CHAPTER 3
Stopping the Negativity Loop
You now know how to think about your presence as a result of creating and living your intentions. All well and good. But what happens when things don’t go as intended? Nervousness, anxiety, and insecurity have a way of derailing our most ardent plans—especially when we care greatly about the outcome.
I mentioned in the last chapter that I’m a speaker for Vistage International, which, with 14,000 members, bills itself as the world’s leading professional development organization for CEOs. It’s a phenomenal organization, and before I became a speaker I was a member for four years. The group has both a high-caliber speakers’ list—from which I learned enormously through the years—and smart, experienced members and group chairs. (Susan Scott of Fierce Conversations fame ran a Vistage group.)
When I sold my PR firm and started working as a leadership coach, I decided to try to get on the Vistage speaker’s circuit. I’d been warned: Becoming a Vistage speaker wouldn’t be easy. First, you have to present to a group that scores you. If you score high enough, you live to speak to another group. Maintain a high score, and you stay on the circuit. Vistage members see a new speaker each month, so the material has to be fresh and relevant. Each three-hour workshop must be engaging and informative. Finally, after each talk, it’s a Vistage custom for the members go around the table and tell you to your face how they think you did. These are seasoned CEOs in an atmosphere that honors telling it straight. They don’t hold back.
In 2008, after weeks of preparation, I led my first Vistage workshop. My talk was on leadership presence. If I didn’t present a strong presence myself, I was toast. I’ve presented with some very high stakes over the years (such as when I was under pressure to make payroll). But this time I was more nervous than ever. I managed to get through it by using many of the concepts in this book. It wasn’t my best presentation, but it was my first time, and I got a passing score. I achieved my goal.
Nervousness, anxiety, and insecurity can derail our most ardent plans—especially when we care the most about the outcome.
Then came the second Vistage workshop about a month later. This one was a whole different story. From moment one, I had a hard time connecting with the group. The points that had landed so well before didn’t resonate. I use a lot of humor to engage, but unfortunately, this time my jokes fell flat. When a couple of the group members pushed back on some of my points, I let it get argumentative. Instead of listening and handling it with grace, I was completely knocked off balance. Somehow I managed to get through it. The feedback at the end was tough. I felt some of the members questioned my right to be there at all. My scores were average. Not good enough.
But that’s just part of the story—the part you can see from the outside. Inside my head was a whirling, spiraling negativity loop. It started even before I uttered one word at the first workshop. I began this endeavor by questioning whether I was good enough to join this exclusive group. I still held some lingering feelings of inadequacy from a childhood fear of public speaking. (Don’t laugh: I bombed in front of my entire elementary school in a student council election.) I also questioned how I’d be taken as a then-30-something woman presenting to a group of seasoned executives, many of whom were men. I was not coming from a point of strength and positivity.
After the second presentation, all those negative feelings seemed entirely validated. And I upped the negative ante quite a bit with even more self-defeating thoughts: I didn’t know what I was talking about. I wasn’t funny or interesting. I’m just not likable enough. I’m going to trash my entire new coaching career. Maybe I should try another profession.
I could go on, but do you see what’s happening here? It’s a big, fat negativity loop. And when it gets steam, it screams.
So what happened next? I spent days poring over the feedback, ruminating and consoling myself with a few glasses of wine, and then decided to learn from the experience and try harder. I consulted some colleagues for outside advice. I went back to the basics and audited myself against my own presence tactics. I focused on what I could control at that point in time, reworking examples and practicing the content repeatedly, on tape, until my presentation felt natural. The next time I presented to the group, my scores improved and continued to stay high. I even had a few perfect scores later on!
While overcoming obstacles makes a good story, that’s not why I bring up this experience. The point is how quickly I spun into the negative and forgot everything I knew about presence. And the more negative I let myself get, the more off balance I was thrown.
Funny enough, when I spoke later with people who were in the workshop that I deemed a disaster, they had a slightly different take. One said my presentation was pretty good for having been only my second one. Another said he learned a lot and has used my material. Someone else told me that that particular group tends to be especially harsh on speakers. Months later, two separate group members even approached me about coaching at their companies.
