Mastering Uncertainty: Unlocking the Superpower to Thrive in Chaos

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or impliedes shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor Elise Cortet.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for torning again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If we have not met before and you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, blog of therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusta Now helped companies in life and fortify their operations by building a dynamic high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. Did you know that inspired employees in purpose led companies outperform their satisfied peers by a factor of two point twenty five two one. In other words, inspiration is good for the bottom line. You can learn more about some how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com and my personal site Eliscortes dot com. Getting in today's program we had with us Rich Davini. He is a retired Navy seal commander in a career spanning more than twenty years. He completed more than thirteen overseas deployments, eleven of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan, and served as the Officer in charge of Selection Assessment and training for a specialized Seal Command. Since twenty seventeen, he has taught classes and delivered keynote speeches about leadership, optimal performance, and high performing teams to thousands of businesses, athletic military leaders, and to many well known organizations.

2:18 He is also the author of the attributes twenty five Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance, and the latest we're focused on today is called Masters of Uncertainty, the Navy Seal way to turn stress into success for you and your team. We'll be discussing in particular his Master Uncertainty method any of us can use to elevate our performance, as well as how it can be applied in teams. Rich Joint is today from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Rich a very party. Welcome to Working on Purpose. Well, thank you, Lis, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm delighted to know you, sir. I'm kind of a command here, but I really really admire and I'm inspired by who you are and how you've navigated your life. So let me just start with that.

2:59 Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It's an honor to be here, and it's honored to be able to share some of the experiences and lessons I learned through that very kinetic career. That's a great word for it. I would say, yes, Well, I want to first start by saying, wow, have you written the timely book? I personally, you know, I've been around for a few decades. I don't remember more uncertain times than we are in today. So did you have some kind of premonition here or just this just works across all kinds of life? How does this happen? Yeah? I have to say, well, I agree with you where it seems like we're more rife with uncertainty than ever before. I will say that it didn't matter to me when the book came out. And if there's any certainty in life, it's that uncertainty will strike, and to be prepared for it and to be ready to move through it and in some cases thrive in it is, in fact, I think, the element of true confidence, and that's what I hope to endow upon people, is the ability to be really truly confident.

4:01 I really appreciate the whole premise and promise of your book that really that's what you're saying, is you're saying what some of these things I like to be able to put your actual words in this. But what you said is Navy seals and other high achievers, anyone who is adept at any circumstances, are fundamentally similar to everyone else. Their edge is simply that they harness innate, yet often overlooked capabilities that we all possess. That is so encouraging, and I love the idea of that. It's just it's a matter of finding it and then somehow unleashing it and harnessing it. Well, you know, it's funny. I began thinking about this stuff even when I first graduated seal training. I mean, in Navy seal training, it's a very, very tough process. There's about an eighty five to ninety percent attrition rate, so only about ten to fifty percent of the guys who start make it through.

4:48 And I remember making it through and that graduation feeling what I call kind of a healthy imposter syndrome because I look around and say, how am I still here with these guys around me? And kind of and I say healthy because it really pushed me. It didn't it didn't make me feel insecure. It just pushed me to really do better, be better, and do right. By my teammates. But ironically, what was interesting is as I got to know my teammates, I realized that they had the same imposter synerme going on. They were like, how am I still here too? So it began to dawn on me that these kind of innate things, or the things that we took as being innate, were not exclusive to Navy Seals.

5:29 They were in fact human. And as I began to dig into the elements and the neuroscience specifically, I recognized that, hey, this is human stuff. It's not just Navy Seal stuff. Once you realize that, you know, you can you can talk about it, you can teach it, you can help others. Yeah, and what I want to also celebrate, which is what we're going to really spend time in the third segments, really focusing on how do we use this stuff in the team seams, world and in organizations. But one thing I did want to sell it what you just said there is the power of associating with other people that are also stretching themselves and going beyond what they think they can do is so so powerful. Choosing that kind of company. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, we we we really the the adage that we are who we surround ourselves with is very, very true, and I've found that and that goes for environments as well.

6:13 I mean, you know, environments matter and they will shape people. And again, the analogy my good friend uses is if you take the best cucumber in the world and put it in a pickle jar, it will turn into a pickle, So. It might be bad. If the brine is bad, it'll be a bad pickle too. So so environment matters, and the people you surround yourself with matters. So I want to I want to give that directly to our listeners and viewers. So listeners and viewers, ladies and gentlemen, if you were in a place where you're not really shining, I would check your teammates. I would check who are you surrounded by. Is this the right place for you? Maybe you need a place where you can shine higher or better these Maybe these this isn't the right group for you. I just would tell you to listen very closely to what rich is saying about opting into and being mindful of who you associate with.

