. We sold up and moved.
My mind – my brain – was guiding me in ways that I could not fathom then, leading me towards a way to meet my goals. Nothing rational, just feelings.
***
Each of the three of us, and indeed most who read this book, have explored the uncertain landscape of purpose and meaning. We have had the universe throw us together, with vastly different backgrounds, expertise and histories, yet with very similar questions. This book is a summary of the work begun by John back in 2001, and picked up by Doug, then Andrew as each of us joined the journey. It is a snapshot of our collective learning and wisdom, initially through a vision of an education system where everybody thrives. The journey has taught us much, but particularly that the learning and growth thrust upon us through our work has been both revolutionary (not evolutionary) and transferable. In the past, the common wisdom has been that the skills of engagement are a birth outcome, not a learning outcome. We have found that once a framework of understanding and a common language of engagement are in place, people have a point of reference from which they, themselves can grow.
This book, then, sets out a process of providing the necessary conditions for people to grow in a range of complex and diverse intelligences. It explores what people need from leaders, from teachers, from parents in order to be bright, collaborative and creative contributors to our world. It will show you how a 21st century brain is different from a 20th century brain, and why our planet is desperate for ‘Blue Zone’ brains. Further, by understanding this ‘Success Zone’ of your brain, this book will show you how to create prosperous outcomes for yourself, and for those around you.
Through each of the five steps, you will, yourself, mirror our journey into having greater life meaning and contribution.
These five steps include:
A language for the mind
Staying calm under pressure
Powerful questioning
Learning to listen
Conversations for growth
We often hear, of our work, that “it’s not rocket science”. Indeed it’s not: in a world riddled with multiple layers of complexity it has become easy to lose touch with plain old common sense. A favourite quote explains this complexity:
“There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
Douglas Adams
This book won’t solve the ‘mystery of the Universe’, but it will solve one other: the enigma of engagement and influence, of great leaders, inspirational teachers and nurturing parents.
Chapter 2
Three Brains, Two Minds
If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.
Daniel Goleman
Meeting Marion
We met Marion at a social change conference in London recently. A small, yet energetic woman who runs a highly successful national mental health project in the UK, she was accompanied by a little dog wearing a slightly askew, bright yellow ‘support dog’ jacket. When she was asked her how her dog, Buddy, helps her, she was direct and open. “I have borderline personality disorder, and my self-harming puts me at very high personal risk. When I’m out with Buddy, I have to keep myself safe so that she is safe.”.
Shortly after this somewhat unexpectedly upfront introduction, Marion became the first person, conversationally with us, to use the term ‘amygdalae’ when describing her emotional states. As someone who regularly teaches others about the amygdalae, two small components of our brain that alert us to threat, having such a spontaneous discussion about this part of the brain engaged our interest immediately.
Three Brains In One
We’ll return to Marion shortly, but before we do, let’s take a moment to construct a picture of the brain. We must be careful here: the brain is complex and interconnected beyond comprehension. It does not organise itself to fit our convenient models and metaphors. Increasingly, a geographical approach to categorising brain regions, while it serves us well at the macro level, is being shown by research to have its limits.
For some time now, a reasonably well agreed-upon model of the brain is the tripartite - a brain that consists of three broad regions or layers.
The deepest layer is the “reptilian brain”, contained in the brain stem. This part of the brain is concerned with biological survival more than anything else. Found at the very base of the skull, where it meets your neck, this region manages automatic biological and vital control functions. Breathing, heart rate, blood electrolyte balance, swallowing and object tracking with the eyes and the startle response are a few of the functions controlled by this region. The jump you get from hearing a car backfire - the startle response - is also an outcome of the ‘circuitry’ here.
The mid-brain, sometimes referred to as the “mammalian brain” and at other times the “limbic system”, is the centre of feeling and emotion. Seen largely as an evolutionary outcome resulting from the greater investment of parental care. It is, indeed, a section of the brain that is unique to mammals. Increasingly neuroscience is uncovering this region as one of the most significant in our day to day lives. Jonah Lehrer, in his recent book “How We Decide”, has expertly crystallised the emerging view that the emotional brain is responsible for a great deal more, particularly in making decisions, than we ever could have imagined. A growing body of research suggests that the rational brain, the neocortex, lags behind, creating the cognitive justification for what has already happened in the emotional brain.
The most recent and most advanced layer is the outer neocortex, or ‘new brain’ which exists only in mammals and is highly developed in humans. We will also refer to this most evolutionary recent brain as the ‘human’ brain, since it is this region that gives us our humanity. Indeed, much of what differentiates us from other advanced forms of life has its home here. Language, imagining a different future, reasoning and knowing how someone else feels from their expression alone are but a few ‘miracles’ of the new brain. Even the beginnings of complex movements such as reaching to catch a ball after tracking its movement through the air seem to begin in the human brain.
