Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence | Daniel Goleman | Talks at Google

MENG TAN: My dear friend Daniel Goleman is one of the world's most recognized experts on topics related to emotional intelligence. He is also an amazing author. He has written more than ten books, and his book "Emotional Intelligence", that book alone, sold more than 5 million copies. He has received numerous awards and has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. On a personal level, Dan is also the person most responsible for me becoming an author. So in 2007, Dan and I, with a group of distinguished friends, co-created something called “Look Inside Yourself,” which became a very popular curriculum on Google and beyond.

And I remember in 2009, Dan and I were taking a walk there. I remember the exact place and the exact time. We were taking a walk and I was trying to convince him to write a book about "Look Inside Yourself." And what he told me was that I would love to do it. I just don't have time. And then he looked at me, pointed his finger at me, and said, Meng, why don't you write the book? I was like, me? I am an engineer, not a doctor. Damn, Jim. In the end, thanks to Dan's support and his belief in me, I ended up writing a book.

Thank you very much Danny. I am very excited about Dan's new book, "Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence." Attention skill is the basis of all higher cognitive and emotional abilities. Attention creates the conditions for personal

excellence

. Attention is so important that in "Search inside yourself" it is the first thing we train. The first thing we train is attention. However, I think that, ironically, the issue of attention itself is not getting enough attention. And I can't think of anyone better than Dan to write a book on an important topic. So, dear friends... my dear friend Danny, I am delighted that you wrote this book.

And I'm glad you didn't ask me to write the book. My friends, please welcome my friend and friend of Google, Dan Goleman. DANIEL GOLEMAN: Thank you. That is sweet. I'm always happy to come to Google. 2007, that reminded me of something. In 2007, there was a brief commentary in "Time" magazine. And he said, there's a new word in the English language. The word is "perplexed." It's a combination of "bewildered" and "pissed off." And describe how you feel when the person you are with takes out their BlackBerry and starts talking to someone else. Think about it. Both things are dead.

That word and BlackBerry too. Things change quickly. That says something. I remember when I went to the publishers and said: I would like to write a book about attention. One of them said, that's great. Keep it brief. Because I think attention is a capacity, a vital capacity, as Meng implied, that is really under siege today. In fact, what worries me the most is our children, but I think we are all kind of victims. There is something quite provocative here. Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize winner, said: "What consumes information is the attention of its recipients. Therefore, a large amount of information creates a poverty of attention," to the extent that it is understood that there are two types of attention.

There is the attention that we direct voluntarily and there is the attention that seduces us. In reality, there are different systems in the brain. One is a top-down system from the prefrontal area. That's when we decided to

focus

on our work. We are applying that kind of attention. But then there are the small seductions... the endless seductions. And there are more and more. I get... I'm writing in my book and a little pop-up appears, you have an email. That's a seduction. That is an intrusion into sustained

focus

. And because of the

excellence

of our technology and the intelligence of the people who design technology (some of whom are in this room, I just realized) we need to pay more attention to whether we are going to maintain or even increase our capacity for it.

This also... the fact that attention is threatened, coupled with the fact that... in the last two or three years, there has been an explosion of neuroscientific findings about attention circuits, which has enormous implications for we. This actually, since I'm a science journalist, prompted me to write the book that Meng refused to write, perhaps fortunately, now that I think about it. And as I got further into it, I realized that I had to rethink emotional intelligence. You didn't mention that "Harvard Business Review" art. Yes, the next issue of "Harvard Business Review," coming out next week, has a cover article from me on the leader's approach, the type of approach, the intentional approach. capabilities that every leader needs.

And in reality we are all leaders. I think of leaders as anyone with a sphere of influence, not necessarily people on the chart. But to the extent that we all need to have more control over our attention, and that makes us good at the things that matter in performance today, it has led me to review emotional intelligence, or the way I think about it. And I will share it with you. There's an effect called... in statistics, many of you are probably familiar with it... the floor effect. It happens in a place like Google. It takes place at an Ivy League university.

It happens anywhere, for example, that an admission premium is placed on IQ. And it's an interesting phenomenon, because it's quite paradoxical. What it means is IQ, which is a fantastic predictor of the level of cognitive complexity you can handle and that you can understand (and therefore classify people into job roles, etc.) skills. Once you are selected by IQ, excellence is largely defined by things other than IQ. And it is because of the ground effect. And do you know the ground effect? OK. So, a little bit of statistics... so if you were to plot, let's say, what's this going to look like?...

