Key Conversations Masterclass: 4 Themes of Excellence

John Ryan
You're listening the key conversations for leaders. This is episode number 26. Welcome everybody. In today's episode, we're going to take a brief break from our normal interview format, and do a bit of a masterclass. In this masterclass we're gonna be diving into the four themes of excellence. We'll be talking about how change is an inside job, how we create our reality, and how we can create results using the Performance Equation and much, much more. your team and your business is a reflection of you. If you want to change what you see on the outside, you've got to change inside because your team and your business grow to the extent that you do and to grow your team. You've got to start with yourself and that's what this show is about better conversations for better leaders.

John Ryan 0:49
Hey everybody and welcome to key conversations for leaders. I'm your host John Ryan, and today we're gonna do a very special episode last week marked our 25th episode. And it was such an exciting time. And I look back over the last few months, and all the great guests and the content and the information and the discussions that we've had. And it's really been an amazing experience and amazing journey. So I want to do something a little bit different. And of course, we have many, many more guests, experts in different areas coming onto the show, to share their insights, their wisdom, and their information, to help us increase our ability to lead to get more results and to be more empowered as leaders and also help empower others that we lead as well. So wanted to kind of look back over the last couple months, last 25 episodes, and kind of bring together four themes that I really think have emerged, not only in these episodes, but things that have emerged over the last 20 years of the train development that I've been involved in having the privilege of over doing over 1500 days of training in the last couple of decades, that there really are four days different themes that really relate to what does it mean to not only be effective, but have an effective mindset. So that we can consistently be effective in our lives in our businesses, and in leading others to create desired results. So I want to do a little bit of content for us and jump into that. So it's good. And without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into our discussion on the four themes. So the first thing to understand about the four themes as these are concepts, these are principles and ideas that you don't do to other people. They're not techniques in that way, but rather their ideas that you hold inside of you, that makes you more effective. So these four themes have been present in the last 25 episodes from a multitude of experts. And I imagined them to be present in the future because these are really the four themes of success to the themes of effectiveness that we see time and time again, the reason we're talking about them now. is to make them more conscious in our awareness so that we can use them more consistently. So let's go ahead and jump in, we're going to go over big picture, what are the four themes, and then we're gonna dive into each one of them so you have a fair and deeper understanding of what they are. So you can again use them in your life. And in your leadership, we have the themes of number one, your focus determines your results. Number two, the theme of ownership. Number three, the Performance Equation and number four, experimentation and personalization. So let's dive in by talking about the your focus determines your results. The idea of your focus, determining your results, is the idea that we don't see the world as it is. We see it as we are. We're had that experience.

John Ryan 3:49
When you're feeling really good. The world looks good around you when you're not feeling so good. Maybe you're sick, you're under the weather, or digging enough sleep well the world changes Just to, of course, the reality is that the world is the same. It's us it's change. So we don't see the world as it is we see it as we are. But what's the mechanism behind that? Well, the first thing to understand is that we of course, have a conscious mind and a non conscious mind or unconscious mind, if you will. And I'm sure you've heard the sistex that you know, 10%, of who we are as conscious mind and the other 90% of us is the unconscious mind. Well, if you're going to focus on getting results, you're going to want to focus on controlling that unconscious mind. Because that's 90% of your entire experience. Yeah, the conscious mind has a role to but the unconscious mind is really where it's at. So if you want to get better results, we're going to learn how to have a better relationship and ability to influence our unconscious mind. To do that. Let's look at what's referred to as the results model. So the results model is really how When we create results, how do we produce the behaviors create the effects that precedes the results that we really want. So where often begins is some stimulus out in the world, we don't just have behaviors, we have some stimulus. And that, for example, is an event, maybe there's some triggering event out there that we're responding to. These events could be positive, they could be negative. And of course, how we view them determines our experience of them.

