1697 – Breaking Free from the Performance Trap: Embracing Growth and Innovation with Eduardo Briceño

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

0:58with us right now eduardo briseño eduardo you are a keynote speaker and congratulations on the performance paradox uh you of which you are the author uh and so eduardo thank you so much for joining us thank you just for having me it's great to be here you have spoke for well i'll tell you what, you are well-known and well-loved. Let me list a few companies that you've spoken for. Microsoft, Uber, Cisco, Siemens, Capital One, Expedia, Google, LinkedIn, Citi, Deloitte, Fidelity. I could go on and on because your roster certainly does go on and on. Oh my gosh, Eduardo, congratulations on the impact you have in the world.

1:42Tell us more about kind of your core messages? Sure. So I started doing the work I do 16 years ago when I partnered with Stanford professor Carol Dweck. You might be familiar with her. She coined the term growth mindset, which is the belief that humans can change. So sometimes we all are in a fixed mindset some of the time thinking that people are natural. The reason they're good at something is because they're a natural leader, because they're a natural athlete. And that has a lot of negative psychological implications. So a lot of our early work and continued work is about helping people become more self-aware on our beliefs about the nature of human beings.

2:20But the other thing that I discovered is that the belief is really important, but it's not sufficient. In order to be motivated and effective learners and to build cultures of learning and high performance, we need to develop the belief that people can change, but also the understanding of how to change and develop the habits and the systems, not only to perform, but also to improve and to engage in continuous improvement and innovation. And so the book that I, the message that I'm focused on right now is what the book I wrote about called The Performance Paradox is about how to change and how to improve and how to lead cultures of growth.

2:56And the key insight, The Performance Paradox, the concept is that if we focus only on performing, our performance suffers. Our results go down if we are narrowly focused on only results. And that's what the book focuses on, helping professionals and leaders overcome. Yeah. So for thinking about maybe something like, say, even something as simple as I right now, I bought 30 days ago, I bought a bass guitar and I'm doing daily lessons with that. And actually, I read a really good book about, you know, like how to get good at something like a musical instrument. And, you know, it's trusting our brains.

3:38Like, and so if you, whether you think you're getting it or you're not getting it, you don't need to worry about that. You are. Because you're engaged in that activity, it will absolutely impact you, whether you believe it or not. Is there any truth to that in your world? Well, you know, so I used to play the guitar too growing up. When I used to, I was in a band, in a rock band, and I was pretty mediocre at it. But when I practiced, I would just practice the songs that I liked and I would play them and sing them. And the thing is, what's really tricky is that just playing the songs works to get better only when we're novices.

4:18When we're starting something and we just start playing with it, we will pick up some skills, we will get better at it. But then once we become proficient, we will stagnate at just trying to do those things. So most people think, for example, that the way you become great at playing the guitar is just playing the guitar for 10 ,000 hours, or the way you get great at playing tennis is you just play tennis for 10 ,000 hours. And that's not true. So if you think about, for example, a world-class tennis player, right? If they're playing a match, a tournament, in that match, say they're having trouble with a particular move like the top spin serve, they're going to avoid that top spin serve during that match because they're just trying to win.

5:03They're trying to perform. That's what I call a performance zone. But then after the match, they'll go to their coach and say, coach, I have to work on my top spin serve. And they'll just focus on that. And that's a very different activity and area of attention than what we do when we're performing, doing the things we know best, trying to minimize mistakes. And for these amazing performers and the most skilled people in the world, the reason they become so good is because they do something very different than just performing the activity. They engage in what I call the learning zone, which is when we're engaging in effective strategies to improve, not just effective strategies to perform.

5:37Wow. You know, that's brilliant. I'm so grateful we're having this conversation because that absolutely tracks. It's like when, so in addition to kind of goofing around and playing along with YouTubers and stuff and finding easy songs, It makes me feel really good. Like, yes, I can tell that I'm getting more comfortable with my fingering and so forth. However, I feel like, you know, it's like that growth is going to come from being challenged and being put in that uncomfortable position. And I know as humans, sometimes we don't like that discomfort. Can you talk maybe just a little bit more about why that's so valuable?

