3. The HiPER Leader with Professor Neil Van Leeuwen

If HiPER Leaders are psychologically wired for crisis and game-change, why do executive search firms, investors, owners, and executive sponsors struggle to identify and retain HiPERs?

Join David Morris and his guest, Neil Van Leeuwen, a philosopher and member of the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. The two unpack the psychological and behavioral traits that distinguish a HiPER leader from traditional leaders, how to identify, and unlock the full potential of a HiPER Leader so they can help take your business to the next normal. To learn more about taking your organization from the new normal to the new exceptional visit www.hipersolutions.com.

Transcript

David Morris  00:10

Welcome to HiPERleadership. Today, I'm thrilled to have Neil Van Leeuwen, a longtime friend, with me to discuss the type of leader that we all depend on to drive breakthrough change. Now, more than ever, these are the leaders that owners, investors, executive sponsors of large projects are leaning on to be able to create the plans and drive positive progress. 

Hello, Neil.

Neil Van Leeuwen  00:37

Thank you for having me, David. It's great to be here.

David Morris  00:40

Yeah. And this goes back so many years. I'm thinking of like college, you know, in the 90s, back at Penn, and so many ideas we used to compare over time. You, of course, went on to become the graduation speaker and studied neuroscience and philosophy over the years. So, it's been really fun to sort of develop this thinking with you.

Neil Van Leeuwen  00:59

Yeah. I've been enjoying it a lot and, and having the opportunity to put various theoretical ideas that I've been developing into contact with your your, both theoretical and practical, and of  thinking about different kinds of person [sic] in the business world and the world at large. And especially this this unique character type, which you call the HiPER. 

David Morris  01:25

Yeah, well, you know, as you probably recall, about 10 years ago, the ideas really started getting solidified[. sic] [I] was always curious about different types of people: what made them tick, and there was this one character that was particularly standing out to me, which originally was called a game-changing leader. And ultimately, we coined the term “High impact PERformer” and HiPER and ultimately the HiPER is over the last 10 years. What we've tried to understand about this leader is why such an individual is: a.) difficult to identify, but when they actually aligned to a mission that matters, they activate and accomplish things that are, you know, sometimes not even, you know, conceivable by by most others. 

So, I want to understand a little bit more during today's session, some of the things that we should be thinking about, you know, over the course of the coming months: we're going to be interviewing different types of HiPER leaders to understand them. And with Neil, I'm curious to get some of the, the constructs we should be thinking about. 

Neil's an empirically oriented philosopher of mind at Georgia State University; did his graduate work at Oxford University, where he studied classics; and then at Stanford University where he studied philosophy. So, what was this whole reaction you had, Neil, when I originally brought up the HiPER to you in 2008/2009? What, what did you think about this and what was it you sort of asked us to go study further?

Neil Van Leeuwen  02:52

Well, it was definitely a reaction of fascination, because I always did sense that that there was a difference between just being really, really good at something and someone who can rise through the ranks and do really well in the traditional pipeline industries, and someone who can essentially change the game and do something extremely effective outside the normal procedures and protocols. So, I was both, honestly a bit fascinated and mystified, because I had the sense that you were onto something, but you hadn't quite yet developed the vocabulary to articulate what it was that made this group of people different, and I think one of the most exciting things over the past almost 10 years about talking more about HiPERs is that, in the course of doing your interviews, you've really found the characteristics that make HiPERs distinctive, that make them both amazing but, on the other hand, both hard to work with and someone who, who definitely needs the right kind of producer to make them have the air cover that they can have to do what they do. 

David Morris  04:11

As we were interviewing different people for the HiPER book, and I know you were listening to a lot of these recordings, a few of the characters stood out in terms of not being obvious that they would, they would actually pursue such a big mission. And ultimately, you got to this concept that the superheroes that are, are not even known. They could be down the street. They could be walking around. Talk to me a little bit about why you think these individuals are just not easy to find and ultimately why executive search firms really struggle in finding them, because it doesn't show up on their pedigree or anything of that form.