6:56 So I want to just bake that in. It's so important. Yeah, all right, well, let's talk about your mastering uncertainty method. It's so it's so elegant, you know, six aspects to it and so straightforward, but so powerful. So if you can kind of give us the overview of how what they are and how they hang together. Yeah, So so it's really it's kind of it's kind of six main elements. Uh. And the first three have to do with the neurology, neuroscience and physiology of human beings. Uh. And the second in other words, it's ubiquitous to everybody. Everybody, everybody can do it. And the second three have to do with what we uniquely bring into uncertainty. And so the first three are you know, it's this concept of moving horizons, which I know we'll get into. How do we how do we actually apply and manage uncertainty in our environment?

7:43 The second involves how do we keep going? So how do we keep doing it? And the third implies how do we maintain a level of of not only calm, but but focus and cognition during the process. One of the things I know we'll get into is and we when we start to feel uncertainty and anxiety and that fear, you know, themalogically some very interesting things happen, and a lot of times our frontal lobe, our decision making part of our brain, starts to take a back seat. And so the idea is keep that engaged so we can in fact manage ourselves. And then the second three are really about what we uniquely bring into uncertainty. One is our objective, so what are the goals or the outcomes that we hope to achieve that drives our performance. The second is attributes, which again I wrote my first book on is a huge topic. But what are those qualities about us that are unique and the order of the equalities are unique, and that that starts to speak to our performance. And then identities, identities, what are those ims that we bring into an environment, because those drive our behaviors, both consciously and unconsciously.

8:44 So those are some things we learn uniquely about ourselves. It's such a powerful, powerful model that you credit. And of course you know that last bit, those last three. I've been an identity and meaning you work with searcher for years and so when you talk about identity driving behavior, like, yeah, it's I really I understand that down to my last tone out, Yeah, I do want to talk about each of these areas and a little bit more in depth. But I wanted to first let let our listeners and viewers hear a little bit about how the model hangs together. So let's talk first about moving horizons. I really thought that this notion of you've situated and introduced stress in a different way. You have told us that, you know, the stress response is designed to by nature to get us up and moving, and therefore it's an asset if we use it as such, and sweet stress gets a really really bad rap. So if you could say a little bit more about moving horizons.

9:37 Yeah, so moving horizons has to do with how we in fact manage ourselves. So just just to rewind just a bit, when we talk about uncertainty, we're talking about actually a very specific type of uncertainty because we're really talking about the uncertainty that elicits fear. Fear is really the factor that holds us back in performance. That's what that's what it does. Now, I know you. You and I talked briefly before we started about my buddy Andrew Huberman, who wrote the Ford Andrew was well, he still is a neuroscientist, is a great podcast. He was studying fear in his lab at Stanford, and we were doing a lot of this work together and one of the things we hypothesized was that fear is in fact a combination of two distinct factors, and those factors are uncertainty plus anxiety. So in other words, if you don't if you only have one but not the other, you don't necessarily have fear. You can be anxious but not uncertain. That's like maybe you have to give a presentation next week at work. You know the presentation, you know the people. There's no real uncertainty there, but there's some anxiety. So there's fear just anxiety. You can be uncertain without being anxious. Well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve, and we know there's no fear there, right, So it's when you combine the two that you get fear. And this is the type of uncertainty we're looking at, is that uncertainty plus anxiety. So moving horizons is part of the process. The procedure for buying down fear. The way you buy down fear is you buy down one or both of those factors. You buy it down uncertainty and or anxiety. Moving horizons helps you by uncertainty by allowing you to focus on an element in your control in the moment. And so one of the things we have

11:08 to understand about our brains is our brain just trying to figure out an environment and create certainty around an environment at all times, and it's doing so kind of a long three major factors. Those factors are duration, how long this is going to last, pathway, my route in out or through, and then outcome, what's the end state. If we are an absence of one or more of those, we start to feel uncertainty in their fore anxiety and fear. A real great example would be illness. You and I. We all know strep throats. Okay, it's an illness we all know. Most people don't die from strep throat. There's an antibiotic that can cure a strep throat. If we get striped throat, we are an absence of only one of the three. Because we know the pathway, antibiotic, we know the outcome we're going to get better. What we don't know is the duration. We don't know exactly how long it's going to take. Anxiety uncertainty level is mild.

11:52 Now let's talk about the flu, which is also a known illness. Most people don't die from the flu, but there's no known cure for the flu. A lot of people have the ideas, but there's no codified cure for the flu. So if we have the flu, we are in absence of now two pathway and duration. We know the outcome will get better, we just don't know how long, don't know how we're going to do it. Now, let's imagine a disease shows up on the planet and we've never seen it before, there's no known cure or a vaccine. Some people are dying, some people are not dying, and we don't know how long it's going to spread across the globe. Well, twenty twenty is probably sounding familiar right now. That's how we all felt. We were absence of all three all moving horizons does is it allows you to ground yourself in something you can control. You ask yourself, what do I know? What can I control? And in essence, by picking a horizon, you create your own DPO, duration, pathway outcome. A real quick example is navy seal training, where you run around all the time with these big heavy boats in your head. And I remember we were doing this, it was like three in the morning. We've been running with these boats forever. We're on the beach.

