We’re fortunate enough here at the Small Giants Community that we get to be a part of the special mindset and attitude that Chip Conley brings to the business world. His new book Emotional Equations (Free Press, 2011) examines how who you are and what you’re looking for add up to create your impact on life and business. The included Q+A explores some of the thoughts and experiences that led to the writing of this new tome.
-The Small Giants Community
SGC: What led you to creating your first “Emotional Equation?”
Chip Conley: I was stuck in a psychological fog in 2008. I had been through one once-in-a-lifetime downturn earlier in the decade and I could see another one coming. Where previously I’d felt like a gladiator in my role as a business leader, now I felt like a prisoner. Added to that was a handful of friends committing suicide, a family member wrongfully going to San Quentin, my own health crisis that led to my heart stopping, and my long-term relationship ending all at the same time. I started rereading one of the most famous books ever written on meaning, psychologist Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, the story of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp and why he saw meaning as the ultimate fuel for life. On a bad day, reading about Frankl’s awful experience and his redemption gave me hope. I turned this book into a little mantra that I could remember and say to myself throughout the day: DESPAIR = SUFFERING – MEANING. Suffering felt like a constant, while meaning was the variable and the more attention I paid to what meaning I was going to get out of this terrible time, miraculously, the despair would diminish.
SGC: When did you start sharing this Emotional Equation and what was the response?
CC:I kept this “Meaning” equation to myself for months and found that it helped me to see what kind of emotions I was getting acquainted with in this desperate time -- whether it was courage, compassion, resiliency, or vulnerability. One day in late 2008, I was supposed to address a collection of leaders in our company at an off-site retreat. I saw a lot of suffering in the room as many of these folks were just as nervous as I was about the implications of the economic collapse on our various hotels and restaurants. I threw away my speech and introduced my equation as a way to show them that there’s meaning or learning to be found in even the worst circumstances. You could hear a pin drop as the private sorrows of each of these 80 leaders now felt collective. The response was enthusiastic and a few of these managers came to me and asked, “Do you have an equation for Jealousy or Disappointment or Workaholism?” I realized that I might be on to something.
SGC: Most CEOs try to portray a confident and pedestal-like persona. How difficult was it for you to express your emotions and your challenges to those who work for you?
CC:I believe CEOs (and, for that matter, allleaders even if you’re just leading your family or a department of three people) are the “Chief EmotionsOfficers” for the groups they lead. We’re the “emotional thermostats” for those we lead. Numerous studies haveshown that the leader’s level of engagement and satisfaction with their work has a profound influence on theculture or morale of the group. The number one trait people want from their leaders, especially in difficult times,is honesty and trustworthiness. And, if we can’t be open about our emotions – in a productive way – and we can’t show vulnerability, then we’re not truly role modeling exceptional leadership to our people. Ironically, some of the best leaders we know are most powerful when they’re most authentic and vulnerable.
SGC: Which equations did you develop after Despair = Suffering – Meaning?
CC:I figured after Despair, that maybe I should focus on Happiness. My timing was perfect as I was able to join a Young Presidents Organization tour to Bhutan, a tiny kingdom and new democracy wedged in a Himalayan crevice between China and India. Bhutan had spent the past forty years as the leader of the Gross National Happiness movement (GNH as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product) so I got to spend time with social scientists on the subject of how we can create the conditions for happiness to flourish. Over the following few months talking to the growing number of academics interested in happiness, I created the equation: HAPPINESS = WANTING WHAT YOU HAVE ÷ HAVING WHAT YOU WANT or, in other words, happiness comes from practicing gratitude rather than pursuing gratification.
SGC: What process did you use in developing these equations and did the academic world look at you with disdain as if you were just creating a parlor game?
CC:Of course, I wouldn’t have made it to the TED stage ifthere weren’t some intellectual ballast to these equations. But, as I realized the value of this emotional lexicon, Isought out some of the world’s great academics whether it was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi regarding how to get ina “Flow” zone with your work, or Barry Schwartz regarding Regret and Disappointment, or Jean Twengeregarding Narcissism, or even the Dalai Lama with respect to Faith. For the 18 equations profiled in the book, Ispoke to the leaders in each field, read more than 150 books and reviewed more than 300 academic articles. I feltlike I was getting my PhD in Emotions at the time when I most needed the knowledge, as 2008-2010 was areally challenging period in my life as well as it was for so many others. The reality is that well-respected academics from Martin Seligman to Barbara Fredrickson to John Gottman had already created equations for Happiness, Positivity, and the likelihood that a marriage will last. It’s just that these equations hadn’t reached the mainstream.
