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Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Leadership Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Stewart, along with my brother, Peter Stewart. And we today have a fantastic guest. Ron Dufresne, welcome to the Leadership Growth Podcast.-Thank you very much, Daniel and Peter. So great to see both of you.-And I should say, Dr. Ron Dufresne, or Professor Ron Dufresne, correct?-Or just Ron. I'll respond to all three.-I love it.

So today, the topic: 0:40

Habits. What habits do leaders need to have? And frankly, what's the process of being able to build effective helpful habits as leaders? This is what we want to dive into. And Ron here will be able to guide us. He has such rich experience. And in fact, let me read his bio and then we'll dive into the topic at hand. So, Dr. Ron Dufresne, Professor of Management at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where he has earned awards for his teaching and research. A former U.S. officer, U.S. Army officer, I should say, he focuses on leadership and ethics, with a particular interest in the role of character in leadership. This is fantastic. So, with all of this, Ron, give us a sense... help us begin the conversation as we look at building great habits with leaders, particularly around decision making, because sometimes we can think, wait a minute. Habits. Do those habits help us make decisions? Or are they kind of substitutes? Walk through the interaction between these habits and decision-making a little bit for us.-Yeah, that's a great way for us to start. So as I approach thinking about habits, and especially I really focus on the role of habits in our leadership. Because there's a lot of different ways to looking at habits, you know, habitual eating, habitual exercise, sleep habits, et cetera. All those certainly serve our leadership, and we can talk about that later. But really the core of the neuroscience, the core of the psychology that goes into our leadership habits, really speak about two broad tracks. One is the System 1 track, which is, you know, more, it is habitual, it is intuitive, it is reactive. Then that System 2 track, and these are Danny Kahneman's phrasings, would be that more deliberative, discerning, intentional decision making. So when we think about the role of habits in decision making, a lot of our inputs into our decisions are based on habits. So, where do we go for our information? You know, whom do I ask for their perspective? How do I tend to process information? Those are all habits that certainly we can't deny the fact that we have our System 2 deliberative approach to deciding. But we, I think, more often than not, ignore the role of habits in kind of setting the foundation for those decisions.-Yeah it's a great reminder you're sharing of the function that habits serve. You know, they're adaptive. They're beneficial for us as humans. It helps make many decisions and behaviors and things we do each day so that we're not having to decide every little thing. It makes it easier on our brain. But it's that same ease that sure can make it difficult then to change and to modify, because our brain tends to not want that change, or it fights against us. What kind of foundational elements can you share with us about that process to help kind of set the stage for well, habits are good, but how do we then begin to adjust them?-It's again a great framing. And Wendy Wood has done great research that finds that in doing diary studies, somewhere between roughly 45, 50% of our daily actions are habitual, which, you know, and more often than not, we can identify them when we recount a day, you know, to do like a diary study, for example. So, again, I think of it in terms of that foundation versus the intentionality. And you're so right, Peter, when we think about trying to get through a day. Imagine if we use that System 2 deliberative process over deciding what to have for breakfast. I mean, none of us would ever leave our homes because we'd still be sitting there, you know, looking up recipes for various omelets and whatever. But instead, we just eat the thing that we habitually would eat or some strict, you know, stripped down set of options. And that's really, I think, how I want to think about the role of habits in our leadership, is to take away a lot of the need for that deliberative, very cognitively taxing work that we need to do as leaders. If we can offload some of these things to habits then we can really focus our attention on the things that really matter. So imagine having built a habit of pausing before making a decision. Wow, that's going to make us more effective when we get around to making that decision. Or a habit of trying to understand what someone's really saying before responding. Wow, what a great way that we can really focus our deliberative attention on what really matters in that case.-So let's keep going there because... Let's paint this picture of an average day of a leader. And there are going to be many decisions that an average, you know, a leader does in an average day. Imagining, okay, when they wake up, they may check email. And they may have all sorts of cues that pop up in the email from their boss. Ooh, I gotta... must immediately respond. Habit. OK, boom, right there. Oh, somebody on my team who is new, isn't as experienced. Okay, I need to help provide. Or, oh, somebody in engineering. Oh, I hate that person. Oh, that person really annoys me. And now I have this develop... and I'm not gonna respond. Anyway, all sorts of these reactions that can become habitual and then carry out throughout the day, especially folks who are so addicted to email and Teams messages, they must respond every time. Or when they go to a meeting and they're in charge, they get into a certain mindset of I need to have the right answers. Or, you know, these deep-seated assumptions. So let's just put a timeout there. How does a leader know when to pay attention and to question and perhaps change some of these habits? Because some of this, it's we're not even aware of it. We just go through, and in fact, it's helpful for us. It may or may not be helpful for other people. How do we pause? What's the process when we know we got to pay attention and perhaps shift some of our habits?