How could our reactions to the same situation have been so dissimilar? And what happened to get me so negative so fast?
I watch clients fall into this same negativity trap all the time. I’m going to guess it’s familiar to many of you reading this book. Negative loops destroy intention. They are akin to a heavyweight pro fighting a lightweight amateur. You can win only if you take away the big guy’s strength. Luckily, there are ways to inoculate yourself against this kind of destructive, anxious thinking—and to recover faster when it happens.
Negative thoughts happen to all of us. You can learn to inoculate yourself and recover faster when destructive, anxious thinking occurs.
What Depressed Adolescents Have to Do with Your Presence
About 10 years ago, a field of psychology branded “positive psychology” began getting mainstream attention. Led in part by Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness and also a renowned psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, it’s permeated many fields including leadership development.1
As Seligman explains it, he found his way to positive psychology by virtue of practices he didn’t support.2 Psychology, as he saw it, was mostly about diagnosing and correcting what’s wrong. In addition to relying on extensive therapy sessions to analyze the core issue, psychologists were prescribing pharmaceuticals with increasing frequency. Seligman was particularly concerned about the rise in depression diagnoses in preteens and teenagers, which had gone up 10-fold since the 1950s (and continue to increase). Fourteen percent of people between the ages of 12 and 17 experience a major depressive episode.3 Seligman began to study ways to build resilience into school-age children so that they never experience depression in the first place. After 30 years of hands-on longitudinal research, he discovered that resilience, in fact, could be taught using techniques that we now know as positive psychology.
One of the overarching messages of this research is that by focusing attention on what’s right rather than what’s wrong, and learning how to be resilient against negativity, we can guard ourselves against protracted setbacks and live a happier, more fulfilling life. Seligman also spawned the idea that we all have signature strengths, and that we are more fulfilled when we are able to apply them in our regular lives. The strengths concept was made even more famous by the Clifton StrengthsFinder, which is an assessment administered by the Gallup Organization and featured in the best-selling book Now, Discover Your Strengths.4
Positive psychology shows that resilience can be learned.
Here’s why these findings are key to your presence. What positive psychologists are discussing occurs in all aspects of your life. It is deeply embedded in your presence and how you approach the world. Those same pessimistic thoughts are also situational; they become loudest when we are in high-stress situations—exactly the same kinds of situations when we need our presence to carry us through. When we get in situations where we are uncomfortable and our negative thoughts take over, we create a downward spiral. Most of know exactly what this feels like. On the other hand, positivity creates an upward and outward spiral—and resilience to shorten our recovery time. We may still have catastrophic thoughts, but if we recognize them in real time, we can get ourselves back on track—and back to our intention—faster.
Positivity creates an upward and outward spiral.
Argue Against Your Negativity—and Win!
So how do you cultivate resilience around your presence? Sounds sort of idealistic, I realize. But Seligman offers some practical ways to manage our thought patterns.
Seligman states that pessimistic thoughts have two characteristics: They are permanent and universal. Permanence is the feeling that something is here to stay and won’t change. I hear these types of permanent statements from clients frequently: “I’m never good in board meetings” or “He’s just difficult to work with.” Universal is the idea that the situation is pervasive. Frequent universal statements might be, “I’m not a people person” or “This entire company is unmotivated.” As you can see, after my second fateful Vistage presentation, nearly all my thoughts fell into these two categories.
People who maintain optimistic thoughts gain resilience. When they have setbacks, they see the issue as temporary and specific, not permanent and pervasive. If I had looked at my Vistage talk from an optimistic standpoint, I would have attributed my less-than-stellar performance to situational nervousness (temporary) and to the personalities in this particular group (specific).
Pessimistic thoughts are permanent and universal. Optimistic thoughts are temporary and specific.
And the truth is, I would have done a better job in the first place since I wouldn’t have been led off track by the downward spiral.