Neil Van Leeuwen  04:48

Well, there there are a couple of things and let me talk about the biggest one. HiPERs are unique in that they're not as concerned with societal recognition. They're not as concerned with being considered a member of the team or a team player. They're extremely mission focused. And they're also very logical. They're all about figuring out what are the actual steps that could be done to solve a crisis or to seize a massive opportunity. And because they're not that focused on social recognition, a few things are different about them. One, they're not going to act flashy, they're not going to broadcast their their, their their biggest accomplishments. So, one of the HiPERs we interviewed, a guy named Mike, who helped start a major, major, major world-level internet company. He was actually a gold medal rower in the 1984 Olympics. And I remember, when we we went through his interview, he just kind of mentioned that in the course of talking about something else. And he rushed past it. He didn't dwell on it; he didn't care for us to give him congratulations: the fact that he had a gold medal. It wasn't really such a big matter of concern to him, that we would recognize him. So, part of the reason why HiPERs are invisible, is because they're, they're not motivated by the kinds of social recognition that so many other people are. This lack of motivation, however, by social recognition is also something that allows them to be game-changers. Because if you think about if you think about what social recognition does, it creates a set of rules that allow you to rise through the ranks, whether it's at a manufacturing company or an internet company or medical devices. You got this rules that say okay, if you do X, Y, and Z, you rise in the ranks and the society around you will congratulate you for that. However, what if the rules are so constructed that they prevent you from solving a certain crisis, or they're so constructed that they prevent you from taking a game-changing opportunity that's actually there? Well, if you don't care about rising through the ranks, and you don't care about having the kind of social recognition, you'll also be more willing to break the rules. And being more willing to break the rules is sometimes exactly what's needed in a crisis or when there's a huge opportunity that's present. So, the very thing that keeps HiPERs invisible, since they're not doing anything flashy to show off, is the same thing that allows them to be so effective in either a crisis or opportunity situation.

David Morris  08:06 

[hmmmm] It's you know, our research has been fascinating because, as opposed to most executives, like 90% of them, who have a motivation around influence; power; corner office; title; money, the thing that we found about HiPERs is their motivation tends to be much more about adventure; novelty; newness; making an impact. Now, it's not that they don't want power, especially if it's an if it enables them: if it's a means to an end to their success. However, it's not the power in and of itself. And they also tend to go from mission to mission. So, those missions may not even be related. You know, one of the things we found is that they may go from different industries, so their resume doesn't tend to have anything other than a consistent pattern of inconsistency. And you know, to that extent, you know, after we think about identifying them, what I'm curious about is some of the stuff going on for: first of all, self-management, what's going on in their mind and then ultimately, the support they need from others. So, let's talk a little bit about self-management. What do you think's really going on in their mind? What is the self-talk like? In your philosophy and writing, you talk a lot about different concepts related to like even self-deception, you know, and, and, and what's, what type of things they're causing them to believe because they're setting out to go do you think about the huge medical example we saw with Stanton? Okay, and how he defied reality. He went off and did something that everyone said was impossible. So, was there cognitive dissonance there? Was he deceiving himself, you know, what do you think that pattern, the sustainable pattern these HiPERs have had that have allowed them to do the game-change over and over again, what's going on in their minds?

Neil Van Leeuwen  10:02

Well, let me let me nitpick a little bit, David, at one thing you just said. You said Stanton Rowe defied reality. What he actually did was defied what other people conventionally thought was reality. But in so doing, he discovered a new fact about it. And I think this really points to two of the features of HiPERs that are so striking. One is their tremendous curiosity. So one thing that stood out to me about the interviews [sic] is one thing that motivates HiPERs is they're interested to, to just discover kind of the laws of physics of how any given system works, whether that's a medical system or a body, or what have you and relatedly too they’re not afraid of failure, and not being afraid of failure is very important. Because, well, you learn things when you fail, right? When you fail, it's almost like you've discovered one of the laws of physics. You tried to do something and you realized, for whatever reason, it couldn't be done. And to me, I think, I think one of the saddest things about the human conditions is that humans do have this capacity for self-deception. But I think the the two features of HiPERs are almost incredible antidotes to that, or, you know, something prophylactic that would prevent self-deception from arising in the first place, because curiosity really goes contrary to people's tendency to deceive themselves. And then second, failure. Fear of failure, I should say, is partly what causes people to deceive themselves. But, if you're not afraid of failure because you're so curious to discover how the world works, even if doing so means you buck convention and rub people the wrong way, you're going to be uniquely unself-deceived among among [sic] humans. And I think I think your example of Stanton, the medical device executive who, who created a new device that was essentially not tested on humans and successfully saved someone's life life with it is is a is a perfect example of that. He was utterly clear with himself about the stakes that if he failed to save this person's life, then the A) the medical device use developing would be completely doomed. It would be never approved. But at the same time, he was also very clear with himself that he was making an ethical decision rather than a business decision. So, this kind of clear view of, of reality and what is known and what isn't known, is also something that that separates HiPERs from most people.