One very special region of the neocortex is the prefrontal cortex, essentially found behind your forehead. In the first half of the twentieth century, this part of the brain was thought to have no significant role to play. So much so, that it was seen as an expendable casualty in personality modification through lobotomy. Modern neuroscience research tells a completely different story. Indeed, the myriad of functions that the neocortex plays a significant, or even partial role in, abound.
Let’s just for a moment take an inventory of what research currently tells us that the prefrontal cortex influences or controls in some way:
Reflection, daydreaming and mindfulness
Consideration of options
Imagination and creativity
Considering the future, setting goals and tracking progress towards them
Monitoring errors (social, cognitive and emotional)
Understanding and labelling of the emotions of the self
Understanding and knowing the emotional state of others
Managing impulses
Affiliation, generosity and goodwill
Integration of emotional, rational and intuitive information into decision making
Core personality
Development of a moral framework and applying behaviour according to those morals
It may not surprise you to know that those who we could name as socially, occupationally and financially successful would also be people who have high functioning prefrontal cortices.
Thinking about the way that we experience the world, both internally and externally, provides a somewhat false sense that a singular mind is responsible. We remain significantly unaware of the operation and impact of any of the many 'sub-systems' in the brain responsible for this 'singular experience' of the world. Some of these systems are inaccessible and buried well below our consciousness, yet others remain tantalisingly within reach once we build awareness and target attention.
Further, some of these brain sub-systems seem to collaborate, while others work in opposition. “The McGurk effect” demonstrates the difference in outcomes when subsystems combine - try this experiment yourself by visiting http://www.thesuccesszone.com/resources to have a first hand experience in engaging systems below your consciousness. Note that the effect explored in this video is not under conscious control - the two subsystems explored here exert their collaboration beyond your control.
Decision-making In The Three Brains
The reptilian brain makes decisions efficiently, instinctively, habitually and impulsively. Decisions made in this region lack the learning from experience, or intuition, of the mammalian brain, and the rational and considered approach of the human brain. Survival situations remain the only purposeful and appropriate aspect of using this brain region for decision-making in today’s world.
The mammalian brain is a surprisingly powerful decision-maker based on its ability to process a large number of variables in the light of its own experience. When we become expert in something and “know” what to do then it is this brain that is “speaking” (and being pre-verbal this appears as a feeling). Similarly, if we want to buy a house then the optimal decision-making process is to visit a range of houses and then buy the one that “feels” right. Intuition is another name for this ability to feel what the right thing to do is. When this is the prevailing decision-making process then organisations tend to grow hierarchically with the best decision-makers taking leading roles. The once all-powerful principal in a school reflected the dominant role of this brain type. This works very well in stable or slowly changing conditions.
When we have new problems to solve then the human brain is the place from which to operate. It is enormously powerful but inefficient. We can only hold about four variables in this brain at one time so that if we have a new, complex problem (say with 30 variables) then it needs a team of people to be able to solve it. This team needs to operate in human brain mode and in such an environment that all variables are properly aired, an environment of openness and acceptance. Under these conditions the mammalian brain can get to work to process the variables and after a time it will become obvious to the group what the solution is.
As you will see later in this book, the greater the presence and level of anxiety, the greater the tendency towards reptilian-brain decisions being made.
Your Two Mind States
One explicit goal of this book is to build your awareness, and your ability to express your awareness, around certain mind states that arise from the interaction of your brain’s three ‘subsystems’.
Consider the following situation:
You are in a nice restaurant waiting for your meal whilst having an engaging conversation with your partner around planning an exciting upcoming holiday. You begin to notice that first one table, then more are being served their meals, though you are sure that you ordered before them.
Your attention now gradually begins to drift away from your immersed planning to scanning and watching for more evidence. As your observations are confirmed, you unsuccessfully try to catch the eye of the waiter, who is clearly serving others who ordered well after you. Very soon, your ability to engage at a thinking level is reduced dramatically in proportion to the increase in the 'gut response'.
As this situation progresses, your whole experience is hijacked by an emotive response, characterised by feelings of anger, increased heart rate, raised voice, and strong eye contact and body language. You even notice that you are now not as hungry...
This is an example of a shift in brain resources from a mind state that we call the Blue Zone to a different mind state called the Red Zone. As this shift progresses, you find yourself thinking and connecting less as more ‘primal’ feelings occur. Indeed, your brain has detected a threat and is preparing you at many levels.
As such situations deteriorate, you literally get to the point where thinking and executive control - managing verbal, even physical impulses - becomes impossible. We will describe the “Blue Zone” and “Red Zone” states in detail shortly. Before we do, one important piece of framework needs to be explained - your brain’s ‘bandwidth’ limits.
