Episode 276 Transcript:

Welcome to this episode of The Manage Track podcast. Today we’re going to talk about biohacking leadership and how to change small behaviors in order to increase your executive presence and your impact. My guest on today’s show is Dr. Scott Hutcheson, a Biosocial scientist, , a senior lecturer at Purdue University, a TED speaker and a bestselling author with over 30 years of experience advising organizations from the White House of Fortune 400 companies.

Scott has worked with more than 4,000 leaders across 147 countries. Now in his book, biohacking Leadership, he challenges that leadership is about personality.

He’s making the argument that instead it’s biology that drives leadership impact By applying neuroscience, biomechanics, and behavioral science, Scott shows leaders how to intentionally shape their presence, their decision making, and their influence to elevate both their own performance and the performance of those around them.

So clearly you’re in for a treat as I’m gonna bring someone in with a vast amount of experience working with leaders directly and helping them elevate their presence and their leadership overall. Now we’re gonna talk about his frameworks and his suggestions

and what are actually the little behavioral habits to tweak in order to increase or enhance how you’re being perceived by others. We’re also gonna talk about his decision making approach and how he advises leaders to be authentic, yet

It experiments with behavioral tweaks in order to increase their effectiveness while still. Seeming coming across as and feeling authentic as a leader.

This is a concise conversation, but full of insights and wisdom directly from Scott. I’m excited to share this and I truly enjoyed the conversation, and I hope you will too.

Let’s dive in.

Here are the two questions. This podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted, 

although the competition and the expectations get bigger. This show with The Manager Track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. 

I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and gross. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate and act as a confident and competent leader. 

You know, you can be. 

Scott, welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I am really excited to have this conversation with you. This is an angle that we don’t often talk about and I’m looking forward to all the wisdom that you’re going to share with our audience today.

Well, thank you. It’s great to be here. Speaking of this being a bit of a unique angle on leadership, how did you get into the, sort of the intersection between leadership and, and biohacking and neuroscience and so forth? So about five years ago, I was asked to go into a, an employer in California who wanted training done in executive presence.

And I said, okay, I think I can do that. But I had never been really thrilled with the idea of executive presence. It hadn’t been very well, I think researched. So there wasn’t a lot of evidence-based frameworks for executive presence. It was kind of those, you know what, if you see it probably too much of an emphasis on natural charisma.

Mm-hmm. So I really started to kind of dig into literally executive presence and, you know, executive. Of course it describes a, a a, an office or, or a high level within an organization, but I found out that it actually came from the executive functions of the brain. And that’s why we kind of co-opted that term for the highest level of leadership because we want our leaders to be able to think with the full force of their executive functions, to plan and to be strategic and to problem solve and have cognitive flexibility.

But the problem is no one can see how you think. So we have our presence. Right. So wanted to, to understand what were the signals that a, a, a leader could send to demonstrate that they have the capacity to lead. And it turned out that those signals are really kind of biological in nature. We sense these signals from other people.

We kind of feel them first, right? We’re inspired or we get the ick, right? And then our body sends a signal to our brain. Our brains interprets us, says, oh, I know this feeling. I feel inspired, or I feel discouraged, right? I feel engaged, or I feel disengaged. And then our behavior kind of follows. So I was fascinated by this kind of biological underpinning of this idea of leadership.

What is something that you learned in this process that surprised you? I learned that small tweaks to behavior could have significant impact, and that’s actually where I kind of settled on this idea of biohacking. So in a completely different part of my life, about that same time, five years ago, I got a diabetes diagnosis.

I knew it was probably a, a matter of when other than if it ran in the family. A1C was creeping up every time I would have my physical, and I finally crossed that threshold. And so I really wanted to understand how my behavior impacted my blood sugar and inflammation levels and all that. So I never really considered myself a biohacker, but I was doing many of the things that, you know, traditional biohackers do.

