Bill Troy is the Co-Founder of Polaris Institute, a community that leverages the Polaris ProcessTM to optimize life and unlock the brain’s full potential through neurological performance. With over two decades of experience as a member of EO Columbus and after founding the Institute, Bill has focused his work on unlocking new opportunities and breakthroughs for high-potential enterprise leaders and teams. The proprietary Polaris Process, central to their approach, aims to foster brain science-based innovation. Bill and his Co-founder frequently present on this topic internationally, including for a notable workshop at the 2023 EO Entrepreneurial Master’s Program at Harvard, underscoring their commitment to advancing enterprise client outcomes through innovative methods.
In an age where the dynamics of teamwork are rapidly evolving, how can brain science offer new strategies for building high-performance teams?
According to Bill Troy, an expert in applying cutting-edge neuroscience to organizational development, brain science-based strategies are key to transforming team dynamics. Leveraging recent discoveries in neuroscience, Troy argues that understanding the brain’s mechanisms for processing stress, conflict, and cooperation can lead to more effective teamwork. The approach involves using knowledge of neuroplasticity to rewire team interactions, fostering environments where innovation and collaboration thrive. By recognizing and addressing the brain’s inherent biases and survival tactics, it’s possible to unlock new levels of performance and satisfaction, transforming how teams operate and achieve their goals.
In this episode of America Open for Business, Cameron Heffernan welcomes Bill Troy, Co-founder of Polaris Institute, to explore the transformative power of brain science in team development. They discuss the significance of emotional intelligence in leadership, the benefits of leveraging neuroplasticity for team dynamics, and practical methods for applying neuroscience to enhance team efficiency and foster innovation.
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Narrator: 0:03
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets.
Cameron: 0:13
Hi, I’m Cameron Heffernan and this is the America Open for Business podcast, where I talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets. This episode of our show is in the Founders and Owners series and it’s brought to you by your B2B marketing, a truly global marketing agency. Many mid-market B2B companies. They face challenges in clearly defining their value proposition and articulating it to customers. We help founders and leaders understand what makes their products and services invaluable to customers and help them put that front and center. That enables our clients to focus on company growth and new market entry, not marketing initiatives, and realize the best and highest use of their time. Discover how we can drive your expansion by visiting wwwyourb2bmarketingco. And that’s not com but co Past.
Cameron: 1:09
Guests on the show include Brian Smith, the founder of the UGG brand, the famous sheepskin boots from Australia and author of Birth of a Brand, about his personal journey to the creation of what became a billion-dollar consumer footwear brand, became a billion-dollar consumer footwear brand. And today I’m happy to have on the show Bill Troy of Polaris Institute, and Bill is a 20-plus-year member of EO Columbus as well as co-founder with another EO member from DC, anna Birch, who is also a global EO and YPO facilitator, anna Birch, who is also a global EO and YPO facilitator. Polaris Institute works with high potential enterprise leaders and teams to open up new opportunities and breakthroughs through the proprietary Polaris process, which is trademarked, and we’ll get into that in a moment. In addition to Bill and Anna’s ongoing work with enterprise clients, they often speak globally about brain science-based innovation and recently conducted a workshop as part of the 2023 EO EMP Entrepreneurial Master’s Program at Harvard. Welcome to the show, bill Troy. Thanks, it’s great to be here. All right, what is the Polaris process?
Bill: 2:23
Right? Well, I would say that, in general, it’s about turning high performing and high potential individuals into teams. We all have groups of people that we work with or that we’re a part of or that we want to have perform, and there isn’t a lot to help people become a team. What is a team? What does a team look like? How does a team function? We have shared objectives, shared goals, but what is the process of becoming a team? And we use a brain science-based model, because what that does is sort of depersonalize it. Right, we all have differences, we have biases, we have histories, we have goals, we have objectives as individuals, and especially high potential, potential, high performing people are rewarded for driving through that right and driving their goals and their objectives. But then we conflict as a team and we’re running over each other and we’re not getting along. And so how do we come together as a team and work together? What does that look like? So that’s really what we’re working on teams for team on teams yeah, conflict is bad.
Cameron: 3:22
It slows teams down. It’s a, it’s a negative thing.