-Yeah, that's great, Daniel. And I'm mindful of something that Peter raised just a minute ago about the adaptive nature of our habits. And I think that the way that we can think through when might be time for us to reflect on what our habits really are and if they're serving us, is to engage in essentially some sort of meta, meta approach. So maybe we're harnessing that system to kind of deliberativeness to take account of the degree to which my habits are adaptive or maladaptive. So we think of, you know, like addiction is a maladaptive habit. You know, it tends to be for many people. So it still has all the features of habituation. It just happens not to serve maybe who you want to be or what you want to do. And same thing with some of our leadership habits. So I think that for us to maybe even start our journey with asking, what are those habits that I do embody? And to what degree are they adaptive? So great. I have a habit of walking my dog. I'd characterize that as an adaptive habit. It gets me out at least a few times a day. It's great. But what about the times that I habitually kind of find myself checking my email on my phone as I walk my dog? I would argue that's maladaptive. That's, you know, it's not good for me. It's not good for my dog. I'm ignoring him. You know, probably going to trip at some point. And I'm depriving myself of that benefit of the habitual walking of just kind of unplugging and paying attention to the birds and just maybe some passing thought coming through my mind. So, walking, adaptive habit. Checking my phone, maladaptive habit in that point. So I think that maybe we can start... One of the first steps, I think, is to really do a wholesale accounting over what patterns might I have and to what degree are they serving who I want to be as a leader?-You're reminding us of just one of the foundational elements of growth, and that's the ability to reflect, to pause, to actually be intentional about what we're doing, because we don't live in a society that really promotes that, or should I say, allows that to happen by accident. Like there have to be those steps of, all right, I am going to think about how I'm doing, and is this bringing the results I want? I want to just highlight, a kind of a reframe that you're providing, that I think listeners may not even be connecting. And it's that recognition that we're talking about habits. At times, we're just talking about behaviors. And whether we're using that term habit, whether we're using that term behavior, I think sometimes there can be that mental barrier to trying to change them. But it really it sounds like habits are just behaviors that we do on a regular basis, more at that subconscious level. So as we start to dive into that more, how can leaders leverage habits for decision making?-Yeah, and there's a great, you're touching on, Peter, where how this is really a bundle of different concepts, you know, behaviors, actions. You know, I started this intentional kind of approach, really, you know, doing deep research or deep reading rather into Aristotle. And Aristotle talks about habits as practices of character. So essentially, we are what we habitually do. And when we look at our leadership, those habitual adaptive approaches, those sets of behaviors that, you know, are in that system wall, we don't have to, you know, really intentionally use our cognitive approach for it or practices for it. You know, to me, I think the habit of reflecting is foundational as we were discussing, as is that habit of perspective taking, that habit of trying to understand where the other person's coming from in their perspective. Because most of us have this habitual, you know, comes from a good place, presumption, maybe even, that, you know, even if I respect both of you as being very intelligent, hardworking, good people, as I know for a fact that you are, well, I'm the same. I'm also fairly intelligent, well meaning, all those great things. So, all right, we're all three sharing the same attributes, therefore, we must all think the same. Well, what a logical flaw I just made at the last step. So, for me to slow down and then to have, hopefully, build that habit of perspective taking such that I need to pause to understand and to deeply listen to what you're saying and why you're saying it. So, in what ways what you're saying perfectly genius or perfectly reasonable from your perspective? And I think, and this is a habit journey that I've been on for probably 25 years, and that is that I've felt better today than I've ever been before. I still have a ways to go. But I'm so much better at rather than habitually dismissing your disagreement as being evidence of your agency, actually, listening to your disagreement as evidence that you're genius. Wow, I knew you to be a really smart guy. Like, you see the world differently than I do? Well, that's going to help me make such better decisions when I have to continue to get with that cognitive System 2 approach when that time comes.-So the perspective taking, I love this. Let's dive a little deeper into this because it's kind of like under the umbrella of what are types of leadership habits that we want to have? And what are those leadership habits that may not serve us well? And so as you're thinking through under the banner of leadership habits that we want, perspective taking is right up there. What can be done to be able to help us get more into a habit of perspective taking? And I'll share an example here as we're kind of talking through this. So I'm working with a CEO, a large publicly traded manufacturing organization. She is so smart. She is quick. For the life of her, she so struggles being present in conversations because she is so task-focused and she gets a lot of things done. But when you're on a Teams call with her, you know she's doing 15 other things and it takes her a moment to get back. But yet she will also talk about how much she values people and the relation... and deep down she does. There is a disconnect between that task focus that is so habitual, and her preference, and yet her intent of also paying attention and taking other people's perspectives. How does a leader begin to go about adapting and adjusting some of their deeply ingrained habits? Even just to take that perspective taking? How do you respond to that, Ron?-Yeah, so that and here again, there's so much great research done either from psychology or from neuroscience that really has in the past couple decades uncovered a lot of kind of the keys to the kingdom here. Very, you know, famously popularized by authors like James Clear or Charles Duhigg, there's that habit loop, which is classically some combination of cue or context, right? So that situation that might trigger some sort of behavioral response, the response being probably the habit, followed by some reward. So, some sort of cue context, followed by the response, followed by the reward. So, back to the question of habitual perspective taking. So thankfully, because we also know that habits will only be formed with habituation, with a lot of repetition, in a relatively stable context to start, thankfully, those of us who work with others have ample opportunities throughout the day to take others' perspective. So, great cue when you say something. As you just did. So that's my cue that if I, if, again, I've done some reflective practice to recognize like,“God, it seems like we're not on the same page.” Great. So that might indicate some degree of misunderstanding. Or these people aren't just, aren't buying into my ideas. Or, you know, people, I spot people rolling their eyes when I'm saying something, whatever that insight to make me realize there's something maybe that I need to be doing better to really pay attention to that cue-response-reward cycle. So it could be that I recognize that typically when someone responds to me, or better yet, when someone disagrees with me, that cue might trigger defensiveness. It might trigger, like, oh, you don't get it. And maybe you have to, you know, speak louder. Or, you know, use, you know, more syllables in my words to prove to you how smart I am, because that'll convince you how right I am. And then, of course, that's been reinforced over time with some sort of reward, maybe the feeling of power, the feeling of being in charge, whatever it might be. So to come back to the question of how might we approach this in a more intentional way, well, the cue is going to remain. So, you're still going to say something. You're still going to maybe disagree with me. Now, it's a question of choosing what response I actually do want to have. And this is the key insights of the research on habit formation is it has to be simple. It has to be measurable. So it can't (unclear) when responding with (unclear) they will listen better. That's terrible. How do I know if I'm listening to them or not? So, when in fact you say something that maybe I disagree with, cue, now I'm going to respond with just pausing, and listening with intent, and maybe repeating what I heard you say. Well, that's more incremental. It's more doable, more manageable. I can measure if I did it or not.-Yeah.-And that's really, that's the crux of any sort of habit formation, habit change, is recognizing the cues are there, now, what response do I want to have when that cue arises, and then hopefully lock that in with some rewards, maybe some shorthand proximate reward like a check mark on my to-do list. Hopefully, longer term, more intrinsic rewards like, wow, we argue less. That would be amazing. I have less stress at work. That would be amazing. These are longer-term rewards.-Yeah, you're really outlining, Ron, and reminding... and it's interesting as I reflect back, even in my training as a psychologist, first core elements of behavioral modification. You know, it was the ABCs. Antecedent. Behavior. Consequence. You know, and the terminology, cue, context, behavior, reward. Like it's these patterns that we've really known about human behavior for decades now. But I think it is a testament to how persistent our habits are,(laughing) that we still are needing to remind ourselves of that. So you outlined it so beautifully of taking that pause to reflect, because you can dissect any behavior, any habit down into those three steps of alright, what are those cues? What are the things that happened before? So then you can be aware of those triggers. Now, what is the behavior I currently do? And what is the result of that? And now, how do I pivot and adjust and shift that? So now that we've kind of outlined that basic core framework, what would you say in your experience working with all these many leaders are the kind of the core, those top habits that you believe leaders should develop?