I got a continuous glucose monitor. I really monitored my diagnostics and, and my blood panels. And then I was experimenting with not only how I eat, everybody knows that that impacts your blood sugar. Exercise, quality of sleep, how I was managing stress, and I began to see that small tweaks to my behavior.

I had realtime data that it was lowering my blood sugar, and so I kind of put those two things together, you know? Mm-hmm. Biohack, there’s a lot of junk science out there, but there’s some good science too. Mm-hmm. Well, if leadership is behavioral. And behavior is biological, then biology can be understood and manipulated.

So why not biohacking leadership? 

So to build on that if it’s small behaviors that lead to change or leads to a different impression and perception of executive presence, then what would you say are sort of the most unknown little tweaks that yield a positive outcome that most of us are not aware of?

Yeah. So when we wanted to, and by we, I’m talking about some of my graduate students and I, so I’m a professor at Purdue University. We wanted to understand or what is the, kind of the minimally viable set of data that others perceive and say, yeah, I think that person has leadership potential, or, I’m not sure that they do, and we make those, categorizations quite quickly. There’s really interesting studies around how you decide who you’re gonna vote for. Mm-hmm. And there’s one study that looked at like two second flashes of the faces of candidates is very predictive of which one will win the election. Mm-hmm. We see similar research around doctor patient interactions.

One research project looked at. Silent footage, just watching a doctor interact with a patient and they could predict pretty accurately which doctors might be sued for malpractice and which won’t. Mm-hmm. Simply by these nonverbal the tilt of a head, the, the genuine warm smile, proximity to the other person, you know, the slight lean in.

Mm-hmm. Even without getting into the words that they say, remember, these are all, all silent. So there are so many small tweaks. There’s really interesting research on if I come onto this call with an open face. You know, just a slight smile eyebrows arch, just the tiniest bit that’s gonna send a very different signal than if I walked around like this, which is actually my normal face.

I’m usually in thought, and my, my brow is furrowed. So imagine showing up like that instead of with an open face. So. We have tiny tweaks that we’ve identified everything from that sort of micro expression to consistently showing up in time, on time to narrating your thinking. For those that you lead to say, you know what here’s how I arrived at that decision.

And you kinda show them how you think. Mm-hmm. So we have a nice core set of about 18 of these that some are, seem really, really tiny and really subtle and people are probably only going to be impacted on a, on a subconscious level. Others are, are, are quite more visible. Okay. You just dropped a couple of examples.

One that being on time, and the second one was about the narrating of the decision making process, which I love. What are a few others, and I’m actually, since we are doing this virtual too, I’m gonna start there on. A camera or in a virtual conference and teams or zooms or whatever companies are using, what are some of the things that you constantly see missed?

Opportunities and such low hanging fruit that make a big impact. Yeah, let me address your first question first. What are some of the others? So the 18 actually cluster together into three, what I call kind of biodynamic channels, and six of them align with warmth. Mm-hmm. Six of ’em align with competence and six of them align with gravitas.

And I define gravitas a bit. Differently ’cause I think Isaac Newton kind of screwed it up for us. Mm-hmm. So lemme unpack that one just a little bit. So, when he co-opted the word gravitas, which was first used to describe a person when he used it to describe gravity, we kind of, overemphasize weightiness and seriousness when we applied it to people.

But I love the planetary definition. You know, our earth just has one moon, but we pulled it into our orbit and channeled its inertia to orbit around us. So my definition of gravitas is the ability to draw people together to create shared value. So we connect with warmth. We, we demonstrate that we have something to contribute with our competence, our area of expertise, our resources that we’re willing to share, and then if we say, Hey, together we can do something of shared value.

Those are the three channels that demonstrate that someone is capable of leading at a, at a high level. So again, underneath each of those, there are these kind of six. Biometrics, I call them that when we check the box on each of these, we’re increasingly convinced that this person could be a good leader.

And then when we see them consistently behave in that way, we’re, we’re, we’re not only convinced that they might be, we are convinced that they are be that they will be. So let me kind of rattle off the six under warmth since we start there. So, so, listens. Listens. Well. To others, you know, listens.

