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8/7/2019 David Rock- Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All …

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YOUR BRAIN AT WORK: STRATEGIES FOR OVERCOMING DISTRACTIREGAINING FOCUS, AND WORKING SMARTER ALL DAY LONG (Uplu

A conversation between David Rock & Moe Ab

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Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, David Rock with Moe Abdou

Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (Unplugged)

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About David Rock & Moe Abdou

David Rock

David Rock is a consultant and leadership coach who advises corporationsaround the world. The author of Coaching with the Brain in Mind, QuietLeadership, and Personal Best, he is the CEO of Results Coaching Systems,a leading global consulting and coaching organization. He is on theadvisory board of the international business school CIMBA.

Moe Abdou

Moe Abdou is the creator of 33voices — a global conversation about thingsthat matter in business and in life. [email protected]

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I have to tell you, not only was I fascinated by your book but a lot of thework that you’ve been doing in this whole area of how your brain workshas really been fascinating to me. I appreciate you sharing your time withme today.

I managed a large wealth management firm for over 20 years. My primary responsibility at that time was growing my leadership team and just asimportantly, obviously, getting the right niche of talent to be able tomarket and sell our products.

So this whole issue of leadership that you’re addressing now; this wholeissue of how to change people’s behaviors and how to change your ownbehavior has just been mesmerizing to me and I wish I had this kind of work or this kind of research, certainly, in the work that I was doing. I seethe relationship between your coaching that you’re doing with the leaders

that you’re working with and certainly how this work is evolving.

I have to ask you, it’s coming up on a year now for your book - Your Brainat Work. I’m really curious, what are the bigger insights that you’vegained in just observing people that you’re working with who have really embraced your book?

It’s addictive.

It is for me too, I have to tell you.

I think it’s a positive addiction. We can get addicted to drinking. We can getaddicted to carousing. We can get addicted to noticing internal experience. Ithink the latter is probably one of the more positive and least harmful. I thinkthat’s something I have noticed. I probably want to write about that shortly. Ithink it’s a positive addiction. I think one of the reasons is it makes lifeinteresting in a whole new way.

When you’re a kid everything is new. They say that kids are almost like beingpermanently on some psychedelic where everything is so vivid. I can certainlyhave some memory of that but as an adult everything fits in the same frame.

I think every new big insight about human functioning especially neuralfunctioning tends to just give such a burst of energy and such an understandingof things that you didn’t understand. It sort of brings a real freshness and anovelty and an engagement to last. I think it’s a positive. I hope it’s a positiveaddiction.

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When I go into to talk to 300 people and I say, who has read the book and whatimpact has it had on them. People are raving about it and how helpful it’sbeen. That’s wonderful. I’m excited about that. The responsibility is a bit scarysometimes too. But overall, I think it seems to stick. That’s the bottom line.

I definitely want to get into the work that you’re doing here in just a few moments. One of the biggest insights for me that I picked up is, I think thatonce, we as human beings, understand the science behind our behaviors isthat perhaps it makes change a little bit easier or makes seeking positivechange a little bit more inspiring. Am I totally off base on this thing?

No, you’re right. That’s one of the big things, is that you learn firstly, whychange is hard and mostly it’s because you’re going in the wrong direction withit. We don’t even know that we’re going in any direction. We think that’s howyou change. You learn that actually change is relatively easy. Your brain

changes millions of times a second. You’ve got to focus on something that feelsdiscomforting. You have to focus on something that is uncertain. The brain

doesn’t like uncertainty. It’s pain. Uncertainty is read as pain.

You have to focus on something that’s uncertain which is where you’re going,you know, what you’re going towards rather than what you’re avoiding. Thebrain prefers to avoid, just prefers problem resolution.

But as you head toward solution, as you get comfortable with the uncertainty,as you head towards your objective, as you head towards your new circuitry

rather than trying to get rid of circuitry, you discover that new circuitry ispretty easy to create. That’s one of the really refreshing and helpful aspects of it all.