Seligman argues that you can learn how to dispute your own negativity and turn it into optimism. I’ve seen clients learn and apply optimism repeatedly in my work. First you need to recognize those stressed-out thoughts for what they are: catastrophizing with little or no root in reality. Just imagine that a friend came to you with those same negative thoughts. You would easily dispute them.
Friend: I’m never good in meetings. People here don’t respect my contribution.
You: Are you kidding? Remember that product brainstorm last month? You had the best ideas on the team. The culture here is to talk all over one another. They do it to everyone.
Friend: I’m bad at motivating other people.
You: Just because you’re not a rah-rah kind of manager doesn’t mean you’re not motivating. You’ve been very motivating to me. You just do it in a quieter way. I come to you for advice because you’re thoughtful and honest. Your team sees the same qualities in you. You simply need to work on pumping up the team more in meetings.
Your work is to get really good at turning pessimism into optimism as soon as it surfaces, even if it’s in the moment. Having actual labels to apply to this thinking deflates it. Is it permanent and universal? I am frequently in conversation with clients who know exactly what they want to say and how they want to say it, but who worry about how they’ll manage setbacks in the moment. They are anxious that their nervousness will overtake their competency if everything doesn’t go right. And life rarely does. You can derail quickly if you play the “what if” game.
How often have you found yourself in a similar situation? How about when the stakes are high, outcomes matter, and you want to maintain your composure? Most important, you want to stay in alignment between your intention and your communications. Is it easy for you to stay on task when things go awry? Or do you find yourself getting tripped up and distracted?
You can practice turning your thoughts around to stay on track, whether in the middle of a stressful situation or in day-to-day encounters. I’ve populated Figure 3-1 with a few examples that come up in my work with executives. See if you can fill in some of your own thoughts and turn your pessimism into optimism.
Figure 3-1. Turning pessimistic thoughts into optimism.
When you arrange the statements side-by-side, it becomes apparent that these pessimistic thoughts, whether spoken or held, are invalid and all-around unhelpful. They support inaction, excuse complacency, and take away our options for solutions. They destroy our game.
Pessimism spreads insidiously in ourselves and in our companies. Now you have a tool to fight back. Listen for pessimism lurking and make an effort to refute it, in any or all of these three ways:
1. Notice and negate your own pessimistic thoughts and words. This step alone will change your orientation as well as how others orient around you.
2. Look around you for pessimism in real time, as it occurs—in strategy meetings, delegation situations, or performance reviews. When pessimism is rearing its ugly head, don’t mindlessly buy into it. Instead, call it what it is.
3. Be a force for optimism. You can be a beacon for resilience and help others to recognize how their negative thinking is holding them (and those around them) back. Your presence will only benefit.
Game On: Get Yourself in the Zone
Many of you may be reading this book specifically because you want to work on your presence in high-pressure situations, whether it’s a job interview or a presentation to your board of directors. That’s often when we rely on our presence the most. It’s important to be resilient when you get anxious or thrown off track, but even better if you can prevent yourself from getting there in the first place.
I am a huge believer in cultivating a repeatable process for getting yourself into the zone. Executives can practice these “pregame rituals” just like athletes do before they take the field. They don’t have to be elaborate. The ritual may be listening to a favorite song, taking a moment to pause and visualize success, or even joking with a friend. It’s unique to the person and relevant to that person’s intention. Pregame rituals dispel nerves and put you in a positive frame of mind to succeed. An effective ritual also gives you confidence that if it worked once it will work again.
A pregame ritual is a repeatable process for getting yourself in the zone of your intention.
Pregame Rituals That Work
One of my coaching clients, Jan, was a partner in a global law firm. In the midst of a critical case, she was heading up a large legal team of associates and other partners. Jan was in charge of client relations. Unfortunately, her client contact was proving to be a difficult personality for her. Jan found this person intimidating, aggressive, and mistrustful of the firm. Several times a week there were large group conference calls with the client where everyone came away feeling beaten up and beleaguered. During our coaching sessions, Jan asked how she could psych herself up to manage these calls more effectively. She wanted to maintain her ground for her team, and also to build a more trustful relationship with the client. Jan wisely knew that if she felt defensive and demotivated during these conference calls, her team would follow suit and performance could suffer. She also realized that simply anticipating the calls made her anxious. She was in a negative spiral.