Truly in the moment is present, connects with people on a personal level. Now, that doesn’t mean that you need to be all up in people’s business, if that’s kind of not your style, but just kind of recognizing that this is a whole person on the other side of this relationship and recognizing their humanity validates others.

You know, simply stating out loud what you appreciate about them is other oriented in their conversation or their work focus. So if you if we’re having a conversation and say, you know, I need you to do this for me. Well, that’s not very other oriented, right? Mm-hmm. Again, I might share why it might be good for both of us.

Mm-hmm. I might turn it around and say, what do you need from me in order to help you accomplish that task that I’ve asked you to do? So that’s being other oriented, and then it is approachable and relatable. And then third is, is simply thoughtful. Is simply thoughtful. So those are the six underneath one fund.

Of course, we’ve got six under competence, we’ve got six under gravitas. It’s so interesting how you refer to this like I statements because we’re so occupied day in and day out with what we need to do or what our goals are that we sometimes forget to make that little shift in how we communicate.

One of those pet peeves that I have is when people say, I want you to even, it’s like, I want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen, right? Like immediately like. Who are you to tell me what to do? No. I don’t know where that’s coming from, my stubbornness. But I totally understand what they actually mean by that and I can get over the, the message in itself.

But there are different ways to say that where it’s just you centric, right? How that would a simple statement like this so benefit the other person. And at work, I think that makes a huge difference in how we come across. Yeah. So it’s small shifts that you just laid out in language, but then you also say things such as listen better.

And I think if I just remember conversations from our audience and leaders, we work with this like listens actively or listens present. Sometimes we think we’re listening, but we’re actually not demonstrating that. Right. That’s true. We look for cues that other people are listening to us. I remember back in COVID when we had come back onto campus, but everyone was masked and we had to have classes in rooms six times the size that we otherwise would need.

’cause everyone had to be six feet apart. So it was a large class anyway, but a hundred students in an auditorium that seats like 600. Seriously. All I could see was this, it was winter, so everyone was in a hoodie and a coat. And I remember one person and I, I can see where she sat right up there. She was just giving me the nod and her eyes were, were so bright.

It was the only feedback I was getting. And man, oh man, it fueled me in a way that I, I otherwise might not have. Been able to make it through those, through those lectures. I kind of wondered is, is she doing it just for me? I kind of thought she probably was, I think she thought he probably needs this.

Mm-hmm. But even, even so, like what? What a gift. Right? What a gift. And I guarantee you it, it spiked my oxytocin, it spiked my dopamine. Just a simple set of nonverbals to know that at least one of those hundred students was tracking and listening and getting something out of it. So for someone who says like, okay, I like to have idea of biohacking, and really thinking about that presence and how we project ourselves, the confidence and the competence and that approachability that we send out.

And then through that, how we influence and impact other people. Do I grasp this correctly that you say, Hey, think about these six different pillars under each of those three categories, and then look at what are sort of small signals that you’re sending or that you’re not sending that demonstrate each of them.

Yes, yes, that’s exactly right. In fact we’ve also developed a, a, a, a psychometric assessment that’s been statistically validated where someone can assess themselves, like how well do I think I send each of these 18 signals. But then they can also get a feedback assessment from others to, you know, they can invite five people below them, peers or above them to give feedback.

And so you can get data. To compare how, how you think you’re sending signals versus how other people are sending signals. Mm-hmm. And then we’ve, we’ve demonstrated that these are developmental. You, you, you can, you can do a better job of sending these signals. So in some of our research, we would have people do this assessment originally to get a baseline.

Mm-hmm. And then they would either participate in one of my. Courses at the university or one of the professional development courses I do, and then we’d follow up with an additional feedback assessment. And we find that, that the improvement and consistently signal these signals goes up 30 to 40%.

Mm-hmm. Those are sustained over time when we kind of 

 learn new habits of how we interact with with others. 