John Ryan 5:27
For example, maybe the event that we're dealing with is that there is a merger, our company is going through a merger in we're not sure how we feel about that. So how we behave is going to determine our interpretation, which we're going to break down in just a moment. Perhaps we're getting some feedback from our boss, from our employee, from a customer, colleague, whoever, and we're gonna figure out how we're going to respond to that feedback. Or maybe there's an increase in attrition in the organization and we're not sure what to do about So some positive some negative events depending on how we look at it. And we don't experience this directly, we actually experience it through our modalities, which is our go between between the external world and the internal world. So our five modalities or modes of thinking are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. And some people think of these as the five senses, but these really are modes of thinking we have more than five senses. We also have the sense of balance, for example, example and proprioception and other things like that. But we're referring to right now is the five modes of thinking so visual, auditory, kinesthetic, those are the three primary modalities or modes of thinking. Then you also have olfactory which is smell and gustatory which is taste which are something that we don't really concern ourselves too much in terms of creating everyday results, especially in business. Unless you're in The dining industry or cooking or something like that. So VA k visual auditory kinesthetic. So we see things we hear things and we feel things. Now, what are we hearing? What are we seeing? What are we feeling out there in the world is still a fraction of what exists because we have a certain amount of bandwidth that we can perceive from our external reality. Now, if you want more details on the science and the psychology behind perception, an amazing book you can check out is the book flow by Hungarian psychologist me Haley chicks at me Haley. And in that book, flow fo w I'm not going to spell out me electrics me, Haley, that's a little bit too much. But you can always check it out on Amazon flow. He says at the peak state. That's what he's measuring really, when you're in the zone when you're in the flow at that peak state. We're taking in about 2 million bits of information per second bps bits per second, that's at the peak.

John Ryan 8:03
Now, other researchers have found that maybe it's not 2 million, it's a million. And I've seen some studies where it's more like 1 million bits per second. That's Oh,that's okay. That's a lot information. The main take whether you want to get that from this, though, is that even though we have 2 million bits coming in, we're only really dealing with about 126 bits. Our experience is not the entire event of the 2 million that's coming at us. We're only getting about 126. In other words, a lot of data coming in, but we only experience a small portion of it. Why is that? Why don't we get the entire value? The first thing you understand, we don't want all of it. We don't want all of it. What our unconscious mind does and it's developed over thousands and thousands of years, is it's learned the ability to filter out the data that's irrelevant. So we can focus on What's most important to us? If you and I are having an amazing conversation and we're walking through, you know, the forest, and we see an animal near us that looks like it's about to attack, we're going to get rid of all the other things that are relevant and focus on fighting, or fleeing, because that's for our survival. So we want to focus on what's most relevant to us. And that's what our unconscious mind does. So one of the ways that it filters from 2 million down to the 126 is the three primary filters of deletion, distortion, and generalization. So a deletion is when you just don't see something. So if I see that animal nearby, salivating looking like it's about to pounce, I am going to be pretty much getting rid of everything else in my awareness except for that threat that's in front of me. Now, that's not consciously that's totally unconsciously Because it's a survival mechanism, fighter flight is actually pre programmed in the body, we don't have to think about it, it just happens automatically. Our unconscious mind takes care of that. If you're looking for your keys and you can't find it, and you check the desk, and you come back later on, and they're right there sending that ESP, but you didn't see them. That was an example of deletion. I see people all the time who are wearing glasses, and they're like, if you see my glasses, like yeah, right here on your face or on the top of your head. So that's an example of deletion as well. Now simple say, Well, how do I get from the 126 to 252, or some multiple there have, you actually don't want to increase that bandwidth? You don't want to get to 2 million. That's not the goal. Because if you did, you would be extremely overwhelmed trying to process through all of that data and you wouldn't be able to respond effectively in the moment. Have you ever seen someone get overwhelmed at Baskin Robbins choosing between 31 flavors? If you have If you know what I'm talking about, you want less options, not more. We'll talk more with that in just a moment.