IQ and emotional intelligence on a scatter plot, you would get a pretty random distribution, because those are things in largely independent of ability, and largely involve different parts of the brain. So you have this group of people. And if this is the IQ axis, and you select the 99th percentile, and this is the access to emotional intelligence, there is much less range of variation for IQ than for emotional intelligence. And the way this plays out in the broader organizational world is that if you look at what's called a competency model, does anyone know what a competency model is?

Another term I should explain. Then, when I was a graduate student, my professor at Harvard, David McClellan, wrote a paper. It was very controversial. He said that if you want to hire the best person for a job, any job in any organization, don't look at his IQ. Don't look at their GPA. Don't look at his personality profile. Look at the people in your own organization who fill the role you are hiring for. Identify the top 10% based on whatever metric makes sense for that job, systematically compare them to people who are average in that role, and determine the competencies or skill sets you find in the stars that you don't find in the average.

That is now called competency modeling. And world-class organizations do it, practically all over the world. And the interesting thing about the competition model, at least what interests me, is that if you add many different models and they are all derived independently, they are actually proprietary, because a company or organization wants to know for competitive reasons, what Should we look in our hires? Why should we promote? What should we develop in people? And they want to keep that close. But I added 100 or 200 models after writing "Emotional Intelligence," the next book. And I only looked at two dimensions in the competition models.

One was, if we look at distinctive competencies (not basic-level competencies, but star-studded ones) and separate them in terms of purely cognitive capabilities, such as IQ or technical skills, and on the other hand, side of the ledger is emotional intelligence, which is how we manage ourselves and how we manage our relationships. It turns out that for leadership, about 80% to 90% of independently identified competencies are on the emotional intelligence side. Well, that makes sense, because leadership isn't about being the smartest person in the room. It's about helping other people be as smart as possible, which is a social skill.

And so emotional intelligence has four parts: self-awareness, self-control, empathy and social skill. And when I looked at that through the lens of mindfulness, I realized that the first and third components, self-awareness and empathy, are varieties of mindfulness. And social skill, really, is a combination of how we handle ourselves and what we read in the other person. So managing ourselves turns out to be based on how self-aware we are. So I checked the model. I'll explain some of that to you by seeing... well, I'm going to share with you this article that will be published next week in "Harvard Business Review," so you don't have to buy it because you already have the "Reader's Digest" version.

So the first skill, or skill set, I call internal focus, which is being aware of what's going on inside of you. And that's exactly what you're teaching, Meng, in "Search Inside Yourself." You are teaching self-awareness. And by the way, I see all types of meditation, including mindfulness, as retraining attention. If we remove the belief system of any meditation from any tradition in the world, we will discover that an attention mechanism is being strengthened. Would you agree with that? Yeah? Yes, exactly. So for self-awareness, I think self-awareness is really important in a lot of pretty surprising areas of life.

I have a friend... I grew up in the Central Valley of California, in the horrible Midwest of California. Don't stop there. Seriously, keep going to Lake Tahoe. And there was a guy who lived down the street, in the next town, who I got to know pretty well. He was a really bad student. He almost flunked out of high school. He managed to go to a community college and found his way into a film course. He loved cinema. Then he entered film school. He did pretty well...he made a student film that caught the attention of a director and he was hired by the director.

The director liked his work so much that he let him direct a film. He did so well with it that they left him; in fact, a studio backed him to direct a script he had written before, when he was much younger. That one did so well that a studio wanted to back him to make another script. But he hated the fact that the studio had the final cut. That meant he considered himself a creative artist and he hated what they did in the final edit. So he said, there's no way I'm taking that money. I'm going to use the money I got from the movie and finance it myself.

Everyone he knew in Hollywood said: You're crazy. You don't risk your own money on a movie. He did it anyway, he ran out of money. Only the eleventh bank he went to gave him the money to finish. Have you seen that movie. "Star Wars." George Lucas is someone who considers himself, and considers himself, first and foremost an artist. The factory that Lucas Film stumbled upon was an accident of his life according to his values. And one of the strengths of good self-awareness is that it helps us answer the question: Is what I'm going to do in line with my sense of purpose, value and meaning or not?