 How do we make sure that then this isn’t turned into us being perceived as robotic or of in authentic? And I’m sure that you get that question a lot. Yeah. So my advice to people is to be you, but be willing to kind of dial up or dial down you by no more than about 20%.

So I’m not a very emotive kind of person. Warmth for me was kind of the, the last of those two to sort of develop. I would’ve never guessed. So you, you did that. Well, thank you, because I hear that all the time people have met me over the last five or six years would say. Oh, Scott’s a pretty warm individual.

And in my case, I felt things inside, but I just didn’t emote externally. Mm-hmm. But I decided, you know, I’m gonna try that. And again, little tweaks, you know. Mm-hmm. Warm up that face just a little bit. Smile at a student or a coworker in a way I might smile with a friend. Asking about their day. I remember kind of one of my go-to baristas at the coffee shop where I stop at something about she was probably my age two or three times the age of most of the 20 something baristas. I always kinda wondered what her story was, you know, was this a retirement gig or whatever.

But my day was always better when she waited on me. Mm-hmm. And I, I thought, you know what, I’m gonna tell her that my day is always better. When she waits on me, and that is not something I would typically do. I mean, I’m not gonna be rude to her, but I just put myself out there and told her and her face lit up and, and, and made me smile even more broadly.

And now she’s still a barista at that coffee shop. We have this nice little relationship that we’re glad to see one another. So I kind of faked it the first time, but then it, it felt, it felt, and it continues to feel genuine. Now in our work or my work in, in coaching and training programs, including executive presence,

one of the core ideas and, and principles that we operate with is that the way that you think also changes the way that you feel and then changes the way that you act. And. In order to create sustainable habit change, you don’t just wanna change a behavior. You really also wanna change the way that you think.

Yeah. And so sometimes like I’ve seen other approaches, right? We start. The question is a bit of like, where on which side of that change do you start? Do you start with the thoughts or do you start with the behaviors or, you know, in, in my opinion, you’re, ideally you’re gonna do both at the same time.

You’re looking at behavioral change, but you’re also looking at how do I need to change my mindset or the way that I think about something. So I’m curious what your response to that is and, and if you agree how you would combine the two to make sure that people reading the book or. Going through these different behavioral changes that also the way that they see themselves as leaders and changes.

That’s a, that’s a great question. And I actually addressed that in the book on a chapter called Biomechanics. Mm-hmm. And that came from pretty interesting place. So long before I did this kind of work as an undergrad, I studied theater and I, I was, I directed plays and thought that’s. What I would do.

Mm-hmm. So I learned different schools of acting, which everyone has probably heard heard of. Stanky’s, the method, you know, Marlon Brando, James Dean. Oh. You just feel this emotion for real inside and it’ll just spill out of you. Well, there was a Russian guy who was a contemporary of him named Meyerhold.

Well, he talked about the biomechanics of theater to say, no, no, you get it right on the inside and then it’ll, it’ll come in. You get it right on the outside and then it’ll. Come inside. Mm-hmm. And so o one of the ways I applied that when I was directing a play is I would ask people, what kinda shoes would your character wear?

Long before we had, we had any discussions about other costuming choices and they would say, oh, although they wear flip flops ’cause they’re a surfer, or you know, they’d wear wing tips ’cause they’re a business person or they’d wear stiles or you know, they’d wear sneakers. Right. Start wearing those in rehearsal.

Mm-hmm. And anyone who has more than one pair of shoes know that you feel differently depending on what kind of shoes you have on. So, so I really think it’s, it’s both. There are things that we can do externally, behaviorally, that impact our. Our brains and the way in which we think, but then there are ways in which we think that automatically sort of spill out in, in, in our behavior.

So I think it is a, this dance of tweaking the things you’re doing on the inside and the things that you’re doing on the, on the outside to to align them better so that you’re way of thinking kind of matches the way in which you’re showing up for others. One of the things that you talk about in the book, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on is decision making.