12:51 We were all miserable, and we were next to a sandburm as we're running, and I remember saying to myself, I said, you know what, I'm just going to focus on getting to the end of the sandburm. And what I did in that moment was, inadvertently, unbeknownst to me, picked a horizon and created a DPO duration from now until end of sandburm, pathway from here to end of sandburm, an outcome end of sandburm. And then created and manipulate my own reward system dopamine system which we can get into and to keep going section that allowed us to allow me to create a reward. And then when I hit that goal, I just did it again. I picked another horizon. So all moving horizons is is asking yourself constantly what do I know? What can I control? Picking something to focus on, moving to it, coming back out, picking the next thing to focus on, moving to that, coming back out. And you can do this over and over again until one of three things happens. Either you make it through the challenge and stress, Two you achieved the goal, you accomplished the goal, or three you generate enough certainty in your environment that you no longer.

13:48 Need to do it. But it works, and it's how Actually, every single human being has a story of having done this. We just probably didn't know what we were doing, but do this all the time, and we can do it in any time in uncertainty challenges. Two things in response to that. First, I love what this whole process even. It's just that, you know, the process of teaching, bringing this stuff to an awareness of consciousness is what allows us to be able to activate and do something with it. Now we're aware that we can actually do this, that we have been doing it, so that strengthens our capacity. Love that, And second, I just got to celebrate. I knew before I even met you, having read your book, heard about your past and you know what you've done with your life, that you were going to be able to You were going to be crisp, You're going to be direct, You're going to speak fast, and here it is. It's great, which is why I crafted more questions than I normally do.

14:37 From right, yes, yeah, okay, so now we have to really geek out on this really fun phrase that you put in and you put in the book that I just could not resist. And it's the concept of actualizing neurology. Let's talk about that. Yeah, Well, actually actualizing neurology means we're going to use our brains in a very proactive, positive way. And one of the first ways we do that is to understand that, like we said, when fear starts to enter our system, our autonomic arousal goes up, our amig dealer gets tickled, and our frontal lobe, the decision making part of our brain, begins to recede the limbic part of our brain begins to take over. Now, in the extreme cases, this is autonomic overload or a Magdala hijack, where our frontal lobe has taken a full back seat, our limbic brain is now forward, we are acting without thinking. Now, this comes in very handy when we're jumping out of a way of a moving train or running from the bear, but it doesn't come in handy about ninety nine percent of other things that happen where we actually want to have some agency in our decision making process. So actualizing neurology means we're going to do things that bring that frontal lobe back online and allow us to in fact use decision making part of our brain. We can do this through and we can talk about buying down anxiety. There's some ways we can do that through visual tools or breath work. One of the best ways to do this is just asking the right types of questions. What we have to understand is our brains are question answering machines

16:07 because again, like we said, our brains want certainty in our environment. So we're constantly interrogating our environment our environment through questions, a lot of times unconsciously. But what we don't realize is are when we take conscious control of this thing. If we place a question into our frontal lobe deliberately, our brain has no choice but to begin to come up with answers. Now, the problem is a lot of times we do this without thinking, but we do it. The wrong way. We say things like why am I so bad at this? Or why does this always happen to me? Or why are these people had to get me okay? Or why am I pissed off? Okay? If you ask yourself why you're pissed off, you will get some spectacular answers as to why you're pissed off okay? Because your brain want answer the question. What every high performing person, high performing team does and everybody I've met is we take conscious control of the questions we ask ourselves, and we ask better ones. We say things like, who's out there can help me? What am I good at in the moving horizons case?

17:03 What do I know? What kind of control? And you get better answers. This is a literal way to focus our thoughts, focus our brain positively because where our frame, where our focus goes, where our focus is is where we go mose mentally and physically. By the way, physically this works because I did a bunch of driving schools when I was a cel. We have to learn how to drive a bunch of different vehicles, so we go to racing schools, and I love everything about driving, so I volunteer for everyone. Every time you go to a racing school, the first thing they teach you is you get in the car and they say, I'm going to teach you how to get out of a spin if your car gets out of control. First rule when you get into a spin is do not look at the wall, because if you look at the wall, you're going to crash in the wall. The car might point to at the wall, but you have to look to where you want to go, and your body will start to follow. The mind does the same thing.

17:47 So actualizing your neurology and asking better questions is simply a way to focus your brain on the better result and get better answers. Such a sexy phrase, and it just sounds so incredible, important and enlivening and elevating. Let's do more about this actualizing neurology, but let's grow our first break, I'm your host, doctor Relie Cortez. We've got on the air with rich d Vinnie. He's the founder of the Attributes. We've been talking a bit about where these ideas of his came from, how he's uson in his own life going through his model. After the break, we're going to continue the conversation about his model and really get into how we can utilize our body's own natural performance generator. We'll be right back.

18:41 Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A lisee at eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

19:33 Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elease Cortes, as I am dedicated to help them create a world or organizations thrive because they're people thrive and they're led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically and liven your business. And I wrote that for leaders to help them understand today's very discerning workforce. What do they want? Want to be able to give their best to you and want to stick around? And then I offer twenty two best practices to equip your organization to provide that for them. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site at least quartest dot com if you are just now joining us.