-So we've talked a lot about their perspective taking. I think that's critical. A habit of reflection. Again, we talked about that. That's also critical. And critically, you know, as like less critical things, the wrong way to listen to this list is to say,“All right, I'll do all five or six this week.” The better approach is to be more intentional and to do phasing. And, you know, maybe I'm going to start, as a foundational habit, with that, you know, that self-reflection. I'm going to pause, you know, four times a day, with predictable cues, maybe when I wake up in the morning, maybe as I'm putting my shoes on to leave the house to go to work. Maybe when I'm eating my lunch, let's hope not at my desk, which is what I typically do. Maybe when I'm driving home from work. I'm going to just spend 60 seconds checking in. What's going well? What's gone poorly? What can I do better? So it has to be repetitive with predictable cues. And if I do that, you know, maybe three, four weeks in a row, now I'm ready for the habit of perspective taking. Maybe a habit of active listening, you know, so building that practice of not just perspective taking, but I'm going to turn to you and give you my full attention. I'm going to put my phone down, you know, turn away from whatever my work is in front of me and look at you and engage in a couple of practices like my physical presence, repeating back what I've heard, and that will be my incremental practice for the next three to four weeks until that becomes more habitual. I would certainly add to the list a short list of habits. You know, for me, I think of it in the domain of courage in leadership, I think that what that means to each of us is going to be different. What it really touches on is building that habit of leaning into the slightly uncomfortable, harder thing. So we know that courage is choosing the harder right instead of the easier wrong. And if I as a leader can pause to recognize that there's a scary... maybe I'm holding off on sending this email because I'm afraid of what response it's going to trigger. Well, I think all of us have three or four or five, ten occasions throughout the day of choosing maybe that harder right versus the easier wrong. And maybe it's not going to be a career-defining amount of courage. It's going to be an opportunity to do something that maybe is harder for me. If we can spend a month working on that, I think we're going to start to desensitize ourselves to what that perceived risk we've been building up in our mind, maybe it's not that big of a deal. And only through the habituation do we start to learn that.-It's well said. And so we can go to the next step here is as we reflect on our current habits and think about which ones we might want to adapt or adjust, how do we make them stick? How do we keep it becoming persistent, especially during times of stress and pressure? Where in those moments, we as humans, we can have that huge tendency, that everything then just that we've worked for goes out the window. And our base sort of internal drive comes right back out. And it's as if we didn't have success previously of being positive and being reflective. How do we keep things to stick, especially in times of stress and pressure? How do we have a mindset to go about dealing with that?-Yeah, and Daniel, you're narrating what happens in all of our brains all the time. So, you know, we have this like this intentionality. That's the prefrontal cortex. It is like, you know, the future planful thinking cognitive load part of our brain. And then when stress kicks in, that disconnects and the amygdala takes over and we've forgotten what our intentions were. Because we can. And that's the beauty of the habituation is when we're under stress, we're more likely to fall back on those habits. So, you know, the best time to engage in the habit formation is when we aren't, you know, right up against something very stressful. You know, it's like the best time to prepare for a crisis at work is when things are going well. Same kind of approach here with our habit development. A couple ways that we can do our best to lock it in. That idea of following the dopamine. So, what do we feel is rewarding? And there's, you know, Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habits, you know, talks about this kind of counterintuitive approach to developing the exercise habit of people rewarding their exercise with bits of chocolate. Because people might you know, it's counterintuitive. Of course, you want to be healthier and you're rewarding the exercise with something that, you know, is seemingly unhealthy. But the idea there is, you know, once the habit is formed, we no longer need that proximate dopamine. In fact, we have that more intrinsic, inherent dopamine still there, still dopaminergic. But it's not so much from the chocolate, it's from that feeling of being... feeling well. So I think for all of us, you know, the first thing is to think about what are those kind of short-term, quick-hit dopamines before we can lock in the longer-term effects. Some of us, like I, I love the feeling of crossing things off of my to-do list. Like, you know, check marking somehow doesn't trigger the same dopamine as crossing. Oh, oh, or of just crossing it off. Feels so good. So for me, that's a short, quick hit dopamine reward. The second really important, perhaps even more important approach is to enlist some social pressure. We know that we are social animals. And one of the most rewarding things we can do is to be respected by others, to be seen in a positive light by others. And the most perhaps cutting thing is the opposite, to feel at the risk of being ostracized by others. So I am a huge fan of accountability partners, of telling you,“Here, Daniel, will you please be my accountability partner, if you're on board with it. I know we talk several times throughout the day. If you ever get the feeling that I'm not fully listening to what you're saying, please, you know, just call a time out on the conversation and let me know that I'm off track. Because I'm telling you, Daniel, that my habit right now I'm working on is really full attention giving and listening. So if I can enlist your help in forming that habit, I mean, right now, I'm having a little feeling of that anxiety. I don't want to let you down, Daniel. And he didn't say yes yet, but there's that social aspect that we are so wired for. So I would say those two things. You know, find whatever short-term, you know, dopamine hit that works for you. And then make it social. Find someone who will hold you accountable in a real way, not just some performative, like, “Oh, yeah, I'm there for you, buddy.” No, someone who's really going to do what good friends do for each other, and that's to hold me accountable.