6:19Absolutely. So in order to improve, we have to change. Sometimes we like the idea of getting better, but we don't really like the idea of changing or going into the things that we haven't mastered yet, right? That leaping that you're talking about. And the leaping, the learning zone is when we leap into the unknown, when we try things that may or may not work, when we do things we haven't mastered yet, we're going to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. And that's really critical because that's how we learn. In fact, if you look at the brain, the way that neuroplasticity works in the brain changes in our mid-20s.

6:53And from then on, the main way that we can drive our own neuroplasticity, our own rewiring of our brain to become smarter and more skilled is through making mistakes, is through making a prediction on something and having that prediction be wrong. That's the main way. And so the way that we can elicit that is by taking on challenges, doing things that we haven't done before. And some of those things are not going to go as we expect. And that's a way that we got smarter and more skilled. Another thing that's come up recently in conversation, I wonder if you have some thoughts on this, is this idea, when we're thinking about, well, it doesn't have to be just kids, but in this particular instance, I was talking with my wife, and I think this is something we've known for quite some time, And I've heard this where don't praise your kids for some imagined innate ability like, oh, you're so smart.

7:46You're so talented. But instead, praise them for the work that they do and the effort that they put into it with. And part of the reason for that is eventually they're going to get challenged. And when they have this belief that they're just innately special and all of a sudden they, you know, come up against something that they're not, quote unquote, talented at, well, it's very disheartening, right? And so whereas if we praise the work or the effort that they put into it, they know that that's the path to overcome that. And by the way, I think this application is appropriate not just with our kids, but folks who we work with, we have a team that we're managing, that sort of thing.

8:25That's exactly right. Right. And that, you know, some of that research was done by Carol Dweck. And it's exactly what you said. And so when we praise kids or other people for being naturally talented or smart after they do something quickly, without mistakes, without effort, they might feel good about themselves in that moment. We do it because we want them to be confident. Right. And to know that they are capable. And we think that if they're confident and they know that they're capable, then they're going to take on challenges and do the hard things. but exactly what you're saying is what happens.

8:58Like we praise them for being smart and naturally talented. They feel good in the moment. But the first thing that happens is they stop taking on challenges because what they want to do is to prove that they're smart. And so they keep doing the same thing that they already know how to do versus the other kids, like they start taking on challenges, right? The second is when they encounter something hard, they give up because they don't want to be perceived as not being smart. So they don't even try, right? And so they say, or I'm not smart at this, I'm going to go try to do something else that I might be naturally smart at.

9:29And there's a lot of other implications. They lie more about their performance. And so in the workplace, right, as leaders, we want to be encouraging and praising and reinforcing positive behaviors, the things that people can control and influence rather than kind of labeling in one way or the other. But there are also mistakes that happen there. Like sometimes if we have a colleague who is working really hard, which we like, but they might not be making progress, they might not be getting better, we might praise that hard work and just leave it there. But if they keep doing the same thing they're doing, they're not going to be, you know, they're unlikely to be, you know, breaking through.

10:12So instead, we can help them think about what different strategy can I use if this particular strategy is not working. Or sometimes we might praise people for working hard when they're not really working hard. So we need to be authentic and really praise behaviors that are working and help people reflect on how can they continue to work smarter. I wanna talk about your book, The Performance Paradox. When is the, let me see, I can click on the, do you know when the publish date is or was based on when this podcast is published? The pop date is September 5th, 2023. So in two weeks. It's already happened then for our listener.

