The Science of Courage and Fear | Ranjay Gulati

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1:31for the content of this advertising. Bold behavior doesn't mean reckless behavior. People can be overconfident or their sense of self-efficacy gets ahead of them. In some instances, it can turn into arrogance. It can turn into recklessness. So there's a fine line here. What is bold?

1:57Well, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Thank you. We'd love to learn what piqued your interest in studying courage? I never thought I was going to study courage per se. It began serendipitously. At an academic level, I was studying companies in recessions. And everyone tells you in recessions is the best time to get ahead of competition. But when you look at companies' behavior in recessions, they all freak out and cut costs. So I actually got data going back three recessions, and I found that there were only 9 % of companies that actually invest for growth in down markets. And they crush it.

2:38It's kind of crazy. No one else does it. Because if you see them after the recession, they're crushing it. But I never thought about courage, and I don't know who these 9 % are, who are these 91 % who don't. My first encounter with courage was actually just looking at bold leaders. individuals who did crazy things, entrepreneurs. And it was really looking at entrepreneurs who took crazy risk. My own mother, who was an entrepreneur, I kind of watched her start a fashion business in 1970, you know, go to Paris in 1970 from India. So it was in my mind, and honestly, I don't think I was a very courageous person myself, though my mother was.

3:23so I was kind of intrigued about the topic this reminds me of some data that came out maybe it was about 15 10 years ago on on football and basically they did the average of kicking the extra point or or uh going for it um going for the the two and it turns out that going for the two the percentage of that completion was was incredibly high and was the determination for a lot of games so all of the coaches that year started going for two however the backlash when they risked it and went for two and didn't make it was so powerful that they didn't want to hear about it at the press meetings anymore.

4:19So they all stopped doing it and started playing conservatively again. So you have this added force of peer pressure. And I think with companies and that recession, you got a board of directors, you got so many people involved that they, even though the data points it out, right? Common wisdom and routine has been to pull back. And I think there's many forces there that are working against them. John, it's too late for you to get the Nobel Prize, but there's a Nobel Prize in economics for exactly what you just said, okay? And I'll tell you what it is. It's called loss avoidance. It turns out that we experience the pain of losing more than the joy of winning.

5:14So a golfer will experience the pain of a bogey more than the joy of a birdie. Even though it's, come on, a stroke is a stroke. Or a double fault, an ace versus a double fault. And it's really interesting. Even though the data is compelling, they still won't do it. But it goes back to something else. I read a fascinating historian's book, and he had a chapter called The Good Coward. And I was like, I was drawn. I said, I got to go to that chapter. Forget the book. I'm going to read that chapter. And I think the point he made is that human beings, we are evolved to be cowards. It's never fight or flight, right?

6:03It's freeze or flight, occasionally fight. Our ancestors are the ones who ran away from danger. Right? The ones who ran to danger didn't have kids. So here we are. And I think what ends up happening, though, is most of us get drawn to safety. We're almost addicted to safety and comfort and not wanting to try. Now, to understand that, you've got to understand uncertainty. There's risk and there's uncertainty. Risk, some people can take it. Some can't even take risk. But risk is I kind of know 10 % chance of this. Like you said, you know, there's a 30 % chance of this, a 50 % chance or 20 % chance.

6:49Okay, should we do it? Should we not do it? Uncertainty is unknown. I don't know. Do you know what the tariffs are going to be in one month or three months? Do you know what's going to happen in the Ukraine war? Do we know? Do we know? We don't know. And I think, or early days of COVID. So when the human brain encounters uncertainty, it packs up. That's where the primitive fear response that is hardwired in the amygdala, in the primitive brain, kicks in and like, dude, get the hell out of there. You know, run for it. So I think, and I think that's what I discovered. courage was people who somehow, even in the face of uncertainty, are able to resource themselves to do something.