Bill: 3:31
It is for a lot of teams, but when we work with people, it isn’t. What we do is we teach them conflict. We look at conflict in some ways like a football play. Right as it starts to unfold and you see that conflict exists, you say, oh, we’re ready for this. We practice this. Conflict means that two people, or multiple people, have a different view of things, right, different opinion of things, and that can either be a conflict we have to resolve, or somebody wins and loses, or we just let it go, or it can be an opportunity to say we’ve got multiple perspectives here. We can capitalize on this. This is a chance for innovation, a chance for creativity. We can embrace it and go, oh, this is great. So when we work with a team they love, when they find conflict, because it isn’t damage, it’s opportunity.
Cameron: 4:13
Wow, what would an engagement look like with a client? Or these workshops? Strategic planning, how does it?
Bill: 4:20
play out. Yeah, we have sort of a good, better, best tiered approach. The simplest thing is an awareness program which can be just a workshop. We’ve done that for, you know, large companies, for example, going into a strategic planning process. Let’s do an awareness workshop to make you guys see some new things before you go in and work together on your strategy. It can range all the way to. Most of the clients we work for are ongoing coaching right. So we’re sort of the coach that comes in and says what are you guys dealing with? Let’s wrestle with this, let’s get it together because teams constantly evolve. So that’s more of a culture building, ongoing coaching and training. Sometimes it’s with the team, it’s not even with individuals on the team.
Cameron: 5:00
Okay, so do you think yourselves as as leadership training for teams?
Bill: 5:07
Yes, in a way, I think we are capacity building for teams. I think we show them what opportunities and capacity there is in the room that they’re not recognizing and how to capitalize on that. In a way, we’re lowering the friction of being a team and making it being a team a more positive thing. You know, I shared an example with you earlier. We were talking about all-star teams. We frequently come into work with an executive team where everyone in the room we did this with a company in the space industry building some space equipment for NASA and man, everyone in that room was an alpha. They were the top of their. You know whether it was, you know rocket design or you know entry mechanics or whatever, and they had all been rewarded for being really good and really successful.
Bill: 5:54
But you come together as a team and they were all there to drive their own vision for what should happen. It was just fight, fight, fight, fight, fight and we were able to show them look, you guys are an all-star team, but you’re not acting as a team. You’re all coming hit this with a history of being the smartest person in the room and having all the answers, but now you’re in here with equals. Now what are you going to do? And so really take them through a day of figuring out. What does a team do? How does a team function? How do you go from being bickering individuals to being a team of superheroes, where I know that you know losing, using the Marvel version of that? You’ve got invisibility. I’ve got super strength. When do we call on each of us? And we love the fact that we have people with different skills on the team, and that’s a great thing and that changes the dynamic of that team.
Cameron: 6:39
Wow, is there any example of an exercise you can talk us through for our listeners, for what that might look like?
Bill: 6:49
Yes, well, we start by using the brain science of how your brain works and why your brain functions the way it does, and there’s a longer version of that but we end up getting you to the point where so everyone can see that everyone has a bias. So everyone can see that everyone has a bias. And the bias that you bring to your reality whether that’s we’ve got to push or we’ve got to take our time or we’ve got is based on your history. Your brain only knows what it’s ever seen and experienced in its life, and so you bring that into every room you go into and it looks to you like the way things have to be done. You know we’ve got to speak up, we’ve got to be quiet, whatever.
Bill: 7:23
That is Right, yeah, and other people that do it differently than you are wrong. I mean, we can think in our society about how we all yell at each other all the time where people have a different perspective than us. Whatever side you’re on of any issue, you know the other side is always a complete idiot. Right, yeah, because how can you not see? It’s so obvious? Well, it’s obvious to all of us because it’s our own reality and our own experience. And when we can show that each of us have that and it’s normal to have that. It’s not a bad thing, it just is the way brains work. We can realize that. Okay, this isn’t a personal thing, this is just six brains around a table that all have different perspectives, and we can come together and discuss that and acknowledge it and go what do you see? What do you see? Now, it’s something we can work on together instead of saying I’ve got to beat you or fix you or whatever.
Cameron: 8:06
Right, so you’re kind of challenging to me, I think. When I think I hear the word bias, I think that’s a negative connotation. Right, but you’re challenging that right.
Bill: 8:15
It’s become a negative word in our society because what we’re talking about is when one person’s bias injures another person. But in fact we’re all biased. I mean our brains again, like I said, have had limited experience on this planet in the course of our lives and our brain can’t know anything else than that. And our brain’s job is to kind of anticipate and create what we want to see and try to, you know, make life what we want it to be, and so being able to sort of stop and address that and say no one is good or bad, you just are who you are. Now let’s talk about what we want to accomplish as a group and say how do we get that done? And who around the table has a new perspective? Who has some bias that’s good, that can help us? Who can see something that I can’t see and we make something that’s a superpower for the team and not something that tears the team apart, is it?