The Brain’s Bandwidth Limits
For an organ that comprises something around 2% of your total body weight, your brain has an energy demand of about 20% of your energy budget. Interestingly, this 20% energy usage tends to be fixed: your brain uses much the same energy when you are reading this, sleeping, doing a crossword, working or watching a movie.
The implications for this are far-reaching, particularly when considering the interactions of our two mind states - the Blue Zone and Red Zones. Imagine that these mind states are each represented by a bucket. You only have enough resources to fill one bucket, so at any one time you may have half in each, or all in one bucket or the other. For you to have your Blue Zone operating at full capacity, resources are provided by ‘the bucket’ that the Red Zone might have ordinarily been using. Similarly, if your Red Zone becomes active, it does so, at a resource level, at the expense of the Blue Zone.
This limit of biological ‘capital’, particularly oxygen and glucose, available to the brain underpins another phenomenon: the scarcity of attention. Think of it as available bandwidth if you like. Just as there is a limit to how much internet traffic you can download on any connection, your brain analogously has similar attentional limits. You have a clear limit to how much bandwidth you can ‘spend’ on any one task - try listening to two people speaking at once. You will be intuitively aware that you simply cannot. You may switch your attention between the two voice ‘streams’, but never can you simultaneously listen and fully comprehend both. This simple illustration manifests itself silently in much of our world, largely because we remain unaware of how we are using our attention ‘bandwidth’.
Your awareness on how and on what you pay attention to becomes critical when you consider that your attention drives what you learn and habituate, how effective you are socially and your ability to engage others. Indeed, attention is the currency of engagement. Those who use their attention well are themselves highly engaging, interesting and influential. We will be explicitly addressing how you direct your attention in the “Powerful Questioning” and “Learning to Listen” Chapters.
Given the limits to our attention and the high competition for that attention by many things in our day-to-day life, the brain has a process whereby it cycles through high demand priorities. We call this attention priority, a mind process where the most pressing attentional needs rise to the top, much like the way blobs of lava rise and fall in a lava lamp. Once the demand decreases, that issue ‘cools’ and falls out of our attention awareness. If left to its own device, the mind will be cycling through a range of attention priorities depending on your habits, needs and desires.
There is a high-energy cost to holding things out of this natural cycle - like paying attention to a speaker for more than thirty minutes - and the attention priority cycle will sneak back in whenever it can. We notice, in presenting workshops for instance, that if the temperature of the room becomes uncomfortably cool, the need of being comfortable rises above attending to us in terms of attention.
The thing is, while you remain unaware of this, you are largely unable to harness the incredible power of this process. You are slave to your habits, needs and desires. We even have our rational brain keep this state in play for us with justifying statements like “I don’t have the time to do this right now”. In fact, if you have ever stopped to think about this statement, a common one when we are faced with things we’d rather not do, why is it that some people find the time to do the tough things, and others do not? We all have the same amount of time - it is just that some of us do not prioritise in the same way.
There are a number of deliberate and intentional ‘tricks’ that are used to construct a different attention priority than our habits, needs and wants would have. Tricks such as affirmations and goals, for instance, allow us to hold at the top, in spite of the habituated priorities, new priorities that without effort would fall back to the bottom of the pile. Do this once - say by writing down your goals for the year - and for a while your brain can hold this as an attention priority for a short time. Soon, however, the energy cost of holding these goals at the ‘top of mind’ allows other needs, wants and habits to resume the cycle.
Action Zone: Attention Priority
The best way that you can harness attention priority is to wire your preferred future into desires, needs and habits. Do this with intention by:
Speaking to as many people as you can around your passion, goals and future
Writing and reading your goals on a daily basis
Affirming daily the future you wish to create
Reading as much as you can in your niche or field, then writing and speaking from your learning and perspective
Increasing the scope of absorption by being in the best mind state - the Blue Zone
Next time you catch yourself saying “I don’t have the time to do that” reframe it into “it is not a priority for me right now” (because, simply, it is not). Check on your emotional energy when you reframe - things that should be a higher priority will let you know!
A Language For The Mind: Blue Zone, Red Zone
Typically, we are not particularly ‘brain aware’: we do not have easily accessible language that allows us to articulate our current ‘mind state’. This is particularly the case when our amygdalae are highly active - all we see is the “red mist” and we are immersed in our limbic response. Further, we are not generally used to monitoring our thinking or feelings, or indeed, which element of our brains might be active. Research, particularly from Matthew Lieberman and the Department of Social Psychology at UCLA, is showing that we have a greater chance of moderating our negative mind states when we can label them.