We started trying out various pregame rituals to get Jan in the frame of mind for her stated intention: staying grounded and open. She wanted to be positive and feel confident in her team’s work, and to be able to push back when it was warranted, without coming across as defensive. We tried various approaches, such as preparing talking points to focus on, practicing deep breathing, using imagery, and even rallying with other team members in advance of the call. Finally, what worked best for her was to shut her office door for five minutes before each call and focus on a photo of her kids. It gave her a sense of joy, took her mind off the negative, and reminded her of what was really important. It was simple. And more important, it worked.
Here’s a different scenario; in fact, it’s my own pregame ritual. When I had my PR firm, we were constantly going on new business pitches—essentially “bake-offs” where three or more firms would come in, one after the other, and sell their best ideas to the potential client. I knew that our ideas alone would not win us the business. At that point in the vetting process, all the firms at the table had good ideas. We would get picked if we exhibited the most creativity and energy, because that’s what makes a PR team successful. I wanted our presence to show precisely those two traits. Frequently, I would take staff members on these pitches. Some of them were neither comfortable nor experienced meeting face-to-face with powerful executives sitting across from them at a large conference table. I needed a pregame ritual to allay their nerves and get all of us “in the zone” together. My ritual was that from the minute we piled into the car until after the sales meeting, we did not talk about the presentation. We weren’t cramming final thoughts into our PowerPoint presentation or rehearsing nuanced points. That would create more stress around the wrong thing. I made sure our discussion was purely fun. We made jokes, talked about weekend plans, gossiped, or played loud music.
What a great first impression we made! The potential client saw a group of smiling, excited people who genuinely enjoyed working together. I believe that pregame ritual was responsible for our amazing 90 percent win rate from final-round meetings. Or, to put it another way, I know for certain that our success wasn’t because of bullet 2 on PowerPoint slide 12.
Develop Your Own Pregame Ritual
To develop your own stress-mitigating pregame ritual, start by asking yourself these questions:
• What usually puts me in a good mood?
• When am I most relaxed?
Your answers will give you some clues about what makes you feel centered and authentic. Then try out some of these ideas right before your next event:
• Listen to a favorite song that pumps you up (Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” does it for me every time) or calms you down (perhaps a classical, jazz, or new age selection).
• Spend five minutes of quiet time alone, eyes closed, focusing on your intention. Try to sit in an open position with your feet flat on the floor and your arms resting on your thighs.
• Look at a meaningful object such as a photo, vacation souvenir, award, or gift that reminds you of a time when you were at your best.
• Think of a time when you have been shown sincere gratitude. Relive as much of the detail from the experience as possible, including how you felt in that moment.
• Visualize the entire experience going well. See yourself succeeding at the things you feel most anxious about.
• Call a good friend or colleague and have a few laughs. If you are at the event or meeting, seek out people who are friendly and exchange a funny story or joke.
• Select clothes that you feel great in. (This piece of advice may sound shallow, but for a lot of people, putting on a power suit or a lucky tie helps.)
In the Moment: Can Sweaty Palms Be Merely Interesting?
For many of us, understanding the negative spiral and having a great pregame ritual still won’t completely alleviate a physical reaction to a stress situation in the moment. And often it’s the physical reactions that trip us up more than anything. Heart pounding, hands shaking, sweating, losing our thoughts—hardly anyone has escaped the symptoms.
When your physical reactions take over, it’s easy to forget your intention and lose your bearings. Before you know it, you’re in a negative downward spiral and thinking, “I’m going to mess up. This is going horribly. Everyone can see I’m nervous. Just get this over with….” But a case of nerves doesn’t have to turn into a potential presence buster. Here are reliable strategies to get back to your presence objective when communicating in any type of group situation.
Often it’s the physical reactions to stress that trip us up more than anything.