John Ryan 11:05
So deletion is the first one, we delete a lot of things that are irrelevant to us in the moment based on our objectives or values, among other things, then we have distortion. distortion is when you see things through a certain lens, you see it through a certain perspective. So imagine it's late at night, and you hear a noise outside. Well, what do you think that noise is? you're by yourself, and you just watch a scary movie. Well, if you're in that fear based state, you're going to perceive that differently than if you just watched a rom com like the notebook. So how we see things is literally impacted affected by how we feel in the moment. If you go to a party, and you're in a great state, you're going to have a different experience than someone else who goes to that same party and is not feeling so well. So this happens all the time, not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It just is what it is, in fact, all art comes from distortion. An artist sees a blank canvas, and they kind of change how it looks in their mind. And then they paint it to look like that picture they have. That's an example of distortion. They were looked at clouds and you've seen shapes, that's distortion as well. So this happens unconsciously. And it happens all the time. Because we make patterns like that. That's just what we're designed to do. And the last one is generalization. So distortion deletion, and generalization. generalization is when you take a learning from the past, and you apply it in the present or the future, bad for people, good for learnings. So it's not fair to say you go to some other country, and and you say, oh, I've been to that country and I met someone there. Therefore all people from that country are like that. No, that's called stereotyping. And and that's not a nice thing to do. We don't want to do that. Instead, you can learn though, we take our learnings from the past and we generalize. That's really what we do in life, we accumulate a bunch of learnings.

John Ryan 13:12
And we use those generalizations to the extent that they you are useful for us in the moment and in the future. So how this works. For example, let's say you, you learn how to drive in a sedan, and then you want to go drive an SUV. Well, even though you never practice driving an SUV before you can do it. Because a SUV and a sedan work in general the exact same way.

John Ryan 13:39
So our brain doesn't have to relearn things over and over because we can take the things we learned from the past and then generalize them in the future, which saves us time. So when you're driving now, you don't have to think about it. You just do it, because it's all happening unconsciously. And that's why you can have a conversation with someone else in the car. You can listen to music And or talk to someone on the phone and have a conversation because you're driving unconsciously, at that point in time. So we have our external events, we've filled, we perceive them through our modalities, and we filter them through the three primary filters of deletion, distortion, and generalization. Now, that's our experience. And how that gets internalized is one of three ways internally, we have an internal representation. We have our emotional state. And we also have our physiology. That's our internal experience being filtered through those three pieces that we talked about a moment ago, our internal representation are the words and the pictures that we have in our mind. That's it. Our internal representation is how we're encoding In fact, the words themselves have pictures behind them. So at its core, our internal representation is really the pictures that we have Because a picture's worth 1000 words, we'll talk more about that more about that in just a moment. So our internal representation, we also have our emotional state and how we feel about it, and also our overall physiology. Now, if you want to change your behavior, you want to get a different behavior and have a different impact effect on the world. We're going to recognize that all three of these impact each other, our internal representation, impacts our emotional state, our emotional state impacts our physiology and vice versa. So how do you create different behaviors? How do you create different results is by changing one of these three things, because you can't just change your behavior directly. We'll talk more about that in just a little bit. How you change your behavior is maybe you change your physiology. Think about it. When you're working out and you're done. And you have those endorphins running through your body and your bloods pumping you feel really good. The world looks differently, doesn't it? And you take different actions Based on that as well, when you're in a good emotional state, when you're feeling pretty good, you take positive action. So here's the thing. You can change your physiology. You can change your physiology by exercising by getting good sleep by doing yoga by eating things by drinking things. Some of them are productive, some of them maybe not so productive and you can do that in the moment.

John Ryan 16:23
Have you ever been to a seminar? That's like a motivational seminar and you feel so pumped up at the end like a physiologist? Like Yes. Well, that's great. And that lasts for typically a short period of time. I used to do that when I first started out in in the transformational and development world. I would go to motivational seminars every six months to kind of fill up my gas tank, so to speak, because that when I got done with the seminar, I felt amazing, and then went back to my environment and I just couldn't necessarily maintain it. So I go back and fill up the gas tank over and over again. I figured something is wrong here. You can change your most That's not necessarily the easiest thing to do. or more importantly, the best way to do this to really create different behaviors and results is to change your internal representation. When you change the pictures that you have in your head, it's a trickle down effect, you feel differently. Your physiology is differently and you're going to create different actions, different behaviors, which is going to get you different results. So to think back to our merger situation, instead of having fight or flight and that concept, if our if we're going our company's going through a merger, maybe we decide that our behavior is we're going to step up, we're going to recommit to this new company that's being formed and, and bring our best selves to the table. If we're thinking about getting feedback instead of, you know, worrying about, you know what that means to me or being offended or trying to resist and justify why I did what I did. Maybe just focus on learning, taking that information in. We're thinking about the attrition that's there. Maybe if my team is Kind of having a turnover rate that's higher than expected, then I'm going to focus on getting refocus, getting connected my intention connecting with my people, having conversations creating buy in, and going through that process, because I can't always control them. But I can always control what I do, which we're gonna get into as one of the other themes in just a moment. So big picture, let's go and summarize what we just said. We have an external events, we filter them through our modalities with the three primary filters of deletion, distortion, generalization, we experience the external world and one of three ways we have internal experience, which is our internal representation, our emotional state and our physiology. You can change any one of those. But if you really want long lasting effects and behaviors, you're gonna want to focus on your internal representation, which is the pictures.

John Ryan 18:50
You know, Dr. Wayne Dyer said it this way, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So to summarize that we have roughly two minutes million bits of data coming at us. And out of that 2 million we have the 126. Now another way to say the 126 is often referred to as seven plus or minus two chunks of information. seven plus or minus a chunk is basically a group of information. And seven plus or minus two is this comes from a paper written in 1956. By Dr. George Miller. It's called the magical number seven magic number seven plus or minus two. And it really aligns very well with Mahalia Jackson's me Haley's work in the book flow. When you're at your peak state, you're really taken in a lot of information on constantly you're in the zone, you're kind of there, but you're also a little bit behind your eyes, you know, I'm talking about you're in and you're absorbed in the experience. You can handle that point seven plus two or minus two, which means really five to nine groups of data at any given point in time. If you're not in the zone. If you're feeling alone. bit off, we know that our bandwidth goes down. So maybe we're to three plus or minus two, or in some cases, if you're, maybe you've ever been so sick or not feeling very well that your loved one plus or minus two, I'm not sure what the minus two would look like in that situation. But if you've been really down now, maybe you've had that experience. So that's what the chunking idea means it will pay attention to so much information.

John Ryan 20:25
And the question is not, how do I get more information? I don't want to have 15 chunks I'm paying attention to I don't want to have 252 bits pay attention to the question is, how do I direct my mind? So that I'm focusing on the seven chunks that are most important to me? How do we focus on the hundred and 26 bits that are most productive at that point in time? When you do that, that's how you gain empowerment. That's how you really become in engage in the mindset of being effective. Last thing I'll share with you on this concept here about our focus determines our results is also the words. Our internal representation, as we said is primarily the pictures but it's also the words that we have. It's almost our sixth modality if you will, not our sixth sense, but our sixth modality. So our experience again, is the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. And every second of every day, we're having all five of those going on.

John Ryan 21:29
Outside of that, we also have our language which is referred to as auditory digital which which is the words that we use to label our experience. And the reason it's kind of out of that category of va KO g our primary modalities is because you can use your words your auditory digital, to communicate all five of these. In other words, you can use your words to describe the visual to describe the auditory kinesthetic, olfactory angle, So it's on it's kind of its own category in that sense. Just to clarify, the difference between auditory digital and auditory. tonal as it's often referred to, is the auditory digital is like the lyrics. It's the words. And our tonal is more the melody. It's the speed. It's the volume. It's the tone, it's the pitch, all those types of characteristics. That's a separation there. But the words that we use to label our experience and why this is important, is the self talk that you have also directs your focus. Because a picture's worth 1000 words and for every word that you have, you have a picture behind it. So you wouldn't be very, very careful of the words that you use to describe yourself. To describe your employees to describe your team describe your future, because if you're choosing the words, not carefully, you're playing Negative thoughts, negative images in your mind, which is produces produces negative experiences negative effects, like we talked about in the previous model. Because it's all about directing our mindset, you may have heard this quote before, that comes from Henry Ford. Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And this is not just about positive imagery, but it's about the language that we use as well. If you say you can't do that, you're going to find that to be true. If you say you can do that, you're going to find that to be true as well. And this goes through the pictures and the words together. So what we're really talking about here is taken this concept of our focus determines our results. I can't always control what happens out there in the world, but I can control what I focus on. I can focus on what I say to myself, I can focus on the pictures that I have in my head, which gives me the second theme Which is ownership. Think about this for a moment, if I am responsible for my focus, and my focus determines my results, then I'm responsible for my success. If I'm responsible for my focus, and my focus determines my results, then I'm responsible for my success is an amazing tool. So these two, these first two themes really come together. So we have focus and ownership. And when I take ownership of my focus by changing the pictures that I have in my head by changing what I say to myself, I'm going to feel differently I have a different emotional state, I'm gonna have a different physiology, which is going to produce a different effect, a different behavior, which produces a different results, but we got to be gonna pay attention to where is our focus, because a lot of times our focus in life is on the problem and Thinking speaking of words, by the way, we will actually distance ourselves from the problem. I don't know, if you're, I'm actually a recovering blamer there's a period of my life when, when I blamed everyone in my life, except for me, for what was going on in my life. And we all know, on a conscious level that that's just not true that we're responsible for that. But it's not what happens constantly that matters, it's unconsciously Have you ever said to yourself, that person, you know, is a problem or that person has problems, or it's their fault.

John Ryan 25:33
If you ever had that type of languaging, then what we've done at that point is we've essentially disassociated or disconnected from the problem or like that person is the problem. Now, that's fair. There are people out there that sometimes that they are causing the issue, and I can't always control their behavior. But think about it from a logical perspective. I want to share with you a quick model here in relation to ownership. I can't control their behavior. But if I'm viewing them as the problem now, if I, if I'm the problem, it's easier than I know I have to be the solution. But think about it this way. If they're the problem, the economy is the problem. The government's the problem. The world is the problem. My spouse is the problem, my kids the problem, whatever is when I, if I'm externalizing, the problem, and they're the problem by definition, guess what? everything outside of their problem, including me has to be the solution. Because if they were the solution, they would have already solved. So from an ownership perspective, I want you to think about if you're ever externalizing a problem in your relationship, in your business in your career, then who has to be the solution you do? That's puts it right back into our responsibility. So the moment you hear that in your head, or Oh, yeah, they've got a problem or they are the problem. It's their fault. We got to use that as a trigger to get it back in. Okay, I can't fix them, but I can do something about it on my end. So I'm going to be that solution. Because if they had the solution inside of them, they would have already fixed it because people do the best they can with what they have. Now, speaking of solutions, let's talk about our focus. Because the solution is to direct our focus, but we have in life, a bunch of things that we're concerned about, let's call this circle, the circle of concern. The sphere circle of concern is a vast circle. And it can be the world it can be your country, it can be your company, it can be your family, it can be you, it could be the local environment, it could be pollution, it could be whatever cause you have that is important to you. Any number of things can be in that circle of concern.

John Ryan 27:52
But the problem is, if you will, we can't control everything in this circle of concern because they have We could, it wouldn't be the circle of concern, it would be the circle of control, which is the center of it all, which is you is if you really think about it, ownership wise, where are you truly responsible? What are the things that you really can control in your life is what I'm trying to get to. One of the things you control your life is really come down to a couple things, what you say what you think, how you feel, and what you do. That's it. And if you really think about it, for the most part, we're not always fully responsible to that degree that we actually take responsibility for what we say, think, feel and do. So even that is probably limited because sometimes we don't feel like we're in control. Well, I can't help how I feel. I just feel how I feel. Well, that's a sense of being disempowered, not taking ownership of our own feelings, but how we feel about things, as we've already established is based on how we think or how we say things to ourselves. So we do have control but don't always exercise it. But at the very least, let's assume that you're in control of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, and and also your behaviors. Well, they're certainly from there we can start to impact and influence the things that we're concerned about. But that's to a limited extent.

John Ryan 29:21
So in between what we're concerned about, and what we control is our circle of influence. These are the people and the resources and the conditions around us, that we can impact as a result of what we control, which again, is what we say what we do, how we think how we feel inside, as expressed through what we say and what we do. So yes, we have a ton of things that we're concerned about in life. If you really want to take control, focus on what you're responsible, what do you really have ownership of, and that's your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. In doing that, you're actually able to enjoy increase that circle of influence, to manipulate, influence and affect the environment and the results around you. So really what we're talking about here, all these last two themes together, the focus determines your results. And ownership brings us to the third theme, which I refer to as the Performance Equation. And you've already heard it a couple times in our discussion so far if you've been paying attention, and really how you have performance, how you actually to create performance consistently is you've got to recognize that thinking, plus feeling, plus behaving equals results. Thinking plus feeling, plus behaving equals results. When you think about the things you're concerned about, we all want different results, personally, professionally in our relationships for our children, for the environment for our country, for the world. But the reality is you don't just get ready results, you don't just end the pollution, right? You don't just and global hunger, you actually have to change our behavior. If you want to grow your company, you have to change your behavior. If you want to get through to a new customer, you have to change your behavior. But you don't, you can't just change your behaviors you've ever tried to change your behavior that's not working for you. Maybe you're eating too much, maybe you're not sleeping enough or you're not exercising and you want to start exercising, you know, you can get results if you just start going out and walking consistently. But the problem is how we behave is determined by how we feel. And then you know that changing your feelings is not the easiest thing to do, especially in the moments not that it's impossible, but it takes commitment. It takes practice.

John Ryan 31:49
When you are congruent you can do that. But it takes practice, and how we do that if you read someone who's angry, or you're feeling angry, and someone tells you to comment They say Calm down, and then you're like, I'll show you calm. And then you ask the lady just that much more. Well, that's an example of not being able to control our feelings. The true way we can change our feeling is by changing our thinking. And our thinking, again, is what we say to ourself, as well as the pictures that we have. And if you want to change, you change the pictures, you're gonna say something different, or change what you say, and you'll see something different as well. So it works in both directions. So thinking plus feeling, plus behaving equals results. You know, I read a statistic recently, and had to do with communication. And think about it from a leadership perspective. Communication is everything. You know, the name of this podcast is key conversations for leaders, because yes, we're having a conversation right now. But it's conversations that are important, that are key are ones that we have to have. But the reality is that in general managers Don't want to have conversations in general, let alone when it's difficult conversations. In order to have different results with your employees with your team to improve performance, you got to have better conversations. You got to be willing to have that conversation first and foremost. And the way you change that behavior is change how you feel about by changing the picture, if you see it in your mind first. That's how you create in reality, Stephen Covey said it this way. Everything in life is created twice first in your mind, then in reality, so if you want to create different results, going back to the Henry Ford thing, whether you think you can or think you can't, you are right, visualize what you want. And then allow that to come through because when you see what you want, you feel differently, you behave differently, and the results materialize around you. So that's the first three themes we again we have your focus determines results, ownership and Performance Equation.

John Ryan 33:58
The last one is experimentation and personalization, we've actually talked a little bit about some concepts and techniques that you can do right now to change your experience and change your results. First one that we talked about literally is directing your focus. If you don't like the reality that you're in right now, change what you're focusing on. Instead of focusing how bad things are, focus on how things can be and, and begin to take action. Focus on changing one thing, doing something right now to create a positive seed that can grow and practice, find what works for you. The reason I'm bringing this idea of experimentation and personalization is because what works for me may not work for you, the principles will work. The four themes are true, but you also got to find how it works for you. So if auditory works for you, maybe the self talk is the key for you. Cool, then change your Talk. If the pictures work well, then change your pictures, maybe you got to find both. That works well what you really want to make this work and really bring these concepts to life is curiosity. Curiosity is really the predecessor of all inventions is the predecessor of results. In life, we get curious when we get creative, and we try to find things that work. So instead of getting ourselves locked in and saying, you know, that won't work, which again, is violating the whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right principle or at least using in the negative sense. ask ourselves, how can I work that puts us into a creative mindset experimentation. And then personalization is finding what works for you. When you look at the different programs for success and the models out there for creative problem solving, leadership, communication, etc. Those are just principles. And when you apply it, you're going to find your style. And what works for you. So putting all these things together is going to help you get in a very positive framework. So your focus determines your results. ownership. If you say they are the problem, then that means you must be the solution. When you focus on what you control, which is your thinking, your feeling and behavior, which is the third theme that's gonna allow you to continue to experiment and personalize your interactions to get the results you're actually looking for. So hope you found our discussion on the four themes helpful and something that you can play with going forward. And thanks so much for being here and spend the time with us. Until next time, develop yourself, empower others and lead by example, and I'll see you on the next episode.

John Ryan 36:46
Thanks for listening to key conversations for leaders with your host john Ryan. If you enjoy the show, please let us know. Give us a rating or write a review. For more free content go and visit us at www.keyconvo.com/free. If you haven't already, connect with me on twitter @keyconvo or on LinkedIn under JohnRyanLeadership.