Hence, we have two mind states that we describe in this book: the Blue Zone and the Red Zone. These states approximately overlap the tripartite brain in the following way:
The Red Zone
The Red Zone describes the mind states that emerge while engaging with the collaboration between the reptilian and mammalian brains, the two ‘oldest’ and most efficient regions of our brain. In other words, the locus of control of the actions, behaviour, thoughts or feelings of a person stems from either the mammalian or reptilian brains. The Red Zone is associated with the drive to survive and is not particularly self aware, nor self-managing.
Recalling Marion’s story, it would not surprise you that the issues that she faces arise out of an overactive Red Zone. To describe the Red Zone in a single concept, we would use anxiety: where anxiety exists, or the potential for anxiety to easily present, the Red Zone is active. When the Red Zone is active, it does so at the expense of the Blue Zone.
While the full range of emotions are available in the Red Zone, emotions characterised by responses to threat, fear or loss are more accessible in this state. Moreover, absence of awareness and control of feelings in this state creates huge potential to cascade and perpetuate further feelings, thoughts, moods, behaviour and even self perception.
In their book “A General Theory of Love”, Lewis, Amini and Lannon use the elegant metaphor of emotions being like musical notes made by a piano. As the hammer strikes a string, a resonance that we detect as musical pitch occurs. Such is the case with emotions; when the resonance is strong enough to detect we have a feeling. Characteristically, the Red Zone has the ability to replay these notes without, itself, being able to discriminate between the original and ‘echo’ notes. Hence, negative emotions and feelings persist with us, each memory of the original trigger causing another hammer strike.
For Marion, this re-resonating occurs to such a degree that it cascades into feelings that result in self harm and even attempts on her life. As it turns out, Marion has an overactive limbic system, to the point where her conscious world narrows to consider only strategies that fulfil the self harm ‘tape’. Her amygdalae become so active that they override her more considered ‘impulse-managing’ Blue Zone brain. Many of us have experienced something of Marion’s condition, though most often without the drive towards self harm. Think of the last time that you really ‘lost it’. Perhaps it was slamming a door, yelling at the kids or lashing out an inanimate object. Daniel Goleman, famed author of “Emotional Intelligence” would name this an ‘amygdala hijack’. In this moment, you were likely unable to think clearly, perhaps found it difficult to manage impulses and were very narrowly focused on the issue of the moment. This is the world of the ‘Red Zone’.
For others the impact of the Red Zone that Marion experiences is often less dramatic, but no less an influence on their life. Take this story from a principal about a high performing teacher with an easily activated Red Zone:
Malcolm is a teacher I once worked alongside. When he had compliance in his classroom, he was a highly engaging and very popular teacher. He used a variety of instructional practices to create learning opportunities for his students and, not surprisingly, he often had outstanding results from his students.As Malcolm’s principal, I had, on one occasion, no choice but to place a student with Asperger’s syndrome in his class. This student challenged the very core values that Malcolm held: “I am the teacher and you will respect me”. The interaction between these two intransigent, but in their own right worthy, people was fiery and socially destructive.
The trigger of this student behaving in a manner that challenged Malcolm’s professional mores created a Red Zone ‘cycling’ cascade of
“This student is not doing what I asked”
“I am angry”
“I am the teacher”
“He should do as he is told”
“I need to act and show authority”
While the conditions were predictable and understood, Malcolm was an outstanding teacher. When his environment changed, so too did his levels of anxiety. For Malcolm, the absence of awareness through being in the Red Zone put possible solutions and choices out of reach. Just as a baby’s whole world is hunger when they are hungry, and just as Marion’s whole world was pain when she was in her Red Zone, Malcolm became the very expression of his Red Zone. It was visible for all to see (and as we will see later, available for others to experience), leading eventually to his premature exit from an otherwise successful teaching career.
The Blue Zone
The Blue Zone, clearly a very different mind state, is the overlap between the emotional mammalian brain and the neocortex, the ‘human’ brain, and particularly where the locus of control is in the human brain. Indeed, as you will see from this point on, this Blue Zone mind state is the Success Zone.
As was the case in the Red Zone, the full range of emotions are available to the Blue Zone, but critically the massive capacity of the prefrontal cortex, and all of its attributes shown above, is enlisted. This provides awareness and choice through the ability to think about emotions and thinking itself.
Take a ‘good news’ story chronicled by the “Daily Collegian” of Tampa in 2005:
Good news from Tampa -- common decency may not be dead.
A few days ago, amid sweltering heat, a homeless mother living at a Salvation Army shelter with her five kids discovered a purse heavy with $800 in cash and two paychecks in a parking lot. Then she did the unthinkable --she returned it.
According to Tampa news sources, 24-year-old Canesha Blackman didn't even open the bag. She was quoted as saying that she would feel terrible if she lost money, and didn't want to put someone else through that trauma.