20:14 My guest is RICHD. Vinnie. He's the author of Masters of Uncertainty, The Navy cl Way to Turn Stress into Success for you and your team. So one of the things that delights me many of you, I should say a core throat what delights me about your book and what you've done here is you've really taught us. You're teaching us how to really get clear about how our brain does work and then really intervening in that in a way that we can sort of command it and really get it working for us instead of against us. And I just really want to celebrate that and all the way down to this fun idea of how we can manipulate dopamine in our favor. Let's talk a little bit about how that relates to your body's performance generator.

20:54 Yeah, well, dopamine is a it's an oft talked about neurotransmitter and actually formally always known as a reward chemical, but in fact we now know it's a motivation chemical. They've done experiments with with dopamine in mice and they've realized that if you know, with no dopamine, a mouse won't even get up to get food if they if they're hungry. So dopain is actually what gets us up and moving in the morning. So we all have different dopamine levels, and we all have different things that initiate dopamine our system. One of the reasons why this is important is because we and we execute the moving horizons process.

21:35 What we're doing is we're actually deliberately manipulating our dopamine system. And the reason is because we're picking a goal that actually is just outside our reach of comfort but not too far, and it motivates us. We're giving us a burst to get us there. Now. The reason why this process moving horizon process is very subjective to the individual and to the intensity of environment is because the dopamine register is going to work in very individualistic So in other words, the more intense the environment, the shorter that horizon often has to be. In seal training, and they also they make you sit in the surf zone and freeze for what seems like hours. The water out there in southern California is really cold. Anybody who's listening who knows southern California water will agree with me.

22:15 It's not tropical at all. Most people, in fact, quit seal training because of the cold, not because of the physical stuff. But anyway, they keep you in those surf zone for hours, it seems. And I remember being in the surf zone a couple of times freezing, and my horizon was count five waves. It was that small. Sometimes my horizon was, you know, make it to the next meal. Sometimes it was make it to the end of the sandburn. But what I was doing is I'm picking a horizon that allows me to have the proper amount of dopamine to get to that goal, and then you also get a dopamine reward for hitting that goal. So it's kind of a double whammy there in a positive way. The good news is we can modulate these distances. If you pick a horizon that's too far, too big, you will run out of dopamine before you get there. All right, anytime we quit anything, it's because we've run out of doping.

23:02 That's why we quit. If we pick a horizon that's too short, then we're not going to register a dopamine reward at all, it's not going to feel it's not gonna feel anything. It's gonna be well, that was too short. But the good news is we can manipulate that. We can adjust along the way. So you can pick a horizon and as you're going you feel like, oh wait, that's too long, you can pull that horizon back in. You can even short it. If you pick one that's too short, you'll feel that right away. You'll just pick some longer. But just know that for every individuals it's subjective and it's really about taking those small chunks. This is the neurological equivalent of eating the elephant one bed at a time, and so we have to experiment with this, in practice with this, we can do it. The great news is we don't have to be in an uncertain environment to do it.

23:43 A lot of us we go to the gym, do this in the gym every day. Anyway. We don't go in the gym and focus on the entire workout. We focus on the muscle we're looking at, maybe the first set. Sometimes we'll do it in the middle of a set. We'll say, you know, well, we'll say I want to do twelve, We'll do six and we'll say, and you know what, six more sticks again, So all you're doing is you're you're manipulating these horizons and you're you're managing your dopamine. So so understanding this level of neurochemistry is really important in accomplishing these goals. So well explained and therefore accessible. Uh So, now I want to move on to another element, and that's this idea of staying cool. And it's just the language I know, it's it's you're taking this from what do you call what's the field that you're drawing from, uh oh, neurobiology, neurology, So staying cool. But you're giving us tools to modulate our autotomic arousal. And then and I certainly know because I if I'm going to have anything I can, I can freak myself out and be you know, my heart rate goes through my through my roop, through my head and I'm I'm rendered useless. So I definitely want to have you talk with us about how we can modulate this arousal.

24:52 Well. So one of the things we so this is this is the second part of the equations. So we've been certainty plus anxiety equalsphere we've talked about buying down uncertainty. The next question is how do we buy down anxiety? All right, First of all, we have to reframe anxiety to what it actually is. Okay, anxiety is in fact fiction, right, It's always ahead of us. It's always about what hasn't happened, but we're worried will happen. Whereas the past is history, the future is fiction, anxiety is fiction. Now, the results of anxiety, the stress that is induced by anxiety, is quite present in our system. But one of the things you'll never see Navy seals do is worry about stuff they can't control in the moment. Okay, Now, that doesn't preclude proper planning. We're always doing proper planning, but we're not overplanning. We're not a suffering process through analysis planning a couple things, and we're saying, hey, when we get there, we get there and we'll hit it along the way, but we don't worry about stuff we can't control in the moment. So that's number one. Reframe anxiety to what it actually is, and that's fiction.