10:53Go get this book. All right. So let's talk about the book and the transformation. First off, who is this book for? And secondly, what would you hope the transformation would take place from someone who reads and applies the principles in this book? Yeah, so this book is pretty wide. It's for any person who works. So it can be an individual contributor. and it can be like a CEO and an executive. Part one of the book is about the key ideas and is for individuals. Part two of the book is how teams and organizations can overcome the performance paradox. So it's more for leaders, but also for individuals because anybody can lead from where they sit.

11:32And then part three of the book is how can we engage in the performance zone and affect impact? Because most of the book is about, so part of the impact is chapter one is called the performance paradox. And it's meant to help people see that if we only focus on performance, our performance suffers. And that's something that's counterintuitive because we think if we just focus on working hard, getting things done as best as we know how, trying to minimize mistakes, that's the way to succeed. But we need to see how we need to do that. That's really important. But also engage in the learning zone and embed the learning zone, like systems and habits, into the way that we work with ourselves and with each other.

12:12So first, it's like a self-awareness of what are some of the ways that I'm working hard that might not be very effective and what might be some shifts that I can make to work smarter. And then also it's for it is also designed for organizations like if you have a senior executive who wants to align on common language, common understanding and common strategies with their teams. You know, their organizations like Stanford HealthCare bought 900 copies of the book to have everybody read it so that or all the leaders so that they can align and get clear on how do we want to lead? Because part of what we need to lead as leaders, right, is first, we need to think about how we frame what we do at work is part of what we're doing at work, working to continue to change and evolve ourselves, for example.

13:00Number two, what systems and habits do we use to perform, but also to improve and to learn? And number three, are we only talking about these things or are we visibly and explicitly modeling learning as leaders? Because often as leaders, we engage in learning in private when other people are not watching. So are we actually showing our learning process to others and making it explicit so that they interpret it in the ways that we mean? And so when, you know, for example, we're soliciting feedback, we are sharing what we're working to improve. We're sharing our mistakes and what we're learning from those mistakes, because when everybody does that, then it becomes a more agile organization.

13:37We respond more effectively to change and opportunity and we become more resilient and more effective at driving change. Yeah. And I know you talked about this just a little bit, but the power of mistakes as a leader, you know, sometimes I think I've seen within the organization where maybe a team member doesn't, you know, or they, I don't want them to feel like this would be an unsafe place for them to make mistakes. Like I want, you know, if I want to encourage people to be comfortable with making mistakes, I know that there's some benefit there. I'm wondering if you could talk about, number one, why that's valuable.

14:15But number two, as a leader, how can we inspire people to make more mistakes? Which sounds counterintuitive, but I think based on what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing that you believe, like I do, that mistakes are good. I do think mistakes are good and that that's too simple a message. So mistakes are good because as an entrepreneur, we are creating things that haven't been created before. We are iterating and creating new products, getting feedback all the time, making changes in what we're doing and growing and learning how we can better impact our customers, better impact our colleagues. And that leads to neuroplasticity.

14:56There's a lot of benefits as to why mistakes are powerful. And chapter five is all about mistakes. And I talk about this in the beginning, but I also say that mistakes decrease performance, right? A great performance is one that has few mistakes. And so how can we reconcile those two things? And one way, and that's what chapter five does, is that it unpacks mistakes into four different kinds of mistakes. There are the stretch mistakes, which are the mistakes that we make when we are trying something hard or different or new or experimenting. thing. And those are really, really important. We want to be doing those all the time, but we want to be mindful about when and where we do those because we want to do them at times where they're not going to create a lot of collateral damage, right?

15:42We don't want to do it in high stakes situations if we can avoid it. Second, there are the high stakes mistakes, which are the mistakes that can create a lot of damage. So we want to identify what are those times and spaces where we don't want to be taking risks if we can avoid it. If we're with a really important client and we're going into a meeting, do we want to take some risk or do we want to play it safe? We want to align as a team before we go into that meeting. And number three is the sloppy mistakes, which are mistakes that we make that we should have known better. And often there's an opportunity for improvement there too, usually an opportunity to gain more focus or to change our systems.