Imagine the full range of emotions and thoughts that this homeless mother might have gone through: joy at the find, uncertainty, empathy through imagining how the loser of the bag felt, the comparison against a moral framework, the decision to return the bag and the likely good feeling resulting from the generosity and honesty of the bag’s return. While it is hard to know how aware she may have been, it is clear that she exercised strong choice in the matter, a element largely absent in the Red Zone.
The ‘human’ or cortical brain is complex beyond comprehension. However, even a cursory acknowledgement of its ‘skill set’ illuminates why a marriage between mammalian and cortical brains is so powerful. This cortical brain, amongst many things, provides:
The ability to solve new problems
An ability to plan, set goals and monitor errors
A sense of who we are as individuals - self identity
Imagination
Empathy - knowledge and insight into the emotions of others
Essentially, the Blue Zone is characterized by social orientation, self-awareness, and through this awareness, an ability to choose or self-manage.
In our most recent meeting with Marion, she mentioned that her last ‘event’ was marked by a subtle but significant shift. In the middle of her limbic dominance and on the way to the toilet to self harm, she had the thought “I am in my red zone…”. This was enough of a toe in the door for her to redirect the outcome and avoid yet another self-harming session. It was the emergence of Blue Zone awareness and choice. While her mood and feelings were still Red Zone, the impact of a fraction of the Blue Zone illustrates its huge potential for change and growth.
Conclusion
The Blue and Red Zones, then, are two mind states that are useful to identify and build awareness around. Note that this is all they are: Blue is not good and Red is not evil, they are just two different mind states. Hence, if you are in a Red Zone moment, you are not a bad person, you are just having a Red Zone moment. Each state has its use, its own ideal context. If you were to step off a curb into the path of a bus, you would find yourself back on the curb, heart beating, before your cognitive brain has a chance to think anything. The impulsiveness and speed of the Red Zone, here, is in its element: survival.
Using the Blue Zone to rescue you from the path of an oncoming bus is as ludicrous as its success is short term. A Blue Zone response would be reflective, observational and considerate of options. Slow and cumbersome compared with the Red Zone, by the time you have considered the question “…if things could be perfect, how might they look now?” the bus has moved on, as have you.
Using the Red Zone to solve social issues is just as ridiculous. A system that prepares you only for a physical response in such an impulsive and unaware fashion cannot have much chance of success. Yet we continue to employ it in resolving conflict, managing people and coercing change. The rest of this book is about applying the Blue Zone to yourself, to helping others grow, to creating thriving organisations. Blue Zone principles will help you become a better communicator, a more influential leader and a more interesting person to be around.
Action Zone: Red Zone Activation Exercise
Take a moment to think of situations that trigger a Red Zone response that is at least moderate in you. Use this exercise to build your awareness of aspects of your habituated Red Zone responses.
Where are you when this happens?
Who or what might have triggered the response?
How often do you experience a moderate to strong red zone response?
How quickly does it appear?
How quickly does it subside?
What are your dominant triggers? (Uncertainty, Lack of Control, Rejection, Unfairness, not being Listened to?)
Come back to this exercise after working with the methods for managing down your Red Zone. Check to see how you are progressing in shrinking your amygdalae!
Chapter 3
Your Mind Zones In Action
Comfort in expressing your emotions will allow you to share the best of yourself with others, but not being able to control your emotions will reveal your worst.
Bryant H. McGill
Imagine you are running to catch a train about to depart. You run to the platform that your train usually leaves from and you get on before you look to see (if at all) where it is going. This is a metaphor for the Red Zone. You are ‘inside’ the emotion, fully engaged and even consumed by it perhaps.
Now picture standing on an overpass to all platforms. You are watching trains arrive and depart from the platforms, perhaps knowing already the destinations of some or all of the trains. Knowing this, you choose to ‘engage’ with one of the trains as you please. This is the Blue Zone metaphor: knowing the destination, and perhaps even from where the trains have come, is the attribute of mindfulness or awareness that enables the next step: choice.
In either zone, the full range of emotions are present and available, and you may still fully engage with that emotion. There are people we know, as would you, that live most of their life in the Red Zone, yet are often happy people. In spite of this, the Red Zone very much limits the future development of such people. Only in the Blue Zone does awareness and choice open the door to significant growth.
The Celebrated Case Of Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage is now somewhat of a celebrity in books such as this. His story, in many ways, exposed potential secrets of the prefrontal cortex, one of the central players in the Blue Zone. On September 13, 1848, twenty-five-year-old Gage was working as a railroad construction foreman, blasting rock for the Rutland & Burlington Railroad Company near Cavendish, Vermont in the United States. After drilling a hole and adding sand and gun powder, his regular activity was to tamp down the mix using a large iron rod. On this occasion, the tamping process ignited the gunpowder mix, firing the iron rod as a projectile through his forehead. Amazingly he survived the accident, though with substantial damage to one or both of his frontal lobes.