25:45 Now. The next piece is the stress induced from that is quite real and quite present, and that autonomic arousal will in fact tip us sometimes again in the extreme cases, into autonomic overload, where we are just panicked. We don't want that, and so we can in fact reverse this physiological process. When we get stressed and we feel that on amic prousal go up, certain things happen physiologically with our vision and with our respiratory system. Vision, for example, starts to tunnel we've heard of tunnel vision. We start to focus in on the thread. This is by design, so we focus on the threat. One of the ways we can reverse or begin to reverse that process is a tool called panoramic vision, which is basically open gaze. It's a very simple tool. All of us know it.

26:25 If I had, if anybody listening has the opportunity, don't do this if you're driving, but if you have the opportunity to look out in front of you, and if you're looking out in front of you and you're picking a point, stop staring at that point and just kind of soften your gaze so if you could kind of notice your peripheries. This is called open gaze. Used in martial arts in other aspects, this has been known to actually decrease our autonomic carausal because we're reversing the process. Okay, I used to do this when I first started public speaking. As you can imagine the Navy Seal, you don't do a lot of public speaking, so it's not something I really loved. I'd get on that, I'd be a little nervous about it. I get on stage, I immediately on stage, I just go into panoramic soft gaze. I wouldn't focus on anything in the coming bound. So that's one of the ways. And I can talk about a couple of different visual tools that you can execute.

27:06 Respiratory wise. We know our breathing quickens, it gets rapid, more shallow. One of the things we can do. Respiratory tools, by the way, are the most powerful. They are more powerful than visual tools. A lot of breath work out there. I talk about a bunch of different breathing techniques. One of the biggest, most I guess efficacious technique is called the is called the physiological SiGe. Okay, physiological size. Really just when one takes a deep breath in all the way in, tops it off, and then a nice slow exhale. You can do that five, six, seven times and you will literally feel yourself calm down. Okay. Now, the cool thing about these breathing techniques if you're really panicked, is you can actually combine picking horizons or moving horizons with breathing, because your first horizon can be I'm going to take five breaths, right. But like you've mentioned, is that as soon as you're thinking that, as soon as you're making that decision, you're automatically engaging your frontal lobe and you're actually in a decision making position, whereas if you're not, then your olympic position that you're acting without thinking. So all of this can be combined in a very unique way and cool way to in fact engage that frontal lobe and begin moving more definitely and confidently through any type of situation.

28:20 I like that. Do you make that sound so accessible and easy? So I'm going to I'm going to work on that, rich, Thank you very much. Okay, we have to talk a little bit about your attributes. As attributes, I don't know why I have a hard time saying that word. I was so I was like, I need to read this book. So I was delighted that you included some information in this book about them. So can you introduce us to them? Absolutely? Attributes are the qualities that allow us to do what we do. They're the quality. They're not they're not They're different from skills. Skills are are kind of you're able to do the thing. Attributes is do you do you have what it takes to do the thing. Skills are very visible, they're very measurable. Attributes are not. They're kind of innate, they're there, they're they're kind of intangible. But attributes are things like patience, situation, awareness, adaptability, uh, humility.

29:11 These are all attributes. And these attributes actually speak to how and why. We're perform the way we do. If we were kind of think about an iceberg, a picture of an iceberg, and and and you can see the entire iceberg, right, So it's one of these pictures where you can see the stuff above the surface, you can see below the surface. And we all know that most of the icebergs sits below the surface. That stuff above the surface is the performance is our performance, our behavior, that's what everybody else sees. But being informed, that is being informed by stuff beneath the service. Now, the very first part that the you know before you get to the surface is your personality. Okay, personality. Though personality is made up of a bunch of things. It's made up of values, beliefs, ideology, environment, a bunch of things go. Into a personality. But beneath even personality, at the very bottom of that iceberg, are our attributes.

29:55 And I know this. We all know this because experientially we've we've experienced it. When the you know what, the fan personality goes out the window, we are running at our most raw, and so our attributes define how we run out our most raw. Now, real quick, I talk about forty one attributes. All of us have all forty one of the attributes. The unique part of us is how much of each attribute we have and other what order the attributes going. So we take adaptability for example, I'm about a level six, which are like scale is seven to one, right, so I'm about six on the appability, which means when the environment changes around the outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go to flow. So when also might be a level three, when the same thing happens to them, it's difficult for them to go with the flow, they can still do it. They're still adaptable, because all human beings are. There's just more friction there. So if we're going to line up these attributes on a wall like dimmer switches, all of us would have different dimmer switch settings.

30:45 That starts to speak to our own unique performance. I always kind of related to automobiles. Every human being, we're all like automobiles. We all have the same components and parts. Okay, however, some of us are jeeps, some of us are SUVs, and some of us are Ferraris, And there's no judgment there because the jeep can do things the Ferrari can't do, and the Ferrari can do things the jeep can't do. But at behooves kind of lift our hood to figure out what kind of engine we're running with, because the friction in our lives might be because we've been a Cheep channel, run our Ferrari track or vice versa. So attributes begin to describe for us individually how and why we show up the way we do, and gives us a real clear picture about who we are and how we're going to perform at our most raw, which is really what happens in uncertainty, challenges stress.