And the way it does this is by tuning us into subtle signals that come from the bottom-up part of the brain, which is involuntary, automatic and, for the most part, unconscious, which also contains much more information than the brain. From top to bottom. And parts of that brain as we go through life extract decision rules; when I did that, it worked pretty well. When I said that, it was a failure. And when we are faced with a decision point, he summarizes that information for us and presents us with his advice. Problem. It does not have a direct circuit to the part of the brain that thinks with words.

It has an extensive circuit to the gastrointestinal tract. You have a feeling: you feel good or you don't feel good. Then we express it in words, after having the intuition. So I guess George had a very strong feeling: I just can't do it that way. This is an ethical rudder for us. Howard Gardner, a friend of mine at Harvard, studies what is called "good work." Good work combines our best skills (what we excel at) with what we love to do, what engages us, and what we believe in: our sense of ethics, values, purpose, and meaning. In good work, when you align excellence, commitment and ethics, you have something to do that you love to do and that is a pleasure to do.

In fact, it takes you to a state of attention, which is the state in which it is called the state of maximum cognitive efficiency or maximum neural harmony. Simple scheme. This is performance. And these are the stress hormones in the brain. And the relationship between stress and performance is well known in psychology. It is curvy. It's an inverted "u." If you have a good job, it isvery likely you are up here. This is the state that some of you may know about in the literature. It's called flow. It was determined that the state of flow (it was actually identified by researchers at the University of Chicago who asked people from many, many areas of competence and work to describe a moment when you surpassed yourself) in which you were absolutely at your best.

And they asked chess champions, basketball players and neurosurgeons. It didn't matter who they asked. They all describe the same phenomenological state. There was a neurosurgeon who described a very difficult and challenging surgery that he had to perform. He didn't know if he could do it before he started, but he did it brilliantly. At the end of the surgery, he looked around him and there was some small debris in the corner. He said to the nurse, what happened? She said, well, while you were operating, the roof caved in over there, but you didn't notice. You were so focused.

It is a concentration of 200% in the flow state. And one of the ways to flow is through developing and improving concentration. Other elements of concentration: require your best skills. They challenge you at the peak of your skill set. Another, you are totally adaptable. You are very flexible. No matter what happens, you can change. You are not fixed in any rigid pattern of behavior. Another element of flow that is very important: it feels good. The things we choose to do in life are generally things that put us into some type of flow or microflow. Flow is also where people work best.

Now, the state down here is basically boredom. Because you don't have... you have a skill set... you can be a fantastic programmer, but you're driving a taxi or whatever. Then you are not challenged. You are not interested in what you are doing. Actually, I doubt that's true here at Google, but in the work world in general, disengagement (which is what HR people call it) is a huge problem. People will do enough to keep their jobs. They are not interested. They are not committed. It's not a good job. However, what they do here is daydream. And daydreaming is another state of attention that has value.

All types of attention have a purpose and a place. When they are out of place they are a problem. It turns out that daydreaming is what the brain chooses to do 50% of the time. There was a study: Harvard psychologists gave people an iPhone app that called them at random times of the day and asked them two things: what are you doing now and what are you thinking about? In other words, is your mind somewhere else? Are you daydreaming? Those are the 50% data. I dreamed most of all when people were commuting to work, sitting in front of a computer terminal.

I'm sure that's not true for the people in this room, but for other people. And work, in general. The most focused? When people make love. Who would answer an application at a time like this? This is totally baffling to me. Happens. So these are two different states of attention. The third is when people are stressed. In fact, there is an article about this. By the way, this axis... the metric for this is the levels of stress hormones, particularly adrenaline and cortisol, in the brain. So if you're up to here, it means you're suffering from what's called an amygdala hijack.

The amygdala is the part of the emotional brain that acts as a threat radar. Our tonsils right now are answering the question that the tonsils have asked throughout evolution. And it is, am I safe? Is there any danger? That's what the amygdala cares about. We must remember that the brain was designed to survive. The neocortex, the part of the brain we use all the time, was later...it's still beta. This was added much later in evolutionary history. And in fact, the brain is still designed to prioritize survival mechanisms. So if the amygdala thinks there's a threat, it can hijack the rest of the brain, particularly the prefrontal area, the part of the brain that we pride ourselves on: the part of the brain that manages attention.