Cameron: 9:04
do you find it challenging to negotiate or, I guess, navigate by the better word within corporate hierarchies? Often, I guess, you’re going to engage with somebody at the C level or maybe an HR that brings you in. Is that a challenge when you’re trying to work in a team kind of structure?
Bill: 9:19
It can be. The challenge we run into is when someone wants to bring us in to fix other people, fix my team or fix my boss or whatever. You kind of can’t convince someone to do it if they don’t want to do it, so it really has to make sure you have to make sure you have buy-in from everyone that’s going to be involved in the process. Otherwise, when we get in the room with people and we can kind of break this down, we have some techniques we use to literally show people you’re making up this reality, you’re completely not seeing what’s really right and what’s really true, and in fact, no one is. All of a sudden it resets everyone to go oh, wow, okay, and it really sort of no matter what level you’re at. So it’s a matter of whether people want to go there or not.
Cameron: 10:09
Okay, Okay. And is this when? You engage with companies. I assume it’s mostly companies that you’re working with. Yeah, okay, is it sort of like the way I think of strategic planning? Maybe that’s not the right, maybe it’s more. The traditional way is, strategic planning happens a little before the end of the year. We do it once and then we don’t do it again until next year.
Bill: 10:29
Are you doing a little bit different than that? Yes, we’re not doing strategic planning, we are helping the strategic plan actually work. So, for example, as I mentioned before, we worked with that, with that high-performing, you know, space industry company. Help them, make sure they got a good strategic plan right. Help them. We can really explore some things. Typically, what we’re doing is more ongoing work and we have a client, for example, right now, where one company acquired another company and there’s really a lot of tension in this company because who’s in charge of where we go? Right? Company A is one kind of company, company B is a different kind of company. They kind of compliment each other, but they’re not the same approach. One of them is more analytical, one of them is more creative, and so the analytical company bought the creative company and the analytical company is saying, well, we bought you, so we’re in charge, right. The creative company saying, yeah, but you thought we were so cool you wanted to buy us. So we know what’s right because you wanted us.
Bill: 11:22
And they’re just fighting all the time about who decides how things work and what’s right and what’s wrong, and the idea that it has to be one or the other is something we’re trying to break through with them and say, let’s just say it’s neither and it’s going to be a new third thing. And what is that? What can we create and let go of that? But both of them have been rewarded up to this point, one of them so successful I could buy another company. The other one’s so successful I could sell the company for doing what they’ve done. And so we have to go in and say, okay, it’s a new game, it’s over, it starts over now. And everything you’ve done up till now that’s automatic and feels right to you and drives you every day is. I don’t want to say it’s wrong, but it may not fit now.
Cameron: 12:03
So you guys would be good working with innovation industries, companies that require that kind of a mindset where, if you want to keep growing and evolving, you’ve got to always be thinking a step ahead.
Bill: 12:14
Yes, whenever there’s a situation of what got you here won’t get you there. It can be something that is old and stodgy that needs to break open, or something that just you know, an industry that’s changing, or a company that’s growing a lot and like, wow, things are different than they used to be. How do we wrestle with that?
Cameron: 12:30
How do you? I think of this whenever I talk to somebody, my marketing hat is always on the back of my head, like thinking how do you find them? Cause it’s not like you can go do a LinkedIn filter for well. I guess there is growth metrics and things are not very reliable, but how do they get to you?
Bill: 12:46
Well, right now it’s a lot of word of mouth. I mean, this is one of the benefits of Anna and I both having spent 20 years in EO. We know a lot of business owners. And then Anna is a global facilitator and trainer for EO and YPO, so she talks to a lot of people as well in that role, and so we happen to know a lot of people. And then the next thing that happens is, once it starts working, it spreads virally word of mouth. So this is an old school word of mouth business Right.
Cameron: 13:13
So within someone in the old days, in my staffing days, we called mushrooming the business like finance connects you to operations, connects you to R&D. Is it that kind of an approach?
Bill: 13:27
Yeah, it’s actually more. Company A has breakthroughs and connects us to company B. You know, it’s sort of CEO to CEO. Typically it’s the CEO that’s bringing us in because they’ve got, for example, a great team and we just aren’t getting it done. Or these people just fight all the time and so they bring us in to solve that. Or these people just fight all the time and so they bring us in to solve that. And then they talk about wow, lightning difference to another CEO and they’re like, oh, what did they do? So that’s really how it goes.