7:41And these were ordinary people. I got to tell you, to me, it's great. I studied astronauts and Top Gun pilots. I studied the Marine Corps. I looked at Navy SEALs. Those are fine. I looked at ordinary people, a guy in Los Angeles working in a dance hall, a woman who's from an undercast group in central India. A lawyer in Kiev three years ago who decided he was going to volunteer to be behind enemy lines commando. That was, to me, interesting. Or an emergency room doctor in New Orleans during COVID. So, you know, these are people who didn't sign up for crazy stuff. how do they resource themselves to do something that to me is the the real question to be asking ourselves like because my hope is that everybody courage is for you know we think of it as kind of this tom cruise james bond jason born kind of thing it isn't our audience is very analytical and i think the fear equation that you outline in the book is super helpful for putting all these concepts into action.

8:57So what is the fear equation is basically that if you want to understand courage, you got to understand courage is action in the face of fear. It's not absence of fear. People confuse it thinking, oh, it's fearless behavior. That's what this Hollywood movie is portraying. So it's action in the face of fear. Then the question and second point is where does fear come from? Fear originates in uncertainty, right? Unknown. Now, then the question becomes, okay, but people still, some of them, take action in the face of fear, this action of courage. Who are they and how do they do it? And then, because the book is based on social science research, then the question is, what do we know from social science of how people resource themselves to take action in the face of fear?

9:46And I think that's why I lay out the different pathways by which ordinary people can learn to resource themselves to take action. But you're right. The fear equation is the kind of the heart of the story, which is zero to not, around which you can then say, OK, what do I do and how do I do it? In a lot of the work with our clients, we recognize the impact of attitude. And I know for myself, when I have a can-do attitude, it definitely feels like there's less fear and uncertainty moving forward and taking action. And so much of what we're talking about here is inaction, you know, just getting in the way of us reaching our goals, going after what we want.

10:29So what is it about attitude that really helps us overcome that fear? That's one of my most interesting chapters, to me at least, that you're zeroing in on. There was this professor at Stanford, very famous guy, Albert Bandura. And Bandura decided he was going to hire students for an experiment. And he asked kids who on their own volition would say, I'm terrified of snakes. The technical term for them is Ophidio folks. So these, he had 25 odd Ophidio folks sign up. They can't, I mean, these are people who can't even be in a room with a snake. They can't even see a snake. And he brings into the room a corn snake.

11:10A corn snakes look like a python they're huge they don't bite so they're not gonna harm the person but they're terrifying to look at and he over a course of several weeks gets about half of them to be willing to touch and hold the snake okay the other half bail out they're like i'm out of here you know this is crazy i'm not gonna do it they're gone but what's interesting what happened to these 10, 12 kids after the experiment is over. They suddenly developed this kind of can-do thing. If I can hold a snake, I can do anything. And he called that research, he didn't call it can-do, he called it self-efficacy.

11:55And I discovered there's research that was done after World War II on bomb disposal squads and paratroopers in World War II in the British Army. the two among the most dangerous and the same thing how they train themselves up to build a can-do mindset i can do it and i found this is true in a lot of entrepreneurs you know they're like oh i'm running out of cash really yeah we'll find a way you're like well dude you're gonna be you're not gonna make payroll or pay rent next month i got it we'll find some way to do this thing. So there's kind of a, it's a self-efficacy that I will find a way to do it.

12:40A great example was Captain Sullenberger, who landed that plane, United U.S. Airways 1549 in the Hudson River. Okay, he was a 40-year veteran pilot. He had been flying for a long time, but none of these guys is trained for landing a plane on the water in January, freezing cold, right? And when Katie Couric interviewed him, she said, did you know what you had to do? He said, yeah, I knew I had to land the plane level, and I had to do this, and I had to do that, and I had to do this, and the nose light me up, and above the minimum flying speed, but not too fast. She said, but there was a lot of things.

13:20And then he looks at her and says, I knew I could do it. I knew I could do it. That is, you know, so where you get that from is the question I explore in that chapter. How do you cultivate a can-do mindset? So you're right, attitude is very important.