31:26 Oh that is so alluring, all right, So what I want to let me let's grab our last break. I do want to cover off on identities and objectives, the rest of the two elements of your model, but let's do that after the break. I'm your host, doctorI Scortes on the air with Rich Davinni. He's the founder of the Attributes. We've been talking through his beautiful uncertainties model, which is accessible to you. You can wrap your arms around it and use it. After the Marik will continue to get cover off on the other two elements, and then we're going to talk about how we can use this stuff to build class ACKed, high performance teams. We'll be right back.

32:14 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with doctor Elise Cortes to reach our program today, or to open a conversation with Elise send an email to Elise A Lisee at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

33:06 Thanks for saying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. If you want to learn more about how we can work together and what's involved with the Gusto Now Academy for leaders and individuals on various journeys alike, make your way to Gusto dash now dot com and then go to the training tap and you can find the academy there if you are just now joining us. My guest is rich to Vinny. He's the author of Masters of Uncertainty. The name me seal a way to turn stress and success for you and your team. So we are going to cover off in the last two elements of your Mastering Uncertainty model. You've already touched a little bit on identities when you did the brief, but I really love if you could say a little bit more about that, and I really want you to say more about why the im statements work so well.

33:55 Yeah, I think I am the two words I am or I think the most powerful words in the human language, because anything we put after that is what we what we identify as, and it shapes our behavior. And what we have to recognize is that we are, in fact the collection of i ams that we collect over a lifetime. And then it can be everything from you know, benign to pretty pretty big and serious. I mean, I went to this high school, I played this sport. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a Navy seal, I'm a Metallica fan. I mean, whatever those are, they are what they are. But every single one of our i ams comes with some rules and conditions and behaviors that describe what it means to be that identity. And what we have to recognize is in uncertainty channels of stress we are going to behave toward towards whichever identity we're prioritizing in that moment. Okay, So when I was in combat and Iraq and Afghanistan, of course my Navy seal identity was prioritized, Okay, but sometimes the target would change and we have to take care of civilians or women and children, and my husband father identity.

34:51 Would would prioritize. We can find ourselves behaving in ways that we actually don't recognize or realize because we're bringing for an identity that we have but don't recognize what it's doing. So we've seen the negative consequences in these We've all seen the story where the sports fan, the the ultra uber sports fan beats the crap out of another sports fan, okay, and they're in they're in the in front of the judge and they're like, you know, the judges like, what were you thinking? And the guys like, I don't know what I was thinking, you know, because the guy was in fact behaving towards an identity without recognizing it. Now, if that person had invoked and had the wherewithal to invoke some other identities maybe professional businessman or or family man, that behavior would have would have subsided. But all this to say is our identities are driving us at all times, especially during uncertainy, challenge stress. We can again, with our frontal lobe engaged, we can pick and choose which identities should be prioritized in the moment and what's the.

35:51 Most useful and what's not the most useful. So so really the act of understanding these identities, these i ams and getting a list going of what however many i ams you have, it starts to really illuminate how and why you perform and behave the way you do. I think that what you just share there about this the the maniacal sports fan is really really compelling. That's that's so well explained and situated. Makes so much more sense to me. Now, okay, so the last element of the model, it speaks to objectives, and I really like, again, your language is so crisp you talk about really that's your objectives? Are your purpose made tangible? Yeah? Yeah, it's it's probably the it's probably the quickest, most simple one, that is, we can't, we can't. You know, Masters of uncertainty don't kind of align themselves to vague purposes.

36:40 They anchor themselves to concrete objectives. When I was a young young man, you know, in my teens in high school, I wanted to be a I want to serve my country. I wanted to be a warrior. I wanted to do good. I wanted to be special, you know, and and and be part of something special and unique. That was a purpose. Right, it became anchored when I side to become a Navy seal. And an anchored purpose, an anchored objective is something you can begin to dpo and shift horizons inside of and start moving towards. So all this to say is we want to make sure we're anchoring ourselves to objectives because these objectives are also driving us in uncertainty, challenges, stress. Fantastic, and that brings us to where I want to get to with how we can use this stuff to really develop productive, high performance teams. And I want to first start by saying that one of the things you say in the book is you say a key reason that many teams remain stuck in mediocrity is they're fail to account for uncertainty. So if we can just start by situating, you know how we can step into the world of building great teams using your framework, your model.

37:44 Yeah, well, the reason is because we have teams, and we have high performing teams. A team is simply defined as any group of two or more people working together towards a common goal or objective. That's a team. A high performing team is any group of two or more people working towards a common goal or objective that perform not only when things are going great, but also when things are not going great. This is the biggest, most distinguishing factor to a regular team team. And so the way we perform when things aren't going great is we have to task organize ourselves in a very specific way, and we have to knowse things about each other and build trust with each other so that we can effect navigate these times and begin to perform. So the very first and probably the most important model is this idea of dynamic subordination. What dynamic subordination is, it's a way if you were think of it as a visual thing.