When you go into a corporation, I assume large and small and that’sprobably why you travel. The demand is just so…

Mostly large corporations….

Well then if it’s large, then it makes this even more interesting. I camefrom a very large organization and you hear about change all the time.

Certainly, it was a theme for the new administration a couple of yearsago. But yet, when people actually get down to it, you see very littlechange. What is your message and how do you really structure a path toguide them through that whole process?

It’s a really big question. I mean, the first thing to know is that change really isdifficult. We really underestimate how difficult change is. As a result, we

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underestimate the resources and the attention and the focus required. Whatwe can in theory make lots of changes. We can only do so many at onceespecially if you’re already overloaded.

I think lots of changes are possible but just changing — you know, I was in

Germany recently and the keyboard looks exactly the same but two keys areslightly different. You just try typing in that place and you’ll notice howfrustrating even the tiniest changes can be. Really small changes bring a lot of problems.

So while change is possible, we really resist change because it’s uncertain,because it produces pain. We try to do too much and we misunderstandchange. We don’t put the right system and structure in place.

What is the right system and structure? I think it’s made of many things. I think

first of all, if you look at the SCARF model which is a big part of my work now -Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. If you look at the

SCARF model, mostly changes create threat in all of the SCARF domain.

You have to work hard at how to offset those because people threaten thischange less generally. People who are experiencing strong threats anyway areless likely to change. A little bit of threat can be helpful. But, often thesethreats are really strong, you know, a threat to ones status is really strong.

What we’re going to do is minimize those threats by increasing certainty

whenever possible. Increasing your sense of relatedness whenever possible.Increasing your fairness is a really big one. Fairness has to be really managed ina change process. So you don’t get a multiplier effective of the negative. Youget an offsetting effect of the five domains of SCARF.

That’s one of the first things, because you got to reduce the threat andchange. And then the second set is just finding the new connection that peopleneed to make. And then creating situations where people make newconnections themselves in the direction that you want to go. If you want yourorganization to be more nimble, more innovative, then how do you get peopleto make connections about being more nimble? Don’t worry about why you’renot nimble or why do you not like the role or why you’re not creative. Thatdoesn’t help. Focus on new connections. How do we become more nimble,more flexible and focusing people on that.

And then the third step is just getting people to come back to that question.It’s just focusing their attention back constantly on the new connections thatneed to happen. And create enough safety for people to think difficult thoughts

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that require a lot of space in the stage and then get people to make newconnections that rewire their brains and then certainly get people to embedthose connections to become long term circuits.

I think it’s those three steps. So how do you do that technically practically?

Well that’s much for your conversation. The short answer is, anyway you canhowever the organization can do that; finding the path of least resistance.

Do you see a timeframe, I mean, depending obviously on the size of thechallenge for an organization especially now certainly on the ones you’reworking with where this actually starts to take shape. I mean, is thissomething that is a 12-month, a 24-month path or can organizations thatare more nimble adapt to these types of things quicker?

The thing I find, if you try to change a culture is that you need people

internally who are going to be driving that change. You can’t just come in anddo training or show people a few slides or give more of that and that. What youhave to do is have something that continues to focus people on a newapproach.

What I end up doing a lot of — this is probably half my work is I’ll create teamsof internal change agents. These people will be coaches for others. They’ll bereally driving a change process. You need those people to be already existing inthe company; people with real day jobs who take this on. Without that internalconstant focus and driving things don’t change. So a lot of times it’s a 12-

month process and you see results at the end of 12 months.

We just did a project with a division of 2000 people which is fairly small for us;a division of 2000 of a larger firm. It was the only intervention in this firm. Andin two years, they measured externally, we didn’t measure it, they measured a50% increase in engagements. They halved the turnover of their people, thestaff turnover, when the industry was going the other way. They turned a 5%loss into a 7% profit. This was the only intervention happening in that time thatwe just recently published this. So there are definitely results that you can seeand you can measure them in different ways.

You know what you’re doing is intervening in the system; in the way peopleinteract, in the way people focus their attention and the way people runmeetings, in the way people understand each other. At the end of the day,what you’re doing is helping people work with the brain in mind more. Helpingto just set up their business in the way the brain actually works.

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Here is a classic example. A study we just did with a client, they surveyed theiremployees and found that ten out of ten of people do their best thinking atwork. Think about that. We said to this company, what do you pay your peoplefor? We said, really they should be thinking. Well, you have 90% of peoplesaying they don’t do their best work at work, so loosen up. Let’s work at how

to solve that. Let’s loosen up. Let’s get people working less from work.

What other ideas can we do to change that because that’s amazing - ten out of ten. This was a survey of about 6000 respondents by the way; 6000 respondentsout of a firm of about 20,000 people. So statistically significant. It’s that kindof thing. So that’s what you got to change. You got to change your thoughts tosort of small systems and rules and processes so that the organization isworking more with the brain in mind.

We’ve misunderstood the brain. A lot of the pain that occurs in companies is

because we misunderstand the brain. Many companies spend a fortune doingthings that make things worse all the time because we don’t understand how

the brain really functions.

When you mentioned SCARF, one of the first things that came to my mind is1, just the simplicity of the acronym but number 2, how relatable thatwould be just in a sales environment. I had to coach over 500 financialadvisors and that’s such a great model for that. Do you see that could work in just really reprogramming the minds of sales people, it doesn’tmatter what field they’re in?

It’s a piece of it. It’s definitely a really helpful piece of it. It’s not necessarily asilver bullet changing everything. I think there are some other pieces but SCARFis one really big piece of how people understand how to interact. We arerunning programs on brain based sales now. Now, we’re teaching brain basedsales in companies. It’s a new area.

It’s definitely really relevant to sales whatever the issue is. It’s not replacing asales process like SPIN selling or solution selling. It’s explaining that andproviding this underpinning support as to why you use the process and how todo it better. We say this on the turbo charging your sales process. We’re doinga bit of that work actually - brain based sales.

Now, SCARF is simple, it’s no accident that it’s a memorable word and thereason it’s memorable is it relates to a physical object. It’s concrete in theworld. It took me three years to come up with something that simple.

Yeah, I bet.

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There are lots of versions of it and there is a lot of research. It was a longprocess to come up with that but I was determined that there was a pattern insocial interaction that we could understand better if we could just summarizeit. It was one of my biggest research projects over three years to come up withjust that one word. Ironically, that one word is probably the most useful thing

in my 42 years I’ve ever come up with.

Let me tell you, you got a lot of other useful things that are out there butyou mentioned that this could be a piece of the puzzle kind of in the salesfield. What are other features that could help? Because, nobody as youknow, wants to be sold from the consumer perspective yet on the other end, everybody is selling something.

Yeah. There is one big piece around insight which has been my earlier bookQuiet Leadership. Essentially, if you look at all the sales processes and all the

sales tips and thought, it’s actually something that no one says there is acommon thread through all of them and that is when a customer comes to anidea themselves, it’s dramatically more effective than when you’re trying tosell.

There is actually this dynamic of toward versus away which is an organizingprinciple of the brain. You know, toward and away. If you are towards, theytend to be away. So if you’re trying to put in, put in, they tend to be pullingback. If you can create the space for a customer to actually make aconnection, then you know it’s dramatically more fulfilling. So the whole

neuroscience of insight, understanding how to create the space for insight isone block.

Another block is self regulation or emotional regulation. That’s actually for thesales person. It’s really important. They’re learning how to regulate emotions,to stay in the right mental state to sell because there is a strong resonancething that happens, you know, your emotions rub off on others.

Those are a couple of the other building blocks from the neuroscience that arereally helpful for sales.

How do you recommend that people regulate their emotions because thatinstantly becomes a contagious thing positively or negatively?

Yeah. I mean, there is a lot to say about that. The first thing is learn to catchthem early. Emotions are like double scotches once they’re in your stomachthere is not much you can do about them. You got to catch them as you’relifting your hand up. So you got to catch them early. A couple of seconds into

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an emotion, you know, you see someone you really don’t like and you catchyourself about to ruminate about why you hate this person. You got stopyourself from that thought before the thought actually hits your whole brain.It’s almost like I’m not going to think that.

You know, once the emotion kicks in, it’s much harder because emotionsreduce cognitive control. You need cognitive control to do anything. Thebiggest insight that’s most useful is that I can tell is catch them early whichrequires being aware of your attention be aware of your thinking, be aware of your mental processes.

How has your research impacted the way you think and work? Let mebacktrack for a second, I say that because I think I started reading some of your blogs and some of your writing back 2-1/2 years ago with the firstbook. And then like you said, it’s become an addiction especially with the

new book. I’m interested in just how this type of research has impacted you personally?

You’ll probably notice the difference in people from the previous book. In thisnew book I really, I mean, basically I worked much harder on Your Brain atWork than Quiet Leadership. I worked hard on Quiet Leadership. QuietLeadership is probably four or five months of actual writing time, you know, abit of research.

Your Brain at Work is a year to a year and a half of actual writing time. It’s

spread over five years and massive research. It nearly killed me. It’s really atough thing to do to simplify something so complex and still have it accurate.The process of writing the book, in many ways, sort of rolled it into itself like

I’m learning about my own brain as I was writing the book.

Obviously, the insights that I was having, you know, I was putting in the bookand then I was having more insights. Writing the book is like reading the book50 times. That is of course you read the book 50 times. So, you know, the shortanswer it’s had a big effect in so many different ways. So do you have a week,I’ll tell you all of it. It’s many, many things.

The thing I guess overall is I’m just much more aware of the moment tomoment of my own state and other people’s state. I can become really boringat parties so sometimes I just don’t tell people what I do. Because you know,

it’s sort of so interesting that it becomes boring after awhile.

I could really see what’s going on. I can see people’s intentions. I can see theirmental state and I can see what’s happening. I can see the different pathways

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they could go. That’s a pleasure and a curse sometimes too but mostly it’s apleasure. It’s an opportunity to make different choices.

If you look at my output, what I achieved, what you’ll see is I don’t have a lotof wasted time. I get a huge amount out of my brain. If you look at the number

of things I’m working on, I’m not Superman. I hit walls all the time. I hit myown limitations all the time. But I think I’m dramatically more productive. Iknow, I’m dramatically more productive than I was five years ago.

Is there a correlation there between your productivity and one of thethings you mentioned as we started is that it seems like you are takingquite a bit of free time to rejuvenate?

Let me rephrase it, I don’t know that I’m necessarily more productive. I’mmore effective. Productive can mean busy and getting things done. I’m

dramatically more effective. I’m not necessarily more productive. Moreeffective sometimes means knowing that you have to do nothing for an hour sothat you can work on a project. That’s what more effective mean. You knowyou got to go for a walk and do something else entirely so that you can crack a

piece of writing. That kind of thing is important.

I know that now I need a good break every month. I go pretty hard and I need agood break. Anywhere from four days, you know, a four-day long weekendthrough to a week, every month to really rejuvenate. I know if go for a week orso with not much sleep which often happens then I need four or five days of a

lot of sleep to recover. I’m not necessarily more productive, I’m moreeffective.

Well your kids are going to be really lucky having all this research behind their family.

They’ll either love it or hate it.

I’m sure they’re going to love it. There was something that was very intriguing to me in November, December somewhere around there whereyou talked about and shared with everybody your experience at Google.

You discussed how beyond your talk how you felt they made their employees smarter. Can you talk about how what you observed perhapscan be implemented by entrepreneurs or other companies out there thatare not Google?

I don’t think it’s necessarily about a lot of money. Some of the things they dorequire capital but a lot of it is a mindset. I think entrepreneurs and more

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business owners, people like that actually often have a lot of it rights sort of naturally.

