Transcript · Leadership Development News
The Unreliable Narrator:
Why Leaders Can’t
See Their Own Story
The full conversation with Dr. Relly Nadler and Dr. Cathy Greenberg, edited for reading.
This is the recorded conversation, edited for reading. Filler, repetition and false starts have been removed, broken sentences closed, and speaker attribution corrected throughout. Nothing has been added, and no answer has been rewritten to say something it did not say. The show’s mid-episode break and closing sign-off are branding rather than conversation, and are not reproduced here.
The episode page, with the definition of leadership set out in full, is here.
If you want the substance without the conversation, the ideas raised are summarised at the end.
Relly Nadler
Welcome to Leadership Development News: Profiles and Practices of Top Performers. I’m Dr. Relly Nadler. Dr. Cathy Greenberg and I have been doing this show for over 20 years, and what we love to do is bring you tips and tools to be your best. We interview a lot of authors, gurus and thought leaders who bring you what is unique and what is best out there.
Today we’re going to talk about the unreliable narrator: why leaders can’t see their own story. I love this title. We’re going to talk with Federico Malatesta, and I imagine he’s going to get into blind spots. Cat and I work with executives all the time, and why do they work with us? Because they can’t see their blind spots. We provide supervision and we can help them with those blind spots. Sometimes that’s challenging, because nobody necessarily wants to hear what they’re doing wrong, so it has to be done in a good way, one they can hear and work on. So we’re going to tap Federico to see what’s in his new book, which comes out next week. And Cat, welcome.
Cathy Greenberg
Well, thank you. I’m really happy to be on today’s show, because we’re talking to someone who has one of my favorite accents. As many of you know, I just love Italy; it’s one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. And I’m so happy we’re going to be talking about self-delusion. Who doesn’t have ideas about who they are that don’t fit anybody else’s perspective of them? A lot of people out there in the audience go through life with these unconscious thoughts about themselves, and they really get in the way. So I’m hoping to learn a little today about what I can do differently.
In each and every show we try to offer our audience some tools and techniques. With all the things you’ve done over the course of your career and the things I’ve done over mine, we have lots of them, but it’s always good to hear from outsiders. So I’m really excited to have our guest, Federico Malatesta, with us today.
Federico Malatesta
Cathy, Relly, my pleasure. It’s nice to be here.
Relly Nadler
We’re going to officially introduce you in a moment, but let’s set the context: why this self-delusion, and why we need to unpack it. Here are the four key challenges we see all the time with leaders.
One, everything is more: more distress, more pressure, more anxiety, more uncertainty. Whatever the adjective is, put “more” in front of it. We’re all on overwhelm, and if we’re on overwhelm, we may overreact. That’s number one.
Number two, which Federico is going to help us with: we’re not as self-aware as we think we are. Some of the research asks people, “Are you self-aware?” “Sure, I know what’s going on for me.” In reality, about 15% of us are truly self-aware. That’s why you need somebody else as a thought partner.
Number three: with everything going on, we know from neuroscience that we’re on autopilot. We’re not thinking; we go to what worked before, and what worked before may not work now.
And number four, which is what we’re going to pick Federico’s brain about, and what Cat and I do in coaching and leadership, is slow thinking. Unless there’s an emergency, you actually have time to think, reflect and look at different scenarios. Those four dynamics are happening for all of us, and that’s one of the reasons Cat and I know emotional intelligence is lower these days than it has been, and lower for the younger generation, because so much is on screen. So, Cat, any words you want to say about that, and then introduce Federico?
Cathy Greenberg
Here’s what I want to say, and then I’ll introduce our guest. We are living in a time when many people are using ChatGPT as their only reflection. And when your chatbot tends to agree with everything you say, it’s going to be very hard to understand what might be getting in your way. So I’m very excited to introduce our guest today, Federico Malatesta, because he’s going to tell us how we can stop lying to ourselves.
He spent 15 years in global energy, rising to CIO of a $40 billion portfolio, before leaving to study something most executives won’t admit they’re up against: why success stops meaning anything. If you haven’t reached that point in your life, prepare yourself. Put your seat belt on; it will come. He’s the founder of FM Transformational Coaching and the author of the forthcoming They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion, and he makes the case that no protocol, framework or optimized morning routine is going to fix a story that has stopped working.