38:33 It's not the pyramid, it's not the flat Line's not even the upside down pyramid. It's kind of a blob. And what dynamics subordination implies as a team understands that challenges and issues can come from any angle, at any moment, and when one does, the person who's closest to the most capable immediately steps up and takes lead, and everybody follows and supports, and the environment shifts and someone else steps up, and you know, I was an officer of the Seal Teams. I went on hundreds of combat missions. I was in charge of every single one. It did not mean was always being supported. In fact, most of the time was the opposite. I was supporting other people, whether it was my sniper's, my preachers, my assauliers. Sometimes the environment shift and they'd be in support of me. But all this tells us is something extremely important, and is that our position on our job on a team has nothing to do with our rank and hierarchy. It has everything to do with what we are there to contribute to a team. And if we are leaders or want to be leaders of a team, it's our responsibility to create that dynamic, the subordinating environment. One of the ways we do that is we have to understand each other's attributesse these attributes mesh together very well. The high patience person and a low patience person mesh very well on a team. My wife and I are like this.

39:39 We've been married twenty four years. She's low patients. I'm a high patience. Now, when in an environment where patience is required, I step up. An environment where impatients required, she steps up. Her impatience has prevented me from sometimes taking too long or procrastinating. My patience has sometimes prevented her from making too quick of a decision or moving too rapidly. So these attributes line up. Then we also have to start building trust. We have to build trust amongst each other, and we have to do that through the way we behave with each other. So now we can get into trust. But I'll stop there because I know I've been ranting a little bit. So I know it's fantastic. I think that this idea of dynamics subordination in teams energy is an incredible concept and it's somebody who also has ought to elevate leaders.

40:21 I think it's just it's just really really exciting, powerful and I see how it really changes the whole outcome in terms of results, and I like how you talk about it. This very fluid transition keeps the team agile, always putting its best foot forward, that collective expertise comes together, and who's the leader has orchestrated the environment for this to happen, and I want to celebrate that that as a possibility. In today's world, I see so much still command and control stuff going on, a lot of bureaucracy stuff that's holding organizations back and the people that are in them that are starving to give their best. So I think that this concept for me just really one of the most powerful things that you have in your book in relation to the world of business and teams inside organizations.

41:07 Yeah, and and it's funny it came from this idea. Obviously the military was the background. But but in the in the early days of military maneuvers, it was it was very I say you do. You had you had lines that stood across from each other in big, big open fields, marching forward and shooting each other. And then as the well, certainly the Revolutionary War, the the early patriots began to to uh hide and run around and began what what eventually would become asymmetric warfare where there was no or no lines, and and and the the the the battlefield is blurred in terms of who and where the enemy and the other people were. In those environments, a leader cannot expect to maintain a pyramid style of I say you do, because you don't have visibility on where in fact the primary problem is. And so dynamics of ordination allows for an organization to.

42:01 Put forth its best foot. As close to the problem as possible and where the where the nodes are actually there and and then and then report back. But but in uncertainty, what's happening is that that that node, that's that's that's forward, that's serving the that's that's being supported. That's that node is setting the first horizon, and then everybody moves to that as soon as as soon as that's that's done, then some new data may present itself and another node may step forward. But this is how we as teams can manipulate and manage uncertainty in in a team environment. And we're just making sure everybody is actualized to put their best foot forward. I mean, it's so simple. I mean we don't if we if we ask a human being to do everything with your nose and leave every part of our body out, we we it wouldn't work. I mean, we have every part of our bodies is fulfilling a role in our hands, are are are our feet or whatever, our nose, our eyes, you know. But but we have to make sure that we are putting forth the best node and allowing that node to kind of prosper and be supported, and then of course being willing to shift back and be in support when the environment changes.

43:18 This just came to me Obviously we're talking about many minimal levels beyond this, but there's a strong undercurrent and element that this dynamics subordination is very much just it's like improv which does really still it also embodies the four key areas that you have to focus on to actually get the things started, which is in your book, and you already mentioned that you have to build trust, to establish communication, be vulnerable, and then create low risk opportunities for practice. So I would love for you to speak a little bit high level to those because so there's two of the things I want to get out of you before we get off air. But for us to put dynamic subordination into movement, you need those more pieces.