A family run business is often run according to the principle of the brain morethan a corporation. There is more trust. There is more relatedness. You got

more ability to make decisions. People have some more autonomy in someways, you know, less politics that kind of thing. It’s still there that’s for sure.

I think in many ways, entrepreneurs are a bit closer to how the brain functions.A good test is how to engage to people. If people are engaged, if people arereally passionate about their work, they’ve got an appropriate amount of threat not low but they’ve got an appropriate amount of threat. They’re notexperiencing maybe uncertainty that could happen in a big company, or theunfairness that can happen in a big company, or the lack of relatedness thatcould happen in a big company.

So I think small firms, they could maximize in terms of relatedness, in terms of being in it together. They could maximize their sense of certainty by sharing alot of information. They can maximize their sense of autonomy getting peoplereally clear boundaries and really letting them grow things. You don’tnecessarily have high status. And to some degree, you have less certainty in asmall company. I think in terms that really maximize fairness, relatedness, andautonomy. I think they can go a long way. To be specific, let people workwherever they’re most effective.

We did that in my firm. At one point, we had 20 people working in an officeand then we said, “You guys work wherever you think you get the most workdone.” A week later, there was like one or two people one or two days in theoffice. We’re looking at the output and it skyrocketed. That’s autonomy. Asthe team grew, we realized we gone a bit too far in one way. We said, “Everytwo weeks, we need one day in the office together.” Everyone was like, “Oh,do we have to?”

Now, everyone is seeing that that’s really helpful. We’ll probably take that upto maybe one day a week where everyone is together at some point. That’s ateam of 20 or 30 people in one city and there are about a hundred people in myorganization worldwide. We get together in different ways but I think thatautonomy piece is really, really helpful. That’s an example of what we’ve doneanyway with that.

Fairness is an absolute. You’ve got to be doing things fairly. You do one unfairthing and you can undo 10 years of good work. You really got to be careful tobe fair.

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What Google does — is interesting, they free people up by basically off loading.Small companies won’t be able to do this but they basically off load thedecisions they have to make. Someone smart there realized that there is alimited number of decisions we can all make a day. And that people were

losing time and energy, spending their processing power on wasteful decisions.

So you get to work at Google and you drop off your dry cleaning and your dog. Imean, everything. It’s all good to handle. So there is just less you have to thinkabout and so you can focus on your work. There is a food station every hundredfeet. You’re never more than a hundred feet from food. They understand thatwe need regular glucose too. There are a couple of things in there but I thinkthe autonomy thing is something that more firms can do more with.

One of the things, right off, I think in the first chapter of the book whereyou talk about prioritizing I think is the phrase that was used. It really

triggered something in my mind. I have a habit everyday of just writing onan index card, the five most important tasks on my day. It’s very helpfulbut I oftentimes find at the end of the day, I have hundreds of those taskson all sides of that card. Can you elaborate a little bit on this wholeimpact of mental energy? The story of Emily in that first chapter wasfabulous.

Yeah…absolutely. The realization is just that our attention which is our abilityto hold information in mind. Our attention is a limited and decreasing resource.Surprisingly, it’s limited to like a couple of hours a day in terms of quality

attention like really being able to think well. It’s mostly the morning for about60% to 70% of people. Some people, it’s the evening for various reasons. But wegot a couple of hours. So idea is, if you’ve got a couple of hours of really goodprocess the entire day, what are you going to use it on and be really deliberatewith that.

One of the things that take a lot of processing power is to actually answer thatquestion. To answer the question of what are you going to focus on, takes a lotof process and power. To do that well, you got to do that one first because it’squite a tiring question to have to think about it. It’s not so much as tiring but ittakes a clear mind to think about it well. And a clear mind means not a lot hasgone on up that you haven’t solved al lot of problems yet. You haven’t filled

with 20 emails yet.

It’s just that quiet moment in the morning or the evening when you can reallythink about what’s really important. What do I really need to do? And maybeit’s to be effective not just productive. What are my real goals? We tend to dothe things that are easier to think about.

