Listening to Complainers Is Bad for Your Brain

Exposure to nonstop negativity actually impairs brain function. Here's how to defend yourself.

Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there's a good reason: Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways, according to Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. In the book, he describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session.

"The brain works more like a muscle than we thought," Blake says. "So if you're pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you're more likely to behave that way as well."

Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity--including viewing such material on TV--actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. "That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving," he says. "Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

But if you're running a company, don't you need to hear about anything that may have gone wrong? "There's a big difference between bringing your attention to something that's awry and a complaint," Blake says. "Typically, people who are complaining don't want a solution; they just want you to join in the indignity of the whole thing. You can almost hear brains clink when six people get together and start saying, 'Isn't it terrible?' This will damage your brain even if you're just passively listening. And if you try to change their behavior, you'll become the target of the complaint."

So, how do you defend yourself and your brain from all the negativity? Blake recommends the following tactics:

1. Get some distance

"My father was a chain smoker," Blake confides. "I tried to change his habit, but it's not easy to do that." Blake knew secondhand smoke could damage his own lungs as well. "My only recourse was to distance myself."

You should look at complaining the same way, he says. "The approach I've always taken with complaining is to think of it as the same as passive smoking." Your brain will thank you if you get yourself away from the complainer, if you can.

2. Ask the complainer to fix the problem

Sometimes getting distance isn't an option. If you can't easily walk away, a second strategy is to ask the complainer to fix the problem.

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"Try to get the person who's complaining to take responsibility for a solution," Blake says. "I typically respond to a complaint with, 'What are you going to do about it?'" Many complainers walk away huffily at that point, because he hasn't given them what they wanted, Blake reports. But some may actually try to solve the problem.

3. Shields up!

When you're trapped listening to a complaint, you can use mental techniques to block out the griping and save your neurons. Blake favors one used by the late Spanish golfer Seve Ballesteros during a match against Jack Nicklaus--a match the crowd wanted Ballesteros to lose. "He was having difficulty handling the hostility of the crowd," Blake says. "So he imagined a bell jar that no one could see descending from the sky to protect him."

Major League Baseball pitchers can sometimes be seen mouthing "Shields on!" as they stride to the mound, he says. He adds that his own imaginary defense is "more like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak."

A related strategy is to mentally retreat to your imagined favorite spot, someplace you'd go if you could wave a magic wand. "For me, it was a ribbon of beautiful white sugary sand that extended out in a horseshoe shape from a private island," Blake says. "I would take myself to my private retreat while people were ranting and raving. I could smile at them and nod in all the right places and meanwhile take myself for a walk on my private beach."

Blake first saw the picture of the island in a magazine, and the image stuck with him. Eventually, he got a chance to try it for real. "It turned out the island was for rent, and it was the same one I'd seen," he says. "So I rented it for a week. And I got to take that walk."

5 Ways to Spot Trends Before They Happen

Want to recognize the next big thing before everyone else? Here's how it's done.

How do some people seem to know about the next big thing way ahead of everyone else?

Because they know how to recognize early signs of change.

To get a look at how it's done, I talked to Panos Panay, founder and CEO of Sonicbids, an 11-year-old social music marketing service that connected bands with more than 95,000 gigs in 2011. Panay says the music industry is among the three most competitive (the other two being media and technology), and the ability to spot trends before they happen is a life-and-death skill. Here's how he does it:

1. Stop talking and listen.

"Today, there's too much broadcasting and not enough receiving," Panay says. "Everyone is focused on pumping out information, but turning off our own signal and receiving and digesting, that's a skill that has gone away."

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Panay says that he likes to immerse himself in a topic by reading about it. "I dedicate an hour in the morning, and again before I go to sleep, to reading. I actually schedule it." He says he started Sonicbids after reading Blur, published in 1999. "The book talked a lot about how the Internet was about to change everything and I started thinking, 'How will it affect my industry?' Playing that scenario through gave me the inspiration for Sonicbids."