And I always find that is sort that slogan good leaders decide about their decision making or their decision making process. Mm-hmm. I botched that quote or that, that statement, but the point is the, we can’t rely on our gut instincts only. Or our behaviors in the decision making process and the further up that we go and the more responsibilities that we have, the more important it becomes to really evaluate and think through the way that we make decisions.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the biohacking approach to making better decisions as leaders. So o one of the things that we are trying to accomplish by using this idea of three biodynamic channels is that they really are channels. So think of them as three channels on a mixing board.

You can, you can dial them up or you can dial them down. So one of the things we do in our classrooms, in our training is. Look at different scenarios in which one might need to be dialed up and you lead with that. One or another might be dialed down to make room for other signals in the environment. So competence is one of those.

So one of the things I do with leaders is, is try to help them think through, alright, I’m facing a big decision. Is the issue or the the problem or the opportunity about which I need to make a decision? Is it, is it merely complicated and it needs. A specialized area of expertise, or is it complex, meaning that it’s gonna require kind of lots of input and lots of expertise from different perspectives.

And I need to kind of, again, kind of use my gravitas to bring people together to share that expertise and then make an informed decision based on that expertise. So that might be a spot where you kind of dial down your own competence to make room for other people’s. Competent or competence. There’s an interesting term in the literature called equity of voice.

In other words, that the inputs are relatively even in, in, in the work that we’re doing together to solve a problem. So when something is highly complex, you really need equity, a voice. If it’s complex, there’s really, you know, no one area of expertise that’s gonna get you where you need to go. So how can a leader kind of.

Dial down their expertise to allow for others to share their expertise and leverage that gravitas to bring those people together and, and to design something with shared value. And by the way, you can’t do that unless you connect with them by warmth. So warmth might be high, competence might be high, but I dial down competence just a little bit so I’m not taking up all the air in the room.

 I like how you distinguish between the complicated and the complex and complicated actually sort of to generalize it may require higher competence. Yeah. Versus the complex requires sort of lower competence on our own in order to an increased s warmth in order to bring in more people. Right.

Will get things from different perspectives. Yes.

My almost final question here is around. The cultural differences and how these signals are interpreted, and I think one of the reasons why executive presence can be so elusive and hard to capture or study is because what executive presence means in the Western world, or let’s say North America.

Or even in Europe there are differences. And then we compare that to countries in Asia, we see vast differences. So what are the differences that you’ve noticed and how do you approach that and address it with leaders? Yeah, I think the, the biology is the same. Mm-hmm. That the relationship between leader and follower and teammates is biological in its, you know, at its core.

But expressions might vary by culture. So we have a very international student body at, at Purdue University, one of the highest percentage of international students. So we have this great little microcosm of people from, from all over the world. And, you know, part of what we get to do is, is have conversations and, and understand some of those differences.

And then when we’re, when we’re training students to go out there, we have some, some really good kind of cultural tools to say, all right, have you never gone out to dinner with a group of Japanese Co. Here’s some things that you might need to think about differently. Even the way for Asian colleagues, how you present a business card might be different than the way you present a business card to a European colleague or to someone here in the us.

So understanding that there are differences and, and not only culturally, but helping us understand. I think that, neurodiversity is important as well. I mean, something as simple as eye contact can be difficult for other people, so recognize that if I’m not sensing eye contact, that might not mean that that person is deceptive or shy.

There might be something else going on there and I need to be a bit more forgiving. Mm-hmm. And when I’m the sender of eye contact, I understand that I need to kind of watch what’s going on around me. And, and fit within the cultural norms. But part of that is, is being really, really aware and, and experimenting, right?

Mm-hmm. If you, if you do something that doesn’t quite land, ask a question, right? Find a, a, a confidant that understands that culture. So we respond the same no matter who we are or where we from biologically on the inside, but the, the signals might need to be stronger or weaker or altered in, in some way.