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I see that traveling in countries all the time. When I’m in one country, it’s somuch easy to think about anything in that country. Even something irrelevantand unimportant becomes much easier to think about something reallyimportant that happens to be in another country.

So we do things that are easier to think about. Not necessarily the mostimportant and that’s just because of the energy and the space required in thebrain to settle forth.

Do you have rituals every morning where you do your best thinking and/or decide what it is what you’re going to focus on that day?

Yeah….absolutely. It depends on the process. I mean, there is a lot of days I’mdelivering or other days, I’m writing, or other days, I’m connecting withpeople. I’m in so many places. I actually haven’t been in Sydney since end of

March and it’s now July. I’ve been all around the world about three times sincethen. But it sort of varies to me.

But if I’m writing, for example, if I’m trying to output then there is nosubstitute for not turning on emails and being really clear before I start writingabout where I want to get to and how I want to get to that. I’ve really got onlytwo ways I can do that. One is with my eyes still closed in the morning orsecond is in the shower. If I don’t use one of those two windows to really thinkdeeply about what I’m going to do, it doesn’t happen because these are subtlethoughts and they need deep thinking.

Is that like meditative-type state for you in the morning?

Meditating is entirely different. It’s called mind wandering. It’s where you’reable to notice subtle connections inside your thinking and it’s fairly effortless.It’s not like doing math. It’s a state called mind wandering and I wrote about itin the book in Chapter 6.

That’s one of the disciplines is just — it depends. If there is days when I’m inmeetings it’s different — I don’t always do that or I’m delivering. But if I’mtrying to create, I’m trying to think, I’m trying to do stuff then I really got to

think through how am I going to achieve and what I’m going to do, what myobjectives are, all the rest.

When I get stumped, when I get stopped, another tool I have is I go justexercise. The perfect one for me is swimming but running or just walking. I’lldo some exercise. I won’t think at all. I’ll just completely relax, won’t think atall and then I come back halfway through my exercise routine. Unfortunately,

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it’s never at the end but halfway through sometimes I suddenly get these ideascoming through. That’s really important, really useful.

Is that also similar to your whole concept of creating visuals and trying tounderstand or solve complex ideas? Does that kind of get it out of your

head as well?

Yeah. What I do is I’m really disciplined about what I don’t think about. I won’tthink about something that I know is too complex to think about in my head.I’ll put in on paper a lot. I’ll draw it or I’ll give it to other people. I try not touse my brain where I don’t have to. I’m saving the processing power for themost important thing as much as possible. I’m not saying I do that everyday.I’m not saying I do that perfectly either. But when I’m trying to output things,from rising or producing or creating then these are really, really importantprinciples.

How about the whole notion of just being happy; the sense of happinessand optimism? You talk about the impact that that has both personally and professionally.

I think happy is an expectation that things are improving. What’s improving? Ithink it’s the SCARF improving. I think happiness is an expectation of SCARFgoing up. A feeling that you’re getting smarter and a higher status, a feeling of understanding the world more in high certainty. A feeling that you’ve got moreand more autonomy and choices, a feeling more and more connected to people

and families too. I think happiness is an expectation of reward. It’s anexpectation that things are getting better. It’s feeling those things to be inbalance. I think those are the things that make us happy.

There is a big study that just came out by Gallop which looked at happiness andthey found that money increases happiness. We’ve known for a few years aboutthe money studies that money only increases happiness to a certain amount.

There is a more interesting study just recently which is that financial wealthdoes bring a certain type of happiness but it doesn’t bring — there is anotherside of happiness which it doesn’t bring which is like an everyday contentment.That actually comes from things that are more SCARF related; a sense of autonomy, a sense of status, a sense of certainty. You’ll see that if you lookthat up.

Money buys a certain sort of contentment but not an everyday happiness. Idon’t remember the right language exactly to quote it properly. They

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distinguish really two quite different types of happiness and money couldn’tbuy one of them.