2. Look beyond your own business.

"You have to look around and ask: 'What are the general trends going on, even though they haven't affected my business yet?'" Panay advises. Early this century he noted that people weren't yet ready to buy music by the download, but the way they found new music was shifting. "I thought, today it's record labels, but I can see how companies will become major players launching new music, such as Apple through its commercials, or Starbucks with its stores. I saw a trend where people weren't necessarily interested in discovering music by walking into a record shop or watching MTV anymore."

3. Visit your alma mater.

When Panay studied business management at Berklee College of Music, all his fellow students wanted to become record company executives. "Today, if you ask the graduates of any school, they'll say they want to be in social media, or media. Technology is such a big part of the conversation."

Panay recommends visiting colleges and asking students where they want to work after graduation. "Looking where the brightest minds are flocking now can inform a lot of your decision making about the future."

4. Kill your products before anyone else does.

"Ask yourself, 'If I were starting a new competing company today, what would I do to put me out of business?'" Panay says. In Sonicbids' original model, bands paid for a membership, and then paid an additional fee each time they applied for a gig. That fee provided about 65% of the company's revenues, but they also provided an important disincentive to prevent bands from simply flooding every promoter and venue on the site with applications.

But noting the e-commerce trend toward free services, Panay knew Sonicbids could be undercut by a newcomer, so it began a transition away from charging for applications. To keep down the flooding, members get a limited number of free "tokens" allowing them to apply for gigs, after which they must pay.

5. Think 'yes' not 'no.'

"Be opportunistic," Panay advises. Sonicbids was intended as a pure matchmaking site, sort of a Monster.com for bands. Early on, Jeep's ad agency came calling. They wanted Jeep drivers to be able to vote for the band to appear at an upcoming Jeep event. "It would have been easy to say,

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'No, that's not what we do,'" Panay says. Instead, he asked how the people would vote, and offered to build a website where they could do it. It turned out to be an important decision.

"That was the beginning of the consumer brands part of our business, and the branded business is quickly becoming the majority of our revenue stream," he says.

How to Get Employees Thinking Like Entrepreneurs

The benefits? They have more fun at work and you get great new ideas. Here's how to do it.

How do you get employees at your start-up company to start thinking like founders? Simple: Let them launch a product of their own.

That's the brilliant concept behind "Innovation Days," an event created by the Indianapolis-based recommendation company iGoDigital, but which could work for any small company. Many companies take employees off-site for leisure activities or team-building exercises to help them be more motivated at their jobs. With Innovation Days, iGoDigital achieved the same benefits--and launched a brand new product at the same time.

"We shut down the office for two days, turn off our phones and email and go off-site," says Eric Tobias, iGoDigital's founder. "This year we went to a co-working space called The Speak Easy. We took it over, and spent two days building brand-new product from scratch."

iGoDigital's core business is based on providing content and product recommendations for e-commerce customers, but the new product it created during Innovation Days is Scribblr, a way to manage email signatures across an organization. The inspiration for Scribblr came when iGoDigital moved its offices: The marketing department had to struggle to get all 50 employees to change their signatures to reflect the company's new address. Executives realized there was a need for a way to update everyone's signatures while still allowing them to personalize them as they wished, and no such product existed on the market. It was also a simple enough concept that it could be built and brought to market in two days.

How do you combine launching a new product and team-building into one event? Here are Tobias' tips:

1. Get people out of their usual roles.

"We all fall into habits, and we get stuck in our own box," Tobias says. So, during Innovation Days, jobs were switched around. "We had designers making sales calls and salespeople working on the product."

To get Scribblr built within the two-day deadline, iGoDigital divided its staff into teams: "One team worked on the website; another worked on the user experience, from creating an account through using the software. Another team was responsible for back-end functions," Tobias says. Each team needed a designer and a  marketer and this approach made it easy for people to try out unaccustomed jobs.

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2. Make it fun.

Innovation Days is intended as a bonding experience so the focus was on personal development and fun. In fact, Innovation Days was scheduled to coincide with the this year's NCAA "March Madness," and employees watched the games as they created Scribblr.