And the amygdala has a privileged position in the brain. A neural connection from the ear, eye and senses. Then you get a snapshot of what's going on. There is a problem. I don't know if many people in this room are old enough to remember when the TV had static. AUDIENCE: Yes. DANIEL GOLEMAN: You remember the non-digital era. Some people do it. OK. That's what the amygdala is looking at. It has a static image, because most of the signal actually goes up to the top of the brain. But the amygdala has an instant activation mechanism. He has a sort of "better safe than sorry" point of view.

So you call 911 when there really isn't an emergency. And to make it more complicated, we now do not live in biological reality, where saber-toothed tiger threats exist, but rather we live in a complex social reality. So the amygdala is misinterpreting social cues…or interpreting them. That guy isn't treating me right. That is not fair. The amygdala is also very childish. Then the amygdala might have a reaction like, "This guy isn't treating me fairly." I would like to hit him. This is how the amygdala thinks. So the good news is that this signal goes from the midbrain to the prefrontal area.

And the prefrontal area gathers information from all parts of the brain. Then I might add something like, oh, but this is your boss. So you don't hit him. You smile and change the subject or something. That's called emotional intelligence. So, people who are in this state... what, if there was an article in "Science" about that state called "The neurobiology of failure." Exhausted people have attention hijacking, because one thing the amygdala does is redirect attention to whatever is bothering us. If you have a problem in a relationship, you will be thinking about that problem at times when you might want to think about something else, like at 2 in the morning, when you want to sleep.

That's the amygdala. It forces us to divert our attention from where it would be if we were here and focus on what is bothering us. It also reorganizes memory. Memory is in a hierarchy. So when you're fighting with your partner, you can't quite remember why I'm with this person. This is how the amygdala works. So this is a state of attention that is very inefficient, particularly when people reflect. There is a difference between constructive worry and rumination. Rumination is thought loops that you can't stop thinking about and that you find disturbing and repeat the same thing over and over again.

Constructive worry comes when you think about it (the amygdala wants you to think about it) and you come up with something you can do. And then you stop thinking. You can regain more voluntary control over attention. So those are three very important types of attention. I want to draw your attention to an aspect of this that I think is really crucial, particularly for kids today. And that is the voluntary ability to get here. It's called "cognitive control." When you practice mindfulness, you are amplifying cognitive control. Mainly for your information, I was in Chicago yesterday. And I gave a talk and Roger Weissberg from the Social Emotional Learning Collaborative was there.

And he said that he really sees this as the next step, integrating, basically, attentional training with emotional intelligence. So, depending on people's point of view, cognitive control is talked about in many interesting ways. It is sometimes called delay of gratification, attention allocation, working memory, resistance to distractions, inhibition of impulses, focus on goals, and readiness for learning. The level of cognitive control in a young child determines how well he or she can pay attention to what the teacher, textbook, or lesson is saying. It is absolutely essential for understanding. And there is a bell curve to this. One of the first tests of cognitive control, in fact, the most famous, was done very close to here at Stanford, at the Bing preschool on campus.

And they brought four-year-old children, they sat them at a small table, they put a big, juicy marshmallow on the table and the experimenter said: you can eat this marshmallow now if you want, but if you don't you need it. Until I run an errand and come back, then you can have two. And then he leaves the room. This is a soul-testing situation for any four-year-old, I promise you. I have seen videos. Some go, lick and then jump back, as if it were something dangerous. Some just sing and dance... you know, sing to themselves to distract themselves.

About a third can't stand it. They just swallow it on the spot. Another third wait the endless 10 minutes or whatever and get both. The discovery of the reward comes 14 years later, when they are located and the two groups are compared, those who grabbed and those who waited. And it turns out that those who waited can still delay gratification in pursuit of their goals, which is what this is proof of. But the most interesting thing is that they have a 210 point advantage over 1600 on the SAT. Now, the SAT is a test of achievement, it is a test of what you have learned.

It is not an IQ test. And when I told this to the people at Princeton who take the SAT, they were stunned. Because they said that's greater than the difference we see between children who come from a family where the parents only have a primary education and those where one of the parents at least has a graduate degree. But these are all children of people at Stanford University. So what is emerging is that cognitive control is an independent asset: the ability to pay good attention. This became really clear in a study done in New Zealand, where they took every child born in a city (I think 1,037 children) for a year, between the ages of four and eight.