Cameron: 13:53
Okay, I was looking at your website earlier and there was a blog post that I stopped. That’s really interesting. So, first of all, I noticed on your site that the blogs are written by you. Call them Polaris Institute members. I would think of that tradition as a client, right, yeah, correct, yes. And it says these are team transformation stories from our members, published anonymously to allow the members to share openly and honestly. This story is from Kelvin M. Why did you make that an important distinction? The anonymous aspect.
Bill: 14:24
Yeah, I think maybe that’s a choice we’ve made, more than they requested. We just wanted to make sure that they can share candidly about what their issue was. And frequently we find some real vulnerability in that company that they didn’t know was there. I mean, they think come in and fix this team, right? Well, when we go in and we start working, we find there are a lot of emotional things. I’ll give you one great example. We did just some values work with a company and we all have values. Right, they’re on the wall, and I was with the management team and we were talking about values and this would be a great case study. Right, we’ve helped you refine your values. But as we went around the values and explored them and they had one on the wall which was customer we do.
Bill: 15:15
Oh, what’s the word Sorry, I just the word that is important word in the in the value. Let me come back to it because it’s a word that also means uh, taking care of someone, um, nurture, like. Think of someone that’s has long-term health issue, for example, that you’re taking care of. Um, what’s?
Bill: 15:36
the word comorbidity is like a couple of diseases, yeah um, I don’t know if you can edit this, but let me, let me pull it up, because I can get the word. Sure, the website. Sorry, one second. Okay, there we go. Okay, got it. So it was so simple. That’s why I forgot it.
Bill: 16:05
One of their values is we care for our customers. Okay, well, duh, what’s wrong with that? As we went around the room, though, we explored that idea that we all have our own bias. Our own brain has experienced what it’s experienced in life. They suddenly started to realize this was going to be much deeper than they understood. Because they thought was going to be much deeper than they understood, because they thought it was going to be, because what we care for our customers meant around the table was different for every person. Some of them, we do whatever it takes, we stay up all night. Some of them are like we think about them and we reach out to them, or we anticipate their problems before they happen.
Bill: 16:36
And one of the people on the management team had been quiet and we got around to her and we’d created enough of a safe space. She said caring is a burden. We’re like whoa, and her history of caring was somebody she had had to care for as her in her young life, when she was a you know, a child, even like a teenager. She had a very sick parent and part of her life experience was the caring for someone while you do it and you love them. It’s a lot of work and a lot of emotional burden, and so a simple word like care, what does that even mean?
Bill: 17:13
And when we throw something out like that, do we know what everyone in the room is thinking?
Bill: 17:17
And so a lot of times we get into a process like that and things come out we’re like, well, okay, we’re not going to put your name on the website for that, because we want to share that vulnerability that came out in the room. And that’s when teams really can open up and say, oh gosh, as a group, we need to make sure we understand what care for customers means and as a team, we can decide that now we can create behaviors or what we mean by that, and not just assume because we put it on the wall. Everyone knows, yeah, and now we can work together on that and we can even know that we’re part of. What we’re going to do is support this person in what they’ve been through in life as a team Helping make sure they don’t feel that pain that they that came with them, that we didn’t even know was there again because because they have their bias, we have our bias right. So that’s an example of the kind of work that happens in the room. That really opens things up.
Cameron: 18:07
I love that. There’s so many things that I’m going to probe into a little more. One is that doesn’t come out in the first 10 minutes of sitting down at the end, right? So?
Bill: 18:17
how do you?
Cameron: 18:17
get to that point, what do? You do to get to that point of vulnerability and then being comfortable sharing that?
Bill: 18:24
Right. Well, it’s a matter of setting the stage so that, again, a lot of it goes back to that brain science base that we have. The brain science base again sort of depersonalizes it and makes everyone in the room realize that what they’re experiencing, what they’re feeling, is just some total of what they’ve had in their life. So it’s okay. And creating that environment is the first step. And then, of course, some people are braver than others and starting to share. She was the last one to share, but starting to create that and show even that everyone has a different perspective. And and, by the way, when we were going around the table and one person said you know, we work all night. If we have to other people in the room, we’re nervous about that. That’s not what I think caring is right. I think caring is making sure that we don’t have to work.