SGC: Have you been surprised by the popular response? And which types of people have most gravitated to these formulas for feelings?
CC:What’s been most fascinating is how men have gravitated to Emotional Equations.As a male CEO said to me recently, “It’s about time I have a means of understanding my emotions in a logicalfashion. I now can have a more thoughtful and deep conversation with my wife with the understanding of whatemotional building blocks are influencing what she or I are feeling in the moment.” There’s a Google seniorexec with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence who helped me with each of the equations and he was amazed how engineers resonated with the material.
SGC: Why do you think the book Emotional Equations fits the times we’re living in?
CC:The 1930s provide a relevant historical precedent. During that unrelenting decade of bad news, Americans turned to authors and thought leaders like Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and Napoleon Hill. And this was when theologian Rienhold Niebuhr created the Serenity Prayer, which helped people understand the wisdom of focusing on what they can and can’t control. The more the external world is chaotic, the more we need internal logic to protect us and help us make sense of life. Of course, because the equations are short and sweet, they are also well suited to texting and tweeting as well and, no doubt, that’s how we communicate today.
SGC: You frequently talk about moving from emotional intelligence to emotional fluency. How is this relevant to organizational leadership?
CC: I’m fortunate enough to have received some tutelage from the academic whopopularized the concept of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman. Goleman helped us see that emotionalmastery was more important for effective leadership than was IQ or the level of experience a leader had in theirwork. Other academics like Nicholas Christakis and Matthew Lieberman have shown the contagious nature ofemotions in organizations as well as the destructive nature of how decisions are made when emotional reactivity is at play. When comparing intelligence with fluency, imagine if you were going to Paris with a friend and you had spent a number of months studying the French language, its origins, the way they conjugate sentences, and the various dialects in the country. You would be intelligent about the language, and your friend may have none of that book knowledge but grew up in Montreal -- fluent in French. Which of the two of you is going to be most comfortable and successful navigating the streets of Paris? Your friend, of course. Emotional fluency is when a leader moves beyond the knowledge and awareness of the importance of emotions in the context of business to living and being an emotional presence that others find naturally magnetic. At the core of that fluency is understanding the recipe or ingredients for our emotions.
SGC: You talk about Emotional Equations giving people an ability to improve their “psycho-hygiene.” What’s an example of an equation and a tool that people can easily use?
CC:Given the fearful times, I’ve found theanxiety equation to be one of the most popular. There are really two key elements that create anxiety: what wedon’t know and what we can’t control, so ANXIETY = UNCERTAINTY x POWERLESSNESS. The tool I’vecreated is called the Anxiety Balance Sheet. Take out a piece of paper and draw four columns. The first columnis what you DO know regarding the subject you’re anxious about. The second column is what you DON’T know. In the third column, write what you CAN influence, and, in the fourth column, write a list of what youCAN’T influence. This exercise highlights that most of us have more items in the “do know” and “caninfluence” columns than we expected and, once we’d outlined what we didn’t know or didn’t think we could influence, it highlighted ways we could gain that information or feel like we could influence the outcome. The two biggest lessons for leaders, especially in disquieting times, are be as transparent about information as quickly as possible because mystery creates anxiety, and, help people see what ways they can make a difference especially during times when people feel most powerless.
SGC: What’s the transition been like from founder/CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality for two dozen years to author, speaker, and teacher? CC: In my last book, PEAK, I explored the three relationships we each have with ourwork: we either have a job, a career, or a calling. I had the odd experience of having a calling turn into a job overtime, while at the very same time, having a new calling emerge. To have this happen during a period when mycompany most needed my leadership was painful. But, I am grateful to have been able to take my company to astronger place by bringing in a well-respected investor and a new leadership team once we’d gotten through the
most challenging part of this recession. When I was 12, I told my dad that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and he told me that writers are usually poor or psychotic, and quite often, both. I shelved that dream, so it’s nice to re-engage with this avocation in midlife. More than anything, I feel fueled by Curiosity, which is how I arrived at my equation: CURIOSITY = WONDER + AWE.