David Morris  13:14

Really fascinating. And, you know, what you're basically saying is these these traits, curiosity, and not fearing failure. Having those in abundance, literally make self-deception almost pointless. So you're almost incapable to self-deceive. If you have those two traits in abundance, is that fair to say?

Neil Van Leeuwen  13:39

Yeah, I don't know if I would go all the way to incapable, but you're, you're certainly a lot less likely to. And just just to extend that point a little bit further: One of the things that that gives rise to so much self-deception is, is frankly, the need to belong with other people. Being being with other people kind of pressures us to present a certain face to present a certain image of ourselves. And if you don't have that need as strongly, then you're less likely to create a face to meet the faces that you meet. And you're more likely just to go with open eyes into a situation. And I think that's what HiPERs do.

David Morris  14:30

Neil, we just talked a lot about what drives a HiPER and how they're wired, and some of the unique character traits to them. Many have estimated that probably somewhere between 1-3% of leaders are in fact HiPERs. The second thing I wanted to focus on are some of the external factors, and one thing that we found in the examples of breakthrough success are HiPERs have a cast of characters. They have people around them. And they're able to integrate a huge amount of information from a lot of different perspectives. They also benefit from air cover: someone above them that supports them. And since this podcast is really designed for investors, owners, executive sponsors of large-scale projects and they're the ones hiring a HiPER to come in and go drive a transformation, could you speak a little bit about some of the support resources that you feel that are going to give the best shot of a HiPER really maximizing their potential?

Neil Van Leeuwen  15:37

Yeah, the first one that that we keep coming back to is this idea of the producer. So, the producer being someone who really taps a HiPER on the shoulder and gives them a mission, but then also provides them with air cover when they do unconventional things. Just to give a sports example: We all know that right now the greatest coach in football is is Bill Belichick. But he's also a strange guy he doesn't, he doesn't dress as well as most of the coaches. He has an unconventional coaching style. But/and at the same time, he's he's enormously successful. Well, you're you're from New England, David Well, why? Who's who's the producer in the Belichick situation?

David Morris  16:31

I think using the Hollywood analogy of the producer who oftentimes provides that air cover to the director, which is really where the term comes from. The owner of the team becomes naturally that producer and you know, Robert Kraft, providing that air cover and direction to Belichick that the mission at hand is not just a Super Bowl, but a dynasty. We're at an interesting time now because the rules are gonna have to be redefined again, in order for for them to resume as they've lost their star player just recently.

Neil Van Leeuwen  17:06

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I think I think that team, so the director being in this case, Belichick and the producer being Robert Kraft, it really requires both parts because if if the HiPER, in this case Belichick, is doing things that are highly unconventional, unsuspected, or unexpected, excuse me, then having someone to smooth over the situation, and to make nice with the people that maybe had a couple of toes stepped on in the process is really essential to the success of, of the HiPER mission. So, I think one thing that could be a wrong impression that people take away from this is like, oh, if I'm not HiPER then I'm not as good but the actual message is that it really does take a team, a cast of characters, and when someone is a HiPER and they're doing their thing, they definitely need that support. And the other role that I was thinking of is that there has to be some sort of translator that can be sometimes the same thing as the producer, sometimes someone else, but one of our one of our HiPERs that we interviewed, Robin, she, she puts it, she needs someone who translates her to the junior people, when she's doing things that are contrary to expectations and surprising and bucking convention. Well, sometimes, the HiPER themselves is not the best at explaining what they're doing to others, right? So those those relationships are very important. One other one other one that I thought was very good So, one of our HiPERs, John, who did important work for a major manufacturing company. He said, “Look, we HiPERs are risk-taking almost to a fault” this John happened to have, as a hobby, racecar driving, and was a serious amateur racecar driver. And the critic has to sometimes bring the HiPER back to priorities and say, “Look, your curiosity is leading to too much risk here. And it's not worth sacrificing everything potentially, if this doesn't work out”. So, I think I think the constructive critic can also help the the HiPER have that kind of ethical orientation about tampering their their risk levels, just a little bit.

David Morris  20:00

Neil, what do you make of the Winston Churchill example where he reached that Darkest Hour where he lost faith and he was depressed at home and King George VI had to come over and really reinforce how much he believed in him. In that case, King George VI being more of that producer, again, inspired by the Hollywood producer concept. And in Winston being the HiPER, you know, what do you make what sense do you make of why there'll be certain times where even a HiPER can self-doubt and and, and the power of that reassurance from someone else they respect?