They tested them rigorously to check for cognitive control. And then they located them when they were 32 years old. This can only be done in New Zealand. Don't try this in Silicon Valley, I assure you. And what they found was that the cognitive control of a child between four and eight years old predicted that child's financial success and health in her mid-30s better than the IQ or the socioeconomic status of the family in which she grew up. Think about that. It's very, very convincing. And it made me feel, that and many other findings, that we should pay more attention to this aspect of child care.

It should be part of education. Because in the study carried out in New Zealand they discovered that children among eight foreigners managed to enhance their cognitive control had the same benefits. And one of the conclusions was that yes, we should teach this to children. And, in fact, if we taught it to all children, it would help the productivity of the economy. People would be much more effective at their jobs. So there are several ways to do it. One of them seems really interesting to me. I visited Sesame Workshop. Sesame Workshop is where they created "Sesame Street." The day I visited, they were having a meeting where all the writers were meeting with two cognitive scientists.

Because it turns out that each segment of Sesame Street is the translation of a discovery in developmental science wrapped in entertainment. Then they told me about one that is specifically aimed at cognitive control in preschool children. It's called "the cookie connoisseurs club." I don't know if you've ever seen Sesame. How many people have seen "Sesame Street?" Then you might remember Alan. He has the store on Sesame Street. Alan wanted to create a cookie connoisseurs club, like a wine club. You take a cookie. You examine it to see if there are any defects. Then you smell it.

And then you take a bite. Cookie Monster, of course...this was for him. He wanted to be in the cookie club. But he couldn't get a bite. He could only gobble. So Alan used several reframes for him. And the one that worked was like the marshmallow test. "Cookie, if you can nibble it now, you'll get a lot of good cookies to eat later." And that was the one who did it for him. This is a cognitive control lesson aimed at young children, because the way children learn is through modeling. When young children watch other children or adults operate, their brains take it all in.

So if they see someone exhibiting cognitive control, that helps them a little bit. Older children. I was at PS 112 in Spanish Harlem in New York City. And I watched the kids who are from a really impoverished neighborhood. Is East Palo Alto still poor? Something like? It is not like before? OK. So... anyway, in New York, it's... the kids live in a huge housing complex next to the school. The teacher of this class said, you know, the other week, a boy came in very upset. And I said, what's wrong? And she said: I saw someone who got shot.

And she said to the class: How many of you know someone who's been shot? Everyone raised their hands. That kind of childhood... very traumatic, very difficult. And normally you would find that children who come from such a chaotic background manifest it in the classroom. But thisClass was absolutely calm and focused. And I realized why when I saw them do what they call "breath buddies." Breathing buddies happen every day. Each child goes to his cubby and takes his favorite stuffed animal, finds a place to lie down on the floor, places the animal face down and watches it rise and fall.

And they count one, two, three as they inhale and one, two, three as they exhale. Basically, it is training attention. When you train the circuit for sustained attention, you get a "two for" because it's the same circuit: it's intertwined with the circuit the brain uses to manage the distribution of emotions and impulses. That's why you get calmness along with concentration. Is there another way to do this. Maybe Meng knows. It's from SEL. It was developed by a friend of mine named Roger Weissberg. It's called "the traffic light." SEL is social emotional learning. Many schools across the country now have an emotional intelligence curriculum.

Basically in managing emotions, being aware of them, empathy, getting along and collaborating. The traffic light is on the wall of each room. It's a traffic light that says, when you're upset, remember the traffic light. Red light, stop. Take it easy. Think before acting. Yellow light, think about a variety of things you could do and what the consequence would be. Green light, choose the best one and try it. And that's another way to teach cognitive control. Otherwise, I had my grandkids play the beta version of a video game being developed for the iPad at... a group in Wisconsin.

Each time you exhale, you touch the screen once. And on the fifth exhale, play it twice. And if you keep doing that, it gets harder; In other words, the challenge gets better and you learn more and more. And secondly, you get a visual reward: as if it were a desert scene, flowers would bloom. They loved him. But that's also explicitly designed to teach, to improve cognitive control. And then, of course, the best way is the one that Meng has developed for us. What's that? MENG TAN: We develop together. DANIEL GOLEMAN: We develop together. I'll give you the credit.

OK. So that's the internal focus. Inner focus is both self-awareness and management of our inner world, particularly our distressing emotions. The second type of approach is another approach: knowing what is happening with the people around us. There are three types of empathy. The first is... what time is it now? MENG TAN: It's 3:40. DANIEL GOLEMAN: When am I supposed to stop? MENG TAN: 4:00. DANIEL GOLEMAN: You mean I have 20 minutes? Alright? Well, forget about other empathy. OK. So there are three types; cognitive, understanding how a person thinks; emotional, understanding and feeling what the person feels and feels with; and empathic concern.