-The Small Giants Community
SGC: What led you to creating your first “Emotional Equation?”
Chip Conley: I was stuck in a psychological fog in 2008. I had been through one once-in-a-lifetime downturn earlier in the decade and I could see another one coming. Where previously I’d felt like a gladiator in my role as a business leader, now I felt like a prisoner. Added to that was a handful of friends committing suicide, a family member wrongfully going to San Quentin, my own health crisis that led to my heart stopping, and my long-term relationship ending all at the same time. I started rereading one of the most famous books ever written on meaning, psychologist Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, the story of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp and why he saw meaning as the ultimate fuel for life. On a bad day, reading about Frankl’s awful experience and his redemption gave me hope. I turned this book into a little mantra that I could remember and say to myself throughout the day: DESPAIR = SUFFERING – MEANING. Suffering felt like a constant, while meaning was the variable and the more attention I paid to what meaning I was going to get out of this terrible time, miraculously, the despair would diminish.
SGC: When did you start sharing this Emotional Equation and what was the response?
CC:I kept this “Meaning” equation to myself for months and found that it helped me to see what kind of emotions I was getting acquainted with in this desperate time -- whether it was courage, compassion, resiliency, or vulnerability. One day in late 2008, I was supposed to address a collection of leaders in our company at an off-site retreat. I saw a lot of suffering in the room as many of these folks were just as nervous as I was about the implications of the economic collapse on our various hotels and restaurants. I threw away my speech and introduced my equation as a way to show them that there’s meaning or learning to be found in even the worst circumstances. You could hear a pin drop as the private sorrows of each of these 80 leaders now felt collective. The response was enthusiastic and a few of these managers came to me and asked, “Do you have an equation for Jealousy or Disappointment or Workaholism?” I realized that I might be on to something.
SGC: Most CEOs try to portray a confident and pedestal-like persona. How difficult was it for you to express your emotions and your challenges to those who work for you?
CC:I believe CEOs (and, for that matter, allleaders even if you’re just leading your family or a department of three people) are the “Chief EmotionsOfficers” for the groups they lead. We’re the “emotional thermostats” for those we lead. Numerous studies haveshown that the leader’s level of engagement and satisfaction with their work has a profound influence on theculture or morale of the group. The number one trait people want from their leaders, especially in difficult times,is honesty and trustworthiness. And, if we can’t be open about our emotions – in a productive way – and we can’t show vulnerability, then we’re not truly role modeling exceptional leadership to our people. Ironically, some of the best leaders we know are most powerful when they’re most authentic and vulnerable.
SGC: Which equations did you develop after Despair = Suffering – Meaning?
CC:I figured after Despair, that maybe I should focus on Happiness. My timing was perfect as I was able to join a Young Presidents Organization tour to Bhutan, a tiny kingdom and new democracy wedged in a Himalayan crevice between China and India. Bhutan had spent the past forty years as the leader of the Gross National Happiness movement (GNH as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product) so I got to spend time with social scientists on the subject of how we can create the conditions for happiness to flourish. Over the following few months talking to the growing number of academics interested in happiness, I created the equation: HAPPINESS = WANTING WHAT YOU HAVE ÷ HAVING WHAT YOU WANT or, in other words, happiness comes from practicing gratitude rather than pursuing gratification.
SGC: What process did you use in developing these equations and did the academic world look at you with disdain as if you were just creating a parlor game?
CC:Of course, I wouldn’t have made it to the TED stage ifthere weren’t some intellectual ballast to these equations. But, as I realized the value of this emotional lexicon, Isought out some of the world’s great academics whether it was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi regarding how to get ina “Flow” zone with your work, or Barry Schwartz regarding Regret and Disappointment, or Jean Twengeregarding Narcissism, or even the Dalai Lama with respect to Faith. For the 18 equations profiled in the book, Ispoke to the leaders in each field, read more than 150 books and reviewed more than 300 academic articles. I feltlike I was getting my PhD in Emotions at the time when I most needed the knowledge, as 2008-2010 was areally challenging period in my life as well as it was for so many others. The reality is that well-respected academics from Martin Seligman to Barbara Fredrickson to John Gottman had already created equations for Happiness, Positivity, and the likelihood that a marriage will last. It’s just that these equations hadn’t reached the mainstream.
