1310: Want To Be Promoted? Cultivate These 4 Traits by Christine Comaford of Smart Tribes Institute on Career Success

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[00:00:59] This is Optimal Work Daily Episode 1310. Want to be promoted? Cultivate these four traits by Christine

[00:01:07] Comaford of SmartTribesInstitute.com. And I'm Dan. I'm your host of the show.

[00:01:12] And I'm here with you every single day reading posts from some of these great blogs that we find the cover work,

[00:01:17] entrepreneurship and a lot of different aspects of the business world.

[00:01:21] So without further ado, let's get right into our post from Christine and optimize your life.

[00:01:30] Want to be promoted? Cultivate these four traits by Christine Comaford of SmartTribesInstitute.com.

[00:01:38] What makes someone high potential? Can we predict rock stars at early stages of their careers?

[00:01:44] What key traits must be identified and cultivated to help stars, talent achieve their full potential?

[00:01:51] According to Kevin Oxner, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, it all comes down to the brain

[00:01:57] and how we're wired plus which traits we cultivate. Here are his four brain based traits of rock stars.

[00:02:03] Focus, learning, personal and social. Focus has two parts. Executive or selective attention.

[00:02:11] What we choose to pay attention to and zoom in on mentally whether it is top down, broad

[00:02:16] and general or bottom up, narrow and specific. Second, it's essential to be able to zoom out

[00:02:22] and see relationships between things to understand context. This ability to manage the signal-to-noise

[00:02:29] ratio inside one's brain and manage internal noise or thoughts helps too. Does the person

[00:02:35] you've identified as a high potential focus in these ways? Learning swiftly and retaining

[00:02:40] learning is key in today's speedy workplace. Oxner follows the Neuro leadership Institute

[00:02:46] model ages to define what effective learning is. A for attention, there it is again. Be present and

[00:02:54] stay focused. G for generation. When learning enables us to make connections and associations

[00:03:01] and effectively contextualize, it sticks with us. When we understand how things fit together

[00:03:06] and possible conflicts, challenges and synchronicities, we understand usefulness and see the

[00:03:12] broader application of learnings. E for emotion. How is emotion applied to the learning?

[00:03:18] Emotion helps us retain what was learned. And S for spacing. Making space around learning

[00:03:25] is key too. We need time to digest and process what was learned. We also need to revisit it

[00:03:31] and assess it when it does or doesn't apply to our world. Does the person you've identified

[00:03:36] as a high potential learn in these ways? Personal ability is twofold. First, it means the individual

[00:03:42] demonstrates knowing themselves, being clear on their motives, their strengths, weaknesses,

[00:03:48] opportunities and threats. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex, VM-PFC, is where self

[00:03:55] judgment occurs and you've heard me talk about it as key in getting in and staying in your smart

[00:04:00] state. Second, the individual must demonstrate self-regulation which also is governed by the

[00:04:05] PFC and its executive functions. Envisioning, goal setting, discernment, language skills, etc.

[00:04:13] Self-regulation is the ability to control our responses and assess ourselves, others,

[00:04:18] status of a project or deliverable. It helps us determine what to do next, whether a goal was

[00:04:23] attained or not. Involved here also is your ventral striatum, VS, where you experience reward.

[00:04:30] An ability to assess what worked in the past and what may work in the future is important

[00:04:35] So, as a combo pack of the aforementioned two skills, an individual with strong personal

[00:04:40] abilities can evaluate, assess and determine what to do next, then regulate, implement strategies

[00:04:47] and repeat the cycle ongoing. Does the person you've identified as a high potential have these

[00:04:52] personal abilities? And social skills enable one to both read people accurately and influence them.

[00:04:59] To read others accurately, an individual is curious. What is the person really wanting? Why?

[00:05:06] How can I help them to get it? They are tuned in to signal presence or social surveillance by

[00:05:11] watching the other person's body language, breathing, facial expressions and listening

[00:05:15] to their speech patterns to discern what they might be feeling. Their amygdala is sensitive

[00:05:20] to picking up the subtle signals from others, and along with their intuition-guided insula,

[00:05:26] they are experiencing empathy for the other. They're earning trust with others by lighting up

[00:05:30] the person's VS and giving them a rewarding experience of being connected. Does the person

[00:05:36] you've identified as a high potential have these social skills? Is it too late? Can one

[00:05:42] learn these skills? According to Oxner's research, much of this is very trainable.

[00:05:47] Focus is very trainable via mindset. See Carol Dweck's awesome book of the same name.

[00:05:54] Mindfulness, this takes more work. Distancing, witnessing your emotions or reactions and

[00:06:00] pausing before you respond or repeating what you heard to cause a pause,

[00:06:05] and resisting distraction. Learning, very trainable. Personal, trainable. The key here

[00:06:12] is emotional regulation. See focus for help here. Also important here is reframing. Some

[00:06:19] examples include, it's okay that my plane is late, now I have a chance to call my son.

[00:06:24] When my PC crashes, it means it's time to take a break. I'm not fat, I just enjoy food to its

[00:06:29] fullest. It's not a personal attack, she must be just having a bad day. Or creating a new,

[00:06:35] more emotionally balanced response to external or internal events or judgments.

[00:06:41] Social. Oxner's research was inconclusive here, but our work at SmartTribe's Institute

[00:06:46] makes it clear that one can absolutely build social skills in leadership, sales, marketing,

[00:06:52] engineering, client care, all areas of a company, all industries, with any human being.

[00:06:59] As a leader you want to assess your team to see who has strengths in which areas,

[00:07:03] then form teams to have complete diversity of skills, focus, learning, personal and social.

[00:07:10] And one note on introversion versus extroversion. Matt Lieberman of UCLA found that this only

[00:07:16] determines 20% of behavior variants. So even though an introvert's brain is taxed in social

[00:07:21] situations, they don't have a true disadvantage. You just listened to the post titled,

[00:07:31] Want to be Promoted? Cultivate These Four Traits by Christine Comaford of SmartTribe's

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[00:08:37] And thank you so much to Christine for another great post here at OWD. For over 30 years now,

[00:08:44] leadership and culture coach, serial entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling

[00:08:48] author Christine Comaford has helped leaders navigate growth and change.

[00:08:53] Her specialty is in applied neuroscience which helps her clients achieve tremendous

[00:08:57] results in record time. As an entrepreneur herself she built and sold five companies with

[00:09:02] an average ROI of 700% and she was also a software engineer back in the early days of Microsoft

[00:09:08] and Apple. Christine is a human behavior expert, a leadership columnist for Forbes.com,

[00:09:14] as well as the New York Times bestselling author of Power Your Tribe, Smart Tribes,

[00:09:18] and Rules for Renegades. So you can come by SmartTribesInstitute.com to learn a whole

[00:09:23] lot more and check out all of their resources. But I think that's going to do it for today.

[00:09:28] I appreciate you as always being here with me and I will see you right back here tomorrow

[00:09:33] where your optimal life awaits.