I think that speaks directly to what we’ve talked about earlier with, ideally we look at this from the two sides of behavioral change, but also changing the way we think. Because when it comes to the, the cultural differences and you called out, like you have to be conscious, you have to be aware, and you have to be curious.

Mm-hmm. And so when we think, oh. I got this figured out, or I know how to light up a room or own a room, or I know how to present myself with confidence in a meeting. What we may think protects confidence in a meeting with people from different demographics may not actually land well at all, may actually make us seem the opposite of confident and, at that point, I think if we go back and we think about the mindset component that will make the difference as to, am I then the one who’s going to put myself out there differently and adapt to what I’m observing in others and how they respond? Am I going to do one of those experiments that you said or ask a question as well?

Yeah, I mean, we all have multiple ways in which we show up. I show up slightly differently with my family than with my friends that I’ve known for 40 years and a bit differently with colleagues and a bit differently with undergraduate students versus graduate students. So we, we make these adjustments and, and figure out how to make our way in the world by again, not.

Not being inauthentic, but learning, oh, I need to dial this up or dial this down, stretch myself just a little bit, or suppress some, some urge to always be sarcastic, right? And recognize that that probably that rubs people the wrong way. So I need to back off on that a little bit so we know how to do this in other context.

And I, I, I think one of the, the, the. Pieces of advice that I give leaders, especially emerging leader, is emerging leaders, is it’s experimentation. You get to try things. I get to try on this way of showing up, motivating you understanding what it’s like to live in, in your shoes. And when I find something that works, I keep doing that until I have evidence that it’s not working in a different context.

And when I find that something is just not landing, then I, I better try another approach. Okay. Now final question. Okay. If, and I’m sure not only have you worked with so many leaders across many, many different countries and companies, but now since you wrote the book, I’m sure you have sort of that laser focus on how people come across.

If you had to give our audience three things and say like, these are the most typical things that you could shift and it would make a big impact, where do you suggest they start? You know, I’d go back to, to earlier part of our conversation. So, you know, we talked about warmth, competence, and gravitas.

That’s actually a really good sequence to use in our interactions with others. And you really made a good point about do we, do I start with, I do. I start with you. So. If I’m going to signal warmth first, that should be you focused right? Our, our first part of our conversation. I should be focusing on you, figuring out how you are, what you need right now.

And then if it comes time for me to share my competence, that’s when I can move into some I statements. Here’s how I’ve been thinking about that, or I had this experience that might be relevant here. So we start with the other you. Mm-hmm. And we move to, I. Then with gravitas, we end with us. You know, here’s how we are going to move together, forward right.

Move forward together. Even if it’s something you are taking on to let you know you’re not alone. I’m here to support you. You know, we’re gonna meet together every other Friday and I’m gonna check in. You can email me anytime. Right? But you’re not in this alone. We’re gonna work on this together. So start with you and contribute with I, and then end it with the we.

 Good. I like that. Are there any other quick tips before we wrap? Yeah. A again, I think experiment, right? Experiment. We all figured out how to be a friend. You know, in, in kindergarten and first grade, we figured out how to be a good date. When we began going out on dates as teenagers or young adults, we figured out how to be a good leader by trying stuff and seeing what works and seeing what doesn’t, and making adjustments.

So experiment, gather data. Yeah. Make some change. I know there’s so much more in your book and in your work, so we’re gonna link to that in the show notes. And I so recommend people to. Think about including myself, like what are the habits that we don’t even notice?

The things that we do that we think are fine or not a big deal. And only when we see how they’re being perceived by others, we really get to answer the question of whether it’s fine or whether it’s useful or not. It’s not our interpretation that matters. It’s really ultimately sort of the consensus of the people that we, surround ourselves with beaters at work or in our personal lives. Thank you for coming on, Scott and sharing about this idea of biohacking and your story of how you even came up with the concept. As I said, I, I think you’re really onto something and wish you all the best. Thank you, Ramona. If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it at archova.org/masterclass. The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. 

You can find all those links. In the show notes down below.