SGC: Have you been surprised by the popular response? And which types of people have most gravitated to these formulas for feelings?
CC:What’s been most fascinating is how men have gravitated to Emotional Equations.As a male CEO said to me recently, “It’s about time I have a means of understanding my emotions in a logicalfashion. I now can have a more thoughtful and deep conversation with my wife with the understanding of whatemotional building blocks are influencing what she or I are feeling in the moment.” There’s a Google seniorexec with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence who helped me with each of the equations and he was amazed how engineers resonated with the material.
SGC: Why do you think the book Emotional Equations fits the times we’re living in?
CC:The 1930s provide a relevant historical precedent. During that unrelenting decade of bad news, Americans turned to authors and thought leaders like Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and Napoleon Hill. And this was when theologian Rienhold Niebuhr created the Serenity Prayer, which helped people understand the wisdom of focusing on what they can and can’t control. The more the external world is chaotic, the more we need internal logic to protect us and help us make sense of life. Of course, because the equations are short and sweet, they are also well suited to texting and tweeting as well and, no doubt, that’s how we communicate today.
SGC: You frequently talk about moving from emotional intelligence to emotional fluency. How is this relevant to organizational leadership?
CC: I’m fortunate enough to have received some tutelage from the academic whopopularized the concept of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman. Goleman helped us see that emotionalmastery was more important for effective leadership than was IQ or the level of experience a leader had in theirwork. Other academics like Nicholas Christakis and Matthew Lieberman have shown the contagious nature ofemotions in organizations as well as the destructive nature of how decisions are made when emotional reactivity is at play. When comparing intelligence with fluency, imagine if you were going to Paris with a friend and you had spent a number of months studying the French language, its origins, the way they conjugate sentences, and the various dialects in the country. You would be intelligent about the language, and your friend may have none of that book knowledge but grew up in Montreal -- fluent in French. Which of the two of you is going to be most comfortable and successful navigating the streets of Paris? Your friend, of course. Emotional fluency is when a leader moves beyond the knowledge and awareness of the importance of emotions in the context of business to living and being an emotional presence that others find naturally magnetic. At the core of that fluency is understanding the recipe or ingredients for our emotions.
SGC: You talk about Emotional Equations giving people an ability to improve their “psycho-hygiene.” What’s an example of an equation and a tool that people can easily use?
CC:Given the fearful times, I’ve found theanxiety equation to be one of the most popular. There are really two key elements that create anxiety: what wedon’t know and what we can’t control, so ANXIETY = UNCERTAINTY x POWERLESSNESS. The tool I’vecreated is called the Anxiety Balance Sheet. Take out a piece of paper and draw four columns. The first columnis what you DO know regarding the subject you’re anxious about. The second column is what you DON’T know. In the third column, write what you CAN influence, and, in the fourth column, write a list of what youCAN’T influence. This exercise highlights that most of us have more items in the “do know” and “caninfluence” columns than we expected and, once we’d outlined what we didn’t know or didn’t think we could influence, it highlighted ways we could gain that information or feel like we could influence the outcome. The two biggest lessons for leaders, especially in disquieting times, are be as transparent about information as quickly as possible because mystery creates anxiety, and, help people see what ways they can make a difference especially during times when people feel most powerless.
SGC: What’s the transition been like from founder/CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality for two dozen years to author, speaker, and teacher? CC: In my last book, PEAK, I explored the three relationships we each have with ourwork: we either have a job, a career, or a calling. I had the odd experience of having a calling turn into a job overtime, while at the very same time, having a new calling emerge. To have this happen during a period when mycompany most needed my leadership was painful. But, I am grateful to have been able to take my company to astronger place by bringing in a well-respected investor and a new leadership team once we’d gotten through the
most challenging part of this recession. When I was 12, I told my dad that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and he told me that writers are usually poor or psychotic, and quite often, both. I shelved that dream, so it’s nice to re-engage with this avocation in midlife. More than anything, I feel fueled by Curiosity, which is how I arrived at my equation: CURIOSITY = WONDER + AWE.
No Comments