Bill: 19:10
We had another one for a company that had like a really specific safety issue that they were working on and one of the people at the table thought that hard work meant you stay after hours. You’ve got to stay till eight o’clock at night to get it done. You stay after eight to get it done, till eight to get it done. And someone else at the table when we created this open space to say, well, let’s just talk about all the different possible perspectives there could be at this table about what doing it right means.
Bill: 19:36
One of the other people said I think if we have to stay till eight o’clock we’re going to make a mistake and someone’s going to die. Oh, wow, interesting If we are tired. So someone thought being tired meant you were doing it. Someone thought being tired means we’re not doing it, like, oh my goodness, wow, okay, you’re both right. Right, but you both. But we got to choose a path here going forward. So that stuff comes out around the table. Amazingly when you start letting everyone open up and say, well, this is what I see when you say just that word, do you guys?
Cameron: 20:04
encourage, do something to encourage the leadership team or whoever brought you and engaged you to share first, Because I think it’s going to be hard for somebody in a lower level to be the first out of the gate saying you know, caring is hard.
Bill: 20:17
Yeah, yeah, you’ve got to read the room. And if it’s people from different levels in the organization, certainly trying to get the leaders to go first and exhibit that behavior is key.
Cameron: 20:28
Another thing I find values. I’m very interested by companies’ values, how they are formed, how often they come from the owner and founder, but just leaving them there doesn’t do much good. You’ve got to get the rest of the team to really be behind it. And the analogy that I remember I read it somewhere in a book which is have you ever heard of a company that says we don’t care about our customers, right, we don’t care about quality, we don’t care. So it’s very trite to say well, what makes you especially unique? Well, bill really cares about his customers. Well, for God’s sake, I would hope so.
Bill: 20:59
Right, exactly.
Cameron: 21:00
So getting these values to have actual resonance. You guys do a lot of work in that area too or as part of the approach?
Bill: 21:13
Yes, because you have to make it real and make it clear, right. So there’s another one great when people have to do the right thing, what is that Right? No one’s doing the wrong thing, or?
Cameron: 21:19
are they?
Bill: 21:20
So so it becomes, um, you know, behaviorally, what does that even look like? How do we know if we’re doing it? So, um, translate it into behaviors, and this is where then it feeds into things like a strategic plan or performance metrics. You know we’re doing, uh, mental health and mental performance coaching, but we’re not working typically with the HR department, we’re working with the operations and business operations side of things, because we’re moving metrics, and that’s really where this has values to say okay, how do we get efficient and effective? And we know what page everyone’s on here.
Cameron: 21:55
That is interesting. So will you sit down with them at the beginning? Do you set okay, at the end of this engagement we’ll have achieved X, y and Z. What kind of metrics would those be? Engagement’s hard to measure, for instance?
Bill: 22:07
Yeah, but we always find that there is an objective business problem, whether it’s, you know, in the case of the company buying the other company. Right, it’s like the team’s on time delivery working together. Turnover of people leaving is a big one. So, yeah, we can definitely, in a long-term engagement, find out what those business metrics are. We’re going to move here because they’re having some problem like that or they wouldn’t feel like they need a solution.
Cameron: 22:36
There’s often a triggering event that leads into you, whether that’s a merger, acquisition, a sale or hey, we just had a really high turnover. That would be a good client to work with.
Bill: 22:46
There’s some kind of stress that’s breaking the system they’ve had up till now. Right, Whether that’s growth or acquisition, or you know, in some cases it’s a pandemic. I mean, whatever it is that you had things that worked and now they’re not working anymore and it doesn’t, why not? I mean, well, we can break that down and figure out why not, and then rebuild it.
Cameron: 23:07
There’s another blog on your site which I’ve seen you present on and I’m going to. I’m going to kind of see if you can summarize it for us. I am versus. I feel changing one word can change your ability to process emotions. What is that?
Bill: 23:20
Yeah, so when we’re working with individuals and we do teamwork and individual work, but even sometimes the teamwork is with individuals on the team, right, we sometimes are coaching individuals and working with the team as well, and a big part of what people do is have emotional responses to things, and this is in personal life as well as work. But somebody makes me mad, or you know, this is really, you know, whatever. And there’s a syntax thing that we use when we’re speaking, a semantic way of saying it. We tend to say either two things, one, two things. You say you’re making me mad or you’re making me X, whatever X is, you’re making me angry, making me sad, or I am sad, right? Well, neither of those things are true. From a logical standpoint, you don’t have the force or mental telepathy. You can’t actually make me mad. You can do something that I get mad about, right, but you can’t make me mad. I make me mad because of what you’re doing, because I feel like me getting mad will somehow stop you from doing it or I’ll be able to whatever. So the emotional reaction is always my own reaction to you. You make me mad.
