The Model: characteristics of emotions

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Besides your emotional system's consistency and reliability, each emotion you feel has several characteristics relevant to its function. I have found four characteristics…

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The Model: perception and belief in more depth

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Let's look at the next element in the cycle after the environment -- perception and belief. Perception means how you look at or…

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The Model: our emotional system is outdated

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I think everybody knows the following, but I have to say it anyway just in case. The human emotional system evolves at the…

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The Model: your emotional system is consistent and predictable

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] The Model predicts the human emotional system to be consistent and predictable. How so? People often contrast emotions with reason, which they consider…

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The Model: our emotions transcend “nature red in tooth and claw”

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Two days ago we covered a few examples of emotional cycles. Some are obvious, like hunger when low on food and thirst when…

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The Model: emotional reward differs from the emotion that brought it about

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday's last example illustrated an important distinction I left implicit so far: the feeling of reward or punishment is independent of the emotion…

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The Model: examples of emotional cycles

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] In our Model, each emotion you experience manifests itself in the emotional cycle of the model. Example 1: let's consider an example of…

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The Model: where emotional cycles came from

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] We've presented all the elements of the Model, barely scratching the surface of what it all means or how to use it. Let's…

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The Model: reward, happiness, and pleasure

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Two days ago we first saw the complete Model. Now we'll begin discussing it. First let's clarify the central points of pleasure, happiness,…

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Dropping friends who bring you down can hurt, but improves your life

Today I'll take a short break from my thread on the Model to share advice to a client with a common problem: he has grown and changed and a former friend hasn't. The former friend now holds him back. He wants to move on, but doesn't know how. His description of the situation described incident after incident of counterproductive behavior from the friend (and him accepting it), only briefly mentioning what held them together -- their music (also going out to meet girls together). I felt the musical success had more long-term value, so I started there. First, congratulations on…

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How to stop boring everyone you meet

Some people ask the same boring questions of everyone they meet. They are so stuck in their ruts they don't see what they're doing. They guide conversations to small talk they've heard before and don't care about, then wonder why people aren't more interesting. By far the most boring, in my opinion, is So what do you do? You've asked it. You've been asked it. You've answered it too many times to count. Maybe at a trade show or networking event this question could be interesting. Any other time you are treating them as an employee before than as a…

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How to stop being so judgmental

Nobody likes feeling judged. We don't like other people feeling so high and mighty as to judge us. I bet you're more judgmental than you realize. Here's how to raise your awareness of it, reduce it, annoy people less, and share more about yourself. I bet you don't realize how judgmental you seem to others, even if you don't intend it. Nor, I bet, do people making you feel judged realize how much they seem judgmental. Why not? Because judgment is in our language. It doesn't have to, but it often is. My exercise on avoiding judgmental words from a…

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Business school’s first major lesson: how to resolve ethical dilemmas

One of my most important lessons from business school came before the first class began. It's been useful for me since. Columbia emphasizes ethics. Orientation included a class on ethics. The case was an employee who witnesses someone breaking a rule. Reporting it would potentially harm him and certainly someone else for something that may have been minor. Not reporting it would benefit himself, but at the cost of becoming complicit. The first thing I learned in this case (not the main lesson) was to understand the case as an instance of a general class of ethical dilemmas where a…

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You don’t know your values until you test them, part II

Yesterday's post described how interacting with a former Austrian soldier, now friend's grandfather led me to examine my values. Such interactions lead you to expand your understanding of others and of humanity as well. Let's understand the situation. Comparing people to Nazis has become an internet joke (perhaps insightful) called Godwin's Law. This situation isn't that. This man was a Nazi foot soldier, proud of some aspects of it. I'm not comparing or judging, only using the real-life situation to examine values from a perspective beyond most people's every day experience. I posted this anecdote because it's been on my…

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You don’t know your values until you test them

You may think you know your values. Until you test them, you probably don't. Understanding their boundaries helps you understand them better. Testing them in controlled situations prepares you for surprises others aren't prepared for. Preparation like that makes for effective leadership of yourself and others. If you never plan to reach any boundaries, you may not expect to benefit from examining them. But then if you never examine them, you won't do well when you do things outside going to work, watching TV, and buying things in malls. I've thought about values -- my own and values in general…

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How to choose between nearly equal but incomparable options