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18:11We've been around those leaders who take charge in those moments where we're all feeling that fear. We're going to run out of cash. We're going to lose our job. What's going on? You know, what can we practically do to strengthen that self-efficacy muscle? I actually in the chapter talk about how do you train yourself? You know, it's it goes beyond the domain training you do. it goes beyond the domain training you do to building this meta skill that no matter what goes wrong will find a way to improvise and adjust around it you know in music they find like if you look at music and art you know great blues music or jazz music players you know they master the scales first and then they're liberated to kind of go around and do whatever the hell they want to do, right?

19:01And it's like you have to understand the domain so well that you are able to work around any curveballs that might come your way. And so how do you cultivate that kind of self-efficacy? The other one I should tell you, so one is just domain knowledge. The other one I found is interesting is other people's belief in you. When others believe you can do it, we live up to other people's expectations. I've had great mentors. I didn't think I could finish my PhD dissertation. I was like, this is too hard. I don't know what I'm doing. This is not going to work out for me. I'm going to give up. But then when you have others who say, I know you can do it, that boosts up our self-confidence too.

19:49There's one thing that I can't help but think about. And this is great for the people who understand the basics, who are able to go outside, who know that if a curveball gets thrown at me, I'm going to be able to handle it. There are many domains in my own life where I'm ready to roll. Hit me with your best shot. And there's going to be a lot where I'm like, you can hit me. I don't know what's going to happen, but we'll figure it out. We'll see what happens but on that flight let's just say that that captain decided i i can't do this i i'm too scared and he announces on the intercom is there any guys in here that think that they can land this on the hudson there's going to be what one or two guys are oh i got this i can do it And those results are not going to turn out the way it thankfully did.

20:47So we have now this contrast between that can-do attitude with competence and that can-do attitude of hubris. So look, totally. And I should tell you, John, that's another great observation you're making. Aristotle, who wrote the first essay I could find on courage, distinguished courage from reckless. Yeah. So and the idea is that, you know, bold behavior doesn't mean reckless behavior. And I think you're right. And sometimes you can look at it as saying people can be overconfident or their sense of self-efficacy gets ahead of them. So you're absolutely right that, you know, in some instances, it can turn into arrogance.

21:42It can turn into recklessness. So there's a fine line here. Like what is bold? Bold is kind of reasoned, measured. But it also means that if the unknown comes at me. Can I give you, let me give you an example of this. Okay, I'll just, I like to talk through a story. So one of the cases I researched was a plant in Japan called the Fukushima Daiini plant. Everyone knows about Fukushima where the meltdown happened, which is going to take 25 years to clean up. That was the Daiichi plant. Eight miles away was the Daiini complex. Each of them has eight nuclear reactors. Both of them had 20 foot high boundary walls because that was the highest.

22:28Water had never come near 20 feet. the tsunami brought 55 feet of water, submerged both plants, complexes. The Daiichi plant melted down. They couldn't get the cooling system back up. They couldn't find power. And it was a mess. This plant had the same problem. The plant manager has 300 scared members of his team in the emergency room. And everything is shut down outside. all the panels, because the nuclear plant runs on dashboards, are shut. They're on the blink. He calls headquarters and says on their emergency phone and says, what should we do? And they say, we don't know. We're busy with the other plant.

23:10You figure it out. He calls GE that made the equipment and they say, look, dude, you need to get the cooling systems back up in 36 hours or we're going to have a meltdown. Good luck. Now, he's a seasoned guy. He's been doing this for 30 years, you know, but he is not prepared for this. And how does he then resource all 300 people with him? And they navigate their way into it. So, you know, how he takes, he says, he literally puts up a whiteboard and calls all 300 over there into the room and says, here's what we know. And he writes down what information they have. Here's what we don't know. Does anybody in this room have any more information that we don't have.