-Yeah. As you're sharing those core thoughts, Ron, I'm reflecting on coaching conversations I've had with many, many leaders who have a similar challenge, a desire to want to focus more on the strategic tasks and needs. But yet they're barred down in the tactical pull of the day-to-day, of the dumpster fires and the crises du jour and that sort of thing. As you're outlining this process, what suggestions would you give to many of our listeners who are sitting here saying, that's my challenge? I want to try to figure it out. How would you help a leader develop a habit to think strategically?-I think for me, the coaching that I've given many, many leaders is to find some tool that will help hold them accountable to just doing it. And for me, it's my calendar. So I'm sure both of you, when we all work with leaders they'll deny having half an hour of time in their calendar.“There's just no time.”“I would love to do this, Peter, but I just have no time.” Until you actually sit down with their calendar with them and recognize that there's time all over the place. It might not be half, it might not be an hour. Might not even be half an hour. But is there a 15-minute window in all of our very busy calendars, when we can carve out that time and to really focus on the strategic aspect. Yes. I'm convinced of it. I mean, I bet no matter what our jobs might be, we have 15 minutes. So I would say schedule it. And importantly, again, back to the idea of making this social, make sure that that is inviolable. Because we do know that we can form habits best in stable contexts. So it's not going to work

if I put it in my calendar, there's a hold on my calendar at 5: 31:00

30 before hopefully I can start to, you know, wind, wind the day down.

From 5:30 to 5: 31:08

45 is my daily strategic thinking time. And the next thing you know, you ask, you know, you stop by my office and you want to chat about the football game. Well, if I don't hold firm to my calendar, and if I haven't enlisted your help, then there's no way it's going to become habitual. So I think the key is to find maybe make the time, find the time, block the time, and then do not violate that time. Because it might be hard, might even think like, all right, 15 minutes, that's not enough time to really think big strategic thoughts. And it might not be. But over time, I bet we can become better and better and better at switching into strategic brain and maybe using a full 14 minutes of strategic thought that we weren't doing before. I bet that's going to make us so much more effective.-Ron, I cannot underscore the power of your comments today. The power of being able to be reflective, to pause, to be able to then look to see, are my habits my... These go-to responses that I have, are they serving me to help me be my best self, not just for myself, but as a leader, which is beyond myself? And it includes others. And it's not just a practice that you do once, but it's continual. Earlier you said a comment for yourself that's something you've been working on for 20, 25 years. These are all things for all of us to continue to work through. So, as we kind of wrap up here, here's my final question for you. What is one or two leadership habits that leaders want to aspire to cultivate and have that will help them be most successful? What would you say?-I think... I think if I were to boil it down to the most pressing two takeaways, what are two very essential leadership habits, one is to build a habit of intention setting. So, whom do I want to become as a leader, as a professional? For me, as a husband, as a father, that's all wrapped up into the same answer anyway. Whom do I want to become? And to maybe, you know, it's going to evolve over a lifetime. So to build a habit of checking in on what my intentionalities might be. I think that would be step one. Then step two is to what degree have I built alignment around making sure my behaviors are pointing in that direction. Am I living a life that I want to live? Or am I living someone else's life? Am I fulfilling someone else's obligations? So if I can build that habit of intention setting and that habit of reflecting maybe again a few times a day. Am I... Am I living in accordance with who I want to be, the leader that I want to be? Am I treating people in a way that I intend to treat them, or not, and to build that habit of actually paying attention to not just what I intend, but to actually what I do, and to avoid that bias blind spot that all of us have. I think I'd start there, Daniel.-I love it. I love it. Dr. Ron Dufresne, thank you. Outstanding comments, great insights. Powerful, especially because it needs to apply to all of us all the time as we challenge ourselves to become better and stronger leaders. Thank you, listeners, for joining us today. We certainly hope you've been able to take away great tips, tools, and insights to help you along your leadership journey. Please like and subscribe. And we look forward to having you join us at a future episode. So long, everybody. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. Or, better yet, leave a review to help other listeners find our show. And remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more great content or to learn more about how Stewart Leadership can help you grow your ability to lead effectively, please visit stewartleadership.com