44:00 Yeah, well, I'll go through a real briefly. And trust is such a huge topic. We could spend an hour on trust alone. But obviously the one thing I want people to understand about trust is trust is about behaviors. In other words, we have to behave in us and it's reciprocal. Okay, we behave in a certain way to allow someone to trust us. You can't make anybody trust you. All you can do is behave in a way that allows them to form a belief a decision to trust you. So it's all about us going first. This nonsense about people coming in so I'll trust them when they prove it to me. No, no, no, we have to go first, and every high performing team we go first with our trust behaviors. That allows for people to trust us and it's reciprocated. So that's trust. Communication. I mean communication has to be abundant and purposeful. And by the end, those two words are very very specific, abundant and purposeful because because for me, as a ground force commander, in other words, I'm charge of the entire mission to spew every single bit of information I'm getting to the operator who's kicking the door right now is not purposeful. I need to make sure that he has every piece of information he needs in the moment and overwhelm him. So it's not about giving everybody everything. It's about being purposeful with everything that someone needs to need and needs to understand and being abundant with it. And that's how you know the information is never silent. Vulnerability is about wearing everything on our sleeves. My strengths in my weekness is our all my sleeps, so my teammates can know exactly when I'm going to be stepping up to support them, and they know exactly when they're going to be steping up.

45:23 To support me. It's absolutely critical. And by the way, it also builds trust and then low risk opportunities for practice just means as teams. First of all, we all have levels of uncertainty every day in our lives. With our teams. We can use those what I call minor little tragedies to practice this stuff as teams. So when the big stuff hits, we're actually reversed in it. But if we focus on and start to highlight some of these lower, lower risk things that happen every day on a daily or weekly basis, we can then think about how we're behaving as a team and begin to actually you get better and better at it. Yeah, and then it sort of takes into account and puts into motion at a previous topic we had on this podcast, which is about now we've set momentum in place, right, so you've really started to activate momentum. Okay, so we're coming to a close here. I want to finish up here with this idea that one of the things that you've said is that in order for this to work in order for us to be able to situate this idea of dynamic subordination, we have to be able to live in that space of vulnerability such that we know the whole teams, that their strengths and their weaknesses, and that you, as the leader especially, have to really model vulnerability and go first. So if we could finish this part of the conversation with sharing a bit about just the power of vulnerability and why it's so important, well.

46:43 Yes, and now we'll just start. First of all, let me just start by saying, leaders, there's a difference between being a charge and being a leader. Okay, one is a position, one is a behavior. Yeah, we don't get to self designate. We don't get to call ourselves leaders. That's like calling yourself good looking or funny. Okay, other people whether or not you are someone they want to follow based on the way you behave. I had sometimes some cases in the military if there'd be someone in a higher cryical position above me, and I'd look at that person, I say, I wouldn't allow that person anywhere. Meanwhile, there'd be someone over here to my right who had no higher copal position whatsoever. I'd be like, I would follow that person to helen back. And it's because of the way we behave. So so if we want to be leaders, we have to behave like leaders. And part of the thing we have to do is we have to first model the behavior we want to see more of and then reward the behavior we want to see more of. So we have to go first. That's being vulnerable.

47:30 We go first. If we want more empathy in our team, we have to show empathy, and we have to reward empathy if we want more whatever you name it. And so all of this has to. Do with modeling and rewarding and going and being vulnerable that way, and that way we can set an example of how to behave in a team. And that's the if there's one message for any of us. And by the way, in the dynamics of ordination environment, everybody has a chance to be a leader, you know, depending on the and and we as the as the people in charge, as the leaders we want to be, have to say set that stage. We have to make sure everybody is empowered and feels ready to step up, because if we don't do that, they're going to be looking back for decisions. And that's yeah, an excellent point well, it goes by so fast, Rishie, We've got a delight to talk with.

48:13 I want to give you the chance to close the conversation with how you like, what would you like leave our listeners and viewers with around the world. All I will say is this. So the reason why this stuff drives me is twofold. First, it will allow people to deal with uncertainty when it happens inevitably and we don't predict it that always happens. We're always going to have uncertainly happens without warning. We want to be able to step more confidently into it. But more important, the more exciting thing for me is if you get really good at this, you begin to deliberately step into uncertainty. And that is where all of our growth, all of our evolution, and all of our discovery lives. And so we as human beings going to have a really wonderful, energetic, rich life and we can explore our potential constantly if we just understand how it can more effectively deliberately step into uncertainty out of our comfort zone. That's where our potential is.

49:01 Fantastic way to finish rich. I am so grateful to know you that you've stepped into my path. I got to read your book to be educated by it, by it, to be inspired by it. I'm here sharing with my listeners around the globe. Thank you for being on the program. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Listeners and viewers. You are going to want to learn more about rich to Vinni, the work he does at the Attributes and is speaking in his latest book. Visit the Attributes dot com. Let me spell that for you. So the t h E Attributes is a T t R I b E t E s the attributes dot Com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it be a recorded podcast. We were on air with Melissa Swift, the author of work Here Now, Think like a Human and build a powerhouse workplace. She really helped us give us language and thus capacity to better understand the aspects of where work is not working for people and what organizations can do to address the issue of today's times. Next week, we'll be on air with Mitchell Leevy talking about the work he's doing to help leaders formulate how they first execute their purpose and then execute abundance. See you then, and together let's lean in and learn together how to make workplaces that work for everyone and find ways to do business in a way that betters the world. That's work on Purpose.

50:14 We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.