Take deep breaths. This is the oldest trick in the book, but it stays there because it works! Often nerves begin to escalate right before you start speaking. When that happens, take a few deep breaths—four counts in, four counts out. The deeper the better.
Start from a position of strength. Nervousness thrives in insecurity. Start your discussion or presentation with comfortable material. If you have a limited time to rehearse, make sure you go through the beginning multiple times. If you do well and get a good response in the first few minutes, often your nervousness will subside.
Pause. Pauses are natural in a conversation. They allow both speaker and listener to collect their thoughts, and they provide transitions between topics. They are not to be feared or avoided. When we get nervous, we tend to talk quickly and avoid pauses. It’s perfectly fine to take a second to regain your composure if you forget a point. Don’t let it derail you. In general, it’s not the pause we notice as much as the speaker’s reaction to her own pause. I’ve seen magnetic presenters make prolonged pauses look entirely deliberate. I’ve also watched people laugh at their own forgetfulness and just go on to the next point. (I once saw Bill Cosby lose his train of thought for several seconds in a live monologue and then create a 10-minute gag out of it.) The audience is more forgiving than you think.
Create a dialogue. Often what creates anxiety is the fact that, as the discussion leader or presenter, the entire event rests on your shoulders. You are busy trying to remember exactly what to say and how to say it. Try taking some of the pressure off by creating a conversation early on where you elicit response by playing the role of facilitator. This works for any size group. Ask a large group a question and tease out answers. Start a small, one-on-one meeting by asking the other person what he wants to get out of the conversation. It takes the focus off of you and allows for a more relaxed interaction. It can also set up your points by creating shared examples you can refer back to later.
Practice acknowledging and isolating the physical reaction. A good friend who is an actor once told me, “Don’t fight with your nerves. You’ll lose.” Later, when I read Leadership Presence by Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar,5 I loved how they applied the same advice. Halpern and Lubar are cofounders of The Ariel Group, a consulting firm of trained performance artists who use dramatic techniques to help leaders improve their effectiveness. They describe it as “Let thoughts go, let feelings be.” The idea is that even performers at the top of their craft get nervous. It’s a physical reaction. Instead of fighting it and resisting, learn to observe it and acknowledge it as purely a physical effect with no link to your ability to perform effectively. When your heart starts racing, simply think, “That’s interesting” or “It’s really pounding now.” Accept the feeling. Dwell on it for a moment. Perhaps even name it: “There’s my crazy telltale heart again.” But don’t conclude that it will make you unsuccessful. Often when the anxiety kicks in, the act of resisting creates a negative spiral because we usually can’t stop our reaction. It creates fear. This technique isolates it, acknowledges it, and enables us to move on.
If It Doesn’t Come Easy, Join the Club
If this chapter hits home, you’re in good company. You can have a penchant for pessimistic thoughts and nerves galore and still have excellent presence. Most successful executives I know have struggled with these challenges and learned to overcome them, even if they never go away entirely. Your presence gets better when you understand what’s happening and develop some coping mechanisms. It also helps to remember that we notice far more about our own mistakes than anyone else does. At times, the best thing we can do is to give ourselves a break.
Key Takeaways from Chapter 3
1. Nearly everyone struggles with nervousness, anxiety, and insecurity in high-pressure situations where we care deeply about the outcome. It happens to even the most successful and dynamic communicators.
2. It’s easy to find yourself caught in a downward negative spiral with your thoughts, feelings, and actions following suit. Stay vigilant and recognize when it’s purely pessimism and not constructive.
3. Pessimistic thoughts are permanent and universal. Optimistic thoughts are temporary and specific. Learn to challenge your thoughts before, during, and after a stressful situation.
4. A pregame ritual—a repeatable process to get yourself in the zone of your intention—can be a powerful way to get into a positive frame of mind from the outset.
5. When you have a physical reaction in a stressful situation, accept that it’s a normal response and use helpful strategies to work around it. Trying to tamp down the reaction or resist it usually makes it worse.
Ideas I Want to Try from Chapter 3:
