Embrace the Chase

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The title for this podcast came from an article in last week’s New York Times about Katie Ledecky, who is one of the dominant swimmers of our times. Ledecky gets a ton of fan mail and requests for advice from young swimmers and their parents, and in reply to a parent who asked her for advice for her 11-year-old daughter who couldn’t seem to catch up to her peers no matter how hard she tried, Ledecky wrote:

“Embrace the chase of those ahead of you. The times will come and you will have fun getting there.”

Embrace the chase. The phrase struck me the minute I read it, but a week later I can tell that it must have crawled around in my subconscious, making connections to a few other ideas I’ve picked up through the years. I’d like to share three ideas from a couple of my favorite books that elaborate on the statement and may just encourage you to embrace the chase yourself.

First point: Your Mindset is Hugely Important

The first point is taken from one of my favorite books, Mindset, by Carol Dweck, who tells us that people generally fit into one of two opposing mindsets when it comes to their beliefs about personal ability. Those with a fixed mindset believe that people are born with a given level of intelligence and ability which will determine their relative capability to succeed in various fields. Those with a growth mindset believe that ability is within our personal control and is determined by effort, learning and hard work.

The distinction is not merely academic. As Dweck’s research shows, “…a simple belief about yourself…guides a large part of your life. In fact, it permeates every part of your life.” In one experiment, kids were given a fairly challenging set of questions from an IQ test. Half were then praised for being smart (let’s call them the FMers), and half were praised for working hard (GMers). In the next step, they were given a much more challenging set of questions. Those who were praised for being smart did not enjoy themselves as much as those praised for working hard. In subsequent tests, the FMers’ performance declined while the GMers’ performance improved. As a final step, they were asked to write about their experience for the next class, and Dweck found that almost 40% of the FMers lied about their performance! It was more important to them to be seen as talented than to put in the work.

So, as you can see there are definite advantages to having a growth mindset, and mindset can be learned. Later, Dweck shows how a growth mindset can be taught to kids and adults, and that’s important because A tremendous amount of scientific evidence has been gathered to show that many of the qualities we consider to be innate and genetically determined are substantially within our control. Studies of identical twins raised apart show that environment can cause a swing in IQ between 12 to 18 points, which could be the difference between a career as a professional or a more modest position.

Anders Ericsson has showed us how “natural genius” can be produced with lots and lots of deliberate practice. When you realize this powerful truth, suddenly you see your own limits in a different light. The evidence shows that most are self-inflicted. There is no need to accept natural limits, and certainly no excuse at all for anyone in a position to influence impressionable young minds, to allow this pernicious belief to take root in their minds.

Second Point: Your Mindset Affects the Type of Goals you Seek

Your mindset influences the type of goals you set for yourself. There are two general types of goals that people set for themselves, performance goals and learning goals. Performance goals are about reaching a set target, which is frequently related to how you compare to others. Learning goals focus on learning, getting better and comparing yourself to yourself.

In one study, researchers tested 167 medical device salespeople involved in a 90-day sales campaign for a particular device. It cost about $5,000, and salespeople were offered a $300 bonus for each device they sold. The nice thing about this study is that it was real-world, with actual dollars at stake and precisely measurable results.[1]

Before the campaign was announced, the salespeople were given a questionnaire to determine whether they were performance-oriented or learning-oriented. Basically, they were asked to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as, “It is important for me to learn from each selling experience I have,” or “I feel very good when I know I have outperformed other salespeople in my company.” In addition, the researchers also asked participants questions about their personal sales targets, how much effort they planned to put into the campaign (they still had to sell everything else), and how much planning they would do.

The study found that “a learning goal orientation had a positive relationship with sales performance” which is the academic way of saying the learning-oriented salespeople kicked ass.

Based on that study, plus some additional research[2] and my own 20 years’ experience in sales training and consulting, I’ve listed seven ways that the proper mindset and goal orientation make you more successful in any pursuit:

1. You set higher goals for yourself.
2. You try harder and spend more time.
3. You are more willing to try difficult things and take risks.
4. You stick with it longer in the face of failure and frustration.
5. You are more optimistic.
6. You are more willing to seek and accept feedback and coaching.
7. You enjoy yourself more.

Third Point: A challenge mindset is better for you

The difference between a problem and a challenge is not merely semantic. The key point is that there is a difference between a problem and a challenge, and how you view a situation can make a big difference in your results and your personal growth and even your physical health.

• A problem is an obstacle; a challenge is a path.
• A problem can scare you; a challenge will excite you.
• A problem is an inconvenience; a challenge is a gift.
• A problem is a threat, a challenge is an opportunity.
• A problem is zero-sum; a challenge is positive-sum.

Those all may sound like just typical motivational mumbo-jumbo, so let me bring in some of the science and the philosophy…

We’ve all been conditioned to believe that stress is bad for us, but did you know there is more than one possible response to stress? We’ve been taught that stress is caused by the activation of the fight or flight response in our minds and bodies. That response is a natural reaction to threat, which prepares our minds and bodies for superior performance, but it evolved many millennia ago in a far different environment than our modern world. So, according to the mismatch theory, our stone-age brains respond to modern circumstances in ways that can hamper performance and over time can severely damage our health.

That makes sense if fight or flight is our only option, but psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains that there are actually three different possible responses to stressful situations. Besides the familiar threat response, we can have a challenge response or a tend-and-befriend response. Although both possible responses are equally important to well-being, my focus in this podcast is on the challenge response.

The difference between the threat response and the challenge response lies in our estimation of our ability to meet the situation that faces us. When we’re fearing for our life, our body does the sensible thing: it goes into defensive mode and sends out hormones that cause a lot of changes; one of the most important is that it constricts blood vessels around our heart, because it might reduce blood loss in the event of severe injury. When we’re not in fear, different hormones cause the blood vessels to relax, which allows for greater blood flow and more energy to rise to the challenge and drives better performance, not to mention being better for us in the long run.

Evoking the challenge response does not reduce stress, but it does make the stress work in our favor. In studies, it has been shown that simply informing people that stress can help them perform better, can lead to improved performance on standardized tests, for example. One reason may be that the threat response narrows our attention and places greater focus on signs that things are going badly, but the challenge response opens our attention to more positive possibilities and opportunities. In numerous studies, those primed to generating a challenge response through prior education led to better performance. Even better, the benefits tend to last far beyond the initial priming.

So, how do you generate the challenge response? The most obvious first step is to avoid the threat response by creating the conditions so that you are not actually in danger. If you are well prepared for a presentation, you should take comfort in the fact that you are equipped to handle any difficult questions that might come up. (Or as I tell my students, if you’re nervous because you haven’t prepared well, you deserve to be!)

You can also activate the challenge response by viewing the stressful situation as an opportunity for learning and growth. Finally, you can activate the challenge response by taking Katie Ledecky’s advice to heart, and EMBRACE THE CHASE!

Please note: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast and want to see a video version of these ideas, I’ve posted four videos:

Embrace the Chase Part 1: Mindset

Embrace the Chase Part 2: Goals

Embrace the Chase Part 3: Challenge

Embrace the Chase Part 4: Talent

[1] VandeWalle, Brown, Cron, Slocum: “The Influence of Goal Orientation and Self-Regulation Tactics on Sales Performance: A Longitudinal Field Test.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1999.

[2] Mindset, by Carol Dweck.

Succeed, by Heidi Grant Halvorson