Effectively lobotomised, Phineas was conscious and physically well, beyond belief considering the scale of the injury. His treating doctor, John Martyn Harlow noted:
“You will excuse me for remarking here, that the picture presented was, to one unaccustomed to military surgery, truly terrific; but the patient bore his sufferings with the most heroic firmness. He recognized me at once, and said he hoped he was not much hurt. He seemed to be perfectly conscious, but was getting exhausted from the hemorrhage. Pulse 60, and regular. His person, and the bed on which he was laid, were literally one gore of blood.”
Indeed, he recovered to full physical health shortly after the accident, yet Harlow noted significant psychological consequences:
“…He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible.”
John Martyn Harlow, (1848). "Passage of an iron rod through the head".
The outcomes from this case, and many others both accidental and deliberate since, have continued to confirm the critical nature of the prefrontal cortex as a participant, even leader, in the Blue Zone. While many areas, including those in the emotional brain, contribute to Blue Zone activity, it seems that the area behind your forehead is special indeed. Damage to this part of the brain can not only change your behaviour, but who you actually are.
Influential Leaders
Think for a moment on the one or two most positively influential teachers that you had as a student. Picture them, recall how it is you felt in their presence, what it was that they gave to you. When we ask people to do this, the most common answers are:
They listened to me
They respected me (in spite of how I might have behaved and/or performed)
They challenged me
They believed in me
They were passionate about their subject, and what it could offer others
There may have been some other attributes, but generally, this list captures how most people answer. We have asked you to think of a past positively influential teacher here because this is often the most accessible example for people. This list also applies, however, to the most influential leaders or, indeed, to influential people generally.
We have also conducted extensive research with the students of today, and when we ask them “What makes a great school for you?”, then we get the answers:
A place where I am safe
Where teachers listen to me
Where teachers respect me
Where teachers believe in me
Where teachers know their subject, and know how to deliver it
These are in order, though the middle three might easily be interchanged with each other. When we ask students the follow-up question of “When these things are present for you, what happens?”, the answers are just as clear:
I have more confidence to do the work and learn what I need to learn
I have (greater) respect for the teacher
I want to go out of my way not to let the teacher down.
Interestingly, the reference to confidence correlates to brain resources, particularly glucose and oxygen, being present where they are needed. Moreover, the more we test this against other contexts, such as leadership in general, the more we see that this seems to be emerging as a universal description of the elements and outcomes of effective engagement.
Think, then, of the most effective and inspirational leader that you have had in recent times. It is most likely that they themselves created professional safety for you, listened, respected and believed in you, and had the knowledge and skills of leadership. Through this, you most likely felt greater confidence in doing what you had to do, greater respect for the leader and a willingness to go out of your way for this individual or the organisation that they led. On this last point, where one leader out of many displays listening, respecting and believing, people tend to develop strong loyalty to this one leader, at the expense of other leaders. Where many or all leaders listen, respect and believe, people develop strong loyalty to the organisation.
Triggering Your Blue Zone
So what are the triggers that cause our brains to shift the balance to the Blue Zone? Resources are redirected when we detect:
Generosity
Vulnerability
Inclusion
Clarity and certainty
Permission
Acknowledgement
Trust
Safety (physical, professional, social and emotional)
Being listened to
Being believed in
Being respected unconditionally
Authentic and focused attention
Of the above list, where many of the elements overlap in some way, the last is the most significant. We would even go so far as to say that all of the triggers above the last are forms of authentic, focused attention. Indeed, deep engagement is triggered when a person detects that your attention on them is authentic, strong and for them. Where they detect that your attention, while perhaps remaining deep and real, is for you, the listener, engagement falls.
You may have noticed already: attention is the common thread throughout this book. How you ‘spend’ your attention on yourself or others, and how aware you are of your use of attention, will largely determine your success, and the success of those you lead.
The Drive To Efficiency
There is a price to pay for using the Blue Zone: it is resource intensive. Studies have shown that you can be using up to five times as much energy in your Blue Zone, compared with brain regions associated with your Red Zone. So let’s just take a step back, and look at some key points about your brain before we take a closer look at your Red Zone:
The most accessible part of your brain, for you, is the thinking brain - the neocortex. This is where you experience your thoughts, your senses, and through specialised parts of the neocortex, the emotional brain.
Most of your brain’s activity is inaccessible to your conscious awareness. Some suggest, like an iceberg, that up to 90% of the activity in your brain is below the level of overt consciousness.
The more recent or ‘modern’ the ‘equipment’, the more energy it uses. Your brain stem, the reptilian brain, is the most efficient part of your brain in terms of energy consumption.
Given that your energy availability is a biological economy, and therefore limited at any moment in time, your brain will always take the path of efficiency if it can. Habits, which reside in your Red Zone, are always preferred over something new, which takes concentration, cognitive effort and resources.