Federico works with executives and senior leaders who have hit the ceiling of what performance can deliver: people who are competent, accomplished and quietly stuck. His approach draws on narrative theory, neuroscience and contemporary psychoanalytic thought rather than slogans and protocols. He writes regularly on identity, leadership transitions and narrative collapse, and his newsletter, Almost Everything Is Context, has built a following among readers who find most coaching content intellectually thin. We’re very excited to have Federico with us today, and we’ll tell you how you can reach him after we say hello and get to know him a little. Federico, welcome to the show.
Federico Malatesta
Cathy, Relly, thank you so much. Wonderful introduction. I love to be here. I’ll do my best to put on the most Italian accent I can master. It shouldn’t be that difficult.
Relly Nadler
I’d agree with Cat: you could mumble and say incoherent things and we would love it. All right. We always start with your key influences, because you’re going to bring us some of your ideas and some of the transformations today. Where does that start?
Federico Malatesta
I would say it starts with my family. I was lucky: I was brought up in a very intellectual family. Pretty much everyone in my family was either a writer or a journalist, so I grew up surrounded by very interesting people: writers, directors, journalists, art critics. That was always part of my world, and I always loved literature. I started reading relatively early in life; by 15 I had probably read all of the Russians.
But I always had interests beyond that. I was always attracted to the world of economics and business. If I think of some names that may mean something to your listeners: probably Paul Krugman when it comes to economics, David Remnick when it comes to journalism, and Warren Buffett, whom I know you like, when it comes to business. These are some of the people who have determined my intellectual path.
Cathy Greenberg
Gorgeous. You have a very deep background. Learning a little about you: you grew up in Rome, you spent nearly 15 years in oil and gas and ended as the CIO of a $40 billion portfolio, and now you coach senior executives from a working horse ranch in Texas. Help us make the connection here.
Federico Malatesta
The connection is that I made it. There isn’t necessarily a connection. I sometimes use horses with clients, but not particularly often. Horses are a passion of mine that I developed over the years. If you want, we can talk later about how it fits with my narrative theory. Horses are mostly for my personal pleasure, and they’re a good way of losing money, an intelligent way of losing money. The coaching is what I enjoy doing as work.
Relly Nadler
We’ll probably get into that. Cat and I have both done some work on working ranches in Tucson where they had horses, and the whole thing is that a horse picks up whether it can trust you or not. We humans do that too, but with horses it’s immediate, right away. With a person, we may not know as much. So say a little about that tie-in, and the narrative piece, because I think that’s where we really want to focus.
Federico Malatesta
Sure. With horses, as in many areas of self-development, there are a lot of myths. There is the myth that horses are mirrors to the soul, that they are wise, and so on. Those are very nice words, because they’re amazing animals. What really happens is that horses are prey animals, so they have a situational awareness that is way beyond what we can understand. What they pick up is incongruence: in the movements you make, in the language you use. If you start screaming, if you raise your voice and they don’t understand why you’re doing it, they start to back away from you, because suddenly there’s something they don’t understand, and therefore you might be dangerous. Usually they will come to you if they see that you are, in that particular moment, a coherent being.
Often when leaders come, especially a certain type of leader who is used to giving orders and having people react immediately, they behave the same way with the horses. They have either too much energy or too little, the horse just doesn’t like it, and it starts backing away and becomes nervous. So, as you were saying, you get feedback much faster than in a coaching relationship. In a coaching relationship, a good client can lie to you for quite a while. With horses it’s a bit more difficult.
Cathy Greenberg
Oh, I wish my clients could get away with lying to me. It would be a marvelous world. But I digress. Let’s talk about your new book, They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion. How does self-development lie about the limits of self-awareness? Relly and I have been talking about this on every show we’ve ever had, for 20 years…
Relly Nadler
Almost 800 episodes, if not more.
Cathy Greenberg
…and self-awareness is so much more than being cognizant, being present, being a good noticer. So talk a little about the new science you’ve put around how we lie to ourselves.
Federico Malatesta
The book has two premises. For the main one, I go back to Aristotle to look at why protocols don’t work. Aristotle defined different categories of activity in life. For what concerns us, he talked about instrumental practices: activities that generate something else. A carpenter makes a chair. There is a technique involved, and there is a final product. You can teach someone carpentry.
Then there is living a good life. Living a good life is an activity in itself. There is no final product. There is no final product in doing something just: justice is doing something just. What Aristotle said is that the worst thing you can do is use techniques, which he called techne, to live a good life, which he called praxis. To live a good life, what you need is phronesis: practical judgment, practical wisdom. The moment you apply techniques to life, you’re making a category error. It will never work.
That’s the main premise of the book. So when I hear people say, “Here is the first step to solving a marriage,” or “There are two steps to finding happiness,” or “There is something called the science of happiness,” that is a complete misunderstanding of how life operates.
The other part is that even if you ignore this, and you shouldn’t, the techniques self-help proposes are flawed. They’re based on bad science, on misunderstood psychology, on flawed neuroscience, and they will never deliver. They don’t deliver because they’re a category error, but also because, the way they’re proposed, they just don’t make sense scientifically. So I went back and looked at as many areas of self-help as I could. I look at sports as a bad metaphor for life. I’ve looked at excellence, greatness, intuition, self-awareness. I look at people taking Eastern religion and trying to make it understandable to Western minds. I’ve looked at yoga, at studies in psychology, and I show that every single one of these realms is based on a faulty construction. That, in a nutshell, is the book.
Relly Nadler
Let me see if I understand this, for myself and for our listeners. You’re saying people are taking tactical actions, but they may not be grounded; it’s not bringing up their wisdom. It’s more tactical than transformational. Say a little more about how you’re unpacking that.
Federico Malatesta
Yes. A lot of the answers we hear from self-help are three- or four-step solutions. There is nothing wrong with a routine or a protocol at the end of the process, at the implementation stage. But first you need to know where you are going, why you are going that way, and whether it is good for you. Until you have that in your head, the routine is meaningless. You can do a routine perfectly and it brings you nowhere. There is no connection between the two.
Relly Nadler
Let me say this and then turn it to you, Cat. As I’m trying to understand this too: self-help is the what, and what you’re saying is the why. Why is this important? Why are we even doing this? Is that right?
Federico Malatesta
Yes. Self-help should be the how. But what I’m also saying is that the how doesn’t work, because it’s based on bad science, on misunderstood philosophy, and so forth.
Cathy Greenberg
And I understand that most people think that if something is bothering them, there must be a special magic formula somewhere that’s going to cure them. So what I hear is that you’re debunking the idea that anybody can figure out how to fix something before they understand what they’re trying to fix. Starting from that misunderstanding, without that foundation, you could go in the wrong direction and take steps that fracture what you’re trying to do even further, as opposed to creating a holistic set of guardrails that take you where you want to go.
· · ·
Relly Nadler
Welcome back to Leadership Development News. We’re talking with Federico about his new book, and today we’re talking about the unreliable narrator. During the break we were talking about this idea that it’s the story that counts. Often it’s not what happens; it’s not the experience. I have a book called Processing the Experience, where we talk about co-construction, and it’s the narrative. It may not even be what happened, but it’s the story that counts. So say a little about the narrative. Why is it so important, and why are leaders not aware of it?
Federico Malatesta
As you say, I think that’s a very good place to start. We live according to stories that we make. They’re not real stories; they’re stories we make ourselves, usually for good reasons, at a certain point in time. What often happens, with anyone but with leaders in particular, is that these stories don’t work anymore. At some point they run their course. It doesn’t mean they were bad stories. It means that at some point they’re not useful anymore.
We cannot understand ourselves too well, and so the only way we can get out of this cycle is for somebody to give us a different opinion, a different perspective, a different way of living. I think one of the worst pieces of advice you can give someone is “surround yourself with people like you.” Absolutely not. Surround yourself with all types of people: some who are like you, some who are not, some who live according to different values and different priorities. This is how you expand life. The moment life is expanded, you see more of it, and when you see more of it, you take wiser decisions. You learn how to use judgment in different circumstances. That’s why this third party is very important.
Should you have a support network? Absolutely. From time to time we need somebody to support us; when we’re going through difficult moments, we don’t want challenges all the time. Both have a role, but you cannot have one without the other. And as you were saying at the beginning, if you ask ChatGPT, it tells you that everything is fine, that you’re a genius and you’re doing everything right. The interlocutor is something more like asking ChatGPT, “Now really criticize my work harshly.” That’s the feedback we need.
Relly Nadler
That’s so good, and I was going to bring it back to what Cat said about AI. AI has great answers, and I think you need the next set of questions with AI, instead of taking it wholesale. That’s what you’re describing as the interlocutor. It’s probably easier just to say we’re coaches, because that word is a little hard to pronounce. As coaches, we’re challenging them. And even with AI you can say, “Okay, I’ve got it. Be a contrarian. What are the ways this won’t work?” That’s what Cat and I call slow thinking, which is so important.
We talk about being in the gap: stimulus, gap, new response, instead of stimulus, same response, same response. You have a story about someone in that gap, where maybe your question as an interlocutor… am I saying it right?
Federico Malatesta
Interlocutor.
Relly Nadler
Interlocutor. …could change that story. So maybe share that.
Federico Malatesta
Yes. It’s the story of a client of mine. The fictional name I use for him is Robert. He sold his company in his late 40s. He was doing very well. He started joining boards; he said, “I can contribute. I have a lot of business experience.” By the time he came to me, he had resigned from three different boards, and he had perfectly valid reasons for resigning. He didn’t like the strategy; the CEO was not good enough; the supporting team could not do a good job preparing him. The reasons were very good, but they were not the real reasons.
Through our coaching sessions we realized, and he didn’t realize it himself at the time, that he always took the decision to leave before taking the decision to leave. It was an unconscious decision he took at the moment his opinion was not valued. Working with him over months, it turned out that his father was a very successful businessman who was very good at declining his opinion politely, and he never felt valued at home. He went into business, starting and then building his own company, where he was in charge of all his decisions. Then he went onto boards and suddenly couldn’t do that. So every time a CEO said, “Thank you for your input, but we’re going to move in a different direction,” what his body was doing was projecting a world where he was refused by his father, where he was refused by other people. It took some time for him to resign from the board, but that was the moment it happened. So understanding that some things happen at an unconscious level, and being aware of it, is the first step.
Relly Nadler
That’s great. We would call that, and I love this term, an emotional bookmark. When that person felt rejected, it wasn’t only in the moment. That emotional bookmark went back to chapters way back in their life, and there may be many of those chapters. That’s the narrative that is not the present: previous chapters crowding out what’s real now. Therefore we’re not that self-aware. Maybe make a comment about that.
Federico Malatesta
Yes, you’re absolutely right. Now, what is the difficulty? The difficulty is that sometimes those signals are faulty. We can have a bodily signal telling us something is wrong when nothing is wrong. There is no certainty in this assessment, which makes the assessment difficult and the answer sometimes complicated.
Relly Nadler
We’re familiar with Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work: emotions in the body are just a signal. We have this in our book Emotional Brilliance, which you can see behind Cat. It’s a signal that goes to the brain, and the brain asks, “What is that signal?” It comes up not with exactly what it is, but with a name for it. Sometimes it’s an old name, an old story, and that’s what it gets named.
Federico Malatesta
Yes, exactly. That goes back to what I was talking about at the beginning with Aristotle and phronesis. How do you know? How do you judge? It takes time and wisdom to make that judgment. It doesn’t take a protocol. It takes time, being aware of it, going through it. I look at the work you’ve been doing, and I think we agree on many things. The difficulty is that these situations often happen in very stressful environments…
Relly Nadler
Where there is no gap.
Federico Malatesta
…where it’s unexpected, and the reaction is almost instantaneous. So how do you create that gap? How do you train yourself to make sure there is a gap, that there is time for it?
Cathy Greenberg
So tell us a little about when you’re working with a client and you start to hear the pattern and to inspect their emotional self-awareness. You’re saying you have to get to the root of the issue, but obviously there are some steps you offer to give someone that capability. Can you share what that looks like?
Federico Malatesta
Sure. The first thing is awareness that there is nothing wrong with the person. These are natural events; there is nothing wrong with the individual because they happen. It’s not a failure. The moment the client understands that he’s not failing at something, that he just has to understand what is happening, that’s the first critical step. Managers, especially executives, often talk about the wrong reaction, while often the question is: what are the possibilities here? What says that something is right or wrong?
Then you start to deconstruct the moment. When we go through a difficult decision or a difficult moment with a client, we start deconstructing it and ask: “Is that really true? Can you actually make a case for this?” The moment something moves from the unconscious to the conscious and they start questioning it, suddenly it’s not a very stressful moment they have to solve. It’s something they can apply the same technique to as they apply to other things. That demystifying of the moment is, I think, the most important part of the journey.
Cathy Greenberg
As we were saying earlier, we use something called name, notice and normalize: accept it, manage it in the moment, and express it when it’s appropriate and in an appropriate way. We all use deconstruction; for our audience, that’s just breaking whatever is happening into segments you can at least look at. And as you said, this person had made the decision before he knew he was making it. So how do we train our brain to pause long enough to recognize when that decision occurred? Is there some process you use?
Federico Malatesta
The first thing I tell my clients is to start working in very low-stress situations. That often sounds silly, and it’s a little funny to do, because you start when you forget your keys and get angry. In those very low-stakes situations we go through the same processes; it just doesn’t really matter. But doing it with the small mishaps of daily life helps us deal with bigger things, because you don’t get good at something when it’s really, really difficult. Cathy, I know you work with special forces, am I right?
Cathy Greenberg
Yes.
Federico Malatesta
They don’t send them into battle after two days, into very complicated scenarios. They start training at a very low level, and over time they build up experience and expertise. The same thing happens to us. Thankfully we don’t have to go into dangerous situations. But instead of waiting for the board meeting, do it when you’re having a discussion with a friend and something comes up, and say: “This makes me feel uncomfortable, and we’re only talking about sport. Why is that? What am I doing? What is happening?” If you start doing that, you’ll find you can translate it to bigger things over time. It takes time.
One of the biggest myths I also talk about in the book is about neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is real, but it takes a long time. It takes effort on a very narrow issue, and it has to be an area where you get constant feedback. So starting with something very simple, where it’s easy to get feedback, where it’s low stakes and therefore low stress, is the best way to train yourself for bigger things.
Relly Nadler
I love this. Let’s keep going with this conversation. Right after this I’m going to be on a panel about neuroplasticity, and my contribution is really about the story. I’ve done training in what’s called narrative therapy, and it’s the story that counts. It doesn’t matter what happened; it’s the story you made up about it.
And there is this idea of leaders being told to be authentic. How do you get at that? I understand what you’re saying about practicing in these moments. It’s challenging, and it goes back to what we say all the time: if you stay on autopilot, you stay average. Nobody has time, and what you’re talking about takes a lot of cognitive budget. It’s hard to think about those emotional bookmarks; it’s uncomfortable to ask how they track to my behavior today. So how do you get into that territory with the leaders you work with, especially with everyone knocking at the door saying, “Hey, you should be authentic,” and they answer, “Okay, I thought I was”?
Federico Malatesta
I have an issue with the term authentic, because it can mean a thousand different things, and when things mean a thousand different things, they usually mean nothing. So let me give you my take on it. If we believe we live by a narrative, a story, and a narrative is something we make up…
Relly Nadler
Right.
Federico Malatesta
…then there is no authenticity but the story, and the story changes. It changes depending on who I’m talking to, depending on the environment, depending on a thousand factors. So which version is authentic? They’re all authentic, and none of them is. What I say is that leaders perform better when they have a good story for what they’re doing at the moment.
I have a definition of leadership that is rather synthetic, but I hope it conveys the three elements I think are fundamental. The first is moving forward. The second is under uncertainty. And the third is assuming responsibility.
What do I mean? A leader has to move forward. A leader who doesn’t move forward is not a leader. You can be the most emotionally supportive person in the world, but if you don’t move forward, you’re a therapist. You’re not a leader.
The second: there is never certainty in life and in business. You need to understand that you’ll never have perfect information. You have a story, the best story you can come up with, and at some point you have to make a decision. If you wait for certainty, you will never make any decisions, and therefore you’re not a leader.
The third element, linked to the other two, is assuming responsibility. If you assume responsibility for your actions, not only are you an example for the team, but it also constrains the type of decisions you will make, because you know it’s on you. It’s very easy to make very bold decisions if somebody else pays. But if you assume responsibility, you tell everyone: I think this is the right risk-reward. So in this framework, authenticity doesn’t matter. It’s not a word I would ascribe particular significance to.
Cathy Greenberg
When you’re thinking about how to approach your client, a leader, you’re looking at all these different perspectives: some that fit for you and some that don’t, some that fit for the client and some that don’t. I’m currently finishing a book that comes out in January, Global Leadership: Future Proof, a 25th anniversary edition of Global Leadership: The Next Generation. We talk about shared leadership, collaborative leadership, and now conscious leadership.
One of the things you’re touching on that I want the audience to take away: when you say authentic may not be the right word, it’s more about being your true self. Being the person who, in any time of constraint, can still move forward; who, in any time of uncertainty, can move in a direction with certainty, and with the confidence other people need to see in order to move with them. And you also have to have the accountability that leads other people to join you and be responsible for the direction you’ve all agreed to go in. I just want to make sure I’ve heard you correctly, Federico.
Federico Malatesta
Yes. We can talk about the true self separately, but I would say that a leader cannot have certainty. There is no certainty in business; there is no certainty in life. A leader can say: I’ve looked at everything, this is the best decision I can think of at this moment in time, I’m bringing you with me, and it’s my responsibility.
So there are three elements. My best view of the world: not certain, not perfect, but the best I can do. If something doesn’t work out, we’ll readjust according to the next best story I can come up with. And it’s going to be my responsibility. The moment we claim certainty, we’re bound for disaster, because there is no such thing.
Relly Nadler
And this is so important for the leaders listening: what’s your story? What’s your best view? And then, as we talked about with AI, can you have people challenge it? Most leaders won’t do that. If anything, they’ve trained people to nod their heads in agreement, like we’re doing, until you give them the prompt. The leader needs to say: “Okay, what have I missed? What would our customers say? What would our people say? Let’s bring in multiple viewpoints, multiple stories, because this is just one story.”
Federico Malatesta
Absolutely. I’ve heard you mention Warren Buffett in a few other episodes. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are the perfect example of this. They made difficult decisions, risky decisions. They challenged each other all the time. Sometimes it was the wrong decision; they said so, they recovered, and they did something else. There was never certainty. You never hear them talking about their authentic choice or their certain choice, because there is no such thing. They say: we looked at the numbers, we challenged each other, that’s the best we could come up with. Sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s okay. We recover.
Cathy Greenberg
But that’s the most difficult thing for most young leaders to understand. And the example you used of the leader who sold his company and decided he should sit on boards: for those of you out there thinking about what your next big step is, it’s not always going to be easy to make that transition. For each of us, unless we understand what fulfills us in life, taking the position that I can just move on and help other people be successful may not be the right role for you, if you’re not willing to listen to what other people need and to recognize that your perspective may not always be what they’re looking for.
Federico Malatesta
Absolutely. If I can bring a personal example: I was the chief investment officer of a large oil and gas company, and one of my jobs was to bring business cases to the board executive committee. You had people with a lot of business and energy experience at that table, and looking at the same numbers, at the same business case, they would reach very different decisions. They would have very different conclusions. Should we do this? Should we not? Maybe in a different way? There was a lot of expertise, so it’s not about technique or expertise. Judgment is often personal. You can have two people with exactly the same data reaching two very different decisions, and that’s okay.
Relly Nadler
Exactly. This is where self-awareness is so important, and knowing your triggers. We introduced the term emotional bookmark: what are some of your emotional bookmarks that are getting in the way right now? Just to bring this to a close, we’ll do a little lightning round. And if you’re interested in more information on Federico: it’s like it sounds, Federico, and then Malatesta, M-A-L-A-T-E-S-T-A, federicomalatesta.com. His new book comes out, I think, next week. So here we go, the lightning round; you just fill in the blank. Leadership is…
Federico Malatesta
Taking difficult decisions under uncertainty.
Relly Nadler
Beautiful. At work, it’s all about…
Federico Malatesta
Doing something that you enjoy.
Relly Nadler
And the last one, which is also for leaders. You’ve talked a lot about what I’d call the difference between doing and being, and you’re a lot on the being side; a lot of leaders, and the delusion, are on the doing side. During the day, what’s the best way for you to recharge, to be the being of Federico?