Bill: 24:38
So just realizing no one is making you anything, you’re making yourself that okay is the first like what Okay. But then realizing no one is making you anything, you’re making yourself, that Is the first like what Okay. But then the next thing is that when we have some discomfort physically knee headache, whatever we say, my knee hurts, my head hurts, I have a headache we never say I am knee pain, I am headache. But when we have emotional discomfort, we take that as our identity I am angry, I am sad, I am in love. And why do we do that? When we do that, we’re giving power to that emotion, as though we have no power over it. We’re on an anger carnival ride until it ends. And then, when it gets over, then maybe I can calm down. But I don’t have any choice in the matter.
Bill: 25:26
Again, if you realize you’re making yourself angry, you can make yourself it’s a lot of work, but you can make yourself not angry and also you can just say I, ultimately I feel anger right now. Okay, cameron, what you’re doing is making I’m feeling anger, I’m making myself feel anger, making myself feel sad, and then it’s something that I can feel and experienced. What does that feel like? Versus just, I am and I’m in it. So there’s kind of a perspective shift that we do. That helps to break through a lot of these emotional things and you can imagine how that changes the team dynamic. No one’s making you mad, I’m just doing things and you get mad about it. But so that helps to again lower the barrier there, lower the bar to emotional challenges, and then we can start to rebuild and say, ok, I don’t have to get mad about that, those are getting in the way of some kind of breakthrough right.
Cameron: 26:15
Yes, because you. I don’t have to get mad about that, You’re not. Those are getting in the way of some kind of breakthrough right.
Bill: 26:18
Yes, because you feel like you have no choice. I’m angry.
Cameron: 26:21
What can I do about that?
Bill: 26:23
I’m just angry, I just am, I just am Right. And then, until it runs its course, you feel like you can’t do anything, and of course no one can tell you to do anything. You’re just. You’re just on the sideline for a while, or everyone’s going to deal with what you’re going to work through. Everyone in the room is going to have to live through your cycle of that until you get done with it.
Cameron: 26:44
I think of like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. It affects the whole family, the household, the environment and a lot of these things that you’re talking us through bringing back to that time when my kids were younger and trying to get them to identify the emotion that they have. And how can we get past that? It sounds very basic, but it’s essential.
Bill: 27:04
Yes, and it’s essential if you want to be a cohesive team. As adults, a lot of us bring that it was successful as a behavior right. I get angry people run from me and I can get what I want, or they give me what to shut me up, and so it can be reinforced to the point where you can drive everyone around you crazy to get what you want and they’re just like, okay, fine, but it isn’t a team thing.
Cameron: 27:29
And also there’s a reason they’re doing it, because it’s work They’ve seen Correct. I throw a temper tantrum. I’m the boss, I come in and throw my papers down. People react, they get up. That there’s activity.
Bill: 27:40
Yeah, so it’s that what got you here won’t get you there. There’s a point at which that model breaks, and when you reach that point, we’re ready to talk to you.
Cameron: 27:47
Tell us a little bit about brain science.
Bill: 27:51
What does that mean? So a lot has been discovered in the last 10 years or so in the brain science field. Now, I’m not a brain scientist. We have people that are advising us to build a program. We’re using brain science in our program, using discoveries in brain science to really set the table for how the discussion happens. But basically this idea that our brain has only experienced what it’s experienced in the past, that our brain has only experienced what it’s experienced in the past. There’s been a lot of work in MRI technology by having people go through certain situations and track what’s happening in their brain and see what’s happening. There’s just a lot of new information about how our brains work and what they’re trying to do and the fact that they’re creating our own reality.
Bill: 28:33
Right, our brain has when we go through the course we teach people, your brain has only one job. You only have one for one reason and that is to keep you alive long enough to carry on the species. Your brain’s job is not to make you happy, find your purpose, find joy. It isn’t trying to do any of that. It’s trying to keep you alive. You know, effectively, you are prey. We think we’re the top of the food chain. But hello, I’m round slow and soft.
Bill: 28:57
I got no weapons, no armor, no protection. But I didn’t live in a house, you know, and have cars and everything to protect me. I’d be like vulnerable out there quivering. So our brain knows this. Our brain knows that really we’re prey and everything is out to get us, and so it spends its whole life, its whole energy, all of its energy and focus on keeping us safe and protected. That’s why we live in a house that’s 72 degrees and we have cars around us and we don’t want to go out in the weather.