The picture I am attempting to construct above is that a good part of your brain is not under your direct conscious control, and that it will ‘decide’ on a course of action, not from what might be’ best’, but what will be most efficient. This is why, when you have taken months to relearn a golf swing, under pressure you revert to your old habitual action. It is also why, perhaps after time spent repairing a relationship, under emotional pressure the dialogue reverts to the old argumentative scripts so easily.
All of this means that already your brain is biased towards choosing the path of the Red Zone over the Blue, if only because it wins the efficiency stakes.
Your Red Zone In Detail
The hallmarks of the Red Zone are immersion, lack of awareness and lack of strong and deliberate choice. Oftentimes, the less intrusive and negative activities of the Red Zone just potter away in the background, so to speak. Remembering that the Red Zone is the mind state resulting from overlap between our limbic and reptilian brains, in any ‘normal’ moment, the Red Zone will not be intruding to any great degree. It is when we have a mind state that is strongly coloured and driven by the Red Zone, that it intrudes at the cost of the Blue Zone. While the most common and obvious forms of this intrusion are anger, guilt, anxiety and fear, the Red Zone also intrudes in a particularly impulsive way through blind love, lust and greed.
Our Red Zones are a vestige of a biological era where the imperative was physical survival. Amongst many things, our limbic system is alert for anything that might be interpreted as a physical threat, and responds both in the brain, and in the body. When activated, our threat-response system shuts down non-essential functions, like digestion, and blood flow is diverted from internal organs to muscles and extremities, in preparation for action: fight or flight. Take note of a really angry person and you will see this extra blood flow as flushing of the face. Eye pupils are dilated, heart and breathing rates are increased, the immune system is suppressed, and agents are released into the blood to assist in blood clotting. The body, then, is prepared for a physical response.
In terms of the impact of a perceived threat on thinking and emotions, this state brings a strong self-interested perspective, engages impulsive desires, resorts to pre-existing habits and expects the worst. The attention ‘field’ narrows, and tends to lock onto the cause of the threat. Creative thinking, which may well be needed for the resolution of the ‘threat’, is suppressed, as is the ability to read and understand the emotional state of others. Error tracking and monitoring, such as saying something inappropriate, is also suppressed.
This cachet of physiological and neurological reactions is all well and good, if you are indeed facing physical danger, but is far from helpful in the heat of an argument, managing a teenager or dealing with an angry customer. Moreover, the problem with Red Zone responses is that the amygdalae are so efficient at alerting us to threat, that without habituated awareness, they often have us reacting well before we have cognitive control. The preparation, mentally and somatically, for a physical resolution of the threat or stress is a poor strategy when we are actually called upon to settle the threat socially and/or emotionally. In the absence of physical resolution, no matter how well we have dealt with the situation, the biochemistry of the stressed state will persist longer.
The typical Red Zone response has been well exposed now, using fMRI brain scanning techniques. Far from theoretical conjecture, social cognitive neuroscience is illuminating such outcomes when subjects are exposed to stimuli such as rejection, ambiguity, perceived unfairness, not being listened to, and lack of perceived control. It is worth noting that in physical terms, none of these stimuli are life threatening. However, try telling your brain this: the physical, emotional and cognitive response driven by the activation of the Red Zone is as if our very lives were at stake. For people like Marion, where the Red Zone activation is dangerously unbalanced, lives can be at stake.
So let’s look at the triggers that can get the Red Zone active:
Fear, anxiety and guilt
Rejection and exclusion
Uncertainty and ambiguity
Perceived unfairness
Perceived lack of control
Perceived or imagined loss
Not being listened to
Being judged
Being told how to think, feel, or in some cases what to do
Of all of the above, uncertainty, imagined or perceived loss and perceived lack of control are the most significant Red Zone triggers.
Emotional Contagion
Intuitively, we all know that emotions are contagious: how else do evocative stories have impact on us? Neuroscience seems to have uncovered the bio-mechanism for the catching of another's emotions: mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons are special nerve cells in the brain that fire both when someone performs an action, and when someone observes the same action performed by another person. These special cells are found in mammals, and even some birds. It seems that where there is some sort of social structure to a species, mirror neurons are present. These neurons, then, "mirror" the behaviour of another, as though the observer were themselves acting. In humans, brain activity consistent with mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex, both significant regions of the ‘modern’ brain.
Empirical research suggests that these neurons allow us to understand the emotional state of others, and to adopt to some degree, those same emotions. Indeed, such research is showing that people with Autism spectrum disorders have reduced function, or reduced numbers of mirror neurons, suggesting an explanation to the social awkwardness for such people.