As you travel around the world, my view of Australia is that it is one of themost progressive places in the world just from the interaction of some of

the entrepreneurs that I’ve had there. Is the perception in a place likethat, of the work that you’re doing a little bit more accepting becausethey’re so progressive than perhaps maybe some other parts of the world?

Not necessarily. Only because — there is that saying, a prophet in his own landis never valued. If I was from America, they would love it more. There is alittle bit of that. They value overseas ideas more but, it happens everywhere.

Australia is somewhat progressive. Sweden is progressive. Denmark isprogressive. Switzerland actually is very progressive. Australia is not that

progressive. It’s pretty conservative in a lot of ways. It’s a bit more creativeand a bit less conservative than the U.S. I think it’s a little more innovative and

partly that’s just because of its size.

New Zealand is more innovative than Australia. Again, partly the fact that youcan make changes in a country of four million, easier than 20 and easier than200 or 300. I think it’s creative and progressive. It’s not the perfect society.There is a lot wrong with it. We’re getting some pretty bad habits from some of our bigger cousins.

Singapore is a wonderful model as is Switzerland of a great way to run acountry. They both have people that are really happier, healthier, andwealthier by so many measures. Americans think Singapore is a terrible placeuntil they visit there and talk to people and find that actually they are reallysafe, really happy, and really wealthy. There are many things to love. Justdon’t try and sell or buy drugs there because they’ll hang you. But otherwise,it’s a wonderful place.

For the people like myself and other entrepreneurs out there who havegotten addicted to your work and the stuff that you’re doing, how do yourecommend that we continue our research and follow what you’re doing toreally make this part of our lives and certainly business?

I’m writing all the time. I’m posting in a couple of places. I’m about to start inthe Washington Post as well. I’m posting on Psychology Today, Your Brain atWork. I’m posting on Huffington Post. So there are those opportunities.

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The NeuroLeadership Institute is really interesting, that’s a community of change agents who are collaborating and connecting and there is anopportunity to do a year’s worth of study in this work; that’swww.NeuroLeadership.org. Also, through my commercial organization ResultsCoaching Systems which is www.ResultsCoaches.com. There are opportunities

to get trained and certified in some of my approaches.

If you really want like a fire hose of ideas, I post on Twitter pretty much everyday new studies. It’s pretty funny actually there are a lot of bizarre thingscoming out all the time. So I post on Twitter, David Rock 101 and a bunch of stuff. I think it’s probably useful to more not so much following it but once in awhile checking it and having a look at what’s interesting because there aresome interesting studies coming up all the time. You’ll find something kind sortof working in there.

Those are some of the ways and certainly I have a mailing list if you register formy list at any of my sites probably at www.DavidRock.net. That’s the easiestone. If you register from my mailing list there, you’ll get an email every monthor two with sort of new writings I’ve done and new insights and new papers andthings like that.

What’s keeping you inspired nowadays? I know this is a phenomenon thatwill continue especially neuro-leadership. What’s keeping particularly intrigued with this stuff?

I’m just going to the next level; how to make this really useful to a lot morepeople. That’s the next challenge. I’m thrilled with the impact that it had onpeople. What upsets me is going to a bookstore and seeing my book not therein most bookstores. How do you get an idea that is so helpful and actually makeit accessible to people? That’s sort of the big challenge.

It’s doing well, don’t get me wrong. It’s doing well. It’s doing much better thanmy last book. The publisher is thrilled and all the rest. How do you get thismessage out? How do you help a lot more people? How do you scale this? That’swhat’s interesting and intriguing. How do I scale this a lot more? The thingshould be really helpful so how do we help more people?

I can tell you that we can do whatever it is that we need to do to try tohelp you scale and spread that message because not only has it becomeaddictive to people but it’s one of the first tools that I’ve been able towork with that really makes positive change easy, accessible and possible.I don’t mean easy as in simple. I mean there is a model here. You wrote the

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book brilliantly by creating story and following it by scientific research. I don’t know if that was strategic or not but the model is brilliant.

It was tricky. It was very difficult. But it was very intense.

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