Bill: 29:23
How much time do we spend talking about the weather? The weather isn’t really a danger to you and I, except a little, but it could be right. So our brain’s anticipating what to wear tomorrow. So our brain is running around trying to keep us safe from danger and it’s a very dangerous world and our brain can find all the dangers out there we can imagine to try to keep us safe from. So it’s keeping us anxious and keyed up and stressed on purpose. So that understanding now and they’ve been able to sort of prove that and show you that your brain is coming Not even just brain science, but even just science around things like your phone.
Bill: 30:02
Why are you addicted to your phone, you constantly need to check for threats and see what’s going on social media, all these things. So the understanding of how our brain works and what it’s trying to do, and then the fact that we can rewire things, that your brain has experienced, what has experienced up till now, and if you experience something new enough times, repeat it over and over again, you can change your expectation. For me, a big one was traffic. Traffic used to be constantly irritating me. So many people in traffic needed lessons from me.
Cameron: 30:28
Yeah.
Bill: 30:29
And I’ve been able to rewire that. I realized, okay, their clue is they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t really are worried about me, so I’m not going to worry about them. And it takes practice over time. But I can rewire that to where it’s like I don’t, traffic doesn’t bother me anymore. I actually, and it feels to me. One of the things I tell people is that it’s not that I, oh, I’m better. That’s my reality now is that people aren’t driving so bad Used to be. They were driving terribly, when in fact they haven’t changed. But I’ve changed. So now we understand that you can rewire memory by practicing new things. You can rewire emotional memory, just like you can rewire physical memory, just like you can learn to play the drums or the piano. You can learn to find more joy in life by practicing various things.
Cameron: 31:19
So it’s like training anything else going to the gym.
Bill: 31:21
No different. There is no one of the other blogs on our on our website talks about. There’s no such thing as muscle memory. We think of muscle memory as learning to deck a card, shuffle that card. There’s no such thing as muscle memory. There’s just memory. Your brain knows how to do things, some of which move your muscles, some of them which you know it gets you angry. Your brain just has a whole set of files it runs, and some of them are useful for you now and some of them are not. They maybe were useful when they were installed, but they’re not useful anymore. Change them.
Cameron: 31:49
Yeah.
Bill: 31:49
Rewire that.
Cameron: 31:50
There’s a book that you put me onto which I’m listening to now atomic habits, yeah, and it a book that you put me on to which I’m listening to now atomic habits, yeah, right, and it’s a lot about this stuff and just uh, I think we over complicate things a lot. But, like, if you want to make change, put yourself in an environment where change can happen. So I want to lose 10 pounds. Don’t bring candy, pizza and junk food to the house. It’s harder to have children because I can’t say hey you guys are out of shape.
Cameron: 32:11
You should need all that stuff. That’s harder. Yeah, you want to start going to the gym? Just sign up for gym and go every day. Eventually you’ll be working out there because you’re there.
Bill: 32:18
Yes, yeah, james Clear is one of our heroes at Polaris Institute. It is the way his process is the way you change things. Now we’re able to go in and break things down and show people they need to change, and show them new perspectives. But then, as far as building those new habits so that you react that way when you walk in the door at home or you don’t react that way when your co-worker walks in with a whatever, that’s practice and james clear’s model is what we use a lot maybe I’ll come in for the traffic management, anger management modules and a break off one that we could, we could do yeah, we’ll just have a special, special class I I move to different places.
Cameron: 32:55
I deliberately move to places where my commute is less or no no commute, just to get around it, right?
Bill: 33:02
um well, I’ll tell you. Let me tell you the secret. One thing you can try as a mental trick yeah, think of what you’re imagining that other driver looks like, and for me it was always like there’s some young 20 year old jerk right, and now what I do is I imagine everyone else on the road is a little grandmother, okay, and so now when they do something stupid, oh, they’re sweet. They don’t even know. God had them on the head. I just feel differently about who’s in the other car and it changes my whole perspective of what they’re doing. They don’t have, you know, they don’t have malicious intent in mind. They don’t try to cut me off and keep me from my thing. They’re like, oh my god, they’re clueless. I need to help them across the traffic here watch out.
Cameron: 33:41
They’re coming over. I like to think if I could read their mind or be in their car and hear what they’re what they’re they’re saying. Or the other one is flip it around like I got turned around and I’m trying to do a three-point turn in the middle of a street where I shouldn’t yes, and then they know hey sorry my bad, give me a yes or I don’t see you want to have like I’m sorry what the hand signals are.