Empathic concern is not, I understand what's going on in you, but if you're in pain, if you're suffering, if you have a need that I can help you with, I'm inclined to help you with it. It is the basis of compassion. And compassion, by the way, begins with noticing what's going on with the other person. There's a spectrum from noticing the person, to tuning in and registering what's going on inside them, to empathizing, and then, if you can help, doing so. And I have a lot more to say, but it's all in my book. Because I wanted to get to the third type of approach, because I think it's very prominent here.

And there's a real problem in the world that I think Google, or the talents in this room and in this valley, could really help with. The external focus is a systems awareness. And I think we all need to be aware of the systems. They could be organizational systems. In an organization, who do you need to influence to make a decision you are trying to implement? That's a kind of systems consciousness. There are also family systems. Family dynamics are systemic. And then there are the broader systems. And it's one of the broader systems that I want to talk about, because it's really a disaster.

And I don't know if you know the terms "wicked problem" and "disorder." They are actually technical terms. A complicated problem is not understood until after a solution has been formulated. It has no stopping rule. You don't know when you're done. Solutions to wicked problems are neither good nor bad. Each wicked problem is essentially novel and unique. Every solution to a complicated problem is a one-time operation. There is no possibility of a learning curve. Now, to aggravate a complicated problem, you have to observe what is technically called a disaster. A disaster is a wicked problem that interacts with other wicked problems.

Another characteristic is that there is no authority in charge of solving the problem. The people who are trying to solve the problem are also creating the problem. And time is running out. Welcome to the dilemma of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene era began with the Industrial Revolution and has been increasing in ferocity ever since. Geologists use this term for the current era in which we exist to describe the fact that one species is altering the global systems that support life in the wrong direction. That is the dilemma of the Anthropocene. The real dilemma is that there are three operating systems that don't fit together.

One system, rather a domain, is the human systems (energy, transportation, construction, industry and commerce systems, on the one hand) that are systematically degrading the eight global systems that support life on the planet. The poster boy, of course, is carbon. But that's just one of many, many different types of problems. The real problem is that the human brain is not designed to notice the problem. The human brain does not have any perceptual apparatus that allows us to perceive this directly, because it is either too macro or too micro. I mean, we're... the human brain is designed to register, honey, we have to talk... that's a threat... but not what's actually happening to the planet.

The amygdala doesn't care. He shrugs. So this is a big, big problem. And, you know, it puts us all in the position of doing evil collectively, simply for the sake of living. Because everything we use leaves a mark. And a footprint is another way of saying that it has a certain level of destructiveness to natural systems. So there's actually a metric for this. It's called a life cycle assessment. Some of you may have heard of it. Take, for example, these glasses. And he says, well, glass. In manufacturing, glass is not a product. It is a process.

You could start the glass story when you get some sand. And you're going to mix it with chemicals. And you are going to transport it. You're going to take it to a place where you cook it at a high temperature for many, many hours, all of that. Every step of the way, you can break down what's happening. And life cycle assessment does it in a very precise way. He says there are almost 2,000 discrete glass steps, from start to finish. And at each step, you can analyze a series of emissions and impacts on the environment, on the health of the people related to it, and on the social well-being of the people related to it.

And metrics... there is a science. It's called industrial ecology. It is a combination of physics, chemistry, biology, environmental sciences, industrial design and industrial engineering. They are the ones who have this metric. So now there is a way to accurately analyze the damage we cause just by living. So...this, by the way, is the part of my talk that makes me depressed and guilt-inducing. I'm sorry. I have a friend who teaches life cycle assessment at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has his students analyze his fingerprint. And then they tell him, and it is something very depressing, the world would have been better if I had not been born.

It is not like this? And he says that's the wrong conclusion. He says that instead of just looking at the footprint, we should look at our handprint. The handprint takes the basis of the footprint and then calculates the metric of everything good we do, everything that reduces our footprint. He says that instead of just lamenting the footprint, he thinks about how you can continue to build your footprint. People can do it. Families can do it. Schools can do it. Companies can do it. There is an added handprint as well as an added footprint. If we are truly responsible to the generations who will bear the cost of how we live now, we would take it very seriously.