Federico Malatesta
Oh, for me it’s simple. I just go to my horses in the pasture.
Relly Nadler
I figured you were going to say that. That’s great. All right, Cat, do you want to bring us home?
Cathy Greenberg
It’s been a delightful conversation today with author and coach Federico Malatesta. Don’t forget, his book comes out this week: They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion.
The ideas in this conversation
A summary of the concepts raised, in the order they came up.
- 01Protocols are a category errorAristotle separates techne, the skill that produces something outside itself, from praxis, an activity that is its own end. Living well belongs to the second kind and needs phronesis, practical judgment. Applying techniques to life is a category error, which is why it never works.
- 02Self-help also fails on its own termsEven setting the category error aside, the techniques rest on bad science, misunderstood psychology and flawed neuroscience. The book tests this across sport as a metaphor for life, excellence, greatness, intuition, self-awareness and yoga.
- 03The routine comes lastThere is nothing wrong with a routine or protocol at the implementation stage. First you need to know where you are going, why, and whether it is good for you. Without that, a routine done perfectly brings you nowhere.
- 04Horses read incongruenceHorses are prey animals with situational awareness far beyond ours. They respond to a mismatch between movement, voice and intent, and they answer faster than any coaching relationship. A client can lie to a coach for a while; it is harder with a horse.
- 05Stories run their courseWe live by stories we make ourselves, for good reasons at a certain point in time. At some point they stop working. That does not make them bad stories; it means they are no longer useful.
- 06The interlocutorWe cannot understand ourselves too well, so we need someone who offers a different perspective. Surround yourself with people unlike you as well as like you. Support and challenge both have a role, and you cannot have one without the other.
- 07The decision before the decisionA former company owner resigned from three boards, each time for valid reasons. The real decision to leave was taken earlier and unconsciously, at the moment his opinion was not valued, repeating a pattern from his father’s home.
- 08Signals can be faultyA bodily signal can say something is wrong when nothing is. There is no certainty in that assessment, which is why it takes time and judgment rather than a protocol.
- 09Nothing is wrong with the personThe first step is understanding that these reactions are natural events, not failures. Deconstructing the moment, and asking whether it is really true, moves it from the unconscious to the conscious and takes the stress out of it.
- 10Practice where the stakes are lowStart with forgotten keys and small irritations, not the board meeting, as special forces train at low levels before battle. Neuroplasticity is real, but it is slow, narrow and needs constant feedback.
- 11Authenticity means a thousand thingsIf we live by a narrative, the story changes with the person, the setting and a thousand other factors. Every version is authentic and none of them is. Leaders perform better when they have a good story for what they are doing now.
- 12A definition of leadershipMoving forward, under uncertainty, assuming responsibility. A leader who waits for certainty never decides, and a leader who carries the responsibility is constrained in the bold decisions that are easy when somebody else pays.
- 13Judgment is personalOn a board executive committee, experienced people looking at the same business case reached different conclusions, and that is acceptable. Buffett and Munger challenged each other, sometimes got it wrong, said so, and recovered.
Terms used
- Techne
- Greek, craft or technique: the skill that produces something outside the activity, as a carpenter produces a chair.
- Praxis
- Greek, action that is its own end. Living a good life is praxis, with no final product.
- Phronesis
- Greek, practical judgment or practical wisdom: the capacity Aristotle says living well requires.
- Category error
- Applying a method to something it does not fit; here, applying techniques to the conduct of a life.
- Interlocutor
- Someone outside the story who challenges it, offering a perspective the person cannot reach alone.
- Incongruence
- A mismatch between what a person does, says and intends. Horses respond to it directly.
- Emotional bookmark
- The hosts’ term for a present reaction that reaches back to earlier chapters of a person’s life.
What you find here is a very summarized version of a longer argument, not an exhaustive explanation. If you want to find out more, contact me at info@federicomalatesta.com.
Before You Decide Without Certainty
A practical tool for anyone waiting for the information that would make a decision safe.
Most advice about hard decisions is about gathering more data. This checklist focuses on what that advice overlooks: what the move is, stated as an action; what you would need to know that you will never know; who pays if it goes wrong; and what would make you revise it.
Where this comes from
Out Now
They Are Lying to You
The Self-Help Delusion
Learn more about the book