23:59He writes that down. So they all, now all the information is on the same place. He said, I need some volunteers to go outside. Any volunteers, all 300 hands go up. Five of them go out in protective gear to physically see what's going on. They come back, they bring some data, they write it down on the board. And he does this, and they are able to get power back up into the cooling system with like two hours of spare. Right? I mean, there was no manual. There was no clear pathway. But he was like, I got to do it. And we got to figure it out. And so you see, now how do you cultivate? That's the, so then I connected it to the science of how do you, not everybody steps up.

24:46The other plant manager failed. so how it's it's really interesting how people sometimes are able to resource themselves to have that attitude um and then plow through what looks like an impossible situation what i discovered also courage is rarely a solo act and i'll tell you i'm guilty of it myself So for the longest time, I teach this case on Ernest Shackleton at HBS. And it's this case about this heroic guy in the early 1900s who went to the South Pole with 28 men and their ship sank. It got crushed in the ice. And he has 28 men and three lifeboats on the roughest sea on the planet. And they survive over almost two years down there.

25:37And he brings all 28 of them back home alive. it. So when I teach this case, we have video, they had a video camera over there. It's like crazy. You should watch it if you haven't. And so he comes back and everyone's like, you're a great hero. That's what I teach. What did Shackleton do? What would you do if you were Shackleton? How would you, what do you think we can learn from him? So I'm writing this book and I start to research Shackleton. I'm going to write up about him. And I discovered he wasn't alone. he had a support team he had an inner support squad there were three men who were critical to his his success and and he had many down moments if you read his diaries he had many kind of moments of despair so you discover that you know so courage so another piece i discovered was that there's this kind of support, that courage is not a solo act.

26:37You know, it's not an attitude only that you have in isolation by yourself. You surround. So I ask the question, who's your support squad? You know, do you have a support squad? Yeah, I think it's important to recognize here. We're talking about his name, but what are the names of the other three people? Right. So that's where Hollywood and storytelling really gets it wrong is they create these single narratives around one person, it's easy to follow the hero's journey. Okay, they're facing this doubt, but they act. We're not talking about their peers, their advisors, their support group. And going back to our earlier point around attitude, a lot of our attitude is reinforced by our support group, right?

27:18If you have a group of people in your life who can check your attitude when it slips from can do to I can't do this, and they point out all the other are opportunities in your life where you could do it, well, now you're supported to maintain that attitude that gets you over the hurdle. But and we share this with our clients, you know, so often we don't think about the influence others have on us. We don't think about how our mindset shifts and our attitude changes in certain groups. And oftentimes the fear of being lonely leads us to stay with support groups that aren't actually supportive, that aren't actually serving us to find the courage in these moments that we need.

27:56And if her mom had said, don't do it, or if that law firm said, you're going to ruin your career, this isn't worth it. And that was the only support she was getting. Well, yeah, she'd probably be running an AI company. Yeah. So absolutely. You know, you're spot on. And I think it's fascinating how many CEOs now I see who have their own little personal advisory board. These are not people even who work with them. But these are the kind of like, I got a problem. What should I do? you know, and I teach an MBA class on turnarounds and transformations. Some of these companies are in dire straits, okay?

28:36And they're big companies like BlackBerry failing 10 years ago, Weight Watchers dealing with GLP-1, you know? And you've got these leaders who have to kind of deal with, and you say, oh, leadership is a lonely job, and, you know, get over it, tough it out. So, uh-uh. They have their support squad. They have people they can call. And their resource. And, you know, that's where the meritocracy versus access plays in. I had one of the most amazing leaders come to my class, Anne Mulcahy. Anne was the CEO of Xerox. 20 years ago, she literally saved it from bankruptcy. It's an amazing turnaround story of how she brought it back.

29:20And she described how she says, you know, the one thing I really didn't get access to was a support group. She says, right, she lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. And she says, right, I knew in my neighborhood there was a group of five male CEOs who all got together every month and talked about their problems and try to help each other out. But I wasn't invited. You know, so that's what happened. is sometimes, you know, we have to create, you know, access to these kind of support networks. And now you see, so what has Ann done? She actually, believe it or not, she's retired. She's on the board of J &J.