And I hope someone does. My job is to tell you and tell you what I think some solutions might be. But I don't really have the answer. There's a group in Berkeley and San Francisco that built something called the Good Guide. It's a website. GOOD GUIDE. goodguide.com evaluates consumer products in terms of their footprint using LCA and compares the products to each other so you can make a better decision. There is one called "Skin Deep" just for personal care products. Personal care products can have 50 different ingredients you've never heard of. They search medical databases to see, well, is this a carcinogen?

Is it an endocrine disruptor? And it rates lipsticks and eye gloss based on their toxicity. Toxicity is one dimension of this. And that gives people options. I feel like it's great that they exist, but you have to look for them. I would like to see the cognitive cost of discovering the impact of what we do and buy reduced to zero. The cognitive cost is the effort that must be made to know the data. So the cognitive cost is high now, even though the metric exists, because people have to look for it somehow. It should be... ideally, it would be there and it would be evident at the moment when we are about to do the activity or buy the product, or B2B if we are buying for one organization from another organization.

So one solution is transparency, at least a partial solution. The second is handprints. The third: I think we are in this situation because most of the platforms that are used (chemically, industrially, etc.) were invented before we knew about stroke, before we thought about the consequences, before it was really a factor. . The chemicals we use are largely based on petrochemicals. Well, petrochemicals, sorry, they stink. The reason is that oil and water do not mix. They never die. Plastics, bad idea. Styrofoam, bad idea. Better idea? Two Rensselaer Polytech students invented a never-dying Styrofoam made from rice husks and mushroom roots.

And it works just as well. In fact, General Motors is using it on car dashboards. Who knew there was Styrofoam on the dashboard of your car? But still, it's better to use this one than the other one, because it breaks down. And we really need to start thinking in terms of biomimicry. How does nature do it so elegantly? We do it so crudely. We could be much better at that. There are wonderful models everywhere. That's another idea I had about what we could do: reinvent everything. Another thing I would like to see is a systemic education for children in school, so that this way of thinking is natural for children because it is integrated into the curriculum, from kindergarten to 12.

And LCA is part of mathematics. You could be... all this science could be part of all kinds of courses. And the other solution, I don't know. What do you think? I just leave you with one question. Because, to finish, I went to a conference at MIT on global systems. And two things caught my attention. One of them was John Sterman, head of the systems dynamics unit at MIT, who said that our biggest problem is system blindness. And the other was what the Dalai Lama said. He said that every time we face a decision, we must ask ourselves: who benefits?

Is it just me or a group? Just my group or everyone? Is it just for now or for the future? Thank you. MENG TAN: Well, we have about ten minutes for questions. Jordan, do you have the microphone? OK. So Jordan has access to Dory. He can ask the first two questions. And then the rest of you, if you have questions, you can line up behind Jordan. JORDAN: Hello. What is the relationship between focus and creativity? Often, if I put all my attention on a problem, I fail to see better solutions that are obvious when I take a step back.

DANIEL GOLEMAN: Yes, you named the solution. Actually, it is the good side of this state. It's daydreaming. Because the classic stages of solving a creative problem begin with concentration, effort and gathering all the information, trying all the solutions you can think of. And if you're still stumped, let it go. And you daydream. You go for a walk. You take a shower. The annals of science and mathematics are full of moments when, for example, a mathematician struggled with an equation for years, couldn't solve it, and the answer came to him while he was boarding a bus. Because in that dreamy state where your mind wanders, you have more access to the ascending part of the mind which, remember, records everything you know.

And that can bring together two discrete elements that have never been combined, but that work in a useful way, which is a creative product. Then, of course, you have to focus again to execute. That's another... I mean, then you need venture capital and, my God, it's like a pain in the ass. Did you have another question, Jordan? JORDAN:Yes. Can you give us the three main points from the "Harvard Business Review" article on leadership and focus, please? DANIEL GOLEMAN: That was my whole talk. It was that leaders need three types of approach: an internal approach to managing and leading themselves, another approach to reading other people effectively and being able to communicate in a way that is persuasive, that motivates and that has the right impact. -- I mean, you could say that the art of leadership is helping people get to this state and stay in it.

