Language, communication, evolutionary psychology, and leadership

A client who knows I've applied a lot from evolutionary psychology to leadership and self-awareness wrote: What's your opinion of the theory that language serves primarily as persuasion? In its raw form, I'm currently telling you that you are an authority by asking a question. And that sentence might seem like it's an authoritative statement, but instead it is clarifying my question, which in its clarification is a neediness to be understood on my part, and distancing us even further. Does that make sense? I read the Red Queen and I don't know what to think anymore. Noting that [an…

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How to increase empathy, part 2: a model and strategy

Yesterday's post discussed how the world complicates understanding empathy with vague definitions and associating it with neediness and unwanted emotions. Today I'll describe a simple model to understand empathy simply. A simple model for empathy The model you have for something determines how you understand it and how you use it. I'll talk about emotions in general and then empathy in particular A simple model for emotions in general Many people contrast emotions with reason and conclude that emotions are irrational or random. I also used to think so, and that mental model undermined my ability to understand others' emotions…

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How to increase empathy, part 1: why it seems so hard to

You want to improve your empathy because you've heard it's fundamental to leadership, influence, and motivation, but find it hard to define, measure, or see in use, making it hard to improve or learn from others. In other words, empathy is important for working with people, but hard to learn, all the more so for those who lack it most. While I don't pretend to be the most empathetic person, having started with little, I've improved a lot. I can teach you to improve yours. Today let's see how others make it hard. The world makes learning empathy hard when…

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How not to lose your composure: Rational Emotion

Context: Losing your composure hurts you When you lose your composure you don't get promoted. People don't follow you if you lose your composure. You lose your ability to motivate or influence them. If you debate or argue with someone and you lose your composure and they don't---that is, if your emotions become more intense than theirs---you generally lose the argument. People feel emotional reward when someone else's emotions get intense. When you get the other person to lose their composure, you feel a certain reward. If you show intense emotions, you motivate the other person to do again what…

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How to Choose

Most of your identity is the culmination of the choices you've made. You choose all day every day. Many people have trouble making big choices, for some choosing is even debilitating. If you do, you're holding yourself back from living your life more fully. I used to dwell on decisions too. In my second year of business school I saw many of my classmates dwelling on choices between different job offers, unable to choose between Goldman and McKinsey. While most of the world would imagine it simple to choose among six-figure offers from prestigious firms, people choose for their reasons,…

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The connection between physics and self-awareness and emotions

People often ask me if I use my physics education today. As I see it, whereas physical sciences aim to make the world a materially better place, by studying and sharing what I learn about self-awareness and emotions I aim to make the world an emotionally better place. To me, physics is the study of the most fundamental parts of nature---time, distance, gravity, charge, mass, and so on. It also includes the human side of observing, honestly sharing results, and accepting improvements to past work, which I consider essential parts of science. People study nature for different reasons, some personal,…

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The Method — the series

I posted The Method on how to use The Model — my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development — in series form. Here is a link to it. I find the Model and Method the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. The Model tells you how we work. The Method shows you how to use The Model to lead yourself and others and create the lifestyle you want. I recommend reading The Model Series first, then reading this series…

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The Model — the series

I posted The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- in series form. Here is the link to it. I find this Model the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. Why? A model's value comes not from its accuracy but how well it serves its purpose, which improves from effective filtering of information. Street maps, for example, are more useful for driving for having less detail than, say, a satellite picture. Subway maps are more useful for…

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Comparing biology and physics from a business leadership perspective

I studied physics to nearly the farthest levels you can at one of the great institutions. Now I study evolutionary psychology more. I've thought about these things a lot. As a practicing businessman and inventor, I look to nature -- physics -- for ideas to create and engineer to bring to market. As a leader I look to people -- biology -- to interact with, team up with, buy from, sell to, etc; in short, to influence. Sometimes I think about the fields and how I interact with them daily, not abstractly asking about the fields or as a researcher…

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There will never be a periodic table of emotions, part 2

Continuing yesterdays' post... In the examples above, the categorization schemes worked because they categorized something with an underlying structure -- the photon and its wavelength, the atom and its nucleus and electrons, natural selection and DNA, the (so far) fundamental particles and the laws governing their interactions. But not everything with patterns has an underlying structure. Let's look at anatomy, for example. As we'll see, it will reveal a lot about emotions and motivations. Notice that despite common characteristics across life, no one has created a periodic table of anatomy. Why not? Because anatomy has no underlying structure like those…

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There will never be a periodic table of emotions, part 1

Discovering the periodic table of the elements told us wonders about chemistry and pointed the way toward understanding atoms. Figuring it out pointed the way toward tremendous understanding and improving our lives. We found similar structures that revealed underlying structure in the spectrum of light, life's family tree, the standard model of particle physics, and others. Wouldn't it be great to find such a structure for our emotions and motivations? Wouldn't we expect discovering such a structure reveal our emotional system and create tremendous progress in psychology, personal development, achievement, motivation, and well-being? Why can't we find such a structure?…

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Audio interview: the difference between my seminar and traditional business school leadership classes

In today's interview, my business partner, Christina Black, asked me about the differences between my course and a traditional business school leadership class. [sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/difference_between_MBA_leadership_course_and_my_seminar.mp3]

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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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