Tobias says, iGoDigital's executives carefully planned Scribblr so that it could be created within two normal workdays--they didn't want employees forced to work long hours. "Interestingly, three of the team members stayed very late or came in early because they were passionate about what we were doing," Tobias notes.

3. Give employees a sense of the choices you face. 

"My real goal was to ingrain the challenges that entrepreneurs face when starting a business across our entire company," Tobias says. "One of those challenges is the constant push and pull of having ideas and all these opportunities--and having to make choices and tradeoffs on a day to day basis. I wanted them all to feel that pain a little bit."

It worked better than anticipated. iGoDigital's employees came back from Innovation Days completely psyched about Scribblr. "We did it on a Thursday and Friday, and everybody got so passionate about it that they wanted to keep working on it on Monday," Tobias says. "It was an unanticipated challenge to refocus everyone on the core business." Going forward, iGoDigital's employees are allowed to spend up to two hours a week on Scribblr he adds, and the new product has had overwhelmingly positive response, with more than 200 companies interested in using it.

As for giving employees the sense of what it's like to be an entrepreneur, that worked even better than expected. "Everyone was there from the moment that it was just an idea," Tobias says. "It's like having 50 founders."

Is Your Leadership Showing?

You're the CEO of your company. But do you look and act like a leader? Here are five ways to get started.

Most members of a team know when they’re doing their work well. They often have a particular area of expertise, and they have deadlines and deliverables. 

For leaders, it’s a bit different. How do you show that you’re leading? Here are five competencies that good leaders demonstrate. They are related to one another, and each is framed with a question to help you think about opportunities to display leadership.

1. Visibility

We know that leaders need to be seen by followers--from formal presentations and announcements, to a crisis, to simple “managing by walking around.”  The less-obvious

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occasions, however, are easily overlooked. They can be lost opportunities, or powerful expressions of leadership.

As a leader, when do you feel out of your comfort zone? Maybe it’s when you have to deliver bad or unpopular news, or mediate a conflict between direct reports, or perform a necessary task that you just don’t like. One CEO client told me that he found it hard to celebrate the “small to medium wins” that his team wanted acknowledged. He considered these victories just part of doing business. His solution was to ask his executives to publicize accomplishments up to a certain level, allowing him to save his praise for the really big achievements.

Ask yourself, “How am I visible to others when I don’t want to be?” The answer is not to pretend to like being visible--far from it. Instead, ask yourself this question prior to an uncomfortable event, and use it to help you prepare. Consider some behavioral options, and put yourself in a different mental space. Then you’ll be able to be visible in a more productive, less stressful manner.

2. Preparation

Many leaders are great at preparing the logistics of leadership (the facts and figures in a plan, or the pitch for a presentation). Too many leaders, however, don’t prepare regularly for the deeper daily requirements of leadership. This is a shame, because most leaders face complex challenges, relentless claims on their time, and increasing pressures to deliver on goals over which they don’t have direct control. A bit of regular preparation goes a long way.

Just as athletic activities involve physical, mental, and emotional energies, leadership is a “whole-body practice” and requires preparation of the whole person. The next time you are running through your checklist prior to a leadership event, ask yourself, “How have I prepared my whole self for this?”

3. Comfort

This is closely related to preparation, because leadership discomfort is greatly enhanced by a lack of preparation. In order to be more comfortable as a leader and to appear that way to other people, you need to practice (which is simple preparation repeated).  By “comfortable,” I don’t mean perpetually happy or even relaxed--I mean grounded in your complete embodiment of leadership.

Ask yourself, “How do I display that I am comfortable with the responsibilities and demands of leadership?” Look for nagging doubts in the back of your mind; or instincts that need to be surfaced around what you feel should be happening instead of what is happening, or that feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach about an issue not faced. This is valuable data, and if you do not address your lack of grounding and comfort, others will certainly sense it for you.

4. Listening

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One reason that modern leadership is hard is because an effective modern leader must listen to others. Though few people manage to do it, this may be one of the easiest competencies to demonstrate--provided you can resist the urge to talk.