Cameron: 33:58
Yeah, I like to think of that when we get stressed at home, like we’re preparing for people to come visit for christmas or a kid’s birthday party. We gotta do these different things and stress mounts up and I step back and think this is all for a seven-year-old’s birthday party. Let’s keep that in perspective here while we’re doing this. Right, they’re not going to care if we don’t have a pinata in time or whatever it is yeah, yeah, right.
Cameron: 34:18
So, uh, before I’m going to ask you one last question, before I know that, I’m going to let people go to your website that is polaris institutenet and you can read more of bill’s. The blog posts are great and the content they have there is good. Bill is regularly um speaking, speaking and putting content out, so I’d encourage you to follow his LinkedIn page there. I see all this culminating into a book in 10 years, so my question is what’s that book going to be called and what’s the hook or the angle that going to be?
Bill: 34:52
Oh, wow, I don’t know, but what it really is, the book is probably just going to be the process. You know like a lot of people want to dig into the whole process, understand the whole step. We have a whole Polaris process model with three different components. We have performance components, we have practice components and premises, which are the science parts of it, and some people want to really dig into that on their own, and so the book will probably be just, you know, a textbook sort of thing that supports the program.
Cameron: 35:22
Hanging it all together.
Bill: 35:23
Yeah.
Cameron: 35:23
Almost like a well, maybe not a handbook, because a handbook you can kind of jump in and out of different sections, but like almost like a manual, maybe.
Bill: 35:30
Right, right, so that that would be useful, for Right now we’re going in and working on a specific thing with a company or a team or whatever we could say grab the book, flip to chapter six instead of just bringing in that thing. So that’s probably what we’ll do is sort of have a more overarching textbook there.
Cameron: 35:48
Could this be taught in an MBA program someday, should it be?
Bill: 35:51
Yeah, I think, yes, I think this is kind of where leadership is going to go. I think we’re finding that we’re going to have to be much more empathetic, much more, much more about EQ than IQ, and I think this is the kind of work a lot of people are going to do to realize, well, my team is limited by IQ. We’ve got to find out what EQ looks like and what. What does that look like? What is training like that look like, and how do we do it. So I think it’s going to become more of a thing.
Cameron: 36:18
You and I have talked about the gap and the gain book and concept. That one comes to mind when I think of that. If you go back 10 years ago, the concept of looking at EQ and measuring it and how it’s changed has changed dramatically over that timeframe. So it’s good to look back and see where we come from 10, 15 years ago with respect to EQ.
Bill: 36:43
And I think even you know there’s been a big push in the last few years around DE&I and companies, especially. You know it seems like it happened during COVID but also that becoming something that is not something to just remedy the past, but also something to rally for the future, like, wow, let’s make this a superpower, not just, you know, a repair of what’s happened. Let’s figure out how we can really utilize this, and teams that do that will excel.
Cameron: 37:03
Wow. Well, I’d love to have you back in the future to pull that apart a little bit. I think that when people push back on that to me, the examples I give are have you heard of the movies Black Panther and Barbie? Why were those billion dollar global successes? And people say, well, I think DEI is overblown or it’s a fad. I disagree.
Bill: 37:24
Yeah, I think it again. We think it’s only some, because we’re back to that thing where bias is a negative thing and that we need to fix the biased people. Wait, we’re all biased, oh okay. And bias, since it’s not just a negative we’re trying to eliminate, it could be a positive to capitalize them. That’s when it lights up and that’s when it becomes something that’s really good.
Cameron: 37:45
Because you’re bringing conversations out in the open rather than I should feel ashamed that I don’t know X.
Bill: 37:50
Right, I want to have as much diversity around this table. I need as many, if you just think of just innovation. I need as many realities and points of view around this table as I can get in order to succeed. Yeah, now, it’s something I want. We’ve got to have it. That’s right. It’s not? Yeah, it’s competitive advantage.
Cameron: 38:08
And, by the way, my clients are like that too. My clients are also diverse. They’re not homogenous. All the same cookie cutter either.
Bill: 38:15
Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: 38:16
Well, thank you, bill. So much for that. Thank you Talk forever. That was Bill Troy, founder and co-owner of Polaris Institute. This has been America Open for Business and I’m Cameron Heffernan. Thanks for listening today and we look forward to the next episode and catch you next time.
Narrator: 38:33
Bye episode and catch you next time. Thanks for listening to the America Open for Business podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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