Someone I'm coaching wrote the following: I will be graduating from college in May, and I am trying to decide which two cities I should move to after graduation. I've been wanting to move to NYC ever since I first visited in high school and been going there ever since. On the other hand, everyone that I know tells me that I should move to LA instead and think I would be better off there. I've only been to LA once when I was younger, (visited Manhattan Beach and Santa Monica) but I did have a great time there. I…

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People join good projects and leave bad management

Professor, author, and former former Chief People Officer at Pepsi, among other impressive feats,  Michael Feiner said one of the most valuable statements I've ever heard about why we choose, like, and don't like our jobs. People join good projects and leave bad management. It's one of the most valuable lessons I learned in business school. It applies to a remarkable number of situations -- nearly every time I've heard of someone leaving a position since I first heard Michael say it. I recommend not just enjoying the statement for its wittiness. You can make it acting by playing with…

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Independence Day

It's still July 4th in the States as I'm writing this even though it's July 5th in Shanghai. Of all our national holidays, I value and celebrate Independence Day perhaps the most. By value and celebrate I don't mean I go to the biggest barbeque I can, though a couple years ago I went to an amazing July 4th party only being an alumnus of an ivy league business school or something similar can get you. And this year I had to pass on an invitation to a monster event with some crazy and amazing people for this trip to…

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Leaders take responsibility

One last behavioral trend to round out a few recent posts on behaviors that correlate with importance. The others were on leaders having the least stuff, being the least hurried, and the most common route to becoming CEO. People know this one, though they don't always act consistently with it. Look throughout an organization. The higher you move in the organization chart, the more responsibility people have. Having responsibility because of your position isn't the same as choosing to take responsibility. But people who choose to take responsibility become more important in their communities. Likewise, people who shirk responsibility lose…

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The most common route to CEO

"What is the best route to become CEO of a corporation?" For people driven to reach the top it's a common question. A classmate asked it of Ralph Biggadike, professor of Top Management Processes, which, when I was at Columbia Business School, was the class in highest demand. Ralph is an excellent teacher, as knowledgeable about top management as you'd expect one of the top professors at one of the top business schools to be. I expect most of the students in the class were driven to reach the tops of their planned professions. As I recall, most of the…

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Emotions, values, children, and school

At my niece's kindergarten graduation Friday the entire graduating class of four-and-five-year-olds sang a song with a chorus "I love America." The song was light-hearted and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. As a thoughtful person, I couldn't help think about what having a whole class sing the song meant. I enjoy playing with ideas and what better time to ponder education than at a graduation? I'll be the first to say the following is a tempest in a teacup. The interaction wasn't that big a deal, but this blog is about values and emotions, with the guiding principle that the…

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The CEO is the least hurried or reactive

Following up on yesterday's post about one aspect of behavior -- how much stuff you carry and how functional you are -- that correlates with importance is how calm or rushed you are. Likewise, how purposeful or reactive you are. People who know their priorities tend not to be rushed. They know what should be done in what order and they do it. So it's not surprising that people who know their priorities also get where they want to go in life. So people who are successful tend not to be as rushed. They're calmer because they know they're doing…

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The CEO carries the least

Important people do things differently than unimportant people -- that is, behavior correlates with importance. If you want people to consider you more important -- to trust and defer to you -- you should pick up on how behavior correlates with importance. And with unimportance if you want to avoid being lumped in with unimportant people. The more important you are, the less you carry. The following corporate examples are simplified to communicate easily, but see how they resonate with your experience. An engineer who is easily replaced often carries tons of stuff -- a big bag, sometimes so full…

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How to tell if someone is good at something

Two observations I've made about how good people are at things: People who aren't good at something talk about how awesome they are at it. People who are great at something talk about the humiliations and failures that got them good at it. I've found this pattern far more accurate than I would have expected. I love hearing stories from people about the disasters that made them who they are. That's how I know they're good at the thing at hand. They've gotten over their insecurity through experience and aren't afraid to share. People who are afraid to share tend…

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Leadership seminar at New York Academy of Sciences posted

The leadership development seminar I led in April at the New York Academy of Sciences has been posted as an e-briefing. Now you can see me speak where Einstein and Darwin did, or at least they were members. You have to be a member to see the video, but the academy has great events. I recommend joining. You do love science, don't you? Here's the overview of the e-briefing: Overview Leadership coach, entrepreneur, and former physicist Joshua Spodek spoke from a scientist's and entrepreneur's perspective on developing personal leadership skills. The two-day, eight-hour interactive seminar took place April 5 and…

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