Ask yourself, “What one thing can I tell myself as a reminder to listen more?” It’s vitally important that you think up an effective cue. If you can’t come up with one, that in itself could indicate a deeper internal misalignment.

5. Blend

This list started with visibility. When the opposite is required, a leader must blend in. Otherwise, he or she risks drawing attention away from the people and issues at hand. When you pull back, it makes it easier for other people to bring you hard problems, bad news, and perspectives that challenge the status quo. 

As a leader, it’s not all about you. The clearest way to demonstrate this is to find the right moments to step out of the spotlight so that other people get the attention they need. Ask yourself, “When necessary, how do I lower the volume of my leadership presence?”

Though leadership can be hard to demonstrate at times, regularly questioning how you embody your role will serve your leadership well.

The 5 Traits of High-Potential Employees

Who will be ready to run your company when you can't be everywhere anymore? Here's how to pick your next generation of leaders.

As your company grows too big for you to do everything--the way you do now--you're going to give over some of the leadership. (Relax. This is a good thing!) For reasons of staff morale, economy, and your own precious peace of mind, it’s better to find your new generation of leaders inside the company. But there’s a rub. Not every longtime loyal employee is really suited to be a leader.

Some have reached their potential and are quite comfortable where they are. This doesn’t imply mediocrity. It simply means that their role at the company and their ambition have converged, and a degree of leveling has set in. Others on your staff might be the “me-me” type--utterly convinced of their own limitless potential and blind to the overwhelming evidence that they’ve gone as far as they're going to get.  

How do you decide who among your longtime lieutenants have what it takes? I point to five criteria:

1. They know the business. Your high-potential employees are the ones who have true expertise and keep learning. Their knowledge may be technical or it may be institutional, but it’s invaluable for the organization. More important, they understand how their activities, their sector, and their realm of knowledge is related to the company’s goals.

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2. Others respect them. Your staff members, not just you, also have to appreciate how much your high-potentials know. It’s not enough that your top people know their stuff. Everyone else has to know they know it.

3. They are ambitious. High-potential employees aren’t just career-minded; they’re ambitious in a focused way. The best way to get a sense of this is to evaluate their commitment to career progression. Look for signs that they long to accumulate new responsibilities, new successes, additional knowledge, and, for better or worse, additional recognition.

4. They work well with others. Though your leaders need to be driven, they also must be able to form partnerships with others besides you. This attitude goes beyond amiability; it's a pragmatic, tactical skill that allows them to make better, more informed decisions. Lone rangers may be creative and ambitious, but they make lousy leaders.

5. They have guts. Your next generation of leaders must understand that no matter how much research they do, no matter how many cost-benefit analyses they conduct, no matter how many market surveys they complete, they will always be deciding under conditions of uncertainty. The information at hand will always be less than the information you wish you had. Leaders need to have the courage to take risks.

Though you don’t want your next generation of leaders to be clones of you, you do want them to have the traits that drove you to build a growing company. You want them to know their stuff. You want them to have a good reputation on your team. You want them to be driven but able to give and accept help. Finally, you want them to have the courage to make tough decisions, even if there’s a chance they’ll fail. Because that’s how entrepreneurship works

9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People

The most successful people in business approach their work differently than most. See how they think--and why it works.

I'm fortunate enough to know a number of remarkably successful people. Regardless of industry or profession, they all share the same perspectives and beliefs.

And they act on those beliefs:

1. Time doesn't fill me. I fill time.

Deadlines and time frames establish parameters, but typically not in a good way. The average person who is given two weeks to complete a task will instinctively adjust his effort so it actually takes two weeks.

Forget deadlines, at least as a way to manage your activity. Tasks should only take as long as they need to take. Do everything as quickly and effectively as you can. Then use your "free" time to get other things done just as quickly and effectively.

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Average people allow time to impose its will on them; remarkable people impose their will on their time.

2. The people around me are the people I chose.

Some of your employees drive you nuts. Some of your customers are obnoxious. Some of your friends are selfish, all-about-me jerks.

You chose them. If the people around you make you unhappy it's not their fault. It's your fault. They're in your professional or personal life because you drew them to you--and you let them remain.