It seems that our ability to read, adopt and infer emotions is such a strong trait of our brains that we even attribute emotionality to inanimate objects. Test this out, if not on yourself, then on someone you know, by watching the Ikea Lamp advertisement (on our resources page – http://www.thesuccesszone.com/resources). Ask yourself, or your test subject, whether any emotions for the lamp were felt?
As the above experiment shows, the ability to read and adopt the emotions from another can happen remotely. Remote in the sense that you may not know the person you are catching the emotions from - you need not have a pre-existing relationship with someone to have their emotions 'infect' you. Remote in the sense that you even need not be with them - you can simply observe emotions in two dimensions, on a television or a computer screen. You may well have seen the YouTube phenomenon that is Christian the Lion; try watching it without feeling generosity, goodwill and affection.
So it seems that these positive 'Blue Zone' emotions are very contagious, particularly when we observe generosity or vulnerability. As it turns out, the negative emotions associated with our Red Zone states are far more contagious, more rapid in their adoption and more persistent after the event. Something like the ‘Christian the Lion’ video may have a 'contagion impact' of minutes, but road rage, recalcitrant teenagers and angry customers can affect us for hours, or longer. Research suggests that Red Zone emotions are more contagious than Blue Zone emotions. Further, the greater the energy in the exchange, the greater the 'infection'. This would explain the contagiousness on one hand of Christian the Lion (with its attendant highly demonstrative affection) and, on the other, road rage.
To further add to the 'hair trigger' state that accompanies Red Zone emotions, it seems that leaders are more contagious than peers. Teachers in classrooms, bosses in boardrooms, parents with children: all are in the most ‘infectious’ positions.
To recall another example, think to when you were last in a classroom and the teacher used their positional power to drive towards coercive behaviour management. Imagine that you are getting on with your work, when one of the challenging students in the class causes a minor disruption. For a variety of reasons, the teacher may, themselves not be in the most ideal brain state. The outcome is as common as it is predictable: “YOU - get out of my class now!!” Let’s take a moment to consider the impact on the brain and mind states immediately after this has happened.
Firstly, the challenging student will have had their own limbic activity ramped up, as a direct result of the actions of the teacher. Consequently, this student is now far less able to understand the needs and emotions of others, manage their own impulses, and track errors against values or expectations. In one simple step, their survival circuits have been switched on, and their focus is now very much on the needs of themselves, not others.
Secondly, there is a good chance that the student in question will respond back to the teacher with more Red Zone. This will have the effect of further raising the Red Zone activity of the teacher, with the outcome leading only to Red Zone Escalation.
None of this may yet be of much news to you: this is very much an everyday occurrence between two people in some way, somewhere. The real, and often hidden, impact of such a situation is on the observers. In this example, every student who witnesses the disagreement, themselves, has increased Red Zone activity. In one fell swoop, the original coercive behaviour management strategy has shifted everyone in the room into their individual Red Zones. While this will vary in degree for the individual, there will have been a collective shift from being socially interested, to being self interested. No one is, or can be, a winner here.
Such examples are not restricted to classrooms. Road rage, board room tantrums and other such overt displays of anger are a part of our every day life.
Take something recently witnessed by Andrew whilst travelling by car:
After stopping for lunch, I was in a queue for one of the 'healthy' fast food chains, that make your order in front of you. The first inkling of a problem behind the counter was the rather offhand impatience, from the sales assistant, with my hesitation in making a choice. "The menu is there, right in front of you", was inflected with enough emotion (frustration) for me to feel my feathers ruffled, so to speak. While this was a minor incident, it led me to watch further, as I ate my lunch nearby. Sure enough, a young man, unhappy with what had been made for him and, more to the point, the way he was treated around this, rather grumpily pushed back his food, and words were exchanged. Clearly, his choice was like it or lump it, and he lumped, it asking for a refund.
What happened next is possibly the worst example of customer service that I have witnessed: the person serving him threw the refund back at the fellow, accompanied by "You shouldn't have f****ng thrown your food at me". The impact of this was immediate, not only on the customer - who responded by upending the contents of the counter on the floor - but on all who witnessed this. Anger, embarrassment and distress were rampant, and several people left the queue.
Knowing this, particularly if you depend on the provision of a service or product, is critical. In literal terms, injury is added to insult to a degree by the rapid hard-wiring of emotional memories in our limbic systems, particularly the amygdalae. In other words, highly charged Red Zone emotions that are caught from others are sticky, and easily recalled. It is likely that, for those present, it will take some time to forget what was witnessed in that food court.
Action Zone: Red Zone Awareness:
Use the list of questions here to explore the impact of your Red Zone on yourself and on others:
What do you predominantly feel when you are in your Red Zone?
What are the major physical signs that indicate that you are in your Red Zone?
What are the major or consistent triggers? (Think of when you are under pressure most)
How often do you notice that you are in your Red Zone?