Neil Van Leeuwen  20:39

Well, let's let's remind ourselves of the kind of situation that that Winston Churchill faced, especially when the large component of the British Army was stranded at Dunkirk. He had to do something that just seemed completely wild from the standpoint of, of conventional wisdom, and the wildness of it led so many of the people around him to say that it's wrong and even even people with the greatest fort... [sic] fortitude will feel discouraged and often depressed when everyone around you is saying that something is wrong. And the truth is the Dunkirk maneuver might not have worked out, it might have been an abject failure. But effectively, and this is what Churchill figured out with his stoic resolve, was that it was the only chance really they had to maintain and preserve their fighting force against the potentially invading Nazis. And if they hadn't done the Dunkirk maneuver, then all would have been lost. So So Churchill faces this situation where he has to do something that probably won't work, but it's really their only chance. And but since it's so unconventional, he's getting criticized. And that's when you need someone else to buck you up. And I think that's that's where the king's intervention really was really was crucial. So I think that's just a good point to the effect that HiPERs aren't are not inhuman. They have peculiar characteristics that make them worth trying to find and attend to. But at the same time, sometimes someone needs to buck them up.

David Morris  22:42

And that's what's so important as we think about our audience here: investors, owners, and executive sponsors of large-scale transformations is, you know, those are some of the things to keep in mind after you recruit such a person, the type of things they need. I've also heard from a lot of HiPERs, Neil, that if the mission is not worthy, you know, and in that case of the king as I reflect on it, him reminding Churchill of the magnitude of the mission, but also his belief, something in that combination, that it matters, that he's relevant, that he's important. And that also, he's believed in: that that activates him. As we as we close up, this has been so much fun, Neil, and we think about the interviews we have, we have a series of HiPERs across the coming months that we’ll be interviewing, what would you say are a few areas we should really probe on? What are some areas of curiosity that you still have, as we really get to a more predictable way of identifying and unlocking the maximum potential [of] HiPER leaders?

Neil Van Leeuwen  23:48

Well, I think it would be fascinating to explore and get them to reflect on their decision-making process and really uncover what led them to take on a new project, or when they were in the process of having a new project, what led them to do things differently that bucked the status quo? So, trying to figure out, I think is this this is really one of the most interesting puzzles, trying to figure out what makes their decision style different from most other people. We've we've gotten something a handle of a handle on it, you know, with this whole being less motivated by the need to fit in conventionally, as a team player. Not in in an inhuman way, but in a somewhat quirky way, but that doesn't really get to the bottom of what's the characteristic HiPER HiPER decision process. The other thing I would like you to focus on in your your future interviews, just because I would love to hear about it, is what makes the difference between when a HiPER is really activated and not as activated. So, we know it's something about having a crucial mission and a big mission. But I think there's still a lot more detail to be filled in on on how that difference in activation works, what it amounts to, because you'll see in some stretches of a given HiPER’s life, they're not that extraordinary. They're not doing amazing things. And that suggests that the potential is unlocked. So really understanding this puzzle of activation is something that I think would be worth getting more reflection on from the people we're going to interview.

David Morris  25:51

Well, Neil, thank you and thank you. I don't know if I've expressed this in such a manner before; you've really been an incredible teacher, advisor, philosopher for me over the years, in terms of being able to take ideas we were discovering, some things related, somethings kind of scattered, and helping to put a construct around this. And, you know, when you when you really help put together the book proposal, you know, to be able to sort of connect these dots in such a [sic] inspiring manner, is a huge contributor to why we continued down this mission, and, and will for years to come. So, thank you, Neil.

Neil Van Leeuwen  26:31

Well, thank you, David. Thanks for having me. It's always a delight to have these conversations. And I'm looking forward to hearing more interviews and to understanding HiPERs better, I think it's going to be a really fun drive. 

David Morris  26:46

Thank you, Neil.

David Morris  26:50

Thank you for joining us in the kickoff to HiPERleadership. Subscribe to this podcast to hear about more exciting examples of HiPER leaders, each of whom will exemplify a trait that is critical as an investor, owner, or executive sponsor of a large project. As you are hiring this HiPER, keep in mind these traits to provide you with an edge. And also, keep in mind that HiPER leaders are timeless. While they're very appropriate for pandemics and challenges that we're living through now, they're always needed for breakthrough change. Thank you.