Think about the type of people you want to work with. Think about the types of customers you would enjoy serving. Think about the friends you want to have.

Then change what you do so you can start attracting those people. Hardworking people want to work with hardworking people. Kind people like to associate with kind people. Remarkable employees want to work for remarkable bosses.

Successful people are naturally drawn to successful people.

3. I have never paid my dues.

Dues aren't paid, past tense. Dues get paid, each and every day. The only real measure of your value is the tangible contribution you make on a daily basis.

No matter what you've done or accomplished in the past, you're never too good to roll up your sleeves, get dirty, and do the grunt work.  No job is ever too menial, no task ever too unskilled or boring.

Remarkably successful people never feel entitled--except to the fruits of their labor.

4. Experience is irrelevant. Accomplishments are everything.

You have "10 years in the Web design business." Whoopee. I don't care how long you've been doing what you do. Years of service indicate nothing; you could be the worst 10-year programmer in the world.

I care about what you've done: how many sites you've created, how many back-end systems you've installed, how many customer-specific applications you've developed (and what kind)... all that matters is what you've done.

Successful people don't need to describe themselves using hyperbolic adjectives like passionate, innovative, driven, etc. They can just describe, hopefully in a humble way, what they've done.

5. Failure is something I accomplish; it doesn't just happen to me.

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Ask people why they have been successful. Their answers will be filled with personal pronouns: I, me, and the sometimes too occasional we.

Ask them why they failed. Most will revert to childhood and instinctively distance themselves, like the kid who says, "My toy got broken..." instead of, "I broke my toy."

They'll say the economy tanked. They'll say the market wasn't ready. They'll say their suppliers couldn't keep up.

They'll say it was someone or something else.

And by distancing themselves, they don't learn from their failures.

Occasionally something completely outside your control will cause you to fail. Most of the time, though, it's you. And that's okay. Every successful person has failed. Numerous times. Most of them have failed a lot more often than you. That's why they're successful now.

Embrace every failure: Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently.

6. Volunteers always win.

Whenever you raise your hand you wind up being asked to do more.

That's great. Doing more is an opportunity: to learn, to impress, to gain skills, to build new relationships--to do something more than you would otherwise been able to do.

Success is based on action. The more you volunteer, the more you get to act. Successful people step forward to create opportunities.

Remarkably successful people sprint forward.

7. As long as I'm paid well, it's all good.

Specialization is good. Focus is good. Finding a niche is good.

Generating revenue is great.

Anything a customer will pay you a reasonable price to do--as long as it isn't unethical, immoral, or illegal--is something you should do. Your customers want you to deliver outside your normal territory? If they'll pay you for it, fine. They want you to add services you don't normally include? If they'll pay you for it, fine. The customer wants you to perform some relatively manual labor and you're a high-tech shop? Shut up, roll 'em up, do the work, and get paid.

Only do what you want to do and you might build an okay business. Be willing to do what customers want you to do and you can build a successful business.

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Be willing to do even more and you can build a remarkable business.

And speaking of customers...

8. People who pay me always have the right to tell me what to do.

Get over your cocky, pretentious, I-must-be-free-to-express-my-individuality self. Be that way on your own time.

The people who pay you, whether customers or employers, earn the right to dictate what you do and how you do it--sometimes down to the last detail.

Instead of complaining, work to align what you like to do with what the people who pay you want you to do.

Then you turn issues like control and micro-management into non-issues.

9. The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland.

Everyone says they go the extra mile. Almost no one actually does. Most people who go there think, "Wait... no one else is here... why am I doing this?" and leave, never to return.

That's why the extra mile is such a lonely place.

That's also why the extra mile is a place filled with opportunities.

Be early. Stay late. Make the extra phone call. Send the extra email. Do the extra research. Help a customer unload or unpack a shipment. Don't wait to be asked; offer. Don't just tell employees what to do--show them what to do and work beside them.

Every time you do something, think of one extra thing you can do--especially if other people aren't doing that one thing. Sure, it's hard.

But that's what will make you different. And over time, that's what will make you incredibly successful.

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