And the third is systems awareness, because you need it for strategic thinking, for example. It is necessary to understand what is happening with technologies. It is necessary to understand what is happening with the economy. You need to understand the broader systems in which your organization operates. And so, for example, with the economic problem, a lot of companies promoted people who were very good at getting numbers but who really walked over people. And now they are realizing that this lack of empathy is costing organizations. So what I'm arguing is that leaders need all three to be in balance.

That'll do? JORDAN: One more. People with ADD are told they are most effective when they follow their impulses, rather than forcing themselves to control their attention top-down. How does this fit into your model? DANIEL GOLEMAN: So ADD is a big problem during the school years, when it's very important to be able to focus on what the teacher is saying, etc. ADD also means that people's minds wander more, which is why it is a problem during the school years. But it turns out that people with ADD tend, on average, to be more creative than other people. For example, they are more entrepreneurial by nature.

JORDAN: Does anyone else have questions? DANIEL GOLEMAN: Someone is after you here. AUDIENCE: So my question is about cognitive control. And you mentioned a lot of studies where certain children or certain people had better cognitive control than others. And my question is, what factors affect that? Do you think it's something people are born with? And is it affected by things like their socioeconomic situation, by culture, by the education they have already received? DANIEL GOLEMAN: Everything. In other words, it's something that people have on some level naturally: it's innate. Is genetic. But you know, the brain is plastic throughout life.

And the cognitive control centers are part of the brain that is the last to develop. Anatomically, it does not fully mature until the age of 20. And during that period of plasticity, roughly childhood and adolescence, what is learned and systematic training has a huge effect. So the basic repetition for cognitive control is that you focus on one thing, your mind wanders, you notice it wandered, and you get it back. Does it sound familiar to you? And every time you do that, the neurons in that circuit strengthen their connectivity. It's exactly analogous to being in a gym and lifting weights.

And every time you do a rep, that muscle gets a little stronger. So the more we can help kids and teens do that, which reminds me, I have some instructional CDs for kids and teens on this, from morethansound.net, if anyone's interested. Because I think it's very important for parents to do this for children and for schools to do this for children. The more you do it, the better your cognitive control will be. Then you asked about the chaotic childhood and all that. And that is a negative factor. That's why I was so impressed by the school in Spanish Harlem.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm one of the lucky Googlers who has teenagers. And I'd like to know a little bit about amygdala hijacking and the response that different teens may have. I have one team that gets angry when they think they've been kidnapped and another that starts crying. Is that a relation to amygdala hijacking or something else? DANIEL GOLEMAN: Angry and tearful, I don't know. Dan Siegel is about to publish a wonderful book called "Brainstorms." It will be released on December 26. And it's about the teenage brain. It's actually written for teens and their parents to read together. But one of the things he

talks

about is the phenomenon that during adolescence there is a wider discrepancy than at any other time in life between two neural systems.

One is the instant gratification system, which is advancing, and the other is the delayed gratification system, which is a little behind. And so individual teenagers may differ in the gap between those circuits, but I've heard a definition of maturity that widens the gap between impulse and action. AUDIENCE: Thank you very much, Mr. Goleman, for this incredible conference. I wonder with this structure that they have here and traditional medicine and what they look at in the mind. And as far as I can tell, being an epileptic, this doesn't really apply much to us. We have cognitive problems that cannot be corrected and a lot of medication has been used.

I am taking medications that are very dangerous. And I'm working with a couple of neurological people, a guy named Jim Fallon... I don't know if you know Jim, he's a guy... and they tell me I don't have much chance of doing a lot of things. these things. And for me, focusing really takes a lot of work. And I was wondering if he has any suggestions for epilepsy. DANIEL GOLEMAN: I am not a neurologist, nor a specialist. I have friends who are in the same situation. But I think... one of the things I didn't mention is that there's a decline in cognitive control with aging.

And they've developed a set of web-based training tools to reverse or slow down that process, and you could try them, because medications are like a shotgun to the brain. They affected many different systems. And the brain is still plastic. So you can go to the mental gym and see... that might help you maintain that focus. AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. DANIEL GOLEMAN: Good luck. MENG TAN: With that, for those of you interested, the CEO is sitting here. Don't hesitate to talk to him. The book is "Focus, The Hidden Driver of Excellence", for those in the room, you can purchase it from the back of the room.

Danny will be signing books after this. For those not in the room, it is available wherever books are sold. So with this, “Focus,” Danny Goleman. Thanks friends. DANIEL GOLEMAN: Thank you, Meng.