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Tag: habits of high performers

  • Why Slow is the New Fast

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    In boardrooms and startup accelerators around the world, a counterintuitive truth is emerging: the leaders who move fastest are often the ones who deliberately slow down. While our Western culture glorifies the perpetual sprint, elite performers are discovering what Navy SEALs have known for decades—”slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”

    The Tyranny of Chronos

    Our modern productivity obsession is rooted in what the ancient Greeks called chronos—linear, measurable time that ticks relentlessly forward on our calendars and clocks. This is the time of deadlines, sprint cycles, and quarterly earnings reports. It’s quantitative, urgent, and unforgiving.

    But the Greeks recognized another dimension of time entirely: kairos—the right time, the opportune moment, time that’s qualitative rather than quantitative. Kairos is the difference between sending an email at 2 a.m. because you can, and sending it when your recipient is most likely to engage meaningfully with your message. It’s the difference between filling your calendar with back-to-back meetings versus creating space for the kind of strategic thinking that actually moves the needle.

    The most successful entrepreneurs and leaders I’ve worked with have learned to dance between both types of time, but they’ve discovered that honoring kairos often requires the courage to slow down in a chronos-obsessed world.

    The SEAL Philosophy in the C-Suite

    When Navy SEALs say “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” they’re describing a mindset that prioritizes precision over speed, preparation over reactive rushing. In high-stakes military operations, moving too quickly can mean missed details, poor communication, and catastrophic failure. The same principle applies to business leadership.

    Consider the CEO who spends an extra week refining their product strategy rather than rushing to market. That deliberate deceleration often prevents months of costly pivots later. Or the manager who invests time in really understanding a team conflict rather than applying a quick fix that creates deeper resentment.

    This isn’t about moving slowly for its own sake—it’s about moving at the speed of insight rather than the speed of anxiety.

    The Three-Part Rhythm of Peak Performance

    The most effective leaders operate in a rhythm I call “Move. Think. Rest.”—or MTR, pronounced “motor”—three integrative phases that honor both chronos and kairos time:

    Move: This is the phase to step away from your desk, to get out of your head and into your body so that you can activate those feel-good hormones—like serotonin, endorphins and dopamine—in order to bring calm to the chaos and energy to blah thinking. It could take the form of an in-person walking meeting; a walking meeting on the phone, sans video; or a team standing meeting. It might also take the form of a dance break.

    Humans are designed to move, and the type of movement I describe is intentional and finite. It helps you to shift away from rushing to entering a flow state. 

    Think: This is your kairos time—space for backcasting (reflection, memory, metacognition) as well as forecasting (imagination, dreaming, and daydreaming). It’s when you pause to step back from the tactical and zoom out so that you can actually think more strategically. Many leaders skip this phase, jumping from one action item to the next, then wonder why they feel perpetually reactive rather than proactive.

    Rest: True rest isn’t just for physical recovery—it’s purpose is also for cognitive and emotional renewal. It’s the space where your subconscious continues processing complex challenges while your conscious mind recuperates. It allows for your default mode network to kick in. The DMN is the meaning-making part of the brain and it goes to work when you are not engaged with the world. The leaders who understand this phase gain access to insights that their always-on competitors miss.

    The Value of Emotional Recovery

    This emotional recovery component of MTR is particularly crucial for leaders. As executive coach Scott Peltin pointed out to me, leaders spend their days absorbing the emotional energy of their teams—fielding frustrations, celebrating wins, navigating conflicts, and holding space for others’ anxieties and ambitions. Without intentional emotional recovery, leaders become depleted reservoirs, unable to provide the steady presence their organizations need.

    Emotional recovery isn’t just about taking a vacation or getting enough sleep (though both help). It’s about creating regular practices that allow you to process and release the emotional residue of leadership. This might mean a daily walk without podcasts or music, journaling to externalize swirling thoughts, or simply sitting quietly for 10 minutes between high-stakes meetings to reset your emotional baseline.

    Practical Applications for the Overwhelmed Executive

    How do you implement this philosophy when your calendar is already packed and expectations are sky-high? Start small:

    Introduce “Think Time” blocks in your calendar. Even 15 minutes before major decisions can shift you from reactive to strategic mode.

    Practice the “24-hour rule” for important communications. Draft that crucial email or decision, then sit on it overnight. You’ll be amazed how often this prevents costly mistakes.

    Create “slow lanes” in your workflow. Designate certain projects or decisions as nonurgent, allowing them the time they need to marinate for optimal outcomes.

    Build in emotional recovery rituals. Schedule brief transition moments between intense meetings. Even three minutes of deep breathing or stepping outside can prevent emotional buildup that clouds judgment later in the day.

    Embrace strategically saying no. Every yes to something urgent is often a no to something important. Slow leaders understand that protecting their kairos time sometimes means disappointing people who operate purely in chronos time.

    The Competitive Advantage of Deliberate Pace

    In our hyperconnected world, the ability to slow down becomes a differentiator. While your competitors are spinning their wheels in perpetual motion, you’re gaining the clarity that comes from operating at the speed of wisdom rather than the speed of fear.

    The future belongs to leaders who can resist the cultural pressure to confuse motion with progress, who understand that in an age of infinite information and constant connectivity, the scarcest resource isn’t time—it’s attention. And attention, like wine, improves with the right kind of patience.

    Remember: in a world obsessed with faster, the leaders who master the art of strategic slowness don’t just survive—they flourish.

    By Natalie Nixon

    This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company.

    Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

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  • 3 Cognitive Habits of People Who Get Things Done

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    Marcus leads a team of eight direct reports, and Jennifer is his star employee. While the other seven team members struggle to complete tasks on time or in the way Marcus asks for them, Jennifer seems to ace any task she’s given. She asks questions when she’s unclear and owns up to her mistakes. Any time the other employees mess up, Marcus wishes he could clone Jennifer seven times and save himself the hassle.

    Sound familiar?

    You may not be able to clone your star employees, but you can help your team replicate the cognitive habits of people like Jennifer to build the skill of accountability across your team. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we’ve spent the past year reverse-engineering what accountable people do from a cognitive perspective. Quite literally, we’ve asked, what are the cognitive habits—the habits of mind—of people who do this well? Three have come into focus: syncing expectations, driving with purpose, and owning one’s impact.  

    In short, accountable people get clarity in what they’re supposed to do, execute tasks deliberately and intentionally, and learn from the outcomes they produce, whether good or bad. 

    3 habits of accountability

    When people attend to these habits in the course of their work, we call it proactive accountability. That is, they see accountability as a way to grow, develop, and innovate. They take ownership of their responsibilities and learn from their mistakes. Proactive accountability stands in contrast  to punitive accountability, a practice in which leaders create environments of fear, blame, or punishment that hinder learning and growth, as well as permissive accountability, in which leaders assume performance issues will simply work themselves out. 

    Sync expectations 

    A major factor in cultures with low accountability is a mismatch in expectations. The manager thinks the team member will do one thing, but the team member thinks they’re supposed to do something else. Disappointment and broken trust follow.

    In the brain, unmet expectations are processed as error signals. Levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine drop, sapping motivation and causing us to feel frustrated or angry, which forces us to adjust our expectations. When expectations are met, however, there is no error signal, dopamine levels hold steady, and trust and satisfaction remain strong.

    The first habit of proactive accountability, Sync expectations, involves the employee getting clear about what’s expected of them. This is an important first step because shared understanding is the foundation of being effective. In the brain this is represented by a temporary synchronization of neural activity, known as neural synchrony. 

    During neural synchrony, neurons in both people’s brains are firing in the same patterns because their minds are processing information in nearly identical ways. For this to happen, both people need to discuss and eliminate any potential misunderstandings before moving forward.

    Syncing expectations also has benefits for relationships at the end of the project because fulfilled expectations breed trust, while unmet expectations erode trust. When two teammates sync expectations up front, they make an investment in sustaining the relationship long-term.

    Tactic: Encourage your team to sync expectations by communicating in a way that’s succinct, specific, and generous (SSG). SSG communication uses a narrow focus to support working memory (succinct); it uses visual, explicit language to enhance processing (specific); and it’s tailored to create ease of understanding (generous). It’s not “Get me this report by 5 p.m.”—rather, it’s “Email me this report by 5 p.m. Eastern Time, and please attach the report as a PDF.”

    SSG communication creates clarity, which promotes synchrony and aligns expectations.

    Drive with purpose

    Once the leader and employee have synced expectations, the employee must own the responsibility to execute the task at the highest level. Highly effective people often do this by connecting the goal at hand to a higher purpose, and then working to create the right outcomes with that purpose in mind.

    Purpose ignites motivation. When we know why we’re asked to do something, and we can see how the work creates a meaningful impact, we’re more intrinsically motivated to act. Compared to extrinsic motivators, such as money and status, intrinsic rewards, like a sense of accomplishment or mastery over a task, are much more powerful. Consciously or not, effective people find deeper meaning in their work to summon the energy to keep pushing.

    They also act deliberately, rather than hastily, investigating as many possibilities as they can and assuming almost nothing. In addition, they check their biases to avoid making rash judgments. Since cognitive biases act as mental shortcuts, they pose risks for an employee completing a task effectively. Someone who acts with an expedience bias, for instance, might move too quickly and miss a crucial part of the work.

    Tactic: Help your employees identify the impact this work will have on them. Perhaps the project is an opportunity for them to build a new skill or to contribute to an important organizational goal. Asking questions that elicit a clear “why” will help the employee form a stronger sense of purpose and ownership over their work. 

    Own the impact

    Accountability doesn’t just involve getting things done as expected; it means seeing how those actions play out going forward. Even the best laid plans can produce unexpected results. Accountable leaders own their team’s impact, regardless of people’s positive intentions, and then they devise new plans to keep pushing toward success.

    Proactive accountability requires us to maintain a growth mindset, or the belief that mistakes are chances to improve rather than signs of incompetence. When people always seem to get things done, it’s because they’re not getting mired in failure or basking in success. They may pause to experience their emotions, but ultimately they’re focused on achieving the next set of goals in front of them. 

    Tactic: The most important time for leaders and team members to own their impact is when things don’t go as planned. Help your team apologize well by following (and modeling) a three-step approach: taking responsibility, saying how you’ll fix things, and asking for others’ input. Choosing to learn from our mistakes preserves trust and promotes growth: two outcomes that sit at the heart of proactive accountability.

    With these three habits, Marcus feels more empowered to help his team build the skill of accountability. Jennifer may have a natural talent for getting things done at a high level, but there’s no “secret” to her efficacy. When a new project comes her way, she merely goes through the prescribed steps that neuroscience shows will naturally produce accountability. 

    It will take time to develop the behaviors of proactive accountability and make them habits. But with the right focus, you can help everyone on your team, including yourself, become the kind of person who meets or exceeds expectations in whatever they do. What seems like magic will really just be brain science at work.

    By David Rock and Chris Weller

    This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company.

    Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

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