16:18And number four is the aha moment mistake, which is when we do something as we expected, but then we realized it was the wrong thing to do. And those mistakes are really, really precious. they are harder to proactively elicit. Like the stretch mistakes, we can always be proactively eliciting. The aha moment mistakes, we can elicit more of by regularly soliciting feedback so that we can make other people's thinking visible to us. And then we can learn so much from that. The last thing I'll say about mistakes is that as a leader is important, like you said, to create safety. And one of the ways to do that is to not weaponize mistakes.

16:52Like if what I see as a sloppy mistake in somebody else, they might see as a stretch mistake or as an aha moment mistake. So we want to approach mistakes with curiosity, ask people, hey, what happened here? How are you thinking? How can we avoid this in the future? What could I have done better to better support you? Is there anything I can do better? And that's the power of mistakes. Yeah. Eduardo, in addition to, obviously, the book, can you talk maybe a little bit more about your work and how you work with organizations? Because it looks like beyond just being a featured keynote speaker and workshop leader that you offer your organization, you do consulting or you're working within organizations.

17:35Yeah. So my work is to help organizations foster cultures of learning and high performance. And not learning like the learning we did in school, which was irrelevant and boring. At least that was my experience. But the learning that we're talking about, that is about the things we care about and that are going to make us better at work and as people and in our personal lives. And so that's what I help organizations do. A lot of the work that I do is doing keynotes where we're introducing some of these concepts, either to all their leaders or to the whole company, doing workshops to do that. But then also I have some apps to foster learning.

18:11One of them is a kind of a digital flashcard app that people can use to identify things that they want to know in their long term memory and be able to generate at any point that are important to them and be able to make that happen. And second is a way for people to have honest and open and self-disclosing conversations with each other so they can get to know each other better, build relationships and build trust. Because to your point about safety, kind of when we trust each other, we make it possible to share more of our thinking with each other. And that leads to both greater learning and greater performing.

18:46So those are some of the kind of apps that I offer. And I do, like you said, offer also consulting for people who are grappling with some of these things, whether it is, you know, how do they want to message their employees? What kind of unintended messages they might be sending, like you said, when we praise people for being smart is one example of that. So kind of like doing audits, for example, of the messaging that people do or coaching for people to think about how do I approach my meetings or the framing for my staff or how do I approach my one-on-ones in a way that's going to foster more learning and performance.

19:20Yeah. All right. So your website is brisenio.com. B-R-I-C-E-N-O. Your book, The Performance Paradox, is on every single bookseller you can imagine. including Amazon. And by the way, can I say, thank you so much for producing an audiobook. That's the kind of, I love a good audiobook. And so already added it to the queue. Can't wait to listen. At Percentive.com, especially if there's organizational leaders that are listening to us right now, what would you recommend kind of their next step at this point? Sure. So one thing they can do, at my website, there's a free PDF on kind of five strategies to foster a growth mindset.

20:04said, those are very actionable strategies to think about for yourself or as a leader. Second, as you mentioned, my book is a resource if you want to go a lot deeper, The Performance Paradox. It was selected as a must read by the Next Big Idea Club, which is curated by Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Dan Pink. I'm really excited about that. And I'm just really excited about that as a resource for leaders and for them to use with their colleagues. and if you want to connect with me and be in conversation with me, I'm active on LinkedIn. Yes, you are. I've been going, I've been connected, kind of looking at all of your LinkedIn content.

20:41You do have, you have a lot of fantastic, including some really interesting kind of behind the scenes stuff in terms of the book launch. So congratulations again, Eduardo Berseno. The book is The Performance Paradox, Turning the Power of Mindset into Action. It's on hardcover, Kindle, audiobook, and of course, your website, brisenio.com. Eduardo, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh, for all you do and for having me here.

21:13Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for The Thoughtful Entrepreneur in Facebook. I'd love even if you just stop by to say hi. I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day.

21:57Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes each day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.